The Project Gutenberg eBook of The widowhood of Queen Victoria
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.
Title: The widowhood of Queen Victoria
Author: Clare Jerrold
Release date: October 13, 2026 [eBook #79779]
Language: English
Original publication: New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons, 1916
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/79779
Credits: Aaron Adrignola, Tim Lindell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIDOWHOOD OF QUEEN VICTORIA ***
THE WIDOWHOOD
OF QUEEN VICTORIA
[Illustration: _Queen Victoria._]
THE WIDOWHOOD
OF QUEEN VICTORIA
BY
CLARE JERROLD
AUTHOR OF
“THE EARLY COURT OF QUEEN VICTORIA,” “THE MARRIED LIFE OF
QUEEN VICTORIA,” “THE STORY OF DOROTHY JORDAN,”
“STORIES OF THE KAISER,” ETC.
NEW YORK
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
1916
_Printed in Great Britain._
PREFACE
Having dealt with “The Early Court of Queen Victoria,” and “The Married
Life of Queen Victoria,” it seemed appropriate to round off this
critical biography of the late Queen by describing the second half of
her life, that which was spent in widowhood. This volume gives a
presentation, not of events of history or politics, but of Queen
Victoria’s influence on those events, of her sorrows and joys, her
mistakes and successes. She, “a poor, helpless woman,” to use her own
words, had suddenly to furnish herself with a support by the help of
which she could gather again into her own hands the affairs of State;
and the support she chose, though natural to one of her temperament,
brought about some curious results.
Her great affection for all things Teutonic, her unwavering
determination to work “for a strong Prussia and a united Germany,” may
not have been without their effect upon the German mind when the war
lords were laying their plans for the conquest of Europe.
CLARE JERROLD.
CONTENTS
PART I
THE GREAT MISTAKE
CHAP. PAGE
I THE QUEEN ALONE 3
II A PRINCE IN BONDAGE 15
III THE QUEEN’S CHILDREN 25
IV A STRONG PRUSSIA 41
V FAMILY GAINS AND LOSSES 60
VI ROYAL SECLUSION 70
VII SUBJECTS IN REVOLT 89
VIII TWO PRIME MINISTERS 106
IX THE BELOVED GERMANY 130
X FOR MONEY, MONEY’S WORTH 147
XI THE WIDOW IN THE HIGHLANDS 172
XII FAMILY JARS 187
PART II
IMPERIALISM
XIII YACHTS IN THE SOLENT 205
XIV QUEEN-EMPRESS 214
XV A STRAIN UPON LOYALTY 225
XVI ANGER AND MORTIFICATION 246
XVII “JOHN BROWN’S BODY” 273
XVIII THE GERMAN INVASION 296
XIX “SHE OUGHT TO BE WHIPPED” 311
XX GLADSTONE AGAIN, ALAS! 323
XXI THE QUEEN ALIVE ONCE MORE 342
XXII THE CROWN PRINCESS 368
XXIII IMPERIAL GROWTH 384
XXIV NEARLY AN AUTOCRAT 406
XXV THE APOTHEOSIS OF QUEEN VICTORIA 424
INDEX 447
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
QUEEN VICTORIA _Frontispiece_
PRINCE CONSORT AND QUEEN VICTORIA IN 1860 _To face page_ 12
THE PRINCE CONSORT IN 1861 20
QUEEN VICTORIA IN 1864 82
(_From a painting by Winterhalter_)
W. E. GLADSTONE 108
BENJAMIN DISRAELI 126
QUEEN VICTORIA IN 1865 132
KING EDWARD VII AS PRINCE OF WALES 346
H.R.H. THE PRINCESS ROYAL 374
(_From a painting by Winterhalter_)
PART I
THE GREAT MISTAKE
CHAPTER I
THE QUEEN ALONE
In the ancient palace of our kings a woman’s heart lay bleeding;
and to the supreme place in birth, in station, in splendour and in
power was now added another and sadder title of pre-eminence in
grief.”--_W. E. Gladstone at Manchester, March 1862._
“With Prince Albert we have buried our Sovereign. This German
Prince has governed England for twenty-one years with a wisdom and
energy such as none of our kings have ever shown. He was the
permanent private secretary of the Queen. If he had outlived some
of our ‘old stagers’ he would have given us, while retaining all
constitutional guarantees, the blessings of absolute
government.”--_Benjamin Disraeli, in conversation with Count
Vitzthum von Eckstaedt._
With the death of the Prince Consort ended the comfortable state of
actual, though not apparent, irresponsibility in which Queen Victoria
had lived since the early years of her marriage. As a girl-queen she had
found herself placed suddenly in a position of great power; from the
schoolroom she went to the throne; from living in a state of absolute
subordination she saw the gate of the fairyland of seeming freedom open
wide, and, seizing her opportunity, she went through quickly and shut
the gate behind her. When her mother tried to follow the way was barred
and the barrier was labelled, “No interference.”
From the moment that William IV changed this life for perhaps a better
one Victoria openly showed the strength of her development; she had at
last the opportunity of turning a deaf ear to maternal advice, she could
shake herself free from what was publicly known as the Kensington
Camarilla, could enjoy solitude and talk with whom she would. These
possibilities crowded upon her mind and gave her the first taste of
royal luxury. “Allow me, my dear mamma, to be alone for two hours,” was
the first advantage she took of the new position, and the last request
made as a child to her mother.
Her fresh duties she grasped at eagerly. She read dispatches while her
maid was plaiting her hair, and took a curious and intelligent interest
in all matters of State. Yet though her outlook, her surroundings, her
habits all were changed, there was one thing which remained the same:
she was still at lessons under a tutor. This tutor was the courtly,
kindly gentleman, Lord Melbourne, who saw her every day and explained
things with the most direct simplicity. To his influence she
unconsciously and quite willingly fell again into bondage.
It was a different bondage; one which was not bounded by the four walls
of a room, by the covers of a lesson book, or by maternal solicitude for
convention. Her interests were as wide as her kingdom, and for the time
she did not wish to go beyond. Her mind was so full of the new lessons
that independent thought was impossible, and she deferred in all things
to her preceptor. She was being educated in the ways of the world as
well as in those of the State, and her diary of the period shows far
more evidence of pleasant gossip about people and events than about
public business. In the latter she did as she was told, for the telling
was judicious in the extreme.
In personal matters, however, the young Queen could sustain an opinion
of her own unswervingly, as was evinced when the two old gentlemen,
Melbourne and Wellington, thought it indelicate for a young girl to hold
a military review in Hyde Park on horseback, and combined to force her
to the ignominious position of the corner of a carriage.
“No, my lord; no horse, no review,” was her reply; and there was no
review. The next year there were both horse and review.
There were, on her part, other determined refusals to be guided by
advice on personal matters which have already been described in an
earlier volume; two of them shattered her popularity with the
aristocracy. They were definite indications of the line she would take
in personal and social incidents to the end of her long life; just as
her relations with Melbourne were symbolical of her attitude to the
problem of government, which, in a curious way, remained with her to the
end.
She was wilful enough when lovers came upon the scene; yet when the
lover became the husband she once more hung up the notice: “No
interference!” and the notice was exhibited for many months, to the
painful bewilderment of Prince Albert, who complained that his little
wife listened to all that Melbourne said, but remained “inattentive to
the plans and measures proposed” and “thought it unnecessary entirely
to comprehend them”;[1] in fact, that she allowed herself to be
dominated by her adviser. The Prince set to work to alter this, and in
course of time was able to announce himself as the Queen’s Permanent
Minister.
From that day things went well between the two rulers. The Prince
allowed nothing to escape his careful thought, and Victoria was as ready
to say “Aye!” to him as she had been to say it to Melbourne. Thus it was
through the remainder of her married life, though the Prince carried his
peculiarly German ideas of royal responsibility to a pitch most
disconcerting to the Queen’s Ministers, and succeeded in making himself
unpopular with all classes. But in all difficulties he himself referred
to his own tutor, Stockmar, and thus the ultimate royal word upon the
government of England was in all great, and often in little, things
uttered by a German baron, whose knowledge of English statecraft was
purely academic. So the reactionary Teutonic theory of the divine right
of kings and the subservience of ministers was planted upon the English
Constitution, and for half a century enjoyed a precarious existence.
By 1861 the Queen was in danger of being spoilt, for she had become
autocratic, and even with her hard-working husband insisted upon a
recognition of her supreme position. She ruled her household under his
guidance with a remarkable knowledge of detail, she ruled her children
lovingly and yet with severity, and she took an intelligent interest in
foreign affairs, though all royal action concerning them was according
to the Prince’s decision. Indeed, her life was full without the
intrusion of the actual fact of governing; this she was content to leave
to her husband, but she exacted in return the recognition that she was
the real Sovereign.
In the midst of this somewhat careless and self-centred existence fell
the blow which cut like a guillotine across her life.
During the Prince Consort’s illness up to December 12, the Queen could
write to King Leopold a good report: “I do not sit up with him at night,
as it could be of no use; and there is nothing to cause alarm.” Two days
later Prince Albert collapsed. Thus in a few hours, from comparative
security and belief in her husband’s recuperative powers, Victoria found
herself faced with the most appalling loss which could have befallen
her. She had actually lost her better half, for it was the half which
was the reality of the Throne and which helped her to keep the
appearance of it. Truly enough could she say in a letter to Lord
Canning, who had just lost his wife--
“To lose one’s partner in life is, as Lord Canning knows, like losing
half of one’s _body_ and _soul_, torn forcibly away ... but to the
Queen--to a poor helpless woman--it is not that only--it is the stay,
support and comfort which is lost. To the Queen it is like death in
life! Great and small, nothing was done without his loving advice and
help--and she feels _alone_ in the wide world.... Her misery, her utter
despair--she cannot describe.”
Into this chaos of dazed and dreadful feelings penetrated another--that
of fear; a fear which was engendered by the promised arrival of her
Uncle Leopold, he who from the time that she was a baby had fathered and
advised her. She feared that now, being alone, she would see him once
again assume the tone of paternal dictator; and in the midst of her
helplessness, her sensation of being lost and powerless, she felt that
any suspicion of authority over her would be unendurable torture.
If _he_ were dead she had to go on living, bring up her children, rule
her kingdom, take into her own hands that fearful mass of work for the
State with which Albert had overwhelmed himself. It was an impossible
task, and yet it was _her_ task. She would do it with her dead husband’s
help. So ten days after the tragedy once more the barrier, “No
interference,” was displayed in a letter to King Leopold, from which I
extract the following--
“I am also anxious to repeat _one_ thing, and _that one_ is _my firm_
resolve, my _irrevocable decision_, viz. that _his_ wishes--_his_
plans--about everything, _his_ views about _every_thing are to be _my
law_! And _no human power_ will make me swerve from _what he_ decided
and wished--and I look to _you_ to _support_ and _help_ me in this. I
apply this particularly as regards our children--Bertie, etc.--for whose
future he had traced everything _so_ carefully. I am _also determined_
that _no one_ person, may _he_ be ever so good, ever so devoted among
my servants--is to lead or guide or dictate _to me_. I know _how he_
would disapprove it. And I live _on_ with him, for him; in fact, I am
only _outwardly_ separated from him, and _only_ for a _time_.... Though
miserably weak and utterly shattered, my spirit rises when I think _any_
wish or plan of his is to be touched or changed, or I am to be _made to
do_ anything.”
King Leopold probably answered this letter in person, as he was at
Osborne directly after, but it is curious to note that even before the
letter was written he had made his authority felt by the widowed Queen
in insisting upon her leaving Windsor before the funeral. Indeed, the
protest may have been the direct result of his dictation.
There probably was something more than a pandering to conventional
custom in the pressure he put upon the Queen to go away from the castle,
for though the published reason for the Prince Consort’s death was
gastric fever and congestion of the lungs, the medical papers assured
the public that it was typhoid.[2] Two years earlier there had been an
alarming outbreak of typhoid at Windsor, both in the castle and the
town, and for many years after 1861 Windsor was known as one of the most
insanitary places in England. The castle itself had been partially
cleared of the fifty-one unventilated cesspools constructed beneath it,
and of which Sir Jeffrey Wyattville, when making his alterations,
remarked dubiously, “I hope it is all right, but there will be a
terrible stink one day.” But there still remained a condition of things
which was bad enough to poison the whole royal household, and so it was
proved when examination of the drainage began in January 1862.
At Osborne Queen Victoria remained with her younger children while the
body of the Prince was placed temporarily in a vaulted passage beneath
St. George’s Chapel; and to Osborne the mourners who came from Germany
went to see her after the funeral, among them being the finicking,
fretful Duke Ernst of Saxe-Coburg, who loved not the sea and suffered
agony in his “terrible passage to Dover.” Victoria wished to see him on
his way to Windsor, so, to his horror, he was not allowed to recover
gently on land, but was at once carried by express to Portsmouth, and
“in spite of the raging storm” was obliged to embark on the Queen’s
yacht, the _Fire-Queen_, and steam to Osborne.
It was not a pleasant experience for a middle-aged gentleman, and it was
made worse by the fact that to ensure privacy the Queen had commanded
that the yacht should not enter Cowes, but anchor in the open road below
Osborne House, whence the Duke proceeded in a small rowing-boat through
wild waves to the landing-place. It was near the hour of midnight when,
frozen with cold, drenched to the skin, and every emotion chilled, the
unfortunate man entered Victoria’s home. The servant who opened the
door to him quickly disappeared, and then alone he went to the Queen,
who awaited him on the staircase--
“Thus I found the unhappy woman, bowed down with sorrow and utterly
prostrate in the stillness of the night, which was interrupted by
nothing but the loud grief which deprived us both of words.”[3]
Of the funeral Ernst wrote: “Of the Queen’s family I had none at my side
but the Prince of Wales. The more comforting was the sympathy of the
Orleans family, hardly a member of which had remained absent.”
He ignores the German princes who were present, also the fact that
Prince Arthur was there; and as Victoria’s son Alfred was away at sea
and little Leopold was at Cannes and the Duke of Cambridge ill, there
were no others to go.
Though the Queen was not present she had carefully studied the
proceedings and had ordered one alteration. The proclamation of the
Garter-King-at-Arms at the graveside should have ended with a reference
to her, “whom God bless and preserve with long life, health and
happiness.” The last word was changed to honour.
Duke Ernst went back to Osborne to spend this “the saddest of
Christmases with the Queen, and as though loss and loneliness were not
enough, menace and a hint of war threatened her Majesty from the
Solent.” It was the time of the American civil war, and England, with
its noisy sympathy for the South, was allowing buccaneering vessels to
coal, refit and man in English ports, pretending not to know that they
were rovers against the Northern States. One such, the _Nashville_, was
then in Southampton Water, and so an American man-of-war, the
_Tuscarora_, flying no flag, slipped into the Solent and anchored off
Osborne. Ernst and Victoria jumped to the conclusion that the intention
was to threaten the latter personally. The guards at Osborne were
reinforced, two English frigates cruised between the island and the
American ship, and gradually everything assumed a warlike aspect. “At
any moment,” says the Duke, “some unforeseen incident, such as would
have been nothing new in the English navy, might have been followed by
the most dreadful consequences.” However, nothing did happen; the
_Tuscarora_ remained for some days, ran into Southampton Water on
January 8 and spent some time silently daring the _Nashville_ to move,
and what occurred later I do not know.
Queen Victoria remained at Osborne for weeks, taking “great pleasure in
the universal feeling of sympathy for her and sorrow for him shown by
all classes,” and in reading and re-reading the innumerable consolatory
letters she had received, and all of which she carefully preserved. It
is curious, in the light of after events, to note that she was most
deeply impressed by the letter written by Gladstone and that she
specially answered it, begging him to write again. Gladstone’s speech at
Manchester on the Prince Consort’s death, showing how well he could
sympathize with loss, is now historic. Victoria’s whole
[Illustration: PRINCE CONSORT AND QUEEN VICTORIA IN 1860]
conversation during those weeks at Osborne was of the Prince, “and she
found much comfort in it,” said Lady Ely, who left early in February,
being ill and much depressed, a state to which most of the Queen’s
attendants had been reduced by the constant demand made upon their
active show of sympathy.
In politics matters were greatly complicated by the serious illness of
Palmerston, who had a severe attack of gout, it being feared that he
would not recover; indeed, his death was actually reported at one time.
Had he died the Queen would have regarded it as a very great calamity
for her, so near had she and her old enemy approached each other in
these days. But if Pam were incapable of conducting public affairs,
Victoria herself found it intolerable to induct herself once again into
the resumption of the actual practice of her regal duties; indeed, her
strong determination to live according to the Prince’s ideals hung for a
little in the balance. She wanted to do it, but the effort was too
dreadful; she surely could have some respite; no one would expect her at
once to put her shoulders under the yoke. Thus it was that, when obliged
to communicate with her Ministers, she left it to Sir Charles Phipps,
the keeper of the privy purse, to act as her mouthpiece. The Ministers
were unwilling to allow the formation of a new precedent of so important
a nature, and signed a memorial refusing to transact business with her
in this unofficial way. The Earl of Malmesbury judged that their action,
“though right, was certainly cruel under present circumstances.” But the
cruelty may be doubted. Her Majesty was for years only too fully
inclined to indulge her grief to the exclusion of everything else, and
something of sufficient importance to divert her mind must have been,
even at that early date, a blessing.
If the Queen had chosen as her deputy the right person, the heir to the
throne, the incident might have been regarded differently. But this she
would not do. She was determined, for one thing, that the young prince
should go through with the programme already marked out for him by his
father, in spite of any arguments which might be urged against it by
King Leopold or any one else; and she had also made up her mind that
Albert Edward was the last person upon whom she would call for help. So
she bowed to the demands of her Ministers and held a Privy Council at
Osborne on January 6, 1862. “This most painful exertion,” she described
it; and such it must have been, for it was twenty years since she had
met her Privy Councillors without the support of the Prince Consort.
CHAPTER II
A PRINCE IN BONDAGE
“_Busch._ They live above the cloud of courtiers and other menials,
separated by them from the ideas and feelings of other mortals,
whose wishes and opinions only reach them in a mutilated or adapted
form, and sometimes not at all.
“_Bismarck._ The comparison is a good one, gods and yet very human.
They ought to be better educated, so that they should know how
things look here below, how the real are not appearances but
truth.”--_Moritz Busch: Bismarck, Some Secret Pages of his
History._
“In Edinburgh next, thy poor noddle, perplext,
The gauntlet must run of each science and study,
Till the mixed streams of knowledge, turned on by the college,
Through the fields of thy boy-brains run shallow and muddy.
Dipped in grey Oxford mixture (lest _that_ prove a fixture),
The poor lad’s to be plunged in less orthodox Cam,
When dynamics and statics, and pure mathematics,
Will be piled on his brain’s awful cargo of cram.
Where next the boy may go, to swell the farrago,
We haven’t yet heard, but the palace they’re plotting in;
To Berlin, Jena, Bonn, he’ll no doubt be passed on,
And drop in for a finishing touch, p’raps at Gottingen.”
_Punch_, September 24, 1859.
Of late years the Prince of Wales had presented great difficulties to
his parents, who did not know how to reconcile the position and claims
of the heir to the throne with the anomalous position of his father.
Victoria had been much agitated by this problem in 1857 when, as a
safeguard, she decided to confer, by Royal Letters Patent, as
Parliament would not do it for her, the title of Prince Consort upon her
husband, writing about it as follows--
“The children may deny the position which their mother has given to
their father as a usurpation over them, having the law on their side;
or, if they waive their rights in his favour, he will hold a position
granted by the forbearance of his children. In both cases this is a
position most derogatory to the Queen as well as to her husband, and
dangerous to the peace and well-being of her family. If the children
resist, the Queen will have her husband pushed away from her side by her
children, and they will take precedence over the man whom she is bound
to obey; if they are dutiful she will owe her peace of mind to their
continued generosity.”
But when the title was conferred the parental uneasiness did not quite
disappear, and this led to the putting off as long as possible any step
which would tend to recognize in the Prince of Wales a person of
responsibility. They also had come to the conclusion that he was a
disappointment, that he was far from reaching anywhere near the ideal
which they had raised for him.
In their youth they had unquestioningly accepted Baron Stockmar’s dictum
that from the very first--nay, from before his birth, their son must be
trained for his high and kingly state; they thought unceasingly about
him and his mental needs, consulted over every detail, mapped out every
branch of knowledge which he was to acquire. His mind was to them the
blank page upon which they were to imprint their own ideals. They never
realized that the boy was born with a temperament and predilections of
his own, and they felt injured and surprised when their impressions came
out blurred and spoilt. They gave him history, science and languages to
study, and there they stopped, and, in stopping, failed. Romance was
rigidly barred; even the good and staid Sir Walter was accounted too
frivolous for a young prince. In his childhood there had been no fairy
tales, and in his youth poetry was banished, while none of the graces of
literature were allowed to lighten and brighten the dry ways of history
and science. His mind was kept in a prison, and his body was scarcely
more free, for his actions and habits were strictly regulated through
every minute of the day. Albert Edward, like the little Princess
Victoria of an earlier generation, was never permitted to be alone, and
very seldom allowed to enjoy the society of boys of his own age. Well
might Prince Metternich say of him at sixteen--
“He is pleasant to every one, but he has an embarrassed and a very sad
air.”
Any infringement of his parents’ rules was met with definite punishment,
for reason had no great place in this iron system. The Prince Consort
never spared the child by neglecting the rod, and it is on record that
once when, as a little boy, the Prince behaved badly in the
drawing-room, the Queen took him up and administered with her own hand
the correction so dear to the hearts of the parents of that period.
As a young man Albert Edward had to sandwich visits abroad with
educational experiments at Edinburgh, Oxford and Cambridge, each of
which places furnished a story of him, two of which endeared him more to
the less well-or ill-regulated public than to his father; the other
pleased all. At Edinburgh he was studying under Lyon Playfair, and one
day, after making the Prince wash his hands to get rid of any grease,
the lecturer said--
“Now, sir, if you have any faith in science you will plunge your right
hand into this cauldron of boiling lead and ladle it out into the cold
water which is standing by.”
“Are you serious?” asked the Prince, and on being assured that he was,
he said, “If you tell me to do it I will.”
“I do tell you,” answered Playfair, and the Prince ladled out the
burning fluid without scald or hurt.
Wherever the youth went he was surrounded by men of a mature age. Sir
Edward Dicey[4] tells how he saw him in Rome often, but “no one ever saw
the Prince out of doors alone; he was always accompanied by one or both
his tutors, General Grey or Mr. Frederick Gibbs, Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge. Admirably qualified to explain monuments they may
have been, but they were certainly not the companions that a young
prince would have chosen.”
It was so until he was twenty-one, and it was the duty of the elderly
gentleman at the moment responsible to send daily reports to the
parents, giving a detailed narrative of his pupil’s life during the
preceding day, telling where he had been, whom he had spoken to or seen.
Thus it was not to be wondered at that now and then the youth rebelled
and tried to escape into a short freedom. A story goes that when at
Oxford he rose quietly very early one morning and left the city of
learning while his estimable tutors were still sleeping the sleep of the
just. However, they soon found it out, and going to the station
discovered that he had taken a ticket to London, whereupon they wired to
his father, with the result that the truant was met at the terminus by
two footmen in charge of a royal carriage. They asked him where he
wished to be driven, and he replied, with quiet humour--
“To Exeter Hall.”
The Cambridge story is much the same, except that this time the footmen
brought a letter from the Queen desiring his attendance at lunch at
Buckingham Palace.
By 1861 Albert Edward was practically banished from home excepting for a
very short time there in between college and travel. Thus, had his
father lived, he would have spent at Windsor the days between the end of
the term and the 28th of December, when a journey to the East would have
begun. This sort of thing had been going on for some years, and people
who watched events did not scruple to say that Albert-Victoria had no
desire for the presence of their eldest son at the centre of affairs;
that the Prince Consort was simply putting off the evil day as long as
possible by labelling these perfunctory collegiate careers and these
travels abroad as education.
There were whispers at Court about serious misdeeds on the young
prince’s part, and after Albert’s death it was said that the Queen was
bitterly angry with her son, as she blamed him for his father’s fatal
illness, in that the Prince Consort had caught a chill when he went to
Cambridge in November to extricate him from the effects of some
escapade. Colour was given to this by the fact that she expressed no
desire for his presence during the weeks that the Prince was ill; even
on the Friday when Dr. Jenner told her that her husband’s state was most
critical she did not send for him. He was left in Cambridge in disgrace,
shut out from the family anxiety because, having been brought up on a
starvation system, he had fallen into excess. Princess Alice sent him a
telegram late on the Friday, and by starting at once he reached Windsor
at three on Saturday morning, stricken with grief, and ready to do
anything. But the suppression under which he had been brought up had
destroyed his initiative, and it was Princess Alice who took the lead.
Neither then nor later did he ever stand in the position of an adviser
or helper to his mother.
Various explanations were given for this, the best accredited being the
resentment mentioned above, which was so keen that Victoria preferred
not to have her son near her. A totally different one was that she gave
him the chance of retrieving himself, by asking him to become her
private secretary, taking up as far as possible the work of his father.
The Prince, knowing
[Illustration: THE PRINCE CONSORT IN 1861]
what that work had been, aware of his own inexperience and his mother’s
arbitrariness, was afraid of the task and begged her not to require so
much of him at first. It was added that the Queen never forgave him his
hesitation, and that when later he himself asked for the post she
absolutely refused to let him associate himself in any way with State
affairs.
The latter story is hardly credible. Victoria was a rigid little person,
and the impressions on her mind at the date of Albert’s death seemed to
remain there for about three decades. At that moment both she and her
husband were disappointed that their son had not turned out as they
expected, as they felt that their careful training ought to have turned
him out; they were certain that the fault did not lie in their system,
but in some abnormal strain of wickedness in the boy himself, therefore
they could neither trust nor rely upon him; and therefore, also,
Victoria was determined to carry out the final plans for his
regeneration which had been made by her consort.
Reports of dissensions and differences between mother and son were
spread abroad, varied by others that the Queen had refused to see or
speak with Albert Edward at all, and the newspapers began to treat of
the subject. Thus, ten days--pitiably soon--after the beginning of her
Majesty’s widowhood a leader appeared in _The Times_ offering her some
advice. Truly she was not to be allowed time for grief. There were
whispers going about--probably quite unjustifiably--of influence
inimical to the young prince being exercised by the old advisers, King
Leopold and Stockmar, which perhaps explains the haste of _The Times_.
The article began by reminding the Queen that there had always been
discord between the Brunswickian sovereigns and their heirs; that the
duty of a parent was not terminated by change, and that implicit
obedience should result in mutual confidence and affection.
“We sincerely trust that her Majesty, so superior in most respects to
most sovereigns of her race, will also prove her superiority to them by
regarding any influence which may interpose between her and the
confidence of her son as a sinister and ill-omened intrusion, boding
nothing but evil to her and to him. We are sure she will feel--what any
mother in a private station would feel--that of all the counsels that
are offered him there are none which it is so desirable that he should
follow as her own. A young and active mind naturally seeks for
employment, and it is in the power of the Queen to provide for the
Prince the most profitable and dignified employment in which he can be
engaged by associating him with her as much as possible in the cares and
duties of government.”
A day or two later an attack was made on the Prince himself which had
something of the revivalist twang about it. He was admonished that from
living a most unusually restrained life, he was now the head of the
family; that two paths lay before him, those of duty and pleasure; and
that if he wished for public affection and esteem he must “choose
now--the decision is to be made this very hour”--between frivolity,
trouble and misery, and a reign of usefulness which would make his name
blessed for ever!
Other papers followed suit, either preaching to Albert Edward or
defending him, and _Reynolds’s Newspaper_ had the temerity to end with
this flourish--
“So he will continue a new and better mode of reigning in England, one
needed by the advance in power of the heir and the reserve imposed by
that advance on the personal action of the Sovereign.”
We can imagine the stupendous anger of Queen Victoria at the hint that
she, a ruler by right divine, was to delegate any scrap of her power to
any one, son or otherwise. Such words entirely sealed the Prince’s fate,
and four days later it was publicly announced that--
“The Prince of Wales will carry out the completion of his education and
make a tour in the Eastern lands.”
The decision came as a blow to many people, for workers in various
fields had been anticipating with pleasure the help of a young and
gracious English prince between whom and them that strange Germanic
superiority and stiffness would not lie as a barrier. To quote from the
_Annual Register_, he was being sent away “at a time when his presence
could ill be spared at the palace, and when the prospects of the Great
Exhibition (of 1862) seemed almost to depend on his taking the place of
the Prince Consort.”
So Prince Albert Edward went again on his travels with his little army
of elderly restrainers, and saw many things, the most notable being the
holy burial place of the Patriarchs, the Cave of Macpelah, where were
buried Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Jacob and Leah. No European
or Christian was allowed within the tomb, but the Prince Consort, with
true Germanic disregard of other nations’ susceptibilities, had ordered
that this should be done, and so by dint of serious threats the English
party gained admittance, guarded by a strong military escort, an army
being sent by the cowed authorities so that soldiers should be stationed
in every house and on every vacant spot in case some infuriated
Mussulman attempted in his wrath to avenge the intrusion of an infidel
prince into his Holy of Holies. By such incidents has Britain earned her
reputation for arrogance.
CHAPTER III
THE QUEEN’S CHILDREN
“While she was visiting the Queen after the engagement she always
came to breakfast in a jacket. ‘My dear,’ said the Queen one day,
‘you seem very fond of jackets! How is it that you always wear a
jacket?’ ‘Well,’ said little Alexandra, ‘I like them; and then, you
see, a jacket is _so economical_! You can wear different skirts
with it, and I have very few gowns, having to make them all myself!
My sisters and I have no lady’s maid, and have been brought up to
make all our own clothes. I made my own bonnet.’ Bless her!”--_Jane
Welsh Carlyle._
“And there were old gauntlets and pieces of hair;
And fragments of backcombs, and slippers were there;
And the gay were all silent; their mirth was all hushed;
While the dewdrops stood out on the brows of the crushed.
And the dames of Belgravia were loud in their wail,
And the matrons of Mayfair all took up the tale;
And they vowed, as they hurried, unnerved, from the scene,
That it’s no trifling matter to call on the Queen.”
_Jon Duan._
Through the first year or two of her widowhood Victoria’s chief interest
was given to the settling in life of some of her children. It was a
great anxiety to her, though it was absolutely pleasant compared with
the troubles which arose later over further efforts in the same
direction.
The first to be settled was Princess Alice, then nineteen, who was
engaged to Prince Louis, nephew of the then Grand Duke of Hesse
Darmstadt; he possessed a very small income and no house to which to
take his bride, but he belonged to the royally favoured nation, and the
marriage would have taken place in the winter but for the Prince
Consort’s death. Parliament granted the Princess £30,000 as dowry and a
yearly income of £6000, and the wedding took place at Osborne very
quietly on July 1, 1862. From that time the affairs of this loving,
gentle daughter absorbed much of the Queen’s thoughts, and many and
large were the sums of money which went to help the young people to make
a home at Kranichstein and to pay the debts incurred in doing so. Later
the Queen had a palace built for them in Darmstadt.
At the end of 1862 the Queen had high hopes of seeing Prince Alfred
comfortably settled in a kingdom of his own, for the Greeks had tired of
Otto, the king imposed upon them by Russia, France and England, and of
his rigid Germanic system of government. A student had tried to murder
Otto’s queen Amalie, also a German, and the nation had hailed the
criminal as a national hero. Upon this the army revolted, the King was
declared deposed, and the royal pair took refuge on a British
man-of-war. Then the Greeks looked round for a successor, and chose
young Alfred of England, he being then eighteen years old, probably
because they hoped by this means to regain control of the Ionian Isles,
which England had taken over.
The Queen hailed the scheme with delight, which caused much disturbance
to her Ministers, who foresaw consequent quarrels with France and
Russia, as the original treaty forbade any relative of either of the
three signatory Powers taking the Greek throne; so she was painfully
induced to relinquish the plan, and the crown was then offered to King
Ferdinand, next to Duke Ernst of Saxe-Coburg. The latter in his turn was
delighted, and Victoria was even better pleased that he should have it
than that her own son should, for if Ernst went to Greece Alfred would
have Coburg. However, Otto had accepted to the full the German idea of
his being a king by divine right, and would not abdicate, so the Duke
felt that his reign might be somewhat hazardous: that he might one day
find Otto returned, Alfred in possession of his duchy, and he a beggar
without a home. His suggestion then was that his nephew should become
Regent in Saxe-Coburg until he himself was firmly established in his new
kingdom. Leopold thought this reasonable, but Victoria absolutely
refused any compromise; Ernst must go, and go for good. A royal quarrel
resulted, and the Queen considered herself greatly harassed and ill-used
by her brother-in-law, Ernst being dubbed as grasping and ungrateful.
Palmerston thought that a provisional arrangement might be made, but he
was getting old and was no longer a match for a vigorous and
strong-willed woman. From that time to the end of his life he gave way
to the Queen in every dispute.
While the matter was still pending the English Government approached
Prince Leiningen and Prince Hohenlohe, both young relatives of the
Queen, but both saw the risks as too great for the adventure. Knowing
of these negotiations, Ernst decided definitely against, and Victoria
with some bitterness found closed a second opening for Alfred. William
George, a brother of Princess Alexandra, was brave enough to become King
of the Hellenes--a title manufactured for the occasion; and a year later
the Ionian Islands were ceded to Greece.
The marriage of the Prince of Wales had been much discussed before the
death of the Prince Consort, the choice being eventually between two
German girls, Princess Alexandrina of Prussia and Princess Alexandra,
daughter of the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, who
had by the treaty of 1852 been made heir to the throne of Denmark. Queen
Victoria keenly desired the first alliance, but Prince Albert inclined
to the second, and King Leopold strongly upheld him; the popular belief
being that he was moved by the entreaties of Albert Edward, who had seen
a portrait of Alexandra, and declared that he would marry none but her.
In reality both Leopold and Victoria had deeper reasons.
William, king over a Prussia which resisted his weak but despotic rule,
was planning to cut through his troubles by flourishing the torch of war
in the face of Denmark through the Duchies of Schleswig-Holstein. The
Queen, allied with Prussia by her daughter’s marriage and moved always
by her family emotions, wished to make it impossible to side against
Prussia, and incidentally against the interest of that daughter, by
forming another alliance with that country. Leopold, on the other hand,
recognizing the danger of Prussia as a near neighbour, desired an
English-Denmark bond which would warn Prussia from her intended
depredations. His arguments, backed by Albert Edward’s inclination,
weighed down the scale, and the first hint of a decision led to a
meeting between the young people at the Prussian manœuvres in September
1861; then the Prince Consort died, and they did not see each other
again for a year.
The English papers were constantly referring to the engagement as an
accomplished fact, causing much annoyance at Windsor; but in August 1862
occurred one of those little comedies of ceremony of which Victoria was
so fond.
First she went to stay at Brussels, leaving after a few days for her
daughter Alice’s home. A day or so later the Prince of Wales appeared in
his uncle’s capital, and the next day came Prince Christian, his wife
and daughters. The Prince and Princess spent a week in each other’s
society, and then the Danes departed in one direction, while Albert
Edward left in another. The young man went to Kranichstein to report
progress to his mother, and was quickly followed by the Danish party.
Then the engagement was announced.
On Prussia the news fell, as Duke Ernst said, like a thunder-burst. The
Prussian Princess had been slighted for a little person from little
Schleswig-Holstein; King William had relied on the friendship of Queen
Victoria, and she had failed him; indeed, the ideal of a “united
Germany” could no longer be cherished by her!
In England it was very different; the people lost sight of the bride’s
German birth and saw in her only a Dane, whose land was nearly
surrounded by the wild sea, and who was, or must be, akin to the English
in life and tastes. They accepted her with all their hearts, and were
ready to champion her through thick and thin.
Sandringham House was bought from Spencer Cowper, at the extortionate
price of £200,000, it having then to be rebuilt; and Marlborough House
was redecorated and furnished, the usual discovery being made of
paintings under a layer of stucco, in this case pictures of the
victories of Marlborough, by Kneller, up the stairway.
Young and gay as she was, when Alexandra came to visit the Queen the
sadness of the Court oppressed her, and she viewed with concern the
heavy _crêpe_ garments worn by her hostess. Taking up a bonnet one day
which was overweighted with _crêpe_ and encumbered with a long _crêpe_
veil, she begged to be allowed to make it less heavy. The Queen
hesitated, then consented, and the girl removed a quantity of material
without much altering the appearance. When she returned it the Queen
took it with a sigh and kissed her. That she wore the bonnet afterwards
was a triumph for the Princess.
The marriage treaty was signed January 15, 1863, at Copenhagen, and all
the royal family set to work to provide a trousseau fit for the future
Queen of England. King Leopold’s present was appropriately a wedding
gown of Brussels lace. In Copenhagen there were parties at which the
delicate and wonderful clothes were shown; in England State levees and
drawing-rooms were held by the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal,
or rather the Crown Princess of Prussia, who was credited with having
helped to form the match, perhaps because propinquity to the Prussian
Alexandrina made her prefer the other girl for her brother, of whom she
was very fond.
Now the Queen had determined to do everything just exactly as things had
been done under the Prince Consort, and, though a tremendous crowd was
expected at these State gatherings, the order went forth that they
should be held in the little rooms of St. James’s Palace, and this in
spite of the fact that when the last large sum had been spent by the
public in renovating Buckingham Palace it had been understood that such
ceremonies were to take place there. _Punch_ dubbed St. James’s Palace
as “the house of detention for ladies,” for many hours had to be spent
before and after the ecstatic moment of kissing, or pretending to kiss,
the hand of a princess. It took hours for the carriages to crawl to the
entry, hours to get up the stairs and wait one’s turn in an anteroom of
small dimensions, and sometimes hours to get away again--
“Thus on they struggled, inch by inch, and stair
By stair; now losing, now a little gaining;
As though it were a life-and-death affair;
As though, indeed, this courtly presentation
Worked out their future and their whole salvation.”
Victoria had made one concession to the comfort of her callers: she had
allowed some chairs to be put in the room where the ladies waited, that
those who were strong enough and quick enough to fight for them might
rest. Others stood until their turns came, and then each lady, summoning
with difficulty a pleasant expression to her jaded face, made her
graceful curtsey.
The coming away was more terrible than the going, for then the jamming
was remorseless and inevitable, the waiting for the carriages being in a
long, narrow corridor, something like a tunnel, in which there was no
hope of movement. Angry and impatient, some dame would hear the official
announcing her carriage, and be entirely unable to get near the door
even by the most strenuous fighting. So the vehicle would move on, and
she would have to wait while it made the whole round again. Pretty girls
would emerge at last with their skirts in rags, a portly duchess would
beg the closely wedged bystanders “just to stoop and look for my diamond
bracelet,” worth perhaps the purchase money of a large estate; and every
one would be crying--
“Oh, what a shame it is! Surely the Queen cannot know what goes on?”
No cup of tea or refreshment of any kind was offered to the victims of
this atrociously bad management, and a woman fainting from exhaustion
was a recurring episode, regarded by all officials with perfect
calmness.
Well might indignant correspondents write to the papers and suggest
that if people were worthy of being received at Court they were worthy
to enter the Queen’s own spacious house, and remind those responsible of
the broken faith over Buckingham Palace.
The Prince’s levee in March was as bad as the Princess’s drawing-room,
more than two thousand men attending it.
“Garments were cleft of them,
Horsehair was reft of them,
What pen can write of them?
How at the sight of them
Gents-at-arms wondered.
As to the Presence there,
Draggled and damaged men
Rushed, crushed and thrust along,
All that was left of them;
First the two thousand,
Then the seven hundred.”
There was one presentation made at this levee of which the newspapers
said: “No event for some years past has excited so much indignation.”
The Duke of Wellington had brought with him a gentleman, rich, well
bred, and one of the principal guarantors to the Commissioners of the
Exhibition of 1862. As the crowd fought its way up the stairs the
stranger stumbled against Justice Baron Pollock, who had an
extraordinary memory for faces. The Baron told what he remembered to
some official, but the presentation had taken place and the levee was
over. The gentleman in question had many years before made a mistake
upon a cheque, and had been sentenced to ten years’ imprisonment. He was
what was known as “one of Jebb’s pet lambs”; that is to say, he had
come under the humane prison reformatory ideas of Sir Joshua Jebb, and
so had been able honourably to reinstate himself in the commercial
world. But his ambition flew too high: wishing to make friends with
royalty, he found himself publicly advertised as unfit for that honour.
The storm of indignation which shook the papers over the unbearable
conditions of royal receptions made no impression upon the Queen, and
the girlish Alexandra held a Court for Victoria in the following May, at
which 2,200 people attended, and confusion was worse confounded. To add
to the faintings, losses and torn rags, empty carriages got mixed up
with full ones, so the presentations lasted until six o’clock, and even
the royal hosts were exhausted. As Henry Greville remarked: “What was
never done before, they retired for a short time to refresh and repose
themselves.” The poor guests had no chance of that relief, however.
It was hoped that Queen Victoria would make the wedding the occasion for
emerging from her seclusion, and that she would honour the bridal pair
by attending as a queen. This hope was summarily destroyed, and so much
stress was laid upon the intention of holding a quiet wedding that
_Punch_ declared that the ceremony would take place in an obscure
Berkshire village, noted only for its old castle and non-sanitary
arrangements, and suggested that the secrecy of the proceedings should
be carried out to the utmost, the only public intimation being in the
first column of _The Times_--
“On the 13th inst., at Windsor, by Dr. Longley, assisted by Dr. Thomson,
Albert Edward England, K.G., to Alexandra Denmark. No cards.”
The settlements had been granted without much parliamentary bickering,
being £40,000 to the Prince and £10,000 to the Princess, which, with
£60,000 from the Duchy of Cornwall, was thought to be sufficient.
The entry of the young Princess into England and her progress through
London must have been one of the most stirring events of her life;
pleasure was there certainly, but pleasure pointed by alarm is
unforgettable. At Gravesend half London seemed to be floating in gaily
decorated craft to welcome her, and from there to the Bricklayers’ Arms
everything, even the haystacks and hedges, blushed with royal bunting;
but the drive thence to Paddington, that was absolutely thrilling!
Queen Victoria had made all arrangements; she was always particular in
her instructions about any great function. The carriages sent to meet
the Princess, who was to drive through London before the eyes of all
England, were thus described by Lord Malmesbury in his _Memoirs_--
“I was never more surprised and disappointed.... The carriages looked
old and shabby and the horses very poor, with no trappings, not even
rosettes, and no outriders. In short, the shabbiness of the whole
cortège was beyond anything one could imagine, every one asking, ‘Who is
the Master of the Horse?’”
Another order given was that the carriages should trot, and that, though
the way lay through the city, the City Fathers should take no part in
the welcoming, because their heavy State carriages would have to go at a
walk. It is really difficult not to wonder whether the latter order was
not issued that the gorgeous city coaches should not contrast too
luxuriously with the humbler royal equipages. But such a loud outcry was
made over the “trotting” order that it was rescinded, and the Lord Mayor
and Aldermen were allowed to escort the Princess from London Bridge to
Temple Bar, the Duke of Buccleugh, Lord High Steward of Westminster, and
the Dean and Chapter heading the procession from Temple Bar to Hyde Park
Corner.
The Lord Mayor, however, used his opportunity with too much pride, by
refusing all help, either from the military or the Force, and relied
entirely upon his own five hundred police managing the crowd. But London
Bridge and the streets were absolutely blocked; the people pressed
against the horses, caught hold of the sides of the carriages, and in a
struggling, shouting turmoil, with waving hands and arms and open
throats, shifting and clinging like figures in a nightmare, they strove
and contended to hold place and get nearest to the carriage which held
the Princess.
This extended to beyond the Mansion House--the carriages crawling along
inch by inch--where the scene was terrible. Between the solid walls of
people no exit could be found; fainting women and boys were with
difficulty saved from being trampled on; a dead or dying baby was held
up over the crowd, and a woman was seen to throw a child into one of the
carriages to save its life.
When turning the corner of the Mansion House, the Princess’s carriage
swayed beneath the pressure and she put out her hand. It was at once
grasped by some one in the crowd. An old Irishwoman clutched the side of
the carriage, and Alexandra said--
“Oh, I hope you won’t be hurt!” Upon which the woman responded, “God
bless you, my darling!”
The Princess, feeling the benison to be of good omen, replied, “Thank
you, thank you!”
The equerries around the carriage showed great good humour, and
effectually persuaded the multitude to give way foot by foot before the
horses, Lord Alfred Paget betraying a skill in chaffing which made every
one who heard him his friend.
From Chancery Lane the route was better kept. At Cambridge House in
Piccadilly the royal carriage came to a halt, for upon the balcony stood
the veteran Lord Palmerston and his wife, with whom salutations were
exchanged.
At Slough, whence the royal party drove to Windsor, the horses became
rebellious; the leaders of the first carriage jibbed, those of the
second turned round upon the wheelers, and the harness got entangled,
which created a scene of great confusion. However, the wise man has said
that all’s well that ends well, and the little Princess _did_ get to
Windsor that night, and had three days in which to rest for her very
sumptuous wedding, which “was so grand as to be quite overpowering,”
judged the courtier Lord Malmesbury.
The brilliant show may be imagined; every one agreed that the bride was
extraordinarily beautiful, but Lord Ronald Gower gave the palm to
another: “The finest part of the ceremonial as regards the persons
present was the magnificent appearance and presence of Princess Mary [of
Cambridge] as she seemed to sail up the nave of this gorgeous chapel.
She looked the very embodiment of earthly magnificence.” Princess Mary,
still unwed at thirty, though many had wanted her! But there seemed
always some reason, State or otherwise, why the suitors, great and
little, should one after the other be discarded.
Above the brilliant scene, in a windowed box, sat the Queen, almost
hidden in _crêpe_; one apart; feeling gladness for these young people,
yet streaming with tears for thinking of her own wedding day. Well, it
was the Victorian way, and there’s no more to be said.
On nearing the altar the Princess curtseyed deeply to the Queen, and her
maids, unprepared for this, thought they ought to kneel; then, finding
their mistake, suddenly straightened themselves, while the Prince stood
irresolute, and Jenny Lind’s sweet voice flooded the building to an
accompaniment composed by Prince Albert. Meanwhile the Queen’s first
grandson, the amiable little Prince William of Prussia, now the most
dishonoured man in the world, was biting the bare Highland legs of his
two uncles, Arthur and Leopold, between whom he stood, and who were
responsible for his quiet and decorous behaviour.
After six-and-twenty royal or imperial hands had signed the register,
and after the hundredweight of cake had been cut and all was over, the
gallant company started back to London. The Windsor stationmaster had
forgotten to keep the platforms clear, and had also not troubled to suit
the train accommodation to the company. So great ladies and courtly
gentlemen stepped from the castle carriages into the midst of a crowd of
sightseers, plentifully besprinkled by roughs and thieves. Among the
results recorded I find Lady Westminster, wearing half a million pounds’
worth of diamonds, saving her property by scrambling into a third-class
carriage, the venerable Lady Palmerston hunting vainly for a seat, and
at last finding one unoccupied in the third class, and Count Lavradio
complaining that his diamond star had been torn from his chest.
For a week afterwards the papers were inundated with letters from
indignant Englishmen, who complained that Queen Victoria had failed to
honour either the Princess or the nation in allowing shabby carriages to
form part of a great London procession. Said one such in _The Times_:
“Our Queen’s equipages have not of late years been remarkable either for
their beauty or for the taste and finish with which they are turned out,
and certainly the servants, carriages and cattle selected to convey the
Danish Princess through joyful London attired in its holiday clothing
must have been the very dregs of that singularly ill-appointed
establishment known as the Royal Mews of Pimlico.”
The popular belief was that the impoliteness shown was the result of a
dispute between the Queen and her advisers twenty-three years earlier.
“Etiquette forbids,” said the Ministers, “that a young prince should use
the Queen’s State carriage before he becomes her husband, or is in any
way connected with the State.” Victoria was said to have remembered
this, and would allow no greater distinction to be shown to her new
prospective daughter-in-law than had been shown to her own beloved;
indeed, not so much, as in her youthful days the Queen’s stables were
excellently appointed.
CHAPTER IV
A STRONG PRUSSIA
“_Lorenzo._ A prince above all things must seem devout; but there
is nothing so dangerous to his state as to regard his promise or
his oath.
“_Alphonsus._ Tush, fear not me, my promises are sound, But he that
trusts them shall be sure to fail.”
_George Chapman_:
‘_Alphonsus, Emperor of Germany._’
“I know that our dear angel Albert always regarded a strong Prussia
as a necessity, for which, therefore, it is a sacred duty for _me_
to work.”--_Queen Victoria in a letter to Ernst of Saxe-Coburg._
One of the most remarkable sentiments held by Queen Victoria was her
affection for Germany in general and Prussia in particular, she
regarding these countries as a sacred care bequeathed to her by her
beloved prince, and whenever she mentioned her desire for “a strong
Prussia,” she would add a pious reference to the departed Albert.
Frederick William IV, the Prussian king who was set aside in 1857 as
insane, had stood sponsor for Victoria’s eldest son; his brother
William, when Regent, married his son William Frederick to Victoria’s
eldest daughter, and he visited England many times. But the friendship
of the sovereigns did not mean the friendship of the public, nor did it
include political amity. Constant annoyance was felt in Berlin over the
long letters from the Prince Consort advising the King how to rearrange
his form of government, letters often sent through Baron Stockmar;
indeed, the perusal of a chapter or so of that period of _The Life of
the Prince Consort_ will show what a passion Albert had for interfering
in other people’s concerns.
In Berlin this was violently resented, especially when William became
Regent. It was said that England had dared to interfere with Prussian
politics and that Stockmar had come over the Channel with the new
“Prussian Ministry all cut and dried in his pocket.” From this time
Prussian outbursts against England became a “hardy annual,” the anger
being mainly directed against Albert, and after his death against
British influence, “the scheming Queen,” and the “English” Crown
Princess. Victoria never did make concessions to public opinion, and
consistently under-rated the value of the sentiments of a people; so
this resentment made no impression on her feeling for Germany, and she
still worked for Albert’s ideal of a “strong Prussia” and a “united
Germany.”
When William was crowned King of Prussia at Königsburg--only the second
Prussian king who went through the coronation ceremony--he boldly
asserted that the Prussian kings “received their crown from God,” a
sentiment with which Victoria entirely agreed. As a writer in _The
Quarterly Review_ for April 1901 stated, though she “probably would not
have signed a paper saying she believed in the divine right of kings, in
her heart she never questioned that she was the anointed of the Lord.”
That the first King of Prussia had bought his crown one hundred and
sixty years earlier from the Emperor of Germany did not seem to affect
the claim made by the new monarch at all, and when his bombastic
utterances were strongly commented upon in the English Press, a very
furore of retort arose in Berlin, England being roundly invited to
attend to her own affairs and leave Prussia alone. The Queen again
sympathized, feeling very angry with _The Times_ and other censorious
journals.
In 1862 William had so much trouble with his Parliament and his people
that he had decided to abdicate, in spite of his divine right, and had
already written out the deed of abdication when Bismarck came to his
aid, and still further frightened him by his drastic views and deeds.
“I can perfectly well see what the end will be,” he said, after one of
Bismarck’s addresses in the Landstag. “Over there in front of the Opera
House, under my windows, they will cut off your head, and mine a little
later,” for he was obsessed by the fate of Charles I and Strafford. But
his Minister laughed and went on his victorious way, and William became
his grateful, if sometimes rebellious, servant.
With Bismarck the occasional anger of Prussia became a settled jealousy
against England, and though for the sake of Albert’s idea of a strong
Prussia, Victoria always worked for Bismarck’s policy, she had a great
dislike for the man, a dislike which he reciprocated fully in a mean and
jealous way, condescending to coarse abuse of the Queen in conversation
with his entourage, and imputing evil and cunning reasons for all that
she did. This dislike he extended in double strength to the Crown
Princess, and all through his life he did his utmost to foster adverse
criticism of her in Germany. He claimed in the name of the King
extraordinary rights over her household, and always had his spies placed
in official positions about her.
In 1864 there was a family quarrel between the two Courts. Count Philip
Eulenburg, a young sublieutenant at Bonn, whose brother later became, in
Bismarck’s pay, master of the Crown Princess’s Household, was
unintentionally jostled in the street by a portly stranger; Eulenburg
replied with foul and insulting language and, being answered in kind,
drew his sword and cut the man down, he being so badly injured that he
died in the hospital. He was a Frenchman named Ott, a chef to Victoria,
and then in Germany in attendance on the Duke of Edinburgh. The Queen
and her son were very indignant, and acrimonious discussions took place
between England, France and Germany, which lasted for months, Eulenburg
in the end being sentenced to pay heavy damages to Ott’s widow and
undergo a year’s imprisonment in a fortress.
This was, however, but a ripple on the surface of the Queen’s enduring
love for Germany, and she took her stand as a buffer between her people
and the aggressive German Government; she eagerly married her children
to Germans, asking nothing in return in wealth or position, nothing, in
fact, but the bridegroom and his nationality, but in these arrangements
she did occasionally allow herself the gratification of spiting the
Chancellor, Bismarck.
Queen Victoria has been regarded as a great statesman, but she did not
show that quality in her dealings with Prussia; for during the first ten
years of her widowhood Prussia put a ring of blood and fire round
Germany; Poland, Denmark, Austria and France being successively attacked
and more or less ruined. Englishmen had deeply desired to help some of
these weaker countries, but Victoria fought every one--her people, her
Government, the Opposition, her family, in her determination to let a
strong Prussia and a united Germany arise. She consulted, not the safety
of Europe or of England, not the balance of European power, then or in
the future, but what she knew to have been the ideals of the Prince
Consort. She had a bad time with her people, but she would have endured
anything rather than have put out a finger against that German ideal by
assisting one of the victims. She seemed honestly to endorse the
sarcastic words of _Punch_--
“May Heaven further walk over Prussia and bless her,
And still of her neighbours’ possessions possess her.”
In July 1862 Bismarck was in London, and he outlined his future policy
before Disraeli over the dining-table of Baron Brunow, saying--
“When I take over the Prussian Government” (which he did two months
later) “my first care will be to reorganize the army, with or without
the Landstag. As soon as the army is sufficiently strong I shall seize
a pretext to declare war on Austria, dissolve the Diet, reduce the small
states and give Germany national unity under Prussia. I have come here
to tell this to the Ministers of the Queen.”
It was a policy of which, except probably for the attack on Austria,
Victoria approved, and which she helped Bismarck to carry out by an
attitude of strict non-interference.
Bismarck, regarded as so “great,” did more evil than good; he made
Prussia physically, but he destroyed her soul. He derided the arts,
debased the Press, destroyed the Parliament, and tore up “scraps of
paper” at will. He fostered the seeds of mental and moral degradation,
indigenous in the Prussian, the fruit of which to-day has made of all
Germany an outcast among the nations, a thing so unpardonable that the
whole world is aghast at the sight.
Bismarck’s quarrel with Austria was that she had recently taken the
initiative in calling together representatives of all the States to
consider a plan for a united Germany, and this naturally pointed to the
predominance of Austria. Of all the kingdoms and states Prussia alone
stood aside from the great conference called at Frankfort. King William
was very grieved over this, for he wanted to take part, and saw himself
at the head of affairs there. The Dowager Queen, Queen Augusta and the
Crown Princess all urged him to attend, and the King of Saxony visited
him to make a personal appeal, with the result that William promised to
go, and to send a signed letter to that effect. As soon as his visitor
had departed, however, Bismarck entered, and had a long interview with
his king, at the end of which, to quote his own words--
“I only succeeded with the utmost difficulty in preventing him [writing
the letter]; I literally hung on to his coat tails.... His Majesty lay
on the sofa and had an attack of hysterical weeping, and when at length
I had succeeded in wringing from him the letter of refusal, I was myself
so weak and exhausted I could scarcely stand.”
Having got this letter, Bismarck sent for a regiment to guard the palace
and so prevent any one else from having access to his “master.”
This abstention of Prussia was a great disappointment and cause of
anxiety to Queen Victoria, who went to Coburg that she might be nearer
the scene of action, and there she invited both the Emperor of Austria
and the King of Prussia to meet her, hoping to induce Prussia to join
the Conference. She could not understand its isolated position, and saw
it becoming an Esau among the nations; reprobated as it was by all
because of its dastardly deed during the Polish rising, when it had
deliberately given permission to the Russians to pursue Polish rebels
through Prussian territory. From Coburg Victoria wrote to Duke Ernst,
then at Frankfort--
“I must believe that Prussia’s position is growing worse and worse, and
I am afraid she will have few voices in the Assembly of Sovereigns to
speak in her interest. All the more would I beg you, as much as lies in
your power, to prevent a weakening of Prussia, which not only my
feeling resists--on account of the future of our children--but which
would surely also be contrary to the interests of Germany; and I know
that our dear angel Albert always regarded a strong Prussia as a
necessity, for which, therefore, it is a sacred duty for _me_ to work.”
King William, attended by Bismarck, went to see his royal cousin at
Coburg. Bismarck was not admitted to the interview, but his influence
was on the King; and when it was over the Queen was extremely depressed,
for William had told her nothing of Prussia’s hopes and plans. After the
Conference her meeting with the Emperor of Austria took place at Castle
Ehrenburg, and of this interview Duke Ernst has left us a description.
At the foot of the staircase stood the Queen with her children on either
side--Victoria, Alice, Helena, Alfred, Leopold and Beatrice, while
behind her stood her Ministers and officers of State. Francis Joseph
entered the great hall with his suite, and the Queen kissed him on both
cheeks and introduced her children. At two o’clock, after luncheon,
Victoria invited him to an interview at which Ernst formed a third. He
tells us that the Queen “maintained the usual pleasant level of her
character,” that she first complimented Francis Joseph on the way in
which he had conducted the Conference, and said that she had no
intention of meddling with high diplomacy, but would make her appeal on
purely personal grounds.
“She then remarked that it was not her business to enter into the actual
political questions pending in Germany, but she had a personal request
at heart. Her maternal anxiety for her children rendered it a matter of
heart with her to recommend them to the Emperor. Whatever might be the
actual difference between the views and policy of Prussia and Austria,
she at all events hoped one thing, that the Emperor would never let the
position and the rights of her dear children in Berlin be prejudiced.
“The Emperor was visibly surprised at this address. He replied in
generally complimentary terms, but did not touch on the actual political
question. If he left Coburg satisfied, that may be partly due to the
effect of his having found, in this meeting with the Queen of England, a
proof of how greatly his Frankfort expedition had contributed to raise
his prestige with non-German monarchs.”
To King Leopold Ernst wrote--
“The Emperor’s interview with Victoria has passed off very well. It was
an exalting scene, without stiffness.”
This was the interview which gained for Queen Victoria her first
definite reputation as a statesman! No one then knew what had passed at
these meetings, but it was believed that her thoughts were upon weighty
European affairs; and all the time she was merely begging first one king
and then another to be kind to her children who were settled in
antagonistic parts of Germany. Bismarck must have been as much surprised
as amused.
As has been said, Prussia had, in its anxiety for Russian friendship,
played a dishonourable part towards the Poles, and had therefore been
subjected to strong criticism in the English Press; but Prussia intended
to go further. Her aim was to beat Austria down from her pre-eminence in
Europe and to seize Schleswig-Holstein, but she went warily to work.
Alexandra’s father, as Christian IX, had succeeded to the Crown of
Denmark in accordance with the treaty of 1852, but Frederick of
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg [what terrible titles!], who
thought he had a claim upon the Danish throne in virtue of his mother
having been a Danish princess, demanded the kingdom, treaty or no
treaty, and in spite of the fact that his father had taken a large sum
of money to settle this claim. The great Diet of German States backed
him up, among them being Hanover, Saxony and Coburg.
This was Bismarck’s opportunity, and he called upon Austria as the chief
German power, and as once the possessor of Schleswig, to help him in
upholding the treaty. It was so honest and simple that it deceived
Victoria, but it deceived no one else, least of all Denmark, who knew
the ways of Prussia, and she turned to England in her trouble, relying
upon the aid which had been virtually promised during the last eleven
years. Palmerston, Granville and Russell were prepared to give it, the
first saying in the House in July 1863--
“We are convinced--I am convinced, at least--that if any violent attempt
were made to overthrow the rights and interfere with the independence of
Denmark, those who made the attempt would find in the result that it
would not be Denmark alone with which they would have to contend.”
Every party, except the peace-at-any-price party, was with him; and the
Danes, counting on us, prepared to defend themselves.
The question was a three-sided one, and like Christianity it divided
families and friends. On one side of the triangle were the Ministry, the
majority of the Opposition, the Prince and Princess of Wales and the
people of England, all for Denmark. On the second, upholding Frederick
of Augustenburg, were most of the German states, the Crown Prince and
Princess of Prussia--in spite of Bismarck--Alice and Louis of Hesse and
Ernst of Coburg. The third party consisted of Prussia and Austria, and
in consonance with the Prince Consort’s desire for a strong Prussia,
Queen Victoria refused to act in any way which was against the interest
of this third party. She was constantly confronted by the white, anxious
face of Alexandra, and guarded herself by peremptorily refusing to
listen to any word about Denmark from the Prince of Wales. Her daughter
Victoria urged the claims of the Augustenburger with cleverness and
asperity. Princess Alice did the same thing with gentle insistence. In
the autumn, when the Crown Prince and Princess were staying at Windsor,
with the intention of improving their kindly love for their new
sister-in-law, the triangular discussions became so bitter that at last
Victoria forbade the mention of the subject altogether, a course which
did not tend to draw the sisters-in-law together.
Duke Ernst wrote to the Queen, urging her to take some action on his
side, and she wrote him a long letter, from which the following is a
paragraph--
“You seem quite to overlook the fact that England is bound by the treaty
of 1852, and, greatly as I may deplore the manner in which that treaty
was concluded, the Government here has _no other choice_ but to adhere
to it. Our beloved Albert _could not_ have acted otherwise.”
The English Cabinet agreed upon a dispatch to be sent to Austria and
Prussia, declaring that the Government would be forced to take a hostile
attitude if Schleswig-Holstein were invaded. The Queen energetically
opposed its being sent, and Lord John Russell resigned. “The Queen will
not hear of going to war with Germany,” noted Lord Malmesbury in his
diary, and he added that the country and the Government would like to
fight for the Danes, “but found great difficulty in the opposition of
the Queen.”
Victoria sent for the leader of the Opposition, Lord Derby, when she
found that not only the Liberals under Palmerston, but the great body of
the Tories were in belligerent mood, and made him promise that, no
matter what his party wanted, he would resist every idea of war.
When the address from the Throne was drawn up in 1864, Lord Palmerston’s
definite Danish pronouncement produced disagreement in the Cabinet, so a
second and milder speech was prepared and sent to the Queen; this she
promptly returned as impossible, and it was not until the evening before
the opening of Parliament that she gave her assent to what was publicly
regarded as the most futile speech which had ever emanated from a
responsible ruler. The Prince of Wales was present the next day to
listen to a statement of which the most important item was a paragraph
of flowery congratulation upon the birth of his first son, and the next
one of adulation of his mother--
“Her Majesty is honoured and admired not only in Europe, but throughout
the world; her virtues live again in her children, and all their
Lordships fondly hope that the infant Prince, who was born under these
auspices and brought up under these happy influences, will at some
future day reign over this realm with the same brilliant qualities which
have adorned the reign of her present Majesty.”
To the Commons the address began with--
“Three years ago we had to lament the loss of a great and good prince, a
loss from which her Majesty has not yet recovered, and from which we are
afraid she never will recover.”
It is almost unbelievable that in a time of such public excitement the
Queen could have sanctioned such puerilities, and that in this speech
Poland, then being slowly martyred, was not mentioned, the war in
America received no word, nor did the English soldiers fighting in
China. As to Denmark, the House was simply reminded that by the treaty
the powers had agreed that no territory should be filched from Denmark;
but another clause, which showed that each Power had individually bound
itself to protect Denmark, was ignored. In the discussion Lord Derby
hoped paradoxically that we were not committed to a disastrous war with
Germany nor to the betrayal of Denmark, which had put her trust in us.
Well might the Austrian ambassador, Count Vitzthum, say joyfully--
“The victory of the peace party is a victory of the Queen maligned,
insulted and reproached with German sympathies. Her Majesty has
checkmated the dictatorship of her Prime Minister, and beaten him three
times over in his own Cabinet on a question of war or peace. The Queen
has recognized the true interests and true wishes of her people, and not
allowed herself to be misled by the gossip of the drawing-room or the
declamation of the daily press.”
And well might the Americans say when they were pressing their claims
for the roving acts of the _Alabama_ at the Geneva Conference, that
England’s conduct over the Danish war proved that England would never
fight again.
The Danes fought like heroes, but it was a foregone conclusion that
alone they must be beaten. Prussia was then as Prussia is to-day, though
less brutal. She bombarded unfortified towns--
“Danish homes our ordnance shattered,
Dashed out Danish women’s brains,
Danish children’s bodies shattered,
Smashed both great and little Danes.”
In a duet which _Punch_ gave between William and Francis Joseph occurred
these lines, accentuating the blatant Prussian piety so familiar to us
to-day--
“_William._ And we smashed the young fry where pitched the live shell;
So I turn up my eyes and go down on my knees,
And give thanks that I’m able to do as I please.
“_Francis Joseph._ We’ll work our omnipotent will,
We’ll torture and burn and slay.
Let but England and France keep still,
And a fig for what they say.”
Palmerston, his force of character relaxed by age, had come to heel, and
there was little to be feared from him, but the satisfaction the Queen
felt in this was dispelled by the fact that now the Opposition was
crying out against ignoble inaction. Lord Derby’s sympathies were with
his party, and he was on the point of yielding when he was again
summoned to Windsor and sharply reminded of his promise. But Disraeli
was left, and he was preparing a vote of censure on the Government’s
foreign policy.
The usual course was being followed of summoning a Conference in London
of all concerned, _except_ Schleswig-Holstein, to see if peace could not
be arranged, and a month’s truce was proclaimed. Bismarck’s
representative arrived, and so delayed matters, ten days late, that
affairs might be left in a favourable position for Prussia when
hostilities recommenced. The Conference failed, as it was bound to do,
and Victoria told Palmerston that she would never consent to England’s
participation if the war continued, instructing him at the same time to
dissolve Parliament if the vote of censure was carried; so says Duke
Ernst in his memoirs.
Queen Victoria’s popularity had decreased when she refused to join in
any attempt to stop the monstrous punishments dealt out to the Poles by
Russia--Prince Albert had always condemned the Poles--and now over
Denmark it fell to zero. Exchanging letters with Duke Ernst over the
Conference, she wrote of loving Germany with all her heart, “especially
our part,” and of having done all she could for peace. “I have been
attacked here--what was still wanting in my sad position--on account of
my German sympathies, and a few silly people have been giving out that I
have been hindering the Government in its actions.... I would most
earnestly request you not to mention me, nor lay any stress on the
little merit I have had, as it might greatly aggravate my position,
difficult and painful as it already is.”
Disraeli’s vote of censure was a crushing attack upon the policy which
the Queen had imposed upon Palmerston and which Palmerston had allowed
her to impose. “Within twelve months we have been twice repulsed at St.
Petersburg. We have menaced Austria, and Austria has allowed our menaces
to pass her like the wind. We have threatened Prussia, and Prussia has
defied us. Our objurgations have rattled over the head of the German
Diet, and the German Diet has treated them with contempt. During the
last few months there is scarcely a form of diplomatic interference
which has not been suggested or adopted.... Couriers from the Queen have
been scouring Europe with the exuberant futility of abortive
projects.... My policy is the honour of England and the peace of Europe,
and the noble lord has betrayed both.”
In a flash of prescience Disraeli said, “If there is a cordial alliance
between England and France war is most difficult; but if there is a
thorough understanding between England, France and Russia war is
impossible.” It might have been true then, but to-day the “strong
Prussia” has grown so strong that the three allies have to fight it side
by side.
Palmerston was only saved from defeat by Bright and his little peace
party.
It has so often been stated that Queen Victoria was a true
constitutional sovereign, that her power over State affairs was purely
nominal, and that she abided most loyally by the decisions of her
Ministers, that many people have believed it. No greater mistake
concerning the Queen was ever made. She considered it her duty to
express her opinion on every subject, and as far as was consistent with
safety to impose her will upon her Ministers. In extreme cases she would
give way and sanction something which she disliked, but this was only
done to avoid some dangerous crisis, the two most notable incidents
being the passing of the Irish Church Bill and the abolition of purchase
of commissions in the army. In these Victoria did what Gladstone wanted,
not that she agreed with him or because she thought it her duty to be
loyal to the Government, but because she desired to save the House of
Lords from the threatened effect of their own uncompromising opposition.
When the Danes were finally beaten the aggressors agreed that six years
were to be allowed to the inhabitants of the two duchies in which they
might decide whether they would choose to belong to Denmark or Prussia
and Austria. This was Bismarck’s way of leaving the question open and so
preventing Austria from taking possession of any part of the land, the
whole of which he intended for himself. In a year and a half his hunger
for possession grew ravenous. He was satisfied that there was nothing to
fear from an Anglo-French alliance, that, as some one has put it--
“However Palmerston might bark, Queen Victoria would never allow him to
bite a Hohenzollern.”
So he followed the usual Prussian course, massed troops on some one
else’s territory--in this case, Hesse-Cassel, as a good jumping-off
point, and when Austria, in alarm, brought her troops to defend her
borderland he shouted aloud to all Europe that Austria was treacherously
mobilizing her army and starting a war. Hesse-Cassel, indignant, sided
with Austria, and when that country was defeated at the end of six
weeks, was promptly swallowed by Prussia, as were Schleswig-Holstein,
Hanover, part of Hesse-Darmstadt, and other small states.
The Queen had watched this attack upon Austria with grief, and had
recognized that there was, after all, something of the wolf in Prussia.
She wrote to Lord Granville, “Prussia should at least be made aware of
what she and her Government and every honest man in Europe must think of
the gross and unblushing violation of every assurance and pledge that
she had given which Prussia has been guilty of.”
But Victoria did not realize that she had, by her abstention from a
just course, put into Prussia’s hands a powerful weapon against her own
country; that she had given it possession of that seaboard for which it
longed, and that henceforth its navy, helped later by another present
from her, was to grow until it was thought strong enough to menace
England.
