Censoring Queen Victoria

by Yvonne M. Ward

  Six months later, in March 1851, the Queen again reminded Lord Russell that he too ‘must keep her constantly informed of what is going on, and of the temper of the parties in and out of the Parliament’.

  Russell was in a difficult position. He was not confident of the Queen’s good opinion of him and did not want to displease her. He did not entirely approve of Palmerston’s conduct – but he could not afford to offend the Radical and Liberal MPs who admired Palmerston, and on whose support his government relied. Throughout 1851, Victoria was irritated by Palmerston’s continued attempts to assert his judgments on matters which she believed could put her in conflict with her government. For example, in October, there ensued weeks of correspondence between the Queen, Russell and Palmerston on the visit of the Hungarian patriot Lajos Kossuth, one of the severest critics of Austria and Russia. Only three years earlier, Kossuth had sought but ultimately failed to overthrow the Austrian monarchy by force. Victoria and Albert looked upon the young Emperor Franz Josef of Austria as a respected fellow monarch, but Palmerston had used England’s influence to protect Kossuth when he fled to Turkey and now wanted to meet him. Palmerston hoped to evade official censure by entertaining Kossuth in his own home, as a private citizen. For Palmerston to host Kossuth (either officially or privately) in 1851 might be compared to a Foreign Secretary of today entertaining a Chinese pro-democracy activist. Victoria declared that if Palmerston did so, she would sack him; he backed down. Within ten days, however, Palmerston had resumed his antagonistic attitude, receiving a Radical deputation from London who congratulated him on his support of Kossuth and denounced Tsar Nicholas and the Emperor Franz Josef. Greville, the Secretary to the Privy Council at the time, thought this the worst thing Palmerston had ever done.

  There was another clash with Palmerston late in 1851. On 2 December, the anniversary of the battle of Austerlitz and of the coronation of Napoleon I, Louis Napoleon dissolved the National Assembly in Paris and arrested its leaders. By these actions he staged a coup d’état, effectively making himself president for life (he declared himself Emperor Napoleon III in 1852). The English Ambassador, Lord Normanby, was ordered to remain neutral, but Palmerston congratulated the French Ambassador in London, Count Walewski, telling him he approved of the coup. When Normanby told the French Foreign Minister in Paris that England was remaining neutral, he was hugely embarrassed to be told that Palmerston had already offered his warm support.

  In the published letters about this affair, there are two from Lord Normanby’s wife. The first is to Lord Normanby’s brother, who was an equerry to Prince Albert. She described the difficult and dangerous situation her husband found himself in and asked about the general feeling in England. The second letter was to Victoria, and this is how the Queen found out about Palmerston’s ‘double-crossing’ of Normanby. She insisted that Palmerston resign. In Parliament, Russell ill-advisedly read out the letter in which Victoria set out what she expected of her Foreign Secretary (quoted above), in order to exonerate himself in his minister’s demise. Palmerston never forgave him.

  The difficulty Benson faced in dealing with these letters was that the new King showed no sign of wanting to adopt his parents’ assertive style. Unlike his mother, King Edward VII welcomed the growth of democracy that had led to the reduction of the monarch’s power. He supported the Third Reform Act of 1884, which amongst other things gave the vote to agricultural labourers, and had even contrived to watch a reform march in London from the balcony of the home of a friend, Lord Carrington. Upon seeing him, the crowd had halted and sung ‘God Bless the Prince of Wales’. The Queen, however, was not enthusiastic about the Third Reform Act, which she believed would be destabilising. She was anxious ‘to avert serious dangers so much desired by Radicals and Republicans’. Hence the editors’ dilemma: they could not glorify Victoria’s assertive approach to her ministers too much, for fear of being seen to suggest that the present King’s handling of his ministers was inferior.

