by Frank Harris
"Don't let's argue, dear. I am Queen; I mean the responsibility is mine. You see, don't you?"
"Yes, I see," said Albert, and left the room quietly.
In half an hour she wanted him and was chilled to hear that he had gone out.
In an hour she sent again; he was still out.
He did not appear at dinner, and the Queen could not even pretend to eat.
Late in the evening she was told he had returned and she waited expectantly; but he kept to his apartment.
At length the Queen could stand it no longer. She went to his room; but the door was locked. She knocked and knocked.
"Albert, Albert!"
"What is it?"
"Oh, let me in; I want to come in."
"I'm sorry, but I've letters to write."
"Let me in, I say; you can do your letters later."
"I want to do them now; please leave me alone."
After begging and begging in vain, the Queen burst into tears.
"Oh, forgive me, I'm so unhappy. I can't bear to quarrel with you. I can't bear it."
That was the literal truth; she could not bear a momentary coldness in the man she worshiped. When two love, the one who loves the least is master; so the Queen became her husband's slave and echo.
Prince Albert's death widowed Victoria-maimed her. For years she found it impossible to take up life without him. Even her duty to her children and the Crown could not draw her from the absorbing anguish of grief; her very reason tottered, for her love was rooted in reverence. Albert was her divinity.
To the very end of her life she bowed to his authority.
And when, after many years, she took up life again without him, she seemed changed to everyone. She met her English ministers and advisers from a different standpoint. She felt herself their superior. She not only knew the English view of matters, but also the German view, and this gave her a singular authority. Her confidence in herself, her dignity, her sense of her own importance grew with the years, till she became authoritative. In every difficulty she was accustomed to ask: "How would he have acted?" It is on record that on more than one occasion she left her minister and went over to a bust of her husband and asked the stone effigy what she was to do.
Such devotion did not seem ridiculous to her, for love is never contemptible.
Besides, there was a great deal of common human nature in her, and it may be well to bring her ordinary qualities first into prominence.
Two stories that can both be vouched for throw, it seems to me, a high light on Queen Victoria's character.
She was a great friend of old Lady Hardwicke's, and used often to go and have tea with her. Lord Hardwicke told me once that as a boy he was very curious to know what the two old ladies talked about, and once listened at the door when the Queen was paying an unusually long visit.
It seems that they had sent for fresh tea for the second time, and the two old ladies had consumed an enormous quantity of muffins. They had been talking about their dead husbands, and when the Queen described how her beloved Albert had looked in his court dress when decked out with the Garter for the first time, she burst into tears. "He was so beautiful," she cried,
"and had such an elegant shape," and Lady Hardwicke sobbed in sympathy.
"They cried in each other's arms," said he, "and went on crying and drinking tea while swapping stories of their dead husbands."
When the Queen got up she wiped her eyes. "My dear," she sobbed, "I have never enjoyed myself more in my lie; a really delightful time-" and Lady Hardwicke mopped her eyes in unison.
"A really delightful time, dear."
When old age came upon her, bringing with it a certain measure of ill health through stoutness, she became irascible and impatient. As a girl even, she was far too broad for her height, and particularly short-necked. In her old age she was very stout, so stout that for ten years before she died, she had to be watched in her sleep continually by one of her women, for fear her head should roll on one side and she should choke, her neck was so short.
There was perpetual scandal in her late middle life about her relations with her Scotch gillie and body servant, John Brown. Even among the officers of her court, there were some who believed in her intimacy with the servant; while there were others equally well informed who would not harbor even a doubt of her virtue.
I remember asking Lord Radnor about it once, who had been in her household for twenty years, and whose daughter had been brought up with
the daughters of Prince Edward, but he would not admit the suspicion, though he told me a curious story of the privileges which John Brown arrogated and the Queen permitted.
On the occasion of a visit from the German Emperor, Lord Radnor had to arrange the reception. He formed up the lords and ladies of the court in two long lines, a sort of lane, in fact, through which the Queen and the German Emperor would pass to the dining-room. Just when he had got everyone in place, John Brown came in and began pushing the lines further back. Lord Radnor told him courteously that he had already arranged the court and that it was all right. John Brown told him he didn't know what he was talking about and pushed him, too, back into the line.
At the moment there was nothing for Lord Radnor to do but submit.
That evening Lord Radnor told the Queen that he had to complain of her servant. The Queen listened impatiently and replied that "It was only John's way; he did not mean any rudeness."
When Lord Radnor insisted that he had been rude, she replied, "You must forgive John. It is his way," adding, with curious naivete, "he is often short with me."
Brown's apartments were always near those of the Queen.
She sometimes sent for him two or three times in the evening. He would always come down, but he often made her wait, and even neglected to address her as "Madame"; he would just put his head in at the door and say,
"Well!" The Queen would say, "I just sent to see if everything was all right."
Brown would not even deign to give a word in reply, but went back to his rooms in silence.
Towards the end of his life she gave him a house and piece of ground in her own park at Balmoral, and when he died she set up his statue in the grounds.
