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HER MAJESTY, THE QUEEN. 
 
THE CHARACTER OF QUEEN VICTORIA. 
 
 The death of the most illustrious of the recent 
 sovereigns of the world has been followed by an 
 outburst of respectful eulogy, not merely from her 
 own subjects, whose pride, no less than their affec- 
 tion, was concerned in the matter, but also from 
 independent observers in all countries, even in 
 those which are, by old habit or recent prejudice, 
 hostile to British institutions, and to the rulers 
 of our Empire. It has been gratifying to us to 
 feel that the virtues of Queen Victoria rose so 
 high above all international jealousies as to com- 
 mand veneration even when it must have been 
 grudgingly accorded. In all the nations — but par- 
 ticularly, it should in justice be said, in France 
 and in America — that ugly habit of scolding, from 
 which we ourselves cannot pretend that we are 
 free, gave place, at least momentarily, to a re- 
 spectful and sympathetic appreciation, for which, 
 unused as we are to these amenities, we can hardly 
 
4 THE CHAKACTER OF 
 
 be too grateful. This was a very striking tribute 
 to. the person of the late Queen, and one which, 
 when we reflect upon it, must have arisen more 
 from a correct general estimate than from any 
 very exact knowledge. The character of Her Ma- 
 jesty was very widely divined; it cannot with 
 truth be said to have been very precisely known. 
 The fierce light which beats upon a throne has two 
 effects, the one of which is more commonly per- 
 ceived than the other. It throws up, indeed, into 
 brilliant prominence, certain public features of the 
 character, but none the less it produces a dazzle- 
 ment, a glare of glory, in the flood of which it is 
 not easy to analyse with exactitude the component 
 parts out of which that character is formed. 
 
 For a little while after the death of a person for 
 whom a semi-religious admiration has been felt, 
 the blaze of reverence continues. It takes some 
 time for the bewildering radiance to die down, and 
 to leave the majestic potentate in the common 
 light of man. But this regression to the mortal 
 state is inevitable, and it occurs not merely in the 
 moral and religious sense which has always im- 
 pressed the Bossuets of the pulpit. It occurs in 
 
QUEEN^ VICTORIA. 5 
 
 the natural order of history ; and it is when it has 
 done its worst, and the solitude is most blank 
 around a royal coffin, that we begin to see what the 
 robes and pageantry concealed. Was it a human 
 being at all? Was it worthy of the idolatry it 
 awakened ? How much of the worship was paid to 
 a woman, and how much to a fetish? In the ut- 
 terances of a loyal and justly emotional press, we 
 have heard the last and least-measured accents of 
 a praise that was too closely allied with pain and 
 grief to analyse or to discriminate. But reason 
 tells us that this cannot last. It tells us that 
 Queen Victoria must, in her turn, take her place 
 among all the other great preceding figures, who 
 are judged not as what they seemed to be, but as 
 what they were. It appears to us that the time has 
 come to begin to abandon the note of purely indis- 
 criminate praise, and to put even this revered per- 
 sonage into the crucible of criticism — to endeav- 
 our, in other words, to note, without any blind 
 or sycophantic laudation, what were the elements, 
 and what the evolution of her character. We can 
 try to do so with the more perfect serenity, seeing 
 that by such treatment it has scarcely anything to 
 
6 THE CHARACTER OF 
 
 lose, and, to the undazzled mind, not a little to 
 gain. 
 
 The theories of heredity are not encouraged by 
 any study of the temperament of the late Queen. 
 There was little of her father or of her mother that 
 could be discerned in the constitution of her mind. 
 On the paternal side, in particular, although some 
 traits which were really habits have been held to re- 
 semble those of, for instance, George III, Victoria 
 offered few or none of the characteristics of her 
 Hanoverian forbears. But in no instance could it 
 be more plainly laid down that while, as we know, 
 poets are bom and not made, sovereigns, on the 
 contrary, are rather made than born. Highly ex- 
 ceptional conditions combined to mould the youth- 
 ful spirit of the Queen into the composite and 
 elaborate mechanism which it became. It has been 
 customary to say that she was unique, and this is 
 in measure true ; but if by this phrase it is meant 
 to be inferred that she was born with an irresisti- 
 ble trend towards personal greatness, like a Na- 
 poleon, or a Darwin, or a Hugo, it appears to be 
 wholly incorrect. The daughter of the Duke and 
 Duchess of Kent was born, we seem to see, a rather 
 
QUEEN VICTOKIA. 7 
 
 ordinary mortal, with fine instincts, consiaerable 
 mental capacity, and a certain vital persistence 
 which was to serve her well. These qualities, not 
 in themselves very unusual, were, however, edu- 
 cated by circumstances which made the very most 
 of them, and, in particular, which enabled them 
 to provide a basis upon which rare excellence could 
 be built up. 
 
 The first fact, in short, which we are required to 
 recognise if we wish to comprehend the character 
 of Queen Victoria, is that it was, to an unusual de- 
 gree, a composite one. It was not brilliantly full 
 at some points and void at others ; it had no strong 
 lights and shades. It presented to the observer a 
 kind of mosaic, smoothed and harmonised by cir- 
 cumstances into a marvellously even surface. 
 There was no one element in her mind which 
 would certainly, in other and untoward conditions, 
 have made itself prominently felt. It was this, 
 indeed, which constituted the very essence of her 
 originality, her completeness on so many sides, her 
 marvellous unity and efiiciency, the broad, pol- 
 ished surface which she presented to all the innu- 
 merable difficulties which beset her path in life. 
 
8 THE CHARACTER OF 
 
 It might be hazarded, as a paradox, that her orig- 
 inality lay in her very lack of originality, in the 
 absence of salient eccentricity. Her character was 
 built up of elements which are usually antagonis- 
 tic, but which in her case were so nicely balanced 
 that they held one another in check, and facilita- 
 ted, instead of embarrassing, that directness of 
 purpose and instinct for going straight to the 
 mark, which were indispensable to success in her 
 sovereign career. 
 
 We speak for the moment of the Queen's char- 
 acter, not as it had been in earlier and more tenta- 
 tive years, but as it has revealed itself, since the 
 death of the Prince Consort, to those who have 
 publicly or privately been brought into relations 
 with her. There are none now living who have 
 known this composite mind of hers in any other 
 condition than completed. The Liitzens and the 
 Melboumes did something to prepare the surface 
 of it; they helped to fit the pieces into the tes- 
 sellated floor. But in the memory of living man 
 it has never presented any but a finished appear- 
 ance. The originality of it, as it has presented it- 
 self in recent times, was discovered, when it was 
 
QUEEN VICTOEIA. 9 
 
 closely studied, to be formed of a singular con- 
 junction of shrewdness, simplicity, and sympa- 
 thy. It will be found, we think, that it was upon 
 a kaleidoscopic combination of these qualities in 
 ever- varying proportions that almost every char- 
 acteristic act of Queen Victoria was based. Mon- 
 taigne understood how, .in the case of persons 
 fenced in from the combat of life, each little im- 
 pact lays its stamp on some facet of character. 
 Ghaque parcelle, as he might have put it, of the 
 temperament of the late Queen was the result of 
 some pressure from these her three cardinal quali- 
 ties. 
 
 Her discriminating shrewdness was at once an 
 invaluable gift and a dangerous weapon. There is 
 no question that it had more than anything else to 
 do with her prolonged success as a politician. It is 
 not difficult to see that it might have proved a peril 
 to her. She early recognised that indulgence in it 
 might lead her astray in the direction of obstinate 
 prejudice, and she was always on her guard against 
 its vagaries. No one that knew her late Majesty 
 well will be inclined to deny that her extraordi- 
 nary pertinacity, her ingrained inability to drop an 
 
10 THE CHARACTEE OF 
 
 idea which she had fairly seized, might naturally 
 have developed into obstinacy. By nature she cer- 
 tainly was what could only be called obstinate, but 
 the extraordinary number of opposite objects upon 
 which her will was incessantly exercised saved her 
 from the consequences of this defeat. She was 
 obliged to cultivate her powers of discrimination, 
 and to introduce into her action that element of 
 deliberate and conscious choice which is fatal to 
 the blind indulgence of prejudice. The habit of 
 suspending her judgment, in other words, pre- 
 vented her from ever resting too absolutely on one 
 order of ideas. The old Pythagorean tag tells us 
 that adversity is the touch-stone of character. In 
 the case of Queen Victoria the same effect was 
 produced by the isolation of extreme prosperity. 
 
 It followed that her will, so trained and forti- 
 fied, usually kept the Queen on a high plane of ac- 
 tion. She was actuated by an extraordinary 
 singleness of purpose, from which, however, it was 
 only human nature that she should sometimes 
 descend. It was in these moments of moral re- 
 laxation that she was exposed to the danger of 
 yielding to prejudice, for in these conditions ob- 
 
QUEEK VICTORIA. 11 
 
 stinacy, in the true sense, would take hold of her. 
 Conscious as she was of the vast round of duties in 
 which she had to move and take her part, she was 
 sensitive about the quantity of time and thought 
 demanded of her from any one point. Hence, if 
 she thought one of her ministers was not thought- 
 ful in sparing her unnecessary work, she would 
 with difficulty be induced to believe that his de- 
 mands were ever essential. She would always be 
 suspecting him of trying to overwork her. Her 
 prejudice against Mr. Gladstone, about which so 
 many fables were related and so many theories 
 formed, really started in her consciousness that he 
 would never acknowledge that she was, as she put 
 it, ^dead beat.' In his eagerness Mr. Gladstone 
 tried to press her to do what she knew, with her 
 greater experience, to be not her work so much 
 as his, and she resented the effort. He did it again, 
 and she formed one of her pertinacious prejudices. 
 The surface of her mind had received an impres- 
 sion unfavourable to the approach of this particu- 
 lar minister, and nothing could ever in future 
 make her really pleased to welcome him. 
 