  Moreover, King Edward VII was fond of Lord Palmerston, who had been a mentor to him when his parents despaired of him. Palmerston was one of several ministers who pleaded unsuccessfully with the Queen to allow the Prince to learn from her about the monarch’s role or to be given some useful work. In the end, Esher softened the image of the assertive Queen and her clashes with her Foreign Secretary. Many passages of criticism of Palmerston were removed. Victoria and Albert’s disparaging nickname for him, ‘Pilgerstein’, was dropped. (The nickname was derived from a German version of his name, Pilger, which was German for a palmer, a pilgrim who returned from the Holy Land with a palm frond. As Victoria’s biographer Elizabeth Longford wrote, ‘No doubt they got a sardonic kick out of visualizing Palmerston, the devil’s son, disguised as a holy man with staff and scrip … inflaming foreign nationalists, establishing constitutional governments, picking quarrels with despots.’)

  In the end, Esher’s caution again won out over Benson’s sense of drama. The initial selection included Victoria’s 1850 comment to King Leopold that ‘The House of Commons are becoming very unmanageable & troublesome, and try to take the powers entirely into their own hands.’ Before showing the pages to the King, however, Esher insisted that the last phrase be deleted. Benson unsuccessfully protested, arguing that it was of ‘great historical value – 60 years on!’ But present considerations were determining the documentation of the past. Although Esher hoped that Edward might come to control his ministers as Victoria had done, he finally had to dilute the anti-democratic instincts of the mother so as not to offend the son.

  Chapter 11

  THE KING’S CENSORS

  FROM THE START OF the project, Benson and Esher had been aware that the King must approve their work. As the time came to seek his formal approval, the editors, particularly Esher, became very nervous. Although Esher was by now an intimate friend of the King, nothing could be taken for granted. Esher had confided to Benson that the King was sometimes a ‘touchy person’. If Esher were to incur the King’s disapproval, it would exact an enormous price – personally, socially and financially. Consequently, before he gave the proofs to the King, he read them once more. Previously, he had been reading with an eye to fashioning a readable and dramatic portrait of the Queen. This time, he needed to see things through the King’s sensitive eyes. Conscious that these two perspectives were not always aligned, he contrived various plans to avoid any possibility of a showdown with the King.

  In November 1905, Esher advised John Murray and Arthur Benson that the King’s approval for Volume I would take about a week. They therefore expected to hear from Esher at least before Christmas. Murray in particular was impatient for news; the first two volumes, almost 1200 pages, were now typeset and sitting in his printery in Scotland. Once Volume I was given the ‘all clear’ for printing, he could have a ‘stereotype’ created, break up the metal type and have more trays and letters available for the third volume. (He had already purchased more type for the project and was unwilling to incur any further expense.) Although changes to the typeset text were time-consuming and expensive, this was the last opportunity for alterations.

  By Christmas, there was no news. Both Murray and Benson now wrote constantly to Esher – about the plates, the preface, the prospectus, the translation of French and German passages, about Volumes II and III – for almost any reason, in order to speed Volume I to publication.

  Why did Esher take so long to achieve what he had predicted would take a week? In the last months of 1905 and the early months of 1906, he was busily involved in the War Office Territorial Committee and in the establishment and chairing of the Army Review Committee – but this also meant that he was in frequent, often daily, contact with the King.

  John Murray was hugely frustrated by the delays. Both he and Benson diplomatically urged Esher along, reiterating time and again the problems of the type being ‘tied up’ and their inability to proceed with the editing of Volume III until it could be set. They always employed a gentlemanly and deferentia
l turn of phrase: ‘This is not to hurry you in any way, but only to explain exactly how we are situated,’ Benson wrote to Esher in June 1906.

