Queen Victoria

L >> Lytton Strachey >> Queen Victoria


The past--the past of only three years since--when she looked back upon
it, seemed a thing so remote and alien that she could explain it to
herself in no other way than as some kind of delusion--an unfortunate
mistake. Turning over an old volume of her diary, she came upon this
sentence--"As for 'the confidence of the Crown,' God knows! No MINISTER,
NO FRIEND, EVER possessed it so entirely as this truly excellent Lord
Melbourne possesses mine!" A pang shot through her--she seized a
pen, and wrote upon the margin--"Reading this again, I cannot forbear
remarking what an artificial sort of happiness MINE was THEN, and what
a blessing it is I have now in my beloved Husband REAL and solid
happiness, which no Politics, no worldly reverses CAN change; it could
not have lasted long as it was then, for after all, kind and excellent
as Lord M. is, and kind as he was to me, it was but in Society that I
had amusement, and I was only living on that superficial resource, which
I THEN FANCIED was happiness! Thank God! for ME and others, this is
changed, and I KNOW WHAT REAL HAPPINESS IS--V. R." How did she know?
What is the distinction between happiness that is real and happiness
that is felt? So a philosopher--Lord M. himself perhaps--might have
inquired. But she was no philosopher, and Lord M. was a phantom, and
Albert was beside her, and that was enough.

Happy, certainly, she was; and she wanted everyone to know it. Her
letters to King Leopold are sprinkled thick with raptures. "Oh! my
dearest uncle, I am sure if you knew HOW happy, how blessed I feel, and
how PROUD I feel in possessing SUCH a perfect being as my husband..."
such ecstasies seemed to gush from her pen unceasingly and almost
of their own accord. When, one day, without thinking, Lady Lyttelton
described someone to her as being "as happy as a queen," and then grew
a little confused, "Don't correct yourself, Lady Lyttelton," said Her
Majesty. "A queen IS a very happy woman."

But this new happiness was no lotus dream. On the contrary, it was
bracing, rather than relaxing. Never before had she felt so acutely the
necessity for doing her duty. She worked more methodically than ever
at the business of State; she watched over her children with untiring
vigilance. She carried on a large correspondence; she was occupied with
her farm--her dairy--a whole multitude of household avocations--from
morning till night. Her active, eager little body hurrying with quick
steps after the long strides of Albert down the corridors and avenues
of Windsor, seemed the very expression of her spirit. Amid all the
softness, the deliciousness of unmixed joy, all the liquescence, the
overflowings of inexhaustible sentiment, her native rigidity remained.
"A vein of iron," said Lady Lyttelton, who, as royal governess, had good
means of observation, "runs through her most extraordinary character."
Sometimes the delightful routine of domestic existence had to be
interrupted. It was necessary to exchange Windsor for Buckingham
Palace, to open Parliament, or to interview official personages, or,
occasionally, to entertain foreign visitors at the Castle. Then the
quiet Court put on a sudden magnificence, and sovereigns from over
the seas--Louis Philippe, or the King of Prussia, or the King of
Saxony--found at Windsor an entertainment that was indeed a royal one.
Few spectacles in Europe, it was agreed, produced an effect so imposing
as the great Waterloo banqueting hall, crowded with guests in sparkling
diamonds and blazing uniforms, the long walls hung with the stately
portraits of heroes, and the tables loaded with the gorgeous gold plate
of the kings of England. But, in that wealth of splendour, the most
imposing spectacle of all was the Queen. The little hausfrau, who had
spent the day before walking out with her children, inspecting her
livestock, practicing shakes at the piano, and filling up her journal
with adoring descriptions of her husband, suddenly shone forth, without
art, without effort, by a spontaneous and natural transition, the very
culmination of Majesty. The Tsar of Russia himself was deeply impressed.
Victoria on her side viewed with secret awe the tremendous Nicholas. "A
great event and a great compliment HIS visit certainly is," she told
her uncle, "and the people HERE are extremely flattered at it. He is
certainly a VERY STRIKING man; still very handsome. His profile is
BEAUTIFUL and his manners MOST dignified and graceful; extremely
civil--quite alarmingly so, as he is so full of attentions and
POLITENESS. But the expression of the EYES is FORMIDABLE and unlike
anything I ever saw before." She and Albert and "the good King of
Saxony," who happened to be there at the same time, and whom, she said,
"we like much--he is so unassuming-" drew together like tame villatic
fowl in the presence of that awful eagle. When he was gone, they
compared notes about his face, his unhappiness, and his despotic power
over millions. Well! She for her part could not help pitying him, and
she thanked God she was Queen of England.

