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[Contents.]
[List of Illustrations] (In certain versions of this etext [in certain browsers] clicking on the image will bring up a larger version.) (etext transcriber's note) |
HER MAJESTY THE QUEEN.
From a Photograph by Mr. Walery, London
THE
LIFE AND TIMES
OF
QUEEN VICTORIA.
BY
ROBERT WILSON.
——
Illustrated.
——
VOL. I.
The first Eleven Chapters of this Work are from the pen of the late Mr. Edmund Ollier, to whom the Publishers originally entrusted the commission to write it—a commission which he was compelled to resign by the illness which terminated in his lamented death.
CONTENTS.
| [CHAPTER I] EARLY YEARS OF THE PRINCESS VICTORIA. | |
|---|---|
| PAGE | |
| A Remarkable Visit to Kensington Palace—Death of King William IV.—Details of his Last Days—ParliamentaryEulogies on his Character—Progress in the Last Half-Century—Ancestry of Queen Victoria—HerDescent Traced to Odoacer, King of Italy—Saxon Ancestors of her Majesty—Liberal Views of theDuke of Kent, Father of the Queen—State of the Succession after the Death of the Princess Charlotte—Marriageof the Duke of Kent, and Birth of the Princess Victoria—Christening at Kensington Palace—TheName “Victoria,” and its Associations—Death of the Duke of Kent—Kensington Palace in theSeventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries—Early Training of Victoria by her Mother—Child-Life of thePrincess—False Rumours of Ill-Health—Anecdotes of Juvenile Years—The Princess and George IV.—Accessionof William IV.—The Regency Bill—Prince Leopold and the Throne of Belgium—Studies ofthe Princess—Her Life of Retirement—Home Tours in Various Parts of England—Visit to the CottonMills of the Messrs. Strutt at Belper—Reception at Oxford and at Southampton—Benevolence to anActress—Her Royal Highness Declared of Age on the 24th of May, 1837 | [1] |
| [CHAPTER II] EARLY EVENTS OF THE NEW REIGN. | |
| First Council of the Queen—Her Address to the Assembled Dignitaries—Admirable Demeanour of theYoung Sovereign—Proclamation of Queen Victoria—Condition of the Empire at the Time of herAccession—Character of Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister—His Training of the Queen in ConstitutionalPrinciples—Question of the Royal Prerogative and the Choosing of the Ministry—Removal of theQueen to Buckingham Palace—First Levee—Her Majesty’s Speech on the Dissolution of Parliament—Ameliorationof the Criminal Laws—Results of the General Election—Meeting of the New Legislature—TheCivil List Fixed—Relations of the Queen towards the Duchess of Kent—Daily Life of her Majesty—RoyalVisit to the City—Insurrection in the Two Canadas—Measures of the Government, and Suppressionof the Revolt—The Melbourne Administration and Lord Durham—Reform of the CanadianConstitution | [19] |
| [CHAPTER III] THE DIFFICULTIES OF A YOUNG SOVEREIGN. | |
| Decline in the Popularity of the Queen—Its Causes—Her Majesty Accused of Encouraging the Papists—AllegedDesign to Assassinate the Monarch—Disloyal Toryism—Honourable Conduct of the Queen—FatalRiots at Canterbury, owing to the Pretensions of John Nicholls Thom—Preparations for theCoronation—The Ceremony at Westminster Abbey—Incidents of the Day—Mismanagement at Coronations—Developmentof Steam Navigation and the Railway System—Prorogation of Parliament inAugust, 1838—Difficult Position of the Government—Rise of Chartism—Appearance of Mr. Gladstoneand Mr. Disraeli in the Political Arena—Failure of Mr. Disraeli’s First Speech—“Conservatives” and“Liberals”—Capture of Aden, in Southern Arabia—Wars with China, owing to the Smuggling of Opiuminto that Country by the Anglo-Indians—Troubles in Jamaica—Bill for Suspending the Constitution—Defeatand Resignation of the Melbourne Government—Ineffectual Attempt of Sir Robert Peel toForm a Cabinet—The Question of the Bedchamber Women—Reinstatement of the Melbourne Administration | [35] |
| [CHAPTER IV] COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE. | |
| English Chartism in the Summer of 1839—Riots in Birmingham—Principal Leaders of the Chartist Party—Excessesof the Artisans in Various Parts of Great Britain and Ireland—Chartist Rising at Newport,Monmouthshire—Conviction of Frost, Williams, and Jones—The Queen and Prince Albert—EarlyLife of the Prince—His Engaging Qualities—Desire of King Leopold to Effect a Matrimonial Engagementbetween Prince Albert and the Princess Victoria—First Visit of the Former to England—HisStudies in Germany—Informal Understanding between Prince Albert and Queen Victoria—Difficultiesof the Case—The Prince’s View of the Matter in the Autumn of 1839—Second Visit to England, andFormal Betrothal—Letter of Baron Stockmar on the Subject—Announcement of the Royal Marriage tothe Privy Council and to Parliament—The Appointment of the Prince’s Household—Subjects of Difficultyand Dissension—Question of the Prince’s Religion—Reduction of his Annuity by a Vote of the Houseof Commons—Progress from Gotha to England, and Reception at Buckingham Palace—Marriage ofPrince Albert to the Queen at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s | [57] |
| [CHAPTER V] THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE. | |
| Difficulties of the Early Married Life of Prince Albert—His Unpopularity in Certain Quarters—Attemptto Suppress Duelling in the Army—Position of the Prince in the Royal Household—Want of Supervisionin the Management of the Palace—Introduction of Reforms, on the Initiative of Prince Albert—DutiesAssumed by the Prince—Domestic Life—Post Office Reform—Defective State of the Serviceprevious to 1840—Rowland Hill and the Penny Post—Opposition to the New Scheme—Introduction ofthe Lower Rate of Postage—General Features and Effects of the Change—Measure for the Protectionof Children Employed in Chimney-Sweeping—Attempt of Edward Oxford to Shoot the Queen—Appointmentof Prince Albert as Regent under certain Eventualities—Life and Studies at Windsor—Birthof the Princess Royal—Devotion of the Prince to her Majesty—Christmas at Windsor (1840)—Christeningof the Princess—Accident to Prince Albert—The Eastern Question: Turkey and Egypt—Removalof the Body of Napoleon I. from St. Helena to Paris—Rise and Development of the Agitationfor Free Trade | [71] |
| [CHAPTER VI] TROUBLES IN THE STATE, AND HAPPINESS AT HOME. PAGE | |
| Growing Unpopularity of the Melbourne Administration—The Stockdale Case—Approaching Fall of theGovernment—Financial Embarrassments—Lord John Russell’s Proposal with respect to the Corn Laws—Defeatof the Ministry—General Election, and Conservative Majority—Views of Prince Albert—Settlementof the “Bedchamber” Question—Wise Counsel of the Prince and Baron Stockmar—Visitsof the Queen to Places of Interest—Troublesome Loyalty—Launch of the Trafalgar—The MelbourneGovernment and Free Trade—Speech from the Throne on the Meeting of the New Parliament—Voteof Want of Confidence in the Government—Resignation of Ministers—Final Years of Lord Melbourne—Formationand Chief Objects of Sir Robert Peels Administration—The High Church Movement inEngland—Disruption of the Church of Scotland—Lord Melbourne’s Opinion of Prince Albert—Sir RobertPeel and the Prince—Public Appearances of the Latter in Connection with Social and Artistic Questions—Birthand Christening of the Prince of Wales—Meeting of Parliament for the Session of 1842—SplendidFestivities at Court—Attempts of Francis and Bean to Shoot her Majesty | [89] |
| [CHAPTER VII] CONVULSIONS IN THE EAST. | |
| Approaches to a Great Tragedy—State of Afghanistan—Position of Dost Mahomed in 1836—Mission ofCaptain Burnes to Cabul in 1837—Afghanistan, England, and Russia—Determination of the Governor-Generalof India to Restore Shah Soojah to the Afghan Throne—Garbling of Burnes’s Despatches—Actionof the Anglo-Indian Government against the Russians before Herat—British Invasion ofAfghanistan in 1839—Difficulties, Dangers, and Successes of the Campaign—Cold Reception of ShahSoojah at Cabul—Operations in the Khyber Pass—Outbreak of Insurrections against the RestoredPower—Actions with the British—Surrender of Dost Mahomed—Increased Turmoil among the Afghans—Massacreof November 2nd, 1841—Imbecility of General Elphinstone—Murder of Sir William Macnaghten—Agreementbetween the British Authorities and Akbar Khan—Retreat of the Army of Occupation—Horrorsof the March, and Complete Destruction of the Army—Defence of Jelalabad by SirRobert Sale—Operations of Generals Nott, Pollock, and Sale—Capture of Cabul—Release of the Prisoners,and Close of the War—Lord Ellenborough and the Gates of Somnauth—Murder of Stoddart and Conollyin Bokhara—Disturbed State of England in 1842—The Queen’s First Visit to Scotland—Receipt of GoodNews from the East—Position of Prince Albert towards the State—Discretion of his Private Life—Extentof his Labours—Colonisation in New Zealand and New South Wales | [111] |
| [CHAPTER VIII] THE ADMINISTRATION OF SIR ROBERT PEEL. | |
| Renewed Popularity of the Queen—Services of Prince Albert—A Volunteer Poet Laureate—Birth of thePrincess Alice—The Whig Deficit, and how Sir Robert Peel Dealt with It—The Income Tax, and Reductionof Duties—The Sliding Scale—Advance of Free Trade Principles—Assassination of Mr. Drummond—TheQuestion of Criminal Insanity—Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Cobden—Disturbances in SouthWales: “Rebecca” and her Daughters—Condition of Women in Mines and Collieries—Lord Ashleyand the Factories Act—Opinion of the Queen and Prince Albert on the Qualities of Sir Robert Peel—Leveesheld by the Prince—The Frescoes for the Houses of Parliament—Encouragement of Fresco-Paintingby the Queen and Prince Albert—The Summer House in the Gardens of Buckingham Palace—Visitof her Majesty and the Prince to Louis Philippe at the Château d’Eu—The Duke of Wellingtonon the Necessity for a Council of Regency—Designs of France on the Succession to the Spanish Throne—DishonestEngagement of the French King—English Opinion completely Misled—Royal Visits toBelgium, to Cambridge, and to the Midlands—The Prince as a Fox-hunter—Model Farming—Events inIndia: Wars in Scinde and Gwalior | [131] |
| [CHAPTER IX] IRELAND, RUSSIA, AND FRANCE. | |
| O’Connell and the Agitation for Repeal of the Union—Early Life of the Agitator—Character of his Oratory—Questionas to the Purity of his Motives—The “Repeal Year” (1843)—Methods by which O’Connellworked on Irish Opinion—Open-air Gatherings on the Repeal Question—Extravagant Speeches ofO’Connell—Crowning of the Liberator on the Hill of Tara—Prohibition of a Proposed Meeting at Clontarf—Arrestof the Chief Agitators—Trial, Condemnation, and Sentences—The Convictions Annulled by theHouse of Lords—Release of O’Connell, and Final Years of his Life—Effect of the Prosecution on theGovernment of Sir Robert Peel—Death of Prince Albert’s Father—Visit of the Prince to Saxe-Coburg-Gotha—HisPresents to the Queen on her Birthday (1844)—Visits of the King of Saxony and theEmperor of Russia to England—Appearance and Manners of the Emperor—Political Objects of Nicholasin Visiting London—His Designs on Turkey—Memorandum of Agreement between the Czar and theEnglish Government—Jealousy on the Part of the French—Ministerial Crisis in the Summer of 1844—SirJames Graham and the Opening of Letters at the Post Office—Disagreement with France withRespect to the Island of Tahiti—The Pritchard Affair—Queen Pomare and Queen Victoria—Anxietiesof the English Court as to the Maintenance of Peace—The Ashburton Treaty with the United States | [151] |
| [CHAPTER X] DAYS OF PEACEFUL DEVELOPMENT AND PROGRESS. | |
| Visit of the Prince of Prussia to England—Christening of Prince Alfred at Windsor Castle—Second Visit tothe Highlands in the Autumn of 1844—Louis Philippe in England—His Reception at Windsor—Interchangeof Courtesies between English and French Officers—Opening of the New Royal Exchange bythe Queen—Letters of her Majesty and Prince Albert on the Occasion—Scientific Progress: the ElectricTelegraph, Photography, Lord Rosse’s Telescope, the Thames Tunnel, and Arctic Exploration—TractarianDifficulties in the Church—Purchase of Osborne by the Queen—Visits of her Majesty and thePrince to Stowe and Strathfieldsaye—Opening of Parliament by the Queen (Feb. 4th, 1845)—FinancialStatement of Sir Robert Peel—Reduction and Abolition of Duties—Acrimonious Debates on the ProposedQueen’s Colleges in Ireland, and the Increase of the Maynooth Grant—Retirement of Mr.Gladstone from the Ministry—Admission of Jews to Municipal Offices—Results of Sir Robert Peel’sFinancial Policy—Economy in the Royal Household—Project for Making Prince Albert King Consort—TheChief Command of the Army | [170] |
| [CHAPTER XI] ENGLAND IN 1845. | |
| Borneo and Sir James Brooke—Cession of Labuan to Great Britain—“Constitutionalism” in the SandwichIslands—State of the Colonies—Unsuccessful Attack on Madagascar—Commencement of theOverland Route to India—Decline in the Popularity of Sir Robert Peel—Rise of Mr. Disraeli and the“Young England” Party—Generous Support of Peel by the Queen and Prince Albert—Offer of theGarter to Sir Robert, which he Declines—Position of the Premier towards the Aristocracy—IncreasingWeakness of the Government—Dangerous State of Ireland—Prince Albert on the Political Situation—Visitof the Queen to Belgium and Prussia—Splendid Reception in the latter Country—Speech ofthe King of Prussia at Bonn—The Illuminations at Cologne—Prince Albert and Baron von Humboldt—Receptionof the Royal Visitors in Bavaria, at Coburg, and at Gotha—The Queen at the NativePlace of her Husband—Excursion to the Thuringian Forest—Other Incidents of the German Visit—SecondVisit of the Queen and Prince Albert to Louis Philippe at the Château d’Eu—Duplicity of theKing—Return of the Royal Party to England—Spread of Railway Enterprise in Great Britain—TheRailway Mania and Panic of 1845-6—Increasing Strength of the Free Trade Movement—The PotatoDisease in Ireland—Threatenings of Famine—Sir Robert Peel and Free Trade—Letter of Lord JohnRussell to the Electors of the City of London—Ministerial Crisis—Return of Sir Robert Peel to Power | [187] |
| [CHAPTER XII] THE MINISTRY OF RENUNCIATION. | |
| The Times Reveals a Secret of State—Mr. Sidney Herbert and Mrs. Norton and the Times—A CourtScandal—Peel’s Resignation—Lord John Russell’s Failure to Form a Ministry—Peel Resumes Office—TheMinistry and the Queen—The Duke of Wellington and Peel—Disintegration of the Tory Party—Croker’sCorrespondence with Wellington—Peel’s Instructions to the Quarterly Review—A BetrayedEditor—Peel and the Princess Lieven—Guizot’s Defence of Peel—The Queen’s Conduct in the GreatCrisis—How she Strengthened the Position of the Crown—Her Popular Sympathies—Why Peel Changedhis Policy—The Potato Rot—Impending Famine—Distress in England—The Campaign of the FreeTraders—Scenes at their Meetings—The Protectionist Agitation and the Agricultural Labourers—Sufferingsof the Poor—The Duke of Norfolk’s Curry Powder—Meeting at Wootton Bassett—The Queenand the Sufferers | [205] |
| [CHAPTER XIII] THE FREE TRADE PARLIAMENT. | |
| Opening of Parliament in 1846—The Queen’s Speech—The Debate on the Address—Sir Robert Peel’s Statement—Mr.Disraeli’s Philippics—Bishop Wilberforce on Peel’s Reception by the House of Commons—Peel’sMistake—Lord George Bentinck’s Attack on Prince Albert—The Queen’s Explanations—TheCourt and the Peelites—The Corn Bill in the House of Lords—Lord Stanley’s Political Dinner-Party—TheDuke of Wellington and the Peers—Triumph in the Lords and Defeat in the Commons—Peel’sCoercion Bill for Ireland—A Factious Opposition—Fall of the Government—Their Policy inIndia—War in the Punjab—Victories over the Sikhs—The Oregon Controversy and its Settlement—LordAberdeen’s Adroit Diplomacy—Resignation of the Ministry—The Queen’s Farewell to Peel—HerSuggestion of a Coalition—Wellington and Cobden Advise Peel to Dissolve—Reasons for his Refusal—TheQueen and the Duke of Wellington—The Duke’s Letter to Lord John Russell—Lyndhurst andReconstruction—Disintegration of the Tory Party—The Peelites in Opposition—A Hint from Aristophanes—ToryPersecution of Peel | [220] |
| [CHAPTER XIV] THE FIRST RUSSELL ADMINISTRATION. | |
| The Transfer of Ministerial Offices—The Whigs Patronise Mr. Cobden—A Radical in the New Cabinet—ThePeelites Refuse to Take Office—Lord Campbell as Chancellor of the Duchy—Anecdote of hisInstallation—Lord John Russell’s Deportment to the Queen—His Modest Programme—The Abolitionof the Sugar Duties—Bishop Wilberforce and Slave-grown Sugar—Outrages in Ireland—The Whigsbecome Coercionists—Their Arms Act—Mutiny among Ministerialists—The Bill Dropped—The AlternativePolicy—Relief Works for Ireland—A Military Scandal—Indiscretion in the Country—Abuse ofCorporal Punishment in the Army—“The Cat” in the House of Commons—The Queen’s Views onMilitary Punishment—The Queen and a Deserter’s Death-Warrant—Captain Layard’s Motion—TheDuke of Wellington’s Interference—Restrictions on the Use of the Lash—England and the Colonies—Canadaand Free Trade—Nova Scotia and the Potato Famine—The Halifax, Quebec, and MontrealRailway—The New Zealand War—The Caffre War—The Expedition to Borneo—End of the Anglo-ChineseDifficulty—The “Spanish Marriages” and the Treaty of Utrecht—Louis Philippe’s Intrigueswith the Queen Dowager Christina—Secret History of the Conspiracy—M. Guizot’s Pretext—How theEnglish Minister at Madrid was Deceived—Lord Palmerston’s Indiscreet Despatch—The Queen’sCutting Letter to the Queen Marie Amélie—Metternich’s Caustic Epigram—Prince Albert’s Resentmentagainst the King of the French—End of the Anglo French Alliance—Fall of the Republic ofCracow | [244] |
| [CHAPTER XV] HOME LIFE AND SOCIAL EVENTS IN 1846. | |
| Prince Albert and the Home Farm—Royalty and the Windsor Vestry—The New Home at Osborne—TheBirth of the Princess Helena—The Visit of Ibrahim Pasha—A Royal Christening—The Queen’s Loneliness—Visitorsat Osborne—A Cruise in Summer Seas—The “Lop” of the Channel—In the ChannelIslands—The Duke of Cornwall in his Duchy—Exploring the South Coast—The Queen Acts as theFamily Tutor—Her Majesty among the Iron-miners—The House-warming at Osborne—Baron Stockmar’sImpressions of the Queen—Some German Visitors—A Dinner-Party at Windsor—The Baroness Bunsen’sPicture of the Scene—The Royal Visits to Hatfield and Arundel—Social Movements in 1846—Originof Secularism—Dr. Hook’s Pamphlet on Education—The Triumphs of Science—Faraday’s Researches—TheUse of Ether in Surgery—Laying of the First Submarine Cable at Portsmouth—Evil Tidings fromStarving Ireland | [259] |
| [CHAPTER XVI] A DISTRESSFUL COUNTRY. | |
| The Irish Crisis—Famine and Free Trade—Evictions and Imports—Fiscal Policy and Small Holdings—ShockingScenes among the Irish People—The Mistake of the Government—Lord John Russell’sRelief Measure Rejected by his Colleagues—An Autumnal Cabinet Meeting—Opening of Parliament—TheQueen and the Distress—The Remedial Measures of the Government—Rival Schemes of the Protectionists—LordGeorge Bentinck’s Railway Subsidies Bill—A Rival Ministerial Scheme—The Attackon the Bank Act of 1844—The Currency Controversy—Peel on a Convertible Currency—The Effect ofthe Railway Mania—Blaming the Bank—The Education Question—Opposition of Dissenters—Colonisationand Emigration—Lord Lincoln’s Motion—Is Emigration a Remedy for a Redundant Population?—TheCabinet and the Ten Hours Bill—Mr. Fielden’s Victory—Opposition of Manufacturers—Evadingthe Act—The Budget—The Queen and the Duchy of Lancaster—Lord Campbell and the Queen—AFamous Duchy Dinner—Privy Councillors at “High Jinks”—Death of Lord Bessborough—Lord ClarendonAppointed Irish Viceroy—Death of O’Connell—Growing Weakness of the Cabinet—Prorogation of Parliament—Dissolution—TheGeneral Election—The State of Parties—Appalling Outrages in Ireland—AnotherCommercial Panic—Suspension of the Bank Act—The Queen and Sir Robert Peel—ParliamentSummoned—A Coercion Bill for Ireland—Ireland and the Vatican—Lord Palmerston’s Correspondencewith Lord Minto—Denunciations of the Queen’s Colleges—Projected Renewal of Diplomatic Relationswith Rome—Lord Palmerston’s Objections—The Jews in Parliament—New Bishops—The Hampden Controversy—BaffledHeresy-hunters | [272] |
| [CHAPTER XVII] THE COURT AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS. | |
| Lord George Bentinck’s Imprudence—French Intrigues in Portugal—England and the Junta—A VulgarSuspicion—The Duke of Wellington and National Defences—The Duke’s Threatened Resignation—TheQueen Soothes Him—Famine in the Queen’s Kitchen—Royal Hospitalities—The Queen’s CountryDance—A German Impostor—Discovery of Chloroform—The Royal Visit to Cambridge—Prince Albert’sInstallation as Chancellor of the University—Awkward Dons—Anecdotes of the Queen at Cambridge—Royaltyand Heraldry—The Visit to Scotland—Highland Loyalty—A Desolate Retreat—Politics andSport at Ardverikie—A New Departure in Foreign Policy—Lord Minto’s Mission—The Queen’s Views—PrinceAlbert’s Caution to Lord John Russell—The Queen’s Amusements at Ardverikie—A RegretfulAdieu—Home Again | [301] |
| [CHAPTER XVIII] REVOLUTION. | |
| At Osborne—Beginnings of Revolution—The Reform Banquets in Paris—Lola Montes and the King ofBavaria—Downfall of Louis Philippe’s Government—Flight of the King—Establishment of the SecondRepublic—The Queen and the Orleans Family—The Chartist Movement—Its Secret History—Its Leaders—TheQueen Retreats to Osborne—The Chartist Meeting at Kennington—London in Terror—The Duke ofWellington’s Precautions—Abortive Risings at Bonner’s Fields and in Seven Dials—Riots in the LargeTowns—Collapse of Chartism—Ireland and the “Young Irelanders”—The Rebellion of “’48”—The Battleof the Cabbage Garden—Arrest of Smith O’Brien and the “Young Ireland” Leaders—Austria andPrussia in Anarchy—Flight of Metternich—The Berlin Mob and the King—Anxiety of the EnglishCourt—The Queen’s Correspondence with her Half-Sister—The Anglo-Spanish Quarrel—Sir H. BulwerExpelled from Madrid—The Queen’s Indignation at Lord Palmerston—Conversation between theQueen and Lord John Russell—Palmerston’s Victory—The “Three Budget” Session—The Anti-Income-TaxAgitation—Blundering in Finance—“Scenes” in Parliament—Irish and Colonial Controversies—TheEncumbered Estates Act—Repressive Legislation—Dawn of the Reform Agitation | [322] |
| [CHAPTER XIX] AT WORK AND PLAY. | |
| The Queen’s Administrative Work—The Condition-of-England Question—The Court and the Working Classes—RoyalPlans for Ameliorating the Lot of Labour—Threatened Attacks on the Queen—The DemagoguesAbashed—A Royal-Hearted Speech—The Queen’s Private Correspondence—A Pension Fund for theWorking Classes—Pauperism among Domestic Servants—Prince Albert’s Relief Plan—The Court atOsborne—Birth and Christening of the Princess Louise—Removal to Balmoral—The Queen at Kirk—ARoyal Geologist—Sir Charles Lyell’s Anecdotes of the Royal Family—An Accident in the Solent—PrinceAlbert as a University Reformer—Death of Lord Melbourne and Lord George Bentinck | [357] |
| [CHAPTER XX] DISCONTENTED DEPENDENCIES. | |
| Reaction in England in 1849—Attacks in Parliament on the Queen’s Speech—Gagging Parliament—The LastDying Struggle of the Protectionists—Repeal of the Navigation Laws—The Tory Attack on the Bishops—ProtectionistPlans for Reducing Local Taxation—Coercion for Ireland—Peel’s Generosity to theWhigs Explained—Irish Mendicity and English Grants in Aid—A Policy of Pauperism and Doles—SmallMinds in a Great Crisis—Peel’s Comprehensive Plan for Relieving Ireland—The Break-down of the PoorLaw—The Queen and the Irish Landlords—Prince Albert’s Project for Reforming the Irish PoorRate—Scandals at the Colonial Office—Ceylon—Demerara and Canada—The Loyal Rebels of Canada—Riotsin Montreal—Attacks on Lord Elgin—An Examination and Defence of his Policy—The Test ofResults—“Be Just and Fear Not” | [371] |
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
DISTANT VIEW OF WINDSOR CASTLE.
