THE ROYAL MARRIAGE.
Birth of Princess Beatrice--Death of the Duchess of Gloucester--A
Royal Romance--Franco-Russian Intrigues--The Art Treasures
Exhibition at Manchester--Announcement of the Marriage of the
Princess Royal--Prince Albert’s Views on Royal Grants--The
Controversy on the Grant to the Princess Royal--Visit of the Grand
Duke Constantine--The Christening of Princess Beatrice--Prince
Albert’s Title as Prince Consort Legalised--The First Distribution
of the Victoria Cross--Opposition to the Order--The Queen’s Visit
to Manchester--Departure of the Prince of Wales to Germany--The
Queen and the Indian Mutiny--Her Controversy with Lord
Palmerston--Sudden Death of the Duchess of Nemours--The Marriage of
the Princess Royal--The Scene in the Chapel--On the Balcony of
Buckingham Palace--The Illuminations in London--The Bride and
Bridegroom at Windsor--The Last Adieus--The Departure of the Bride
and Bridegroom to Germany.
It was when the country was passing through the crisis of Palmerston’s
“penal dissolution” that a Princess was added to the Royal circle--soon
to be diminished by the migration of her eldest sister to a home of her
own in a foreign land. The little Princess was born on the 14th of
April, and in a letter to King Leopold the Queen says: “She is to be
called Beatrice, a fine old name borne by three of the Plantagenet
Princesses, and her other names will be Mary (after poor Aunt Mary),
Victoria (after Mama and Vicky, who, with Fritz Wilhelm, are to be the
sponsors) and Feodore.”[355] On the 19th Prince Albert tells his
stepmother that the Queen was already able to leave her room, and her
recovery, therefore, could not have been retarded by the political
excitement and agitation of the times.
As the month ended, however, sorrow fell on the Royal household. On the
30th of April the Duchess of Gloucester died--the “Aunt Gloucester” to
whom the Queen and her husband in their letters make so many
affectionate references. This Princess was the last child of George
III., and of all his family the best beloved. The story of her life was
in itself a romance, the pathos of which accounts for the Queen’s
frequent allusions to her nobility and unselfishness of character.
During her girlhood at Windsor the Princess Mary, as she was called, won
the hearts of the people by her quiet, unobtrusive philanthropic work
among the poor. She and her cousin, the Duke of Gloucester, fell in love
with each other, but when he attained the age of twenty-one their
romance was cruelly and abruptly ended. The Princess Charlotte was born,
and it was decreed that the Duke of Gloucester must remain single, so
that he might marry her if no eligible foreign prince claimed her hand.
The Princess Mary and the Duke of Gloucester waited in suspense for
twenty weary years--for she refused to encourage any other suitor. In
1814 a rift appeared in this cloud that overhung their lives. The Prince
of Orange, it was said, was about to wed the Princess Charlotte, and
the ladies of the Court noticed how the pining Princess Mary suddenly
began to look bright and happy. But the projected alliance with the
Prince of Orange was abandoned, and the Princess Mary began to droop
again. A few months, however, put an end to the long probation of the
Royal lovers. Leopold of Coburg married the Princess Charlotte, and
Court gossips chronicle the fact that when she came down the steps of
Carlton House after the ceremony, the Princess Mary rushed forward and
fell weeping into her arms. She was married to the Duke of Gloucester in
1816, and it may be noticed that they refused to ask Parliament for any
increase of income. During their lives they had devoted themselves to
benevolent work, and had not only learned the value of money, but how to
make their means serve their wants. Their married life was so arranged
that they not only lived on their private incomes, but won a great and
well-merited reputation for their wide and generous charity. The sweet
and gentle nature of the Duchess, to which the strange story of her life
imparted an additional charm, had ever a strong fascination for the
Queen.
The triumph of Palmerston at the General Election had an immediate
effect upon those Franco-Russian intrigues for the settlement of the
Danubian Principalities which had given the Queen some uneasiness. The
approaching visit of the Grand Duke Constantine to Paris had been
commented on severely by the English press, and the Emperor of the
French, in writing to the Queen to congratulate her on the birth of the
Princess Beatrice, attempted to explain away the significance of the
visit. Lord Clarendon suggested that Prince Albert should reply to this
letter, telling the Emperor quite frankly why England was jealous of the
advances of Russia to France. An alliance between France and England,
said the Prince in his letter, could have no basis save the mutual
desire to develop as much as possible Art, Science, Letters,
Commerce--in a word, everything that is meant by Civilisation. But as
for an alliance with Russia, on what basis could that be raised? What
interest had Russia in Progress? What was there in common between modern
France and modern Russia? A Franco-Russian alliance, therefore, could
have no foundation but that of political interest--and hence the
prospect of it alarmed the free States of Europe.
Prince Albert’s reception at Manchester, where he opened the great Art
Treasures Exhibition on the 5th of May, delighted the Queen. But of all
the incidents of his tour, perhaps none pleased her more than the manner
in which his speech at the unveiling of her statue in the Peel Park of
that city was criticised by the public. In his address he alluded to the
devotion of the people to their Queen, and spoke of it as the outcome of
their attachment to the Sovereign “as the representative of the
institutions of the country.” The phrase struck the popular fancy, and
to the Queen it seemed the formula of her position and her life. Two
days later the Court removed to Osborne, where the Queen gradually
recovered from the depression of spirits under which she had sunk after
the death of the Duchess of Gloucester.
On the 16th of May the Prussian _Official Gazette_ announced the
forthcoming marriage of the Princess Royal and Prince Frederick William,
and on the 19th the same announcement was made to Parliament by a Royal
Message. In this Message the Queen expressed her confidence that the
nation would make a suitable provision for her eldest daughter, and it
is worth recording that at the outset the Cabinet were a little
uncertain as to the reception which such a Message would meet with.
Perhaps that was why Lord Palmerston, in moving the Address in reply to
it, took pains to tell Parliament that, quite apart from the personal
interest which Englishmen felt in this affair, it held out political
prospects “not undeserving the attention of the House.” Family alliances
tended, he argued, to mitigate the asperities which from time to time
spring from diversities of national interests. “Therefore,” he added, “I
trust that this marriage may also be considered as holding out an
increased prospect of goodwill and of cordiality among the Great Powers
of Europe.”
