Thursday, 24th May.—I this day enter my 20th year, which I think very old! In looking back on the past year, I feel more grateful than I can express for all the very great blessings I have received since my last birthday. I have only one very dear affectionate friend less—dearest Louis! Oh! if she could but be still with us!! Though I have lost a dear friend, I can never be thankful enough for the true, faithful, honest, kind one I’ve gained since last year, which is my excellent Lord Melbourne, who is so kind and good to me!!... At 25 m. p. 10 I went with the whole Royal Family into the other Ball-room through the Saloon which was full of people; after speaking to a good many I went to my seat (without sitting down) and then opened the Ball in a Quadrille with George.[490] There were about the same number of people there as at the 1st Ball, and a great number of Foreigners there. My good Lord Melbourne came up to me after my 1st Quadrille, but only stopped one minute, and though I saw him looking on at 3 of the Quadrilles I danced afterwards, he never came near me again, which I was very sorry for; and when I sent for him after supper, he was gone.... After supper I danced 4 Quadrilles in Strauss’s room; he was playing most beautifully. I danced with Lord George Paget,[491] Lord Cantelupe,[492] Lord Milton,[493] and Lord Leveson. Count Eugene Zichy (cousin to Countess Zichy’s husband) wore a most beautiful uniform all covered with splendid turquoises; he is a handsome man, with a very good-natured expression, as he is too, very unaffected and good-humoured, and a beautiful valzer. We then went into the other room, and danced a regular old English Country Dance of 72 couple, which lasted 1 hour, from 3 till 4! I danced with Lord Uxbridge, Lord Cantelupe and Lady Cowper being next, and the Duke of Devonshire and Lady Lothian[494] on the other side. It was the merriest, most delightful thing possible. I left the Ball room at 10 m. p. 4, and was in bed at 5—broad daylight. It was a delightful Ball, and the pleasantest birthday I’ve spent for many years!...
Monday, 28th May.—Spoke of writing to George of Hanover,[495] which he said I should do; and also to the King of Hanover for his birthday; spoke of the report of poor George’s marrying a Russian Princess. He then continued saying it would raise a curious question, “his marrying a Greek” (of the Greek religion it is); for he believed that only marrying Roman Catholics was forbidden by law here (George being in the succession here). I said I thought it was said, all who were not of the Reformed Religion, without naming specifically (Greek, he says, he supposes is included under Roman Catholics) Roman Catholic. Lord Melbourne said I might be right, for that he had not looked at the Act for some time. He said he believed also that George could not marry without my leave.[496]
Tuesday, 29th May.—I told him that Lord Glenelg had made me a present of a Black Swan; Lord Melbourne said that a Black Swan was not a Swan; “It’s a Goose.” Lady Mulgrave said the Ancients had Black Swans, and to prove it began quoting the lines from the Latin Grammar, which Lord Melbourne then repeated, and which I used to learn: “Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno.” Lord Melbourne said, that meant to describe something very rare, and which did not exist. I said to Lord Melbourne I was very glad to hear that he would come down to Windsor for the Eton Montem. He said, “It’s quite right to go, but I don’t think it’s a very pleasant thing, the Montem; rather foolish”; and we spoke of the Regatta on the 4th of June, to which I’m not going. “The Regatta as you call it,” he said to Lady Mulgrave; “The Boats” it used always to be called. That is in fact done without the consent of the Masters, and all the boys were generally flogged next day. Lord Melbourne has not been to a Montem since 1809. In speaking of the head Colleger who generally is made the Captain, he said he was usually a big boy about 19; “More foolish than a boy,” Lord Melbourne said laughing; and that the expenses were generally so great, and the boy so extravagant for some time before, that he seldom cleared anything. I said the Montem generally ended in the boys’ being sick and drunk; Lord Melbourne said in his funny manner, he thought in these days of education, no boys ever got drunk or sick—which I fear is not the case. He said all this eating and drinking, “all the chocolate and tea and coffee” for breakfast, had got up since his time; that when he was at Eton, they used to cut a roll in half and put a pat of butter inside it and give it to you, and that you then might drink a glass of milk and water (for breakfast); “I never could take milk, and therefore I always took water,” he said, “and we did very well”; much better he thinks than they do now. He said that he remembered people always gave children what they disliked most; he used (before he went to school) to have every day boiled mutton and rice pudding, which he hated; “Children’s stomachs are rather squeamish,” he said; and boiled mutton is particularly nauseous to a child, he observed; and he hated rice pudding. “Somehow or other,” he said, “they found out you disliked it, and there it was every day”; this, he thinks (and everybody else almost, I think, ought to do so), a bad system. He added, “Children’s stomachs are rather delicate and queasy”; which made us all laugh.