THE
Life and Times of Queen Victoria.
CHAPTER I.
EARLY YEARS OF THE PRINCESS VICTORIA.
A Remarkable Visit to Kensington Palace—Death of King William IV.—Details of his Last Days—Parliamentary Eulogies on his Character—Progress in the Last Half-Century—Ancestry of Queen Victoria—Her Descent traced to Odoacer, King of Italy—Saxon Ancestors of her Majesty—Liberal Views of the Duke of Kent, Father of the Queen—State of the Succession after the Death of the Princess Charlotte—Marriage of the Duke of Kent, and Birth of the Princess Victoria—Christening at Kensington Palace—The name “Victoria,” and its Associations—Death of the Duke of Kent—Kensington Palace in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries—Early Training of Victoria by her Mother—Child-life of the Princess—False Rumours of Ill-health—Anecdotes of Juvenile Years—The Princess and George IV.—Accession of William IV.—The Regency Bill—Prince Leopold and the Throne of Belgium—Studies of the Princess—Her Life of Retirement—Home Tours in Various Parts of England—Visit to the Cotton Mills of the Messrs. Strutt at Belper—Reception at Oxford and at Southampton—Benevolence to an Actress—Her Royal Highness declared of Age on the 24th of May, 1837.
THE ROYAL ARMS.
In the dawn of June 20th, 1837, immediately after the death of King William IV., the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Howley) and the Lord Chamberlain (the Marquis of Conyngham) left Windsor for Kensington, to convey the tidings to his late Majesty’s successor. They reached the Palace about five o’clock in the morning, and knocked, rang, and beat at the doors several times before they could obtain admission. When at length the porter was aroused, the visitors were shown into one of the lower rooms, where a long time passed without any attention being paid them. Growing impatient, they rang the bell (as we read in the interesting narrative of Miss Wynn), and desired that the attendant on the Princess Victoria might be sent to inform her Royal Highness that they requested an audience on business of importance. Another long delay ensued, and again the bell was rung, that some explanation might be given of the difficulty which appeared to exist. On the Princess’s attendant making her appearance, she declared that her Royal Highness was in so sweet a sleep that she could not venture to disturb her. It was now evident that stronger measures must be taken, and one of the visitors said, “We have come on business of State to the Queen, and even her sleep must give way to that.” The attendant disappeared, and a few minutes afterwards the young sovereign came into the room in a loose white robe and shawl, her fair hair falling over her shoulders, her feet in slippers, her eyes dim with tears, but her aspect perfectly calm and dignified.[1] Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, was at once sent for, and arrived at nine o’clock, when, after an interview of half an hour with the Queen, he addressed himself to a rapid study of the ceremonials to be observed at the approaching Privy Council. Some time after, the Lord Mayor and other members of the Corporation reached the Palace, and the chief members of the Privy Council soon thronged the rooms.
Although the final illness of the late King had been rather brief, William had for some time been in declining health, and the nation had only to hope that his life would be prolonged until his niece, the Princess Victoria, had attained an age which could be regarded as constituting her majority. This had occurred on the 24th of the previous month, when the Princess completed her eighteenth year, which had been declared by Act of Parliament to be sufficient. William IV. was a man of very moderate abilities; but a certain simplicity and geniality of character had secured for him the regard and respect of the people, and had carried him through the revolutionary epoch of the Reform Bill with no great loss of popularity, even at a time when he was supposed to be unfriendly to the measure. For the last two years he had ceased to take any interest in the political tendencies of the day, while discharging the routine duties of his high office with conscientious regularity. Brought up in the midst of totally different ideas, he could not, at his time of life, accommodate himself to the flood of novel principles which had recently set in, and which he was equally unable to accept and powerless to resist. The result was that, as a well-qualified observer records, “he submitted to what he could not help, but evidently with a sense of weariness.”[2] In the previous April he had been distressed by the death of his eldest daughter, Lady de Lisle, and of the Duchess-Dowager of Saxe-Meiningen, mother of Queen Adelaide. Great physical prostration ensued shortly afterwards, and by June it was evident that the end could not be far distant. His Majesty was attended by the Queen with the most affectionate devotion; but the weakness steadily increased, and soon reached a fatal termination.
Owing to the state of the King’s health, the Duke of Wellington proposed to dispense with the usual Waterloo Banquet at Apsley House; but on the 17th of June the dying monarch sent a message to the illustrious Field-Marshal, desiring that the occasion should be observed in the customary manner, and wishing the host and guests a pleasant day. On the anniversary of the great battle (the 18th), the Duke transmitted to Windsor, in accordance with the prescribed form, the banner by the presentation of which he held his estates. Lord Muncaster presented it to the King, who, raising himself up, grasped the folds of the flag, and exclaimed, “Ah! that was a glorious day for England!”[3] The eulogies pronounced in Parliament on the character of the deceased sovereign may have been somewhat affected by the conventional or official tone inseparable from such utterances; but they probably contain a fair amount of truth, with no more than the usual omissions. The disposition of William IV. was certainly superior to that of his brother George; and the country recognised the difference with the true instinct of a free people.
The Modern Age, in its most distinctive developments, is almost coeval with the reign of his successor. It is true that the Railway service had already begun; but it was still in its infancy when Queen Victoria ascended the throne, and had not yet effected any great revolution in the sentiments or habits of society. The Electric Telegraph, though fully born in the brains of scientific speculators, had received no practical application. Steam and machinery had still to achieve some of their greatest triumphs. The Postal system of those days seems barbarian to our modern eyes. The Newspaper Press was an insignificant force compared with what it is at the present day. Education, in the popular sense, hardly existed. Nation with nation held but little intercourse, and the prejudices of Englishmen were scarcely less gross than they had been in the days of Hogarth. Manners were far more coarse and brutal than they are now; the laws were more complicated and uncertain; social order was less secure; the arts had not attained so wide and general a culture; medicine, surgery, chemistry, geology, and other sciences, were less cultivated; taste was less diffused and less instructed; the luxuries, and even the comforts, of domestic life were almost unknown to the poorer classes; and political power was held by only a small proportion of the community. The England of 1837 was so different from the England we now behold, that the “Pickwick Papers,” belonging to that date, require explanatory notes for the benefit of a younger generation. The history of these vast changes—in which the personal character and influence of her Majesty have had no small share—must be of the deepest interest to all thinking men; and it is this history which we propose to relate.
Alexandrina Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland, and Empress of India, was born at Kensington Palace on the 24th of May, 1819. She is the daughter of Edward, Duke of Kent, fourth son of King George III.; and her mother was Victoria Mary Louisa, daughter of his Serene Highness Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. The Duke of Kent was the second husband of this lady, who in 1802 had married Charles Louis, Prince of
WEST FRONT OF KENSINGTON PALACE.
Leiningen—an ill-assorted match, productive of no happiness. The second marriage took place in 1818; but the Duke of Kent died in less than two years. Her Majesty’s descent is very illustrious. It may be traced (conjecturally, at least) up to Odoacer, a warlike chief of the Heruli, who, after defeating the forces of Romulus Augustulus, the last Roman Emperor of the West, in the year 476 of the Christian era, disputed the kingdom of Italy with Theodoric the Ostrogoth. One of the supposed descendants of Odoacer was Boniface, Count of Lucca and Duke of Tuscany, who lived in the early part of the ninth century, and from whom sprang Alberto Azzo II., Marquis of Italy and Lord of Este, who, in the first half of the eleventh century, married Cunegonda, of the House of Guelph, by whom he had Guelph, Duke of Bavaria, the ancestor of the House of Brunswick, and consequently of the present Royal Family of Great Britain, who are called Este-Guelphs. According to some accounts, however, the Guelphs are derived from a younger brother of Odoacer, whose son, Olfigandus, held a command in the army of Belisarius. But in truth
KING WILLIAM IV.
these matters lie beyond verification, and are interesting only as affording a shadowy link between the present and the past.
One of the most famous ancestors of the Duchess of Kent, and therefore of Queen Victoria herself, was Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony in the early years of the sixteenth century, who ranks among the first converts to Protestantism, and who befriended Luther when that great reformer stood in peril of his life. The Prince Consort was likewise descended from the same family, and the Queen’s children are thus doubly connected with one of the most distinguished German houses of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. In later times, various members of the Saxon family have shown their prowess as warriors, or their capacity as rulers; but the father of the Duchess of Kent, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, was a man of pacific inclinations and retiring habits, with a taste for the fine arts. The Duke of Kent was remarkable as a generous supporter of popular government—even to an extreme bordering on democratic ideas—at a time when the Court and the ruling classes were fanatically enthusiastic on the Tory side. Tall and striking in aspect, trained to military service, irreproachable in private life, and exact in all his business habits, the Duke of Kent inherited the manly and sedate qualities of his father, George III., while superadding to them a breadth of intellect to which the King himself could advance no claim. As a commander in the British army, his Royal Highness incurred some temporary disfavour by his strictness as a disciplinarian; but this was afterwards removed by the liberal character of his political views. At a banquet, during which he replied to the toast of “The Junior Members of the Royal Family,” he said:—“I am a friend of civil and religious liberty, all the world over. I am an enemy to all religious tests. I am a supporter of a general system of education. All men are my brethren; and I hold that power is delegated only for the benefit of the people. These are the principles of myself, and of my beloved brother, the Duke of Sussex. They are not popular principles just now; that is, they do not conduct to place or office. All the members of the Royal Family do not hold the same principles. For this I do not blame them; but we claim for ourselves the right of thinking and acting as we think best.”
Like some of the other Royal Princes, the Duke of Kent refrained from marriage until after the death of the Princess Charlotte, on the 6th of November, 1817. That ill-fated lady—the only child of the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV.—had been married, on the 2nd of May, 1816, to Prince Leopold, third son of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and brother of the Princess who was subsequently united to the Duke of Kent, and became the mother of our Queen. Leopold (who, several years later, was chosen King of the Belgians) was distinguished, from his earliest maturity to his latest days, by high character and distinguished abilities; and the English people hoped much from a union which seemed to promise so fairly. But, unhappily, the Princess Charlotte died in childbed; and, as the infant was still-born, the succession to the throne was left in a very precarious state. Accordingly, in the following year (1818), the Duke of Clarence, third son of George III., and afterwards William IV., the Duke of Kent, fourth son, and the Duke of Cambridge, seventh son, contracted nuptial alliances; but that of the Duke of Clarence, the elder brother of the Duke of Kent, was unattended by any issue that survived, so that the Princess Victoria soon became heiress-presumptive to the crown of Great Britain.
For some time after their marriage, the Duke and Duchess of Kent resided abroad, chiefly from motives of economy, the allowance of the former being restricted within narrow limits by the servile Parliament of that day, owing to his political independence. In view, however, of an expected event, the Royal couple returned to England in the latter part of April, 1819, so that their child should be “born a Briton;” and, as we have said, the future Queen of England drew her first breath on the 24th of May. The Duke of Kent had been long estranged from his brother, the Prince Regent; but a reconciliation took place shortly after the birth of the Princess Victoria. The infant was christened on the 24th of June at Kensington Palace, where she had been born; on which occasion, the gold font was brought from the Tower, and the draperies were removed from the Chapel Royal, St. James’s. Chief among the sponsors were the Prince Regent and the Emperor Alexander of Russia, the latter represented by the Duke of York. It was in compliment to the Czar that the infant Princess received Alexandrina as her first name. In subsequent years, however, this Russianised Greek appellation was wisely abandoned, as unfamiliar and unwelcome to English ears, and the far nobler-sounding “Victoria” took its place. The second name, now famous throughout the world, is of course pure Latin, and no more native to our race than Alexandrina. But in a certain sense we are all Latins—we of the West of Europe; and the accents of the Imperial tongue are familiar to our ears. The meaning and sound of “Victoria,” moreover, are strikingly appropriate to the sovereign of a great Empire; and the omen has, on the whole, been happily fulfilled under the sceptre of her Majesty, not merely in the triumphs of war, but also in the victories of peace.
It is not generally known, that, so far as can be inferred from imperfect and obscure records, a monarch bearing the name of Victoria once before held sway in Britain. During the general weakness of the Roman Empire in the second half of the third century, several of the provinces detached themselves from the central authority, and for a while established separate governments. Spain, Gaul, and Britain formed a western realm of immense extent, the capital of which was at Trèves, on the Moselle, then a city of Gallia Belgica; and the sovereignty of this varied region passed in time to an ambitious and energetic woman named Victoria. She is mentioned in the great work of Gibbon; yet little is known of her acts or character. It is probable that she was a resolute and capable despot; but she appears in history as a name, and little else.
For the brief remainder of his life, the Duke of Kent dwelt principally at Claremont, which, but a short time before, had been the residence of the Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold, and which was rendered sadly memorable by the death of the former. But the unusually severe winter of 1819-20 induced the Duke and Duchess to visit Sidmouth, for the sake of the mild climate of Southern Devonshire. At Salisbury Cathedral, to which he made an excursion during the frosty weather, the Duke caught a slight cold, which, after his return to Sidmouth, became serious, owing, it would seem, to neglect and imprudence. According to the medical custom of those days, the patient was copiously bled, and not improbably owed his death to the exhaustion thus occasioned. He expired on the 23rd of January, 1820, in his fifty-third year; and so small were his means that he left the Duchess and the Princess totally devoid of maintenance. Such was the statement made long afterwards by Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, who was with his sister during the days of her trial and bereavement. Soon after the fatal event, the Prince accompanied the widowed lady to London, where addresses of condolence were voted by both Houses of Parliament. The address of the Commons was presented by Lords Morpeth and Clive, when the Duchess of Kent
CLAREMONT.
appeared with the infant Princess in her arms. The scene was one of the chambers in Kensington Palace; and that historic building can scarcely have witnessed a more affecting interview.
The edifice in which Queen Victoria passed most of her early years, and which yet attracts the interest both of Englishmen and Americans, dates, as a palace, from the time of William III., though, at a rather earlier period, the Finches, Earls of Nottingham, had a mansion on the same spot, of which a small portion is believed to be still existent. The second Earl of Nottingham sold the house and grounds to the illustrious Dutchman who came to rescue us from the Pope and the Stuarts; and his Majesty caused additions to be made to the building by the greatest English architect of that time—Sir Christopher Wren. Successive
DEATH OF THE DUKE OF KENT: PRESENTING THE COMMONS’ ADDRESS OF CONDOLENCE TO THE DUCHESS AT KENSINGTON PALACE. ([See p. 8.])
sovereigns, down to George II., still further enlarged the domicile and the grounds; and, for sixty years of the eighteenth century, Kensington Palace was the most brilliant and courtly place in London. All the nobles, statesmen, wits, and beauties of the age assembled in its saloons, or paraded in its gardens. Many are the anecdotes (scandalous and otherwise) connected with this royal home; but there are pleasanter associations too. Tickell, one of the minor literati of the period which we associate with Queen Anne, though it extended into the reigns of George I. and his successor, wrote a pretty fairy tale, in verse, in connection with Kensington Gardens; and Pope may have studied in that courtly enclosure the belles and fops of his “Rape of the Lock.” In the Palace itself, Death was a frequent visitor, as he must be in houses which survive several generations. William III. and Queen Mary, Queen Anne, Prince George of Denmark, and King George II., all died within its walls; and then came an eclipse. The sedate and formal residence, with its stately gardens, fell out of favour with George III., though it is not easy to say why, since his own character inclined him to the formal and sedate. All the glancing lights of wit and beauty faded from its rooms; and, by the earlier years of the present century, the Palace had acquired the sombre and somewhat depressing character inseparable from all old buildings which have seen better days, and from which the laughter and the life of earlier times have passed away.
Such were the surroundings amongst which the Princess Victoria was brought up. They were far from inspiriting; yet they may have helped to form the character of the future Queen, and to give to it an element of gravity, not unbecoming the sovereign of countless myriads. The walls of the apartments were adorned with pictures belonging chiefly to the Byzantine and early German schools; and these probably did much in creating a taste for art. The training of the young Princess was conducted by her mother—a task for which she was admirably qualified. When the Prince of Leiningen died, in 1814, his widow, afterwards the Duchess of Kent, was left the guardian of her young sons, and the ruler of their territory until they came of age. These duties she had performed in a manner the most exemplary; and she afterwards showed equal good sense in the education of the Princess Victoria. The child was taught from her earliest years to rely on exercise and temperance as the best promoters of health; to devote a reasonable amount of time to riding and sailing; to be economical, yet charitable; and, while observing a courteous demeanour towards her inferiors, to keep aloof from the evil influence of parasites. In early years, it was rather the moral than the mental nature of the Princess that was cultivated. The Dowager-Duchess of Coburg wisely wrote to her daughter, in 1823, that it would be better not to force book-knowledge too soon on one so young; and this advice appears to have been followed.
As her Royal Highness grew up, however, she was well grounded in languages, music, and such branches of science as were then thought suitable to ladies. Her general education was afterwards entrusted to the Duchess of Northumberland, wife of the third Duke; and the Princess speedily developed many charming qualities. Living for the most part in retirement, she was but little known to the outer world; but her affability made an excellent impression on all with whom she came in contact. Her character was to some extent influenced by the great philanthropist, William Wilberforce, whom she saw very frequently. Several pleasing anecdotes are related of her charity and kindness; and it is said that in her visits to Ramsgate she was a great favourite with the bathing-women and other characteristic frequenters of the sands. When, a little later in life, it became nearly certain that she would succeed to the throne, owing to the childlessness of her father’s elder brothers, the Princess emerged more into public view, and took her rides and walks in places where she could be generally seen. It is said that, for some years, George IV. treated his sister-in-law and her infant with marked coldness; but the Duke and Duchess of Clarence—whose own disappointments, in the failure of offspring, might have furnished some slight excuse for neglect—showed much kindness to the Duchess of Kent and the Princess Victoria. This cordial sentiment continued after the accession of William IV., and the Queen never forgot, in later days, the respect and affection which she owed to Adelaide.
The early years of the Princess were passed under healthful conditions, and resulted in the formation of a strong constitution. Nevertheless, the public were disquieted by rumours to the effect that the daughter of the Duke of Kent would never attain her majority, or that, at any rate, if she lived to marry, she would never become the mother of a family. In proportion as these statements were believed, fears arose that the succession would pass to the Duke of Cumberland—a prince very generally disliked for his arrogance, and for faults and vices which may perhaps have been exaggerated by popular hatred. The connection between the kingdoms of Great Britain and Hanover—which would have been perpetuated by the succession of any one of the Princes, but which the existence of the Salic Law in the latter State rendered incompatible with the accession of a female sovereign in England—was another contingency which the people of this country regarded with the utmost distaste. For these reasons, the false reports concerning the Princess’s health created no little agitation. But it soon came to the public knowledge that the unwelcome tidings were wholly false; and it was evident, from her frequent appearances in the streets and parks, that the heiress-apparent to the British throne was not likely to die prematurely.
