Sons, Servants and Statesmen (8 page)

Of the social realism portrayed by such writers as Charles Dickens, he was equally dismissive. One day in conversation he mentioned
Oliver Twist
. Commenting that it was all about (or among) workhouses, coffin makers and pickpockets, he remarked that he did not like ‘that low debasing style; it’s all slang; it’s just like
The Beggar’s Opera
; I shouldn’t think it would tend to raise morals; I don’t like that low debasing view of mankind.’ When Victoria defended the book, he repeated that he did not like such things: ‘I wish to avoid them; I don’t like them in
reality
; and therefore I don’t wish to see them represented.’
⁷
Quite how serious he actually was, or whether he was speaking with tongue in cheek, one will never know. When he told her that it was ‘almost worthwhile for a woman to be beat, considering the exceeding pity she excites’, he can hardly have meant his words to be taken seriously. He would surely never have said any such thing to his Queen unless he knew she had a sense of humour.

Nevertheless, if one assumes that his remarks about ‘low debasing style’ were genuinely representative of his views, then he certainly was a typical reactionary aristocrat, if no worse than any other such figure of the time. His opinions on the subject of workers’ rights and ostrich-like attitude to the evils of society or the plight of the poor were in contrast to his liberal views on the upbringing of children. When the Queen told him that she thought solitary confinement and silence were suitable punishments for wilful youngsters, he begged to differ, saying he thought they must be ‘very stupifying’. Nevertheless, his indulgence towards minors was severely limited in other directions. The work of such philanthropists as Lord Shaftesbury to improve the conditions of factory children who worked between twelve and fifteen hours a day in cotton mills or mines, he told her, was quite unnecessary, as reports of their conditions were greatly exaggerated; making the children work kept them out of mischief and prevented them from starving.
⁸

The father-figure in him constantly made gentle suggestions to the Queen for the sake of her health. He warned her that over-eating was a Hanoverian family failing, and that she ought to eat only when she was hungry. In that case, she retorted, she would surely be eating all day, as she was always hungry. She should take more exercise and walk more if she did not want to get fat, he said, but she complained that walking made her feet swell. Anyway, she got stones in her shoes. Have them made tighter, he suggested. King Leopold added his support to Lord Melbourne’s advice, telling her that poor Charlotte, his wife, had died through not walking enough.

Two of his favourite girls’ names, Melbourne said, were Alice and Louise, and it was not surprising that Victoria would later name her second and fourth daughters thus. The Louise was to be partly in honour of her mother-in-law and also her aunt, Queen of the Belgians, but there had not been a royal Alice for some generations.

On her accession to the throne, the Queen pointedly ignored her mother, the Duchess of Kent, much of the time. She was one of the first to look askance at the close relationship between her daughter and the Prime Minister. ‘Take care Victoria you know your Prerogative!’ she warned. ‘Take care that Lord Melbourne is not King.’
⁹
She need not have worried, for Melbourne scrupulously observed the limits of the royal prerogative.

Though nobody could ever hope to eclipse Melbourne as political mentor in the first two years of Victoria’s reign, two other political personalities of the day had a decisive impact, albeit in different ways. The first was Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, the hero of the battle of Waterloo; the other was Melbourne’s Foreign Secretary, Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston.

As the man who had defeated the arch-enemy Napoleon Bonaparte, no Englishman was more revered at the time than Wellington, and he was one of the most steadfast allies and defenders the Crown could ever have. Much as he might have disparaged, in an impatient moment, the sons of King George III as ‘damned millstones’ around the government’s neck, nobody could be regarded as a more faithful supporter of the British monarchy than the Iron Duke. After attending the first privy council of Victoria’s reign, he said that ‘if she had been his own daughter he could not have desired to see her perform her part better’.
¹⁰

A few weeks after her accession, Victoria was due to appear at a review of her troops, and despite the objections of her ministers she intended to appear on horseback. The Duke objected to her being forced into what he regarded as a piece of theatrical display on her part, especially as he had misgivings about her horsemanship. ‘Much better come in her carriage,’ he wrote to Lady Salisbury. ‘I would not wish a better subject for a caricature than this young Queen, alone, without any woman to attend her, without the brilliant cortège of young men and ladies as ought to appear in a scene of that kind . . . . And if it rains and she gets wet, or if any other
contretemps
happens, what is to be done? All these things sound very little, but they must be considered in a display of that sort . . . . It is a childish fancy, because she has read of Queen Elizabeth at Tilbury Fort; but
then
there was the threat of foreign invasion, which was an occasion calling for display; what occasion is there now?’
¹¹

She had not ridden since her illness two years earlier, and there were doubts as to whether she would be able to hold her own properly on horseback. Melbourne likewise recommended that she should attend in a carriage, though for reasons of propriety, as she would be accompanied by a female attendant instead of riding on a horse between two men. Her verdict to them all was unequivocal: no horse, no review. She had her own way and went on horseback as she said she would.

Wellington felt exceptionally protective towards his young sovereign, and though he saw that she was ‘quite satisfied’ with Melbourne, looked with some dismay on her reliance on her Prime Minister, and feared her resistance to an eventual change in the government, which was inevitable. ‘My opinion’, he wrote to a friend after dining with Victoria at Buckingham Palace one night in February 1838, ‘is that she does nothing without consulting him, even upon the time of quitting the table after dinner and retiring to bed at night.’ Should the government be defeated and he or Sir Robert Peel, as the senior Tories, be asked to form an administration, ‘I have always been and always shall be in front of the Battle. I cannot hold back.’ He hoped the occasion would not arise, as in a minority administration they would find it difficult to govern ‘when we cannot rely upon their support in any opinion of ours’,
¹²
and he knew she would find it difficult to exercise her royal prerogative while still so young and inexperienced.

