Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria/Chapter 4

by Millicent Garrett Fawcett

Chapter IV.

Love and Politics

The first important political event of the Queen's reign was the insurrection in Canada, which broke out in the late autumn of 1837. The Queen has herself told us that, notwithstanding all King Leopold's and Stockmar's instructions, she was at this time an ardent Whig in her political sympathies; but the history of the Canadian insurrection, while ultimately showing the value of colonial self-government as a safeguard against rebellion, demonstrated the wisdom of their maxims that it was the duty of a constitutional Sovereign to keep aloof from party, and also was one of a series of events which revealed to the Queen the real character of many of the able statesmen of both parties by whom she was surrounded. The first effect of the policy of the Whig Government in Canada was disastrous to them as a Ministry. The Earl of Durham, whom they had appointed High Commissioner, with very large powers to deal with the insurrection, showed a masterly grasp of principles, combined with a total want of judgment in detail. His failure in details was at first all that was apparent; he went far beyond his large legal powers; his ordinances were disallowed by Parliament, and he resigned his office, publishing, before he left his official residence at Quebec, a proclamation attacking the Government which had appointed him. Almost the only group of politicians who supported him at home were the Radicals, who, in or out of Parliament, were influenced by J. S. North.

In the House of Lords the ultra-Liberal Brougham joined with the ultra-Tory Lyndhurst in scathing attacks on Lord Durham and the Government. It was soon evident that Brougham rejoiced in any national calamity in Canada or elsewhere if it afforded him means of damaging the party of which he was a former member. The Duke of Wellington, on the other hand, had a single eye to his country's welfare. The Canadian insurrection placed her in difficulty and danger; and his first thought was how to get her out of the difficulty, and avert the danger. He entirely sunk all party considerations in national objects, and as even his enemies were obliged to confess, "that man's first object is to serve his country, with a sword if necessary, or with a pickaxe." In the first debate in the Lords on Canada, Brougham "delivered a tremendous philippic of three hours. The Duke of Wellington made a very noble speech, just as it befitted him to make at such a moment, and of course it bitterly mortified and provoked the Tories, who would have had him make a party question of it, and thought of nothing but abusing, vilifying, and embarrassing the Government." On the next occasion, when another party field-day was arranged in the in the House of Lords, the Duke was expected to make some amends to his party, and explain away the moderation of his former speech; but he made a second speech quite as moderate as the first. Greville's mother told the Duke how angry his party were with him for what he had said, and his only reply was, "Depend upon it, it was true." This was the course invariably pursued by the Duke in times of danger he dropped all party considerations, and thought of nothing but how to serve his country. When the China War broke out in 1840, when the Whigs were in office, he supported the Government in the House of Lords with all the strength he could command. Greville told him that his own party were to the last degree annoyed and provoked by his speech. He replied: "I know that well enough, and I don't care one damn. … I have not time not to do what is right."

Peel had shown the same spirit during the general election that followed the Queen's accession. Certain low Tories of the baser sort had not hesitated to make party capital out of the unpopularity of the New Poor Law, passed by the Whigs in 1834. Peel would have nothing to do with this; for though the Act could not but be unpopular in certain quarters, he was convinced of its necessity, and wholly discountenanced the attacks upon it.

These two incidents in the political warfare of the first months of her reign must have had a considerable influence in forming the young Queen's judgment on men and parties. Events framed themselves into a sort of new version of the judgment of Solomon, and enabled her to distinguish between the real and false patriots, between those statesmen who really loved their country and acted on conviction, and those who only pretended to love, and acted from self-interest.

A very brief review of the chief political events of 1837-40 will serve to show of what an absorbing nature they must have been to the Queen. The Anti-Corn Law agitation was just beginning to show its great importance; in antagonism with this, and parallel with it, was the more or less revolutionary Chartist movement, associated in these early years of the reign with riots at Birmingham, Manchester, and Newport, Monmouthshire. The country was in a very disturbed state; the Government was weak, and inspired no confidence; moreover, the perennial trouble in Ireland was just then in a more than usually acute stage.