The studies of the Princess were pursued with a fair amount of diligence, though her Royal Highness would occasionally show her independence by refusing to be too closely bound by rules. On one occasion, she objected to that dull, mechanical practising of notes which the young learner of the pianoforte has perforce to undergo. She was told that this was necessary before she could become mistress of the instrument. “What would you think of me,” she asked, “if I became mistress at once?” She was told that that would be impossible; there was no royal road to music. “Oh, there is no royal road to music, eh?” repeated the Princess. “No royal road? And I am not mistress of my pianoforte? But I will be, I assure you; and the royal road is this”—whereupon she closed the piano, locked it, and took out the key. “There!” she continued, “that’s being mistress of the piano. And the royal road to learning is never to take a lesson till you’re in the humour to do it.” This, however, was spoken
QUEEN CAROLINE’S DRAWING-ROOM, KENSINGTON PALACE.
more out of a sense of fun than from any spirit of opposition; for, immediately afterwards, her Royal Highness resumed the interrupted lesson.
The readiness to admit a fault was amusingly shown by a little incident which occurred during a visit to the seat of Earl Fitzwilliam. The royal party were walking in the grounds, when the Princess ran on in advance. One of the under-gardeners pointed out that, owing to recent heavy rains, a certain walk was very slippery, or, as he expressed it, using a local term, “very slape.” “Slape! slape!” exclaimed the Princess, in the style of quick reiteration which characterised the utterance of her grandfather, George III.; “and pray what is ‘slape’?” The requisite explanation was given; but the little lady proceeded down the path, despite all warning, and speedily fell to the ground. Seeing what had happened, Earl Fitzwilliam called out, “Now your Royal Highness has an explanation of the term ‘slape,’ both theoretically and practically.” “Yes, my lord,” she replied, “I think I have. I shall never forget the word ‘slape.’” Another time, she persisted in playing with a dog against which she had been cautioned. The animal made a snap at her hand; and when her cautioner expressed his fears that she had been bitten, she replied, “Oh, thank you! thank you! You’re right, and I am wrong; but he didn’t bite me—he only warned me. I shall be careful in future.”[4]
An additional grant of £6,000 a year was made to the Duchess of Kent in the
QUEEN ADELAIDE.
early summer of 1825, in order that the Princess Victoria, then six years of age, might be enabled to live more in accordance with her rank and prospects. After this period, the King (George IV.) behaved with greater kindness to his sister-in-law and niece. The latter, however, was not seen much at court during the remainder of that monarch’s reign; indeed, her time was mainly occupied by the work of education. It was in 1830—shortly after the death of George IV.—that the Duchess of Northumberland was appointed, at the suggestion of the new King, to the office of governess to the Princess; and under her judicious care considerable progress was soon made. The accession of William IV. to the throne, on the 26th of June, 1830, placed the Princess Victoria in direct succession to the British Crown, as the Duke of York had died on the 5th of January, 1827. It was therefore thought advisable to make provision for the various contingencies of the future; and accordingly, towards the close of the year, a Regency Bill was introduced into Parliament, which provided that Queen Adelaide, in the event of her giving birth to a posthumous child, should be the guardian of such child during its minority, and also Regent of the kingdom. If that event did not occur, the Duchess of Kent was to be Regent during the minority of her daughter, the Princess Victoria, who was not to marry, while a minor, without the consent of the King, or, if he died, without the consent of both Houses of Parliament.
During these early years, Prince Leopold, brother of the Duchess of Kent, had acted the part of a father to the young Princess; but he was now removed to a different scene and other duties. A revolution broke out at Brussels on the 25th of August, 1830, with the ultimate result that Belgium was separated from the Kingdom of the Netherlands, of which, since 1814, it had formed a part. On the 12th of July, 1831, Leopold was elected King of the new nationality, and a week later entered the capital. He had shortly before been designated by the Great Powers to the sovereignty of Greece, which had just achieved its independence of Turkey; but he declined that perilous and doubtful honour. As the liberal and enlightened ruler of the Belgians, however, he acquired great and deserved distinction until his death on the 10th of December, 1865. The assumption of regal powers on the Continent removed Leopold from constant association with his niece; but the nearness of Brussels enabled him to make frequent visits to England, and in after years the Queen often consulted him on difficult matters of State policy. His decease was in many respects a serious affliction to the sovereign of this realm.
Under the general direction of the Duchess of Northumberland, the instruction of the Princess was conducted by various gentlemen of high repute in their several attainments. She made considerable progress in Latin; from Mr. Amos she received the elements of Constitutional Government as it exists in England; and Westall, the painter, taught her the lighter graces of drawing. Music was now studied with assiduity, and the future Queen revealed at an early age that passion for a noble art which has distinguished her to the present day. Shortly after the accession of William IV., the health of the Princess underwent some decline, due in part to the distracting gaieties to which she had been introduced since the change of reign. This failure of health appears to have been the reason why her Royal Highness and the Duchess of Kent were absent from the coronation of King William, on the 8th of September, 1831, though the circumstance gave occasion at the time to many sinister remarks, as if the favour of the new monarch had been suddenly withdrawn from his niece. Such, however, was not the case. The Princess was treated with the consideration befitting her rank; and, on the 24th of May, 1831, when she completed her twelfth year, Queen Adelaide gave a juvenile ball in her honour, the magnificence of which made a deep impression on the mind of the principal guest. It is evident, therefore, that the King and Queen retained their old affection for the Princess; but the Duchess of Northumberland saw that so much excitement was having a prejudicial effect on the health of her pupil, and she accordingly advised absence from court, and from the fatigue and turmoil of a coronation ceremony. Only a month before, the King had recommended to Parliament an increased allowance for the Princess; in consequence of which, an additional income of £10,000 a year, for her Royal Highness’s maintenance and education, was granted by the national representatives. The Princess, however, was still much sequestered; and it may be that the Court of William IV., though better than that of his brother, was not well suited to a young girl whose mother considered her purity more than anything else.
It was about this period that Southey, the poet, historian, and critic, being one morning at Kensington Palace, was admitted to an interview with the Princess, who expressed to him the great pleasure she had derived both from his poetry and his prose, especially from the “Life of Nelson,” which she declared she had read half a dozen times over. At the time of the coronation, the Duchess of Kent and her daughter were staying in the Isle of Wight, from which they afterwards proceeded to Worthing and Malvern. The Princess was a great admirer of ecclesiastical architecture and music, and she frequently visited such cathedral cities as Worcester, Hereford, and Chester. She was also entertained by the principal members of the nobility at their country seats, and thus acquired a knowledge of the semi-feudal state which still distinguishes the lives of our aristocracy. A very extensive home-tour was made in 1832, when, amongst other interesting events, the royal party visited the cotton-mills of the Messrs. Strutt at Belper, in Derbyshire. By means of a model, Mr. James Strutt explained to the Princess the various processes of cotton-spinning, and a great impression was produced by this exposition of a most important manufacture. It was a very felicitous thought to take her Royal Highness to one of those great seats of industry to which England owes so much, and to show her how varied, complicated, and far-reaching were the interests over which, in the maturity of time, she was to bear sway. From this visit, in all probability, may be dated the Queen’s intelligent appreciation of the commercial and manufacturing greatness of her Empire, which brings unparalleled wealth into the land, circulates wages amongst innumerable labourers, and furnishes a counterpoise to the preponderance of hereditary power. In 1856, the Queen conferred the dignity of a peerage, with the title of Baron Belper, on the son of Mr. James Strutt, who had conducted her over the factory four-and-twenty years earlier.
Before the conclusion of the royal tour, the Princess and her mother visited Oxford, where they were presented with an address in the Sheldonian Theatre by the Vice-Chancellor. In her reply, the Duchess of Kent said:—“We close a most interesting journey by a visit to this University, that the Princess may see, as far as her years will allow, all that is interesting in it. The history of our country has taught her to know its importance by the many distinguished persons who, by their character and talents, have been raised to eminence by the education they have received in it. Your loyalty to the King, and recollection of the favour you have enjoyed under the paternal sway of his house, could not fail, I was sure, to lead you to receive his niece with all the disposition you evince to make this visit agreeable and instructive to her. It is my object to ensure, by all means in my power, her being so educated as to meet the just expectation of all classes in this great and free country.”
THE DUKE OF KENT.
Their Royal Highnesses returned to Kensington on the 9th of November, 1832, and in the following year confined themselves to the south coast of England. The most memorable circumstance of this trip was one of those ceremonials in which the Queen has since so often taken part. While the Duchess of Kent and her daughter were residing at East Cowes, in the Isle of Wight, they attended the opening of the new landing-pier at Southampton, then beginning to acquire importance as a great southern port. In Southampton
THE QUEEN’S FIRST COUNCIL. (After the Painting by Sir David Wilkie). ([See p. 19.])
Water, the Royal yacht, which had been towed from Cowes by a steamer, was met by a deputation from the corporation of the town, the members of which were stationed on board an eight-oared barge, with one of the town-sergeants bearing a silver oar. To the address of this deputation, the Duchess of Kent replied that she wished her daughter to become attached, at an early age, to works of utility—an attachment which, in later life, her Majesty has exhibited on many interesting occasions. The distinguished visitors were then rowed ashore, and entertained at luncheon; after which, the Duchess of Kent signified her pleasure that the new pier should be called the Royal Pier.
In July, 1834, the Princess Victoria was confirmed by the Archbishop of Canterbury (Dr. Howley) in the Chapel Royal, St. James’s. The remainder of the year was distinguished by no very remarkable events; but a little incident occurring at Tunbridge Wells gives a pleasing idea of the young Princess’s benevolence. The husband of an actress employed at the town theatre died under circumstances of poverty, leaving his wife on the eve of her confinement. Distressed at what she heard, the Princess obtained £10 from her mother, added an equal sum from her own resources, and personally carried the amount to the sufferer. After the accession of her Majesty to the throne, she conferred on the actress an annuity of £40 for the remainder of her life. The years 1835 and 1836 passed very quietly; but 1837 was destined to be a date of great importance. On the 24th of May, the Princess completed her eighteenth year, and was declared legally of age, according to the provisions of the Act of Parliament to which reference has before been made. The day was kept as a general holiday: Kensington was especially festive, and a serenade to the Princess was performed under the Palace windows at seven o’clock in the evening. Among the numerous birthday presents was a magnificent pianoforte from the King. Within a month from that time, William IV. had breathed his last.
COWES HARBOUR.
CHAPTER II.
EARLY EVENTS OF THE NEW REIGN.
First Council of the Queen—Her Address to the Assembled Dignitaries—Admirable Demeanour of the young Sovereign—Proclamation of Queen Victoria—Condition of the Empire at the Time of her Accession—Character of Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister—His Training of the Queen in Constitutional Principles—Question of the Royal Prerogative and the choosing of the Ministry—Removal of the Queen to Buckingham Palace—First Levee—Her Majesty’s Speech on the Dissolution of Parliament—Amelioration of the Criminal Laws—Results of the General Election—Meeting of the New Legislature—The Civil List fixed—Relations of the Queen towards the Duchess of Kent—Daily Life of her Majesty—Royal Visit to the City—Insurrection in the Two Canadas—Measures of the Government, and Suppression of the Revolt—The Melbourne Administration and Lord Durham—Reform of the Canadian Constitution.
We now resume our narrative of what happened on the first day of the new reign—the 20th of June, 1837. At eleven o’clock in the forenoon—the appointed hour—Queen Victoria, attended by the chief officers of the household, entered the Council Chamber, and seated herself on a throne which had been placed there. The Lord Chancellor (Cottenham) then administered the customary oath taken by the sovereigns of England on their accession, in which they promise to govern according to the laws. The Princes, Peers, Privy Councillors, and Cabinet Ministers, next took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy, kneeling before the throne; and the first name on the list was that of Ernest, King of Hanover, known to Englishmen as the Duke of Cumberland. The Queen caused these distinguished persons to be sworn in as members of the Council, and the Cabinet Ministers, having surrendered their seals of office, immediately received them back from her Majesty, and kissed her hand on their reappointment. Having ordered the necessary alterations in the official stamps and form of prayer, the Council drew up and signed the Proclamation of her Majesty’s accession, which was publicly read on the following day. But one of the principal incidents of that memorable Council was the reading by the Queen (previously to the surrender of the seals by the Ministers, and their reappointment) of an address which ran as follows:—
“The severe and afflicting loss which the nation has sustained by the death of his Majesty, my beloved uncle, has devolved upon me the duty of administering the government of this Empire. This awful responsibility is imposed upon me so suddenly, and at so early a period, that I should feel myself utterly oppressed by the burden, were I not sustained by the hope that Divine Providence, which has called me to this work, will give me strength for the performance of it, and that I shall find, in the purity of my intentions, and in my zeal for the public welfare, that support and those resources which usually belong to a more mature age and longer experience. I place my firm reliance upon the wisdom of Parliament, and upon the loyalty and affection of my people. I esteem it also a peculiar advantage that I succeed to a sovereign whose constant regard for the rights and liberties of his subjects, and whose desire to promote the amelioration of the laws and institutions of the country, have rendered his name the object of general attachment and veneration. Educated in England, under the tender and affectionate care of a most affectionate mother, I have learned from my infancy to respect and love the constitution of my native country. It will be my
GATEWAY OF ST. JAMES’S PALACE
unceasing study to maintain the reformed religion as by law established, securing at the same time, to all, the full enjoyment of religious liberty; and I shall steadily protect the rights, and promote to the utmost of my power the happiness and welfare, of all classes of my subjects.”
The demeanour of the Queen on this difficult and agitating occasion is described as composed and dignified. She received the homage of the nobility without any undue excitement, and her delivery of the address was an admirable specimen of the clear and impressive reading to which her Majesty has since accustomed the public. Occasionally she glanced towards Lord Melbourne for guidance; but this occurred very seldom, and for the most part her self-possession was extraordinary. The quietude of manner was now and then broken by touches of natural feeling which moved the hearts of all present. Her Majesty was particularly considerate to the Royal Dukes, her uncles; and when the Duke of Sussex (who was infirm) presented himself to take the
QUEEN VICTORIA AT THE TIME OF HER ACCESSION.
oath of allegiance, and was about to kneel, she anticipated his action, kissed his cheek, and said, with great tenderness of tone and gesture, “Do not kneel, my uncle, for I am still Victoria, your niece.”
On the whole, that day was the most memorable in the Queen’s life, and its effects were seen next morning in an aspect of pallor and fatigue. An inexperienced girl, only just eighteen, had been invested with a power which carried with it the gravest responsibilities towards innumerable millions; and she had for the first time to discharge the duties of the State—duties of which she could have had no practical knowledge until then—under the affliction of a personal loss, for there can be no doubt that she was attached to her uncle, the late King. The lonely height of regal splendour was never more sharply or intensely felt than by that young Princess in the first hours of her grandeur and her burden. It is true that the death of King William was not unexpected, and that his niece had for some years been familiarised with the fact that, in the ordinary course of nature, she would one day succeed to the crown. But death is always surprising when it comes, and the new monarch had seen little of the ceremonial life of courts before her elevation to the throne. Owing to the temporary failure of health to which we have alluded, the Princess had not been made fully aware of her destiny until after she had entered her twelfth year. She had probably thought but little of the future in the intervening time; and at eighteen she was called upon to administer the affairs of a vast Empire, full of varied races, of complex interests, and of unsettled problems.
The new sovereign was proclaimed under the title of “Alexandrina Victoria”; but the first name has not been officially used since that day. The appearance of the Queen at one of the windows of St. James’s Palace, on the morning of June 21st, was greeted with immense enthusiasm by a vast crowd of people who had assembled to hear the Proclamation read, but who did not anticipate that the sovereign would present herself. At ten o’clock, the guns in the Park fired a salute, and immediately afterwards her Majesty stood conspicuously before her subjects. Dressed very simply in deep mourning, her fair hair and clear complexion came out the more effectively for their black surroundings. With visible emotion, and with her face bathed in tears, she listened to the reading of the Proclamation, supported by Lord Melbourne on the one side, and by Lord Lansdowne on the other, both dressed in court costume; while close at hand was the Duchess of Kent. The court-yard of the Palace was filled with a brilliant assemblage of high functionaries, consisting of Garter King-at-Arms, heralds and pursuivants, officers-of-arms on horseback, sergeants-at-arms, the sergeant-trumpeter, the Knights-Marshal and their men, the Duke of Norfolk as Earl-Marshal of England, and others—all clad in the picturesque dresses and wearing the insignia of their offices. At the conclusion of the Proclamation the Queen threw herself into the arms of her mother, and gave free vent to her feelings, while the band played the National Anthem, the Park and Tower guns discharged their salvos, and the spectators burst into repeated acclamations.
In some respects, the accession of Queen Victoria took place at a fortunate time. England was at peace with all foreign Powers; her colonies were undisturbed, with the exception of Canada, where some long-seated discontents were on the eve of breaking out into a rebellion which for a while proved formidable; and, about three years before, slavery had ceased in all British possessions. At home, several of the more difficult questions of politics and statecraft had been settled, either permanently or for a time, in the two preceding reigns; so that large sections of the people, formerly disloyal, or at least unfriendly to the existing order, were well disposed towards a form of government which no longer appeared in the light of an oppression. The repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts, in 1828, had conciliated the Dissenters; the removal of Roman Catholic disabilities, in 1829, had abolished one of the grievances of Ireland. By the Reform Bill of 1832—the temporary defeat of which had very nearly plunged the country into revolution—the middle classes had obtained a considerable accession of political power. The sanguinary rigour of the criminal laws had been partially mitigated; and, in September, 1835, an Act was passed for reforming the government of municipal corporations. The great Constitutional question, touching on the relation of the sovereign towards the Cabinet, had been virtually settled, during the same year, in harmony with those Parliamentary claims which were at any rate in accordance with the current of popular feeling. France—the great hotbed of revolution—was comparatively tranquil; and nothing in the general state of the world betokened the advent of any serious troubles.
Lord Melbourne, who held the office of Prime Minister at the time of the Queen’s accession, was an easy-tempered man of the world, well versed in political affairs, but possessed of little power as a speaker, and distinguished rather for tact than high statesmanship. He had entered public life in 1805 as an adherent of Charles James Fox, and therefore as a Whig of the most pronounced type; it was as leader of the Whigs that he now held power; but in the latter part of the reign of George IV. he had taken office under the Conservative Administrations of Mr. Canning, Lord Goderich, and the Duke of Wellington. In truth, he cared more for government than for legislation, and was therefore well disposed to join any set of politicians who seemed capable of conducting the affairs of the country with firmness and sense. Still, his most natural and permanent inclinations were towards a moderate Whiggism, very different, however, from the quasi-Radicalism of Fox, which he had adopted in the days of his youth. In 1830 he accepted the seals of the Home Office in the Government of Earl Grey; and this brought him back to the old connection. On the retirement of Lord Grey, in July, 1834, he succeeded to the Premiership; but in the following November the King dismissed the Ministry without any reference to the wishes of Parliament, and placed the Government in the hands of Sir Robert Peel. This was the occasion of that Constitutional struggle which, in consequence of the House of Commons gaining the day, has fixed the later practice in accordance with what are usually regarded as popular principles. Sir Robert Peel encountered so much opposition that, in April, 1835, he was compelled to resign, and Lord Melbourne for the second time became First Lord of the Treasury.
It was from this versatile, well-informed, but not very profound statesman that her Majesty received her first practical instructions in the theory and working of the British Constitution. That Lord Melbourne discharged his office with ability, devotion, and conscientiousness, is generally admitted; but it may be questioned whether he did not, however unintentionally, give something of a party bias to her Majesty’s conceptions of policy, and whether his teachings did not too much depress the regal power in England. It is in truth only within the present reign that it has come to be a fixed principle in English affairs that the Ministers for the time being are to be chosen from the majority of the
LORD MELBOURNE.
House of Commons, without the least regard to the sovereign’s desires. Melbourne himself, as we have seen, suffered from William’s assertion of his independence in the matter of choosing his Ministers; and it was perhaps not unnatural that he should wish to establish a contrary practice, by instilling into the mind of his illustrious pupil the conviction that absolute submission to the Parliamentary majority (or rather to the majority in the Lower House) was the only Constitutional course. But in fact that very course was an innovation; and to Lord Melbourne, more than to any other man, is the innovation attributable. There had undoubtedly been a movement in this direction since the latter end of the seventeenth century; but it had been occasional rather
PROCLAMATION OF THE QUEEN AT ST. JAMES’S PALACE. ([See p. 22.])
than continuous, and was frequently checked by reactions towards the other practice.
From an early date in the Middle Ages, the King of England was assisted in the task of governing by the Privy Council, the members of which body did not, at the utmost, much exceed twelve. All were appointed by the sovereign, and each was removable at his pleasure. In process of time, the number of councillors became so great that their capacity for the despatch of business was seriously impaired; and in 1679 Charles II. limited the assembly to thirty members, of whom fifteen were to be the principal officers of State. Those functionaries had already assumed, under the name of the “Cabinet,” a species of separate existence, though only as a part of the larger body to which they belonged. It was not until shortly after the Restoration that this interior council acquired much importance; and by many it was regarded as unconstitutional and dangerous. Even at the present day, the Cabinet, in the striking language of Macaulay, “still continues to be altogether unknown to the law: the names of the noblemen and gentlemen who compose it are never officially announced to the public; no record is kept of its meetings and resolutions, nor has its existence ever been recognised by any Act of Parliament.”[5] Nevertheless, the Cabinet, having gained a place in the machinery of the State, gradually drew to itself greater powers; and when, in 1693, the Earl of Sunderland persuaded William III. to choose his Ministers from among the members of the predominant party in the House of Commons, it is obvious that both the Legislature and the Government obtained increased importance. Yet the King still allowed himself considerable latitude, and had certainly no intention of giving up all power in the matter.