If she deprecated the methods of Prussia, the results were not
altogether disagreeable. Prussia was growing strong, and as a French
writer, M. Abel Chevalley, says, “the progress towards the unity of
Germany enchanted her! She saw her daughter an empress in the future.”
Austria had once been the Imperial head of Germany, henceforth the
Emperor knew himself to be second to the family of Hohenzollern, which
in earlier years had felt distinguished by being the cupbearers to the
Hapsburgs. The blind King of Hanover and his son were sent wandering,
and Victoria telegraphed to Duke Ernst, “Thank God, you are safe. It is
too dreadful. Where is the poor King and his son?” To which she received
answer that the King and his son had passed through Gotha early that
morning in the best of health.
CHAPTER V
FAMILY GAINS AND LOSSES
“Really I do not think it _possible_ for any one in the world to be
_happier_ or as happy as I am. He is an Angel, and his kindness and
affection for me is really touching. To look in those dear eyes,
and that dear, sunny face, is enough to make me adore him.”--_Queen
Victoria on her marriage._
“I could hardly bring myself to believe that this was really death,
that which I had so often shuddered at and felt afraid of; there
was nothing there dreadful or appalling, only a heavenly calm and
peace.”--_Crown Princess on the death of the King of Prussia._
If Queen Victoria had much anxiety to endure in the ’sixties through
mistaken foreign policy and a strongly stirred people, she yet enjoyed
many of those domestic pleasures which deal with life in its most
primitive aspect. There were grandchildren to welcome into the world,
brides to help into partnership--though that word would but ill express
Victoria’s idea of the marriage state--and deaths to call forth her
tears and sympathy.
In August 1865 the Queen went again to Coburg, with her three youngest
daughters and Prince Leopold, that they might be present at the
unveiling of a bronze statue to the Prince Consort in the square of his
native town.
Princess Helena was then nineteen, and either from the usual cause of
mutual attraction or through maternal policy she became engaged to
Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, brother
to the husband of her Majesty’s niece, Princess Adelaide of
Hohenlohe-Langenburg (the daughter of Princess Feodore, half-sister to
the Queen).
There are those who have said that this Prince Christian was brother to
“the Augustenburger” who had claimed the crown of Denmark, and also that
the Queen arranged the marriage that she might not only placate both
Denmark and the little German states, but give at least one little blow
back at Bismarck, by showing compensation to the family he had cheated.
However, all this was wrong. The Augustenburger renounced his rights to
his title in 1864, taking instead that of Count de Noer, and dying the
following year; I have not discovered that he had a brother. His
successor, who took all his long row of names, was the husband of
Princess Adelaide. Thus this marriage seems to have been arranged in an
ordinary way, with no underlying policy of generosity or spite.
Prince Christian was accredited with a wife, but as she was not of royal
birth, royalty would have considered this no bar to a second marriage
with a young girl. How easy is royal morality, especially that which is
made in Germany! Nearly all the German princelings of that date appear
to have made morganatic unions at least once in their lives, which they
gaily put aside as soon as a better match offered.
The Prince had neither lands nor money, but Queen Victoria was ready to
supply all that he needed; so he resigned his position as an officer in
the Prussian army, and was dowered by his mamma-in-law with £100,000 and
a house at Frogmore. When the wedding took place it was announced that
“none of Prince Christian’s male relatives were able to attend,” and Mr.
_Punch_ wickedly suggested that--
“Considering what the bride’s brother had done for Mr. Poole [the great
tailor] we should have thought that he might have made this possible,
even at three months----” A remark which shows how extremely impecunious
the family was believed to be.
Victoria, however, was determined that full honour should be given to
Prince Christian in England, and when he approached our shores was
peculiarly insistent upon the use of his title of Serene Highness. Thus
the Court Circular announced--
“H.S.H. arrived in London attended by----; H.S.H. embarked from Dieppe
in a Government steamer. H.S.H. was received at Dover by the naval and
military authorities. A guard of honour attended H.S.H.’s departure.”
The _Pall Mall Gazette_ maliciously commented that “H.S.H. must be
rather astonished at the pinnacle on which his betrothal to Princess
Helena has put him. In their own country Serene Highnesses mostly travel
about in second-class carriages and smoke cheap cigars. Here they put in
motion generals, admirals, troops and paragraphs when he moves.”
At the wedding the Queen for the first time allowed some modification of
the ghastly garb of _crêpe_ which she had lived in for four and a half
years. Her dress was of _moiré_ antique, interwoven with silver; of
course, there was a good deal of _crêpe_ about it, but there was also a
row of diamonds round the bodice and a little coronet of diamonds round
the cap.
It was not in such festive robes that Victoria, a month earlier, had
watched her cousin, Mary of Cambridge, marry. There had been much
speculation as to why Princess Mary remained single until she was
thirty-three, for there was always some one ready and waiting. In 1864
she was said to be sought by “a gallant young soldier of noble birth,”
upon whose suit she did not frown, all that was wanting being the
Queen’s consent, which was for the moment withheld. It was evidently
withheld for longer than a moment, and Princess Mary had still to wait.
In 1866 she met Francis, Prince of Teck, the only son of Duke Alexander
of Württemberg and a Hungarian countess--another morganatic marriage,
but a faithful one! Francis, being so born, could not inherit, so his
father made him Duke of Teck, gave him his blessing and congratulated
him on marrying an English royalty. He was a third poor German to add to
Prince Louis of Hesse and Prince Christian, but so much regard was felt
for the bride that the published comments were on the whole sympathetic.
The wedding took place in the little church at Kew, in June, in the
midst of a great company of princes and princesses, and the Queen
entered upon the gay, brilliant scene clothed in mourning so deep that
not one speck of white relieved her dress at any point.
Many were the grandchildren born to her Majesty during these ten years,
chief of which were the children of the Princess of Wales. The first two
years of her life in England could scarcely have been happy to the young
Dane, whose mind was filled with her people and their troubles, though
her anxiety was tempered by her husband’s complete sympathy. At
breakfast one morning an equerry thoughtlessly read out news of a Danish
defeat, causing Alexandra to burst into tears, and Albert Edward’s
anger, it is said, would not have disgraced Henry VIII. It may be
imagined that the Princess did not love Bismarck, and once when a
visitor at Windsor asked Princess Beatrice what she would like for a
present, the child, having consulted with Alexandra, replied--
“I want Bismarck’s head on a charger, please.”
The Princess’s eldest son came into this world two months before he was
expected, and he was, therefore, unable to enjoy all the elaborate
preparations which had been made for his comfort at Marlborough House.
He had to be wrapped in an ordinary flannel petticoat, and was
professionally examined by an ordinary Windsor practitioner bearing the
ordinary name of Brown, just like any ordinary baby. Alexandra was
staying at Frogmore and had gone to watch the skating on Virginia Water,
leaving there at four in the afternoon; the baby was born at nine, and
the London doctors and nurses arrived at eleven. Dr. Brown was probably
the happiest person among them all, for he pocketed £500 for his share
in the event.
The baby was, of course, very small, and some motherly person, thinking
to comfort the Princess, remarked that John Russell (who was diminutive)
was a seven months’ child, and was surprised to hear a scream of
laughter from the bed.
Alexandra’s second son was born in June 1865, he, too, being in a hurry,
though he only antedated his parents’ expectations by a month. Two years
later a man named Alfred John Pearce published a prophecy about the
young Prince George in an annual he then edited, and this was
re-published in 1910 by the _Toronto Globe_. The salient part of the
prophecy ran--
“From these positions [of the stars] we may conclude and predict that
this prince will, if he live, become King of England, under the name of
George V.... The Prince will in mind and taste greatly resemble his
grandfather, the good and great Prince Albert. Indeed, England will be
proud of her fifth King George, and his fame shall descend to posterity
as one of the best and wisest of monarchs. The position of Jupiter
signifies a very prosperous and peaceful reign.”
The last paragraph scarcely fulfils present-day conditions, but then
King George may live so long that the present war may become but an
incident in an otherwise peaceful and wise reign.
Several other children were born to the Princess, of which Louise and
Victoria, both belonging to this decade, survived. Princess Alice’s
first daughter saw the light at Windsor in April 1863; the Crown
Princess of Germany was not idle; while Princess Helena and the Duchess
of Teck both did their duty by the State.
Among those who died were four veterans: the old enemies Palmerston and
Stockmar, also King Leopold and Queen Amélie of France. Of the four Pam
had had the most successful life, for one cannot find that he had known
fear, and he alone of the four possessed wit. Stockmar was
hypochondriacal; all his life he had feared for his health, until at
last he lost it. The Queen went to see him in 1862, and together they
talked and wept over the dead prince, Stockmar breaking out one evening
in deep lamentations, reproaching himself with being alive, and saying--
“Ah, my dear Prince, my good Prince, how happy I shall be to see you
again! That will not be long to wait.”
It was not long, for he died the next year, before the man whom he had
always regarded as an enemy and that other whom he now loved best in the
world, King Leopold.
“In full activity, as a soldier at the breach,” Palmerston died in
October 1865, and, in spite of her long antagonism, it was at the wish
of the Queen that he was buried in Westminster Abbey. The funeral
service was dramatic. The hearse, which was, as usual, a forest of
nodding plumes, was followed by solemn royal carriages, and then by
gaudy mayoral coaches, brought from all over England and containing one
hundred and forty costumed corporations. This cortège, like some huge,
primeval saurian crawling to its fossil bed, slowly went to the Abbey
through sunshine; but during the ceremony there a storm broke, rain
fell heavily, wind howled, and in that darkness--so dark that the
clergyman was nearly invisible--the body was lowered. When the grave was
covered the sun came out again.
Pam was eighty-one, and in some ways still young, active and occupied to
the last week of his life. I have been told a curious story of the way
in which he received his bootmaker, named Seton. An appointment would be
made, and Seton would be shown into the room where Palmerston was
standing at a high desk, writing. The footman would put a stool to the
right and the statesman’s foot would be placed on it and measured, the
stool being then placed in position for the left foot. Seton would then
go away without having received a word from his customer. This had gone
on for twenty years, during which the two had never spoken to each
other.
This bootmaker, well known in his day, also served the Prince of Wales,
and the first time he went to Marlborough House he was shown into a room
and left to wait. About forty minutes later the Prince came in, and,
seeing a stranger, asked--
“Who are you?”
“I have come to measure your Royal Highness for a pair of boots,” was
the reply.
Albert Edward rang the bell sharply, and said to the servant, “How is it
that Mr. Seton has been kept waiting here forty minutes and you did not
tell me? Let it never occur again.”
But then the Prince was not quite so seriously occupied as his Prime
Minister. Palmerston possessed a terse wit which sometimes flashed
across the dismal speeches of the House. Thus, when some one was
boringly enumerating things which we owe to the Jews, Pam replied--
“I quite agree with the honourable gentleman; many of us owe a great
deal to the Jews.”
A lady once told him that her maid objected to going to the Isle of
Wight again because its climate was not embracing enough. “Now what
would you do with such a woman?” she asked.
“Take her to the Isle of Man next time,” was the prompt response.[5]
Leopold of Belgium died in December 1865, much to Victoria’s sorrow. At
one time he was the most devoted friend of France, but in his later life
he became intensely suspicious of Louis Napoleon, having been worked on
by German intrigue to that end, for Bismarck, too, feared France, and
started the policy of isolating her in Europe. It was a successful
policy both with Belgium and England, for as long as Victoria lived
there was no confidence between the two countries. As for Leopold, he
lived in terror of Napoleon, and constantly raised the cry that the
latter intended to annex Belgium. He also did much in influencing
Victoria against her neighbour, continually alarming her ministers and
fostering English distrust of the French.
Early the next year ex-Queen Marie Amélie, aged eighty-two, was buried
at Weybridge, her body being followed to the grave by princes,
ambassadors and ministers from almost every country in Europe, as well
as from Brazil and Mexico.
In June 1867 Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, was shot by his own
subjects. His wife was the Queen’s cousin, Charlotte, daughter of King
Leopold, of whom she had been very fond. Charlotte came to Europe in
1866, hoping to turn Napoleon from his purpose of withdrawing all French
troops from Mexico and so leaving her husband unprotected, and she went
mad at her want of success. She is still alive, though it is doubtful
whether her brother’s stories of her continued insanity were true, for
he had secured her whole fortune and it was to his interest to keep her
in seclusion. The house in which she lives was entered by Germans in the
autumn of 1914.
What a farce is the supreme position in a country! Queen Amélie had fled
for her life from her subjects and lived eighteen years in exile;
Leopold lived in fear of the monarch next door to him; and Louis
Napoleon lived in terror of assassination by the dagger. When President
Lincoln was shot in 1865 Napoleon’s shattered nerves made him leave
Paris abruptly for Algiers, under the excuse of drinking the waters
there, but--it was said--in reality to get used to the idea that a
pistol was a good assassination weapon--a fact which he had always
contended--and also to realize that the chances against him were now
doubled.
CHAPTER VI
ROYAL SECLUSION
“‘Nay, let my people see me!’ Kind
Was she whom then our cheers were greeting,
Now, would that Lady bear in mind
That words like those will bear repeating?”
_Shirley Brooks in ‘Punch.’_
“Prince Albert, the oppressively good.”--_Current Press._
After the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria practically buried
herself; she did not put her body under the ground, it is true, but what
was almost equally bad she enclosed her mind in stone, in mausoleums,
statues, cairns and other _mori memento_, and to the living world she
became as dead as a nun. To her family she still partly lived, and that
family no doubt hoped to see her some day again fully alive, but they
could scarcely have believed that two dozen years would pass before
Victoria would begin to recognize the ordinary amenities of social life.
Yet so it was, and this long self-indulgence in a life of privacy while
clinging to the most public post in the kingdom, explains to a great
extent why the nation generally feel a far deeper personal affection for
Edward VII than for Queen Victoria. The fact that she was a woman saved
the Queen from the full effect of her sins of omission. Men were imbued
by that unhealthy sense of what is called chivalry for womanhood which
allows of two standards of right and honour for the two sexes; the men
of the time were also suspicious that they could not understand such an
unreasonable creature as woman, and that it was better to accede to her
whims than dispute them. “Men must work and women must weep” explained
the whole situation, and that Queen Victoria did weep and nurse her
grief continually seemed for a time sufficient excuse for the neglect of
all her public work. But there is not the slightest doubt that had a
king in the same circumstances indulged his personal wishes to the
exclusion of public duty, as did Queen Victoria, that which was nearly a
revolution in 1867 would have been completely so, for the discontent and
anger of the people was by that time intense.
Another quality which helped to save the situation was the Queen’s
sentimental nature, for it was an age of sentimentality, of feminine, or
rather, to use the then current word, “female” foolishness and masculine
superiority, an age when “females” tied their husband’s neckties and
laced their boots, when the “male” thought he was justified in swearing
at his wife if she neglected to put the studs into his shirt, and
expected her to consider herself fully compensated by his protection.
The Queen was intensely sentimental. To the end of her days she wrote
birthday greetings to every child, grandchild and great-grandchild, as
well as to many others; she mourned all deaths on the right
anniversaries, and remembered all the marriages. With such a nature it
was understandable that she should assume perpetual mourning for the
Prince Consort. At first her people responded by putting up statues to
his memory, and nothing roused her so much as these evidences of
sympathy. Each one was a justification for her continued mourning, and
she commemorated the bereavement in every possible fashion. Thus early
in her widowhood she summoned Noel Paton to Windsor to arrange the
painting of a picture of “The Bereaved Family,” and later she broke
through her new habit of seclusion sufficiently to go to the artist’s
studio to see how the picture was progressing. Finding his little boy
there, and always loving children, she is said to have asked him if he
would not kiss her, to which he replied “No.” Being asked if he knew who
she was, he answered--
“Yes, you are the Queen of England, and you killed Queen Mary, so I
don’t love you.” An answer which probably did not displease her, as she,
too, disliked Queen Elizabeth for the same cause.
Early in 1862 great exertions were being made to raise subscriptions for
an Albert memorial in London, which were responded to but slowly; and to
his memory the Royal Horticultural Gardens were inaugurated by the
Prince of Wales. The Queen paid her first visit since her widowhood to
the metropolis the following year to see them.
Her first care was the mausoleum at Frogmore, which was built as a cross
with the funeral cell in the centre, that part being lit by windows in
the clerestory. The roof was of copper, bearing a square tower
surmounted by a cross. The doorway was guarded by monoliths of Aberdeen
granite, and the whole exterior was faced with a mixture of granite from
Aberdeen and Guernsey.
The Queen was never tired of adding to the interior adornments of this
mourning house, I had almost said this place of worship, until in 1890
its effect was sumptuous rather than austere. A great picture of Christ
emerging from the tomb, with Roman soldiers hiding under their shields
in fear at the triumph over death, hung over the altar; on one side was
a picture of the crucifixion, and on the other one of the visit of the
disciples to the empty tomb. Four bronze angels supported the
sarcophagus, upon which rested a recumbent figure of the Prince in white
marble. A beautiful marble statue of Princess Alice later occupied a
recess. Before the tomb were placed three rows of chairs, the first
devoted to the Queen and her children, the second to lesser royalties
and principal ladies, and the third to other ladies and gentlemen. Such
was the spot which for a long time became the centre of the Queen’s
death-in-life.
In the Highlands a cairn, its base forty feet square, was raised on
Craig Lowrigan, where it could be seen “all down the valley.” “I and my
poor six orphans all placed stones on it; and our initials as well as
those of the three absent ones are to be carved on the stones all round
it,” wrote Victoria. This cairn was the subject of a stupid sermon by a
Dr. Candlish, a leading light among the Free Kirkers who took umbrage at
the inscription, from _The Wisdom of Solomon_, “He being made perfect
in a short time fulfilled a long time. For his soul pleased the Lord;
therefore hastened He to take him away from among the wicked.”
The Free Kirkers, having justly desired to choose their own pastors, had
years before rebelled against lay patronage, and had provoked the
determined opposition of the Queen, who considered that the royal
prerogative was in essence being assailed. Therefore they were ready to
condemn all English ecclesiasticism, and Candlish declared that this
text was a studied insult to the “Bible that Scotland loved,” to the
doctrine of Inspiration, to Scotland and [which was certainly true] to
the generation from which the Prince had been removed by death. It was
“shabby, flimsy, a wretched shred and a sham without even an allusion to
blessed immortality.”
The English were aghast at this attack on the Queen, and Candlish had to
publish an apology, which was really almost as bad as the offence, as he
declared that he did not for a moment think that the Queen had chosen
such a text, but had been led away by the evil advice of English
clergymen.
The Scot is a cute person, and a religious publisher seized this
opportunity of pushing a new edition of the Bible which he had ready,
with this flourish of advertising verbosity--
“A copy has been presented to the Prince of Wales and the Princess
Alexandra through Lord Shaftesbury--who have been graciously pleased,
especially the Princess, that brightest of orbs in the firmament of
living beauty, to express high admiration of it.”
Truly religion in the beloved Highlands was on its trial!
It was in the autumn of 1863 and at Aberdeen that Victoria appeared for
the first time in public, and then mutely, to unveil a statue to Albert,
and to declare through the lips of Sir George Grey that she had come “to
proclaim in public the unbounded reverence and admiration, the devoted
love that fills my heart for him whose loss must throw a lasting gloom
over all my future life.”
Such words in such circumstances would to-day seem greatly wanting in
reticence and dignity, but upon this subject Victoria knew no reticence,
and she followed this unveiling and declaration with many other events
of the same kind both in Scotland and England.
In time “statues to the Prince almost covered the land,” as Gladstone
once said, and even Ireland tried to do its best. But at Dublin the
movement met a check. The Irish knew themselves neglected by rulers and
governing classes, and the Irish remember even to this day a speech by
Prince Albert in which he said contemptuously that the Irish were
entitled to no more sympathy than were the Poles. The Fenian movement
too, born in Paris about 1855 of Irish agitators, and nursed in America,
had grown strong and lusty, so when the Mayor of Dublin called a meeting
on February 8, 1863, to arrange to put up a Prince Albert statue on
College Green, a man named Sullivan made a proposal that the statue of
Grattan should occupy the spot, saying that Dublin people would hate
the Prince’s statue and hiss it as they passed.
Sullivan’s motion was defeated, but he called a meeting of protest in
the Rotunda, which was said to have been attended by 40,000 people. Now
the protestor himself was regarded as a traitor by the majority of the
Fenians, and when he began to speak the moiety of the audience which had
got into the hall, among the leaders of whom was O’Donovan Rossa, went
for him, and also for the O’Donoghue, M.P., who was chairman of the
meeting. These two flew for their lives, hid for two hours in some
private room and were rescued by the police. In the great hall the
speaking had occupied only a few minutes, but for two hours a free fight
raged, being probably much enjoyed by the combatants.
That was the end of the Prince’s statue on the Green, and years later
one was erected there to Grattan, the work being done by J. H. Foley. A
statue was eventually erected to Albert on Leinster Lawn, which forms
one side of Merrion Square and belongs to the Royal Dublin Society. It
was protected by high railings, yet one Sunday night in 1872 an attempt
was made to blow it up with dynamite.
The impression left upon the mind of the Queen was that the Irish had
flouted and insulted the memory of her adored husband, and it was over
thirty-six years before she showed any signs of forgiving the incident.
In 1866 the Queen sent to her eldest grandchild, William of Prussia, a
silver statuette of his grandfather, three feet high, representing him
as a hero conquering sin.
There was probably a double reason for this, for the beloved first
grandchild was showing an unamiable spirit. Sir Charles Hallé described
him paradoxically as charming, but a devil. The little prince had
entered the Queen’s room just as Sir Charles was leaving it, and
Victoria told him to salute her visitor. He refused, and she asked him
what his mamma would say if she were told that her little boy was
impolite. However, he would not move. The Queen insisted that he should
obey, and the delightful eight-year-old boy, looking straight into her
eyes, said--
“I will not!”
This was followed by a spanking, or as the musician put it, “a veritable
struggle and a very painful one took place between grandmother and
grandson. At last the child yielded and made a deep bow.”
There is another story, probably belonging to a somewhat earlier year,
of how little William, being naughty at the luncheon-table, was
sentenced to disappear beneath the table until the meal was over. Being
at last allowed to return to dining-room society, he emerged--stark
naked.
The fact that Queen Victoria, while repudiating all public activity,
found energy to visit Netley Hospital and the Consumptive Hospital at
Brompton early in her widowhood, these being places the foundation
stones of which had been laid by the Prince; that she instituted the
Albert medal as an award to those who saved life at sea; that for years
her chief personal interest was in planning and unveiling memorials;
all these indicate the state of her mind. She had fallen in love with
grief, and her only pleasure came from indulging it.
As the years passed the public grew tired of this insistence upon woe.
It had wept with her at first and had been roused to a sympathetic,
protective love for her. The journals had given the Prince such pæans of
praise as a winding-sheet as were not later accorded to Victoria
herself. This was a reaction of feeling in regard to the popular
prejudice against the Prince which had troubled all his English life,
and the reaction was caused by the suddenness of the catastrophe and a
true appreciation of the Queen’s grief; but it passed, and the public’s
opinion of the Prince Consort gradually veered round to what it had
been, largely, at the time, because of the resentment felt at Victoria’s
attitude in showing always that the dead man was of more importance to
her than her living subjects.
But Queen Victoria thought that that evanescent mood had come to stay,
and that her people’s first care should be that she should be left in
peace with her sorrow. So for the first three or four years she saw no
one but her children and usual attendants; she refused to go to London
or to take up any Court functions--Albert had always hated London, and
she too disliked it. She grew morbid and self-absorbed, and suffered
keenly from self-consciousness on the very rare occasions when she did
appear before strangers, generally to unveil a statue.
A ball or so, a concert or so, a drawing-room or so, each with a
princess as hostess, made the courtly season, and the tradesmen of
London began to complain, the papers began to urge the Queen to come
into view, and the people began to say, “Why have a queen at all?”
Victoria paid no heed, for she had a large share of that firmness which
the vulgar call obstinacy. She also possessed an absolute conviction
that when she had chosen a course she _could not_ be wrong, her
decision, being hers, must be right. Therefore she refused all
concessions and continued in her isolated position. She saw nothing of
the change coming over the minds of men, of the republican feeling which
was permeating the working classes under Palmerston’s contempt for all
schemes of political reform, of the hatred which was leavening Ireland
against England because of the mixed policy of neglect and tyranny which
obtained there. She only saw, when complaints were made, that her people
were unjust and cruel to her personally, that republicanism was a sin
against Divine Right, and that the Irish were very wicked people. Such
warnings as the following, published by _The Times_, she regarded as
pure extravagance--
“It may be that in time London may accustom itself to do without the
Palace, but it is not desirable that we should attain that point of
republican simplicity.... No reigning house can afford to confirm in
their view those who suggest that the throne is only an antiquarian
relic and royalty itself a ceremony, who think that the less that is
seen and heard of a Court the better.”
In 1864 she made the concession of allowing her birthday to be kept with
the usual honours, she herself being at Balmoral. The next year she
announced that she would hold two Courts, one for diplomatists and the
second for such distinguished persons as she wished to invite. At once
the hope arose that Buckingham Palace would again become inhabited and
the Court recover from its state of suspended animation, but there was a
tinge of doubt and bitterness mixed with the hope.
The first reception, that to the diplomatists, had an unfortunate
introduction; the officials who arranged it had been four years out of
practice, and had forgotten the formula. They sent out the invitations
in something like this form--
“The Queen will graciously receive the Corps Diplomatique, _male_ and
_female_, at a Court to be held at Buckingham Palace,” etc.
Such a barbarism could not pass unnoticed, and the invited gentlemen
sent their cards to their respective Courts, either as curiosities or to
ask for guidance, so the blunder was known all over the world. Victoria
must have felt much mortified, and though all those responsible tried to
shift the fault on to each other’s shoulders, nobody dared to suggest
that it was want of usage which occasioned the stupidity.
Two swallows do not make a summer, and these two receptions did not
constitute a season; the grumbles and entreaties continued, and in
September 1865 _Punch_ published its renowned cartoon of “Hermione,” in
which Pauline, in the form of Britannia, is shown drawing back some
curtains, thus revealing a statue of the Queen, crowned and wearing her
robes of State.
“‘Tis time! Descend! Be stone no more!” says Pauline.
At last, when public comment became too loud and sustained, Victoria
published a definite statement of her intentions, declaring that the
idea that she was intending to resume her place as head of society could
not be too explicitly contradicted; that she had other and higher duties
to perform, which weighed unceasingly upon her, overwhelming her with
work and anxiety; that she had laboured to discharge those duties till
her health and strength had been impaired. “To call upon her to undergo,
in addition, the fatigue of those mere State ceremonies which can be
equally well performed by other members of her family, is to ask her to
run the risk of entirely disabling herself for the discharge of those
other duties which cannot be neglected without serious injury to the
public interest.” The statement ended with her saying that she would do
what she could--in the manner least trying to her health, strength and
spirits to give support to society and encouragement to trade.
This pronouncement rather increased than allayed the dissatisfaction,
for the popular mind could not understand that any work should make a
recluse of the most public official in the whole country. The difference
between the two standpoints lay in the fact that England regards the
Sovereign as the Crown of the State, while Victoria regarded herself not
as the Crown alone but as the foundation, a somewhat contradictory
view, which I doubt if even she could have explained.
What was this work in which she buried herself?
It was work which had gradually fallen into Albert-Victoria’s hands
through the Germanic ideals of the Prince Consort, who, under Stockmar’s
tuition, consistently mistook the functions of royalty in England. He
demanded that nothing of any sort should be done in the Cabinet, or in
Parliament, until it had received full consideration by the Queen; in
actual fact he asked that the Constitution should become an absolute
Monarchy, that no dispatches should be sent away until they had been
studied by the Queen, which really meant by himself--and altered in
agreement with her wishes. This applied not only to important matters
but to everything, to the merest triviality of legislation; but foreign
diplomacy was regarded as particularly the prerogative of the
Sovereign--with a view to upholding Monarchy in Europe.
When the Prince died Victoria gathered all this work into her own hands,
and at the same time felt acutely that it was no fit work for a woman,
for she had no belief in the intellectual capacity of her sex. Thus,
while she set herself to perform a perfectly unnecessary, useless and
impossible task, she pitied herself with an intensity which was
pathetic. Writing to Theodore Martin, she asked him to contradict the
idea that it was the Queen’s sorrow which kept her secluded. “It is her
_overwhelming_ work and her health which is greatly shaken by her
sorrow, and the
[Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA IN 1864
After a painting by Winterhalter]
totally overwhelming amount of work and responsibility--work which she
feels really wears her out. Alice Helps is wonder-struck at the Queen’s
room, and if Mrs. Martin will look at it she can tell Mr. Martin what
surrounds her. From the hour she gets out of bed until she gets into it
again there is work, work, work, letter-boxes, questions, etc., which
are dreadfully exhausting--and if she had not comparative rest and quiet
in the evening she would most likely not be alive. Her brain is
constantly overtaxed.”
Mrs. Martin went to look at the royal workroom, and wrote of “the piles
of dispatch-boxes, all of them full of work for her, and all requiring
immediate attention; and this goes on from day to day. It is the Queen’s
great aim to follow the Prince’s plan, which was to _sign nothing_ until
he had read and made notes upon what he signed. You may imagine how such
conscientiousness swallows up the royal leisure.”
Conscientiousness is admirable, when rightly used; in this case,
however, though it justified itself to the Queen, it was exercised to
the detriment of the country. Upon all these papers dealing with the
government of the country the most expert political brains of whichever
party was in power had been exercised, yet each question had, in every
stage of its development, to be reduced to the comprehension of a single
mind, and every movement of its passage had to be retarded while that
mind was not only grappling with it, but demanding alterations. Had
Victoria’s intellect been equal to that of her most renowned Minister
the situation would still have been difficult; as it was it was often
painful, leading to an intense royal dislike of some statesmen, and a
system of unashamed flattery on the part of others which, while oiling
the wheels of the machine, was unperceived by Victoria.
It does seem as if the poor Queen, in her desire to continue to rule
England according to the ideals of the Prince Consort and Stockmar, had
set herself an overwhelming task, to use her own word. But there was,
entirely unknown to her general subjects, and for a long time to her
Cabinet, an alleviation of the situation. From the beginning of her
widowhood she had called upon some of those who held official posts in
her household to help her in these political duties. The Hon. Charles
Grey, who had been private secretary to Albert, remained the Queen’s
private secretary until his death in 1870. He and Sir Charles Phipps,
the Keeper of the Privy Purse, were deputed by her to assist her
personally in the matter of dispatches, and they had clerkly assistants
to aid them. Mr., afterwards Sir Arthur, Helps, Clerk to the Privy
Council, advised her in personal matters, and thus there were a number
of people engaged in doing the actual work of which Victoria complained.
An anonymous criticism of the Queen appeared in _The Quarterly Review_
in April 1891, the authorship of which I have seen ascribed to such
diverse people as Baron Stockmar’s son and Lady Ponsonby--the first
obviously impossible--which revealed much about this secret staff.
“The staff, never officially acknowledged in the fulness of its
functions, had to exercise the most complete self-effacement and became
in effect an expansion of the Queen’s personal power in action. The
watchword of the lives of her private secretaries was devotion to the
will of the Queen. The secret of the power they exercised was faithfully
kept from the public, and will always be kept. These men gave their
lives to her service, without demur or reserve, and it is as much to her
honour as it is to theirs, that she inspired such complete devotion in
men of such remarkable gifts.”
Later General Ponsonby, Sir Thomas Biddulph, Sir Arthur Bigge and Sir
Fleetwood Edwards became members of the advising staff. These men were
required to belong to no party, to have no politics and to show in their
political work no bias, and they loyally succeeded in conforming to
these conditions. Beaconsfield once said he believed General Ponsonby to
be a Whig, but could not tell what he really was, adding, “I can only
say that I could not wish my case stated to the Queen better than her
private secretary does it.” Gladstone also paid the General a high
tribute of the same kind.
These men, forming a sort of secret cabinet, read through all dispatches
and digested all political questions, kept watch upon all matters of
public importance, and had the history and analysis of events ready
scheduled for Victoria’s use should she call for it. Thus her position
was not so bad as she in her self-commiseration thought it was, and she
found plenty of time to write her numberless family letters, keep in
touch with a hundred and one schemes for perpetuating the Prince’s
memory, and carry on various literary labours of her own.
The first of the books which she caused to be published--in 1862--was a
collection of her husband’s speeches, Arthur Helps doing the actual
preparation under her keen supervision. Then came the compilation of the
volume entitled _Early Years of H.R.H. the Prince Consort_, in which
Charles Grey helped her, the Queen sorting and choosing all the
material. This work proved so congenial to her that she looked for more,
and projected an important biography of the Prince. As Sir Charles Grey
found it impossible again to combine his heavy secretarial duties with
biographical work, she went for advice to Arthur Helps, a man of high
literary attainment. He also being much occupied, suggested Theodore
Martin as a likely man for the task, and under that gentleman’s
editorship the five huge volumes of the _Life_ were written. Theodore
Martin refused to take a penny for his work, doing it entirely as a
labour of love, thereby receiving the friendship of the Queen and a
knighthood. For this book Victoria chose all letters and documents and
watched every page of its progress, allowing it to absorb much of her
time. The first volume was not published until 1874, but the other four
volumes followed quickly.
A fourth book, and in one way the most important of all, for it was much
more widely read, and has long outlasted the others, was _Leaves from
the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands_, being a selection from
Victoria’s diary written in her Balmoral home. The contents of this were
carefully chosen by her Majesty, and Arthur Helps put it together. It
is, or was in the last generation, too well known to need description;
simply written, it is an account of daily life and excursions in
Scotland, tremendously laudatory both of the scenery and the people,
precise as to the hour and minute at which everything was done, and full
of allusions to the Prince: “Albert was in perfect ecstacies ... it
delighted dear Albert ... Albert enjoyed it so much.” Also as
_Punch_--and other reviews--wickedly said, “the trait that seems to be
the most prominent in her Majesty’s book is the tea-tray.” One paper
solemnly declared that it was untrue that Sir Wilfred Lawson intended to
write a diary of his temperance work and dedicate it to the Queen under
the title “More (Tea) Leaves.” The Royal party seems to have been a
perpetual tea-party, for wherever they went or whatever happened the
tea-kettle was always being boiled. At Balmoral it appears to have been
all holiday, for work is never mentioned in the book, which was one that
any simple-minded woman might have written, making no pretensions to
style; but then, said Victoria, “How could Mr. Helps expect pains to be
taken when she wrote late at night, suffering from headache and
exhaustion, and in dreadful haste and not for publication?”
However, it was published, privately in 1867 and publicly the next year,
realizing something over £30,000, which some paragraphist gravely
asserted was given to the Prince of Wales, who on an inadequate income
was doing all the royal State work. Thus it will be seen that while the
Queen was lamenting that her work for her country destroyed her health,
she was also deeply engrossed in superintending four books, three of
which appeared at the very time that she was excusing herself from her
public duties.
CHAPTER VII
SUBJECTS IN REVOLT
“With a Court that is given to chilling formality,
Limited Monarch in name and in deed;
It rests with the people to show hospitality,
Such as consorts with the national creed.”--_Anon._
“She closed her palace--deputing the heir-apparent--to dwell in a
beautiful castle she possessed in a secluded and romantic spot,
retaining about her only a few faithful adherents. She chose as her
constant attendant a trusty and faithful henchman named Ivan Roan,
whose duty it was to watch over her, and accompany her in her long
rambles amidst the wild but picturesque scenery which surrounded
her mountain home.”--_Queen Tresoria and her People._ 1867.
From the first year of her widowhood Queen Victoria went to Scotland
twice a year, and she gradually followed a definite annual routine.
Christmas would be spent at Osborne, the visit there not concluding
until well into January, and even on rare occasions until the end of
February. When in later years she went abroad, April was the favourite
month. In May the journey taken was to Balmoral, for a four weeks’
visit, which generally ended about the twentieth of June. Some time in
July the royal party went to Osborne, whence in August they travelled
straight to Scotland, this autumn sojourn in the north varying from six
weeks to three months, the longest stay there being even longer than
that. Thus it would be some time in November before Victoria returned
to Windsor, and then, as soon as the fatal fourteenth of December was
passed, the Court moved to Osborne for Christmas. During the whole
twelve months the Queen would pass a few isolated days in her capital.
Windsor received her during the intervals between Scotland and Osborne;
it was not far from London, and yet only the most pressing family
reasons could at first induce her to make the journey to town.
It had been regarded as a sacred duty that the Sovereign should always
open Parliament in person. William IV was the first to fail to comply
with it, but only in the last year of his reign; and he was admonished
that his absence contravened constitutional principle.
Our Queen, however, resolutely refused to take this slight share in the
work of the State, and thus she gave opportunity for further criticism,
until when 1866 dawned she found herself face to face with a difficulty.
Though she flouted Parliament she could not do without its help, and
this year she must ask it not only for a dowry for Princess Helena, but
for an income for Prince Alfred, who was coming of age. So, feeling it
necessary to do something popular, she consented to appear at the
February ceremony.
It was a terrible trial to her; she had lived in seclusion so long that
she did not know how to bring herself to face a multitude, and as she
was doing it for her own ends and not from a sense of duty or a love for
her people, she did it grudgingly, determined that if the public wanted
to see her they should see her not as the royal head of the State, but
as one who sorrowed unceasingly.
Long before two, the hour of opening, the throne-room was filled with a
gorgeous crowd. Said Moncure D. Conway, in his _Autobiography_: “I
believe every gem, necklace, coronet, robe and decoration belonging to
the nobility was worn that day; the fullest of Court dress, and the
scene was billowy with necks and shoulders.” When silver trumpets
sounded and a cannon thundered the whole assembly rose as though
galvanized. Then came an awkward pause, for nothing happened, and with
cheerful grins every one sat down again.
On the throne before that great company were spread the royal robes,
with the crown near by, and every one wondered. The Queen used the dress
carriage, not the state coach, and had it drawn up at the peers’ door,
not at the royal entrance, and when she went into the throne-room it was
in dead silence, without the usual fanfare of trumpets. Deep reverences
were made, but murmurs of disappointment accompanied them. The Queen
seated herself on the throne, her daughters drawing the state robe about
her. To quote again from Moncure Conway--
“Save for some slight badge and the Koh-i-Noor on her forehead, she was
still in sombre raiment. She was the only homely woman in the House, and
this was accentuated by contrast with the beautiful and superbly
costumed Princess of Wales. Instead of her reading the address to
Parliament, it was read by the Chancellor. Through it she sat as if
carved on the throne; when it was finished she rose, bowed slightly,
kissed the Princess of Wales and disappeared through the back door....
This withdrawal from her functions impressed me as a danger. There was a
vigorous republican agitation going on in England, and it was frequently
said that the practical extinction of the Court had demonstrated the
uselessness of the throne. I remember being at a dinner of the Urban
Club, St. John’s Gate, of which I was a member, when young Mr.
Babington, a kinsman of Lord Macaulay, refused to rise to the toast to
the Queen, avowing, when his conduct was questioned, his republican
opposition to monarchy. There was a noisy discussion, but a goodly
number defended Babington’s right so to express his opinion. It became
plain to me that the Queen was not popular.”
Having once made a public progression through the streets, her Majesty
opened Parliament again next year, with the same absence of state,
though her gown was more regal in that it was trimmed with ermine, and
she wore a Marie Stuart cap. Laments were uttered that her sweet,
musical voice was no longer heard in England’s Parliament, and instead
of declaring themselves amply satisfied, the papers pleaded that, having
done so much, she should go further and take up other neglected royal
duties.
“Our royal personages, when they travel abroad, are received with royal
honours. It seems unfit that there should be so little return as there
has been in England of late for the hospitalities which have in so many
countries been extended to our own princes. Hotels, however
comfortable, are not palaces, and it is unseemly that the entertaining
of strangers should ever be done in England by simply paying the bill.
In private life the thing would be impossible.” So said _The Queen_
newspaper.
The trouble hinted at here had been gathering force for some time, and
arose from the fact that Victoria refused to entertain at her home any
but personal friends. When Prince Humbert of Italy came to England he
was put up at his ambassador’s, was not invited to Court, was shown over
Windsor Castle like an ordinary visitor, and had to go to an inn there
to get food. Said a sneering journalist, “It is such delicate courtesies
as these on the part of our Court that make the name of England so
deeply respected and beloved throughout the Continent.”
The Queen of Holland came to England in September 1867, was received at
Woolwich by Customs House officials, and on arrival in London was driven
to Claridge’s Hotel, whence she went to Hatfield to become the guest of
the Marquis of Salisbury. However, the matter which had raised the
question of England’s loss of dignity in its treatment of friendly
foreign sovereigns was that not only had her Majesty’s Ministry refused
to take any part in the Great French Exhibition in deference to the
Queen’s and Palmerston’s known dislike and distrust of Louis Napoleon,
but that Victoria refused to entertain any of the royal visitors to that
great gathering. The Emperor of Russia, the Sultan of Turkey, the
Khedive of Egypt and other crowned heads were to be within a few hours’
journey of London, but no invitations were sent to any one to visit us.
“We might, so far as this mighty fellowship of the nations is concerned,
as well be dead.... There is dust on the curtains and rust on the hinges
of the doors.... The stupor is forced upon us. We are all ready to rebel
against the fate that holds us down. And unless a relaxation of the
bondage is speedily granted, our national dissatisfaction will find a
voice,” complained the leader-writer in _The Sunday Times_, and all the
papers voiced the popular anger.
The Khedive sent a message that he would like to visit England, which
gave the Queen a shock at the idea that she should entertain him, though
both Buckingham Palace and St. James’s Palace stood empty from one end
of the year to the other. The perplexed Ministers could only think of
Claridge’s Hotel; there were remonstrances and questions in the House,
and then Lord Dudley “interposed to protect the nation from the reproach
which would have been cast upon it,” by placing his mansion in Park Lane
at the disposal of the Viceroy, and the Cabinet were only too glad to
accept his offer.
The Sultan openly waited an invitation from the English Court, and no
one knew what to do. No one really wanted him, for it was the time of
the Cretan rebellion, which was being put down with the usual Turkish
barbarities. However, the Ministers thought it a matter of diplomacy to
let him come, and urged upon Victoria that it was extremely necessary
that she should extend and confirm her influence in the East, the
cleverest argument that they could have used.
So she relented and allowed the Sultan, whom Gladstone later called the
greatest murderer in Europe, to be received at Buckingham Palace, she
herself remaining at Windsor. Her friendly instincts were satisfied by
inviting the Khedive to dine and sleep at Windsor one night, by inviting
the Sultan to lunch one day, and holding a grand review of battleships
in the latter’s honour. It had been suggested that Abdul Aziz should be
decorated with the Order of India, but the proud monarch scorned
anything less than the Garter, and he was invested with it during the
review. It was a stormy day, the ships at Spithead pitching bows under
when at anchor. On the yacht _Osborne_ the Sultan steamed for two miles
between battleships--three lines of vessels on either side of him--and
at the end he joined the Queen on the _Victoria and Albert_. There the
ceremony took place, being done “in grand style by the Queen herself,”
on the quarter deck, in the midst of a howling storm and the roaring of
cannon. As it was also done in a hurry there was no ribbon ready, so
Victoria took the Prince of Hesse’s ribbon, intending it should be
changed for a new one afterwards, but the Sultan refused to give it up,
saying he would only wear the actual ribbon given him by the Queen.
The people of England, in their delight at feeling themselves once more
in touch with the great world of Europe, went wild over the Sultan, the
last monarch on the continent to deserve their ebullience; yet he went
away dissatisfied with the attention shown him.
In May 1867, the Queen went in semi-state to lay the foundation-stone of
the Albert Hall, a wooden building equal in size to the intended hall
having been put up and roofed in canvas. The velvet and gold canopy and
throne which should have been used at the 1862 exhibition were
transferred there, and Victoria, in deepest mourning, widow’s bonnet and
_crêpe_ mantle, occupied its gorgeousness, her mind in tune with her
clothing. But she was not always so sad, and we read of her three months
later starting for Balmoral, wearing a bonnet of so frivolous a material
as tulle, and looking in good spirits and excellent health.
When she could get away from the centre of affairs and dispense with
state without qualms of conscience she was happy; but when she returned
to England “all her depression was renewed.” Theodore Martin had been
living at Osborne all that summer, engaged on the _Life_ of the Prince,
and to him Victoria wrote of Scotland--
“Beloved country! The Queen’s whole heart yearns to it more and more,
and it will be a sad day when she leaves it again.” After her return, in
another letter to him, she spoke of Windsor as the “gloomiest, saddest
of places,” the change to a cathedral church with its bells and clergy,
to a garrison town and a Court she described as “dreadful”; saying that
she missed “the atmosphere of loving affection and the hearty attachment
of the people.” The very sentinel under her window she thought an
annoyance.[6]
From which series of complaints it is easy to see that neither Windsor
nor its people was at fault, but the Queen’s most unfortunate state of
mind. Clinging firmly to royalty, she yet despised all its ways, and
punished her innocent subjects by lauding the simple, homely life of a
country lady which she loved, as though they were the cause of her
having occasionally to take her real position as a queen. She was quite
an old woman before her mind grew healthier and she began to realize the
real character of her English subjects, before she began to lose the
blighting Germanic impressions about them almost indelibly pressed upon
her by Prince Albert. That the English people resented her poor opinion
and avoidance of them was only to be expected, but Victoria regarded
their resentment as only a new proof of their unworthiness and
inferiority to her Scotch peasants.
During the next few dark years English newspapers recurred constantly to
the popular desire for the Queen’s favour, for her presence, for her
recognition of the people’s loyalty; some, more impatient, openly
declared that the country had no use for such a queen, that it was wrong
to spend so much money for nothing. “Which is it to be?” was the
question under a double cartoon; one side showing Victoria on her throne
in the midst of animated people, some at work and others at play, and on
the opposite page was the throne covered solely with state robes, and
people vainly seeking work, or in a state of exhaustion. All this has
been ignored by the mass of courtly biographers who have written “lives”
of Victoria, who sing a prolonged song of praise, and pretend that the
nation honoured her long seclusion as a beautiful ideal of devotion. But
the truth is to be found in the daily papers of the period, and in the
speeches both of members of Parliament and of leaders of revolution.
Official attempts were made in July 1867 to explain her Majesty’s
continued absence from all public festivities on the score of health,
saying that agitation, over-worry or much talking in the evening would
be followed by restless nights and distressing sick headaches: “It is
right to be known that her Majesty, with the greatest desire to fulfil
all those duties which appertain to her dignity or her hospitality, is
occasionally prevented from performing them by bodily suffering of a
character most difficult to be borne.” A sentence which, from its style,
was obviously written by Victoria herself.
This did not do much good, probably because the notice protested too
much, for no one believed that Victoria was anxious to fulfil the duties
in question. But there can be no doubt that she did suffer as described
through nervousness, produced, not by over-excitement in itself, but by
the constant seclusion which gave rise to a feeling of excitement when,
on rare occasions, she did surround herself with people.
She had in March of this year spent two days at Buckingham Palace, on
one of which she had driven round Trafalgar Square to see the new lions,
and had held a Court in the afternoon; on the second she had gone to
the studios of Henry Weekes and Patrick M’Dowell to see the groups being
executed for the Albert Memorial. At the end of the month she was in
London again for twenty-four hours, and held the first drawing-room of
her widowhood.... Thus she had at least made an attempt to meet the
wishes of her subjects. In the following year she held another
drawing-room, this time of a more dignified character, as the
invitations were for Buckingham Palace and not for St. James’s. Of this
function it was told that her Majesty’s sense of decorum was shocked by
the dress of one lady, and that she instructed her chamberlain to inform
that guest that she was not to appear again at the palace in so low a
dress. In July, too, she invited six hundred guests to a breakfast in
the garden of Buckingham Palace, at which she was said to look
remarkably well and to enjoy the party.
There was a curious controversy, born of lack of usage, as to what
garments were suitable for a breakfast held at 4.30 p.m.--we now call
them tea-parties--and it ended in a command for morning trousers and
evening coats, perhaps an attempt to accentuate the hour as between
morning and night. One facetious writer declared that the Lord
Chancellor had been reduced to studying _Enquire Within upon Everything_
for guidance.
In spite of these rare appearances, so gladly acknowledged by the Press,
Victoria had no intention of making a habit of hospitality, and
discontent was by no means stamped out; her injudicious favouritism of
a Scotch servant also gave it new life, while altering its character in
a disagreeable way.
John Brown was the son of a humble farmer at Craithie, was gaunt in
appearance, rough in manner, and spoke broad Doric. He had been gillie,
or outdoor boy, to Prince Albert at Balmoral in 1849, and was taken on
as permanent servant three years later. After her widowhood Victoria
gave up riding for a time, and then, to relieve monotony, used a pony,
John Brown being appointed to walk at its head. From that time he was
her Majesty’s shadow; maybe because, in her entourage trained to meek
obedience and quiet subservience, this uncouth and assertive Scotchman
provided a certain piquancy to her dulness. She went nowhere without
him, he stood behind her chair at table, drove on the box of her
carriage, went abroad with her, and was by her side on every journey,
short or long. He became a power in the palace, and was a far more
important person than Sir John Cowell, the Master of the Household.
In 1866 the Queen gave John Brown the title of Esquire, and _Punch_ at
once did his new position honour by including his name in an especial
Court Circular--
“Balmoral. Tuesday. Mr. John Brown walked on the Slopes. He frequently
partook of a haggis. In the evening Mr. John Brown was pleased to listen
to the bagpipes. Mr. John Brown retired early.”
In the previous year when Victoria wrote to her daughter Alice that she
should bring Brown with her on her visit to Germany, Alice replied, “How
it will amuse and please me to show the excellent Scotchman our home.
It is a pleasure to hear of such devotion and attention to you as
Brown’s is, and indeed you are so kind to him, that his whole happiness
must consist in serving so good a mistress.”
Living at such a distance, Princess Alice could afford to write in this
way; but had she lived under the Scotchman’s shadow, as some of her
sisters and brothers did, she might have been less cordial. John Brown
was a republican in manners, uttering his opinions loudly before all,
his royal mistress included, and in him she did not resent this. His
advice was asked on all questions, whether family, private or public,
and many a strong word has been smothered in a royal throat in
exasperation thereat. As time went on Brown became more and more
necessary to the Queen, and more and more overbearing to those with whom
he came in contact. But his mistress showered favours on him and
delighted to do him honour. Among one of his privileges was the sole
right of fishing in the Dee, at a spot close to the Castle of Balmoral.
One morning when he was busy with the salmon, a servant went to him,
saying--
“Mr. Brown, her Majesty wishes you to go to her.”
“Weel, just tell her Majesty that A canna come; Ah’m juist hooking a
feesh.”
A little later the servant went again; the Queen wanted to see him at
once.
“Weel, ye must tell her Majesty that A’ve juist hooked the saumun, and A
canna come the noo.”
When Adelaide was queen she kept a little frigate on Virginia Water for
family use, and Victoria conceived the idea of replacing it with
something more useful and up to date. She, of course, consulted Brown,
who asked her what was the good of fooling away so much money. Later her
Majesty, still playing with the idea, suggested a steam launch, but her
servant snubbed her with the same retort. At last, through some
influence, the Admiralty provided a barge, at the public cost of £700,
which gave Victoria a double pleasure. John Brown, however, still
scowled, until told that the Admiralty had paid for it, whereupon he
graciously ejaculated--
“Weel, if they like to fule awa’ their money, o’ course they can.”
It is said that the barge was never used by the Prince and Princess of
Wales, as they would have had to ask permission of the Queen, which
would have been tantamount to asking it of John Brown.
Another perfectly authentic story, told by several people and among them
by Neele, the superintendent of the Queen’s train, who was on the
platform at the time, is dated 1878. The Queen received a telegram on
her way north, before reaching Perth, where breakfast was arranged for
her in the usual waiting-room. From this telegram she learned that
Princess Helena’s week-old son was dead. As soon as the train drew up on
the Perth platform, Brown swung himself off, and approaching the crowd
of magnates who were waiting to receive her Majesty, cried in loud
Doric--
“No cheering! no cheering! Christian’s babby’s dead!”
Brown is also credited with telling the Queen on more than one occasion
that she did not know her own mind for two minutes together, a freedom
which would have been allowed to no one else on earth.
By 1867 John Brown’s name was in every mouth, and such stories as the
above were titbits of gossip, eagerly repeated. It was all so contrary
to the Englishman’s conception of his Queen, proud to a fault, coldly
indifferent, punctilious in ceremony, that it gradually rose to a
sensation, and the worser sort did not scruple to utter coarse jokes.
This was commented upon by _The Sunday Times_, a paper at that period
most annoying to high persons for its outspokenness. Noting the general
discontent with royalty, in a leader it continued--
“This discontent is already making itself known by methods which we both
disapprove and deplore. We have but little patience with sinister
mendacity and still less with disgusting scandal. But the mendacity is
not without meaning--the scandal is not without significance. Almost
every kind of unpleasant rumour is in circulation. Nobody believes the
rumours, which yet find a ready currency. The explanation of this state
of affairs is too easy to find. Unpleasant lies are invented and
repeated and handed from mouth to mouth, because there is a strong
inducement of dissatisfaction which is too earnest for silence and yet
too timid for utterance. We abhor the trick, we deprecate and denounce
it.”
A weekly illustrated paper, named _The Tomahawk_, published a cartoon
that August, entitled, “The Mystery of the Season,” showing John Brown
in Highland clothes, pipe in hand, leaning on the side of the throne
chair, gazing down upon it thoughtfully, while the British lion stares
up at him, waiting, like an expectant dog, for his word.
Of Brown at this period the Queen herself wrote:
“His attention, care and faithfulness cannot be exceeded; and the state
of my health, which of late years has been sorely tried and weakened,
renders such qualifications most valuable, and indeed most needful, in a
constant attendant upon all occasions. He has most deservedly been
promoted to be an upper servant, and my permanent personal attendant. He
has all the independence and elevated feelings peculiar to the Highland
race, and is singularly straightforward, simple-minded, kind-hearted and
disinterested; always ready to oblige; and of a discretion rarely to be
met with.”
The only pity was that the Queen was herself so indiscreet in allowing a
mere serving-man, or indeed any one, such liberty of speech as that
claimed by John Brown--a liberty far exceeding that which she allowed to
her own children; her indiscretion was also shown in making her
favouritism so publicly known among her English subjects, who felt that
the superiority of the Highland character was too much insisted upon.
From this time John Brown’s name constantly appeared in print in a way
flattering neither to him nor to her Majesty, for his influence
increased as the years passed. He was known as one who was feared, not
liked by his equals; one who could not be opposed with impunity, who was
strongly disliked by the Queen’s children--the Princess Royal being the
only one who dared to say openly to her mother what she thought about
him and his position--who knew many secrets, and who was charged
occasionally by the Queen with delicate and secret missions.
In June 1870 _The Tomahawk_ published another cartoon of him, called
“The Vacant Chair,” showing John Brown about to seat himself upon the
Prince Consort’s empty throne. Before July had elapsed the paper had
ceased to exist, and Matt Morgan, its editor, had received a large bribe
to exercise his talents on the other side of the Atlantic.
That the Queen’s family and relatives occasionally joined in the
remonstrance offered her concerning her avoidance of her subjects is
shown by the last words uttered about her by King Leopold--
“Pauvre Victoria! ne la tormentez.”
CHAPTER VIII
TWO PRIME MINISTERS
“You forget, my dearest love, that I am the Sovereign, and that
business can stop and wait for nothing. Parliament is sitting, and
something occurs almost every day for which I may be required, and
it is quite impossible for me to be absent from London, therefore
two or three days is already a long time to be absent.”--_Queen
Victoria’s Letter to Prince Albert._ 1840.
“We know we say how very good our Queen is,
And what a manager and what a mother!
But though all this so very plainly seen is,
We cannot quite our discontentment smother.
Her virtues we admire, but what we mean is,
Of two moves she should choose the one or t’other;
The one is--coming out amongst the nation,
The other--going in for abdication.”
_Contemporary verse._ 1868.
Of the men who held the exalted post of Prime Minister during the last
forty years of Queen Victoria’s reign, the two most notable were
Gladstone and Disraeli. They were in almost every way in extreme
opposition to each other, and they had a profound dislike for each
other. Gladstone’s dislike was downright and caustic, and Disraeli’s
sarcastic and suave. Gladstone had intellectual depth, Disraeli was
superficial and brilliant; the one was devoted to ruling an improved
England, the other to wielding Imperial power; the first found his
greatest pleasure in living with the old Greek writers, notably Homer,
the other in writing graceful and satirical novels. Their points of
agreement belonged purely to their external life. They were both
faithful lovers and both won the adoration of their wives. Mrs.
Gladstone, once known as “the beautiful Catherine Glynn,” was in her age
once heard at a royal concert discoursing upon her married happiness,
and concluded with the remark, “But perhaps, my dear, you don’t know
what it is to have an affectionate husband!” She also once spoke of her
husband as “surrounded with a halo of humility.” But a beautiful story
is that of a clergyman calling to see Gladstone, and being entertained
by Mrs. Gladstone until her husband, who was writing upstairs, was
disengaged. The visitor lamented the terrible state of affairs in
Ireland, but added consolingly--
“There is One above who will set all right.”
“Oh yes,” said Mrs. Gladstone; “he’ll be down directly!”
Disraeli married Mrs. Wyndham Lewis, who was the widow of a friend, and
fifteen years older than himself. He would tell her in joke that he had
married her for money, but she would only smile and say, “But if you had
to do it again you would do it for love”; to which he would agree. She
called him, as many other people did, “Dizzy,” and he spoke of her as
Mary Anne. It was a case in which the quality of protectiveness was
exercised by the wife, for Mrs. Disraeli stood ever between her husband
and trouble, and counted herself as nothing. She was once driving to the
House with him, when her hand got crushed in the carriage door, but she
bore the pain silently, smilingly, for fear knowledge of the accident
should distract his mind from the important speech he was about to make.
She was more discriminating than Mrs. Gladstone, perhaps because she had
a strong sense of humour, and she once said to a friend, “Dizzy has the
most wonderful moral courage in the world, but no physical courage. When
he has a shower-bath, I always have to pull the string.”
Certainly in their home lives both the Gladstones and the Disraelis came
well up to the Queen’s ideal of perfection. Gladstone once, staying at
Windsor, was talking to a colleague on serious political questions, when
a slight noise was heard through an open door, much to the horror of the
colleague.
“Never mind,” said Gladstone; “it is only my wife. For forty years she
has heard me discuss matters of State, but never once has anything come
back to me.”
Gladstone had come naturally to a parliamentary life, but Disraeli,
hampered by his race and comparative poverty, had had to fight for it
from the beginning. It is said that when he saw the first caricature of
himself he jumped for joy, declaring that now his career was made. As a
boy of fourteen he had been christianized, but he never really changed
his religious beliefs, and for that reason could fight equally well on
any side of Christian dispute. Yet he had once said, “You will see many
things, but there are two which you will never _not_ see me--a Jew and a
Radical.”
[Illustration: W. E. GLADSTONE]
When Darwinism was first discussed he thought it politic to condemn it
in a speech at Oxford.
“What is the question?” he asked. “It is now placed before society with,
I might say, a glib assurance which to me is astonishing--the question
is, is man an ape or an angel? (A laugh.) Now, I am on the side of the
angels. (Cheers.)” This saying has become a “familiar quotation”;
_Punch_ fastened on it thus--
“On the side of the angels, my Dizzy? ah, then,
How happy the angels should be!
The ally whom they least could have looked for of men,
In their army enlisted to see!”
Of the two men politically no one can doubt which Victoria preferred.
The Prince Consort had once said of the Liberal, “Mr. Gladstone is a
very clever man, and as he was educated at Oxford, he is able to believe
anything he chooses.”[7] And, with her subservient regard for the
lightest word of the Prince, the Queen accepted this libel upon an
honest statesman. Gladstone was also too subtle and intellectual for
her, she _could_ not understand him, always feeling irritated at the end
of an interview, probably for the same reason that a Liberal once gave
for his dislike of the Minister, “Oh, he is always so damnably right.”
Gladstone regarded Victoria with the deepest loyalty and respect, both
personally and because he felt the Crown to be sacred; he accepted to
their fulness the assertions that she studied every question put before
the country, and would go into details in explanation of his views,
which she could not follow; and once she said petulantly after he was
gone, “He talks to me as though I were a public meeting.”
Disraeli, on the contrary, spoke a little on politics, told her some
amusing stories, discussed intricate German relationships and German
art, found occasion to make her laugh and to impress her with her high
importance. He had no scruples either about the use of flattery. “First
of all remember,” he said to a colleague who was going out to Baden with
the Queen, “that she is a woman!” This and his charming manner give the
secret of his ascendancy over Victoria; she was what we now call a
mid-Victorian woman, and her Conservative adviser realized it and
treated her with the chivalrous air and the banalities which were then
regarded as the correct thing for the “inferior sex.” So Disraeli’s
gaiety delighted her, his deference soothed her wounded self-respect,
and his flattery confirmed her belief that all she did was right. She
took him into her confidence and gave him a definite part in her life,
and he was nearly at the height of his ambition; not quite, for there
was one little thing still to achieve.
Gladstone’s deep respect and sincere loyalty were to her but the dues of
her position; that he did not accompany them with an equally deep
interest in the small things of her life was an offence, and it would
have utterly surprised him to know that she said of him that he showed
“little interest” and was “very helpless” in her personal affairs. She
is not the only one who has preferred as a friend one who could
sympathize with her own point of view rather than one who was absorbed
in her matters of business.
This power for sympathy was the secret of Victoria’s friendship for Dr.
Norman Macleod. In her diary, under date June 17, 1866, when she was
indignant at the discontent of her English people, she wrote of the
clergyman--
“He was so amiable and full of sympathy; he also suffers much from
constant work and worry and must go abroad for relaxation. Told him how
much I required it and that I came here for it, and had had a hard fight
for it. He said he quite felt this, and entreated me--‘as you work for
us’--always to insist upon coming here.”
There have been many theories for Victoria’s dislike of Gladstone, but
they all resolve themselves into incompatibility of manner and outlook,
and a dislike for his politics. This double dislike she never hid, often
giving it public expression, and at his death many stories were revived
about actual personal discourtesies offered, such as keeping him waiting
hours when he was summoned for an audience, while she went out for a
drive or otherwise followed her usual routine, and refusing to speak to
him if she met him anywhere. That Gladstone never allowed this to
influence his policy angered her the more, and he, speaking in his age
of their strained relations, said that from his first entrance to
Windsor to his last there had been occasions when he had had to harden
his heart to a flint, for his actions had always been “sole”; that is to
say, he had been working for a principle and had had to resist all the
Queen’s efforts to shake him from it.
She loved the brave show, the splendid outside fabric, the imperialistic
ideas which characterized Disraeli, and had little appreciation of the
solid building work which opposed Gladstone to him. It was enough that
the former wanted to extend her empire. Gladstone had no interest in
that; he had his mind upon the people, and saw that if a revolution was
to be avoided the ills of Ireland must be cured, not accentuated by
suppression; that if the Queen was to be maintained firmly upon her
throne the English must be given the franchise reform that they
demanded. Victoria, obsessed by her conviction of divine right, could
not see these things at all.
So it was very much to her annoyance that in March 1866, when Prussia
was getting ready for its swoop on Austria, she saw Gladstone bring in a
Reform Bill. She wanted all her attention for continental happenings,
and when she realized that her ministers intended to make this Bill the
great measure of the session, and also that it would be a very
contentious measure, she declared that it could not possibly be regarded
as of sufficient importance to be allowed to upset the Government. She
plainly told Lord John Russell that, whatever happened to his Franchise
Bill, she would allow no change in the Ministry until the
Austro-Prussian war was settled. In return her Cabinet begged her to
stay at Windsor through May while the debates were progressing, that
she might be at hand if a crisis arose.
Her answer was that she intended to go to Balmoral as usual, and she
expected the Government to allow no crisis to occur.
So while the House was in the midst of an energetic struggle, Victoria
left England to follow her pleasant but mild occupations in the
Highlands: driving, riding, sketching, visiting hallowed spots, and
hearing sympathetic words from Dr. Macleod. But her command could not
control the conflict of six hundred men, and in the middle of June the
Government was defeated by eleven votes, causing a tremendous scene of
ebullient joy among the Tories.
Victoria was extremely “provoked,” and said she was taken entirely by
surprise. Had she been--what it is so often claimed that she was--a
truly constitutional sovereign, no surprise could have fallen upon her;
it was her unconscious tendency to absolute monarchy which had made her
believe that it was only necessary for her to speak to be obeyed. Lord
John Russell was then very old, and felt that he had done his last
public work; the journey to Balmoral was too much for him to
contemplate, so he sent his resignation by messenger, which also
displeased the Queen.
While she was in Scotland monster Reform meetings were held in all large
towns, and yet she wrote back to Russell that the state of Europe was
dangerous, the country was apathetic about reform, and it was
inconsistent with the duty that ministers owed herself and the country
to abandon their posts on what was, after all, only a matter of detail.
She desired them to reconsider their decision. The Cabinet met to do as
she wished, but found that the only plan was resignation. Victoria
returned to Windsor nine days after the ministerial defeat, and it was
another nine days before Lord Derby was sent for and accepted office,
with Disraeli as his foremost man. The people of London rose in
turbulence at the death of Reform, and a great crowd surrounded
Gladstone’s house one day when he was not there. Fearing a riot, the
police begged Mrs. Gladstone to appear for one minute on the balcony to
satisfy them, and then the people dispersed.
It is curious in this struggle between Queen and Parliament, and in
later ones, to contrast Victoria’s action in leaving the country without
a Government for eighteen days, and going to Balmoral for a month when a
great crisis was expected, with her youthful sentiments which head this
chapter.
It was in July this year that a five days’ battle took place in Hyde
Park between the police and an army of roughs, who took advantage of the
Reform agitation to do as they pleased; and then were broken down those
Hyde Park railings about which so much has been heard of late years.
The whole world seemed awry, for in addition to wars abroad and rows at
home Ireland was being filled with money, pikeheads and Irish-Americans
to fight England, and the Habeas Corpus Act had to be suspended. It was
done in somewhat peculiar circumstances, there being great anxiety to
conclude the matter before the end of the week. The Queen was at
Osborne, and to her on the Saturday a telegram was sent for her assent.
The members remained in the House until midnight, and then, as the
answer had not arrived, dispersed. At 12.30--that is, on Sunday
morning--a messenger came with the assent, and the House was convoked,
and though not fifty men were present the new law was promulgated, in
spite of the law against Sunday legislation.
Disraeli had done his utmost to turn Russell’s Government out on Reform,
and had succeeded; he himself, finding the “apathetic” public too eager
and vociferous to let him drop that measure, determined to “dish the
Whigs” and bring in a Reform Bill of his own. He was afraid, though,
that the Opposition would retaliate in kind, so, with the Queen’s
consent, tried to arrange that the fate of his Government should not be
allowed to depend on his bill. It was a cry of “Heads I win, tails you
lose!” which did not please the Liberals. He had once said of Peel that
he had found the Whigs bathing and had walked away with their clothes;
in this case Disraeli had helped the Liberals to undress for the plunge
and had then walked off with their garments.
He relied upon the “Adullamites,” so called because they were Liberals
who dissented from Gladstone’s bill, and whom Bright likened to the
enemies of Saul who hid with David in the Cave of Adullam. These,
however, instead of joining Disraeli, ran away shivering when he said
“Reform,” upon which Gladstone uttered an eleventh commandment: “Thou
shalt not commit Adullamy.” When the new bill, torn to pieces,
reversed, its black made white and its white black, was at last passed,
Lowe, the chief of the Adullamites, piously made the best of events by
saying of the new voters, “We must now educate our masters.”
As to Fenianism, it is too long a tale. The Fenians thought to capture
Chester Castle, they rescued prisoners in Manchester, and
unintentionally killed a policeman, which led to the hanging of three
men who were by no means proved to have been the assassins; in dastard
callousness they blew up a part of Clerkenwell Prison, killing many
innocent people; and they threatened to kidnap the Queen, an idea which
tickled her Majesty wonderfully, who declared, laughing, that they would
find her a very troublesome prisoner. But every one felt that she was in
real danger, and on her return from Balmoral that autumn her advisers
ordered a Scotch regiment to accompany, under arms, the royal train from
Ballater to Carlisle, a regiment of footguards being sent to the latter
place to go with the train to Windsor. However, the Queen would have
none of it; she saw wisely that such a course would mean visible public
division between herself and her people, so she resolutely refused to
sanction the arrangement, saying that she felt the fullest confidence in
her people.
It had often been urged that the Queen or the Prince of Wales should
have a house in Ireland, but unfortunately this was never brought about,
though at this time a report spread through the sister isle that the
Prince and Princess intended to spend a portion of each year there, and
that her Majesty would go to Killarney in 1867. It was not, however,
till April 1868 that Albert Edward and Alexandra paid the promised
visit, and then the Irish people, jealous, passionate and generous, met
them with cheers, presented the Princess with two white doves--which
later found a home at Sandringham--and themselves kept the streets of
Dublin free from confusion, no troops appearing at all; which is a
tribute, not only to the Irish, but to the courage of the royalties.
Prince Arthur, who went there a year later, did not fare quite so well.
He was young and injudicious, and identified himself far too much with
the Orange faction, so that enthusiasm died. After going to Dublin,
Killarney and Belfast he went on to Londonderry, and the night of his
arrival a sharp collision took place between the triumphing Protestants
and the embittered Roman Catholics, in which two men were killed. This
led to an unforgettable incident at Cork. In 1868 Prince Alfred had made
a tour in Australia, which almost ended tragically, for while at a
public breakfast at Port Jackson he was shot in the back by a Fenian
named O’Farrell. The ball entered near the spine and ran round the body
without touching any vital part. The Prince recovered; O’Farrell it was
who died--by hanging. The Queen was in deep distress, weeping at any
mention of it, and so she feared greatly while her younger son was in
Ireland.
At Cork two prisoners, Costello and Colonel Warren, having been
released, were given a dinner before starting for America by the mayor
of the town, a man named O’Sullivan, who made a long speech, in many
respects temperate, but at the end alluding to the presence of the young
prince in their land; and then, reverting to the Fenians, he declared
that O’Farrell, who had shot the Duke of Edinburgh, was a noble and
patriotic man.
