Queen Victoria

by Lytton Strachey
CONTENTS

CHAPTER
I. ANTECEDENTS

II. CHILDHOOD
III. LORD MELBOURNE

IV. MARRIAGE
V. LORD PALMERSTON

VI. LAST YEARS OF THE PRINCE CONSORT
VII. WIDOWHOOD

VIII. MR. GLADSTONE AND LORD BEACONSFIELD
IX. OLD AGE

X. THE END
BIBLIOGRAPHY

QUEEN VICTORIA
CHAPTER I. ANTECEDENTS

I
On November 6, 1817, died the Princess Charlotte, only child of the Prince

Regent, and heir to the crown of England. Her short life had hardly been a
happy one. By nature impulsive, capricious, and vehement, she had always

longed for liberty; and she had never possessed it. She had been brought up
among violent family quarrels, had been early separated from her disreputable

and eccentric mother, and handed over to the care of her disreputable and
selfish father. When she was seventeen, he decided to marry her off to the

Prince of Orange; she, at first, acquiesced; but, suddenly falling in love
with Prince Augustus of Prussia, she determined to break off the engagement.

This was not her first love affair, for she had previously carried on a
clandestine correspondence with a Captain Hess. Prince Augustus was already

married, morganatically, but she did not know it, and he did not tell her.
While she was spinning out the negotiations with the Prince of Orange, the

allied sovereign--it was June, 1814--arrived in London to celebrate their
victory. Among them, in the suite of the Emperor of Russia, was the young and

handsome Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. He made several attempts to attract
the notice of the Princess, but she, with her heart elsewhere, paid very

little attention. Next month the Prince Regent, discovering that his daughter
was having secret meetings with Prince Augustus, suddenly appeared upon the

scene and, after dismissing her household, sentenced her to a strict seclusion
in Windsor Park. "God Almighty grant me patience!" she exclaimed, falling on

her knees in an agony of agitation: then she jumped up, ran down the
backstairs and out into the street, hailed a passing cab, and drove to her

mother's house in Bayswater. She was discovered, pursued, and at length,
yielding to the persuasions of her uncles, the Dukes of York and Sussex, of

Brougham, and of the Bishop of Salisbury, she returned to Carlton House at two
o'clock in the morning. She was immured at Windsor, but no more was heard of

the Prince of Orange. Prince Augustus, too, disappeared. The way was at last
open to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.

This Prince was clever enough to get round the Regent, to impress the
Ministers, and to make friends with another of the Princess's uncles, the Duke

of Kent. Through the Duke he was able to communicateprivately with the
Princess, who now declared that he was necessary to her happiness. When, after

Waterloo, he was in Paris, the Duke's aide-de-camp carried letters backwards
and forwards across the Channel. In January 1816 he was invited to England,

and in May the marriage took place.
The character of Prince Leopold contrasted strangely with that of his wife.

The younger son of a German princeling, he was at this time twenty-six years
of age; he had served with distinction in the war against Napoleon; he had

shown considerablediplomatic skill at the Congress of Vienna; and he was now
to try his hand at the task of taming a tumultuous Princess. Cold and formal

in manner, collected in speech, careful in action, he soon dominated the wild,
impetuous, generous creature by his side. There was much in her, he found, of

which he could not approve. She quizzed, she stamped, she roared with
laughter; she had very little of that self-command which is especially

required of princes; her manners were abominable. Of the latter he was a good
judge, having moved, as he himself explained to his niece many years later, in

the best society of Europe, being in fact "what is called in French de la
fleur des pois." There was continualfriction, but every scene ended in the

same way. Standing before him like a rebellious boy in petticoats, her body
pushed forward, her hands behind her back, with flaming cheeks and sparkling

eyes, she would declare at last that she was ready to do whatever he wanted.
"If you wish it, I will do it," she would say. "I want nothing for myself," he

invariably answered; "When I press something on you, it is from a conviction
that it is for your interest and for your good."

