Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen (Vol. 1&2). Sarah Tytler
two very good friends at the Castle—one of the pages, and a little man who lights the fires. The Queen's pages are not little boys in green, but tall and stout gentlemen from forty to fifty years of age. My friend (Mr. Batchelor) was a page in the time of George III, and was then twenty years old; George IV died in his arms, he says, in a room adjoining the one I am painting in. Mr. Batchelor comes into the room whenever there is nobody there, and admires the picture to my heart's content. My other friend, the fire-lighter, is extremely like Peter Powell, only a size larger. He also greatly admires the picture; he confesses he knows nothing about the robes, and can't say whether they are like or not, but he pronounces the Queen's likeness excellent." [Footnote: Leslie's Autobiography.]
CHAPTER VI. THE MAIDEN QUEEN.
When the great event of the coronation was over the Queen was left to fulfil the heavy demands of business and the concluding gaieties of the season. It comes upon us with a little pathetic shock, to think of one whom we have long known chiefly in the chastened light of the devoted unflagging worker at her high calling, of our lady of sorrows, as a merry girl—girl-like in her fondness, in spite of her noble nature and the serious claims she did not neglect, of a racket of perpetual excitement. We read of her as going everywhere, as the blithest and most indefatigable dancer in her ball-room, dancing out a pair of slippers before the night was over; we hear how reluctant she was to leave town, how eager to return to it.
Inevitably the old and dear friends most interested in her welfare were now regarding this critical period in the Queen's career with anxious eyes. In looking back upon it in after life, she has frankly and gravely acknowledged its pitfalls; "a worse school for a young girl, or one more detrimental to all natural feeling and affection, cannot well be imagined, than the position of a queen at eighteen, without experience, and without a husband to guide and support her. This the Queen can state from painful experience, and she thanks God that none of her dear daughters are exposed to such danger."
The King of the Belgians sought to abridge the period of probation by renewing the project of the worthy marriage to which his niece had been well inclined two years before. But either from the natural coyness and the strain of perversity which are the privilege and the danger of girlhood, or simply because, as she has, stated, "the sudden change from the secluded life at Kensington to the independence of her position as Queen Regnant, at the age of eighteen, put all ideas of marriage out of her head," the bride in prospect demurred. She declared, with the unhesitating decision of her age, that she had no thought of marriage for years to come. She objected, with some show of reason, that both she and Prince Albert were too young, and that it would be better for him to have a little more time to perfect his English education.
The princely cousin who had won her first girlish affections, and the tender sweetness of love in the bud, were by no means forgotten. The idea of marriage never crossed the Queen's mind without his image presenting itself, she has said, and she never thought of herself as wedded to any other man. But every woman, be she Queen or beggar-maid, craves to exercise one species of power at one era of her life. It is her prerogative, and though the ruth of love may live to regret it, and to grudge every passing pang inflicted, half wilfully half unwittingly, on the true heart, it may be questioned whether love would flourish better, whether it would attain its perfect stature, without the test of the brief check and combat for mastery.
But if a woman desires to prove her power, a man cannot be expected to welcome the soft tyranny; the more manly, the more sensitive he is, the more it vexes and wounds him. Here the circumstances were specially trying, and while we have ample sympathy with the young Queen—standing out as much in archness as in imperiousness for a prolonged wooing—we have also sympathy to spare for the young Prince, with manly dignity and a little indignant pain, resisting alike girlish volatility and womanly despotism, asserting what was only right and reasonable, that he could not wait much longer for her to make up her mind—great queen and dear cousin though she might be. It was neither just nor generous that he should be kept hanging on in a condition of mortifying uncertainty, with the risk of his whole life being spoilt, after it was too late to guard against it, by a final refusal on her part. That the Queen had in substance made up her mind is proved by the circumstance that it was by her wish, and in accordance with her written instructions—of which, however, Prince Albert seems to have been ignorant—that Baron Stockmar, on quitting England in 1838, joined the Prince, who had just endured the trial of being separated from his elder brother, with whom he had been brought up in the closest and most brotherly relations, so that the two had never been a day apart during the whole of their previous lives. Prince Albert was to travel in Italy, and Baron Stockmar and Sir Francis (then Lieutenant) Seymour were appointed his travelling companions, visiting with him, during what proved a happy tour, Rome and Naples.
At home, where Baroness Lehzen retained the care of purely personal matters and played her part in non-political affairs and non-political correspondence, Lord Melbourne, with his tact and kindness, discharged the remaining offices of a private secretary. But things did not go altogether well. Party feeling was stronger than ever. The Queen's household was mainly of Whig materials, but there were exceptions, and the lady who had borne the train of the Duchess of Kent at the coronation belonged to a family which had become Tory in politics.
Lady Flora Hastings was a daughter of the Marquis of Hastings and of Flora, Countess of Loudoun, in her own right. The Countess of Loudoun in her youth chose for her husband Earl Moira, one of the plainest-looking and most gallant officers in the British army. The parting shortly after their marriage, in order that he might rejoin his regiment on active service, was the occasion of the popular Scotch song, by Tannahill, "Bonnie Loudoun's woods and braes." Earl Moira, created Marquis of Hastings, had a distinguished career as a soldier and statesman, especially as Governor-General of India. When he was Governor-General of Malta he died far from Loudoun's woods and braes, and was buried in the little island; but in compliance with an old promise to his wife, who long survived him, that their dust should rest together, he directed that after death his right hand should be cut off, enclosed in a casket, and conveyed to the family vault beneath the church of Loudoun, where the mortal remains of his widow would lie.
Lady Flora Hastings was good, clever and accomplished, dearly loved by her family and friends. But whether she, nevertheless, possessed capabilities of offending her companions in office at Court; whether her conduct in any respect rebuked theirs, and provoked dislike, suspicion, and a desire to find her in the wrong; whether the calamity was sheerly due to that mortal meanness in human nature, which tempts people not otherwise unworthy to receive the most unlikely and injurious evil report of their neighbour, on the merest presumptive evidence, the unhappy sequel remains the same. Lady Flora had been attacked by an illness which caused so great a change in her personal appearance, as to lend colour to a whispered charge that she had been secretly guilty of worse than levity of conduct. The cruel whisper once breathed, it certainly became the duty of every person in authority round a young and maiden Queen to guard her Court jealously from the faintest suspicion of such a reproach. The fault lay with those who uttered the shameful charge on slight and, as it proved, totally mistaken inferences.
When the accusation reached the ears of Lady Flora—last of all, no doubt—the brave daughter of a brave man welcomed such a medical examination as must prove her innocence beyond dispute. Her name and fame were triumphantly cleared, but the distress and humiliation she had suffered accelerated the progress of her malady, and she died shortly afterwards, passionately lamented by her friends. They sought fruitlessly to bring punishment on the accusers, which could not be done since there was no evidence of deliberate insincerity and malice on the part of the circulators of the scandal. The blame of the disastrous gossip fell on two of the Whig Ladies of the Bed-chamber; and just before the sad climax, the other event, which angry Tory eyes magnified to the dignity of a conspiracy, drew double attention to both catastrophes.
In May, 1839, the Whig Government had been defeated in a crucial measure, and the ministry under the leadership of Lord Melbourne resigned office. The Queen sent for the Duke of Wellington, and he recommended that Sir Robert Peel should be called upon to form a new Cabinet. It was the first