It is no wonder that the Duchess of Kent was anxious, as far as possible, to keep her daughter from the influence of such a Court as this. Much of the Queen’s conscientiousness and punctual discharge of the political duties of her station may be attributed to her careful education by her mother and her uncle Leopold, the widower of Princess Charlotte, and afterwards King of the Belgians. It is not possible to tell from the published memorials what clouds overshadowed the Princess Victoria’s childhood. She seems to have had a most loving mother, excellent health and abilities, and a judicious training in every way; yet she says herself, in reference to the choice of the name of Leopold for her youngest son, “It is a name which is the dearest to me after Albert, one which recalls the almost only happy days of my sad childhood.”
It is evident, therefore, that her young life was not so happy and tranquil as it appeared to be to outsiders. Perhaps her extreme and almost abnormal sense of responsibility was hardly compatible with the joyousness of childhood. There is a story that it was not till the Princess was eleven years old that her future destiny was revealed to her. Her governess then purposely put a genealogical table of the royal family into her history book. The child gazed earnestly at it, and by degrees she comprehended what it meant, namely, that she herself was next in succession to the ancient crown of England; she put her hand into her governess’s and said, “I will be good. I understand now why you wanted me to learn so much, even Latin… I understand all better now.” And she repeated more than once, “I will be good.” The anecdote shows an unusually keen sense of duty and of conscientiousness in so young a child, and there are other anecdotes which show the same characteristic. Who, therefore, can wonder at the unbounded joy which filled all hearts in England when this young girl, pure, sweet, innocent, conscientious, and unselfish, ascended the throne of George IV. and William IV.? Her manners were frank, natural, simple, and dignified. The bright young presence of the girl Queen filled every one, high and low, throughout the nation with enthusiasm.
The American author, Mr. N. P. Willis, republican as he was, spoke of her in one of his letters as “quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting for the heir of such a crown as that of England.” Daniel O’Connell, then the leader of the movement for the repeal of the union between England and Ireland, was as great an enthusiast for her as any one in the three kingdoms. His stentorian voice led the cheering of the crowd outside of St. James’s Palace who welcomed her at the ceremony of proclamation. He said, when some of the gossips of the day chattered of a scheme to depose “the all but infant Queen” in favour of the hated Duke of Cumberland, “If necessary I can get 500,000 brave Irishmen to defend the life, the honour, and the person of the beloved young lady by whom England’s throne is now filled.”
The picture of the Queen’s first council by Wilkie was shown in 1887 in the winter exhibition at the Royal Academy. It helps one very much to understand the sort of enthusiasm which she created. The sweet, girlish dignity and quiet simplicity with which she performed all the duties of her station filled every one with admiration. Surrounded by aged politicians, statesmen, and soldiers, she presides over them all with the grace and dignity associated with a complete absence of affectation and self-consciousness. Greville, the Clerk of the Council then, and for many years before and after, writes of this occasion: “Never was anything like the impression she produced, or the chorus of praise and admiration which is raised about her manner and behaviour, and certainly not without justice. It was something very extraordinary and far beyond what was looked for.” Melbourne, her first Prime Minister, loved her as a daughter; the Duke of Wellington had a similar feeling for her, which she returned with unstinted confidence and reliance. The first request made by the girl Queen to her mother, immediately after the proclamation, was that she might be left for two hours quite alone to think over her position and strengthen the resolutions that were to guide her future life. The childish words, “I will be good,” probably gave the forecast of the tone of the young Queen’s reflections. She must have felt the difficulties and peculiar temptations of her position very keenly, for when she was awakened from her sleep on the night of the 20th June 1837, to be told of William the Fourth’s death, and that she was Queen of England, her first words to the Archbishop of Canterbury, who made the announcement, were, “I beg your Grace to pray for me.”
The Queen was very careful from the beginning of her reign thoroughly to understand all the business of the State, and never to put her signature to any document till she had mastered its contents. Lord Melbourne was heard to declare that this sort of thing was quite new in his experience as Prime Minister, and he said jokingly that he would rather manage ten kings than one Queen. On one occasion he brought a document to her, and urged its importance on the ground of expediency. She looked up quietly, and said, “I have been taught to judge between what is right and what is wrong; but ‘expediency’ is a word I neither wish to hear nor to understand.” Thirty years later one of the best men who ever sat in the House of Commons, John Stuart Mill, said, “There is an important branch of expediency called justice.” But this was probably not the kind of expediency that Lord Melbourne recommended, and the Queen condemned.
In the Memoirs of Mrs. Jameson, by Mrs. Macpherson, there is a letter, dated December 1838, containing the following illustration of the way in which the Queen regarded the duties of her position. “Spring Rice told a friend of mine that he once carried her (the Queen) some papers to sign, and said something about managing so as to give Her Majesty less trouble. She looked up from her paper and said quietly, ‘Pray never let me hear those words again; never mention the word “trouble.” Only tell me how the thing is to be done, to be done rightly, and I will do it if I can.’” Everything that is known of the Queen at that time shows a similar high conception of duty and right. She was resolved to be no mere pleasure-seeking, self-indulgent monarch, but one who strove earnestly to understand her duties, and was determined to throw her best strength into their fulfilment.
It is this conscientious fulfilment of her political duties which gives the Queen such a very strong claim upon the gratitude of all her subjects. People do not always understand how hard and constant her work is, nor how deeply she feels her responsibilities. She is sometimes blamed for not leading society as she did in the earlier years of her reign, and it is no doubt true that her good influence in this way is much missed. Mrs. Oliphant has spoken of the way in which in those early years of her married life she was “in the foreground of the national life, affecting it always for good, and setting an example of purity and virtue. The theatres to which she went, and which both she and her husband enjoyed, were purified by her presence; evils which had been the growth of years disappearing before the face of the young Queen.” That good influence at the head of society has been withdrawn by the Queen’s withdrawal from fashionable life; and there is another disadvantage arising from her seclusion, in the degree to which it prevents her from feeling the force and value of many of the most important social movements of our time. Except in opening Holloway College, and in the impetus which she has given to providing medical women for the women of India, she has never, for instance, shown any special sympathy with any of the various branches of the movement for improving and lifting up the lives of women. Still, fully allowing all this, it is beyond doubt that her subjects, and especially her women subjects, have deep cause for gratitude and affection to the Queen. She has set a high example of duty and faithfulness to the whole nation. The childish resolve, “I will be good,” has never been lost sight of. With almost boundless opportunities for self-indulgence, and living in an atmosphere where she is necessarily almost entirely removed from the wholesome criticism of equals and friends, she has clung tenaciously to the ideal with which she started on her more than fifty years of sovereignty. Simplicity of daily life and daily hard work are the antidotes which she has constantly applied to counteract the unwholesome influences associated with royalty. Women have special cause for gratitude to her, because she has shown, as no other woman could, how absurd is the statement that political duties unsex a woman, and make her lose womanly tenderness and sympathy. The passionate worship which she bestowed upon her husband, the deep love she constantly shows for her children and grandchildren, and the eager sympathy which she extends to every creature on whom the load of suffering or sorrow has fallen, prove that being the first political officer of the greatest empire in the world cannot harden her heart or dull her sympathy. A woman’s a woman “for a’ that.”
So much has lately