QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  The struggle to get the Bill passed was long and tiring; and Disraeli, who was suffering from gout, asthma and bronchitis, was seriously affected by the strain. But on 12 May 1876 the Queen was declared an empress and thereafter could sign herself with pride Regina et Imperatrix.4

  Delighted with her new title, the Queen was reported to be 'in ecstasies', too, when Disraeli - borrowing £4,000,000 from Baron Rothschild while Parliament was in recess - bought the bankrupt Khedive of Egypt's shares in the Suez Canal on behalf of Her Majesty's Government. 'It is just settled,' Disraeli wrote to her triumphantly. 'You have it, Madam.'5 Accepting it with gratitude, the Queen considered the purchase yet another example of her Prime Minister's 'very lofty views' of her country's proper place in the world, besides being 'a blow against Bismarck'. She was confirmed in this opinion of him when troubles in the still huge though crumbling and ramshackle Turkish Empire showed how much 'greater' he was than Gladstone.

  Never much concerned with the plight of oppressed nations and racial minorities struggling for freedom, Disraeli was disinclined to pay close attention to reports of the mistreatment of Christian subjects by their Turkish masters; and was concerned only lest the other great powers might profit from interference. When reports reached London that thousands of Bulgarian peasants had been murdered by Turkish irregular troops he affected to suppose that the stories of the massacre were mere 'coffeehouse babble', referring to the 'atrocities' in inverted commas as though they were the figment of some inventive journalist's imagination. The Queen was rightly inclined at first to take the stories more seriously. 'She don't like the Turks,' Henry Ponsonby said, 'hates them more because of their atrocities.' But then Gladstone, equally outraged by the stories and sensing that the time had come to emerge from his premature retirement, helped to alter her view by giving voice to the horrified outrage of the British people in his famous pamphlet The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, which, castigating the Turks as 'the one great anti-human specimen of humanity', sold 200,000 copies within a month and brought large crowds of demonstrators to rallies all over London. Well aware that Gladstone's passionate protest was far more in tune with the nation's feelings than his own dismissive cynicism, Disraeli hotly denounced the pamphlet as 'contemptible', 'vindictive and ill-written', the product of an 'unprincipled maniac, perhaps the greatest ... of all the Bulgarian horrors'. The Queen was quite as condemnatory. Gladstone, that 'half-madman', was 'a mischief-maker and firebrand', whose conduct was 'shameful and most reprehensible'. The Turks, whose cruelty had previously been inexcusable, were now seen to have been reacting against the Russians, the Slavs' traditional protectors. And in her fury against the Russians on whose shoulders rested 'the blood of the murdered Bulgarians', and whose policies were seen as directed towards mastery in the East, the Queen became positively bellicose.6 To demonstrate her support of her Prime Minister's 'Imperial policy' as against Gladstone's 'sentimental eccentricity', she not only opened Parliament in February 1877 but also went to a well-publicized luncheon with Disraeli at Hughenden Manor, his country house in Buckinghamshire, a visit which prompted a vehement supporter of Gladstone insultingly to jeer at 'the Jew in his drunken insolence' having had the Queen to eat with him 'ostentatiously ... in his ghetto'.7

  As passions rose and quarrels grew ever more bitter in one of the fiercest political arguments that has ever erupted in England, Disraeli became increasingly anti-Russian. But while declaring that England's military resources were inexhaustible, and that once she entered into a war she would not stop fighting till right was done, he merely wished to threaten war rather than wage it, in the hope that peace might be preserved without loss of honour. The Queen, on the other hand, was less restrained. In music halls her people raucously sang the chorus to a popular song which added a new word to the English language, and she could not but sympathize with their sentiments:

  We don't want to fight, but, BY JINGO if we do,

  We've got the ships, we've got the men, we've got the money too.

  We've fought the bear before, and while we're Britons true

  The Russians shall not have Constantinople.

