Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria/Chapter 16

by Millicent Garrett Fawcett

Chapter XVI.

Domestic Life After 1861.

After the death of the Prince Consort the available materials for a life of Her Majesty are much less ample. It is true that in giving directions to Sir Theodore Martin for writing the Life of the Prince, Her Majesty's desire was that only so much of her own life was to be revealed as was absolutely necessary for the continuity of the story; but the two lives were so completely one that it was impossible to write an account of one that was not almost equally an account of the other. The realized, as long as the Prince lived, the dream of Tennyson's "Princess":

"Everywhere
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life."

Sources of information from political memoirs and biographies also became rarer, till they disappear altogether as we approach recent years. The burning political questions of the present day cannot be handled as those can that have been cooling for nearly half-a-century. Her Majesty's published diaries and the Memoir of Princess Alice studiously exclude nearly all references to the multifarious and constant political duties and interests devolving on the Head of the State; it is only every now and then and, as it were, accidentally, that Her Majesty's political activities, during the thirty-four years since her husband's death, have been made known to the mass of her subjects; whereas, during the twenty-one years of her married life, they have been set forth in full detail. There is, however, every reason to know that Her Majesty is fully as active, and certainly has been as efficient, in the discharge of her political duties since she has stood alone as she was when her "permanent Minister" was by her side.

When the blow of her husband's death fell upon her, the effect on the Queen was overwhelming. She was stunned by it. In after years she could hardly remember those dreadful days of the first realization of her loss; the effect of her anguish was like that of a physical blow, producing insensibility, or at least the inability to record in the tables of the memory the sharp pangs she then endured. Her principal comforter and supporter was her daughter, Princess Alice. In a few days the young girl of 18 developed into a thoughtful, helpful woman. She was for a time the medium of communication between the Queen and her Ministers. Fears were entertained, especially by Leopold, King of the Belgians, that residence at Windsor would involve risk to the Queen's health and even to her life, and he induced her Ministers to bring great pressure to bear on her to leave the castle and go to Osborne even before the funeral of the Prince Consort. At first, very naturally, the Queen entirely declined to entertain the idea; but King Leopold insisted, and it was finally through the persuasion of the Princess Alice that the Queen was induced to yield. Broken-hearted as she was, she did not forget the duty she owed to her country and family. In after years Princess Alice wrote that it was cruel and wrong to force her mother to leave Windsor at such a moment; but the motive, whether misplaced or not, was anxiety for the Queen's health, and this was paramount over other considerations. The responsibility thrown on Princess Alice in two directions, to support and console the Queen, and also as the medium of communication for a time with the Ministers, to understand and follow the political movements and events of the times, wonderfully developed the character of the young girl. To the end of her life she combined these two characteristics in a pre-eminent degree. She was one of those women who are born to seek that which was lost, to bind up that which was broken, and strengthen that which was sick; and she also took the keenest and most intelligent interest in politics, following the movements for the unity of Germany, the development of constitutional liberty in various countries, and the education and employment of women, not only with sympathy, but with practical knowledge and a constant wish to forward all these movements by personal exertions and sacrifices. She was very soon to leave her mother's home for her husband's. Her marriage with Prince Louis of Hesse took place on July 1st, 1862; but though her home was henceforth in Germany, the country of her birth remained the country of her heart: she loved England as the home of liberty and as the country which was leading the way of advancement both for men and women. It is a touching incident that, dying as she did at Darmstadt in 1878, her last request to her husband was that the Union Jack might be laid on her coffin.

Her devotion to the Queen in the hour of her desolation greatly endeared her to the English people; the memory of that sacred time of common sorrow made a special bond between the mother and daughter. It will not be forgotten that when, in 1871, the Prince of Wales had a desperate attack of the same illness (typhoid fever) that had been fatal to his father ten years earlier, the Princess Alice helped the Princess of Wales to nurse him safely through it; the anniversary of the Prince Consort's death, December 14th, was the day on which the illness of his son took a favorable turn. On the first anniversary of the turning point in the Prince of Wales's illness, December 14th, 1872, Princess Alice wrote to the Queen that the day must always be one of mixed recollections and feelings, of thankfulness as well as of sorrow, and that in both respects it would always be "a day hallowed in our family." Six years later it was on this very day, December 14th, 1878, that the beloved and gifted Princess breathed her last.

