CHAPTER VIII
QUEEN VICTORIA’S PRIME MINISTER
“Good Monarchs we’ve had whom we think on with pride, Who wisely e’er filled their high station, But now we’ve a woman, Heaven bless her! beside She’s a child of our noble nation. Victoria the First is of virtue the gem, May sorrow ne’er seek to oppress her, Then, fill up your goblets once more to the brim, Long life to the Queen, God bless her!”
_Anon._
“Nobody is more abused by bad people than Melbourne--and nobody is more forgiving.”--_Queen Victoria._
From the beginning of the reign Melbourne had been in constant attendance on his Queen, exacting from her an assiduity in State matters which she was very ready to give, and taking no notice of the gossipers’ innuendoes which filled the social atmosphere. Nothing startling had happened, but Court matters had taken a turn which meant a slow drifting into trouble of various kinds.
There is no doubt at all that Victoria went heart and soul with the Whigs. She was not a Radical, but she was also not a Tory. Though in later years she was accused of neglecting Ireland, at that time she was keen to deal justly with that part of her kingdom. She was interested in foreign affairs, and she did her successful utmost to understand the affairs of England. The fears of the Anti-Catholics had not been verified, though those people seemed to take little comfort in the fact; Victoria was not influenced by her foreign surrounders; she had not put Sir John Conroy into a high place of honour; nor had Lord Durham, the leader of the Radicals, become Master of the Household--in place of that he was invested with the dignity of a Knight Grand Cross of the Most Honourable Order of the Garter, and appointed Governor of Canada, while Lady Durham became one of the Queen’s ladies.
But Queen Victoria introduced certain new customs into her social life which caused considerable offence. For instance, she gave precedence to the Diplomatic Corps, and so raised much anger among the aristocracy, who opposed the innovation and revenged themselves for it whenever and wherever they got the opportunity, which frequently gave rise to very disagreeable incidents. This is quite understandable, for if the Queen always had Melbourne on her left and Bülow or some other foreigner on her right, the English Dukes and other men of rank had no chance of being distinguished by her favours. On the other hand, the Queen saw the Englishmen often, and it must have been more amusing for her to talk with the strangers.
The Opposition felt gradually obliged to divest itself of the plans it had made for the new reign, and the Lords, who had assumed that King William was, without his will, in the hands of a faction from whose bondage he could not release himself, and had strongly hoped that Victoria would range herself on their side, had also to realise that they would receive no special support from the Crown. Indeed, a gulf of dislike was being formed with the Government and the Queen on one side, and the Opposition and the House of Lords on the other. As early as the autumn of 1837, in their spleen the latter started foolish stories about the Queen and Melbourne. The more thoughtless would not believe in the real position of affairs, and had, forsooth! to whisper that at last Melbourne was showing his ambition, and that it was no mere tutorial care that he was giving to Her Majesty. The Countess Grey wrote in the October following Victoria’s accession, “I hope you are amused at the report of Lord Melbourne being likely to marry the Queen. For my part I have no objection. I am inclined to be very loyal and fond of her; she seems to be so considerate and good-natured.” Princess Lieven, too, made in a letter the very complacent remark about Melbourne’s association with the Queen, “I for myself cannot help imagining that she must be going to marry him. It is all, however, according to rule, and I find it both proper and in his own interest that Lord Melbourne should keep himself absolutely master of the situation.” It was so absurd an idea that even if the Queen had heard of it she could not have let it trouble her. A day or so before Princess Lieven’s letter had been written, Victoria had been talking in most intimate fashion to Lady Cowper (Melbourne’s sister), saying to her: “He eats too much, and I often tell him so. Indeed, I do so myself, and my doctor has ordered me not to eat luncheon any more.” “And does your Majesty quite obey him?” asked Lady Cowper. “Why yes, I think I do, for I only eat a little broth.”
