ROCKS AHEAD.
The proverbial troubles that mar the course of true love were not
realized in the case of the Queen and Prince Consort, at least so
far as their personal relations were concerned. But there were some
difficulties and annoyances in store for them from outside influences.
A foolish attempt was made to circulate the report that the Prince
was a Roman Catholic. When the announcement of the Queen’s intended
marriage was made to Parliament, it contained no reference to the
Prince’s religious faith, and the omission was severely commented on in
both Houses. The Queen thought her subjects were as well informed as
she was herself upon the history of the House of Coburg, and believed
that the attachment of the Prince’s family to the principles of the
Reformation was notorious. In the susceptible state of the public
mind at that time, and in the light of current events, it was perhaps
an error of judgment not to mention the Prince’s Protestantism in
the announcement of the marriage. Even when it was demonstrated that
the Prince was Protestant to the backbone, the Ministry were soundly
accused of suppressing all mention of the fact in order to retain the
support of the Irish Roman Catholic members in the House of Commons.
The Whig Government was tottering to its fall, and Lady Holland’s witty
description of the political situation was that in the coming appeal to
the country they had “nothing to rely on but the Queen and Paddy.” Even
the Duke of Wellington, who usually kept his head when other people
lost theirs, moved and carried an amendment in the House of Lords to
insert the word “Protestant” in the address in reply to the Queen’s
speech announcing her intended marriage, “thus showing the public,” he
said, “that this was still a Protestant State.”
This little outbreak was only a temporary vexation; but there appeared
to be serious cause for alarm in another quarter. There was, about
1839, a remarkable outbreak of real disloyalty in the Tory party; it
arose partly, no doubt, from the Queen’s known sympathy with the Whigs;
but one cannot help suspecting that it was augmented by the elements
of social corruption which had flourished in the atmosphere of the two
previous reigns. When Prince Albert’s household were being selected,
the only conditions which he insisted on were that it should not be
formed exclusively of one party, and that it should consist of men of
rank, “well educated and of high character.” This limited the range of
choice, more perhaps than the young Prince was aware of, and did not
increase his popularity among those who were excluded.
A non-gambling, non-drinking, pure-hearted, and clean-living young
couple would have against them much that had enjoyed the sunshine of
Court favor under the son of George III. The hounds of the “Great
Goddess Lubricity” were in full cry against the Court. The undeserved
humiliation suffered by poor Lady Flora Hastings gave them an advantage
they were not slow to make the most of; it gave them the cover they run
best in.
Added to this source of unpopularity which had in it nothing of a
party character, there was another of a strictly party nature. The
Bedchamber question, the Queen’s dislike of Peel, and her desire to
keep Lord Melbourne in office, still further aggravated the situation,
and, towards the end of 1839, Tory members of Parliament broke out
into speeches containing violent personal attacks upon the Queen. One
of these, “_Victorippicks_,” delivered at a Conservative dinner at
Canterbury, Greville describes as “violent and indecent,” “a tissue of
folly and impertinence;” it was, however, received by the assembled
company with shouts of applause. The chief offender on this occasion,
Mr. Bradshaw, was called out by Mr. Horsman, a strong Whig and M.P. for
Cockermouth; but matters were made worse, as far as the Tory party were
concerned, by the fact that Bradshaw’s second was Colonel Gurwood, the
confidential friend and secretary of the Duke of Wellington. Another
striking manifestation of Tory disloyalty was given about the same time
at Shrewsbury, when at a public dinner the company present refused to
drink the health of the newly appointed Lord Lieutenant because he was
the husband of one of the Ladies of the Bedchamber, the Duchess of
Sutherland, with whom the Queen had refused to part when Sir Robert
Peel was endeavoring to form a Government in 1839. Stockmar, Greville,
and other observers of the current of English politics marked with
alarm the decay of loyalty in the party whose traditional principles
led them in an exactly contrary direction.
