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

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.