 In daily life, too, the inherent obstinacy, not 
 
12 THE CHARACTER OS^ 
 
 checked by the high instinct of public duty, would 
 often make itself felt. The Queen was fond of a 
 very regular and symmetrical order of life. In 
 this she showed her great instinct for business, 
 since her hours had to be filled and divided with as 
 rigid a precision as those of a great general or the 
 manager of a vast commercial enterprise. But 
 the habit of regulating all the movements of life 
 necessitated the fixture of innumerable minute 
 rules of domestic arrangement. The Queen dis- 
 played an amazing quickness in perceiving the in- 
 fraction of any of these small laws, and she did 
 not realise how harassing some of them were to 
 those who suffered from their want of elasticity. 
 There they were, settled once and for ever. In 
 small things as in great, the Queen never believed 
 that she was or could be wrong on a matter of prin- 
 ciple. This was. an immense advantage to her ; in 
 great matters it was an advantage the importance 
 of which, in steadying her will, could hardly be 
 over-estimated; but of course in little things it 
 was sometimes apt to become what is colloquially 
 called "^trying.^ Again, since it is in moments of 
 physical weakness that the joints in every suit of 
 
QUEEN" VICTOEIA. 13 
 
 human armour discover themselves, so, when the 
 Queen was poorly or exhausted, those around her 
 were made to feel how, with less self-control, she 
 might have appeared arbitrary. She would be 
 cross for no reason ; she would contest a point, and 
 close the argument without further discussion. At 
 these moments those who knew her best could 
 realise what a merciful thing it was for her own 
 happiness that the immensity of the field of her 
 actions and her decisions forcibly kept her mind 
 upon the very high plane which was its habitual 
 station. 
 
 To form an accurate opinion of human beings 
 who were presented to her attention was so im- 
 portant a part of her whole function as a sovereign 
 that it took a foremost part in her intellectual ex- 
 ercise. She was thoroughly convinced of the im- 
 portance of being correct in her reading of char- 
 acter, and she devoted her full powers to it. In 
 her inspection of a strange minister or a newly 
 appointed member of her household, she had a 
 method well understood by those who observed her 
 narrowly. She received the unfamiliar person with 
 a look of suspended judgment in her face. Hei 
 
14 THE CHARACTEE OF 
 
 eyes and her mouth took on their investigating 
 aspect. She could be seen to be making up her 
 mind almost as though it were a watch which 
 had to be wound up. If the analysis was easy, and 
 the result of it satisfactory, the features would re- 
 lax; a certain curious look of amenity would pass 
 across her face. But if the presented type was 
 complex or difficirtt, those who knew the Queen ex- 
 tremely well would perceive that her mind was not 
 made up after all. The lines of the mouth would 
 continue to be a little drawn down; the eyes, like 
 sentinels, would still be alert under eyebrows faint- 
 ly arched. But sooner or later she would succeed 
 in her analysis, and an almost unbroken line of 
 examples served to give her a justified faith in her 
 acumen. She was scarcely ever wrong, and she was 
 slow to admit a mistake. The judgment formed 
 in that cool period of suspended observation, of 
 which we have spoken, she was content to abide 
 by; she defined the personage after her own acute 
 fashion, and such as she had seen him first so she 
 continued to see him. 
 
 This sureness of judgment was veiled by a sim- 
 plicity and an absence of self-consciousness which 
 
QUEEK VICTORIA. 16 
 
 took away from it the most formidable part of 
 Buch an ordeal. Often, doubtless, the humorous 
 look of indecision which preceded the Queen's in- 
 ner summing-up, must greatly have baffled the 
 victim of her analysis, ^hat is Her Majesty 
 thinking about?' he might say to himself, but 
 never with a sense of real discomfort, because of 
 the Queen's complete freedom from anything like 
 personal vanity. This was once exemplified in 
 the case of a public man presented to her for the 
 first time. Something was said about his opinion 
 of the Queen. ^Dear me,' she said, 'I did not 
 give a thought to that. It is so beside the ques- 
 tion. What really signifies is what I think of 
 him.' If this initial examination was embarrass- 
 ing to a timid person, no one was so quick as she 
 Queen to observe the result and to mitigate any 
 outward sign of its cause. Then all her kindli- 
 ness would assert itself. To the awkwardness of 
 real modesty no one in her court was so indulgent 
 as herself. Once when a man who was presented 
 to her had been so particularly clumsy that his ef- 
 forts were afterwards smiled at, the Queen re- 
 proved the merriment. 'He was shy,' she said, 
 
16 THE CHARACTER OP 
 
 'and I know well what that is, for sometimes I 
 am very shy myself/ The most serene and digni- 
 fied of women to external observation, it is possi- 
 ble that indeed Queen Victoria had a little secret 
 core of timidity, for she was rather fond of con- 
 fessing, with a smile, to a 'stupid feeling of shy- 
 ness,' especially if that confession could make an- 
 other person comfortable. 
 
 Perhaps it should be noted that there was one 
 result of the Queen's studied habit of suspending 
 her judgment which was not entirely convenient. 
 She feared to commit herself; and sometimes her 
 cryptic phrases, short and vague, with the drawn 
 lips and the investigating eyes, fairly baffled her 
 ministers. They put before her State conundrumB 
 to which she was not prepared to give an immedi- 
 ate answer; and she puzzled them to divine what 
 she had on her mind. She left them in their un- 
 certainty, and sent them away bewildered. It 
 would perhaps have been convenient if, in these 
 cases, she would have deigned to admit that she 
 was herself undetermined. 
 
 We have said that when once she had formed a 
 deliberate judgment with regard to a person, it 
 
QUEEN VICTORIA. 17 
 
 was difficult to induce her to revise it. But her in- 
 nate and yet carefully cultivated kindliness tem- 
 pered the severity of a harsh decision. She would 
 moderate her condemnation ; she would dwell upon 
 Bome pleasant trait in a character not otherwise to 
 her fancy. There can be no doubt that she was 
 aware that her view of others, shrewd as it always 
 was and astonishingly close to the truth as it 
 would often be, was not infallible. Those who 
 watched her could almost see her hold her severity 
 in check, draw herself together lest she should be 
 tempted to be severe, to forget that her first duty 
 was to be quite just. She was, however, very im- 
 patient of dulness and of want of instinctive per- 
 ception. This was, perhaps, where she was least 
 inclined to be indulgent. It would be respectfully 
 urged that some lady who was out of favour was 
 'a nice kind woman.' 'Yes,' the Queen would 
 reply, 'but Fve no patience with her, she's so 
 stupid.' This was not out of any kind of in- 
 tellectual arrogance, but because stupidity, in re- 
 lation to herself and the business of the courf, was 
 rust on the axle of the coach of state. It was 
 necessary that all things about the Queen should 
 
18 THE CHAEACTEK OF 
 
 be lubricated with the practical emollient of com- 
 mon-sense and alertness. 
 
 Those who were much with her were never al- 
 lowed to forget that she was the most important 
 person in the room. Without the least emphasis, 
 or need for emphasis, her character imposed itself 
 on her surroundings. It was part of her real im- 
 portance in great things that she was obliged to be 
 a little tjnrannical in small things. After all, it 
 was essential that the court and the country should, 
 continue to move ; and in order to do this properly] 
 they must revolve smoothly around herself. Nq 
 doubt> in a degree which she would scarcely have 
 admitted in her secret thought, she was always 
 conscious of this. If any one had ventured to put 
 this into words and to submit it to her, she would 
 unquestionably have acquiesced in it. It was not 
 personal vanity ; it was a proper acceptance of her 
 inborn station in the general social system. Oddly 
 enough, though she bore her imperial greatness 
 with such perfect ease and modest assurance, she 
 sometimes displayed a certain love of the exercise 
 of power, for its own sake, in little things. It 
 might almost be said that, feeling decision to h% of 
 
QUEEN VICTOKIA. 23 
 
 memory of it is lost, the exquisite manner of Queen 
 Victoria. This was the characteristic in her 
 which grew most definitely out of her training and 
 surroundings. It was made up of what she had 
 learned as a child from Baroness Lutzen, as a girl 
 from grands seigneurs who gently guided her first 
 unpractised footsteps in public affairs, as a young 
 matron from the Prince Consort. Probably we 
 should be right in attributing the most striking 
 parts of it to the second pf these classes on influ- 
 ence, and especially to the admiration she had felt 
 for the experience of life and the stately tenue of 
 Lord Melbourne and of Lord Conyngham. These 
 men belonged in measure to the tradition of the 
 eighteenth century ; they could recall the time when 
 people wore perukes, and long silk waistcoats, and 
 entered drawing-rooms delicately, with the cha- 
 peau-hras pressed between the palms of their hands 
 as they bowed. It was a very curious chance which 
 ordained that the earliest guides of the youthful 
 Queen should be men of mature age extremely 
 conservative in manner and bearing, carrying 
 about with them an elaborateness of conduct which 
 
24 THE CHARACTEE OF 
 
 was already, sixty years ago, beginning to be anti- 
 quated. 
 