Creevy comments upon this in a letter, “Now, I think a little Queen taking care of a Prime Minister’s stomach, he being nearly sixty, is everything one could wish! If only the Tory press could get hold of this fact what fun they would make of it.” It would indeed have been a much better subject than that Melbourne was anxious to marry his Sovereign. I must quote a little further from this sprightly diarist, for he was on the spot, and gives us an account of the Queen which is frank, and therefore not animated by the servile desire to praise in spite of everything. He went to dine with Her Majesty when she made her visit to the Pavilion at Brighton, and having been told that he was to sit on the Duchess of Kent’s right hand, he said of it later, “Oh, what a fright I was in about my right ear,” which, however, being deaf, should not have troubled him, as he would naturally present his left ear to the Duchess. His account continued:
“Here comes the Queen, the Duchess of Kent the least little bit in the world behind her, all her ladies in a row still more behind; Lord Conyngham and Cavendish on each flank of the Queen.... She was told by Lord Conyngham that I had not been presented, upon which a scene took place that to me was truly distressing. The poor little thing could not get her glove off. I never was so annoyed in my life; yet what could I do? But she blushed and laughed and pulled till the thing was done, and I kissed her hand.... Then to dinner.... The Duchess of Kent was agreeable and chatty, and she said, ‘Shall we drink some wine?’ My eyes, however, all the while were fixed on Vic. To mitigate the harshness of any criticism I may pronounce upon her manners, let me express my conviction that she and her mother are one. I never saw a more pretty or natural devotion than she shows to her mother in everything, and I reckon this as by far the most amiable, as well as _valuable_, disposition to start with in the fearful struggle she has in life before her. Now for her appearance, but all in the strictest confidence. A more homely little thing you never beheld, _when she is at her ease_, and she is evidently dying to be always more so. She laughs in real earnest, opening her mouth as wide as it can go, showing not very pretty gums.... She eats quite as heartily as she laughs, I think I may say she gobbles.... She blushes and laughs every instant in so natural a way as to disarm anybody. Her voice is perfect, so is the expression of her face, when she means to say or do a pretty thing.”
One would like to know the sentiments of the passages which have been left out of this account by the editor of the book; things a little more plainly spoken than those left in, which are plain enough perhaps. That the Queen loved a hearty laugh is well known, and from some current print I have copied this vulgar criticism upon her: “The extraordinary funny laugh of the little lady is amusing enough. Her smile is proverbially beautiful; but there is no very great necessity for such a peculiar display of the ivories, albeit they are unquestionably excellent.” Her Majesty is said to have eaten ungracefully all her life. I remember years ago hearing a pert daughter reprove her father for picking a bone. He turned calm eyes upon her as he replied, “It is well known that the Queen always picks bones at table; I like doing it and may surely follow the fashion set by Her Majesty.” A lady diarist of the day notes that during one of her tours in the Midlands the Princess was given asparagus, and insisted upon eating it in her own way, “which was not a very pretty one,” and it was some time before she would give heed to the Duchess’s repeated remonstrances.
A little later the genial letter writer who gave so frank a description of the greatest lady in the land, added to an epistle, “Alas! tho’ last not least, in truth little Vic. and her mother are _not_ one, tho’ Melbourne knows of no other cause of this disunion than Conroy, whom the Duchess of Kent sees still almost daily, and for a long time together.”
There was one matter which troubled the Queen from the day she began to reign, and that was the need of money, for the Civil List could not be arranged until Parliament met in November. Messrs. Coutts, however, came to the rescue, with a desire that she would draw upon them for all that she needed. Yet at that time neither she nor anyone else knew what would be the amount of her income. It was felt generally by the Ministers that it would be better to show confidence in their Sovereign than to be niggardly in the allowance made, as the provision of a good income would take away all excuse in future for the contracting of Royal debt. So the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Rt. Hon. Spring-Rice, who when he first came to Court was said to see everything _en couleur de rose_, had to bear the burden of this. Melbourne begged him to “come prepared to act boldly and liberally, and by no means to fiddle upon small points and about petty salaries.”
Spring-Rice loyally did as he was advised, and made himself still more unpopular than he had hitherto been. The Economists, the Radicals, and the Opposition--a coalition which was much more successful three or four years later when asked to grant an income to Prince Albert--railed alike at the extravagance; for trade and agriculture were in a state of depression, and an expensive scheme of Poor Law was being considered with the hope that it might do something to relieve the worst poverty. The newspapers taunted and upbraided Spring-Rice to their mischievous content, and made little verses upon him.
