Victoria: A Life

by A. N. Wilson

  In Palmerston, he met his match. Stockmar and Albert were no doubt appalled by Palmerston’s morals, his breezy manner, his vulgarity, his unashamed populism. They could not, however, dismiss him as a lightweight, as they might have wished to have dismissed Melbourne. ‘Pam’ was a consummate diplomat – it could be said, the consummate diplomat of the pre-Bismarck times, if one is simply using the word ‘diplomat’ to mean one conversant with current affairs abroad, rather than one who is in any sense ‘diplomatic’. As he told the Prime Minister in January 1849, ‘Dispatches received & sent out [from the Foreign Office] in 1848 was upwards of 29,000’.13 He combined an encyclopaedic knowledge of foreign affairs with a calculated ‘recklessness’ (Harold Nicolson’s word14), which he knew would usually increase his vast popularity with the public.

  His political career had begun during the Napoleonic Wars, when he became an MP in 1807, aged twenty-three. Within a month of his election, he was made a junior lord of the Admiralty, and by 1809, Prime Minister Spencer Perceval was offering Pam the choice of being Chancellor of the Exchequer or Secretary of State for War. He chose the latter. He liked war, and he liked the idea of Britain and a fighting country, and he never really lost the joy of feeling, as he had done during the war, that he could send out ships to blast at foreigners. As a proud, clever Whig, he did not really consider himself answerable to anyone. One of his colleagues, Lord Clarendon, recalled Palmerston ‘agreeing with me that Vera Cruz ought to be blockaded, and desiring me to write accordingly to the Admiralty. I said – “Surely not without bringing it before the Cabinet?” – “Oh. Ah: the Cabinet”, was his answer. “Very well; call one then, if you think it necessary”.’15 Pam was bombastic, patriotic, a showman, and one who, for all his mastery of diplomatic complexities, had an essentially simple foreign policy. He defined it succinctly in 1848 in the House of Commons when he said that Britain had no eternal allies and no perpetual enemies.16 His foreign policy was popular with the rank and file of provincial Liberals in England because, with increased bellicosity he favoured what later history would call ‘Liberal interventionism’. If it was in British interests, or not against British interests, and if it allowed Palmerston the chance to indulge in some heroic defence of the underdog against tyranny, then – in with the gunboats.

  While the young Queen Victoria had enjoyed the company of raffish Pam, her young husband found him deplorable. Albert persuaded Victoria to write frequent letters of complaint to Lord John Russell that he did not show her dispatches before they were sent abroad in her name. The truth was that the Court and the Foreign Office were increasingly at odds.

  At first, this was not so. In the matter, for example, of finding a suitable bride for the young Spanish Queen Isabella and her sister Luisa the Infanta, Victoria and Palmerston were agreed. He took a non-interventionist view. Louis-Philippe and Guizot, his reactionary premier, had assured him that they would not, without prior British agreement, marry off the French King’s son, the Duke of Montpensier, to the Infanta (aged fourteen) while Queen Isabella (aged sixteen) married her cousin the Duke of Cadiz, who was presumed to be incapable of having children. This would mean that Louis-Philippe’s grandchildren would inherit the throne of Spain. The Coburg faction had hoped that Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg would marry Isabella. Palmerston was ‘reckless’. When the letter was drafted, proposing that Prince Leopold marry the Spanish Queen, Palmerston decided, without consulting Victoria, to confide in the French Ambassador, hoping that the Duke of Montpensier would back off. In fact, the French rushed ahead with marrying Montpensier off to Luisa, much to the fury of Victoria and Albert. The Coburgs would have to wait a generation before they saw a Glied on the Spanish throne – Ena, daughter of Princess Beatrice and Prince Henry of Battenberg.

  Palmerston’s blunder appeared to justify Albert in opposing Pam in everything. He nicknamed him ‘Pilgerstein’, the heavily literal ‘joke’ being a translation of the name Palmer/Pilgrim-Stone. But in most areas of foreign policy over the next few years, Pilgerstein got the better of the prince. Palmerston supported the aspirations of the Italian nationalists in wishing to drive the Austrians out of Northern Italy. Apart from the embarrassing fact that Albert wanted to be friends with the Emperor of Austria, perhaps one day to see him as the figurehead of a united Germany, there were too many inconsistencies in the policy. If Britain supported the Italians in wishing to wrest their ‘lawful possessions’ from the Austrians, where was the logic in opposing Irish nationalism? Yet when the German nationalists wished to absorb the Duchies of Schleswig and Holstein into a German federation, Pam illogically (as Victoria and Albert felt) supported the Danish claim to the Duchies.