 The consequence was that the Queen, carefully 
 preserving this tradition as she did, and perpetuat- 
 ing it by her august example, retained not a little 
 of the air of a bygone age. Without pedantry, 
 her scheme of manner was distinctly more vieille- 
 cour than that of any one else in Europe. In it- 
 self beautifully finished, it offered positively an 
 antiquarian interest. But people who saw her 
 seldom, or who were not accustomed to differ- 
 entiate, made a mistake in speaking of 'the 
 Queen^s beautiful manners.' She had no 'man- 
 ners' at all in the self-conscious or artificia Isense. 
 Her charm was made up of spontaneous kindli- 
 ness and freedom from all embarrassment, built 
 upon this eighteenth-century style or manner which 
 she set herself to have good 'manners,' but be- 
 great lady of 1790 might have acted, not because 
 she set herself to have good 'manners,' but be- 
 cause that was how great ladies, trained as she 
 had been trained, naturally behaved, with a perfect 
 grace based upon unsuspecting simplicity. What 
 was inherent nature in her manner struck recent 
 
QUEEN" VICTOKIA. 25 
 
 beholders with amazement as conscious art; but 
 what deceived them was a survival of the stateli- 
 ness of the eighteenth century. 
 
 Her ^manner' was greatly aided by a trait so 
 unusual and so strongly marked that no sketch of 
 her character could be considered complete which 
 failed to dwell upon it. It was perhaps the most 
 salient of all her native, as distinguished from 
 her acquired, characteristics. This was her 
 strongly defined dramatic instinct. Queen Vic- 
 toria possessed, to a degree shared with her by cer- 
 tain distinguished actors only, the genius of move- 
 ment. It is difficult to know to what she owed 
 this. From the accounts preserved of her earliest 
 girlish appearances, it would look as though it 
 had been innate. She certainly possessed it in full 
 force as far back as human memory now extends. 
 What we mean by her instinct for movement may 
 perhaps be made apparent by the use of a homely 
 phrase — she was never flurried by a space in front 
 of her. How rare this is, even among the most 
 august of every nation, only those who have had 
 some observation of courts can know. The most 
 experienced princes and princesses hesitate to ^take 
 
26 THE CHARACTEE OE 
 
 the stage/ to cross alone, without haste and with- 
 out hesitation, over a clear floor, just so far as is 
 exactly harmonious and suitable. The most hard- 
 ened are apt to shrink and sidle, to appeal mutely 
 for help. These movements never gave Queen 
 Victoria a mementos inquietude. She knew by 
 divination exactly where, and exactly how, and ex- 
 actly how far to advance; how to pause, and how 
 to turn, and how to return were mysteries which 
 never bewildered her in the slightest. When the 
 Czar Alexander II was here in 1874, the Russian 
 court was astonished at the easy and unconscious 
 dignity with which the Queen would walk straight 
 over to some obscure person, and enter gracefully 
 into conversation with him. That so much stateli- 
 ness could be combined with so unconscious a sim- 
 plicity was the suliject of their continual amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 Something more must be said about this habit 
 of the Queen. Her movements on these occasions 
 were never made without a purpose. It was not 
 her custom to go directly to a personage of the 
 first importance who had just been brought within 
 her circle. She made it a practice to be well-in- 
 
QUEEN VICTORIA. 27 
 
 formed, and she greatly disliked being put at a 
 conversational disadvantage. She would there- 
 fore walk over to a man or woman of less prestige, 
 and obtain from him or her the information she re- 
 quired about the ultimate object of her inquiry. 
 But it would often happen that in the course of 
 this auxiliary interview the Queen^s sympathy and 
 interest would be arrested ; and while she was col- 
 lecting facts about the third person, her attention 
 would be drawn away to the individual from whom 
 she was receiving the information. Hence the 
 court was often amused, and those who had but a 
 superficial knowledge of the Queen were surprised, 
 to see her, at a formal reception, linger long m ap- 
 parently confidential exchange of ideas with one 
 of the least important people in the room. Of 
 course the person so distinguished was enchanted, 
 and the Queen had made another friend for life, 
 and one whom she would never forget. Then she 
 would serenely resume her turn round the room, 
 entirely unembarrassed, greatly interested in each 
 fresh mind that was presented to her. These were 
 occasions of singular interest to the student of her 
 character, who would try, but try in vain, to de- 
 
28 THE CHARACTER OF 
 
 cipher the inscrutable look in her face. It is im- 
 possible to conceive a social function more dis- 
 tressingly set about with snares for an unwary 
 footstep. But the Queen was trammelled by no 
 bourgeois fear of not doing the right thing. She 
 trusted to the unfailing nicety of her famous dra- 
 matic instinct. 
 
 There are still a few who recollect her demeanour 
 when she went to Paris to greet the Emperor and 
 Empress of the French in 1855. She was not 
 known in France; Parisian society had not made 
 up its mind whether it meant to like her or not. 
 Her tiny figure disconcerted the critics, and some- 
 body quoted fimile Deschamps, 'La reine Mab 
 nous a visite.' Paris decided at first sight that it 
 did not like her English dress, and was frigid to 
 her Vant of style.' But within a week Paris was 
 at the feet of the little great lady. Her conquest 
 of France happened at the gala performances at 
 the Opera. Everybody was watching for the sov- 
 ereigns, and the moment was highly critical. The 
 Empress was looking magnificent, a dream of 
 silken splendor ; the Queen, as ever, somewhat dis- 
 dainful of her clothes, had made no effort to shine. 
 
QUEEN VICTORIA. 39 
 
 But when the party arrived at the box of the 
 Opera, her innate genius for movement inspired 
 her. The Empress of the French, fussing about 
 her women, loitered at the door of the box; the 
 Queen of England walked straight to the front, 
 waiting for no help and anxious for no attendance. 
 She stood there alone for a moment, surveying the 
 vast concourse of society, and then she slowly 
 bowed on every side, with a smile which the most 
 consummate actress might envy. 
 
 This was a great moment, and the way in which 
 it struck the French was extraordinary. ^La reine 
 Mab' become from that day forth the idol of 
 Parisian society, and 'the way she did it,^ the 
 consummate skill of the thing, was celebrated 
 everywhere by the amateurs of deportment. She 
 was never embarrassed ; if a question could possi- 
 bly be raised about etiquette, she would say, 'What 
 dos it matter?' She felt herself to be a law- 
 giver on all such questions. In the same con- 
 nexion, her behaviour to the Empress of the French 
 was a model of good style. The Empress Eugenie 
 was at that time one of the most exquisite human 
 beings in Europe, while Queen Victoria was not, 
 
30 THE CHARACTER OF 
 
 and knew that she was not, what is understood by 
 ^pretty/ But she was frankly and simply 
 charmed with the admiration which the beanty of 
 the Empress awakened wherever the sovereigns 
 went; she shared this admiration, and it never 
 crossed her mind to resent the expression of it. 
 She would as soon have been piqued at the effect 
 caused by a gorgeous sunset or by a tropical flower. 
 Her admiration was returned on other grounds; 
 the Empress Eugenie's visits became a pleasure 
 which the Queen always looked forward to. The 
 manner of each of them to the other was perfect, 
 and the friendship between the two ladies, begun 
 nearly fifty years ago, ended only with the life of 
 the Queen. 
 
 Queen Victoria was unique in combining simple 
 and unconscious dignity with a distinct theatrical 
 instinct. She was unrivalled in her sense of 
 the proper mise en scene of a formal ceremonial. 
 When her chamberlains were at a loss to see by the 
 light of nature how a court function should be ar- 
 ranged, at the last moment there was always the 
 resource of appealing to the Queen. This dra- 
 matic imagination of hers made her a formidable 
 
QUEEN VICTOEIA. 31 
 
 ^' 
 critic of manners and in particular of attitude. It 
 was no matter of doubt with her how this, that, 
 or the other should be said or handled; she knew 
 at once, infallibly, what was the one right wuy. 
 Hence she was sometimes, as it appeared to laxer 
 disciplinarians, rather severe on ugly manners; 
 sh used to complain that so-and-so had ^such an 
 uncomfortable way of behaving/ It jarred upon 
 her nerves; it was a discord which the perfect 
 rightness of her own instinct made it difficult for 
 her to comprehend. But she never showed the 
 discomfort which she felt. Her command over her 
 face was absolute, and only those who knew her 
 very intimately could detect the slight tightening 
 of the lips and concentrated expression of the eyes 
 which showed her sense of annoyance. 
 