“Your name, Spring-Rice, is not the thing, To call you so is flummery, For how can that belong to Spring Whose treatment should be summery?”
was one comment. A second which I have come across is more spiteful: “Mr. Spring-Rice is a smart, little, flat-catching thimble-rigger, full of small tricks and deceptions. Yet whenever he attempts to practise on a large scale he invariably throws crabs.” I wonder whether Spring-Rice’s optimism survived all the attacks made upon him during his political career.
In spite of the grumbling the Civil List was quickly pushed through, and the Royal maiden found herself the possessor of--in addition to the Duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall--a total annuity of £385,000 a year, being £10,000 more than the net income granted to William IV. This large sum was divided in the following way. Privy Purse, £60,000; Household salaries, £131,260; Household expenses, £172,500; Royal Bounty, £13,200; and unappropriated, £8,040. With this the Queen was very content, and returned thanks to Parliament in person for what it had done. Then she did a wonderful thing, for by the autumn of the following year she had transferred to her father’s creditors out of her privy purse nearly £50,000. This was a noble thing to do, indeed, seemingly almost impossible, when one remembers the family from which she had sprung--one King after another, to say nothing of the Princes, dying deeply in debt, and considering it but a normal condition--and also remembering the fascination which the spending of money on personal matters must have had for a girl hitherto almost deprived of money.
This income, however, gave new soreness to those who were smarting already, and the better sort, being debarred from criticising their Queen too openly, turned upon Lord Melbourne, who never troubled to read strictures upon himself, and who took such criticism, when he did hear it, with a smile. From the day of Victoria’s accession until the day that he went out of office, Melbourne was the favourite object of vilification. The Court was said to be, under his influence, such a hot-bed of Whiggism “that a Conservative cat was not so much as permitted to mew in the precincts of the Palace,” and it began to be hinted that the Queen might remember that she was Queen over England and not over a party. The first form of attack was directed against Melbourne’s constant association with her; he was accused of pleasure-seeking, of idleness, and of irresponsibility. Queen Victoria, who was most conscientious about business matters, seems to have shortened her stay at Brighton on his account, for the _Court Journal_ announced: “Her Majesty arrived at Buckingham Palace from Brighton, the distance from the latter place being too far for Lord Melbourne,” which meant, of course, for her to see him each day. Upon this another journal asked:
“Why will the Queen at Brighton make So very, very short a stay? Solely, of course, for Sponge’s sake, Who cannot _dine_ there every day.”
“Lord Sponge Melbourne” was a favourite form of address for him in the satiric papers.
However, the real fury did not burst around the Throne until some time after the Queen’s coronation, and it became a veritable hurricane after the troubles of 1839. Meanwhile Melbourne did his best, not only to guide Her Majesty and to educate her in statecraft, but to arrange the affairs of the realm as far as he could in the face of virulent opposition. There was really no justification for the comment made by _The Times_ early in 1838 that Melbourne “was a mere dangler after the frivolous courtesies of the ball room and boudoir.”
In a conversation with her Prime Minister the Queen once told him that the first thing which had convinced her that he was worthy of her confidence was his conduct in the disputes at Kensington the year before concerning her suggested allowance. Then, though he knew that the King was near his end, and that he was offending the Duchess, who might soon be the most important person in the kingdom, he consistently took the King’s part, in face of that King’s disfavour. This the then silent but observant young Princess regarded as a proof of his honesty and determination to do what was right, and it is evident that she herself sided with the King on that occasion. Indeed, from the affection with which she always afterwards spoke of her uncle, it can hardly be doubted that she was with him in many of the quarrels which occurred. Greville says that when King William made that fierce attack on her mother at the Windsor banquet, and expressed his earnest hope that he might live to see the majority of his niece, “Victoria must have inwardly rejoiced at the expression of sentiments so accordant with her own.” But this is going too far, for though it may have been true concerning her concurrence with the King’s hope, it is most likely that in such a scene the girl’s feelings were those of terror, regret, and a passionate sympathy with her insulted mother. Afterwards that particular sentiment may have appealed to her, but scarcely at the time.