  The Queen openly told her Prime Minister that she feared Palmerston was threatening ‘the peace of Europe in general’.17 Lady Palmerston wrote to her husband, ‘I am angry with the Queen for not being more courteous, the little wretch!’18 Palmerston was breezy, sanguine. His political experience stretched back long enough to see crowns and dukes and princelings tumble, while the Whigs in their great estates and houses seemingly went on forever.

  Meanwhile, the little prince in his sailor’s suit, who so beguiled the crew of the royal yacht, was lucky enough to be immortalized by Winterhalter, who painted him that very summer, while his father was debating foreign policy with Lord Palmerston. Standing by an unspecified shore – presumably on the Isle of Wight – the child has his hands in his pockets. The sailor’s hat is perched jauntily on the back of his head. His stumpy little legs, encased in slightly crumpled nankeen, stand defiantly, and he looks at the painter with a degree of amused self-confidence. Bertie would never be so beautiful again, but Winterhalter had captured some of the impishness, and some of the charm, which would enable him to survive, more or less, a life scarred by illness, scandal and the hostility of his mother.

  But she was not hostile to him when this picture was painted, and gave it to Albert as one of his presents that Christmas at Windsor. ‘It is such a perfect likeness and such a charming composition,’ she commented.19

  Franz Xaver Winterhalter (1805–73) was the Van Dyck of the Victorian Court. He played a powerful role in promoting the family-loving, virtuous iconography which was central to Victoria and Albert’s political purposes. Nor is the Van Dyck parallel fanciful, since it may be seen that, for example in the full-length portrait of Prince Albert in Garter Robes (1843), the pose, the folds of the garments and the background are clearly modelled on Van Dyck’s portrait of Charles I (1636). 20 (Both pictures are in the Royal Collection.)

  The children were an essential part of the Stockmar–Albertian plan for the conversion of the monarchy into a bulwark of Liberalism. Britain had a parliamentary system which was the envy of European Liberals. It now had Free Trade, and an economy which was growing – bursting – on a scale unprecedented in history. It could not turn into an autocracy on the Prussian or Austrian pattern; but nor must it risk becoming a republic. For this, it was necessary to train up the Royal Family, not only as an example to the nation of domestic rectitude, but also as new potential European monarchs. Dynastic marriage could be made to achieve what revolution or political rhetoric could not. But for this to happen – for Vicky, and Bertie, and their siblings to grow up responsibly, and marry into the European Royal Families and spread abroad their father’s Liberal Protestantism, Free Trade Liberalism, care for the working classes and love of arts and science – it was necessary for them to be educated. They must be as well educated as if they had been brought up in Germany.

  The children were divided into two classes. The first, a nursery class, took them to the age of five or six.21 Lady Lyttelton was their governess, and was in charge of instructing them in English, French, German and the elements of religion.

  After the age of six, each child would be moved up a class, and the learning would begin in earnest. A Miss Hildyard had been engaged as their governess, with a salary of £200 per annum. The children would continue to sleep in th
e nursery, where Mrs Thurston the nurse, with two nurserymaids, supervised their physical needs.

  The religious instruction of the Princess Royal was undertaken by the Queen, but from an early age, despite her admiration for Winterhalter’s depiction of Bertie in the sailor’s suit, the Queen felt an aversion to the Prince of Wales, and left his instruction to others.

  Punishment was severe. Princess Alice, who had inherited the Hanoverian short temper, was whipped for not speaking the truth and for ‘roaring’ when aged only four. Prince Alfred was commended at the age of only eighteen months for displaying ‘a very good manly temper; much more like that of most children than that of the Princess Royal or the Prince of Wales’.22

  The Princess Royal was a strikingly intelligent child, and found no difficulty with her lessons. The Prince of Wales, on the other hand, did not learn easily. His parents had his head examined by a phrenological expert. Phrenology – the measurement and classification of different parts of the skull – was the fad of the 1840s, and although to us it seems like mumbo jumbo, many intelligent Victorians believed in it.