 Queen Victorians genius for movement was born 
 with her, and not inherited. She certainly did not 
 receive it from the excellent Duchess of Kent. She 
 attributed something of her perfect ease to the 
 early training of a French dancing-mistress, but 
 it was certainly innate. Although the drama was 
 that branch of the fine arts in which she took the 
 greatest interest, she herself never acted in the 
 
32 THE CHARACTER OF 
 
 private theatricals which were so prominent a part 
 of the court life at one time. She was not, per- 
 haps, a careful student of drama itself, from the 
 literary point of view ; it was the scenic effect, and 
 in particular, the elements of scenic attitude and 
 movement, which occupied her attention. When 
 she attended the theatre, which she loved, she al- 
 ways commented on any lack iof propriety in 
 action; and, on the other hand, the presence of 
 this quality attracted her strong approval. It is 
 recollected that she placed Grisi on a higher level 
 than all other operatic performers in this respect. 
 When that actress flung herself across the door 
 in 'The Huguenots,' or arranged the poison scene 
 with the Duke in 'Lucrezia Borgia,' and when 
 Viardot Garcia rose to the height of her invective 
 in the Trophete,' the Queen's face blazed with 
 approbation. She would turn in her box and say, 
 'There! not one of the others could do that, no, 
 not even Alboni !' At the private plays at court, 
 she was always an acute observer, and, when she 
 consented to advise, a superlatively practical stage- 
 manager ; while, when professional companies came 
 down to act before her — an event to which she 
 
QUEEN VICTOEIA. 35 
 
 dictatorial. This tolerance, too, was to be read 
 in her smile, a cautious suspension of judgment, a 
 faintly humorous and intentional ambiguity. Her 
 smile, in fact, was the key, for those who knew how 
 to turn it, to the secrets of the Queen's character. 
 In the intimacy of home life, and particularly 
 when the discipline of her household was relaxed at 
 Balmoral or at Osborne, the Queen gave way with- 
 out restraint to her very quick and rich sense of 
 humor. If those of her ladies who have seen her 
 at the little purely feminine dinners in Scotland 
 or at Mentone would but speak, they could give us 
 charming studies of Her Majesty in the allegro 
 vein. The jests in which the Queen delighted were 
 not of the very subtle kind. But a rather primitive 
 kind of fun, when she was in the mood for it, 
 would amuse her almost beyond her own endur- 
 ance, till she was simply breathless and could bear 
 no more. Her rather prominent blue eyes would 
 positively beam with entertainment. Sometimes 
 she was taken, and at very awkward moments, with 
 what the French so aptly term le fou rire. She 
 had no very cautious sense of the proper range of 
 jokes, and has been known to pass them on with 
 
36 THE CHAEACTEE OF 
 
 an extraordinary rashness. A very charming ele- 
 ment in her humor, when it was less exuberant, 
 was a certain kindly shyness, as though she were 
 not quite sure of being met half way, and yet be- 
 lieved that she would be, and, at all events, would 
 venture. 
 
 Although so given to perceive the risible side of 
 things, and, therefore, unprotected against laugh- 
 ter, the Queen could, when it was necessary, per- 
 form feats of endurance. On one 0(3casion an 
 embassy from a leading Oriental power, never rep- 
 resented at our court before, was to be received for 
 the first time. The event was of some importance, 
 and the reception very ceremonious. The English 
 court, however, had not been prepared for the ap- 
 pearance or the language or the formalities of the 
 envoys. From the very opening of the scene, there 
 was something inconceivably funny about every- 
 thing that happened. When, at last, the ambassa- 
 dors suddenly bowed themselves, apparently as 
 men struggling with acute internal pain, and 
 squeezed their hands together in passionate depre- 
 cation between their knees, the English court quiv- 
 ered with merriment like aspen-leaves. The 
 
QtrEEN VICTORIA. 37 
 
 Queen alone remained absolutely grave. If any- 
 thing betrayed emotion, it was a deepened color 
 and a more intense solemnity. The envoys with- 
 drew at last, with salaams the most exquisite 
 imaginable, and then, but not till then, the Queen 
 broke down, saying, through her sobs of mirth^ 
 ^But I went through it, I did go right through it !' 
 
 The Queen made no pretension to smartness of 
 speech, yet she could often surprise those who 
 talked with her by her wit. It consisted, to a great 
 degree — as, indeed^, most wit does — ^in a rapid 
 movement of the speaker^s mind, which dived sud- 
 denly and reappeared at an unexpected place. Her 
 sincerity led her to a quaintness of wording which 
 was often very entertaining. One instance of this, 
 among many which rise to the memory, may be 
 given here. A piece of very modern music had 
 been performed in the Queen's presence, manifestly 
 not to her approval. ^What is that?' she asked. 
 Ws a drinking song. Madam, by Eubinstein.' 
 ^Nonsense,' said the Queen; '^no such thing! 
 Why, you could not drink a cup of tea to that !' 
 
 Her sense of humor was that of a strong and 
 healthy person. It was a natural outcome of the 
 
38 THE CHAEACTER OF 
 
 breadth of her normal and wholesome humanity. 
 That she had a very remarkable fund of nervous 
 strength follows as a matter of course on the 
 record of ^what she was and what she lived to do. 
 Her courage was one of the personal qualities of 
 which her subjects were most properly convinced; 
 they knew her to have a royal disdain of fear. 
 One of the little incidents, hardly noted at the time, 
 and soon forgotten, which deserve to be revived, 
 was connected with the attack made upon her in 
 1850 by Robert Pate, who struck her across the 
 face with a cane. She was on her way home from 
 her afternoon drive, when, just as the carriage 
 turned into the archway on Constitution Hill, the 
 assault was made. She was announced to appear 
 at the Opera that evening, and her frightened 
 ladies said that of course she would stay at home. 
 ^Certainly not,^ she replied. 'If I do not go, it 
 will be thought that I am seriously hurt, and people 
 will be distressed and alarmed.' '^But you are 
 hurt, ma'am.' 'Very well, then every one shall 
 see how little I mind it.' The usual orders were 
 given, and at the proper hour she appeared in the 
 theatre, where the news of the attack had preceded 
 
QUEElSr YICTOEIA. 43 
 
 she did not approve of long services, and would 
 sometimes scandalize the minister by indicating, 
 with uplifted fan, that the sermon was getting too 
 lengthy. She said of one clergyman, ^I think he 
 would do better if he did not look at me. He 
 catches my eye, and then he cannot stop.^ The 
 Queen disapproved of proselytism in the court ; she 
 would allow no distribution of tracts, no propaga- 
 tion of fads and ^peculiar opinions.' There was 
 no reason why there should be any sects, she 
 thought, and no proof* that modern people were 
 any wiser about morals than their forefathers. 
 She was a Broad Churchwoman, in the true sense, 
 and her attitude towards dogmatic religion was a 
 latitudinarian one, though perhaps she would 
 have disliked it being defined in that way. In the 
 old Tractarian days she felt a certain curiosity in 
 the movement, but when Lady Canning tried to 
 convert her to High Church views, the Queen was 
 very angry. It rather set a mark in her mind 
 against a person that he or she was a ritualist. It 
 was always an element in her reticence with re- 
 gard to Mr. Gladstone, that he was too High 
 Church ; 'I am afraid he has the mind of a Jesuit/ 
 
44 THE CHARACTEE OF 
 
 she used to say. She liked Roman Catholics very 
 much better than Anglican ritualistS;, partly be- 
 cause she had a respect for their antiquity, and 
 partly because she was not the head of their 
 Church, and so felt no responsibility about their 
 opinions. She had foreign Roman Catholic 
 friends with whom she sometimes spoke on reli- 
 gious matters with a good deal of freedom. Her 
 knowledge of many phases of modern religious 
 thought was rather vague ; and when the creed of 
 the Positivists was first brought to her notice, she 
 was extremely interested. ^How very curious/ 
 she said, 'and how very sad! What a pity some- 
 body does not explain to them what a mistake they 
 are making. But do tell me more about this 
 strange M. Comte.' 
 
 The religious position of the Queen, as a human 
 being, can be very simply defined. The old peas- 
 ant at her cottage-door, spelling out a page of the 
 Bible, was an image that particularly appealed to 
 her. She was full of beautiful and perfectly sim- 
 ple devotional feelings; she was confident of the 
 efficacy of prayer. She looked upon herself quite 
 without disproportion, not as a Queen, but as an 
 
QUEEN VICTOKIA. 45 
 
 aged woman who had been sorely tried by anxiety 
 and bereavement/ and by the burden of responsi- 
 bility; but who had been happy enough to see 
 through it all that it was the will of God, and to 
 feel that that lightened the load. It was her 
 cardinal maxim that all discomfort comes from 
 resisting that will. To her parish-priests she al- 
 ways showed particular kindness; and some she 
 honored with her confidence. Dean Weilesley, in 
 many ways like-minde^ with herself, was long her 
 trusted confidant. Nephew of the great Duke, he 
 was a noble type of the enlightened statesman- 
 priest, and he was the latest survival of all those 
 men who were grouped around the Queen in her 
 early youth. He exercised a paramount authority 
 in matters of Church preferment, where the Queen 
 never questioned his wisdom, for she had proved 
 him to be raised above all sectarian prejudice by 
 his remarkable elevation of character. Dean 
 Wellesley was aware of the importance of his advice 
 to the Queen, and he refused bishopric after bishop- 
 ric from unwillingness to leave her. At his death, 
 in 1882, she was deeply afflicted. No later chap- 
 lain could hope to exercise quite the same power as 
 
46 THE CHARACTER OP 
 
 Dean Wellesley; but Dr. Davidson (the present 
 Bishop of Winchester), who, after a short interval, 
 succeeded him in the Deanery, obtained in later 
 years an influence closely resembling that of his 
 predecessor. In the Established Church of Scot- 
 land, no minister received clearer marks of Her 
 Majesty's favor, and none, it may be added, de- 
 served them better, than Dr. Korman Macleod, 
 whose elevated and lovable character, compounded 
 of strength and tenderness, good sense, humour, 
 and sympathy, was animated by a form of religion 
 specially attractive to the Queen. 
 