Many accounts are given by contemporary writers as to how the Queen’s evenings were spent in the first years of her reign, and they all tally with regard to the general details. Her semi-state entry into the drawing-room just before the announcement of dinner seems always to have commenced the evening. She would then shake hands with the women and bow to the men, speaking a few words to everyone. At the table Melbourne, when present, always sat on her left hand, and a foreign ambassador or, failing any such, the highest in rank present among the English, on the other. The men only stayed a quarter of an hour in the dining-room after the Queen rose, and were then expected in the drawing-room, where she always stood until they appeared. Then the Duchess of Kent would be settled at a whist table, and the Queen would marshal the other guests about a round table--Melbourne, the careless and easy, sitting bolt upright and keeping a guard upon his tongue, still at her left hand. There they all remained talking small talk until the band had finished its music, and the evening was at an end at about half-past eleven. How a man of the world like Melbourne could put up with that night after night it is difficult to say, for he might have been in any one of half a dozen other places where there was real conversation going on, and where he could have been at his ease.
Among Melbourne’s curious failings was a habit of talking to himself, a habit which grew with his years. He was once seen coming out of Brooks’s, saying emphatically, though unaccompanied by anyone, “I’ll be damned if I do it for you, my Lord.” One day Lord Hardwicke was writing in the library of the House of Lords, when Melbourne entered straight from a debate on the Non-Intrusion question in Scotland. The Prime Minister threw himself into a chair saying, “God bless me! What’s to be done now? I had only just settled that confounded Irish Church question, when earth yawns, and here comes up a devilish worse one about the Scotch Church.”
This peculiarity he seems to have successfully dropped when in the presence of Queen Victoria, even though he spent about six hours out of the twenty-four in her society. But there can be no doubt that he had a feeling of paternal affection for his young Sovereign, which led him to give up much for her sake. Some malicious writer tried to make a joke with a sting in it upon the Prime Minister and his constant attendance upon Victoria, heading it “Royal Quip.” It ran as follows:--“Some days ago the dinner-seeking Premier, on a drawing-room lounge, was endeavouring to render himself as amiable as possible to his Royal Mistress. Among other questions she was asked whether or not she had read Lady Blessington’s last charming work, ‘The Idler in Italy.’ Her reply was in the negative; ‘I know not,’ archly continued our youthful Sovereign, ‘what may have been the exploits of the Idler in Italy, but I am convinced that the Idler at Home is a great bore.’ Mel. instantly took leave of Her Majesty. We note, however, that matters have since been satisfactorily arranged, seeing that the Premier had his feet under the Royal mahogany on Wednesday last.”
* * * * *
As for the Coronation, we have heard so much during late years of these celebrations that there is no need to enter into any great detail about it, but it may be mentioned that the event formed a good excuse for contention between the two political parties, and others found it a good peg on which to hang their scorn or their platitudes. The cry of the Banquet was raised, the Government having decided that as that picturesque but mediæval custom had been dropped at the preceding Coronation it should not be revived. This was, of course, sufficient to make the Tories call for one, and to raise a cry of false economy and meanness. The Duke of Buckingham wrote, “The Ministers turned a deaf ear to all representations either of right or of policy, and the British Empire was condemned to stand in the eyes of foreigners as too poor to crown her monarch with the state which, when much poorer, the nation had willingly afforded.”
Yet now, seventy-three years later, we have just been reading of the amusement caused in foreign circles about the way in which we cling to old customs in our coronations. And earlier, when William IV. was crowned _The Times_ published a curious leader in which it more than justified the curtailment of the various functions. The writer of the article spoke of the quackeries played off in the course of the ceremony, “revoltingly compounded of the worst dregs of Popery and feudalism,” and continued, “What a fuss with palls, and ingots, and spurs, and swords, and oil for anointing (greasing) their Sacred Majesties, and whipping off and on of mantles and the rest of it.” The writer closed with an expression of the hope that when a leisure hour should arrive the entire character of the solemnity should be re-cast. It may well be wondered how far the views of _The Times_ of to-day agree with those it held in that yester-year!
The walking procession of all the Estates of the Realm was also dispensed with, and for the last time the Queen’s Barge-master with forty-eight watermen preceded twelve of the Royal carriages.
Marshal Soult, who came as special Ambassador from the King of France, was so much cheered both in and out of the Abbey that he was overcome, and seizing the arm of his aide-de-camp, said, “Ah! vraiment, c’est un brave peuple!” Later he declared publicly that it was the greatest day of his life, for it proved that the English believed that he had fought as an honourable man. He brought over with him a State carriage, which had been used by the Prince of Condé, and had it decorated in the most costly fashion. It was a curious thing that both in Queen Victoria’s and King William’s Coronations there was a great competition in equipages. The Russian Ambassador (Count von Strogonoff) bought for sixteen hundred pounds a carriage for which the Duke of Devonshire had given three thousand when he went on his Extraordinary Embassy to St. Petersburg. Another diplomatist gave two hundred and fifty pounds merely for the hire of a vehicle for the day.