Thursday, 31st May.—He said that Lord Mulgrave was very anxious about being made a Marquis at the Coronation, and that he supposed it must be done, but that it would offend other Earls; he added that there was great difficulty about making these Peers,—but that he must soon lay the list before me. “I shall advise Your Majesty to make as few as possible,” he added. It would not do, he said, to make any Members of the House of Commons Peers, on account of vacating their seats. Lord Dundas wishes to be made an Earl, he says, which he supposes should be granted; and Lord Barham wishes to be made Earl of Gainsborough.[497] William IV. made 16 Peers and 24 Baronets at his Coronation; and George IV. 15 Peers; “he was so clogged with promises,” Lord Melbourne said, “he had made such heaps of promises.”
INTRODUCTORY NOTE TO CHAPTER X
The three summer months of 1838 were eventful in the life of the young Queen. It is not only that she attended an Eton Montem (that quaint ceremony so graphically described in Coningsby by one who was in future years to be her Prime Minister), and not only that she held her first Review in Hyde Park (which was somewhat of a disappointment to her owing to Lord Melbourne having dissuaded her from riding on horseback), but on the 28th June she was crowned in Westminster Abbey. There have been many accounts from eye-witnesses of the Coronation of British Sovereigns. Volumes have been written on the subject from the earliest times. Even the immortal pen of Shakespeare has touched upon this great ceremonial. Queen Victoria’s description, however, is unique in this, that the writer is the Sovereign herself, and that the Coronation is painted from the point of view of the central figure in the picture. Owing to the extreme youth of the Queen, her childlike appearance, her fairness and fragility, and the romance attaching to her sex, owing also to her dignity, simplicity, and composure amid that vast concourse in the setting of the great Abbey, surrounded as she was by every circumstance of pomp and splendour, and overweighted, as it seemed, by the tremendous and glittering responsibility of St. Edward’s Crown, the ceremony appeared to onlookers extraordinarily moving. The Queen noticed that Lord Melbourne was deeply stirred. He was one of the many who were in tears.
To the thousands who saw her on this occasion for the first time and to the millions who read the story of the Coronation, the 28th June, 1838, appeared to be the opening day of Queen Victoria’s reign. Who, among those present in the Abbey or in the streets of the metropolis, could foresee what her reign was to bring forth, and who could measure with any degree of accuracy the progress of the country she was about to rule, or the growth of the Empire over which she was destined to preside, between the day when the Crown was placed upon her head, and the day when it was borne away by her sorrowing servants from the Mausoleum at Frogmore sixty-three years afterwards?
“The guns are just announcing,” wrote Queen Adelaide to her niece, “your approach to the Abbey, and as I am not near you, and cannot take part in the sacred ceremony of your Coronation, I must address you in writing to assure you that my thoughts and my whole heart are with you, and my prayers are offered up to heaven for your happiness and the prosperity and glory of your reign.” The answer to this prayer for the young Queen is to be found in the story of her reign, and it is written large in golden letters across the face of her Empire.
