



Produced by Jonathan Ingram, S.R. Ellison, and Project
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QUEEN VICTORIA

STORY OF HER LIFE AND REIGN

1819-1901







[ILLUSTRATION: QUEEN VICTORIA. (From a Photograph by Russell & Son.)]



  'Her court was pure, her life serene;
     God gave her peace; her land reposed;
     A thousand claims to reverence closed
   In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen.'

                           TENNYSON.


'God bless the Queen for all her unwearied goodness! I admire her as a
woman, love her as a friend, and reverence her as a Queen. Her courage,
patience, and endurance are marvellous to me.'

           NORMAN MACLEOD.


        'A Prince indeed,
   Beyond all titles, and a household name,
   Hereafter, through all time, Albert the Good.'

           TENNYSON.


PREFACE.

This brief life of Queen Victoria gives the salient features of her reign,
including the domestic and public life, with a glance at the wonderful
history and progress of our country during the past half-century. In the
space at command it has been impossible to give extended treatment. The
history is necessarily very brief, as also the account of the public and
private life, yet it is believed no really important feature of her life
and reign has been omitted.

It is a duty, incumbent on old and young alike, as well as a pleasing
privilege, to mark how freedom has slowly 'broadened down, from precedent
to precedent,' and how knowledge, wealth, and well-being are more widely
distributed to-day than at any former period of our history. And this
knowledge can only increase the gratitude of the reader for the golden
reign of Queen Victoria, of whom it has been truly written:

     A thousand claims to reverence closed
     In her as Mother, Wife, and Queen.




CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.--Reign of Queen Victoria--Outlook of Royalty in 1819--Duke and
Duchess of Kent--Birth of Victoria--Anecdotes.

CHAPTER II.--First Meeting with Prince Albert--Death of William
IV.--Accession of Queen Victoria--First Speech from the
Throne--Coronation--Life at Windsor--Personal Appearance--Betrothal to
Prince Albert--Income from the Country.

CHAPTER III.--Marriage--Family Habits--Birth of Princess Royal--Queen's
Views of Religious Training--Osborne and Balmoral--Death of the Duke of
Wellington.

CHAPTER IV.--Chief Public Events, 1837-49--Rebellion in Canada--Opium War
with China--Wars in North-west India--Penny Postage--Repeal of the
Corn-laws--Potato Famine--Free Trade-Chartism.

CHAPTER V.--The Crimean War, 1854-55--Interest of the Queen and Prince
Consort in the suffering Soldiers--Florence Nightingale--Distribution of
Victoria Crosses by the Queen.

CHAPTER VI.--The Indian Mutiny, 1857-58--The Queen's Letter to Lord
Canning.

CHAPTER VII.--Marriage of the Princess Royal--Twenty-first Anniversary of
Wedding-day--Death of the Prince-Consort.

CHAPTER VIII.--Death of Princess Alice--Illness of Prince of Wales--The
Family of the Queen--Opening of Indian Exhibition and Imperial
Institute--Jubilee--Death of Duke of Clarence--Marriage of Princess May.

CHAPTER IX.--The Queen as an Artist and Author--In her Holiday
Haunts--Norman Macleod--Letter to Mr Peabody--The Queen's
Drawing-room--Her pet Animals--A Model Mistress--Diamond Jubilee--Death of
the Queen.

CHAPTER X.--Summary of Public Events and Progress of the Nation.





CHAPTER I.

Reign of Queen Victoria--Outlook of Royalty in 1819--Duke and Duchess of
Kent--Birth of Victoria--Wisely trained by Duchess of Kent--Taught by
Fraeulein Lehzen--Anecdotes of this Period--Discovers that she is next to
the Throne.


The reign of Queen Victoria may be aptly described as a period of progress
in all that related to the well-being of the subjects of her vast empire.
In every department of science, literature, politics, and the practical
life of the nation, there has been steady improvement and progress. Our
ships circumnavigate the globe and do the chief carrying trade of the
world. The locomotive binds industrial centres, and abridges time and
space as it speeds along its iron pathway; whilst steam-power does the
work of thousands of hands in our large factories. The telegraph links us
to our colonies, and to the various nationalities of the world, in
commerce and in closer sympathy; and never was the hand and heart of
Benevolence busier than in this later period of the nineteenth century.
Our colonial empire has shared also in the welfare and progress of the
mother-country.

When we come to look into the lives of the Queen and Prince-Consort, we
are thankful for all they have been and done. The wider our survey of
history, and the more we know of other rulers and courts, the more
thankful we shall be that they have been a guiding and balancing power,
allied to all that was progressive, noble, and true, and for the benefit
of the vast empire over which Her Majesty reigns. And the personal example
has been no less valuable in

     Wearing the white flower of a blameless life,
     Before a thousand peering littlenesses,
     In that fierce light which heats upon a throne,
     And blackens every blot.

