QUEEN VICTORIA
By Lytton Strachey
New York Harcourt, Brace And Company, 1921
CONTENTS
I. ANTECEDENTS
II. CHILDHOOD
III. LORD MELBOURNE
IV. MARRIAGE
V. LORD PALMERSTON
VI. LAST YEARS OF THE PRINCE CONSORT
VII. WIDOWHOOD
VIII. MR. GLADSTONE AND LORD BEACONSFIELD
IX. OLD AGE
X. THE END
BIBLIOGRAPHY
QUEEN VICTORIA
CHAPTER I. ANTECEDENTS
I
On November 6, 1817, died the Princess Charlotte, only child of the
Prince Regent, and heir to the crown of England. Her short life had
hardly been a happy one. By nature impulsive, capricious, and vehement,
she had always longed for liberty; and she had never possessed it.
She had been brought up among violent family quarrels, had been early
separated from her disreputable and eccentric mother, and handed over to
the care of her disreputable and selfish father. When she was seventeen,
he decided to marry her off to the Prince of Orange; she, at first,
acquiesced; but, suddenly falling in love with Prince Augustus of
Prussia, she determined to break off the engagement. This was not her
first love affair, for she had previously carried on a clandestine
correspondence with a Captain Hess. Prince Augustus was already married,
morganatically, but she did not know it, and he did not tell her. While
she was spinning out the negotiations with the Prince of Orange, the
allied sovereign--it was June, 1814--arrived in London to celebrate
their victory. Among them, in the suite of the Emperor of Russia, was
the young and handsome Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. He made several
attempts to attract the notice of the Princess, but she, with her heart
elsewhere, paid very little attention. Next month the Prince Regent,
discovering that his daughter was having secret meetings with Prince
Augustus, suddenly appeared upon the scene and, after dismissing her
household, sentenced her to a strict seclusion in Windsor Park. "God
Almighty grant me patience!" she exclaimed, falling on her knees in an
agony of agitation: then she jumped up, ran down the backstairs and out
into the street, hailed a passing cab, and drove to her mother's house
in Bayswater. She was discovered, pursued, and at length, yielding
to the persuasions of her uncles, the Dukes of York and Sussex, of
Brougham, and of the Bishop of Salisbury, she returned to Carlton House
at two o'clock in the morning. She was immured at Windsor, but no more
was heard of the Prince of Orange. Prince Augustus, too, disappeared.
The way was at last open to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.
This Prince was clever enough to get round the Regent, to impress the
Ministers, and to make friends with another of the Princess's uncles,
the Duke of Kent. Through the Duke he was able to communicate privately
with the Princess, who now declared that he was necessary to
her happiness. When, after Waterloo, he was in Paris, the Duke's
aide-de-camp carried letters backwards and forwards across the Channel.
In January 1816 he was invited to England, and in May the marriage took
place.
The character of Prince Leopold contrasted strangely with that of
his wife. The younger son of a German princeling, he was at this time
twenty-six years of age; he had served with distinction in the war
against Napoleon; he had shown considerable diplomatic skill at the
Congress of Vienna; and he was now to try his hand at the task of taming
a tumultuous Princess. Cold and formal in manner, collected in speech,
careful in action, he soon dominated the wild, impetuous, generous
creature by his side. There was much in her, he found, of which he could
not approve. She quizzed, she stamped, she roared with laughter; she
had very little of that self-command which is especially required of
princes; her manners were abominable. Of the latter he was a good judge,
having moved, as he himself explained to his niece many years later, in
the best society of Europe, being in fact "what is called in French de
la fleur des pois." There was continual friction, but every scene
ended in the same way. Standing before him like a rebellious boy in
petticoats, her body pushed forward, her hands behind her back, with
flaming cheeks and sparkling eyes, she would declare at last that she
was ready to do whatever he wanted. "If you wish it, I will do it," she
would say. "I want nothing for myself," he invariably answered; "When
I press something on you, it is from a conviction that it is for your
interest and for your good."
