“The Prince has made great strides of late.... Place weighty reasons before him, and at once he takes a just and rational view, be the subject what it may.... He will now and then run against a post and bruise his shins, but a man cannot become an experienced soldier without having been in battle and getting a few blows.... His temper is thoroughly free from passion, and he has so keen and sure an eye that he is not likely to lose his way and fall into mistakes. His mind becomes every day more active, and he devotes the greater part of his time to business, without a murmur. The relations between husband and wife are all one could desire. The Queen also improves greatly. She gains daily in judgment and experience. The candor, truthfulness, honesty, and fairness with which she judges of men and things are really delightful, and the impartial self-knowledge with which she speaks of herself is thoroughly charming.”

It was Stockmar’s habit, rarely departed from between 1840 to 1856, to spend the winter months of each year with the Queen and Prince, and the rest of the year with his own family in Coburg. His political activity and interests were vigilantly kept up from his own home, but he compares the outlook on politics in Coburg and London with strong preference for the latter. London, he says, is a high watch-tower, from which he could command the whole of Europe, and Coburg, “a little hole in an old stove.”

He was equally at home in organizing a nursery establishment for the Queen and Prince, in directing the religious and general education of the Royal children, in planning and carrying out extensive reforms in the Royal household, in setting the private financial affairs of the Sovereign on a sound footing, and in far-reaching schemes of political development. He often combined the domestic with the political in a manner that was almost feminine. His chief political object in life was the unity of Germany under the leadership of Prussia, and secondary to this, the development of a good understanding between England and Prussia, and the spread of Constitutional monarchy all over the Continent. It was indirectly to serve all these ends that he strongly advised, on the birth of the Prince of Wales, that the King, Frederick William IV., of Prussia should be invited to England to be godfather to the young heir. The King of Hanover, we learn, was furious at this. But Stockmar hoped that the visit of the King of Prussia would promote friendly personal relations between the two Royal Houses; it is probable that he already had his eye on the little Princess Royal as the future bride of Prince Frederick William of Prussia; he also expected that the King of Prussia would be favorably impressed by the free political institutions of England, and become less averse to their establishment in his own country. Stockmar’s method of recommending Constitutional government to foreign princes was to use every suitable opportunity for having them invited to the English Court, so that the advantages of free institutions might insensibly commend themselves by way of object lessons. Palmerston was also a great admirer of the free institutions of his country; but his way of recommending them to foreign governments was to write despatches from the Foreign Office in London to the English ambassadors in various capitals of Europe, with instructions that these documents were to be communicated to the respective governments to which the ambassadors were accredited, to say how vastly superior the English system of government was to that pursued by the benighted foreigner. To have the same end in view and to pursue it by diametrically opposite methods is an almost certain receipt for personal animosity; and it is not too much to say that Stockmar and Palmerston were actively hostile to each other all through the former’s participation in English political life. Yet Palmerston, along with other English statesmen, cordially acknowledged Stockmar’s absolute honesty and disinterestedness, and also his great political capacity. Palmerston spoke of Stockmar to Bunsen as the only perfectly disinterested character he had ever met with in the political world; and again on another occasion he said Stockmar had one of the best political heads he had ever met with. Stockmar did not return the compliment. He could not forgive Palmerston for pursuing good ends by wrong methods; he accused him of a narrow insularity, of being flippant and obstinate at the same time; one good quality he allowed him,—that he was not a Frenchman. The antagonism between these two opposing forces in the great world of politics had an important bearing on the personal history of the Queen and her husband, which will be the subject of a future chapter.

CHAPTER IX.
THE NURSERY.

The courage of the Queen on the occasion of the attempt by Oxford upon her life was enhanced by the fact that it took place a few months before the birth of her first child. The Queen’s natural courage was perhaps fostered on this and other occasions by her having so much to do and to think of besides her own personal concerns. During the months when she was awaiting the birth of her first child, she was up to the eyes in politics. In 1840 there was a premonitory rumbling of the storm in the East, which has so frequently broken the rest of Europe. France was fractious, and imagined herself slighted by England, and in the summer and autumn of 1840 it looked several times as if the two countries were on the brink of war. The Queen, writing to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, said: “I think our child ought to have, besides its other names, those of Turco-Egypto, as we think of nothing else.” If it were true that home duties and political duties were incompatible, the Royal children would have had a sadly-neglected childhood; but it is a matter of experience that busy people are usually those who find time for everything, and the Queen and her husband were no exception to the rule. There is probably not a mother in England who has given more loving thought and care for her children’s welfare than Her Majesty has done. The children and her love for and pride in them are constantly mentioned in the Queen’s Journals. In the letters from Princess Alice to the Queen, published as a memorial of the former, she repeatedly refers to her happy childhood and her desire to pass on a similar training to her own little flock. Under the date of January 1st, 1865, Princess Alice writes to her mother: “All the morning I was telling Louis” (her husband) “how it used to be at home, and how we all assembled outside your dressing-room door to scream in chorus ‘Prosit Neujahr,’ and to give to you and papa our drawings, writings, &c., the busy occupation of previous weeks.... Dear papa bit his lip so as not to laugh.”

The Princess Royal, now the Empress Frederick of Germany, was born at Buckingham Palace on November 21st, 1840. Prince Albert was then having a course of reading in English law with Mr. Selwyn; the tutor arrived on November 23d to continue his instructions. The Prince said: “I fear I cannot read any law to-day.... But you will like to see the little Princess.” He took the lawyer into the nursery, and, taking the little hand of the infant in his own, said, “The next time we read it must be on the rights and duties of a Princess Royal.” The Queen made an excellent recovery; then, as always, the Prince was her tender guardian and nurse. No one but himself ever lifted her from her bed to the sofa, and he always helped to wheel her on her bed or sofa to the next room. However occupied he was, “he ever came,” writes the Queen, “with a sweet smile on his face.” In short, his care of her was like that of a mother, nor could there be a kinder, wiser, or more judicious nurse.

At Christmas this year, Prince Albert naturalized the German custom of Christmas-trees in England; there is probably hardly a child in England who has not appreciated their introduction.

It may be imagined that Stockmar had plenty of good advice to give the young parents. One of his wise saws was, “A man’s education begins with the first day of his life.” He undertook in the early years of the Queen’s marriage the organization of the nursery department. In one of his letters he says: “The nursery gives me more trouble than the government of a kingdom would do.” The Princess Royal was always the child nearest his heart. He had an immensely high opinion of her abilities. “I hold her,” he said, “to be exceptionally gifted, even to the point of genius.”

Curiously enough, Melbourne was also consulted (1842) by the Queen and Prince upon the organization of the nursery, and the choice of a lady to preside over it.