There was also among the Ambassadors--who had the liberty of dressing as they would--what might almost have seemed a competition in dress. Thus the Greek Ambassador was adjudged as the most picturesque, and Prince Esterhazy, son of the Minister Plenipotentiary from the Emperor of Austria, was the most gorgeous--one lady said of him that he looked as though he had been caught in a shower of diamonds and had come in dripping; she almost expected to see them settling in little pools on the floor. Prince Paul von Schwartzenberg, the Austrian Ambassador Extraordinary, wore violet velvet heavily embroidered in seed pearls, the jewels with which he was covered being worth half a million florins, while his boots alone cost sixteen thousand florins.
We have all heard that the old Duke of Sussex embraced the Queen on this public occasion, that old Lord Rolle stumbled and fell down two steps, giving Her Majesty the opportunity of doing one of her pretty acts; and that a large bird hovered over the Palace and was regarded as an omen of good luck. We have all heard, too, of the Coronation ring, which, though made for the little finger by mistake, the Archbishop insisted should be placed on the fourth finger--a painful event for the poor little Queen. As there had been no rehearsal, “little Victory” never knew what to do next, and said once to John Thynne, “Pray tell me what to do, for they don’t know.” Someone who “did not know” made her leave her chair and enter St. Edward’s Chapel before the Archbishop had finished the prayers, much to that ecclesiastic’s chagrin. Then when the Orb was put into her hand she asked, “What am I to do with it?” and on learning that she was to carry it in her left hand, replied, sighingly, “But it is very heavy!”
All these incidents have been told over and over again, but there are some things not so well known, and one is that in consequence of the ceremony extending from noon to five o’clock people would have fainted from hunger, if caterers had not been allowed to sell their wares in the Abbey. At a convenient moment the Queen was conducted into St. Edward’s Chapel, where she found the altar spread with food and bottles of wine. It disturbs one’s sense of the fitness of things that an altar, even to a long dead saint, should be used as a dining table, yet perhaps it is no worse than the irreverent selling of the outsides of churches for the erection of tiers of seats whenever a Royal Procession is coming along.
The author of “The Ingoldsby Legends” described the Coronation very amusingly under the name of Barney Macguire, one verse of which runs:--
“Then the crame and custard, and the beef and mustard, All on the tombstones like a poulterer’s shop; With lobsters and white-bait, and other swate-meats, And wine and nagus, and Imparial Pop! There was cakes and apples in all the chapels, With fine polonies and rich mellow pears,-- Och! the Count von Strogonoff, sure he got prog enough, The sly ould Divil undernathe the stairs.”
In another set of verses on the subject the same author said he was in the Abbey looking through the wrong end of a pair of binoculars, and--
“At first I saw a little Queen was sitting all alone, And little Duke and Duchesses knelt round her little throne, And a little Lord Archbishop came, and a little prayer he said, And then he popped a little crown upon her little head.”
It is curious to note that the Queen, when writing in her journal of the Coronation, just mentioned her mother as being there, but of Lehzen she wrote: “There was another most dear being present at this ceremony, in the box immediately above the Royal box and who witnessed all: it was my dearly beloved angelic Lehzen, whose eyes I caught when on the Throne, and we exchanged smiles.”
Lord Glenelg was Victoria’s Colonial Secretary for a period, and one imagines that he must have inspired Dickens with the idea of the Fat Boy, for we often hear of him as asleep at the wrong time. Like other people, he had to get up very early for the Coronation, and it was therefore not surprising that he fell asleep in his place in the Abbey. He awoke for the crowning, and duly put on his coronet, then promptly fell asleep again, and his head nodding, the heavy thing fell off with a clatter. Roused by the noise, he sat up, put his hand to his cranium, and cried aloud, “Oh! I have lost my nightcap!” The “nightcap” had rolled out of sight, and was not recovered until after the homage, but the story does not tell how he managed to offer his fealty without it.