Among the members of the household at Claremont, near Esher, where the
royal pair were established, was a young German physician, Christian
Friedrich Stockmar. He was the son of a minor magistrate in Coburg, and,
after taking part as a medical officer in the war, he had settled down
as a doctor in his native town. Here he had met Prince Leopold, who had
been struck by his ability, and, on his marriage, brought him to England
as his personal physician. A curious fate awaited this young man;
many were the gifts which the future held in store for him--many and
various--influence, power, mystery, unhappiness, a broken heart. At
Claremont his position was a very humble one; but the Princess took
a fancy to him, called him "Stocky," and romped with him along the
corridors. Dyspeptic by constitution, melancholic by temperament, he
could yet be lively on occasion, and was known as a wit in Coburg. He
was virtuous, too, and served the royal menage with approbation. "My
master," he wrote in his diary, "is the best of all husbands in all the
five quarters of the globe; and his wife bears him an amount of love,
the greatness of which can only be compared with the English national
debt." Before long he gave proof of another quality--a quality which was
to colour the whole of his life-cautious sagacity. When, in the spring
of 1817, it was known that the Princess was expecting a child, the post
of one of her physicians-in-ordinary was offered to him, and he had
the good sense to refuse it. He perceived that his colleagues would be
jealous of him, that his advice would probably not be taken, but that,
if anything were to go wrong, it would be certainly the foreign doctor
who would be blamed. Very soon, indeed, he came to the opinion that the
low diet and constant bleedings, to which the unfortunate Princess was
subjected, were an error; he drew the Prince aside, and begged him to
communicate this opinion to the English doctors; but it was useless. The
fashionable lowering treatment was continued for months. On November 5,
at nine o'clock in the evening, after a labour of over fifty hours, the
Princess was delivered of a dead boy. At midnight her exhausted strength
gave way. When, at last, Stockmar consented to see her; he went in, and
found her obviously dying, while the doctors were plying her with wine.
She seized his hand and pressed it. "They have made me tipsy," she said.
After a little he left her, and was already in the next room when he
heard her call out in her loud voice: "Stocky! Stocky!" As he ran back
the death-rattle was in her throat. She tossed herself violently from
side to side; then suddenly drew up her legs, and it was over.
The Prince, after hours of watching, had left the room for a few
moments' rest; and Stockmar had now to tell him that his wife was dead.
At first he could not be made to realise what had happened. On their way
to her room he sank down on a chair while Stockmar knelt beside him: it
was all a dream; it was impossible. At last, by the bed, he, too, knelt
down and kissed the cold hands. Then rising and exclaiming, "Now I am
quite desolate. Promise me never to leave me," he threw himself into
Stockmar's arms.
II
The tragedy at Claremont was of a most upsetting kind. The royal
kaleidoscope had suddenly shifted, and nobody could tell how the new
pattern would arrange itself. The succession to the throne, which had
seemed so satisfactorily settled, now became a matter of urgent doubt.
George III was still living, an aged lunatic, at Windsor, completely
impervious to the impressions of the outer world. Of his seven sons, the
youngest was of more than middle age, and none had legitimate offspring.
The outlook, therefore, was ambiguous. It seemed highly improbable that
the Prince Regent, who had lately been obliged to abandon his stays, and
presented a preposterous figure of debauched obesity, could ever again,
even on the supposition that he divorced his wife and re-married, become
the father of a family. Besides the Duke of Kent, who must be noticed
separately, the other brothers, in order of seniority, were the Dukes of
York, Clarence, Cumberland, Sussex, and Cambridge; their situations and
prospects require a brief description. The Duke of York, whose escapades
in times past with Mrs. Clarke and the army had brought him into
trouble, now divided his life between London and a large, extravagantly
ordered and extremely uncomfortable country house where he occupied
himself with racing, whist, and improper stories. He was remarkable
among the princes for one reason: he was the only one of them--so we
are informed by a highly competent observer--who had the feelings of a
gentleman. He had been long married to the Princess Royal of Prussia,
a lady who rarely went to bed and was perpetually surrounded by vast
numbers of dogs, parrots, and monkeys. They had no children. The Duke
of Clarence had lived for many years in complete obscurity with Mrs.
