On one of my early visits to the Castle he put to me a question which I was glad to have an opportunity of answering, and to which, in the interests of the Queen, he was entitled to a reply. "To what," he said, "do you look forward in return for executing the onerous task you are undertaking?" "My compensation," I replied, "will be ample, if I can make people understand the Prince, how great he was, how devoted to the welfare of our country, how great the debt which the country owed him. It must," I added, "be understood that my work is to be without fee or reward of any kind. My private means are ample for all my wants, and I can therefore afford full time for doing the work thoroughly. All I stipulate is that I am to have a free hand both as to the time and manner in which it is to be done. I foresee that it will be the work of years, and that it can only be well done if I am allowed entire independence in forming and expressing my estimate of the Prince, and of his influence in matters of public or political importance."
General Grey expressed his satisfaction with what I said, and, no doubt, lost no time in informing the Queen of its import. However this might be, from that moment I was treated with unreserved confidence, and the conditions for which I had stipulated were fully and frankly kept throughout all my labours. In General Grey I found a cordial friend. He paid me the compliment of asking my assistance in finally seeing through the press the work, The Early Years of the Prince Consort, on which he was then engaged, and which was soon afterwards published. It had been originally intended that my work should begin where his left off. But as I went on with my studies I found that, to make my biography coherent and complete, I must go over the ground General Grey had already gone over, and treat its incidents in my own way, and with a view to my plan for the further narrative of the Prince's life.
As I look back on my correspondence with the Queen, it gratifies me to see how early Her Majesty's letters had passed from formal reserve into a strain of confidential friendliness. Thus in a letter of December 18, 1867, she writes, "The Queen thanks Mr Martin for his two kind letters," and invites him to Osborne for two or three days, where he will meet M. Silvain van de Weyer, "a great and intimate friend of the dear Prince, a man of great cultivation of mind and of the kindest heart, and who will give Mr Martin many useful hints about the Prince's character." This meeting led to an unbroken friendship with the singularly gifted man so well described by Her Majesty. From him I learned much that was of service to my immediate purpose in depicting the early part of the Prince's life. He had been so completely behind the scenes also in all the political movements of the time, that I hoped to have the benefit of his knowledge in dealing with the subsequent years as well. But this was not to be. To my infinite regret, he died before the first volume of the Life was published;[1] but he read the proof-sheets of the greater part of it, and I was greatly encouraged by the warmth of his approval. In the same letter the Queen goes on to say: "The Queen is reading Mr Martin's Correggio,[2] of which she used to hear her governess, the Baroness Lehzen, so often speak. Would he let her have a copy to send to the Baroness?"
"This day," the letter adds, "has been splendid—a cloudless blue sky, and equally blue sea, with the purest air. But when the Queen awoke this morning her heart felt sick, as she knew how her darling husband would have enjoyed such a day in his beloved Osborne, and she yearned for one hour of former happiness."
I was again summoned to Osborne in the first week of January 1868. A day or two after my arrival (10th of January) I had a bad accident on the skating-pond,—so bad that I had to be carried to the Palace, where the limb was promptly placed in splints by Dr Hofmeister, the Queen's resident surgeon. The injury was serious, and the pain extreme. On the Queen's return from her afternoon drive she heard of the accident, and immediately sent the late Duchess of Roxburghe, her Lady-in-Waiting, to me. She had been commanded to express Her Majesty's regret that she could not come at once to see me, as she had so many despatches awaiting her which required immediate attention. She also added that I was to write to my wife to come to Osborne: the Royal yacht would be ordered to Portsmouth to wait her arrival and to bring her over. Before nine o'clock next morning I was surprised by the appearance of Her Majesty in my room, where she expressed her warm sympathy with my suffering, and gave orders for my having the constant attendance of one of her principal servants. The Queen had scarcely left my room when two unusually large pillows were brought to me. The Queen, I was told, thought the pillows I had were too small, and had ordered these larger ones to replace them. This thoughtful kindness was but the beginning of a care for my recovery on the part of Her Majesty which left nothing undone that could minister to my comfort. On the 12th my wife arrived, and was met by the Duchess of Roxburghe. Soon after, the Queen came to her room, and her Diary records: "H. M. gave me her hand, and welcomed me most kindly. I am desired to ask for everything as if I were at home;" and everything was done to make her feel at home, by Her Majesty, by the Royal children,—the Princesses Helena, Louise, and Beatrice, and the Duke of Connaught and Prince Leopold,—and by all the ladies and gentlemen of the household. What the impression was which she produced upon the Queen we subsequently learned by a letter from Mr Helps, in which he quoted Her Majesty's words from a letter he had received:—
"17th January 1868.
"We are selfishly glad that Mr Martin is kept here, and think Mrs Martin most pleasing, clever, and distinguished—really very charming."
Almost daily during the three following weeks we had the honour of lengthened visits in our rooms from Her Majesty, in which there was a frank interchange of views, not only in regard to the subject on which I was specially engaged, but also upon the events of the day and other topics of general interest. It so happened that just at this time the Leaves from a Journal were published. Her Majesty's estimate of that little volume was most humble; and as, possibly from a feeling of shyness, she shrank from writing with this first literary effort to the Poet Laureate, she honoured me by requesting me to do so on her behalf. The Queen reverenced genius; greatness in birth and station she regarded as but an accident. To the genius which makes its own position by commanding the love and admiration of the world she bowed with genuine humility. How well this was shown in her visit to Abbotsford! "In the study," she writes, "we saw Sir Walter's Journal, in which Mr Hope Scott asked me to write my name, which I felt it would be presumption to do." Surely a beautiful appreciation of genius, as distinguished from the accident of position.
The Leaves book was inscribed by the Queen's own hand, and this was the acknowledgment which reached me from Mr Tennyson:—