This failing of Glenelg’s was constantly being referred to in the papers in jest or earnest. Here is a sample: “Is it true, Mel., that railroads rest upon sleepers?” asked Victoria. “Yes, your Majesty,” replied Mel. “Then pray take care that Lord Glenelg travels only by the mail coach, as if he goes by the railway he may be mistaken for a sleeper,” was the Queen’s entreaty. Another joke, even then somewhat time-worn, ran:--
“‘What, twelve!’ Lord Glenelg, waking cries; ‘How quick the time has passed!’ ‘No wonder,’ little John replies, ‘You sleep so very fast.’”
Lyndhurst distinguished himself before the ceremony commenced by standing on some steps beyond the choir, and with eyeglass up scrutinising the Peers “and particularly the Peeresses” as they came from the entrance.
One of the silliest customs of the Coronation was the flinging of medals about behind the throne, that is to say, between the altar steps and the choir. On this occasion Lord Surrey, the Lord Treasurer of the Household, flung them right and left, and there was a pretty scramble; maids of honour, peers, generals, goldsticks, robed aldermen wrestled and fought, some getting more than their share, and some less. The judges, however, felt themselves enclosed in the dignity of the law, they did not scramble or move, but pathetically wooed the fates by standing stiffly erect and holding out their hands. Such a “good boy” attitude ought to have been rewarded, but alas, not one of them caught a falling piece of silver.
Lord Dalhousie was struck with the absence of popular enthusiasm and of reverence inside the Abbey, and Carlyle’s commentary upon the event is scarcely cheerful. He had been invited to the Montagues’ window to see the procession, and he went there, though he gave away his invitation ticket to the Abbey.
“Crowds and mummery are not agreeable to me. The Procession was all gilding, velvet and grandeur; the poor little Queen seemed to have been greeting; one could not but wish the poor little lassie well; she is small, sonsy, and modest--and has the ugliest task, I should say, of all girls in these Isles.” He added to this, “She is at an age when a girl can hardly be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself; yet a task is laid on her from which an archangel might shrink.”
C. R. Leslie, the artist, told of her that as soon as she returned to Buckingham Palace after this long day she hurried to put off all the splendid signs of royalty that she might give her spaniel Dash its bath. A similar incident is related of her return from opening her first Parliament. An old Court official watched her as she re-entered the Palace, being much impressed with her dignity as she crossed the rooms of St. James’s. He wondered if this would last when she was alone, and curiously followed her as she went through a door leading to the staircase which led to her own apartments. There at the foot of the staircase he saw her roll her train round her arm, pick up her dress all round, and run up two steps at a time, calling to her dogs.
This mixture of dignity and girlishness is very endearing, as those who have watched youthful womanhood well know.
The year of the Coronation was a year of small things as far as the Court was concerned, a year of steady tramping along the road of disaffection among the better-class politicians, and a year of endeavour to do the right thing on the part of the Queen, relieved by an occasional autocracy of manner which led her to do the wrong thing. Relations between herself and her mother became more and more strained, so much so that it was a matter of public comment. Conroy still hung about the Duchess and was still maligned in the papers, _The Times_ toward the end of the year being found guilty of libelling him by saying that he bought property in Wales which he had paid for, though not with his own money. On the other hand, the tradesmen who served the Duchess of Kent presented Sir John Conroy with plate to the value of £400, to show their appreciation of the kindness and urbanity with which he had invariably treated them.
The _Age_ now changed its tone; instead of vilifying the Duchess and all her friends, it chose to regard her as a martyr, _against_ whom plots were formed by the foreign Camarilla, which included Leopold, Lehzen, Stockmar, Sir James Clark (Physician), Sir Henry Seton, and any foreigners who might be at Court or passing through. It asserted now that the ruin of Conroy was part of a plot for alienating mother and daughter, and placing the latter more firmly under foreign influence; but there are people who would scarcely consider £3,000 a year pension as ruin.
The Baroness Lehzen, of whom Lady Normanby said that she was a kind and motherly person to the young Maids of Honour, retained her position with the Queen, and the more firmly she seemed to be established the more furiously did one section of the public and the Press hate her. One or two examples will show the way in which the more outspoken papers wrote of her; and all had the idea at the back of their anger that she was pushing forward with all her influence the pretensions of Albert of Saxe-Coburg, who, surrounded by Catholic belongings, would do some frightful, undescribed, and impossible deeds when settled in power. It was all wild, stupid, and hysterical, yet somewhat amusing to look back to now.