Jordan, the actress, in Bushey Park. By her he had had a large family
of sons and daughters, and had appeared, in effect to be married to her,
when he suddenly separated from her and offered to marry Miss Wykeham, a
crazy woman of large fortune, who, however, would have nothing to say to
him. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Jordan died in distressed circumstances
in Paris. The Duke of Cumberland was probably the most unpopular man in
England. Hideously ugly, with a distorted eye, he was bad-tempered
and vindictive in private, a violent reactionary in politics, and was
subsequently suspected of murdering his valet and of having carried
on an amorous intrigue of an extremely scandalous kind. He had lately
married a German Princess, but there were as yet no children by the
marriage. The Duke of Sussex had mildly literary tastes and collected
books. He had married Lady Augusta Murray, by whom he had two children,
but the marriage, under the Royal Marriages Act, was declared void. On
Lady Augusta's death, he married Lady Cecilia Buggin; she changed her
name to Underwood, but this marriage also was void. Of the Duke of
Cambridge, the youngest of the brothers, not very much was known. He
lived in Hanover, wore a blonde wig, chattered and fidgeted a great
deal, and was unmarried.
Besides his seven sons, George III had five surviving daughters. Of
these, two--the Queen of Wurtemberg and the Duchess of Gloucester--were
married and childless. The three unmarried princesses--Augusta,
Elizabeth, and Sophia--were all over forty.
III
The fourth son of George III was Edward, Duke of Kent. He was now fifty
years of age--a tall, stout, vigorous man, highly-coloured, with bushy
eyebrows, a bald top to his head, and what hair he had carefully dyed a
glossy black. His dress was extremely neat, and in his whole appearance
there was a rigidity which did not belie his character. He had spent
his early life in the army--at Gibraltar, in Canada, in the West
Indies--and, under the influence of military training, had become at
first a disciplinarian and at last a martinet. In 1802, having been sent
to Gibraltar to restore order in a mutinous garrison, he was recalled
for undue severity, and his active career had come to an end. Since then
he had spent his life regulating his domestic arrangements with great
exactitude, busying himself with the affairs of his numerous dependents,
designing clocks, and struggling to restore order to his finances, for,
in spite of his being, as someone said who knew him well "regle comme du
papier a musique," and in spite of an income of L24,000 a year, he
was hopelessly in debt. He had quarrelled with most of his brothers,
particularly with the Prince Regent, and it was only natural that he
should have joined the political Opposition and become a pillar of the
Whigs.
What his political opinions may actually have been is open to doubt; it
has often been asserted that he was a Liberal, or even a Radical; and,
if we are to believe Robert Owen, he was a necessitarian Socialist. His
relations with Owen--the shrewd, gullible, high-minded, wrong-headed,
illustrious and preposterous father of Socialism and Co-operation--were
curious and characteristic. He talked of visiting the Mills at New
Lanark, he did, in fact, preside at one of Owen's public meetings;
he corresponded with him on confidential terms, and he even (so Owen
assures us) returned, after his death, from "the sphere of spirits" to
give encouragement to the Owenites on earth. "In an especial manner,"
says Owen, "I have to name the very anxious feelings of the spirit of
his Royal Highness the Late Duke of Kent (who early informed me
that there were no titles in the spititual spheres into which he had
entered), to benefit, not a class, a sect, a party, or any particular
country, but the whole of the human race, through futurity." "His whole
spirit-proceeding with me has been most beautiful," Owen adds, "making
his own appointments; and never in one instance has this spirit not
been punctual to the minute he had named." But Owen was of a sanguine
temperament. He also numbered among his proselytes President Jefferson,
Prince Metternich, and Napoleon; so that some uncertainty must still
linger over the Duke of Kent's views. But there is no uncertainty about
another circumstance: his Royal Highness borrowed from Robert Owen, on
various occasions, various sums of money which were never repaid and
amounted in all to several hundred pounds.
