CHAPTER VIII.
STOCKMAR.

One of the strongest influences, personal and political, in the Queen’s earlier life was that of Baron Stockmar. This remarkable man attained, simply by dint of character, the position of being one of the chief of the unseen political forces of Europe. Without any official political position, he was the friend and confidant of statesmen and princes, and acquired extraordinary influence by his clearness of view and tenacity of purpose in political concerns, joined with personal honesty and disinterestedness, and also in a remarkable degree with a singularly firm grasp of “the inexhaustibly fruitful truth that moral causes govern the standing and falling of States.”

The formative influences on his character had been the political misfortunes of Germany under the first Napoleon, in the early part of the century. As a youth he witnessed the bitter humiliation of his country, and later the downfall of her oppressor; and from henceforth the bed-rock of his character was the belief in the existence of a moral power ruling over the fate of nations and individuals. His son and biographer narrates an event which influenced Stockmar deeply. During the Napoleonic tyranny in Germany, he formed one of a group of enthusiastic young Germans, some of whom broached the possibility of delivering their country by murdering her oppressor. An old Prussian officer who was present reproached the lads for their folly: “This is the talk,” he said, “of very young people;” and he went on to express his firm confidence that the rule of the French in Germany was in its very nature evanescent, and must come to an end. His counsel was: “Trust in the natural course of events,” and be ready to take advantage of them. Things that are rotten and hollow decay; those that are sound and healthy flourish and grow. Stockmar saw the crumbling to dust within a few years of what then appeared the overwhelming strength of Napoleon, and never forgot the lesson he had learned. All through his life he really believed what most people profess to believe, that the wages of sin is death.

From this standpoint of a belief in moral causes as governing the standing and falling of States, he sought to understand the source of the political humiliation of Germany, and he found it in the petty jealousies and childish narrow-mindedness of the little German States. Once convinced of this, long before the unity of Germany came within the sphere of practical politics he labored earnestly to bring it about. He was not slow to perceive that the arrogance of Napoleon and the shame and despair of Germany brought with them the germ of a better state of things. In the first place, Napoleon reduced the number of small German States from something like three hundred to thirty. This in itself was no small step towards national unity. In the second place, the anguish and humiliation endured in common by the German populations animated them with a common purpose to throw off the yoke of their oppressor. This was a beginning of a new national life. As Stockmar expressed it, “The people had come to know that hitherto they had had no Fatherland; and from that hour they cherished the resolve to have one.”

Stockmar never believed that bad morals could be good politics. It was his creed that wrong-doing brings with it its own inevitable retribution. Immediately after the Coup d’état in December, 1851, he said that out of the elements with which its success had been secured, the devil only could form a stable Government, and that he did not believe in the possibility of a permanent rule for his black majesty. His biographer, writing early in 1870, remarks that it yet remained to be seen whether Stockmar’s prediction would be fulfilled. Within a few months all doubt on the subject was ended by the cannon of Sedan and the downfall of the Second Empire.

A character like Stockmar’s, with a fixed political and wholly impersonal end in view, is never lacking in self-confidence; he never for a moment swerved from his aim, though after 1848 he realized that he would never probably live to see it accomplished. The fact that practical statesmen thought his dream of German unity under the leadership of Prussia a “bee in his bonnet,” did not in the least disturb him. He went on diligently “laying the seed corn,” as he himself described it, in other minds, quietly, almost secretly, knowing that once planted it would grow. After the downfall of the hopes of German unity in 1848, Stockmar was not discouraged, nor would he allow discouragement in others. He used to say, “The Germans are a good people, easy to govern; and the German Princes who do not understand this, do not deserve to rule over such a people. Do not be frightened, for younger ones are quite unable to estimate how great is the progress which the Germans have made towards political unity. I have lived through it, and I know this people. You are marching towards a great future. You will live to see it, not I; but then think of the old man.”

Stockmar’s policy was constantly directed towards:—

  1. German unity under the headship of Prussia; and subsidiary to this:—
  2. A cordial understanding and alliance between England and Germany;
  3. The harmonizing of democracy with the throne through constitutional monarchy.

