CHAPTER III.

Chapter 35,362 wordsPublic domain

The dominant quality in the Queen's character, it seemed to me, was her strong common-sense. It enabled her to see things in their just proportion, to avoid extremes, as a rule, in her estimate of persons, of opinions, and events; to accept the inevitable without futile murmur or resistance. Very early this quality must have been developed, and it will account for that perfect self-possession on the announcement of her accession and at her first Privy Council, which created surprise and admiration in all who witnessed it. Those who read of it were often incredulous, and stories of her agitation on these occasions have found a place from time to time in newspapers and elsewhere. One of these, which appeared in a respectable journal so late as November 1886, drew from the Queen the following very suggestive remark in a letter to me: "The Queen was _not_ overwhelmed on her accession--rather full of courage, she may say. _She took things as they came, as she knew they must be._" It was so with her through life. She met trial, difficulty, or danger "with courage," and reconciled herself with a thoughtful constant spirit, and without passionate remonstrance, to what she "knew must be." What but this quality of mind, and her strong sense of the claims of duty upon her as Sovereign, could have enabled her within a few days after the loss, which for a long time took all sunshine out of her life, to resume her active duties as Queen, and to continue them unbrokenly through feeble health and the many domestic anxieties and bereavements which during her long life pressed frequently and heavily upon her? The Queen's historian will have much to tell in illustration of her breadth of view, her prompt decision, and undaunted spirit in times of political difficulty. At these times, the truly Royal spirit within her answered to the call. A judgment enlightened by a vast experience, and unwarped by prejudice, then came into play. Her sole thought was for the good of her people, and to see that neither this, nor the position of her Empire before the world, should be in anywise impaired. To this end she brought into play the well-balanced judgment, which begets and is alone entitled to the name of common-sense.

The same quality was equally conspicuous in her judgment of the affairs of ordinary life. Of this I might have been able to give many examples, had I not made it my rule never to make a memorandum of any remarks on men and things that fell from Her Majesty at any of my interviews with her. In her letters to me, acute and characteristic remarks like the following frequently occurred: "The wisest and best people are sadly weak and foolish about Great Marriages. The Queen cannot comprehend it." With her experience of the private history of the many homes of both the noble and the rich, who so able as she to judge how little of the true happiness of life results from the gratification of such an ambition? "Her sagacity in reading people and their ruling motives and weaknesses" was remarkable. This was noted by Archbishop Benson, and it often broke into remarks touched more with kindliness and humour than with sarcasm. The Archbishop also remarks, truly, that the Queen "was shrewder and fuller of knowledge than most men." "She had not much patience with their follies and the pettiness of their desires." One recognises as very characteristic a remark of hers which the Archbishop quotes: "I cannot understand the world--cannot comprehend the frivolities and littlenesses. It seems to me as if they were all a little mad."[12]

Here, too, may be noted the gentleness of her judgments, even in cases where not to condemn would have been impossible. One was often reminded that the axiom, _Tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner_, was habitually present to her mind. If a kind construction could be put upon an action rather than a severe one, she was prompt to seize it. But at the same time her condemnation of falsehood, cant, party intrigue, egotistical ambition, or proved unworthiness was swift and stern.

The time had been when Mr Disraeli's attacks on her friend Sir Robert Peel had prepossessed her greatly against him. In one of my letters on the subject of the Prince's _Life_, I must have had occasion to refer to these attacks. This was her reply (7th of June 1870):--

"The Queen quite agrees with what Mr Martin says about Mr Disraeli's conduct to Sir R. Peel. It was and is a great blot, and it is to her the more extraordinary, as he seems a very kindhearted and courteous man. But he was at that time very young, bitterly disappointed, not thought much of, and probably urged on by others."