After the death of the Princess Charlotte it was clearly important, for
more than one reason, that the Duke of Kent should marry. From the point
of view of the nation, the lack of heirs in the reigning family seemed
to make the step almost obligatory; it was also likely to be highly
expedient from the point of view of the Duke. To marry as a public
duty, for the sake of the royal succession, would surely deserve some
recognition from a grateful country. When the Duke of York had married
he had received a settlement of L25,000 a year. Why should not the Duke
of Kent look forward to an equal sum? But the situation was not quite
simple. There was the Duke of Clarence to be considered; he was the
elder brother, and, if HE married, would clearly have the prior claim.
On the other hand, if the Duke of Kent married, it was important
to remember that he would be making a serious sacrifice: a lady was
involved.
The Duke, reflecting upon all these matters with careful attention,
happened, about a month after his niece's death, to visit Brussels, and
learnt that Mr. Creevey was staying in the town. Mr. Creevey was a close
friend of the leading Whigs and an inveterate gossip; and it occurred
to the Duke that there could be no better channel through which to
communicate his views upon the situation to political circles at home.
Apparently it did not occur to him that Mr. Creevey was malicious and
might keep a diary. He therefore sent for him on some trivial pretext,
and a remarkable conversation ensued.
After referring to the death of the Princess, to the improbability of
the Regent's seeking a divorce, to the childlessness of the Duke of
York, and to the possibility of the Duke of Clarence marrying, the Duke
adverted to his own position. "Should the Duke of Clarence not marry,"
he said, "the next prince in succession is myself, and although I trust
I shall be at all times ready to obey any call my country may make upon
me, God only knows the sacrifice it will be to make, whenever I shall
think it my duty to become a married man. It is now seven and twenty
years that Madame St. Laurent and I have lived together: we are of
the same age, and have been in all climates, and in all difficulties
together, and you may well imagine, Mr. Creevey, the pang it will
occasion me to part with her. I put it to your own feelings--in the
event of any separation between you and Mrs. Creevey... As for Madame
St. Laurent herself, I protest I don't know what is to become of her if
a marriage is to be forced upon me; her feelings are already so agitated
upon the subject." The Duke went on to describe how, one morning, a day
or two after the Princess Charlotte's death, a paragraph had appeared in
the Morning Chronicle, alluding to the possibility of his marriage. He
had received the newspaper at breakfast together with his letters, and
"I did as is my constant practice, I threw the newspaper across the
table to Madame St. Laurent, and began to open and read my letters. I
had not done so but a very short time, when my attention was called to
an extraordinary noise and a strong convulsive movement in Madame St.
Laurent's throat. For a short time I entertained serious apprehensions
for her safety; and when, upon her recovery, I enquired into the
occasion of this attack, she pointed to the article in the Morning
Chronicle."
The Duke then returned to the subject of the Duke of Clarence. "My
brother the Duke of Clarence is the elder brother, and has certainly the
right to marry if he chooses, and I would not interfere with him on any
account. If he wishes to be king--to be married and have children, poor
man--God help him! Let him do so. For myself--I am a man of no ambition,
and wish only to remain as I am... Easter, you know, falls very early
this year--the 22nd of March. If the Duke of Clarence does not take any
step before that time, I must find some pretext to reconcile Madame St.