An apparent accident enabled him to obtain a place in the world of European politics, from which he could work for these ends. Born in 1787, the son of a lawyer in the little German town of Coburg, nothing could have appeared less likely than that Christian Friedrich Stockmar would have any weight in settling the affairs of nations. But having been trained for the medical profession, and having distinguished himself for courage and organizing capacity as an army surgeon, he was appointed physician in the household of Prince Leopold on the occasion of his marriage to Princess Charlotte in 1816. This introduced him to political personages in England. From henceforth we have flashes from the bull’s-eye lantern of Stockmar’s letters on the great world of English politics. Nothing escaped his notice, and he gives a series of vignettes of the Royal circle very different in tone from the formal adulation which often characterized such productions. The Mulatto countenance of the Queen-mother, Queen Charlotte; the hideous face of the Duke of Cumberland, with one eye turned quite out of its place; the quiet kindliness of the Duke of Kent; the erect figure, with black hair simply cut, immense hawk’s nose, tightly compressed lips, strong, massive under-jaw of the Duke of Wellington, with his easy, simple, friendly manners, and his moderation at table, are all noted; so are Castlereagh’s bad French and not very good English; the Grand Duke Nicholas (afterwards the Emperor Nicholas of the Crimean War), “a singularly handsome, attractive young fellow, ... very well mannered, with a decided talent for flirting.... When Countess Lieven played after dinner on the piano he kissed her hand, which struck the English ladies present as peculiar, but decidedly desirable.” Those who are apt to take alarm at the advent of “The New Woman” will perhaps learn with surprise that she is not so very new after all. Mrs. Campbell, Lady-in-Waiting to Princess Charlotte, “opposes everything she sees and hears, and meets everything that men can say or do with such persistent contradiction that we can tell beforehand what will be her answers to our questions. This lady, however, professed man-hater though she was, thought with the rest of the women that the Grand Duke Nicholas was charming.” Mrs. Campbell could not cease praising him. “What an amiable creature; he is devilish handsome. He will be the handsomest man in Europe,” &c. Stockmar notes the hoidenish manners, good heart, and strong will of Princess Charlotte. “Handsomer than I expected, with most peculiar manners, ... laughing a great deal, and talking still more.” He was, evidently, rather shocked by her want of decorum, but he noted with satisfaction the simplicity and good taste of her dress. He was devoted to his master, and predicts that the Princess’s impressionable, generous nature will develop and improve under his influence and that of a refined and affectionate home, which the poor child had never known. The Princess herself said to Stockmar: “My mother was bad, but she would not have become as bad as she was if my father had not been infinitely worse.” Stockmar was devoted to Leopold, and spoke of him in a private letter as “My glorious master, a manly prince and a princely man.” Leopold, on his side, spoke of Stockmar as “the most valued physician of his soul and body.” In the Royal household at Claremont he was treated by both the Prince and Princess as a friend, and he fulfilled the duties of private secretary as well as physician to his master. His good sense made him decline to act as medical adviser to Princess Charlotte. This office should, he felt, devolve on an English doctor. This may have been either fortunate for himself or unfortunate for the poor Princess,—probably the latter; as there are reasons to believe that he would have prescribed a rational treatment in the place of the purging, bleeding, and general lowering of the system which caused her death within a few hours of the birth of her stillborn son. In that dark hour of the loss of all his hopes of domestic happiness and political ambition, Leopold leant on the firm devotion of Stockmar. He made Stockmar promise never to forsake him. Kneeling at the bed where his young wife lay dead, Leopold said, “I am now quite desolate. Promise me always to stay with me.” He promised. Again later the Prince reminded him of his promise, and asked him if he had considered all that it meant. He renewed the promise; but even in this moment of supreme emotion he was not carried away, for he did not promise unconditionally. “I said I would never leave him as long as I saw that he confided in me and loved me, and that I could be of use to him.” He added, in writing an account of all that had happened to his sister, “I did not hesitate to promise what he may perhaps claim forever, or, perhaps, even next year, may find no longer necessary to him.” Without building too much on his being permanently necessary to the Prince, he knew that he was necessary to him at the moment. No elder brother was ever more tender than Stockmar to Leopold at the time of his bereavement. He never left him, he slept in his room; if the Prince woke in the night Stockmar got up and talked him to sleep again. He watched over him morally and physically, and devised remedies and occupations for him. He encouraged him to stay in England and to devote himself to the study of the English language and literature and constitutional history, and to interest himself in the social and political questions of the day. It is probably a universal experience that love and service go together. One never loves, either human beings or causes, till one has done something for them. Therefore the more Stockmar served Leopold the more he loved him; and the relation between them became almost unique in Royal annals.