  In August 1906, the King left England to visit Germany and Austria. Murray and Benson continued to wait for royal approval, while Esher and Knollys adjourned to their respective retreats in the Scottish Highlands. Benson was becoming hot and bothered. After receiving yet another impatient letter from Murray, he shot back a reply marked ‘Private’:

  As to the Queen’s letters, I can well understand your feeling … I will tell you frankly and confidentially that I am meditating a final coup – withdrawing from the Editorship. If much objection is taken to what we have done, and if much rearrangement &c becomes necessary, I think I shall say plainly that I will have nothing more to do with it. Of course it would mean throwing away some money &c but it will give you some idea of how these delays irritate one. Royalties have no conception how much trouble they give and no one ever tells them. It is not want of consideration so much as the deplorable kind of education they receive.

  I have mentioned this as yet to no one but yourself; but if I can’t get things to move, I shall write to Esher in the same sense shortly. Please regard this as wholly confidential.

  Ever yours,

  ACB

  Benson in this instance was being disingenuous. Like Esher, he could play games when it suited, and he was merely trying to placate Murray. In his diary entry for the same day he wrote: ‘Irritable letter from Murray … but I took the wind out of his sails by telling him quite frankly that I was thinking of giving up the editorship myself!’ But Benson, ever conscious of his financial position, never seriously intended to carry out his threat.

  Esher, meanwhile, knowing that the King would not read all the letters himself, chose two men whom the King would respect to check the revised proofs. The first was Arthur Bigge, Lord Stamfordham, Queen Victoria’s last private secretary and later Keeper of the Privy Purse. An interested and conservative critic, he was chosen because of his long and close association with Victoria and his current position in the Royal Household. The second was John Morley, a Gladstonian Liberal, a member of Parliament and of Cabinet and a successful author. Benson was not consulted about this process and remained unaware of it.

  Bigge wrote to Esher saying that he disagreed with the publishing of any of the late Queen’s letters or journals, and implied that Esher had agreed with him: ‘I am glad that you and I agree in deprecating in the publishing of any letters and journals: however the King, I suppose, has well considered this particular case.’ Bigge mistakenly believed that the pages he was reviewing had already been approved by the King – a misunderstanding orchestrated by Esher. The King had seen some of the Queen’s early letters ‘referring to family matters’, but certainly not the whole volume. Consequently, Bigge excused himself from suggesting significant cuts, lest he seem presumptuous in questioning the King’s judgment. He did, however, question the inclusion of some of the letters between Lord Melbourne and Queen Victoria before her marriage: ‘There is a good deal in there which I cannot help thinking was never intended for publication; which is of no importance historically and would only supply matter for gossip and possibly ill-natured criticism.’ In outlining his concerns, he revealed a true courtier’s mindset: protective of the image of the Queen and of her memory; submissive towards the present King; anxious that material deemed ‘private’ not be disseminated into the public domain. He sent a detailed list of objections to Lord Knollys:

  In the extract from the Queen’s Journal describing the events of the CORONATION p. 153 there are passages especially referring to Lord Melbourne and to the Queen’s conversation after the ceremony which strike me as unsuitable for publication.

  The extract to which he referred was eventually printed in its entirety and included such passages as:

  My excellent Lord Melbourne, who stood very close to me throughout the whole ceremony, was completely overcome … when [he] knelt down and kissed my hand, he pressed my hand, and I grasped his with all my heart, at which he looked up with his eyes filled with tears and seemed much touched …

  Victoria went on to record affectionate comments made by Melbourne after the ceremony: ‘He asked kindly if I was tired; and said the Sword he carried (the first Sword of State) was excessively heavy. I said that the Crown hurt me a good deal. He was very much amused …’ He congratulated Victoria ‘again and again’ throughout the evening. At one point, ‘with tears in his eyes … he said, “You did it so well – excellent! … It’s a thing that you can’t give a person advice upon; it must be left to the person.”’ Perhaps it was the emotional intimacy which Bigge found to be ‘unsuitable’, as he also objected to:

  letters to Lord Lansdowne pp. 222 & 225 in which the Queen is ‘sadly disappointed’ at Lord M’s not coming to dine especially ‘as she felt so happy at the thought of his not dining elsewhere and her having him to dinner’ …

  [And letters to Lord Melbourne in which] ‘The Queen anxiously hopes Lord M. has slept well … it was very wrong of him not to wish her goodnight … When did he get home? … It was a great pleasure that he came last night &c’.