When the time came for returning some of these visits, the royal pair
set forth in their yacht, much to Victoria's satisfaction. "I do love a
ship!" she exclaimed, ran up and down ladders with the greatest agility,
and cracked jokes with the sailors. The Prince was more aloof. They
visited Louis Philippe at the Chateau d'Eu; they visited King Leopold in
Brussels. It happened that a still more remarkable Englishwoman was in
the Belgian capital, but she was not remarked; and Queen Victoria passed
unknowing before the steady gaze of one of the mistresses in M. Heger's
pensionnat. "A little stout, vivacious lady, very plainly dressed--not
much dignity or pretension about her," was Charlotte Bronte's comment
as the royal carriage and six flashed by her, making her wait on the
pavement for a moment, and interrupting the train of her reflections.
Victoria was in high spirits, and even succeeded in instilling a little
cheerfulness into her uncle's sombre Court. King Leopold, indeed, was
perfectly contented. His dearest hopes had been fulfilled; all his
ambitions were satisfied; and for the rest of his life he had only to
enjoy, in undisturbed decorum, his throne, his respectability, the table
of precedence, and the punctual discharge of his irksome duties.
But unfortunately the felicity of those who surrounded him was less
complete. His Court, it was murmured, was as gloomy as a conventicle,
and the most dismal of all the sufferers was his wife. "Pas de
plaisanteries, madame!" he had exclaimed to the unfortunate successor of
the Princess Charlotte, when, in the early days of their marriage, she
had attempted a feeble joke. Did she not understand that the consort
of a constitutional sovereign must not be frivolous? She understood, at
last, only too well; and when the startled walls of the state apartments
re-echoed to the chattering and the laughter of Victoria, the poor lady
found that she had almost forgotten how to smile.

Another year, Germany was visited, and Albert displayed the beauties of
his home. When Victoria crossed the frontier, she was much excited--and
she was astonished as well. "To hear the people speak German," she noted
in her diary, "and to see the German soldiers, etc., seemed to me
so singular." Having recovered from this slight shock, she found the
country charming. She was feted everywhere, crowds of the surrounding
royalties swooped down to welcome her, and the prettiest groups of
peasant children, dressed in their best clothes, presented her with
bunches of flowers. The principality of Coburg, with its romantic
scenery and its well-behaved inhabitants, particularly delighted her;
and when she woke up one morning to find herself in "dear Rosenau, my
Albert's birthplace," it was "like a beautiful dream." On her return
home, she expatiated, in a letter to King Leopold, upon the pleasures
of the trip, dwelling especially upon the intensity of her affection for
Albert's native land. "I have a feeling," she said, "for our dear little
Germany, which I cannot describe. I felt it at Rosenau so much. It is
a something which touches me, and which goes to my heart, and makes me
inclined to cry. I never felt at any other place that sort of pensive
pleasure and peace which I felt there. I fear I almost like it too
much."

V

The husband was not so happy as the wife. In spite of the great
improvement in his situation, in spite of a growing family and the
adoration of Victoria, Albert was still a stranger in a strange land,
and the serenity of spiritual satisfaction was denied him. It was
something, no doubt, to have dominated his immediate environment; but it
was not enough; and, besides, in the very completeness of his success,
there was a bitterness. Victoria idolised him; but it was understanding
that he craved for, not idolatry; and how much did Victoria, filled
to the brim though she was with him, understand him? How much does the
bucket understand the well? He was lonely. He went to his organ and
improvised with learned modulations until the sounds, swelling and
subsiding through elaborate cadences, brought some solace to his heart.
Then, with the elasticity of youth, he hurried off to play with the
babies, or to design a new pigsty, or to read aloud the "Church History
of Scotland" to Victoria, or to pirouette before her on one toe, like a
ballet-dancer, with a fixed smile, to show her how she ought to behave
when she appeared in public places. Thus did he amuse himself; but there
was one distraction in which he did not indulge. He never flirted--no,
not with the prettiest ladies of the Court. When, during their
engagement, the Queen had remarked with pride to Lord Melbourne that
the Prince paid no attention to any other woman, the cynic had answered,
"No, that sort of thing is apt to come later;" upon which she had
scolded him severely, and then hurried off to Stockmar to repeat what
Lord M. had said. But the Baron had reassured her; though in other
cases, he had replied, that might happen, he did not think it would
in Albert's. And the Baron was right. Throughout their married life no
rival female charms ever had cause to give Victoria one moment's pang of
jealousy.

