Queen Victoria (9 page)

[Footnote 9: Fergusson,
 
History of Modern Styles of Architecture
.]

John Ruskin, who was in many ways the greatest art teacher of his age, was the first to point out the value and the method of correct observation of all that is beautiful in nature and in art.

In an address on “Modern Manufacture and Design,” delivered to the working men of Bradford, he declared: “Without observation and experience, no design - without peace and pleasurableness in occupation, no design - and all the lecturings, and teachings, and prizes and principles of art, in the world are of no use, so long as you don’t surround your men with happy influences and beautiful things. . . . Inform their minds, refine their habits, and you form and refine their designs; but keep them illiterate, uncomfortable, and in the midst of unbeautiful things, and whatever they do will still be spurious, vulgar, and valueless.”

At the time, however, the Exhibition proved a great success, and the Duke of Coburg carried most favourable impressions away with him. He says: “The Queen and her husband were at the zenith of their fame. . . . Prince Albert was not satisfied to guide the whole affair only from above; he was, in the fullest sense of the word, the soul of everything. Even his bitterest enemies, with unusual unreserve, acknowledged the completeness of the execution of the scheme.”

So far from there being a loss upon the undertaking there was actually half a million of profit. The proceeds were devoted to securing ground at South Kensington upon which a great National Institute might be built. This undertaking (the purchase of the ground) was not carried through without great difficulty and anxiety. The Queen’s sympathy and encouragement were, as always, of the greatest help to her husband, and he quoted a verse from a German song, to illustrate how much he felt and appreciated it:

When man has well nigh lost his hope in life,
Upwards in trust and love still looks the wife,
Towards the starry world all bright with cheer,
Faint not nor fear, thus speaks her shining tear.

The Great Exhibition was sufficient proof - if any had been needed - of how the Prince with his wife laboured incessantly for the good of others. Without his courage, perseverance, and ability there is no doubt that this great undertaking would never have been carried through successfully. He recognized the fact that princes live for the benefit of their people; his desire for the improvement in all classes was never-ending, and from him his wife learnt many lessons which proved of the greatest value to her in later life when she stood alone and her husband was no longer there to aid her with his unfailing wise advice.

A second Exhibition was held in 1862, and so far as decorative art was concerned there were distinct signs of improvement. ‘Art manufacture’ had now become a trade phrase, but manufacturers were still far from understanding what ‘Art’ really meant. As an instance of this, one carpet firm sent a carpet to be used as a hanging on which Napoleon III is depicted presenting a treaty of Commerce to the Queen. Particular attention had apparently been paid to the ‘shine’ on Napoleon’s top boots and to the Queen’s smile!

The Prince’s great wish was to restore to the workman his pride in the work of his hands, to relieve the daily toil of some of its irksomeness by the interest thus created in it, and, where the work was of a purely mechanical nature, and individual skill and judgment were not called for, he wished the worker to understand the principles upon which the machine was built and the ingenuity with which it worked.

His schemes for the building and equipment of Museums of Science and Art were arranged with the purpose in view that both rich and poor should have equal opportunities of seeing what improvements had been made throughout the ages, and how vast and far-reaching the effects of such improvements were on the lives of the whole nation.

It was under his direction that the pictures in the National Gallery were first arranged in such a manner as to show the history and progress of art. In his own words: “Our business is not so much to create, as to learn to appreciate and understand the works of others, and we can never do this till we have realized the difficulties to be overcome. Acting on this principle myself, I have always tried to learn the rudiments of art as much as possible. For instance, I learnt oil-painting, water-colours, etching, lithography, etc., and in music I learnt thorough bass, the pianoforte, organ, and singing - not, of course, with a view of doing anything worth looking at or hearing, but simply to enable me to judge and appreciate the works of others.”

It is interesting to note how closely the views of the Prince agreed with those of John Ruskin in matters of art and literature. Ruskin declared that it was the greatest misfortune of the age that, owing to the wholesale introduction of machinery, the designer and maker were nearly always different people instead of being one and the same person. He declared that no work of art could really be ‘living’ or capable of moving us to admiration as did the masterpieces of the Middle Ages unless the maker had thought out and designed it himself.

It was largely owing to his teachings that the ‘Arts and Crafts’ movement under William Morris and Walter Crane arose - a movement which has since that time spread over the whole civilized world.

In 1862, together with some of his friends, Morris formed a company to encourage the use of beautiful furniture and to introduce ‘Art in the House.’ Morris himself had learnt to be a practical carpet-weaver and dyer, and had founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings.

All the work of this firm was done by hand as far as possible; only the best materials were to be used and designs were to be original. They manufactured stained glass, wall paper, tapestry, tiles, embroidery, carpets, etc., and many of the designs were undertaken by Edward Burne-Jones.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti, the poet-painter, Holman Hunt (best remembered by his famous picture “The Light of the World “) and others, formed what was known as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, to instruct public taste in creative work in art and literature. At the Kelmscott Press some of the most beautiful printed books of their kind were produced under the direction of Morris.

Ruskin, like so many others of his time, was greatly influenced by Carlyle, and his views on the ‘condition of England’ question were practically the same. He bewailed the waste of work and of life, the poverty and the ‘sweating.’ He urged employers to win the goodwill of those who worked for them as the best means of producing the best work. He preached the ‘rights’ of Labour - that high wages for good work was the truest economy in the end, and that beating down the wages of workers does not pay in the long run. He declared that the only education worth having was a ‘humane’ education - that is, first of all, the building of character and the cultivation of wholesome feelings. “You do not educate a man by telling him what he knew not, but by making him what he was not,” was the theory which he endeavoured to put into practice by experiments such as an attempt to teach every one to “learn to do something well and accurately with his hands.”