CHAPTER X
1838 (continued)
Friday, 1st June.—I also told Lord Melbourne that I quite approved of what he had written to me (also in the afternoon) about the Homage at the Coronation; namely, that the Peers should kiss my hand; Lord Melbourne smiled when I said this. Lord Melbourne had left Lady Holland in a great fright, fearing there would be a thunderstorm, of which she is dreadfully afraid. We spoke of thunderstorms, of people being afraid of them, of there being always a certain degree of danger; of the danger of standing under a tree. I told Lord Melbourne I never could forgive him for having stood under a tree in that violent thunderstorm at Windsor last year; he said, “It’s a hundred to one that you’re not struck,” and then added smiling: “It’s a sublime death.” Spoke ... of Lord Durham for some time, of whose arrival we think we must soon hear. Lord Melbourne said, “I’ll bet you he’ll go by Bermuda,” which would be a good deal out of his way; I asked Lord Melbourne what could make Lord Durham wish to go there. He replied, “I’m sure I don’t know why he’s got it into his head, but I’ll bet you he’ll go there.” Spoke of my fear that Lord Melbourne was right in what he said about Lady Mary Lambton’s[498] great regret at leaving England, the other day; namely, her being attached to John Ponsonby,[499] which we think seems likely, as he (J. Ponsonby) is the only person to whom Lady Mary has written since she left England. Spoke of Epsom, and Lord Melbourne said there was scarcely ever “a Derby without somebody killing himself; generally somebody kills himself; it is not perfect without that,” he said laughing. Spoke of Don Giovanni, and the Statue having laughed so much the other night (about which Lablache told him he was so distressed), and Lord Melbourne said the original Piece and Music was very old; and on my observing that I thought this music by Mozart old-fashioned, he clasped his hands and looked up in astonishment....
Sunday, 3rd June.—We spoke of Music; of Lord Melbourne’s going to sleep when Thomas Moore was singing, which he would hardly allow. Lord Melbourne quoted some lines to prove that Lydian music used to put people to sleep; and of Phrygian music, which made people fight. I showed Lord Melbourne the 1st number of a work called, Portraits of the Female Aristocracy. Then he, and also I, looked at a new Work called Sketches of the People and Country of the Island of Zealand, which are very well done. Lord Melbourne said, in opening it, “These are a fine race, but they eat men, and they say it’s almost impossible to break them of it.” He farther added, “There are no animals whatever there, and therefore they are obliged to eat men.” Lady Mulgrave observed that she thought they only eat their enemies; Lord Melbourne said, “I fancy they eat them pretty promiscuously.” Lord Melbourne was in excellent spirits, and very funny in his remarks about the different drawings; it’s always my delight to make him look at these sorts of things, as his remarks are always so clever and funny. He again said that it was so difficult to break them (the New Zealanders) of eating men; “for they say it’s the very best thing,” which made us laugh. He added, “There was an old woman who was sick, and they asked her what she would like to have; and she said, ‘I think I could eat a little piece of the small bone of a boy’s head,’” and he pointed laughing to his own head, explaining what part of the head that small bone was.... Lord Melbourne went on speaking of New Zealand, &c., and said, “The English eat up everything wherever they go; they exterminate everything”; and Lady Mulgrave and Mr. Murray[500] also said that wherever the English went, they always would have everything their own way, and never would accommodate themselves to other countries. “A person in a public situation should write as few private letters as possible”....
