QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  Princess Alexandra, naturally sympathetic towards Denmark when German armies invaded the country of her birth, was, on the other hand, outspokenly anti-German. Her attitude was warmly endorsed by her husband. 'This horrible war will be a stain for ever on Prussian history,' the Prince of Wales wrote in a letter to Mrs Bruce, his late Governor's widow, 'and I think it is very wrong of our government not to have interfered before now.'

  'The dreadful war in Denmark causes both the Princess and myself great anxiety,' the Prince wrote in a letter to Lord Spencer, his Groom of the Stole, 'and the conduct of the Prussians and the Austrians is really quite scandalous.'21 Such remarks were not only addressed to his friends. The Prussian Ambassador, the disagreeable Count Bernstorff, felt constrained to register a formal complaint about the Prince's behaviour which was matched by that of the Princess, who pointedly refused to speak to Bernstorff after she had observed him declining to raise his glass in a toast to the King of Denmark.22

  The Prince and Princess were resolved not to be silenced. Nothing the Queen could do prevented them from speaking out. So strongly did the Prince feel, in fact, that he even discussed what he considered to be the pusillanimous policies of the Government with the leading members of the Opposition after his offer to act as an intermediary between London and Copenhagen had been treated - as the Queen instructed that it should be treated - 'with extreme caution'. 'Oh,' the Queen lamented to her daughter in Germany, 'if Bertie's wife were only a good German and not a Dane! ... It is terrible to have the poor boy on the wrong side, and aggravates my sufferings greatly.'23

  With her eldest son being so troublesome, with his wife expecting a baby (a weak thing born prematurely as a result, so it was said, of her distress over her country's plight), with her daughter, the Crown Princess, writing angry letters about England's attitude towards Prussia, with the Crown Prince fighting in the Prussian army - and, to his brother-in-law's disgust, wearing on his Prussian uniform 'a most objectionable ribbon which he received for his deeds of valour ???' - and with Palmerston and Lord Russell, those 'two dreadful old men' in open sympathy with Denmark, the Queen prohibited all further mention of the Schleswig -Holstein business at Windsor and everywhere else.

  Chapter 40

  THE RECLUSE

  'We must all try, gently, to get her to resume her old habits.'

  Active as she had been in attempting to guide her Government's foreign policy and priding herself on having 'the eyes of Argus in spite of [her] broken heart', the Queen continued to live, so far as the outside world was concerned, in impenetrable and mournful seclusion.

  A few months before Prince Albert's death, the poet, A. J. Munby, had seen her on her way to and from Parliament, 'in ermine robe and diamond coronet, looking well and young. Great crowd and more cheering than I have heard before - one workman near me very enthusiastic, shouting, "England's Crown for ever!" as he held his hat up.'1

  Now the months went by and neither Household nor Ministers could persuade her to show herself in public. Charles Grey, her Private Secretary, was blamed by the Cabinet for not doing more to urge her to do so, since he was known to be as close to her as any member of her Household. Indeed, she herself had written to him to say that she could not deny he was her 'main support'; and when he was away, she added, 'she always feels additionally anxious. She is not worrying herself now [ January 1863], & is calmer; but her constant & ever increasing grief - added to a terribly nervous temperament by nature (which her precious Husband knew but too well & often had to suffer ... ) - prevents her taking anything calmly.'2

  Grey did what he could to persuade her to emerge from her seclusion, knowing quite well that, as her second daughter, Princess Alice, assured him, and as he himself observed at a ghillies' ball at Balmoral, the Queen's health was not really as delicate as she claimed it was. 'Princess Alice also says that the Queen owned to her that she was afraid of getting too well - as if it was a crime ... She is so nice & touching in her manner that it is difficult to find the heart to urge her to do anything she does not like - but after the next anniversary, we must all try, gently, to get her to resume her old habits. '3

