Part 6 (1/2)
Difficulties and Delicacy of Prince Albert's Position--Early Married Life--Studies continued--Attempts on the Queen's Life--Courage of the Queen--Birth of the Princess Royal--Parting from the Whig Ladies of the Bedchamber--Dark Days for England--Birth of the Prince of Wales--The Queen described by M. Guizot--A Dinner at Buckingham Palace--State Dinner at Windsor.
The Queen was now married to the husband of her choice. ”It is that,” said Lord Melbourne to her, ”which makes your Majesty's marriage so popular, as they know it is not for state reasons.” A few months after the wedding-day, the Prince wrote to an old college a.s.sociate--”I am very happy and contented.” After the wedding, the young couple stayed for four days at Windsor, reading, riding, walking together, and giving small dinner parties in the evening. They then returned to Buckingham Palace, where a large crowd had collected to welcome them, and fairly commenced the common duties of their married life. At first it would appear that jealousies, in quarters which need not be specified, prevented the Prince taking his proper position as the head of his home and household. He wrote to his friend, Prince Lowenstein, in May, 1840--”I am only the husband, not the master in the house.” But the common sense of the Queen, and the dignity of the Prince, soon set this matter to rights. When urged that she, as being Sovereign, must be the head of the house, she quietly rejoined that she had sworn to obey, as well as love and honour, her husband, and that she was determined to keep all her bridal troth. She communicated all foreign despatches to him, and frequently he made annotations on them, which were communicated to the Minister whose department they affected. He had often the satisfaction of discovering that the Minister, though he might say nothing on the subject, nevertheless acted upon his suggestions. His correspondence to Germany soon bore a very different tone and complexion. To use his own words, and slightly expand them, he ”endeavoured to be of as much use to Victoria as possible.” The Queen now, having received the approval of the Duke of Wellington, whom she consulted as a confidential friend, for the first time put her husband in his proper place, by giving him, by Royal Letters Patent, to which Parliamentary sanction is not required, rank and precedence next to herself, except in Parliament and the Privy Council.
[Sidenote: EARLY MARRIED DAYS.]
Frequent levees, and ”dinners followed by little dances,” formed the chief amus.e.m.e.nts of the young couple in the earliest stage of their married life. They went much, too, to the play, both having an especial relish for and admiration of Shakespeare. The Queen, although now a married woman, by no means neglected useful or solacing and refining studies. She took singing lessons from Lablache, and frequently sang and played with the Prince, sometimes using the piano, sometimes the organ as accompaniment.
They went to Claremont, the Queen's favourite youthful haunt, to celebrate her birthday, and continued to do so, even after the purchase of Osborne, until 1848, when Claremont was given as a residence to the ex-Queen of the French. Both Queen and Prince were extremely glad to get away from the smoke and grime of London. In fact, these const.i.tuted a peculiar source of physical oppression to both; and they were always glad to retire to the rural quiet and seclusion of Claremont.
[Sidenote: THE QUEEN SHOT AT.]
The first alarming incident of the Queen's wedded life occurred on the 10th of June, 1840. In her first early days of maiden queenhood, she had been annoyed by madmen wanting to marry her. On more than one occasion her saddle-horse was attempted to be stopped in the Park by one of such maniacs, as she was attended by an equerry; and in two instances similar attempts were made by innocent lunatics to force their way into Windsor Castle, in each case armed with nothing more deadly than a proposal of marriage. But what we are about to narrate was a much more serious matter.
There is no denying the fact, that, after the first two years of her reign, the Queen was, for a time, by no means so popular as she had been.
Her ministers were eminently unpopular, and to no slight extent she shared their unpopularity. Appalling distress prevailed, and Chartism and other more dangerous forms of sedition were rife. The poor asked how so much money could be spent on the Queen's hospitable entertainments, while they were starving; and inquired how it was that the name of Lord Melbourne, who should be supposed to have work enough to do looking after the affairs of the distressed nation, should appear in the newspapers almost every day as attending some of Her Majesty's banquets. Occasionally during the summer she was received in public in silence, and once or twice, in theatres and elsewhere, disagreeable cries were heard. More than once during this and one or two succeeding years, pistol-shots were fired at her. We select one, and the first attack upon her, as a type of the others. A youth named Oxford, some seventeen or eighteen years of age, either a fool or a madman, fired two pistol-shots at her, as she and her husband were driving in a phaeton up Const.i.tution Hill. He was at once arrested, and it being impossible to a.s.sign any conceivable cause for the act, he was declared insane, and doomed to incarceration for life. Neither the Queen nor the Prince were injured, and both showed the utmost self-possession.