But in those days the Representatives of the people, were more jealous
guardians of the public purse than they are now, and on both sides of
the House there was a strong feeling against increasing public
expenditure. The competition then was in economy--not as now in profuse
extravagance. There were three views current on the subject. One was
that of Prince Albert, who thought that the time had come when
Parliament should settle finally what provision ought to be made for
members of the Royal Family on their marriage, so as to avoid the
necessity of frequent eleemosynary appeals to Parliament. He held, and
as it now seems rightly, that the feeling of the country at the time ran
in favour of treating the Queen’s children generously. In one of his
letters to Baron Stockmar he says, “Seeing how marked was the desire to
keep questions relating to the Royal Family aloof from the pressure of
party conflict, and to have them settled, I believe it would have been
an easy matter to have carried through the future endowments of them
all, according to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s and Palmerston’s
original plan, which was subsequently dropped by the Cabinet.”[356] Then
there was the Ministerial view, which was that the Princess should be
voted a dowry and an annuity; and the Radical view, which was that the
nation should not be burdened with an annuity, but that whatever was
voted to the lady should be a lump sum, so that when the vote was passed
the Princess would cease to be a yearly charge on the country she was
leaving. Mr. Roebuck gave expression to this last view, even before the
Chancellor of the Exchequer laid his proposal before the House--which
was that the annuity should be £8,000, and the marriage portion £40,000.
The majority of the House, however, desired to come to a unanimous vote
on the subject, and they laughed at Sir George Lewis’s grave citations
from Blackstone and his precedents from the reign of George II. Still
more
[Illustration: THE HASTINGS CHANTRY, ST. GEORGE’S CHAPEL, WINDSOR.]
heartily did they laugh when he explained how the Queen had recently
been forced to bear very large expenses of a public nature, alluding
particularly to the visit to the Emperor Napoleon--“a visit,” said Sir
George, solemnly, “which was purely for public and State purposes, and
not for her individual pleasure.”[357] No doubt the visits of George IV.
to Hanover, Ireland, and Scotland were paid for by the State. But it was
as ridiculous to cite such a bad precedent as that, as to go back for
others to the reign of George III., when Parliament at different times
voted a total sum of £3,297,000 to pay the debts of the Royal Family.
The truth is, that the Sovereign cannot be held exempt from the ordinary
liabilities of exalted rank and station. Every person who accepts a high
public office is in the habit, now and then, of drawing on his private
income to enable him to discharge his public duties with greater
efficiency--in fact, this liability is simply one of the incidents of
great estate in every aristocratic country. But, unfortunately, the
Queen had on her accession surrendered her Crown revenues to Parliament
for a fixed annuity, on the more or less formal understanding that
Parliament would provide for her children when they settled in life. So
that the House of Commons felt there was really no choice in the matter,
save to vote the grant, and if possible, out of respect for the Queen,
vote it unanimously. Mr. Roebuck withdrew his opposition, but on the
report of the vote in Supply, Mr. Coningham, Member for Brighton,
entered a protest against the principle of voting annuities to the Royal
Family, and moved the reduction of the vote in this instance from £8,000
to £6,000 a year. The motion was lost by 328 to 14. Mr. Maguire and Sir
J. Trelawny, supported by Mr. Coningham, then argued that the annuity
was enough, and moved that there be no dowry granted. They were beaten
by a vote of 361 to 18, and here the matter ended. “We have,” writes
Prince Albert to Stockmar, “established a good precedent, not merely for
the grant itself, but for the way and manner in which such grants should
be dealt with.”[358] This opinion he would perhaps have recast had he
lived to see the painful position in which the Royal Family have again
and again been placed by repeated applications of the precedent.
Just before the Court left Osborne, the Grand Duke Constantine paid the
Queen his long expected visit. He arrived on the 30th and left next
night, after going with her Majesty to see the fleet at Spithead. His
visit was not quite a pleasant one for the Queen and Lord Palmerston.
The Grand Duke, to their surprise, spoke with almost cynical candour of
the Crimean War; indeed, it was not till his visit that the Queen had
brought home to her effectually the murderous mistakes of that campaign.
He told her about Menschikoff’s blundering, and showed her how
Sebastopol was at the mercy of the Allies after the Battle of the Alma,
because there were only two battalions in the city; and further indulged
in many cheering reminiscences of a similar sort, especially in
reference to the attacks on the Redan. But as he had just come from
Paris, one wonders if he told his English hosts how it was that the
Emperor discovered that the Malakoff was the weak point in the defences
of the town.[359] On the 3rd of June the Court returned to Windsor, and
the Queen went to Ascot Races, and admired the beautiful mare, Blink
Bonny, which was brought out for her inspection.[360] The first Handel
Festival at the Crystal Palace, however, provided a stronger attraction
than Ascot for the Queen and her husband, and her visit to it is
described in glowing terms by contemporary chroniclers. It was the
precursor of these great festivals which have since become world-famous,
and on the 17th, when the Queen was present, _Judas Maccabæus_ was given
by 2,500 performers.
The christening of the Princess Beatrice took place in the private
chapel of Buckingham Palace on the 16th of June, and among the visitors
and guests the Archduke Maximilian of Austria was one of the most
prominent. He had become betrothed to the Princess Charlotte of Belgium,
a young and beautiful princess, to whom the Queen was deeply attached.
It was a love match, but the lives of the young people, radiant at the
outset with sunshine, were darkened at the end by the gloom of an awful
tragedy. In an evil moment the Archduke permitted the French Emperor to
lure him into his wild project for establishing a Transatlantic-Latin
Empire as a counterpoise to the Anglo-Saxon Republic of the West. He was
crowned Emperor of Mexico in 1863, and deposed and shot by order of the
President of the Mexican Republic in 1867. His unhappy consort passed
the rest of her existence in the living death of insanity.
On the 25th of June the Queen conferred on her husband, by Royal Letters
Patent, the title of Prince Consort, which, however, had already been
given to him by the people, who never called him anything else. Still it
had been a popular, not a legal title, and Prince Albert could claim no
other precedence than what was accorded to him by courtesy. Moreover,
when he went abroad, although he held a kingly position in England, he
ranked merely as a younger Prince of Saxe-Coburg Gotha, and foreigners
raised difficulties about the precedence that should be given to him. “I
should have preferred its being done by Act of Parliament,” wrote the
Queen to King Leopold, in reference to the legalising of the new title,
“and so it may still be at some future period; but it was thought better
on the whole to do it now in this simple way”--namely, by Letters
Patent.
On the 26th, her Majesty presided over one of the most interesting
functions of her reign--the first distribution of the Victoria Cross, or
Cross of Valour, to the men who had earned it by personal prowess in
war. It is a curious fact that till this period no English sovereign
ever decorated an Englishman for being brave. Courage in England is so
common and cheap, said Mr. Bright once, that it can be bought easily for
less than a shilling a day. Nay, there were some generals, like Colin
Campbell, who objected strongly to decorations being conferred for
valour--because, as Campbell said, you might as well decorate a woman
for being chaste as an English soldier for being brave.[361] But contact
with the French Army had altered the old-fashioned English ideas on the
subject,
[Illustration: THE VICTORIA CROSS.]
and the spectacle of private soldiers in the Crimea wearing the Legion
of Honour on their breasts had created a feeling in favour of some kind
of decoration which would be open to all ranks of the army. The Order of
the Bath could not be granted for mere bravery--it was granted for
bravery combined with exceptional skill and talent. But then, as the
private soldier had no chance of displaying any quality in war save
courage, it was obvious that the new Order must seek a basis in
individual heroism alone. The Queen, struck by the episodical incidents
of the Crimean War, was strongly of opinion in 1856 that exceptional
deeds of personal valour should have more distinctive recognition than
the war medal which every man received, however slight might have been
his share in the campaign. In that year, therefore, she instituted, by
the Royal Warrant of January 29th, 1856, the Order of the Victoria
Cross. The decoration was to be given to soldiers or sailors who had
performed some signal act of valour or devotion to their country in face
of the enemy--and a small pension of £10 a year was to be attached to
the Cross. It was not until late in 1857 that a list of persons
qualified for admission to the Order could be drawn up, and when it was
submitted to the Queen she resolved to decorate them with her own hands.