As the years went on Mr Disraeli won for himself a very high place in Her Majesty's regard. In him she recognised the patriotic statesman, free from all mean ambition, superior to the prejudices of party, looking with keen sagacity beyond "the ignorant present," his every thought directed to the weal, the safety, the expansion of the Empire. She also found in him a man of generous instincts, on whom she could depend for consideration and sympathy. Among the other qualities for which she admired him were the constancy of his devotion to Lady Beaconsfield, and the honour which he paid to her memory upon her death. "How touching," she writes to me (December 26, 1872), "is the account of Lady Beaconsfield's funeral! _He_ is a _very fine_ example to set before us in these days of _want_ of affection and devotion, and of belief in what is true, unselfish, and chivalrous."

When in 1870 the land was deafened by the outcry about "Woman's Rights," which has not yet wholly subsided, the Queen writes to me (29th May):--

"The Queen is most anxious to enlist every one who can speak or write to join in checking this mad, wicked folly of 'Woman's Rights,' with all its attendant horrors, on which her poor feeble sex is bent, forgetting every sense of womanly feeling and propriety. Lady ---- ought to get a _good whipping_.

"It is a subject which makes the Queen so furious that she cannot contain herself. God created men and women different--then let them remain each in their own position. Tennyson has some beautiful lines on the difference of men and women in _The Princess_.[13] Woman would become the most hateful, heartless, and disgusting of human beings were she allowed to unsex herself; and where would be the protection which man was intended to give the weaker sex? The Queen is sure that Mrs Martin agrees with her."

In regard to the prevailing extravagance and want of individuality in dress, also, the Queen held strong opinions. Thus she writes to me (January 14, 1875):--

"The Prince had the greatest possible dislike for extravagance in dress, and, above all, for always _following_ in fashion. He liked people to be _well_ and elegantly and neatly dressed, but abhorred in men as well as in women anything loud, or fast, or startling. He would not have allowed me or any of our daughters to appear in any dress or coiffure or bonnet not becoming or proper, and he would have made us take it off. I never bought a dress or bonnet without consulting him, and his taste was always good. I remember so well, when my French coiffeur came from Paris every year, and brought over things which were tried on, the Prince has come in and said, '_Das trägst Du nicht!_' [That you shall not wear!] The Queen and Princesses, he said, ought never to _follow_ foolish and ugly fashions, only because they were new. This was entirely out of place.

"What would he say now, when every one dresses so overmuch, and thinks so much more about dress than they ever did before! He thought, and I think the same, that people ought to adopt what is really becoming, but not because it is the fashion, and especially what does not suit their face and figure."

Wise words, no doubt; but how few are they, in all ranks of life, who have the courage to be in what Falstaff calls "the rereward of the fashion," however fantastic the fashion may be, and out of harmony with their face and figure?

The Queen's passionate love for Scotland, with which her little books have made the world familiar, her delight in the prospect of going to Balmoral, her dejection at the thought of leaving it, constantly broke out in her letters to me. Thus (28th June 1867) she writes from Balmoral:--

"The Queen hopes Mr Martin will find a good place in the _Life_ for the Prince's love and admiration for our beloved Scotland. Mr Martin remembers his memorable words spoken not three weeks before his fatal illness: 'England does not know what she owes to Scotland.' Beloved country! The Queen's whole heart yearns to it more and more, and the 14th will be a sad day when she leaves it again."

Notwithstanding my love for my own native land, I found so much of graver matter to deal with in the Prince's life that I fear I did not gratify this phase of the Queen's feelings so fully as she desired. Greatly as the Prince enjoyed his Scottish holidays, Scotland was not to him what it was to the Queen, especially after his death. She was never so well in health as there, and with health came fresh vigour of mind and cheerfulness of spirits. She rejoiced, too, in the contrast of her comparatively simple and genial life there with the life of state and courtly convention which awaited her at Windsor, where, as she has told me, even the measured tread of the sentinels under her windows was irksome to her. The very splendour of Windsor Castle, that stateliest and most richly endowed of palaces, weighed upon a spirit that yearned for the freedom of life and movement, for which monarchs have ever yearned, but must, perforce, school themselves to forego. Her Majesty's feeling on this subject finds striking expression in the following passage of a letter to me from Windsor Castle (November 8, 1869):--

"The departure from Scotland, that beloved and blessed land, 'the birthplace of valour, the country of worth,' is very painful, and the _Sehnsucht_ [yearning] for it, and proportionate chagrin on returning to this gloomiest, saddest of places, very great.[14] It is not alone the pure air, the quiet and beautiful scenery, which makes it so delightful--it is the atmosphere of loving affection, and the hearty attachment of the people around Balmoral, which warms the heart, and does one good, and the absence of which, replaced by a cathedral church, with all its bells and clergy, a garrison town, and a very gossiping one, a Court with all its chilling formality, and the impossibility of going among the poor here, who are in villages of a very bad description, makes the change a dreadful one."