Prince Arthur returned quite safely to England, but Victoria was more
than ever embittered against Ireland, and a great depression fell upon
her for herself and her family, in no way relieved by the demand in
Parliament that the Mayor of Cork should be suspended from his
functions; he, however, solved the difficulty by resigning.
Disraeli became Prime Minister in the spring of 1868. He was sixty-four
years old, and had worked for this position all his life against
tremendous odds, but he had conquered all; and now, having attained, he
quickly secured a position of confidential trust given to no other man.
Moncure Conway said of him: there is “something so picturesque in a
Jewish lad bringing the royal family and the aristocracy to his feet. He
has done it, too, in the wise and gentle ways of Solomon, by unbroken
civility and friendliness.”
So “the solitary gladiator,” as _Punch_ once called him, ended at last
his long, lonely struggle and became first man in England. There was
much chaff and the recrudescence of many stories, one of which lived
longer than himself. In 1862 he had made a speech in which he said that
he “observed that there was a great deficiency in our national
character, and which, if neglected, might lead to the impairing not only
of our social happiness, but even the sources of our public wealth; and
that was a deficiency of culture. But he was not satisfied in detecting,
he resolved to supply it.” Ever afterwards Dizzy’s intention to educate
the nation was a subject for joking.
His great position was his but for a short time, his Ministry being
defeated over the second serious measure brought forward--Gladstone’s
Irish Church Bill. Sydney Smith had thus described the condition of the
State Church in Ireland at the time--
“On an Irish Sabbath the bell of a neat parish church often summons to
church only the parson and an occasional conforming clerk, while two
hundred yards away a thousand Catholics are huddled together in a
miserable hovel and pelted by all the storms of heaven.”
For this unwanted and unused Church the Irish peasant had to pay, and
Gladstone saw here one method of reducing Irish grievance and doing
justice to Irish need. His bill was to abolish the State Church in
Ireland. The country was with him, the Queen against him. She was the
head of the Church, and to interfere with that institution was to aim a
blow at her prerogative.
Disraeli fought with all his might, but he was defeated twice, by
majorities of sixty-one and sixty-five. What was he to do? It was death
to his hopes, to his long-coveted eminence. He determined to consult his
best friend, not his wife but in this case the Queen, and he did it
without first talking the matter over with his colleagues, which made
them very wroth. He advised her Majesty to dissolve Parliament, thinking
that the country would surely return him; or, he added as an
afterthought, she might prefer to appoint a new Ministry.
It broke the Queen’s heart to part with her pleasant, gossipy minister,
she shuddered at the thought of having to labour again under the
taskmaster Gladstone, and she took a day to consider the question; after
which she decided upon a dissolution which was not to take place until
the autumn, when the new Reform Bill would come into operation.
Then Disraeli had to explain the decision to the House; not at all, even
for his imperturbable self, a pleasant task; and in his
trepidation--that may not sound the right word, but it is the only one
which adequately explains his method of doing it--he put the burden of
the decision upon the shoulders of the Queen. The Prime Minister’s only
constitutional course after such a defeat would have been to resign and
let matters develop; he had no right to put two ways before the Queen
and make her responsible for a certain line of policy, to expose her to
the anger and distrust of a nation demanding justice. If Victoria had
been a statesman she would have realized this, and have refused to allow
Disraeli to use her partiality for him to keep him in power.
There was naturally a great and acrimonious discussion in the House,
Disraeli being described as “a suffering minister who was holding office
by the wish of the Queen for the benefit of the people.” Mr. Bright
denounced the great injury he had done the Crown “by representing the
Queen in the character of an enemy in the cause of religious freedom....
Any man who puts the sovereign in the front of a great struggle like
this, who points to the Irish people and says from the floor of this
house, ‘Your Queen holds the flag under which we, the enemies of
religious equality and justice to Ireland, are marshalled’--I say that
the minister who does that is guilty of a very high crime and a great
misdemeanour against his sovereign and against his country.” It was
reported that the Prime Minister, in a somewhat pointless speech,
entirely lost his temper and shook his fist at Bright.
The Duke of Richmond in the Lords did not make matters better, as he
bluntly stated that the Queen had refused to accept the resignation of
her minister, and had given him the freedom of dissolving Parliament
when he chose.
All this was unfortunate for the Queen’s peace of mind; not that she
repented showing so much favour to Disraeli, or even believed that she
had exceeded the power which the Constitution laid down for her; but
because she was still unpopular, still the subject of intense criticism,
having met her people solely by paying a very occasional one, two or
three days’ visit to London during the year. Thus her name was still
prominent in a sinister fashion, and her flight to Scotland immediately
after her interview with Disraeli roused deep indignation. She did not,
in popular words, stay to face the music. Though messengers were sent
to Balmoral every day, immediate communication with her was impossible,
and it was felt that, whatever her virtues, she definitely put her
pleasure before the country’s needs. The outcry was loud enough to
necessitate an announcement that her “journey to Scotland had been
undertaken solely in consequence of her health.”
This, having been heard often before, and Victoria’s appearance, when
she was seen, being generally one of robustness, gave a turn to public
criticism which was menacing. It was hinted by some and frankly stated
by other newspapers that if her Majesty was ill the malady must be
mental as well as physical. Contrasts were drawn between her appearance
and “the thin, pale face of the gentle princess who had so long nobly
borne the fatigues of a vicarious queen.” The Tory Press more or less
contented itself with the advantage its party had gained, the Liberal
Press was more outspoken, the Sunday papers spoke yet more openly, and,
needless to say, _The Tomahawk_ went to the extreme--
“We confess we are, with extreme reluctance, compelled to arrive at the
conclusion that her Majesty has no longer the power, however earnest be
her desire or strong her determination, to endure the strain inseparable
from her high office, and which she has in former years so ably
fulfilled. If three weeks is the longest period which she is able to
spend in the Imperial capital each year, if all the functions which the
Head of the Realm should discharge have to be vicariously discharged by
the Heir Apparent and his Consort, it is evidently for the true
interest and well-being of the Queen as well as of the nation that a
Regency Bill should be passed as soon as possible. Six years is a long
probation, and if the energies of the Queen are still so overwhelmed by
her great sorrow as to affect materially the discharge of her important
duties, it is surely far more considerate towards both the Sovereign and
the woman that she should be relieved from the distressing weight which
the unavoidable neglect of such duties must occasion to her sensitive
and conscientious nature. At present her Majesty cannot but feel the
deepest regret that, through her own infirmities, so much inconvenience
and loss of time should be inflicted on her ministers in carrying on any
communication with her during this very urgent crisis, and cannot but
resent acutely the faintest hint of a suspicion that her absence is
owing to any want of courage or self-denial.”
The article then set out the qualities of the Prince of Wales for the
post of Regent, his zeal, courage, detachment from politics, knowledge
of foreign countries, etc., and then pointed out how, “released from the
ties of ceremonial duties, relieved from a sense of continual
disappointment and vexation, and purged from all suspicions, however
ungenerous, our beloved Queen will be able to enjoy an honourable
retirement, cheered by the undimmed affection of her subjects.... She
will be able to revel in the congenial solitudes of Osborne and Balmoral
without any reproach, and to devote her leisure time to any pursuits
which her inclination may select.”
These sentiments were repeated elsewhere. A member of Parliament named
Reardon gave notice in May that he should address this question to the
House: “Whether it be true that her Majesty the Queen has been compelled
through delicate health to retire from England during the remainder of
this session; and if so, whether it is the intention of her Majesty’s
Government, out of consideration to her Majesty’s health, comfort and
tranquillity, and in the interest of the royal family and of her
Majesty’s subjects throughout the empire, and especially of this
metropolis, to advise her Majesty to abdicate.”
This question raised cries of “Order!” and much indignation, but that it
could be asked at all was a notable sign of the feeling of the time.
That Queen Victoria was not in very good health is more than probable.
Her adjustment to the lonely circumstances of her widowhood was not
really complete, she was determined to walk only by the rule she had
laid down for herself in the first days, and it was no easy matter
always to judge what the Prince would have done. So, distrusting her own
decisions, she was ever feeling after the ideas of another, with the
result that her nerves were over sensitive, and any disturbance of the
usual produced headache. The crisis in the Government was quite enough
to upset her.
This August the Queen made the first of her visits abroad under the name
of the Duchess of Kent, going to Switzerland, and accepting from Louis
Napoleon the loan of his train through France. On her return she went
to Balmoral, and spent part of her Highland visit in a new house which
she had built for herself: “the widow’s first house, not built by _him_,
or hallowed by _his_ memory.” She called it the Glassalt Shiel, and it
was in a wild and lonely country, at one end of Loch Muick, the other
three sides being bounded within a few hundred yards by rocky mountains.
She regarded this place as in full keeping with her condition, and there
she could be quite away from all Court and State requirements. It is not
to be wondered at that, while she was in such a morbid state of mind,
there were people who thought she would be happier dissociated from the
active work of governing. She remained in the north until late in
November, and only returned in time to take leave of her ministers, for
the Liberals had a majority of 128 at the elections. Seeing what a
crushing defeat it was, Disraeli refused to meet Parliament again, and
at once resigned office.
The Queen offered him a baronetcy, which he refused, and then, to show
her appreciation of him, she bestowed upon Mrs. Disraeli the title of
Viscountess Beaconsfield, an honour which touched his heart in its
tenderest spot. Disraeli was said to be the first Prime Minister without
armorial bearings, and the heralds had to supply a coat-of-arms. When he
read the description and found the words, “Supporters gorged,” he
remarked--
“Now that is absurd! I have done my best to stuff my supporters, but I
could never appease their hunger, much less gorge them. If it is
heraldic, my dear, let our supporters be described as voracious, not
gorged.”
When subsequently a telegram was brought to Gladstone from the Queen it
was taken to him into the park, where he was felling a tree, with Evelyn
Ashley holding his coat. He went on with his work for a little, then,
resting on the handle of his axe, said with deep earnestness--
“My mission is to appease Ireland.”[8]
Mr. Bright, once so anti-royal, was persuaded to join the new Cabinet,
which gave pleasure to the Queen, for she believed in his sincerity, and
on the last Saturday of the year he was invited to dine and sleep at
Windsor and to receive the seals of office. Victoria, with that kindly
carefulness which characterized her when she had to meet people, allowed
him to modify his Court dress by omitting the sword, in accordance with
his Quaker principles, and it was intimated to him that she wished him
to omit any part of the ceremonial which was repugnant to his
conscience. He had replied that he objected to kneeling, so when her
Majesty gave him the seals she held out her hand, saying--
“Mr. Bright, we dispense with the kneeling.”
Mr. Ward Hunt, who had been Chancellor of the Exchequer in Disraeli’s
Cabinet, had not asked or wished to be exempt from kneeling before his
Queen; and as he was six feet four inches high, weighing twenty stones,
he made an astonishing figure, being taller than Victoria even in that
attitude.
[Illustration: BENJAMIN DISRAELI]
One picturesque and turbulent figure passed away this year definitely
from the councils of England, and this was Henry Brougham, who died in
his sleep at the Villa Eleanor, Cannes, at the age of ninety, his last
mania having been the collection of hymns. When Lord Derby took office
after the death of Palmerston, Brougham made his last appearance on the
political stage, coming into the House with Lord John Russell and Lord
Derby, all three looking very broken and old.
After Disraeli’s interview with Victoria at the last Privy Council
Meeting of his Government he was seen to come out of the royal closet in
great excitement, and Lord Malmesbury, who met and spoke to him, was
pushed aside, with the words--
“Don’t bring any more bothers before me; I have enough already to drive
a man mad.”
The trouble was that the Archbishop of Canterbury had inconsiderately
died, and the Premier wished to appoint Dr. Colenso in his place. The
Queen, however, had already chosen the man, Archibald Campbell Tait, to
whom good fortune had come through misfortune. For when, in less
elevated clerical rank, he had lost five children at once by scarlet
fever, and this was brought to the Queen’s notice, she strove to
compensate him by inducing Palmerston to give him the Bishopric of
Carlisle. The next step was to make him Bishop of London, and now, again
over the heads of his seniors, he received the highest ecclesiastical
post in the kingdom, which was considered by many as an injustice,
induced by sentiment.
Victoria, though having no great regard for the office of bishop, was
extremely keen upon choosing all bishops herself, and she made her
choice generally with a frank disregard of rule or right, her standard
being simplicity, lack of rhetoric and ceremonial; to this was added the
factor of personal liking on her part. It was thus that Wilberforce,
Stanley and Bradley were raised to high honours.
In February 1869, deploring the introduction of the discussion on the
Irish Church and lamenting the loss of Disraeli, Victoria refused to
open Parliament, on the score of ill health, and she passed the session
in great tribulation of spirit over the bill. Hoping to secure
compromise, she invoked the advice of the Bishop of Peterborough, and
wrote on February 12, 1869, to Gladstone that she strongly deprecated
the hasty introduction of the measure, which would serve only to commit
the Government to proposals from which they could not recede, “while it
is certain, from what the bishop says, that they would not be accepted
on the other side.” The bill was, however, read the third time, with a
majority of 114.
In face of this it was little use fighting, save for modification, and
her Majesty continued to take daily interest in the progress of the
bill; yet at the fiercest point of the struggle, when the Lords, taking
up the Die-hard attitude, were trying to destroy it by introducing
sixty-one amendments, and incidentally to weaken their own power, she
went to Scotland.
“How much more effectually could the Queen assist in the settlement of
this question if she were not six hundred miles off,” wrote Gladstone.
On the first reading Tait voted against it, but Wilberforce gave his
vote for it, whereupon some one said--
“The Bishop of Oxford is going the wrong way.”
“No,” replied Lord Chelmsford; “he is going the road to Winchester.”
There was much strong language in the higher House, Lord Winchelsea
offering to lay his head on the block rather than accede, Gladstone
being labelled Jack Cade, and Lord Grey becoming so violent that the
Duke of Argyll fastened upon him the now famous title of “the chartered
libertine of debate.”
The Commons refused the amendments, the Lords refused conciliation, and
at last even Disraeli[9] was alarmed and thoroughly frightened at the
state of the political parties and the country, for it was felt that the
Lords were in imminent danger. The Queen, from a distance, worked hard
writing to every one, pointing out ways of agreement and appealing to
Tait to induce the bishops to avoid pushing matters to extremes. It was
Lord Cairns who eventually linked the dissentient parties and secured an
agreement. Though the Queen disliked the bill extremely she eventually
saw that the country demanded it, and she feared more than the bill a
conflict between the two Houses, such as would inevitably injure the
House of Lords. Thus she hailed with relief the agreement which secured
the passage of the bill and saved the Lords intact.
CHAPTER IX
THE BELOVED GERMANY
“There will be no kingdom for our son unless you fight
Germany.”--_Eugénie to Louis Napoleon._ 1870.
“What swine! They are full of vexation and envy because we have
fought great battles here--and won them. They cannot bear to think
that shabby little Prussia should prosper so. The Prussians are a
people which should merely exist in order to carry on war for them
in their pay. That is the view taken by all the upper classes in
England. They have never been well disposed towards us, and have
always done their utmost to injure us.... The Crown Princess
herself is an incarnation of this way of thinking. She is full of
her own great condescension in marrying into our country. I
remember her once telling me that two or three merchant families in
Liverpool had more silver plate than the entire Prussian nobility.
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘that is possible, your Royal Highness, but we
value ourselves for other things besides silver plate.’”--_Prince
Bismarck on England._ 1870.
Queen Victoria’s fiftieth birthday was spent at Balmoral, where the
Scotch peasants and servants were given every opportunity of rejoicing;
the Queen herself principally observing the day by bestowing the Garter
upon Prince Leopold and the Order of the Thistle on Prince Arthur.
On her return from the north the Khedive of Egypt was in London, and it
was a sign that Victoria was regaining, however slowly, a normal state
of mind, that she invited him to stay at Windsor, held a review for him
in Windsor Great Park, and stayed a night at Buckingham Palace that she
might be present at a breakfast or garden party given in his honour. At
this function the wind was bitterly cold, causing the gorgeous
refreshment tents and the drawing-room tent to be crowded, while every
one was admiring or criticizing the way in which the Prince of Wales and
about thirty of his friends had at last solved the knotty question of
how to dress for such an occasion. Blue coats with brass buttons were
the choice, a fashion which, if odd in itself, was better than the
earlier impecunious-waiter mode of evening coats and morning trousers.
Later in the week there was a great review at Aldershot, and then the
Prince of Wales sped the departing guest from Charing Cross, and the
Egyptian visitor was this time really gratified by the royal attention
shown him.
The one public event in which the Queen took part in 1869 was the
opening of Blackfriars Bridge and the Holborn Viaduct, and this she did
with all the outward observance of full state, the first time the state
coach had been out since her widowhood. The people, anxious to let her
know what they could do, showed tremendous enthusiasm in their welcome,
and though there was an undercurrent of darkness and anxiety, it was
kept hidden from royal eyes.
The workless population of London--and there were many
thousands--decided to descend in a mass upon the route and exhibit
themselves in all their wretched poverty before their sovereign; but
their intention became known, and the influence of the trade unions was
invoked to prevent this. The Fenians, too, had their scheme of upsetting
the harmony of the day, a placard being sent out bearing the following
awful inscription--
“To all Fenians.
Vive la Republique!
The Queen will visit the City in state on Saturday, and on that day
she will be shot. She seldom gives a chance. The opportunity won’t
be lost.
God save Ireland!”
Shirley Brooks, in relating the fact, added, “I hope the beast who wrote
it will be bitten by a mad dog.”
Each year of the Queen’s reign seems to have brought its own big event
or anxiety. The anxiety was accentuated by the fact that her opinions
had become definitely crystallized into conservatism, and her
Governments were so far generally Liberal. The great event of 1870 was
the Franco-German War, but there were minor troubles to endure. There
was Gladstone’s Irish Land Bill, which aimed at giving to all Ireland
the “tenant rights” which had never been filched from Ulster, and the
retention of which has been the secret of the success of North Ireland.
This Bill she liked no better than the Irish Church Bill.
Her energetic Government raised another question which was personally
offensive to her, and that concerned the sleepy ways of her cousin,
George of Cambridge, the commander-in-chief, and she found herself
obliged to play a losing hand over the right
[Illustration: QUEEN VICTORIA IN 1865]
claimed by the Crown to command the army irrespective of parliamentary
interference. The Duke had been appointed in 1855 to the chieftainship
of the army by Albert-Victoria, not for his qualities as a soldier, but
that they might concentrate the command of the army in themselves.
George of Cambridge was kindly enough, but he was, like many of the
Georges, far from clever, and he was but the veil which hid the real
headship of the Queen. Albert had felt strongly that the monarch should
have full control of the army, and would have taken the post himself in
1850 had he not already known his hands to be full and that such an
appointment would have added greatly to his unpopularity. It was the
Germanic system grafted upon our Constitution, and was extremely
dangerous in that it seemingly gave military power over to one person
who had neither the knowledge, aptitude nor time necessary to wield it,
and who was wedded to ancient theories of use and prerogative. From the
day of the Duke of Wellington our army had dwindled until it was
declared during the Danish war that we could only have put twenty
thousand men into the field.
Palmerston, during the last five years of his life, had, with his
moribund Parliament, enjoyed a siesta of inaction which but poorly
prepared the Queen for the strenuous times that were coming under
Gladstone and his new brooms who were intending to sweep as cleanly as
possible. Thus when Cardwell, later Viscount Cardwell, became War
Secretary in 1869, and Childers went to the Admiralty, they found both
army and navy in an alarming state of inefficiency. France was superior
to England in ironclads, while Russia and Italy combined equalled her.
In 1866 Sir John Pakington had asked for supplies to build six turret
ships, and the Chancellor Disraeli opposed the suggestion, refusing to
allow £50,000 that even one might be begun. The statements made then
awoke public attention to both army and navy, and various short-sighted
actions of the Duke of Cambridge’s--such as condemning a young
lieutenant for some misdemeanour to wear his uniform on all occasions
for a year as a punishment, thus turning an honour into a disgrace--kept
the matter alive. Many people were astonished and relieved when in
answer to a question in the House in February 1869 Cardwell replied--
“The Duke of Cambridge is not Commander-in-Chief, but a Field Marshal
commanding in chief,” a distinction which had not been understood by the
majority. To this he added the still more surprising information that
the Duke was under the command of himself, who intended that he should
remain so.
England waited for developments, and was not altogether disappointed.
Sir E. M. Grant Duff tells that Gladstone one day met Cardwell and
Childers walking in Bond Street, and the former said to him--
“We have come to a decision. We are going to alter the arrangements of
the War Office and get rid of the Duke of Cambridge.”
“Good gracious!” replied Gladstone. “You have just come into office; you
have enemies enough already and to spare! Do you really mean to add to
them the undying hostility of the Court?”
This may have cooled the ardour of the two ministers, for the Duke of
Cambridge held his post for a long time, and a _Punch_ cartoon gave the
key to the situation, saying--
“Look here, Cardwell, you say _you_ can keep George up to his work! Mind
you do, or, by Jingo, I shall advise her Majesty to sack you both.”
Mr. Cardwell had made the first step and had incidentally raised the
first pang of surprised anger in the Queen’s breast at the idea of a new
infringement of her prerogative. The Duke of Cambridge could no longer
be regarded as commander of the national forces subject only to her
Majesty. The War Minister did, however, go further, by bringing forward
a scheme for the reconstruction of the army, one clause being the
abolition of the purchase of commissions and the substitution of
promotion for personal merit.
The purchase system had become one of extreme danger both to the army
and the country, and as it was a class arrangement it was bitterly
fought through both houses when Gladstone made it one of his essential
reforms. It raised such keen feeling that for the first time obstruction
in its modern form took the place of opposition. That the question of
loss should not destroy the Bill, Gladstone proposed to buy the
commissions back at the extraordinary values set upon them by the
holders. It passed the Commons by a small majority, but the Lords were
determined this time to fight to a finish.
Victoria once more found herself on the side of ancient things, and from
the quiet of her far retreat watched events with anger and distrust.
Then to her horror she suddenly found herself drawn into the centre of
the dispute. Gladstone knew entirely the temper and the intention of the
Lords, and foresaw months spent in discussing a reform which was
essential to the safety of the nation, ending, perhaps, with a terrible
upheaval which would do much more damage to the Upper than to the Lower
House. He had all through been in unremitting correspondence with the
Queen, and had done his best to soothe her contention that he was
infringing her personal rights. At last he proved to her that Commission
purchase was instituted by an Act of George III, which left it _to the
discretion_ of the sovereign to continue the practice, and that George
had used his discretion in so continuing it.
Thus in July, when the Lords were joyfully contemplating the destruction
of the Bill by amendments, the Queen was being persuaded to sign a
warrant reversing that of her grandfather. She hated the deed, but she
knew that the country was with the Bill, and she was under the spell of
Gladstone’s strong determination. It must have been one of the occasions
when he had “to harden his heart to a flint.” The compensation he
offered her was that by this act she was giving public evidence of the
power of the Crown, one which pleased her and took the bitterness out of
the transaction.
“She made no sort of difficulty in signing the warrant,” said Lord
Halifax, the minister in attendance, “but she asked a formal expression
of the Cabinet’s advice as she was using her power in opposition to the
House of Lords.”
The deed caused a sudden cessation of the storm; then after the first
surprise it burst again in full fury; anathemas rang through the land,
and piteous stories were told of the brutal Prime Minister who had
literally forced her Majesty to sign this warrant against her will, who
overturned the Constitution, robbed the officers and wished to destroy
the army. The incident did not cause Victoria to like her Prime Minister
any better; but had not Gladstone done this in spite of her opposition,
we should never have had a Sir John French, the son of an unmoneyed
naval captain, as head of the army’s aristocracy of merit.
There was another man whom the Queen did not like, and that was Louis
Napoleon. She always distrusted him, most people did, and Bismarck was
busy just now getting articles inserted into the London Press which
aimed at producing anger in England against France, for he felt himself
now in deadly need of keeping France isolated. Napoleon III had been a
great figure, dominating Europe; he had dreamed great dreams, which
sometimes came to reality, but towards this last year he had lost health
and confidence. He wanted to sit quietly writing a book on Cæsar, and
his enthusiastic wife dragged him into noisy discussions on Poland,
Mexico and the future of their son. He was already a broken man before
1870, and he had no desire for war.
The man who wanted war was Bismarck. He had raised Prussia upon the
shoulders of a united Germany to the pinnacle of European supremacy.
Denmark and Austria he had stamped under his feet. Now he wanted to
fulfil a plan made twelve years earlier, when he had said that as soon
as he could win the friendship of Russia he intended to conquer France.
He had wooed Russia ever since; the human sacrifice of Poles had been to
this end, and now he had succeeded by whispering the words “Black Sea
Fleet.” So he turned his attention to France, the strongest empire in
Europe, and he determined to act quickly before Russia could repent.
Napoleon was a little disturbed from his dreams, and felt feebly for an
ally in Austria; then he turned to the Powers and demanded that the
Luxemburg question, left open since the Danish war, should be settled,
for the presence of Prussian guns on its forts pointing over his land at
last struck him with an air of menace. By the intervention of England
this matter was adjusted, and the little state was declared, with the
assent of all, a permanently neutral country, its forts being
dismantled.
This was a check to Prussia, but the wily Chancellor found in it a
pretext for a quarrel, declaring that Napoleon himself had tried to
secure Luxemburg for France. There had been some secret suggestions,
which Bismarck himself was accused by some of having prompted. In 1869
Prussia sent picked troops to the north to engage in gigantic manœuvres,
and the Queen of Holland wrote warning letters to Napoleon about
Prussian intentions. But Kismet had entered into his soul, and he made
no preparations. England might have influenced events, but all she did
was to revile him. He could not understand it, nor could he tell why
England’s queen, who had so gratefully accepted his train for her
journey through France, should now turn so bitterly against him. Perhaps
he never knew that in his great defeat she said harshly that it was “a
righteous punishment upon him.” Certainly he did not know at the time
that Queen Victoria sat in the little Craithie church listening to her
dear Dr. Macleod, the clergyman who knew so well how to reach her heart,
while he preached a sermon which, as it echoed her sentiments, she
judged to be “splendid.”
“Without mentioning France, he made every one understand what was meant
(when he pointed out how God would punish wickedness, vanity and
sensuality). And the chapters he read ... were really quite wonderful
for the way in which they seemed to describe France. It was all
admirable and heart stirring.”[10] One of the chapters was Isaiah
xxviii, crying woe upon drunkards: “They are swallowed up of wine, they
are out of the way through strong drink, they err in vision, they
stumble in judgment. For all tables are full of vomit and filthiness,
for there is no place clean.”
Poor wicked France and poor Louis Napoleon! How he had been beloved
fifteen years earlier! But since then he had won from Austria some of
her filched possessions; and now he was opposed to the dear Germany, in
which lay the interests of her children.
A German scheme to put a Hohenzollern on the throne of Spain, thus
sandwiching France between two of that family, caused disagreement, but
the matter was in process of being arranged, and Emperor William wrote a
telegram from Ems, which would have smoothed negotiations. It passed
through the hands of Bismarck, who made important deletions, and war was
declared.[11]
Victoria’s two sons-in-law, “Fritz” and Louis of Hesse, were commanding
portions of the German army, and the Queen followed their actions
keenly, and was also constantly in correspondence with the Crown
Princess and Princess Alice, sending them hospital material. The latter
wrote to her mother--
“How I sympathize with you, for I know with what fervour you wish well
to Germany. All the world knows well the services rendered to Germany by
England, the dangers that England has warded off from her, and that all
is owing to your wisdom, to your experience, to your sentiments, which
are sincere and just. You will be happy, I am sure, to know how
universally your work is recognized and appreciated. What would dear
papa have thought of this war? The unity of Germany would have pleased
him, but not the brutal means by which it has been founded.”
Prussia now was Prussia then. _The Standard_, which kept itself free
from the taint of Prussian money, published accounts of vindictive and
dishonourable acts. Whole villages had been put to the flames, civilians
had been thrust back to die in their burning houses, public buildings
and hospitals were shelled. Bismarck sneered at these revelations as
manufactured in England, or as the ravings of ignorant villagers who
wanted to be revenged for their losses. But these things caused the
beginning of a reaction in England, and other things learned from her
daughters softened the Queen’s heart to France.
When Bismarck arranged the bombardment of Paris, he found himself
foiled, as neither the Emperor nor the Crown Prince would allow it. He
laid the fault at the doors of Queen Augusta, the Crown Princess, and
chiefly of Queen Victoria, who through her letters held the two men
back. He hated all women who were clever, or who meddled in public
affairs, and at this great crisis of his life he was pinned down by
three women. He loathed them with all his heart, talked of them freely
to those around him: “There are also female snobs and very distinguished
ones. The feminine half of our Court are snobs, our two most exalted
ladies are snobs.” For Victoria his hate was the hate of the man
who--far as he had climbed--knew he could never get to the top. Shortly,
he was jealous. He knew well enough how Victoria had played into
Prussian hands; he knew that she did it blindly as far as European
politics went; he knew that it resulted from her affection for Germany
because of her own birth, her husband and her children. And he hated her
the more for it. For whatever he did he knew that he could not make
Prussia supreme over England. So he wrote contemptuously of the
“Coburg-Belgium-English clique,” thus dumping together Victoria, Ernst
and Leopold II.
The ineffable Ernst was like a creature on wires during those days,
bombarding his Prussian relative with reams of advice, and flourishing
his sword before the eyes of Europe. Like the Crown Prince, he sent to
his wife regular accounts of what happened, and after the battle of
Worth he wrote in this delightful style--
“I am able to begin with the joyful words, ‘another bloody battle,’ as
the telegraph has informed you, brilliant and victorious.”
Emperor William sent the like news to his empress, in words which
_Punch_ scarcely altered in the lines--
“My dear Augusta,
We’ve had a buster.
Laid ten thousand Frenchmen low!
Thank God from whom all blessings flow!”
As far as Napoleon was concerned the war was quickly over; hardly a
month from the beginning Sedan was fought and he surrendered. Then came
the German advance upon Paris, and the three months’ struggle between
Bismarck and the royal family. The Crown Princess was reported to have
struck the table while talking of it and saying--
“For all that, Paris shall not be bombarded.”
She was wrong, Bismarck prevailed, and the siege began on December 27
amid heavy snow and severe cold.
Then the royal ladies concentrated their energies upon succouring the
Parisians when the moment of capitulation arrived, a mistaken
generosity, which but prolonged the suffering. They persuaded William to
allow them to pass trains, packed with provisions, as near Paris as
possible, ready to be taken into the city as soon as the siege was
raised. Queen Victoria sent enormous quantities of food, but she would
have been wiser to have tried to stop the war at the beginning, or at
the end to have protested against the criminal fine exacted by Prussia
from France. These food trains rested in the lines of the German
soldiers, who themselves had not enough to eat; and when the gates of
Paris were opened, there was no way of getting them there because of
broken bridges and destroyed roads. The knowledge that it was coming had
made the Parisians prolong their resistance until the last moment, so
that then the mortality was frightful, five thousand a week dying of
starvation, a great number being children under two years of age, and
“coffins of these tiny French citizens were to be seen in all
directions.”
It is a statesman’s business to be wise before and not after an event,
and there was little statesmanship in English and royal action
concerning this war.
Russia had not been idle. She had issued a circular to the European
powers declaring that she would no longer recognize the prohibition
which was inserted in the treaty of Paris, against her warships entering
the Black Sea. This condition had been insisted upon by Palmerston after
the Crimean War, and was regarded with disfavour by every country but
England; Palmerston himself not believing that it could be enforced for
more than ten years, but it had lasted fifteen. On receipt of the
Russian circular Odo Russell was sent to the Prussian King to say that
unless he could induce the Muscovite to withdraw the circular, England
would go to war. Bismarck was utterly surprised at a belligerent tone
from England, and seeing that it was meant he consented to use his
influence, protesting that the whole affair was a remarkable, new and
unexpected event to him. Yet in his reminiscences we find him boasting
of his share in the transaction. “But for us they (the Russians) would
not have obtained it from France and England.”
The circular was withdrawn, a conference was called, and Russia’s
freedom in the Black Sea was assured by pacific means.
In spite of the Queen’s love for Germany, Bismarck was too strong for
her, and when the war was over she was, next to the Crown Princess, the
most unpopular person in that kingdom. Indeed, a most extraordinary wave
of anger against England swept over the land, anger which had its root
in jealousy of a people which could see neighbouring countries ravaged
by war and yet sit quietly behind their cliffs and suffer no like
damage.
One of the Queen’s strongest qualities was that of personal sympathy,
and when Sedan sealed the fate of Napoleon and Eugénie, the latter fled
to England, being received by Victoria, who had always loved her, with
tears for her plight. Grant Duff said of Eugénie years earlier, “she is
brave and would show well indeed if she had to dare anything in the
streets of Paris.” That chance had arrived in September 1870, when, with
Madam Le Breton, she fled through the palace and galleries of the
Louvre, and sat silently for hours hidden in the dark corner of a
conveyance in the Rue de Rivoli, surrounded by the rabble which blocked
the streets, until at last she got away. Reaching a station outside
Paris, she had again to wait for a train, and her only safety from
detection was a newspaper which she held before her face and which saved
her from discovery and possible death.
Once in England she went to Chislehurst, where Mary of Teck, one of her
first callers, found her sadly changed and wrinkled, while the Duke of
Cambridge thought her looking sixty and very low and subdued. It was of
her that some one later said, “Her face makes me think of Rudyard
Kipling’s story, _The Gate of a Hundred Sorrows_.”
Napoleon, a prisoner at Wilhelmshöhe in Cassel, was trying to get some
moderation of the terms of peace by suggesting a common German-Franco
war against England. This should not raise surprise, for he had nothing
for which to thank England. It was many years before the world knew of
this, and if Victoria heard of it at the time from Fritz, she did not
let it prevent her offering an asylum to the dethroned emperor. He too
came to Chislehurst, and once he again met the English queen, she
succumbed anew to his charm of manner, and remained his firm friend
until his death in January 1873; at which event she wept publicly and
showed such grief that her people were astonished.
CHAPTER X
FOR MONEY, MONEY’S WORTH
“Our faithful Commons, ’tis a story
To say you’re Radical or Tory.
You vote your Queen such generous doles,
You are all Liberal, bless your souls.”
_Contemporary verse._
“The fact is there are too many of us.”--_The old Duchess of
Gloucester._
That children bring sorrow as well as joy is a trite saying of which
Queen Victoria experienced the truth. She was most disappointed in the
Prince of Wales, whom she had laboured so hard to develop on her own
lines, only to find him resolutely bent on running on his own. Princess
Louise did not marry a German Serene Highness, and therefore was
scarcely satisfactory. Prince Alfred was more promising, as he was
showing a remarkable carefulness in money matters and an extensive
knowledge of stock-exchange fluctuations which must have pleased her, in
spite of the fact that he gave rise to many facetious paragraphs in the
Press. Prince Arthur was much beloved and was also popular with the
public. But poor Prince Leopold appealed most to his mother’s heart, and
was at the same time a great anxiety, for he was very delicate, being
liable to fits and suffering from external hæmorrhage, which showed an
abnormal thinness of the skin. Thus he was always liable to take
illnesses, such as typhoid, sciatica, etc.
The Prince of Wales, however, tried her most, for his name was before
the public in a scandalous way. Yet the people insisted upon liking him
better than all the rest, and, whatever comments they might pass upon
him, the whole nation was agreed in lauding his princess. These two did
their utmost to make up for the social deficiencies of the Queen. They
held levees and drawing-rooms, laid foundation-stones, dedicated wards,
named ships, visited hospitals, opened bridges, and occasionally did
work still more domestic, for there was no limit to the demands of
charitable and public companies. Thus in 1865 the Prince had to start
the engine which for the first time delivered the contents of the
Southern Main Drainage Works into the Thames; a complimentary loyalty
somewhat similar to that which named one of the London sewers near
Buckingham Palace the Victoria Sewer. It was in June 1872 that the
Prince and Princess opened the Bethnal Green Museum, and found among the
mottoes displayed along the route some with these kindly messages: “Long
wished for, come at last.” “Come again and bring your mother with you!”
“Thank you for your kind visit.”
For years the papers gave such constant paragraphs to this young
couple’s good deeds that people began to realize that they were very
hard at work. Most of this work, however, was attended by a sameness
which eventually brought dullness with it, and needed an antidote one
way or another. The Princess found it in bearing a succession of
children; the Prince, devoid of such resource, became _épris_ with the
bright eyes of one lady after another. This was scarcely astonishing,
seeing the stock from which he sprung; it would, in fact, have been
unreasonable not to expect somewhere in the Queen’s family a throwback
to an earlier generation. But what a prince does cannot be hidden; so
while, on the one hand, a cartoon was issued showing Alexandra as Joan
of Arc before the throne, carrying the sword of popularity and the
banner of self-sacrifice, trampling the while on the Fenian flag and the
rod of discontent, the Prince in another was drawn running after the
shade of George IV.
In 1867 the Court Circular announced that Alexandra had given birth to
“a princess,” which gave occasion for good-humoured scoffing, it being
pointed out how interesting would be the then first columns of the
newspapers if every titled person made such announcements as “Lady
So-and-so of a baronet” or “of an honourable,” etc. This birth took
place during a painful illness of acute rheumatism, the disease becoming
eventually localized in the knee. The Princess’s condition caused so
much anxiety that the Queen went several times quietly up to London to
see her, which was in itself an event. In September, when Alexandra went
to Hesse-Darmstadt to meet her nation’s enemy, King William of Prussia,
the knee, having been treated, in the manner of those times, by splints,
bandages and lying-up, was rigid, and she walked with two sticks.
Of the meeting Princess Alice said: “Alix was pleased with the civility
and kindness of the King. It is an amusing trait with the Prussian
‘kulturist’ that when he has successfully robbed a nation, he declares
that he has done it for that nation’s good and does his best to make it
believe it and ‘kiss and be friends.’”
Albert Edward had some accidents during these years which perhaps added
to the excitement of his existence, being spun off his horse by a
heavily antlered stag when shooting in Germany, but without receiving
injury; later in Rotten Row a runaway steed cannoned into him, sending
his horse down like a rabbit struck with shot and apparently rolling
over his rider, the intruder jumping clear over both. But again he was
not hurt, and remounted and rode away before much of a crowd could
gather. A volunteer was arrested for threatening to shoot the Prince,
and carrying on parade ball cartridges in his pocket for that purpose.
Thus when Albert Edward was in Russia and a report was sent to his wife
that he had been killed there, she at once believed it. It was, however,
false, though other dangers to which he laid himself open were true
enough.
These were the dangers of gossip, scandal and fierce anger in various
circles, which all culminated in 1871, when not only was his name
publicly used in what was known as the Mordaunt Divorce Case, but he
himself was called as a witness.
Sir Charles Mordaunt wanted a divorce from his wife, she having owned to
him that “she had done very wrong” with several people, among them
being the Prince of Wales. What would have been divulged had the case
taken its normal course it is not easy to say, but the onus of
embroiling the Prince was too much for all but the defendant’s counsel.
So the convenient question was raised as to whether Lady Mordaunt was
sound enough mentally to plead a defence, and upon this point the trial
took place. Sir Charles’s counsel indignantly repudiated the assertion
that he had subpœnaed the Prince, whereupon counsel on the opposite side
subpœnaed him. Part of Sir Charles’s examination ran--
“I believe you had no personal acquaintance with his Royal Highness?”
“I can’t say that I knew him well. I had a slight acquaintance and had
spoken to him, but he was not a friend of mine.”
“Did he ever come to your house upon any invitation of yours?”
“Never.”
“Did you ever have any conversation with your wife about him?”
“I did. I warned her against continuing her acquaintance with him.”
He further said that he knew nothing of frequent visits paid by the
Prince, and did not know that his wife had received letters.
However, eleven letters were brought into Court, and on February 23 the
Prince himself was called. His share in the trial was small, however,
the last question asked him being--
“Has there ever been any improper familiarity or criminal act between
you and Lady Mordaunt?” To which he answered--
“There has not.” Applause followed this, but was instantly checked, and
the _Daily Telegraph_ commented, “The words, though given without
special emphasis, carry along with them an earnest of their honest
truthfulness.”
Lady Mordaunt was pronounced insane, and Sir Charles was left to bring
up as his heir a boy who, though bearing his name, was not his son.
Six weeks later there was another scandal, an application for a criminal
information against the proprietors of the _Sheffield Daily Telegraph_
being made. This paper had published “A Startling Rumour” to the effect
that the Prince was likely to appear again in the Divorce Court, this
time as a co-respondent. The case came before the Queen’s Bench six
months afterwards, and a fine of £50 was imposed, it having been shown
that part of the paragraph had been lifted from the _Echo_ and the names
which had been added had been secured from an usher of the Divorce
Court. The people implicated by the paragraph all swore that it was
entirely without truth.
Thus for ten months the name of the future ruler of England was dragged
in the mud, and the distress and anger of the Queen were very deep, for
the scandals struck a blow at her most cherished ideal for her children.
All in all the spring of 1871 was perhaps the most wretched of the
Queen’s widowhood, for there seemed to be no form of public annoyance
to which she was not exposed. That it was to a great extent her own
fault did not, and, from her supreme belief in the inviolability of her
position, could not, occur to her. She blamed her Government and her
people alone, and so found further reason for ignoring England and
expanding the warmth of her affections over Scotland. Had she not
alienated the great mass of the public there might have been discussion
over her new demands for dowries and incomes, but there would not have
been the general excitement that was shown.
The marriage of Princess Louise was the first centre of attack, and then
came the majority of Prince Arthur.
Louise was pretty and gay, desiring the admiration of her kind, and,
like other girls, she flirted with any charming man in her proximity,
which for a queen’s daughter was perhaps not “quite discreet.” The
papers announced once that she was to marry a bishop, and it was a
matter of open comment that she was much inclined to a “handsome,
brilliant divine,” Canon Ainger. On the other hand, she was never
accused of any partiality for impecunious German princelings, her last
flirtation being with the Marquis of Lorne, whom the Queen said she
remembered in his babyhood as “a dear, white, fat, fair little fellow
with reddish hair.”
Whatever her Majesty’s private feeling about this marriage, she said no
word publicly against it, and it may well be believed that if a Briton
were to be chosen, she would prefer a Scot to any other. The Prince of
Wales was strongly against it, but then he was not in the habit of
approving of his brothers-in-law, his disregard for the Crown Prince
being a matter of comment in Germany. When “Fritz” and his wife came to
London in 1871 it was remarked in Germany that “they made a great
impression, Society and the Press recognizing his importance,” and “the
Prince of Wales and his Princess were themselves more civil this time,
and even put in an appearance at the German legation.”
In spite of all remonstrance Victoria gave her sanction to the
marriage--all that was needed to make the Royal Marriage Act a dead
letter--and the wedding was fixed for March 1871, during Lent.
Society, instead of upholding its own order, followed the example of
Albert Edward, but then it always follows the bell-wether on the sheep
track and does little thinking on its own account. The people were
considerative at first, for if an income were granted the Princess, they
hoped it would be spent in the British Isles, perhaps even in London.
As money was wanted once again, Victoria once again screwed up her
courage to face her loyal Parliament, and in February drove quickly
through the streets to the peers’ entrance of the House of Lords to
declare Parliament open. She was received with little enthusiasm, for
the people knew now that she was only ready to humour them when she
wanted something, and they resented it. When she entered the throne-room
it was seen that some modification had been made in the sombreness of
her dress. The material was less heavy, and a small diamond crown was
worn above her widow’s cap. She also was preceded by Lord Granville
carrying the sword of state, the Marquis of Winchester with the cap of
maintenance, and Lord Bessborough with the crown. For a brief moment the
assembled multitude hoped that she would herself read the speech. But
no; the Lord Chancellor accomplished the task, while his royal mistress
sat with downcast eyes on the throne, the robes of state being loosely
cast around her.
With the meeting of Parliament the most extraordinary discussion on
royalty began. To a student of events it was not astonishing that the
spirit of revolution was still strong. France had declared a republic,
and for more than seventy years France had greatly influenced England.
Now high and low alike were asking why something like a million pounds
of public money should go to keep up a Monarchy and a Court which for
two-thirds of the year lived at the two extremes of the kingdom and for
the other third, though within reach of London, steadily refused to
appear there. Though public suspicion and criticism were as keen now as
before, it had become somewhat muzzled, for Gladstone stood as a buffer
between royalty and the people; and, much as Victoria disliked him, he
was her strongest protector, his policy of domestic reform alone being a
safeguard to her. The feeling among the workmen that at last a friend
was at the helm of State, that at last their dire needs were to receive
consideration, had by 1870 reduced the tendency to violent speech. But
now it all broke forth again.
After the official announcement of Louise’s engagement meetings were
held in many large towns to protest against the money grant that every
one knew would be demanded. At Nottingham it was condemned and the crowd
separated shouting for a republic. Birmingham would not give a hearing
to the two members who spoke in its favour, and a deputation was sent to
them demanding that they should oppose it in the House. At Wellington
Music Hall, Holborn, a packed meeting passed with acclamation a
resolution that the time had come to “demand the withdrawal of all
annuities now paid out of the taxes to German princes, and also that no
further endowments be made to any of the royal family.” Brighton
demanded the opposition of its member, Professor Fawcett, and other
towns too numerous to mention followed suit.
The _Pall Mall Gazette_, in a remarkably outspoken leader, declared that
to be a worthy representative at the head of the State was a difficult
part, “and yet a ruler of real intellect and force of character might
produce incalculable effect upon the country.” It rang the note of
warning against indifference and neglect, adding, “Nine men in ten would
preserve the monarchy, but not one in ten would express warm personal
devotion to it. Thus if vehement political agitation arise, those
institutions which have ceased to cause lively enthusiasm may go to the
wall more quickly than any one expects.”
When Gladstone proposed the usual grants many petitions were laid on the
table against them, Professor Fawcett, Mr. Peter Taylor and Sir Robert
Peel speaking as opposers. The last-named questioned the use to which
Victoria put the money granted by the nation to support the dignity and
representation of the Crown: “When foreign sovereigns come to England it
is painful to Englishmen to find the enormous income is not devoted in
the way contemplated by Parliament.... I would double the income of the
Prince of Wales. He lives among us and does that for which £385,000 is
voted to the Crown.” He added that when a princess lays aside royalty
she should accept other conditions, and her Majesty should be left to
make provision for her.
The same note was struck in the Upper House by Lord Oranmore and others,
yet in both Houses every one knew that the grants were assured, so when
it came to a division the protestors, knowing themselves in a minority,
stayed away. Two objectors, Peter Taylor and Auberon Herbert, were
tellers in the division, and Professor Fawcett walked in stately
solitude into the “No” lobby, provoking peals of laughter. This result
gave the historians the chance of ignoring the whole agitation and
enlarging upon the great satisfaction felt by the House and the country
over the match.
The Queen held personally two Courts at Buckingham Palace in February,
thus necessitating only one night’s stay in the capital, which was felt
to be but a poor return to her hungry and generous Londoners.
There was trouble over the date of the wedding. Instead of going abroad,
Victoria chose to spend April at Osborne, leaving Windsor on the 5th;
the earlier part of May was absorbed by glad anticipations of Balmoral;
the latter part of that month and the greater part of June was passed in
Scotland; therefore the only time left was March. So, though she was the
head of the Church, she chose a date in Lent, much to the horror of
those subjects who regarded that period as a time for soberness.
Agitations were set afoot to get the day altered, and to petition the
Archbishop to declare it lawful for the clergy to dispense for the day
with the Church’s ordinary rule, and there was an attempt to institute
in London High Churches a special penitential service at the hour of the
wedding.
Victoria was quite unmoved, and the marriage took place at St. George’s
Chapel, the Queen taking a prominent part in it by walking up the aisle
with the bride, perhaps that she might publicly show her sanction. The
Duke of Argyll was in full Campbell apparel--kilt, philibeg, sporran,
claymore and scarf--while the Marquis and his two supporters were in
Volunteer Artillery uniform. Every one was there, even the Gladstones,
in their very best clothes; and the _Daily Telegraph_, reporting the
gorgeousness of it all, added that the heralds who were busy about the
discharge of their duties looked like “enormous human remains from some
strange island where the missing link is to be found between man and
birds.”
When the newly wedded drove away rice and satin shoes were thrown after
them, also a new broom which the muscular arm of John Brown sent
slithering on to the stones. Being a Scotch marriage, he was surely
privileged. Scotch sentiment on the event was amusingly expressed by the
Campbell crofter who said that the Queen must be a proud woman that day
because she was marrying her daughter to the son of the great Duke of
Argyll.
In July, when a grant was asked for Prince Arthur, the whole monetary
discussion was again raised, and even more bitterly. A demonstration in
Trafalgar Square was attended by the largest crowd that had ever met
there, reaching from the steps of St. Martin’s Church to the barracks
which then stood at the west side, to listen to Bradlaugh protesting, in
the name of the men of Lancashire, Yorkshire and other counties, against
“princely paupers” taking the people’s money, some one else saying that
such grants tended to encourage idleness and the evils which sprang from
it. At the same time in the House, every approach to which was closely
guarded by police, half a dozen members protested against the grant, and
though the motion was passed with an overwhelming majority, there
remained “an uneasy feeling that the prolonged eclipse of the splendour
of royalty had effectually damaged the popularity, not only of the
Queen, but of the Crown.”
The Queen herself, fortified by her usual attitude, could see no danger
in the universal discontent and no justice in the appeal of her people;
she saw nothing but a wicked persecution of herself, and blamed her
ministers for not putting it down with a high hand, for not eloquently
and publicly proclaiming that all that she did was right.
Disraeli might have found some means of diverting public attention, he
would certainly have softly sympathized with his sovereign; but the
strenuous Gladstone, who defended her strongly both in and out of the
House, showed her that he wanted her to help in safeguarding herself. He
begged her to conform to the demands of her position, to open
Parliament, to delay a journey to Balmoral for the public good, or to
carry out some other royal function; and this made her angry. She
accused him of being inimical to her, of not recognizing the weight of
work which hung over her, and she made the absurd charge that he was
trying to force her to do work which was not so much hers as his. Her
feeling for him became actively resentful, and, to quote from the
article in the _Quarterly Review_--
“The surface of her mind had received an impression unfavourable to the
approach of that particular minister, and nothing could ever in future
make her really pleased to welcome him.”
Disraeli had little sympathy with representative government or the
English Constitution, and he made matters worse in a speech at Hughenden
when he said that the Queen’s duties were multifarious, weighty and
unceasing, that she read every dispatch received or sent; adding, “The
whole internal administration of the country greatly depends on the sign
manual; and of our present Sovereign it may be said that her signature
has never been placed to any public document of which she did not know
the purport and _of which she did not approve_.”
Seeing how very conservative Victoria had become, this declaration
raised wide indignation, for it described personal government,
autocracy. Indeed, the reiteration of the assertion that the Queen was
unceasingly at work on State affairs and had no time for mere functions
was breeding an angry suspicion that there was more to be feared than
desired in her activity.
Upon her the painful events of the first half of 1871 had a not unusual
effect. She fell ill with neuralgia and rheumatic gout, which she
attributed to worry. The news of the illness at once caused a
modification of public comment; people began to think they had been hard
upon her, and they atoned by showing sympathy and concern; and though
this pleased her Majesty, she put it down to remorse for the cruel way
in which the nation had treated her, saying “that she thought it very
hard that it was necessary to have this severe illness and great
suffering to make people feel for her and understand her.” She was not
to blame for this in one way: it was the result of the rigidity of her
nature; as has been said, she regarded herself as right, and nothing
could shake that conviction.
The Queen probably suffered from what is now known as neuritis. In 1869
she had “a violent attack of neuralgia” in the leg, and it is more than
likely that the long, wearing lameness which afflicted her in 1883 and
the following year was due to the same thing, rather than to an
accidental tripping on the stairway.
It was November before she could walk up and down stairs again, just
about the time when discontent broke out afresh, started by Sir Charles
Dilke in a speech at Newcastle-on-Tyne. His subject was the Civil List
and the sums voted to the Crown, such as £131,000 in yearly annuities to
daughters, sons and relatives, £7000 for steam packets to take visitors
to and from Osborne, and for insignia and presents when a royal prince
went abroad, £20,000 in military and naval pay to members of the royal
family, £100,000 for the yearly upkeep of the royal yachts, and other
sums, bringing the total to £1,000,000 of public money. Concerning the
yachts, Sir Charles added, “As an instance of the decorative character
of these yachts I may say that I found an able-bodied seaman who was
maintained all the year round to paint the lion and the unicorn on the
five brackets. He commented upon the freedom of these annuities from all
taxes, and of the Queen from income tax. From this he discussed the
sinecures in the Household, declaring that among the officials retained
were twenty-one doctors, dentists and chemists, a
lithographer-in-ordinary, an historical painter to the Queen, a portrait
painter to the Queen, the Lord High Almoner, Sub-Almoner, Hereditary
Grand Almoner, Clerk of the Check, Clerk of the Closet, Master of the
Buckhounds, Exons-in-waiting and Hereditary Grand Falconer.
The real brunt of his attack lay in the question: “Now that no Court is
kept £100,000 is saved on tradesmen’s bills, and where does that money
go? Has it not been diverted from its just use into the pocket of the
Queen?” The speech concluded with--
“Show me a fair chance that a Republic will be free from the political
corruption that hangs about the Monarchy, and I will say, ‘Let it
come!’”
The public was so inured, and in a great respect so sympathetic, to
these attacks on the woman who flouted it that the speech raised little
surprise or horror, and comment upon it would have been kept alive, but
that across the strained feeling fell a misfortune which, though quite
extraneous to the trouble, diverted every one’s attention.
The Prince of Wales, temporarily unpopular and in social disgrace, fell
ill. He had been staying at Londesborough Lodge, Scarborough, and after
his return to Sandringham developed the complaint of which his father
died, typhoid fever. At the time there were many stories of domestic
estrangement in the princely home, but the next three months healed
these, made people forget the Queen’s shortcomings, and reinstated
royalty once more in its high position.
Alexandra, Helena and Alice became Albert Edward’s devoted nurses, but
his death was expected daily. On December 1 he recovered consciousness
for a short time, and, hearing the date, murmured, “It is Alexandra’s
birthday.” A relapse followed this moment of hope, and a member of the
household wrote that the end was not far distant. The Queen went down to
Sandringham for the second time, her face wet with tears as she left
Windsor; and she stayed there eleven days, dreading that terrible 14th,
not daring to hope that it would not again bring death to her family.
But to her joy on that very day the first sign of improvement took
place, and she left Norfolk on the 19th consoled and hopeful, paying a
high tribute to the doctors and royal nurses when she said--
“Had my Prince had the same treatment he might not have died.”
There was a great discussion as to how the disease had been contracted,
for Lord Chesterfield, who was at Londesborough Lodge at the same time,
also took typhoid and died. On the other hand, Blegg, the Prince’s
groom, who had not left Sandringham, succumbed to typhoid on December
18. Expert examination showed that while the drainage of Sandringham was
passable, its water supply was flavoured by cesspools, and the disease
was rampant at a village near the Prince’s house. Londesborough Lodge
was condemned without extenuation as “a vessel inverted over the mouth
of a drain-pipe,” so judgment had to be withheld.
At the end of February 1872 a thanksgiving service was held at St.
Paul’s Cathedral, to which the Queen went in semi-state, changing her
mourning _crêpe_ for velvet and ermine. London people, diverted from
their grumbling by sympathy with a great trouble, made a gala day of the
event. They hung their banners and carpets over their house-fronts,
smothered the window-frames with flowers, and made much money by
letting those windows to cousins from the country. Some enthusiasts also
spent enough to turn three hundred yards of the Strand into a perfumed
pathway, strewn with violets.
Victoria was so happy that she had lost her self-consciousness and
desire to hide, and she forgot to be mean over trifles of procedure. So
the Lord Mayor shut the gates of Temple Bar in her face, that he, as
King of the City, might command them to be opened for his Sovereign in
the ancient fashion; and the people cheered frantically at this evidence
of good feeling. Somewhere along the route a travelling circus got mixed
up with the generals’ staff and could not be disengaged, at which the
crowd went wild with delight, and, temporarily, loved their Queen and
Prince with a boundless love.
In contrast to this gay, careless crowd, away in some dark corner sat a
sour, disappointed residuum of Revolutionaries, the committee of which
wrote that day--the letter getting into the hands of the police--
“These English are a nation of fools; they were all mad this morning and
they will all be drunk to-night--but the Revolution is adjourned for
fifty years.”
Yet republicanism was still much alive, and there were those who felt
that though the Prince’s illness was a cast of the dice in the Queen’s
favour, it was not at all the same thing as a personal attempt on her
part to obtain her people’s affection, and many would have echoed the
words of J. R. Green, had they known them--
“I am sorry when any young fellow dies at thirty, and am far more sorry
when any mother suffers; but the sentiment of newspapers and town
councils over ‘telegrams from the sick-bed’ is simply ludicrous.
However, one remembers that all France went mad with anxiety when Lewis
the Well-beloved fell sick in his earlier days, and yet somehow or other
’89 came never the later.”[12]
The Queen, however, felt very comforted by her people’s enthusiasm, and
she wrote a letter to them, saying that their loyalty and sympathy had
“made a deep and lasting impression upon her heart which could never be
effaced”--a statement which they had opportunities of testing.
The day after the thanksgiving an incident happened which increased the
general loyal feeling. As the Queen was driving into Buckingham Palace
yard, a half-witted youth of sixteen, named O’Connor, presented a pistol
at her over the side of the carriage with one hand and held out a paper
with the other. The evidence given at Bow Street on March 1 was somewhat
conflicting. John Brown said, “The prisoner ran round the back of the
carriage to the side where the Queen was sitting and raised his hand. He
placed his hand upon the carriage and I seized him by the neck.... I
kept the boy in custody until the police arrived.”
General Harding, one of the two equerries, said, “I saw a commotion in
the carriage and I went to the off side. The prisoner had already been
seized by the other equerry in attendance.” The constable’s evidence
was, “Afterwards I ran into the enclosure and received the prisoner in
custody from Lord Charles Fitzroy (the other equerry).”
However, whether Lord Charles Fitzroy or John Brown caught the boy, the
Queen gave all the credit to the latter, and regarded him as a hero.
Exaggerated reports as to the danger the Queen had been in caused great
excitement, but Lord Ronald Gower,[13] who went to the police station
out of curiosity, saw only a harmless-looking boy and an old flintlock
pistol which had not carried a ball for many a year, and had neither
flint nor hammer. The paper was a petition for the release of some
Fenian prisoners.
Victoria made such a fuss over John Brown and his share in the event
that she cooled the enthusiasm of her subjects, who then became inclined
to laugh the whole thing aside. She announced that she had long thought
of rewarding her faithful domestic servants, and began by presenting the
Scotsman with a gold medal and an annuity of £25, as a “mark of
appreciation of his devotion on the occasion of the attack made upon her
Majesty.”
Other awards of the same sort do not appear to have been made public,
and it would be interesting to know if any other good servant was
presented with the order of John Brown.
This superior man grew more and more burdensome to his colleagues and
gave cause for much gossip. Every one had some story about his roughness
of speech and rude manners. A man who for long superintended the
details of the royal journeys to the north relates that on passing along
the platform one night at Wigan he was surprised to find John Brown. On
inquiring if all was right, he was further surprised by the answer--
“No; the Queen says the carriage is shaking like the devil.”[14]
Neele adds: “John Brown’s coarse phonograph had thus transmitted her
Majesty’s gentle complaint.”
He tells how on another journey the Queen’s reading-lamp was required,
and for some cause the candles could not be placed in the sockets. The
attendant tried again and again to get over the difficulty, and at last
said it must wait until they reached Carlisle. John Brown would not hear
of it, and, “as I fancy was his wont, asserted as though her Majesty had
heard the suggestion, ‘The Queen says the train shanna stir a fut till
the lamps are put in.’ And it had to be done.”
It was John Brown who broke bad news to her Majesty, upon whose arm she
leaned if feeling pain in her leg, who went with her in her walks,
drives, excursions, visits, who stood by her chair and scolded if she
did not eat enough or if she chose from a dish which he thought would
disagree with her. “Brown, who superintends everything for me,” was the
best description of this useful but unpopular person.
He was said to take large percentages from the tradesmen, and in return
would, when possible, give them his help. Thus, when in 1878 the Court
remained for Christmas at Windsor, the Mayor went to see his friend
Brown to say that the town would sustain much loss if on Boxing Day
there were no attraction for the visitors. So Brown promised to use his
influence with the Queen, who, to the intense astonishment of all around
her, ordered the state apartments to be open to the public on that day,
though she was in residence. The day was wet, and _The Times_ reported
that “the state apartments of the castle being opened proved a refuge to
the unfortunate pleasure-seekers.”
This, however, is a digression.
A fortnight after the day of thanksgiving Sir Charles Dilke was
ill-advised enough to repeat in the House the speech he had made in the
autumn, on bringing forward a motion for an inquiry into the manner in
which the income and allowances of the Crown were expended. As both he
and Auberon Herbert announced themselves as republicans there was a
terrible uproar, with booing and shouts of “Vide!” while one member from
behind the Speaker’s chair gave loud cock-crows, a form of derision
which had not been heard in that place for forty years. Professor
Fawcett opposed the motion, saying that republicanism had nothing to do
with huckstering and haggling over the cost of the Queen’s income.” It
was lost by 276 to 4.
Victoria is reported as saying musingly of Dilke, whose father had
received a baronetcy for his services in the Great Exhibition of 1851,
“I have had him on my lap. I have stroked his hair. I suppose I stroked
it the wrong way.”
But though sentiment was to the fore at the moment, this did not prevent
a widespread conviction that great injustice was being done in the use
of public money. The preceding autumn a pamphlet had been widely
disseminated, entitled _What does she do with it?_ by “Solomon Temple,
Builder.” It gave a statement of the case which, though exaggerated in
financial details, which could only be guessed at, was just and
temperate, showing how the Civil List was a public matter, and had
always been treated as a public matter until about 1850, when, under the
influence of the Prince Consort, the Lords of the Treasury had denounced
Lord Brougham’s questions, to which he demanded answers, concerning the
great savings made upon the Civil List, as improper, mischievous and
disloyal. By the Civil List the Queen was allotted £60,000 a year for
her own private use, concerning which no one had a right to criticize;
further sums of £131,260 went for salaries and retired allowances for
her Majesty’s household, £172,500 for household expenses, and £13,200
for alms and bounty. These sums were, as the Civil List Act stated, to
enable the Queen to “defray the expenses of her royal household, and to
support the honour and dignity of the Crown.” Now it had been admitted
that the Prince Consort had by 1849 effected considerable savings on the
salary list--savings which had gone on, and even been increased, yearly;
thorough secrecy had been maintained as to what use the money had been
put. The natural inference was that it had been diverted to swell the
sum of £60,000 allotted to the Queen’s private use. It was further known
that the Prince had left a very considerable sum of money by will; this
again was treated with secrecy, only the Queen being aware of what the
sum was or what had become of it. A miser named John Camden Neild had
left Victoria a quarter of a million pounds as well as large estates,
and others to a less degree had followed his example. And meanwhile it
was believed by every one that in her secluded life the Queen made
further great savings on the Civil List. It was therefore felt that the
public should be assured that the money voted by them for the
maintenance of state was not being diverted simply to add to the great
riches of one who was already an immensely rich woman. But no assurance
of the kind was given, and so almost to the day of her death this matter
rankled in the minds of the Queen’s subjects, who felt that the refusal
of ministers to treat the Civil List as a public matter meant that all
the suspicions were true, and that the country had no right to be asked
constantly to add by annuities and dowries to the wealth of one family.
CHAPTER XI
THE WIDOW IN THE HIGHLANDS
“We wish our Queen would dance a little more,
Would follow Queen Elizabeth’s example;
And of her powers upon the dancing-floor
Would give us Englishmen a sample.
That Scots alone are favoured makes us sore,
For surely London’s loyalty’s as ample;
And, with all deference, we think it silly
To dance a reel with gamekeeper or gillie.”
_Jon Duan._
“Come awa ben and sit doon, Queen Victoria.”--_Greeting of Scotch
peasant to her Sovereign._[15]
If Queen Victoria took her royal position with intense seriousness and
felt herself to be above all social law, she yet possessed a simple
outlook upon life which allowed her to get a great deal out of it, and
to find amusement where many a society dame would have been terribly
bored. She also showed a fund of sympathy for personal troubles which
endeared her to many individuals.
In Scotland she could develop her taste for simplicity to the fullest
extent, could let every act be dictated by the habits and wishes of the
dead. Albert had said that the Scotch peasants resembled the country
people of Coburg, and so she trusted and loved them. In England she
feared always lest some one should take a liberty with her, in England
she made no friends either rich or poor. In the north she was friends
with all, allowed all to talk as they would, and laid aside her fear
that they should be “indiscreet” enough to take a liberty. This was
carried to such an extraordinary length that those who went north with
her found a totally different mistress from the one they had served at
Windsor. Lady Canning would warn a maid-of-honour before starting in the
following words--
“You will be delighted with your waiting at Balmoral or Osborne. You
will see the Queen intimately, riding, dancing, playing, dining. You
will think she cannot get on without you. And then you will come back
one day to Windsor, and some one else will take your place, and you will
have become--a number on a list.”
In Scotland her Majesty became unrestrainedly a woman of the higher
middle class; there she knew every one in her house or on her estate--at
Windsor men had served her for decades and never received a word from
her. From the moment that she turned her back upon her castle her
spirits began to rise, and the nearer she got to Balmoral the higher
they went.
The journeys to Scotland were elaborate affairs. Court officials,
railway managers, superintendents were all at work, pilot engines had to
be supplied and different lines linked; patrols by the thousand were
engaged to guard the lines, every over-bridge and under-bridge had its
man to prevent trespass; other trains were stopped fifteen minutes
before and after the passing of the royal train, and all shunting ceased
for half an hour before. A look-out man travelled on the engine to
perform the impossible feat of watching both sides of the train at once
in case anything happened or the Queen wished the speed altered.
As the hour for leaving Windsor drew near the officers of the Great
Western would assemble on the platform, and to the porters would be left
the conduct of those who first arrived, the pages, servants and humble
members of the suite. Then came the ladies, equerries and
lords-in-waiting, followed by the junior members of the family. When all
these were safely given their respective seats, with a clatter of
quickly moving hoofs came the Queen. In hot haste John Brown and Francis
Clarke would drop from their high seats, run to open the door and assist
her Majesty to alight.
The carriages of the Queen and the Princesses were perfectly fitted, the
former very gorgeous with blue silk walls and white silk ceiling; but no
other carriage had sanitary arrangements, which necessitated various
stops at isolated places during the afternoon and night. Prince Albert
had always decreed that a marked difference should be made in all
respects between the treatment of the family and the attendants, and the
Queen never dreamed of altering things. It was “a fond clinging to old
association,” as Neele, the superintendent, said when the last ten miles
of the line had been built from Ballater and Victoria refused for two
years to use it, insisting upon driving as heretofore. It needed a
strong representation from Dr. Jenner as to the necessity of improved
sanitation before any mercy was shown to the suite.
There was another difference too, amusing to look back upon, but very
vexing for those who suffered from it. The doorways of the trains were
very high up, and to the Queen’s carriage a pair of folding steps were
fixed; but to the others there was given no means of descent. The little
stopping places were at lonely spots where there were no platforms;
Beattock Summit was one of these, and the Queen would often send word to
some lady that she wished her presence from that or some other point to
the next. It might be in fine weather, but it also might be in a storm,
and the unfortunate chosen one would have to drop from her carriage
somehow over its steep, wet side, and sometimes return under the same
conditions. Thus there is a record of Lady Ely being summoned in the
pouring rain of a November afternoon at Greenhill, and being sent back
at the Summit. The dress of the period included long trains, huge
bustles, great chignons and thin shoes, and thus the train
superintendent found Lady Ely trying to swarm up the wet side of the
carriage. He is too delicate to relate how he hoisted her up; but he
does tell how the Caledonian manager, a very short, sturdy man, used to
amuse his friends by describing his adventure in “pushing up” Lady
Augusta Bruce on one occasion. No one dared to suggest that the royal
privilege of steps should be accorded these humbler people, and the
eventual remedy was to change the defective stopping places for more
convenient ones.
John Brown, it is said, never noticed the need of steps, and would swing
himself up and down easily, his Highland costume probably being an
advantage. If some suffering lady had condescended to entreat him, maybe
the trouble would have disappeared much earlier than it did.
The Queen’s desire for privacy was strongly impressed upon the railway
officials, and though the train started in the afternoon this privacy
was strictly maintained through England. If the train stopped at any
southern station the platform would generally be cleared. But before
Perth was reached Victoria would be in a gayer frame of mind, and there
“Her Majesty was generally greeted by a bright gathering of her lieges.”
Thus in 1867, when criticism upon royal seclusion had been loud, the
strictest orders were given that on no pretext was any person to be
allowed in any station south of Perth; and by some mistake the good
Perthians were also shut out. The Queen quickly rectified this insult to
her beloved Scots, the barriers were removed and she graciously
acknowledged the cheers of the crowd.
“No accidents ever happen to a royal train, it is too well looked
after,” said _Punch_, but there was once very nearly an accident, when a
yardman took a goods wagon, hauled by a horse, straight across the main
line just as the Queen’s train came up. A gentleman gallantly jumped on
the line and waved the driver of the train back, and he stopped in time.
Such is the account, but it might be imagined that a goods wagon was as
visible as a man. On another occasion there were a series of
misfortunes. The engines were late, to begin with, the brake on her
Majesty’s carriage broke; at Perth the station was being altered, which
necessitated the Queen descending on the up side and having to walk to
her luncheon-room on the down line. The up platform, alas, had not been
kept clear, and she was almost jostled by the people crowding to their
train. Then her saloon lamps incontinently extinguished themselves, and
lastly, on arrival at Windsor, the Queen’s portion of the train, which
was detached there to allow her to descend quietly on a special
platform, would not move, and it took some minutes to get it to stir
into the terminus. Some evil spirit must have been at work to annoy her
Majesty.