Public interest in the ceremony on the 26th of June was intense. At an
early hour crowds of well-dressed sightseers swarmed into Hyde Park,
where a vast amphitheatre of seats, capable of accommodating 12,000
persons had been erected. In the centre stood a simple table, on which
were laid the bronze Maltese crosses--their red and blue ribbons being
the only patches of colour that caught the eye. In front, a body of
4,000 troops, consisting of the _corps d’élite_ of the army--Guards,
Highlanders, Royal Marines, the Rifle Brigade, Enniskillens, and
Hussars, Artillery and Engineers--was drawn up. Between them and the
Royal Pavilion stood the small group of heroes--sixty-two in number--who
were to be decorated. At 10 a.m. the Queen, the Prince Consort, Prince
Frederick William of Prussia, and a brilliant train, rode into the Park.
The Queen, mounted on a gallant and spirited roan, and wearing a scarlet
jacket, black skirt, and plumed hat, rode up to the table, but did not
dismount. One by one each hero was summoned to her presence, and bending
from her saddle, her Majesty
[Illustration: THE QUEEN DISTRIBUTING THE VICTORIA CROSSES IN HYDE
PARK.]
pinned the Cross on his breast with her own hands, whilst the Prince
Consort saluted him with grave and respectful courtesy. As each soldier
or sailor was decorated, the vast concourse of spectators cheered and
clapped their hands--whether he were an officer whose breast was already
glittering with stars and orders, or a humble private or Jack Tar whose
rough tunic carried no more resplendent embellishment than the ordinary
war medal. But of all the cheers none were heartier than those which
were given for a man who, when called out, stepped forward arrayed in
what was then the grotesque and pacific garb of an ordinary policeman.
The Art Treasures Exhibition at Manchester, which had been opened in May
by the Prince Consort, had become amazingly popular. It was the first of
its kind seen in England, and the great difficulty which its organisers
had to overcome was the reluctance of private collectors to lend works
of art for exhibition. But for the Queen and Prince Albert it is
probable this obstacle would never have been surmounted,[362] and hence
it was but natural that her Majesty should desire to visit the
collection. Her reception at Manchester, on the 30th of June, was
enthusiastic, a crowd of a million people welcoming her, as she said
herself, with “kind and friendly faces.” The display of Prussian flags,
and the complimentary allusions to her husband and to her eldest
daughter’s approaching marriage, appear to have touched her deeply. At
the Exhibition, her Majesty knighted the Mayor, as she observes, “with
Sir Harry Smith’s sword, which had been in four general actions,” and on
the 2nd of July she left for Buckingham Palace, where she gave a great
musical party in the evening. The next event of importance in the
home-life of the Queen was the departure of the Prince of Wales to
Königswinter, where it had been arranged he was to carry on his studies.
He left in high spirits, and with the Queen’s anxious adieus, on the
26th of July, accompanied by young Mr. Frederick Stanley--now Lord
Stanley of Preston--General Grey, Sir H. Ponsonby, and his tutors. Mr.
Gladstone’s son, Mr. C. Wood, son of Lord Halifax, and the present Lord
Cadogan, were also selected by the Queen and Prince Consort to join him
as companions in his studies.
From this time till the tide of war in India turned in our favour, the
Queen’s attention seems to have been absorbed by the crisis in our
Eastern Empire. Her political work was apparently concentrated in a
persistent effort to induce the Cabinet not only to hurry out
reinforcements, but to replace them by increasing the establishment at
home up to the full limit voted by Parliament, and for which estimates
had been taken. Lord Palmerston, on the other hand, in his light and
airy way, refused to regard the Mutiny as serious, and persisted in
sending out reinforcements in driblets, and then replacing them by
driblets of recruits. The Queen very sensibly contended that the force
absorbed by the Indian demand should “be replaced to its full extent and
in the same kind,” whereas the Cabinet was replacing whole battalions by
“handfuls of recruits added to the remaining ones.” It was in vain that
the Minister met her with the usual stock platitudes--that neither the
money nor the men could be got. The Queen replied that her project would
actually be more economical than the confused and unmethodical devices
of Palmerston and Panmure. The East India Company would find the money
for the reinforcements, which could be applied to the creation of new
battalions. But these could in turn absorb the old half-pay officers
reduced from the War Establishment, who would then cease to be a burden
on the Exchequer. As to the argument that the men could not be got, the
Queen wrote to Lord Palmerston, “This is an hypothesis, and not an
argument. Try, and you will see. If you do not succeed, and the measure
is necessary, you will have to adopt means to make it succeed. If you
conjure up the difficulties yourself you cannot, of course, succeed.”
One fact may be mentioned as curiously illustrating the shallowness of
understanding and feebleness of grasp with which Palmerston approached
any great question of State to which Foreign Office _formulæ_ could not
be applied. He, or some one at his instigation, seems to have tried to
frighten the Queen by warning her that the East India Company would
object to keep up such a large addition to her army in India. The Queen,
however, saw what Palmerston could not see--that the first shot fired in
the rebellion had virtually eliminated the Company as a dominating
factor in the Indian problem. “The Queen,” she writes to Palmerston,
“thinks it next to impossible that the European force could again be
decreased in India. After the present fearful experience the Company
could only send back (home) Queen’s regiments, in order to raise new
European ones of their own. This they cannot do without the Queen’s
sanction, and she must at once make her most solemn protest against such
a measure. It would be dangerous and unconstitutional to allow private
individuals to raise an army of Queen’s subjects larger than her own in
any part of the British dominions.” And at the close of the Memorandum,
which she haughtily desires Palmerston to communicate to his colleagues,
the tone becomes sharper as she sums up the net result of the bungling
military policy of the Cabinet. “The present situation of the Queen’s
army,” she writes, “is a pitiable one. The Queen has just seen, in the
camp at Aldershot, regiments which, after eighteen years’ foreign
service in most trying climates, had come back to England to be sent
out, after seven months, to the Crimea. Having passed through this
destructive campaign, they had not been home for a year before they are
to go to India for perhaps twenty years! This is most cruel and unfair
to the gallant men who devote their services to the country, and the
Government is in duty and humanity bound to alleviate their
position.”[363]
In August a flying visit to Cherbourg in her yacht convinced the Queen
that the growing strength of this port as a place of arms was dangerous
to England, and on her return she called the attention of the Cabinet to
what she had seen, and demanded reports as to the precise state of the
defences on the South coast of England. As usual, nobody could find the
required information, and when it was obtained Lord Clarendon told the
Prince Consort that nobody could read such an account of our
shortcomings without immediately desiring to remedy them. September saw
the Court at Balmoral, where the Queen’s holiday was sadly overcast by
the Indian reports which came pouring in. As the Prince Consort said, in
one of his letters to Stockmar, they were “tortured by the events in
India, which are truly frightful!” The French Emperor’s courteous offer
to pass our reinforcements through France brought some cheerfulness to
the anxious Sovereign, not diminished by the friendly offer of two
regiments from Belgium--which was, however, rejected by Lord Palmerston,
who had sense enough to see that if England was to win at all she must,
as he said, “win off her own bat.”