While, for the reason I have stated, Scotland took no prominent place in my _Life_ of the Prince, I made the Queen such amends as I might by my assistance in the preparation and passing through the press of the profusely illustrated edition of the _Leaves from a Journal_,[15] in the details of which Her Majesty took great interest. With her accustomed courtesy the Queen acknowledged a service which was a pleasure to me from the frequency with which it brought me into communication with her, by presentation of a fine copy of the book, inscribed (January 11, 1869) by her own hand, "To Theodore Martin, Esq., with the expression of sincere gratitude for the pains he has taken with this illustrated volume." And here I may say that I have not met in life a nature more grateful than the Queen's for service done, however slight, or more courteous in the acknowledgment of it. This perfect courtesy showed itself in many ways. Thus, for example, if a letter remained without answer for a day or two, the reply was sure to open with an apology for the delay. If the delay extended to several days, then "the Queen is shocked" at her own tardiness, although it was due to the urgent demand of business of State, or to some other important claim on her attention. Again, when she has been sitting at work, surrounded by despatch-boxes, in the open air at Osborne, and I have come to make my adieu, taking off my hat as I approached, she would desire me to replace it; and when I deprecated doing so, "Put on your hat," she said with a peremptory playfulness--"put on your hat, or I will not speak to you! I know you suffer from neuralgia,"--though how she came to know it I could not imagine.

The marriage of H.R.H. the Princess Louise, for whom my wife as well as myself had a warm regard, was sure, as the Queen knew, to be a matter of deep interest to us. No sooner was it arranged than Her Majesty wrote to inform us. The announcement was followed by another letter (12th March 1871), in which she wrote, in anticipation of the official invitation to the ceremony at St George's Chapel, Windsor, on the 21st: "The Queen is anxious that Mr Martin should know that he is specially invited to Princess Louise's marriage as _the Queen's personal friend_." The signal honour thus done me was continued at all the subsequent marriages of the Royal children.

The period between the short Administration of Mr Disraeli in 1868 and his return to office in 1874 was one of great political agitation and unrest, both at home and abroad. Problems that had not hitherto got beyond academical discussion took a practical form under the impulse given to reform by Mr Gladstone on his accession to power. Bills, among others, were launched for the Abolition of the Irish Church, for Compulsory Education, for the Establishment of the Ballot, for the Abolition of University tests, and for Army Reform. These were all measures novel and of a wide-reaching scope, upon which public opinion was greatly divided, and on which the Queen, according to her method, had to form an independent judgment. The state of affairs abroad, also, demanded close attention. The plots and counterplots, not always favourable to England, which came to a climax in the outbreak of the Franco-German war, the attitude of America in regard to the Alabama Claims, and of Russia in denouncing the clauses of the Treaty of Paris which provided for the neutralisation of the Black Sea, all fell within the same period, and in the policy to be maintained in regard to them Her Majesty's Ministers looked for her advice and assistance.

Early in 1870 an extra pressure of work was thrown upon the Queen by the death of General Grey, formerly secretary to Prince Albert, and afterwards her own Private Secretary, on whose vigorous judgment and political sagacity she had long been accustomed to rely. A passage in a letter to me (29th March), the day before he died, shows how deeply she felt his loss: "Alas! poor General Grey will hardly live through the day! This is very, very sad, for in many, many ways he was most valuable to the Queen, and a very devoted, zealous, and very able adviser and friend.... It is too dreadful to think of his poor wife and children, whom he quite doted on, and who are remarkably fine children. The poor dear Duchess of St Albans, too, who was confined in the same house, and very near the father she adored, was struck down. It is too, too sad!"