 Perfect as she was in a regal and political 
 aspect, filling more than adequately an astonishing 
 number of offices, it was yet inevitable that there 
 should be sides of life in which Queen Victoria 
 was not inclined, or was not, let us boldly admit it, 
 competent to take a leading part. Such shining 
 qualities as hers could not but have their defects, 
 and it is the poorest-spirited obsequiousness to 
 pretend that they had not. No one brought a 
 greater tact to the solution of the questions, What 
 can I, and what can I not do? than did her late 
 Majesty. When it came to her asking herself. Can 
 
QUEEN VICTOEIA. 47 
 
 I be a leader of intellectual and aesthetic taste? 
 she promptly decided that she could not, and she 
 did not attempt the impossible task. It may be 
 admissible to regret, or not to regret, that the 
 Queen did not take the lead in the advancement of 
 literature and art among her people. It may be a 
 not insufficient answer, founded upon absolute 
 common-sense, to say that she had, literally, not 
 leisure enough to do everything, and that she very 
 wisely diverted her attention from those subjects 
 in which, as a leader, she might have failed. She 
 had no time to fail ; consequently, if there was the 
 least doubt concerning her ability in any one di- 
 rection, there it was useless to push on. 
 
 This was particularly the case in regard to 
 literature. She saw a vast and growing work be- 
 ing performed by her subjects, and she did not feel 
 that she was in touch with it. She accordingly 
 left it alone, and had the wisdom not to attempt 
 to patronise what she was not sure of comprehend- 
 ing. If we are content to examine her personal 
 tastes and predilections, they were not brilliant, 
 but they did no discredit to her understanding. She 
 was naive about the books she read, which were 
 
48 THE CHARACTER OF 
 
 mainly novels and travels. Walter Scott was her 
 favourite author ; but she had a great partiality for 
 Jane Austen. The Prince Consort was an en- 
 thusiastic student of George Eliot, and he per- 
 suaded the Queen to read her books ; she continued, 
 perhaps partly for the Prince's sake, to express 
 great admiration for them. The Queen had no 
 real feeling for poetry, although she professed a 
 cult for Tennyson, founded upon her emotional 
 interest in his *^In Memoriam.' More modern 
 authors received little attention from her ; and the 
 stories current of the Queen's particular interest 
 in this or that recent writer may be dismissed as 
 the fables of self-advertisement. She would some- 
 times begin a book, at the earnest request of one of 
 her ladies, who would immediately write off to the 
 author: ^I am happy to tell you that the Queen 
 is now deep in your "Prodigies of Passion" ' ; but 
 the correspondent would fail to mention that Her 
 Majesty had tossed it away when she reached the 
 fifth page. She would be very full of a book of 
 information while she was studying it, would be 
 riveted by particular anecdotes, and would quote 
 them eagerly. 
 
QUEEN" VICTOEIA. 49 
 
 It could not with truth be said that her interest 
 in art was much more acute. Here again^ it was 
 always her instinct that guided her rather than 
 cultivated knowledge. She never took the right 
 kind of interest in the beautiful objects she pos- 
 sessed in her palaces, and it is' merely courtly com- 
 plaisance to pretend that she did. In painting, 
 two or three foreigners pleased her, and she rang 
 the changes on their productions. In portraiture 
 she greatly perferred likeness to artistic merit, and 
 it was this that kept her from employing some of 
 the great Englishmen of her reign. The Queen 
 was entreated to sit to Mr. G. F. Watts, but in 
 vain. When it was argued that he would produce 
 a splendid painting, she would say: ^Perhaps so, 
 but I am afraid it would be ugly.^ Lady Canning 
 at the time of the Pre-Eaphaelite revival, tried 
 very hard to lead the Queen^s taste into fresh chan- 
 nels, and to woo it away from its cold German 
 traditions; but she did not succeed. Frankly, the 
 Queen did not care about art. She did not attempt 
 to become acquainted with the leading English 
 artists of her time. The only studio of a master 
 that she ever visited was that of Leighton, whose 
 
60 THE CHAEACTEE OF 
 
 Trocession of Cimabue' the Prince Consort had 
 bought for her, and whom she thought delightful, 
 though perhaps more as an accomplished and 
 highly agreeable courtier than as a painter. 
 
 Her attitude to music and to drama was much 
 more interesting, though very simple. She had a 
 sweet soprano voice, and had been trained by Costa 
 to produce it prettily. She was very modest and 
 even deprecatory about this accomplishment of 
 hers, in which, however, she acquitted herself 
 charmingly. Her favourite musician was Men- 
 delssohn, who had greatly pleased her in early 
 days as a man. She would have nothing to say, 
 until quite late in life, to Wagner or Brahms, and 
 once dismissed them all in one of her abrupt turns 
 of conversation, 'Quite incomprehensible!^ 'I'm 
 bored with the Future altogether,^ she used to 
 say, 'and don^t want to hear any more about it.' 
 She was not more partial to some of the old mas- 
 ters, and once closed a musical discussion by say- 
 ing, 'Handel always tires me, and I won't pre- 
 tend he doesn't.' She carried out her aversion to 
 the last, and forbade that the Dead March in 
 'Said' should be played at her funeral. 
 
QUEEN VICTORIA. 51 
 
 At the play she must always have heen a charm- 
 ing companion, her attention was so gaily awak- 
 ened, her spirits so juvenile. She was fond of 
 drama, even of melodrama, and let herself become 
 the willing victim of every illusion. Sometimes she 
 put on a little sprightly air of condescension to a 
 companion presumably ignorant of stage affairs: 
 ^Now listen, carefully. You think that woman is 
 the housekeeper, but you wait and see.' And at the 
 denouement, the Queen was always triumphant: 
 'There! you didn't expect that, did you?' She 
 thoroughly enjoyed a good farce, and laughed 
 heartily at the jokes. She delighted in Italian 
 opera, and when she liked a piece, she steeped 
 herself in every part of it, the melody and 
 the romance, and heard it over and over until 
 she knew the music by heart. 'Norma' was a 
 great favourite ; and later years Calve won her 
 heart in 'Carmen,' to which opera — music, plot, 
 and everything — the Queen became absolutely de- 
 voted. And the pieces of Gilbert and Sullivan 
 were an endless delight to her ; she would even take 
 a part in these, very drolly and prettily. No one 
 could form a more sympathetic audience, whether 
 
52 THE CHAEACTER OF 
 
 in music or drama, than the Queen. She gave her 
 unbroken attention to the performer, and followed 
 whatever was being done with an almost childish 
 eagerness. If the tenor began to be in the least 
 heavy, the Queen would be observed to fidget, as 
 though hardly restrained from breaking into song 
 herself; and at the slightest deviation from per- 
 fection of delivery her fan began to move. No 
 part of her character was more singularly interest- 
 ing than the way in which, in such matters as 
 these, she preserved a charm of juvenile freshness 
 like an atmosphere surrounding the complex ma- 
 chinery of her mind. 
 
 One side of her development which must not 
 escape consideration was that which made her, 
 without rival, the leading woman of the world of 
 her time. The way in which the Queen faced the 
 society of Europe, or rather advanced at its head, 
 through the greater part of her long life, was the 
 result of a variety of influences, from within and 
 from without. To follow these curiously would 
 lead us too far, and we must confine ourselves to a/ 
 consideration of certain definite effects upon the 
 Queen's character. But before doing so, it may be 
 
QUEEN" VICTORIA. 53 
 
 well to offer a few remarks with regard to the court 
 which she formed around her, and which took the 
 stamp of her personal tastes and temperament. 
 To comprehend the constitution of the Victorian 
 court, it must be recollected, first and foremost, 
 that the Queen had an extreme respect for tenue 
 in all its forms. When she was alone with her 
 usual companions, nothing in the world could be 
 more easy than she was in her deportment and con- 
 versation; but on anything approaching a state 
 function utter rigidity was to be observed. This 
 exterior stiffness, for which the English court be- 
 came rather uncomfortably celebrated throughout 
 Europe, was due, doubtless, in the first instance, 
 to the tradition of Stockmar through the Prince 
 Consort. When the Prince came to this country, 
 there was an idea abroad that the court of Windsor 
 was very much too free and easy. He early in- 
 duced the Queen to take the same view, and witli 
 her remarkable tenacity of purpose she acted on 
 those lines until the end. There were certain 
 jnodifications, of course. Some people now living 
 can recollect the intensely German evenings at 
 Windsor, with their curious round of etiquette. 
 
54 THE CHAEACTER OF ^ 
 
 The Queen herself invented the convenient bnt 
 embarrassing habit of having one person after an- 
 other called np to converse with her. Meanwhile 
 silence had to be maintained in the rest of the 
 room, and the whole social effect was stilted to the 
 last degree. The Royalties stood together on the 
 rug in front of the fire, a station which none durst 
 hold but they; and amusing incidents occurred in 
 connection with this sacred object. When Sir Ed- 
 ward Bulwer-Lytton first dined with the Queen, 
 he strolled about the drawing-room afterwards so 
 freely that Her Majesty whispered in agitation, 
 *^If you don^t do something to attract his atten- 
 tion, in another minute he'll be — on the rug.' 
 