In the year 1819 the family outlook of the British royal house was not a
very bright one. The old king, George III., was lingering on in deep
seclusion, a very pathetic figure, blind and imbecile. His son the Prince
Regent, afterwards George IV., had not done honour to his position, nor
brought happiness to any connected with him. Most of the other princes
were elderly men and childless; and the Prince-Regent's only daughter, the
Princess Charlotte, on whom the hopes of the nation had rested, and whose
marriage had raised those hopes to enthusiasm, was newly laid in her
premature grave.

But almost immediately after Princess Charlotte's death, the king's third
and fourth sons, the Dukes of Clarence and Kent, had married. Of the Duke
of Clarence we need say little more. He and his consort eventually reigned
as William IV. and Queen Adelaide, and they had two children who died in
earliest infancy, and did not further complicate the succession to the
crown.

The Duke of Kent, born in 1767, fourth son of George III.--a tall, stately
man, of soldierly hearing, inclined to corpulency and entirely
bald--married the widowed Princess of Leiningen, already the mother of a
son and a daughter by her first husband. The duke was of active, busy
habits; and he was patron of many charitable institutions--he presided
over no less than seventy-two charity meetings in 1816. Baron Stockmar
describes the Princess of Leiningen after her marriage in 1818, as 'of
middle height, rather large, but with a good figure, with fine brown eyes
and hair, fresh and youthful, naturally cheerful and friendly; altogether
most charming and attractive. She was fond of dress, and dressed well and
in good taste. Nature had endowed her with warm feelings, and she was
naturally truthful, affectionate, and unselfish, full of sympathy, and
generous.' The princely pair lived in Germany until the birth of a child
was expected, when the duke at first thought of taking a house in
Lanarkshire--which would have made Queen Victoria by birth a Scotchwoman.
Eventually, the Duke and Duchess of Kent took up their abode in Kensington
Palace.

On the 24th May 1819, their daughter was born, and she was named
Alexandrina Victoria, after the reigning Emperor of Russia and her mother.
The Prince Regent had wished the name of Georgiana; her own father wished
to call her Elizabeth. The little one was the first of the British royal
house to receive the benefits of Jenner's discovery of vaccination. The
Duke of Kent was so careful of his little girl that he took a cottage at
Sidmouth to escape the London winter. To a friend he wrote: 'My little
girl thrives under the influence of a Devonshire climate, and is, I am
delighted to say, strong and healthy; too healthy, I fear, in the opinion
of some members of my family, by whom she is regarded as an intruder.'
Next winter the Duke came in one day, after tramping through rain and
snow, and played with his little child while in his damp clothes; he thus
contracted a chill from which he never rallied, and died January 23, 1820.

This child was destined to be the Empress-Queen, on whose dominion the sun
never sets. Yet so remote did such a destiny then seem, owing to the
possibilities of the Regent's life, and of children being born to the Duke
of Clarence, that in some courtly biographies of George III. there is no
mention made of the birth of the little princess. Even in their accounts
of the death of her father the Duke of Kent, seven months afterwards, they
do not deem it necessary to state that he left a daughter behind him;
though he, poor man, had never had any doubts of her future importance,
and had been in the habit of saying to her attendants, 'Take care of her,
for she may be Queen of England.' The Duke of Kent was a capable and
energetic soldier, of pure tastes and simple pleasures. In presenting new
colours to the Royal Scots in 1876, the Queen said: 'I have been
associated with your regiment from my earliest infancy, as my dear father
was your colonel. He was proud of his profession, and I was always told to
consider myself a soldier's child.'

The position of the widowed Duchess of Kent, a stranger in a foreign
country, was rather sad and lonely. It was further complicated by
narrowness of means. The old king, her father-in-law, died soon after her
husband. The duchess was a woman of sense and spirit. Instead of yielding
to any natural impulse to retire to Germany, she resolved that her little
English princess should have an English rearing. She found a firm friend
and upholder in her brother Leopold, husband of the late Princess
Charlotte, and afterwards King of the Belgians. On discovering her
straitened means he gave her an allowance of L3000 a year, which was
continued until it was no longer necessary in 1831. As the duke came into
a separate income only at a late period of his life, he had died much in
debt. Long afterwards the Queen said to Lord Melbourne: 'I want to pay all
that remains of my father's debts. I must do it. I consider it a sacred
duty.' And she did not rest till she did it. In reply to an address of
congratulation on the coming of age of the Queen, the Duchess of Kent
said:

'My late regretted consort's circumstances, and my duties, obliged us to
reside in Germany; but the Duke of Kent at much inconvenience, and I at
great personal risk, returned to England, that our child should be "born
and bred a Briton." In a few months afterwards my infant and myself were
awfully deprived of father and husband. We stood alone--almost friendless
and alone in this country; I could not even speak the language of it. I
did not hesitate how to act, I gave up my home, my kindred, my duties [the
regency of Leiningen], to devote myself to that duty which was to be the
whole object of my future life. I was supported in the execution of my
duties by the country. It placed its trust in me, and the Regency Bill
gave me its last act of confidence. I have in times of great difficulty
avoided all connection with any party in the state; but if I have done so,
I have never ceased to press on my daughter her duties, so as to gain by
her conduct the respect and affection of the people. This I have taught
her should be her first earthly duty as a constitutional sovereign.'