The double tragedy was indeed sad, and these words express what was felt by all who knew General Grey and his beautiful daughter, and the great love by which they were united.

Apart from all considerations of personal feeling, the loss of a friend so long and intimately associated with the daily work of the Queen as Sovereign must have been serious indeed.[16] The strain upon her mind, great enough before, became inevitably greater, and it is not surprising that in the course of 1871 her health, as she says in the letter of 17th September of that year, above cited (p. 40), broke down. I saw much of her, in connection with my work, at this time, and on one occasion she said: "I wonder what my ladies think of my want of courtesy. Sometimes I drive out with them for a couple of hours, and all the time do not exchange a word with them. I am so taken up with thinking what answers to make to the despatches and letters of the day."

The position of a sovereign in regard to foreign policy must often be rendered embarrassing by the ties of relationship or personal friendship. The Queen must have felt this on the outbreak of the Franco-German war. With Germany she had the closest family ties, and she saw with satisfaction that, with the progress of the war, German unity, which she knew had been the cherished dream of the Prince Consort, and which she herself felt would tend in the long-run to the peace of Europe, became a fact. On the other hand, she had formed a warm personal regard for Napoleon III., and also for his Empress, remembering how much they both loved our country, and how loyally he had, on several occasions, behaved to England when his support was of importance. While, therefore, maintaining politically an attitude of perfect neutrality, the Queen's kind heart gave to the fallen sovereigns a sympathetic welcome when they came to England. On the 3rd of December 1870 she wrote to me from Windsor Castle:--

"The Queen has seen the poor Empress, who shows great dignity and great gentleness.... The Queen is pleased to say she was cheered at the station on arriving. There is a great and kind feeling here for those who are in misfortune and sorrow, especially among the working people, and that is not the case in many other countries."

Again, when the Emperor came to Windsor Castle in the following March, the Queen wrote (31st March):--

"The visit of the Emperor Napoleon--his _first_ return to Windsor since his triumphal visit here in 1855--was very trying. He was very much moved, but he behaved beautifully and with all the peculiar charm of simple, unaffected graciousness which he possesses in a wonderful degree. He spoke readily of the present and the past...."

The Queen's interest in the Emperor did not diminish during the brief span of life which was left to him. On the 8th of January 1873 she writes: "We are all so grieved for the poor Emperor Napoleon, whose state, the Queen fears, is very critical. She is sure the country is full of sympathy." Again, on the 15th, she writes: "The Queen is much pleased with Mr Martin's observations on the poor Emperor Napoleon, whose sudden death she truly grieves at, and she is proud to see the sympathy and feeling shown by the nation.... Did Mr Martin go to the lying-in-state at Chiselhurst yesterday?"

This I was unable to do, and I expressed my regret to the Queen, and mentioned that I should go down for the funeral. This was Her Majesty's answer:--

"OSBORNE, _22nd January 1873_.

"The Queen sends Mr Martin the copies of two letters that will interest him.[17] The Empress Augusta's especially is very generous and kind. The Queen thanks Mr Martin for his last letters, and is very sorry he could not have the last look, which she so very deeply regrets not having had herself. As soon as she returns to Windsor, she will go to the poor Empress...."

I had written to the Queen a full account of the funeral. To this she refers: "The reception on Thursday must have been most affecting. The dear boy is said to behave so well. The Queen sends on the copy of a letter which gives a touching trait of him. The Dean of Westminster [Stanley] the other day said it would be such a good thing, if the poor Emperor's great charm of manner, great amiability and kindness, and wonderful power of attracting people--in short, _fascination_--which the Queen herself felt very strongly, could be generally known; but he did not exactly know _how_. The Queen said she thought it might be possible to do it in Mr Martin's _Life of the Prince_; for the visits to Boulogne of the Prince _alone_ in 1854, of the Emperor and Empress to Windsor in 1855, and of ourselves to Paris in the same year are full of the greatest interest, and the Queen has a very full account of them in her Journal, which she thinks of having extracted, and she feels Mr Martin would be pleased to pay a tribute to one whose reverse of fortune and great misfortunes were borne with such dignity and patience, and without any bitterness towards others."