 But although the rule of the court in these mat- 
 ters was so absolute, and its habits intensely con- 
 servative, the Queen's private manner was never 
 affected by it, even on these stately occasions. 
 Sometimes the court, on arriving in the drawing- 
 room after dinner, would form a semi-circle around 
 the Queen, and stand while she spoke to one after 
 another. There was, of course, no other talk. 
 When this ordeal was over, the Queen would take 
 her flight to the sofa, where the Duchess of Kent 
 
QUEEJSr VICTORIA. 55 
 
 was already seated at a round table at her game 
 of cards. The formality of the evening would then 
 subside, and the Queen would be once more the 
 charming easy companion with whom her ladies 
 had gone sketching in the park in the morning. 
 
 The Queen was sometimes a little nervous lest 
 people whom she did not know well should be 
 tempted to take a liberty. Of course, as years 
 roiled on, this became a more and more utterly in- 
 credible supposition, but in old years more than 
 one dinner party at Windsor was spoiled by it. At 
 the shadow, or less than the shadow, of an undue 
 freedom, she would freeze, and, in all probability, 
 not thaw again through the course of the dinner. 
 She had a droll way of referring to these mis- 
 chances, for which she had always the same 
 formula; she used to say, ^I chose to have a head- 
 ache last night. I am not quite sure that is 
 
 discreet.^ This was a favourite word with the 
 Queen, and she used it in a variety of meanings. 
 It meant well-bred, and it meant tactful; and it 
 meant personally or instinctively agreeable to Her 
 Majesty. It was rather a dreadful moment when 
 she said that somebody was 'not discreet.' Her 
 
56 THE CHARACTER OF 
 
 favourite form of showing displeasure for want of 
 discretion was to leave off asking the indiscreet 
 person to dinner. The Queen invariably selected 
 her own dinner list; and people who had uncon- 
 sciously offended found out their error by not be- 
 ing asked for several successive nights. In process 
 of time their sin would be pardoned, and the sign 
 of it would be the reappearance of the name on the 
 dinner list. 
 
 She had a very fine instinct for good breeding, 
 but this did not prevent her from being sometimes 
 a prey to vulgar toadies. People would enlist her 
 sympathies for some decayed relation of their own, 
 and the Queen would become violently interested. 
 If, as not unfrequently was the case, the person- 
 age proved disappointing, she would often be ex- 
 ceedingly forbearing. "^Not very pretty manners, 
 poor thing ! Well, Well !' she would say, and 
 that would be the end of it. On the whole, she 
 did not resent this commonness of manner so 
 much as she did lofty behaviour. She looked 
 askance at pretentious people, and in this direction 
 she was certainly sometimes tempted to injustice. 
 She was always a little afraid of ^clever^ women; 
 
QUEEN VICTOEIA. 57 
 
 and a reputation for superior intelligence was no 
 recommendation in her eyes. She liked the ladies 
 about her to have extremely good manners and a 
 pretty presence, but she shrank away from any 
 woman who, she feared, was Agoing to be clever.' 
 It had been very early instilled into her that it was 
 man's province to be clever, and that it was much 
 best for woman not to intrude into it. 
 
 The men with whom she had been principally 
 brought into contact at the beginning of her reign 
 had not been remarkable as a group for their men- 
 tal cultivation. There *seems to be no doubt at all 
 that the 'man of the world' of fifty years ago was 
 in every respect a more ignorant being than he 
 would be if he flourished to-day. Not merely did 
 he not knov»^ much, but it was a point of honour 
 with him to conceal what little he did know. The 
 wives and daughters of these noblemen surrounded 
 the young Queen, and impressed upon her the 
 idea of what English women ought to be. In the 
 course of time. Prince Albert appeared upon the 
 scene, with his head full of the precepts of Count 
 Stockmar, his store of German culture, and his 
 genuine taste for science and philosophy. The 
 
58 THE CHARACTEE OF 
 
 Queen was partially converted to the Prince Con- 
 sort's views; not merely was she prond of his at- 
 tainments, but she admitted to herself that it was 
 proper that there should be cultivated and learned 
 men, who should walk in line with the Prince. 
 But, as regards women, she retained her precon- 
 ceived ideal. She would certainly never have al- 
 lowed that every action of theirs could be analysed 
 under one of three categories, as it was said that 
 Stockmar had persuaded Prince Albert to believe. 
 Much must, however, be left to conjecture 
 when we speak of the formation of the Queen's 
 character at that early date, as there are few sur- 
 vivors among us to consult, and as the memoir- 
 writers of those years scarcely thought of preserv- 
 ing the intimate and homely details which would 
 now be so invaluable. Old court circulars and lists 
 of the personnel of tlie court indicate, however, that 
 then, as now, the court consisted of eight ladies of 
 the bedchamber, simply styled ladies-in-waiting, 
 eight maids of honour, eight equerries, the Prince 
 Consort's private secretary, and the privy purse. 
 Other special posts were filled by other occupants, 
 when they were required, at Windsor or in Lon- 
 
QUEEN VICTOEIA. 59 
 
 don. From 1854 onwards, for the next fifteen or 
 twenty years, we meet with names such as those 
 of Lady Canning, Lady Macdonald, Lady Joeelyn, 
 the Duchess of Athole, and Lady Mount Edg- 
 cumbe. Each of these remarkable women left a 
 vivid impress on the daily life of the Queen. The 
 extraordinary courage and strength of purpose of 
 Lady Canning, exhibited as they were through the 
 Indian Mutiny and afterwards, are matter of his- 
 tory. In Lady Macdonald there existed a love of 
 literature and language which Prince Albert great- 
 ly admired, and which he commended to the notice 
 of the Queen. But it was Lady Jocelyn, brilliant 
 and witty — the most beautiful woman of her day, 
 and doomed to close her life as the most unhappy — 
 who was more uniformly fortunate than any other 
 of the Queen's early companions in sustaining that 
 spirit of artless gaiety and sparkling good man- 
 ners in which Her Majesty delighted. 
 
 The influence of the Duchess of Athole upon the 
 Queen was unique. No one, perhaps, ever charmed 
 her Eoyal mistress so completely. The Duchess 
 was a romantic being, who seemed to be trans- 
 ferred to life straight from the pages of one of 
 
60 THE CHAEACTER OF 
 
 the Waverle}^ novels. She was, before she came 
 to Windsor, and v/henever she was back at home 
 in the north, the type of a Scottish chieftainess. 
 Her purpose was inflexible, her sense of humour 
 broad and full, her will that of a woman who was 
 born to rule, and who knew it. Full of kindliness 
 to those who acknowledged her sway, but quick to 
 resent and to resist the slightest encroachment, 
 the smallest slight to her pride, the Duchess of 
 Athole seemed created by nature to fail at court 
 and fling over the traces of its discipline. But her 
 brain was full of wild Celtic rom.ance, and this was 
 fortunately centred, with an intense devotion, upon 
 the person of Queen Victoria. Whatever homage 
 she would have demanded from others for her- 
 self, whatever claims her fierce pride made on the 
 allegiance of her clan, the Duchess was only too 
 happy to lavish on the Queen. She was not con- 
 ventional, and she laid herself out to persuade the 
 Queen to share her breezy love of outdoor life. 
 The result on the Queen was a further appreciation 
 of scenery, and of the landscape-painters whom 
 the Duchess would sometimes bring in her train 
 from Dunkeld. 
 
QUEEK VICTOEIA. 61 
 
 In slightly later times women scarcely less re- 
 markable than these, and in some cases still more 
 intimately bound up in the Queen's private life, 
 took the place of the older ladies. Lady Mount 
 Edgcumbe, whose musical talents were a ceaseless 
 source of delight to the Queen, formed a link be- 
 tween the older generation and those who, like 
 Lady Ely, with her tireless devotion, and Lady 
 Churchill, whose life closed but a few days before 
 that of her Royal mistress, succeeded them in their 
 duties and their privileges. Although the gentle- 
 men-in-waiting did not occupy so much of her 
 time, there were several, such as the present Duke 
 of Grafton, Lord de Roos, Lord Hertford, and 
 General Hardinge, who were counted among the 
 Queen's real friends for life. 
 
 The maids of honour were never reckoned in 
 court esteem as quite so high in consideration as 
 the ladies-in-waiting. Some an^ong them, how- 
 ever, as particularly Miss Phipps, continued to 
 serve the Queen as secretaries to the end; and 
 two. Lady Biddulph and Lady Ponsonby, as wives 
 of successive keepers of the privy purse, shared 
 with their husbands the privilege of attending the 
 
62 THE CHAEACTEK OF 
 
 Queen wherever she went. None of these whom 
 we have mentioned could be called dull or com- 
 monplace women. Each had some peculiar strength 
 or charm of temperament; and it might be sup- 
 posed that each would exercise some direct influ- 
 ence upon the Queen's character. But it is more 
 than doubtful whether they can be said to have 
 done so. Queen Victoria was curiously independ- 
 ent of her attendant ladies. She valued them, she 
 appreciated their qualities, she leaned on their 
 devotion ; but she was never under their influence. 
 She accepted their services in a dispassionate, 
 professional way, and she ever, by preserv- 
 ing a quiet tone of decorum, checked any exag- 
 gerated expression of personal affection the mo- 
 ment that it was threatened. 
 
