their children. Lady Lyttelton was named royal governess and
superintended the nursery. The children were brought up very simply; the
Queen spent as much time as she could with them, played with them, and
interested herself in their friends and their pets, and they were
encouraged to act little plays and recite poetry to their parents.
Prince Albert, like the Queen, was very musical, and they often sang
together. When the famous composer, Mendelssohn, visited England, he was
invited to Buckingham Palace, and they both sang to his accompaniment.
He said that the Queen sang “really quite faultlessly and with charming
feeling and expression.” They also loved the theatre, and plays were
often acted at Windsor.
Several times the Queen visited Germany with Prince Albert, and they
also went to Ireland. But wherever they were they never failed in their
attention to public business. It was a great grief to the Queen when a
change in the government came, and Lord Melbourne had to resign. But she
always remained friends with him and wrote to him constantly. At first
she dreaded having to do with his successor, Sir Robert Peel, but she
grew to like and admire him very much. With nearly all her ministers her
relations were most cordial; only with Lord Palmerston did she find it
difficult to get on, and she never was quite easy with Gladstone. They
all alike admired her industry and strong sense of duty, and her great
knowledge of public affairs.
[Illustration:
LORD PALMERSTON.
From a seated figure in Hayter’s Reformed Parliament in the National
Portrait Gallery.
]
In 1851 the first International Exhibition was held in London. The idea
of such an exhibition was Prince Albert’s, and at first it met with
great opposition, both at home and abroad. But it turned out a
triumphant success. Many foreign princes came to the opening ceremony.
The Queen described it to her uncle as “the greatest day in our history,
the most beautiful and imposing and touching spectacle ever seen, and
the triumph of my beloved Albert.” People hoped that this great
gathering of all nations would prove a festival of peace. But it was
only a very few years afterwards that the Crimean War broke out. In this
war England took part as the ally of Napoleon III. who had just made
himself Emperor of France. The Queen followed the war with the deepest
anxiety. She felt proud of the conduct of her troops, as she always
called them; she welcomed them on their return, presented them with
medals with her own hands, and did all in her power to show sympathy
with their sufferings. Before the war was over, she paid her first visit
to Paris to show her friendship for the Emperor, whose personal charm at
that time attracted her very much; later she learnt to distrust him. She
was received with immense enthusiasm, and wrote that she was “delighted,
enchanted, amused, and interested, and had never seen anything more
beautiful and gay than Paris.”
[Illustration: WILLIAM EWART GLADSTONE.]
When the Crimean War was over, the Queen visited Aldershot, and reviewed
the troops herself. She started a new order, called the Victoria Cross,
to be given to those soldiers who had done some specially brave act, and
gave it herself to fifty-two men at a review in Hyde Park.
In 1856 her eldest daughter was betrothed to the Crown Prince of
Prussia. The Queen was delighted, and showed her high spirits by dancing
vigorously at all the balls given in honour of the betrothal. She even
danced a Scottish reel to the bagpipes. The next year came the great
anxiety of the Indian mutiny. The Queen felt it much more distressing
than the Crimean War, “where there was glory and honourable warfare, and
where the poor women and children were safe.” It was also a sorrow to
part from her eldest daughter when she married, but she rejoiced in her
happiness and visited her in Germany. In 1859, at the age of
thirty-nine, she became a grandmother when her first grandchild, the
present Emperor of Germany, was born. Her family were an ever-growing
joy to her, and life was full or interest and happiness.
[Illustration:
THE VICTORIA CROSS.
Instituted in 1856.
]
But in the year 1861 a sudden end came to her happiness. In the spring
her mother died; and she wrote as a broken-hearted child to her uncle,
saying that she could not imagine life without her. A greater blow was
awaiting her. Before the end of the year, Prince Albert fell ill, and,
almost before his illness was known to be serious, he died. The Queen
was utterly crushed. In her first broken-hearted letter to her uncle,
she said: “My life as a happy one is ended, the world is gone for me.”
It was indeed a terrible loss for her. She had absolutely depended on
him and leant on his advice, and she had loved him and looked up to him
as a perfect being. Ten years before, she had written about his
wonderful fitness for business and politics, and added: “I grow daily to
dislike them both, more and more. We women are not made for
governing—and if we are good women, we must dislike these masculine
occupations.” Now she was left to govern alone, bereft of what had been
the joy of her home life. Immense sympathy was shown to her and she was
much touched by it. She determined to take her husband’s example as her
guide, and to give the same minute care as he had given to public
affairs. But she shut herself up in absolute seclusion, seeing no one
but her family and those whom she had to see for business.