On the 16th of October the Court returned to Windsor, the Queen having
spent a night at Haddo House, where she went to visit her venerable
friend, Lord Aberdeen. The sudden death of the Duchess of Nemours, first
cousin of the Queen and Prince Consort, and wife of the second son of
Louis Philippe, now threw the Court into mourning. “We were like
sisters,” wrote Her Majesty to King Leopold, “bore the same name,
married the same year, our children are the same age; there was, in
short, a similarity between us, which, since 1839, united us closely and
tenderly. Now one of us is gone--passed as a rose, full-blown and
faded--from this earth to eternity, there to rest in peace and
joy.”[364] The commercial crisis of November caused Parliament to be
summoned before the year closed, and December was spent in making
preparations for the marriage of the Princess Royal.
When the 19th of January, 1858, came round Buckingham Palace was full of
guests--the King of the Belgians and his sons, the Prince and Princess
of Prussia and their suites, being among the number. It was a brilliant
scene of bustle and excitement, covers for eighty or ninety guests being
laid daily at dinner. Four dramatic representations were given by
command at Her Majesty’s Theatre, where, writes the Queen, “We made a
wonderful row of royalties, I sitting between dear uncle and the Prince
of Prussia,” and where the audience cheered the young couple who were to
be so soon united with a cordiality that brought tears to their parents’
eyes. Balls, dinners, musical parties, celebrated the coming event at
the Palace, till the 24th, which is recorded in the Queen’s Diary as
“poor dear Vicky’s last unmarried day ... an eventful one, reminding me
of my own.” Charming in its simplicity is the Queen’s description of the
family delight over the wedding gifts; and the tearful “Good-night” of
the 24th between the Princess and her parents is too sacred a subject
for more than passing allusion. On the 25th, the eventful day of the
wedding, the Queen writes, “I felt as if I were being married over again
myself, only much more nervous, for I had not that blessed feeling which
I had then, which raises and supports one, of giving myself up for life
to him whom I loved and worshipped--then and for ever.” But the sun
shone with happy omen as the morning advanced, and the wedding party,
amidst cheering crowds, proceeded to the Chapel Royal at St. James’s
Palace.
[Illustration: THE CRIMSON DRAWING-ROOM, WINDSOR CASTLE.]
This interesting building had been put to strange uses in its time. It
had been in turn a Roman Catholic chapel, a Protestant chapel, a
guard-room, and a store-room, before it ended as a chapel reserved for
Royal nuptials. Within its walls Queen Anne had married good-natured
George of Denmark, and George III. the shrew of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. It
was the scene of the wedding of the ill-fated Caroline of Brunswick and
the “First Gentleman of Europe,” who, it may be remembered, had to be
fortified with brandy ere he could undergo the ceremony. Here, also,
William IV. wedded the amiable and gentle Queen Adelaide, and his
successor plighted her troth to the husband of her heart. But not even
on that occasion was the chapel the scene of a more brilliant pageant
than when it witnessed the nuptials of the Princess Royal of England and
the son of the Prince of Prussia. The dingy edifice, which Holbein’s
admirers revere as a triumph of his genius, was now no longer dingy.
Hangings of crimson silk, gleaming with gold fringe and tassels, gilded
columns and scroll work, gold headings, and emblazoned shields and
ciphers, dispelled the customary gloom from the building. The altar,
too, was sumptuously equipped with quaint “services” of gold plate,
illustrative of the Augustan age of English Art.
The marriage procession was formed at Buckingham Palace. It consisted of
more than twenty carriages, the first detachment of which conveyed the
Princes and magnates of the House of Prussia. At a short interval the
bridegroom and his suite followed; then the Queen and her family. When
it arrived at St. James’s Palace the procession was received by the
great officers of State, who conducted it to the chapel through the
splendid apartments, rich in sombre decorations of Queen Anne’s reign.
The Prince Consort and King Leopold were radiant in the bravery of Field
Marshals’ uniforms, “the three girls,” writes the Queen, with quick
feminine memory for the details of such an occasion, “in pink satin
trimmed with Newport lace, Alice with a wreath, and the two others only
with bouquets in their hair of cornflowers and marguerites; next the
four boys in Highland dress.” As for the eight bridesmaids, they “looked
charming in white tulle, with wreaths and bouquets of pink roses and
white heather;” and “Mama” (the Duchess of Kent) “looking so handsome,”
says the Queen, “in violet velvet trimmed with ermine and white silk and
violet,” with “the Cambridges” and all the foreign Princes and
Princesses, made up a brilliant party. The wedding procession was, in
fact, formed in the Closet--the room in the Chapel which on Court days
is reserved for the Royal Family and the families of Peers, “just as at
_my_ marriage,” writes the Queen, “only how small the _old_ Royal Family
has become!” Lord Palmerston carried the Sword of State “with easy grace
and dignity,” says the _Morning Post_,[365] “with a ponderous
solemnity,” says the _Times_, in their respective accounts of the scene,
and the Queen, with the “two little boys” on each side, and followed by
her three daughters, walked after Lord Palmerston and the two elder
Princes. Amidst
[Illustration: MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL. (_See p. 751._)]
beating drums and blaring trumpets, the procession entered the Chapel,
the appearance of the Queen crowned with a glittering diadem, being
greeted with a profound and reverential obeisance by the wedding guests
as she swept on to her chair of State on the left of the altar. The
entrance of the bride with her father and King Leopold sent a flutter of
excitement through the throng. When the Princess appeared her face
seemed pale, even in contrast with her snowy robe of rich moire antique.