Among the members of the household at Claremont, near Esher, where the royal
pair were established, was a young German physician, Christian Friedrich

Stockmar. He was the son of a minor magistrate in Coburg, and, after taking
part as a medical officer in the war, he had settled down as a doctor in his

native town. Here he had met Prince Leopold, who had been struck by his
ability, and, on his marriage, brought him to England as his personal

physician. A curious fate awaited this young man; many were the gifts which
the future held in store for him--many and various--influence, power, mystery,

unhappiness, a broken heart. At Claremont his position was a very humble one;
but the Princess took a fancy to him, called him "Stocky," and romped with him

along the corridors. Dyspeptic by constitution, melancholic by temperament, he
could yet be lively on occasion, and was known as a wit in Coburg. He was

virtuous, too, and served the royal menage with approbation. "My master," he
wrote in his diary, "is the best of all husbands in all the five quarters of

the globe; and his wife bears him an amount of love, the greatness of which
can only be compared with the English national debt." Before long he gave

proof of another quality--a quality which was to colour the whole of his
life-cautious sagacity. When, in the spring of 1817, it was known that the

Princess was expecting a child, the post of one of her physicians-in-ordinary
was offered to him, and he had the good sense to refuse it. He perceived that

his colleagues would be jealous of him, that his advice would probably not be
taken, but that, if anything were to go wrong, it would be certainly the

foreign doctor who would be blamed. Very soon, indeed, he came to the opinion
that the low diet and constant bleedings, to which the unfortunate Princess

was subjected, were an error; he drew the Prince aside, and begged him to
communicate this opinion to the English doctors; but it was useless. The

fashionable lowering treatment was continued for months. On November 5, at
nine o'clock in the evening, after a labour of over fifty hours, the Princess

was delivered of a dead boy. At midnight her exhausted strength gave way.
When, at last, Stockmar consented to see her; he went in, and found her

obviously dying, while the doctors were plying her with wine. She seized his
hand and pressed it. "They have made me tipsy," she said. After a little he

left her, and was already in the next room when he heard her call out in her
loud voice: "Stocky! Stocky!" As he ran back the death-rattle was in her

throat. She tossed herself violently from side to side; then suddenly drew up
her legs, and it was over.

The Prince, after hours of watching, had left the room for a few moments'
rest; and Stockmar had now to tell him that his wife was dead. At first he

could not be made to realise what had happened. On their way to her room he
sank down on a chair while Stockmar knelt beside him: it was all a dream; it

was impossible. At last, by the bed, he, too, knelt down and kissed the cold
hands. Then rising and exclaiming, "Now I am quite desolate. Promise me never

to leave me," he threw himself into Stockmar's arms.
II

The tragedy at Claremont was of a most upsetting kind. The royal kaleidoscope
had suddenly shifted, and nobody could tell how the new pattern would arrange

itself. The succession to the throne, which had seemed so satisfactorily
settled, now became a matter of urgent doubt.

George III was still living, an aged lunatic, at Windsor, completely
impervious to the impressions of the outer world. Of his seven sons, the

youngest was of more than middle age, and none had legitimate offspring. The
outlook, therefore, was ambiguous. It seemed highly improbable that the Prince

Regent, who had lately been obliged to abandon his stays, and presented a
preposterous figure of debauched obesity, could ever again, even on the

supposition that he divorced his wife and re-married, become the father of a
family. Besides the Duke of Kent, who must be noticed separately, the other

brothers, in order of seniority, were the Dukes of York, Clarence, Cumberland,
Sussex, and Cambridge; their situations and prospects require a brief

description. The Duke of York, whose escapades in times past with Mrs. Clarke
and the army had brought him into trouble, now divided his life between London

and a large, extravagantly ordered and extremelyuncomfortable country house
where he occupied himself with racing, whist, and improper stories. He was

remarkable among the princes for one reason: he was the only one of them--so
we are informed by a highly competent observer--who had the feelings of a

gentleman. He had been long married to the Princess Royal of Prussia, a lady
who rarely went to bed and was perpetually surrounded by vast numbers of dogs,

parrots, and monkeys. They had no children. The Duke of Clarence had lived for