  The Queen shared such emotions to the full. 'Oh, if the Queen were a man,' she told Disraeli, 'she would like to go & give those horrid Russians, whose word one cannot trust, such a beating.' To the Crown Princess, who was not so furious in her dislike of them as her mother, she wrote impatiently, 'I am sure you would not wish Great Britain to eat humble pie to those deceitful cruel Russians?'8 Of those who suggested that Britain ought to be conciliatory towards the Russians, those 'horrible, wicked ... villainous, atrocious' Russians, she was dismissively scornful.9 As for Lord Derby, the Foreign Minister, who was attempting to prevent a conflict by revealing Cabinet secrets to the Russian ambassador, 'words failed her'. Not trusting him to make her feelings plainly known to the Tsar, she wrote directly to St Petersburg without reference to him; and when Ponsonby expressed his concern at her indulging in so unconstitutional a practice she was quite unrepentant. It was a 'miserable thing to be a constitutional Queen,' she complained, '& to be unable to do what is right'.10

  She threatened to 'lay down her crown' rather than 'submit to Russian insult'; and she admitted that she 'never spoke with such vehemence' as she did to the Colonial Secretary, Lord Carnarvon, who was far too pacific for her taste and had warned against a repetition of the Crimean War. 'Inspired by the British Lion', she 'pitched into him with vehemence and indignation,' she reported to the Crown Princess, '& he remained shrinking but still craven hearted! - wishing to say to the world we cld not act!!! Oh! that Englishmen were now what they were!! But we shall yet assert our rights - our position - & "Britons never will be slaves" - will yet be our Motto.'11

  Nor did the Queen altogether spare from her strictures the Prime Minister who, pursuing a delicately balanced policy, was at one moment condemned by the Opposition for being too aggressive and at another berated at a banquet by a lady who angrily demanded to know what he was waiting for - to which question he replied with his customary suavity, 'At this moment for peas and potatoes, Madam. '12

  When Russia imposed upon Turkey the secret conditions of the Treaty of San Stefano of March 1878 which was believed to require Turkey to pay an immense indemnity and to surrender several Aegean ports, thus providing the Russians with bases in the eastern Mediterranean, the Queen demanded forceful action. Lending her authority to the hawks in the Government and strongly advocating 'a bold and united front to the enemy', she reviewed troops, went to Spithead to inspect a naval task-force, and sent numerous telegrams to the Prime Minister as well as memoranda for him to read to his colleagues.

  Faced with the prospect of further Russian aggression, the Cabinet -from which Lord Carnarvon and the Foreign Secretary, Lord Derby, both resigned - called up reserves, sent Indian troops to Malta and in June entered into a secret agreement with Turkey, undertaking to help to defend that country against further attacks. In return Britain was allowed to occupy Cyprus as what Disraeli called a place d'armes from which Russia's designs on the disintegrating Turkish Empire could be resisted.13

  Having helped to ensure that the Treaty of San Stefano was submitted to a European congress, Disraeli left for Berlin where he so much impressed Bismarck that the Iron Chancellor was heard to observe, 'Der alte Jude, das ist der Mann.'14

  Much to the relief of the Queen who had been reluctant to allow him to go, Berlin being 'decidedly too far', Disraeli returned to London with what was claimed to be peace with honour. The Queen, while regretting that Russia 'had got anything', was quite satisfied with Disraeli's work. 'High and low are delighted,' she assured him happily, 'excepting Mr Gladstone who is frantic.'15 She offered him a dukedom which he declined, having already gone to the House of Lords as the Earl of Beaconsfield. She then wrote to him to say, 'He must now accept the Garter. She must insist on it.' This he did accept, suggesting Lord Salisbury, who had succeeded Lord Derby as Foreign Secretary, should be given it too, and commentin
g when both of them received it, 'To become K.G. with a Cecil is something for a Disraeli.'16

  The Queen listened with pleasure to his account of the successful negotiations. 'Bismarck, Madam,' he said, 'was enchanted to hear your Majesty had ordered the occupation of Cyprus. "That is progress," he said. His idea of progress is the occupation of fresh countries.' The Queen joined in the general laughter.17

  She was well aware, though, that the occupation of fresh countries entailed the defence of them and that this would regrettably on occasions lead to war. From this she did not flinch. She had not done so during the Ashanti War of 1873; neither did she when the Afghan War broke out in 1878, nor yet in the Zulu War of the following year when a British force was all but annihilated at Isandhlwana and the Queen urged the Government 'not to be downhearted for a moment but show a bold front to the world' until the 'honour of Great Britain' had been restored. It much pained her, though, to have to approve of her soldiers fighting against such brave, black-skinned warriors as the Zulu King Cetewayo who should be treated well, so she told the Government when the war was over. It was almost equally painful to read of Mr Gladstone's maddening usurpation of her own right to champion the virtues and manliness of the African races, as well as his assumption of her authority to speak over the heads of parties and classes to the nation at large.