When the royal party returned from Scotland in the autumn of 1870,
Princess Louise, who had just become engaged, was carried to the train
on a litter, for in some way she had hurt her knee, and in a recumbent
position she received delighted ovations from the pleased Scottish
crowds. There was some “cursed spite” against the royal knee. Prince
Leopold fell at a dance about this time and sprained his knee; the
Princess of Wales suffered for many years with her knee, the Prince of
Wales had what some one described as a “finicking walk with a weak
knee”; in ’69, ’71 and ’83 the Queen was laid up with rheumatism or
sprain of the knee.
In Scotland, as has been said, the Queen became a different woman. She
would lay aside some of her decisiveness, would indulge in the luxury
of not knowing her own mind, and would in some matters be under the
domination of a favourite servant, not being quite sure as to which road
she would take or which dress she would wear. Here she could indulge in
sad reminiscences or homely joy, a good example being the house-warming
at the Glassalt Shiel, the first widow’s house. At this all, save
Victoria, and including Louise and Lady Ely, danced reels, the rest of
the company being sixteen servants, among whom were the policeman
supposed to be on guard, and a stableman. The following is from her
Majesty’s book--
“After the first reel whisky toddy was brought round for every one, and
Brown begged I would drink to the ‘fire-kindling.’ Then Grant made a
little speech, with an allusion to the wild place we were in, and
concluding with a wish ‘that our Royal Mistress, our good Queen’ should
‘live long.’ ... Sad thoughts filled my heart both before dinner and
when I was alone and retired to rest. I thought of the happy past and my
darling husband, whom I thought I must see, and who always wished to
build here in this favourite wild spot, quite in among the hills.”
At Balmoral the Queen often gave a dance, but those invited only
included the officials, ladies, servants, outdoor men, and sometimes the
relatives of the latter and some who lived on the estate. Sir Arthur
Helps mentioned in a letter such a dance at which a little “tiger”
distinguished himself by contriving to get the Princess of Wales as a
partner, and a coachman cut out the Prince in a “perpetual jig.” The
Queen would remain watching the gaiety for hours and then, on one
occasion, was persuaded to join in, her first partners being her young
grandsons. The news of this, of course, duly reported in the English
papers, would have pleased her English subjects, but unfortunately the
injudicious monarch followed her first dances by joining in a reel with
John Brown and then in another with a gamekeeper. In the then state of
public criticism this was made the subject of somewhat bitter banter and
jokes, the chief point of which was the utter difference between
Victoria in England and Victoria in Scotland.
“It is not seemly that the servants’ hall
Should form a Court, nor that the servants there
Should be the sole invités to a ball
Which the Queen graces with her presence rare;
Nor that she only hold high Carnival
When her Scotch servants marry; ’tis not fair
To us, who royal smiles are never rich in,
To find them lavished freely on her kitchen.
References were freely made to that not-to-be-forgotten Elizabethan
episode, when the Virgin Queen, being asked by the Spanish ambassador to
wed Philip of Spain, replied, though in less rhyming words--
“Supreme is the honour of him to be sought;
Oblige him I’m sorry I can’t, oh!
But lest you should think you have come here for nought,
You shall see how I dance the coranto.”
And the ambassador was so amazed that he could only record to his
master--
“I have seen the Head of the English Church dancing!”
Scotland would never have made fun of the Queen in this way, but then,
as _Punch_ once pointed out in a bogus Queen’s Speech, Scotland had
reason to be restrained. “Scotland gives me no trouble, but then I am so
often there, and we know the frequent appearances of the Sovereign tend
to raise the temperature of the nation.”
Sometimes Victoria had less pleasing experiences than balls and
house-warmings, and one such was a spill on a dark night when returning
home. Princesses Alice and Helena were with her, Brown was on the box,
and Smith was the coachman. The latter “seemed to be quite confused, and
got off the road several times, once in a very dangerous place.” Alice
probably saw that the man was drunk, for she was uneasy, even when he
was driving straight; but Brown was much too thoughtlessly careful, for
he held up a lantern, “though the road was as broad and plain as
possible,” and the glare in the man’s eyes could only have made him less
fit. Shortly the carriage turned over. The Queen--remembering as in a
flash that there were things she had not settled and still wanted to
do--being thrown on her face “very hard,” and the Princesses being
pinned down by their clothes. Brown cried, “The Lord Almighty have mercy
on us! Who did ever see the like of this before? I thought you were all
killed.” The horses lay on their sides as if dead, and the driver stood
stupidly staring. The Princesses got free by tearing their clothes, and
then helped their mother up, sitting her in the side of the overturned
carriage, and it is a most curious revelation of the motive power which
guided the Queen’s life that as she sat there she meditated--
“I am thankful that it (the accident) was caused by no imprudence of
mine, or the slightest deviation from what my beloved one and I had been
in the habit of doing, and which he sanctioned and approved.”
Dear, limited, superstitious soul! and in this spirit she was governing
a great nation like England--and putting the fault of non-success upon
England and her statesmen.
The way for another drive on a pitch-dark night lay through a wood, but
the coachman, blinded with rain, lost his bearings and took them by a
road which was no road, over hummocks and through deep holes filled with
water. The Duchess of Athole was with the Queen, and General Grey, who
was in a carriage in front, called back to her to know which way she
thought they should go, whereupon the modest, faithful one, Brown,
instantly shouted--
“The Duchess don’t know at all where we are.”
Brown’s kilt got heavy with rain and the edge of it cut his leg at the
back, much to Victoria’s concern, who had the doctor to him, and for
several days entered in her diary the stages of his progress towards
recovery.
Victoria’s books on Scotland give no hint that the Scotch were not
perfection, yet she suffered somewhat from their want of manners. Those
who lived near her had their meed of royalty, but those who lived at a
distance were as curious, as eager and as vulgar as any of her English
subjects, and resorted to every dodge known to the celebrity hunter to
catch a glimpse of her. Craithie Church offered the best facility, and
enterprising owners ran post-chaises and omnibuses there on Sundays
crammed with sightseers, who made a scramble for the best pews or bribed
the canny sidesmen to secure them. For fear of coming off second best
they carried binoculars, so that they might be assured of watching their
Queen at her devotions. In their exuberant loyalty they would even stand
on the seats and turn their backs to the altar. Having sufficiently
adored those in the royal pew, they would then take to the open air, and
spreading their luncheons on the flat tombstones, enjoy the second part
of the entertainment.
There were times when her Majesty wearied of this and used her own
drawing-room as a place of worship, allowing certain friends in the
district to join in the service. Tactics would be changed then by those
who had sufficient money, and splendid carriages would roll to the
castle, filled with worshippers of royalty. This had to be met by
posting detectives in plain clothes around Balmoral and about the
neighbourhood. So each carriage had to render an account, and many a
disappointed, well-dressed hooligan was sent empty away of his or her
Sabbath pleasure.
In 1878 the Queen bought Ballochbuie Forest, which was being sold for
its trees, a sale which had strong merits, as at least the land would
have had a chance of being brought under cultivation--for it is the
“forests” of Scotland which have kept it poor. However, the idea hurt
the Queen, who thought it desecration, so she purchased it herself on
condition that the trees were allowed to remain standing. Within it, on
Creag Doin, she built a cairn, inscribing on it--
“Queen Victoria entered into possession of Ballochbuie May 15, 1878. The
bonniest plaid in Scotland.” The last words allude to a tradition that
Ballochbuie was once sold at the point of a dirk by a MacGregor to a
Farquharson for a tartan plaid.
When Victoria died she possessed Balmoral, Ballochbuie, Birkhall and
Abergeldie--an aggregate of 50,000 acres. The Lochnager distillery was
also hers; in the south Osborne was her private property; she further
had estates at Coburg, the Villa Hohenlohe at Baden-Baden, and the Duchy
of Lancaster. Osborne and Balmoral had been bought and built by royal
savings during the life of the Prince Consort, and as each place ran
into several hundred thousands of pounds, it is not difficult to see
where the savings on the salaries and other departments of the Civil
List had gone.
Sir Edward Russell in a recent book, _That Reminds Me_, gives an
anecdote of the Queen, which is interesting.
In talking to a man of standing she remarked that she did not like a
certain family, and on being asked why, replied--
“Oh, because they are _very bad_ to their tenants, and many of their
cottages are in a _horrid state_; and if anything is done by any tenants
at their own expense to improve their condition, the first thing
the ----’s do is to raise the rent upon them.”
The gentleman said he was glad that she sympathized with the afflictions
of tenants, to which she answered--
“Oh, I am a tenant myself. I hold ---- from Mr. ---- and I have made
_many_ improvements, and _every time_ I have made an improvement my rent
has been raised.”
The gentleman laughed outright, and her Majesty’s eyes twinkled.
“Well, ma’am, let me say that this you have complained of underlies and
is the basis of the whole Irish question and the whole Crofter question.
It is rather amusing to find your Majesty suffering from a grievance as
a crofter.”
Then her Majesty laughed very much.
“I can only say,” he added, “how good it is to find you sharing in the
afflictions of the poorest of your subjects.”
The Queen’s heart was in the right place, as the old saying has it, and
especially in Scotland might have been added, for her Scottish tenants
were well looked after. But from time to time paragraphs of want in
Osborne cottages were published. In 1873 some of her labourers were
discharged for sending a round robin to her asking for an increase of
wages. They were getting 14_s._ a week, but as in the vicinity of
royalty prices are inflated, this did not go further than 11_s._
elsewhere. They worked from sixty to seventy hours a week, so they also
asked to leave off at four on Saturdays and to have sixpence an hour
for overtime. The Queen sent no answer to the letter, but the men were
called before the steward, and those regarded as ringleaders were
dismissed. The rest went back to the old conditions.
Yet there were yearly fêtes to the tenants, queenly visits to cottagers
and certain charities.
It is said that Victoria would sometimes fall a prey to toadies, and
take up some relative of one of her people, being deeply interested; and
when the person in question proved disappointing, she would remark, “Not
very pretty manners, poor thing! Well, well!”
It was this personal desire to be kind to individuals which would lead
her to make of the Court Circular an advertising column occasionally.
Thus we get, in 1871, this absurd notice, “Lord Lurgan’s famous champion
Irish greyhound has had the honour of being presented to her Majesty at
Windsor.” This dog had won the Waterloo Cup three times.
A little later it was, “Madam Hazer has had the honour of exhibiting her
dog Minos before the Queen and the Royal Family, and her Majesty was
very pleased with the performance.”
Victoria was extremely fond of dogs, but could not bear cats, to stroke
a kitten being the nearest she could go in showing that animal
friendship. Shortly after the first Jubilee she was said to be in great
grief over the death of her dog Noble, and one reporter added to his
account of this that “Noble had for fifteen years mixed with the highest
society.” It was a Frenchman who, believing his English immaculate,
observed that in regard to her Government the Queen was only a _puppy_!
A goat that Victoria once gave as a mascot, then called a pet, to the
Welsh Fusiliers, was well behaved for a time, as a Queen’s gift should
be. But he grew tired of virtue, and took to mischief, his culminating
crime being to butt his colonel when he was in the act of pushing in his
trouser-strap, thus throwing him against a wall and causing black eyes.
Had it not been for his splendid youthful record the goat would have
been drummed out of the regiment, as it was he was ever after known by
the disgraceful title of the Rebel.
CHAPTER XII
FAMILY JARS
“A more effete, ungracious, uncivilized creature than this
yellow-faced Persian could not be imagined, but English society,
while he was in London, prostrated itself before him and his ugly
jewels as if he were some demi-god fresh from Olympus ... a man
without recommendation except that he is called by his slaves and
courtiers, and by himself, the King of kings and the Lord of
lords.”--_Lord Ronald Gower: ‘Reminiscences.’_
“Marie of Edinburgh made a fuss
And summoned to her aid her royal dad,
Because a princess who’s most dear to us
Declined to listen to her foolish fad,
Or questions of precedence to discuss.
But if it’s true then Marie must take care,
Lest she be called the little Russian Bear.”
_The Hornet._
During these years of royal domestic and semidomestic happenings her
Majesty’s Government had also been busy. The Ballot Act was passed, also
the Irish Land Act of 1870, and the matter before the country early in
1873 was the Irish University Bill. On this Gladstone was defeated by
three and promptly tendered his resignation, which the Queen just as
promptly and much more delightedly accepted. Gladstone had bored her to
death by wanting her to understand the intricacies of his bills, and one
day she had handed over his explanation of the Irish Bill to Theodore
Martin with the request that he would reduce it all to a few lines!
So as Disraeli had done his utmost to overthrow the Government, bringing
members from the far ends of the country--and even further, she sent for
him as confidently as she said good-bye to Gladstone, and--he declined
to serve her! “He could not undertake to carry on her Majesty’s
Government in the present House of Commons,” and “he would not advise
her Majesty to recommend a dissolution.”
Such a reply, unparliamentary and unprecedented, seemed like that of a
mischievous boy who, having created havoc, refused to do his share in
putting things straight; but in reality it was his way, not exactly well
principled, of carrying out his own policy. He knew that he could not
use his little majority, and he wanted to turn it into a large one. So
while Gladstone had to go back to work, and the Queen endured it with
distress, Disraeli stumped the country discrediting the Government,
accusing the Ministry of every wickedness, and explaining that they “sat
in a row on the Treasury benches,” reminding him “of a range of extinct
volcanoes.”
Early in August Gladstone went to Osborne to see the Queen, and late in
August he went to Balmoral to stay a few days, during which Victoria
displayed perfect good-humour and interest in his family, saying to Lord
Granville “that she had never known Gladstone so remarkably agreeable.”
She had special reason for wanting the help of a minister sympathetic to
her interests, and Gladstone had ever done his best for her in money
matters, the trouble being that the Prince of Wales was overwhelmed with
debt, £600,000 being the rumoured sum, and either she would have to pay
it or the country must do so. She had looked backwards into history for
a precedent, and had found that the debts of George IV when Prince had
been paid by the nation, and she trusted that the same thing would
happen again. Thus Gladstone was asked to pass a Bill to liquidate the
Prince’s liabilities. He, with his finger on the pulse of the nation,
dared not, for her own sake, accede. He made a suggestion, however,
which might have been carried into effect had it not been for the strong
opposition of Sir Charles Dilke. The suggestion was that Victoria should
transfer to Albert Edward some real estate, which would naturally go to
him at her death; and to circumvent the law that this property would
become national property and therefore inalienable if the heir received
it before his accession, Gladstone proposed a Bill guaranteeing its
remaining personal property. With Dilke tabulating the immense royal
personal possessions, bought perhaps with Civil List money, it proved
impossible that such a Bill could be allowed to slip through.
The only plan left was that the Queen should pay these debts herself,
and it was with some justice asked, why not? The Prince had been doing
her work on little more than a fourth of the sum especially allowed to
her Majesty for the purpose, and though it is more than probable that a
large proportion of the debts had been contracted in ways that had no
relation to State concerns, yet it must be remembered that the Prince
had been deliberately shut out from any intellectual share in the
country’s affairs, and was so much the more likely to find amusement by
easy and extravagant means.
The Queen could not see that she was responsible, so, disappointed and
angry at Gladstone’s failure, she eagerly awaited a change of
Government, but--though I do not know the sequel--she probably paid the
debts, for Abergeldie, a property owned by the Prince in Scotland near
Balmoral, passed into her hands. It may be that Gladstone tried to salve
her disappointment by bringing in the Crown Private Estates Act, for
such a one was passed this year, by which the Queen was given the power
to invest savings like a private person, a course hitherto against the
law, as it was thought undesirable that the monarch should be
independent of Parliament.
In later years Victoria rebuked Gladstone strongly for making speeches
in other places than his own constituency, but it did not trouble her in
1873 that Disraeli, the leader of the Opposition, broke political rules
by holding public meetings over the country; it was but a means to a
good end, and her desires were fulfilled in February 1874 when the
Ministry went to the country and were hopelessly beaten.
So once more Disraeli stepped under the halo of his ambition! He had
conquered the country, and now he set himself to conquer the Queen. Two
years earlier Lady Beaconsfield had died, and Lord Ronald Gower tells
how at Hughenden Disraeli spoke very despondingly of her during her
illness--
“‘She suffers,’ he groaned, ‘so dreadfully at times. We have been
married thirty-three years, and she has never given me a dull moment.’
It was quite touching to see his distress. His face, generally so
emotionless, was filled with a look of suffering and woe that nothing
but the sorrow of her he so truly loved could cause on that impassive
countenance.”
When Lady Beaconsfield died her husband refused all state and honour for
her, and turned his back upon the frightful English usage in the matter
of funerals. At 1.30 the coffin was removed from the saloon of Hughenden
Manor to a low bier, covered with a black velvet pall and carried across
the grounds by the cottage tenants of the estate to the church.
This sorrow drew the Queen closer to the politician, and their
friendship strengthened during the next few years. Disraeli had no
illusions about her Majesty’s powers. He wasted no time in showing her
both sides of a question and inviting her to think for herself.
“Gladstone,” he said, “treated the Queen like a public department; I
treat her like a woman.”
In politics he was quite ready to keep the people quiet with small
concessions, or even to allow them some big measure of domestic reform,
provided he could also carry on his schemes of enlargement and work to
secure a brilliant all-world glory for himself. Thus with him the Queen
felt safe both at home and abroad; she revelled in the “strong
Conservative Government,” and in the idea that it proved England to be
inimical to Radicalism.
Disraeli’s first step towards the full winning of Victoria’s heart was
to bring in the Public Worship Regulation Act, aimed against Ritualism.
This delighted her with her abhorrence of High Church, and that
Gladstone agreed with that form of worship may have added somewhat to
her pleasure. The Bill passed, and almost straightway became a dead
letter. It is somewhat amusing that Sir Sidney Lee reports the Queen as
being extremely disgusted with Gladstone for opposing the next measure,
the Scotch Church Patronage Bill, for she herself had opposed
resolutely, thirty years earlier, a scheme of the sort when initiated by
the Free Kirkers. Now, as Philip Clayden said, “it had become a
reactionary measure by being brought into the world a generation behind
its time,” and could have been of as little benefit as the Bill against
High Church. Of Gladstone’s speech in the House against it, Victoria
said petulantly, “He could so easily have stayed away!” Surely it was
evil of Gladstone in the Opposition to oppose the leader of the
Government!
Though Victoria had not made many concessions to the public desire to
see her, there had been a few in the occasional holding of a Court or a
drawing-room, and an equally occasional one or two nights at the Palace.
In 1873 she had also entertained the Shah of Persia at Buckingham Palace
in solitary grandeur and at Windsor in royal style.
The people who had heard that he was bringing £5,000,000 with him, and
had also heard of his harem, his jewels and his primitive ways, thronged
the streets, swarmed over the houses, and shouted themselves hoarse when
he drove by, and then amused themselves with laughter and songs about,
“Have you seen the Shah, Smoking a cigar,” etc. The great people took
their cue from the Queen, but they had to endure insults which she did
not hear. That the Shah thought them compliments did not make them
sweeter. He did not admire the English ladies, who were too thin, and it
is told that when he saw a picture of the Fat Woman in a show, he said
she was the most beautiful woman he had seen in all his journeys, and
wanted to buy her. The public said--with how much truth I do not
know--that when he had chosen the woman he thought most beautiful, or
rather passable, in any assembly, he showed his approbation by spitting
on her gown; until the knowledge had to be gently conveyed that the
English did not do these things.
Men-of-war met him at sea, Princes Arthur and Alfred met him at Dover
and the Prince of Wales escorted him from Charing Cross to Buckingham
Palace. When he went to Windsor, which he did three times, Leopold, “who
does not go anywhere away from the Queen,” as the Shah wrote in his
diary, was always on the platform. The day of his arrival, being angry
with his Greek secretary, he ordered him to be executed, and it was in
vain that his Grand Vizier and Sir Henry Rawlinson protested. He was
implacable, until at last he was told that the offender was safely
killed and buried in the palace garden. The man was secretly sent to
Paris to await the return of his master there, and one wonders if he
eventually got off with his life.
The Shah was invited to the houses of great noblemen, and on seeing
Trentham Castle, the Duke of Sutherland’s place, he turned to the Prince
of Wales, asking if, when he came to the throne, he would not have the
Duke beheaded. To which the Prince replied that there were so many great
and rich nobles in England that he could not undertake such a clearance.
He was also privileged to see the mausoleum at Frogmore, upon which he
wrote that he shed tears and felt very sad.
One of the amusing incidents of his stay--included in the _Personal
Recollections_ of C. K. Tuckerman, an American--took place at Chiswick
Gardens, a house which the Prince of Wales then rented from the Duke of
Devonshire, and where the Queen went to meet him. For its comedy of
state etiquette during Victorian times, it is as delicately ironic as
the incident of Miss Matty’s new carpet in _Cranford_. There were
present every member of the royal family, also the Russian Tsarevitch
and his consort, whose visit to the heir apparent was quite overshadowed
by the potentate.
“In the middle of the lawn, in front of the garden walks, two large
canvas marquees or pavilions had been erected, facing each other at the
distance of a few yards, between which extended a broad strip of crimson
carpet. Over one of the pavilions floated the banner of England, and
over the other the rising sun and royal arms of Persia. It looked like a
scene upon the stage, and the performance that followed heightened the
theatrical effect. Perhaps if I present the spectacle in a dramatic way
it will be more vivid to the reader.
“SCENE I.--The Queen arrives upon the grounds, with her usual
punctuality, accompanied by her suite. Taking the arm of the Prince
of Wales, her Majesty passes down the line of guests, graciously
acknowledging their silent greetings, and, proceeding to her
pavilion, disappears therein. A long pause ensues, owing to the
tardy arrival of the Shah, who, with Oriental moderation, seems in
no haste to put in an appearance. Meanwhile the spectators keep
their eyes fixed on the canvas that conceals their Sovereign, as
if, like the palaces of Aladdin, it may vanish into air should
their attention be for an instant diverted from it.
“SCENE II.--Arrival of his Majesty of Persia and suite, the latter
consisting of half a dozen royal highnesses and as many
excellencies. He, in turn, takes the arm of the Prince of Wales,
and is conducted to his own pavilion, into which he disappears.
“SCENE III.--Reappearance of the Shah at the opening of his
pavilion, from whence he walks with measured steps down the crimson
carpet, and, entering the Queen’s marquee, disappears from view.
“SCENE IV.--Reappearance of his Majesty, who retraces his steps,
and again disappears beneath the royal canvas.
“SCENE V.--Reappearance of the Queen at the opening of her
pavilion, who proceeds to return the royal visit, and disappears
from view.
“SCENE VI.--Her Majesty emerges from the Shah’s pavilion, and,
retracing her steps to her own, disappears from view.
“SCENE VII.--Simultaneous reappearance of the two sovereigns at the
openings of their respective marquees, whence they advance towards
each other with mathematical precision until they meet in the exact
middle of the strip of crimson. Here, for a moment, the Shah seems
at a loss to know what next is expected from him, and stands like
an awkward actor who has forgotten his part; but her Majesty sets
him right by gracefully taking his arm and walking away with her
illustrious visitor, until lost to view down the long avenue of
ancestral trees.”
Which of the two most enjoyed this punctiliousness, the Queen or the
Shah, and did it satisfy a social need or was it engaged in for the
pleasure of the assembled multitude?
When the Shah left our shores he noted in his diary, “It was evident
that the people of England were all sorry and grieved in their hearts at
our departure.”
The visit of the Tsarevitch was not without meaning, and had been
prefaced by the diplomatic but secret mission to Victoria of Count
Schouvaloff earlier in the year. To both she was very amiable, for the
suggestion was a marriage between the Grand Duchess Marie and Prince
Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh. When it was announced every one seemed
pleased, excepting Mr. Peter Taylor and eighteen members of Parliament,
who voted against the second reading of the Bill for allowing Alfred an
additional £10,000 a year. When this was carried in July, Gladstone laid
stress on the Tsar’s promise to allow his daughter £6000 yearly and a
pension of £30,000; but the report went that she would receive £20,000
as an annuity and a dowry of £200,000, which was certainly more likely.
A complaint was made that the Bill had been introduced very late in the
session, and Gladstone, usually a very truthful man, excused this by
saying that it was a case of deep love on both sides, and lapsing into
poetry, continued--
“Does my honourable friend think that the sentiments of love can be
restrained?
‘Love, free as air, at sight of human ties
Spreads his light wings and in a moment flies.’
These things are not under my control with regard to royal persons or
any one else. I cannot fix the time at which the invader should be
allowed to occupy their hearts, and to bring to an issue these great
questions.”
The people, who had been solemnly assured that the union was in no way
prompted by policy, were pleased with it, for they saw that it might
prove a safeguard against quarrels with Russia. They were tired of the
constant scares about that country, as well as doubtful of the British
policy of making a pet of the Turk. They were also glad that a rich
bride had been chosen rather than some unknown German.
The marriage took place in January 1874, and when the bride and
bridegroom came home to London on a cold, snowy March day, Queen
Victoria did honour where honour was expected, and went to meet her new
daughter-in-law, driving with her through the streets. “How she and the
Princess did shake their heads incessantly right and left, as if they
had indiarubber necks, and that for miles!” commented one whose name I
have lost.
A weekly paper, _The Hornet_, much in vogue just then, hailed Marie as a
Russian fairy, saying, “She has burst upon the Court like golden
sunshine in a fusty, dusty room,” and further declared that Victoria
could not resist her, and allowed her to dance at will into her private
rooms without announcement. Under this influence, “we hope to see the
Queen out of mourning, heading a country dance on the lawn of Buckingham
Palace with some gay gallant like Dizzy.”
This may give some readers a shock, but they must remember that the
widowed Queen had already in the Highlands danced with a much less
courtier-like person.
Speculation was rife about the Russian bride, for it was thought that
she would not comprehend or agree to “the German ceremonial too long
observed by the royal family,” that she would have nothing to do with
that saving system which the people insisted--in spite of all
denial--was the Germanic attribute of their liege lady, the Queen.
The sad thing for the Princess was that she had married the most careful
and saving member of the Queen’s family, and one who, wanting the
kindliness and graciousness of his elder brother, was distinctly
unpopular, also that he _had_ an elder brother. Albert Edward, in spite
of his sins, was a favourite with the public, while it would have been a
rash person who spoke evil of Alexandra. The Schleswig-Holstein
question, her beauty, and later her kindliness and her cheerful
shouldering of the work of an uncrowned queen, had made such an
impression upon the vulnerable heart of John Bull that he went so far as
to say that she retained for the royal family “the personal popularity
which it had lost through the nun-like retirement of Queen Victoria.”
It was a matter of public remark that at this time there were two
Courts, the holiday seeking Court of the Queen and the social Court of
the Prince of Wales, also that the Queen and Prince scarcely ever
appeared anywhere together, and the one did not know the plans of the
other. Thus on a memorable day when the Queen emerged into the view of
her people, by going to open Victoria Park in the East End, the Prince
was to have been installed Grand Master of the United Order of Knights
Templars and St. John, at Willis’s Rooms. To avoid the gossip which
might have been produced by the two reports appearing in the same
morning’s paper, the Prince asked postponement of his ceremony for a
week, and went to stay with Lord Carrington.
Princess Marie Alexandrovna did not understand the intricacies of
English Court and social life. She, being an Imperial Highness, felt
that she had done some condescension in marrying into the family of a
mere queen, and she was certain that her rank would ensure her a place
second only to the Queen herself. That Alexandra, the daughter of the
king of tiny Denmark, should dream of taking precedence soon became a
very sore point. So she constantly tried to upset that delicate system
which aims at reducing social rank to definite law, but she might just
as well have demanded the obeisance of the sun and moon. Partly
realizing her failure, she haughtily declared that she would not go to
Court at all, and sulkily retired after calling upon her father for
help.
_The Times_ announced with dignity that as the Princess was _enceinte_
she had retired from society. The Tsar, however, promptly came to
succour his neglected daughter, and stayed a week, Marie being
constantly by his side. At a state ball held by the Prince of Wales at
Buckingham Palace in his honour, the two were inseparable all the
evening, and seemed equally amused when the younger members of the royal
family, led by the Marquis of Lorne in Highland costume, bare-kneed and
debonair, danced a Scotch reel. There is no doubt that the Tsar did his
best to adjust the grievance, and after his departure his daughter’s
name was published in the Court Circular next to that of the Princess
of Wales, as Her Royal and Imperial Highness the Duchess of Edinburgh
and Grand Duchess of Russia! But Marie did not take with kindly heart to
the knowledge that as wife of a younger son she could not stand first,
and the people, knowing this, never again saw her in the glamour which
had surrounded her coming.
There was another person who might, with justice, have asked a nobler
place in the Court circle, and that was the Marquis of Lorne, to whom
was given no official recognition, and who, though thought fit to marry
an English princess, was not thought fit to sit next her at table, or
with her to enter the doorway reserved for royalty. The result was that
Princess Louise was often absent from royal functions, and later often
absent from her husband’s side. It was odd that the Queen, who had
suffered bitterly when abroad from Germanic etiquette on this point,
should in her own Court have allowed her own daughter to experience the
same discomfort. However, it was the same intricate machinery at work,
and heaven knows what nobleman might not have been annoyed if Lorne had
been treated with respect.
PART II
IMPERIALISM
CHAPTER XIII
YACHTS IN THE SOLENT
“The _Mistletoe_ crept along like a snail,
For the wind scarce bellied a single sail;
The steamer was going at sixteen knots,
For the Queen was dying to see her Scots;
And several lubbers of high degree
Were on her bridge, but they didn’t see
That they’d sealed the helpless _Mistletoe’s_ fate,
If they kept their course at such a rate.
Oh! the _Mistletoe_ bow!”
‘_Edward the Seventh._’
By the year 1875 the Queen was fairly happy in her family and quite
happy in her state relationships; indeed, she was more at peace than she
had been for a long time. Then into the midst of her content came a bolt
from the blue, at least so it seemed, though the real cause was her
royal--royal is not quite the right word, however--appreciation of her
dignity, which allowed her to place herself above all law and rule.
When she drove or when she was on the sea she demanded speed, speed, and
yet more speed, and she could not conceive the right of any one to stand
in her way. In the first years of her reign she rode at a gallop through
the roads and parks; on her first visit to Edinburgh her cortège dashed
through the streets at a gallop, to the anger of the inhabitants; in
1848 her yacht _Fairy_ was bearing her over the Solent at its greatest
speed, when it ran down a boat full of people, four of whom were
drowned. Now, twenty-seven years later, the thing occurred again. In the
first accident the yacht’s commander was Lord Adolphus Fitzclarence, son
of William IV and Dorothy Jordan; in the second Prince Leiningen, son of
Victoria’s half-sister Féodore, was the responsible person, his under
officer being a Captain Welsh.
During August each year the Solent became the happy sailing ground for
little vessels. A Mr. E. S. Heywood, a visitor to Ryde with his wife and
her sisters had, with the latter, the two Misses Peel, been for a two
days’ cruise on his schooner yacht. A rule of the sea provides that a
steamer gives place to a sailing vessel when on the starboard tack, for
obvious reasons, and Heywood’s ship, the _Mistletoe_, was keeping
steadily but slowly, for there was no wind, on its course, when the
Queen’s yacht, the _Alberta_, was seen to be coming towards them at the
rate of sixteen or seventeen knots an hour. No one dreamed of an
accident, but Prince Leiningen--if he was anything but a mere
figurehead--evidently thought the yacht would save itself somehow, and
did not attempt to alter his ship’s course until he was within twenty
yards of the _Mistletoe_. The latter boat tried, too late, to avert
collision, and it was rammed nearly amidships.
Commander Fullerton of the _Alberta_ and some sailors plunged into the
sea to save people, but Leiningen at once ordered his vessel to be
backed, which caused the _Mistletoe_ to sink in three minutes. He did
this, he said, to prevent spars falling upon the _Alberta_, and so even
when the accident had happened, lives which might have been saved were
lost unnecessarily, for the sinking of the _Mistletoe_ caused the very
thing which the thoughtless German wished to avoid, in that it dragged
the mainmast and rigging across the _Alberta’s_ bowsprit. These in their
fall carried Miss Peel, the master, and Captain Fullerton down with the
vessel. Fullerton rose at once, the master was picked up in a drowning
state and died in half an hour; Miss Peel’s body was found entangled in
the rigging; a dead sailor was also picked up some days later, and two
others were injured.
Victoria stood on the bridge of the _Alberta_, wringing her hands,
through this dreadful scene, and--as was expressly stated in the
papers--giving orders that every effort should be made to save the
persons on board! but Captain Fullerton and the sailors who plunged did
not wait for orders, royal or otherwise. The reports also laid great
stress upon the fact that her Majesty spoke to the Miss Peel who was
saved and made constant inquiries after the injured, and that on
reaching Gosport she gave orders that no efforts were to be spared on
behalf of the sufferers, and every attention was to be paid to their
wants. Had she not done so it would have been monstrous, but to report
such natural acts was to reduce a tragedy to the limits of the Court
Circular.
The _Alberta_ was half an hour late in arriving at Gosport, where
anxiety was felt for its safety, so punctual was the Queen, and when it
drew up in Clarence Yard it was noted that its bowsprit was carried
away and the bows broken. The royal family immediately went to the
train, but her Majesty was very anxious and dubious about starting, as
she feared that, the train being behind time, some accident might
happen. However, she was assured that a late train was always looked for
more anxiously than one running punctually, and that every precaution
would be taken.[16]
This accident made a great sensation, which recurred for months, revived
by Coroners, Admiralty and Parliamentary Inquiries. But the sensation
was not so much horror at the accident--accidents had happened
before--but horror at the indifference shown publicly by the Queen.
Never once was a word or sign allowed to reach her people that she felt
sorrow or wished to make reparation. She rode over her subjects and
passed on to the north, and papers reported the ordinary, trivial
occurrences taking place which were usual at Balmoral. She may have been
prostrated with grief, her nerves may have been shaken to pieces; if so,
no one heard of it, and she was judged according to what people knew.
Her only activity was displayed in trying to save her servants from
blame and in endeavouring to fasten the fault upon the victims of the
disaster.
There were several coroner’s inquests, but information about one will
suffice, though in all attempts were made to suppress free disclosures.
Leiningen was called as a witness at the first, and refused to answer a
question until he had read aloud a letter he had received from his
queen-aunt, which frankly condoled with him in this trouble and
expressed her Majesty’s thorough confidence in his ability and
carefulness. It was evidently intended to impress coroner and jury in
his favour.
Yet he had to admit that the _Alberta_ was going at a speed which was
dangerous in so crowded a sea, that it was an unbreakable rule that a
steamer must give way to a sailing vessel on the starboard tack, and
that had the _Alberta’s_ helm been put to starboard she would have
passed at the stern of the _Mistletoe_; also that no order was given to
alter the _Alberta’s_ course until she was within fifteen or twenty
yards of the yacht. One of the quartermasters declared that the
_Alberta_ had got into such a position that she would have run the
schooner down in any case.
The commander of the _Victoria and Albert_, which was following the
_Alberta_, gave curious evidence. He spoke of “the speed at which the
royal yachts are obliged to go,” and on being questioned as to his
meaning, replied--
“Her Majesty, having the fastest yachts built for the special purpose of
passing to her residence at the Isle of Wight, she is desirous to make
the passage as rapidly as possible. The officers conducting the royal
yacht were at the same time to take every precaution to ensure the
safety of the vessel at the speed at which it may be travelling. It is
the wish of her Majesty to travel fast. I do not wish to convey the
meaning that royal yachts are to run over everything to oblige others to
give way. Every care is taken. They are built fast, and what does the
Queen have fast vessels for--surely not to travel at four miles an
hour! Sixteen knots is the usual speed, or faster if they can go. It is
like a railway train. If a man steps on the line just in front of the
train the driver could not prevent an accident.”
Such a statement showed the perversity of reasoning which justified the
matter to the royal servants; for the only likeness between the yacht
and the train was in the use of steam, the train having no liberty of
movement. But beyond that was the absolute belief that if the Queen
wished to make the Solent and the bays near Ryde dangerous she had a
perfect right to do so.
One juror tried to get a definite opinion from Mr. Heywood, who had been
picked up nearly drowned, as to where the blame lay, and turning to the
coroner, the latter asked--
“Is it fair for me to say that I think the greatest blame attaches to
those on board her Majesty’s yacht?”
The coroner decided that it was unfair.
It was declared in Parliament, in April 1875, that one of the jurors was
a friend of Captain Welsh, and the other was so dependent on the
dockyard that he did not dare to agree in a verdict hostile to the
officers. It was further asserted that an officer called on the coroner
and urged the inclusion of these two men on the jury. Whether this was
true or not, the two men stood out against the verdict of manslaughter
brought in by the other ten, and the jury had to be dismissed. The
second jury, knowing what was required, brought it in as accident,
adding that the officers of the royal yacht ordered excessive speed, and
that their watch was ill kept. On leaving the court at the end of the
inquest the officers were mobbed by an excited crowd and had to be
given police protection.
The Admiralty Court of Inquiry was held in camera, the only thing known
by the public being that Leiningen was pronounced blameless and Welsh
was reprimanded. At once the angry people declared Victoria had taken
means to protect her nephew. Certainly the relationship had stood him in
good stead.
The Queen was injudicious enough to have a letter sent directly after
the Gosport verdict to Lord Exeter, President of the Royal Victoria
Yacht Club at Cowes, which ran as follows--
“It has appeared in the course of the recent inquiry at Gosport that it
is a common practice for private yachts to approach the royal yacht when
her Majesty is on board, from motives of loyalty or curiosity. It is
evident that such a proceeding must at all times be attended with
considerable risks, and in summer, when the Solent is crowded with
vessels, such manœuvres are extra dangerous. The Queen has therefore
commanded me to request that you will kindly assist her Majesty in
making it known to all owners of yachts how earnestly the Queen hopes
that this practice, which may lead to lamentable results, should be
discontinued.”
This letter further inflamed feeling against the Queen, for it was taken
to mean that she blamed Mr. Heywood, though it had been shown that he
and his party were at tea in the saloon until there was a cry of danger
and were not royalty-hunting. It was also taken to mean that Victoria
did not intend to lessen her speed. The members of the club were
furious and instructed their secretary to reply that, in the opinion of
the club, “the royal yachts in the Solent violated without restraint the
ordinary rules of navigation.”
_Punch_ apologized for the Queen’s letter by saying that half of it had
been lost, and that in the missing part the Queen had commanded General
Ponsonby to remind all officers of her ships to keep a careful look-out,
and never under any circumstances to go at excessive speed. Above all,
it was to be borne in mind that the maritime rule of the road between
steam and sailing vessels admitted of no exception, whatever be the
dignity of the flag or the rank of the passenger on board the steamer.
It was stated that Victoria had compensated the widows of the drowned
men, and it is impossible not to hope earnestly that it was so, for she
had great sympathy with those who lost by death. The newspapers
asserted, however, that it was not true, that she had not given a penny,
but that it was the Admiralty which had allotted £400 to one and £500 to
the other, on condition that these terms were accepted as a full
discharge of all claims. Heywood, it was said, had set an example of
patience, self-control and personal liberality which put royalty and
officialdom to the blush, for he had paid his crew their wages in full
and had compensated them for their losses. He received £3000 from the
Admiralty, which could not, however, have compensated him for the loss
of his schooner. One outspoken paper asked the following questions: “Has
the Queen sent Heywood a cheque for the loss of his yacht? Has she
given the crew a single sixpence? Has she done what would have been more
queenly still, ordered a new yacht for Mr. Heywood? Has she given orders
that the speed of her yacht should be lessened? Has she reprimanded her
officers? She has done none of these things, but has done what would
influence a verdict and has insulted the subject who has been so
generously forbearing.”
Very bitter was the feeling against the Queen--a bitterness caused by
her resolute silence, by her refusal to acknowledge that she or those
about her could be wrong, and the indirect attempt to put blame on other
shoulders. It all came back to the old cause of dissension between her
and her people, the difference in the point of view concerning what was
royal, the difference between the German view and the English, the
difference between the sovereign who felt personally above law, and the
ideal sovereign who was the proud upholder of law in every way to her
people.
CHAPTER XIV
QUEEN-EMPRESS
“In the fulness of years and of successful management the Lady of
the House was buried, and her memory is cherished still--but it is
the memory of the manager of the ‘Queen’s Head;’ and not of the
‘Empress’s Crown.’ Under the former she had won her high repute;
the other could add nothing to it.”--_The Blot on the Queen’s
Head._
“Those who were present at dinner when Disraeli proposed the
Queen’s health as Empress of India, with a little speech as flowery
as the oration of a Maharajah, used to describe the pretty smiling
bow, half a curtsey, which the Queen made as he sat down. It is
still remembered how much more she used to smile in conversation
with him than she did with any other of her
ministers.”--‘_Quarterly Review_,’ April 1901.
Disraeli, having found himself obliged to give much attention to
domestic affairs, was yet dreaming of wider glory. Like Bismarck, he did
not find the highest place in his nation’s councils enough; he wanted to
have the world as a playground, to feel that _his_ mind had influenced
great affairs in great countries, that he was not only a power in
England, but in Europe, in Asia and in Africa. It was at least a great
ambition, and so long as his work was beneficent it was worthy of
praise. He began by turning his attention to the truculent country near
home, for Germany had been behaving in a very suspicious way.
In 1874 the Germans were fortifying without stint Strasburg and Metz,
and adding a chain of detached forts of incredible strength. France’s
only new frontier work was Epinal, and later Toul, Paris being made the
strong place of the country. Bismarck, afraid, or pretending to be
afraid, of France attempting retaliation, was preparing for a second
Franco-Prussian war.
The Queen heard much of what was going on in Berlin and Darmstadt from
her daughters and others, and she and her minister did their best to put
an end to the mischief. She implored the Tsar to do what he could to
prevent such a calamity, and the Tsar wrote to Emperor William, which
gave Bismarck a fine opportunity for uttering spiteful things about
Victoria. She also wrote personally to William, and he, like the pious
hypocrite he was, answered in pained surprise that she could deem him
capable of such an enormity as plunging Europe into war; altogether, had
not facts proved all her contentions, the Queen might have experienced
the mortifying feeling of having been an interfering busybody over
nothing. But she knew and all the others knew that she was right, and
though, had Germany been thoroughly prepared and ready to surprise the
world with some false charge of French treachery, the war would not have
been delayed because of Victoria, it is certain that the detection of
their only half-completed plans destroyed them for the time.
Disraeli’s next good deed was to send the Prince of Wales to India, a
plan which synchronized with some public criticisms of the Prince, who,
being tired of his occupation of making embroidery for the royal
reputation, had broken out in a new place. He had begun to vary his
public good deeds by displaying an intense interest in horse-racing and
horse-rearing, which shocked the unco’ guid. The _Daily News_ warned him
against following the devious ways of his great-uncle, “who, if the
first gentleman in England in manners, was also the most vulgar ruffian
in Europe in morals,” and advised him--without any reference to what
might have been the Queen’s wishes--to fill that vacant place of
confidential agent of the monarchy between the sovereign and her
ministers which so badly needed filling. Others followed this lead, and
Albert Edward was much in the position of the men and the donkey, though
he never allowed himself to be driven to the extremity of carrying the
donkey himself.
The journey to India relieved him from this affectionate care, and it
placed him for the first time before the world in an important way as
the representative of the English Crown. Alexandra had to stay at home
in accordance with the charming Victorian custom concerning husbands and
wives; and the enthusiastic Mary of Teck, meeting the Princess, wrote--
“I thought her lovelier than ever. She is a great darling, and I _just
adore her_. Though I am quite in favour of Wales going to India, I
grieve for her at the long separation, and wish she could have gone with
him, if only for a part of the time.”[17]
The Prince and Princess were at Balmoral just before the departure for
the East, and the Queen arranged “various details of this anxious
journey to India.” In making his adieux Albert Edward said good-bye to
Löhlein, ex-valet to his father, also to Brown; and the Queen wrote--
“I saw how that began to try him, and I felt nearly upset myself when
Brown shook him by the hand and said, ‘God bless your Royal Highness,
and bring you safe back!’”
One wonders if the Prince appreciated the initiative being taken by the
servant as much as he welcomed the good wish.
The Prime Minister followed this good idea with an astute stroke of
business for which England should be ever grateful to him. The Khedive,
who was on the verge of bankruptcy, held 175,000 shares out of the
400,000 in the Suez Canal, which he offered to France. The editor of the
_Pall Mall Gazette_ at the time was Frederick Greenwood, of whom George
Meredith once said--
“Greenwood was not only a great journalist, he had a statesman’s head.
The national interests were always urgent at his heart.” He alone knew
of the Khedive’s desire, and promptly communicated it to Disraeli. The
latter wasted no time, but, with the secrecy that he loved, bought the
shares for England for £4,000,000. He then astounded his Ministry and
the world with his announcement. It is to be noted to Mr. Greenwood’s
honour that he did not publish the startling transaction in his paper
until it suited the Prime Minister’s plans. When people congratulated
Disraeli on this brilliant stroke, it is said that he wagged his head in
a mysterious way and hinted that this was only part of his scheme and
there was more to follow.
At the beginning of the session 1876 some of the “more” was disclosed:
the Queen was to have a new title, but what was for a time kept secret;
then at last it was announced that she was to be an empress. The people
of England were electrified, unpleasantly, for great things had been
done through many centuries by kings or queens of England, and that
these honoured names should be overlaid by an Eastern title, cheaply
gained at the word of a minister of Eastern origin, annoyed people of
all politics and classes. What, they asked, was there about the title to
make it desired? Where were the emperors of France, where were the
ancient emperors of Germany, whose regalia still lies uselessly in the
treasure house of Austria? The Emperor in Germany but not of Germany got
no reverence in England for his new semi-imperialism, the Emperor of
Mexico had been shot, the Emperor of Brazil could give no weight to the
word, the emperors of Russia, autocrats as they were, had often to pay
with their lives for their title.
That Disraeli, with a majority of 105, could do just anything he pleased
every one knew, but the sentiment of England was against the change. As
Sir William Harcourt said, “Patriotism and loyalty--sentiments the
strongest in our nature--are made of ancient associations. It is for
these things that great men have been proud to live, and good men have
dared to die.”
Every one quoted the passage from _King John_--
“You were crowned before
And the high royalty was ne’er plucked off,
* * * * *
Therefore, to be possessed with double pomp,
To guard a title that was rich before,
To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,
To throw a perfume on the violet,
To smooth the ice, or add another hue
Unto the rainbow, or with taper-light
To seek the beauteous eye of heaven to garnish,
Is wasteful and ridiculous excess.”
Disraeli was depicted as Aladdin’s magician offering new crowns for old;
he was accused of intending to demand that a sum should be voted to
whitewash Westminster Abbey; and Victoria was asked whether she would
rather be “Victoria, Dei Gratia Angliæ Regina” or “Victoria, Disraeli
Gratia Indiæ Imperatrix”?
Disraeli liked the jibes, but he saw that some limit must be put on the
idea, and promised that it should in no circumstances be used except in
reference to India. Victoria was as delighted as a child with a new toy.
It would put her even with the Russian potentate anyhow, and Marie
Alexandrovna would no longer have cause to regard the English family as
inferior to her own, while Disraeli persuaded her that so new and great
an added honour would, with her poorer and discontented subjects, repair
the torn prestige of her royalty. To ensure this she consented to go in
semi-state to open a new wing of the London Hospital, thus giving the
East End a chance of seeing her; and _Punch_ published a cartoon showing
her standing by the bedside of a little patient, and softly touching the
child’s hair, saying--
“My darling, I hope you will be better now!”
“‘Queen of the East’ is the best title of all,” said _Punch_.
However, Victoria, prompted by Disraeli, thought that all who opposed
the idea were doing so purely from party motives; she could not conceive
that there was real loyalty and a dislike of snobbishness behind the
opposition, even though many Conservatives joined it. She used her
influence where she hoped it would be effective, and, to the intense
astonishment of Lord Shaftesbury, invited him to dine at Windsor and
stay the night of March 11, it being over twenty years since he had been
her guest.
“He was satisfied that it must be for some especial object, and he had
little doubt that it related to the question then uppermost in men’s
minds--the Royal Titles Bill. Although the weather was inclement Lord
Shaftesbury went to Windsor.
“‘I dread it,’ he wrote on the previous day; ‘the cold, the
evening-dress, the solitude, for I am old, and dislike being far away
from assistance should I be ill at night.... She sent for me in 1848 to
consult me on a very important matter. Can it be so now?’
“‘_March 14th._--Returned from Windsor. I am sure it was so, though not
distinctly avowed. Her Majesty personally said nothing....’
“The views that Lord Shaftesbury expressed at Windsor he was requested
by the Lord-in-waiting to communicate to Mr. Disraeli, and this was
accordingly done. These views were in every way opposed to the proposed
title,” and Lord Shaftesbury moved an address in the House of Lords,
praying her Majesty not to take it.[18]
It was evident from Disraeli’s reply in the House that he himself did
not look upon the matter as of dignified importance, but rather as a
pretty present to the Queen, for he treated it with great levity. He
assured the members that Milton’s Satan twice addressed Eve as Empress,
that Spencer had dedicated his _Faerie Queene_ to the “magnificent
Empress Elizabeth,” and added further that a twelve-year-old schoolgirl
had written him that in _Whitaker’s Almanack_ the Queen was already
described as Empress of India. Robert Lowe asked with contempt whether
he wished the House to think as meanly of the subject as he did himself,
and the number of dissentients greatly increased.
The bill passed, of course, under the promise that, instead of the
limitation of the title being inserted in the bill, the proclamation
should declare that the title of empress was to be localized in India
alone. But the proclamation declared nothing of the sort, the only
condition being that Victoria should not call herself Empress of
England, which led to the raking up of the whole question again. A
lively scene occurred through a rash speech of Bob Lowe’s at a dinner
at Retford, in which he voiced his strong suspicion that “at least two
previous ministers have entirely refused to have anything to do with
such a change. More pliant persons have now been found, and I have no
doubt the thing will be done.”
Gladstone wrote to say that the Queen had never made any such suggestion
to him, but Disraeli was furious, as much for himself as for his
monarch, as he said it held him up to public infamy as servile. Victoria
entrusted him with a definite contradiction of the statement, and
Disraeli violently denounced Lowe, thundering at him and banging the
table, and losing himself in a really fine spell of rhetoric gone mad.
Justin MacCarthy suggested that it would have been better had the Prime
Minister contradicted the charge quietly, and not, by “this boisterous
and furious denunciation,” have dragged the dignity of the Crown through
the mud of a parliamentary squabble.
Victoria allowed herself little restriction in the use of the new title,
for within the year she signed all English documents as Victoria R. and
I., and in 1893 caused Ind. Imp. to be engraved on British coins.
However, to the people of England the imperial title is still unfamiliar
and almost non-existent.
Disraeli had given the Queen her wish, and she in return made him a
lord, he becoming Lord Beaconsfield at the end of the session of 1876.
The Queen was proclaimed Empress of India on May 1, and on the following
1st of January Lord Lytton made the proclamation in that country at a
Durbar. In far places the colonels of regiments announced it to
assembled crowds. One is said to have insisted upon doing it in
Hindustanee in honour of the occasion, and part of his speech ran--
“Pigs! The Queen-Empress has sent to me a number of cats, which I will
now distribute among you. She requests that you will hang them round
your necks and continue to wear them in that manner.”
This affair had kept Victoria’s name well before the public, which
forgot to grumble, and she, being pleased with her ministers, forgot in
her turn to feel irritated and perverse with her people. Thus, demand
being withdrawn, she was more ready to give, and appeared several times
in London. She attended a great concert at Albert Hall, went to inspect
the elaborate Albert Memorial, in which had been placed the gilded
figure of the Prince Consort: “My gilty dad,” as Albert Edward was
reported to have flippantly said. She also attended the funeral in
Westminster Abbey of Lady Augusta Stanley.
Another of her ladies, Lady Caroline Barrington, had died suddenly at
Kensington Palace, and the Queen went up from Windsor, carrying many
flowers, that she might once again look on her waiting-woman’s face. In
this decade she lost Dr. Norman Macleod and her stepsister Feodore,
while in 1876 died a woman to whom she had early in her reign been kind,
the wife of the Duke of Sussex, whom she had created Duchess of
Inverness. Of her Princess Mary wrote--
“I, alas! no longer have my kind neighbour, the dear little Duchess, to
fall back upon.” For her was opened the tomb in Kensal Green in which
lay the old royal Duke.
Lord John Russell died in 1878 at Pembroke Lodge, and the next year the
Prince Imperial was killed in South Africa. But there were two other
deaths, more dreadful and intimate, which brought her much sorrow: one
in 1873, when a little son of Princess Alice’s fell out of a window
before his mother’s eyes, and, falling twenty feet upon the stones
below, died in a few hours; the other was five years later, on the
melancholy 14th of December, when Princess Alice, having nursed her
family through diphtheria, succumbed herself to that disease. There was
a peculiar sympathy between Victoria and this daughter, and the blow was
very heavy. The whole country grieved with her, for it had been much
impressed with the Princess’s fine qualities. She was buried in Germany,
but at her desire her body was wrapped in the Union Jack.
CHAPTER XV
A STRAIN UPON LOYALTY
“When the Government ordered the fleet to the Straits,
They surely encountered the hardest of fates,
For the order, scarce given, at once was recalled,
And the Russians were not in the slightest appalled.
And every one says who has heard the debates,
It’s the Cabinet now, not the fleet, in the straits.”
_Sir H. W. Lucy: ‘Later Peeps in Parliament.’_
“A health to Jingo first, and then
A health to shell, and then to shot!
The man who hates not other men,
I deem no perfect patriot.
To all who hold old England mad,
We drink; to all who’d tax her food!
We pledge the man who hates the Rad!
We drink to Bartle Frere and Froude!
Drinks all round!
Here’s to Jingo, king and crowned!
To the great cause of Jingo, drink, my boys!
And the great name of Jingo, round and round!”
_Anonymous parody of Tennyson’s ‘Hands All Round.’_
The absolute loyalty of Queen Victoria to the one-time opinions of her
dead husband helped to lead England occasionally into devious ways. The
Crimean War was the result of an idea in England that Turkey in Europe
was necessary to the interests of this country, and once the war was
started the Queen and Prince upheld it heart and soul. Albert had the
usual German hatred of Russia, and deplored the Prussian tendency to
court the Muscovite as an ally, expressing himself with astonishing
frankness in his letters.
In 1875 came the beginning of another incident between Russia and
Turkey, and the Queen followed exactly the same course as had been
pursued over twenty years earlier, and unfortunately she had Disraeli,
with his wild dreams of world expansion, at her elbow.
The Turks were actively oppressing their Christian subjects, the Slavs,
and turning their backs upon past promises and conventions. The great
powers, Russia, Austria and Prussia, drew up a Note demanding Turkey’s
adhesion to past treaties, and asked the other nations to join them.
France and Italy at once agreed, but England hesitated until such time
had passed that Turkey herself felt oppressed and sent a message to
England, which was in effect--
“Sign, my dear friend, that tiresome note. I shall know that you do not
mean it, and I shall also know how to deal with it.”
England signed, and the note was received in Constantinople “with lively
satisfaction.” It gave Turkey time, and she went on with her schemes for
punishing the Christians. Then the Powers drew up another Note, plainly
declaring that, if Turkey insisted upon transgressing, Europe would
force her to decency. It would have settled the matter, for Turkey would
not have thought of fighting Europe. But to England’s shame she
resolutely refused to sign this warning, and so deliberately broke the
Concert of Europe. It was tantamount to saying that Turkey was to be
allowed to do as she liked, and England would uphold her.
Why was this?
Nominally because England suspected the good faith of Russia, and was in
deadly fear lest the Tsar should obtain Constantinople in some curious
way. But behind this were two reasons, both inadequate and, from a
political point of view, vicious. The one I have indicated, the legacy
of opinion left to England by the Prince Consort; the other was
contained in the prejudices and ambitions of the Prime Minister, who,
whatever his public pretensions, was at heart a Jew. In the last year of
his life he said to Lord Ronald Gower--
“I would indeed be very ungrateful to Christianity, which has caused
half the world to worship a man and the other half a woman, both of my
race.”
As such, Disraeli had far more sympathy with the Mahommedans than with
the Eastern Christians; had not the latter often persecuted the Jews?
and how could he declare friendship for Russia? And further, he had
gorgeous dreams concerning Egypt; perhaps, as some one said, of
advancing from an earl to being Duke of Memphis.
So, for what might be called English royal family reasons, Turkey went
on its way rejoicing. It burned Bulgarian villages and put every
inhabitant to the sword; Turkish soldiers took whole parties of girls,
and having done with them thrust them into barns and then burnt
buildings and humans to cinders. The church at Batak was found piled
with bodies, mostly women and children, half-way up the low arches. It
had been set on fire, pieces of the roof torn off and burning oil poured
in upon those below. Those who tried to escape were sabred, and the
churchyard was piled two feet deep with bodies. These are but incidents
in the many terrible things that occurred, and warnings of which were
sent to England by alarmed English out there. Then reports arrived, but
neither warning nor report moved Disraeli. He laughed at it all, called
the accounts “coffee-house babble,” and as they were first published in
_The Daily News_, declared that it was all a party trick.
The country got hot over it, and questions were constantly asked in the
House; _The Daily News_ sent out a new Commissioner, who returned with
confirmation of all that had been told, and added horrible details.
Still Disraeli treated it with scorn, and, knowing little of Turkish
affairs, asserted that the Bashi-Bazouks were Circassians who had long
lived in Bulgaria by the consent of Europe, and went on to reproach the
“Liberal Party with the lack of sympathy they now showed for a race of
beings in whom they once professed such an interest.” He also described
the Bulgarians as cruel oppressors of the Turks, probably having once
read Voltaire’s _Candide_. As late as August 11 he asserted that the
whole thing was negligible and grossly exaggerated, and that the
integrity of the Ottoman Empire should be the leading principle of the
foreign policy of England.
That was the last speech he made in the Commons, and it ended on the
word “empire.” Instead of passing behind the Speaker’s chair, he walked
the full length of the House, turned about at the Bar, glanced round at
the familiar scene, and walked out never to return.
The next morning all the world was astonished to hear that he had gone
to the Upper House as Lord Beaconsfield. The moment chosen helped him
over a difficult situation. He intended to stick to his policy, but he
knew that the majority of the country was against him, and he told the
Queen that he must resign. She suggested his acceptance of a peerage,
and he replied, “Yes, but with resignation.” She answered that that was
impossible in the then state of Europe.[19]
Not only the Queen, but under her influence her Court was loudly
pro-Turk, especially Leopold and Mary of Teck. The Prince of Wales was
the only one who truly regarded his royal position, and no one ever knew
on which side he stood, while he retained relations of equal cordiality
with the leaders of both parties.
To save its credit the Government had to send out a representative to
inquire into the “atrocities,” and he came back with much the same
story, upon which the excitement rose high. Gladstone who, being
sixty-five, had resigned the leadership of his party in 1873, was moved
with such indignation that he wrote a pamphlet upon the question which
went like wildfire, and he spoke at great meetings, championing the
cause of the Slavs, and saying that England should send the Turks out of
Bulgaria, bag and baggage.
Beaconsfield retaliated when speaking at what had been his own seat,
Aylesbury, by a violent diatribe against the enemies of Turkey, and
added that “the conduct of his political opponents was worse than any
Bulgarian atrocity.” At the Lord Mayor’s banquet later, he hinted at
approaching war with Russia, and from that time no one, not even his own
followers, knew what he would do next.
The Queen, as has been said, was wholeheartedly for Turkey; sorry for
the Bulgarians, of course, but that was not diplomacy; and politically
she never had had sympathy for small countries rebelling against
tyrannical rulers; all through her life, without exception, she had been
true to her caste, and had upheld monarchy against oppressed people. Up
to the autumn of 1876 she thought the matter had been managed fairly
well. She believed that the public disgust at Turkey would soon die
down, especially if she could show Russia as she herself saw her. And
then across this growing content fell Gladstone’s pamphlet. She was
astounded and then furious. The man had resigned the leadership; how
dared he come forward in this way? She seemed to think that in that
resignation he had sold his birthright as an Englishman and a
politician. Had there been any wavering in her mind about war, this
settled it, and “She accepted unhesitatingly Lord Beaconsfield’s view
that England was bound to protect Turkey from injury at Russia’s
hands.”[20]
Russia may have been as untrustworthy as our Imperialists believed, but
it cannot be denied that up to that point Russia had been perfectly
correct in her attitude, and she was equally correct in her further
proceedings. She said--
“Here is an offshoot of my own nation, speaking a form of my own tongue
and following my own religion, being exterminated by a lawless and
barbarous nation. I have asked you to help me peacefully to protect
Bulgaria, and you have refused. Now I shall take matters into my own
hands and fight for it.”
Victoria did her utmost to dissuade the Tsar, to make him leave his
kinsmen a continued prey to the inhumanities of the Turk. She privately
based her reasoning entirely upon Albert’s programme of twenty-four
years earlier, and she felt that every right-minded person would agree
with her. Alexander listened politely and refused to be bound by the
wishes of her defunct consort.
The third volume of Albert’s life, which had been intended to be the
last, was then being written, and she altered the whole scope of it, for
it had reached the period of the Crimean War. The book dealt with this
in every detail, and though she could not possibly have conceived it, it
was not altogether to the Prince’s credit. It showed him as an advocate
of war at all risks and to the last extreme. Prussia, for refusing to
join England in that reckless war, was vilified in the Prince’s letters
to Stockmar: “Prussia’s conduct is truly revolting, and the King is
looked upon by all political men here with profound contempt.” The King
was also described as a nobody, who dishonoured his monarchy, as a tool
of Russia, as trembling in his shoes, and ready to pawn his soul rather
than provoke Russia.
The book also showed how, at the instigation of Stockmar, the Prince and
the Queen had interfered in politics, badgered their ministers, and had
gravely accepted such nonsense from the old German as, “The old Tories
have died out, and the race which in the present day (1854) bears the
name are simply bastards,” and “the Whigs stand in the same relation to
the Throne as the wolf does to the lamb.”
Theodore Martin suggested that in deference to the relationship between
the royal families of Russia and England, various passages should be
deleted, but the Queen scorned the idea. “Do not let the fact of my
son’s marriage into the Russian family weigh with you for a moment!
Whatever conclusions you come to upon the facts and documents before
you, express them as if no such marriage existed,” was her command. The
book was published in 1877, provoking five marvellous criticisms by
“Verax” in the _Manchester Guardian_, criticisms which were a deep sign
of the spirit of the time.
Alexander fought and thrashed Turkey, and Victoria, watching events with
trembling anxiety, “did not dissemble her disgust and disappointment”
at his success.
At the end of 1877, to show her confidence in him, Queen Victoria with
Princess Beatrice went, with much publicity, to visit Beaconsfield at
Hughenden, lunched with him and planted the inevitable tree on the lawn.
It was done in the face of Europe, and Europe duly registered the fact
that in policy Victoria was one with her Prime Minister.
Beaconsfield denounced Russia so often, hinting, as often at war, that
the people began at last to believe that their country was in imminent
danger, and that their solemn duty was to fight for the unspeakable
Turk, who had showered honours upon the soldiers engaged in murder and
rapine in Bulgaria. He tried his utmost to push England into another
Crimea, but his Cabinet was not with him, and he once said in private
conversation, “In my Cabinet of twelve we have six parties; two think we
should go to war with Russia immediately, two think that we should go to
war with her before she gets to Constantinople, two think we should go
to war with her when she has reached Constantinople, two think we should
not go to war at all.” He ended with, “The Chancellor of the Exchequer
and I think that something ought to be done, but we don’t know what it
should be.”
A curious comedy in five acts took place in this divergent Cabinet, and
five times we were on the brink of war, each crisis coinciding with a
popular upheaval provoked by ministerial papers, and from the musichalls
came the Jingo chorus--
“We don’t want to fight--
But, by jingo, if we do,
We’ve got the ships, we’ve got the men,
We’ve got the money too.”
ACT I.--January 1878. Beaconsfield insisting that the Fleet be sent to
the Dardanelles as a threat to Russia, Lord Carnarvon resigned. The
Prime Minister retracted.
ACT II.--Fleet ordered to Dardanelles. Lord Carnarvon finally and Lord
Derby for the first time gave in resignations. Beaconsfield drew back,
ordering Fleet to stop at Besika Bay.
ACT III.--Demand for money for Army and Navy. The Fleet again ordered to
Constantinople to protect the Turks. Russia replied, “Then my Fleet
shall go there to protect the Christians.” Compromise made. British
ships not to touch Gallipoli. Russian ships to keep to south of
Dardanelles.
ACT IV.--News of peace between Russia and Turkey, and distracted cries
of Austria that she had been cheated. Jingo shouts for war--under
prompting; Reserves called out, Army brought from India to Malta. Derby
resigned finally, checkmating Beaconsfield again.
ACT V.--Public bluff. Loud threatenings--to sustain the Jingoes--and
secret treaties signed with Russia and Turkey.
During the third act the British public went mad. Crowds patrolled the
London streets shrieking for war, howling over Gladstone as a traitor
and threatening to pull down his house brick by brick, so that a force
of police had to be kept in readiness to prevent disaster. One Sunday
three different parties arrived, one friendly, the others hostile, and
in spite of the police all the windows were broken. There were other and
worse demonstrations, on one occasion Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone being
dragged from the steps and mobbed. “There is strange work behind the
curtain,” said Gladstone; “the instigators are really those guilty; no
one can wonder at the tools.” (It was by many believed that Disraeli’s
hatred of Gladstone had caused these personal attacks.)
A few days after the breaking of his windows Gladstone received a
post-office order for £3 10_s._, the sender, a working man, saying that
he was so ashamed of what had happened that he, his wife and family had
scraped together money to repair the damage.
At this time Beaconsfield said to a friend, “I have got the Parliament
and the nation at my back, and if I were ten years younger I could
settle all Europe.” Yet his fall, the result of his own Imperialism, was
not far off, for the inevitable reaction against a too enthusiastic
jingoism had set in.
But before that happened his career was to receive its crown at that
European Congress at Berlin suggested by Bismarck. He attained the dream
of his life, and one feels glad that, whatever his faults, this
ambitious man of “dissolving views,” this “melancholy harlequin,” as
Carlyle dubbed him, should have attained to that fugitive glory which
appealed to his soul. He made himself plenipotentiary with Lord
Salisbury at the Berlin Congress, and through Germany his journey was a
progress in the midst of a curious, gratified and acclamatory people.
This hollow fraud of a congress had its humorous incidents, for
Beaconsfield, knowing that the official language would be French, but
speaking that language very badly, determined to make his speech in that
tongue, and he learned it by heart under the tuition of his fellow
minister. Lord Odo Russell, the ambassador in Berlin, was in despair,
and had the wit, on being appealed to, to say--
“But that will be a great disappointment.”
“Why?”
“Because, knowing that you are a great master of English eloquence,
every one has been looking forward to your addressing the Congress in
English as to an intellectual treat.”
“You don’t say so!” replied Beaconsfield musingly, and the French speech
was torn up. His French was so poor that he found it very difficult to
follow the other speakers, and each day before setting out drank three
tumblers of good port to steady his nerves.
To the public the Conference seemed a great thing, but in reality it was
a pretence. Two secret treaties had already been signed, and in face of
Victoria’s insistence upon her right to pass every detail of diplomatic
affairs, it must be supposed that this was done with her sanction. One
treaty gave Russia part of what it wanted, approximating to Gladstone’s
“bag and baggage” policy; the other was a convention with Turkey,
promising to defend that country in Asia, and demanding the cession of
Cyprus.
These treaties were published in the _Globe_ four days after the
plenipotentiaries had started for Berlin, through the instrumentality of
a clerk, engaged temporarily in copying at the Foreign Office. He was
accused at Bow Street of stealing information, but the charge was
quashed as the Government dared not risk publicity. Thus, as Moncure
Conway wrote, “the whole theatric display ended with the grand London
Ballet, _Aphrodite_, of which Cyprus was the scene, Beaconsfield and the
Queen of Cyprus the hero and heroine.”
At the Conference the Russian minister and Beaconsfield had a sparring
match to keep up appearances, and then came to an agreement, upon which
the English hero telegraphed to his sovereign that he had secured peace
with honour. Joyous meetings were held all over the country. No one
understood anything about it, except that the Prime Minister had in some
wonderful way assured a glorious peace to our land, and some people did
not even comprehend that. For at one gathering, when a great
transparency of Beaconsfield and Salisbury was shown, a woman accosted
the sitting member of the place with--
“Please, sir, will you tell me which is Peace?” (the murderer).
But the “peace with honour” was only three weeks old when “the bloody
overture was being played all over again,” and the newspapers were
filled with accounts of a new campaign, involving Austria, Turkey,
Bosnia and Herzegovina. As _The Hornet_, of Conservative politics said,
the phrase was “a claptrap euphemism for rapine, pillage and slaughter.”
Gladstone, who knew the inner workings of this wonderful diplomatic
affair, angered Beaconsfield by describing the Conference as an insane
convention; so the latter gave utterance at a dinner to the famous
retort that Gladstone was “a sophistical rhetorician inebriated with the
exuberance of his own verbosity, and gifted with that egotistical
imagination that can at all times command an interminable and
inconsistent series of arguments to malign an opponent and to glorify
himself.”
The Queen honoured Beaconsfield on his return to England by conferring
on him the Order of the Garter.
Like Bismarck, Beaconsfield was drunk with Imperialism, which inevitably
means war. He had sent Sir Bartle Frere to South Africa and Lord Lytton
to India, first imbuing both with his policy, and both obeyed not wisely
but too well. South African affairs are so little known that it is
difficult to judge what was or was not necessary in regard to the Zulus
or the Boers, but general opinion decried Bartle Frere’s Zulu War as
unnecessary. The withdrawal of Indian troops to Malta caused a
threatening movement by Russia upon Afghanistan, and Lytton retaliated
by taking steps to establish English influence in that country, and so
came the Afghan War.
The sensation of the South African War, apart from the later event of
Majuba Hill, was the death of the Prince Imperial. It was his own fault
from beginning to end, for he was a wilful, masterful person. He
insisted upon joining the English force that, by proving himself on the
field, he might make himself acceptable to France; yet there were hints
that one motive was said to be a love affair with a girl at Chislehurst.