One of the first things the Prince of Wales did when he came to the throne was to ask the relatives of Mr. Brown to take the statue away. It is, I believe, still regarded as a precious heirloom in the Brown clan.
In her later life, Victoria left all the ceremonies of royalty to Prince Edward.
He had to receive for her and fulfill all the social duties of the monarch, but there his power ended; he was a figure-head and nothing more. She hardly ever attended a court and gave scarcely any dinners, except occasional dinners to royal personages, particularly to her nephew the German Emperor, and now and then to some German prince; but to the end she kept in her own hands the reins of government. She did not even consult her son about anything or allow him to have any first-hand knowledge of state affairs.
She judged him almost as severely as the German Emperor judged him later.
She heard of scandals-stories of his relations with women; she regarded him as leicht-lebend-loose, if not dissolute, and there was no weakness she condemned so bitterly. She would never have a divorced woman at her court, and if she received anyone and they afterwards got mixed up in any scandal, she cut out their name relentlessly, even though she had liked them.
Looseness of morals was to her the sin that could never be forgiven.
Queen Victoria had all the intolerance of perfect virtue. People she knew and liked and esteemed tried to get her to forgive Colonel Valentine Baker; pointed out to her how nobly he had acted in not defending himself against the woman who accused him; how he had redeemed his fault, too, by years of high endeavor; how he had shed his blood for the English in Egypt. Nothing could move her. A man should be as pure as a woman, was her creed, and she would tolerate no infringement of it. Her eldest son's lax moral code was a perpetual offense to her.
; Up to the very last Queen Victoria was Queen and would brook no interference or advice. Her relations with her ministers for the last thirty years of her life were always on a peculiar footing. She had not only grown more imperious with the years, but wiser. Again and again she had matched her brains with her ministers, and a woman learns rapidly through intercourse with able men; but it was her German husband who had taught her broad-mindedness and given her faith in herself.
This self-confidence grew in the nineties to absurd heights. She wrote several messages to her people which were plain translations from the German.
At a big reception one evening I followed Arthur Balfour up the Starrs and a lady, I think the then Duchess of Sutherland, was chaffing him about the latest Royal message. "Your English," said the lady, "is not so pure as it used to be, my dear Arthur."
"I had nothing to do with it," replied the Prime Minister. "The dear old lady never even showed me the message! I wish she would, but it is difficult now even to hint criticism to her. So I keep quiet; after all it doesn't matter much-"
"Would you like the practice to cease?" I asked him a little later.
"Indeed I should," he answered. "It might lead to an awkward position at almost any time: her ministers are supposed to do these things."
The next week I wrote an article in the Saturday Review, entitled "The Queen's English," in which I set forth how this expression came into vogue as expressing how careful her various ministers had been to put only good English into any document which the Queen was supposed to sign. I went on to say that the good custom was being neglected, and I took certain phrases from the latest messages and showed that the bad English of them was due to the fact that they were literal translations from the German.
Yet Arthur Balfour knew no German and was besides a master of good English: it was evident that the Queen herself had written these messages, a custom which, if persisted in, would soon ruin her reputation as a writer of English. "In fact," I summed up, "the Queen's English is now plainly made in Germany."
The exposure put an end to the practice: always afterwards the Queen used to call her ministers to counsel.
Queen Victoria grew to dislike radicalism through her dislike for Gladstone.
"He speaks at me," she said, "as if I were a public meeting."
She loved Disraeli's deference and courtesy, and when he made her Empress of India he won her heart of hearts.
In the South African War she took the English official point of view very strongly while deploring the necessity, as she regarded it, of war; and when her nephew, the German Emperor, sent his famous telegram to Krueger, she wrote to him with her own hand, declaring that he had acted unjustifiably; rated him, indeed, as if he had been a peccant schoolboy. And when he pleaded that he thought her Majesty's ministers had directed the Jameson raid, the old lady replied by declaring that none of her ministers knew anything about it and scolded him sharply for the assumption.
"You have weakened the principle of royalty," she wrote.
It says a good deal for the Kaiser that he apologized humbly and promised never to offend again in the same way.
From this it will be seen that towards the end of her life Queen Victoria's personal influence in the courts of Europe was extraordinary. She was the oldest reigning sovereign, save the Emperor of Austria, and the most secure.
Everyone outside of England saw that she had immense power, and yet she was supposed to be a constitutional ruler.
Men of the first capacity as English politicians were astonished at her ability.
No two men could have been more unlike than Lord Randolph Churchill and Sir Charles Dilke; yet both spoke of Victoria as the ablest woman they had ever known. Still, her influence was injurious. She strengthened English conservatism and it was already far too strong; she did more than any other person to block the wheels of progress. All her influence during the last twenty years of her life was thrown against reform; she loved the established order and the traditional rule of conduct.
Her foreign policy was bounded by the idea of working in perfect harmony with Germany. She distrusted and disliked France and despised the French.