Besides these larger political interests, there were others of a character more personal to the Queen herself, which must for a time have occupied and interested her almost to the exclusion of even more weighty matters. The gorgeous ceremonial of the coronation took place in June, 1838. The cheers of the Londoners in honor of Marshal Soult on that occasion, curiously enough, did something to produce a more friendly feeling between France and England, and paved the way for an alliance between the two countries. There are such a number of graphic accounts by eye-witnesses of the coronation that it is unnecessary here to attempt to reproduce them. As usual, the spectators saw what they brought with them the capacity to see. One gives a detailed account of the pageant, the floods of golden light, illuminating gold and jewels and velvety robes; another sees a young life dedicating itself to the public service. Lord Shaftesbury was one of these latter; the note in his diary on the coronation is: "It has been a wonderful period, … an idle pageant, forsooth? As idle as the coronation of King Solomon, or the dedication of his temple."

A purely domestic affair, in 1839, must have caused Queen much anxiety and trouble. One of the ladies attendant on the Duchess of Kent, Lady Flora Hastings, was accused of being with child; and she was ordered not to appear at Court till she could clear herself of the imputation. Subsequent medical examination proved the entire innocence of the unfortunate lady, who was suffering from a disease of which modern surgical skill has very largely reduced the perils. At that time, however, it was supposed to be beyond all human aid, and the poor lady died within a very few months after the humiliation to which she had been subjected. There was naturally an intensely strong feeling of commiseration for her. No one was to blame exactly in the matter; one can quite understand the determination of those who felt themselves the natural protectors of the young Queen, to guard her Court from the scandals and disgraces of a loose standard of conduct; but it was generally felt that a little more tact, a little more kindness, even supposing the poor lady to have been guilty, would have prevented the report being blazoned all over London and England in the way it was. This scandal very much weakened the Ministry in the estimation of the country, rather unjustly as it seems to us now; for the whole matter was one relating to the Queen's private establishment, and not to her political advisers. It was a delicate matter which ought to have been dealt with by an experienced woman, possessed of good feeling and good sense. But Lord Melbourne was blamed, and people said, "What is the use of the Prime Minister being domiciled in the Palace, unless he is able to prevent the shame and mortification of such blunders?"

Another of the incidents of 1839 was as much domestic as political. The famous Bedchamber question excited the Houses of Parliament and the country to a degree which it is difficult now to understand. It was one of Life's little poems that the course which events took in this matter led the Whigs to champion Tory principles, and vice versa. Lord Melbourne's Government was virtually defeated on his Jamaica Bill, in May, 1839. Lord Melbourne resigned, and advised the Queen to send for the Duke of Wellington. His opinion had been expressed on a former occasion, that he and Peel would not make good Ministers to a Sovereign who was a young girl. "I have no small-talk," he had said, "and Peel has no manners." The sturdy old lion had yet to learn that a woman could appreciate something beyond small-talk. When he saw the Queen after Melbourne's resignation, she told him she was very sorry to lose Lord Melbourne, who had been almost like a father to her since her accession; the Duke was greatly pleased with her frankness, but excused himself from serving her, on the grounds of his age and deafness. He also said that the Prime Minister ought to be leader of the House of Commons, and advised her to send for Peel, which she accordingly did. The want of manners proved more serious than the want of small-talk, for Sir Robert Peel, mainly through a misunderstanding, presently found himself involved in what almost amounted to a personal quarrel with the Queen about the appointment of the ladies of her household. She thought he wanted to dismiss all her old friends, and even her private attendants. She imagined that it might be proposed to deprive her of the services of her former governess, Baroness Lehzen, who had now become of her secretaries. She felt bound to make a stand against what she considered an encroachment on her independence. The Duke of Wellington and Peel saw her again together, but made no impression on her. If they had explained that Peel only wished to remove the ladies who held the offices that are now recognized as political, the dispute would never have arisen; but as it was there was a deadlock. The Queen wrote to Melbourne: "Do not fear that I was not calm and composed. They wanted to deprive me of my ladies, and I suppose they would deprive me next of my dressers and my housemaids; they wished to treat me like a girl, but I will show them that I am Queen of England!" Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell advised the Queen that she was quite right, and supported her in her determination not to give way; so that the Whigs found themselves defending the principle that the will of the Sovereign is paramount over the advice of her Ministers and public considerations; while the Tories were defending the opposite doctrine. Angry discussions took place in both Houses; Lord Brougham in the House of Lords opening the sluice-gates in a three hours' speech that Greville calls "a boiling torrent of rage, disdain, and hatred." The end of it was that Sir Robert Peel declined to undertake to form a Government, and Lord Melbourne was recalled; he had been in a very weak position before; but he was still further weakened by the events that had just taken place.