All the contemporary records speak of the Queen as having borne her terrible grief with courage. She is said to have been more outwardly composed than she had been after the death of her mother. She began after a few days to transact necessary business. On the 20th December, one of the family wrote from Windsor that she had signed some papers, and had seen Lord Granville. One of her political letters to Lord Palmerston, written in January, 1862, has been already quoted. It is entirely characteristic of her that her first public utterance after the death of her husband was an expression of tenderest sympathy with the wives and children of 204 poor men who were killed in the Hartley Colliery explosion in January, 1862. Her own misery, the Queen said, made her feel the more for them. A little later she received visits of sympathy and condolence from her uncle, King Leopold, and from her half-sister, Princess Feodore of Hohenlohe. To a nature like hers, work and the sympathy of loving friends are the best of all balms; but she was intensely forlorn; she had lost the source of joy and happiness, and nothing could bring it back. The joyous young woman, radiant with light-hearted happiness, ceased to exist on December 14th, 1861. Henceforward our Queen has been a careworn woman, acquainted with grief. She has herself told how her sad and suffering heart was cheered by the solemn beauty of her beloved Highlands, and especially that she was taught many a lesson of resignation and faith by her faithful Scottish servants. One of these, John Grant, wheeling her chair, or leading her pony along the mountain paths, taught her that she must not look upon the days especially associated with her husband's memory—his birthday, August 26th, or even the day of his death, December 14th—as days of mourning. "That's not the light to look at," he said, and helped her to feel that they were beloved and blessed days, because they were so full of the memories of the blessed past. In recording this the Queen writes, "There is so much true and strong faith in these good, simple people." The lesson was not forgotten, and we find, by various notes in the diary, that the Queen keeps her husband's birthday by trying to make it a happy day for those about her, celebrating it by giving presents to her children, ladies and gentleman in attendance, and servants, so that all should feel they had been borne in mind, and received some "remembrance of the dear day." In the same spirit of gratitude for past happiness, Her Majesty's note in her dairy of October 15th, 1867, is, "Our blessed engagement day! A dear and sacred day—already twenty-eight years ago. How I ever bless it!" In contrast with this, we find the entry for her own birthday, May 24th, 1863, just three words, "My poor birthday!"

Chief among her Highland friends, the Queen had the good fortune to reckon Dr. Norman Macleod. His strong faith and his power of sympathy, combined with a wonderful gift of expression and indefatigable kindness, gave him a peculiar power in saying the right thing, and giving just the help and support that the Queen wanted when she felt most forlorn. He had also the strong sense of humor which so often makes the crooked straight, and the rough places plain. The Queen felt she could talk openly to him about her sorrow; he helped her to look, not down, but up. When showing him a drawing of the Prince's mausoleum, his exclamation was, "Oh, he is not there." He would lead her away from her own grief, to realize, and help to soothe, the sorrows of others. He told her of a beautiful expression of a poor Scottish woman who had lost her husband and several of her children. The poor woman had said, referring to her husband's death, "When he was ta'en, it made sic a hole in my heart that a' other sorrows gang lichtly through."

It is interesting to note that on October 3d, 1869, the Queen asked Dr. Macleod his opinion of the Marquis of Lorne. The Doctor assured her hat he knew Lord Lorne well, and had prepared him for confirmation, and thought very highly of him,—"good, excellent and superior in every way." Exactly a year from that day, October 3d, 1870, the Princess Louise became engaged to the Marquis of Lorne, and they were married on March 21st, 1871.

The Queen was greatly attracted by the simplicity and dignity of the services of the Scottish Church. She was present at the Communion Service at Crathie in 1871. The Journal says:—

"It would be impossible to say how deeply we were impressed by the grand simplicity of the service. It was all so truly earnest, and no description can do justice to the perfect devotion of the whole assemblage. It was most touching, and I longed much to join in it."

Since 1873, this wish on the part of the Queen has been gratified, and she has joined in the communion at Crathie every autumn.

Although Princess Alice's marriage in July, 1862, had deprived the Queen of the constant companionship of this dearly loved daughter, yet the Princess continued to spend part of almost every year with her mother. She returned to England in November, 1862, and stayed with the Queen till after the birth of her first baby, in April, 1863. The Queen was a most tender nurse, and always took a special interest in the granddaughter and god-daughter who had been born under her roof. It was Princess Alice who encouraged the Queen to emerge a little from the seclusion to which she had clung since her widowhood. She promoted little mountain excursions, in which the Queen was induced to take part, in the autumn of 1863. She, and also the Princess Royal, accompanied the Queen in the same year to the ceremony of the unveiling of the Prince's statue at Aberdeen. It is easy to understand what a trying ordeal this must have been to the Queen. There were dense crowds, loyal and kindly, but silent and full of mournful sympathy; there was no music even,^[1] the bands having been forbidden to play,—such a contrast, as the Queen wrote, to "former blessed times." No wonder that she was "terribly nervous, and longed not to have to go through this fearful ordeal." The Queen had been present before this at family ceremonies, the marriages of Princess Alice in 1862, and of the Prince of Wales on March 10th, 1863; but the first of these had been of quite a private character, and in the second the Queen had taken no part, merely watching the service from the Royal Closet in St. George's Chapel, Windsor; but this was her first appearance since her husband's death at a public ceremony. She "prayed for help." But, however painful, she felt it was right that she should make the effort, and it helped her to overcome her extreme reluctance to take her part once more in the pageantry and glitter of royalty. Little by little she took up this burden also, helped and encouraged by her children, and from 1866 has from time to time opened Parliament in person, and taken her part as Sovereign in the public functions devolving on her position. There was at one time an undercurrent of rather mean resentment that she did not, after her widowhood, enter into social gayety and lead fashionable life as of old. The loss of her direct personal influence from the social world has been a very real one. But there are limits to human strength and endurance; and those who grumbled because the Queen absented herself from the world of fashion, were probably thinking more of the number and brilliancy of Court functions, and of the supposed benefit to trade accruing therefrom, than of the value of a pure-hearted woman's influence at the head of society. Mr. John Bright in 1866 gave a trenchant rebuke from a public platform to one of these grumblers, who asserted at a meeting of working-men that the Queen was so absorbed in her own grief as to have lost all sympathy with her people. He said:—