Monday, 4th June.—Spoke of the Eton Montem, and I told Lord Melbourne I was going to the Provost’s house, which he said he was very glad of. There were two Montems while he was at Eton; he said no one knows the origin of the Eton Montem. Formerly there used to be, he said, a Mock Sermon at Salt Hill; a boy dressed like a clergyman and another like a clerk delivered a sort of sermon, and in the middle of it the other boys kicked them down the hill; George III. put a stop to it, as he thought it very improper. We spoke of the Montem, and of giving money, and Lord Melbourne said he thought he should give £20. I asked Lord Melbourne what he did when Lady Holland goes down to Brocket. “Oh! I give up the whole house to her,” he replied. And he says she twists everything about; not only in her own room but in other rooms downstairs. Then she swears she has too much light, and puts out all the candles; then too little, and sends for more candles; then she shuts up first one window, then another. I showed him in the Genealogy of Lodge’s Peerage how Lord Barham came to his title and how he was related to the Earl of Gainsborough. In looking over it, Lord Melbourne began to speak of Sir Charles Midleton, First Lord of the Admiralty, made 1st Lord Barham, and maternal grandfather to Lord Barham. He said he was a most distinguished and clever man. He told me, with the tears in his eyes, an anecdote of what he (Sir C. Midleton) did at the time of the Mutiny.[501] He was very much for those people and said, “I used always to think those poor fellows very hardly treated”; but when he heard of the Mutiny, he ordered two 74-gun ships to be put broadside of the ship in which the Mutineers were, and desire her to surrender, and if she did not, to send her to the bottom. So they said to him, “But if the men should disobey?” “Why, then we shall be in a scrape; but give your orders steadily and they won’t disobey.” “That was very fine,” said Lord Melbourne. Spoke of clothes, about which Lord Melbourne was very funny; said the fewer you had the better, and that he was certain it was very bad to keep things in store, at which we laughed much, and said it would be impossible for ladies to keep dresses in store, as the fashions always changed; and he was against keeping furs, as he said “The moth doth corrupt.” Spoke of Miss Chaworth, Byron’s first admiration, about whom Lord Melbourne told a story on Sunday, which I did not quite understand, and I begged him to repeat it which he did. It was as follows:—Miss Chaworth was told that she would like Lord Byron very much (she did admire him) and would in fact marry him. She said, No, she never would; for that if ever she married, it should be a man with two straight legs (Byron having one leg and foot quite deformed[502] from his birth, which made him limp very much); this was told to Byron, whom it shocked most exceedingly, as he was extremely unhappy and conscious of his lameness, and made him quite indignant. He went to her, made her copy a piece of music for him (they had been in the habit of singing together) in order to have a remembrance of her, took it, left the house, and never saw her again. Lord Melbourne told me there was an awkwardness between the two families; as in George II.’s reign Miss Chaworth’s ancestor was killed in a duel by a Lord Byron; they quarrelled at a Club, went upstairs, fought and Chaworth was killed[503]; Lord Melbourne said it was always suspected that he had been killed unfairly, as Chaworth was known to be the best fencer there was, and it was thought that Byron passed his sword through him before they fought. Miss Chaworth married afterwards a Mr. Musters and was very unhappy; lived on bad terms with her husband, and at last died deranged. Lord Melbourne said he saw her once, he went over to her place, Annesley, when he was staying in Nottinghamshire in 1813, and stayed there two days. She was then living on very bad terms with her husband, and everything was in a very uncomfortable state; but she was very kind to Lord Melbourne. I asked Lord Melbourne where Lord Byron made the acquaintance of his cousin, Miss Milbanke, now the Dowager Lady Byron; he said at his house, at Whitehall, where Byron used to come. Spoke of Irish and Italian servants, who Lord Melbourne says are very uncertain and not to be trusted. I asked Lord Melbourne if he had good servants; he said, “Not very”; he added, “I’m told that great drunkenness prevails in my house,” but that he never saw it, and as long as that was the case, he could not much complain; he, of course, can’t look after them. The man he always takes about with him, when he comes here, he says is a very steady, exact man, and always ready; he has risen from being a steward’s boy in his house. He told me that he has but few servants; a butler, this man, an under butler, and one footman; that’s all. He’s likewise told that his expenses in comparison to other people’s are very great; that the profuseness in his country house was beyond everything, people told him; he does not think the expense very great, in fact he says it cannot be, as he is so little at home.