In after years the Queen, with her accustomed generosity, took the whole blame upon herself. Curiously enough, it was Lord John Russell, who had, in 1839, encouraged the Queen in the line she took on the Bedchamber question, who asked her in 1854, if she had not been advised by some one else in the matter. "She replied with great candor and naïveté, 'No, it was entirely my own foolishness.'"

These events excited the whole country to an extraordinary degree, and it is not astonishing that they were intensely absorbing to the Queen, and that she therefore, for the time, dismissed from her mind all thoughts of marriage. Indeed, she wrote to her uncle Leopold in July, 1839, stating very strongly her intention to defer her marriage for some years. To Stockmar also the Queen expressed the same intention. These diplomatists do not appear to have argued the matter with Her Majesty; but they thought they knew how to shake her resolution. She had only once seen her cousin Albert, when he had come over to England with his father and his elder brother Ernest, for a few weeks' visit to the Duchess of Kent, in 1836. He was then a boy, very stout, as the Queen herself has told us, but amiable, natural, unaffected, and merry. He had now (1839) greatly improved in appearance and developed in character, and Leopold determined on sending him to England again on a second visit to his cousin. After his first visit the Princess, as she then was, had written to her uncle Leopold in a strain which showed that she thought her future marriage with her cousin Albert was a practical certainty; she begged her uncle "to take care of the health of one now so dear to me, and to take him under your special protection;" and she added she trusted "all would go prosperously and well on this subject, now of so much importance to me."

The Prince wrote immediately on the Queen's accession to congratulate his "dearest cousin," and to remind her that in her hands now lay "the happiness of millions." But he said nothing of his own happiness; nothing was settled, and the correspondence between the cousins was suffered to drop. The Queen generously blames herself for this. A memorandum made by Her Majesty to "The Early Years of the Prince Consort" is very characteristic. "Nor can the Queen now," she writes, "think without indignation against herself of her wish to keep the Prince waiting for probably three or four years, at the risk of ruining all his prospects for life, until she might feel inclined to marry! And the Prince has since told her that he came over in 1839 with the intention of telling her that if she could not then make up her mind, she must understand that he could not wait now for a decision, as he had done at a former period when their marriage was first talked about."

It is probable that no one but the Queen herself thinks she was to blame in the matter. She had seen her cousin only when he was a boy of seventeen, and she a girl of the same age. She had acquiesced in the wish of her closest advisers that she should regard him as her future husband, but she had at the time of her accession no strong personal feeling in the matter. She did not feel then, as she felt afterwards, that the happiness of her whole future life was involved in this union; and absorbed as she must have been in the intense interest of being the centre of the inner circle of politics, and in learning the duties and going through the ceremonials of her new position, it is no wonder that for a time she dismissed all thoughts of marriage. Indeed, the happiness of what she so often called her "blessed marriage" might have been marred had she not waited till her heart spoke.

The Prince Consort's was a singularly pure and disinterested nature. As a child he possessed a remarkable degree of beauty, and a natural disposition almost without flaw. All the associates of his youth agree in speaking of his perfect moral purity, combined with gayety and courage; but he was not one of the preternaturally perfect children who hardly exist out of books, and even these are generally destined to an early grave. His childish letters and diaries record that he fought with his brother and cried over his lessons like other little boys. When he was only five years old his father and mother separated, and were afterwards divorced. He was henceforth separated entirely from his mother, who died in 1831. Prince Albert resembled his mother in person and mind, and although so early taken from her, he retained through life the strongest feeling of affection for her, and one of his first gifts to the Queen was a little pin which had belonged to his mother. She was beautiful, intelligent, and warm-hearted, and had a great fund of drollery and power of mimicry, which her younger son inherited from her.