These fears were augmented by events in the House of Lords and House
of Commons, relating to Prince Albert’s position and establishment. In
the House of Commons, Lord John Russell proposed on the part of the
Government an allowance from Parliament for Prince Albert of £50,000
a year. This was the sum which had been voted for Prince Leopold
on his marriage with Princess Charlotte. Prince George of Denmark,
husband of Queen Anne, had enjoyed this income, and the same sum had
been voted for a succession of Queens Consort. It seems to have been
overlooked that the circumstances of the present case were not quite
parallel to these. The Civil List had been readjusted at the beginning
of the Queen’s reign, not in the direction of increasing it, but on a
scale that was believed not only to be ample, but to allow an ample
margin for all contingencies; in Prince Albert’s case no separate
establishment would be needed, and only a very moderate household.
Moreover, even if no account were taken of the exceptional commercial
distress prevailing at the time,[11] the Ministry would have done well
to realize that the time had gone by when the passing of huge sums
for the Royal Family would go through as a matter of course. But the
Government did not take heed of any of these things, nor did they take
the precaution of consulting the leaders of opposition as to their
view on the matter; on the contrary, Lord John Russell insisted on
going on even when he knew he would be beaten, and irritated the Tory
party by taunting them with disloyalty. When the vote of £50,000 was
proposed, Mr. Hume moved to reduce to £21,000. This was negatived, but
an amendment by Colonel Sibthorpe to reduce the vote to £30,000 was
supported by Sir Robert Peel and other leading members of the Tory
party, and carried by 262 to 158. It was not a strictly party division,
for the majority was composed in part of Whigs and Radicals, as well as
Tories. Still it was anticipated that the division would set the Prince
against the Tory party. This, however, was not the case. His vexation
on hearing of the vote was based on the fear that it indicated that his
marriage with the Queen was unpopular in England, and when he learned
that this was not the case, he did not allow the matter to disturb him
in any way, although, as will be seen later, he did not forget it. It
will be seen that the fact that Sir Robert Peel had taken a prominent
part in reducing the vote did not prejudice the Prince against that
statesman. When the time came, eighteen months later, that Peel was
called on again to form a Cabinet, he was rather uncomfortable in
meeting the Prince. But he found not a single trace of any personal
soreness in his demeanor. “On the contrary, his communications were
of that frank and cordial character which at once placed the Minister
at his ease, and made him feel assured that not only was no grudge
entertained, but that he might count henceforward on being treated as a
friend.”
The curious in such matters will here note a parallel between the
foundation of the Queen’s esteem for Melbourne (page 53) and the
Prince’s esteem for Peel.
The Queen was much more seriously annoyed by what took place in the
House of Lords on the question of the Prince’s precedence. This is one
of the matters in which it is impossible for the masses to understand
the classes. It is like the pea and the real princess in Andersen’s
tale. Either you feel it or you do not feel it; but if you do not
feel it, you are not a real princess. Questions of precedence appear
absolutely unimportant to those who are not born with a natural gift
for thinking them important. The Duke of Wellington, even though he
was an aristocrat by birth, never acquired the power of grasping the
enormous importance of precedence and etiquette. When the Earl of
Albemarle, who, as Master of the Horse, was extremely sensitive about
his right of riding in the Queen’s carriage on State occasions, made
himself rather troublesome on the subject, the Duke, who was appealed
to, said: “The Queen can make Lord Albemarle sit at the top of the
coach, or under the coach, behind the coach, or wherever else Her
Majesty pleases.” The Bill for the Prince’s naturalization contained a
clause enabling the Queen to give him precedence over all other members
of the Royal Family. The King of Hanover furiously raged, together
with some of his Royal brothers. Objections were raised in the House
of Lords. The Duke of Wellington thought it was unnecessary to settle
the Prince’s precedence by law, and that the Queen could settle it by
placing the Prince next herself on all occasions. This common-sense
view would have been sufficient for ordinary people; but the fact that
the House of Lords allowed the precedence clauses of the Naturalization
Bill to drop seems to have caused no little trouble and annoyance.