The eighteenth century was mainly divided between the laxity of the first two Georges—who, as foreigners largely concerned in Continental affairs, were glad to leave much to their Ministers, especially to so powerful a man as Sir Robert Walpole, though their powers of initiative were not entirely abandoned—and the high-prerogative ideas of the third George, who conceived that the kingly office had been unduly lowered since the Revolution of 1688, and who resented the supremacy of a few Whig families. Whatever may be thought of his policy or his motives, it cannot be denied that George III. was within his right in determining to have an actual voice in the appointment of his Ministers. A legal authority says:—“The Cabinet Council, as it is called, consists of those Ministers of State who are more immediately honoured with his Majesty’s confidence, and who are summoned to consult upon the important and arduous discharge of the executive authority. Their number and selection depend only upon the King’s pleasure; and each member of that Council receives a summons or message for every attendance.” Such is the statement of Mr. Edward Christian, Chief Justice of the Isle of Ely, and Downing Professor of the Laws of England in the University of Cambridge, in a note to the fourteenth edition of Blackstone’s Commentaries, published in 1803; and similar expositions appear in much more recent law-books. Originally, the Cabinet Council was a committee of the Privy Council: it is now, in effect, very little else than a committee of the House of Commons; and it was Lord Melbourne’s instructions to the young Queen which gave it finally, and perhaps irrevocably, that character.
Queen Victoria and her mother left Kensington on the 13th of July, and proceeded to Buckingham Palace, a residence which George IV. had favoured, and which William IV. detested and forsook. A levee was held shortly after her Majesty’s arrival; on which occasion the Queen is said to have presented a striking appearance, her head glittering with diamonds, and her breast covered with the insignia of the Garter and other orders. More important business, however, was approaching, and on the 17th of the month the Queen went in State to the House of Lords to dissolve Parliament. Addressing both Houses, her Majesty said:—“I have been anxious to seize the first opportunity of meeting you, in order that I might repeat in person my cordial thanks for your condolence upon the death of his late Majesty, and for the expression of attachment and affection with which you congratulated me upon my accession to the throne. I am very desirous of renewing the assurances of my determination to maintain the Protestant religion as established by law; to secure to all the free exercise of the rights of conscience; to protect the liberties, and to promote the welfare, of all classes of the community. I rejoice that, in ascending the throne, I find the country in amity with all foreign Powers; and, while I faithfully perform the engagements of the Crown, and carefully watch over the interests of my subjects, it will be the constant object of my solicitude to maintain the blessings of peace.” After alluding to the chief events of the session, the Queen concluded by observing:—“I ascend the throne with a deep sense of the responsibility which is imposed upon me; but I am supported by the consciousness of my own right intentions, and by my dependence upon the protection of Almighty God. It will be my care to strengthen our institutions, civil and ecclesiastical, by discreet improvement, wherever improvement is required, and to do all in my power to compose and allay animosity and discord. Acting upon these principles, I shall on all occasions look with confidence to the wisdom of Parliament and the affection of my people, which form the true support of the dignity of the Crown, and ensure the stability of the Constitution.”
In the course of this speech—which was delivered with great clearness and elocutionary power—the Queen expressed marked pleasure at a further mitigation of the criminal code, which she hailed as an auspicious commencement of her reign. The change was assuredly much needed, and the subject had engaged the attention of eminent statesmen and lawyers for several years. Jeremy Bentham had exposed the unreasonable and cruel severity of the punishments attached to comparatively trivial offences; and Sir Samuel Romilly, seconded by Sir James Mackintosh and Sir Fowell Buxton, had brought the state of the law before the notice of the Legislature. For a long while, the disinclination of Parliament to deal with important reforms kept this crying abuse of justice in the background; but in 1833 a Royal Commission was issued, for the purpose of inquiring how far it might be expedient to reduce the written and unwritten law of the country into one digest, and to report on the best manner of doing it. In the following year, the Commissioners were further required to state their opinions on the subject of the employment of counsel by prisoners, and on capital punishment. At the present day, it seems almost incredible that until 1836 the accused in criminal trials were not professionally defended. But still worse was the merciless spirit with which the rights of property were hedged about. A case is reported in which a poor Cornish woman, who, urged by want caused by the impressment of her husband as a seaman, had stolen a piece of cloth from a tradesman’s door, was hanged for the fact. Indeed, in the earlier years of the present century, the death-penalty was so frequent, and attached to so many offences, that numerous criminals were executed regularly every Monday morning outside Newgate. The extreme rigour of the law, however, was softened by various Acts of Parliament, passed from 1824 to 1829, with which the name of Sir Robert Peel is honourably associated. But much still remained to be done; and the Acts to which the Queen alluded, and which were introduced into the House of Commons by Lord John Russell, confined the punishment of death to high treason, and, with some exceptions, to offences consisting of, or aggravated by, violence to the person, or tending directly to endanger life. By the Criminal Law Consolidation Acts of 1861, death is now confined to treason and wilful murder; so that the reign of Queen Victoria has been distinguished, amongst other things, by a great and beneficent reform in the criminal laws of England.
The General Election followed quickly on the dissolution of Parliament, and the Whigs, who had been losing popularity for some time past, proceeded to the country with the questionable credit of being supported by Royal favour. Personally, the Queen liked Lord Melbourne, and readily adopted the political opinions he advanced. The Ministerialists made the most of the fact, and it was even said that they went about “placarded with her Majesty’s name.” But it is not improbable that this very circumstance told against them in many quarters, by inducing waverers to believe that the holders of office were endeavouring to influence the electorate after a manner entirely foreign to constitutional usage. At any rate, the Government lost seriously in the counties; yet, owing to their gains among the borough constituencies, and the large amount of support obtained in Scotland and Ireland, they returned to Westminster with a small majority, though with an appreciable loss of political repute. Parliament reassembled on the 20th of November, and on the 12th of December the Queen sent a message to the House of Commons asking for a suitable provision for the Duchess of Kent. This was made; the Civil List was settled, though not without some opposition from the economists; and the necessary preliminaries of a new reign were complete. The income of the Queen’s mother was fixed at
BANQUET TO THE QUEEN IN THE GUILDHALL (NOVEMBER 9, 1837). ([See p. 31.])
£30,000, as against £22,000 previously; while the Civil List of her Majesty was settled at £385,000 a year, including £60,000 for the Privy Purse.
The Queen at once threw herself with business-like precision into the duties of her high office. She rose at eight, signed despatches until the breakfast hour, and then sent one of the servants to “invite” the Duchess of Kent to the Royal table. Such was the rather cold formality observed by the young monarch; and in other respects the etiquette of a Court seems to have been followed with rigid exactness. The Duchess never approached the Queen unless specially summoned, and always refrained from conversing on affairs of State. These restraints were considered necessary, in order to prevent any suspicion of undue influence by the mother over the daughter; but they were very distressing to the former. The late Mr. Charles C. F. Greville, for many years Clerk of the Council, was told by the Princess de Lieven that the Duchess of Kent was “overwhelmed with vexation and disappointment.” The same authority adds that the Queen behaved with kindness and attention to her parent, but she had rendered herself quite independent of the Duchess, who painfully felt her own insignificance. For eighteen years, she complained to Princess de Lieven, she had made her child the sole object of all her thoughts and hopes; and now she was taken from her. Speaking from his own observations, Mr. Greville remarks:—“In the midst of all her propriety of mind and conduct, the young Queen begins to exhibit slight signs of a peremptory disposition, and it is impossible not to suspect that, as she gains confidence, and as her character begins to develop, she will evince a strong will of her own.”[6] With respect to the Queen and the Duchess, it should be recollected that one in the exalted position of the former is necessarily bound by other than domestic rules.
At twelve o’clock, the sovereign conferred with her Ministers, and the serious business of the day at once began. When a document was handed to her Majesty, she read it without comment until the end was reached, the Ministers in the meanwhile observing a profound silence. The interval between the termination of the Council and the dinner-hour was devoted to riding or walking, and the public had many opportunities of observing the admirable style in which the Queen sat her horse. At dinner, the first Lord-in-waiting took the head of the table, opposite to whom was the chief Equerry-in-waiting. The Queen sat half-way down on the right hand, and the guests were of course placed according to their respective ranks. At an early hour, her Majesty left the table for the drawing-room, where the time was passed in music and conversation. The sovereign herself was a proficient at the pianoforte, and often showed her abilities in this respect; and when the gentlemen returned from the dining-room (which was in about a quarter of an hour), a little singing would give variety to the evening. Mr. Greville speaks of these banquets as dull and formal. They were doubtless unavoidably so; for the ceremony of a Court is not favourable to the charm and vividness of the best social intercourse.
On the 9th of November—eleven days before the meeting of Parliament—the Queen went in State to the City, and was present at the inaugural banquet of the new Lord Mayor, Alderman Cowan. The streets through which her Majesty passed were densely thronged by people of all orders, who kept up an almost continual volley of cheers as the Royal carriages, with their escort, proceeded eastward. The houses were hung with richly-coloured cloths, green boughs, and such flowers as could be furnished by the mid-autumn season. Busts of Victoria were reared upon extemporary pedestals; flags and heraldic devices stretched across the streets; and London displayed as much festive adornment as was possible in those days. At Temple Bar, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen were seen mounted on artillery-horses from Woolwich, each with a soldier at its head, to restrain any erratic movement that might have troubled the composure of the City dignitaries. On the arrival of the Queen, the Lord Mayor dismounted, and, taking the City sword in his hand, delivered the keys to her Majesty, who at once returned them. Then the Lord Mayor resumed his horse, and, bearing the sword aloft, rode before the Queen into the heart of the City, the Aldermen following in the rear of the Royal carriage. In the open space before St. Paul’s Cathedral, hustings had been erected, on which were stationed the Liverymen of the City Companies, and the Christ Hospital (or Blue-coat) boys. One of the latter presented an address to the Queen, in accordance with ancient custom, and the whole of the boys then sang the National Anthem. The Guildhall was magnificently adorned for the occasion; and here an address was read by the Recorder. A sumptuous banquet followed, and at night the metropolis was very generally illuminated. On this occasion, the Queen was accompanied by the Duchesses of Kent, Gloucester, and Cambridge, and by the Dukes of Cambridge and Sussex, together with Prince George of Cambridge. The Ambassadors, Cabinet Ministers, and nobility, followed in a train of two hundred carriages, which are said to have extended for a mile and a half. The title of Baronet was conferred on the Lord Mayor, and the two Sheriffs were knighted. It was long since the City had had so brilliant a day, and the memory of it survived for many years.
The first great historical event in the reign of Queen Victoria was the insurrection in Canada. This proved to be of very serious import, and undoubtedly showed the existence of much disaffection on the part of the French-speaking colonists. It is probable that the latter had never outgrown the mortification of being snatched from their old association with the mother-country, and subjected to a Protestant kingdom. For several years after the Treaty of 1763, which made over Canada to Great Britain as a consequence of the brilliant victories gained by Wolfe and Amherst, the colony was despotically ruled; but in 1791 a more representative form of government was established, by which the whole possession was divided into an Upper and a Lower Province. Each of the provinces was furnished with a constitution, comprising a Governor, an Executive Council nominated by the Crown, a Legislative Council appointed for life in the same way, and a Representative Assembly elected for four years. This constitution (which had been sanctioned by an Act of the British Parliament) worked very badly, and in 1837 the Assemblies of both provinces were at issue with their Governors, and with the Councils appointed by the monarch. But by far the most serious state of affairs was that which prevailed in Lower (or Eastern) Canada, where the population was mainly of French origin, and where, consequently, the antagonism of race and of religion was chiefly to be expected. Towards the latter end of the reign of William IV., Commissioners were nominated to inquire into the alleged grievances, and the report of these gentlemen was presented to Parliament early in the session of 1837. On the 6th of March, Lord John Russell (then Home Secretary) brought the subject before the attention of the House of Commons, and, after many prolonged debates, a series of resolutions was passed, affirming the necessity of certain reforms in the political state of Canada. These reforms, however, did not go nearly far enough to satisfy the requirements of the disaffected, and by the close of 1837 the Canadians were in full revolt.
When the Queen opened her first Parliament, on the 20th of November, the state of Lower Canada was recommended, in the Royal Speech, to the “serious consideration” of the Legislature. Before any measures could be taken, intelligence of the outbreak reached England, and, on the 22nd of December, Lord John Russell informed the House of Commons that the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada had been adjourned, on its refusal to entertain the supplies, or to proceed to business, in consequence of what were deemed the insufficient proposals of the Imperial Government. The colonists had undoubtedly some grievances of old standing, and their constitution required amendment in a popular sense. But a position had been assumed which the advisers of the Crown could not possibly tolerate, and the malcontents were now in arms against the just and legal authority of the sovereign. As early as March, Lord John Russell had said that, since the 31st of October, 1832, no provision had been made by the legislators of Lower Canada for defraying the charges of the administration of justice, or for the support of civil government in the province. The arrears amounted to a very large sum, which the House of Assembly refused to vote, while at the same time demanding an elected Legislative Council, and entire control over all branches of the Government.
The insurgents of Canada had numerous sympathisers in the United States, where, under cover of a good deal of extravagant talk about liberty, many people began to hope that existing complications would effect the long-desired annexation of the two provinces to the great Federal Republic. Those who were the most earnest in their views soon passed from sympathy into action. In the latter days of 1837, a party of Americans seized on Navy Island, a small piece of territory, situated in the river Niagara a little above the Falls, and belonging to Canada. Numbering as many as seven hundred, and having with them twenty pieces of cannon, these unauthorised volunteers seemed likely to prove formidable; but their means of offence were soon diminished by an energetic, though somewhat irregular, proceeding on the part of the Canadian authorities, acting, as was afterwards well known, under the orders of Sir Francis Head, the
PRESIDENT VAN BUREN.
Governor of Upper Canada. A small steamboat owned by the American invaders, with which they kept up communications with their own side of the river, and which was laden with arms and ammunition for the insurgents, was cut adrift from her moorings on the night of December 29th, set on fire, and left to sweep over the cataract. The affair led to a great deal of diplomatic correspondence between the American and British Governments; but the preceding violation of Canadian soil by a body of adventurers precluded the Cabinet of Washington from making any serious demands on that of London. Ultimately, in the course of 1838, the President (Mr. Van Buren) issued a proclamation calling on all persons engaged in schemes for invading Canada to desist from the same, on pain of such punishments as the law attached to the offence. This put an end to the difficulty so far as the two countries were concerned; but the insurrection was not yet entirely suppressed.
Although the worst disaffection was in Lower Canada, both provinces were disturbed by movements of a disloyal nature. Upper Canada was excited by the fiery appeals of a Scotsman named William Lyon Mackenzie; Lower Canada by the incitements of Louis Joseph Papineau, one of the disaffected French provincials. The two divisions of the colony, however, were jealous of each other, and this hampered what might otherwise have been a more dangerous rising. The Radical party in England supported the cause of the malcontents, and insisted on the necessity of at once redressing all grievances. The Government of Lord Melbourne maintained that the rebellion must be first suppressed; and undoubtedly that was the only course consistent with Imperial authority. In the autumn of 1837, a small party of English troops was beaten at St. Denis; but another detachment was successful against the rebels, and the garrisons of the various cities, though extremely small, held their own against the rising tide of insurrection. Aided by the Royalists, the Government force under Sir John Colborne inflicted some severe blows on the enemy; yet the movement continued throughout the greater part of 1838. On the 16th of January in that year, however, the Earl of Durham had been appointed Governor-General of the five British colonies of North America, and Lord High Commissioner for the adjustment of the affairs of Canada. The liberal policy thus inaugurated, and the victories obtained over the rebels by Sir John Colborne, Sir Francis Head, and others, brought the revolt to an end before the close of the year, and the colony soon afterwards entered on a future of prosperity.
The task of Lord Durham had, nevertheless, been surrounded by many difficulties, and, although he was sent by the British Government to carry out measures of leniency and concession, which his personal inclinations were well inclined to second, he was speedily called to account by the Imperial Cabinet for an ordinance touching the punishment of offenders, which, being regarded as in some respects illegal, was disallowed. Protesting that he had been abandoned by the Government, Lord Durham resigned on the 9th of October, and the principal conduct of affairs was left in the hands of Sir John Colborne. The policy of the High Commissioner had been swayed by truly benevolent and broadly liberal motives; but he had adopted—perhaps necessarily, considering the state of affairs with which he had to deal—a highly dictatorial manner, and the Opposition at home (especially in the Upper House, under the violent incentives of Lord Brougham) found several opportunities of effective attack. The Government, being weak and vacillating, said less in defence of their representative than they might have done; Lord Durham, in his passionate and imperious way, issued a farewell proclamation to the people of Canada, which, in effect, amounted to an appeal from the decisions of the Queen’s advisers—an appeal, that is, to a community still in rebellion against the Crown; Ministers replied by recalling their insubordinate servant; and the career of Lord Durham was at an end. Having left his post without permission—certainly a very improper proceeding—he was not honoured with the usual salute on landing, and, in revenge, caused his wife to withdraw from the position she held in the Queen’s household.
The recall of Lord Durham had been anticipated by his resignation; but the disgraced official, assisted by his two secretaries, Charles Buller and Edward Gibbon Wakefield, drew up a report containing the germs of that system of unity and self-government under which Canada has since become a loyal, contented, and progressive colony. It was not long before the Cabinet of Lord Melbourne carried out the suggestions of the discredited, but still successful, dictator. In 1839, Lord Glenelg, who had been Colonial Secretary during the dissension with Lord Durham, gave place to Lord Normanby, and he shortly afterwards to Lord John Russell, who in 1840 passed a measure for reuniting Upper and Lower Canada, and establishing a system of colonial freedom. In the same year, Lord Durham died at the early age of forty-eight; but the principles of his colonial policy rose triumphant above his tomb.
CHAPTER III.
THE DIFFICULTIES OF A YOUNG SOVEREIGN.
Decline in the Popularity of the Queen—Its Causes—Her Majesty Accused of Encouraging the Papists—Alleged Design to Assassinate the Monarch—Disloyal Toryism—Honourable Conduct of the Queen—Fatal Riots at Canterbury, owing to the Pretensions of John Nicholls Thom—Preparations for the Coronation—The Ceremony at Westminster Abbey—Incidents of the Day—Mismanagement at Coronations—Development of Steam Navigation and the Railway System—Prorogation of Parliament in August, 1838—Difficult Position of the Government—Rise of Chartism—Appearance of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli in the Political Arena—Failure of Mr. Disraeli’s First Speech—“Conservatives” and “Liberals”—Capture of Aden, in Southern Arabia—Wars with China, owing to the Smuggling of Opium into that Country by the Anglo-Indians—Troubles in Jamaica—Bill for Suspending the Constitution—Defeat and Resignation of the Melbourne Government—Ineffectual Attempt of Sir Robert Peel to Form a Cabinet—The Question of the Bedchamber Women—Reinstatement of the Melbourne Administration.
Nothing could exceed the popularity of the Queen at the beginning of her reign. Her youth, her innocence, the novelty of her duties and the difficulty of her position, all appealed with a commanding tenderness to every manly instinct and every womanly sympathy. But after a while a change occurred in the national sentiment, which was not altogether inexcusable on the part of the public, though it did some injustice to the sovereign. Many enthusiasts expected more than they had any right to expect, and were disappointed because the Queen did not at once do wonders for the removal of grievances, and the cure of national distress. Beyond these vague impressions, however, there were some real causes of complaint, or at least of apprehension. It was seen very clearly that the young monarch had placed herself too unreservedly in the hands of one political connection. The offices about the Queen’s person were filled by ladies belonging to the families of the chief Ministers. People said that Lord Melbourne was too much at the Palace; that he sought to occupy the position of a
THE EARL OF DURHAM.
Mentor in all things; and that in the General Election the Queen showed a partiality for certain candidates who belonged to the faction then in power. Ministers and their supporters did really use the name and supposed leanings of her Majesty as a means of bolstering up a Cabinet which they knew to be generally unpopular; and persons were found to ask whether the English Court was always to be the appendage of an aristocratic coterie.
Under the influence of these feelings, some men were unmanly enough to attack the Queen in public with shameful imputations. The excitement, which began during the elections of 1837, had become almost frantic in 1839. The Orangemen of Ireland, and the ultra-Protestants of England, believed, or affected to believe, that the sovereign was being influenced to destroy the reformed religion, and re-establish Papacy throughout her dominions. The Melbourne Administration supported religious liberty; to some extent, its members leant for support upon the Irish vote; the Queen favoured Lord Melbourne: therefore, her Majesty was inclined to Rome. Such were the stages by which these hot-headed reasoners
THE THRONE-ROOM, BUCKINGHAM PALACE.
arrived at their conclusion. Some placed their hopes in the Tory party; others openly declared that the Tories, could they only get possession of the sovereign, would poison her, and change the succession. Men recollected with an uneasy feeling that, in 1835, Mr. Joseph Hume, a conspicuous Radical member of Parliament, detected and unmasked an Orange plot for setting aside the rights of the Princess Victoria, and giving the crown to the Duke of Cumberland, on the ridiculous plea that, unless some such step were taken, the Duke of Wellington might seize the regal power for himself. The investigations which the Government were compelled to make raised a strong suspicion that the Duke of Cumberland was privy to this traitorous scheme. The English people were so delighted when he left for Hanover, after the death of William IV., that a cheap medal was struck to commemorate the event; and his despotic rule in the small German kingdom amply justified their fears. Nothing more, it would seem, was to be dreaded from the fifth son of George III.; yet apprehensions of a conspiracy still remained.
It is a remarkable feature of the times that during all this commotion the Liberals were the loyal and courtly party, while many of the Tories indulged in fierce invectives against the monarch. On the one side, the Irish agitator, Daniel O’Connell, vaunted in the course of 1839 that he could bring together five hundred thousand of his countrymen to defend the life and honour of “the beloved young lady” who filled the English throne; on the other, a Mr. Bradshaw, member for Canterbury in the Tory interest, alleged, without any circumlocution, that the countenance of Queen Victoria, the ruler of Protestant England, was given to “Irish Papists and Rapparees,” her Majesty, he added, being “Queen only of a faction, and as much of a partisan as the Lord Chancellor himself.” This, indeed, was by no means the worst of the speaker’s utterances; but his wildest flights of vituperation were received with enthusiastic cheers. It is but fair, however, to add that he afterwards apologised for his bad manners. At a meeting held at the Freemasons’ Tavern, presided over by Lord Stanhope, a Chartist orator proposed to open a subscription for presenting the Queen with a skipping-rope and a birch-rod. Other persons spoke with equal violence, and in some instances the authorities even found it necessary to warn military officers, and civil servants of the Crown, against such disloyal utterances. One very painful incident occurred towards the end of June, 1839, when her Majesty was hissed on Ascot racecourse. It was represented to her that the Duchess of Montrose and Lady Sarah Ingestre were amongst the persons so acting; the Queen therefore showed her displeasure to those ladies at a State ball. The slander was apparently traced to Lady Lichfield, who denied it, first by word, and then by writing. With the letter in her hand, the Duchess went to the Palace, and required an audience of her Majesty, but, after being kept waiting a couple of hours, was refused, on the advice of Lord Melbourne. She was extremely angry, and insisted that a written statement should be laid before the Queen. These circumstances increased the unpopularity of the monarch, and she was coldly received at the prorogation of Parliament.