Perhaps the best proof of her bravery on the occasion of this outrage, as it was an unquestionable proof of her tenderness of heart, was the fact that within a minute or two after the shot of Oxford had been fired, she had the horses' heads turned towards her mother's house, that her mother should see her sound and uninjured, ere an exaggerated or indiscreetly communicated report of the occurrence could reach her. Immediately after, she drove to Hyde Park, whither she had been proceeding before the outrage occurred, to take her usual drive before dinner. An immense concourse of persons of all ranks and both s.e.xes had a.s.sembled, and the enthusiasm of her reception almost overpowered her. Prince Albert's face, alternately pale and flushed, betrayed the strength of his emotions. They returned to Buckingham Palace attended by a most magnificent escort of the rank and beauty of London, on horseback and in carriages. A great crowd of a humbler sort was at the Palace gates to greet her, and it was said that she did not lose her composure until a flood of tears relieved her pent-up excitement in her own chamber. ”G.o.d save the Queen” was demanded at all the theatres in the evening, and in the immediately succeeding days the Queen received, seated on her throne, loyal and congratulatory addresses from the Peers in their robes, and wearing all their decorations; from the Commons, from the City Corporation, and many other public bodies.
Oxford was incarcerated in Bethlehem Hospital, one of the great metropolitan lunatic asylums, in which he remained many years, and of which he was made one of the chief ”sights” by its visitors. Perhaps it was this circ.u.mstance that induced the authorities to order his removal to Broadmoor, the state prison in which persons charged with felonious crimes, whose lunacy has been established, have within recent years been confined. There he remained until the commencement of the winter months of 1867. During all the weary period which intervened between the perpetration of his offence and that date his conduct was exemplary, and no evidence of mental aberration appeared. At various times appeals were made in his behalf by influential persons who had the opportunity of watching his demeanour and judging his character. His own representation from first to last ever was that the pistol which he fired was not loaded.
He attributed the act which so nearly cost him his life and which wasted the best years of his existence, to inordinate vanity, fostered by a variety of trivial circ.u.mstances in his domestic life, on which it is not necessary to dwell, and which led to a senseless desire--similar to that which has perpetuated the name of Erostratus, the incendiary who fired the Temple of Diana at Ephesus--to gain notoriety by whatever means. To a certain extent he educated himself during his confinement, and became a tolerable linguist. He also taught himself that branch of the house-painter's trade termed ”graining,” sufficiently well to enable him to earn a decent livelihood. At last, late in 1867, he received a free pardon and release, subject only to the very proper provision that he should expatriate himself and never return to British sh.o.r.es. The same mania, or silly senselessness, might break out again, and it is manifestly right that the person of the Sovereign should be protected from the vanity of a man who, at however distant a period, could commit the cowardly outrage of which he was the author.
When, a year or two later, the Queen was again providentially saved from similar felonious attempts, their character being of the same nature as that of Oxford's, a strong feeling animated the general public mind that some special deterrent should be devised to prevent or reduce the likelihood of such maniacal or quasi-maniacal deeds. An Act of Parliament was accordingly pa.s.sed, ere the close of the Session of 1843, by which severe flogging was imposed as part punishment in all such cases. It had the desired effect. From the period of its enactment until now, attempts to take the Queen's life, and minor a.s.saults upon her person, have been almost entirely unknown.
[Sidenote: BIRTH OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL.]
On the afternoon of the 21st of November, the country was gladdened by the birth of the Queen's first-born, the Princess Royal, now Crown Princess of Prussia. The event occurred considerably before the period antic.i.p.ated by the Queen's medical and other attendants, and preparations had to be made in a hurry. Nevertheless, the Queen soon regained her accustomed health, and so rapidly that we find it recorded that on the day before that appointed for the christening, she and a lady of the Court, exercising their strength and preserving their presence of mind, rescued the Prince from a most perilous if not fatal position. He had been skating, accompanied only by the Queen and one Lady-in-waiting, and had fallen through the ice in such a position that he could not possibly have extricated himself.