Two years later, the Queen’s reputation plummeted with the ‘Lady Flora Hastings affair’ (see p. 47). During this sorry time it saddened Wellington that the Queen seemed to have so little affection or respect for her mother, though behind the scenes he urged both factions – the Hastings family and the Queen herself – to try to hush matters up as much as possible. At the time of the ‘bedchamber crisis’ (see pp. 45–6), she had briefly sent for Wellington as a possible prime minister in place of Peel, though he rejected the offer, partly on grounds of age – he was almost seventy years old – and as he thought it best if the prime minister was a member of the House of Commons.

By the end of 1839, Wellington’s relations with the sovereign had become rather strained. When the matter of Prince Albert’s annuity was discussed in parliament, it was fixed at £30,000, little more than half the sum granted to Prince (now King) Leopold on his marriage, a matter which still rankled with those at Westminster who were indignant at seeing such revenue go to a man who was now a European sovereign and in effect no longer a member of the British royal family. Despite Melbourne’s greatest efforts to increase it, it was reduced to the lower figure.

The Queen was furious with the ‘abominable infamous Tories’, reserving her greatest venom for ‘this wicked old foolish Duke [of Wellington]’. As her speech when she opened parliament in person on 16 January 1840 announcing her betrothal omitted the word ‘Protestant’, Wellington raised doubts about her future husband’s religion and insisted on an amendment to the legislation authorising his income, ensuring that the word ‘Protestant’ appeared. He and Sir Robert Peel strongly opposed giving Albert precedence, and only when it was ascertained that the Queen could bestow whatever rank she wished on her husband by royal prerogative was the issue of precedence removed from the Naturalisation Bill.

When the list of guests for the royal wedding was drawn up, Melbourne had to persuade the Queen to invite Wellington, which she did with great reluctance. He was one of only five Tories out of 300 guests in the Chapel Royal, the others being Lord Liverpool, the two joint Lord Great Chamberlains (Lord Willoughby de Eresby and the Marquess of Cholmondeley) and Lord Ashley, who was married to a niece of Lord Melbourne’s.

Within a few months, any differences were forgiven and forgotten. In August 1840 Wellington sat next to the Queen at dinner, and though he was a teetotaller who only drank iced water, he enjoyed the hospitality. ‘She drank wine repeatedly with me;’ he recalled, ‘in short if I was not a milksop, I should become her Bottle Companion.’ Six months later, he was invited to stand proxy for Albert’s father, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, at the christening of the Princess Royal. He was much flattered: ‘I must be in favour to be thought of as a Beau Père!’
¹³

Lord Palmerston’s connections with Lord Melbourne extended beyond those of political colleagues. He was his brother-in-law, having married Melbourne’s sister Emily, Lady Cowper, after the death of her first husband. Palmerston was entrusted by Melbourne with the duty of acquainting their sovereign with international affairs, and he spent much time with the Queen poring over maps and memoranda. He was won over by her charm, and he took much trouble to instruct her in the intricacies of foreign politics, providing her with specially drawn maps and an annotated
Almanach de Gotha
, teaching her to believe that these matters lay ‘within the Sovereign’s province’, a move he would later come to regret. He taught her how to address her fellow sovereigns throughout Europe and how to end letters to them in her own hand, writing the appropriate endings for her in pencil, so she could copy over them herself before the pencillings were carefully erased.

He was also ever ready with advice as to what presents should be given to fellow sovereigns and their most distinguished subjects. Such instruction she found very helpful and enjoyable. Some three months before her accession, she wrote to King Leopold of having dined the previous Saturday with several guests, including Palmerston, ‘with whom I had much pleasant and amusing conversation after dinner – you know how agreeable he is’.
¹⁴

Palmerston was also slightly besotted with the Queen, though less so than Melbourne. In the first few months of her reign, both ministers attended on her as often as they could, even when there was no official need, and they rode regularly with her at Windsor. Tories and others regarded their constant hanging around with suspicion. Lord Aberdeen, another future prime minister, thought he saw parallels in the relationship between the Queen and her Prime Minister with that of the young King Edward VI and his Protector, Lord Somerset. Cartoons of the triumvirate were published, showing them riding together, or the Queen and Palmerston playing chess while Melbourne looked on. Soon the advice of King Leopold was being eclipsed by theirs.

However, these initial good impressions were to count for little against an episode which occurred at one point during Melbourne’s administration. On a winter’s night in 1839, Palmerston disgraced himself while staying at Windsor Castle by blundering into the bedroom of Mrs Brand, one of the Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. As Charles Greville discreetly put it, the bold minister’s ‘tender temerity met with an invincible resistance’.
¹⁵
Once in the bedroom, Palmerston locked one door behind him and blocked the other with a piece of furniture. Finding him advancing on her in the middle of the night, Mrs Brand jumped out of bed and called for help, leaving him to retreat disappointed, if not chastened. Next day, Mrs Brand complained to Melbourne, who feared that the ensuing scandal would damage the Queen further and perhaps bring down the government. He ordered Palmerston to write an immediate letter of apology to Mrs Brand, which she accepted, but the Queen had already heard the news. It may have simply been a mistake on Palmerston’s part, and that he was wandering around the long, ill-lit corridors in search of the bedroom of Lady Cowper, to whom he was still only engaged at the time. While the Queen was soon pacified by Melbourne’s assurances that no harm had been intended, she neither forgot nor forgave her Foreign Secretary for such behaviour.