  Grey was reluctant to press her too hard, since he knew this would make her all the more determined to cling to her privacy, and that when she was urged to make a public appearance she would, as likely as not, turn to her doctors for a reason for refusing. The Queen's physician, William Jenner, who was created a baronet in 1868, was much criticized for not giving Ministers a more accurate account of his patient's state of health. When pressed on this point by Lord Halifax, the Lord Privy Seal, he protested, 'But how can I? Isn't it better to say the Queen can't do so and so because of her health - which is to a certain extent true - than to say she won't?' It was much easier, in fact, to agree with her own diagnoses than to antagonize her by dissent.4

  Lord Halifax, commenting on the Queen's obstinacy and nervousness, spoke of some 'evidence of insanity'. However, since she had 'always been much the same in these matters', there was no need to fear that her mind would grow worse.5 Yet she herself instructed Jenner to tell Lord Derby that 'any great departure from her usual way of life, or more than ordinary agitation, might produce insanity'.

  Jenner agreed that the Queen's nerves were 'a species of madness' against which it was 'hopeless to contend'.6 Her insistence on seclusion was due to 'nervousness'. He pointed out how hard she worked at her papers, how diligently she went through her despatch boxes even in Scotland where it was really necessary she should go for periods of relaxation, since she needed an 'entire change of air at least twice a year'. The Scottish writer and biographer, Sir Theodore Martin, confirmed how hard she worked at her papers. Martin had sprained his leg while skating on the Isle of Wight and the Queen had sat by him and read to him every day 'as if she had been his mother'. 'They had been daily in close intercourse at Osborne' so Martin had had an opportunity of 'seeing her in her room surrounded by the despatch boxes which [came] to her twice a day from London'.

  'From 7.30 a.m. when she gets up, to twelve at night or 12.30,' so Martin told A. J. Munby, 'she is continually at work, except the hours of meal & exercise, and half an hour after dinner, when someone reads to her.'7

  Even so, as Jenner knew, she was inclined to overstate her case, talking and writing of 'constant incessant labour' and being 'overwhelmed with business', protesting, as she did to the Crown Princess, how impossible it was for her to bear the 'noise and excitement' of public appearances 'without feeling really ill'. It was all very well for General Grey to refer in private to the 'Royal Malingerer', and for Lord Clarendon to speak of 'Eliza' as being 'roaring well' and able to do 'everything she likes and nothing she doesn't'. Jenner remained convinced of the real distress which lay behind her almost hysterical outbursts, her wild protests against being 'driven to desperation by the want of consideration shown by the public for her health and strength', against her being required to work and drudge 'from morning to night' in total disregard of the danger of a 'complete breakdown of her nervous system', against her - 'a poor weak woman shattered by grief and anxiety and by nature terribly nervous' -being 'dictated to by public clamour into doing what she physically CANNOT', against all 'unreasonable demands from which she [expected] Ministers to protect her'.

  The people of the country began to grumble about a Queen who might just as well be dead for all they heard about her. Lord Torrington, one of her lords-in-waiting, complained to General Grey that there was a 'considerable danger' of the public ceasing to take any interest in the monarchy, while the 'ignorant mass' might well come to believe that 'Royalty [was] of no value'. 'There is not a tradesman in London,' so Torrington thought, 'who does not believe he is damaged by the Queen not coming to London.'8 Newspapers took up and endorsed these complaints. The Globe and The Times criticized her for retreating to Balmoral when she should have been available to her Ministers six hundred miles further south - comments which induced her to instruct General Grey to 'tell her when such articles are in the pape
rs, as then she won't read them'.9 A Member of Parliament went so far as to ask in the Commons 'whether it is the intention of Her Majesty's Government, out of consideration to Her Majesty's health, comfort and tranquility ... to advise Her Majesty to abdicate'.10

  This drew forth from the Queen a characteristic protest:

  She thinks it vy important that the question of her state of health once for all shld be understood - It is simply this: The Queen's health - & nerves - require in the spring time a short interval of bracing mountain air & comparative quiet - or she must break down completely & if the public will not take her - as she is - she must give all up - & give it to the Pr of Wales - No doubt they wld wish her to be always in London for their convenience ... but the Queen can't... The Queen's looks belie her & nobody believes how she suffers.11

  In March 1864 a large poster, fixed to the railings of Buckingham Palace, announced to passers-by that 'these commanding premises' were 'to be let or sold, in consequence of the late occupant's declining business'.