Laurent to my going to England for a short time. When once there, it
will be easy for me to consult with my friends as to the proper steps to
be taken. Should the Duke of Clarence do nothing before that time as to
marrying it will become my duty, no doubt, to take some measures upon
the subject myself." Two names, the Duke said, had been mentioned in
this connection--those of the Princess of Baden and the Princess of
Saxe-Coburg. The latter, he thought, would perhaps be the better of the
two, from the circumstance of Prince Leopold being so popular with the
nation; but before any other steps were taken, he hoped and expected to
see justice done to Madame St. Laurent. "She is," he explained, "of very
good family, and has never been an actress, and I am the first and only
person who ever lived with her. Her disinterestedness, too, has been
equal to her fidelity. When she first came to me it was upon L100 a
year. That sum was afterwards raised to L400 and finally to L1000; but
when my debts made it necessary for me to sacrifice a great part of my
income, Madame St. Laurent insisted upon again returning to her income
of L400 a year. If Madame St. Laurent is to return to live amongst her
friends, it must be in such a state of independence as to command their
respect. I shall not require very much, but a certain number of servants
and a carriage are essentials." As to his own settlement, the Duke
observed that he would expect the Duke of York's marriage to be
considered the precedent. "That," he said, "was a marriage for the
succession, and L25,000 for income was settled, in addition to all his
other income, purely on that account. I shall be contented with the same
arrangement, without making any demands grounded on the difference of
the value of money in 1792 and at present. As for the payment of my
debts," the Duke concluded, "I don't call them great. The nation, on
the contrary, is greatly my debtor." Here a clock struck, and seemed
to remind the Duke that he had an appointment; he rose, and Mr. Creevey
left him.
Who could keep such a communication secret? Certainly not Mr. Creevey.
He hurried off to tell the Duke of Wellington, who was very much amused,
and he wrote a long account of it to Lord Sefton, who received the
letter "very apropos," while a surgeon was sounding his bladder to
ascertain whether he had a stone. "I never saw a fellow more astonished
than he was," wrote Lord Sefton in his reply, "at seeing me laugh as
soon as the operation was over. Nothing could be more first-rate than
the royal Edward's ingenuousness. One does not know which to admire
most--the delicacy of his attachment to Madame St. Laurent, the
refinement of his sentiments towards the Duke of Clarence, or his own
perfect disinterestedness in pecuniary matters."
As it turned out, both the brothers decided to marry. The Duke of Kent,
selecting the Princess of Saxe-Coburg in preference to the Princess
of Baden, was united to her on May 29, 1818. On June 11, the Duke of
Clarence followed suit with a daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen.
But they were disappointed in their financial expectations; for though
the Government brought forward proposals to increase their allowances,
together with that of the Duke of Cumberland, the motions were defeated
in the House of Commons. At this the Duke of Wellington was not
surprised. "By God!" he said, "there is a great deal to be said
about that. They are the damnedest millstones about the necks of
any Government that can be imagined. They have insulted--PERSONALLY
insulted--two-thirds of the gentlemen of England, and how can it be
wondered at that they take their revenge upon them in the House of
Commons? It is their only opportunity, and I think, by God! they are
quite right to use it." Eventually, however, Parliament increased the
Duke of Kent's annuity by L6000. The subsequent history of Madame St.
Laurent has not transpired.
IV
The new Duchess of Kent, Victoria Mary Louisa, was a daughter of
Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and a sister of Prince Leopold.