Popular report, however, insisted that there was an attachment between
him and Princess Beatrice, and much sympathy was felt for her when the
news came.
Though the Prince was only allowed to go as a spectator in the war area,
he joined, in spite of remonstrance, in reconnaissance work, and
further, when the little force was starting on the morning of the
fatality, he insisted upon going away with half of it, refusing to wait
for the others, who were late. In the afternoon, when Lieutenant Carey
urged the necessity of returning, he refused to shorten his siesta, and
so was caught. It was almost as though the gods intended his death. To
his mother at Chislehurst it brought terrible sorrow, and no one showed
her such sympathy and loving-kindness as Queen Victoria, who had learned
through grief how to assuage grief. The latter wanted Parliament to put
up a statue to him in Westminster, and even visited the Abbey to select
a spot, persuading Gladstone, ever pliant to her in sentimental matters,
to support the idea; but it was refused on the grounds of policy and
nationality, so she had to withdraw the request, contenting herself with
putting a memorial in St. George’s Chapel.
These two wars were the death-knell to Beaconsfield’s political life.
The people were beginning to tire of Jingoism, to feel a distrust of
the Prime Minister’s foreign policy, and there was an alarming deficit
in finance, for glory had to be paid for. However, neither the Queen nor
Beaconsfield scented danger, for the latter’s love of show and power had
run away with him. Without the inflexibility of Bismarck, he still
further emulated that “blood and iron” statesman by declaring to his
mistress that he desired to make her (poor little woman!) the Dictatress
of Europe (and poor Europe!), writing, “Many things are preparing, which
for the sake of peace and civilization render it most necessary that
your Majesty should occupy that position.”
“Who knows what dreams of domination these two gave themselves up to in
the communion of their souls, this subjugated woman and this prodigious
actor?”[21]
London still applauded the Prime Minister, the clubs entertaining him,
and neither he nor the Queen looked for signs into the country or among
those who felt the economic pinch. Her anger was still hot against
Gladstone for his opposition to Beaconsfield. In the spring, when Arthur
of Connaught was married to Princess Louise Margaret, third daughter of
Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, she offered the public affront to
Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone of refusing to ask them to the wedding, though
Beaconsfield himself urged it, and though Gladstone had again thrown his
influence on her side in the matter of settlements. But she did more
than this. Knowing that the Gladstones often visited the Wellesleys at
the Deanery at Windsor, Victoria wrote to the Dean suggesting that, as
Mr. Gladstone was making violent attacks on the Government, it would be
as well to cause these visits to be discontinued. “Whereupon,” said the
stout old Dean, “I wrote her a tickler.” Imagination boggles at the
thought, says Mr. G. W. E. Russell, who tells the story.
In the autumn of 1879 Gladstone was invited to contest Midlothian, and
he started at the end of November on that remarkable campaign which, for
a man who a year before had congratulated himself if he walked a short
distance in London without being insulted, whose very friends feared his
eloquence and his energy, was a bewildering and enthusiastic progress
through town after town, ever surrounded by cheering crowds.
Beaconsfield called it the Pilgrimage of Passion.
Viscount Esher tells a story, which is hardly parliamentary, of George
Hamilton attacking Gladstone in a public speech during this campaign.
“And why did Mr. Gladstone do this, and why did he do the other? I will
tell you why. Mr. Gladstone has an eye on the Treasury Bench.” Upon this
a man in the crowd cried out, “Yes, and if you don’t look out he will
have his b--m on it soon.”
In his speeches Gladstone did not spare either the Prime Minister or the
Government, and Victoria’s indignation was intense, she declaring both
in conversation and in letters that his attacks on her favourite were
shameful and disgraceful. It is certain that, had the case been
reversed, she would have thought Beaconsfield justified in using the
highest and lowest of his enormous range of rhetoric and invective
against Gladstone. But with high hearts, still sure that the people must
see with their eyes and look forward to a glorious future under their
foreign policy, the Queen and Beaconsfield decided in March 1880 that
the Government must go to the country; and Victoria went to visit
Germany, to stay in the home of her dear lost daughter, in thorough
confidence as to the result. But from the very first day of the
elections it was evident that a tremendous reaction had set in, and when
all was done the Liberals had a majority in England, Wales and Scotland
of 119. Thus ended what Madame Blaze de Bury described as “the reign of
the mad Caliph.”
Beaconsfield was staying at Hatfield alone, for Salisbury was abroad,
and as the news rolled in upon him, hour by hour, he faced the ruins of
his hopes as a great man, accepting with a seemingly undisturbed mind
the conviction of his final downfall; and turned to the completing of
his last novel, _Endymion_. He had reached to the very summit of honour,
had refused a dukedom offered by his distressed queen, and felt that he
had no time left in which to regret lost dreams. Lord Ronald Gower says
that he gave himself two more years of life, and the Queen twenty. He
also once remarked, “Bismarck and I were perfectly in accord. Had the
late Government lasted we would have kept the democrats in Europe in
check; but now all is over!” He did not realize that the very desire to
keep a living force in check had helped to bring about his own downfall.
Exactly a year later, on April 19, 1881, Beaconsfield died of gout and
bronchitis, saying during his illness, “I would confess anything, if I
were a Nihilist, under my torture.” When he was dying one watching
doctor said, “I think the old gentleman is gone at last,” and Dizzy,
humorous to the end, quietly remarked, “Not yet.”
The Queen asked, and Gladstone offered, a public funeral, but the
statesman had wished to lie by his wife. As had been her burial, so was
his, the coffin being carried through the grounds of Hughenden to the
churchyard; but the service was attended by many uninvited princes,
ambassadors and country people.
Victoria, writing later in the year on the death of the Duchess of
Westminster, said, “_I_ don’t understand the wish to be buried in a
churchyard, but I _know some_ vaults are gloomy and painful.” She sent
two wreaths for the grave, the one of immortelles inscribed, “With the
true affection, respect and friendship of the Queen”; the other was a
wreath of primroses, with a card bearing the words, “_His_ favourite
flower. Gathered at Osborne. A tribute of affection from Queen
Victoria.”
Only one person was ever designated in this way without a name by
Victoria; to her the pronoun thus used could refer only to one, Prince
Albert. But sentimentalists rushed to the idea that Beaconsfield had
loved the lowly primrose, and they still dedicate the flower to his
memory. He was once asked--I forget by whom--if he liked the primrose,
and replied, “Yes, in a salad.” On the other hand he is reported to have
said, “I like to be in the country when the primroses are out.” That
Beaconsfield, with his love of colour and gorgeousness, with his eyes
always raised to the stars of fame, with his wild ambition to rule
Europe, had the right sentiment to love a lowly yellow blossom is
unthinkable. But to Prince Albert, deeply interested in wood and field,
in life animate and inanimate, such a preference was natural. The Queen,
seeing in the primrose cult a new agent in strengthening Conservatism,
never declared what her sentence had meant.
However, some of us still smile over Primrose Day, but many sorrow over
the devastation of field, hedgerow and coppice, over the bespoiled
country and the children who seek and cannot find the yellow flowers
after that murderous spring day has passed.
A week after the funeral two women clad in mourning entered the
churchyard at Hughenden. The elder woman was Queen Victoria, and she
went alone to Beaconsfield’s grave, where, weeping, she laid a wreath
and a cross of white camellias--far better emblem of the dead man’s
tastes--upon it. She then joined her daughter Beatrice and went to the
Manor, resting awhile in his study. The following year she ordered a
monument to be put in Hughenden Church, upon which was inscribed--
“To the dear and honoured memory of Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, this
memorial is raised by his grateful and affectionate Sovereign and
friend, Victoria, R.I. Kings love them that speaketh right.”
Some of those who still thought of the Bulgarian atrocities made the
reverse comment that “Queens love them that speaketh wrong.”
Beaconsfield’s supporters were joyful over the evidence that the Queen
was on their side, but a little later they found that she could be
equally eulogistic about a quite different person.
The dreadful strain which had been put upon the loyalty of England for
five years was over. If you read the remarkable essays already
mentioned, which were written by H. Dunckley in the _Manchester
Guardian_ and signed “Verax,” in 1878, it will be easier to understand
how the whole constitution tottered under the combined actions of
Victoria and Beaconsfield. As the Hon. G. W. E. Russell says in his _An
Onlooker’s Notebook_, “That the strain did not reach bursting-point was
beyond all question due to the facts that the throne was occupied by a
queen, and that the real leader of the militant Opposition was the man
who of all others most ardently cherished the principle of chivalrous
loyalty to the Crown.”
Englishmen would never have borne from a king what they passed over as
coming from a queen.
CHAPTER XVI
ANGER AND MORTIFICATION
“Perched as I am on a dreary, sad pinnacle of solitary
grandeur.”--_Queen Victoria, in a letter to Sir Theodore Martin._
“The cause of the rising in the Sudan is the cause of all risings
against Turkish rule, wherever they have occurred. No one who has
been in a Turkish province and has witnessed the results of the
Bashi-Bazouk system, which excited so much indignation some time
ago in Bulgaria, will need to be told why the people of the Sudan
have risen in revolt against the Khedive. The Turks, the
Circassians, and the Bashi-Bazouks have plundered and oppressed the
people in the Sudan as they plundered and oppressed them in the
Balkan peninsula.... That the people were justified in rebelling,
nobody who knows the treatment to which they were subjected will
attempt to deny.... It is a mistake to regard the Mahdi as in any
sense a religious leader; he personified popular discontent.... The
movement is not religious, but an outbreak of despair.”--_Letter by
General Gordon, included in ‘Events in the Life of Charles G.
Gordon,’ by H. W. Gordon._
With the fall and death of Disraeli the Queen lost far more than a
friend; she lost her dreams, her ambition, her feeling of security and
her happiness. When Gladstone was in power his aim was to consolidate
Britain from within; when Beaconsfield was in power his desire was to
extend the empire outwards. The former went straight at his mark of
renovating outworn laws and customs, raising the standard of the people
and reforming abuses; the latter spoke softly to his Queen, pointed to
her colonies and whispered that they spread over the earth, that the
tie which must bind them to England would be neither Parliament nor
blood, but the Empress-Queen. Beaconsfield raised dreams of world-wide
dominance which would have done justice to a Hohenzollern; he bred in
her mind an appreciation of war, and tutored her in believing that
aggrandisement justified war; he kept the people in a constant state of
surprise, cast over them the glamour of a spirited foreign policy, and
presented them with finely coloured dramatic pictures, such as Peace
with Honour, and Imperialism, and, by diverting their minds, laid to
rest for the moment republican sentiments. Under his adroit management
Victoria came more among her people--in face of Gladstone’s
straightforward arguments she drew back into her seclusion. She refused
to open Gladstone’s Parliaments, but for Beaconsfield she was present at
least every other year. When Prince Leopold came of age, Dizzy asked for
him £15,000 a year with a flourish of trumpets. Leopold was a sage, an
intellectual of the rarest merit; he was like his great father who had
“given a new impulse to the course of civilization”; and the pension was
granted with few dissentients. When the Duke of Connaught married and
wanted his income increased the request was quietly acceded to, for
there was a rumour that he was to be made Viceroy of Ireland, so that
there was no Irish opposition. But when Leopold, who was created by the
Queen, in May 1881, Duke of Albany--a sinister title, for all the royal
dukes of that name had died young or been murdered!--asked the usual
increase in March 1882, on his marriage with Helene of Waldeck-Pyrmont,
there was strong opposition. Irish hopes had not been fulfilled by the
Connaughts, and Irish affairs were in a desperate condition, so
forty-two, mostly Irish patriots, voted against the royal wishes, and
Labouchere again raised the question of what became of the Civil List
money not spent by the Crown. Gladstone, as usual, defended the Queen,
but admitted that she took private possession of the money saved by her
economies on the Civil List. However, in a House of 387 the majority was
345. The fact remained that under Gladstone these discussions arose.
When Beaconsfield had decided to go to the country in 1880 he cast about
for a cry which might be popular, and pitched upon Anti-Home Rule. These
words had come into use long before, Gladstone saying in 1871, “I am not
quite certain what is meant by Home Rule.” At the moment of the
dissolution, however, there was no demand for it, as Ireland had
suffered from bad potato harvests and was on the verge of starvation;
Parnell, already a personage, had his hands full in devising means of
safeguarding the Irish, and gave the somewhat natural advice that they
should save money as much as possible, and pay as little rent as
possible, so that when the deadliest pinch came food could still be
bought. This alienated both Liberal and Tory, for the sacredness of
property over life was even more pronounced then than now. Thus the
anti-Home Rule cry interested no one and had no influence on the
election; the people were too occupied with their sudden fear of the two
recent costly wars of aggrandisement, with the suspicion that a
“spirited foreign policy” was not worth paying for, and their sudden
reaction in favour of Gladstone, to whom they turned with expectation.
Six years earlier he had resigned the leadership of the Opposition to
Lord Granville, a member of the Upper House, and the Liberals had chosen
Lord Hartington to lead them in the Commons. Thus Granville was the
responsible person. Beaconsfield, however, thought that Hartington would
interfere least with his line of policy, and advised Victoria to send
for him, which she did. Gladstone had naturally said that he would not
take office under any one, and neither Granville nor Hartington had any
fancy to have Gladstone thundering over their heads from a back bench,
and putting them right. So when Hartington had his interview with the
Queen, whose face he could only see imperfectly, as she stood with her
back to the window, he told her that Gladstone was the only man who
could form a Government and that his Government would be more moderate
than any he himself could get together. The Queen implored him to do her
wishes, appealing to him as responsible leader of the Party, and
continued to do so in answer to all he said. She then asked if he was
sure Mr. Gladstone would not serve under him.
“I can’t say I am sure he wouldn’t, ma’am, for I’ve never ventured to
ask him.”
“Now I beg you will ask him and come back and let me know what he says.”
The next day Hartington and Granville went to Windsor, and both said it
was impossible for either to become leader while Gladstone was at hand,
and so they were sent back to summon Gladstone. The Queen was quite
courteous to him, but seemed “natural under effort, and the interview
ended pleasantly,” at least on the surface.
Beaconsfield blamed Hartington bitterly for not taking the first office,
saying that he showed a want of courage, and “abandoned a woman in her
hour of need,” and he moaned, “All becomes chaos, all becomes chaos when
I am away.”
Victoria took leave of him that April of 1880 as though all peace had
left her, and offered to confer on him a dukedom, which he declined. She
felt that her prospects of world-domination were gone, that there would
be no more wars of expansion, that once again the wearisome and, from
her point of view, dangerous policy of internal reform would replace
those glorious dreams. So she looked about for a means of counteracting
what she regarded as the coming retrograde policy, and she turned to the
Army, determined to impress upon it her position as true
commander-in-chief. She was sure that misfortune would befall this
beloved section of her subjects, that the Liberals wanted to reduce it
in numbers and in power, and her fear was heightened by the inclusion of
Joseph Chamberlain, popularly regarded as a Socialist, in the Cabinet.
He and Dilke were known as the Parliament of Two, because they were
inseparable, and each refused office unless the other had some
responsible post. “You may make your choice,” said Sir Charles Dilke to
Gladstone, “the other shall be leader of the Radicals.”
When her Majesty saw Gladstone she was keen on knowing who was suggested
for the War Office, and evidently disapproved on hearing the name of
Childers, who in the earlier Liberal administration had been at the
Admiralty. So the Queen wooed the Army. On July 13, 1880, she reviewed
11,000 Volunteers in Hyde Park; on the 28th the colours of the 24th
Regiment, lost at Isandhlwana but afterwards recovered, were taken to
her at Osborne, and in the presence of the officers she decorated them
with a wreath. Before the first battalion of the Rifle Brigade started
for India, August 21, she visited it on board the troopship _Jumna_,
inspected their quarters and was solicitous for their comfort. In 1881
she held a review in Queen’s Park, Edinburgh, of 40,000 Scottish
Volunteers under difficult circumstances, for the rain descended in
torrents; she, however, remained to the end, and for three hours let the
rain pelt upon her, so that by the time she got back to Holyrood her
carriage contained a pool of water, and streams of it ran off her skirt.
She kept a watchful eye over Childers, disapproving every suggested
reform, and setting herself strongly against all reorganization. In her
fear of change she identified herself with all that had been, standing
up for old abuses; as Sir Sidney Lee says, “No military reform escaped
her censorious vigilance.” She even went so far as to disapprove of the
abolition of the use of the “cat” as a punishment. This abuse had
gradually diminished, but an officer could still order fifty lashes with
the cat to be inflicted on the bare back, and scandals arose in the case
of bad-tempered officers. Part of her letter ran: The Queen hopes “that
officers on service may not be deprived of the only power they possess
of keeping young troops in order, viz. by inflicting corporal punishment
in the extreme cases of cowardice, treachery, plundering, or neglect of
duty on sentry. The Queen hates the system of flogging, but sees no
alternative in extreme cases on active service.”
The punishment was, however, abolished in 1881.
We are wiser about punishment in this generation, though it is only a
few months since that Lord Charles Beresford sought to glorify this
brutalization of men.
When it was desired to abolish the abuse of distributing Army rank and
pay as rewards to those whose qualifications were invisible, Victoria
strongly opposed it, saying that if there were abuses they could easily
be remedied. A case in point was that of a General Macdonald, who had
never done military duty as a general, but had for many years been
private secretary to the Duke of Cambridge. To his honours had been
added the title and pay--to the amount of £1000 a year--of honorary
colonel, and a question was asked in the House of Commons about it. The
Queen, then at Balmoral, wrote Childers a long letter demanding that he
would not pledge himself to any reform in this matter, saying that she
was strongly opposed to the abolition of those honorary colonelcies,
that to abolish them would be to destroy all _esprit de corps_ and to
weaken the pride which the officers feel in the regiments. How could she
have attained to such a conclusion, seeing the facts of the case? What
_esprit de corps_ could there be between a regiment and an honorary
colonel who was in reality a secretary?
There was delay in posting this letter, so her Majesty telegraphed in
cipher to the War Minister. The telegram arrived too late, the question
having been asked and answered; but Childers wrote to her, saying that,
had he received it in time, his answer would have been more vague. Yet
we are often told that the Queen did not influence the Government.
When in the winter of that year Childers prepared a scheme for linking
battalions and associating the names of counties or towns with
regiments, he again found himself faced with an annoyed and forbidding
Queen.
The plan was pushed through, however, and resulted in an immediate
accession of recruits; and Childers, driven to desperation by the
unceasing and unintelligent heckling both in Parliament and from the
Throne, put his position plainly before the country in a speech at
Pontefract, on January 19, 1882. It was a justification of the British
constitutional attitude as against the German claim that the monarch is
in absolute command of the Army. To such men as Gladstone and Childers,
strong, self-assertive and determined, the English people owe a great
debt of gratitude for the saving of our army from relapsing into an
inefficient body, given over to obsolete custom and ruled by those whose
only claim was that of high descent.
In the course of the speech referred to Childers said: “It is said that
the Secretaries of State for War are encroaching on the functions of
others. The Army, they say, is the army of the Crown; we Secretaries of
State want to make it the army of the Commons. The Crown, they say,
commands the Army through the commander-in-chief; the Secretary of State
is a mere financial officer who has gradually intruded on the province
of the Crown. All this is mere delusion. The Queen is the head of the
Army, the head of the Navy and of every branch of the public service; as
such she can do no wrong. But that is because all her acts are the acts
of her responsible ministers. The doctrine of personal government which
you have seen so undisguisedly claimed in Prussia is absolutely unknown
in our Constitution.... Under the Secretary of State are three
departments, the heads of which are equally responsible to him. The
Chief Officer Commanding, for the Military Department; the
Surveyor-General, for the Ordnance and Supply Department; and the
Financial Secretary for the Finance Department. To say that the
Secretary of State has no controlling power in such matters, when he is
responsible to Parliament for any improper exercise of the Queen’s
prerogative in regard to them, is manifestly absurd.”
The Queen’s greatest anxiety at the beginning of the new Government was
that it should carry on the same foreign policy as its forerunner;
especially that it should bring to a close in a glorious manner the two
wars. A great majority, however, clamoured for the recall of Sir Bartle
Frere, and every one was dumb with surprise to find Gladstone deciding
to retain him at his post. There were two reasons for this: the one he
gave was that steps to confederation were being taken, and Frere must
stay to complete the scheme. The second reason--which he did not
give--was that Victoria did not cease to urge upon him her confidence in
the commander, and her desire for what she regarded as a strong policy.
The enemy by this time were no longer Zulus, but Boers. The royal
chagrin was bitter when Frere was recalled in July, and still more
bitter when, after many vicissitudes, a peace was concluded the
following year without its being secured at the point of the sword.
Over Afghanistan her distress was even keener, for the decision of the
Government was to return to the original Anglo-Indian policy which had
been found successful before the war. So Lord Roberts’ brave march to
Kabul, and thence to the relief of the British at Kandahar, was followed
by the appointment of a new Amir and the evacuation of the country by
the British, a policy which has so far proved a good one.
This withdrawing after such a desperate attempt to annex Afghanistan to
India was a terrible grievance to Victoria, and she refused to discuss
it with her ministers. Lord Hartington said, after an interview in
October 1880, that she was very gracious, but avoided talking about
Kandahar with him, and he feared she was getting into the habit of
refusing to talk over with her ministers any subject which was
unpalatable to her. Lord Esher commented upon this that there was
probably some wisdom in it, as she knew that she or the Ministry must
give way, and that she had no chance against a united Cabinet.
When the decision was carried into effect Victoria could not bring
herself to face it squarely, and absolutely refused to allow her
ministers to publish the matter, which threw them into an awkward
predicament in January 1881, when the Queen’s Speech was being prepared.
The country had a right to know so important an event, and to let it
leak out through report rather than in the legitimate way was sufficient
to discredit any Parliament. On Gladstone including in the speech that
Kandahar had been evacuated, she telegraphed from Osborne that she
strongly objected to it; her ministers replied that four months had
elapsed since the withdrawal, and it was absolutely necessary to
announce the fact now; to which she returned that she would agree to a
modified form of words which did _not_ announce our withdrawal.
Hartington and Gladstone did not know what to do; should they go to
Osborne and see what could be done with this autocratic personage, or
should they further prorogue Parliament until she had the courage to
face the universal knowledge? At that very hour a Privy Council was
being held at Osborne, and Sir Henry Ponsonby declared that he had never
seen her Majesty so angry as she was then. Possibly the Privy
Councillors, met to discuss the speech, helped to cause this anger, and
also helped to induce a more reasonable frame of mind, for at six
o’clock a telegram was put into Gladstone’s hands giving assent.
With Gladstone’s Government came trouble in Egypt. When England acquired
a monetary interest in that country it was necessary to have some
control over Egyptian finance, which Beaconsfield had found in a
bankrupt condition. French influence had for long been strong in the
country, and in 1879 the Dual Control of Finance (England and France)
had been instituted. But Turkey was bankrupt in her influence also,
having ruled with her usual injustice and barbarity, so the whole great
land of Egypt and the Sudan was ripe for rebellion. The army under Arabi
Pasha started the revolution, and England’s lack of real knowledge of
the country caused this to be regarded as a mere military revolt. There
was a massacre at Alexandria, and when Britain prepared to restore order
by bombarding the town, the French fleet refused to act with it and
steamed away. Gladstone declared that the Sultan must see after his own
possessions. France suggested a European Conference, and the Sultan of
Turkey, fearing that he would get short shrift at the hands of Europe,
and regarding England as his friend through thick and thin, always ready
to pull his chestnuts out of the fire for him, refused to have anything
to do with a Conference and made the offer to England that it should
take exclusive control of Egyptian administrative affairs. Gladstone and
Granville, horrified at the idea that they were to spend valuable time,
money and men in reducing a Turkish province to order for Turkey,
refused pointblank and without consulting their Cabinet. The very
thought must have been horrible to Gladstone.
It is easy to see how this high-handed action provoked the Queen, who
was so willing to favour Turkey, and who, imbued with the
Beaconsfieldian policy of Empire extension, would have taken all that
was offered, at whatever cost, in the hope that it would lead to more.
So there was a sharp disagreement between her and Gladstone at the very
outset, a disagreement which widened and deepened over Egypt until
Victoria regarded Gladstone much as he looked upon the Sultan, as “the
greatest murderer in Europe.”
The Queen did not cease to press the policy of her late minister upon
her new Cabinet, and she endured mental tortures for fear that her
efforts would be of no avail. She turned again to the Army, demanding
that the smallest details should be submitted to her, for she distrusted
Childers, especially now that it was necessary to put down Arabi Pasha
before anything else could be thought of. A commander-in-chief of the
expedition had to be chosen, and she refused to sanction any appointment
until she had diligently studied the careers and qualities of all her
chief soldiers, eventually agreeing to the Cabinet’s choice of Lord
Wolseley. She worried over transports, rations, hospitals, equipments;
she wrote and telegraphed incessantly to the War Office, sending one day
as many as seventeen letters! in fact, she did not cease to inform her
already harassed and hard-working servants that they knew nothing of
their work, and must be given her unsleeping surveillance.
It is needless to say that Childers was loyalty itself, but it would
have been interesting on the seventeen-letter day to have heard his
language, say at the tenth letter. After that his sensibilities must
have become blunted, and his overcharged feelings too congested for
expression.
In all this getting ready what had become of her Majesty’s deputy, her
cousin the Duke of Cambridge, that she did the overlooking herself? She
had evidently come to regard him as an inefficient screen between her
and her Ministry, and indeed he never had been strong. Like so many
military and royal Germans, his mind was burdened with straps and
buckles and lace. The present Kaiser has always been keen over these
things, spending earnest thought and much talk over the relative
importance of two, or three, buttons on some part of a uniform, as to
whether a strap should be four inches or four and a half inches long,
and such stupendous trifles. Like his father, the Duke of Cambridge was
noted for talking loudly in public places, and was far more audible
often at the theatre than were the actors; and like many men who have
been stay-at-home soldiers, his ideas upon military matters were
somewhat hazy. He loyally upheld his royal cousin in holding fast to
ancient custom, and when, after the lesson taught during this first
Egyptian campaign, it was suggested and pressed that the betraying
scarlet uniform should be abolished, he offered what some outspoken
person called “a senseless opposition”; saying that he thought it good
for the soldier in action that he should be visible to the enemy. He
was, with equal reason, totally against raising the standard of age to
nineteen.
Victoria had insisted that her son, the Duke of Connaught, should lead
the Guards’ Brigade, and that the Duke of Teck should have a
responsible post on Wolseley’s staff, so in addition to the constant
fussing over everything that had any relation to the war, the Queen was
also anxious about her son. “My nerves were strained to such a pitch by
the intensity of my anxiety and suspense that they seemed to feel as
though they were all alive.”
Tel-el-Kebir was fought and won, and her Majesty celebrated it as she
had years before celebrated the fall of Sebastopol, with a bonfire on
the top of Craig Gowan and many other rejoicings, writing in her
journal--
“Felt unbounded joy and gratitude for God’s great goodness and mercy.”
It was natural that she should say and think this--but now, since the
beginning of the Great War, it is only possible to feel that to join the
name of the Christian’s God with war at all is a blasphemy. Kaiser
William has shown us that the only god of War is a revolting devil.
When the Egyptian Campaign was over Queen Victoria rewarded her three
relatives for their share in it, the Duke of Cambridge being appointed
personal aide-de-camp to herself, which, as his work had been entirely
hidden by her Majesty’s own industry, was, as some paper wrote, “like
decorating the King of the Unknown Regions for his share in the Transit
of Venus. Practically he did as much in the one event as in the other.”
A comic paper stated that while our troops were winning Tel-el-Kebir,
the Duke, “aware somehow of fighting, rose two hours earlier than
usual, shouldered his umbrella, charged an imaginary enemy at the head
of imaginary troops and fell with an imaginary bullet in his shoulder.”
The Duke had been accused of going on parade on a wet day with his
umbrella up, and so that useful domestic article was never forgotten
when any story was to be told against him. Thus the next year, when the
trooping of the colours was countermanded by him because of the rain,
the comment was, “The troops were ready, the public were waiting, but
all were told to go home. Was a certain historical umbrella necessary?”
The Duke of Connaught had been mentioned three times in dispatches, was
given the C.B., and received the thanks of Parliament. Yet a sceptical
public had much to say over a report that he had been well guarded, that
by order of a “high personage his troops had been so arranged at the
battle as to prevent him from incurring danger.” This naturally caused
lively indignation in royal circles, and both Wolseley and Childers
emphatically denied its truth, the former saying, “He took his chance
like any one else.” But the public were not convinced, and there was
some excuse for this when one remembers the question addressed to
Lieutenant Carey after the killing of the Prince Imperial--
“Where is the Prince?”
“Dead, sir.”
“Then why are you alive?”
This was sufficient to destroy reliance on the word of a superior
officer on any such matters, for people naturally felt that such would
protect his own reputation by putting such a precious charge as a royal
prince in a safe corner.
Victoria also thoughtfully devised the decoration of the Royal Red Cross
for nurses who had shown great service, which was bestowed upon four
nurses, also upon Princess Louise, the Duchess of Albany and Princess
Frederica of Hanover for their services in the First-Aid Society for
sick and wounded soldiers. She distributed medals and reviewed the
returned troops. Her keen desire was for the drastic punishment of Arabi
and the other principal rebels. “The whole state of Egypt is full of
difficulties, and we must take great care that, short of annexation, our
position is firmly established there, and that we shall not have to shed
precious blood and expend much money for nothing,” was one of her
exhortations.
Arabi Pasha was a rebel against the unutterable cruelty of the Turks;
his movement “was in essence, a genuine revolt against misgovernment”
and “was not essentially anti-European,” said Evelyn Baring (Lord
Cromer). He had headed a national movement against a foreign oppressor,
and the Government could not force itself to carrying out the extreme
measures urged by Victoria. He was brought to trial and condemned to
death by the Egyptian Government, but Lord Dufferin, preventing the
carrying out of the capital sentence, sent him to Ceylon, whence he
returned after some years and died in Egypt.
Gladstone felt a great repugnance against burdening the country with any
aggressive policy in Egypt; yet it was evident that peace in Egypt could
only be secured by the retention of a British force there. Lord
Dufferin recommended the formation of a native force of about 6000 men
with a proportion of British officers, and a semi-military gendarmerie
of 4,400 men. Evelyn Wood became Sirdar of the former and Valentine
Baker was made Inspector-General of the latter, the intention being to
train native soldiers to do Egyptian work for Egypt, and that England
should gradually evacuate a country to which its only right was the
desire of the Sultan to shift his burdens upon her shoulders. The Queen
strongly resented the idea of evacuation, but could do nothing.
The revolt of the Arabs, however, continued; it had but moved its
location from Egypt to the Sudan. The tribes in that vast region were
regarded simply as a slave nursery by Turkey and as material for
taxation. The people, forced to grow corn for their oppressors, died of
starvation themselves. Thus, when the Mahdi came to the front as their
deliverer, he at once secured an enormous army. The Khedive now wanted
England to extend her assistance and reconquer the Sudan for him. Evelyn
Baring advised against it; the Government saw no reason for saddling
England with such a burden, but Victoria, dreaming of an African empire
as large as that of India, did not cease to urge the sending out of
armies.
In January 1883 an Englishman, Hicks Pasha, had been dispatched by the
Egyptian authorities, entirely against his own military judgment, with
10,000 Egyptian troops against the Mahdi, and the army had been
practically annihilated, upon which our Government proposed sending a
Governor-General, meaning Charles Gordon, “which, if it had been
accepted, would have saved the Sudan from anarchy and rebellion, and
England from expense in life and money, but the Egyptian Government
declined his services.”[22]
At this time over the millions of miles of the Sudan the tribes roamed
at will, but there were some small towns, more or less fortified, in
which were located forces of Egyptian soldiers and some Europeans who
had gone there for trading or other purposes; and, as in 1874 and 1878,
Gordon had been Governor-General under the Egyptian Government of some
of the provinces, he was more liked by the Arabs than by the Turks.
The Government felt that their evacuation plan was the best that could
be devised, but first the isolated garrisons must be extricated, and, in
spite of Egypt’s refusal of Gordon, they asked him if he could do this
work. During those two years and after it was quite easy to allocate
blame, to fasten it, as the Queen did, upon one man, but it is time now
that the matter should at least be studied from both sides and not from
party feeling, or personal prejudice. Gordon knew the Sudan as
intimately--and the intimacy was of the slenderest--as such a huge
country could be known at that time, and when at twenty-four hours’
notice he started from England on his mission, in January 1884, he
said--
“The Mahdi’s forces will fall to pieces of themselves!”
The cause of all the trouble was the want of knowledge on all sides. The
Sudan with its heat and cold, its floods and droughts, was an unknown
country; the Arab and other forces, the influence of the Mahdi, the aims
of the fighters, the character of Gordon himself, all were unknown; even
Gordon could not diagnose the case. He himself was not in the slightest
understood by the men who sent him. They knew that he had been
successful before, that he had an influence in the Sudan, and that every
one said he was the man; as far as they could tell he was. Later they
knew he was not. Energetic, upright, religious, he was yet subject to
enthusiasms which blinded his judgment, he naturally trusted the people
about him, and he acted upon his instincts rather than upon reason.
I remember well the terrible excitement about his fate, the bitter
denunciations, the unjust charges, but those who knew him best thought
afterwards that he was sent too late for his powers to cope with the
situation. Here is one example of his want of stability of idea. In an
interview given, just before starting, to a representative of _The Pall
Mall Gazette_ he said--
“There is one subject on which I cannot imagine any one can differ. This
is the impolicy of announcing our intention to evacuate Khartoum. Even
if we were bound to do so we should have said nothing about it. The
moment it is known that we have given up the game every man will go over
to the Mahdi. All men worship the rising sun.... The difficulties of
evacuation will be enormously increased, if indeed the withdrawal of our
garrison is not rendered impossible.”
No sooner, however, was he in the midst of the disturbed country than he
repudiated this by calling the authorities together at Berber on
February 13th, announced to them the intention of abandoning the Sudan,
and followed this by drawing up a proclamation appointing six of the
most influential men to administer the government of the province,
subject to the Governor-General. The whole of the notables present at
the meeting threw their interest on the side of the Mahdi as opportunity
arose.
Gordon’s one mission was to bring the garrisons away, yet no sooner was
he in Egypt than he added to this programme the intention of forming a
provisional Government for the Sudan, and stuck to this to the end,
refusing to leave Khartoum until this impossible task was accomplished.
In his earlier period of authority Gordon had earned the hatred of a man
named Zobeir, by putting down a revolt, thus causing the execution of
Zobeir’s son and the loss of property to him. On reaching Egypt this
time he met Zobeir, and for fear of complications asked the Egyptian
Government to send the old rebel to Cyprus out of the way. This was
refused, and Gordon thought the safest plan would then be to take Zobeir
to Khartoum with him. Those, however, who saw the hatred in the Arab’s
eyes, judged that such a course would mean the death of one of the two
men, and Zobeir was kept in Cairo. Gordon must have known that Zobeir
was a man of power, the man to lead his countrymen, and later urgently
begged the English Government to send him out to Khartoum as
Governor-General. The Egyptian government supported this, but our
Cabinet, wanting Gordon to confine himself to his mission, and knowing
Zobeir to be a great slave-dealer, refused.
Thus Gordon, by changing his policy, and the English ministers, by not
changing theirs, each contributed to the final result.
The revealing of his hand shut the Sudan to Gordon, and a little more
than a month after his arrival in Khartoum the tribes all around had
joined the Mahdi. He had in the first weeks sent away 2,500 people, but
he still had with him nearly 10,000 troops, there being left in the town
at the end about 4000 Bashi-Bazouks, nearly 3000 irregulars, and many
black soldiers.
In April 1884 there was a strong desire to send a relief expedition out,
and Gladstone was in favour of sending cavalry to Berber to ensure
Gordon’s safety, but the Cabinet decided against it.
Great pressure was put on the Government by the Queen, by the Opposition
and by the people, until at last an expedition was decided upon. Then
was fought “the battle of the routes,” when the generals sat in council
in London and squabbled with unabated tenacity for month after month
whether the force should go up the Nile or through the desert, so it was
August before a start was made, and at long last the passage up the Nile
began.
In Gordon’s Journal there are many curious passages about the
expedition. In September he wrote: “I think I can say truly that I never
asked for a British expedition.” In October he asked what it was coming
out for, saying he could not understand it. If it was for the purpose of
relieving him he deprecated it; he could get away at any time, adding
that if it did reach Khartoum he would not go away with it unless he
could take the whole garrison with him. “No one can judge of the waste
of money and expense of life in the present expedition; it is an utter
waste of both, but it is due to the indecision of the Government.” “If
the Europeans like to go to the Equator I will give them steamers, but I
will not leave these people after all they have gone through.” “I
decline to agree that the expedition comes for my relief; it comes for
the relief of the garrisons, which I failed to accomplish. I expect her
Majesty’s Government are in a precious rage with me for holding out and
forcing their hand.”
He frequently gave the people in Khartoum permission to join the Mahdi,
and gradually about 20,000 drifted away, leaving 14,000 in all in the
town.
For six months the Mahdi’s army was stationed around them waiting, and
the garrison’s food was getting very low. But when Gordon knew that the
British force was nearing him he ordered that the greater part of it
should be sent to Berber, and thus it was a comparatively small number
which at last got to Khartoum. What Gordon knew the Mahdi knew, and two
days before the arrival of the British, the latter judged that it was
time to strike. By treachery or by attack his troops entered the town
and Gordon was shot.
“Too late!” screamed every one as they turned to rend the Government
and in especial to rend Gladstone. But late was not really the word. Had
the expedition arrived months earlier the result would probably have
been the same, and in no case could the relief column have carried
sufficient food to help the garrison to march away. There were so many
“ifs” in the whole matter, and applicable no less to Gordon himself than
to the English Government and the English generals.
Gordon’s temperament appealed to the public, and, combined with his
religion, his championship of a forlorn hope and his long resistance of
the wild desert forces, enshrined him in the national imagination as a
hero and a martyr. It was a time of emotion, not of thought, and even
now the generation of that day will refuse to recognize anything but the
emotional aspect.
Of all the Queen gave way most unrestrainedly to her emotions. Her first
act was to send a telegram to Gladstone and Lord Hartington, not in
cypher as usual but in plain English--a small and unworthy act--blaming
them entirely for what had happened, saying that it was too fearful to
realize that the fall of Khartoum might have been prevented and many
precious lives saved if they had taken earlier action. She put the whole
burden on her Prime Minister’s shoulders, and saw in him nothing less
than a murderer.
She wrote also to Miss Gordon, the general’s sister, a letter filled
with regret, grief, anger and extravagance. “_How_ shall I write to you
or how shall I attempt to express _what I feel_? To _think_ of your
dear, noble, heroic brother, who served his country and his Queen so
truly, so heroically, with a self-sacrifice so edifying to the world, to
think that he was not saved! That the promises of help were not
kept--promises of which I _so often_ and _so constantly_ reminded those
who should have fulfilled them; ah! it is to me _grief_ inexpressible.
Indeed it has made me ill.... Would you express to your other sisters
and your elder brother my true sympathy, and what I do so keenly
feel--the _stain_ left upon England for your dear brother’s cruel,
though heroic fate.”
Miss Gordon sent her brother’s Bible as a present to the Queen, and in
July sent his diary for her Majesty’s perusal. The reading of it, with
the curious evidence it gives of the writer’s character, his
changeability and obstinacy, in no way modified her admiration for him,
and she wrote again of her mortification at the vacillation of her
ministers.
Henry Gordon, at the end of his book, “_Events in the Life of Charles G.
Gordon_,” put the chief blame on the refusal of the Egyptian Government
to accept General Gordon’s help when the British Government offered it
in 1883, saying that in that case Gordon would have been in Khartoum by
the new year, and have easily then have brought the whole garrison away.
But who knows? Charles Gordon might have refused then, as later, to
bring any one away until he had carried out his impossible scheme of
political reorganization.
Germany’s ruler, Bismarck, greatly enjoyed the contemplation of our
trouble, and started one of his periodic attempts to excite German
feeling against England, employing Busch, whose greatest joy was in
licking the Chancellor-Emperor’s boots, to write articles for the German
papers--notably the _Grenzboten_--showing England to be guilty of great
crimes. One article dealt with Protection, another with England and
China, declaring that by restrictive legislation England had caused
famine and cholera in India and was responsible for cholera in West
Africa and Europe. England and the Boers, England and Russia were the
themes of other of these articles. Busch tells how he and Bucher--one of
like kidney--rejoiced together over England’s misfortunes in the Sudan,
and the latter expressed the hope that Wolseley’s head would soon arrive
in Cairo nicely pickled and packed! He also explains how the Sultan’s
refusal to see after his own possessions was influenced by threats from
Germany.
The crisis in the Sudan was not concluded by the tragedy of Khartoum;
that had to be followed by a decision either to destroy the Mahdi or to
evacuate the Sudan altogether. The latter alternative was decided upon,
and in April Gladstone wrote to the Queen, who was then abroad, and she
replied with a vehement protest against the decision, saying that it
would affect our position in India, and demanding that Wolseley and our
political representative in Egypt, Evelyn Baring (since Lord Cromer)
should have an absolutely free hand to do what they thought. To her
first objection it could only be pointed out that India alone demanded
the policy decided upon, for Russia, believing Britain fully occupied in
the Sudan, was again attacking Afghanistan; and the second was answered
by Baring sending a spontaneous recommendation that the Sudan be
abandoned.
When Britain’s need was defence, the Government was quick enough to act,
and in the Afghan quarrel steps were at once taken which considerably
helped the settlement of the matter by negotiation.
CHAPTER XVII
“JOHN BROWN’S BODY”
“That terrible struggle for life in the lonely plantation near the
Fisheries.”--_Daily Paper._
“The Prince, become King, had the statue removed before he even saw
his castle; the ‘mansion’ he bought from the servant’s heirs, and
dedicated it to his own use. So did all trace of the favourite
disappear from Balmoral.”--_Contemporary Note._
I have no intention of dealing with Irish affairs--they were too
engrossing, too complicated and too immense; but in 1880 began a cycle
of distress, rebellion, agrarian crime and coercion. Fenianism was again
rampant, and great anxiety was felt over the royal journey from Scotland
to Windsor in the autumn of 1880. For three or four years the world
seemed to suffer from madness--as it does suffer occasionally--and
Ireland was mad, only with more cause than the rest of the globe. The
assassinations, the incipient revolts which underlay them, and the
insecurity which the Queen felt under the rule of Gladstone (believing
as she did that under him revolution was encouraged), all combined to
produce a condition of nervousness on Victoria’s mind which each new
blow increased.
In March 1881 the Tsar of Russia was killed by a bomb, the lower part of
his body being blown away; in the summer President Garfield was shot,
and in March 1882, as Victoria was walking from the train at Windsor to
her carriage, a crazy youth, named Robert McLean, fired a Colt’s
revolver at her from a distance of a few yards, an Eton boy saving her
by beating up McLean’s arm with an umbrella. Other Etonians who were
near tried to lynch him. Fortunately no one was hit, though, for the
first time in the history of the many bogus attempts at assassination of
our Queen, there was proof that the revolver was loaded.
Victoria, with her usual courage under such events, drove on to the
castle, and wired reassuringly to Marlborough House. McLean, a clerk out
of employment, was tried at Reading, and, being found to be insane, was
detained for life.
In May of the same year news of a dreadful Irish tragedy came at the end
of a day on which the seal had been set on the accomplishment of a good
deed. There had been revelations of abuses in the city, and the
Government had talked of reforming the City Corporation; so, as a sop to
Cerberus, Epping Forest was set in order and presented to the public by
the City fathers, and on May 6 her Majesty went in semi-state to declare
it duly open.
A noted journalist gives the following account of the occasion and of
the news which followed hard upon it--
“It was a day of bright sunshine as Queen Victoria drove from Chingford
to High Beach to declare Epping Forest open for the use of the people
for all time.... We were quietly snatching a hasty lunch in a marquee
beside the daïs.... Suddenly, a few minutes before the expected time, a
blare of trumpets announced the Queen’s approach. Ministers and Pressmen
alike were on the alert; Lord Granville, one of the most homely of
Secretaries of State, not only filled his mouth with part of a sandwich
he was eating, but carried the rest on to the platform. The happy
chronicle of the royal rejoicings in Epping Forest, which closed with
one of Messrs. Brock’s matchless firework displays, had scarcely been
completed when there came ‘Terrible News from Ireland.’ The
assassination under such savage circumstances of Lord Frederick
Cavendish and his under-secretary, Mr. Burke, was clearly and correctly
reported. This fact is emphasized on account of its having been so often
stated that the London public heard nothing of the diabolical occurrence
until Monday morning. Not only was the news given, but in some comments
I said, ‘The crime shatters at a blow Mr. Gladstone’s hope of pursuing a
gentle policy.’”[23]
Ireland was, indeed, badly served by her revolutionaries, and she knew
it. When the words of Lady Frederick Cavendish--surely one of the
noblest of women--to Mr. Gladstone, “You did right to send him to
Ireland, Uncle William,” were told by a priest from the altar of a
chapel in Connemara Road, Dublin, the whole congregation spontaneously
fell down on their knees. Parnell offered to resign his seat
immediately, but Gladstone would not allow it, rightly regarding the
Irish leader as the last restraining influence upon the Fenians.
The very month that this took place a tatterdemalion named Albert Young
was sentenced to imprisonment for openly threatening the death of Queen
Victoria and Prince Leopold. The Queen was a very brave woman, but this
succession of horrible events made her soul quail. She believed in the
strong arm--no talking, little thinking; if you are hit, no matter how
or why, hit back as hard as you can. Gladstone’s appeal to justice and
reason were to her but signs of weakness; she never owned herself wrong,
and that he had owned England wrong in Africa and Afghanistan enraged
her; that he had tried to meet Irish desperation by conceding reforms,
by treatment rather than by force, woke her scorn, and she blamed him
for the deep unrest which had produced these Irish murders by members of
a secret society who did not even know whom they were killing, that they
were English gentlemen being sufficient excuse.
Under Disraeli’s Government her Majesty had felt buoyant, hopeful, young
again; now a black atmosphere of treachery and murder surrounded her.
She refused each year through this Government to be present at the
opening of Parliament. In 1883 she was at Windsor, and that she would
not come even that short distance aroused indignation in some quarters:
“To be at Windsor and yet to refuse to run up to town is as good as
saying, ‘My faithful Lords and Commons, you can get on very well without
me, and I don’t care to see you. Do your duty, but don’t bother me
while I am looking after the youngest of the many grandchildren whom you
will have to provide for some day.’” Such was one contemporary comment.
One of the causes of this recrudescence of public irritation was that,
Gladstone having been very ill, the Liberals, jealous for the honour of
the minister, noted that there was no hint of “kind inquiries” by the
Queen, and they recalled the anxious assiduity with which Beaconsfield’s
bedside had been attended: “At the time when the Court was required to
go into mourning for an unknown German, it was a question whether
Gladstone would be well enough ever to handle again the ribbons of
State.”
There was, however, a difference of degree in the illnesses as well as
in her Majesty’s solicitude. As a matter of fact, she was duly informed
of her Prime Minister’s state, though she made no inquiries, and, seeing
happy possibility before her, she seized upon it by causing Ponsonby to
write and urge Gladstone to retire from the greater part of his active
work and become a peer. But there were some reforms that the Prime
Minister still wished to make, and he politely refused the distinguished
offer of superannuation, a refusal which damped Victoria’s sympathies.
Victorian Court mourning was a wonderful and intricate invention, for it
had been elevated--I cannot say to a fine art, for there was nothing
artistic about it; but if I say an exact science--though there are those
who will scoff--it best describes it. The death of a cousin of the last
recognizable degree was supposed to cause the members of the Court
anguish, modified according to the closeness of the relationship, which
also decided the amount of black that was to be worn. Thus when in
January of 1883 a brother of the Emperor William died, a gentleman whose
mind was not very strong I believe, the Court mourning orders were:
women to wear for one week black dresses, white gloves, black or white
shoes, feathers and fans, pearls, diamonds or plain gold and silver
ornaments. Men to wear black Court dress with black swords. For the
second week the women were allowed coloured ribbons, flowers and
ornaments; and then all were to go out of mourning.
Death was at this time horribly busy in the Queen’s circle of friends.
To her grief, Dean Stanley was one of those taken; as Lord Ronald Gower
commented: “He is a greater loss to the Queen than to the Church”;
Archbishop Tait, who by his good sense, solid qualities and intellectual
simplicity had won her friendship; and Dr. Wellesley, the Dean of
Windsor, also slipped out of life. In February 1881 Thomas Carlyle died,
and Queen Victoria sent to inquire about him, not knowing that he had
already passed away. “As we sat in the parlour the streetdoor bell rang,
and ‘a messenger from the Queen’ was said to be in the passage; I went
out at Mary’s request, and found a Scotchman of middle age, who said he
was ‘sent by the Queen to inquire after Mr. Carlyle.’ I told him of the
death, asked him no questions. He may have been John Brown.”[24]
In February 1883 a sergeant, William Maye, of the 1st Battalion
Coldstreams, went to relieve the guard at Windsor Castle, and died
suddenly at his post. This tragic event made a deep impression on
Victoria, who insisted on attending the funeral, a military one, and
followed the cortège to the cemetery. She drove with Princess Beatrice
in an open carriage, General Sir Henry Ponsonby and Colonel Byng being
in attendance on horseback. Victoria did not alight, but watched the
interment from her carriage, having sent a handsome wreath for the
coffin, and returning to the castle after the firing of three volleys
over the grave. She probably had a definite reason for this, in addition
to the sympathy which she always felt over bereavement by death. In
October 1875 the old farmer, John Brown, father of her servant, had died
in his eighty-seventh year. He had been known to her, as had other
tenants and cottagers on the Balmoral estate, probably for thirty years;
but it was her affection for her servant which induced her to go to the
funeral, and to command the greater part of her household to be present.
Princess Beatrice, the Marchioness of Ely, the Hon. M. West, three
doctors and others, the upper and outdoor servants, all went up to the
home of the widow, a poor blind old woman sitting in her kitchen and
mourning the loss of her lifelong companion. On the other side of the
house door, in a tiny room, lay the coffin. As the road was impassable
for the hearse the coffin had to be carried by the Brown brothers from
the house to where the conveyance stood. Though it was raining
hopelessly, the Queen and Princess Beatrice followed to the hearse, and
then, standing on a hillside, watched the procession and the
crowd--which had come as much to see the Queen as to do respect to the
dead man--wind along the road. “The sons were there, whom I
distinguished easily from their being near good Brown, who wore his
kilts, walking near the hearse. All walked except our gentlemen, who
drove. It fortunately ceased raining just then. I went back to the house
and tried to soothe dear old Mrs. Brown, and gave her a mourning brooch
with a little bit of her husband’s hair which had been cut off
yesterday.... We took some whisky-and-water and cheese, according to the
universal Highland custom, and then left.... We drove quickly on, and I
saw them go into the kirkyard, and through my glasses I could see them
carry the coffin in. I was grieved I could not be in the kirkyard.”[25]
This incident, duly reported in the English newspapers, caused both
comment and criticism. It was said that her Majesty could not do honour
enough to her Highland servants and their relations, and that she had
never been known to pay one tithe of such attention to any poor Windsor
dependants. So when a soldier fell dead at her palace door she
demonstrated her martial position, and showed her English subjects that
it was possible for her to grieve even over a humble Englishman.
There is a curious little contrasting touch in the following, taken from
Sir Algernon West’s _Reminiscences_. His friend Alfred Montgomery, who
died in 1881, was one whose “sense of humour and wit lasted till the
end; one day during his illness the Prince of Wales called on him, and
shortly afterwards the Princess. On her departure, he said to the
servant, ‘Should the Queen call, say that I am too tired to see her
Majesty.’ Curiously enough, he once told me that though he had been in
the Queen’s household since her Majesty’s accession, she had never once
spoken to him.”
Other honours had been done John Brown. Balnachoil, a fine house,
popularly described as a mansion, had been built for his occupation at
Balmoral, and given to him and his heirs for ever; some of the finest
fishing and shooting on the Balmoral estate were strictly reserved for
him; circumstances were made so easy for him that he was amassing a
fortune, and it was rumoured that royal visitors to the castle were
always enjoined--or did it of their own free wills--to leave a trifle
for the favourite servant. The sum of £20,000 was named as his savings
after his death, but that was perhaps an exaggeration. He had also been
honoured, as a result of his mistress’s praise of him to others, with a
decoration from the King of Greece, while another distinguished person
at Mentone had given him a gold medal.
On the few occasions on which the Queen appeared in public John Brown
was even more eagerly looked for than her Majesty, and at the opening of
the new Law Courts in December 1882 some one remarked, “Everything
considered, he looks well. He shows no sign as yet of suffering from
his duty.” We hear of him from Madame Waddington (_My First Years as a
Frenchwoman_) in Paris with his mistress, and waiting at the door of the
room in the British Embassy until the Queen came out that he might shake
hands with Mr. Waddington and invite him to come to Scotland, “where he
would receive a hearty welcome.”
He had become more assertive, more lofty; there was no appeal against
his word; and such a person has more enemies than friends. One man only
he dared not interfere with, and that was Löhlein, the German valet who
had come to England with Prince Albert. He did not hesitate to offer
advice or comment to the sons and daughters of his mistress, and there
are various allusions in the Queen’s journals which show that Brown’s
opinion on everything was of import. Thus at the unveiling of the statue
to Prince Albert at Edinburgh in 1876, at the end of the description we
are told that Brown “was delighted with the reception.” When the Duke of
Connaught returned to Balmoral after the Egyptian war, and the Albanys
came home from their honeymoon, in face of royalties and aristocrats
Brown stepped forward and asked them all to join in a Highland cheer for
the bride and bridegroom. On the anniversary of the Prince Consort’s
birthday in 1876 the Queen notes: “I gave my faithful Brown an oxydized
silver biscuit box and some onyx studs. He was greatly pleased with the
former and the tears came into his eyes, and he said, ‘It is too much.’
... I gave my maids some trifles from Dunbar; and to Janie Ely, the
gentlemen and the servants a trifle each.”
When Brown died in 1883, at the age of fifty-seven, it must be realized
that Victoria was already badly shaken by the many assassinations, her
disappointments in foreign policy, her rooted distrust of a Liberal
Government, and a succession of threatening letters sent to herself. It
was probably in conjunction with these that Sir John Cowell, Master of
the Household, issued some curious instructions to servants at Windsor
in February 1883. Those who were on duty at the castle were forbidden to
leave the palace, and those who went home to sleep were forbidden to
visit musichalls, theatres or any place of public amusement; in
addition, if any in their homes were suffering from illness, they were
to report it and stay away from the castle altogether. This reminds one
of the present Kaiser, who throughout his reign has occasionally issued
such notices, and who, on hearing of any one suffering from a cold or
sore throat even remotely connected with his household, would at once
flee and seek shelter in another of his numerous castles or palaces.
On March 15, 1883, a Fenian attempt to blow up the Home Office failed;
at Liverpool the police were busy with an organized band of dynamitards,
and all public buildings were being watched by pickets and guards. When
the Queen travelled at this time the whole length of the line was
guarded by men stationed at distances which allowed of their being in
sight of each other, and carrying flags and noisy fog-signals.
Two days after the attempt on the Home Office, Victoria, then at Windsor
Castle, slipped on the stairs of the palace and caught her knee with
such violence on the marble edge that it gave her much pain; and at this
very moment happened the event which led to Brown’s death. A certain
young woman, Lady Florence Dixie, well known at the time in society--one
who, like Dryden’s Duke of Buckingham, had tried her hands at many
things, and who lived at The Fisheries, a riverside house close to
Windsor--had been writing letters to _The Times_ about the Irish Land
League. On Saturday the 17th, at about half-past four she walked near
her house, and a little later returned to it in a state of agitation,
disarray and mud, and with a cut hand. Her story was that two very tall
women had attacked her, one throwing her down, the other stabbing at her
with a knife, the blow being deflected by the whalebone of her stays. At
the second stab Lady Florence seized the knife with both hands and
shouted, upon which a handful of mud was pushed into her mouth, nearly
choking her. The arrival of her St. Bernard dog coincided with her own
loss of consciousness, and when she recovered the two people, whom she
was convinced were men in disguise, had disappeared.
This event naturally caused a great sensation, and the Queen received
the news as quickly as it could fly. The Prince of Wales and every one
round sent condolences and inquiries to The Fisheries, but no one was so
affected as Victoria, for here was another attempted assassination at
her very gate and in broad daylight. On the Sunday her Majesty refused
to take her usual drive, and sent first the Marchioness of Ely, then
Lord Methuen and Sir Henry Ponsonby, to The Fisheries. Not content with
that, she asked Brown to examine the ground where the attack had been
made. He drove there in an open cart, a present to him from the Queen,
and closely examined everything, including the dog, feeling so puzzled
with the whole case that he spent much time over it exposed to a bitter
wind.
It may be mentioned that other people beside John Brown were very much
puzzled, as the place at which the affair occurred was open to view from
a well-frequented road, and the two women, or men, might have been
wraiths from the way in which they entirely vanished. The only evidence
of their presence was said to be the marks of hobnailed boots in the
mud. Conviction generally spread, whether justly or unjustly, that love
of notoriety was alone responsible for a theatrical episode.
The results were, however, serious for John Brown and the Queen. He took
a bad cold, and for a week, while going about his duties, seemed unwell.
On Monday the 26th he was too ill to get up, and erysipelas developed.
Dr. Reid attended him, and Sir William Jenner was sent for on Tuesday
morning. He died at 11.30 that night, killed, as some one said, by
kindness, for a Highlander to die of a cold caught in a wind implied a
too luxurious state of living.
The grief of the Queen was intense and noisy; her exasperated nerves
entirely gave way; she blamed Ireland, criminal Ireland, which had
stolen from her her servant and friend; she blamed Gladstone, who had
hoped by legislation alone to tame the wild land. Her mind became
obsessed with Brown, and she drew up a notice to be inserted in the
Court Circular of March 29, which ran to the length of twenty-five
lines; an unprecedented feature in the whole history of that public
record of trivialities--
“We have to record the death of Mr. John Brown, the Queen’s personal
attendant. This melancholy event has caused the deepest regret to the
Queen, the Royal Family and all the members of the Royal Household. To
her Majesty the loss is irreparable, and the death of this truly
faithful and devoted servant has been a grievous shock to the Queen....
During the last eighteen and a half years he served her Majesty
constantly, and never once absented himself from his duty for a single
day. He has accompanied the Queen in her daily walks and drives, and all
her journeys and expeditions, as well as personally waiting on her at
banquets, etc. An honest, faithful and devoted follower, a trustworthy,
discreet and straightforward man, and possessed of strong sense, he
filled a position of great and anxious responsibility, the duties of
which he performed with such constant and unceasing care as to secure
for himself the real friendship of the Queen.”
In this the Queen practically asked for her people’s sympathy, and they
gave it warmly, recognizing the true facts of the case; but most
Englishmen felt that the death of this too prominent servant removed
one who had long been damaging to royal prestige.
Brown’s body was sent to be buried at Craithie churchyard, near the
river Dee, where, at Victoria’s order, a mausoleum of brick and
encaustic tiles was built alongside the grave of his father; and the
funeral was attended by all the servants at Balmoral. The Queen sent an
extraordinary wreath for the coffin, one more suitable to a wedding, for
it was composed of myrtle and white flowers. To it was attached the
words: “A gracious expression of her Majesty’s personal sense of the
loss she has sustained, and of her affection for her faithful servant.”
(When will royalty allow a sense of humour to correct the bad taste of
royal custom? When her Majesty graciously does something, the word is
suitable from the pen of the reporter or the secretary, but there is a
snobbish tinge about it when she deliberately uses it herself that makes
it offensive.) At the hour at which John Brown was buried a service was
held in his apartments at Windsor Castle, being attended by the Queen
and Princess Beatrice.
After this the public announcements of the Queen’s ill-health were
accompanied by vague and sinister rumours. Sir William Jenner was in
constant attendance. It was stated that her fall and the shock of John
Brown’s death had made her condition the cause of much solicitude; that
rest, both mental and physical, was imperatively needed, for she could
not stand long without anguish, and soon wearied of any intellectual
effort; while the inflammation of the blood was one of the worst signs.
But the rumours went further, and there were whispers of some coming
momentous change if the doctors could not overcome the weakness of the
Queen: “We should be glad that there is no immediate prospect of a
change on the throne.” She had entirely given up driving, and never
appeared outside the castle gates, and gossip had it that she feared
assassination; the truth probably being that she was too ill to go out.
A curious order, made in the middle of April, that “in consequence of
the mortality of sheep and lambs the Queen has commanded that no lamb
shall be served in the Royal Household this season” raised something
like consternation, showing as it did a lack of knowledge of the
sheep-rearing industry. A fortnight later, upon the representations made
to her, the Queen said, in effect, _revenons à nos moutons_--for the
order was rescinded.
Victoria was to have gone on a visit to Sandringham, but it was put off,
then arranged and again put off, and at last she went to Osborne on
April 17. The journey was made in rigid privacy; from the castle she
drove in a closed carriage, with equerries riding by the windows; the
public and even the station officials were dispensed with at the
stations, and all along the line no heads of railway departments were
allowed to be on the platforms. In May the return was made in the same
way, and on the 25th of that month she went to Balmoral under the same
signs of secrecy, a great screen of evergreens being put up at Perth to
hide her when passing to her breakfast-room. There followed many
strange stories as to her mental condition, especially as the doctors
were reported to be very anxious about her; suggestions were made that
the injured knee was but an innocent fiction intended to disguise the
true state of affairs, and further whispers among those who were around
her Majesty at the time were spread abroad to the effect that possibly a
Regency would be arranged.
Later on the Queen indignantly protested that no woman who had to be
lifted to and from her carriage in a chair would wish a crowd to stand
watching the process, and that this was the cause of her journeys being
so privately conducted.
It was hoped that the change of air and scene at Balmoral would have a
good effect upon the Queen’s health, but, to the disappointment of every
one, it but deepened the depression. This was somewhat natural, as the
whole place was reminiscent of John Brown, and all her thought was for
his memory. Arriving at Balmoral in the morning, she ordered everything
to be in readiness to take her to Craithie churchyard, and after a short
luncheon drove with Princess Beatrice and Dr. Profeit to the spot. A few
days later she was there again, carrying with her a wreath to lay upon
the grave. The servants at Balmoral were ordered to wear mourning bands
round their arms for him, and the royal servants contributed
unquestioningly to a memorial subscription fund. The royal birthday
passed without rejoicings, and there were no servants’ or tenants’
parties.
The memoirs which John Brown left were never published, all his papers
being, by the Queen’s command, taken possession of by Sir Henry
Ponsonby. Boehm, the sculptor, was ordered to make a life-sized statue
of the dead man, which in the following year was mounted on a pedestal
and placed close to the castle at Balmoral; and at Osborne was placed
another monument to his memory in the shape of a granite seat, upon
which the Queen had some pathetic lines engraved.
When at Osborne in August Victoria summoned Tennyson for one of those
interviews which gave so much pleasure to both, and asked him to write
an epitaph to put on the tomb at Craithie. The poet, however, sent her a
quotation, and Victoria had a stone put over John Brown’s grave which
rivalled that to Beaconsfield, the inscription running--
THIS STONE
IS ERECTED IN AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE OF
JOHN BROWN
THE DEVOTED AND FAITHFUL PERSONAL ATTENDANT AND BELOVED
FRIEND OF QUEEN VICTORIA, ‘THAT FRIEND ON WHOSE
FIDELITY YOU COUNT, THAT FRIEND GIVEN YOU BY
CIRCUMSTANCES OVER WHICH YOU HAVE NO
CONTROL, WAS GOD’S OWN GIFT.’
Of her last interview with the Laureate, which took place a little later
in the year, the Queen wrote: “When I took leave of him, I thanked him
for his kindness and said I needed it, for I had gone through much; and
he said, ‘You’re so alone on that terrible height; it is terrible. I’ve
only a year or two to live, but I shall be happy to do anything for you
I can--send for me whenever you like.’ I thanked him warmly.”
Victoria had intended to go to the Continent in June, and her yacht, the
_Osborne_, was docked at Portsmouth, thirty workmen busy at getting it
ready; but at the last the journey was postponed, the royal party only
returning from Balmoral on the 23rd of the month, when the Queen had to
be carried to the train in an invalid chair, and for almost the first
time in her life being half an hour late in starting. In July she went
to Osborne, and in August returned to Balmoral; and now we get one of
the first indications that she was beginning to feel that her presence
was to some extent necessary to her ministers, for that journey was
postponed some days, as Parliament had not been prorogued. However, once
in Scotland she remained there three months, coming back at the end of
November through heavy snow, and under threats that explosives would be
placed on the lines. An extra pilot-engine preceded the train, and extra
guards were stationed, one in sight of the other, for the whole six
hundred miles; and nothing happened.
This autumn the Queen amused herself by preparing her second series of
journals, _More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands_; and
when it was issued, in 1884, it bore the dedication--
“To my loyal Highlanders and especially to the memory of my devoted
personal attendant and faithful friend, John Brown, these records of my
widowed life in Scotland are gratefully dedicated.
“Victoria, R. I.”
The volume concluded with a short appreciation of John Brown, one
paragraph in which ran: “His loss to me (ill and helpless as I was at
the time from an accident) is irreparable, for he deservedly possessed
my entire confidence; and to say that he is daily, nay hourly, missed by
me, whose lifelong gratitude he won by his constant care, attention and
devotion, is but a feeble expression of the truth.”
This whole John Brown incident is typical of Victoria’s character. From
the very first she had been unable to stand alone; she needed a stronger
personality to support her. Melbourne, Prince Albert, John Brown, these
had, each in his turn, afforded that support: Melbourne entirely during
her youthful exercise of power; her husband had wielded the power for
her and left her happy with the appearance of it; John Brown slid
insensibly into the position of confidential helper and stay, and she
discussed everything with him, being delighted with his shrewd answers.
At a time when she was lonely, overworked by her own indiscriminating
will, the subject of her people’s bitter disappointment and discontent,
bearing many sorrows caused by death, this man, strong, devoted and
capable, stood always by her side. The mere personal proximity during so
many years, combined with some natural sympathy between their natures,
drew him slowly into his position of close friend as well as of
attentive servant. Her simplicity and frankness, as well as her
invincible faith in her high position, blinded her to the impropriety of
her constant public recognition of him, to the possibility that vulgar
gossip--born of anger--could arise; to the natural contrast which the
public must draw between her attitude to a simple Scotch peasant and her
own eldest son, heir to her throne.
Every one knew that the Prince of Wales was never consulted on matters
of State policy, that his ambitions were forcibly bounded by the laying
of foundation-stones and the opening of charitable institutions. It was
also known, as time went on, that when he saw younger men than himself
holding positions of great power and influence he openly regretted that
he had been delegated at the beginning of his career to the duties of a
social figurehead, and it was said that he aspired to higher things. His
many journeys abroad, laughed at by some, were regarded by others as a
deliberate self-training in the knowledge of people, statesmen and
feeling in different countries, and as providing the means of studying
the effects of our foreign policy both at home and abroad. Quite
unconsciously to himself the exaltation of John Brown turned the
people’s attention to the Prince, and they centred their hopes in him.
However, the Queen, engrossed in her feelings, knew nothing of this, and
to the day of her death shut out of her counsels the man who should have
been her chief support. She continued to hold herself aloof from great
and small, while the Prince and Princess of Wales broke through the cold
and rigid German Court etiquette by mingling with those who were
virtually their subjects, and accepting invitations in London and the
country. It had never been done before with anything like the same
freedom, and foreign Court pedants as well as her Majesty looked on
aghast. But it brought them close to the nation, and though Albert
Edward spoke English with a strong German accent, he was regarded as
more English than his mother.
The long series of deaths which had so distressed the Queen came
temporarily to an end in 1884 when Prince Leopold died suddenly at
Cannes. He had married in 1882, and was given as a wedding present
Claremont and all it contained by her Majesty, who bought it outright
from the State. He inherited his father’s tastes, and on the rare
occasions on which he chaired a meeting his speeches much resembled
those of Prince Albert. In the general irritation against royalty, it
was said that it was impossible that one of the Queen’s sons could make
a decent speech, and that they were written for him; but there was no
reason to believe that this was anything more than idle spite. He alone
of the four brothers spoke English with a pure accent. His little
daughter was born in 1883; his son’s birth did not take place until
after his death.
Leopold craved for some active position, but his health and his mother’s
solicitude enforced great restrictions upon him. He particularly hoped
to be made Governor-General of Canada, and Gladstone would have been
quite willing to give him the post, but the Queen forbade, and the
Prince felt much hurt at the Prime Minister’s refusal. Early in March
1884 he went to Cannes to avoid the bitter east winds, and there, at the
Cercle Nautique, he, too, slipped on the stairs and again hurt his
knee. He was taken to the Villa Nevada, where he was residing, and
seemed little the worse, but in the night he died in an epileptic fit.
He was buried at Windsor, and, having been totally unable to lead a
physically active life, the Queen ordered a full military funeral, his
body being borne by the Seaforth Highlanders, for in this regiment she
had given him one of those much-discussed honorary colonelcies.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE GERMAN INVASION
“He is a dear, good, amiable, high-principled young man, who, I am
sure, will make our dearest---- _very_ happy, and she will, I am
sure, be a most devoted, loving wife to him. She is _very, very_
happy, and it is a pleasure to see their young, happy faces beaming
with love for one another.”--_Letters of Queen Victoria._
“I am far more proud of my Stuart than of my Hanoverian
ancestors.”--_Queen Victoria._
If Queen Victoria never neglected her duty at a funeral, and pleased her
sentiment by remembering all death anniversaries, she extended that
thought and sentiment to more cheerful things, and gave her protection
to constant lovers. It is impossible for the ordinary commoner to
believe that royal marriages are not solely the result of interested
considerations, and however much it may be protested that a young
princess or prince has made a love match, there are few to give the
statement credence. However, the Queen helped forward some marriages
which seem to have had their origin in sheer romance.
One of these took place in 1880 when Frederica, “the lily of Hanover,”
the daughter of Victoria’s blind cousin George, whom Bismarck had
deposed in 1866, owned herself in love with one of her father’s late
equerries, Baron Pawell von Rammingen. This was certainly not a
marriage of high degree for a princess, a great-granddaughter of George
III of England and daughter of an ancient line of German kings.