  Bertie’s report stated that, ‘In the Prince of Wales, the organs of ostentativeness, destructiveness, self-esteem etc. are all large, intellectual organs only moderately developed.’ This last phrase was an understatement. Prince Albert was one of those highly intelligent people who found unintelligence in others bewildering, and in their own children a source of distress. Against any dictate of common sense, the Prince of Wales’s parents determined that he must be forced to become a serious, unselfish, scholarly person like Prince Albert. They had named him Albert Edward with the express purpose of turning him into a miniature clone of his industrious, clever father. With the glorious incorrigibility of humanity, the young prince simply would not, could not, be moulded.

  Winterhalter, the son of a farmer from Menzenschwand, a small village on the edges of the Black Forest, had had the good fortune to be talent-spotted by the local priest, Father Lieber, who drew the boy’s skills to the attention of Baron Eichtal, their local grandee. It was Eichtal who provided Winterhalter with his vital contacts in the early stages of his career, introducing him to the families who would make his name and fortune. Having studied at Freiburg and Munich, Winterhalter’s Italianate, glossy manner was perfected at an early age. By the time of the 1830 Revolution in France, he was in a position to execute over thirty royal portraits establishing Louis-Philippe as a stately and august figure. Through Louis-Philippe’s daughter, the beloved ‘Aunt Louise’, Winterhalter was introduced to Queen Victoria and became her court painter, visiting England for several months each summer from the mid-1840s onwards.

  The Queen always considered his masterpiece to be the family group which he painted in the summer of 1846. All those who saw the work in progress – Palmerston, the Duchess of Sutherland, the Cambridge family – admired it. When the painting went on show at the Royal Academy in 1847, it was criticized on the grounds, first, that its artist was foreign, and secondly for its lack of ‘taste’, its ‘sensual and fleshy’ depiction of the royal couple, in the words of the Athenæum.23

  The very xenophobia of the English criticism is itself bristling with ironies. While the London periodical wonders why the British needed to go all foreign, many liberals of Europe looked to Britain as a role model. A German picture of a three-quarters German family was trying to teach Europe to be more like England. Beside the constitutional politics, it is precisely in what the fastidious saw as lack of taste that the picture has its appeal. For a start, it is a piece of magnificence. The couple sit on a gilded sofa. His index finger, both to control and to tease erotically, is just about to touch her hand. She is both regal and a sensual wife. Though ten inches shorter than her husband when standing up, on the sofa she is higher than he is, presumably plumped up by cushions. The Prince of Wales nestles near his mother, a sure sign to all of us that the monarchy has a future. Little Affie (Alfred) toddles independently in the foreground, while Vicky and Alice (as perhaps befitted the female members of a family in 1846) are caring for their infant sister. Lenchen, the baby Helena, looks back and up – straight at us – while her father looks shyly away. Among the many clever things about this political emblem is that while placing the prince centre stage, it allows his Queen the position of absolute dominion.

  The painting was made into an engraving, which proved to be extremely popular. Thus, the iconography of Winterhalter’s Happy Family was disseminated throughout the Empire, an emblem of ‘peace, harmony, concord, wealth, fecundity, obedience, happiness’ (to quote from the percipient National Portrait Gallery exhibition catalogue of 1987).24

  The world of 1847–8, when this engraving was making its way out into the world, was a dangerous place, and Victoria and Albert saw it as their task to make it less dangerous. The Corn Laws were abolished. Free Trade was to bring peace and prosperity. The future was as bright and as blue as the Solent on a summer day.

  Then, in February 1848, the government in France was overthrown by Revolution. Public gatherings had been banned by Louis-Philippe and Guizot, but in 1847, this had given rise to the ‘banquet’ campaign: you could ban a public meeting, but you could not ban a ‘banquet’. A huge ‘banquet’ was planned in the capital. On 22 February, crowds of students and workers swarmed around La Madeleine and there was violence in the Place de la Concorde as the police tried to disperse them. The violence spread. Within two days, there were 1,500 barricades in the streets of Paris. The monarchy had been abolished. The humiliated Louis-Philippe drove to Le Havre in disguise. He was initially refused passage on a boat, until the British Foreign Office sent word to rescue him, his Queen and their family – the Duke and Duchess of Nemours, the Duke of Montpensier and the Duke of Joinville. The Queen and prince, with Lord John Russell’s agreement, offered them Claremont as temporary accommodation, but the accursed French royalty were doomed to bad luck. Dissolved lead in a newly installed cistern was poisoning the water supply, and they were all ill. The King’s doctor recommended an immediate change of air and they all decamped to the Star and Garter inn at Richmond. The family who, only so recently, had been frustrating the political machinations of Palmerston and Stockmar by their dynastic ambitions in Spain, and who appeared to hold France under their authoritarian sway, were now a poverty-stricken gaggle of refugees, suffering diarrhoea in a pub beside the Thames.