Yet, if people could have set aside their prejudices and passions, they would have found abundant evidence that the nature of the Queen was instinct with just and honourable feelings. She had been accustomed from childhood to live strictly within her income, and to deny herself any little gratification which could not be at once paid for in ready money. The same habit of virtuous prudence continued after her accession to the throne; and out of her savings she was enabled, during her first year of regal power, to discharge the heavy debts of her father, contracted before she was born. With respect to this matter, however, it should be mentioned that, according to a statement in the Morning Post, the Duke of Kent’s executors had succeeded in Chancery in establishing their claim against the Crown to the mines of Cape Breton, which had been made over to his Royal Highness for a period of sixty years dating from 1826, and that therefore the Crown must either have paid the Duke’s debts, or suffered the mines to be worked for the benefit of the creditors. The Queen also paid her mother’s debts, which, however, were in some respects her own, since they had in the main been incurred on her behalf. With a truly liberal and generous feeling, she continued to the natural children of William IV. by Mrs. Jordan the allowance of £500 a year each which had been granted them by the King. What was really regrettable in the early part of the Queen’s reign was the completeness with which the new sovereign placed herself in the hands of Lord Melbourne and his clique, and which seemed for a time to set her in the light of a partisan. But what else could be expected of one so young, so inexperienced, so incapable by early training to assume all at once the full responsibilities of royalty? The fault was with the advisers, rather than with the advised.
The General Election of 1837 failed to rescue the Government from the difficult position they had long occupied. Threatened by the Radicals, who considered they did not move fast enough, they were obliged to lean for assistance on the Conservatives, without whose help they would often have been left in a minority. Ministers felt the ignominy of their lot, but were unable to amend it; and a painful set of incidents in the spring of 1838 gave occasion for a sharp attack on the Home Office. A few years previously, a person called John Nicholls Thom left his home in Cornwall, and settled in Kent, where he described himself as Sir William Courtenay, Knight of Malta. He was in truth a religious madman, claiming to be the King of Jerusalem, or, in other words, the Messiah; and multitudes of persons, belonging for the most part, though not entirely, to the poor and ignorant classes, believed in his assertions. Dressed in a fantastical costume, he went about the country, haranguing the people, and violently denouncing the Poor Law. He persuaded many of the farmers and yeomen that he was entitled to some of the finest estates in Kent, and that he would shortly be established as a great chieftain, when all the people on his lands should live rent-free. To the still more credulous he spoke of himself as Jesus Christ, and pointed in confirmation to certain marks in his hands and side, which he described as the wounds inflicted by the nails of the cross. Crowds followed him about, believing in his foolish miracles; some actually paid him divine honours; but a tragedy was approaching. On the 31st of May, 1838, Thom shot a constable who had interfered in his proceedings. The military were then summoned from Canterbury, when the rioters retreated into Bossenden Wood; a lieutenant who endeavoured to arrest the maniac was also shot dead; and a riot ensued, in which several persons, including Thom himself, were killed by the fire of the soldiers, and others wounded. It afterwards appeared that the man had previously been confined as a lunatic, but had been liberated the year before by Lord John Russell, acting as Home Secretary. For this, the latter was severely censured by the Opposition in Parliament, and a select committee was appointed to inquire into the circumstances; but it was generally agreed that the Minister was not to blame in the matter.
In the first half of 1838, attention was drawn away from many distracting controversies by the preparations for crowning the new sovereign. The
THE CORONATION CHAIR, WESTMINSTER ABBEY.
imagination of the populace was powerfully affected by the thought of this gorgeous ceremony, and a Radical paper of the time observed that the commonalty had gone “coronation-mad.” Political economists, however, fixed their thoughts upon the question of expense, and it was resolved that the charges should fall far short of those incurred for George IV., which amounted to £243,000. The crowning of his successor had cost the nation no more than £50,000; but it was stated in Parliament that the expenses for Victoria would be about £70,000—an increase on the previous reign due to the desire of Ministers to enable the great
THE CORONATION OF THE QUEEN. (After the Painting by Sir George Hayter.) ([See p. 43.])
mass of the people to share in what was described as a national festivity. Some important alterations were introduced into the programme. The procession of the estates of the realm was to be struck out, and the accustomed banquet in Westminster Hall, with its feudal observances, was likewise marked for omission. To compensate for these losses, it was arranged that there should be a procession through the streets which all could see. The new arrangements were objected to by some of the upper classes; but there can be no question that the popularity of the show was greatly enhanced by these concessions to the wishes of the majority.
The coronation took place on the 28th of June. Although the day began with clouds and some rain, the weather afterwards cleared, and the pageantry was seen to great advantage. The streets were lined with spectators; an unbroken row of carriages moved on towards the Abbey; and the windows were crowded with on-lookers. At ten o’clock A.M., the Royal procession started from Buckingham Palace, and, passing up Constitution Hill, proceeded along Piccadilly, St. James’s Street, Pall Mall, Cockspur Street, Charing Cross, Whitehall, and Parliament Street, to the west door of the grand old historic structure where the ceremonial was to take place. The carriages of the Ambassadors Extraordinary attracted much attention, especially that of Marshal Soult, which, so far as the framework was concerned, appears to have been the same as that used on occasions of state by the last great Prince of the House of Condé, one of the most famous military commanders of the seventeenth century. The gallant adversary of Wellington in the wars of the Peninsula was everywhere received with the heartiest cheers, and was so deeply touched by this cordiality of feeling on the part of his old opponents, that some years after he declared himself, in the French Chamber, a warm partisan of the English alliance. Westminster Abbey had been brilliantly decorated for the occasion. The ancient aisles glowed and shone with crimson and purple hangings, with cloth of gold, and with the jewels, velvets, and plumes of the peeresses; and when the procession entered at the west door, the effect was both magnificent and solemn.
It was half-past eleven when her Majesty reached the Abbey. Retiring for a space into the robing-room, she issued forth clad in the Royal robes of crimson velvet, lined with ermine, and embroidered with gold lace. Round her neck she wore the collars of the Garter, Thistle, Bath, and St. Patrick, and on her head a circlet of gold. It is mentioned that she looked very animated; and assuredly the scene was one well calculated to impress even the mind of a sovereign with a sense of lofty and almost overwhelming grandeur. The noble, time-honoured building, with half the history of England in its monuments and its memories, appealed powerfully to the moral sentiment; while the splendour of the decorations and the costumes was such as to hold the Turkish Ambassador entranced for some minutes. The peers and great officials, with their pages and other attendants, were gorgeously dressed; so also were the Foreign Ministers and their suites, and, in particular, Prince Esterhazy glittered with diamonds to his very boot-heels. Her train upborne by the daughters of eight peers, preceded by the regalia, the Princes of the blood-royal, and the great officers of State, and followed by the ladies of the Court and the gentlemen-at-arms, the Queen advanced slowly to the centre of the choir, and, amidst the chanting of anthems, moved towards a chair placed midway between the chair of homage and the altar, where, kneeling on a faldstool, she engaged in private devotion. The ceremony of the coronation then commenced.
The first act was that which is called “the Recognition.” Accompanied by some of the chief civil dignitaries, the Archbishop of Canterbury advanced, and said, “Sirs, I here present unto you Queen Victoria, the undoubted Queen of this realm; wherefore, all you who are come this day to do your homage, are you willing to do the same?” The question was answered by loud cries of “God save Queen Victoria!” and, after some further observances, her Majesty made her offerings to the Church, in the shape of a golden altar-cloth, and an ingot of gold of a pound weight. The strictly religious part of the ceremony followed, and, at the conclusion of a sermon preached by the Bishop of London, the Oath was administered in the manner usual on such occasions. The Queen then knelt again upon the faldstool, while the choir sang, “Veni, Creator Spiritus;” after which came the Anointing. Her Majesty seated herself in the historic chair of King Edward I., while the Dukes of Buccleuch and Rutland, and the Marquises of Anglesey and Exeter (all being Knights of the Garter), held a cloth of gold over her head. The Dean of Westminster next took the ampulla from the altar, and poured some of the oil into the anointing-spoon; whereupon the Archbishop anointed the head and hands of the Queen, marking them with the cross, and pronouncing the words,—“Be thou anointed with holy oil, as kings, priests, and prophets were anointed,” etc. A prayer or blessing was then uttered, and the investiture with the Royal Robe, the rendering of the Orb, and the delivery of the Ring and Sceptre, were the next ceremonies. The placing of the Crown on the sovereign’s head was one of the most striking incidents of the day. As the Queen knelt, and the crown was placed on her brow, a ray of sunlight fell on her face, and, being reflected from the diamonds, made a kind of halo round her head.[7] At the same moment, the peers assumed their coronets, the Bishops their caps, and the Kings-of-Arms their crowns, thus adding greatly to the richness and dignity of the spectacle. Loud cheers were echoed from every part of the Abbey; trumpets sounded, drums beat; and the Tower and Park guns were fired by signal.
The Benediction, the Enthroning, and the formal rendering of Homage, now ensued. The last of these ceremonies had a singularly feudal character. First, the Archbishop of Canterbury knelt, and did homage for himself and the other Lords Spiritual; then the uncles of the Queen, the Dukes of Sussex and Cambridge, removed their coronets, and, without kneeling, made a vow of fealty in these words:—“I do become your liege man, of life and limb, and of earthly worship; and faith and truth I will bear unto you, to live and die, against all manner of folks. So help me God!” Having touched the crown on the Queen’s head, they kissed her left cheek, and retired. The other peers then performed their homage kneeling, the senior of each rank pronouncing the words. It was at this part of the day’s proceedings that an awkward incident occurred—an incident, however, which served to bring out an amiable trait in the sovereign’s character. As Lord Rolle, then upwards of eighty, was ascending the steps to the throne, he stumbled and fell. The Queen, forgetting all the ceremonious pomp of the occasion, started forward as if to save him, held out her hand for him to kiss, and expressed a hope that his Lordship was not hurt. Some rather obvious puns were made on the correspondence of the noble Lord’s involuntary action with the title which he bore; and even his daughter was heard to remark, after it had been ascertained that no damage was done, “Oh, it’s nothing! It’s only part of his tenure to play the roll at the Coronation.”
While the Lords were doing homage, the Earl of Surrey, Treasurer of the Household, threw silver medals about the choir and lower galleries, which led to a good deal of rather unseemly scrambling. The choir then sang an anthem, and the Queen received two sceptres from the Dukes of Norfolk and Richmond. Next, divesting herself of her crown, she knelt at the altar, and, after two of the Bishops had read the Gospel and Epistle of the Communion Service, made further offerings to the Church. She then received the Sacrament; the final blessing was given; and the choir sang the anthem, “Hallelujah! for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth.” Quitting the throne, and passing into the chapel of Edward the Confessor, while the organ played a solemn yet triumphant strain, her Majesty was relieved of her Imperial Robe of State, and arrayed in one of purple velvet. Thus adorned, with the crown upon her head, the sceptre with the cross in the right hand, and the orb in the left, the Queen presented herself at the west door of the Abbey, and, delivering the regalia to gentlemen who attended from the Jewel Office, re-entered the State carriage on her return to the Palace. It was by this time nearly four o’clock, but the streets were still crowded with sight-seers. The peers now wore their coronets, and the Queen her crown; the latter of which (together with the coronets of the Royal Family) blazed with diamonds and other precious stones. State dinners, balls, fireworks, illuminations, feasts to the poor, and a fair in Hyde Park, lasting four days, which was visited by the Queen herself, followed the splendid ceremony of which Westminster Abbey had been the theatre.
In many respects, the proceedings in the Abbey were grand and impressive; but Mr. Greville, the clerk of the Council, lets us a little behind the scenes in the Second Part of his Memoirs. “The different actors in the ceremonial,” he writes, “were very imperfect in their parts, and had neglected to rehearse them. Lord John Thynne, who officiated for the Dean of Westminster, told me that
THE QUEEN RECEIVING THE SACRAMENT AT HER CORONATION.
(After the Painting by C. R. Leslie, R.A.)
nobody knew what was to be done except the Archbishop and himself (who had rehearsed), Lord Willoughby (who is experienced in these matters), and the Duke of Wellington; and consequently there was a continual difficulty and embarrassment, and the Queen never knew what she was to do next. They made her leave her chair, and enter into St. Edward’s Chapel, before the prayers were concluded, much to the discomfiture of the Archbishop. She said to [Lord] John Thynne,
THE DUCHESS OF KENT.
‘Pray tell me what I am to do, for they don’t know;’ and at the end, when the orb was put into her hand, she said to him, ‘What am I to do with it?’ ‘Your Majesty is to carry it, if you please, in your hand.’ ‘Am I?’ she said; ‘it is very heavy.’ The ruby ring was made for her little finger instead of the fourth, on which the rubric prescribes that it should be put. When the Archbishop was to put it on, she extended the former, but he said it must be on the latter. She said it was too small, and she could not get it on. He said it was right to put it there, and, as he insisted, she yielded, but had first to take off her other rings, and then this was forced on; but it hurt her very much, and as soon as the ceremony was over she was obliged to bathe her finger in iced water in order to get it off. The noise and confusion were very great when the medals were thrown about by Lord Surrey, everybody scrambling with all their might and main to get them, and none more vigorously than the Maids of Honour.”
There can be no doubt that on all these occasions mistakes and omissions are numerous. What accidents may have attended the coronation of Queen Elizabeth it is impossible to say, for there were no Memoir-writers in those days; but, in several of his letters, Horace Walpole gives some amusing anecdotes of the unpreparedness of the Court officials at the coronation of George III. In a communication to Sir Horace Mann, dated September 28th, 1761, he says:—“The heralds were so ignorant of their business, that, though pensioned for nothing but to register lords and ladies, and what belongs to them, they advertised in the newspaper for the Christian names and places of abode of the peeresses. The King complained of such omissions, and of the want of precedents: Lord Effingham, the Earl Marshal, told him it was true there had been great neglect in that office, but he had now taken such care of registering directions that next coronation would be conducted with the greatest order imaginable. The King was so diverted with this flattering speech that he made the Earl repeat it several times.”
On the 4th of September, 1838, the King and Queen of the Belgians paid a visit to England. They landed at Ramsgate, and were escorted by Lord Torrington to the Queen at Windsor Castle, where they remained the guests of her Majesty. A fortnight later, a military review took place in Windsor Little Park, when the Queen appeared on horseback in the Windsor uniform, with the badge and ribbon of the Order of the Garter. She had King Leopold, in a Field Marshal’s uniform, on her right, and Lord Hill, Commander of the Forces, on her left, followed by the Duke of Wellington and Lord Palmerston. The King and Queen of the Belgians left the Castle on the 20th, and embarked the following day for Ostend. It was a great delight to the English sovereign to have King Leopold as a visitor, for his advice on affairs of State was highly valuable.
The year 1838 was signalised, among other things, by some events showing the rapid change which science was making in the habits of society. On the 23rd of April, the Great Western steamer arrived at New York, after a voyage of fifteen clear days. This famous ship, and the Sirius, whose voyage was simultaneous almost to a day, were the first vessels which had crossed the Atlantic by steam-power alone, sails having been used in combination with steam on previous occasions. The Great Western was in those days the largest steamer ever known, her tonnage being equal to that of the largest merchant-ships. She was built at Bristol, and sailed from that port on the 7th of April. When she entered the harbour of New York, she had still a surplus of one hundred and forty-eight tons of coal on board, and the problem was solved as to whether a steamer could be constructed large enough to carry sufficient fuel for so long a voyage. The size, tonnage, and speed of this historic vessel have been greatly surpassed in later times; but the fact of a ship crossing the Atlantic in fifteen days was a very genuine astonishment to the people of 1838. Two years later (1840), the Cunard line of steamers was established at Liverpool, which soon entirely eclipsed Bristol as the great commercial port on the western side of England, and as the packet-station for the American service. Another interesting feature of the year 1838 was the opening of the London and Birmingham Railway throughout its entire length. The precise date was the 17th of September, and thenceforward the railway system progressed rapidly. The line in question, however, was not the first that had been placed at the disposal of the public. The original railway for the use of passengers was that constructed by Edward Pease and George Stephenson between Stockton and Darlington, and opened on the 27th of September, 1825. The next was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, commenced in October, 1826, and opened on the 15th of September, 1830—on which occasion, Mr. Huskisson, a prominent statesman of the time, was accidentally killed. Nevertheless, the development of the system is associated almost entirely with the reign of Queen Victoria, and we hardly think of railways as belonging, even in their inception, to an earlier period.
The Parliamentary Session of 1838 came to a close on the 16th of August. Having taken her seat on the throne, the Queen was addressed by the Speaker of the House of Commons on the subject of the suspension of the constitution of Lower Canada (which had been set aside as a preliminary to the introduction of more liberal arrangements when the rebellion should be suppressed), and on some other matters of less general interest. Her Majesty gave the Royal assent to a number of Bills, and then proceeded to read the Speech, which presents nothing of importance. The Government were heartily glad to be free for some months from the criticism and the menaces of a Parliament not very cordially inclined towards Lord Melbourne and his colleagues. When the House of Commons reassembled after the General Election in 1837, Ministers found themselves with a majority of only twelve. Conservative support saved them from discomfiture on several occasions; but this very fact was not unnaturally considered fatal to their reputation as Whigs. The breach between the Cabinet and the advanced section of the party became wider and more impassable during the session of 1838: the recess, therefore, came as an immense relief. In addition to their troubles in the Lower House, Ministers had to encounter, in the other branch of the Legislature, the invectives of Lord Brougham, who had quarrelled with his old friends in consequence of not being reappointed to the Chancellorship in 1835. The affairs of Canada, moreover, had brought the Whigs into collision with Lord Durham, whose nature was almost as passionate and imperious as that of Brougham himself. Their demerits were probably not so great as their enemies tried to show; but the conduct of affairs was weak, and Tories and Radicals were alike dissatisfied, though often for the most diverse reasons.
A good deal of discontent, also, was growing up in the country itself. The price of bread was high; wages were low; trade was not prosperous; and the operation of the new Poor Law was considered unnecessarily harsh. In the autumn of 1838, meetings were held in various localities, at which some of the speakers addressed inflammatory language to the assembled people, who belonged to the artisan and labouring classes. A body of men had arisen, calling themselves Chartists. They demanded a Charter of popular rights, the six points of
NEWARK CASTLE.
which were Manhood Suffrage, Vote by Ballot, Annual Parliaments, Payment of Members, Abolition of the Property Qualification, and Equal Electoral Districts. Several of these objects have since been carried out, either wholly or nearly so; but, in the days of which we write, they seemed dangerous and visionary in the highest degree. The middle classes, who had carried the Reform Bill of 1832 with the assistance of the grades below them, considered that enough had been done when their own interests were satisfied. A reaction had set in, and the prosperous were afraid of advancing on to the paths of revolution. Even Lord John Russell declared against further organic changes, and, in the absence of any leaders of distinguished social status, the humbler orders took the agitation into their own hands. A sentiment of vague discontent arose very speedily after the passing of the great measure which changed the representation. Bad harvests and general distress gave acrimony to the spirit of political discussion, and in the summer of 1838 a committee of six Members of Parliament and six working men, assembling at Birmingham, prepared a Bill embodying their views of what
MR. DISRAELI IN HIS YOUTH. (After the Portrait by Maclise.)
was required by the country in general, and the labouring classes in particular. This was the document which soon afterwards received the name of “the People’s Charter”—on the suggestion, it is said, of Daniel O’Connell. The direction of the movement fell into the hands of the more violent members. Physical force was threatened; torchlight meetings were held; processions were formed, in which guns, pikes, and other weapons were openly displayed; and on the 12th of December the Government issued a proclamation against all such gatherings. Chartism, however, was not destroyed by this measure. Some degree of truth pervaded its extravagance, and its influence has been felt in later days.
It is about this period, or a little earlier, that we become aware of two great names in modern statesmanship, one of which is still potent in the political world, while the other has but recently passed into the sphere of completed history. Mr. Gladstone—then a young man of twenty-three—was returned for Newark, in December, 1832, to the first reformed Parliament. He was then a Conservative, with the same High Church leanings which, in the midst of considerable changes on other subjects, he has manifested ever since. His ability, his mental culture, and his habits of business, attracted the attention of Sir Robert Peel, who, in his short-lived Administration of 1834-5, made him a Junior Lord of the Treasury, and afterwards Under-Secretary for Colonial Affairs; but it was not until the beginning of Victoria’s reign that he became conspicuous. Probably no one—not even himself—could at that time have anticipated the greatness he was subsequently to achieve; but he was slowly maturing his powers, and acquiring that extraordinary knowledge of public affairs for which he has since been famous.
His rival, Mr. Disraeli, afterwards Lord Beaconsfield, did not enter Parliament until the latter half of 1837—the first Parliament of the reign of Queen Victoria. He was the son of Isaac D’Israeli, an author of distinction, the descendant of a family of Jews, formerly connected with Spain and Italy. Isaac having quarrelled with the Wardens of the Synagogue, his son Benjamin was brought up as a Christian from an early period of his life. By 1837-8, he had made a name for himself by a variety of novels, embodying those political and social ideas which afterwards influenced his conduct as a public man—a sort of Toryism, with an infusion of democratic sympathy. It was as a species of Radical, though with Tory support, that he first endeavoured to obtain a seat in the House of Commons; but a few years later he found no difficulty in displaying the Conservative colours without reserve. The inconsistency, though of course not susceptible of being entirely explained away, was hardly so extreme as might at first appear. Mr. Disraeli hated the Whigs, and objected to several features of the Reform Bill, as giving too much power to the middle classes, and too little to the working classes, and as tending in this way to the increased predominance of the great Whig families. He appeared, therefore, to be attacking the same enemy, whether from a Radical or a Tory platform. In a letter written on the 17th of January, 1874, this was the explanation given by Mr. Disraeli himself. “It seemed to me,” he said, “that the borough constituency of Lord Grey was essentially, and purposely, a Dissenting and low Whig constituency, consisting of the principal employers of labour, and that the ballot was the only instrument to extricate us from these difficulties.” Probably, Mr. Disraeli was consistent from his own point of view, and in his devotion to certain leading ideas; but it is equally obvious that he was resolved to get into Parliament, and that he addressed his appeal at different times to different supporters.