George of Hanover, Frederica’s brother, was then living in Vienna, and
there seemed little prospect before Frederica other than that of a lone
lady of somewhat restricted means, when love pointed out the way.
Finding herself hopeless against the world at the moment of her grand
passion, she appealed to her earlier protectress, the Queen of England.
The adventure pleased the Queen, who did not go all the way with German
punctiliousness where true love was concerned. She arranged that the
wedding should take place in her private chapel at Windsor. Remonstrance
reached her from the Court of the German Emperor, and the whole of the
etiquette-ruled nations looked askance upon the marriage, affecting to
disbelieve that the Queen could have promised her support. Victoria was,
however, determined that they should make no mistake about her sanction,
and ordered that a list of the presents should appear in the Court
Circular, and two days later had the dress and veil fully described and
acknowledged as her gifts.
Thus she made two people happy, but one would imagine that the Baron was
even happier out of Germany than in it; Lord Carlingford, writing to
Edward Lear from Balmoral in 1884, said, “I found the Queen remarkably
well, better in body and mind than I have seen her for a long time,
though anxious about public affairs. The lady-in-waiting is the widowed
Duchess of Roxburghe, whom I like. Princess Frederica of Hanover, and
her husband Baron Pawell von Rammingen are here. He is a pleasing sort
of man in an awkward position--one of the servants informed a
maid-of-honour that ‘Mrs. Rummagen was come.’ She is very tall,
distinguished and charming.”
If Victoria shocked Prussia by mothering this romance, a little later
she found opportunity to flout all the German ideals of caste which have
ever existed, and she carried out her rôle of fairy godmother with the
same determined and complacent autocracy which she showed in neglecting
some of her most important duties at home. Three more marriages she
tried to arrange with morganatic bridegrooms on the one hand and one
ducal and two royal princesses on the other. The bridegrooms were the
Battenbergs.
If English people think of the Battenbergs at all they still either
wonder who on earth they were, or content themselves with saying
wearily, “Germans, of course.” They were Germans on their father’s side,
that father being Alexander of Hesse, uncle to the Grand Duke Louis. But
their mother was a Pole, whose father, said to have been of humble
origin, rose to be War Minister at Hesse-Darmstadt. Alexander was
brother to the Empress of Alexander II, Czar of Russia, and he took
service in the Russian army in 1851. Before this he had met at the Court
there Mademoiselle Haucke, a Polish maid-of-honour, and when he married
her in 1851 the title of Princess Battenberg was given her by the Czar.
Of this morganatic marriage at least five children were born, four boys
and a girl, the three eldest boys being Louis, Alexander and Henry, two
of them becoming German officers. Being first cousins of the husband of
Princess Alice, the Queen naturally knew them well, and as they were
handsome young men without a penny piece among them, they appealed
strongly to her sense of protectiveness. The eldest boy she invited to
England, where at the age of fourteen he arrived, and being naturalized
entered the British Navy. This is he who, wisely yielding to natural
British distrust, in the autumn of 1914 gave up his position as First
Sea Lord of the Admiralty.
The second brother, Alexander, was made by the Tsar, in agreement with
the other Powers, Prince of Bulgaria, but not being sufficiently
subservient to his patron he fell into disgrace and had to give up his
dignity, after which he wandered back to more western lands, his one
ambition being to reoccupy his old position as a Prussian soldier.
The third boy, Henry, educated in Thuringia, became a lieutenant in the
Saxon Hussars, and in 1882 a member of the Berlin “Garde du Corps.”
When her Majesty went abroad, which by this time was almost every year,
she would generally see one or more of the Battenbergs. In 1871, when
she was staying at the Villa Hohenlohe at Baden-Baden, among the guests
was the mother, Princess Battenberg. This villa belonged to Victoria’s
half-sister, Feodore; and the Queen went there once again--the following
year--as a guest, for Feodore died in the autumn of 1872, after which
her Majesty became owner of the property. Her continental holidays were
spent in various places, Coburg occasionally attracting her. Baveno, on
Lake Maggiore, was the chosen spot in 1879, and there, though it rained
nearly all the time, she passed her days in the beautiful garden; from
there she went to Les Rosieres at Mentone, where, from her window, she
could look down on a forest of orange and citron trees.
In 1880 she went again to the Villa Hohenlohe, and thence to the castle
at Darmstadt, where again she lived, her mind filled with memories and
regrets, in her dead daughter’s rooms.
While she was there two things happened. One was the engagement, made by
Bismarck, between Prince William of Prussia and Augusta Victoria,
daughter of Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein-Sondenburg-Augustenburg, and
granddaughter of Feodore. Bismarck’s choice was governed by his hatred
of the Crown Princess, her sharp intellect and her English leanings,
which made him look around for the most German of German princesses, one
who would never think of opposing his rule. Augusta Victoria was the
embodiment of his ideal; domestic and economical by necessity, the child
of a mother whose intelligence was far from strong, all her qualities
were simply housewifely. The engagement being an accomplished fact,
Bismarck caused articles and paragraphs to appear in all the papers
praising the Princess for her German manners, her German appearance, her
German ways, until the gilded youth of Berlin jokingly declared that her
only use was to make sweets and jam; to which Prince William replied,
with pointed irony against his mother, that a wife who could make sweets
was preferable to one who could discuss the Constitution. The second
event was the birth of a romance between Princess Beatrice, the
“permanent Princess,” as some one called her, and Prince Henry of
Battenberg.
Princess Beatrice had for years been her mother’s shadow; flower shows,
bazaars, Highland servants’ balls, secluded visits abroad, quiet
existence at Osborne, Balmoral or Windsor, had made up the sum of her
days; all punctuated by dreary drives to tombs and mausoleums and
accompanied by all the varying moods of her royal mother, who could be
very cross at times; she could, “for no reason, be arbitrary, contest a
point and close the argument without further discussion” (_Quarterly
Review_).
It is said that Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry became engaged
secretly in 1881, but the secret was well kept, even from the Queen.
In 1882 Victoria stayed at Mentone for a month; in 1883 she had intended
visiting Darmstadt again, for she had arranged a marriage between her
then favourite Battenberg, Louis, and her granddaughter, Victoria of
Hesse, they being first cousins once removed. However, her health was in
far too precarious a state, and her sprained knee made it impossible for
her to move about, for it was nearly a year from her fall on the stairs
before the Queen could walk, even with the aid of sticks.
This Battenberg marriage caused more consternation in Germany than did
that of Frederica. The Emperor William actually forbade it; the Princess
had her grandmother at her back, however, and a grandmother who was not
likely to defer to the scruples of another monarch in such a matter. So
keenly necessary did the Queen consider her presence to make the affair
go off smoothly, that a few days after the funeral of Prince Leopold she
went to Hesse-Darmstadt, where the wedding was held on April 26, 1884,
the two brothers, Alexander and Henry, being there. Three things
happened at this visit: the first being the marked attentions shown by
Alexander Battenberg to Princess Victoria of Prussia, daughter of the
Crown Prince, which raised very ruffled feelings on the part of the
Prussian royalties.
Another event was the confession of the secret between Henry and
Princess Beatrice to Queen Victoria, which caused a great upheaval. It
was one matter to allow one out of a multitude of granddaughters to
marry a handsome young man without prospects, but quite another thing to
approve of the same fate for the daughter of the most important royalty
in the world. So the Princess went through a strenuous interval before
her royal mother calmed down and considered the net advantages to
herself of such a match. The more she considered the more solid she saw
these advantages to be, and soon became as keen on it as was Princess
Beatrice.
The third event--for a little time kept secret--on being revealed
produced a more terrible explosion than anything that had gone before.
It was the private marriage, on the very night of his daughter’s
wedding, of the Grand Duke Louis with Countess Kalomine, another nobody
from the royal point of view.
The old William of Prussia and Victoria joined hands over this: the one
from Imperial pride and the other from pride and sentiment, for the
Queen regarded a second marriage as something irreligious, if not
actually blasphemous. The two monarchs worked so hard over the affair
that in a few months the Supreme Court of Leipzig decided that Countess
Kalomine was not legally the wife of Duke Louis, though it was said that
justice and common sense were on the lady’s side. It is curious to see
that in all these cases the man who was a nobody from the royal point of
view was eligible, but the woman who was not royal was a person to be
scorned. It was Victoria’s way.
The engagement of Princess Beatrice was not publicly announced until the
end of November, when it created a stir in England, public opinion being
intensely against it. People reasoned that here was another German, a
lieutenant in the Prussian army with pay of about £70 a year, who would
have to be supported by them--and there were already too many such.
Henry’s elder brother Louis had become a commander in the navy, raised
over the heads of English officers; Prince Christian, comfortably
settled with a good income in a comfortable house in Windsor Park, had
no need to seek for a sinecure, or a position with emolument; Count
Gleichen was Constable of Windsor Castle and an admiral of the British
Fleet; Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar was moved from the Government House
at Portsmouth and given the command of the Forces in Ireland early in
1885, a post which should have been bestowed upon an English soldier;
Prince Leiningen, commander of the Queen’s yacht, was made vice-admiral;
Princess Frederica and her husband were always with us; Prince Teck was
raising comment at the time through alleged extravagance, a sale of
“surplus” furniture having been effected at Kensington Palace.
Really the most loyal had some cause for complaint at this German
invasion; but Victoria did not mind, and calmly went on dealing out
posts and honours in the face of all grumblers. She could not understand
that her people were a power with which the sovereign should deal, but
went straight over all their susceptibilities and prejudices, never
failing to make a demand when she needed their money. What is the use of
being a queen if you cannot do as you like? The Prince of Wales had a
far finer sense of delicacy; that is to say, the somewhat brutal
Georgian characteristics were in him modified by generosity and
perception. His eldest boy came of age in January 1885, but though he
himself was deeply in debt, and had an income which, large as it was,
did not do all that was required of it, he asked no settlement for his
son. His horror at the inevitable Radical comments made him decide to
leave the field open to his sister Beatrice. On her account the Queen
made the usual demands--a dowry of £30,000 and £6000 a year--and the
weary Commons, seeing at last a temporary end of royal marriages in
sight, gave, after the usual strong protests, and with thirty-eight
dissentients, their assent.
If Germany was astonished at the Frederica marriage and affronted at
that of the Louis Battenberg’s, it was in a state of stupefaction over
the Henry Battenberg alliance. Even the Princess Royal could not be
reconciled to it, and as usual said what she thought. The Prince of
Wales also did his utmost to oppose it, and altogether discord was
rampant in the royal family. This was shown in the first week of January
1885, when the Queen and the permanent Princess absented themselves from
the great coming-of-age celebrations at Sandringham. Prince Henry, who
was in England in December, left our shores without receiving the
congratulations either of the Prince of Wales or the Duke of Edinburgh.
It is easy to imagine the disgust of the Duchess of Edinburgh, Grand
Duchess Marie Alexandrovna, over so unpretending a bridegroom.
Even Ernst of Saxe-Coburg ranged himself against the Queen and refused
to be present at the wedding, which wedding, however, was really of
supreme importance only to the chief persons concerned. Prince Henry was
constantly coming over to England, and the lovers had opportunities of
meeting when in April Victoria went first to Aix-les-Bains and then to
Darmstadt, where a great-grandchild, daughter of the Louis Battenbergs,
was christened.
The Queen was at this time, 1885, not quite sixty-eight years of age,
but she dressed like a very old woman, and it was quite common for
people to think of her as aged. The following paragraph from an
unidentifiable newspaper cutting gives an interesting picture of her as
she appeared just before going abroad--
“Here comes the Queen! The cry is raised far off, and at a rapid rate on
comes the imposing cavalcade, through loud buzzing of the multitude of
lips, ‘The Queen! The Queen!’ As usual there is a small military escort,
cavalry with drawn swords and others. Then come the outriders, jockeys
on horseback, riding rapidly and clad in the deepest mourning livery.
The Queen’s carriage is drawn by four splendid horses conducted by a
postilion mounted on one of them. Two Highlanders now occupy the seat
once so proudly held by John Brown, one of them being his brother
George, who is now with the Queen. At sight of the aged sovereign every
hat is raised. The great lady shows the years of sorrow. Her hair is
white and her face careworn. She is dressed in the very deepest
mourning, with heavy _crêpe_ veil and the widow’s cap. Beside her sits
Princess Beatrice, clad in what is called half-mourning, with a purple
velvet bonnet, and a mantle embroidered with the same colour. On the
front seat of the carriage is Prince Henry of Battenberg, the Princess’s
affianced husband. He is a fine-looking man, with what I should call
features rather square cut. One can well understand the rumour that on
both sides this may be a love match.”
During that short stay in London the little party went to the Botanical
Gardens, and coming away the off-leader took fright, plunged and kicked,
and only with great difficulty was got under control. The leading pair
had to be detached, and the Queen drove away with only two horses.
By July, when the wedding took place at Osborne, most of the quarrels
had at least been smoothed over; the Prince of Wales gave away the
bride, the Princess of Wales supported the Queen at the ceremony in
Whippingham Church. Prince Louis of Hesse, whitewashed by this time, was
of necessity present, but there was no representative at all from
Prussia, and the daughters of the Crown Princess did not join the
bridesmaids as did the young Princesses of Wales. Gladstone was
carefully omitted from the invitation list.
Directly after the marriage Henry of Battenberg was created a royal
prince by the Queen, which completed the consternation among her
Prussian cousins, who decided that her Majesty was insulting them, and
all foreign Courts refused to recognize the title, which, however, gave
him in England precedence over the husband of Princess Louise, the
Marquis of Lorne, never too well treated by the family into which he had
married.
Victoria further bestowed upon her new son-in-law the Order of the
Garter, a bestowal which entailed an outlay of about £500, which she
intended to defray, but when it came to the point she thought it better
to let the privilege devolve upon her faithful subjects.
The German comments upon this new Royal Highness aroused her defiance,
and she looked round to see how she could further prove her power in the
making of princes. Count Gleichen, another son of her sister Feodore,
had in 1861 married a daughter of Sir George Seymour, and this being a
morganatic marriage he had renounced his rank as Prince Victor
Hohenlohe, taking instead a minor title of his father’s. The Queen
commanded him to resume his original title, but of course the German
relatives refused to recognize this, though Prince Victor’s children are
cousins to the present German Empress.
Early in August Prince Henry’s parents, Alexander of Hesse and Princess
Battenberg, were guests at Windsor, and then the royal party went
northwards, as the bridal pair were to live with the Queen. Prince Henry
was very obedient in those days, for he, and with him Louis of Hesse,
wore kilts and sporrans on the journey, and he had to wear these breezy
garments for three months, until chill November nearing its end he was
permitted to return to town with his wife and mamma-in-law.
The Queen did not often let things be done in Scotland in a half-hearted
way. All the male servants and relatives had to don the kilt, the change
of costume having to be made _en route_ in the train. Her love for the
Stuarts made her choose the Royal Stuart tartan plaid as the dominant
adornment of Balmoral. Thus all the carpets were made of it, and much of
the furniture covered with it, while the thistle was embroidered on her
chairs, and her favourite dinner service was bordered with tartan. It
must have been hideously depressing, but she loved it. One of her most
cherished possessions was a little pin-cushion on tartan wooden mounts
with a portrait of the Prince on one side, and this was said to be
always on her dressing-table. This reminds me of an assertion I have
seen somewhere that on her breakfast-table every Sunday, and only on
Sunday, two little silver saltcellars were always laid, which had been
given her by John Brown. When in the north she chose Scottish doctors,
and it is on record that one newly appointed medical professor announced
the honour to his class by writing on the blackboard that he had been
made physician to the Queen. When later in the day he looked at the
board again some wag had added “God save the Queen.”
Once Victoria asked a crowd to Balmoral. It was in 1885, when the
British Association met at Aberdeen under the presidency of Lyon
Playfair, and she first invited him and Lord Rayleigh, the Montreal
president, to dine and sleep, the chief point of conversation mentioned
being her description of the Prince Consort’s interest in science. This
meeting probably suggested an invitation to all the members, and the
newspapers supplied details not mentioned in the _Memoirs of Sir Lyon
Playfair_, by Wemyss Reid. The British Association arrived there, but
found that both the Queen and Princess Beatrice had arranged a day’s
excursion for themselves which would keep them away as long as the
visitors were near the castle; and probably the former never knew that
it was said that the accommodation was defective and the luncheon-table
somewhat meagre. A very different reception from that accorded to the
British Association by the Queen and Prince Albert in 1859.
CHAPTER XIX
“SHE OUGHT TO BE WHIPPED”
“Here are women--doting wives and loving mothers--quitting the
serene and holy circle of their own hearths, relinquishing for an
appointed term the happiness and tenderness of home, to endure a
glorifying servitude beneath the golden yoke of
ceremony.”--_Douglas Jerrold on Court Ladies._
“Then comes the list of the General Committee (of the London
National Society for Woman’s Suffrage). We see the names of Mrs.
Somerville, Miss Nightingale, Miss Frances Cobb, Miss Martineau,
Mrs. Grote, Miss Hosmer, Madame Bodichon, and we greet the owners
with a loving smile, and congratulate them on fellowship with
Charles Kingsley, Edwin Arnold, Grote, Masson, F. Palgrave, Lyon
Playfair, Huxley, Lord Romilly, F. W. Newman and Mill.”--_‘Punch,’
June 1868._
Though Victoria was especially keen upon bestowing honours on her
connections--when Prince George of Wales received the Garter in 1885 he
made the twenty-eighth royal knight of the Order, as against six in
1837--she sometimes thought of humbler folk. Under Disraeli’s advice she
had offered Tennyson a Baronetcy and Carlyle the Grand Cross of the
Order of the Bath, but both were refused. In 1883 Tennyson was offered a
Barony and Gladstone urged him to accept it, telling a friend that the
only thing he felt dubious about was whether Tennyson would insist upon
wearing his extraordinary hat, his unfailing companion, in the House of
Lords. Tennyson was not eager to take the new rank, but eventually
accepted it.
Arthur Helps and Theodore Martin, two of Victoria’s most faithful
friends, had been knighted and invested with the Order of the Bath; and
for her magnificent charity Miss Burdett Coutts was made a peeress in
1871, upon which _Punch_ declared that her old title of Lady Bountiful
could never be forgotten. Ten years later the Baroness married William
Ashmead-Bartlett, she being then sixty-seven and he a young man. It was
a remarkable marriage, an accentuation of that of Disraeli and
contracted for the same motive, that an ambitious young man might be
helped to his desires; but it might have passed without great comment
had not her Majesty made so strong a protest against it and, when the
Baroness persisted in her plans, virtually intimated that she must
consider herself in permanent disgrace.
The Queen’s ideal of womanhood was entirely Germanic; that is to say, it
was something less than reality and very much less than ideal. She was
fond of talking of her “poor, feeble sex” and of “female brains being
overtaxed,” repeating and thoroughly believing all the nonsense
inculcated by Stockmar and Prince Albert; and this explains the constant
pity she expressed for herself, “a poor, weak woman” who had to overtax
her brains doing man’s work.
A clever woman she always avoided; it is doubtful whether she thought
such a one quite proper, her conviction being that a woman’s interests
should be limited to births, marriages and deaths, or, to put the
sentiment in other words, to children, cooking and church. Other
subjects should be left to the stronger intellect of men, to whom women
should defer even in the veriest trifle. Through her widowhood more than
in her married life Queen Victoria lived up to this idea. Her
politics--“I hate politics,” she once said to Tennyson--were based upon
those of the Prince Consort; her foreign policy was, as nearly as she
could make it so, an expression of the views he had held a quarter of a
century before; her habits were still those once encouraged by him. She
never bought new clothes without consulting her memory of his tastes,
and there were many around her who wished that she could be induced to
wear something less dowdy and commonplace than the garments so inspired.
She once told Theodore Martin that--
“_He_ would not have allowed me or any of our daughters to appear in any
dress or coiffure or bonnet not becoming or proper, and he would have
made us take it off. I never bought a dress or bonnet without consulting
him, and his taste was always good. I remember so well when my French
coiffeur came from Paris every year and brought over things which were
tried on, the Prince has come in and said, ‘That you shall not wear.’”
It all went back to the same thing, this struggle--against her
principles--to do intellectual work, this plain dressing, this
subservience to a man’s will: all meant that to her the man should
command the woman’s obedience. That being so, it is not to be wondered
at that such an idea as Woman’s Franchise upset her. The following is
from a letter of hers on the subject, again to Theodore Martin--
“The Queen is most anxious to enlist every one who can speak or write to
join in checking this mad, wicked folly of ‘Woman’s Rights,’ with all
its attendant horrors, on which her poor, feeble sex is bent, forgetting
every sense of womanly feeling and propriety. Lady [Harberton?] ought to
get a _good whipping_. It is a subject which makes the Queen so furious
that she cannot contain herself. God created man and woman
different--then let them remain each in their own position. Tennyson has
some beautiful lines on the difference of men and women in _The
Princess_. Woman would become the most hateful, heartless and disgusting
of human beings were she allowed to unsex herself, and where would be
the protection which man was intended to give the weaker sex?”
I have always enjoyed this letter. It is practically the basis upon
which the “antis” have founded their arguments or want of arguments:
“God created man and woman different.” That suggests so many questions
to the inquiring mind. Is God really interested in the merits of skirts
over bloomers, in twaddle about dress, over squabbles about politics, in
the brainless woman over the thoughtful one, in the idle over the
self-supporting woman? But across the lighter feeling that this letter
raises comes one of disgust that the Queen’s respect for her own sex was
so small as to allow her to suggest indignity for one with whom she
disagreed.
This belittling of women was not confined to Queen Victoria. For many
years the _Annual Register_ was edited by two ladies, the sisters of
Herman Merivale, whose ill-health devolved the work upon them. Their
account of the Franco-Prussian war was so admirable that another
publisher wished to issue it as a separate volume. However, on finding
that the authors were women he decided that republication was out of the
question, as it was not considered proper that women should be entrusted
with such high work.
On this subject Victoria should have liked Gladstone, for he agreed with
her on the Suffrage; but Disraeli, when appealed to before his last
Government, gave Miss Frances Power Cobb authority to announce that he
should vote for the measure. “Mr. Gladstone, however, has declared that
he will oppose it; and the Government opposition will be fatal to us.
Let him be known as William the Woman-hater.” So said Miss Cobb to the
meeting she had called; and Gladstone had the intellectual women against
him everywhere.
But, as has been said, the Queen did not like Gladstone, and more, she
did not like Mrs. Gladstone, who was far too able a woman to please her
taste. The Gladstones on rare occasions went to dine and sleep at
Windsor, and one reads of Mrs. Gladstone invited to lunch there and
taking it with those whom W. H. Brookfield facetiously called the
servants, the ladies-in-waiting and the grooms of the chamber, etc., and
then having five minutes’ conversation with her Majesty, probably both
being very glad when the restrained and chilly meeting was over. On one
occasion the Prime Minister had some adventure in a fog, in which a
horse tried to go upstairs, which was too good a story not to be
repeated everywhere. Being commanded to dine and sleep at Windsor, a
lady in the train discussed with him the fog, the horse and the
staircase at length; others did the same on the way. At the castle Sir
Henry Ponsonby was the first to allude to it, then came Sir John Cowell,
Master of the Household. To all Gladstone gave the same reply: “I assure
you it was much exaggerated.” After dinner, in the corridor, her Majesty
came to speak to him, saying, “We have had dreadful weather lately, and
you must have had a bad experience the other night.” “Oh, ma’am, I
assure you too much has been made of it,” was his answer. And some one
remarked what a solecism it was that a man of Gladstone’s age and
eminence should go to Windsor--dress-coat and pantaloons--stay the
night, and all the talk he had with his sovereign was a word or two
about the fog.
The Queen’s feelings on femininity were not confined to the question of
the vote; she further expressed it to Lord Herschell after Tennyson’s
death, when he was commanded to a dine-and-sleep visit. Miss Jean
Ingelow, a pleasant but mediocre poet, was spoken of at the royal table,
the Queen turning to Herschell and saying--
“I have had Miss Ingelow’s claim to the Laureateship put before me, and
I admire her poetry extremely, but I do not consider that a woman can
properly fill the post of Poet Laureate.”
Herschell bowed acquiescence and did not utter his thoughts, which were
that “if one woman can fill the post of Queen of England and Empress of
India, another might be trusted to write a royal ode now and then.”[26]
But though Victoria could not stand a clever woman, she also did not
like a socially stupid one, being very impatient of dulness. If some one
praised a lady as good and kind, the answer might be--
“Yes, but I’ve no patience with her; she is so stupid.”
This did not mean that she was drawing comparisons between her own
powers and those of the other, but that there must be no stupidity in
relation to herself and her affairs; it might clog the wheels upon which
the State ran.
Even for intellectual men she had no affinity. That authors were doing a
good work she realized, but it did not touch her life or interests, and
so she left all such out in the cold. She made a friend of Tennyson
because some sentiments in his incomparable _In Memoriam_ seemed to fit
her case, and she once arranged a meeting with Carlyle, Browning, Grote,
Dickens and Lyell at the house of Lady Augusta Stanley. This was the
exception which proved the rule very sharply, though her flatterers have
used it as a proof that she was deeply interested in literature.
To Browning, who had just published _The Book and the Ring_, she said,
“Have you been writing anything lately?” As she continued to stand all
the visitors stood also, and Carlyle was both old and frail. He was
talking with her Majesty, “launching forth his great, rolling periods as
only he can,” until the pain in his back was almost unendurable. “We who
knew the Queen so well were delighted to see the pleasure that her
Majesty was receiving from the conversation, but I must own both the
dean and I were apprehensive for her aged subject,” said Lady Augusta in
telling the story. At last the Sage of Chelsea took the matter into his
own hands. Seizing a chair, he said--
“If your Majesty would please to be seated we could carry on the subject
with greater ease.”
Her Majesty took a chair, still talking, and Carlyle was happy for the
rest of the meeting, but Victoria was not quite so pleased. The old man
declared afterwards that it was “impossible to imagine a politer little
woman; nothing the least imperious; all gentle, all sincere ... makes
you feel, too, if you have any sense in you, that she is a queen.”
Victoria said of him that he was gruff-tempered, if not unmannerly. She
could not quite forgive the liberty he had taken.
This importance of being allowed to sit in the Queen’s presence reminds
me of another story given in a magazine article, and somewhat resembling
the Carlyle episode. The Queen, the Empress Frederick and fifteen other
royalties when at Sandringham determined to pay what was somewhat
loosely regarded as a surprise visit to a neighbouring vicar. Two
men-servants were thoughtfully sent in advance with cakes and
delicacies to lay the tables for tea. The hostess, as was the custom a
few years ago, poured out tea for this regal crowd, and, as may be
imagined, was kept hard at work. That task over, she was _not_ asked to
sit down in her own drawing-room, and so stood for a long period, until
a princess implored her mother to ask their hostess to take a seat, when
the permission was _most graciously given_. Let us hope that this
example of discourtesy is not true, for if it were what a condemnation
it offers of the ways of the Court then. How could any writer use such a
word as _graciously_ over such a rudely delayed invitation?
But to return to the Queen’s views upon her sex. They were perfectly
sincere, for she had been inoculated with such ideas by one whom she
thought infallible, but they had their inevitable consequence. A man
might sin, yet kiss her Majesty’s hand, but should the merest suspicion
fall upon a woman she at once became ostracized. Never until Victoria’s
time was this distinction so bitterly marked, and it was the result, not
of a high ideal of morals, but of a low ideal of womanhood. And this
gives the strongest reason for the unpopularity of the late Queen among
intellectual women. No woman likes or trusts that woman who regards her
own sex meanly. It seems to me, however, that Victoria’s attitude in
making this great difference between men and women has had one good
result, in that it has so shocked and incensed women that they in their
turn tend to demand from men the cleanness that has been demanded from
them. For, whatever we may say or think of the Court, no one can doubt
that it does influence what may be termed the fashion in morals of the
nation. Albert and Victoria set themselves to impress on the people a
new ideal of domestic life, and they succeeded to a great extent, at
least they went half-way to success. Our present royalties do not talk
about such aims, for the habit is made, but their influence is quite as
strong.
Nothing could have persuaded Victoria that God had given women brains to
use just as He had given them to men. She would have answered as before,
“God made man and woman different,” and have felt that there was no
appeal against the way in which she translated the words; and she would
have also felt in this as in other things that the fact that she was
queen rendered it even more impossible that she could be mistaken, her
reverence for the royal position being as deep as her belief in her own
rightness.
This was shown on the publication of the first part of Charles
Greville’s diaries in 1874, which caused her much annoyance. Greville
had been Clerk to the Privy Council, and his journals dealt, not with
the Council, but with the public events and politics of his period,
including much criticism of royalties and well-known people. He died in
1864, leaving these diaries to his friend Henry Reeve to edit and
publish. Reeve allowed ten years to elapse and then issued the first
three volumes, which ended with the death of William IV. Eleven days
after the publication of the work the Queen sent Reeve, who believed
that she had not really read the book, but only newspaper extracts, a
message by Sir Arthur Helps expressing her disapproval. She found three
causes for complaint: that the book was disparaging to her family; that
it tended to weaken the Monarchy; that it proceeded from official
persons. Reeve begged Helps to reply, with his humble duty, that the
book showed that if Monarchy had really been endangered it was by the
depravity of George IV and the absurdities of William IV, but that under
her Majesty’s reign it had been stronger than ever; an explanation
probably quite as annoying to her as the book had been. She never
forgave it, and though Reeve was entitled to the K.C.B. for his long
service as Clerk of Appeals to the Privy Councils, he never received the
honour.
Reeve called upon the old Duchess of Cambridge one day, and found her
much interested in the book, which was being read to her, she frequently
adding further amusing recollections.
The second series of these memoirs was published in 1885, and the third
series two years later. Reeve sent copies to Sir Henry Ponsonby, who
laid them before the Queen, but she made no further sign.
Queen Victoria had no more interest in art and artists than she had in
literature and authors; as the writer of the article in _The Quarterly
Review_ says, she never even “took the right kind of interest in the
beautiful objects she possessed in her palaces, and it is mere courtly
complaisance to pretend that she did.” There were two or three German
artists, such as Winterhalter and von Angeli, to whose work she was
accustomed, and that their portraits were bad she never could see. On
being urged to sit to G. F. Watts, who would produce a splendid
portrait, she replied, “Perhaps so, but I’m afraid it would be ugly.”
Disraeli, however, had hanging in his dining-room a half-length copy of
one of von Angeli’s portraits of her, which she had presented to him,
and which, as Lord Ronald Gower says, was a standing proof of her utter
want of vanity, for it was almost a caricature.
Frankly, the Queen did not care for art, though she was always making
little sketches, and though the Marquis de Foulon, a courtier as well as
a Frenchman, who had taught her drawing in her girlhood, told her that,
had she not been born to wear a crown, she would have made one of the
best “female” artists of the age!
That her Majesty wielded the pen everybody knows, but not so many will
remember the issue, about twenty years ago, of a terrible book,
“published with the gracious permission and approval of” the Queen, and
named _Her Majesty’s Dolls_. No one with any artistic understanding
could have allowed this to appear, but Mr. Harry Furniss, in his volume
_Harry Furniss at Home_, puts the responsibility on other shoulders when
he says: “_The Queen’s Dolls_ compliments the public by playing down to
its limited understanding of art matters.” Probably he was right, for
the public, in spite of its occasional spasms of republicanism, is the
essence of snobbery in matters royal.
CHAPTER XX
GLADSTONE AGAIN, ALAS!
“Oh, cry of Tory, cry of Rad,
I hear you ere your time;
The Tory shout is faint and sad,
And suits an artless rhyme.
Old England’s honour long is dead,
Her wealth is like to die;
The gilt is off the gingerbread,
The bloom is off the rye.
To Radicals Trevelyan gave
An eligible shout;
Their funny banners wild they wave,
And shriek and strut about;
And still they clamour, ’midst applause,
From stump and brake and van,
We’re fighting for the same old cause,
And for the same old man.”--_Punch._
“Sackery-down, the Ministers frown,
The Queen is again so far from town;
She summons them up, she summons them down,
Because she won’t travel to London town.”
_Contemporary Verse._
The year 1884 had been an arduous one for her Majesty’s Government, for
as the demands for reform rose, so did the opposition to reform
strengthen; as Irish discontent grew more bitter, so the more violent
became its actions, and as violence begets violence, so the
determination to increase coercion grew more energetic.
Lord Salisbury was the head of the Opposition, and Lord Randolph
Churchill had inspired a small but noisy party with his own views. It
was under his clever initiative that the epidemic of “slumming” spread
among the aristocracy, and ladies made a fashion of studying the most
sordid aspects of London. Most of it was of no use, but after the first
resentment the East-Enders grew to tolerate and then to like some of the
efforts put forth to amuse and help them, and at least it proved that
great ladies thought they looked upon them as human. Many of us remember
the constant conjunction of the words “classes” and “masses.” Even the
Queen was drawn to the East End to open the People’s Palace, and at
least the movement gave a fillip to the Conservatives by impressing upon
the poor that they had friends in that party.
The Bill for extending the County Franchise, which passed by a majority
of one hundred and forty, was thrown out by the Lords, and Lord
Salisbury inconsequently demanded that Parliament should be dissolved.
Gladstone declared privately that if it did dissolve it should be upon
organic change in the House of Lords, and there gradually arose much the
same position as that which had obtained between the two Houses over the
Irish Church Bill, and once again Victoria, half convinced that the
reform was necessary, set herself to bridge the gulf between the Lords
and the Commons, through Sir Henry Ponsonby, who was an unacknowledged
statesman of a high order. Eventually Gladstone wrote “to tender his
grateful thanks to your Majesty for the wise, gracious and steady
influence on your Majesty’s part, which has so powerfully contributed
to bring about this accomplishment and to avert a serious crisis.” To
which the Queen replied, “I gladly and thankfully return your telegrams.
To be able to be of use is all I care to live for now.” So they were
both happy, and Ponsonby had the usual reward of virtue, which of course
was not publicly mentioned.
Through all this the Sudan trouble continued, and this year General
Stewart won, though with heavy loss, a victory over the Mahdi. The
definite intention was to abandon the Sudan, but from one cause and
another the evacuation had to be postponed. Some people, following the
Queen, blame Gladstone for even dreaming of evacuation, but much money
and many lives were already being thrown away to keep this possession
for the Turks, who were not strong enough to keep it for themselves.
When Lord Salisbury came into office, and until 1896, he resolutely
resisted every attempt to make him change the policy laid down by
Gladstone there. For he knew that it would have been suicidal to
withdraw troops from India, where frontier wars were constantly
occurring and a chronic state of unrest existed, to attempt the conquest
of a country of such doubtful utility as the Sudan. When matters were
ripe for action, however, he was prompt to take it.
A further difficulty for the Government was Ireland. “There lay
Ireland--squalid, dismal, sullen, dull, expectant, sunk deep in hostile
intent,” says Lord Morley; a difficulty with which, as has been said, I
cannot deal, and the answer to which has not yet received the royal
seal. Parnell had in 1885 found one key to the situation when he said
that it would be for the Irish people in England and for the Irish
members to decide at the next election whether a Tory or a Liberal
Ministry should rule in England.
Gladstone wanted to give a measure of local government to our sister
isle, but this was vetoed by members from both sides, and Lord Salisbury
determined to placate Parnell by dropping Coercion, the two events in
close conjunction being something of a satire on party politics. Every
indication went to show that the Liberal Government was at the end of
its resources. The Cabinet was in a constant state of division and
resignation. All but three or four members separately tendered
resignation, and some more than once. One Cabinet was said to have sat
for four and a half hours debating whether they should resign, and
Gladstone’s casting vote then negatived it. At one time too, all the
peers in the Cabinet voted one way and all the commoners another.
The Irish complicated affairs by dropping bombs about. At the end of
January 1885 there was an effective explosion at the House of Commons,
in which all the windows of Westminster Hall were blown out, a hole made
at the top of the crypt below the steps in the great hall, the statues
in the lobby hurled down, the gallery of the Commons shattered, the
Speaker’s chair ruined, and beams and glass shed all over the place--the
destruction amounting to a policeman’s life and £70,000. In May occurred
explosions in St. James’s Square and Scotland Yard, and an unsuccessful
attempt was made at the base of the Nelson Monument; while there was a
further one near St. Thomas’s Tower at the Tower of London, in which
children were wounded.
Every one knew that a parliamentary change was at hand, and it came
about nominally through a vote on duties upon spirits and beer, but not
on wine, in the Budget discussion, actually through an alliance between
the Tories and the Irish. The motion which produced it was made by Sir
Michael Hicks Beach, under Lord Salisbury’s direction, though Gladstone
warned them that if it were carried it would mean the resignation of the
Government.
This was in June, and ended what was one of the most anxious half years
experienced in Parliament.
It was in this 1880-1885 Ministry that George Glyn (second Lord
Wolverton) had a place. Of him it was said that he had a canine fidelity
to Gladstone, so that he would at critical moments be anxiously watched,
his face being a clue to what was happening. After one division some one
said cheerfully, “Oh, it’s all right, George Glyn has gone up to
Gladstone wagging his tail.” Glyn died in 1887, and the rumour went that
he had left Gladstone £100,000, but the rumour was without
justification, for Gladstone did not benefit at all under his friend’s
will.
Victoria had just attained her sixty-eighth birthday. She was getting
old and could not alter ideas which had guided her for nearly a quarter
of a century. She had followed her own sweet will all through, and
intended still to do so, and probably never had she been so much away
from the centre of affairs as she was this year.
Let us follow her movements. At Christmas she was at Osborne, and had
not left when the news arrived in February 1885 of the fall of Khartoum.
Her feelings were then too bitter for her to contemplate Windsor, and
she stayed on, making illness the excuse. When she felt anything keenly
her nerves and general health would become affected, and the short
journey across the Solent, though at a respectably reduced speed, tried
her always after the tragic _Mistletoe_ affair.
On March 18 she was in London, holding a Drawing-room, the first held by
her since the early part of 1883; early in April she went to
Aix-les-Bains and Darmstadt for a month, leaving urgent instructions
with her Prime Minister that she should be constantly informed by
telegraph of all important proceedings, and especially in reference to
Egypt and the Sudan. This considerably added to the labours of men who
were doing their best to govern her kingdom, and retarded events through
loss of time in getting her replies.
In May she returned and held two more Drawing-rooms, and on the 21st of
that month, when parliamentary affairs were in danger every day of
collapsing, she started for Balmoral. An urgent request for a short
delay, if only for a day or two, was refused, and before she had been
many hours gone a special messenger had to follow her. She passed
through England as usual in strict seclusion, the station platforms
being kept empty while her train ran through. At Perth a crowd was
allowed to approach. It was the usual thing, and a very small thing, but
it made people angry. At Balmoral, after paying an early visit to John
Brown’s grave, she lived her usual outdoor, restful life.
The defeat of the Government came on June 8, 1885, the news being
received by her the next morning. There are various accounts as to how
her Majesty took it. Sir Sidney Lee says that it was with “incalculable
elation.” On the other hand, she was considerably annoyed that it should
have happened while she was at Balmoral, for she did not like any mental
disturbance when on a holiday; therefore she made no effort to meet the
situation, but carried out her plan of taking a long drive to Braemar,
Glen Clunie and other places, returning to the castle late in the
evening, expecting to hear that Gladstone had telegraphed an intention
of being with her the next day. He, then seventy-six and feeling that
his work was done, had decided against such a journey. The Queen was
obliged to write to him on the 10th, when she declared her surprise that
he should have made his defeat a vital question, and asked whether his
Cabinet would not go on if Lord Salisbury refused to form a Government,
which did not exactly look like “incalculable elation.” She did not want
Gladstone, and she did want Salisbury, but it seemed as though she
wanted least of all to let a matter of national importance interfere
with her holiday. Such an attitude could not escape comment, and there
were many public protests against her causing a ministerial crisis to
last for weeks, when a few hours ought to have settled it. For one who
protested so much that she was always thinking of and working for the
good of her kingdom it _was_ remarkable.
She was, however, extremely angry that Gladstone had not at once gone to
her, and plainly told him so; showing little consideration or mercy for
an old man who had for four months been working at high tension. He
replied in effect that he was near the end of his life, that his ideas
were probably coloured by the shortness of the future left him, and that
he thought Lord Hartington, a younger man, “would be more useful in
conversation with her Majesty.” So Hartington prepared to go to
Balmoral, but the Queen countermanded this, accepted the resignations,
and summoned Lord Salisbury to the Highlands.
Now that Lord Salisbury was face to face with the situation he, as
Disraeli, did not like it; he would have to depend upon coalition with
the Irish, and however welcome they were in defeating the Government
they might be dangerous as coadjutors, so he recommended that Gladstone
should be invited to reconsider his decision. This the latter refused to
do. Lord Salisbury had led the great quarrel over reform between the
Lords and the Commons; under his opposition had been engineered a most
determined system of obstruction, and he had done his utmost to defeat
the Government on its Budget. “If an Opposition defeat a Government,
they must be prepared to accept responsibility for their action,” said
Gladstone to the Queen. Then Salisbury demanded promises of support as
to finance, time and other matters, and Gladstone again refused--it was
on finance that Salisbury had eagerly overthrown him!
The interregnum continued, for though Gladstone told the Queen that
there would be no attempt to embarrass the new ministers, Salisbury was
still afraid of taking office, and it is not surprising, as, Irish
uncertainties aside, he would have a majority against him, and also as
Irish affairs were causing acute difficulties in his own party. “The
Queen was most gracious and I thought most reasonable,” said Gladstone,
after an interview on June 18, her Majesty having returned to Windsor
the day before. On the 20th Ponsonby was with Gladstone again, on the
22nd he paid him no less than six visits; on the 23rd the Queen
impressed upon Salisbury that he might reasonably accept Gladstone’s
assurances, and urged her earnest desire to bring the crisis to an end.
So after sixteen days in the doldrums the ship of State was again in
motion under what came to be known as the Stop-Gap Government, for a
dissolution was fixed for November.
All being ended, the Queen wrote a perfectly charming letter to
Gladstone, again offering him a peerage. “She wishes to offer him an
earldom, as a mark of her recognition of his long and distinguished
services, and she believes and thinks he would thereby be enabled still
to render great service to his sovereign and country.”
Gladstone said that the letter moved and almost upset him. “It must have
cost her much to write, and it is really a pearl of great price.” As
every one knows he did not accept the proffered honour which would have
crippled his work.
The Queen now turned her thoughts to Osborne, going there after the
settlement, and being engrossed in Princess Beatrice’s wedding. She came
thence to Windsor in August to entertain Duke Alexander and his wife
Princess Battenberg. On the 24th of that month she started for Balmoral,
and remained there until November 17, and a month later went again to
Osborne.
Now this is the amount of time spent by the English Queen in her castle
twenty miles from London: March and a few days of April, two weeks in
May, two weeks in June, two weeks in August, and one month near the end
of the year, between three and four months altogether, of which about
four days had been spent in Buckingham Palace. The fact was that she
still hated the essential part of her life as queen as much as she
loathed Windsor, and this autumn, though she only returned there under
great pressure on November 17, her spirits fell instantly, so that by
the beginning of December she was reported to be deeply depressed--a
part of which depression may have been caused by the election results.
She had not found Lord Salisbury so docile to her whims as had been Lord
Beaconsfield, for he, like Gladstone, attached more importance to her
position as head of the State than did her favourite minister.
The elections were begun on November 23rd, and Salisbury appointed a
Council meeting for the 18th. The Queen, however, said that she did not
intend to return south before that date, and if a Privy Council was
necessary, then it would have to be held at Balmoral. Salisbury,
however, was firm; the 18th was the very last day on which the Council
could be held before the elections, and his representations were strong
enough to make Victoria give up a few days of her holiday, and save a
large body of her loyal helpers from the wearisome journey to and from
Scotland.
The election was virtually fought on the Irish question. Parnell
demanded some form of Home Rule, Salisbury declared definitely for the
reform if not the repeal of the Coercion Act. Gladstone, who foresaw
that Ireland would be the essential question in the new Parliament,
offended Parnell by refusing to formulate any scheme; while Hartington
and Chamberlain definitely declared against any Irish plan at all.
Parnell decided to throw his weight on the side of Salisbury, with
results which were embarrassing to every one. The Liberals stood at 333,
the Conservatives at 251, and the Parnellites at 86 on the side of the
Conservatives, so that the latter could count a majority of four in a
full house. But it meant Gladstone being called once again to power. No
wonder Victoria was depressed in spirits in December!
Things had not gone well with her this year, but in more than one
respect the reason lay with herself. She was far too careful with her
money in England; she spent nothing on dress, on hospitality or on State
functions, and on the other hand there were constantly little bills put
before the parliamentary finance committee for payment. Thus when our
present king was given the Garter in March, £548 was demanded to pay the
expense, and there was the same for Prince Henry, then £360 was asked
for steamboats to carry royalties between Dover and Calais; her steam
yacht, _Victoria and Albert_, which she used scarcely four times a year,
was repaired and decorated at a public cost of £50,000, and as she had
four or five such yachts people began to make inquiries into the annual
cost of these, and found it to be, including the pay of officers and
sailors, very large. In June there was another foolish little matter
which provoked comment and amusement. Some ardent Egyptian admirer made
Victoria a present of a donkey for the little carriage which she used in
the grounds of her residences. It was to be sent from Suez, so a
transport waited there with steam up for days, until the deliberate
animal eventually appeared, the cost of the waiting being about £150 per
day.
A small matter concerned with the Civil List was also revived, showing
that four or five people who had helped to educate the Queen, and who
were pensioned in 1840, were still receiving £100 a year each; one had
taught her drawing, another dancing, others music, German and Italian.
Two years later the Marquis de Foulon died, thus releasing one hundred
pounds. One feels some shame that these small sums were the subject of
public comment, but, on the other hand, had her Majesty shown generosity
with her own money as well as that of the nation, half these grumbles
would never have been uttered.
In the autumn of 1885 a rumour spread that Victoria had invested a
million pounds in ground rents in the City, which rumour Ponsonby denied
by asserting that the Queen had not such a sum to invest. Upon which
busybodies declared that though she might not have got it then she had
had it, and published proofs of property bought, one cited being St.
Mary Chambers in St. Mary Axe, for which £46,250, that is twenty-five
years’ purchase, had been paid, the deal having been completed on June
6, 1878, in her Majesty’s name by cheques on Coutts’s Bank. Other
examples followed, and though no one could prove the existence of such a
sum as one million, it was everywhere believed.
Indeed it was a season of complaint, and the society papers got warm
over the paucity of Drawing-rooms, State balls and concerts held by the
Queen. It was a fair grumble, for when she did once or twice in the year
summon visitors to her palace, those ladies who had been weeping because
they were not invited had occasion to weep because they were; for the
opportunities being so few the Drawing-rooms were crowded as in the very
worst days of palace mismanagement. All the archaic customs were also
adhered to, the carriages not being allowed to stand at the door long
enough for the owners to reach them, and if they were not actually on
the spot these poor tired women would see their vehicle roll away to
complete the whole round again, while they might have to stand an hour
or more, faint with thirst and fatigue. Through the papers they implored
that at least a cup of tea should be offered them by their royal
hostess, but the petition was in vain.
To this recrudescence of complainings the Queen turned her usual
indifferent ear, and invoked the usual exasperation of her people. Had
she been less self-absorbed and less obstinate, she could have swept the
whole thing away as a cobweb is swept down, but she refused; she must
adhere to the line she had laid down for herself. In actual fact she did
more than that, she bent the line inwards, as it were, retreating with
it, and thus keeping her people at a greater distance. She could be
kindhearted to individuals, death could always bring tears to her eyes
and a beautiful letter of sympathy from her pen to a mourner, but her
lack of imagination left her cold as stone to the requests of a
community.
In the case of soldiers this indifference warmed into thoughtfulness,
and an anecdote is told of a visit she made to Netley Hospital in 1883,
when she observed to the authority near her that she should like to see
more armchairs in the wards.
“Only one armchair to a ward is allowed by the regulation, your
Majesty,” was the reply.
“I was not speaking of regulations, but of armchairs,” was the quick
retort.
In some vague way Victoria associated Gladstone with these ebullitions
of public criticism, for these discomforts seemed to happen under his
rule; and though Salisbury was actually in power when this latest
outburst occurred, there was a Liberal majority in the House. Thus she
was keenly troubled over the 1885 elections, and went down to Osborne,
after the mourning rituals of December 14, with a heavy heart; the more
so that Gladstone had outlined his Home Rule policy to her early in the
month, and she felt that another political fight was imminent, and one
in which she saw no saving grace at all on the Home Rule side.
I remember the discussions against the royal family of that period, the
popular and vehement talk, the speeches at street corners and the wild
bets made that if the then Prince of Wales was ever allowed to become
king, his son never should be. This was generally flavoured with stories
of the wonderful wealth which the Queen had saved from the taxes imposed
upon the people, and the vast sums that she had spent over German
princes both in England and on the Continent. There were also other
stories which had leaked through some chink in the iron wall of reserve
which the Prince Consort had built round the domestic life of the
palace, stories of the Queen’s arbitrariness, of her excessive demands
upon her ladies, the long hours of standing in her presence so that
occasionally one fainted at her post, of capricious dislikes and ladies
being suddenly dismissed simply because she had wearied of them, or they
had proved physically unequal to the labour demanded. Thirty years ago
these things were said, and the writer of the article in _The Quarterly
Review_ of 1901 substantiates some of them.
It goes without saying that Victoria refused to understand that her own
attitude under a Liberal Government was the real cause of the
disaffection, that she shut herself up more rigidly then than when the
Conservatives were in power and showed far less consideration all round.
Thus, not having opened a Liberal session for twenty years, she returned
in 1886 from Osborne before January 21, to go to the House of Lords in
semi-state to support Salisbury.
On his defeat Salisbury, who had all the grit of his race, showed no
intention of refusing to meet Parliament, as Disraeli had done ten years
earlier, and he occupied the Ministerial bench when the House opened,
but five days later he was outvoted, and the parties changed sides.
Gladstone had prepared a scheme for municipal Home Rule in Ireland
without prejudice to Imperial Unity and interests, and on March 15,
1886, there came into being the notable new party, the
Liberal-Unionists, under Joseph Chamberlain, the ultra-Radical. Thus
there were four parties in the House. Chamberlain and his group,
Hartington, the Whig, and his followers, Salisbury and the Tories and
Gladstone and the Liberals. The first three met to discuss the situation
and lay their plans, and on June 7 the first Home Rule Bill was
rejected.
After winding up the debate and while the House was cleared for
division, Gladstone sat on the Treasury bench and with calm face began
writing his letter on his knees to the Queen. This daily letter at the
end of a long and exciting debate must always have been something of a
tax upon a weary and harassed minister.
It was a curious characteristic of Victoria that, when it suited her,
she played with the conventions of parliamentary custom. Home Rule was
dead and out of the way. There had recently been an election, and though
her minister was repugnant to her, he could now do little harm, so she
decided that another election was unnecessary. It was, she said, a
needless disturbance of her own and the country’s peace. Gladstone,
however, saw in resignation rather than dissolution simply an
abandonment of the Irish cause, a showing of the white feather, as he
told the Queen, and he dissolved without delay.
During the preceding weeks Victoria had suffered from every emotion of
disgust and nervous tension. To give the Irish any voice in their own
affairs, to allow them any kind of local government meant to her, as it
has done to a large number of her subjects who have never studied the
suggestions put forth, a disruption of her empire, a breaking of her
coronation oath, a handing of Ireland over to America, and a number of
other absurd and impossible calamities. Much the same things were said
about self-government for South Africa, and had the Government then in
power listened, the Boers would, as one nation, in this year of 1915,
have joined our German foes, and Africa would have been the scene of a
terrible war.
All along Victoria had definitely expounded her views about her Prime
Minister and his Bill to every one with whom she came in contact, and
she consciously headed the Opposition, so the defeat brought her great
joy, and when the new Parliament showed a Unionist majority of 110 and
she had to take leave of Gladstone she was beaming. He had spent
fifty-five years in political life, and twenty-five years in office, and
her sole remark personal to him at the leave-taking was that he would
require some rest. The greater part of the conversation was devoted to a
discussion of the means to be employed to secure grants, dowries and
pensions for the third generation of her family. She was glad to be rid
of him, but she was quick to seize the opportunity of enlisting his help
for her personal affairs.
“I remember,” said Gladstone, “that on a closing audience in 1874 she
said she felt sure I might be reckoned upon to support the Throne. She
did not say anything of the sort to-day. Her mind and opinions have
since that day been seriously warped, and I respect her for the
scrupulous avoidance of anything which could have seemed to indicate a
desire on her part to claim anything in common with me.”
Yet she was ready to grasp at this opportunity of ensuring his future
support!
During the election Gladstone took the unusual course of speaking in
many large centres, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester and others, and the
Queen remonstrated with him in what Lord Morley called “a gracious and
frank letter from Balmoral.” To which he replied, “He must state frankly
what it is that has induced him thus to yield (to importunity for
speeches). It is that, since the death of Lord Beaconsfield, the Leaders
of the Opposition have established a rule of what may be called popular
agitation, by addressing public meetings from time to time at places
with which they were not connected. This method was peculiarly marked
in the case of Lord Salisbury as a peer, and this change on the part of
the Leaders of the Opposition has induced Mr. Gladstone to deviate on
this critical occasion from the rule which he had generally or
universally observed in former years.... Your Majesty will be the first
to perceive that, even if it had been possible for him to decline this
great contest, it was not possible for him, having entered upon it, to
conduct it in a half-hearted manner, or to omit the use of any means
requisite in order to place (what he thinks) the true issue before the
country.”
So was legalized, as it were, the custom of ministers and their
opponents speaking all over the country.
CHAPTER XXI
THE QUEEN ALIVE ONCE MORE
“She did not struggle knowingly against principles; she did not
conceive of them. She struggled solely against men who displeased
her.... Queen, in good faith she defended royalty. It was her rôle.
To reproach Victoria because, being on the throne, she had not
enough intelligence and foresight to put the interest and future
good of the nation before what she considered as the interest and
immediate good of her country, of her function, of her person,
would be to reproach her for not having combined heroism and genius
in her soul.”--_Abel Chevalley: ‘La Reine Victoria.’_
“The hurrahs were yet ascending from our jubilating lips.”--_De
Quincey: ‘Autobiographical Sketches.’_
There had already been in the winter of 1885 talk of the rejoicings
which it was hoped would be made on the attainment of the fiftieth year
of Victoria’s reign, and the hint of such a thing caused her pleasure,
even though it occurred when Lord Salisbury was being turned out of
power, and swelled into popular favour under Gladstone. There was about
it a suggestion of peace and good feeling which she hailed gladly, and
her sensible suggestion that it should be held on the completion of the
fiftieth year was accepted by all as a proof of her strength and
confidence.
She was, indeed, in better health, both of body and mind; the poisonous
depression and self-absorption which had held her for twenty-five years
and rendered her a nonentity in her own capital was at last being
effectively conquered, and for the first time she seemed really to
become aware that any unpopularity from which she had suffered had some
relation to her own attitude. Thus 1886 saw the beginning of a
revolution in her life, brought about in the first place by a desire to
lead the fight against a measure which she opposed with every sentiment
of her being.
The keenness of her feeling against Home Rule led her to look for
methods of impressing her ideas upon the people, and she could think
only of that “personal influence” which she had so long scorned. In
realizing this she also began to see that she had deliberately thrown
aside many golden opportunities. So she armed herself for the conflict,
and the fight was begun by her appearance at the opening of Parliament
in January 1886, and though five days later Gladstone succeeded to the
Chair of State, she constantly appeared in public during the session. In
February she went to a great concert at the Albert Hall; in March she
laid the foundation-stone of the Medical Examination Hall on the
Embankment, actually replying herself to the address presented to her.
When, in 1882, she had opened the Royal Courts of Justice, the programme
included a short opening speech by herself; but as the moment approached
she began to look very unhappy, and, beckoning Sir William Harcourt,
talked earnestly to him--every one thinking that he was getting a
scolding. The fact was that she was suddenly stricken with deadly
nervousness, and was telling him that she could not utter the briefest
sentence, and commanding him to do it for her. In May she opened the
great Colonial and Indian Exhibition (the “Colindries”) at South
Kensington, the inception of which was due to the Prince of Wales. She
did things now, not as a prisoner dragged to the task, but with a will;
and in this instance decided upon a magnificent state ceremonial, which
awoke enthusiasm in the souls of those who love a show. From Paddington
to South Kensington she drove through huzzaing crowds. At the exhibition
she was received with a blare of trumpets and the National Anthem, by a
host of people brilliant in garb and many of them brilliant in
reputation. Her throne in the amphitheatre was of hammered gold (once in
the possession of the East India Company; one wonders how they got it!),
and the canopy was of Indian cloth-of-gold, its hangings looped with
gold chains and pendants of Delhi work.
It was all very gorgeous and inspiriting, and the Queen once more did
what for twenty-five years she had refused to do except over a tomb or a
statue: she gave voice to her own reply to the address. She had at last
found her feet, and seemed determined henceforth to walk on them, and
not to be for ever begging her people to carry her.
Later she held a review at Aldershot to do honour to her Indian and
Colonial visitors, asked them to lunch at Windsor, and gave a party
there to the overseas workers at the exhibition. But she forgot that all
this goodwill had been made possible by the policy of past Governments
who recognized the autonomous principle of Colonial government, the
very principle which, when applied to Ireland, she thought would be
disruptive of her empire.
A week after the opening of the exhibition she paid a long-promised and
long-delayed visit to Liverpool. She stayed there three days and two
nights, and though it rained intolerably all through one of those days
she stuck to the programme, and drove in an open carriage through the
streets. Well might she have a wonderful and glorious welcome! Returning
thence to Windsor, she then took her usual holiday at Balmoral, and at
the end of June was ready to open the Royal Holloway College at Egham.
Think of it, a college for women! In addition to all these functions she
held Drawing-rooms and State concerts in London, and ordered various
other levees, balls and assemblies to take place. The whole royal family
were allowed to wake up at last, the various princes and princesses
being kept busy with the public events which have since become
recognized as part of their duties; giving their blessings to new
bridges, schools and institutions, and to various celebrations.
In August the Queen went from Osborne to Edinburgh, staying at Holyrood
Palace, and visiting the Edinburgh International Exhibition, where
complimentary addresses passed between the Queen and the Lords Provost
of Edinburgh and Glasgow. From Holyrood to Balmoral she went, and thence
in the first week of November to Windsor, where, on the 23rd of the same
month, Princess Beatrice bore a son. This last occurrence necessitated
Christmas being spent at Windsor--the second time since her widowhood.
It was kept cheerfully, too, with all the usual Christmas accessories,
and “a jolly tuck-in” for the Bluecoat School boys, though, for some
reason, the aids to warmth, both internal and external, for the poor
were not distributed until the New Year. On the last day of the month
her Majesty flitted to Osborne, and stayed there well over the opening
of Parliament.
By six months’ activity Victoria had almost slain the dragons of
discontent and revolt. In 1885 it was popularly reported that Albert
Edward, Prince of Wales, did not hope to be king, which was probably
true; one remembers that little sentence he uttered at the close of his
life: “Well, there will be one more king, in any case.” By the end of
1886, thanks to the resuscitation of energy in the Queen, he had a
sporting chance. There were and are, of course, always with us those who
disapprove of royalty by reason rather than by sentiment, and these, now
that the danger of royal aggrandisement of power under German tutelage
has disappeared, are tolerant enough.
The Queen and her eldest son were never close friends, and for long
Victoria had found so much to criticize in Alexandra that by this date
their affection for each other was much more equable when they were
apart. It is quite understandable. Queen Victoria, in spite of
Bismarck’s spiteful criticisms, was a perfect and, from the feminine
point of view, admirable specimen of a German _frau_. She considered
that the chief duties of a woman were to be prolific, to adore her
[Illustration:
_Photo_ _W. & D. Downey_
KING EDWARD VII AS PRINCE OF WALES]
husband, to dress soberly, manage economically, and to forswear
intellect. Alexandra never interfered in State matters, nor made a cult
of intellectual pursuits, but she had that which carries a woman a long
way: infinite social charm and knowledge, coupled with a
self-sacrificing patience which Victoria utterly lacked; she had had a
fair number of children, but the opportunity for marital adoration had
seldom been given her, and there had been times when matters in the
“Social Court” were distinctly strained. The great fault which the Queen
found in her, however, was that, though she was the mother of adult
children, she did not walk in the way of the Prince Consort’s precepts.
She allowed no one to say, “That you shall not wear!” and she did not
dress according to what her mother-in-law considered was a style
suitable to one who might have been a grandmother. She was still the
best-dressed and the most graceful woman at Court, and retained an
appearance of youth which her own eldest daughter could not rival.
Another sore point had been that--in common with the Crown Princess in
Prussia--she had, in conjunction with her husband, utterly turned her
back upon the Stockmar-Albertian ideal of education for royal children.
The Prince of Wales had always determined that his children should not
suffer from the nervousness and cramped effect which his upbringing had
entailed upon himself, with its consequent overpowering
self-consciousness; and his boys were sent to school, while his girls
led a natural home life, unfettered by a profundity of mock respect for
their high-born parents. They also were allowed to observe the
continental rather than the British Sabbath.
A further cause of friction between the two ladies was that the Queen
shuddered at the name of Gladstone, while the Princess most undutifully
liked him; a liking in which the Prince shared, whether he did or did
not always agree with the Grand Old Man’s policy, which, however, was
never known. Gladstone once told Lord Ronald Gower that no royalty that
he had ever known--“but my experience is limited”--had such charm and
tact as the Prince of Wales.
In 1883 Gladstone had been one of a party with Tennyson and Browning to
go a cruise to Denmark, and had been made much of by the royal family
there; a matter which drew a sharp reproof from Victoria, in that
Gladstone--the locality of the cruise being unpremeditated--had not
first received her permission to go near Denmark. On his side the
statesman was a courtier to the finger-tips where the Princess was
concerned, as, indeed, he also was to the Queen: “Nothing could be more
charming than the deference he paid to the Princess, and the pleasure
she always showed in his company.”
Gladstone always expressed delight over his intercourse with the Prince,
whom he yearly invited to his annual Royal Birthday dinner, being much
troubled over it in 1886 because the many splits in Parliament made him
fear that most of the chief men would refuse the invitation, and he
would be shamed before the Prince and Albert Victor, who was to be his
guest for the first time; however, his old comrades showed better
sense, and the dinner was a success. The Queen had an absolute
abhorrence of tobacco, a dislike which Gladstone shared, but he, knowing
what a victim to the nicotine fiend was Albert Edward, always gave his
Royal Highness the lead by lighting a cigarette.
Victoria had in early days been most severe with her son over this
habit, absolutely forbidding him to smoke in any of the royal
residences; and when on one occasion the youthful prince transgressed he
was sentenced to remain in his rooms for a month, a punishment
rigorously enforced. Such punishments were customary in German royal
families, and are still inflicted by the Kaiser on the slightest excuse
upon one or other of his many relatives.
This prohibition extended to visitors at the castle, even to the
dine-and-sleep-one-night visitors, and there are amusing anecdotes of
noted men lying on the hearthrug to smoke up the chimney, or resorting
to other sly ways of getting a luxurious whiff. _Punch_ declared in 1863
that so strictly were the rules against it carried out that the very
chimneys received intimation from the Lord Chamberlain that they would
be expected to consume their own smoke. And further back, in the early
days of his marriage, the Prince Consort was thus interdicted, it
needing many a struggle before his beloved pipe became regarded as part
of his lawful possessions.
Before his marriage Prince Henry of Battenberg smoked in bed or in his
bedroom; but he had not been long a Benedick before he was allowed far
greater latitude than had ever been extended to his brother-in-law, or
even to the deceased and beloved prince himself. But by this time the
Queen had attained something in breadth of view on this subject, as on
many others.
In 1886 the Battenberg question had become again acute. Alexander of
Bulgaria was continuing his series of quarrels with Russia, and Queen
Victoria warmly took up his side; the Blue Book on Bulgaria and Eastern
Rumelia recording her opinion that if he succeeded in once more grasping
the reins of power with a steady hand, and again stood forth as the
constitutional head of a law-abiding state, the people of England would
probably be deeply moved and “would scarcely look on with indifference
should an attempt be made from without to disturb this state of things”:
which was something like a hint of war, as well as a promise which the
people of England would scarcely have honoured.
Alexander was very handsome, and this, coupled with his misfortunes, was
sufficient to capture Victoria’s heart. At one time news concerning him
could not be secured, and she sent repeated anxious messages to
Darmstadt, to which at last arrived an answer that the hero was
suffering from typhoid, though the illness turned out to be smallpox. He
recovered, and when he came to England in the early summer he was, by
the Queen’s orders, received with royal honours by the garrisons and
fleet; the cause of this being that Victoria was seeking to settle him
matrimonially, and report had it that Princess Louise of Wales was the
chosen lady, also the widowed Duchess of Albany was mentioned; but
later every one knew that it was Princess Victoria of Prussia, the
Queen’s granddaughter and sister to the present kaiser.
There was some indignation over Prince Louis of Battenberg at this time,
as he had been made commander of the _Dreadnought_, first ship of its
species, over the heads of a large number of senior officers, even
though he had been judged medically unfit. In this matter Victoria had
personally intervened, insisting upon his appointment, the reason being
that until he had had a year’s command he could not get the rank of
captain.
In the same year Henry was appointed aide-de-camp to the Queen, a
position which carried with it a colonelcy in the Army and its pay, and
he became colonel of the Isle of Wight (Princess Beatrice’s) battalion
of Rifles. It was popularly asserted that the mantle of John Brown had
fallen upon the shoulders of this favourite son-in-law, and that the
fishing and shooting so long reserved for the exclusive use of the
servant were now reserved for the prince.
At Osborne the Queen made a new departure in February 1887, by having
the Kendal and Hare company to act before her, and she was so pleased
that she gave a valuable brooch to Mrs. Kendal. Six years earlier she
had seen a theatrical performance, the first of her widowhood, when at
Abergeldie the Prince and Princess of Wales arranged the play of
Burnand’s _The Colonel_. The Queen also commanded some of the Windsor
clerics to journey to Osborne to preach before her, though it was quite
easy for her to hear them when at the castle; and in January, during
very cold weather, her statesmen had to make the long journey to consult
with her.
At the end of February she returned to Windsor Castle for about six
weeks, and arranged two Drawing-rooms for March, during which month she
actually spent ten days in London--probably the first successive ten
days for nearly forty years. This succeeded a visit to Birmingham, where
she had been enthusiastically received.
The Drawing-rooms, though held at Buckingham Palace, were crowded, but
her Majesty did not now feel equal to going through the whole ceremony,
and after about eighty presentations had been made slipped away, her
place being taken by the Princess of Wales. To lessen the fatigue the
Queen had had arranged for her comfort a high stool, upon which she half
sat, half leaned, while retaining the appearance of standing. Her
fondness for her grandchildren had let her permit half a dozen of them,
including Princess Beatrice’s baby in the arms of a nurse, to stand by
the doorway, where the ladies’ trains were unfolded and spread before
their interested eyes.
The children were the delight of the Queen’s life, and they loved her as
children can love an indulgent, understanding grandmother. What a pity
it is that so many parents have to grow old before they lose the
red-tapism of parentage, in which they are even more tangled to-day than
they were in the Queen’s youth, for babies are no longer budding
individuals, but puppets in some one’s--generally Germanic--system.
In April Queen Victoria, Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry went to
Cannes and Aix-les-Bains for a month, necessitating the passing to and
fro of Queen’s Messengers at Easter to obtain her signature to
parliamentary bills, and the consequent remaining in town for three days
of ministers who might have been off for the Easter recess. By May the
arrangements for the Jubilee were well advanced, and though the Queen
was too busy to hold the Drawing-rooms herself, she was several times in
town. Once she went to inspect the atrocious mauling of Westminster
Abbey which was in progress, and followed this by attending a
performance by Buffalo Bill at the Wild West Show.
She arrived at the latter place soon after five o’clock, accompanied by
the Battenbergs, in a carriage and four, with outriders in scarlet; and
other carriages followed her. Some of her friends went in the
“Dreadnought” coach, which was driven at the gallop round the arena
while Indians attacked it, and a tremendous amount of bogus firing went
on; all of which affected her into a state of radiant delight, so that
at the close Buffalo Bill, the Indian chief and two of the squaws with
their little painted papooses were presented. How much healthier
mentally she would have been had she oftener enjoyed simple things like
this; and also how much more exhilarating would it have been for her
that day had she seen the whole gallery of seats filled with her happy
subjects, instead of being empty by her orders so that the performance
might be private to herself.
On a Saturday in May her Majesty went in grand procession to open the
People’s Palace in the East End, and most divergent accounts were given
in the papers of her reception. On the one hand it was said that the
enthusiasm was intense, on the other that she was coldly, even sullenly,
received, derisive shouts being heard at some points. The cheers, it was
said, came from the window-holders, and the sullenness was caused by the
fact that the tradesmen had petitioned for another day, as Saturday was
the most important day for their business, the response from the
Secretary’s office being that “her Majesty was not pleased to signify
any commands thereon.”
It was a trying journey for more than one person, for Fenianism was
still to the fore, and dynamite not long discarded as a weapon; and the
East End was regarded--in spite of the philanthropists--as the source of
all metropolitan violence. The Queen could not be sure that all would go
well, and Henry of Battenberg was, justly or unjustly, said to give open
evidence of being in a blue funk.
There had been many Jubilee suggestions made. The Prince of Wales
proposed the ill-fated Imperial Institute, which gained little favour
from the first. Some suggested the repeal of the Royal Marriage Act;
more advanced people referred to an earlier rumour and suggested that
the Queen should resign in favour of her son. Others were bolder still,
and openly said that Victoria herself should return thanks to God by
giving something to her country. The Rev. Arthur Robins, Rector of Holy
Trinity, Windsor, and familiarly known as the Soldiers’ Bishop, thought
it would be a noble act if the pestilential spots of Windsor should be
cleansed and healthy houses built for the poor, for no place in England
was so fever-stricken as the district which lay around the royal castle.
Some one suggested that all women should contribute and form a Women’s
Jubilee Fund.