The little princess was brought up quietly and wisely at Kensington and
Claremont. In a letter from the Queen to her uncle Leopold, written in
1843, we find the following: 'This place [Claremont] has a particular
charm for us both, and to me it brings back recollections of the happiest
days of my otherwise dull childhood, when I experienced such kindness from
you, dearest uncle, kindness which has ever since continued.... Victoria
[the Princess Royal] plays with my old bricks, &c., and I see her running
and jumping in the flower-garden, as old, though I fear still _little_,
Victoria of former days used to do.'

Bishop Fulford of Montreal remembered seeing her when four months old in
the arms of her nurse. In the following year she might be seen in a
hand-carriage with her half-sister, the Princess Feodora of Leiningen.
Wilberforce in a letter to Hannah More, July 21, 1820, wrote: 'In
consequence of a very civil message from the Duchess of Kent, I waited on
her this morning. She received me with her fine, animated child on the
floor by her side, with its playthings, of which I soon became one.' She
became familiar to many as a pretty infant, riding on her sleek donkey (a
gift from her uncle the Duke of York) in Kensington Gardens. She used to
be seen in a large straw hat and a white cotton frock, watering the plants
under the palace windows, dividing the contents of the watering-pot
between the flowers and her feet, and often took breakfast with her mother
on the lawn there. There are playful stories told of those happy early
days. The little princess was very fond of music, listening as one
spell-bound when first she heard some of Beethoven's glorious
compositions. But like most children, she rebelled against the drudgery of
scales and finger exercises, and on being told that there is 'no royal
road to music,' she sportively locked the piano and announced that 'the
royal road is never to take a lesson till you feel disposed.'

Sir Walter Scott records in his diary that he dined with the Duchess of
Kent on 19th May 1828. 'I was very kindly received by Prince Leopold, and
presented to the little Victoria--the heir-apparent to the crown as things
now stand. The little lady is educated with much care, and watched so
closely that no busy maid has a moment to whisper "You are heir of
England." I suspect if we could dissect the little heart, we should find
that some pigeon or other bird of the air had carried the matter,
however.' This, it seems, was not the case. Charles Knight has told us how
he one morning saw the household breakfasting in the open air, at a table
on the lawn. It is also related that Victoria took her airings in
Kensington Gardens in a little phaeton drawn by a tiny pony, led by a
page. A dog ran between the legs of the pony one day, frightening it, so
that the little carriage was upset, and the princess would have fallen on
her head, but for the presence of mind of an Irishman who rescued her.
Leigh Hunt saw her once 'coming up a cross-path from the Bayswater gate,
with a girl of her own age by her side, whose hand she was holding as if
she loved her;' and he adds that the footman who followed seemed to him
like a gigantic fairy. When the princess was in her fifth year, George
IV., who acted as one of her godfathers, sent a message to parliament
which resulted in a grant for the cost of the education of his niece.

In 1824, when the princess was five years old, Fraeulein Lehzen, a German
lady, became her governess; afterwards she held the post of the Queen's
private secretary, until relieved by the Prince-Consort. She was the
daughter of a Hanoverian pastor, and came to England in 1818 as governess
to the Princess Feodora of Leiningen. In her home letters she records that
'the princess received her in a pretty, childlike way,' and describes her
as 'not tall, but very pretty;' adding that she 'has dark brown hair,
beautiful blue eyes, and a mouth which, though not tiny, is very
good-tempered and pleasant; very fine teeth, a small but graceful figure,
and a very small foot. She was dressed in white muslin with a coral
necklet.' The domestic life was that of any other well-regulated and happy
family. The princess shared her governess's bedroom. They all took their
meals together at a round table. When they did not go to church, the
duchess read a sermon aloud and commented pleasantly on it. As early as
1830 Thomas Moore heard the Princess Victoria sing duets with her mother,
who also sang some pretty German songs herself.

Nor are there lacking traces of strict and chastening discipline. The
princess had been early taught that there are good habits and duties in
the management of money. When she was buying toys at Tunbridge Wells, her
wishes outran her little purse, and the box for which she could not pay
was not carried away on credit, but set aside for her to fetch away when
the next quarter-day would renew her allowance. Fraeulein Lehzen says, 'The
duchess wished that when she and the princess drove out, I should sit by
her side, and the princess at the back. Several times I could not prevent
it, but at last she has given in, and says on such occasions with a laugh
to her daughter: "Sit by me, since Fraeulein Lehzen wishes it to be so."
But,' says the governess, 'I do not hesitate to remark to the little one,
whom I am most anxious not to spoil, that this consideration is not on her
account, because she is still a child, but that my respect for her mother
disposes me to decline the seat.' Once when the princess was reading how
Cornelia, the mother of the Gracchi, introduced her sons to the first of
Roman ladies with the words, 'These are my jewels,' she looked up from her
book, and remarked