  Bigge explained:

  These are examples – I will not trouble you with others. Of course one realises that the Queen was only a girl of 20 [sic. She was in fact eighteen and nineteen] and these letters were written to a man whom she regarded in the light of a father, but still she was Queen and he Prime Minister.

  Depend upon it, Her Majesty would never have consented to the publication of these very intimate, may I say, childlike communications – and I repeat again – cui bono?

  Knollys disagreed and defended their inclusion:

  Dear Bigge,

  At first I was of the same opinion as you in regard to the publication of Lord Melbourne’s letters, but when I found that she was ‘carrying on’ most of the time with Prince Albert, I thought it would seem that her expressions of affection to the former were simply those of a daughter to one whom she evidently looked upon as a sort of parent. One of her most affectionate letters to Lord M. was written a few days before she told him of her engagement and when she was violently ‘in love’ with Prince Albert.

  I cannot help thinking you are mistaken in supposing that the letters which passed between the Queen and Lord M. will not interest people. I confess to having been much interested in them myself.

  In some of this detail, Knollys was mistaken. As can be ascertained from Volume I of the Letters, Victoria was only ‘carrying on’ with Albert after his second visit in October 1839, and they were married four months later. Most of the material to which Bigge objected had been written the year before.

  After sending this reply off to Bigge, Knollys conspiratorially wrote to Esher:

  I hold the same opinion [as Bigge] respecting the publication of Lord M.’s letters, but what do you say to the usual way of getting out of a difficulty – a compromise – the compromise being that if Bigge has any particular feelings about any special letters up to 3 or 4 in number, they ought to be omitted.

  A compromise was made, removing just one of the entries Bigge objected to and omitting Victoria’s letters to Lord Lansdowne. These omissions had little effect on the overall picture of the warm relationship between Victoria and Lord Melbourne.

  Bigge was also critical of the decision to typeset the material while it was still being revised. From the proofs he could see that Benson had sent material to the printers containing, for example, the observation that the Duchess of Kent was ‘so much pleasanter to deal with now that that man was got rid of’ (referring to Sir John Conroy). Although this passage had been marked to be deleted, Bigge thought it highly improper that such sensitive material should ever have been seen by the typesetters. He was a deeply cautious courtier and argued against any ‘intimate material’ being included:

  I always imagined that it was the political correspondence that would be given to the public – for instance all the Prime Ministers�
� letters, reports of Cabinet meetings, &c tho’ of course some of these are included in the papers now under discussion.

  I quite see your comparisons of the intervals which separate us from Melbourne and that between James I and Queen Anne, and between Geo II and Queen Victoria. But on the other hand, Queen Victoria has not been dead 6 years – Her memory is loved and venerated by all English-speaking people; in India it is positively a worship – and if I were the King, both from the point of view of son and Mother and also for the sake of the monarchical idea and ‘Culte’ I would publish nothing which could tend to shake the position of Queen Victoria in the minds of her subjects.

  This distinction between personal and public was of course contentious, and was something Benson and Esher had struggled with themselves. In a later letter to Esher, Knollys rather perceptively reminded him that the Queen herself had authorised the publication of many of the Prince Consort’s letters in Martin’s biography: ‘With respect to Bigge’s objections, I wonder what the Prince Consort would have said to the publication of his letters and diaries in Martin’s Life, which remember was brought out under the direct authority of Queen Victoria …’ No doubt he was intending to reassure Esher. Reading Martin today, however, one is struck by how little of the Prince’s voice is heard and how few of his personal letters or journal extracts were included. Much of the material comprises letters written about the Prince by others, including Victoria.