The future Lord Beaconsfield was thirty-three years of age when he entered the House of Commons as the Conservative Member for Maidstone. He was five years older than Mr. Gladstone, and began his Parliamentary career five years later; but, from the close of 1837 to the summer of 1876, when Mr. Disraeli was advanced to the Peerage, both were members of the Lower House, except during the short interval between Mr. Gladstone’s retirement from Newark in 1846 and his election for Oxford University in 1847. The appearance of the representative for Maidstone did not create a favourable impression. He was a dandy, of the type existing in those days, with the addition of a certain Hebrew extravagance and gorgeousness. His long black hair, his sallow countenance, his bottle-green coat and white waistcoat, his profusion of rings and gold chains, his strange gestures and general exaggeration of manner, excited a sense of the ludicrous which was not fortunate for the new-comer. His first attempt at oratory had a disastrous termination. A few years earlier, O’Connell had patronised young Disraeli; but they afterwards quarrelled on political grounds, and, in reply to a savage attack on himself by the Irish agitator, Mr. Disraeli had declared that, as soon as he obtained a seat in the House of Commons, he would inflict on that demagogue such a “castigation” as would make him repent the insults to which he had given utterance. On the 7th of December, 1837, during an Irish debate, he rose to acquit himself of this engagement. The speech had been elaborately prepared, but was too high-flown for the taste of the House. Certain it is that there were frequent interruptions and bursts of laughter; but a good deal of the disturbance appears to have originated with the Irish followers of Mr. O’Connell. The new member struggled bravely for a long time against this ungenerous opposition, but at length gave way, in these memorable words addressed to the Speaker:—“I am not at all surprised, Sir, at the reception I have met with. I have begun several times many things, and I have often succeeded at last. Ay, Sir, and, though I sit down now, the time will come when you will hear me.”
The great figures of Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Disraeli have occupied such prominent positions during the reign of Queen Victoria, that it has seemed necessary to make special reference to their rise as politicians. At this period, both sat on the Conservative side of the House. But their Conservatism was of two very different orders; Mr. Gladstone’s being more of the steady, orthodox kind, while Mr. Disraeli’s shot forth into novelties and unexpected developments, touching on autocracy in one direction, and on democratic power in another. The term “Conservative,” it may be here remarked, arose about the commencement of the Queen’s reign, or at any rate not long before. Since 1832, also, it had been not unusual for certain enthusiasts of the opposite party to call themselves Liberals; but the older members of both bodies preferred the historic appellations of Whig and Tory. “Radical” was another term belonging to the same epoch; so that we find, at the beginning of the Victorian era, all the party watchwords which are still active in the political arena.
The leading events in the earlier months of 1839 were the occupation of Aden, on the 20th of January, by the troops of the East India Company; the opening of Parliament by the Queen in person on the 5th of February; and the arrest by the Chinese Government, on the 7th of April, of Captain Elliot, the superintendent of British trade in China, who was compelled to deliver up opium to the value of £3,000,000. Aden is a town and harbour at the south-western extremity of Arabia. It was at that time a miserable collection of mud huts, containing not more than six hundred inhabitants, but is now, under English rule, a flourishing and populous place of trade, a coaling-station of the Anglo-Indian mails, and a singularly convenient position for communication with Asia and Africa. A British merchant-vessel having been shipwrecked off the coast of Aden, the barbarian natives of which plundered and ill-used the crew, a war-ship was despatched from Bombay in 1838, to oblige the reigning Sultan (a half-savage potentate) to make restitution. It is evident, however, that the East Indian authorities were rather glad of the incident, since it gave them a much-desired pretext for impressing on the petty sovereign of the country—with that persuasiveness which the presence of a ship-of-war so greatly facilitates—the desirability (from our point of view) of ceding Aden and the adjacent lands to the English. The Sultan agreed to the proposal, but afterwards endeavoured to break his promise, when he was compelled by force to submit.
Affairs of this nature have always their questionable side; but the Chinese war was much worse. An English factory was established at Canton in 1680, and several were in existence in 1839. A factory, in the Anglo-Indian sense of the word, is not a place of manufacture, but a place of trade. One of the principal trades we pursued at Canton was the trade in opium, which, having been grown in India, was smuggled into China, in defiance of the express prohibition of the Imperial Government. The use of opium ruined the health, and corrupted the whole moral nature, of innumerable Chinamen; but the culture and exportation of the poisonous drug yielded a large revenue to the Indian Government, as well as a great profit to the traders; and the reasonable wishes of the Chinese authorities were therefore to be disregarded. Frequent dissensions arose in consequence; and at length, in 1839, matters came to a crisis with the arrest of Captain Elliot, and the seizure of the opium over which he had control. A naval war, ultimately supported by a military force, soon afterwards broke out between England and China, and lasted, with brief interruptions, until the 29th of August, 1842, when a treaty of peace was concluded at Nankin, the Imperial sanction of which was received on the 15th of September. Amicable relations were thus re-established for a few years; but at a later period hostilities again broke out, owing to repeated misunderstandings between the British authorities and the Chinese Government. By the Treaty of 1842 (the formal ratifications of which were exchanged between the Emperor and Queen Victoria on the 22nd of July, 1843), it was provided that Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo, and Shanghae, should, in addition to Canton, be thrown open to the British, who were permitted to maintain a consul at each of the five ports; and that the island of Hong-Kong should belong in perpetuity to England. We had succeeded by virtue of superior force; yet such triumphs yield nothing but a feeling of shame to any well-informed
THE COUNCIL CHAMBER, ST. JAMES’S PALACE.
Englishman whose mind is not vitiated by false reasoning or self-interest. The Chinese fought in defence of their cities with a heroism which would have called forth the generous praises of Plutarch; and the pitiable spectacle of brave men slaying their wives and children, and then themselves, rather than fall into the hands of the enemy, should have burnt like red-hot iron into the consciences of the opium-mongers who provoked the war.
These were matters in which the Queen was not immediately concerned, though it would be unfitting to omit them from any account of her reign. But a complication had arisen in Jamaica which led to a Ministerial crisis in England, involving points of constitutional practice that were very important to her Majesty’s position. Slavery had been abolished in Jamaica in the year 1834; but the troubles inseparable from that detestable system did not cease with its abrogation. The planters continued to be insolent and cruel. They evaded the new arrangements in every way they could, and placed themselves in systematic opposition to the Governors sent out from England, whose duty it was to see the laws enforced. The House of Assembly defied the Imperial Government, and ultimately refused to provide for the executive needs of the island until they were allowed to have their own way in all things. On the other hand, it is very probable that the negroes were often indolent, and sometimes presumptuous; though nothing is more surprising than the temper and self-control exhibited by the poor blacks on finding themselves suddenly invested with liberty. The Jamaica embroilment was made all the worse by the imprudence of Lord Sligo, who, while acting as Governor in 1836, committed a gross violation of the privileges of the Assembly. He was compelled by the Home Government to apologise, and soon afterwards gave place to Sir Lionel Smith, who, after a brief period of popularity, became as much at issue with the Assembly as his predecessors. The representative body refused to pass the most necessary laws, and expressed the greatest indignation at a Bill, sanctioned by the Imperial Parliament, for the regulation of prisons in Jamaica, where many cruelties were inflicted on the negroes. Nor was this all; for the unfortunate men of colour were frequently turned out of house and home, together with their families, and left to starve—a fate not absolutely impossible, even in the genial climate of a West India island. The state of things was becoming intolerable, and the Government of Lord Melbourne struck a venturesome blow.
A proposal was brought before Parliament in 1839 to suspend the constitution of Jamaica for five years, and to substitute during that period a provisional government appointed by the Home authorities. However regrettable in itself, the measure seems to have been justified by the circumstances; but the weakness of the Government invited attack on so favourable an opportunity for creating odium. The majority of twelve with which they commenced the new Parliament had by this time fallen even lower, and there was enough to say against their Jamaica policy to give the Opposition an excellent chance of success. The measure was indeed carried by a majority of five at the sitting of May 6th; but this was equivalent to a defeat, and the Ministry at once resigned. The announcement of their resolution was made on the 7th of May, and, on her Majesty sending for the Duke of Wellington on the 8th, she was advised by him to entrust the formation of a new Cabinet to Sir Robert Peel. Accepting this counsel, the Queen commanded the attendance of that statesman at Buckingham Palace, but at the outset encountered him with the discouraging remark that she was much grieved to part with her late Ministers, whose conduct she entirely approved. She added, however, that she felt the step was necessary; that her first object was the good of the country; that she had perfect confidence in Sir Robert, and would give him every assistance in her power in carrying on the Government. Nothing was said on that occasion about the difficulty which afterwards arose, and the composition of the Cabinet proceeded without any material obstruction.
The next day, however, while talking over matters with his intended colleagues, Sir Robert Peel became for the first time aware that the person of the Queen was surrounded by ladies closely related to the Whig statesmen recently in office. This was very naturally considered as involving a special peril to the new Ministry; for, when it was remembered that the Queen had an avowed partiality for the ideas and political conduct of Lord Melbourne, it seemed almost inevitable that ladies so intimately connected with the Melbourne Government would use their position about her Majesty to prejudice and embarrass the incomers. In consequence of these apprehensions, Sir Robert Peel brought the subject before the notice of the sovereign on the same day (May 9th), and stated that, while no change would be required in any of the appointments below the rank of a Lady of the Bedchamber, he should expect that all of the higher class would at once resign. If such should not be the case, he should propose a change, although he thought that in some instances the absence of political feeling might render any alteration unnecessary. On the 10th of May, her Majesty wrote to the Conservative leader:—“The Queen, having considered the proposal made to her yesterday by Sir Robert Peel, to remove the Ladies of her Bedchamber, cannot consent to adopt a course which she conceives to be contrary to usage, and which is repugnant to her feelings.” A few hours later, Sir Robert addressed a communication to the Queen, relinquishing his attempt to form a Government, and recapitulating the circumstances which, in his judgment, rendered that attempt impracticable.
It is difficult to come to any other conclusion than that Sir Robert Peel was right in the view which he took of this matter. He could not have carried on the administration of the country under a perpetual liability to backstairs intrigues. Besides, it was the opinion of very high authorities on constitutional law that the appointments of the Royal Household are State appointments, and therefore dependent on the Ministry of the day. Lord Melbourne and Lord John Russell, however, advised her Majesty to the contrary, and it was the members of the late Government, sitting in council by a questionable stretch of powers that were then merely provisional, who arranged the terms of the letter which the Queen addressed to Sir Robert Peel on the 10th of May. The leader of the Conservatives became for a few days the most unpopular man in England. It was supposed by the Queen, and rather sedulously spread abroad by the Melbourne party, that Peel desired to remove all her personal friends and familiar attendants; but, as we have seen, this was far from being the case. The Whigs endeavoured to create a factitious sentiment on behalf of the Queen by stating that the ladies whose dismissal Peel demanded were “the friends of her Majesty’s youth;” whereas they appear to have been scarcely known to her until their appointment at the beginning of the new reign. That appointment was made on purely political grounds, and the Duchess of Kent was not consulted in the matter. The facts were afterwards made clear by the statesman chiefly concerned; but a great deal of unmerited odium had been incurred, and, in particular, Daniel O’Connell and Feargus O’Connor denounced Sir Robert in unmeasured language, while pouring out fulsome eulogies on the sovereign whose lawful authority they were a few years later to dispute. When the truth became known, a strong reaction set in, and there can be no doubt that what was called the Bedchamber affair was one of the causes of that temporary unpopularity of the Queen to which we have before adverted.
The Melbourne Government resumed office on the 11th of May, and lost no time in adopting a minute in the following terms:—“Her Majesty’s confidential servants, having taken into consideration the letter addressed by her Majesty to Sir Robert Peel on the 10th of May, and the reply of Sir Robert Peel of the same day, are of opinion that, for the purpose of giving to the Administration that character of efficiency and stability, and those marks of the constitutional support of the Crown, which are required to enable it to act usefully to the public service, it is reasonable that the great officers of the Court, and situations in the Household held by Members of Parliament, should be included in the political arrangements made in a change in the Administration; but they are not of opinion that a similar principle should be applied or extended to the offices held by ladies in her Majesty’s Household.” Two years later (at the suggestion of Prince Albert), the question was settled by a compromise which substantially conceded what Sir Robert Peel had required. The restored Whigs introduced another Jamaica Bill, of a less stringent character, which they carried with the assistance, and under the correction, of the Tories; and the session closed in the midst of general distraction, and the errors of a feeble rule.
COBURG. (After a Sketch by Prince Albert.)
CHAPTER IV.
COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE.
English Chartism in the Summer of 1839—Riots in Birmingham—Principal Leaders of the Chartist Party—Excesses of the Artisans in Various Parts of Great Britain and Ireland—Chartist Rising at Newport, Monmouthshire—Conviction of Frost, Williams, and Jones—The Queen and Prince Albert—Early Life of the Prince—His Engaging Qualities—Desire of King Leopold to Effect a Matrimonial Engagement between Prince Albert and the Princess Victoria—First Visit of the Former to England—His Studies in Germany—Informal Understanding between Prince Albert and Queen Victoria—Difficulties of the Case—The Prince’s View of the Matter in the Autumn of 1839—Second Visit to England, and Formal Betrothal—Letter of Baron Stockmar on the Subject—Announcement of the Royal Marriage to the Privy Council and to Parliament—The Appointment of the Prince’s Household—Subjects of Difficulty and Dissension—Question of the Prince’s Religion—Reduction of his Annuity by a Vote of the House of Commons—Progress from Gotha to England, and Reception at Buckingham Palace—Marriage of Prince Albert to the Queen at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s.
An event of peculiar interest to her Majesty, and almost equally to the nation at large, took place in the second half of 1839; but, before relating the circumstances attending the Queen’s engagement to Prince Albert, it will be desirable to pass in rapid review the state of the country at that period—a state which might well have persuaded a young female sovereign of the need of sharing her responsibilities with one of the stronger sex. The Government, as we have seen, was extremely weak; Ireland, as usual, was giving the utmost trouble; the Colonies were agitated; and England itself was almost on the brink of revolution, owing to the distress existing among the labouring classes, and the incitements of the Chartists. The last of these dangers was the greatest of all. Hunger was preaching insurrection to thousands and tens of thousands of the poor and humble all over the kingdom; some few designing men, and scores of others who, however mistaken in their methods, were sincere and even noble in their aims, were thrusting the pike and the torch into the hands of maddened operatives; and the authorities, for a time, seemed paralysed. On the 14th of June, Mr. Attwood, Member for Birmingham, presented to the House a Chartist petition, signed, it was said, by 1,280,000 persons, and adopted at five hundred public meetings. It was at any rate sufficiently heavy to task the strength of twelve men to carry it out of the House; yet when Mr. Attwood, on the 12th of July, brought forward a motion to submit the grievances described in the petition to a select committee, he could obtain only forty-six votes, against 235 on the adverse side. On the 4th of July, a Chartist riot broke out in Birmingham, during which some policemen, sent from London, were severely handled. It was found necessary to call out the military, and for a time the disturbance seemed at an end. But on the 15th of the same month a much worse rising filled the whole town with consternation. Shops were sacked, houses set on fire in several localities, and the firemen obstructed and menaced in their attempts to extinguish the flames. Property was destroyed to the amount of nearly £50,000, and the vicinity which suffered most was afterwards described by the Duke of Wellington as presenting a worse appearance than that of a city taken by storm.
It was believed by superficial thinkers that these excesses would prove the death of Chartism; and, under this impression, the Attorney-General, Sir John Campbell, afterwards Lord Chief Justice of England, made a speech at a public dinner at Edinburgh on the 24th of October. He even spoke of Chartism as a thing already extinguished, and considered that the punishment of the rioters had brought the whole matter to an end. But the movement was served by some men of zeal, earnestness, and intellectual capacity, and it had aroused the deepest feelings of countless men and women who had no voice in the government of the country, and who undoubtedly suffered in divers ways. One of the principal leaders of the party, but by no means one of the wisest, was the Irishman, Feargus O’Connor—an agitator by taste and profession, who nevertheless claimed to be descended from the old kings of Ireland. There were others who said that he was the grandson of one Conyers, an Essex farmer who settled in the sister island, and whose son thought it prudent to Hibernicise his name. If so, the redoubtable Feargus was not so Irish as he seemed; but, however this may have been, he preferred to throw himself into the vortex of English agitation, leaving the Irish work to O’Connell. More reasonable, more argumentative, and more profoundly sincere, were Thomas Cooper, a poet of some power and passion; Henry Vincent, an effective lecturer; and Ernest Jones, a writer for the periodical press. These were all men of decided ability; and their advocacy of Chartist principles gave a more solid character to what might otherwise have passed off in effervescence.
On the other hand, it is not to be denied that the working classes, maddened by sufferings which their ignorance often led them to impute to wrong causes, committed many deplorable and guilty actions. At the direct incentive of the Trades-Unions, the factory hands sent threatening letters to the masters, fired the mills, made murderous attacks on such of their fellow-workmen as were willing to serve for lower wages, destroyed valuable machinery, and kept a large part of England, Scotland, and Ireland in perpetual terror. Chartism, by its assertion of political principles, whether right or wrong, did a certain amount of good, by giving another direction to all this turbulent socialism. Yet Chartism itself had its excesses, and, after the riots at Birmingham and elsewhere, the Government became alarmed. There were physical-force Chartists as well as moral-force Chartists; and at first the former were the more prevailing. The manufacturing districts were almost in a state of rebellion when, in the autumn of 1839, Henry Vincent was imprisoned at Newport, Monmouthshire, for delivering seditious speeches. There was at that time in Newport a respectable tradesman named John Frost, who had until recently been a magistrate of the borough, but whose use of intemperate language at a public meeting had caused his removal from the post. This dangerous egotist, or enthusiast, whichever he may have been, determined on making a bold attempt to rescue Vincent. He collected a vast body of armed men, marched seven thousand into the town on the 4th of November, while a great many more remained on the surrounding hills, and proceeded to the Westgate Hotel, where the magistrates were sitting.
The authorities knew something of what was about to happen, and had made as much preparation as they could. Thirty soldiers and some special constables were assembled in the building, and made a good defence. Frost’s men fired into the hotel, and wounded the Mayor, Mr. Phillips, together with several others. The soldiers returned the fire, killed and wounded a good many, and struck such terror into the rest that, with the want of spirit usually displayed by English mobs, they fled in confusion, notwithstanding their immense superiority in numbers. Frost was soon arrested, together with two other ringleaders, named Williams and Jones, and some of their followers. They were tried in January, 1840, on a charge of high treason, it being evident that, over and above the rescue of Vincent, the conspirators intended to form a junction with the malcontents of Birmingham and other large manufacturing towns, and thus create a general rising. The three leaders were found guilty, and sentenced to death; but, owing to some informality in the proceedings, this was afterwards commuted to transportation for life, and even the milder punishment was subsequently curtailed. An amnesty having been granted to Frost, Williams, and Jones, on the 3rd of May, 1856, they returned to England in the September of that year, to find everything wonderfully altered since they left. Other Chartist risings took place in the latter part of 1839 and the beginning of 1840, or were nipped in the bud by the vigilance of the authorities. The country was in a state of seething discontent, and it says much for the mingled leniency and firmness of the Government that the army was not called upon to suppress an insurrection.
While the working classes of Great Britain were thus starving and conspiring, and while the aristocracy (in the late summer of 1839) were amusing themselves with the theatrical jousts of the Eglintoun Tournament, her Majesty was advancing towards the most important event of her personal life. Her affection for her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, dated back some years; but it was not until 1839 that a matrimonial alliance was effected. The Prince was the second son of Duke Ernest I. of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (brother of the Duchess of Kent), and of his wife, the Princess Louise, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. He was born at the Rosenau (a summer residence of his father, situated about four miles from Coburg) on the 26th of August, 1819. The future husband of the Queen was thus about a quarter of a year younger than herself; and at the time of the formal engagement he was but a youth of twenty. From his childhood he had given proof of an excellent disposition, and, as he gained in years, he became extremely intelligent and studious. It is easy to flatter a Prince, and many tongues are always ready to perform the task. But it seems to be the absolute truth to say of Prince Albert that his nature was manly, sincere, and affectionate; that his life was blameless and discreet; and that his intellect and acquirements were remarkable, even at an early age. Added to this, he was graced with physical beauty and pleasing manners; so that in more ways than one he attracted the attention of many observers.
When, in 1836, it became evident that the Princess Victoria must, in all human probability, succeed to the British throne, her uncle, King Leopold, was very desirous of effecting a marriage between his niece and his nephew. He well knew how terrible would be the weight of Imperial sovereignty on the head of a young, inexperienced girl, and he wished to lighten the burden by the constant advice and guidance of a conscientious husband. On this subject lie consulted with his valued friend and private adviser, Baron von Stockmar, a man of great judgment and experience, and of a proportionate honesty and independence. Stockmar thought well of the young Prince, but would not commit himself to a positive opinion until he had seen more of him. A visit to Kensington Palace was subsequently arranged with the Duchess of Kent, and Prince Albert came to England, with his father and brother, in May, 1836. This was his first acquaintance with the country which he was afterwards to regard as almost his own; and it laid the foundations of the subsequent union. The Prince, it was obvious, had made a very favourable impression on the Princess. How far the former was affected could not as yet be ascertained; but he knew that the marriage was considered desirable, and he must of necessity have been flattered by the possibility of such a future. About the same period, King Leopold made his niece aware of his wishes on the subject, and the answer of the Princess showed that his hopes were also her own.