Two days after the Princess was born, Mr. Selwyn, a gentleman with whom Prince Albert was reading English law and const.i.tutional history, came to give his pupil his accustomed lesson. The Prince said to him, ”I fear I cannot read any law to-day, there are so many constantly coming to congratulate; but you will like to see the little Princess.” He took his tutor into the nursery, as he found that the child was asleep. Taking her hand, he said, ”The next time we read, it must be on the rights and duties of a Princess Royal.”
In 1841 Lord Melbourne was no longer Prime Minister. Sir Robert Peel, who had gained the largest Parliamentary majority which had been known for many years, reigned in his stead. The Queen made no difficulty about the Ladies of the Household now. Her tastes and feelings were consulted with great delicacy and consideration by the Premier, and the selection of the d.u.c.h.ess of Buccleuch in the first instance as Mistress of the Robes, which post may be termed the female Premiers.h.i.+p of the Household, was especially gratifying to Her Majesty. But her heart was, nevertheless, loth to part with the constant female companions of the first four years of her reign.
Thursday, September the 2nd, was the last evening she spent with them. At the dinner-table she could scarcely trust herself to speak, and she is reported to have shed bitter tears when she retired with her ladies.
Everybody pitied the young Sovereign, and saw and felt the hards.h.i.+p involved. But it was an inevitable accompaniment of her high position.
[Sidenote: BIRTH OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.]
The heir to the throne adorned by Queen Victoria was born in the midst of one of the very darkest periods of English history. In 1841 the condition of the people had been declining from the beginning of the year.
Operatives were on half time--at last they had no work at all--and the few who had had the means or the will to be provident, were living on their savings. Public meetings were being held to consider what was to be done, and public subscriptions were opened. Then the idle hands commenced to meet in large numbers, with a sullen look of despair, waiting for death or alms--a comparatively small number being employed at the expense of munic.i.p.al and other recognised bodies, in road making or road mending.
Crime, which follows pauperism as surely and almost as rapidly as the obscene vulture pounces upon the carrion which is not yet cold, was rife; murders came in mult.i.tudes, poisonings by wholesale; murders by trades unionists, murders by thieves. It was when this dark cloud lowered over England--a cloud never completely dispelled until the rise of the great and glorious Free Trade sun, five years later--that the Prince of Wales first breathed. A _London Gazette_ extraordinary, which appeared on Tuesday evening, November the 9th, ran as follows:--
Buckingham Palace, Nov. 9th.
This morning, at twelve minutes before eleven o'clock, the Queen was happily delivered of a Prince, His Royal Highness Prince Albert, Her Royal Highness the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent, several Lords of Her Majesty's Most Honourable Privy Council, and the Ladies of Her Majesty's Bedchamber, being present.
This great and important news was immediately made known to the town by the firing of the Tower and Park guns; and the Privy Council being a.s.sembled as soon as possible thereupon, at the Council Chamber, Whitehall, it was ordered that a Form of Thanksgiving be prepared by His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, to be used in all churches and chapels throughout England and Wales and the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed, on Sunday, the 14th of November, or the Sunday after the respective ministers shall receive the same.
Her Majesty and the infant Prince are, G.o.d be praised, both doing well.
The joy of the nation at the succession to the crown in the progeny of the Queen and Prince Albert being thus secured, was excessive. Upon the announcement of the happy accouchement, the n.o.bility and gentry crowded to the Palace to tender their dutiful inquiries as to the Sovereign's convalescence. Amongst others, came the Lord Mayor and civic dignitaries in great state. They felt peculiarly proud that the Prince should have been born on Lord Mayor's day; in fact, just at the very moment when the time-honoured procession was starting from the City for Westminster. In memory of the happy coincidence, the Lord Mayor of the year, Mr. Pirie, was created Sir John Pirie, Baronet. On the 4th of December, the Queen created her son by Letters Patent, Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester:--”And him, our said and most dear son, the Prince of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, as has been accustomed, we do enn.o.ble and invest with the said Princ.i.p.ality and Earldom, by girding him with a sword, by putting a coronet on his head, and a gold ring on his finger, and also by delivering a gold rod into his hand, that he may preside there, and direct and defend those parts.” By the fact of his birth as Heir-Apparent, the Prince indefeasibly inherited, without the necessity of patent or creation, these dignities--the t.i.tles of Duke of Saxony, by right of his father; and, by right of his mother, Duke of Cornwall, Duke of Rothsay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Lord of the Isles, and Great Steward of Scotland.