The Queen placed in my hands a manuscript copy of her Journal of these visits. The attractive qualities of the Emperor were so fully illustrated by the copious extracts of which I made use in the Prince's _Life_, that it required no commentary or eulogium of mine to show them in relief. The complete Journal of these visits was printed for the Queen in 1881. It is a historical document, which will be of permanent interest. In sending me a copy on the 10th of October of that year, the Queen writes:--

"The little account of the two French visits in 1855 has delighted those of the Queen's children and friends--only two of the latter, as yet--to whom she has given it. But she finds a great omission on her part, and that is, of _all_ the names of all those who accompanied us to Paris. She here sends the list, and would ask how it could be added, and sends one of the copies for him to look at and see how it could best be done,--whether as a leaf at the end of the book, or as a note like the dinner-list at Windsor, and include the Emperor and Empress's suite who came with them to Windsor."

The reply was to send a printed slip with the list of the names to be inserted at the end of the volume. With the exception of Lady Ponsonby, then Miss Bulteel (Maid of Honour), not one of the numerous persons named in the list is now alive. She is, therefore, the sole survivor of the Queen's suite who was present on the occasion of the Queen's reception at the Opera House in Paris, of which the very graphic description is given in the _Quarterly Review_ article of April last, already referred to.[18] It is a very welcome addition to the Queen's own very modest account of what must have been a remarkably brilliant and memorable scene, but of which the most she records is, that her "reception was very hearty," that _God save the Queen_ was sung splendidly, and that "there could not have been more enthusiasm in England."

In the midst of the public cares and perplexities of the time, the Queen had to face, at the end of 1871, a deeper anxiety than all other in the dangerous illness of the Prince of Wales. To place herself by his bedside, to cheer and to encourage, and never to surrender hope, however dread the symptoms, was characteristic of her strong, loving nature and brave spirit. Her conduct at that trying time drew her people nearer to her, and their sympathy bound her to them by a very tender tie. Through her kindness I was kept informed by telegram of the progress of the Prince through the extremes of danger to convalescence. Among the letters which the Queen wrote to me from Osborne after her return there with the Prince from Sandringham, the following passage occurs:--

"OSBORNE, _Feb. 13, 1872_.

"Two new sad and shocking events have overclouded the joyful return of the dear Prince of Wales: the one which, contrasting as it did with the Queen's own case, made her feel it most keenly--viz., the death of her dear niece[19] from scarlet fever, a terrible blow to her dear sister, who is so delicate herself; the other, the horrible assassination of poor Lord Mayo, a noble and most loyal subject, and most admirable Viceroy, which has shocked the Queen dreadfully! It is awful, and _how_ could it happen? Some dreadful neglect, surely.

"The dear Prince of Wales, though quite himself, bears great traces of his fearful 'death-illness.' He seems like new-born, pleased at every tree and flower, ... and gazing on them with a sort of 'Wehmuth' which is quite touching...."

Fortunately for the recovery of the Prince of Wales, the treatment of typhus was now better understood than it had been but a few years before. "Ah!" the Queen said to me soon after this time, "had _my_ Prince had the same treatment as the Prince of Wales, he might not have died!"--one of those sad, vain imaginings of "what might have been," common to us all, but on which the Queen was too wise to allow her mind to dwell.

The Queen had long ceased to have reason to complain of want of appreciation on the part of the people. On the contrary, it was enthusiastically shown whenever she was seen in public, and most impressively when she went in January 1872 to the thanksgiving service in St Paul's for the recovery of the Prince of Wales. Her letters are full of expressions of satisfaction at these demonstrations of public feeling. Thus she writes, for example, to me on the 10th of April 1872: "There never was a greater success or a greater exhibition of spontaneous loyalty than the Queen's visit to the East End the other day;" and a few days later (23rd April) she calls my attention to a similar display "at two very pretty military events which took place at Parkhurst last Thursday, and here [Osborne] yesterday, on the occasion of giving new colours to the 79th Cameron Highlanders," and of her acceptance from them of the old colours. "Their former chaplain," she adds, with her usual love of detail, "who has been fourteen years with them, and in Lucknow, came on purpose to bless the colours, which he did extremely well and touchingly. It is a splendid regiment."