"I am not accustomed to stand up in defence of those who are the possessors of crowns. But I could not sit here and hear that observation without a sensation of wonder and of pain. I think there has been, by many persons, a great injustice done to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. And I venture to say this, that a woman, be she queen of a great realm, or be she the wife of one of your laboring men, who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affection, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with you."

The whole meeting responded to the simple, generous words, touching as they did the chord of universal human feeling.

The Queen's love for Scotland and the Scottish people has made it easier for her to take part in ordinary social life in the neighborhood of Balmoral than in the crowded whirl of London. She has taken part in the torch-carrying on Halloween, in gillies' balls, in marriages and christenings in Scotland, and made herself one with her people there in all their joys and sorrows. Her faithful Scotch servant, John Brown, was for many years a familiar figure, in his Highland dress, behind the Queen's carriage. He served her with tact and fidelity, which she rewarded with grateful and unstinted appreciation. He died in 1883. The last words in "More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands," are a tribute to his memory; while the book itself is dedicated, "To my Loyal Highlanders, and especially to the memory of my devoted personal attendant and faithful friend, John Brown." She attended the funeral service held in his mother's house on the occasion of his father's death, and stayed with the widow to soothe and comfort her when the funeral procession left the house. Only the heavy rain prevented her from accompanying the other mourners to the grave. It is no doubt the freedom from formality, the genuine simplicity of the life around her at Balmoral, which makes it congenial to the Queen. There the gayeties are really gay; the mournings are really sad, dignified, and solemn, and not a mocking travesty of pretended woe. One of the luxuries the Queen allows herself in Scotland is the building of what may be called "pic-nic" houses in attractive situations in the neighborhood. These are little more than cottages, only just large enough for the Queen, and one or two of her children, and the necessary attendants and servants, generally built in wild and rather inaccessible spots among the hills. One of these, Altnagiathasach, was built before the Prince Consort's death. After her widowhood, the Queen felt she could not go there alone, and she built another at Glassaltshiel, the house-warming of which she celebrated in 1868. When the little festivity, with its reel-dancing and whiskey-toddy drinking, was over, the Queen's Journal records, "The sad thought struck me that it was the first widow's house, not built by him" (the Prince), "nor hallowed by his memory. But I am sure his blessing does rest on it, and on those who live in it." Another of these little houses, a much smaller one, with only two rooms and a kitchen, is Glengeldershiel; it is within a short drive from Balmoral. In the neighborhood of these retired cottages the Queen could walk, accompanied by her friends, her children, and her dogs, without the fear of the tourist or the much-dreaded reporter before her eyes.

It must not, however, be represented that it was only in Scotland that Her Majesty found any means of social enjoyment. The following letter from Thomas Carlyle (first published in The Athenaeum, in January, 1895) shows that this was not the case. It is too picturesque to be cut up; the ill-natured and unjust references to Lady Augusta Stanley and Mrs. Grote must be tolerated for the sake of the rest of the letter. It would not be characteristic of Carlyle if it were bowdlerized so as to leave the impression that he was in charity with all mankind. The letter is addressed to his sister, Mrs. Aitken:—

Chelsea, March 11th, 1869.

Dear Jean,—Mary, I find, has inserted for you a small letter along with the one that belongs to the Doctor. I have nothing of my own in the form of news beyond what that "child of Nature" will have said.

All busy here,—March winds "snell" as possible (one's new cape not useless), but not unwholesome: fine, dry, and cold, instead of the wet, tepid puddle we have long had, and, in consequence, sleep a little better than then.