The Queen has added a note to the “Life of the Prince Consort,” in
which she says: “When I was first married, we had much difficulty on
this subject, much bad feeling was shown; several members of the Royal
Family showed bad grace in giving precedence to the Prince, and the
late King of Hanover positively resisted doing so.” The law of England
has provided for the precedence of a Queen Consort, placing her above
all other subjects, and giving her rank and dignity next her husband;
moreover, relieving her of the legal disabilities of a _feme-covert_;
but the law takes no cognizance of the possible existence of a husband
of a Queen Regnant. As far as his legal position was concerned, the
Queen’s husband had no rank except what belonged to him as second son
of the Duke of Coburg. Greville looked up the authorities, and wrote
a pamphlet on the subject, urging that the husband of the Queen ought
to have precedence over all other persons. He thought the Tory party
had made a serious mistake in the line they had taken in the matter.
It was calculated, he said, to accentuate the Queen’s dislike of them
as a party, and he also felt that it was ungracious to give the Prince
so uncordial a reception. It will render him, he said, “as ironical
to them [the Tories] as she is already.” In this prediction events
proved him to have been mistaken. Both the Queen and the Prince were
hurt at what had taken place, but neither of them was imbittered. He
first heard of the cutting down of his annuity in the House of Commons,
and the lapsing of the Precedence Clauses in the Lords accidentally
on taking up a newspaper at Aix, where he stopped for a few hours on
his way to England for his marriage. “We came upon it,” he wrote to
the Queen, February 1st, 1840, “in a newspaper at Aix, where we dined.
In the House of Lords, too, people have made themselves needlessly
disagreeable. All I have time to say is, that, while I possess your
love, they cannot make me unhappy.”
The events just narrated received an importance they did not in
themselves deserve, from the fact that they showed a weakening and
disintegration of the monarchical principle in the party most bound
by their professions to maintain it. Revolutionary doctrines were
almost everywhere making way; a few years later, in 1848, they shook
almost every throne in Europe. Aided by the experience and foresight
of their friend and mentor, Baron Stockmar, the young Queen and her
husband set themselves definitely, consciously, and earnestly to the
task of strengthening the hold of the monarchy by basing it on the
affections of the people, and also by making the crown a real power,
above all party, seeking only to increase the welfare of the masses
of the people, and uphold the power and dignity of the Empire. This
object is expressed over and over again in the numerous letters and
memoranda which passed between the Prince and Stockmar in anticipation
of the marriage, and in the years which immediately succeeded it. The
Prince was convinced that the dignity and stability of the throne could
only be based on the affection and respect of the nation; to earn that
affection and respect, the domestic life of the Sovereign must be
pure and blameless; that moreover the Sovereign must be the partisan
of no party, but have a single eye to the true welfare of her whole
people. We learn incidentally not only that “Melbourne called this
‘nonsense,’”[12] but that he said, “This damned morality is sure to
ruin everything.”[13]
But this only illustrates anew that the wisdom of the man of the world
is often mere foolishness.
In speaking of the Queen’s childhood, attention was drawn to the
peculiarly fortunate circumstances which withdrew her very largely
from the influences of Court life and gave her much of the quiet
simplicity of a private station. If she was fortunate in her childhood
she was still more fortunate in her marriage; not only were she and her
husband life-long lovers, but she found in him a character and will as
strong as her own; he was a sagacious counsellor, a fearless critic, a
far-seeing friend, strengthening her throne by pursuing with her the
ends of a worthy ambition. The warning which they both received from
the events related in this chapter may have been fortunate too, if they
emphasized the resolve they had formed to strengthen the monarchy by
making the throne a throne of justice and purity.
[11] In 1840 wheat was 81_s._ a quarter; wages were low, and trade
depressed; the revenue was steadily falling; deficits were chronic; and
Chartist riots were common occurrences.
[12] Life of the Prince Consort, vol. i. p. 244.
[13] Memorandum by Stockmar, Life of the Prince Consort, vol. ii. p.
550.