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.