She passed the Queen with a deep bow, and as her eyes met those of the
bridegroom, her cheeks suddenly flushed to deepest crimson. “My last
fear of being overcome,” writes the Queen, “vanished on seeing Vicky’s
quiet, calm, and composed manner.” The whole scene indeed recalled her
own marriage, and her eyes glistened with tears as the sweet memories of
her happy and busy life flitted through her mind. The ceremony was
performed by the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of London,
Oxford, and Chester. The Archbishop was “very nervous,” however--much
more so than either bride or bridegroom, and the Queen records that he
omitted some of the passages in the Service. When the ceremony was over,
tender and affectionate congratulations passed between the married pair
and their relations. The bride and her mother fell weeping into each
other’s arms, and for a minute or so their agitation was manifestly
beyond their control. The bridegroom then kissed the bride, who,
escaping from his embrace, threw herself into the arms of her father,
whom she kissed again and again. The Princess of Prussia embraced her
son and kissed the Queen most affectionately; but the most touching
greeting of all was that which passed between the bridegroom and his
father, who seemed quite unnerved with emotion. The Prince clasped his
father passionately to his heart, and then, as if recovering
self-control, suddenly knelt down and reverently kissed his hand. These
congratulations were repeated when the register was signed by all the
Princesses and Princes present, including the Maharajah Duleep Sing.
Through cheering crowds bride and bridegroom and the splendid train of
wedding guests proceeded to Buckingham Palace, where the wedded pair and
their parents appeared on the balcony and bowed their thanks to the
kindly people who stood huzzaing outside. Then came the breakfast and
the parting, which is “such sweet sorrow” to mother and daughter on such
occasions. The married couple drove to Windsor, and at the railway
station were met by the Eton boys, who dragged their carriage all the
way to the Castle. London was one blaze of illuminations that night, and
the rejoicings at the Palace closed with a State concert. Nothing
pleased the Queen more than the demeanour of the populace. Their
demonstrations of loyalty were purely spontaneous and utterly
unaffected. So much was this the case that the foreign guests were
amazed to find that the Government offices were the only buildings which
were not illuminated; in fact, their gloomy darkness alone rendered the
general illumination of London a little less brilliant than that which
celebrated the Proclamation of Peace with Russia.
On the 27th of January the Court removed to Windsor, where Prince
Frederick William was invested with the Order of the Garter, and a
dinner-party followed, at which the Duke of Buccleuch gratified the
Princess with his reports of the enthusiastic loyalty of the crowds in
London, among whom he had moved about _incognito_ on the night of the
wedding ceremony. Next day the whole family returned to London, and in
the evening went to see Sheridan’s _Rivals_ and the _Spitalfields
Weaver_ at Her Majesty’s Theatre, the Queen being greatly amused, as she
herself records, by the drolleries of Wright, the low comedian, in the
latter piece. On the 30th loyal addresses from the City of London and
all the great towns came pouring in, and what the Prince Consort calls
“a monster Drawing-Room” was held. On Monday the 1st of February the
Queen writes in her Diary, “The last day of our dear child being with
us, which is incredible, and makes me at times feel sick at heart,”[366]
and when the next day came round the Queen’s fortitude failed her.
Mother and daughter sat weeping in each other’s arms, and when the
“dreadful time,” as the Queen calls it, arrived, and they had to go down
into the Hall, filled with weeping friends and sad-eyed servants, the
scene was touching in the extreme. “Poor dear child,” writes the Queen,
“I clasped her in my arms and blessed her, and knew not what to say. I
kissed good Fritz, and pressed his hand again and again. He was unable
to speak, and the tears were in his eyes.” But the final parting could
be postponed no longer, and the Queen returned to her room in sorrow.
Instead of driving from Buckingham Palace to the Bricklayers’ Arms
Station by the shortest route, the Prince and Princess drove along the
Strand, Fleet Street, Cheapside, and London Bridge. The houses and shops
were profusely decked with flags, though the decorations were got ready
in a hurry. The day was bitterly cold, and snow fell fast. Yet the
inclement weather did not deter vast crowds from turning out to bid the
newly-married pair “Good speed.” When the Prince Consort, who had
accompanied his daughter and son-in-law part of the way, returned home,
the Queen’s grief broke out again. Even the sight of “the darling baby”
(Princess Beatrice) saddened her, for, as she writes, “Dear Vicky loved
her so much, and only yesterday played with her.” As for the Prince
Consort, he told the Princess, in one of his letters, that the void she
had left was not in his heart only, but in his daily life. In fact,
nothing save the cordial and brilliant reception which welcomed her in
Germany could have consoled him for the loss of a daughter whom he
proudly described to her husband as one who “had a man’s head and a
child’s heart.”
FOOTNOTES:
[1] Morley’s Life of Cobden.
[2] Greville’s Journal, Vol. III. p. 290.
[3] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I. p. 243.
[4] Letter from the Queen to Lord Melbourne, cited by Sir T. Martin in
the Life of the Prince Consort.
[5] This is not quite accurate. The details were arranged by Lord
Clarendon; the plan, or original idea, of the visit was the Queen’s.
[6] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., p.
295.
[7] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.
[8] “This faithful and trusty valet nursed his dear master most
devotedly through his sad illness in December, 1861, and is now always
with me as my personal groom of the chambers or valet. I gave him a
house near Windsor Castle, where he resides when the Court are there.
He is a native of Coburg. His father has been for fifty years Förster
at Fülbach, close to Coburg.”--_Footnote by the Queen._
[9] “Who was very active and efficient. He is now a page.”--_Footnote
by the Queen._
[10] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., pp.
296, 297.
[11] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.
[12] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XXXVIII.
[13] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III. p.
335.
[14] Memorials of an Ex-Minister, by Lord Malmesbury, Vol. I. p. 261.
[15] This, of course, applies only to States within the European comity
of nations. Semi-barbaric Asiatic or African States--_e.g._, Turkey
and Tunis--by special treaties or “capitulations,” surrendered to
England extra-territorial jurisdiction over cases in which her subjects
resident in their territories were concerned.
[16] The details of this intrigue, it is understood, were recorded by
Mr. Greville, but the publication of them was withheld by the editor of
his “Journal,” for reasons which may easily be guessed. The whole story
will probably not be told during the lifetime of the Queen.
[17] Had the Bill passed, Lord Clarendon would have been Irish
Secretary.
[18] See a curious letter of Croker’s in the third volume of “The
Croker Papers.”
[19] He was beaten only by a majority of 3.
[20] See the Queen’s letter to King Leopold, cited in Martin’s Life of
the Prince Consort, Ch. XXXIX.
[21] It is commonly called “the Queen’s Reading Lamp,” but it may be
said that Sir Theodore Martin is not quite correct in assuming that
this type of lamp was introduced into England by Prince Albert. A
similar lamp was in use in Cambridge long before the Prince came to
this country, and was known as the “Cambridge Reading Lamp.”
[22] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XXXI.
[23] _Punch_, Vol. XVIII., p. 229.
[24] Mr. Cobden always said that such a protest would have deterred
Russia from stamping out Hungarian liberty.
[25] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.
[26] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.