Of all these proposals only the first and the last were carried out, and
the public languidly subscribed to both. Baroness Burdett Coutts heaped
coals of fire on her sovereign’s head by presiding at a large meeting in
London to start the Women’s Fund idea, for the Queen had shown a very
broad back to her since her marriage. The fund being well started,
Victoria nearly killed it by announcing her intention of building a new
memorial to Prince Albert with it! Purses shut up with a snap at the
very idea. This coming to the ears of her Majesty, as well as the want
of enthusiasm about the Imperial Institute, caused her much distress. So
nothing further was said about the statue, and the sum rolled up to
about £80,000, of which only £3000 was used for a bronze equestrian
statue to the Prince, later set up in Windsor Park. The great bulk of
the gift the Queen devoted to founding an institute for training nurses
as attendants on the sick poor in their homes, and some of the ladies
nearly wept because her Majesty did not keep a trifle to buy herself a
personal ornament in commemoration of the glad event.
The late Arthur W. à Beckett did his utmost with Cardinal Manning to get
the Golden Rose for her Majesty from the Pope, but she was outside the
Church, and the end of it was that the Cardinal murmured, with a smile,
to his interviewer, “The dear lady has received a very beautiful mosaic
from Rome. It would have been the Golden Rose had it been possible.”[27]
In return for this and for the Pope’s courtesy in sending a
representative to the Jubilee, Victoria sent for the Papal Jubilee the
following year a golden ewer and basin.
One of the many presents sent to Queen Victoria was a carriage rug of
feathers gathered from the seabirds of Heligoland, that valuable isle
which with such lavish prodigality she later thrust into the hands of
her beloved grandson, the War Lord. This present reminds me of that sent
ten years earlier by the Empress of Brazil of a dress made of spiders’
webs, with which the handsomest silk could not compare either in quality
or beauty, and which was made from the strong threads woven by a large
species of South American arachnid.
The previous year the Queen had pleased India by attaching two Indian
attendants to her service, and now she added an Indian gentleman, the
Munshi Abdul Karim, as Groom of the Chamber, with a special duty of
teaching her Hindustani. She was doing her best to bind the empire
safely round her throne; but what might she not have done had she
started on this course twenty-five years earlier? And, by the way,
through all these distractions and engagements where were the noted
dispatch boxes which were supposed daily to take up the whole of her
time? It must be hoped that with her growing sense of fitness she had
banished all but the most important. This suggests the further idea of
how much easier and more pleasant a time the Marquis of Salisbury had in
office than had ever the G.O.M., whose Government she harassed daily,
and sometimes hourly, over matters small and great. “The nation at large
knew nothing of difficulties at Windsor,” says Lord Morley of Victoria’s
relations with a Liberal Government.
The Indians created some confusion at times, especially when they were
travelling. “Sir Henry, disquieted about Indian attendants, whose castes
required three separate apartments,” noted the train superintendent;
“however, only two were to be had.” This remark occurs various times in
comments upon the journeys, which were occasionally touched with gleams
of humour. Thus in 1892 a pungent smell of hot oil arose, but no one
could find its origin; and at Forfar the train had to pull up.
“The Queen wants to know what gars this stink!” was the question of John
Brown’s brother. It was found to be due to a faulty locomotive, which
had to be detached. During the popularity of Sarah Grand’s work one of
her Majesty’s ladies, arriving at Windsor, was greatly distressed
because she had lost “the heavenly twins,” and she was sure she had had
them during the night in the sleeping-saloon.
The Queen often dined at Perth, and it is curious to think of her at
table in a room at the Station Hotel there dining from gold plate,
brought for her use from Tynemouth Castle by her faithful subject Lord
Breadalbane. It gives a touch of colour in keeping with the royal
saloon, covered with blue and white silks. When G. P. Neele had taken
her a hundred times to and fro, Victoria presented him with a chiming
clock in recognition of his services for thirty-one years, and when he
soon after retired he had an audience of her and received a valuable
present.
In 1887 the Queen remained four weeks at Balmoral, trying to calm her
nerves for the great ceremony before her, for she was in no very happy
or confident mood. In fact, she dreaded the day of Jubilee; she feared
its fatigues, for she had allowed herself a chronic belief in the
delicacy of her health, and she feared assassination. This will seem
impossible to some, yet she had had more pistols pointed at her than she
had fingers on one hand; and though we are, in common with most nations,
conscious of our own rectitude, she had some reason for her fear. How
often had a storm of indignation risen around her from the ranks of her
people? and what had she ever given to Ireland but her approval of harsh
measures and insensate punishment for a moral illness brought on by
oppression? What a target might not her glittering procession be for
dynamite?
The incessant discussions over clothes, guests, gifts and arrangement
left her irritable and worn, so that on her return to Windsor she was in
a bad state of nervous excitement. She had to include guests whom she
did not want, whose morals offended her, and she felt no peace in
anything, only ardently wishing that all were over.
The day came at its appointed time, and passed; many have written about
it, some with strong criticism and others with a happy faculty for
universal admiration. One declared that her Majesty never looked more
cheerful and it was impossible to pick a hole in any of the arrangements
for this great and superb show. Yet it was not so great and superb as it
might have been, for the state carriage was not used, and there were
other things which made it, despite its uniqueness, only a semi-state
procession.
Why? you may ask. Well, because her Majesty was a very careful and
economical person, and the supreme moment of her age could not temper
these qualities. Had she gone in full state the throne and the plate
used would by ancient custom have become the property of the Lord Grand
Chamberlain; and that was not to be thought of!
There were those who said that the Queen looked radiant, but Professor
Blackie’s evidence was that “in the last carriage was the Queen herself,
whether sweet or glum I could not say. Certainly she did not look
radiant. But though a good woman and an excellent wife and a model
mother, she never did look sublimely regal even in her best days. So I
was not disappointed.”
Then, too, as to the declaration that no fault could be found, William
Allingham wrote in his diary:
“Foreign kings in _covered_ carriages--long wait; soldiers march
off--all over? No; here come the Indian princes--some in livery stables
turnout; two hansoms--mismanagement somewhere.”
The truth about the Queen’s expression was that it differed at different
stages; at first she was exceedingly nervous, and one reporter said that
“at Waterloo Place her timorous agitation was pitiable, her mouth
twitching.” Coming back she felt reassured, her countenance was brighter
and she showed a joyful, emotional excitement.
The ten thousand people gathered in Westminster Abbey saw only the
pathos and the gaiety of the memorable scene. Most of them only caught a
passing view of her Majesty, but the small proportion who could look
down upon the central spot of interest saw a little old woman sitting
alone in a square space in an ancient chair whose historic framework had
been hidden by cloth of gold; before her being a _prie-dieu_ so tall
that no one under six feet high could use it.
“She sat alone, how terribly alone in the vast crowd, and with what
memories of the past thronging about her, a moment that I am not at all
ashamed to say made me feel disposed to weep out of sympathy and
reverence. There were many people in the galleries in front and
immediately right and left staring straight in her face through opera
glasses. It was not a part of the Steward’s duties to stop such
vulgarities, or how gladly one would have done it!”[28]
Fashions and manners had certainly changed for the worse since Victoria
opened her first Parliament, and Lady Jersey raised general indignation
in her own class by using opera glasses.
At some distance, facing the Queen, sat the foreign kings and princes;
on her right stood the royal princes and on her left the princesses.
When the service was over these defiled before her, and she kissed all
but the Crown Prince of Germany and Prince Louis of Hesse; and when they
had all passed she remembered that she had made a difference, and had
those two called back that they also might receive the royal salute.
When the Queen returned to Buckingham Palace after the long hours of
driving she received a message from the aged Duchess of Cambridge hoping
she was not tired; and her answer was--
“I am too happy to be tired.”
There was a painful side to this day of rejoicing, and one which centred
in the Abbey itself. To the undiscriminating the interior of that
marvellous building gave no jarring shock; the brilliant uniforms and
gorgeous dresses, filling every available space from the floor to the
roof, hid the poor decorations and made a picture of beauty. But to
those who knew and loved the Abbey, behind all the extraneous glow and
colour lay the most revolting desecration, indignity and callous
disregard of real beauty.
Thus when her Majesty alighted from her carriage, in place of entering
the Abbey through a great open door beneath the high roof soaring above
her head, instead of seeing at once before her the solemn and noble
interior, one of the most splendid things the world can show, she found
herself in a little dark passage some ten feet high, crushed down
beneath the feet of many of her subjects. _The Times_ declared that the
effect was that of a circus, the horses coming into the ring under a red
baize box with a braying band in it: “That was the place of entry of the
august Lady in whose reverence we had all assembled.”
The arrangements of the Abbey had been taken out of the hands of all the
responsible Abbey officials, who knew the building’s capabilities, its
weak spots and what it could bear, and given entirely over to a firm of
respectable undertakers, “the eminently respectable and entirely
unsuitable firm of Messrs. Banting.”
They had arranged three great tiers of galleries, one above the other,
over the west door, through which the Queen made her entry, which
necessitated the low passage and the circus-like effect. _The Times_
further tells how the galleries and the floor were covered with
bath-red, which had the tint of cold blood and was incredibly mean and
inartistic; the red was dotted all over with a ridiculous travesty of
the Star of the Bath in white shaded with dirty grey. This carpet of
cheap and nasty baize added to the circus effect, and drew from some
reminiscent people a fancy picture of what the Abbey might have been
treated with reverence and the floor covered with the rich rugs which
were used at the coronation of George IV.
Mr. Somers Clark, in his article in _The Nineteenth Century and After_,
tells some gruesome stories of the method of preparing the Abbey by
Banting’s men. For instance, the Coronation Chair, the pride of two
nations, was smeared over with stain and varnish, and futile upholstery
was nailed into the remnants of the gessowork still adhering to the back
and arms. The chair was then dragged over the wonderful Abbot Ware
pavement in front of the altar, altogether irrespective of damage to the
mosaic. A question being asked in the Commons about the treatment of the
chair, Banting was ordered to remove the disfigurement, so the men set
to work with spirit to wash off the discoloration. Somers Clark declares
that he saw them, after dabbing on the spirit, rub it off with the tails
of their rough cotton shirts. He must have meant the aprons, or whatever
the men call their save-all garments; but even then the indignity was
bad enough.
When it was all over the floor of the North Ambulatory had yielded
considerably through the heavy beams; the porphyry and serpentine
pavement of St. Edward’s Chapel was badly damaged; and the surface was
dragged from the old grey walls in long bands of white in many places.
“Happy inspiration! Dirt from the London streets was collected, soup
made of it in buckets, and this was dabbed on the wounded places with
mops. This I saw done,” said Somers Clark.
One wonders by what arrangement a firm of undertakers were given this
free hand to mar England’s greatest building.
Of those who rode in the Queen’s great procession that day the Crown
Prince of Prussia won the most attention in his white uniform, and
though he looked pale and grey, few knew that he was ill. Two queens
were among the guests, the Queen of the Netherlands and the Queen of the
Sandwich Islands. Of the latter Sir Lyon Playfair wrote--
“The only person who was of greater importance in England than in her
own dominions was the Queen of the Sandwich Islands. She refused a guard
of Hussars, and said that she would not leave her hotel unless Life
Guards were sent to her as a crowned head, and she got her way. Another
story went that the kings had struck and refused to offer their arms to
her sable Majesty at the state balls, so the Dukes of Edinburgh and
Connaught had to discharge this duty. It was surprising how this island
queen maintained her royal dignity. I waited upon her Majesty one
evening, and she received me and conversed through an interpreter in
excellent style.”[29]
There was, however, another very important person in the procession, and
that was a coachman, who was asked if he would be driving any of the
imperial or royal guests then staying at Buckingham Palace, and who
replied, with proper pride--
“No, sir; I am the Queen’s coachman. I don’t drive riff-raff.”
The great day drew to its close with an excited, shouting multitude
thronging the streets; here was a chance of amusing themselves, and
they took it without reasoning why or blessing the cause of it; but they
were so heady that they might have been inverting themselves to let
their blood run to their brains. Some remained cool, perhaps stayed at
home, of whom one was Lord Derby, who remarked that though he had been
very grateful to the Queen for much she had done, and especially for
much she might have done and had not, he had not yet managed to work
himself into a state of enthusiastic gratitude to her for having reigned
fifty years.[30]
These were dreadful sentiments when every one was bubbling over with
animal spirits and sentimentality, but the mark of a balanced mind none
the less.
Aix-les-Bains, grateful for her Majesty’s recent visit, in company with
other continental places, blazed its enthusiasm into the night sky,
priding itself upon its magnificent _pièce de resistance_ which set
forth its “Hommage à la Reine Victoria,” and in its eagerness fixed it
upside down.
Bismarck, too, had cast about for a way of celebrating, and his most
pointed idea was to instruct one of his creatures to write an article
upon the relative merits of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth, of
course, as he said, “not to the advantage or the credit of the former.”
But his iron will went flabby for once, or rather deeper and more
sinister intrigues occupied his mind, for the article was not written.
It was a good thing, for the Queen would have been hurt, as of all
historical English persons she most hated Elizabeth and most loved the
Stuarts, especially Mary, Queen of Scots. Yet there were many points of
resemblance between her character and that of Queen Elizabeth, and it
was Dean Stanley who once said, “When she faces you down with her ‘It
must be!’ I don’t know whether it is Victoria or Elizabeth who is
speaking.”
For weeks the retreating wheels of the Jubilee rumbled in her Majesty’s
ears. She gave a great garden party at Buckingham Palace, at which,
after the first appearance of the Queen, when the guests were marshalled
into lanes for her to walk down, greeting those she knew, the well-bred
guests literally mobbed her, opening out before her, closing when she
had passed, and then rushing on in front to get another stare. (I saw
the same thing done at the Quirinal a few years ago by people of all
countries, but not by Italians.) The diplomatist Sir Frederick St. John,
who was at the Buckingham Palace party, drew a favourable contrast to
the aristocracy of Russia under the same circumstances; which should
clear Russia on at least one point of the charge of barbarism.
In July the Queen paid a visit to her Prime Minister at Hatfield, and
she attended a naval review in the Solent, at which, however, she lost
her nerve, being very glad when it was over. All through her August
visit to Osborne she received such masses of correspondence on the past
event and had to give so much thought to it that it became a nightmare,
for hidden in her heart, under all the pleasure in the goodwill shown,
lay a terrible sorrow.
For years she had grieved over the troubles which sometimes threatened
to overwhelm her eldest daughter, the Crown Princess of Germany;
troubles arising from the animosity and jealousy of Bismarck. Now there
was a worse calamity, in that the Crown Prince was afflicted with a
serious disease. After the Jubilee he underwent a slight operation in
England, the effects of which allowed him to eat and speak without pain;
and then the question had to be decided as to a long absence from Berlin
and from the Court over which Prince Bismarck reigned supreme, with--as
his aide-de-camp--Prince William, a Hohenzollern who concentrated in
himself the most salient faults of his race.
CHAPTER XXII
THE CROWN PRINCESS
“My poor, dear, persecuted daughter!”--_Queen Victoria of the
Empress Frederick._
“Germany will pay dearly for the honour of having had Bismarck at
her head, and for having possessed the most incapable Parliament
that ever existed. The future will avenge Europe, for what now
makes the glory of Prussia will be the cause of her ruin in time to
come. It is not with impunity that all the vital strength of a
nation is centred in one man ... although he has triumphed over six
successive Parliaments by the same artifices, although he has
aggrandized his country and made himself the arbiter of Europe,
imposing his will on all, Prince Bismarck has at the same time
prepared the fall and annihilation of his country.”--_‘Society in
Berlin.’ By Count Paul Vasili._ 1885.
There has, perhaps, never lived a ruling sovereign about whom some
marriage secret has not been related, and during the preparations for
the Jubilee such a story was unearthed about Prince Albert,--who was in
effect a ruling sovereign--was given publicity in the _New York World_
and copied into some English newspapers. Such stories were told about
George II, George III, George IV, William IV and nearly all the
different members of the different royal generations; so if Albert did
not suffer in exactly good company, there were at least people of equal
rank who shared his misfortune.
The story was to the effect that in a little back street of New York a
certain Mrs. Kent kept a shop, and that she was actually Queen
Victoria’s eldest daughter, and in this wise: In 1839, while wandering
about the Continent, Albert of Coburg had fallen in love with and
married a Countess von Reuss, member of a well-known German family, and
then in the autumn of that year came the Queen’s intimation to Albert
that she thought their union would be a wise and happy event. The
Countess von Reuss bore Albert a daughter on November 8, 1840, and on
the 21st of the same month the Princess Royal was born. Upon this the
deserted countess promised to efface herself on condition that the
children should be changed, her child taking the position of Albert’s
eldest daughter, while Victoria’s child was to be given over to the care
of the Countess. After much persuasion the reluctant prince agreed, the
exchange was secretly made, and the English princess grew up abroad. Her
life was one of vicissitude. She married but got a divorce from her
husband, went to America under the name of Mrs. Kent, came back and
lived in Paris, whence she wrote to Victoria for money, John Brown being
sent over there to see her and arrange matters. When last heard of, that
is at the Jubilee, she was keeping this shop in New York.
It was so absurd a story that no one heeded it, especially as with the
repetition of it apologetic explanations were published to the effect
that early in the century the Duke of Kent had for a time settled down
with some lady, who was generally known as Mrs. Kent, and of whom this
person of New York was a descendant.
Those of us who know the late portraits of the Empress and compare them
with those of the Queen, could have no doubt that they were mother and
daughter, though in her little volume, _Recollections of a Royal
Parish_, Patricia Lindsay says, “She always seemed to me very unlike her
brothers and sisters in appearance; the type of face was different, and
though not handsome in feature was highly intelligent and in youth very
winning ... inheriting, in the Queen’s opinion, much of her father’s
nature and talent.”
This description, somewhat invidious in form, does not mean that the
brothers and sisters were not clever, for though the Princess was
extremely clever--in a different way from her father, for while he was
academic she was creative--she yet was in some ways extremely stupid. In
her tactlessness and indifference to public opinion and the feelings of
those she disliked, she was very much like her mother, though, on the
other hand, that which was obstinacy in the Queen developed as spirit
with her, and she was entirely free from the weakness of
self-commiseration which was so marked a feature of Victoria’s middle
life. Albert Edward was in many ways far more clever than his eldest
sister, and though he did not distinguish himself with the paint-brush
and the chisel, or in scientific and diplomatic arguments, his judgment
upon all the essentials of his state and position was impeccable. The
public is already beginning to see that Edward VII is by far the
greatest person that his family, either on the Guelphic or the Wettin
side, has yet produced.
The _New York World_ story does, however, bring to mind the rumours
which spread about early in the married life of Albert and Victoria of a
strange foreign lady seeking the former at Buckingham Palace, of a lady
starting from the Continent to find him, and being intercepted and sent
back before she could get here, and subsequently of a mad woman who
tried to annoy him with her delusions.
Almost from the beginning the eldest princess’s life had held the
element of strife; she adored her father, and always ranged herself by
his side in any difference between him and her mother; and even to the
Queen she never failed from her youth up to say what she thought on any
subject of dispute, such as the favour shown to John Brown, or to the
Battenbergs.
Her life in Prussia was an unending struggle with Bismarck, for, as has
been said, that statesman abhorred all royal women, fearing their
influence, and he was not sparing of brutal criticism, for which he
secured publication in the Press of many countries, attacking in turn
the old Empress, Empress Augusta and the Crown Princess. This struggle
culminated in 1887 and 1888 with the illness of the Crown Prince
Frederick, and the proposed marriage of his daughter Victoria to
Alexander of Battenberg, matters which absorbed Queen Victoria’s
thoughts.
It was obvious to all that the old Emperor William could not live long,
and Bismarck looked forward with unconcealed repulsion to the reign of
Frederick, with whose enlightened views he had no sympathy; and when he
knew that the heir was suffering from a disease in the throat, he hailed
it as a means of deliverance from a dangerous situation. He knew that
various Hohenzollerns had suffered from cancer, and suspecting that this
dread disease had once more appeared, he at once studied the possibility
of passing over the, to him, obnoxious generation. Prince William,
susceptible to theories of force, was in his hands; for years the
Chancellor had been training him in his system of warfare, aggression
and greed of power and land. He had also been training him into
opposition against his parents, and whole-hearted concord with himself.
He regarded William as his puppet, and thought that if only Frederick
could be eliminated his own further reign over Prussia would be assured.
Would William I outlive his son? He hoped so, but he dared not leave it
to chance. So he discovered an old Hohenzollern law, said to apply only
to insanity, and twisted it into one making a mortal malady a bar to the
succession. He insisted upon the surgeons and physicians to the Prince
being appointed by the State, that is to say by himself, and ruled that
their verdict should be final. The chief of these was Professor von
Bergmann, a skilful surgeon who loved using the knife, whether necessary
or not.
By the spring of 1887 the disease had become serious, and the Princess
had found out that a peculiarly odious form of espionage was being
exercised in her home by people installed by Bismarck. There were spies,
sycophants and scandal-mongers among her servants, and lies and
half-truths, to the injury of the Crown Prince, were disseminated until
Berlin became a veritable whispering gallery.
Bismarck had more than one string to his bow; he caused a meeting with
the Emperor of the Crown Prince and Prince William, at which the future
situation was discussed. No one knows what happened, but the story went
that Frederick decided to waive his right of succession in favour of his
son. It was further added that Bismarck had secured a written promise to
that effect, but he was never able to produce such a document. Yet so
public had the matter become that the young prince was openly believed
to be a party to a conspiracy to deprive his father of the Crown.
The doctors declared, and rightly, that the Crown Prince was afflicted
with cancer, and von Bergmann said the only chance of saving him was
that a dangerous and almost certainly fatal operation should be
performed, that is to say that the affected portion of the larynx should
be removed. This would at best have caused dumbness, and thus in either
case the Prince would, according to the Chancellor’s ruling, be unfit to
reign.
It is needless to say that the Princess was entirely opposed to the
operation, so von Bergmann decided that he must make a further
examination, which would necessitate the use of anæsthetics. It was
whispered in Court circles that he was really in the act of beginning
the actual operation when the Crown Princess, suspecting his aim, tore
the instruments out of his hands and turned him out of the room. A
picture of the event painted later by Oreste Cortazzo showed her kicking
the door open for the discomfited doctor’s exit, he holding his face as
though it had been struck.
Through this dreadful time of trial the Crown Princess was in constant
communication with her mother, and Dr. Morell Mackenzie was sent to
Berlin, through Victoria’s influence and with the acquiescence of the
German doctors, who did not like the stories that were current. His
verdict was that the throat was cancerous, but that in his opinion it
might be cured by other means than the knife. Upon this a violent storm
arose, the one side saying that the Crown Prince must die in six months
if not operated upon, and the other that he would die at once if the
operation took place.
So the Princess brought him to England--incidentally to make a lasting
impression upon the public by his gallant bearing--and later took him to
the Tyrol and San Remo. It was not until Emperor William died in March
1888, his last words being “dear Fritz,” that the royal couple returned
to the Charlottenberg, Berlin.
Of the awful nightmare of persecution which followed, every sort of
mental annoyance being inflicted upon the new but dying Kaiser, there is
no room here to write, but it is said that every one was in terror when
William came to see his father lest he should suggest that he became
Regent. And when Frederick died in June, after a reign of ninety-nine
days, Prince William at once showed his true character. He was
[Illustration: H.R.H. THE PRINCESS ROYAL
After a painting by Winterhalter]
present at the last moments in the New Palace, Potsdam, to which his
father had been moved, and as soon as the Emperor had drawn his last
breath he ordered the guard to be doubled round the palace, and no one
to be allowed to leave or enter. He then declared that all the property
of those within, his mother, sisters and attendants, was confiscated for
the time, and he personally “went through” their bedrooms, boudoirs,
cupboards, desks, strong boxes, jewel boxes and every other receptacle
for clothes, articles or papers. He told his mother’s officials and
servants that now he was master, and only his orders were to be obeyed.
He tore up the list of persons who might be admitted to look for the
last time on the dead emperor, which the Empress Frederick had given to
her chamberlain, and substituted an order for the admission of high army
officers. In fact, he heaped insults upon his dead father and his living
mother. When the Empress Frederick left her home three months later for
good, she is reported to have said good-bye to her officials and
servants with these words, “If you ever want to see your old mistress
again you must come to Berlin, where I will make you welcome. May palsy
strike my foot if ever I thrust it over this threshold again!” She is
said never again to have entered the palace in which most of her
womanhood had been passed.
Thus did William help to build up a bitter enmity between himself and
the royal family of England.
The reason for his search of his mother’s home was that his father was
said to have kept a detailed diary, one volume of which proved
conclusively that the whole German Emperor idea originated with and was
planned by Frederick. As Bismarck had arrogated to himself all the
credit for this, he was keenly anxious that the diary should never be
given to the world, and had instilled into his pupil the necessity of
confiscating all the volumes for fear of State secrets being revealed.
None of them was found, however, and one story went that Queen Victoria
had carried them, knowingly or otherwise, to England with her after she
had visited her daughter at Potsdam in April 1888; another was to the
effect that Sir Morell Mackenzie had brought them to England.
However, the particular 1870-71 volume had been put into the hands of
Dr. Geffcken, a friend of Frederick’s, who published it in a newspaper
inimical to Bismarck, whereupon the latter brought all his Press
influence into play by confiscating the offending paper, having abusive
articles published about the dead Kaiser, saying that he was but a
nonentity, who could never be trusted with knowledge of State affairs as
he would reveal them to England, and that if the diary was genuine he
was a traitor to Germany. Geffcken was seized and imprisoned, but when
he was tried by the Imperial Court of Judicature at Leipsic on a charge
of high treason he was pronounced innocent, which was the second blow
received by Bismarck in the new reign. Through all this the young Kaiser
William by his studied silence showed that he did not disapprove of this
attack on his father.
There is a story that among the Queen’s possessions after her return
from Germany the other volumes of the diary were found, and that a year
later she sent them back to William, with their seals unbroken, an act
which earned for her her grandson’s gratitude, and made him revise his
determination never to visit England.
After Kaiser Frederick’s death William must have felt his relations with
his mother’s country to be seriously strained, and, according to his
character, put the whole burden of fault upon England. The Prince of
Wales was in Berlin in June and remained there for some time, deputed by
the Queen to guard his sister’s interests, and protect her from the
insults of her son and Bismarck. It was to the latter’s interest to keep
the young Kaiser apart from his mother and her family, and to gain this
end he once more resorted to the Press, causing articles “made in
Germany” to be inserted in some of the English papers--he boasted of
having captured three of the most important--in which William was
painted in the blackest colours; while in Germany he had other articles
given to the curious world, full of bitter denunciations of the Empress
Frederick and the Prince of Wales, and to cap the affair further
inserted in the German papers anonymous denunciations of the scandalous
things said by the English Press. It is almost incredible, but it is all
to be read in the books upon Bismarck, especially in those by his
servant Busch, _Some Secret Pages of His History_, and others. A country
which could produce a powerful man like Bismarck and a subservient tool
like Busch, congratulating themselves and each other with pride over
their want of honour, was, in spite of its apparent strength, even then
on the road to failure. It was Busch who noted on June 16--
“I wrote to Bucher a few lines expressing the satisfaction I felt that
we were relieved of that incubus, the Emperor Frederick, and that his
place was now to be taken by a disciple and admirer of the Chief.”
All these things taken into account, Albert Edward had no very easy time
in Berlin, especially as no love was lost between him and his nephew. As
boy and youth William had been arrogant and ill-mannered, and his uncle
had duly snubbed him; as the years passed the English prince had seen
far more deeply into the nature of the German emperor and into his plans
than the latter liked. He knew the sinister hopes and ambitions of the
young man’s mind, and, while not interfering with him, set himself to
gain friends among the nations for Great Britain. It is to him that we
owe the beginning of the great change in our relations with France, for
he loved the French capital as much as he shrank from the pomposities of
Berlin. But this preference and his friendliness with other European
powers raised unmitigated spite and anger which, being cleverly worked
by the German Press, has led to their present-day stories of how King
Edward of England tried to set an iron wall around the Fatherland.
For several years after 1888 the Prince of Wales and the Kaiser scarcely
spoke to each other, but Queen Victoria could not so show her
displeasure, nor did she wish to do so. William was her eldest
grandchild, and had been much loved, and she was ready to accept what
extenuation could be found for his conduct; he was not all she wished,
but he would make Prussia strong, hold fast to the united Germany and be
a great European power. So, angry as she was at his treatment of his
mother, she yet felt grief that he assumed a personally hostile attitude
to herself. It was not until the autumn of 1899 that, annoyed at the
snubs which Russia dealt him and already contemplating the rupture with
Bismarck, William paid his first visit to England as ruler of Germany.
Victoria was delighted and showed him every mark of honour that was
possible. William on his side was as eager for friendship, and so began
a period of peaceful feeling between the two countries which was
strengthened by the fall of Bismarck the next year.
It is necessary to go back in time, for there was another dispute in
1887 and the following year which had for its parties Queen Victoria and
her daughter, the Crown Princess, on the one hand, and Bismarck and
Prince William on the other. This was over Alexander of Battenberg, and
the wonder was that the Crown Princess should have championed one of
that family. However, her excuse was that her daughter Victoria was very
much in love and had won her consent.
This daughter, Victoria, was said to be the least attractive and least
popular of the Prussian royal children, but at her cousin’s wedding at
Darmstadt--the Hesse-Battenberg marriage--she had fallen in love with
Alexander Battenberg, then Prince of Bulgaria, who was regarded as the
most handsome and fascinating man in Europe. His Bulgarian throne had
collapsed in 1886, and he, without position or fortune, went to live in
Darmstadt, his one ambition being to return to his position in the
Prussian army. Then came the chance of marrying into the Prussian royal
family, and though he must have been ready to seize it with delight,
there must also have been some strong misgivings mixed with his emotion.
Queen Victoria accepted the idea eagerly, for, as has been said, she
loved a romance, and she also had a strong partiality for the
Battenbergs. Bismarck, to whom neither reasons appealed, was dead
against such a match, and with some cause, but he was wrong in regarding
the Queen’s approval of it simply as a diplomatic attempt to spite
Russia by making Prussia pick up the man whom Russia had cast down from
the Bulgarian throne. However, that was the attitude he took, adding
that Victoria was trying to injure Prussia by causing a rupture with the
power which he had so long wooed.
The matter dragged through some contentious months, and in April 1888
the Chancellor thus delivered himself to Busch--
“The old Queen is fond of matchmaking--like all old women--and she may
have selected Prince Alexander for her granddaughter because he is a
brother to her son-in-law, the husband of her favourite daughter
Beatrice. But obviously her main objects are political--a permanent
estrangement between ourselves and Russia--and if she should come here
for the Princess’s birthday there would be the greatest danger that she
would get her way. In family matters she is not accustomed to
contradiction, and would immediately bring the parson with her in her
travelling bag and the bridegroom in her trunk, and the marriage would
come off at once.”
He declared, concerning the suffering Emperor Frederick, “They (the
Empress and her daughter Victoria) actually ill-treated, abused and
martyred him when he declined (to consent to the marriage). He is glad
that I have come to his assistance, as she (the Empress) is too much for
him in argument.” Dr. Mackenzie, who also was at Charlottenburg at the
time, remarked of it, “I cannot say that this discussion produced much
effect on the Emperor.”
Bismarck gave Busch instructions to write an article for the
_Grenzboten_, with the title “Foreign Influence in the Empire,” setting
forth his views on the suggested marriage and attacking the Empress as
tyrannizing over her husband, and a few days later expressed in the
_Berlinger Boersen Zeitung_ his abhorrence of the _Grenzboten_ article.
The old Emperor William had been as much against the marriage as his
Chancellor, but after his death Queen Victoria suggested that the
wedding should take place at Windsor, and that the new Battenberg couple
should live “elsewhere than in Germany.” The trousseau was ready, the
day fixed and almost arrived, when Alexander, who had probably realized
that he would never again sup with Prussian officers, or indeed enter
Prussia, and who had also most probably received a strong hint from his
prospective brother-in-law, decided that the world was _not_ well lost
for love, and wrote to the Crown Princess saying that he had come to the
conclusion that he could only marry if he had the consent of Prince
William. There may have been other influences at work to cause the
writing of this letter, for Victoria, who had been in Florence in March,
and gone thence in April to Charlottenburg, met Bismarck there. Busch
tells in his diary what happened.
“_April 28._--This afternoon met Bucher. He said, smiling, ‘I have just
heard a surprising piece of news. Grandmamma behaved quite sensibly at
Charlottenburg. She declared the attitude of the Chief in the Battenberg
marriage scheme to be quite correct, and urged her daughter to change
her ways. Of course it was very nice of her not to forget her own
country, and to wish to benefit it when it was possible for her to do
so, but she needed the attachment of the Germans, and should endeavour
to secure it; and finally she brought about a reconciliation between
Prince William and his mother.’
“I asked, ‘Have you that on good authority?’
“‘On very good authority.’
“‘Well, that is satisfactory ... we do not hate Victoria on account of
her extraction, but because she feels as an Englishwoman, and wishes to
promote English interests at our expense, and because she despises us
Germans.’”
When the Queen went to Charlottenburg this April, 1888, the Crown
Princess showed some of that tactlessness which so much annoyed the
Berliners, for, wanting to refurnish the rooms destined for her mother,
she sent to England for all that she needed, and, further, had English
workmen sent over to do the decoration. It was naturally deeply
resented, and it was feared that some hostile demonstration might be
made against Victoria. This did not happen, but Prince William behaved
so coldly to his grandmother that she could plainly see the attitude of
him and his friends.
Yet the Germans should not have been so much hurt, for they had little
courtesy, as was shown once when the Crown Princess said of a dog, “Ah,
he is a bad dog, he bit a child,” and the prompt response was, “Nein
Kaiserliche Hoheit, ein erwachsenes Mädchen!”
As for the principals in this marriage question, the young Princess
Victoria married Prince Adolphus of Schaumberg-Lippe, and in 1889 Prince
Alexander married when at Nice an actress, Mlle. Losinger, the daughter
of the valet and the cook of the old Austrian General Faviani. Later the
Prince abandoned both title and status in favour of the title of Count
Hartenau, became a colonel in an Austrian regiment, and died as
major-general in command of a brigade at Gratz in 1893.
Queen Victoria heard of his marriage with sorrow rather than with anger,
merely saying with a sigh, “Perhaps they loved one another.”
CHAPTER XXIII
IMPERIAL GROWTH
“Dere’s grandma dinks she’s nicht small beer,
Mit Boers und such she interfere;
She’ll learn none owns dis hemisphere,
But Me--und Gott.
She dinks, good frau, some ships she’s got,
Und soldiers mit der scarlet goat.
Ach! We could knock dem! Poof! Like dot,
Myself--mit Gott.”
_A. McGregor Rose._ 1897.
As some one has put it, under Lord Salisbury’s political guardianship
the Queen could sleep in peace; upon him had fallen the mantle of
Beaconsfield so far as Victoria’s favour went, though, honestly,
Salisbury showed little veneration for his predecessor, whom he regarded
as divided from himself by class and race. Salisbury had won his
election on a “No Coercion” cry, thereby securing the adhesion of the
Irish members. But he was an advocate of tradition, a champion of
conservatism and aristocracy. He had fought each one of Gladstone’s
reforms with all his strength, whether in the suffrage, the Church or
the Army. When Disraeli “dished the Whigs” by bringing in his Reform
Bill of 1867, Salisbury resigned rather than be associated with it. He
had none of Disraeli’s plasticity, none of his sympathy for the workers
which made him once say, when talking of the narrow, selfish ways of
many Whig and Tory landed proprietors who made their class hated by
excluding the people from their parks and demesnes, “I for one cannot
and will not do anything so absurd.” But even one so steeped in the past
as the new Prime Minister had to bend to the living forces of the time
and accept Joseph Chamberlain as a colleague. This one-time
ultra-Radical had rapidly assimilated the new Imperialism; he was a
fighter, and power pleased his senses, and it was his imperialism which
made him refuse to Ireland what he had been so anxious to give his own
countrymen, a measure of justice and self-rule.
The Queen and her advisers, then, were in accord, and Disraeli’s cry of
a world-power seemed to be taking shape in fact. Indeed, after her
Jubilee Victoria found herself much nearer that ideal than she had hoped
ever to be when Beaconsfield died. Princes had come from all quarters of
the globe to do her homage; her name was the link which bound the far
ends of the earth together.
Yet there was one little country the people of which had refused to bow
the knee to her greatness, and that was Ireland. Starved in every way,
its manufactures destroyed, railways refused to it, its people left to
the bitterest oppression of the exploiter, Ireland stood, sullen and
defiant, while all the world knelt on that fine June day in 1887; for
Ireland regarded its queen as its enemy.
Those who lived in comfort in England, who had no knowledge of all the
conditions in Ireland--conditions very different from those of
Ulster--were aghast, and had no pity when the Government changed its
tactics and declared for coercion of the most stringent type. Nearly
three thousand families were cast roofless upon the roadside; and the
terrible injustice of Mitchelstown, which occurred in September 1887,
leaves a permanent blot upon the record of the then Irish Secretary. In
this tragedy the slaughter of three Irishmen was finally left as though
it had been the slaughter of three dogs, and it, with the evictions,
gave birth to the second popular English movement in favour of Ireland
which has, at long last, culminated in the present Home Rule Act. For
the people know, what biassed rulers will not recognize, that unreproved
violence by servants of the State means injustice; they themselves have
suffered from it. Yet in England Chamberlain was allowed to gain for his
countrymen the County Councils and the possession of allotments, while
other isolated reforms took place which showed that the Conservatives
were beginning to know the value of popular support.
The writer of the article in _The Quarterly Review_ asserts that her
Majesty “desired almost passionately to be loved by the Irish”; a
statement which makes one dumb with surprise, for during a reign of
sixty-four years she made no effort to understand the people or their
conditions; for forty years--from 1859 to 1899--she refused to go near
their shores; she was always ready to apply the rod and unwilling to
give any kiss of peace.
If in the end she did desire the affection of those people, it is one
of the tragedies of her life that she did not earlier wake up to the
possibilities of the sister isle, that the mellowing of her heart came
too late. It is also a proof that the Queen Victoria of 1899 was a
totally different person from the Queen of 1861. She had learned at last
to trust and love her English subjects, and perhaps, had it only
happened earlier, she would have found means to know and then to love
her Irish subjects also. As it is, it cannot be a matter for surprise
that Queen Victoria never gained the love of the Irish.
For the fourteen years that remained to her from the Jubilee the Queen
set herself to secure the English. She did not change her long-cherished
plans, but still paid three visits a year to Osborne, two to Balmoral,
and a month abroad, which left her little time for Windsor and
practically none for London. But London had grown used to this, and
relied upon the Princess of Wales to organize “the season” and so keep
society going.
On her journeys Victoria would go hither and thither, laying
foundation-stones, reviewing troops, opening hospitals and town halls,
christening or launching battleships, such as the _Royal Sovereign_ and
the _Royal Arthur_, visiting large towns in England and Scotland, such
as Manchester, Sheffield, Derby, Paisley, Glasgow, etc. Bristol also she
went to, when the spirit of love and forgiveness had become a habit with
her, in 1899; for Bristol had been shunned by her since the early years
of her reign, as it had refused to welcome a German prince as her
husband. In 1899 she visited the principality of Wales, Sir Henry
Robertson lending her Palé Hall, near Lake Bala, whence she went to see
the Theodore Martins, who lived in the neighbourhood.
Sir Theodore Martin, like many of those who had had much personal
intercourse with their Queen, has told much about her that it is
pleasant to know; in his case it is enshrined in a little volume, _Queen
Victoria as I Knew Her_. Once, when at Osborne on a wintry January day
he had hurt his leg on the skating-pond, and had to keep his room for a
considerable time. As soon as the Queen knew of the accident she
telegraphed for Martin’s wife (the one-time famous Shakespearean
actress, Helena Faucit), and sent the royal yacht to fetch her. The next
morning her Majesty went to see the injured man, and after leaving him
it occurred to her that he did not look comfortable, so she sent a
servant with two large pillows for his use. It was Theodore Martin who,
on March 7, 1875, found the Queen in tears “and moved to a degree that
was distressing to witness,” for Sir Arthur Helps had died from a chill
caught at the Prince of Wales’s levee. Her first thought was for his
family, and how the embarrassments from which they might suffer could be
lightened.
While in Wales those few days she did her best to charm the people who
saw her, even to the extent of learning sufficient Welsh to thank in
their own language a party of men who presented her with a walking-stick
of native wood.
Wherever she went she pursued an active policy of giving as well as
receiving pleasure, for, like little Kay in the _Snow Queen_, the piece
of glass in her heart had at last melted and she was again human, and
more like the girl-queen of 1837 than she had been since her marriage.
If only it had happened before those lost years were spent there would
be no two opinions about Queen Victoria. As it was she had not time
enough left her to catch up with neglected opportunities. English
jealousy of her love for Scotland and Germany had been allowed too long
a life to be permanently overcome by her old-age repentance or growth of
kindliness. Those who knew her and whom she liked, ladies who received
her charmingly sympathetic letters of condolence, still adore her
memory; a great proportion of the nation see her faults rather than her
virtues, a large proportion have no interest in her at all, and a few
repeat the old cry of her great goodness and wisdom. On the whole,
judgment about the Queen must be regarded as suspended.
There was one more disagreeable matter up to which she felt that she had
to screw her courage, and that was an endeavour to persuade the nation
to allot maintenance to the third generation of her family. These
incidents become wearisome by repetition, and I should like to pass this
by, but it has to be related that this part of her life may be rounded
off. Albert Victor was twenty-five that year, and Princess Louise of
Wales was about to marry the Duke of Fife, who had for a couple of years
been _persona grata_ at Court. The dear lady had in England twenty-two
grandchildren beside, most of them threatened with loss of income on
the death of their parents.
So once more the Queen girded on her armour, determined to get the whole
matter settled at one stroke, and asked Salisbury to make an arrangement
which should automatically pension each grandchild as occasion needed,
and hinted that the same sum should be given to the second generation as
to the first; that is, £15,000 each a year to the boys, and £6000, with
a marriage portion of £30,000, to the girls.
Salisbury could not--indeed, dared not--suggest such a course, and the
discussion was started in Parliament by the reading of the two messages
from the Queen concerning Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence, and the
Princess Louise.
At once all the old arguments arose, less noisy, but stronger and
deeper, than before; for Bradlaugh was at hand, with his long-advocated
republicanism, his denunciation of the extravagance and wastefulness of
keeping a Court. Labouchere, too, had weight, and John Morley lent
dignity to the expostulations. Bradlaugh wanted to refer the whole
question of royal revenues to a committee for reconsideration, arguing
that the royal savings on the Civil List would amply provide for all the
grandchildren. This amendment was lost, but 125 members voted for it.
Gradually the demand was lessened, the Queen withdrawing those for her
daughters’ children, and then those for the children of her younger
sons; but at last it was only through the mediation of Gladstone, who
was anxious to save the Monarchy from any further criticism and
dispute, that the ministers modified the proposal to granting a sum of
£36,000 annually to the Prince of Wales for the support of his children.
Even this met with opposition from the Radicals, Labouchere demanding a
peremptory refusal to the making of any grant to the grandchildren at
all, and his amendment to this effect gained 116 supporters. A further
amendment by John Morley ensuring finality by declaring that no further
demands could be made was lost by 355 to 134. Lord Selborne saw in all
this ominous signs of a recrudescence of republicanism. It would have
been more correct to have judged that republicanism had quietly grown
stronger through the years owing to the constant demands made by the
sovereign, accompanied by her neglect of her people.
Now that the order of things has changed, and there is less royal
interference with the Government, few people trouble about
republicanism, though its theoretical supporters may have greatly
increased; but the popular sentiment of independence is stronger than
ever, and if any ruler of Britain suddenly assumed arbitrary power the
Conservatives themselves would be among those resenting it; they, too,
would show themselves republican.
The grants made in 1889 were subject to this restriction, that they
should continue only until six months after her Majesty’s death, for
naturally then different arrangements would have to be made. With this
conclusion the Queen, though only half pleased, declared herself
satisfied, and it is amusing to note that while the negotiations were
pending, and Gladstone, as usual, was doing his best for his sovereign,
she sent friendly congratulations to him on his golden wedding day; the
Prince and Princess of Wales did the same, accompanying them with a
present.
As a last word on money matters and the Queen’s ability to see after her
grandchildren it may be as well to state what her income was at the
time.
The Duchy of Lancaster, which had been a negligible factor when her
first Civil List was arranged, producing only £5000 a year, now brought
in £60,000, a small part of which went in administration of the estates.
There was also £60,000 from the Civil List, and all the income from
investments and shares, house and landed property which she had secured
through savings on the Civil List. During these last debates it was
officially stated that the total savings on the Civil List only amounted
to £824,025, and that out of this much had been spent on entertaining
foreign visitors; in fact, the actual amount which had been put to the
Queen’s credit was £653,000, a sum which, laid out at interest, could
scarcely be regarded as despicable. In addition to this there were the
legacy of a quarter of a million left her by John Camden Neild, other
smaller legacies from subjects, and the sum the Queen inherited under
the will of the Prince Consort, which popular report said was nearly a
million pounds, though this must have been a great exaggeration. Truly
Labouchere had some justification for inviting the special committee to
record its opinion that it was undesirable to prejudice any final
decisions by granting allowances or annuities to any of the
grandchildren of the sovereign.
Sir H. W. Lucy, in _Later Peeps at Parliament_, states that he was told
by one in authority that the Queen’s personality did not exceed at her
death the sum of 800,000; and this might well be if she had already made
the promised provision for her descendants, and she had certainly done
much for her children.
During the last years of her Court, when comparative social gaiety was
observed, the royal household expenses were increased; and it is said
that she had become so mellowed that she made up deficiencies in some
departments from her privy purse. It was a pity that occasional
evidences of generosity were not given to the public by Victoria, for
there was a strong popular belief that she had become miserly, which was
strengthened by the fact that neither during the Jubilee of 1887 nor
that of 1897 did she show any gratitude for a long life of unbounded
opportunity by dispensing money of her own in any good cause. Her small
habits of strict economy lasted to the end of her life, and little
payments for work done which had been considered adequate in 1861 were
so considered in 1901.
As an instance of this, a covering cloth was used for the donkey which
drew the Queen’s chair, to be thrown over him when standing still, which
cloth was bound all round with black braid. When the braid was worn a
poor woman of Windsor was employed to renew it and to re-work the royal
monogram in the corner, for which she never received more than one and
sixpence. Of course, a thing like this might never come to the personal
knowledge of the Queen, yet she was so precise about details, so
observant of everything around her, that those about Windsor who knew of
royal habits would not believe but that such things were governed by her
Majesty’s wishes.
During the parliamentary debate the tremendous expenditure incurred by
the royal yachts was again urged, and H. W. Lucy gives in his book
interesting information concerning three of them. The little _Elfin_,
built at a charge of only £6000 early in the reign, cost yearly such a
sum that in 1900 it was estimated that £500 a ton had been spent over
it; a man-of-war would in the same period have cost £80 a ton. The
_Victoria and Albert_, built in 1855, cost originally £176,820, but,
apart from wages of the crew and supply of stores, the nation had
subsequently paid £12,000 a year for it, which brought the total expense
to nearly three-quarters of a million. The _Alberta_ was built in 1863,
being quickly followed by the _Osborne_, the initial charge for the
latter being £134,000, and the annual expenditure for her being £8000.
In addition to this there was the _Fairy_. Yet, possessing all these, it
was announced in the papers late in 1895 that a new yacht was to be
built for the Queen’s use, assurance being given that no attempt would
be made to rival the floating palace of the Kaiser. As Victoria had by
that time lost her nerve on the water, this may not have been true,
though, on the other hand, it may have shown a desire for something
especially steady and safe.
The troublesome matter of the royal incomes being at last swept from her
life, the Queen turned to more stately things. In August 1889 she
received for the second time as a guest the Shah of Persia, and later
came her nephew, William II of Prussia, on a visit.
There were wheels within wheels to bring about the imperial meeting.
Before he had been Kaiser a month William had rushed off--without
invitation--to Russia, desiring to prove not only his severance from
England, but that _he_ could bring about the longed-for Russian entente.
He was not received too warmly, and afterwards he waited in vain for a
return visit from the Tsar. Meanwhile, during the next twelve months, he
was trying to prove, first to himself and then to the world, who was
really master of Prussia--he or Bismarck. Knowing the jealousy between
Russia and England and the hatred of Bismarck for all that was British,
he then determined to flout both the Tsar and his Chancellor by
discovering an elaborate warmth of friendship for his grandmother and
her country. So he steamed away from Germany, much to Bismarck’s anger,
in his beautiful yacht, the _Hohenzollern_, at the head of a dozen new
warships, to Portsmouth Harbour.
He was received with open arms, and promptly created an admiral of the
English Fleet, whereupon he solemnly made his grandmother a colonel of
dragoons, re-naming the regiment “The Queen of England’s Own.” He also
held out the olive branch to his uncle the Prince of Wales by gazetting
him a colonel in the Prussian Army. It was a merry farce of compliments
on the one side, for the Queen never rode at the head of her dragoons,
nor did the Prince of Wales ever lead his Prussian regiment. The Emperor
regarded his new honour somewhat differently, for when he went to Athens
in the following October to be present at the marriage of his sister
with Prince Constantine of Greece he steamed into the Ægean Sea with the
British admiral’s flag flying at his yacht’s masthead, and prosecuted
what he fancied to be the duties of a British admiral with greater zeal
than discretion. For a British squadron was in the bay, and he would
descend upon it at all unearthly hours, order the men up for parade,
inspect uniforms, stores and the condition of the ships in a way which
raised the anger of the officers and men alike, so that at last a
complaint was sent to the Admiralty by the former. As some one said, “If
he would just wear the uniform and let it end there we should not mind;
but we did not make him an admiral that our lives might be worried out
of us in this fashion.”
William was by this and subsequent visits fired with fresh enthusiasm
for his own fleet, and cogitated methods of securing advantage for it.
Thus when Anglo-French-German disputes arose over territory in Africa,
he was ready in 1890 to forgo his purely nominal authority in Zanzibar
for definite possession of Heligoland. His grandmother could deny him
nothing, and though Lord Salisbury has generally been blamed for losing
this rocky yet valuable little island, the act was the Queen’s, who did
not suspect the astuteness of the policy which not only gained for
Germany a much stronger naval base, but ousted the British from a spot
too near to Kiel. And the Germans say now that this European war of 1914
and 1915 could never have taken place but for the possession of
Heligoland!
It is forgivable to feel some satisfaction in knowing that that hard man
Bismarck, who had cast off so many, friend and foe alike, when he could
squeeze nothing more out of them, went begging at the last to the woman
whose life he had done his best to mar, the Empress Frederick, not
knowing that she had helped in his undoing. Finding that her son was
rebelling against the autocracy of his Chancellor, she had drawn him
once more under the influence of his old tutor Hinzpeter, whose whole
nature was opposed to the ruthlessness of Bismarck; and so she had
helped to make the breach final. Bismarck, catching at every straw, went
so far as to inspire an article in one of our great “dailies” upon the
admiration he felt for the Empress; and he went to ask her intercession,
reminding her of a service he had done her--though he did not recall
that it was at her husband’s orders--two years earlier. She, whom he had
persecuted for more than thirty years, whose home he had filled with his
spies, whose son he had alienated, whose adopted country he had turned
in hatred against her, could do nothing to soften the blow to him.
In this crisis Bismarck knew no reticence. He showed only too plainly
his mortification, and loudly demanded that every one should know that
he went from his post against his will. Visitors who called to take
leave of him were entertained by Princess Bismarck’s denunciations of
the Kaiser--
“The brat, the stupid brat!” she cried over and over again.
_Punch_ published its noted cartoon of “Dropping the Pilot,” which
highly delighted William, and Bismarck said bitterly that the Kaiser saw
in it a justification of his action.
Though the Kaiser revisited England every year until 1896 he was already
meditating how and when he could use his new fleet, and keeping a sharp
eye on Africa, ready to pounce upon any chance of a colony. As an
American, Pulteney Bigelow, said in 1891, “Germany waits from day to day
to mobilize her troops and march to the frontier.” From that time for
five years William was intriguing in South Africa, and Europe looked on
with some amusement, for Britain had been so successful in land-grabbing
that a little trouble for her was regarded as legitimate. Great Britain
claimed suzerainty over the Transvaal, but the Kaiser practically
recognized its independence, in spite of the Pretoria Convention of 1881
and the London Convention of 1884. In the troubles which followed
Germany was regarded as the warm friend of the Boers, and a banquet was
given among the leading Boers in honour of the Kaiser’s birthday in
January 1895, at which Kruger referred in glowing words to William,
saying that the friendship of Germany for his nation would in the future
be more firmly established than ever. There is no doubt that, England
being the one whom Kruger hated, he expected the help of William in
getting rid of its control. The knowledge of this reached England, of
course, and Chamberlain felt it necessary to announce that the
conventions would be adhered to, and in May Tongoland and Kosi Bay were
annexed, which shut the Boers from the sea. This may seem arbitrary, but
though the Boers had long had the chance of securing Kosi Bay they had
refused to comply with the necessary conditions. The result of this was
that England and Portugal joined up on the east coast of Africa at a
point which the Germans were beginning to consider specially necessary
to themselves, and the annexation was made specially to prevent Germany
from having a spot at which she could land troops in aid of the Boers,
and where she could secure the rights over the Delagoa railway.
William made overtures to Russia to aid him in his championship of the
Boers, and Russia turned her back on him; France refused to become ally
to her enemy, so he approached Portugal, haughtily demanding that his
troops should land in Delagoa Bay on their way to Pretoria. And he did
all this, imagining that at his word Britain would waive her suzerainty
over the Transvaal, although more than half the inhabitants were
European, possessing nine-tenths of the country’s wealth and half the
land.
The cause of dispute between the Boers and the Uitlanders, or Europeans,
was comprehensible enough. The Boers cared nothing for gold, diamonds or
mines; they wanted to farm their land and to be left in peace and in
patriarchal family squalor. Europeans insisted upon digging mines,
making railways, and otherwise upsetting the land-dwellers; so the
latter put every possible difficulty in the way of the former. To the
English land-grabber in distant lands rights of property do not exist,
except for himself, and it cannot be expected that he should be treated
gently. The Boers did what they could to protect themselves: they
allowed the strangers no political rights, seeing a definite swamping
for themselves if they did so; they secured monopolies of all important
things necessary for the miners, such as fuel, petrol, etc., and made
their enemies pay through the nose; they taxed the Uitlanders to
extinction, allowed them no schools for their children, and bound them
so tightly hand and foot as to make their lives unbearable. I am stating
facts, not upholding ethics for one side or the other. This struggle,
pushed to extremes, could only end in war, and Cecil Rhodes, then Prime
Minister of Cape Colony, made the first move towards the reopening of
the conflict which had been closed by Gladstone in 1883. He, with Dr.
Jameson and Alfred Beit, laid a plan of invasion, by which the two
latter were to cross the border and join up with Uitlanders in
Johannesburg. Delay was, however, necessary, as arms and men were not
ready, but Jameson had the adventure in his blood and started against
orders. He and his men fell into the Boers’ hands, and the Jameson Raid
was a foregone failure.
Upon this the Queen’s grandson William sent an open telegram to Kruger
congratulating him that “without appealing to the help of friendly
Powers” he had repelled the invasion. Of course, every one knew that he
meant himself by “friendly Powers,” and England was wild with anger
against him over this folly, so the Queen wrote her beloved young
relative a stiff letter, such as she could write when moved, pointing
out that his interference in South Africa would most assuredly mean war.
As William was not then ready for war he climbed down, ordered his
newspapers to explain the incident away and express surprise that the
English Press should have made so much over so little. When Kruger went
to Berlin later, and for the second time, William refused to see him.
From that point there was some bitterness between Victoria and the
Kaiser, though both of them diplomatically tried to hide that fact. When
returning from Nice that spring Victoria came through Germany, that she
might meet her grandson and assure him that her neglect to return his
visits was not due to indifference, as he had suggested; but she did not
go to Berlin. William, on his part, sent her a present in the summer,
perhaps with a sly hint of menace behind it; for it took the form of a
fountain fashioned as an eagle flapping its wings, the water issuing
through its beak so that it looked as though flying through spray. It
was set up in a little garden near another fountain presented by Emperor
William I, and one feels that the Prussian eagle seemingly flying
through Windsor gardens was somewhat ominous.
Kaiser William did not come to England again until 1899, and it has been
said that he never came without squeezing something out of his
grandmother. That year he obtained an island in the Samoan
group--probably with a view to making raids on Australia and New
Zealand. The cartoonists got to work over this, and _Figaro_ gave a
picture of the Queen cutting for him a large slice off a plum pudding
named the World, William, dressed as a sailor, running eagerly for it.
Another drawing showed him wiping her eyes with a handkerchief labelled
Delagoa Bay, while out of his pocket protruded a treaty with the word
Samoa upon it.
Cecil Rhodes came to London in 1896 to face the music caused by the
Jameson raid, and a great speech was expected; but four days later he
left, having said no word in public. During that short period he was
summoned to Windsor. It was the second time that he had had an audience
of the Queen. The first time was in 1891, when he dined and slept at
Windsor and had a long talk with her Majesty over South African affairs,
during which she showed an astonishingly intimate knowledge of the
country. After he had gone some one remarked to the Queen that he was a
great woman-hater, upon which she replied, with her delightful
simplicity--I hope she felt a touch of humour in making such a
reply--“Oh, he was very kind to me!”
To the second interview Rhodes went in “a state of awful funk,” says Mr.
Harry Furniss in his book, _Harry Furniss at Home_; but he received only
a mild remonstrance, much to his surprise, for he had expected a severe
scolding, and he looked uncommonly relieved. The Queen in her heart was
glad that the South African matter was being reopened, and that at last
there was a chance of reversing the earlier policy.
There is a story of another South African millionaire, evidently a
German, being received by Victoria, to whom she said--
“Sind sie ein Baier?”
He, being confused and perhaps not expecting to be addressed in German,
replied, “Not at present prices, ma’am.”
In 1898 there occurred a new cause of trouble between the English Court
and the Kaiser, one which is not likely to appear in the history books.
When Duke Ernst of Saxe-Coburg died in 1893 the Queen’s second son,
Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, took possession of the little German
principality and went to live there, giving up the allowance of £15,000
made by our Parliament, but retaining the extra £10,000 allotted to him
on his marriage. He had one son, Alfred, who would have succeeded him
had he not fallen into the Kaiser’s power.
From the day he ascended his throne the Kaiser assumed despotic
authority over all his relations, interfering in their domestic affairs
and ordering their goings out and their comings in. One instance of this
is fairly well known. Princess Frederick Leopold, sister to the present
Kaiserin, went skating with only one lady in attendance, and, getting on
to thin ice, fell in, being promptly rescued. William, on hearing of
it, immediately ordered the punishment of Prince Frederick for allowing
his wife so much liberty. Neither Prince nor Princess was allowed to
leave their house for a certain number of days, and all lights were to
be put out in their rooms at eight o’clock every evening, as though they
were two naughty children.
When he found that a young cousin of his own was to live in Coburg,
William demanded that the education of the boy should be given over to
him, and had him brought to Berlin away from his family. Once having
Alfred there, he placed him in a military circle and forgot him. No
motherly or fatherly control was exercised by the Imperial couple, and
being left entirely to his own devices he got into bad company, was
fleeced by gamblers, slipped heavily into debt, and lost both his
reputation and his health. Learning something of all this, the Duke of
Saxe-Coburg went to Berlin and plucked his son away into what he hoped
was safety. It was too late, however; the young man died shortly after,
in February 1899, at Meran, of phthisis. So says the biographer, but the
report at the time was that he had shot himself.
An heir being needed for the Saxe-Coburg throne, the Duke of Connaught
was named. At first he accepted the prospect, but on second thoughts,
and considering his own young son in connection with his Prussian
nephew’s peculiarities, he decided that the risk was too great; and so
he, with the Queen’s strong approval, refused the chance of reigning
over his father’s country. Connaught had been Victoria’s favourite son
since the death of the Duke of Albany, and she wished to lose him as
little as she wished another grandson to share the fate of Alfred.
Eventually the boy Duke of Albany was appointed heir, there being then
every reason to hope that it would be many years before he would take
his place in Germany. To-day he is fighting against those who nurtured
and brought him up.
There was another prince who, for the same reason, held aloof from
Berlin, and that was the Duke of Cumberland, who, but for Bismarck,
would have been King of Hanover. Because he had no wish to see his son
delivered over to the mercies of the Kaiser he resolutely refused all
Prussian invitations to forgive the injury of 1866.
CHAPTER XXIV
NEARLY AN AUTOCRAT
“Through it all stood out his old conservatism in the truest sense
of the word: his devotion to old traditions and constitutional
forms; his loyalty to the Crown; while with this devotion was
joined a courtesy most reverential to the Queen and an affection
for the royal family which was most touching.”--_‘Recollections,
1832 to 1886.’ By the Right Hon. Sir Algernon West, K.C.B._
“I observe that it is now universally the fashion to speak of the
first personage in the state as the great obstacle of the
measure.”--_‘Peter Plymley’s Letters.’ By Sydney Smith._
For six years the Queen was happy politically, and then a new Government
was elected with a Liberal and Irish majority of forty only. It was most
disconcerting to Victoria, who, hoping against hope that something might
happen to save the situation, commanded Lord Salisbury not to resign
until Parliament met. So he submitted himself to the inevitable passing
in the House of a vote of want of confidence, and the next morning must
have read in the Court Circular with some surprise, as did the rest of
the world, that the Queen accepted his resignation “with great regret.”
In one sense she never could remember that she was Queen not only of the
Conservatives but of all English people, or if she remembered it she was
indifferent to the anger which such acts as these raised among half her
subjects. This Parliament lasted only three and a half years, until June
1895, and it accomplished little, though never had more strenuous labour
or more careful thought been given to the affairs of the country. The
man in the street knew that the Queen would welcome anything which would
render that labour and thought ineffective, and expressed himself in
elation or bitter disgust according to the side he took; the members of
the Commons knew exactly what her feelings were, and opposition became
simply obstruction, any trick of noise or subtlety being resorted to
face down the Ministry or discredit the ministers.
The Lords were almost at the pinnacle of their pride, and felt that the
real power of government lay in their hands. The Home Rule Bill passed
its third reading in the Commons by a small majority of thirty-four,
which gave them their coveted opportunity. We still call it a fight over
Home Rule, but in reality Home Rule mattered little except as a symbol.
It was an elemental fight between Imperial-Jingoism and reason, between
pride of dominance and love of force on the one hand and progressive
tendency on the other. Queen Victoria had, in fact, lost her balance
over Gladstone, seeing in him a wolf waiting to gobble up her kingdom,
and so she deliberately set herself at the head of a party--her party.
She had never been reticent about those whom she liked or disliked, and
she plainly told every one whom she spoke with or wrote to, what she
thought of the bill and its projector. She led the Church, the Army, the
Conservatives, all whose ideals were of dominance and power; and the
Lords, dear people, realized with exhilaration that for once they had a
free hand, that no diplomacy of compromise or mediation would be
resorted to this time by their sovereign. They seized the occasion with
joy, and when this Home Rule Bill, this figment of things of much
greater moment, passed into their hands, they incontinently slew it,
and, to quote from a nonsense rhyme, “cast its reeking fragments on the
air.”
What revellings there were, and what language! I remember being told
over the breakfast-table--not my own--by an avowed upholder of Church
and State, that if he could only sit there and watch Gladstone’s body
hanging from the tree before his window he would be happy, and would
thoroughly enjoy his breakfast. His eye gleamed with desire as he spoke.
He was a type of the extremist party in the struggle. One proof that
this struggle had nothing in reality to do with Home Rule was that this
excess of feeling was evoked not only by the mention of Ireland, but by
the mere name of Gladstone, and in connection with every act of his
Government. Thus an Employer’s Liability Bill in cases of accident, and
a parish council measure, both of them of great importance, were as
bitterly withstood as the Irish Bill, and thrown out by the Lords in the
same way. These unreasoning acts were the beginning of the downfall of
the Lords.
Gladstone had overcome the opposition in the Commons with his marvellous
gifts of rhetoric and reason, but he could do nothing with the Lords,
and the Queen saw with joy that she was now strong enough to do what
she liked, that at long last she, and not her Parliament, was the real
ruler of England.
Henceforth the people allowed this position, though they did not
recognize it openly, and for this there were several causes. At the
beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign her sex had acted powerfully in
awakening a chivalry which allowed to a woman that which would be
resented in a man. She was weak, therefore she must be defended. This
general feeling flagged under Albert, and flagged still more strongly in
those years of her widowhood when she showed herself independent of
anything her subjects might say, do, or ask. But the knowledge, forced
into the people’s minds at the Jubilee, that now she was old, revived
the ancient indulgent spirit. We all give way to age, to those who have
not long to live; we want them to be happy, and ourselves to escape the
remorse which would later arrive if we thwarted their wishes.
A second strong reason was the glamour of Imperialism or Jingoism which
affected the greater part of the nation, including many Liberals and
Democrats. Those who disagreed with it saw its weakness, and believed it
to be but a spurious form of patriotism which bore within it the seeds
of its own destruction. They knew that though the Government of the
country was in the hands of Liberals, half the nation had become drunk
with this belief in their own share of imperial greatness, and that
nothing was to be done until the fit had worn itself out. How much the
annual visit of the German Emperor pandered to this sentiment cannot be
judged, but it certainly had a large influence upon the Queen, and some
upon her people. The very children in the schools were unfailingly
taught that they were members of the most glorious nation upon earth,
one upon which the sun never set. This self-glorification rose until it
became almost a frenzy in 1897, the year of the Diamond Jubilee. Yet no
one feared over-much for the English Constitution, for all knew that the
ebullience could not last long, it might end this year or next, soon any
way, for its strength would evaporate directly Victoria left this world
for another.
By July 1892 Gladstone had lost the sight of one eye, and the other was
affected; his hearing, also, was bad, and he knew that he could not
retain office long. But he did not resign on Home Rule, the two causes
which led to that event in March 1894 being his health and the
opposition he felt to the heavy Naval Estimates in the new Budget. Those
who insisted upon them probably already had cause to suspect the designs
of Germany, but Gladstone felt them to be a menace of war. “I have
always advocated and worked for peace. I cannot change that attitude,”
he said.
He wrote to the Prince of Wales to tell him of his intended resignation,
and the Prince responded with a charming letter of appreciation and
kindliness, including Mrs. Gladstone’s name. Arthur Balfour, his
opponent in the House, spoke of the nation’s debt of gratitude to him in
fostering and keeping alive the great traditions of the House of
Commons. But Queen Victoria had no kindly farewell greeting for her aged
minister, no word of thanks for his long and warm loyalty to her
personally and to the Throne, nor did she show any recognition that by
his social measures he had saved England from a possible revolution in
1867, and gradually leavened the workers with some of his own loyalty.
She was determined not to ask him herself for any advice or information
as to his successor, for she had already chosen the man, yet she badly
wanted to know what he thought would be the attitude of the members
towards her choice. So she tried to elude this difficulty by instructing
General Ponsonby to waylay Gladstone before her interview with him and
find out what he thought. There was to be a Privy Council in the
morning, so as soon as Gladstone arrived for that Ponsonby met him and
plied him with questions. When Gladstone saw to what these questions
were tending, he said that all his thoughts were at the command of the
Queen, but it must be at her command, otherwise his lips were sealed. As
Sir Henry had not been ordered to divulge that command, the information
was not given.
When in the afternoon queen and minister met, most of the talk was of
eyes and ears, German _versus_ English oculists, Victoria being emphatic
as to the superiority of the German over the English, as was her usual
opinion over the attainments of the two nations. So they parted, the
Queen so cold and indifferent that those about her were as much
distressed as those who cared for the old man. So aloof was she that,
after sixty-three years service, Gladstone could not even offer his
loyalty and best wishes.
“A departing servant has some title to offer his hopes and prayers for
the future; but a servant is one who has done, or tried to do, service
in the past,” he said sadly, afterwards.
When he left her he found the Empress Frederick outside waiting to say
good-bye to him, with a friendly clasp of the hand, giving him “a most
kind and warm farewell.” The next day he received from the Queen a note
in answer to the written resignation he had left in her hands, and in it
she hoped that he would have rest and quiet, adding that she would have
offered him a peerage, but that she knew he would not accept it, which
was rather a neat way of now withholding it. Twice she had offered him
this dignity, hoping by that means to secure his removal from the lower
House, and twice he had refused it because his work was not done. Now
that his reason for refusal no longer existed, the Queen was adroit
enough to use it as though still in force. Not that there is any
evidence that he would even then have welcomed it.
Gladstone praised her sincerity, but her attitude wanted greatness and
dignity.
I remember hearing many stories at the time intended to show how little
honour she ever paid Gladstone, stories of her keeping him waiting alone
for hours when he went to consult her, and showing slights in other
ways, for Liberals were greatly incensed with her over what they
regarded as her Georgian manners; and she quite sufficiently resembled
her forbears to show her feelings in this way. It is open to wonder if
she hated her statesman as much as the lady who was dying and whose
doctor thought the only chance of her recovery was to administer a
mental shock. So, knowing her opinions, he shouted into her ear the one
word, “Gladstone!” “Wretch!” she cried and recovered.
Victoria chose as Prime Minister one from whom she thought she would
have nothing to fear in regard to the doings in either House or measures
of Reform--Lord Rosebery, whose mother had been one of the Queen’s
bridesmaids and whose grandmother had been a member of the first
Household of the reign. Yet under him the Welsh Disestablishment Bill
passed its second reading, and the Duke of Cambridge was induced to
resign at last his office as commander-in-chief. Neither event pleased
the Queen, who, however, hoped that she would be able to keep the army
post still in her family.