 The Queen, full of warmth and human tender- 
 ness as she was, and surrounded all her life by 
 persons deeply devoted to her, to whom she was 
 deeply attached, was singularly without what could 
 truly be called friends. The atmosphere of her 
 life was too much charged with formality to allow 
 of what could deserve the name of a deep personal 
 friendship between herself and any of her subjects. 
 
QUEEN VICTOKIA. 63 
 
 No one, it was made apparent, was ever quite neces- 
 sary to her ; the indispensable person did not exist. 
 Lady Canning used to warn enthusiastic novices of 
 the danger of cultivating any illusion on this 
 point. She would say, *^You will be delighted with 
 your waiting at Balmoral or at Osborne. You will 
 see the Queen intimately, riding, dancing, playing, 
 dining. You vsdll think she cannot get on without 
 you. And then you will come back one day to 
 Windsor, and somebody else will take your place, 
 and you will have become — a number on the list.^ 
 Undoubtedly, in her ripe wisdom, the Queen en- 
 couraged this. She desired above all things to keep 
 the society immediately around her person on a 
 serene and even footing. There must not be the 
 least approach to favouritism; and she would 
 check herself first of all if she discovered a ten- 
 dency in her own manner to encourage one person 
 at the expense of another. But, in truth, her en- 
 grained professional habit made her free of all her 
 ladies. 
 
 It is matter of ancient history that in 1839 the 
 Queen waged a determined battle with Sir Robert 
 Peel on the subject of the appointment of her bed- 
 
64 THE CHAEACTER OF 
 
 chamber women. He offered his resignation, and 
 she accepted it without the least compunction. It 
 is not so well known that she failed in her second 
 and parallel controversy, about her private secre- 
 tary. No Government would hear of creating any 
 such appointment, and the post continued to be 
 officially unrecognised until the very close of her 
 reign. It was none the less powerful, however, 
 for being unofficial. In Baron Stockmar^s letters 
 to the Prince Consort, he acutely points out how 
 the Prince may best serve the Queen, by acting as 
 her private secretary. He tried to do this, with 
 the help of G. E. Anson ; of course the result was 
 that the unseen man, of professional knowledge 
 and habits, became the moving spirit. It con- 
 tinued to be so after the Prince's death. If any one 
 doubts this, let him turn to the Queen's letter on 
 the disestablishment of the Irish Church, in the 
 ^Life of Archbishop Tait.^ Can any one fail to de- 
 tect, in the liberal accent with which the Queen 
 deprecates the rejection of the Bill, that there is 
 more of General Grey in this letter than the mere 
 shaping of the draft? 
 It came about in this way, unofficially, and as it 
 
QUEEN YICTOKIA. 65 
 
 were, unconsciously, that after the death of the 
 Prince Consort the Queen gradually found herself 
 at the head of a little staff of confidential officers. 
 These consisted originally of General Grey, and 
 then of General Ponsonby, as private secretary, 
 with Sir Charles Phipps originally, and then Sir 
 Thomas Biddulph, as the keeper of the privy purse. 
 Eventually there was an arrangement by which Sir 
 Henry Ponsonby combined the two offices, with the 
 aid of two assistants. Still later, there was a re- 
 turn to the original arrangement ; and Sir Arthur 
 Bigge was private secretary, and Sir Fleetwood 
 Edwards keeper of the privy purse, to the end. 
 This staff, never officially acknowledged in the 
 fulness of its functions, had to exercise the most 
 complete self-effacement, and became, in effect, an 
 expansion of the Queen^s personal power in action. 
 The watchword of the lives of her private secre- 
 taries was devotion to the will of the Queen. The 
 secret of the power they exercised was faithfully 
 kept from the public, and will always be kept. 
 These men gave their lives to her service, without 
 demur or reserve, and it is as much to her honour 
 
66 THE CHARACTER OF 
 
 as it is to theirs that she inspired such complete 
 devotion in men of such remarkable gifts. 
 
 The duties of the private secretaries included 
 not merely communication, on the Queen^s behalf, 
 with the principal Departments of the Govern- 
 ment, but the reading through of all the des- 
 patches, and the digestion for the Queen's use of all 
 documents — ^the keeping watch, in short, upon 
 everything of public importance which went on in 
 and out of Parliament, and the scheduling it so 
 as to save the Queen's time as much as possible 
 when it became necessary for her to form a de- 
 cision. Not till many years have passed by will 
 the real work of the private secretaries be fully 
 known, but history is sure to confirm the verdict 
 that, whatever their duties may ultimately prove 
 to have been, they carried them out with complete 
 self-effacement. 
 
 In this delicate and responsible position, it was 
 the Queen's constant wish that the private secre- 
 taries should never allow their own political feel- 
 ings to be discoverable. They had to consent to 
 belong to no particular party, to suffer, in fact, 
 political disfranchisement. This, with the utmost 
 
QUEEN VICTORIA. 67 
 
 sagacity, they always contrived to do; and minis.- 
 ters of every complexion have acknowledged the 
 impartiality of the private secretaries. Lord Bea- 
 consfield said to a political friend, ^I believe that 
 General Ponsonby used to be a Whig, but, what- 
 ever his politics may once have been, I can only 
 say that I could not wish my case stated to the 
 Queen better than the private secretary does it. 
 Perhaps I am a gainer by his Whiggishness, as it 
 makes him more scrupulously on his guard to be 
 always absolutely fair^and lucid.^ The tributes of 
 Mr. Gladstone were not less explicit. It is greatly 
 to the credit of the private secretaries, who came 
 nearer to the mind of Her Majesty than any other 
 persons, that they never forget to efface their own 
 views and wishes in her sovereign will. She exer- 
 cised that will with complete independence; and, 
 from the death of the Prince Consort onwards, 
 if she ever found any of her gentlemen issuing an 
 order without her cognisance, she did not fail to 
 make her displeasure felt. 
 
 Throughout periods of crisis nothing could 
 equal the firmness with which the Queen sup- 
 ported the decisions of her ministers. This was 
 
68 THE CHARACTEB OF 
 
 peculiarly the case during the South African War, 
 when her loyalty to the Government never flagged 
 for a moment. That she regretted that she had not 
 seen the end of the war was true, but that she 
 wished it to be prematurely stopped, or stopped 
 by weak concessions, is absolutely untrue. A story 
 has been circulated by some interested persons to 
 the effect that, in her last words to the Prince 
 of Wales, she ordered him to ^stop the war.' This 
 is a sacrilegious falsehood, to which it is proper 
 that the most direct denial should be given. Such 
 inventions do real mischief, and distort the popu- 
 lar conception of the Queen's character. Having 
 decided as head of the Army that war with a 
 foreign nation was necessary, the Queen never 
 drew back. She had a soldierly feeling which sup- 
 ported her throughout, and weak remorse was 
 never one of her failings. The kindly and hu- 
 mane expressions which she used in individual 
 cases could only by wilful violence be distorted into 
 an appearance of disloyal opposition to her minis- 
 ters in regard to a national question of vital im- 
 port. 
 At the same time, the Queen was less ready to 
 
QUEEN VICTOEIA. 69 
 
 yield to ministerial dictation than is commonly 
 supposed. She did not admit it at the time, but 
 she allowed it afterwards to be felt, that if she had 
 made up her mind on a question of principle, she 
 would not yield without a struggle. Of her re- 
 lations with various Governments much has come 
 to light which it would be otiose to repeat here. 
 Less is known of her intercourse with Lord Claren- 
 don, whom she liked, although she was a little in- 
 timidated by his sarcasm and his bright, free 
 speech. She had a certain nuance of dislike in her 
 relations with Lord Palmerston; she thought him 
 a roue^ and his jauntiness was not to her taste. 
 The rebuff she once administered to him, as 
 Foreign Secretary, is matter of history. Lord 
 Granville was excessively fortunate in all his deal- 
 ings with the Queen. A finished actor and a fin- 
 ished man of the world, he contrived in all con- 
 ditions to maintain exactly the correct tone. The 
 remarkable gifts of this astute statesman never ap- 
 peared to such brilliant advantage as during his in- 
 terviews with the Queen, whom he exhilarated with 
 his gaiety and sprightly wit. Of Lord John Rus- 
 sell she said amusingly that he would be better 
 
70 THE CHAEACTER OF 
 
 company if he had a third subject ; for he was in- 
 terested in nothing except the Constitution of 
 1688 and — ^himself. She esteemed Lord Derby, 
 but she considered him a little boisterous. On 
 Lord Aberdeen she placed a deep reliance ; he was 
 easy and explanatory in his official dealings with 
 her, and in his somewhat grim fashion he always 
 contrived to make his interviews pleasant to her. 
 For Lord Grey (then Lord Ho wick) she had an 
 indulgent appreciation, although she once de- 
 scribed him as 'the only person who has ever flatly 
 contradicted me at my own table.' 
 