  'If we are to maintain our position as a first-rate Power,' she wrote encouragingly to Lord Beaconsfield, 'we must, with our Indian Empire and large Colonies, be Prepared for attacks and wars, somewhere or other CONTINUALLY. '18 And when wars did break out, it was folly, she contended, to make a premature peace after an early setback: this would only lead to difficulties in the future. It was also folly to give up territories once they had been acquired. When the Government proposed to make over the North Sea island of Heligoland - which had been seized by the British navy in 1807 - to Germany in exchange for Zanzibar, she protested that it was 'always a bad thing' to 'give up what one has'.19

  She was far from believing in war for war's sake. Yet there were occasions when conflict could not be avoided, when Britain would otherwise become 'the laughing-stock of the world'.20

  Chapter 49

  'THE HALF-MAD FIREBRAND'

  'The Queen does not the least care but rather wishes it shd. be known that she has the greatest possible disinclination to take this half crazy & really in many ways ridiculous old man.'

  When Disraeli's Conservatives were defeated at the polls in 1880, the Queen did all she could to thwart the return to power of a man who had followed such a 'blind and destructive course' during the election campaign. She had long since decided that she 'never COULD have the slightest particle of confidence' in this awful man Mr Gladstone, 'a most disagreeable person - half crazy, and so excited', who would become a dictator if he could.1 She would abdicate rather than have him back; she would have the more tractable Lord Granville as Prime Minister, though she did not rate his talents very highly; or she would, as Disraeli suggested, send for Lord Hartington, even though she strongly disapproved of his liaison with the Duchess of Manchester and his frequent appearances at raffish parties at Marlborough House.2

  Despite the advice which had been given to her by Prince Albert in his efforts to guide her towards the creation of a new English monarchical tradition which placed the throne above party, she had never fully grasped the limits imposed upon a constitutional monarch. Indeed, Prince Albert, who often overstepped the bounds of constitutional propriety by speaking in the Queen's name, never completely comprehended these limits himself. He had seemed, on occasions, to share her endorsement of Baron Stockmar's frequently expressed opinion that the Prime Minister was merely the 'temporary head of the Cabinet', while the monarch was the 'permanent premier'. When, for instance, in 1852 on the fall of his Conservative Government, Lord Derby had proposed that Lord Lansdowne should be sent for and Lord John Russell had maintained that his own claims should be considered more deserving, the Queen, after consultations with her husband, had rejected them both and had sent for the kindly, amenable, and 'safe' Lord Aberdeen to whom the Prince had gone so far as to hand a list of names considered suitable for inclusion in the Cabinet. Similarly, when faced six years later with the prospect of having to take back Palmerston, an eager proponent of a policy in Italy to which they had been opposed, the Queen and the Prince had done all they could to deny the 'old Italian Master' the premiership and had endeavoured to bring into being a government headed by Lord Granville.

  Their efforts had been in vain, just as were those of the Queen in 1880 when she endeavoured to thwart the return to power of the dreadful Mr Gladstone, the 'most disagreeable' of all her Ministers, whom, faute de mieux, she was eventually obliged to accept as Prime Minister for the second time.

  At his audience on 23 April, she treated him with what he loyally described as 'perfect courtesy', while comforting herself with the thought that the seventy-year-old 'half-mad firebrand' would not be in office for long. Indeed, he told her as much himself, looking, so she thought, satisfyingly ill, old and haggard - though Henry Ponsonby considered he had never appeared more healthy.3 In the meantime, to soften the blow of having to part with 'the kindest and most devoted as well as one of the wisest Ministers' she had ever had, she proposed to continue to correspond with Disraeli 'without anyone being astonished or offended, and even more without anyone knowing about it'. 'You can,' she told him, 'be of much use to me about my family and other things and about great public questions.' She would 'never write, except on formal official matters, to the Prime Minister'.4

  She asked Ponsonby to make it clear to Gladstone on his appointment that there must be 'no democratic leaning, no attempt to change [the previous Government's] foreign policy, no change in India, and no cutting down of estimates. In short no lowering of the high position this Country holds, and ought always to hold.'5

  As she had feared, however, Gladstone's administration fell far short of the Queen's instructions and aspirations. It was, indeed, so she told the Crown Princess, the worst Government she 'had ever had to do with': the Foreign Secretary, Lord Granville, for instance, was 'absolutely passe' and neglected things 'in a dreadful way', while the Colonial Secretary, Lord Derby, was 'a terrible Minister' who made 'dreadful messes'. As for Gladstone - struggling under the weight of the mountainous correspondence which the Queen imposed upon him - he thought that 'she alone [was] enough to kill any man'.