[27] “One of our keepers since 1851. An excellent, intelligent man,
much liked by the Prince. He, like many others, spit blood after
running the race up that steep hill in the short space of time, and he
has never been so strong since. The running up-hill has in consequence
been discontinued. He lives in a cottage at the back of Craig Gowan
(commanding a beautiful view) called Robrech, which the Prince built
for him.”--_Note by the Queen in “Leaves from a Journal.”_
[28] The allusion here is to the Ritualists or Puseyites, or
Tractarians, as they were called then.
[29] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.
[30] Morley’s Life of Cobden.
[31] Morley’s Life of Cobden.
[32] It is but right to say that Mr. Herries was now over seventy years
of age, and had been virtually shelved for twenty years.
[33] According to Mr. Greville, it was Mr. Thomas Baring.
[34] Letters of the Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart., to
various friends, edited by the Rev. Sir Gilbert Frankland Lewis, Bart.,
p. 240.
[35] Mr. Disraeli did not support the Tory opposition to the Jews.
[36] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., p.
407.
[37] The Editor of the _Times_.
[38] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., p.
415.
[39] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLII.
[40] Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught.
[41] Quoted by Sir Theodore Martin in his Life of the Prince Consort,
Chap. XLII.
[42] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I. pp. 284 and 288.
[43] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLIII.
[44] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLIV.
[45] _See_ p. 479.
[46] These were Morny (a natural son of the Prince-President’s mother,
the Queen Hortense, by Count Flahault), Persigny, Fleury, Maupas,
Marshal Mangan, and probably Rouher.
[47] Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis de Tocqueville with
Nassau William Senior, edited by W. C. M. Simpson, Vol. II., p. 5.
[48] De Tocqueville’s Conversations and Correspondence with Nassau W.
Senior, Vol. II., p. 6.
[49] Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III., p.
447.
[50] Lord Malmesbury’s Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 309.
[51] The corresponding office in our day is Secretary of State for
India.
[52] Letters of the Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart., to
various persons, edited by the Rev. Sir Gilbert Frankland Lewis, Bart.,
p. 251.
[53] Mr. Greville’s Journal of the Reign of Queen Victoria, Vol. III.,
p. 448.
[54] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 332.
[55] On coming into office, Lord Derby announced that it was the
mission of his Government to “oppose some barrier against the
democratic influence that is continually encroaching, which would throw
power nominally into the hands of the masses, but practically into the
hands of the demagogues who lead them.”
[56] This was the occasion, not the cause. The Americans and the French
were beginning to show themselves in the Eastern seas. According to Mr.
Arnold, it was because they were casting covetous eyes on the Delta
of the Irawaddy that Lord Dalhousie determined to forestall them by
annexing that region. _See_ Arnold’s Administration of Lord Dalhousie,
Vol. II., p. 14; Papers of the House of Lords, 1856, No. 161.
[57] Lord Derby and Mr. Herries admitted that Lambert acted without
instructions. Hansard, Vol. CXX., p. 656; Memoirs of Herries, Vol.
II., p. 250; Parl. Papers relating to Burmah, 1852. Cobden also
accused Fishbourne of provoking the Governor. _See_ Cobden’s Political
Writings, Vol. II., p. 57.
[58] Life and Correspondence of Lord Palmerston, by the Right Hon.
Evelyn Ashley, Vol. II., p. 247.
[59] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XX.
[60] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVI.
[61] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXI.
[62] Spencer Walpole’s History of England. London: Longmans, Green, and
Co. 1886. Vol. V., p. 43.
[63] Reminiscences and Opinions of Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, Bart.
London: Longmans, Green, and Co. 1886. Pages 321-330.
[64] Hansard, Vol. CXXIII., p. 351.
[65] _Ibid._, p. 411.
[66] Letters of the Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart., to
Various Persons, p. 259.
[67] T. P. O’Connor’s Life of Lord Beaconsfield, p. 441; Hickman’s
Beaconsfield, p. 183.
[68] Hansard, Vol. CXXIII., p. 1693.
[69] It is worth while to recall this fact. After the resignation
of Mr. Gladstone in 1886, when the Tory Party attempted to form a
Coalition Ministry under Lord Hartington as Premier, and Lord Salisbury
as Foreign Secretary, the project was defended on the plea, that
just as the Whigs in 1852 bought up a small but powerful faction of
Peelites, by giving their leader the Premiership, so should the Tories
in 1886 buy up the small but powerful section of Liberal “Unionists” by
putting Lord Hartington at the head of affairs. The argument, it will
be seen, was based on a complete ignorance of party history and of the
ideas and policy of the Court in 1852, because it was for other reasons
altogether that Lord Aberdeen was elevated to the Premiership.
[70] It was partly by Macaulay’s persuasion that Lord John permitted
himself to be embalmed in history as the fourth Prime Minister of the
century who, after serving as Premier, accepted an inferior rank.
The other three were Sidmouth, Goderich, and Wellington. “Russell’s
example,” says Mr. Spencer Walpole, “indicates that a man who has once
served in the highest place had better refuse all subordinate offices.”
Cf. Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 61; and Trevelyan’s Life
of Macaulay, Vol. II., Chap. XIII.
[71] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. LXVII.
[72] Letters of the late Sir G. C. Lewis, Bart., p. 260.
[73] Lord Malmesbury, who was at Balmoral at the time, is the authority
for this statement. _Vide_ Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 377.
[74] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVI.
[75] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I, p. 347.
[76] “Persigny,” writes Lord Malmesbury, “whose real name was Fialin,
was one of those adventurers who looked forward with confidence to the
success of Louis Napoleon’s fatalism and dreams of ambition, and proved
it by the most absolute devotion, and, I must add, personal affection
for his master, whom he always accompanied through his failures and
imprisonments. Faithful to the Emperor, the Emperor was faithful to
him, and loaded him with honours. He was a courageous and impetuous
man, and his hot temper was against him as ambassador.”--Memoirs of an
Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 300.
[77] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 310.
[78] Morley’s Life of Cobden, Chap. XXI.
[79] On hearing of the _coup d’état_, the Queen, _without waiting
for Ministerial advice_, personally directed the Cabinet to follow a
policy of strict neutrality. Lord John Russell replied: “Your Majesty’s
directions respecting the state of affairs in Paris shall be followed.”
Note that the relations of the Crown and the Minister were identical in
this case with those which obtained under the Tudor Sovereigns. It is a
curious instance of a policy being _initiated_ by specific “directions”
from the Queen in an age when, according to constitutional practice,
the functions of the Crown are supposed to be limited to suggestion,
criticism, and sanction.
[80] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVII.
[81] English Ambassador at Paris.
[82] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 379.