The family was an ancient one, being a branch of the great House of
Wettin, which since the eleventh century had ruled over the March of
Meissen on the Elbe. In the fifteenth century the whole possessions of
the House had been divided between the Albertine and Ernestine branches:
from the former descended the electors and kings of Saxony; the latter,
ruling over Thuringia, became further subdivided into five branches,
of which the duchy of Saxe-Coburg was one. This principality was very
small, containing about 60,000 inhabitants, but it enjoyed independent
and sovereign rights. During the disturbed years which followed the
French Revolution, its affairs became terribly involved. The Duke was
extravagant, and kept open house for the swarms of refugees, who fled
eastward over Germany as the French power advanced. Among these was the
Prince of Leiningen, an elderly beau, whose domains on the Moselle
had been seized by the French, but who was granted in compensation
the territory of Amorbach in Lower Franconia. In 1803 he married the
Princess Victoria, at that time seventeen years of age. Three years
later Duke Francis died a ruined man. The Napoleonic harrow passed over
Saxe-Coburg. The duchy was seized by the French, and the ducal family
were reduced to beggary, almost to starvation. At the same time the
little principality of Amorbach was devastated by the French, Russian,
and Austrian armies, marching and counter-marching across it. For years
there was hardly a cow in the country, nor enough grass to feed a
flock of geese. Such was the desperate plight of the family which, a
generation later, was to have gained a foothold in half the reigning
Houses of Europe. The Napoleonic harrow had indeed done its work, the
seed was planted; and the crop would have surprised Napoleon. Prince
Leopold, thrown upon his own resources at fifteen, made a career for
himself and married the heiress of England. The Princess of Leiningen,
struggling at Amorbach with poverty, military requisitions, and a
futile husband, developed an independence of character and a tenacity of
purpose which were to prove useful in very different circumstances. In
1814, her husband died, leaving her with two children and the regency
of the principality. After her brother's marriage with the Princess
Charlotte, it was proposed that she should marry the Duke of Kent; but
she declined, on the ground that the guardianship of her children and
the management of her domains made other ties undesirable. The Princess
Charlotte's death, however, altered the case; and when the Duke of Kent
renewed his offer, she accepted it. She was thirty-two years old--short,
stout, with brown eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, cheerful and voluble,
and gorgeously attired in rustling silks and bright velvets.
She was certainly fortunate in her contented disposition; for she was
fated, all through her life, to have much to put up with. Her second
marriage, with its dubious prospects, seemed at first to be chiefly a
source of difficulties and discomforts. The Duke, declaring that he was
still too poor to live in England, moved about with uneasy precision
through Belgium and Germany, attending parades and inspecting barracks
in a neat military cap, while the English notabilities looked askance,
and the Duke of Wellington dubbed him the Corporal. "God damme!" he
exclaimed to Mr. Creevey, "d'ye know what his sisters call him? By God!
they call him Joseph Surface!" At Valenciennes, where there was a
review and a great dinner, the Duchess arrived with an old and
ugly lady-in-waiting, and the Duke of Wellington found himself in a
difficulty. "Who the devil is to take out the maid of honour?" he kept
asking; but at last he thought of a solution. "Damme, Freemantle, find
out the mayor and let him do it." So the Mayor of Valenciennes was
brought up for the purpose, and--so we learn from Mr. Creevey--"a
capital figure he was." A few days later, at Brussels, Mr. Creevey
himself had an unfortunate experience. A military school was to be
inspected--before breakfast. The company assembled; everything was
highly satisfactory; but the Duke of Kent continued for so long
examining every detail and asking meticulous question after meticulous
question, that Mr. Creevey at last could bear it no longer, and
whispered to his neighbour that he was damned hungry. The Duke of
Wellington heard him, and was delighted. "I recommend you," he said,
"whenever you start with the royal family in a morning, and particularly
with THE CORPORAL, always to breakfast first." He and his staff, it
turned out, had taken that precaution, and the great man amused himself,
while the stream of royal inquiries poured on, by pointing at Mr.
Creevey from time to time with the remark, "Voila le monsieur qui n'a
pas dejeune!"
Settled down at last at Amorbach, the time hung heavily on the Duke's
hands. The establishment was small, the country was impoverished; even
clock-making grew tedious at last. He brooded--for in spite of his piety
the Duke was not without a vein of superstition--over the prophecy of
a gipsy at Gibraltar who told him that he was to have many losses and
crosses, that he was to die in happiness, and that his only child was
to be a great queen. Before long it became clear that a child was to be
expected: the Duke decided that it should be born in England. Funds were
lacking for the journey, but his determination was not to be set aside.
Come what might, he declared, his child must be English-born. A carriage
was hired, and the Duke himself mounted the box. Inside were the
Duchess, her daughter Feodora, a girl of fourteen, with maids, nurses,
lap-dogs, and canaries. Off they drove--through Germany, through
France: bad roads, cheap inns, were nothing to the rigorous Duke and the
equable, abundant Duchess. The Channel was crossed, London was reached
in safety. The authorities provided a set of rooms in Kensington Palace;
and there, on May 24, 1819, a female infant was born.