 None of these statesmen, however, approached 
 the remarkable ascendency which Disraeli exer- 
 cised over the Queen. No one, it is certain, ever 
 amused her so much as he did. After she had over- 
 come the first instinctive apprehension of his ec- 
 centricity, she subsided into a rare confidence in his 
 judgment. She grew to believe that on almost all 
 subjects he knew best. With his insinuating 
 graces, his iron hand under the velvet glove, his 
 reckless disregard of court etiquette, Disraeli was 
 almost the exact opposite of Lord Granville; but 
 from him the Queen bore what she certainly would 
 
QUEEN VIGTOEIA. 71 
 
 have resented from almost anyone else. He was 
 never in the least shy ; he did not trouble to insinu- 
 ate ; he said what he meant in terms the most sur- 
 prising;, the most unconventional; and the Queen 
 thought that she had never in her life seen so 
 amusing a person. He gratified her by his bold 
 assumptions of her knowledge, she excused his 
 florid adulation on the ground that it was ^orien- 
 tal/ and she was pleased with the audacious way 
 in which he broke through the ice that surrounded 
 her. He would a-sk across the dinner-table, 
 ^Madam, did Lord Melbourne ever tell your Maj- 
 esty that you were not to do' this or that? and 
 the Queen would take it as the best of jokes. 
 Those who were present at dinner when Disraeli 
 suddenly proposed the Queen's health as Empress 
 of India, with a little speech as flowery as the ora- 
 tion of a maharajah, used to describe the pretty 
 smiling bow, half a curtsey, which the Queen 
 made him as he sat down. She loved the East, 
 with all its pageantry and all its trappings, and 
 she accepted Disraeli as a picturesque image of it. 
 It is still remembered how much more she used 
 
72 THE CHARACTER OP 
 
 to smile in conversation with him than she did 
 with any other of her ministers. 
 
 That the Queen preferred Scotland to any other 
 country is well known. In the sincere and artless 
 'Journals/ extracts from which she was induced 
 to publish, this delight in the Highlands glows on 
 every page. It was always remarked by those 
 around her that her spirits steadily rose as the 
 time approached for her journey to Balmoral, 
 and that when she actually started she was as eager 
 as a child on a holiday. The total absence of re- 
 straint, and the comparative removal of responsi- 
 bility, acted most pleasantly on her spirits, and to 
 those whose duty it was to serve her she was never 
 perhaps so completely charming, so easy to satisfy, 
 so warmly genial, as when she was driving and 
 sketching and drinking tea on the remote Aber- 
 deenshire moors. In Scotland, too, she even laid 
 aside something of her decisiveness. She would 
 indulge, in little things, in the luxury of not 
 quite knowing her own mind, and was even in 
 some matters under the domination of favorite 
 and trusted domestics. She had the peculiarity 
 of never being sure which road it was best to take. 
 
QUEElSr VICTORIA. 73 
 
 or what garment to wear; and her drives became, 
 on this account, prolonged agonies of indecision. 
 Bound up with this love of the Highlands was 
 the Queen's romantic passion for her Stuart an- 
 cestors, mainly seen through an atmosphere of the 
 romances of Sir Walter Scott. It became difficult 
 to decide whether she liked Aberdeenshire because 
 it reminded her of the tartan heroes, or whether 
 much wandering over the braes brought the lives 
 of the Jacobites home to her. One of the Queen's 
 strongest traits was her partiality for the Stuarts ; 
 she forgave them all their faults. She used to say, 
 'I am far more proud of my Stuart than of my 
 Hanoverian ancestors;' and of the latter, indeed, 
 she very seldom spoke. She once reproved one of 
 her gentlemen rather sharply for condoning the 
 acts of the Butcher. She drew herself up and re- 
 marked, *I do not like to hear the Duke of Cum- 
 berland praised: he was a shocking man,' not wholly 
 on account of his action after Culloden, but also 
 because of her fondness for the romantic prince, 
 whom she would never allow any one in her pres- 
 ence to style the Pretender. She cultivated a deep 
 and almost superstitious admiration for Charles I, 
 
74 THE CHARACTEE OF 
 
 who was never anything less than 'the Royal 
 Martyr' in her eyes. All the objects which had 
 belonged to that family, which she could gather 
 together, she preserved with the greatest venera- 
 tion; and it is recalled that when she visited the 
 late Lord Ashburnham's collection of Stuart relics, 
 the Queen was quite overcome with emotion. No 
 disparaging remarks were ever permitted in her 
 presence, even with regard to James II. It is very 
 amusing that she never seems to have been willing 
 to admit that the success of either Pretender would 
 have been fatal to herself. If some stickler for his- 
 torical accuracy suggested the delicacy of the situ- 
 ation, the Queen would say: 'The Stuarts pre- 
 tenders? Because of me? There is no question 
 of me. You can't argue about that. But I'm 
 talking of themf She adored Mary Stuart, and 
 had a proportionate dislike for Queen Elizabeth. 
 Dean Stanley used to say that this last prejudice 
 was unjust, because she was herself so very much 
 like that sovereign in character. 'When she faces 
 you down with her "It must be," ' he declared, "I 
 don't know whether it is Victoria or Elizabeth who 
 is speaking !' 
 
QUEEN VICTORIA. 75 
 
 The Queen greatly enjoyed her visits to foreign 
 countries, and particularly those to Italy. When 
 she stayed in Florence, she was eager to see every 
 beautiful corner of the city, and to visit all the in- 
 teresting churches. The difficulty which at- 
 tended the inspection of the miraculous picture in 
 the Annunziata added a peculiar zest to the per- 
 mission which she ultimately received. The Queen 
 was indirectly, but not the less deeply, influenced 
 by the beauty and antiquity of her surroundings 
 in Italy. It was the* home of the music that she 
 loved best; it represented the romance of art to 
 her. She was extraordinarily interested in the sys- 
 tem of the Misericordia, and quite put out by the 
 success of her ladies and gentlemen-in-waiting, 
 who brought back news of having met the pro- 
 cessions on their merciful errand. At last, by dint 
 of driving about and loitering in likely places, the 
 long-wished-for meeting was effected. The Queen 
 hastened home to report her good fortune to her 
 ladies: ^And the poor man was really dead,' she 
 exulted, 'not merely wounded, like yours !^ She 
 had tender scruples as to whether she ought to be 
 drawn about the churches in her bath chair; 'I 
 
76 THE CHARACTER OF 
 
 should hate them to think 1 was irreverent/ she 
 said. She was indefatigable in her choice of fresh 
 views to rest before and admire, when she camped 
 out for tea in Italy or Prance. In old days, as in 
 the Highlands, she would sketch during these ex- 
 peditions; but of late she had not attempted this. 
 The Queen had a great affection for the Italian 
 language, and spoke it easily, though not as she 
 spoke French. She gave herself quaint practice in 
 this accomplishment. Never did an organ-grinder 
 make his appearance near Osborne but, if the car- 
 riage met him, it had to be stopped, while the 
 Queen conversed in Italian with the grinning 
 musician, and enquired after the health of his 
 monkey. She liked to hear the sound of the lan- 
 guage, even in its least classic form ; and Neapoli- 
 tan singers in the street were quite irresistible to 
 her. Something about the whole character of the 
 Celtic and Latin races was sympathetic to her ; she 
 felt at home with their turns of temperament. 
 She desired, almost passionately, to Be loved by the 
 Irish; and when she went to Dublin in 1899 she 
 believed that they did love her. She felt the stim- 
 ulus of success in pleasing, but she acknowledged 
 
QUEEN VICTOKIA. 77 
 
 that the work required of her was twice as great as 
 it had been on her earlier visit. She did her very 
 best to win the affection of the Irish, but the effort 
 fatigued her much. She was carried through it all 
 by her enjoyment of the wit and gaiety of the 
 crowd. She kept on saying, 'How I delight in 
 the Irish !' 
 
 In closing this brief study of one of the most 
 remarkable personalities of the nineteenth century, 
 a few words must not be omitted dealing with the 
 Queen's attitude towards her own regal position. 
 No one ever accepted her fate with a graver or 
 more complete conviction. It is possible that if 
 her signature had been required to a declaration, 
 on paper, of her belief in the divine right of kings, 
 she would have thought it prudent to refuse to 
 sign; but in her own heart she never questioned 
 that she was the anointed of the Lord, called 
 by the most solemn warrant to rule a great nation 
 in the fear of Grod. She was fond of the word 
 'loyalty,' but she used it in a sense less lax than 
 that which it bears in the idle parlance of the day. 
 When the Queen spoke of her subjects as loyal/ 
 she meant it in the mediaeval sense. The relation 
 
 LofC. 
 
78 THE CHAEACTER OF 
 
 was not, in her eyes, voluntary or sentimental, but 
 imperative. If she had been a wicked or a foolish 
 woman, it would have been very sad ; but the duty 
 of obedience would, in her idea, have been the 
 same. Subject must be ^loyal;' if they loved 
 their sovereign, so much the better for them and 
 for her, but affection was not essential. In her 
 phraseology this constantly peeped out — % the 
 Queen,' 'my people,' 'my soldiers.' She re- 
 garded herself, professionally, as the pivot round 
 which the whole machine of state revolves. This 
 sense, this perhaps even chimerical conviction of 
 her own indispensability, greatly helped to keep 
 her on her lofty plane of daily, untiring duty. 
 And gradually she hypnotised the public imagina- 
 tion, so that at last, in defiance of the theories of 
 historic philosophers, the nation accepted the 
 Queen's view of her own functions, and tacitly 
 concluded with her that she ruled, a consecrated 
 monarch, by Right Divine. 
 
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