[83] This person wielded an influence that few people suspected at the
time. For example, in September, 1852, Lord Malmesbury, then Foreign
Secretary, set a gang of police spies to watch the outraged victims of
the _coup d’état_ in London. Having put together all the information
he could get, he illustrated the spirited foreign policy of the day
by sending his private secretary and relative, Mr. George Harris,
to convey this information secretly to Charles Louis Bonaparte. But
that potentate did not deign to give Mr. Harris an interview. For
three days he was kept dancing attendance, and at last by a private
letter of introduction to an aide-de-camp of the President’s, he got
access to Canrobert, Tascher, and Roquet, who loftily told him that
in a week’s time perhaps he might have an audience. “Then,” writes
Mr. Harris to Lord Malmesbury, “I returned to Paris, and called on
Mrs. Howard, toadied and flattered her, stating that I was in a great
hurry to get back to London, and only wanted to see his Highness the
President for two minutes. She sent off an orderly at once, and before
night, I received an invitation from Louis Napoleon to accompany him
out shooting to say my say, at 5.30, and dine afterwards.”--Memoirs
of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 346. That the Foreign Minister of
England should act the part of a Bonapartist spy, is curious. That his
relative and private secretary should have accepted the mission of a
subordinate _mouchard_, and, in carrying it out, should have “toadied
and flattered” a Parisian _cocotte_ to get an audience from the
Prince-President, gives one a quaint glimpse of diplomatic manners and
customs in 1852.
[84] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 379.
[85] The Imperial marriage took place--the civil ceremony on the 29th,
and the religious ceremony on the 30th of January, 1853.
[86] Compare with such comments a passage in a letter written by
Mr. Nassau Senior, to M. de Tocqueville. “Mrs. Grote tells me that
you rather complain that the English papers approve the marriage,
a marriage which you all disapprove. The fact is that we like the
marriage because you dislike it. We are, above all things, desirous
that the present tyranny should end as quickly as possible. It can
end only by the general alienation of the French people from the
tyrant; and every fault that he commits delights us, because it is a
step towards his fall.”--Correspondence and Conversations of Alexis
de Tocqueville, Vol. II., p. 34. Cf. also Palmerston’s opinion from
another point of view. Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 7.
[87] Mr. Disraeli reckoned the revenue of 1852 at £51,625,000.
It actually reached £53,089,000. He set down the expenditure at
£51,164,000, whereas it came only to £50,782,000.
[88] Dowell’s History of Taxation, Vol. II., p. 322; Smith’s Wealth of
Nations, Vol. III., p. 337.
[89] These bore interest at £1 10s. per cent., but were in future to
bear interest at £2 15s. up to 1864, and £2 10s. up to 1891.
[90] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 68.
[91] Students of financial history may be referred to Hansard, Vol.
CXXL, p. 11, for Mr. Disraeli’s first Budget, and to Hansard, Vol.
CXXV., pp. 818, 1355, 1399, and 1423, for Mr. Gladstone’s. Cf, also
Report of the Commissioners of Inland Revenue, 1870.
[92] This was the principle which Mr. Fox and the “old Whigs” advocated.
[93] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 45.
[94] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 49.
[95] For facts bearing on this point, see Fawcett’s Manual of Political
Economy, p. 490.
[96] In 1847 the Mint coined £5,000,000, in 1850 £11,000,000, and in
1858 only £1,200,000.
[97] Wheat which in June, 1853, stood at 45s. a quarter, on the 25th of
November went up to 72s. 9d. The 4-lb. loaf rose from 10½d. to 1s.
Annual Register, Vol. XCV., p. 165.
[98] “You know,” said the Emperor on the 14th of January, to Sir
Hamilton Seymour, “the dreams and plans in which the Empress Catherine
was in the habit of indulging: these were handed down to our time; but,
while I inherited immense territorial possessions, I did not inherit
those visions--those intentions if you like to call them so.” And again
on the 22nd of February, “I will not tolerate the permanent occupation
of Constantinople by the Russians; having said this, I will say that
it never shall be held by the English, or French, or any other great
nation.” Secret Correspondence between Sir G. H. Seymour, British
Chargé d’Affaires at St. Petersburg, and Her Majesty’s Government.
Eastern Papers, Part V.
[99] Secret Correspondence, Eastern Papers, Part V., p. 204.
[100] Diplomatic Study of the Crimean War, from Russian Official
Sources, Vol. I., p. 115.
[101] Consult on this subject Mr. Nassau Senior’s article in _North
British Quarterly Review_ for February, 1851, on “The State of the
Continent.”
[102] Louis Philippe, it must be stated in justice to Napoleon III.,
also claimed for the Latin Church the right of repairing the dome of
the Holy Sepulchre in the Latin instead of the Byzantine form, a claim
which was indescribably offensive to the Greek priests.--_North British
Quarterly Review_, February, 1851.
[103] Dip. Stud. Crimean War, Vol. I., p. 134.
[104] Spencer Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 79.
[105] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XI.
[106] Russian Ambassador in London.
[107] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., pp. 402, 403.
[108] Mr. Disraeli’s Speech at Manchester, April 3, 1872.
[109] See Count Nesselrode’s Memorandum embodying the views which,
according to the Czar, were agreed on in the conversations he held
with the Tory Ministers in 1844.--Eastern Papers, 1854, Part VI.
This document, probably the one referred to by Lord Malmesbury, was
transmitted to England on the Czar’s return to St. Petersburg, and
deposited unchallenged in the secret archives of the Foreign Office.
[110] Eastern Papers, 1852, Part VI. pp. 10, 11.
[111] Afterwards Lord Strathnairn.
[112] Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol. I., pp. 387-389. It is right to
state the fact as communicated to Lord Malmesbury by the French Emperor
in conversation, because Mr. Walpole rather unfairly asserts that the
Emperor of the French saw in Rose’s fear “a fresh excuse for embroiling
France.”--Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 84.
[113] Russia argued that she might fairly exercise the same kind of
protectorate that France had always asserted over Roman Catholics and
England over Protestants in Turkey. Against this it was urged that
there was a difference in degree between the two cases which amounted
to a difference in kind, for, whereas the Catholic and Protestant
subjects of the Sultan were only a few thousands, his Greek subjects
were 12,000,000.
[114] Official Note of the Porte to the Powers, 28th of May.
[115] On the 1st of June Menschikoff’s Note of the 18th of May,
intimating his withdrawal from Constantinople and threatening Turkey
with coercion, arrived in London.
[116] It would have been also more candid at this juncture to have
warned Russia that England would object to any actual invasion of
the Principalities, before the resources of European diplomacy were
exhausted.
[117] When these events had passed into history, Earl Russell, in his
Recollections and Suggestions, said that, if he had been Premier in
1853, he would have insisted on Turkey accepting the Vienna Note. He
was not Premier, but he was one of the leaders of the War Party in the
Cabinet which supported Turkey in rejecting it. Lord Russell was, in
fact, not the only statesman of the period who grew “wise after the
event.”
[118] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVIII.
[119] Prince Bismarck: an Historical Biography by Charles Lowe, M.A.,
Vol. I., p. 205.
[120] Eastern Papers, Part I., p. 169.