Two very affectionate grandmothers, or rather a grandmother and a step-grandmother, did what in them lay to supply the mothering of which the Prince and his elder brother were deprived through the unfortunate difference between their parents. The two children were fortunate in possessing as a tutor a Herr Florschutz, of Coburg, one of those men who have something of the woman's tenderness for little children. He was often seen playing the part of a kind nurse than that of a tutor, and carrying the little Albert in his arms.

The greatest care was bestowed upon Prince Albert's education; his grandmother and his uncle Leopold kept constantly before their eyes and in their hearts the destiny for which they intended him. He pursued his studies of mathematics, jurisprudence, and constitutional government partly under tutors, but also at Brussels under his uncle's own immediate supervision, and later at the University of Bonn. When it was decided that his education should be carried on in a somewhat wider atmosphere than the little Court of Coburg could afford, Berlin was not selected because it was both "priggish" and "profligate;" Vienna was rejected on account of its peculiar relations towards Germany; the choice fell on Brussels, because he could here study the constitutionalism which would afterwards be such an important factor in his life as husband of the Queen of England. As early as 1836 Stockmar congratulated Leopold that the young Prince was beginning to acquire "something of an English look."

When Princess Victoria became Queen in 1837, her marriage with her cousin began to form a topic of gossip; and in order to divert attention from it, King Leopold sent Prince Albert and his brother for a prolonged tour over South Germany, Switzerland, and Italy. In 1835 King Leopold had a long conversation with his nephew on the subject of the projected marriage, and found that he looked at the whole question from the "most elevated and honorable point of view." "If I am not mistaken in him," wrote the King to Stockmar, "he possesses all the qualities required to fit him for the position which he will occupy in England. His understanding is sound, his apprehension clear and rapid, and his heart is in the right place." The young Prince said he was quite ready to submit to any delay in the marriage which the Queen might desire, but that he felt that he had a right to demand some definite assurance from her as to her ultimate intentions. He had no fancy to play the ridiculous parts so often forced upon Queen Elizabeth's numerous suitors, of hanging about her for years, having his matrimonial prospects talked of all over Europe, in order at the end to learn that the lady had never had the least intention of marrying him.

It was either to obtain this definite assurance from the Queen herself, or to withdraw entirely from the whole affair, that he came to England, again accompanied by his brother, Prince Ernest, on October 10th, 1839. On the 15th he was the Queen's betrothed husband. All the Queen's reasons for desiring the postponement of her marriage with her cousin vanished in his presence; they were overwhelmed by the irresistible feeling inspired by the Prince. In the memorandum by the Queen previously quoted in part, she had stated that no worse school for a young girl, or one more detrimental to all natural feelings and affections, could be imagined than that of being Queen at eighteen. Very few persons are qualified to express an opinion on the point, but it is quite certain that being Queen at eighteen had neither destroyed Her Majesty's capacity of loving, nor her power of inspiring love. The letters of the two young lovers to their friends, to announce their engagement, are full of the music of overflowing happiness. They both wrote to Stockmar. The Queen said: "Albert has completely won my heart, and all was settled between us this morning. … I feel certain he will make me very happy. I wish I could say I felt as certain of my making him happy, but I shall do my best." The Prince's letter says: "Victoria is so good and kind to me that I am often puzzled to believe that I should be the object of so much affection. … More, or more seriously, I cannot write. I am at this moment too bewildered to do so.

"Das Auge sicht den Himmel offen,
Es schwelgt das Herz in Seligkeit."^[1]

The Queen's position made it necessary for her to offer herself in marriage to her cousin, not to wait till he sought her love. In her letter to her uncle Leopold, she tells him, "My mind is quite made up. I told Albert this morning of it. The warm affection he showed me on learning this, gave me great pleasure. He seems perfection, and I think I have the prospect of very great happiness before me. I love him more than I can say, and shall do everything in my power to render this sacrifice (for such, in my opinion, it is) as small as I can. … The last few days have passed like a dream to me, and I am so much bewildered by it all that I know hardly how to write, but I do feel very happy. … Lord Melbourne, whom I have of course consulted about the whole affair, quite approves my choice, and expresses great satisfaction at this event, which he thinks in every way highly desirable Lord Melbourne has acted in this business, as he has always towards me, with the greatest kindness and affection. We also think it better, and Albert quite approves of it, that we should be married very soon after Parliament meets about the beginning of February."