In common with Wordsworth Ruskin held that the love of Nature was the greatest of educators. He believed that

The world is too much with us; late and soon,
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers.

The beauty and the everlasting marvel of Nature’s works were, to him as to the poet of the Lakes, the real road to knowledge:

Come forth into the light of things,
Let Nature be your teacher.

An education of not the brain alone, but of heart and hand as well, all three working in co-operation, was necessary to raise man to the level of an intelligent being.

Ruskin’s teachings fared no better than those of Carlyle at first, and though he is spoken of sometimes as being ‘old-fashioned,’ yet his lesson is of the old-fashioned kind which does live and will live, for, like Dickens, he knew how to appeal to the hearts of his readers. He is one of the most picturesque writers in the language, a man of great nobility of character and generous feelings, who had a tremendous belief in himself and knew how to express his thoughts in the most beautiful language. Some of his books, for example
 
Sesame and Lilies
and
 
Unto this Last
, are probably destined for immortality.

The year 1861 was a black year for the Queen. On March 15th her mother, the Duchess of Kent, died. She had been living for some time at Frogmore, a pleasant house in the Windsor Home Park, and here in the mausoleum erected by her daughter her statue is to be seen.

She was sincerely loved by every member of her household, and her loss was felt as one affecting the whole nation. In the words of Disraeli: “She who reigns over us has elected, amid all the splendour of empire, to establish her life on the principle of domestic love. It is this, it is the remembrance and consciousness of this, which now sincerely saddens the public spirit, and permits a nation to bear its heartfelt sympathy to the foot of a bereaved throne, and to whisper solace to a royal heart.”

The death of the Queen’s’ mother came as a great shock to the Prince Consort. The Queen was, for a time, utterly unable to transact any business, and this added to his already heavy burden of cares and responsibilities.

In the following November the King of Portugal died. The Prince had loved him like a son, and this fresh disaster told so severely upon his health that he began to suffer much from sleeplessness. The strain of almost ceaseless work for many years was gradually wearing him out.

He had never been afraid of death, and not long before his last illness he had said to his wife: “I do not cling to life. You do; but I set no store by it. If I knew that those I love were well cared for, I should be quite ready to die to-morrow. . . . I am sure, if I had a severe illness, I should give up at once, I should not struggle for life.”

On the 1st of December the Queen felt anxious and depressed. Her husband grew worse and could not take food without considerable difficulty, and this made him very weak and irritable.

The physicians in attendance were now obliged to tell her that the illness was low fever, but that the patient himself was not to know of this. The Ministers became alarmed at his state, and when the news of his illness became public there was the greatest and most universal anxiety for news.

In spite of slight improvements from time to time, the Prince showed no power of fighting the disease, and on the evening of the 14th December he passed gently away.

It is no exaggeration to say that the death of the Queen’s beloved husband saddened every home in the land; it was a sorrow felt equally by the highest and the lowest. He died in the fulness of his manhood, leaving her whom he had loved and guarded so tenderly to reign in lonely splendour.

In the dedication of
 
Idylls of the King
 
to the memory of Prince Albert, Tennyson, the poet-laureate, wrote:

Break not, O woman’s-heart, but still endure;
Break not, for thou art Royal, but endure,
Remembering all the beauty of that star
Which shone so close beside Thee that ye made
One light together, but has past and leaves
The Crown a lonely splendour.

When one looks over the vista of years which have passed since that mournful day, it is with sadness mingled with regret. For it is too true that “a prophet is not without honour, save in his own country.”

‘Albert the Good’ was, like many other great men, in advance of his times, and not until he was dead did the nation as a whole realize the blank he had left behind him.

Even so late as 1854 Greville writes in his Diary of the extraordinary attacks which were made upon the Prince in the public Press. Letter after letter, he noted, appeared “full of the bitterest abuse and all sorts of lies. . . . The charges against him are principally to this effect, that he has been in the habit of meddling improperly in public affairs, and has used his influence to promote objects of his own and the interests of his own family at the expense of the interests of this country; that he is German and not English in his sentiments and principles; that he corresponds with foreign princes and with British Ministers abroad without the knowledge of the Government, and that he thwarts the foreign policy of the Ministers when it does not coincide with his own ideas and purposes.” And again: “It was currently reported in the Midland and Northern counties, and actually stated in a Scotch paper, that Prince Albert had been committed to the Tower, and there were people found credulous and foolish enough to believe it.”

        But English gratitude is always such
To hate the hand which doth oblige too much.

These words of Daniel Defoe help to explain something of the attitude of a part of the nation toward the Prince in his lifetime.

He had given his life in the service of his wife and his adopted country, but he was a ‘foreigner,’ and the insular Briton, brought up in the blissful belief that “one Englishman was as good as three Frenchmen,” could not and would not overcome his distrust of one who had not been, like himself, so singularly blessed in his nationality.

But Time has its revenges, and the services of Prince Albert will “smell sweet and blossom in the dust” long after the very names of once famous lights of the Victorian era have been forgotten.

His home life was singularly sweet and happy, and a great contrast to that of some of his wife’s predecessors upon the English throne. The Queen, writing to her Uncle Leopold in this the twenty-first year of their marriage, says: “
Very
 
few can say with me that their husband at the end of twenty-one years is
 
not
 
only full of the friendship, kindness, and affection which a truly happy marriage brings with it, but the same tender love of the
 
very first days of our marriage
!”