But my present business is to tell you exclusively of the Queen's interview, for which great object I have only a few minutes. Swift then, if my poor hand but would! "Interview" took place this day gone a week. Nearly a week before that the Dean and Deaness (who is called Lady Augusta Stanley, once Bruce, an active, hard and busy woman) drove up here and, in a solemnly mysterious, half-quizzical manner, invited me for Thursday, 4th, at 5 P. M.—"must come; a very high, indeed highest personage has long been desirous," &c., &c. I saw well enough it was the Queen's incognita, and briefly agreed to come. "Half-past four, come you," and then went their ways.

Walking up at the set time, I was ushered into that long drawing-room in their monastic edifice. I found no Stanley yet there; only at the further end a tall old year-pole (?) of a Mrs. Grote, the most wooden-headed woman I know in London, or the world, who thinks herself very clever, &c., and the sight of whom led me to expect Mr. too, and perhaps others, as accordingly in a few minutes fell out. Grote and wife, Sir Charles Lyell and ditto, Browning and myself: that I saw to be our party. "Better than nothing," thought I, "these will take off the edge of the thing, if edge there be"—which it had n't, nor threatened to have.

The Stanleys and we were all in a flow of talk, and some flunkys had done setting coffee-pots and tea-cups of a sublime pattern, when Her Majesty, punctual to the minute, glided in, escorted by her dame-in-waiting (a Duchess Dowager of Athol), and by the Princess Louise, decidedly a very pretty young lady, and clever too, as I found out in talking to her afterwards. The Queen came softly forward, a kindly little smile on her face, gently shook hands with all the three women, gently acknowledged with a nod the silent bows of us male monsters; and directly in her presence every one was at ease again. She is a comely little lady, with a pair of kind, clear, and intelligent gray eyes; still looks almost young (in spite of one broad wrinkle which shows on each cheek occasionally); is still plump; has a fine, low voice, soft; indeed, her whole manner is melodiously perfect. It is impossible to imagine a politer little woman; nothing the least imperious; all gentle, all sincere, looking unembarrassing,—rather attractive even; makes you feel, too (if you have any sense in you), that she is Queen.

After a little word to each of us—to me it was, "Sorry you did not see my daughter" (Princess of Prussia), or "all sorry," perhaps so; which led us to Potsdam, Berlin, &c., for an instant or two. To Sir Charles Lyell I heard her say, "Gold in Sutherland"—but quickly and delicately cut him short in responding. To Browning, "Are you writing anything?" (who has just been publishing the absurdest things!) To Grote I did not hear what she said, but it was touch-and-go with everybody—Majesty visibly without interest, or nearly so, of her own.

After this, coffee (very black and muddy) was handed round, Queen and three women taking seats, Queen in the corner of a sofa, Lady Deaness in opposite corner, Mrs. Grote in a chair intrusively close to Majesty; Lady Lyell modestly at the diagonal corner; we others obliged to stand and hover within call.

Coffee fairly done, Lady Augusta called me gently to come and speak to Her Majesty. I obeyed, first asking, as an old, infirmish man, Her Majesty's permission to sit, which was graciously conceded. Nothing of the least significance was said, nor needed; however, my bit of dialogue went very well. "What part of Scotland I came from?" "Dumfries (where Majesty might as well go sometimes). Carlisle, Caer Lewel, a place of about the antiquity of King Solomon (according to Milton)," whereat Majesty smiled. Border Ballads and old James Pool slightly alluded to, noy by name. Glasgow, and grandfather's ride thither, ending in more psalms, and streets vacant at 9½ P. M.—hard, sound Presbyterian root of what has now shot up to such a monstrously ugly cabbage-tree and hemlock-tree! all which Majesty seemed to take rather well: whereupon Mrs. Grote rose good-naturedly and brought forward her husband cheek by jowl with Majesty, who evidently did not care a straw for him, but kindly asked—"Writing anything?" and one heard "Aristotle, now that I have done with Plato" (but only for a minimum of time). Majesty herself (and I think apropos of some question about my shaky hand) said something about her own difficulty in writing to dictation, which brought forward Lady Lyell and husband, mutually used to the operation; after which, talk becoming quite trivial, Majesty gracefully retired with Lady Augusta, and, in ten minutes more, returned, to receive our farewell bows, which, too, she did very prettily, and sailed out as if moving on skates, and bending her head to us with a smile.

By the underground railway I was home before seven, and out of the adventure, with only a headache of little moment.

Froude tells me there are foolish myths about the poor business, especially about my share of it; but this is the real truth, worth to me in strictest truth all but nothing, in the myths less than nothing.

Tell the Dr. I intended writing him, but it is already (horrible to think!) a quarter-past four.

Adieu, dear Sister,
Yours ever,T. C.

1. It was nearly five years after her husband's death before the Queen could bear to listen to music. In 1866, Princess Alice wrote to her mother: "I am really glad to hear that you can listen to a little music. Music is such a heavenly thing, and dear Papa loved it so much, that I can't but think that now it must be soothing, and bring you near to him."