What more and more absorbed him--bringing with it a curious comfort of
its own--was his work. With the advent of Peel, he began to intervene
actively in the affairs of the State. In more ways than one--in the cast
of their intelligence, in their moral earnestness, even in the uneasy
formalism of their manners--the two men resembled each other; there was
a sympathy between them; and thus Peel was ready enough to listen to the
advice of Stockmar, and to urge the Prince forward into public life.
A royal commission was about to be formed to enquire whether advantage
might not be taken of the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament to
encourage the Fine Arts in the United Kingdom; and Peel, with great
perspicacity, asked the Prince to preside over it. The work was of a
kind which precisely suited Albert: his love of art, his love of method,
his love of coming into contact--close yet dignified--with distinguished
men--it satisfied them all; and he threw himself into it con amore.
Some of the members of the commission were somewhat alarmed when, in his
opening speech, he pointed out the necessity of dividing the subjects
to be considered into "categories-" the word, they thought, smacked
dangerously of German metaphysics; but their confidence returned when
they observed His Royal Highness's extraordinary technical acquaintance
with the processes of fresco painting. When the question arose as to
whether the decorations upon the walls of the new buildings should,
or should not, have a moral purpose, the Prince spoke strongly for the
affirmative. Although many, he observed, would give but a passing glance
to the works, the painter was not therefore to forget that others
might view them with more thoughtful eyes. This argument convinced the
commission, and it was decided that the subjects to be depicted should
be of an improving nature. The frescoes were carried out in accordance
with the commission's instructions, but unfortunately before very long
they had become, even to the most thoughtful eyes, totally invisible.
It seems that His Royal Highness's technical acquaintance with the
processes of fresco painting was incomplete!

The next task upon which the Prince embarked was a more arduous one:
he determined to reform the organisation of the royal household. This
reform had been long overdue. For years past the confusion, discomfort,
and extravagance in the royal residences, and in Buckingham Palace
particularly, had been scandalous; no reform had been practicable under
the rule of the Baroness; but her functions had now devolved upon
the Prince, and in 1844, he boldly attacked the problem. Three years
earlier, Stockmar, after careful enquiry, had revealed in an elaborate
memorandum an extraordinary state of affairs. The control of the
household, it appeared, was divided in the strangest manner between a
number of authorities, each independent of the other, each possessed
of vague and fluctuating powers, without responsibility, and without
co-ordination. Of these authorities, the most prominent were the Lord
Steward and the Lord Chamberlain--noblemen of high rank and political
importance, who changed office with every administration, who did not
reside with the Court, and had no effective representatives attached
to it. The distribution of their respective functions was uncertain
and peculiar. In Buckingham Palace, it was believed that the Lord
Chamberlain had charge of the whole of the rooms, with the exception of
the kitchen, sculleries, and pantries, which were claimed by the Lord
Steward. At the same time, the outside of the Palace was under the
control of neither of these functionaries--but of the Office of Woods
and Forests; and thus, while the insides of the windows were cleaned by
the Department of the Lord Chamberlain--or possibly, in certain cases,
of the Lord Steward--the Office of Woods and Forests cleaned their
outsides. Of the servants, the housekeepers, the pages, and the
housemaids were under the authority of the Lord Chamberlain; the clerk
of the kitchen, the cooks, and the porters were under that of the Lord
Steward; but the footmen, the livery-porters, and the under-butlers
took their orders from yet another official--the Master of the Horse.
Naturally, in these circumstances the service was extremely defective
and the lack of discipline among the servants disgraceful. They absented
themselves for as long as they pleased and whenever the fancy took
them; "and if," as the Baron put it, "smoking, drinking, and other
irregularities occur in the dormitories, where footmen, etc., sleep
ten and twelve in each room, no one can help it." As for Her Majesty's
guests, there was nobody to show them to their rooms, and they were
often left, having utterly lost their way in the complicated passages,
to wander helpless by the hour. The strange divisions of authority
extended not only to persons but to things. The Queen observed that
there was never a fire in the dining-room. She enquired why. The answer
was "the Lord Steward lays the fire, and the Lord Chamberlain lights
it;" the underlings of those two great noblemen having failed to come
to an accommodation, there was no help for it--the Queen must eat in the
cold.

