“Das Auge sicht den Himmel offen,
Es schwelgt das Herz in Seligkeit.”[9]
The Queen’s position made it necessary for her to offer herself in marriage to her cousin, not to wait till he sought her love. In her letter to her uncle Leopold, she tells him, “My mind is quite made up. I told Albert this morning of it. The warm affection he showed me on learning this, gave me great pleasure. He seems perfection, and I think I have the prospect of very great happiness before me. I love him MORE than I can say, and shall do everything in my power to render this sacrifice (for such, in my opinion, it is) as small as I can.... The last few days have passed like a dream to me, and I am so much bewildered by it all that I know hardly how to write, but I do feel very happy.... Lord Melbourne, whom I have of course consulted about the whole affair, quite approves my choice, and expresses great satisfaction at this event, which he thinks in every way highly desirable. Lord Melbourne has acted in this business, as he has always done towards me, with the greatest kindness and affection. We also think it better, and Albert quite approves of it, that we should be married very soon after Parliament meets, about the beginning of February.”
King Leopold’s answer applied to himself the words of old Simeon, “Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace.” The dearest wish of his heart was as good as accomplished.
The Prince avowed his engagement to his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Gotha, in these words: “The Queen sent for me alone to her room a few days ago, and declared to me in a genuine outburst of love and affection that I had gained her whole heart, and would make her intensely happy if I would make the sacrifice of sharing her life with her, for she said she looked on it as a sacrifice; the only thing that troubled her was that she did not think she was worthy of me. The joyous openness of manner in which she told me this quite enchanted me, and I was quite carried away by it. She is really most good and amiable, and I am quite sure Heaven has not given me into evil hands, and that we shall be happy together. Since that moment Victoria does whatever she fancies I should wish or like, and we talk together a great deal about our future life, which she promises me to make as happy as possible.” In these letters one feels that her tone is more generous than his. The Queen’s letters, then in the first blush of love, and always wherever her husband is concerned, breathe the spirit of Elsa’s self-dedication, “Dir geb’ ich Alles, was ich brie!”
She had then, and preserved to the end of their happy life together, unbounded belief in him and pride in him. To her he was the most beautiful, the wisest and best of human beings. He was always to her “my precious Albert,” “my incomparable Albert,” “my beloved Albert, looking so handsome in his uniform.” Sometimes, even in very happy marriages, the King of the fireside has to descend from his throne when the babies arrive; the wife becomes less the wife and more the mother. This was never so in the case of the Queen; her husband was always first and foremost in her heart. She wrote after many years of marriage, during one of the Prince Consort’s short absences from home, “You cannot think how much this costs me, nor how completely forlorn I am and feel when he is away, or how I count the hours till he returns. All the numerous children are as nothing to me when he is away. It seems as if the whole life of the house and home were gone.” King Leopold had read her rightly, when he wrote immediately after her engagement, that she was one to whom a happy home life was in a special degree indispensable. The cares and anxieties of her political duties made it more necessary for her happiness than even for that of most women, to have her home hallowed by the sympathy, support, advice, and affection of the husband who never ceased to be her lover.
Most women can sympathize with what the Queen must have felt when she had to announce to her Council her intended marriage. This took place on November 23d 1839. There was a large attendance, eighty Councillors being present. Greville describes the scene in his usual graphic manner: “The folding-doors were thrown open, and the Queen came in, attired in a plain morning gown, but wearing a bracelet containing Prince Albert’s picture. She read the declaration in a clear, sonorous, sweet-toned voice, but her hands trembled so excessively that I wonder she was able to read the paper which she held. Lord Lansdowne made a little speech, asking her permission to have the declaration made public. She bowed assent, placed the paper in his hands, and then retired.”[10]
The Queen describes the same scene in her Journal; it will be seen she confirms Greville in every particular. “Precisely at two,” the Queen writes, “I went in; the room was full, but I hardly knew who was there. Lord Melbourne I saw looking kindly at me, with tears in his eyes, but he was not near me. I then read my short declaration. I felt my hands shake, but I did not make one mistake. I felt most happy and thankful when it was over. Lord Lansdowne then rose, and in the name of the Privy Council asked that this most gracious and most welcome communication might be printed. I then left the room, the whole thing not lasting above two or three minutes.” She adds that the Prince’s picture in her bracelet “seemed to give me courage at the Council.” The Prince, with the Queen’s entire approval, determined to take no English title, thinking that bearing his own name would more distinctly mark his individuality and independence. At this time he felt, as he expressed it in one of his family letters, that whatever changes were in store for him, he should always remain “a true German, a true Coburg and Gotha man.” However sincere and natural this feeling may have been, he learned later thoroughly to identify himself with the country of his adoption, and that the true realization of his personality lay in sinking his own individual existence in that of his wife.
Heaven opens on the ravished eye,
The heart is all entranced in bliss.
Schiller: Song of the Bell.
[10] Greville Memoirs, vol. i., 2d series, p. 247.