After Fashoda she still passed a couple of months on the French Riviera in the winter, but her relations with the French had been so slight and formal that the difference of feeling between the two races made hardly any impression on her. It was the South African war which got the English thoroughly disliked in France. And the high-handed, not to say, rude way the English acted about Fashoda humiliated French pride and brought the two peoples to the verge of war. I have already told how Rochefort, the greatest of French journalists, wrote in the Intransigeant the bitterest attack on Queen Victoria; he even called her "Cette vieille caleche qui s'obstine a s'appeler Victoria," (That old stage coach which persists in calling itself Victoria.) Prince Edward used to say that he never knew his position till his mother died, and at her death-bed Lord Salisbury spoke to him.
"He had always been cold to me," he said, complainingly, "but when the doctors said, 'The Queen is dead,' Lord Salisbury suddenly altered his tone, his manner, everything. He came to me respectfully; stooped to kiss my hand and hoped that I would believe he would serve me as faithfully as he had tried to serve my mother. I was really touched. Then, for the first time, I realized through his deference what it was to be King of England."
When Edward came to the throne, he brought a new policy into power: so long as Victoria lived, England favored Germany and cold-shouldered France, and the outward visible sign of England's good will was the cession of Heligoland to Germany.
Of course, Lord Salisbury knew nothing of the value of that island; never dreamed that it could be an outpost of attack on England by airships and a fortress to protect the German navy. He was blissfully ignorant of geography and gasped with astonishment when told once that Zanzibar was an island.
But he had served Victoria loyally, and up to the very end of her reign it looked as if the understanding between the two Teutonic peoples was certain to endure for at least another century.
In 1889, when I first knew him, Prince Edward was a typical German in appearance, about five feet eight in height, very heavily built, with dark brown hair and full whiskers, beard and moustache. He was already very stout; but instead of trying to get rid of his fat, or to keep it within bounds, he was much more concerned to conceal it. The trait is characteristic. He dressed with extreme care, and always with the idea that he had a figure.
Consequently, his clothes were always a little too tight, and thus drew attention to his rotundity. As is usually the case, his vanity did him harm.
His love of good living and childish self-esteem were his most obvious qualities; they went hand in hand with good humor and a certain bonhomie which everyone noticed in him. When threatened by old age, he tried from time to time to diminish his drinking, believing that too much liquid was the cause of his obesity: but he could never be persuaded to cut down his eating.
Foolish proverbs, enshrining the stupidity of the past, governed him, or were used by him as justification: "Bread is the staff of life… good food never hurt any one," commonplaces appealing to him irresistibly.
The Prince had had every advantage of both German and English training.
He spoke English however, with a strong German accent, and continually used bad English through translating literally from the German. In the same way, his French was fairly fluent so long as he kept to the commonplaces of conversation; but as soon as he had to express some unfamiliar thought he was hopelessly at sea, and then his baragouinage was that of a South German. Curiously enough, his accent in French and in English was rather like a Bavarian, with an indefinable tang of the Jew. I don't put forward the usual scandalous explanation; I merely note the fact.
The Prince's sensualism was as round as his figure, as full-blooded as his body.
He gambled whenever he could because of the pleasure it gave him; he smoked incessantly, though the cigarettes plagued him w
ith smoker's cough; but till Nemesis came with the years-ill health and indigestion from want of exercise or from over-eating, which you will-he was generally good humored and kindly disposed: un ban vivant, as the French say.
Like the average man, he delighted in popularity. He could not help believing that all desired and sought it, and if they failed, it was because of some shortcoming in them. He could not imagine that anyone would hold himself above the arts which lead to popular applause. When he drove through London, bowing and smiling to cheering crowds, he took it all as a triumph of personal achievement, a final and complete apotheosis.
Edward had all the aristocrat's tastes. He loved horse-racing, was gregarious, hated to be alone, preferred a game of cards to any conversation; in fact, he only talked freely when he went to the opera, where, perhaps, he ought to have been silent. He was a gambler, too, as English aristocrats are gamblers, and his love for cards often got him into difficulties. It has been said by a bitter but keen sighted observer: "King Edward was loved by the English because he had all the aristocratic vices, whereas King George is disliked by them because he has all the middle class virtues."
Early in the nineties I was struck by the story of Father Damien. There was an echo of the heroic self-sacrifice of St. Paul and the early Christian martyrs in his self-abnegation.
A simple Belgian monk, he had begged to be sent to the South Sea lepers. He made the choice in the spring of lusty manhood, knowing that he would never see his home and his loved ones again, in the full conviction that he, too, must catch the loathsome malady and die piecemeal, rotting for years, and praying in the end for death as a release.
At luncheon one day I happened to have the Vyners: Mrs. Vyner, an intimate friend of the Prince of Wales, was an extraordinary woman; Bob Vyner, her husband, was simply a very rich Yorkshire squire. Mrs. Vyner, without being good-looking, had an extraordinary charm of manner. I remember once saying to her daughter, Lady Alwynne Compton: "You know, Lady Alwynne, after talking to your mother for some time, one feels a sort of ultimate sympathy with her, almost as though it were love."