Her military enthusiasm increased rather than diminished as she became
old, and nearly all her public appearances were connected in some way
with army matters, reviews, military exhibitions and visits to
Aldershot. In January 1893, when Sir Evelyn Wood was giving up the
command at Aldershot, it was reported that her Majesty was personally
anxious that he should be succeeded by her third son, the Duke of
Connaught. With this rumour was for months fitfully busy, until early in
August the Duke of Connaught caused a contradiction to be published, in
deference to the strictures made upon “one of the crying evils of our
present system, which pitchforks royalty on to posts which it never
would occupy otherwise,” etc., to quote newspaper comments. A few days
later his contradiction was contradicted from headquarters, and he took
the command. From that time the Queen was frequently at Aldershot, even
staying there for two days on one occasion. When the Duke of Cambridge
resigned she confidently expected that her son would be made
commander-in-chief, but in this matter her hopes were not realized. One
wonders whether they would have been under Lord Salisbury. In 1888,
under his Ministry, an endeavour had been made to invest the post with
far wider and more responsible powers, most probably to meet the Queen’s
desire that her personal deputy should be given the entire control of
the army, a most dangerous thing for the country, when the deputy was
chosen by favour and because he was a royal relative, and without any
regard for his military career or ability. The whole responsibility for
army matters and military duties of every kind was then centred in the
commander-in-chief.
This act, intended as a final declaration of the Queen’s supreme control
of the army, led to the sweeping away of the whole fiction. Its
nineteenth-century resuscitation in England had been caused by the
German training of Prince Albert, or rather by the behind-the-throne
exhortations of Stockmar, though among us it had been dead for
centuries, and it was a definite and threatening step towards despotic
power, being an integral part of the “divine right” belief.
The Duke of Cambridge was no longer young, and could not possibly carry
out the duties which this change demanded of him. It meant excessive
centralization in his hands, and the weakening of responsibility and
efficiency among the heads of departments. If it had been persisted in
it must have practically destroyed the army, for the time had even then
long passed when one brain could keep a country’s army fit for all
emergencies. So reorganization took place, and the Government decided to
put an able soldier at the nominal head of military affairs, choosing
Lord Wolseley, and strictly limiting the term of office to five years.
So passed from England--it is to be hoped for ever--this trace of German
militarism.
To compensate her cousin for his loss of public position the Queen made
him her first personal aide-de-camp, with the right of attending her on
all military occasions and of holding the parade on her birthday. As
commander-in-chief he had done his best according to his knowledge and
training, and at his age, the same as that of Victoria, he must have
been ready to give way to a younger man with more modern views. He
retained many other posts, among them being Ranger of Hyde Park (since
1852), also of St. James’s Park, and of Richmond Park; indeed, one of
his nicknames with the public was “George Ranger.”
The appointment of Lord Rosebery as Prime Minister had not been popular,
even in his own party, for many resented the placing of a peer in the
supreme position in the Commons, and his Ministry was defeated in June
1895, Lord Salisbury again coming into office, with Joseph Chamberlain
as Colonial Secretary. From that time to her death the Queen was happy
politically.
She even more closely associated herself now with military matters than
before; she talked army, and praised army life in a way that was truly
Germanic; so much so that Henry of Battenberg became inculcated with
military fervour. Princess Beatrice had had several children, the second
being born in 1887, Victoria being reported to have strongly desired
that its name should be Jubilee. The home of the Battenbergs was still
at Windsor, or Osborne, or Balmoral, though there were suggestions that
a separate establishment should be formed; and this palace life was but
a dull one for a young man, though it was now more diverse and gay than
it had ever been in Princess Beatrice’s youth. It held, however, no
excitement and little change, except that of scene. The people had never
taken to Prince Henry, moved more by national prejudice than any other
sentiment, for he interfered in no way with public things. His chief
troubles seemed to be social, for however happy he might be in his
relations with the Princess and Queen, there were members of that large
family who were equal to giving Bismarck much justification for his
lecture on snobbery. Early in the ’nineties stories were told of the way
in which Prince Henry was publicly snubbed by them, stories which might
or might not have been true; the following is gathered from Mr. Thomas
Catling’s book of _Reminiscences_, and may be regarded as true, as it
was related to him by an official who was present on the occasion.
At a November 9th dinner-party given by the Lord Mayor at the Mansion
House various guests were invited, among them being Prince Henry. The
seats were arranged strictly in order of precedence, and, as usual, a
plan of the table was made. Some of the guests at the top table,
thinking themselves rather crowded, pushed out one chair and took their
seats. Prince Henry, who arrived after this had been done, referred to
the plan, and asked his relatives--by marriage--to move that he might
take his place. They all sat stolid, no one would move, and the
unfortunate guest had to find an official and get his help. Official
authority had actually to be used to make the offenders sit more closely
so that the chair could be replaced. Turning round before he sat down,
Henry said--
“Thank you; they are very cruel to me.”
He must have found it a pleasant dinner to sit through!
At one such dinner the Duke of Cambridge, who was accustomed to use loud
and plain speech, caused some consternation by looking down at the seat
reserved for him and blurting out--
“I’m damned if I’m going to sit there.” And it took much suavity and
explanation to induce him at last to take the chair assigned him.
Henry, somewhat weary of his aimless existence, and more than weary of
the way in which he had to regard his position, at last determined to
make a bid for personal honour. We were then engaged in the second
Ashanti war, which incidentally brought another large slice of territory
under British rule, and he volunteered to go with Sir Francis Scott’s
expedition to Coomassie in 1895. The suggestion horrified the Queen, who
felt that he supplied much of the youth and brightness which now
surrounded her, and she felt that she could not spare him. But he wanted
at least to prove himself as a soldier, and Princess Beatrice saw with
him how much more bearable successful action of the sort might make his
life. No one realized that he had had no training, that he went from the
soft life of a palace to the hardships of long marches in an unknown
climate, and that his habits had unfitted him for anything of the kind.
When the expedition landed he shared in the labours and fatigues of
those with whom he marched, having nearly reached Coomassie when he was
struck down by fever, and being promptly sent back to the coast, died on
H.M.S. _Blond_ on the way home on January 19, 1896.
If he had been personally but a shadow to the people, his death made
them realize the grief of his wife and the Queen, and sympathy was felt
for them all through the country. Victoria responded with one of her
public letters, expressed so simply that very pity strengthened the
protecting love which her subjects had again begun to feel for her--
“This new sorrow is overwhelming, and to me in a double sense, for I
lose a dearly loved and helpful son, whose presence was like a bright
sunbeam in my home; and my dear daughter loses a noble, devoted husband,
to whom she was united by the closest affection. To witness the blighted
happiness of the daughter who has never left me and has comforted and
helped me is hard to bear.”
Four years earlier the Queen had suffered severest grief at the death of
the heir presumptive, the Prince of Wales’s eldest son, Albert Victor,
the Duke of Clarence. In December 1891 he had become engaged to his
cousin, Princess May, the daughter of Princess Mary of Teck, and had
almost immediately caught a cold which resulted in influenza and
pneumonia. There had been rumours afloat as to how he had been living
not wisely, but too well, and few were surprised that his strength would
not stand against severe illness.
It was commonly said that the affections of Princess May, now our Queen,
had from the first been given to Albert Victor’s brother George, but
that grandmamma had decreed that she must marry the heir to the throne,
and what grandmamma decreed in matters of the heart was bound to become
fact. True or not, Princess May was engaged to Prince George within a
year, but this was not immediately made public; for, though the Queen
approved, she would not allow any announcement to be made before the
tomb was erected over the Duke of Clarence’s grave!--an idea of
etiquette which must raise a smile. Her Majesty was said to favour
Prince George over his brother, and had had his portrait painted by Von
Angeli, which raised the inevitable question, “Are there no English
portrait painters?”
The marriage of the Duke of York and Princess May took place in July
1893, in the Chapel Royal, St. James’s Palace, the first royal wedding
held in London for over fifty years; and the Queen was present, not as a
tearful mourner as when her eldest son was married, but as the head of
the house and the sympathetic grandmother.
There were other marriages in the family which pleased her. The Grand
Duke of Hesse had died in 1889, and his son and successor married a
cousin, the daughter of the Duke of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg. To this
wedding of her two grandchildren went the Queen, her last visit to
Coburg, that she might give the young people her blessing, which
unfortunately did not avail them much, for they soon disagreed and were
divorced eight years later.
Princess Alex of Hesse, said to be lovely, married the new Tsar Nicholas
II in November of the same year, a marriage which gave Victoria
exquisite pleasure; for though she could never lose her suspicions of
Russian policy in the East, she loved to be allied with that great power
by personal ties. In honour of the wedding she gave a state banquet at
Windsor, and made the Tsar colonel-in-chief of the Second Dragoons, the
Royal Scots Greys.
King Death was busy both with her friends and foes during these ten
years, causing her varying degrees of grief or regret. For the death of
her brother-in-law, Duke Ernst of Coburg, in 1893, she probably wept
little, for the quarrel over the Greek succession had never been really
healed, and Ernst was not morally all she could wish. They had not met
for years, and his loss brought her the pleasant consequence that her
second son inherited the country of his father.
For the death of Gladstone she also could have felt no emotion, even
though she had met him once again and had, her feelings softened by
time, shown him an unwonted kindliness. It was at Cimiez, early in
1897, where the Gladstones were staying. Princess Louise was also on a
visit there, and invited the old people to tea. They were shown into a
room, to quote Gladstone’s words, “tolerably but not brilliantly
lighted, much of which was populated by a copious supply of Hanoverian
royalty. The Queen was in the inner part of the room, and behind her
stood the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Cambridge.... The Queen’s
manner did not show the old and usual vitality. It was still, but at the
same time decidedly kind, such as I had not seen it for a good while
before my final resignation. She gave me her hand, a thing which is, I
apprehend, rather rare with men, and which had never happened with me
during all my life, though that life, be it remembered, had included
some periods of rather decided favour. Catherine sat down near her, and
I at a little distance. My wife spoke freely and a good deal to the
Queen, but the answers appeared to me rather slight ... it seemed to me
that the Queen’s particular faculty and habit of conversation had
disappeared. It was a faculty, not so much the free offspring of a rich
and powerful mind, as the fruit of assiduous care, with long practice
and much opportunity. After ten minutes it was signified to us that we
had to be presented to all the other royalties.”
Gladstone died in May 1898, and Victoria sent a note of sympathy to Mrs.
Gladstone in which she was very careful to express no personal regret at
the event, and no recognition of the services he had done her country.
The nearest approach was, “My thoughts are much with you to-day, when
your dear husband is laid to rest,” and “I shall ever gratefully
remember his devotion and zeal in all that concerned my personal welfare
and that of my family.”
Among the pall-bearers were the Prince of Wales and Prince George, and
when the funeral service in Westminster Abbey was over the former did
one of those graceful acts which made him beloved by all parties and all
classes. Instead of at once leaving the Abbey he walked gravely to where
Mrs. Gladstone was seated, took her hand in his and kissed it. A very
uncourtier-like Radical who saw the scene exclaimed: “This atones for a
good deal. I’ll never say another word against him as long as I live.”
Such things as these help to explain the universal popularity of the
Prince of Wales; they also explain the great difference in the quality
of the national feeling which was stirred by the deaths of Queen
Victoria and King Edward. The Hon. Adelaide Drummond[31] well expressed
it in a letter to Lady Agatha Russell, when she said, “I think this
loss” (of King Edward) “is felt much more as a personal one than that of
Queen Victoria. That death was very impressive, but the tender feeling
was not uppermost as it is with us now, and the fact seems to pervade
all the everyday doings which used to suggest all sorts of prosperity
and festivity.”
Princess Mary of Teck, that vivacious and warm-hearted woman, died in
October 1897. She had made herself peculiarly loved by the people, who
were well aware of her good deeds and her reputation as an appreciator
of humour, whether merely good humour or that form which approximates to
wit. Every one is drawn to one who can laugh or cause laughter in
others, and her ready laugh and gift of happy repartee added just that
touch of pride in her which made us feel a personal touch of kinship.
One of the stories so often told may bear repetition. Seated at dinner
one evening between Canon Teignmouth Shore and another canon, the former
asked if she did not feel in an alarming position with--
“Canon to right of her,
Canon to left of her,” etc.
“Well,” she replied, “this is the very first time I have been classed
with the Light Brigade.”
Her husband died in 1900, just a year before Victoria, being buried
beneath St. George’s Chapel. And that year the Queen’s second son,
Alfred Duke of Saxe-Coburg, suddenly developed a fatal illness, and left
the little country he had so lately acquired to the boy Duke of Albany.
Almost at the same time Victoria first learned that the Empress
Frederick, of whom some one said in 1893 that she looked so remarkably
young and well that she might have been thought to be about thirty, was
stricken with the mortal disease which had killed the Emperor. This was
a bitter grief, but her daughter outlived her for six months.
CHAPTER XXV
THE APOTHEOSIS OF QUEEN VICTORIA
“Come, fill the Cup, and in the fire of Spring
Your Winter-garment of Repentance fling:
The Bird of Time has but a little way
To flutter--and the Bird is on the Wing.”
_Edward FitzGerald’s ‘Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.’_
“From many lands we come;
From North, from South, from East, from West, we bring
Our fealty unforced....”--_Geoffrey Junior._
Almost every year Queen Victoria went abroad, generally to the south of
France, though Italy was the chosen country on three occasions, and in
1889 she paid a visit to San Sebastian in Spain. Mentone had been a
favourite with her, which was not far from San Remo, where Edward Lear,
who had once taught her drawing, had a villa. He was much troubled by
rumours that her Majesty intended to pay him a visit.
“T’other day,” he wrote in his well-known facetious style, “over a
hundred owly fools came up and stood all about my gate for more than an
hour! but on finding that no Queen came went away gnashing their hair
and tearing their teeth. I hope if her Majesty does come I shall be told
of the future event before it does come to pass, as it would not be
pretty to be caught in old slippers and shirt sleeves. I dislike contact
with royalty, as you know; being a dirty landscape painter, apt only to
speak his thoughts and not to conceal them. The other day when some one
said, ‘Why do you keep your garden locked?’ said I, ‘To keep out beastly
German bands and odious wandering Germans in general.’ Says my friend,
‘If the Queen comes to your gallery you had better not say that sort of
thing.’ Says I, ‘I won’t, if I can help it.’”[32]
Lord Spencer, who was with the Queen at Mentone, called to see him, and
Lear commented with glee upon the outrageously ridiculous reports which
were spread about the Queen’s going to see his pictures. “Among the most
absurd was one that old George had been busy for two days and two nights
making immense quantities of macarōōn cakes; for, said the Sanramesi,
‘It is known that the Queen of England eats macarōōn cakes continually,
and also insists on her suite doing the same. And there is no one at San
Remo who can make macarōōn cakes except Signor Giorgio Cocali (Lear’s
cook). I told George of this, who laughed, a rare act on his part; and
said, ‘To begin with, I don’t even know what a macarōōn cake is like,
and never saw one, to my knowledge.”[33]
At the various places which the Queen visited a mass of legends arose
about the things she did, which might or might not have been true. Her
Indian and Scotch attendants, with their remarkable clothes, caused
crowds to gather, especially in such large cities as Florence; and
children found a never wearying pleasure in stealing round to watch
them. Once her Majesty told an Indian to give a cake to one little
creature, but at his awesome approach the whole group of babes fled in
screaming terror, drawing hearty laughter from the Queen.
It was her custom to drive about the grounds of the house in which she
was staying in a donkey-chair in the morning and take a long drive in
her landau in the afternoon. When at Nice in 1897 she often passed on
the hill road an old beggar, sitting in a rough little wooden cart,
drawn by two dogs, to whom she generally gave a coin. One morning the
old man whipped up his dogs and proceeded to race the Queen’s carriage
down the hill. For a while his dogs kept bravely abreast, but of course
soon had to give up the contest, and her Majesty was sufficiently
diverted to send some one back to him with a second douceur.
At times her hotel surroundings were scarcely majestic, though the hotel
proprietor may have been very proud of them, and Lord Ronald Gower, in
his _Old Diaries_, gives us a glimpse of her in homely surroundings at
Aix-Les-Bains. Commanded to dine with her, he found the dining-room so
small that the ten people at the table quite filled it up; on its walls
was only one picture--a Jubilee portrait of her Majesty. Could that have
been intended as a compliment, and if so, how dull a one! The
reception-room, in which local magnates were to make their bows before
royalty, was lit only by a few candles, and the dinner guests made
desperate but futile efforts to induce the gas chandelier to add to the
illumination, until the Queen, fearing an accident, begged them to
desist. That the reception might be in good style the middle of the room
had been cleared of furniture, and seemingly the sides too, for when
more candles and a lamp had been secured there was no place upon which
they could be stood. To add a touch of colour, some one seized some
vases of flowers--artificial, there being none others at hand--and
brought them in, and was met by the same trouble, being at last obliged
to group them on the one vacant spot which had been found for the lamp.
It all sounds very curious when one remembers the particularity of the
Queen at home, the way in which she liked people to appear as if by
magic at the moment at which she expressed a wish for them, and her
absolute intolerance of any hitch whatever in the service around her.
But perhaps on this particular evening all her attendants had a holiday.
At Nice, in 1897, the conditions were much the same while she was
staying at “the hideous Hotel Regina,” the drawing-room walls of which
were covered with red paper and hung with bad paintings lent by a
picture dealer; while the dining-room was disfigured by a vulgar glaring
paper and a life-sized copy of the coronation picture of George III and
Queen Charlotte.
A matter which much exercised the minds of the inhabitants of these
towns was the way in which the Queen of England dressed, for, like most
of her country-people of that day, she thought that any old clothes were
good enough for travelling, and she did not compliment the Florentines
or Nicians by any effort after regality. A broad-brimmed straw hat, a
shawl and a black skirt which had seen much service, such as she wore in
the grounds of Osborne or Windsor, are said to have become familiar in
the towns of her holiday making, and were the subject of many jokes
among our southern friends as well as in England. A writer of a magazine
article tells how once a new stableman at Windsor saw a little old woman
examining the horses one day, and called out--
“Hello! no one is allowed in here when the Queen is about!” upon which
the straw hat, pointed shawl and black skirt turned round sharply, and
the man’s jaw dropped as he recognized the visitor.
Victoria’s 1893 visit to Florence found, for some reason, a large number
of commentators, who give many little interesting pictures of her
doings. It has not generally been known that the precautions taken on
these foreign journeys were in some ways more elaborate than even those
across England, and it is a little wonderful that the French should have
allowed their through service to be disarranged on her account. But the
Queen, like all sovereigns, feared assassination and accident, and it is
quite certain that the authorities in France would have done anything
rather than have suffered any ill thing to happen to her in their
country. Thus, when she went on this journey to Florence, all the way
there from Cherbourg the lines were cleared, so that for two hours no
other train or portion of a train ran in front of hers.
On several occasions King Humbert and his Queen had visited her when she
was abroad, and this year it was rumoured that she intended to return
their calls, but the visit was opposed by the Vatican. It was said, too,
that feeling in England was against it, so far as the intention was
known, for Rome--terrible fact!--was the home of Roman Catholicism!
There is no bigotry in the world like that of the English Evangelican
when thinking of Romanism. The peasants of Cimiez firmly believed,
though, that in her heart Victoria was a Roman Catholic, and had to go
abroad to be shriven in secret.
She was particularly keen to see the miraculous picture of the
Annunciation, which was always carefully hidden under a curtain behind
the altar of the Church of the Annunciation in Florence, and the
privilege of seeing which was rarely granted. The difficulties in her
way added zest to the visit when the permission came, and she was
wheeled into the church in her chair by her Indian attendants. They were
all grouped before the picture, candles were lit, prayers were said and
much genuflexion made, and at last the great moment came when most
solemnly the curtain was withdrawn from what the priests said was a
picture drawn by heavenly hands. The Queen looked and looked, then
turned to Ronald Gower, whispering--
“Can you see anything, Ronald? for I cannot.”
He replied that he could only see a glitter of jewels, for all that was
visible was a blurred female profile beneath a crown of incrusted gems.
The Queen must have felt some inward amusement when the young monk near
her said with bated breath, that “Michael Angelo had remarked that he
thought he knew something of painting, and he was convinced that no
mortal hand could have painted the work!”
Old age crept gently upon Victoria. By 1890 she never walked without a
stick, and it was evident that movement was uncomfortable; two or three
years later she would enter a room leaning heavily upon the arm of an
Indian and using the stick with her other hand; then she was wheeled
about the castle in a chair. By 1898 her sight was failing, for cataract
had appeared, and she could not easily read her letters, though this was
kept as secret as possible, and dispatch boxes were sent her as usual.
She kept up as long as she could her open-air life, and one reads of her
in 1893 sitting in the garden several hours on a March day going through
business papers, she being then nearly seventy-five years old. Almost up
to the end, too, she would go, when at Windsor, from the castle to White
Lodge, a tea-house at Frogmore, before breakfast, and, after having a
cup of coffee, attend the service there and then return. It was at this
place she would occupy a summer-house and work on dispatches, with her
secretaries around her.
Age seemed to bring her youthful tastes back, and there was no longer
any need to beg her to go to a theatre, for she was quite ready to
command the theatre to go to her. Beginning in 1890, when her children
organized some private theatricals and tableaux at Osborne, her liking
for the drama revived. So she saw _The Gondoliers_, Duse in _La
Locandiera_, and commanded Tree to act _The Red Lamp_ at Balmoral. She
also turned to her early favourites, and had _Il Trovatore_, _Faust_,
_Carmen_ and _Cavalleria Rusticana_ to be performed before her. She
entered with great zest into the fun of Tom Taylor’s _Helping Hands_ at
Osborne, and eighteen months before her death had Sanger’s Circus at
Windsor Castle, with 150 horses, elephants, camels and many wild birds
and beasts. To this was added an historical procession, some of the
characters being taken by well-known people, and representing St.
George, Richard III and even Queen Elizabeth. That many of these shows
were for the sake of Princess Beatrice’s children did not detract from
the fact that she too enjoyed them.
She no longer avoided garden parties or state concerts, and when
Princess Maude married Prince Charles of Norway in the private chapel of
Buckingham Palace in 1896 she was there, and gave a garden party in the
palace gardens, and also was present at a state concert to which 1500
guests were invited, the royalties sitting in crimson and gold seats,
strictly in order of precedence, which, being so at all functions, must
have been rather boring, as the neighbours were always the same.
Princess Maude received £4000 a year from the sum allotted to the Prince
of Wales for his children, and the Queen must have been relieved that
there was no longer any need for her to enter into a new struggle on
that point.
In 1896 her Majesty entertained the Tsar of Russia with the Tsarina and
their infant at Balmoral, insisting that it was a purely family visit, a
statement which her ministers duly echoed, though every one knew that
negotiations were going on between the two sovereigns concerning the
disturbed state of Europe and the system of murder and illimitable
taxation of the Armenians by the Turks. The previous year Rosebery had
addressed the House on the horrors which had been perpetrated there,
“while the Powers look on and fly little diplomatic kites.” The matter
threatened European war, and a little later culminated in the crisis of
Crete. It was rumoured that the Tsar wished to associate with England in
delivering the Armenians from the ghastly thraldom in which they lived,
a rumour which had little association with fact, for the Tsar refused to
use coercion with Turkey, nor would France join in, and England felt
that it could not act alone. Twenty-five thousand Armenians were
massacred in 1896, and the diplomatic kites continued to fly for years!
But the notable point was that, with a Conservative leader in the House,
for in 1895 Salisbury took Rosebery’s place, the Queen was willing to
reverse the whole of her Eastern policy, and go to the aid of the
oppressed. It was, however, only partly the result of the different
political influence with which she was surrounded--there was also
another and more personal reason. Age had, as has been several times
pointed out, brought a change in her attitude; she had at last, and
perhaps unconsciously, discarded the pernicious attempt to rule her
country according to the remembered wishes of Prince Albert, then dead
for thirty-five years; she was at last governing according to the advice
of her ministers and according to the natural, humane sentiments of her
own mind; she was at last herself and not the shadow of some one else.
By 1897 the Queen had completed sixty years of reign, and the well-named
“Diamond” Jubilee took place. By a route three times as long as that of
the Jubilee of ten years before, she drove in her chariot of state to
St. Paul’s Cathedral, preceded and followed by Prime Ministers from all
the colonies, delegates from India and all the dependencies and
representatives from all the armed forces of the empire. Here were
Mounted Rifles from Victoria and New South Wales, from the Cape and
Natal, from “Our Lady of the Snows.” Here were Hausas from the Niger and
the Gold Coast, coloured men from the West India regiments, Zaptiehs
from Cyprus, Chinamen from Hong-Kong and Dyaks from British North
Borneo; here were Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen and Welshmen, Imperial
Service troops sent by the native princes of India, and a detachment of
Sikhs. Said a writer in _Figaro_, “Rome is equalled if not surpassed by
the Power which, in Canada, Australia, India and the China seas, in
Egypt, Central and Southern Africa, in the Atlantic and in the
Mediterranean, rules peoples and governs in their interests.”
In the midst of this great and gorgeous procession, in a golden coach
drawn by eight cream-coloured horses, who marched proudly under their
load of golden harness, champing their gilded bits, their blue reins
held by grooms whose scarlet coats were encrusted with gold and insignia
of service, in this magnificence came a little old woman of
seventy-nine, clothed in garments which gave the appearance of rich
white lace figured with black, her face beaming, and bowing her
acknowledgments from right to left for four hours.
But was she merely a little old woman? No, she was an idol, a symbol,
the symbol of Imperialism surrounded by the proofs of her great cult.
Imperialism was burning like a flame in the hearts of the English, but
never before had they seen with their own eyes just what it meant. The
knowledge burst upon them like a miracle; they saw, they understood, and
their rending shouts meant the bending of the knee to the power which
was centred in that little frail figure. Through roaring crowds she
passed, the awakener of the nation’s self-consciousness. They shouted in
acclaim of their own importance as well as of hers, but she did not
realize the cause of their emotion, the great niche in which they had
placed her. She felt it to be personal.
“How kind they are, how kind they are to me!” she said through blinding
tears, as she re-entered the gates of Buckingham Palace.
And if they had been challenged, every one in the crowd would have
declared stoutly that their homage was personal, as it was, to a large
extent, yet without this new awakening it would not have been the same
homage. At last the bond between the Queen and her English subjects was
complete, riveted by Imperialism.
It was the apotheosis of Queen Victoria!
Old as she was, the day brought her nothing but happiness, and later she
mused and dreamed over it and constantly returned to it in conversation.
Meeting the Bishop of Winchester the following month, she asked him
from what point he had seen the procession, and then suddenly
remembering, added, with a laugh--
“Oh, you were on the steps of St. Paul’s. I was unfortunate--I had a
very bad place and saw nothing.”
Six days after the great procession her Majesty gave a garden party at
Buckingham Palace, driving slowly with the Prince and Princess of Wales
in an open carriage through lanes of her guests, “looking most amiable
and happy.” But the great review off Spithead, by which the Navy took
part in the Diamond Jubilee, she could not attend.
There were some, however, who, in this period of rejoicing, felt
aggrieved. The Queen was to receive the congratulations of the Commons,
and with her martinet-like precision, which allowed nothing for numbers,
appeared on the very moment, remained in the room but a few minutes and
went away. It has several times been pointed out that the carriage
arrangements at any royal reception were atrocious, and though there
were many carriages, the number was not excessive. However, the usual
muddle occurred, and by the time most of the visitors were allowed to
crawl to the palace door, the Queen had long gone to seek her afternoon
repose. As a certain General G. C. Bartley wrote to _The Times_,
somewhat derisively, over the supposed privileges given to members as
regarded the Court and the Jubilee, he read of Colonists and foreigners
of all nations going to royal reviews, parties, garden and otherwise,
but as a member of Parliament he had not received a single invitation
of any sort to identify himself with the festivities or meetings; “but
then I was not made in Germany nor in New South Wales,” he added. “I
attribute all deficiencies to State officials who manage these affairs,
but large constituencies are apt to resent such treatment of their
representatives and even to consider it an intentional slight.”
But this was a new Victoria, and instead of passing the complaint by
with indifference, she at once had an invitation to a garden party
issued to the members and their wives.
With the imperial fervour which had been steadily growing since the
death of Beaconsfield, there was a growing sense that England had
certain scores to wipe off. Afghanistan had been settled as far as
possible by Gladstone after the second war, but it was felt necessary to
come to some definite agreement with Russia about boundaries, a matter
which was fortunately brought to a conclusion with nothing more serious
than a war of words.
Through European machinations the Sudan still remained in unrest. So far
the policy initiated by the G. O. M. had been maintained by his
successors, but it was felt by 1897 that the time had arrived for making
a great effort to settle the country. So British and Egyptian troops
were sent out under Lord Kitchener, and the battle of Omdurman, in
September 1898, restored to Egypt the greater part of the territory it
had once possessed, which caused the Queen intense satisfaction. It was,
however, not placed in the same way again in the power of the Turk, and
England has had since to maintain a great army there, both military and
civil; in fact, England has practically added Egypt and the Sudan to her
list of dependencies.
From 1897 to 1899 one frontier war succeeded another in India, brought
about by fear, defiance and patriotism on the part of the tribesmen and
by a mixture of self-defence and aggression on our side. So we went on
expanding with a firm conviction that we were conferring a blessing on
the world by so doing, and that if they would only realize it the black
men, the yellow and the brown would be much happier in subjection than
left to their own freedom. It was the heyday of the missionary who saw
evil in every religion but his own, and went about preaching of that
evil and of the religious blessings which would accrue to the coloured
men under British rule; incidentally he was also the pioneer after whom
all the sins of civilization were introduced into every quarter of the
globe. However, it all jumped with Imperialism, and we were content to
stigmatize these little people who were fighting for the continued
possession of their independence as wicked rebels, horrible barbarians
and treacherous enemies.
As to Africa, Majuba Hill still rankled and, though the pacifists kept
clear of war there as long as possible, there was ample occasion for it
on both sides. The position of the Boers has been explained earlier. The
Uitlanders said, on their side, “We are the majority of the inhabitants
here, we make the wealth of the country, you tax us beyond all
necessity, you will not let us educate our children, you keep us under
the heel of your police; above all, you give us no political rights.”
“Let us live in peace in our country,” said the Boers. “I insist upon
dragging wealth out of the bowels of your earth,” replied the Uitlander.
How could such divergent interests be reconciled? Of course, there had
to be war.
A great outcry was raised in 1899 against the starting of this war, for
even by then the Jingo fever was beginning to abate, but there were
sinister circumstances underlying it, known only to some of those in
authority and some of those on the spot. The Kaiser had never visited
England since his famous telegram to Kruger, and the Kaiser was still
hoping to make himself master, by hook or by crook, of a broad band
across Africa, from east to west, which should effectually and for ever
divide the British possessions in the north from those in the south. His
dream was Africa for Germany, for having once secured this band he would
continue, he hoped, to broaden it until the continent was all his.
In March 1899 the Uitlanders sent direct to Queen Victoria a petition,
signed by 21,000 British out there, setting forth their heavy
grievances, and by then the suspicion arose that Kruger was preparing
for war. To the Cabinet the practical choice lay between the gradual
submission of all South Africa to a Boer farmer of sordid habits and
peculatory instincts or a fight to a finish. There could be no doubt as
to what the choice should be.
The fight began in October, and the next month Kaiser William, anxious
to lay his hand on his heart and say “This is not my game!” came to
visit the Queen and the Prince of Wales with his Kaiserin. This visit,
of course, in the usual ostrich fashion of the Court, which wished to
hide its activity under the sands of innocence, was announced to have no
relation whatever to South African affairs, to be a purely family visit;
and to support this the historians tell us that the notorious
Kaiser-telegram to Kruger was really quite innocent and free from
inimical intent. But how are we to believe the smooth speakers?
From the commencement of her widowhood the Queen’s interest in her army
had been yearly increasing, and when war began it was never out of her
thoughts. But though she did what she could, it was impossible that she
should again harry the War Office as she had done in the past. The
conditions were different, the Government was now Conservative and not
Liberal, and so could do with impunity what the other would have been
forbidden to think; her energies were lessening, and her sight was so
affected that she could no longer read the reports and dispatches which
were sent for. So she knitted woollen comforters and caps, feeling great
vexation when her work was appropriated by officers instead of being
given to the men. At Christmas she broke through long habit, and
remained for the third time at Windsor rather than go to Osborne, that
she might be nearer the centre of news, and she sent chocolate to the
soldiers at the front at New Year.
But now that she was near her life’s end there remained one section of
her countryfolk whom she had never forgiven, against whom she had
harboured distrust all her reign, adding suspicion, resentment and a
desire for reprisals since 1862. Those people lived in Ireland. She had
never pardoned Dublin’s refusal to put up a statue to the Prince
Consort, the attacks on her sons or the national desire for freedom in
the administration of the country’s affairs. In 1899 she held out the
olive branch to Bristol, after ignoring the place for nearly sixty
years; would she die and still leave Ireland to ban her memory?
She might have done this had it not been for the Boer War. The Irish
have ever been fighters, and England has ever taken advantage in her
need of this great quality. In 1900 the bravery of the Irish troops made
a great impression upon her, and it is to be hoped that in the general
mellowing which age had brought to her rigid self-complacency she felt
some regret, perhaps even remorse, for the way in which she had treated
the whole nation. She had persistently, sometimes heatedly, refused all
the suggestions of her ministers to go there or, as was repeatedly urged
in earlier years, to choose a residence there; she would allow no son of
hers to be associated with the island; and the only royal link between
England and Ireland for thirty years had been made by the Prince of
Wales, who had three times visited it, being accredited by the fearful
with great courage when he went there in 1885. Yet his courage was not
put to the test, for he met kindness and loyalty everywhere. “What do
you want?” he asked of a man with a bundle of walking-sticks, who tried
to get near him and who was being chased away by his attendants.
“Nothing, your honour, nothing, but to ask your honour to take a present
of a Tipperary rifle,” replied the man, offering the best stick he had.
The Prince took it with genial thanks, sending some one after him with a
sovereign. When some ill-looking people in Dublin were cried out against
by the suite, who wanted them sent away, the Princess turned to the
latter, saying, “Oh, think of how they have been treated.”
When the Queen went to Wales in 1889, the Irish made one more attempt to
induce her to visit them, and again she refused. To her Ireland was
nothing. She needed the visible proof of personal service on their part,
for she had no imagination, before the hardness of her heart could be
broken; and this proof was given now. It moved her to a feeling of
gratitude, and she sent permission to her Irish soldiers to wear their
national badge, the shamrock, one day in the year, the day of St.
Patrick; and then in April 1900 she gave up her long journey to the
south of France for the short one to Dublin. She did it gracefully,
telling the people of Dublin that she came to seek change and rest and
to revive her memory of the warm-hearted welcome given to her, her
husband and children in earlier days. And so hearty was the welcome that
she declared that the Irish really loved her, and she responded to the
wit and gaiety of the crowd by repeating--
“How I delight in the Irish!”
For three weeks she remained there, driving about, attending a military
review, an assembly of 50,000 school children, and entertaining
notabilities. If only she had done this from time to time during the
forty years of neglect, how different might Irish Victorian history have
been.
This year, old and feeble as she was, all her youthful enthusiasm had
revived. She drove through London in March, that she might show her deep
interest in her people at a time of anxiety, and was received with the
greatest enthusiasm, love and veneration, she looking well and happy.
She visited Netley and Woolwich hospitals; she held a Drawing-room at
Buckingham Palace, her last; she acted personally as sponsor to the Duke
of York’s third child, she gave musical entertainments at Windsor, a
garden party at Buckingham Palace, and a state banquet to the Khedive of
Egypt. She received at Windsor the delegates from Australia, who were
watching their Commonwealth Bill through the Commons, welcomed home
troops from the war, among them Canadian and Colonial detachments, and
attended--her last appearance in public--a sale of needlework by Irish
ladies at Windsor Town Hall. It is not too much to say that this year
she did as much as she had done all together in the first ten years of
her widowhood.
Even the beloved Scotland was allowed to suffer somewhat from her war
anxiety, for Victoria’s thoughts were fixed on South Africa, and she
would allow no servants’ balls, no fêtes, no joy-ringing of any sort.
Truly a revolution had taken place!
In her demeanour the old jealousy of her apparent dignity, showing
itself in the fear of any liberty being offered her--a most curious
characteristic in one so highly placed as herself--had entirely
disappeared. Perhaps by that time she knew that dignity could cast out
fear. I have been told by a dweller near the castle that once, during
these late years, he saw a happy wedding party, meeting the Queen in her
carriage, throw confetti over her, and she responding with a jolly laugh
of amusement and restraining her attendants from driving the party away.
How one regrets that spurious dignity which kept her so aloof so long!
It leads to the thought that it was grafted upon her nature by the
German training given her in what royalty should expect.
The article in _The Quarterly Review_ shows how, before she was so old,
at the shadow or less than the shadow of freedom she would freeze and
probably not thaw again through a dinner-party, saying the next
morning--
“I chose to have a headache last night. I am not quite sure that---- is
discreet.”
In ordinary family life a headache under such circumstances would be
regarded as a euphemistic way of explaining sulkiness. With the Queen I
suppose it was regarded as a calculated method of ensuring a rigid line
of behaviour among her guests, a heavy penalty for those guests to pay
for dining with royalty!
On December 14, 1900, Queen Victoria celebrated for the last and
thirty-ninth time the mourning rites at the mausoleum at Frogmore, and
four days later took an unconscious farewell of Windsor towers, when
she started for Osborne. She had largely lost her memory, she did not
always hear, and it annoyed her to miss a word in conversation, and she
was further depressed by her anxieties concerning the war. At Osborne
one more trouble fell upon her, for on Christmas Day her valued friend
and attendant, Lady Jane Churchill, was found dead in bed. The tearful
Queen wove a wreath of flowers with her trembling old hands to lay on
the bier.
Yet on the second of January she received Lord Roberts, and talked a
little with him, but it was a supreme effort; when Joseph Chamberlain
went to her on the 10th she could scarcely speak, and the interview
lasted only two or three minutes. On the 15th she drove out for the last
time, her companion being the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and
after the 19th she did not speak again. Two days later the Kaiser
arrived at Osborne, and the next day she died, with him and five of her
children round her.
Of the funeral there is little need to write. It was military, according
to her desires, and the _Alberta_ carried her over the Solent between
lines of thundering battleships. From Victoria to Paddington soldiers
guarded the roads two deep and shoulder to shoulder, and artillery
escorted the gun-carriage upon which her body lay. The King, the German
Emperor, the Duke of Connaught, the kings of Greece and Portugal, and
representatives from all the royal families of Europe followed, to see
her placed in the spot where her husband had lain for nearly forty
years.
It was the end of a woman of great sincerity. If she made many
mistakes, alienating in turn different sections of her people, two
things must be remembered. One is that in her age for a short space she
brought them all under her influence; and another that she was born in
1818, and had helped to drag England out of the disgusting quagmire of
immorality in which the people were sunk from the time of the Stuarts
till the end of the Georges. She was the link between then and now, and
a link cannot be the crown and completion of a chain. She did a great
deal more for the reconstruction of English habits than could ever have
been expected from a member of the Guelph family. Her chief weakness lay
in the rigidity of her will. And yet this--because of the length of her
life--became at last the chief cause of the claim made by her adulators
that she was great. By this rigidity she brought disasters upon herself,
and yet at last, by its continued exercise, she hypnotized the people
into believing that she must be right. Without putting it into words,
the majority agreed that she ruled by Right Divine.
She was also, under Beaconsfield, one of the chief influences in
enlarging her empire. Had she had unrestricted liberty in this matter
she would inevitably have brought disaster upon her country, for in
this, as well as in domestic policy, we may go too fast. The sane road
is the middle road, and the glory and safety of England depended more
upon her changing ministers than upon her.
INDEX
Abdul Aziz, Sultan of Turkey, 94
a’Beckett, Arthur, _quoted_ 356
Adelaide, Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, 61
----, Queen, 102
Adolphus, Prince of Schaumberg-Lippe, 383
“Adullamites,” 115
Ainger, Canon, 153
Albany, Duchess of, 262, 350
----, Duke of. _See_ Leopold, Prince.
Albert Edward, Prince of Wales. _See_ Edward VII.
----, Prince Consort, 3, 5, 7, 15 _et seq._, 48, 56, 65, 70, 75,
82, 87, 100, 170-1, 174,
225, 232, 292, 293, 304, 307, 312, 320, 349, 368
---- Memorial, 72
---- Victor, Prince, 64, 348, 389-90, 419
Alexander of Hesse, 298, 308, 420
---- II, Tsar of Russia, 93, 200, 231, 232, 273
---- Tsarevitch, 194, 197
---- of Württemberg, 63
Alexandra, Queen, 25, 28, 51, 64, 74, 91, 102, 117, 148 _et seq._,
163, 177-8, 199, 200, 216, 347
Alexandrina of Prussia, 28, 31
Alfred, Prince. _See_ Edinburgh, Duke of.
---- of Saxe-Coburg, 404
Alice, Princess, Grand Duchess of Hesse-Darmstadt, 20, 48,
51, 65, 100, 141, 149, 180, 224
Allingham, William, _quoted_ 359
Amélie, Queen of France, 66, 68
_Annual Register_, 23
Arabi Pasha, 258, 262
Argyll, Duke of, 158, 159
Arthur, Prince. _See_ Connaught, Duke of.
Ashley, Evelyn, 126
Ashmead-Bartlett, William, 312
Atholl, Duchess of, 181
Augusta, Queen of Prussia, 46, 142, 143, 371
Augusta Victoria, German Empress, 300
Austro-Prussian War, 58
Babington, Mr., 92
Baker, Valentine, 263
Balfour, A. J., 410
Barrington, Lady Caroline, 223
Battenberg, Alexander, King of Bulgaria, 298, 299, 302, 350, 379 _et seq._
----, Henry, Prince, 299, 302, 305 _et seq._, 349, 351, 353, 416-18
----, Louis, Prince, 299, 301, 303, 305, 351
----, Princess, 298, 308
----, Princess Henry. _See_ Princess Beatrice.
Beach, Sir Michael Hicks, 227
Beaconsfield, Lady (Mrs. Disraeli), 107, 190
----, Lord. _See_ Disraeli, Benjamin.
Beatrice, Princess Henry of Battenberg, 48, 64, 233, 239, 244, 279, 287,
301 _et seq._, 309, 332, 345, 416-18
Beresford, Lord Charles, 252
Bessborough, Lord, 155
Biddulph, Sir Thomas, 85
Bigelow, Pulteney, _quoted_ 398
Bigge, Sir Arthur, 85
Bismarck, Prince, _quoted_ 15, 43, 45, 46 _et seq._, 58, 64, 68,
_quoted_ 130, 137,
138, 140, 141, 143, 144, 215, 242, 270, 276, 300,
365, 367, 371
_et seq._, 376 _et seq._, 397, 398
Blackie, Professor, 359
Blegg, groom to Prince of Wales, 164
Bradlaugh, Charles, 159, 190
Bradley, Dean, 128
Breadalbane, Lord, 358
Bright, John, 115, 121, 126
Brooks, Shirley, _quoted_ 70, 132
Brougham, Lord, 127, 170
Brown, Dr., of Windsor, 64
----, George, 306, 357
----, John, senior, 279
----, John, 100 _et seq._, 159, 166 _et seq._, 174, 176, 180,
181, 217, 278,
281 _et seq._, 285 _et seq._, 289, 306, 309, 329, 369, 371
Browning, Robert, 317, 348
Bruce, Lady Augusta. _See_ Lady Augusta Stanley.
Brunow, Baron, 45
Bucher, Herr, 271, 378
Bulgarian Atrocities, 227
Burdett-Coutts, Baroness, 312, 355
Burke, Thomas Henry, 275
Busch, Moritz, _quoted_ 15, 140 _note_, 271, 377-8, 381-2
Byng, Colonel, 279
Cairns, Lord, 129
Cambridge, Duchess of, 321, 361
----, George, Duke of, 11, 132, 134, 146, 259, 413-15, 421
----, Mary, Princess. _See_ Teck.
Candlish, Dr., 73
Canning, Lady, 173
----, Lord, 7
Cardwell, Viscount, 133 _et seq._
Carey, Lieutenant, 239, 261
Carlingford, Lord, 297
Carlyle, Jane Welsh, _quoted_ 25
----, Thomas, 235, 278, 311, 317-18
Carnarvon, Lord, 234
Catling, Thomas, _quoted_ 275, 416-7
Cavendish, Frederick, Lady, 275
---- ----, Lord, 275
Chamberlain, Right Hon. Joseph, 250, 333, 338, 385-6, 415
Chapman, George, _quoted_ 41
Charles, Prince of Norway, 431
Charlotte, Empress of Mexico, 69
Chelmsford, Lord, 129
Chesterfield, Lord, 164
Chevalley, Abel, 59, _quoted_ 342
Childers, Right Hon. Hugh, 133-4, 251 _et seq._, 258
Christian IX, King of Denmark, 29
----, Prince of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, 61
_et seq._, 303
----, Princess, 48, 60, 62, 65, 90, 102, 163, 180
Churchill, Lady Jane, 444
----, Lord Randolph, 324
Clark, Somers, _quoted_ 360, 303
Clarke, Francis, 174
Clayden, Philip, 192
Cobb, Frances Power, 315
Colenso, Dr., 127
Conference of Berlin, 235
Connaught, Arthur, Duke of, II, 38, 117-18, 130, 147, 159, 193, 240, 247,
259, 282, 404-5, 413-14
----, Louise Margaret, Duchess of, 240
Conway, Moncure D., _quoted_ 91, 118, 237
Cortazzo, Oreste, 374
Costello, Fenian, 117
Cowell, Sir John, 100, 283, 316
Cromer, Lord, 262-3, 271
Crown Prince. _See_ Frederick, Emperor.
Crown Princess. _See_ Frederick, Empress.
Cumberland, Duke of, 405
_Daily News_, 216, 228
De Quincey, Thomas, _quoted_ 342
Derby, Lord, 14th Earl, 52, 54-5, 114, 127, 234
----, Lord, 15th Earl, 365
Dicey, Sir Edward, 18
Dickens, Charles, 317
Dilke, Sir Charles, 162, 158, 169, 189, 250
Disraeli, Benjamin, Lord Beaconsfield, _quoted_ 3, 45, 55-6,
85, 106 _et seq._,
115, 118-19, 125, 127, 129, 134, 160, 188
_et seq._, 214 _et seq._, 227, 233 _et seq._, 239-40,
241-3, 246
_et seq._, 250, 277, 312, 315
Dixie, Lady Florence, 284
Drummond, Hon. Adelaide, 422
Dudley, Lord, 94
Duff, Right Hon. Sir E. M. Grant, _quoted_ 109, 134, 145
Dufferin, Lord, 262-3
Dunckley H., 245
Edinburgh, Alfred, Duke of, 11, 26, 44, 48, 90, 117, 118,
147, 193, 197, 403
----, Marie, Duchess of, 197 _et seq._, 219, 305
Edward VII, 11, 14, 15 _et seq._, 28 _et seq._, 51, 53, 64, 67,
70, 72, 74, 87,
102, 117, 123, 131, 147 _et seq._,
163 _et seq._, 177, 178, 189, 194, 199, 200, 215,
229, 337, 344, 346, 349, 370, 377-8, 391-2, 396, 410,
421, 422, 440-1
Edward of Saxe-Weimar, Prince, 304
Edwards, Sir Fleetwood, 85
Ely, Marchioness of, 13, 175, 178, 279, 285
Ernest II, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, 10, 27-8, 47, 51, 56, 142, 403, 420
Esher, Viscount, 241, 255
Eugénie, Empress, 145
Eulenburg, Count Philip, 44
Faucit, Helena. _See_ Martin, Lady.
Faviani, General, 383
Fawcett, Prof., 156-7, 169
Feodore, Princess, Duchess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, 61, 223, 299
Fife, Duke of, 389
Fitzclarence, Lord Adolphus, 206
FitzGerald, Edward, _quoted_ 424
Fitzroy, Lord Charles, 167
Foley, J. H., 76
Foulon, Marquis de, 322, 334
Francis Joseph, Emperor of Austria, 48, 54
Franco-Prussian War, 132 _et seq._
Frankfort Conference, 46 _et seq._
Frederica of Hanover, Princess, 262, 296-8, 304
Frederick Charles, of Prussia, Prince, 240
Frederick, Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg, 50-1, 61
----, Emperor, 41, 51, 141, 361, 364, 367, 369 _et seq._,
371 _et seq._, 374-5, 381
----, Empress, 31, 41, 44, 46, 51,
_quoted_ 60, 65, 141-3, 154, 318, 347, 375 _et seq._, 381-3, 397, 412, 423
Frederick Leopold, Princess, 403-4
----, William IV, King of Prussia, 41
French, Sir John, 137
Frere, Sir Bartle, 238, 254
Frogmore, mausoleum at, 72
Fullerton, Commander, 206
Furniss, Harry, 322, 402
Geffcken, Dr., 376
George III, 136
---- V, 65, 311, 419, 422
----, King of Greece, 28
----, King of Hanover, 59, 297
Gibbs, Frederick, 18
Gladstone, Right Hon. W. E., _quoted_ 3, 12, 57, 75, 85,
95, 106 _et seq._,
114, 115, 119, 126, 128, 133-7, 155, 157, 160, 197,
222, 229-30,
234, 238-9, 246-51, 256 _et seq._, 262,
267, 269, 271, 275-7, 294, 307, 315-16, 324, 326-7,
329 _et seq._,
338 _et seq._, 348-9, 408 _et seq._, 420-2
----, Mrs., 235, 240, 421-2
Glassalt Shiel, 125
Gleichen, Count, 304, 308
Gloucester, Duchess of, _quoted_ 147
Glyn, George, 327
Gordon, General Charles G., _quoted_ 246, 264-72
----, Sir Henry, 270
----, Miss, 269-70
Gower, Lord Ronald Sutherland-Leveson, 38, 167, _quoted_ 187, 227,
242, 426, 429
Grant, royal servant, 178
Granville, Lord, 50, 54, 140 _note_, 155, 188, 249, 257
Green, J. R., _quoted_ 165
Greenwood, Frederick, 217
Greville, Charles, 320
----, Henry, 34
Grey, Hon. Charles, General, 18, 84, 86, 181
Grote, George, 317
Halifax, Lord, 137
Hallé, Sir Charles, 77
Hamilton, George, 241
Harcourt, Sir William, 343
Harding, General, 166
Hartington, Lord, 249, 255-6, 269, 330, 333
Helena, Princess. _See_ Christian, Princess.
Helene of Waldeck-Pyrmont, 247
Helps, Miss Alice, 83
Helps, Sir Arthur, 84, 86, 87, 178, 312, 321, 358
Herbert, Auberon, 157, 169
_Her Majesty’s Dolls_, 322
Herschell, Lord, 316
Heywood, E. S., 206, 210, 211, 212
Hicks Pasha, 263
Hinzpeter, Herr, 397
Hohenlohe, Prince, 27
Holland, Queen of, 93, 138
_Hornet, The_, 187, 198, 237
Humbert, King of Italy, 93, 428
Hunt, Ward, 126
Ingelow, Jean, 316
Inverness, Duchess of, 223
Jameson, Dr., 400
Jebb, Sir Joshua, 34
Jenner, Sir William, 285, 287
Jerrold, Douglas, _quoted_ 311
Jordan, Dorothy, 206
Kalomine, Countess, 303
Kent, Duke of, 369
----, Mrs., 369
Khedive of Egypt, 93, 130, 217
Kitchener, Lord, 436
Kruger, Paul, 398 _et seq._
Labouchere, Henry, M.P., 248, 390
Lavradio, Count, 39
Lawson, Sir Wilfred, 87
Lear, Edward, _quoted_ 424-5
Le Breton, Madam, 145
Lee, Sir Sidney, _quoted_ 287, 329
Leiningen, Prince, 27, 206, 211, 304
Leopold, King of Belgium, 8, 14, 27-8, 31, 49, 66, 68, 105, 142, 221
----, Prince, Duke of Albany, 11, 38, 48, 60, 123, 147, 193, 247, 294,
405, 423
Lincoln, President, 69
Lind, Jenny, 38
Lindsay, Patricia, 370
Löhlein, valet to Prince Consort, 217, 282
Lorne, Marquis of, 153, 158, 200
Losinger, Mlle., 383
Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, 25, 51, 63, 95, 141, 303, 361
Louise, Princess, Duchess of Fife, 350, 389-90
----, Princess, Marchioness of Lorne, 65, 147, 153, 154, 156, 163,
177-8, 201, 262
Lowe, Robert, 221
Lucy, Sir H. W., _quoted_ 225, _quoted_ 393-4
Lyell, Sir Charles, 317
Lytton, Lord, 222, 238
MacCarthy, Justin, 222
Macdonald, General, 252
MacDowell, Patrick, 99
Mackenzie, Sir Morell, 374, 376, 381
Maclean, Robert, 274
Macleod, Dr. Norman, 111, 139, 223
Mahdi, The, 263 _et seq._
Malmesbury, Lord, 13, 35, 52, 127
_Manchester Guardian_, 232
Marlborough House, 30
Martin, Lady, 82, 388
----, Sir Theodore, 82, 86, 96, 232, 312, 388
Mary, Queen, 419
Maude, Princess, Queen of Norway, 431
Maximilian, Emperor of Mexico, 69
Maye, Sergeant William, 279
Melbourne, Lord, 4, 5, 292
Methuen, Lord, 285
Metternich, Prince, 17
Montgomery, Alfred, 281
Mordaunt, Lady, 157
----, Sir Charles, 150
Morgan, Matt, 105
Morley, John, 325, 390-1
Napoleon III, 68, 93, 124, 137 _et seq._, 146
Neele, G. P., 102, 168, 174, 358
Neild, John Camden, 392
Nicholas II, 420
Noer, Count de. _See_ Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein.
O’Connor, Fenian, 166
O’Donoghue, The, M.P., 176
O’Farrell, a Fenian, 117
Oranmore, Lord, 157
O’Sullivan, Mayor of Cork, 118
Ott, Monsieur, _chef_ to Queen Victoria, 44
Otto, King of Greece, 27
Pakington, Sir John, 134
_Pall Mall Gazette_, 156
Palmerston, Lady, 39
----, Lord, 13, 27, 37, 50, 52, 55, 58, 66, 93, 127, 133, 144
Parnell, Charles S., 248, 275, 326, 333
Paton, Sir Noel, 72
Peel, Misses, 206
----, Sir Robert, 157
Phipps, Sir Charles, 13, 84
Playfair, Sir Lyon, 18, 309, _quoted_ 364
Pollock, Justice Baron, 33
Ponsonby, General Sir Henry, 85, 212, 256, 277, 279, 285, 290,
316, 321, 324, 331, 335, 411
----, Lady, 84
Prince Imperial, The, 224, 238, 261
_Punch_, quoted 15, 34, 54, 62, 80, 100, 118, 180, 212, 311, 323
_Quarterly Review, The_, 42, 84
Rammingen, Baron Pawell von, 296-8
Rawlinson, Sir Henry, 193
Rayleigh, Lord, 309
Reardon, M.P., 124
Reeve, Henry, 320-1
Reid, Dr., 285
_Reynolds’s Newspaper_, 23
Rhodes, Cecil, 400, 402
Richmond, Duke of, 121
Roberts, Lord, 255, 444
Robins, Rev. Arthur, 355
Rose, A. McGregor, _quoted_ 384
Rosebery, Lord, 413, 415, 432
Rossa, O’Donovan, 76
Roxburgh, Duchess of, 298
Royal Horticultural Gardens, 72
Royal Red Cross, order of, instituted, 262
Russell, Sir Edward, _quoted_ 183
----, Hon. G. W. E., 241, 245
Russell, Lord John, 50, 52, 65, 112-13, 127, 224
----, Lord Odo, 144, 236
Salisbury, Marquis of, 93, 235, 237, 242, 323-5, 327, 329 _et seq._,
384, 406, 415
Sandringham House, 30
Saxony, King of, 46
Schleswig-Holstein, 50
Schouvaloff, Count, 197
Scott, Sir Francis, 417
Seton, Mr., a bootmaker, 67
Shaftesbury, Lord, 220
Shah of Persia, 192 _et seq._
Smith, Sydney, 119, _quoted_ 407
Spencer, Lord, 425
_Standard, The_, 141
Stanley, Dean, 128, 278
----, Lady Augusta, 175, 223, 317-18
Stewart, General, 325
Stockmar, Baron, 5, 16, 42, 66, 84, 232, 312
Stop-Gap Government, the, 331
Sullivan, A. M., 75
_Sunday Times, The_, 103
Sussex, Duke of, 223
Tait, Archbishop, 127, 278
Taylor, Peter, M.P., 157, 197
Teck, Duke of, 63, 260, 423
----, Mary, Princess, Duchess of, 38, 63, 66, 146, 216, 223, 422
Tennyson, Lord, 290, 311, 314, 316-17, 348
_Times, The_, 21, 39, 169
_Tomahawk, The_, 103, 105, 122
Tuckerman, C. K., _quoted_ 194
Vasili, Count Paul, _quoted_ 368
Victoria of Hesse, Princess, 301
Victoria, Queen:
retrospective, 1 _et seq._;
and Ernst of Saxe-Coburg, 10;
new rule of life, 8;
and Palmerston, 13;
and Prince of Wales, 15;
and marriage of Princess Alice, 26;
and the Grecian crown, 26;
and marriage of Prince of Wales, 28;
and Princess Alexandra, 30;
drawing-rooms, 31;
at wedding of Prince of Wales, 38;
affection for Prussia, 41 _et seq._, _47 et seq._;
and Bismarck, 43;
Denmark, 51;
her Cabinet, 52;
constitutional sovereign, 57;
and Prince Christian, 60;
Albert memorials, 70;
seclusion, 70;
sentimental nature, 71;
mausoleum, 72;
Craig Lowrigan cairn, 73;
attacked by Dr. Candlish, 73;
at Aberdeen, 75;
anger against Dublin, 76;
struggle with grandson, 77;
state of mind, 77;
rouses public resentment, 78;
reception to diplomatists, 80;
protest against public demands, 81;
her work, 82;
mistaken ideal, 83;
secret staff, 84;
literary work, 86;
_Life of Prince Consort_, 86;
_Leaves_ from her _Journal_, 86;
yearly routine, 86;
opens Parliament, 90;
refusal to invite royal visitors, 93;
bestows Garter upon Sultan, 95;
foundation stone of Albert Hall, 96;
love of Scotland, 96;
unpopularity, 97;
official explanation of seclusion, 98;
visits Buckingham Palace, holds drawing-room, gives garden party, 98.
John Brown, 100-4;
friendship for Disraeli, 110;
dislike for Gladstone, 110;
eulogism of Dr. Macleod, 111;
absorbed in Austro-Prussian war, 112;
goes to Balmoral during political crisis, 113;
anger at resignation of Cabinet, 113;
laughs at Fenian threats, 116;
distress at attempted assassination of son, 117;
Irish Church Bill, 119, 128;
Disraeli throws responsibility upon, 120;
flight to Scotland, 121;
menacing criticism of, 122;
Regency Bill suggested, 123;
health, 124;
goes to Switzerland, 124;
receives John Bright, 126;
and A. C. Tait, 127;
refuses to open Parliament, 128-9;
fiftieth birthday, 129;
Khedive as guest, 130;
opens Blackfriars Bridge, 131;
head of the Army, 133;
signs warrant against purchase of commission, 136;
feeling against Napoleon III, 139;
hatred of Bismarck for, 142; unpopular in Germany, 144;
receives Empress Eugenie, 145;
and Napoleon III, 146;
her children, 147;
distress at scandals about Prince of Wales, 152;
Lorne marriage, 154;
opens Parliament, 154;
her use of public money discussed in Parliament, 155;
holds Court, 157;
wedding of Princess Louise, 158;
resentment against public criticism, 159;
also against Gladstone, 160;
neuralgia and rheumatic gout, 161;
attack by Sir Charles Dilke, 162;
goes to Sandringham, 163;
and the illness of Prince of Wales, 164;
threatened by O’Connor, 166;
decorates John Brown, 167;
her income, 170;
simplicity in Scotland, 172;
journeys to the north, 173;
nearly an accident, 176;
dances a reel, 179;
thrown out of carriage, 180;
and sightseers, 181;
her landed property, 183;
kindness to individuals, 185;
love of dogs, dislike for cats, 185;
and Prince of Wales’s debts, 189;
rebukes Gladstone, 190;
and Disraeli, 190;
meets the Shah, 195;
meets Grand Duchess Marie in London, 198.
Queen’s yacht runs down the _Mistletoe_, 206;
tries to protect Leiningen, 209;
desire for speed, 209;
letter to Royal Yacht Club, 211;
bitter criticism of it, 213;
intercedes against Prussia’s warlike plans, 215;
sends Prince of Wales to India, 217;
Empress of India, 218;
opens wing of London Hospital, 220;
creates Disraeli Lord Beaconsfield, 222;
goes more into public, 223;
and Russia, 226;
Prince Consort’s influence, 227;
and Bulgaria, 230;
and Gladstone, 230;
issues Crimean volume of _Life of Prince Consort_, 231;
disgust with Russian success, 233;
lunches at Hughenden, 233;
gives the Garter to Lord Beaconsfield, 238;
and Empress Eugenie, 239;
“Dictatress of Europe,” 240;
publicly slights the Gladstones, 240;
goes to Germany, 242;
tribute to Disraeli, 243;
visits his grave, 244;
letters from, _quoted_ 246;
influence upon, of Disraeli and Gladstone, 246-7;
Gladstone, 249-50, 258, 273, 276;
and the Army, 250 _et seq._, 413 _et seq._, 439;
at Edinburgh, 251;
and foreign policy, 254;
and withdrawal from Afghanistan, 256;
and Turkey, 257;
and nurses, 262;
and Egypt, 262-3, 267;
and General Gordon, 269;
attempt on, 274;
threatened, 276;
and Court mourning, 277;
loss of friends, 278, 294;
at funeral of Sergeant Maye, 279;
at funeral of John Brown, senior, 279;
and John Brown, 281 _et seq._;
precautions in travelling, 283;
accident to, 284;
and Lady Florence Dixie, 284;
and John Brown’s death, 285 _et seq._, 289 _et seq._;
rumours as to mental condition of, 289;
more _Leaves_, 291, _quoted_, 296;
as matchmaker, 296 _et seq._, 380;
and Frederica, Princess of Hanover, 296-8;
at Baden-Baden, 299;
sojourns abroad, 299 _et seq._
Snubs Gladstone, 307;
love of Stuarts, 308, 366;
her Germanic ideals, 312;
foreign policy, 313;
and Women’s Rights, 314;
and Mrs. Gladstone, 315;
and men of letters, 317-18;
and the position of women, 319;
and the arts, 321;
_Her Majesty’s Dolls_, 322;
and the People’s Palace, 254, 324;
offers Gladstone a peerage, 321;
neglect of London, 332;
over-carefulness with money, 333-4, 359, 393-4;
self-absorption, 336;
anti-Liberal sympathies, 338, 357;
and Ireland, 339;
and Jubilee, 342;
reappearances in public, 343;
opens Exhibition at South Kensington, 344;
at Liverpool, 345;
opens Royal Holloway College, 345;
at Edinburgh, 345;
and Prince and Princess of Wales, 346 _et seq._;
dislike of tobacco, 349;
and the Battenbergs, 350;
and theatrical performances, 351, 430-1;
at Birmingham, 352;
love of children, 352;
at Wild West Show, 353;
the Jubilee of, 354 _et seq._;
learns Hindustani, 356;
visits Lord Salisbury, 366;
and William II of Prussia, 377 _et seq._, 395;
and the Conservatives, 384;
the Imperial ideal, 385;
and the Irish, 386-7;
renewed activities, 387;
at Bristol, 387;
visit to Wales, 388;
and her grandchildren, 389-91;
her Civil List, 392;
her yachts, 394;
colonel of German dragoons, 395;
gives Germany Heligoland, 396;
and the Kaiser’s Kruger telegram, 401;
and Cecil Rhodes, 402;
her party politics, 406 _et seq._;
dismissal of Gladstone, 410-12;
family sorrows, 418-19;
journeys abroad, 424 et seq.;
travelling precautions, 428;
growing old, 430;
and the Diamond Jubilee, 433 _et seq._;
and the Irish, 440;
visit to Ireland, 441-2;
failing powers, death and funeral, 444.
Victoria of Prussia, Princess, 302, 351, 379 _et seq._
----, Princess of Wales, 65
Vitzthum, Count, 54
Von Angeli, 321-2
Von Reuss, Countess, 369
Waddington, Mme., 282
Wales, Prince of. _See_ Edward VII.
----, Princess of. _See_ Alexandra, Queen.
Warren, Colonel, Fenian, 117
Watts, G. F., 322
Weekes, Henry, 99
Wellesley, Dean, 241, 278
Wellington, 1st Duke of, 5, 133
----, Duke of, 33
Welsh, Captain, 206, 210, 211
West, Sir Algernon, _quoted_ 280, 406
----, Hon. M., 279
Westminster, Duchess of, 39, 243
Wilberforce, Bishop, 128, 129
William George of Denmark. _See_ George, King of Greece.
William I, King of Prussia, German Emperor, 28, 41-3, 46 _et seq._,
54, 140-3, 149, 303, 371, 374, 381
---- II, German Emperor, 38, 76, 259, 283, 300-2, 349, 367, 372
_et seq._, 374 _et seq._, 382-3, 395 _et seq._, 438-9, 445
William IV, 3, 90, 206
Winchester, Bishop of, 435
----, Marquis of, 155
Windsor Castle, 9
Winterhalter, 321
Wolseley, Lord, 258, 271, 415
Wood, Sir Evelyn, 263, 413
Wyattville, Sir Jeffrey, 10
Young, Albert, 276
PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY RICHARD CLAY & SONS, LIMITED,
BRUNSWICK ST., STAMFORD ST., S.E., AND BUNGAY, SUFFOLK.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] _Letters of Queen Victoria._
[2] _The Lancet_ and _Medical Times_ also said that one bulletin issued
on Dec. 11, saying that the fever was “unattended by any unfavourable
symptoms,” was not issued as written, but that the first word,
“hitherto,” had been struck out “by an illustrious person with her own
hand.”
[3] _Memoirs of Ernst, Second Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha._
[4] _King Edward VII: Biographical and Personal Sketches._ By Sir
Edward Dicey.
[5] _Notes from a Diary._ By Grant Duff.
[6] _Victoria as I Knew Her._ By Sir Theodore Martin.
[7] _Notes from a Diary._ By the Right Hon. Sir Mountstuart Grant Duff.
[8] _Life of Gladstone._ By John Morley.
[9] Memorandum by Sir Robert Phillimore.
[10] Queen’s Diary.
[11] It should never be forgotten by Englishmen that one of Germany’s
methods in making war is to secure the assistance of the Press in each
country. Thus, at this time many articles appeared in English papers
which were written by Busch, or some other tool of Bismarck. In July
1870 he caused to be inserted in “non-official German papers and in the
Belgian and English Press paragraphs about the way the English observed
neutrality.... They impartially permit both sides to purchase horses
and munitions of war in England. It is unfortunate, however, that
France alone can avail herself of this liberality, as will appear from
a glance at the geographical position of the two countries, and from
the superiority of the French at sea.”
This point was laboured for some time, Lord Granville being accused
of favouring France, and the result was a flutter in England among
politicians, a Bill being suggested to amend the laws regulating
neutrality. So easily did we fall into the German trap! However,
Bismarck came to the decision to let matters drop because, though
Granville was not what they desired, he was not prejudiced, and if he
were overthrown his successor might be worse. All this and much more of
the same kind can be read in the various books on Bismarck, written by
Busch, notably _Some Secret Pages of Bismarck’s History_. Any English
newspaper which plays into a German enemy’s hand is open to suspicion.
[12] _Letters of John Richard Green._ Edited by Leslie Stephen.
[13] _Old Diaries._ By Lord Ronald Sutherland Gower.
[14] _Notes of a Railway Superintendent._ By G. P. Neele.
[15] _Recollections of a Royal Parish._ By Patricia Lindsay.
[16] _Railway Reminiscences._ By Superintendent G. P. Neele.
[17] _The Princess Mary Adelaide, Duchess of Teck._ By Sir C.
Kinloch-Cooke.
[18] _The Life of Lord Shaftesbury._ By Edwin Hodder.
[19] Told by Lord Granville to Mr. Gladstone, “on the authority of a
high personage.”
[20] _Queen Victoria._ By Sir Sidney Lee.
[21] _La Reine Victoria._ By Abel Chevalley.
[22] _Events in the Life of Charles G. Gordon._ By H. W. Gordon.
[23] _My Life’s Pilgrimage._ By Thomas Catling.
[24] _William Allingham: a Diary._
[25] _More Leaves from the Journal._ By Queen Victoria.
[26] _Some Memories of Victorian London._ By L. B. Walford.
[27] Arthur W. à Beckett: _The à Becketts of ‘Punch.’_
[28] _The Coronation._ Article in _The Nineteenth Century and After_.
By Somers Clark.
[29] _Lyon Playfair, Memoirs and Correspondence._ By Wemyss Reid.
[30] _That Reminds Me._ By Sir Edward Russell.
[31] _The Hon. Adelaide Drummond: Retrospect and Memoir._ By Basil
Champneys.
[32] Lear was keenly annoyed at a new hotel built by Germans, which
overlooked and spoilt his garden.
[33] _Later Letters of Edward Lear._ Edited by Lady Strachey.
Typographical errors corrected by the etext transcriber:
Alexander of Würtemberg=> Alexander of Württemberg {pg 68}
of Wurtemburg=> of Württemberg {INDEX}
*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE WIDOWHOOD OF QUEEN VICTORIA ***
Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.
Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.
START: FULL LICENSE
THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.
Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg
electronic works
1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.
1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when
you share it without charge with others.
1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.
1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with this eBook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you
are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.
1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg.
1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg License.
1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg electronic works
provided that:
• You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
the use of Project Gutenberg works calculated using the method
you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
to the owner of the Project Gutenberg trademark, but he has
agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation.”
• You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
works.
• You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
receipt of the work.
• You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.
1.F.
1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.
1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.
1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.
1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.
1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.
Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg
Project Gutenberg is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.
Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.
Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.
The Foundation’s business office is located at 41 Watchung Plaza #516,
Montclair NJ 07042, USA, +1 (862) 621-9288. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation
Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.
The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.
While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.
International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.
Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg electronic works
Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.
Project Gutenberg eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.
Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.
This website includes information about Project Gutenberg,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