A surprising incident opened everyone's eyes to the confusion and
negligence that reigned in the Palace. A fortnight after the birth of
the Princess Royal the nurse heard a suspicious noise in the room next
to the Queen's bedroom. She called to one of the pages, who, looking
under a large sofa, perceived there a crouching figure "with a most
repulsive appearance." It was "the boy Jones." This enigmatical
personage, whose escapades dominated the newspapers for several ensuing
months, and whose motives and character remained to the end ambiguous,
was an undersized lad of 17, the son of a tailor, who had apparently
gained admittance to the Palace by climbing over the garden wall and
walking in through an open window. Two years before he had paid a
similar visit in the guise of a chimney-sweep. He now declared that he
had spent three days in the Palace, hiding under various beds, that he
had "helped himself to soup and other eatables," and that he had "sat
upon the throne, seen the Queen, and heard the Princess Royal squall."
Every detail of the strange affair was eagerly canvassed. The Times
reported that the boy Jones had "from his infancy been fond of reading,"
but that "his countenance is exceedingly sullen." It added: "The sofa
under which the boy Jones was discovered, we understand, is one of
the most costly and magnificent material and workmanship, and ordered
expressly for the accommodation of the royal and illustrious visitors
who call to pay their respects to Her Majesty." The culprit was sent
for three months to the "House of Correction." When he emerged, he
immediately returned to Buckingham Palace. He was discovered, and sent
back to the "House of Correction" for another three months, after which
he was offered L4 a week by a music hall to appear upon the stage.
He refused this offer, and shortly afterwards was found by the police
loitering round Buckingham Palace. The authorities acted vigorously,
and, without any trial or process of law, shipped the boy Jones off to
sea. A year later his ship put into Portsmouth to refit, and he at once
disembarked and walked to London. He was re-arrested before he reached
the Palace, and sent back to his ship, the Warspite. On this occasion it
was noticed that he had "much improved in personal appearance and grown
quite corpulent;" and so the boy Jones passed out of history, though
we catch one last glimpse of him in 1844 falling overboard in the
night between Tunis and Algiers. He was fished up again; but it was
conjectured--as one of the Warspite's officers explained in a letter
to The Times--that his fall had not been accidental, but that he
had deliberately jumped into the Mediterranean in order to "see the
life-buoy light burning." Of a boy with such a record, what else could
be supposed?

But discomfort and alarm were not the only results of the mismanagement
of the household; the waste, extravagance, and peculation that also
flowed from it were immeasurable. There were preposterous perquisites
and malpractices of every kind. It was, for instance, an ancient and
immutable rule that a candle that had once been lighted should never be
lighted again; what happened to the old candles, nobody knew. Again, the
Prince, examining the accounts, was puzzled by a weekly expenditure of
thirty-five shillings on "Red Room Wine." He enquired into the matter,
and after great difficulty discovered that in the time of George III
a room in Windsor Castle with red hangings had once been used as a
guard-room, and that five shillings a day had been allowed to provide
wine for the officers. The guard had long since been moved elsewhere,
but the payment for wine in the Red Room continued, the money being
received by a half-pay officer who held the sinecure position of
under-butler.

After much laborious investigation, and a stiff struggle with the
multitude of vested interests which had been brought into being by long
years of neglect, the Prince succeeded in effecting a complete reform.
The various conflicting authorities were induced to resign their powers
into the hands of a single official, the Master of the Household, who
became responsible for the entire management of the royal palaces. Great
economies were made, and the whole crowd of venerable abuses was swept
away. Among others, the unlucky half-pay officer of the Red Room was,
much to his surprise, given the choice of relinquishing his weekly
emolument or of performing the duties of an under-butler. Even the
irregularities among the footmen, etc., were greatly diminished. There
were outcries and complaints; the Prince was accused of meddling, of
injustice, and of saving candle-ends; but he held on his course, and
before long the admirable administration of the royal household was
recognised as a convincing proof of his perseverance and capacity.

At the same time his activity was increasing enormously in a more
important sphere. He had become the Queen's Private Secretary, her
confidential adviser, her second self. He was now always present at her
interviews with Ministers. He took, like the Queen, a special interest
in foreign policy; but there was no public question in which his
influence was not felt. A double process was at work; while Victoria
fell more and more absolutely under his intellectual predominance, he,
simultaneously, grew more and more completely absorbed by the machinery
of high politics--the incessant and multifarious business of a great
State. Nobody any more could call him a dilettante; he was a worker,
a public personage, a man of affairs. Stockmar noted the change with
exultation. "The Prince," he wrote, "has improved very much lately.
He has evidently a head for politics. He has become, too, far more
independent. His mental activity is constantly on the increase, and he
gives the greater part of his time to business, without complaining."

