I had made my selection of Stockmar's letters and memoranda for my purpose, when a volume by his son, the Baron Ernest von Stockmar, was published in the autumn of 1872, of Memorabilia from his father's papers, which threw not a little additional light upon the life and character of this remarkable man.[9] As he was to form a prominent figure in my book, and, though little known to the general public, had been frequently misrepresented as a dangerous influence at the Queen's Court, I made his son's book the text for a careful monograph of the Baron for the Quarterly Review.[10] I was the more impelled to do so, as the Queen, the Princess Royal (Empress Frederic), and others of the Baron's friends thought the book had failed to do justice to the lovable and more attractive features of the Baron's character. His wisdom and great political sagacity spoke for themselves in the extracts from the published documents, but the finer qualities were not brought out which endeared him to his friends. His son had not, perhaps, had so many opportunities as his English friends for judging the Baron, for a large part of Stockmar's life had been spent away from his home in Coburg, first in attendance on Prince Leopold (King of the Belgians), and afterwards in long visits at the English Court. This might well have been, seeing that "Stockmar," as M. Van de Weyer, who had known him long and intimately, wrote to me, "concealed the tenderness of his heart, his loving nature, his sweet temper, his devotion to his friends, under a stoical appearance which deceived none of those who knew him well; and to know him was to love him." His son had, somehow, failed to appreciate this side of his character, and his book, therefore, left an impression of hardness and austerity which did injustice to his father, and which it was my endeavour to remove.
That his influence upon the Queen and Prince was all for good, they were the first and always most eager to acknowledge. No one knew England and its people—what they would bear and what they would not bear in their sovereigns—better than he. Sir Robert Peel, Lords Aberdeen, Derby, Clarendon, John Russell, and Palmerston all deferred to his judgment as that of the wisest and most far-seeing politician of the day. Having very fully expressed my opinion of him from this point of view elsewhere, it only concerns me to say here, that the Queen considered that she owed much of the success of her reign to the sound constitutional principles which he had impressed upon her, and to the warnings, almost prophetic, as to how the changes of circumstance and of opinion were to be dealt with, which his statesmanlike sagacity foresaw were likely to arise in the epoch of transition into which England and Europe were, in his view, rapidly advancing.
Stockmar, who had watched the Queen from childhood, wrote of her in 1847: "The Queen improves greatly. She makes daily advances in discernment and experience; the candour, the love of truth, the fairness, the considerateness with which she judges men and things are truly delightful, and the ingenuous self-knowledge with which she speaks about herself is amiable to a degree." Of that rare quality of ingenuousness I saw many illustrations. Thus, for example, how few would be ready to make so frank a confession as to any portion of their past lives as this, in a letter to me (February 18, 1869), which Her Majesty gave as a reason why she could not send, for the purpose of the Prince's biography, her letters during the first years after her accession:—
"Osborne, Feb. 18, 1869.
"The Queen's own letters between 1837 and 1840 are not pleasing, and are, indeed, rather painful to herself. It was the least sensible and satisfactory time in her whole life, and she must therefore destroy a great many. That life of constant amusement, flattery, excitement, and mere politics had a bad effect (as it must have upon any one) on her naturally simple and serious nature. But all changed in 1840 [with her marriage]."
The Queen's candour and love of truth, too, made her impatient at being praised where praise was not due, especially where praise should have been given to the Prince Consort. Thus she writes to Lord John Russell (November 18, 1860), on reading in a Cape journal a speech of Sir George Grey's extolling the nature of the education given to her eldest sons: "She feels, she must say, pained at such constant praise of her education of our sons, when it is all due to the Prince, and when his untiring and indefatigable exertions for our children's good is the chief, indeed sole, cause of the success which till now has attended our efforts.... The praise so constantly given to the Queen, and the popularity she enjoys, she knows and feels are due, in a great measure, to the guidance and assistance of the Prince, to be whose wife she considers so great a privilege, and she feels it almost wrong when praise is given to her for what she knows he deserves."
Every inch a Queen as she was, and careful that the Royal authority which she inherited should suffer no detriment in her hands, there ran through Her Majesty's nature a vein of modest humility as to her own knowledge and powers in things of common life, a seeking for guidance and help, which was infinitely touching. She made no secret to herself of her own faults and shortcomings. One does not expect queens to make acknowledgments of these, but even these were made upon occasion. Thus in her anxiety to throw light for me upon the Prince's character, she sent me a copy of a letter (July 13, 1848) in which he rebuked her, tenderly but firmly, for writing to him when he had gone from home on a public occasion, in what she calls "a very discreditable fit of pettishness, which she was humiliated to have to own," to the effect that he could do without her, and did not take her miniature with him. In her letter to me she says, that she would not have written as she did had she not been spoilt by his never really leaving her. The Prince's reply is too sacred to quote in full; but what wife's heart would not leap with joy to read the concluding words? "Dein liebes Bild trage Ich in mir; und die Miniaturen bleiben stets weit hinter diesen zurück; eine solche auf meinem Tisch zu stellen um mich Deiner zu erinnern bedarf es nicht."[11]
CHAPTER III.