During the next few years, Prince Albert pursued his studies in Germany,
PRINCE ALBERT.
chiefly at the University of Bonn. After keeping three terms there, and earning the highest praises from the several professors, he left in September, 1838, and in the ensuing months paid visits to Switzerland and Italy. Returning to his own country in the early summer of 1839, he was formally declared of age a little before the completion of his twentieth year. The Prince had all along continued to take a great interest in his cousin, and many were the rumours, both in Germany and England, that he was her affianced husband. But the statement was premature, for nothing had been settled as yet. Still, though there was no formal engagement, it came to be gradually understood that the English Queen and the young Saxon Prince stood in a certain relation of mutual fidelity, though not of an absolutely binding order. William IV. had always been greatly opposed to the contemplated match, and formed various schemes for his niece’s marriage, the most favoured of which had Prince Alexander of the Netherlands for its object. But there was now no hindrance in the way of the Queen’s wishes, and everything conspired towards one result. The Dowager Queen Adelaide subsequently told her illustrious relative that the King would never have attempted to influence his niece’s affections, had he known they were bestowed in any particular quarter. Yet a disagreeable impression had been produced, which could not be entirely obliterated at a later period.
Attached as she was to the Prince, the Queen desired to postpone the marriage for a few years, partly because of her cousin’s extreme youth. The visit of Albert to Windsor Castle in October, 1839, however, decided the matter. It was indeed the desire and intention of the Prince himself to come to a definite understanding on the question. He considered, not unreasonably, that if he was to keep himself free, and to decline any other career which might seem likely, he ought to have some positive assurance that the engagement, of which so much had been said, would really be carried out. He even admitted in after life that he was not without some fear lest the Queen should be playing on his feelings. It must be recollected, however, that the position of her Majesty, as a sovereign, from whom the first advances must proceed, and yet as a woman, from whom a certain reserve is expected, was one of great difficulty. In the autumn of 1839, the Prince had resolved to declare himself free, if further postponement were required; but the course of events made it quite unnecessary that he should speak to any such effect. Her Majesty was unable to resist the combined force of the young Prince’s good looks and fascinating manners. All previous hesitation disappeared, and, on the 14th of October, she informed Lord Melbourne of her intention. The Premier, we are told, showed the greatest satisfaction at the announcement, adding the expression of his conviction that it would not only make the Queen’s position more comfortable, but would be well received by the country, which was anxious for her marriage.[8] “A woman,” he observed, “cannot stand alone for any time, in whatever position she may be.” On the following day, an understanding was come to between the parties chiefly concerned, and all that remained was the execution of the formal arrangements. A month later (November 14th), the Prince and his elder brother left London for Wiesbaden, where they found the King of the Belgians and Baron Stockmar awaiting them. This was a time of great letter-writing, and a communication from Stockmar to the Baroness Lehzen (one of the governesses of the Princess Victoria), dated December 15th, 1839, is particularly noticeable.
“With sincere pleasure,” writes the Baron, “I assure you, the more I see of the Prince, the better I esteem and like him. His intellect is so sound and clear, his nature so unspoiled, so childlike, so predisposed to goodness as well as truth, that only two external elements will be required to make of him a truly distinguished Prince. The first of these will be the opportunity to acquire a proper knowledge of men and of the world; the second will be intercourse with Englishmen of experience, culture, and integrity, by whom he may be made thoroughly conversant with their nation and constitution.... As regards his future relation to the Queen, I have a confident hope that they will make each other happy by mutual love, confidence, and esteem. As I have known the Queen, she was always quick and acute in her perceptions; straightforward, moreover, of singular purity of heart, without a trace of vanity or pretension. She will consequently do full justice to the Prince’s head and heart; and, if this be so, and the Prince be really loved by the Queen, and recognised for what he is, then his position will be right in the main, especially if he manage at the same time to secure the good will of the nation. Of course he will have storms to encounter, and disagreeables, like other people, especially those of exalted rank. But, if he really possess the love of the Queen and the respect of the nation, I will answer for it, that after every storm he will come safely into port. You will therefore have my entire approval, if you think the best course is, to leave him to his own clear head, his sound feeling, and excellent disposition.”
It was the original intention of the Queen to make the first notification of her contemplated marriage to Parliament; but she afterwards considered that the Privy Council was the fittest body for the purpose. The Council met on the 23rd of November at Buckingham Palace—an unusually large assemblage of eighty-three members. Wearing a bracelet with the Prince’s portrait—which, as she subsequently recorded in her Journal, “seemed to give her courage”—her Majesty read to the Council a declaration of her intention to contract a union, of which she declared her belief that it would at once secure her domestic felicity, and serve the interests of her country. Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha was indicated as the object of her choice; and the declaration concluded with the words:—“I have thought fit to make this resolution known to you at the earliest period, in order that you may be apprised of a matter so highly important to me and to my kingdom, and which, I persuade myself, will be most acceptable to all my loving subjects.” When the Queen had finished reading, Lord Lansdowne rose, and asked, in the name of the Council, that her Majesty’s welcome communication might be printed. Leave was given, and the declaration was published in the next Gazette, whence it was copied into the newspapers. Some intelligence of the statement to be made to the Privy Council had found its way into the public mind; and, on leaving the Palace, her Majesty was cheered with more than usual warmth.
The announcement to the Legislature was made in the Queen’s Speech at the opening of the next session, January 16th, 1840. At the same time, her Majesty expressed her conviction that Parliament would provide for such an establishment as might appear suitable to the rank of the Prince and the dignity of the Crown. In the meanwhile, some difficulties had arisen with regard to various matters of detail. The settlement of the Prince’s household was no very easy business. With admirable sense, Albert wrote to her Majesty on the
THE MARQUIS OF LANSDOWNE.
10th of December, 1839:—“I should wish particularly that the selection should be made without regard to politics, for, if I am really to keep myself free from all parties, my people must not belong exclusively to one side. Above all, these appointments should not be mere ‘party rewards,’ but they should possess some other recommendation, besides that of political connection. Let the men be either of very high rank, or very accomplished, or very clever, or persons who have performed important services for England. It is very necessary they should be chosen from both sides—the same number of Whigs as of Tories; and, above all, it is my wish that they should be men well educated and of high character, who, as I have said, shall have already distinguished themselves in their several
INTERIOR OF THE CHAPEL ROYAL, ST. JAMES’S.
positions, whether it be in the army or navy, or the scientific world. I am satisfied you will look upon this matter precisely as I do, and I shall be much pleased if you will communicate what I have said to Lord Melbourne, so that he may be fully aware of my views.”
These most reasonable suggestions were disregarded, and, without any consultation of the Prince’s wishes on a matter which closely concerned himself, the post of Private Secretary was conferred on Mr. Anson, who had long discharged the same functions for the Premier. This was evidently another attempt of the Whig Ministry to obtain a permanent influence over the Palace. Prince Albert protested against the appointment, only to be told that the matter had gone too far for withdrawal. Fortunately, however, Mr. Anson showed, in the discharge of his duties, an entire absence of party predilections, together with many positive qualities which won the high esteem of the Prince. A question much debated at the time was as to whether the Queen’s husband should be made a peer of the realm, as had been done in the case of Queen Anne’s consort, Prince George of Denmark; but Prince Albert himself resisted the suggestion, which was certainly one of very questionable wisdom. The consideration of precedence was also a knotty point. The Queen desired that her husband should take precedence immediately after herself; but her uncle, the King of Hanover, refused to waive his right, and the Duke of Wellington, speaking on behalf of the Tory peers, declined to consent. The question was afterwards withdrawn from the Naturalisation Bill to which it had been attached, and was settled by an exercise of the Royal Prerogative, which, as a species of compromise, both political parties accepted. By letters patent, issued on the 5th of March, 1840, it was provided that the Prince should thenceforth, “upon all occasions, and in all meetings, except when otherwise provided by Act of Parliament, have, hold, and enjoy, place, pre-eminence, and precedence next to her Majesty.”
There were worse subjects of dissension, however, than those already mentioned. No sooner was the announcement of the Royal marriage made public than sinister rumours arose that the Prince was a Roman Catholic. Others averred that he was an infidel. But the most damaging because the most definite charge was that of being a Papist; and this was strengthened by the singular and very careless omission of any reference to the Prince’s religion in the declaration to the Privy Council and to Parliament. King Leopold of Belgium saw the imprudence of giving the least opportunity for doubt or cavil; but Ministers would not or could not recognise the danger. Debates took place in both Houses in the discussion on the Address, and, in the House of Lords, the Duke of Wellington carried a motion for introducing the word “Protestant” into the Congratulatory Address to the Queen. It was on this occasion that Lord Brougham, referring to some observations of Lord Melbourne, made use of the memorable words:—“I may remark that my noble friend is mistaken as to the law. There is no prohibition as to marriage with a Catholic. It is only attended with a penalty, and that penalty is merely the forfeiture of the Crown.” The Protestantism of Prince Albert was in truth well known, and so was that of his family, with but few exceptions. In a letter to the Queen, dated December 7th, 1839, the Prince said:—“There has not been a single Catholic Princess introduced into the Coburg family since the appearance of Luther in 1521. Moreover, the Elector, Frederick the Wise of Saxony, was the very first Protestant [Protestant Prince?] that ever lived.” Still, it was remiss of the Government not to make the desired declaration, especially as some of the Prince’s relatives had become Romanists. People generally have but little historic knowledge; and indeed the subject was one which history did not much avail to settle.
While the Lords were raising a question as to the Protestantism of the Prince, and making difficulties in the matter of precedency, the Commons were considering the position of the new-comer from a financial point of view. On the 24th of January, 1840, Lord John Russell moved “that her Majesty be enabled to grant an annual sum of £50,000 out of the Consolidated Fund for a provision to Prince Albert, to commence on the day of his marriage with her Majesty, and to continue during his life.” Three days after, Mr. Joseph Hume, faithful to his character as a guardian of the public purse, moved as an amendment that £21,000, instead of £50,000, be voted annually to Prince Albert. He would even have preferred that no grant whatever should be made to the Prince during her Majesty’s lifetime; but in this respect he had yielded to the wishes of his friends. Mr. Hume asked what was to be done with such a sum as the Government proposed to grant, and courteously remarked that Lord John Russell must know the danger of setting a young man down in London with so much money in his pockets. The amendment was lost by 305 votes against 38—a majority so enormous that it might well have discouraged any further opposition. Yet, on the very same evening, Colonel Sibthorp, a member of the Tory Opposition, moved that £30,000 should be the extent of the annuity, and, being supported by nearly all the Conservatives, as well as by the Radicals, and even some of the Whigs, he carried his proposal by 262 votes against 158. There was in truth a good deal to be said in favour of the smaller sum, though the suggestion roused Lord John Russell almost to fury, as if an actual personal affront to the Queen were intended. The country was in great distress; agriculture and manufactures were alike suffering; the poverty of large classes was extreme; taxation was oppressively heavy; and the revenue showed an ever-increasing deficit. Under these circumstances, the reduction of the annuity was essentially just and fair. The matter was decided on the 27th of January—the same day that the Government were so strenuously resisted in the House of Lords on the Precedency question as to see the necessity of separating it from the Naturalisation Bill. These circumstances induced in Prince Albert, for a short time, a fear lest his marriage to the Queen would not be popular with the English people; but he was soon undeceived on this point by the representations of his friends in England.
On the day following Colonel Sibthorp’s successful amendment with respect to the annuity, the Prince, accompanied by Lord Torrington and Colonel (afterwards General) Grey, who had been sent to invest him with the insignia of the Garter, and conduct him ceremoniously to England, set out from Gotha, accompanied by his father and brother. In the course of the journey, King Leopold was visited at Brussels, and the party then proceeded to Calais, where they were met by Lord Clarence Paget, commanding the Firebrand, in which the Prince and his companions were conveyed to the shores of Kent. They landed at Dover on the 6th of February, and met with a very hearty reception. This was repeated at Canterbury, and at every other place along the line of route,
COURTYARD OF ST. JAMES’S PALACE.
while at London the enthusiasm was marked and unmistakable. Buckingham Palace was reached on the afternoon of February 8th, when the Prince found her Majesty and the Duchess of Kent waiting at the door to greet him. In a little while, the Lord Chancellor administered the oath of naturalisation, and a banquet followed in the evening. The Prince was fairly settled in his new home.
The marriage was celebrated in the Chapel Royal, St. James’s, on the 10th of February, 1840. An unusually large crowd assembled in St. James’s Park and its approaches, notwithstanding the severity of the weather, which did not become sunny until after the return of the bridal party from the chapel. Prince Albert wore the uniform of a British Field Marshal, with the insignia of the Garter, the jewels of which had been presented to him by the Queen. On one side of the carriage sat the Prince’s father, on the other side his brother; both in uniform. A squadron of Life Guards formed the escort to the chapel, and the bridegroom was loudly cheered. Her Majesty soon afterwards
DUKE ERNEST, OF SAXE COBURG-GOTHA, PRINCE ALBERT’S BROTHER.
followed, with the Duchesses of Kent and Sutherland. She looked pale and anxious, but smiled every now and then at little incidents occurring among the crowd. The somewhat dusky old palace was brightened up for the occasion by temporary decorations, and still more by the presence of splendidly-dressed ladies, picturesque officials, gentlemen-at-arms, yeomen of the guard, heralds, pages, and cuirassiers. The altar of the Chapel Royal was set out with a great deal of gold plate, and four State chairs were provided for the Queen, Prince Albert, the Queen Dowager (Adelaide), and the Duchess of Kent. The ceremony was performed by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Bishop of London. All present admired the calm grace and dignified deportment of the Prince; but of course the great object of interest was the Queen herself. She looked excited and nervous, and, according to a letter from the Dowager Lady Lyttelton (one of the ladies-in-waiting), her eyes were swollen with tears, although great happiness appeared in her countenance. The Duchess of Kent is said to have been disconsolate and distressed; while the Duke of Sussex, who gave away the bride, was in the gayest spirits. The John Bull—a high Tory journal, edited by Theodore Hook, the motto of which was, “For God, the Sovereign, and the People!”—remarked that the Duke of Sussex was always ready to give away what did not belong to him. It should be understood that the sovereign whom Hook set up his paper to champion was George IV., and that therefore it was no great inconsistency to insult a Royal Duke who was also a Liberal, and the uncle of a Liberal monarch. The Royal Family, as we have seen, were not very popular with the Tories of that date. At the Queen’s marriage, only two Conservative peers were present: the Duke of Wellington and Lord Liverpool.[9]
As her Majesty was returning to Buckingham Palace, it was observed that the paleness and anxiety of the morning had given place to a bright flush, and a more unrestrained and joyous manner. After the wedding breakfast, the newly-married couple left for Windsor, on reaching which they found the whole town illuminated. A cordial reception from the residents, and from the Eton boys, sufficiently declared the sentiment of affectionate respect with which the Queen and Prince were regarded in the Royal Borough.
MARRIAGE OF QUEEN VICTORIA. ([See p. 70.])
(After the Painting by Sir George Hayter, R.A.)
CHAPTER V.
THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE.
Difficulties of the Early Married Life of Prince Albert—His Unpopularity in Certain Quarters—Attempt to Suppress Duelling in the Army—Position of the Prince in the Royal Household—Want of Supervision in the Management of the Palace—Introduction of Reforms, on the Initiative of Prince Albert—Duties Assumed by the Prince—Domestic Life—Post Office Reform—Defective State of the Service Previous to 1840—Rowland Hill and the Penny Post—Opposition to the New Scheme—Introduction of the Lower Rate of Postage—General Features and Effects of the Change—Measure for the Protection of Children Employed in Chimney-sweeping—Attempt of Edward Oxford to Shoot the Queen—Appointment of Prince Albert as Regent under certain Eventualities—Life and Studies at Windsor—Birth of the Princess Royal—Devotion of the Prince to her Majesty—Christmas at Windsor (1840)—Christening of the Princess—Accident to Prince Albert—The Eastern Question: Turkey and Egypt—Removal of the Body of Napoleon I. from St. Helena to Paris—Rise and Development of the Agitation for Free Trade.
Having stayed three days at Windsor Castle, her Majesty and the Prince returned to Buckingham Palace. On the 28th of February the Duke of Coburg left for Germany, and his son had now to enter on the ordinary routine of life, such as life is in that exalted station. The position of the Prince was no doubt extremely difficult, and at first it appeared almost unbearably irksome. Nothing could surpass the mutual love and confidence of the newly-wedded pair, and, as regarded the great mass of the English people, the bridegroom was popular. But he was scanned with jealous dislike by a large section of the aristocracy; he had not the particular kind of disposition best fitted for overcoming that dislike; and some of the incidents which preceded his arrival in England were certainly of a nature to vex and discourage. On the whole, he bore his probation well; yet we now know that, in private, he used expressions of annoyance which showed how deeply he had been wounded. His letter to the Queen, complaining of the appointment of Mr. Anson as his Private Secretary, was rather querulous in tone, however just in argument. In another letter to her Majesty, written from Brussels on the 1st of February, 1840, he spoke of the vote on Colonel Sibthorp’s amendment with respect to the annuity as “most unseemly”—which it clearly was not; and in May of the same year he wrote to his friend Prince Löwenstein that he was “only the husband, and not the master in the house.” All these opposing facts and feelings boded evil for the future.
In some degree, the very virtues of Prince Albert’s character stood in the way of his rapidly making friends, though a feeling of respect was not slow in arising. His manners were reserved and distant, and people mistook for haughtiness what was nothing more than the disinclination of a reflective and sequestered nature to enter heartily into the promiscuous and not always very sincere intercourse of what is called general society. He was considered cold and ungenial, and it is probable that to some he really was so. To those whom he truly loved, and whose natures were sympathetic with his own, he could be a most delightful companion; but this, of course, was no compensation to courtiers who expected to find in him a facile man of the world, but whose frivolities repelled and wearied him. In truth, he was something of a formalist, and formalism is the quality, of all others, which generally makes Englishmen feel most uneasy. One of his favourite ideas was to promote the abolition of duelling in the British army by the substitution of courts of arbitration on questions of personal honour. The Duke of Wellington and other leaders gave some heed to this proposal; but it had no great prospect of success, and in time ceased to be talked about. Nevertheless, it must be allowed that the agitation of this subject by Prince Albert, in 1843, co-operated with other causes to put down the foolish and wicked practice against which his Royal Highness sought to make provision. When Queen Victoria ascended the throne, duelling was frequent. In twelve or thirteen years, it had almost entirely died out, killed by the ridicule and the awakened moral sense of all reasonable men.
The question of the Prince’s position in the Royal Household was indisputably one of no little importance. The young husband possessed (as we find it stated by one well qualified to speak on the subject) “no independent authority by right of his position, and could exercise none, even within his own household, without trenching upon the privileges of others, who were not always disposed to admit of interference. This could scarcely fail to embarrass his position in the midst of a vast Royal establishment, which had inherited many of the abuses of former reigns, and where he found much of which he could not approve, but yet was without the power to rectify. And as behind every abuse there is always some one interested in maintaining it, he could not but be aware that he was regarded with no friendly eyes by those who were in that position, and who naturally dreaded the presence among them of one so visibly intolerant of worthlessness and incapacity.”[10] The consequence was that the Prince sometimes found himself in collision with functionaries who would scarcely allow him any authority whatever, and especially with Madame Lehzen, then the Private Secretary of the Queen, who seems to have presumed too much on her Majesty’s affection for her former governess. Confusion and extravagance, delay and discomfort, reigned within the Palace; the Queen and the Prince were equally inconvenienced and annoyed; yet, although some reforms were effected at an earlier period, it was not until 1844 that the system was radically altered.
There was in fact no master of the Royal dwelling, because there were too many masters. The control of affairs was divided by the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Master of the Horse; but no one of these was superior to the other two, and each acted in his department with entire independence. As their position was bound up with that of the Ministry, change was frequent, and an adverse vote in the House of Commons, on a question wholly political, would deprive the Queen of servants who were perhaps only just beginning to understand their work; for the appointments were made solely on party grounds, and
BUCKINGHAM PALACE—GARDEN FRONT.
without any reference to fitness for the post. The apportionment of functions and responsibilities was often most bewildering in its nicety and complex elaboration; so that particular matters would be left without any supervision whatever, because it was impossible to determine whose business it was to look after them. Baron Stockmar, who, early in 1841, had drawn up a Memorandum on the subject at the request of the Queen and Prince Albert, wrote, with a certain sense of humour in the midst of his grave exposition, that the Lord Steward found the fuel and laid the fire, while the Lord Chamberlain lighted it; that, in the same manner, the Lord Chamberlain provided all the lamps, while it was the duty of the Lord Steward to clean, trim, and light them. The commonest repairs, such as are required in every house, could not be executed without the order passing through so many hands that months frequently elapsed before the desired result could be effected. The state of things, indeed, was such that Dickens’s Circumlocution Office can hardly be regarded as an exaggeration.
“As neither the Lord Chamberlain nor the Master of the Horse,” said Baron Stockmar, “has a regular deputy residing in the Palace, more than two-thirds of all the male and female servants are left without a master in the house. They can come and go off duty as they choose; they can remain absent hours and hours on their days of waiting, or they may commit any excess or irregularity; there is nobody to observe, to correct, or to reprimand them. There is no officer responsible for the cleanliness, order, and security of the rooms and offices throughout the Palace.” The laxity of the system was so extreme as to be attended by certain very positive dangers. During the years 1840-41, a young chimney-sweep was more than once discovered hiding in one of the apartments. “The boy Jones” became the talk of the town; but the incident was decidedly unpleasant, although the lad does not seem to have had any evil intent. No such circumstance could have happened with any proper system of supervision; but of system there was positively none. Yet it was a matter of the utmost difficulty to bring about a change in this chaos of incompetence and corruption; and Sir Robert Peel, when consulted on the subject in 1841, deprecated any reform which should seem to impair the authority of the great officers of State. Prince Albert, however, held resolutely to his purpose, and, about the close of 1844, the heads of the several departments were induced to confer on the Master of the Household absolute authority over the whole internal economy of the Palace. From that time forward the Royal dwelling was managed with intelligence and economy.
In relation to the State the position of the Prince was even more beset with thorns than in respect of his domestic arrangements. It was impossible that he should cut himself off from all interest in the great events of the time; yet he had no place in the Constitution, and it was most necessary that he should avoid even the semblance of interfering in the politics of the country on which he had been affiliated. His own idea was to constitute himself the Private Secretary and confidential adviser of the Queen; and this was the position which, after a while, he actually filled. He read the foreign despatches which it is the duty of Government to submit to the sovereign before sending them out; he wrote notes for the guidance of her Majesty’s judgment, and in many ways assisted the youth and inexperience of one who had been called, without much preparation, to the discharge of onerous duties. The suggestions of the Prince were not seldom accepted by Ministers; though of course it was necessary to regard them as coming from the Queen, as, indeed, by adoption they did. The domestic life of this period was cheered and exalted by reading, by music, by art, and by frequent visits to the theatre, especially to witness the plays of Shakespeare, then interpreted by a school of actors who in these days have scarcely any successors. Occasional visits to Claremont relieved the oppressive monotony of London existence.