King Leopold's answer applied to himself the words of old Simeon, "Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace." The dearest wish of his heart was as good as accomplished.

The Prince avowed his engagement to his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Gotha, in these words: "The Queen sent for me alone to her room a few days ago, and declared to me in a genuine outburst of love and affection that I had gained her whole heart, and would make her intensely happy if I would make the sacrifice of sharing her life with her, for she said she looked on it as a sacrifice; the only thing that troubled her was that she did not think she was worthy of me. The joyous openness of manner in which she told me this quite enchanted me, and I was quite carried away by it. She is really most good and amiable, and I am quite sure Heaven has not given me into evil hands, and that we shall be happy together. Since that moment Victoria does whatever she fancies I should wish or like, and we talk together a great deal about our future life, which she promises me to make as happy as possible." In these letters one feels that her tone is more generous than his. The Queen's letters, then in the first blush of love, and always wherever her husband is concerned, breathe the spirit of Elsa's self-dedication, "Dir geb' ich Alles, was ich brie!"

She had then, and preserved to the end of their happy life together, unbounded belief in him and pride in him. To her he was the most beautiful, the wisest and best of human beings. He was always to her "my precious Albert," "my incomparable Albert," "my beloved Albert, looking so handsome in his uniform." Sometimes, even in very happy marriages, the King of the fireside has to descend from his throne when the babies arrive; the wife becomes less the wife and more the mother. This was never so in the case of the Queen; her husband was always first and foremost in her heart. She wrote after many years of marriage, during one of the Prince Consort's short absences from home, "You cannot think how much this costs me, nor how completely forlorn I am and feel when he is away, or how I count the hours till he returns. All the numerous children as as nothing to me when he is away. It seems as if the whole life of the house and home were gone." King Leopold had read her rightly, when he wrote immediately after her engagement, that she was one to whom a happy home life was in a special degree indispensable. The cares and anxieties of her political duties made it more necessary for her happiness than even for that of most women, to have her home hallowed by the sympathy, support, advice, and affection of the husband who never ceased to be her lover.

Most women can sympathize with what the Queen must have felt when she had to announce to her Council her intended marriage. This took place on November 23d 1839. There was a large attendance, eighty Councillors being present. Greville describes the scene in his usual graphic manner: "The folding-doors were thrown open, and the Queen came in, attired in a plain morning gown, but wearing a bracelet containing Prince Albert's picture. She read the declaration in a clear, sonorous, sweet-toned voice, but her hands trembled so excessively that I wonder she was able to read the paper which she held. Lord Lansdowne made a little speech, asking her permission to have the declaration made public. She bowed assent, placed the paper in his hands, and then retired."^[2]

The Queen describes the same scene in her Journal; it will be seen she confirms Greville in every particular. "Precisely at two," the Queen writes, "I went in; the room was full, but I hardly knew who was there. Lord Melbourne I saw looking kindly at me, with tears in his eyes, but he was not near me. I then read my short declaration. I felt my hands shake, but I did not make one mistake. I felt most happy and thankful when it was over. Lord Lansdowne then rose, and in the name of the Privy Council asked that this most gracious and most welcome communication might be printed. I then left the room, the whole thing not lasting above two or three minutes." She adds that the Prince's picture in her bracelet "seemed to give me courage at the Council." The Prince, with the Queen's entire approval, determined to take no English title, thinking that bearing his own name would more distinctly mark his individuality and independence. At this time he felt, as he expressed it in one of his family letters, that whatever changes were in store for him, he should always remain "a true German, a true Coburg and Gotha man." However sincere and natural this feeling may have been, he learned later thoroughly to identify himself with the country of his adoption, and that the true realization of his personality lay in sinking his own individual existence in that of his wife.

1. Heaven opens on the ravished eye,
   The heart is all entranced in bliss.
   Schiller: Song of the Bell.
2. Greville Memoirs, vol. i. 2d series, p. 247.