[121] In the 7th Article of the Treaty of Kainardji it is provided
that “_The Sublime Porte promises to protect constantly the Christian
religion and its Churches_, and also it allows the Ministers of the
Imperial Court of Russia to make on all occasions representations as
well in favour of the new Church at Constantinople, of which mention
will be made in the 14th Article, as in favour of those who officiate
therein.” The 14th Article provides that “it is permitted to the High
Court of Russia, in addition to the chapel built in the house of the
Minister, to construct in the Galata quarter, in the street called Bey
Oglu, a public church of the Greek rite, which shall be always under
the protection of the Ministers of that Empire, and shielded from all
obstruction and all damage.” The first words in italics appear to give
Russia the same general kind of pledge to protect the Greek Christians
in Turkey, the insertion of which in the Vienna Note was supposed to
vitiate it. The issue, however, was so close that diplomacy ought to
have prevented the disputants from coming to blows.
[122] Ashley’s Life of Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 276.
[123] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLIX. Compare this
with Lord Salisbury’s statement at the Guildhall banquet on the 9th of
November, 1886, that England’s Eastern policy is to pledge herself to
fight on the side of Austria, when Austria thinks fit to go to war. By
substituting “Austria” for “Turkey” in the first two sentences of this
important State Paper of the Queen’s, very interesting deductions might
be drawn by students of Constitutional history.
[124] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLIX.
[125] Walpole’s History of England, Vol. V., p. 99.
[126] Lord Malmesbury says that it was Mr. Gladstone and Lord Aberdeen
who begged Palmerston to come back.--Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, Vol.
I., p. 418. But Prince Albert’s statement is the truer one, though
it is not so palatable to those writers who have for a quarter of a
century devoted themselves to the heroic idealisation of Palmerston’s
character and career, and who at one time tried to persuade themselves
that, as a condition of his return, he forced the Ministry to send
a fleet to avenge Sinope. In the middle of September, however,
Palmerston and Russell had already persuaded the Cabinet to warn
Russia that any attack on the Turkish fleet would be met by the fleets
of England and France. Palmerston resigned, however, on the 15th of
December. Moreover, it has not been noticed by Palmerstonian partisans
that Prince Albert’s statement is curiously confirmed by Sir George
Cornewall Lewis. Writing to Sir E. Head on the 4th of January, 1854,
he says:--“Since I last wrote to you there has been the strange
escapade of Palmerston. He disliked the Reform Bill, partly as being
too extensive to suit his taste. He therefore resigned solely upon this
measure; but he probably expected that a threat of resignation would
bring his colleagues to terms, and was surprised at being taken at his
word. When he went out he found that the country took his resignation
very coolly, and that he was so much courted by the Derbyites that he
could not avoid becoming their leader in the House of Commons in the
next Session. He could not hope to occupy a neutral place, and so,
finding that his position was a bad one--that it was too late in life
for him to set about forming a new party--he changed his mind, and
intimated to the Government that he wished to return.”--Letters of the
Right Hon. Sir George Cornewall Lewis, Bart., p. 275.
[127] Letter of Prince Albert to the Dowager-Duchess of Coburg, in
Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVII.
[128] Medical men may be interested to know that the Duke and Duchess
transmitted it unconsciously “to the Duke of Brabant and Count of
Flanders, whom they met on their way back to Coburg, and before they
were aware they had taken the seeds of the illness from England with
them.”--Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort.
[129] Contrast this with the habits of the House in the time of Charles
I., when it met at eight in the morning and rose at noon; and in Sir
Robert Walpole’s time, when the mere suggestion of a Member that
“candles be brought in” was regarded as phenomenal.
[130] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort. See also a reference to
the Grand Duchess Olga’s “Mission” in Lord Malmesbury’s Memoirs of an
Ex-Minister, Vol. I., p. 404.
[131] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVIII.
[132] _Annual Register_ for 1853.
[133] Ashley’s Life of Lord Palmerston, Vol. II., p. 13. For Lord
Aberdeen’s answer to Palmerston’s bellicose special pleading, see
Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. XLVIII.
[134] This letter, dated the 14th of November, was not sent till it had
been submitted to Lord Aberdeen and Lord Clarendon for their approval.
The precedent should be noted, because, as Sir Hamilton Seymour told
Count Nesselrode at the time, “these correspondences between sovereigns
are not regular, according to our Constitutional notions.” At the same
time, when personally addressed by a foreign sovereign, the Crown
cannot, as a matter of courtesy, reply through a Minister of State. The
course taken by the Queen in this instance is obviously the prudent one.
[135] Cobden’s Collected Writings, Vol. II., p. 269.
[136] Martin’s Life of the Prince Consort, Chap. L.
[137] Letters of Sir G. C. Lewis, p. 276.
[138] It is only just to the memory of Mr. Cobden to state that towards
the end of his career some suspicion of the truth crept into his
mind. Speaking on the American Civil War, he said:--“From the moment
the first shot is fired or the first blow struck in a dispute, then
farewell to all reason and argument; you might as well reason with mad
dogs as with men when they have begun to spill each other’s blood in
mortal combat. I was so convinced of the fact during the Crimean War;
I was so convinced of the utter uselessness of raising one’s voice
in opposition to War when it has once begun, that I made up my mind
that so long as I was in political life, should a war again break out
between England and a great Power, I would never open my mouth upon
the subject from the time the first gun was fired till the peace was
made.”--Cobden’s Speeches, Vol. II., p. 314. See also Mr. John Morley’s
masterly defence of the Cobdenites in 1854, in his Life of Cobden,
Chap. XXII.
[139] Count Nesselrode’s Despatch to the Russian Ambassador in England,
dated the 16th of January, 1854.
[140] See Sir H. Seymour’s Despatch to Lord Clarendon, dated the 30th
of January, 1854.
[141] Amongst other things, she demanded that some fresh arrangement
should be made as to the right of asylum granted to political refugees
in Turkey. This obviously pointed at Turkey’s refusal to surrender the
Hungarian patriots after the Revolution of 1848 was suppressed; and,
knowing the opinion of England on the subject, it was absurd to add
such stipulations to new preliminaries of peace.
[142] Nesselrode, Orloff, and Kisseleff.
[143] “Russia, as I can guarantee, will prove herself in 1854 _what she
was in 1812_.... My conditions are known at Vienna.”
[144] Observe _not_ “a day,” as Kinglake has it.
[145] “L’Empereur ne juge pas convenable de donner aucune réponse à la
lettre de Lord Clarendon.”--Eastern Papers. Consul Michele’s Despatch
to Lord Clarendon, dated St. Petersburg, 19th March, 1854.
[146] Mr. Kinglake blames the London Press, especially the _Times_,
for manufacturing this passion. Mr. Cobden took much the same view.
Educated people who were rich, but ignorant of geography and military
history, however, all clamoured for war. “I have had the satisfaction
of seeing the rascally Czar defeated by the unassisted Turks, and
obliged to cross the Pruth. Now for Sebastopol!” Thus wrote Lord
Campbell in his Journal on the 14th of August.--See Mrs. Hardcastle’s
Life of John, Lord Campbell, Vol. II., p. 326.