A few weeks before the marriage of Prince Albert, a social and administrative reform had been begun in Great Britain, which must have possessed a very deep interest for his humane and liberal mind. For many years, the Postage system of the country had been in a state wholly inadequate to the requirements of modern civilisation. When a regular Post Office was established in the reign of Charles I. (all communication until then being occasional and precarious), the number of persons who could read and write was small, and the needs of the public were proportionably trivial. But in the middle of the nineteenth century it was imperative that the transmission of letters should be cheap, rapid, and facile. Facile and cheap it certainly was not, and before the full elaboration of the railway system there could be no rapidity in the modern sense of the term. Education was spreading; yet, to relatives and friends divided by a few miles, the expense of a letter was so great that, in many instances, people forbore from writing altogether, or resorted to a number of curious and dishonest tricks for sending and obtaining some sort of intelligence without paying for it. Within a small radius of Charing Cross, London, letters of moderate weight could be transmitted for twopence; but beyond these bounds the tariff was so high as to be prohibitory to all humble folk. The variations in the scale were determined not merely by distance, but also by the weight, and even the size of a letter. For transmission between London and Brighton the charge was eightpence, while nothing could be sent from London to Aberdeen under one shilling and threepence-halfpenny; and the letters so taxed were not to exceed a single sheet, or they paid extra. Peers, members of the House of Commons, and Cabinet Ministers, had the right of “franking,” as the phrase was; that is, by writing their names on the outsides of letters, whether their own or those of other persons, they could secure their free conveyance. In the case of Ministers this privilege was without limits; in the other cases, the right was confined to a certain proportion of letters in the course of the year. The system of franking was bad in every way. It deprived the revenue of what was legitimately its due; it caused a large amount of petty vexation to the holders of the privilege; it humiliated those who went begging for the favour; and it spared the very people who were best able to afford the expenses of the post.
No one requires to be told that, taking the whole mass of the population, there were but few persons sufficiently intimate with the great ones of the earth to obtain franks. The less fortunate were therefore driven to expedients of their own to evade a pressure which they were unable to bear. Illicit agencies for
PRINCE ALBERT’S MUSIC ROOM, BUCKINGHAM PALACE.
(From a Photograph by Mr. H. N. King.)
the transmission of letters at a cheaper rate were formed in various parts of the kingdom, and these were much employed by mercantile and manufacturing firms, who saved largely by the device. People lower in the scale exercised their wits in a number of contrivances, which were often extremely ingenious, and which it is impossible either to defend, or seriously to accuse. Newspapers were marked with strange dots and other understood symbols, which conveyed a few general facts from the sender to the recipient. Sometimes two or three words were written on one of the margins; but this was very likely to be detected. A much safer plan was to despatch a blank sheet of paper duly directed, the mere sight of which would sufficiently assure B, who received, that A, who sent, was alive and well. The letter could then be at once returned to the postman, on the plea that the postage could not be afforded. An incident of this nature came under the observation of Coleridge when wandering about the
MR. (AFTERWARDS SIR) ROWLAND HILL.
Lake district in the days of his early manhood; and there can be little doubt that the same thing was frequently done in many successive years. The evils of the Postal system were slightly mitigated by these stratagems, but only slightly; and, as a rule, the poor were almost entirely deprived of the knowledge of one another, if fifty miles or so separated the brother from the sister, or the mother from the son.
Nevertheless, the revenue suffered from the several schemes for evading the high rates of postage. Between 1815 and 1835 the population of Great Britain increased thirty per cent.; education had made some progress; and travelling was so much more common that the stage-coach duty (though the railway system had begun by the latter year) had increased one hundred and twenty-eight per cent. Yet during the same time the receipts of the Post Office underwent no augmentation whatever, if, indeed, they did not fall off. It is clear, therefore, that the secret and illicit post must have enjoyed a good deal of patronage, though rather in the middle than the lower class. The objections to the Postal system were many and glaring. It was needlessly onerous, the average charge on every letter throughout the United Kingdom being as much as sixpence-farthing; it encouraged fraud; it hindered the natural intercommunication of the poor; it was capricious and uncertain in its operation; and it included a great deal of most offensive spying, to ascertain whether suspected letters contained more than the regulation number of pages. Still, owing to the force of habit, it survived years of obloquy, until a genius arose capable of organising a better method.
Mr. Rowland Hill (subsequently Sir Rowland) was the third son of Mr. Thomas Wright Hill, of Kidderminster, and afterwards of Birmingham, and brother of Matthew Davenport Hill, an eminent lawyer, politician, and reformer, whose name is identified with the more humane treatment of juvenile offenders. Delicate in health from his childhood, young Rowland showed a premature genius for figures, and a still greater genius for organisation. In 1833, when about thirty-eight years of age, he was appointed Secretary to the South Australian Commission, and was largely instrumental in founding the colony of South Australia. It was about this time that his attention was first directed towards the Postal system, and early in 1837 he published a pamphlet on “Post Office Reform: its Importance and Practicability.” He had observed that the number of letters passing through the post bore a ridiculously small proportion to the number of the population. His mathematical mind induced him to make calculations as to the cost of conveyance; and he found that the expense of transit on each individual letter between London and Edinburgh—a distance of four hundred miles—was not more than the thirty-sixth part of a penny. Indeed, the cost was but little enhanced by distance; and Mr. Hill therefore came to the conclusion that, if the rates of postage were reduced to the lowest, if the despatch of letters were made more frequent, and the speed of conveyance were increased, the revenue would gain instead of lose, to say nothing of the social boon.
Starting from his well-ascertained datum, that thirty-six letters could be carried from London to Edinburgh at a cost of a penny, Mr. Hill strongly urged the desirability of adopting a uniform rate of postage within the limits of the United Kingdom. That this rate should not be more than a penny, followed naturally from the proved facts of the case, and from the obvious justice of giving the public the advantage of a cheapness which would actually benefit instead of injuring the revenue. Nevertheless, the opposition to be encountered proved very serious and harassing. All the persons engaged in the old system were pledged to resist the new; and it appears to have been really thought that a Penny Post would entail such difficulties in its organisation as to be practically impossible. The Postmaster-General, Lord Lichfield, declared in the House of Lords that the proposed scheme was the wildest and most extravagant he had ever known. In the opinion of this official, and of several others, the necessary expenses would be absolutely overwhelming, while, owing to the immeasurable increase of correspondence, no building would be large enough to receive the clerks and the letters. This very argument, however, clearly implied that there was a public want which the existing system did not supply. On the other hand, many believed that there would be very little increase in the number of letters, and that there was, in fact, no real demand for any change whatever.
Some persons, from whom a greater liberality might have been expected, were as antagonistic to the scheme as if they had been Post Office officials. The Rev. Sydney Smith, who had been a reformer in his earlier days, but who was now getting old, spoke of the plan as “nonsensical,” and as needlessly entailing a loss of a million to the revenue. Rowland Hill, however, was not a man to be deterred by any amount of difficulty. He had convinced himself, and ultimately he convinced others, that letters might be sent to any part of Great Britain and Ireland for the sum of one penny, and that yet there would be a profit of two hundred per cent. The uniformity of charge would in itself save a large amount of time and trouble; and if the postage could be paid in advance, there would be a still further gain in general convenience. The idea of a penny letter-stamp was suggested to Mr. Hill by a proposal put forth some years before by Mr. Charles Knight, the eminent author and publisher, who thought that the best way of collecting a penny postage on newspapers would be by the use of stamped covers. This plan was ultimately adopted for letters, and people at the present day, if they think at all upon the subject, are astonished how their forefathers could have gone on from year to year without a method at once so cheap, so simple, and so admirably adapted to the necessities of the case.
As Mr. Hill was not himself a member of Parliament, it was essential to his scheme that he should get a spokesman or two in that Assembly. He was well served by Mr. Warburton and Mr. Wallace, who frequently brought the subject before the attention of the House of Commons. In February, 1838, Mr. Wallace moved for a select committee to investigate and report upon the proposed scheme of postal reform; but, as the Government declared that the matter was under their consideration, the motion was not carried. Public attention, however, was by this time strongly directed towards the subject, and numerous petitions were sent up to Parliament from very influential bodies, praying that the law might be altered. The Melbourne Ministry began to see that the subject was one which must shortly be taken in hand, whether in a greater or a less degree. The natural inclination was, of course, to treat it in the slightest degree possible, and various minor reforms were proposed, which only showed that the official position was getting insecure, but yet that there was a strong disinclination to sanction any radical change. At length, on the 5th of July, 1839, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, in bringing forward the annual Budget at an unusually late period of the session, proposed a resolution declaring it to be expedient “to reduce the postage on letters to one uniform rate of one penny, charged upon every letter of a weight to be hereafter fixed by law; Parliamentary privileges of franking being abolished, and official franking strictly regulated; this House pledging itself at the same time to make good any deficiency of revenue which may be occasioned by such an alteration in the rates of the existing duties.” The evidence obtained by a committee of the House had shown the absolute need and the entire practicability of Rowland Hill’s plan. The demand for the adoption of that plan was now universal, and the Government could no longer resist a change which was supported by convincing reasons. The requisite Act of Parliament was rapidly passed, and the law received the Queen’s sanction before the end of August.
Nevertheless, there was to be an intermediate period, during which the charge for postage would be at the rate of fourpence for each letter, half an ounce in weight, within the entire area of the United Kingdom. This was to save the Post Office from being deluged by a flood of penny letters, for which the officials would not be all at once prepared. But on the 10th of January, 1840, the postage was fixed at the uniform rate of one penny per letter not exceeding half an ounce in weight—a limit which in 1865 was widened to one ounce. Mulready, the painter, furnished a design for an official envelope, which, however, was found to be inconvenient, and was speedily laid aside. The affixed penny stamp was introduced on the 6th of May, and the system was then fairly launched—as fairly, that is, as official jealousy would suffer it to be. Franking was abolished with the introduction of the new method; and, although the Queen was still entitled to this privilege, she immediately relinquished it, with that good feeling which has always distinguished her Majesty’s relations towards her people. The aristocracy, and others who had enjoyed the invidious right, found even the penny postage a serious addition to their expenses; but the merchant, the manufacturer, the tradesman, the middle classes generally, and the poor, were suddenly invested with a benefit of which they had long been unjustly deprived, and which proved of the highest value in all the ordinary transactions of life.
Another social reform in which her Majesty and Prince Albert must have taken the deepest interest was in some degree associated with the year 1840. On the 7th of August an Act of Parliament was passed with reference to the employment of children in the sweeping of chimneys. By the terms of this Act, it was made unlawful for master-sweeps to take apprentices under sixteen years of age, and no individual under twenty-one was to ascend a chimney after July 1st, 1842. The law was made more stringent in 1864; but in the meanwhile it had done an immense amount of good. The barbarity of the system it supplanted was great indeed. Boys of tender years, whose ordinary treatment by their employers was of the roughest kind, were compelled, often by acts of extreme violence, to ascend chimneys for the purpose of brushing down the soot. Cases were known in which these poor little creatures were lost and stifled in the dark, cavernous, and winding passages which they had to thread. At the
RECEPTION OF THE QUEEN IN HYDE PARK AFTER THE NEWS OF OXFORD’S ATTEMPT ON HER LIFE.
best, the suffering was great, and entailed diseases of the joints, of the eyes, and of the respiratory organs. The system was wholly inexcusable, for the ramoneur, or jointed brush, now in general use, had been known for several years. It required an Act of Parliament, however, to enforce the introduction of this machine, and to protect the unfortunate children; though, in a very few years after the alteration, respectable householders wondered how they could have tolerated the abominable cruelty to which the climbing-boys were subjected.
Between the introduction of the new Postal system and the passing of the Bill for the protection of youthful sweeps, her Majesty had been exposed to a danger and an affront which she had probably never anticipated, though it has been repeated several times since. On the 10th of June, 1840, the Queen was driving up Constitution Hill, in company with Prince Albert, when she was twice fired at by a pot-boy, seventeen years of age, named Edward Oxford. Her Majesty turned very pale, and, between the firing of the first and second shots, rose up in the carriage; but Prince Albert immediately pulled her down by his side. A pleasing impression was produced at the time by the thoughtfulness of the Queen in ordering the carriage to be at once driven to the residence of the Duchess of Kent, that her mother, who might have heard some rumour of the occurrence, should see that she was safe. On afterwards driving through Hyde Park, her Majesty had a most enthusiastic reception from the fashionable company in the Row. She was ultimately escorted home by a crowd consisting of all classes, and repeated shouts revealed the cordiality of the public feeling. On the offender being examined next day before the Privy Council, he said that, although there were many witnesses against him, they contradicted each other in several important particulars. It appeared that he belonged to a secret society called “Young England,” the rules of which prescribed that every member should, when ordered to attend a meeting, be armed with a brace of loaded pistols and a sword, and should also be provided with a black crape cap, to cover the face. This society, however, does not seem to have had any wide ramifications, and was probably nothing more than an association of foolish young people, actuated as much by vanity as by malice. On the 10th of July, Oxford was tried for high treason in its most aggravated form, including an attempt on the very life of her Majesty. The defence was based on an allegation of insanity, though there can be little doubt that Oxford was not insane in any true sense of the word. He was ordered to be kept in a lunatic asylum during her Majesty’s pleasure; but in 1868 he was set at liberty, on condition of going abroad. It is a discreditable fact that even members of Parliament applied for locks of his hair when it was cut off previous to his confinement. Many persons considered that he ought to have been hanged, and, when similar attempts were made some two years later, Oxford himself expressed an opinion that, had he been executed, there would have been no more shooting at the Queen. In this opinion he was probably right; but the extreme tenderness of the modern conscience forbade the execution of one whose criminal folly had, after all, effected no real mischief. After a while, Oxford seems to have recognised the wickedness of his act, which he attributed to inordinate vanity; and during his long confinement he learned the art of graining, and even taught himself some modern languages. His attempt, however, was a very grave evil, and, even supposing there had been no bullets in the pistols (as Oxford, perhaps truthfully, alleged), might have produced serious consequences. “My chief anxiety,” wrote Prince Albert shortly afterwards, “was lest the fright should have been injurious to the Queen in her present state.” One good effect was the increased popularity both of the Queen and of her husband, who were received with genuine enthusiasm whenever they appeared in public.
The condition of her Majesty in the summer of 1840 rendered it advisable that a Regency should be appointed, in case of her approaching confinement terminating in a manner which all would have deplored. The Queen’s own wish was that Prince Albert should be named as Regent; but of course it was necessary to carry a Bill to this effect through Parliament, and it was feared that, as in the case of the Naturalisation Bill and the measure for granting an annuity, there might be some difficulties of a vexatious nature, unless an understanding could be previously arrived at with the leaders of the Opposition. The Duke of Sussex was known to dislike conferring this position on Prince Albert, and to favour the idea of creating a Council of Regency, in which he himself would be a prominent member. Baron Stockmar, therefore, opened communications with Sir Robert Peel and the Duke of Wellington, and the matter was speedily arranged. A Bill appointing Prince Albert to the office of Regent in the case supposed was introduced into the Upper House on the 13th of July, and passed with no other dissentient voice than that of the Duke of Sussex. The measure was equally successful in the House of Commons, and it was generally agreed that the father, as the natural guardian of any offspring, was the fittest person to exercise supreme power in the name of the Royal infant, until he or she had attained the legal majority. On the other hand, there was the objection that the actual ruler of the country during many years would be a born foreigner; but, as this had happened several times before in the history of England, it was held to be no serious obstacle to an arrangement otherwise satisfactory.
On the 11th of September, Prince Albert was made a member of the Privy Council, and, having been recently appointed to the Colonelcy of the 11th Hussars, he went out from time to time with a squadron of the 1st Life Guards in Windsor Park, in order to make himself acquainted with the forms of English drill, and the words of command. During the same autumn months, he was much occupied with a series of readings on the laws and Constitution of England, under the care of Mr. Selwyn, a distinguished writer on jurisprudence. He and the Queen were then residing at Windsor, the green and woody surroundings of which were an endless source of delight to the Prince. But an event was now approaching which rendered a return to Buckingham Palace advisable. The London residence of her Majesty was re-entered on the 13th of November, and, during the same month, Baron Stockmar, who had left England for his home in Coburg at the beginning of August, returned to London at the urgent solicitation of the Prince, who desired to have that admirable friend and counsellor at hand during a period of natural anxiety. On the 21st of November, 1840, the Princess Royal was born, and, although the Prince was a little disappointed at the infant not being a son, the feeling was but momentary. His devotion to the Queen during her confinement was constant, and beyond all praise. He generally dined with the Duchess of Kent, refused to go out in the evening, and was always at hand if anything were required. “No one but himself,” says a memorandum by her Majesty in an official work on the Prince’s early life, “ever lifted her from her bed to her sofa, and he always helped to wheel her on her bed or sofa into the next room. For this purpose he would come instantly when sent for from any part of the house. As years went on, and he became overwhelmed with work (for his attentions were the same in all the Queen’s subsequent confinements), this was often done at much inconvenience to himself; but he ever came with a sweet smile on his face. In short, his care of her was like that of a mother; nor could there be a kinder, wiser, or more judicious nurse.”[11] Her Majesty recovered so rapidly that the Court removed to Windsor Castle for the Christmas holidays. The Prince was always much interested in the ceremonies of that season, and it was now that the pretty German custom of setting up Christmas-trees, as a graceful means of distributing little presents both to old and young, was introduced into England. The Court returned to Buckingham Palace on the 23rd of January, 1841, and Parliament was opened by the Queen in person on the 26th. Her Majesty had but recently told the Prince that in former days she was only too happy to be in London, and felt wretched at leaving it; but that since the hour of their marriage she was unhappy at leaving the country, and could be content never to go to town. This pleased him, as showing an increasing solidity of mind, which found greater pleasure in the quiet yet joyous delights of the country than in the giddy amusements of the metropolis.
The baptism of the Princess Royal took place on the 10th of February, the first anniversary of the Queen’s marriage, when the infant was christened Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa. The Prince, in writing, on the 12th of February, 1841, to his grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of Gotha, said that the christening had gone off very well. “Your little great-grandchild,” he added, “behaved with great propriety, and like a Christian. She was awake, but did not cry at all, and seemed to crow with immense satisfaction at the lights and brilliant uniforms, for she is very intelligent and observing. The ceremony took place at half-past six P.M.; and after it there was a dinner, and then we had some instrumental music. The health of the little one was drunk with great enthusiasm.” The sponsors at the christening were the Duke of Saxe Coburg and Gotha (represented in his absence by the Duke of Wellington), the King of the Belgians, the Queen Dowager, the Duchess of Gloucester, the Duchess of Kent, and the Duke of Sussex. Only the day before, the Prince had met with an accident, which might have proved fatal. He was skating on the ornamental water in Buckingham Palace Gardens, when a piece of ice, which had been recently broken, and had thinly frozen over again, gave way as he was passing across it. He had to swim for two or three minutes, in order to get out; but her Majesty, who was standing on the bank, showed great presence of mind, and afforded valuable assistance.
During the last two years, the Queen had been rendered anxious by
CHRISTENING OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL. (After the Painting by C. R. Leslie, R.A.)
complications in the East, which at one time threatened to involve us in a war with France. The Pasha of Egypt, Mehemet Ali, had for some years made himself almost independent of the Turkish Sultan, Mahmoud II., and had annexed the whole of Syria to his recognised dominions. He had an able, energetic, and martial son (or rather an adopted son) named Ibrahim Pasha, who repeatedly worsted the Ottoman forces, overran the larger part of the Turkish dominions in Asia, and even threatened Constantinople itself. After a while, a compromise was effected, by which the Egyptians withdrew from their more advanced positions, but were suffered to retain the province of Syria. This arrangement was concluded in 1833; but, six years later, Mehemet Ali again rose against his suzerain. Mahmoud II. expired on the 1st of July, 1839, shortly after a great battle in Syria, which had ended in the discomfiture of his army, but of which he had not received intelligence at the time of his decease. A few days later, the Capitan Pasha, or Lord High Admiral, Achmet, deserted to Mehemet Ali with the whole of the Turkish fleet, and the Ottoman Empire might have been rent into fragments, had it not been for the interposition of England, Russia, Austria, and Prussia, which, in July, 1840, gave Mehemet Ali to understand that he would not be permitted to proceed in his career of rebellion and conquest. Thus assisted, the young Turkish Sultan, Abdul-Medjid, pronounced the deposition of his Egyptian vassal. Beyrout was bombarded by a combined English, Austrian, and Turkish fleet, and captured in October. Other successes followed, and old Mehemet Ali made his submission to superior power. He was deprived of all his conquests, but permitted to retain Egypt; and thus a very difficult state of affairs was brought to a peaceful conclusion about the close of 1840. There had been no little danger of a rupture with France, owing to the very different views of the Eastern Question taken by that Power and by England. France dreaded the establishment of British influence in Egypt, where she desired to affirm her own superiority; and in the spring of 1840 M. Guizot was sent on a special mission to London, in the hope of composing matters. The Queen received him graciously; yet he has left an account of a dinner at Buckingham Palace, which confirms other descriptions as to the dulness and languor of those entertainments. His negotiations did not proceed very happily; but at length the clouds passed off, and, shortly after the birth of the Princess Royal, all menace of a European war had entirely disappeared.
A minor but still important incident, belonging to the same period, tended to the creation of a better feeling between England and France, and, in a not distant future, helped forward a striking change in the political condition of the latter country. In May, 1840, during the reign of Louis Philippe, the body of Napoleon I. was removed, by permission of the English Government, from the island of St. Helena to the dominions where the great conqueror had once held such brilliant, yet disastrous, sway. On the 15th of December, the remains were buried with solemn pomp in the Hôtel des Invalides, in Paris. A magnificent monument has since been erected over the grave, and it cannot be doubted that the enthusiasm awakened by the reception of the mighty soldier’s ashes had much to do with the subsequent revival of the Napoleonic Empire.