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.”