  When in office Disraeli had always encouraged her to believe that her political role as monarch was far more important than any but the most monarchically inclined interpreter of the British constitution would have allowed it to be. He continued to do so in opposition. When the Queen strongly objected to the evacuation of Kandahar in Afghanistan and refused to announce it as part of the Government's programme in her Speech at the opening of Parliament in 1881, the Cabinet had to threaten to resign before she gave in to them. She surrendered most grumpily, making them only too conscious of her displeasure, speaking to none of them when they next came to Osborne, and noting with relish how they 'nearly tumbled over each other going out'. Before leaving the house, however, the Home Secretary had the courage to remind her that her Speech constitutionally did not express her own views but was 'only the speech of the Ministers'. Considering this opinion most distasteful, not to say demeaning, she instructed her youngest son, Prince Leopold, to enquire what Disraeli's views were on the subject. The Home Secretary's principle, Disraeli declared, with sublime indifference to the opinion of the leading constitutional theorists of the day, was quite unfounded: it was merely 'a piece of parliamentary gossip'.6

  This was almost the last piece of advice which Disraeli gave her. In April 1881, weakened by bronchitis and asthma and by the deleterious medicines which his doctors had prescribed, he died and was buried beside his wife at his house, Hughenden. Throughout his illness the Queen had made anxious enquiries to which he had insisted on replying, the pencil shaking in his hand; but when he was asked if he would like her to visit hi
m, he replied, making his last sad joke, 'No, it is better not. She will only ask me to take a message to Albert.'7 His last authentically recorded words were, 'I had rather live but I am not afraid to die.'8

  The Queen could 'scarcely see' for her 'fast falling tears' as she wrote to his friend and Private Secretary, Montague Corry. 'The loss is so overwhelming... Never had I so kind and devoted a Minister and very few such devoted friends. His affectionate sympathy, his wise counsel -all were so invaluable even out of office. I have lost so many dear and valued friends but none whose loss will be more keenly felt.' The blow was 'terrible', she told the Crown Princess; it made her feel quite ill, 'poorly and shaken'. Lord Beaconsfield was 'the truest, kindest friend and wisest counsellor'. And to Lord Barrington, who had acted as Lord Beaconsfield's Private Secretary when Corry had had to take his seriously ill sister abroad, the Queen wrote, 'Words are too weak to say what [she] feels; how overwhelmed she is with this terrible, irreparable loss ... His kindness to the Queen on all and every occasion she never, never can forget and will miss cruelly.'9

  The grief was deep and unfeigned; but it was not enduring; and she soon returned, more vigorous than ever, to her condemnation of her dead friend's political opponents. Not a single one of her Liberal Ministers, she decided, was worthy of his appointment, while their leader, as Gladstone himself gloomily recorded in his diary, was kept 'at arm's length', 'outside an iron ring'. The Queen did not trouble to disguise her hope that the tiresome old man would soon have to relinquish his office.

  Her attitude towards him momentarily softened when he had paid a warm tribute to his erstwhile opponent in the House of Commons: she had actually asked him to sit down at his next audience. But it was only a short-lived rapprochement; and she grew increasingly exasperated by his unwillingness to submit to what he termed her 'intolerable' and 'inadmissible' claims to be fully informed about confidential discussions in Cabinet.10 He much annoyed her by going abroad in 1883 without her permission and accepting hospitality from various foreign rulers, including the Tsar. He had irritated her even more when, standing as candidate for Midlothian, he had gone barnstorming through Scotland, making speeches about Reform, putting his head out of his railway carriage window to acknowledge the cheers of the crowd. She complained of these 'constant speeches' and expressed her utter disgust at his 'stump oratory'; and when, in his curiously insensitive way, he sent her a press cutting which referred to his 'triumphal procession', she sent it on to Ponsonby by way of Lady Ely with a note to say she hadn't read it. As Henry Ponsonby observed, commenting on her 'jealousy', 'she feels aggrieved at the undue reverence shown to an old man of whom the public are being constantly reminded ... while HM is, owing to the life she leads, withdrawn from view ... She can't bear to see the large type which heads the columns of newspapers by "Mr Gladstone's movements" while down below in small type is the Court Circular.’11