  That spring the Queen was persuaded to make an appearance at a flower show in the Royal Horticultural Gardens; and in June she steeled herself to take a drive from Buckingham Palace to Paddington in an open carriage and, although the experience was 'very painful', she was deeply gratified to see how pleased people were to see her again. A fortnight before this rare excursion she had received a letter from King Leopold urging her to show herself more in this way. Well knowing the effect it would have upon her, he reminded her that the Prince of Wales and his wife - now living in grand style at Marlborough House with a household of over a hundred persons, including scarlet-coated and powdered footmen, pages in blue and black, and innumerable maids - were 'constantly before the public in EVERY IMAGINABLE SHAPE and CHARACTER', filling 'entirely the public mind'.12 Having taken her uncle's advice not to let her heir and his wife overshadow her, she noted complacently how the people stopped to look at her and ran after her carriage when she did bring herself to appear in public, this, 'naturally', they did not do for them.

  The Queen drew the line, however, at opening Parliament. When this was proposed to her in 1864; she told the Prime Minister that such a function was 'totally out of the question'. It had been difficult enough to do so when she had had 'the support of her dear husband, whose presence alone seemed a tower of strength, and by whose dear side she felt safe and supported under every trial'. Even with that support she had been 'always terribly nervous on all public occasions, but especially at the opening of Parliament, which was what she dreaded for days, and hardly ever went through without suffering from headaches before or after the ceremony. '13

  This was true: she had once told Prince Albert that on every such occasion she was so nervous it was as though it were the first time she had endured it; and Lady Lyttelton had once noticed at a prorogation ceremony how uncontrollably she was trembling. Now that her husband's support had gone, no child could feel 'more shrinking and nervous than the poor Queen' when she had to 'do anything'.

  Apart from an appearance at Wellington College - the public school founded as a memorial to the great Duke, with which her husband, as President of the Governors, had been closely associated and to which one of her grandsons was sent - the Queen was very rarely seen beyond the walls of Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and Osborne in 1864. Nor was she in 1865 when, in the spring of that year, her life, so she lamented to her eldest daughter, was still 'bereft of joy', still - as she wrote to the widow of Abraham Lincoln who was assassinated in April - 'utterly broken-hearted' by the loss of her 'own beloved husband', 'the light of [her] life'.14 But during the next year she brought herself to appear in public rather more often: she went to the Royal Academy, the South Kensington Museum - where she was intrigued by an exhibition of porcelain painted by 'ladies or at least women' - and to the Zoological Gardens. She went to inspect a parade of troops at Aldershot; she walked round the workhouse at Old Windsor - where she was sorry to see men and their wives housed in separate quarters in their old age - and was shown over the prison at Parkhurst on the Isle of Wight where some prisoners knelt before her in tears, 'sobbing for pardon', and others, mostly Roman Catholic and Irish women, were 'so unmanageable & excited that nothing could be done with them'.15

  She drove over from Balmoral to attend the Highland Gathering at Braemar and to open a waterworks at Aberdeen where she was actually induced to make a speech. She went to Wolverhampton in the royal train from which she alighted with 'trembling knees' to unveil a statue of Prince Albert; and, anxious to obtain a dowry for Princess Helena, who was to marry the impecunious Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg that year, as well as an annuity for Prince Alfred, shortly to be created Duke of Edinburgh, who had celebrated his twenty-first birthday the year before, she actually agreed to open Parlia- ment in February 1866 for fear lest the House of Commons made difficulties about granting money for the children of a Queen neglecting her duty. But it would, she protested, be a terrible experience to be 'ALONE in State' and exhibited as though she were an oddity or attraction in some kind of show, 'the spectacle of a poor, broken-hearted widow, nervous and shrinking dragged in deep mourning' to what she 'could only compare to an execution'.16 She would force herself to go, however, though definitely not in the state coach.

  In the event she was quite as nervous as she had expected to be, unable to eat most of her luncheon and afraid that she was going to faint as she entered the Chamber and felt 'all eyes fixed' upon her in the intimidating silence. She was clothed all in black with a black veil and black widow's cap surmounted by a small coronet of diamonds and sapphires.