The great change in the public mind, which resulted in the fall of Mr Gladstone's Ministry at the beginning of 1874, took the Queen somewhat by surprise. "The result of the elections," she writes to me (10th February 1874), "is astounding. What an important turn the elections have taken! It shows that the country is not _Radical_. What a triumph, too, Mr Disraeli has obtained, and what a good sign this large Conservative majority is of the state of the country, which really required (as formerly) a strong Conservative party!"

Amid the turmoil of the elections which led to this important result a domestic incident took place--the Confirmation of the Princess Beatrice, which was communicated to me in the following letter (January 13, 1874):--

"The Queen cannot resist sending the lines which Mlle. Norèle wrote on her sweet Beatrice at her Confirmation. She did so look like a lily, so very young, so gentle and good. The Queen can only pray God that this flower of the flock, which she really is (for the Queen may truly say she has never given the Queen one moment's cause of displeasure), may never leave her, but be the prop, comfort, and companion of her widowed mother to old age! She is the Queen's Benjamin."

The prayer, we know, was granted. Mlle. Norèle's graceful lines form a worthy pendant to the charming picture presented in this letter. I give them with my own translation, as it pleased the Queen at the time:--

In the spring of 1874 the Queen suffered a great loss in the death of her devoted and most trusted friend, M. Silvain van de Weyer.

On the 24th of April she writes:--

"The Queen has felt much regret at poor Livingstone's fate, and we are now very anxious, alas! again about dear M. Van de Weyer.[20] She herself is very much overdone and overworked, and her nerves overstrained. Never did so many things come together as this winter and spring. On the 18th of May she hopes, _D.V._, to get off to the North for a month, and then really to get rest."

Among the many deaths of relatives and friends which the Queen had to mourn within the last few years, no one was more deeply felt than that of her half-sister on 23rd September 1872. "Divided in age by eleven years, and separated by long and unavoidable absences, yet the affection of the Queen for the companion of her early childhood never failed, and the connection of the Princess as sister and aunt of the Royal Family of England was maintained with a fidelity which was never interrupted, either on the part of the Princess herself or of her illustrious relatives." A memorial volume of the Princess's Letters to the Queen was printed in 1874 by Her Majesty, of which I had the honour to receive an early copy. A more beautiful picture of sisterly devotion it would be hard to find than is presented in this volume. From the brief introduction, in which the hand of Dean Stanley may be recognised, I have taken the words above cited. The letters themselves give the impression of a highly refined, intellectual, and sympathetic nature, which must have made the Princess very dear to those who knew her. The opinion of the volume which I expressed in thanking Her Majesty for the gift was acknowledged in the following letter, the closing words of which are especially noteworthy:--

"BALMORAL, _Nov. 19, 1874_.

"The Queen is greatly gratified by Mr Martin's opinion of the letters of her darling sister. _She_ felt proud of them, but still she could not know what others might feel, but all who have seen them admire them much! No one who did not know her intimately _could_ know what she was, for she was so modest and unobtrusive--not outwardly expansive, and she did not easily take to people whom she did not find sympathetic. But she was a remarkable, noble-minded, kind, good, and single-minded person, whose loss to the Queen, though we lived so much apart, is daily more keenly felt. The Prince had the greatest respect and admiration for her, and said she would have been worthy of a crown. But, oh! _how unenviable is that!_"

How the Princess loved and was beloved by the Queen may be seen from a passage, quoted at the end of the volume above referred to, in a letter found among the papers of the Princess, and marked to be given to the Queen after her death:--

"I can never thank you enough for all you have done for me, for your great love and tender affection. These feelings cannot die; they must and will live on with my soul--till we meet again, never more to be separated,--and now you will not forget

"Your only own loving sister,

"FEODORA."