It should be remembered that Fräulein Lehzen was the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman, and that she came to England with the Duchess of Kent as a governess or nursery governess to Princess Féodore. A Lutheran clergyman was not likely to be a man of any particular rank, but he was at least a man of thought; he may have been very poor, as a large proportion of clergymen have been all through the ages, and his daughters may have, most likely did, help in the work of the house and gardens. This, however, is but surmise in an endeavour to explain the absurd reproaches levelled at the Baroness. Thus writes the _Age_, which was bitterly hated by the Whigs, because it published every little fault and prank of the men of their party; a paper which they naturally, under the circumstances, said to be simply a lying, scandalous rag, but which, as a matter of fact, was often very astute, and told the truth with just that touch of exaggeration which gave it the necessary allurement.
“On public grounds we are determined to let the country know the detestable schemes by which a foreign Camarilla rules in the Palace [now Buckingham, not Kensington, Palace], to which the noble and virtuous of the land are not invited--nor would they go if they were. [The last sentence is somewhat reminiscent of the fox and the grapes.] We do not object to the Baroness because she was originally a milk girl, but because of her manner and behaviour, especially to the Duchess of Kent. She has rendered herself most hateful to the people of England, because her connection with Leopold, through his creature Stockmar, is calculated to inflict the deepest injury upon the Sovereign and the country generally; because she is a bad-hearted woman; and because she is trying to bring about a union at once mercenary and distasteful.”
As time went on, the Tory section of the Press grew more emphatic in its utterances, and the extreme Tory clique expressed itself in plainer and more violent and libellous language. With them the Baroness was anathema. They affirmed that having in her youth been a milkmaid, she was now only fit for the housemaid’s table; her sister had been Queen Caroline’s maid, and she had come as such to the Duchess of Kent for a few pounds a year. “Yet now she insults the good Duchess, who is beloved by everyone.” “She has broken up the mother’s influence, and deliberately taught the child to look coldly on one who has nobly done her duty to the country by educating that child suitably, and, having gained the needed ascendency, had come to an understanding with Leopold and his friends as to the use to be made of her power.” The Duchess of Kent, who they said was insulted by her _ci-devant_ servant, should have their protection, they vowed, but did not explain how it would be given.
A story went around that once at Windsor the Baroness mislaid her keys, and that in consequence the Queen could not open any of her dispatch boxes, and thus everyone averred that the secrets of the Empire were entrusted to “this German spy.” “We demand to know what office this woman bears about the Sovereign? She may rest assured that this question will not only be asked, but a reply peremptorily demanded when Parliament meets.” Her position was denounced as unconstitutional and dangerous to the personal comfort of Her Majesty, it was said--though the real meaning was “to the dying hope that the Tories would ever regain their influence.” When some hireling about the Court made known the fact that Lehzen had changed her bedroom, taking the next room to that occupied by Victoria, there being no door but a curtain between the two rooms, a terrible fear arose, and all the exaggerations about complete ascendency over the mind of the Queen were started afresh. “The Constitution does not permit the Sovereign to have an irresponsible adviser, and if anyone under the guise and specious title of friend obtains possession of State matters and controls State proceedings, is a foreigner and in communication with a foreign Court, that same Constitution will vindicate its outraged fences and expel the intruder even from the Royal footstool.” To heighten the indignation, it was said that Louis Philippe was fostering a plot in favour of the Catholics, and through Leopold was making the Baroness his tool, so that the “exasperated Protestants of the Empire” were losing their hope of favour, but “were determined to wrest a satisfactory certainty from the Crown as their ancestors had done before them.”
Melbourne was naturally blamed, though his influence was by no means strong enough to allow him to interfere in the Queen’s private friendships, and he more or less knew that the suggestion that Lehzen was consulted in State matters was unfounded.
In all this lies the inner cause of that difficulty which arose in 1839 and convulsed politicians, the “Bedchamber Squabble,” as it has been called. It burst forth without warning, no one probably being more surprised than the two chief actors, the Queen and Sir Robert Peel. Though it will be necessary to go back again to events of 1838, it is better perhaps to detail here the intricacies of this knotty question, which had such an important, if temporary, effect on politics.