  Today the Queen opened Parliament [A. J. Munby recorded in his diary] ... Very stout, very red in the face, she looked, bowing at the carriage window. She was well received, but not so warmly as the Princess of Wales who followed ... It was a good humoured crowd.17

  'When I entered the House [which was very full],' she wrote in her journal that night, 'I felt as if I should faint. All was silent and all eyes fixed upon me, and there I sat alone.' The robes she had worn before her widowhood were draped over the throne, next to which stood an empty chair. While the Lord Chancellor read the speech which she could not bring herself to deliver, she stared ahead, motionless, her face like a mask, willing herself not to break down.18

  On the way back to Buckingham Palace she gave vent to her relief in a stream of talk to her daughters, Princesses Louise and Helena, who were sitting opposite her in the carriage. Later Princess Alice wrote to congratulate her mother on her 'great effort' which would bring its reward. 'Think of the pride and pleasure it would have given darling Papa,' she said, 'the brave example to others not to shirk their duty. '19

  The Queen steeled herself to open Parliament again in February the next year. But afterwards she wished she had not done so:

  Yesterday was a wretched day, and altogether I regret I went [to open Parliament] - for that stupid Reform agitation has excited and irritated people, and there was a good deal of hissing, some groans and calls for Reform, which I - in my present forlorn position - ought not to be exposed to [the Parliamentary Reform Act extending the suffrage was passed in August that year]. There were many, nasty faces - and I felt it painfully. At such times the Sovereign should not be there. Then the weather being very bad -the other people could not remain to drown all the bad signs. Of course it was only bad people.20

  Chapter 41

  DISRAELI

  'He is full of poetry, romance & chivalry. When he knelt down to kiss my hand wh[ich] he took in both his - he said: "In loving loyalty and faith." '

  One of the ordeals which the Queen found most trying was the inescapable and constant tribulation of having to grow accustomed to new men in her Cabinet, for she had always hated change and clung to old friends with an almost passionate intensity. Six months after her husband's death she had asked Lord Clarendon to warn Lord Derby, the Leader of the Opposition, that her mind was so strained that a change of Government might well be
'more than her reason could stand'.

  She also contrived to ensure that her Household remained comparatively stable, even though this eventually entailed being served by increasingly elderly men, several of whom were deaf. General Grey, the Queen's Private Secretary, was still in office when he died aged sixty-six in 1870. Henry Ponsonby, who succeeded him, remained Private Secretary until he suffered a stroke in 1895 in his seventieth year. Sir Thomas Biddulph, Keeper of the Privy Purse, was also in his seventieth year when he died at Abergeldie Mains near Balmoral; and Sir James Clark was well over seventy when he was treating the Prince Consort in his last illness. Sir Arthur Bigge, Ponsonby's successor, later Lord Stamfordham, remained the Queen's Private Secretary until her death.

  Changes in her household were nearly always opposed, often successfully. When at the age of forty-one, in November 1863, Lady Augusta Bruce decided to marry - and had accepted the 48-year-old Canon Arthur Penryn Stanley of all people - the Queen did not trouble to hide her displeasure and mortification: 'Lady Augusta has most unnecessarily decided to marry (!!!)' she told King Leopold, 'I thought she never would leave me![xliii]... It has been my greatest sorrow and trial since my misfortune! ... She will remain in my service and be often with me, but it cannot be the same, for her first duty is now to another.'[xliv]1

  When a far less valued lady left to get married, the Queen admitted that she grudged 'any change in [her] Household now'. Fortunately most of her ladies were widows and there could be no question of their remarrying: she was firmly opposed to any such union and her ladies were left in no doubt as to where their duty lay - to the memories of their late husbands and to herself. She could scarcely prevent Lady Augusta's marriage; but she did manage to postpone for three years the marriage of one of her equerries, Henry Ponsonby's son, Frederick, to a colonel's pretty daughter with whom he had fallen deeply in love, on the grounds that a man 'always told his wife everything and therefore all her private affairs would get known all over London'. When the Queen's opposition to the marriage was at last overcome, Ponsonby was made to understand that he could never expect to be given a house.2