"The relations between husband and wife," added the Baron, "are all one
could desire."

Long before Peel's ministry came to an end, there had been a complete
change in Victoria's attitude towards him. His appreciation of the
Prince had softened her heart; the sincerity and warmth of his nature,
which, in private intercourse with those whom he wished to please, had
the power of gradually dissipating the awkwardness of his manners,
did the rest. She came in time to regard him with intense feelings of
respect and attachment. She spoke of "our worthy Peel," for whom, she
said, she had "an EXTREME admiration" and who had shown himself "a man
of unbounded LOYALTY, COURAGE patriotism, and HIGH-MINDEDNESS, and his
conduct towards me has been CHIVALROUS almost, I might say." She dreaded
his removal from office almost as frantically as she had once dreaded
that of Lord M. It would be, she declared, a GREAT CALAMITY. Six years
before, what would she have said, if a prophet had told her that the day
would come when she would be horrified by the triumph of the Whigs? Yet
there was no escaping it; she had to face the return of her old
friends. In the ministerial crises of 1845 and 1846, the Prince played a
dominating part. Everybody recognised that he was the real centre of the
negotiations--the actual controller of the forces and the functions
of the Crown. The process by which this result was reached had been so
gradual as to be almost imperceptible; but it may be said with certainty
that, by the close of Peel's administration, Albert had become, in
effect, the King of England.



VI

With the final emergence of the Prince came the final extinction of Lord
Melbourne. A year after his loss of office, he had been struck down by
a paralytic seizure; he had apparently recovered, but his old elasticity
had gone for ever. Moody, restless, and unhappy, he wandered like a
ghost about the town, bursting into soliloquies in public places, or
asking odd questions, suddenly, a propos de bottes. "I'll be hanged if
I do it for you, my Lord," he was heard to say in the hall at Brooks's,
standing by himself, and addressing the air after much thought. "Don't
you consider," he abruptly asked a fellow-guest at Lady Holland's,
leaning across the dinner-table in a pause of the conversation, "that
it was a most damnable act of Henri Quatre to change his religion with
a view to securing the Crown?" He sat at home, brooding for hours in
miserable solitude. He turned over his books--his classics and his
Testaments--but they brought him no comfort at all. He longed for the
return of the past, for the impossible, for he knew not what, for the
devilries of Caro, for the happy platitudes of Windsor. His friends had
left him, and no wonder, he said in bitterness--the fire was out. He
secretly hoped for a return to power, scanning the newspapers with
solicitude, and occasionally making a speech in the House of Lords. His
correspondence with the Queen continued, and he appeared from time to
time at Court; but he was a mere simulacrum of his former self; "the
dream," wrote Victoria, "is past." As for his political views, they
could no longer be tolerated. The Prince was an ardent Free Trader, and
so, of course, was the Queen; and when, dining at Windsor at the time of
the repeal of the Corn Laws, Lord Melbourne suddenly exclaimed, "Ma'am,
it's a damned dishonest act!" everyone was extremely embarrassed. Her
Majesty laughed and tried to change the conversation, but without avail;
Lord Melbourne returned to the charge again and again with--"I say,
Ma'am, it's damned dishonest!"--until the Queen said "Lord Melbourne, I
must beg you not to say anything more on this subject now;" and then
he held his tongue. She was kind to him, writing him long letters, and
always remembering his birthday; but it was kindness at a distance, and
he knew it. He had become "poor Lord Melbourne." A profound disquietude
devoured him. He tried to fix his mind on the condition of Agriculture
and the Oxford Movement. He wrote long memoranda in utterly
undecipherable handwriting. He was convinced that he had lost all his
money, and could not possibly afford to be a Knight of the Garter. He
had run through everything, and yet--if Peel went out, he might be sent
for--why not? He was never sent for. The Whigs ignored him in their
consultations, and the leadership of the party passed to Lord
John Russell. When Lord John became Prime Minister, there was much
politeness, but Lord Melbourne was not asked to join the Cabinet. He
bore the blow with perfect amenity; but he understood, at last, that
that was the end.