  The Queen’s journals convey with vivid candour the sense of shock brought by that February to her, and to the Royal Family. The beginning of the month found them a great concourse of Coburgs happily installed at Windsor Castle. Her uncle Leopold was over from Belgium, and after dinner, on 31 January, Victoria sat on the sofa with the Belgian Queen – her ‘Aunt Louise’, Louis-Philippe’s daughter – pasting in ‘our prints of the French King & Princes’.25 Only a fortnight later, when Sir Robert Peel came to dine, he expressed himself ‘much alarmed about France’. By 25 February, they got the news that Louis-Philippe had abdicated, though at first they did not know where he was. ‘We could talk of nothing else.’26

  The first royal refugee to fetch up in London was Louis-Philippe’s daughter Clémentine, married to another Coburg – Prince Augustus. She described to a horrified Victoria how ‘poor Hélène had her children torn from her’27 – Hélène after whom Victoria and Albert had named their fifth child. ‘Poor Clém says she can get no sleep, constantly seeing before her eyes those horrible faces, & hearing these dreadful cries and shrieks.’28

  When Louis-Philippe eventually came ashore from the fishing boat, Victoria and Albert were at first all sympathy. ‘The French are really a very ungrateful nation to forget in one day all the King has done for them these 18 years!’29 But when the Queen, and Lord Palmerston discovered that Louis-Philippe, without admitting to them what he was doing, had made plans to send the Duke of Montpensier with his Spanish bride to Europe again to lay claim to the Spanish title, her sympathy evaporated. (Montpensier was making matters worse by going
first to King Leopold in Brussels.)

  ‘Oh!! They have brought on much of all this,’30 the Queen reflected in a letter to King Leopold when she contemplated the devious behaviour of Louis Egalité over the years.

  Still, the sheer fact of the thing was shocking. ‘The news from France is that the Monarchy & Royalty have been abolished & that the people are going on in a disgusting way.’31 You could not read a more shocking sentence in a diary written by a pregnant Queen. ‘I felt as if I could not believe it.’32 The journals dwell on the physical pathos of it; the fact that these royal personages, many of them cousins or marital connections, had arrived in London with nothing – no clothes to wear, nothing to wash with, nowhere to live. At least Clém, married to a Coburg, could take refuge in Germany, ‘whereas the others are homeless’.33

  As if these upsetting events were not enough to disturb them all, the Coburgs received the sad news from Germany that old Duchess Caroline Amalie had died – without Ernst, Victoire or Leopold by her side. Albert, with tears in his eyes, broke the news to his Queen that the duchess was dead. ‘Thousands of recollections of dear Albert’s childhood are broken, he clung to her with such love, she was so clever, so good, so beloved & respected & had such a warm heart.’34 (She was the stepmother of Albert’s mother.)

  How could they be certain that outrages such as had befallen the Orléanist monarchy could not befall Victoria, and Albert, and their children? It was a terrifying point in their history. As Victoria went into labour for the sixth time, producing Princess Louise on 18 March, the child was brought into an uncertain world.

  The Chartist unrest had gained ground. It was the real hope of those who supported them that they could bring in universal suffrage, and parliamentary democracy. One of the leaders of the movement, Ernest Jones, son of an army officer, was godson to the most reactionary of all Queen Victoria’s uncles – the King of Hanover!35 Born in Berlin, educated for the first twenty years of his life in Germany, Jones was a close associate of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In the mid-1840s, Jones had joined forces with the charismatic Chartist leader Feargus O’Connor, who had briefly been an MP (representing Cork). The Chartists wanted an annual Parliament, and the vote for every adult in the country. (O’Connor and Jones eventually emended this to every adult male in the country, since they were persuaded that to campaign for female suffrage was a step too far.) They wanted the ballot, to avoid intimidation at the polls. In many respects the Chartists had more in common with Tories than with classic Victorian Liberals (even though it was with the Liberals that Jones would later join forces). They supported Shaftesbury’s Factory Acts. They opposed Corn Law repeal, on the grounds that they wanted to buy land for the working classes and hold it as a co-operative, not to boost Free Trade per se. One of their most successful rallies was a demonstration against income tax.