[Illustration:
MARRIAGE OF H.R.H. VICTORIA, PRINCESS ROYAL, TO H.R.H. PRINCE
FREDERICK WILLIAM OF PRUSSIA.
(_From the Picture by John Philip at Windsor Castle._)
]
At first, people accepted the Queen’s seclusion as natural and respected
her grief. But as the years passed and she made no change, many
complaints were made of her neglect of the duties of her position. The
newspapers published criticisms of her conduct, which deeply wounded
her. She made no change, and spoke of herself as a cruelly misunderstood
woman. At first, her only public appearances were to unveil statues of
her husband, and occasionally she opened Parliament. She worked as hard
as ever at public business, and was much taken up with family affairs
and with the arrangements for the marriage of her children. She liked
best to be at Balmoral, and felt Windsor a sad and gloomy place. During
these years her seclusion led to her being decidedly unpopular, and it
may rightly be considered the one serious mistake in her life.
The serious illness of the Prince of Wales in 1871 roused much sympathy
and helped to make the Crown again more popular. When Mr. Disraeli
became Prime Minister the Queen began to find public business more
interesting. He was not only clever, but he took much trouble to be
agreeable to her and to amuse her, so that she became really fond of
him. She was delighted with his Indian policy, which ended in her being
proclaimed Empress of India in 1876. She much enjoyed this new honour,
and showed her feeling for India by having Indian servants to attend
upon her, and by beginning to learn Hindustani.
[Illustration: BENJAMIN DISRAELI, LORD BEACONSFIELD.]
As the years passed, many sorrows came to the Queen through the death of
relations and friends; especially she felt the death of her second
daughter, Princess Alice. She continued to exert much influence on
public affairs, and always did all in her power to help to keep the
peace in Europe. In 1879 she visited Italy for the first time, and she
often repeated her visit and travelled also in other countries, always
in a very quiet and simple way.
In 1887 the Queen had been on the throne for fifty years, and she was
persuaded to keep her Jubilee publicly. On the Jubilee Day, June 21,
1887, she went in procession, preceded by thirty-two princes of her own
family, sons, sons-in-law, and grandsons, to a thanksgiving service in
Westminster Abbey. Representatives of all the countries of Europe, of
India, and the colonies followed her. The immense crowds who gathered to
see her pass received her with an enthusiasm which deeply touched her.
She said on her return to Buckingham Palace that she was very tired but
very happy. The same enthusiasm attended other celebrations in
connection with the Jubilee. In her old age the Queen was as popular,
perhaps even more popular, than she had been in her youth. People in all
the wide lands which made up the British Empire felt that she was the
outward sign of the unity of the Empire. They venerated her for her long
and blameless life, devoted to duty. In far distant lands, black and
savage people honoured the great white Queen and trusted in her justice.
[Illustration:
_Photo: London Stereoscopic Co._
QUEEN VICTORIA’S JUBILEE, 1897.
]
After the Jubilee, she went about a little more and saw more people; she
visited Berlin, and spent some time in the south of Europe each year.
She received many royal visitors, and once more there were concerts and
dramatic performances at court. In spite of her age she still gave as
much attention as ever to business, and would spend two or three hours a
day going through papers, and signing her name to public documents.
In 1897 when she had reigned sixty years, her second, or diamond,
Jubilee was celebrated. This time a great state procession was made all
through London, and on reaching St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Queen’s
carriage paused at the bottom of the steps for a brief service of
thanksgiving.
Her last years were clouded by the war in South Africa. Amidst all the
gloom that followed on the news of the disasters suffered there by the
English troops, the Queen never despaired of ultimate success. She took
every opportunity of showing her sympathy with her soldiers, and telling
them of her gratitude for their exertions. The war was not over when she
began to show signs of failing health. One of the last things she did
was to receive Lord Roberts to hear from him about the state of things
in Africa. Little more than a week afterwards she died, at the age of
eighty-one.
When we think over her long life and the great position she filled, we
find that she owed her influence more to the strong sense of duty she
always had, and to her constant determination to do what she felt to be
right, than to any special gifts or talents she possessed. She was a
wonderful woman because she was always true to the best that she knew,
and it is this that makes her an example for us all.
THE END
Printed by BALLANTYNE, HANSON & CO.
Edinburgh & London
Transcriber's Note:
When italics were used in the original book, the corresponding text has
been surrounded by _underscores_.
Some presumed printer's errors have been corrected, including
normalizing punctuation. Additionally, a single occurrence of the name
Elflæd was changed to Ælflæd, which was the spelling more frequently
used in this book.