Sons, Servants and Statesmen

by John Van der Kiste

  When she read this despatch, the Queen was furious and demanded that it should be sent again with the ‘objectionable’ paragraph deleted. Palmerston told Russell, the Prime Minister, that such a despatch would need to be signed by a new Foreign Secretary. He then wrote a long explanatory memorandum to the Queen, praising the British people for their hospitable reception of foreigners and assuring her that feelings of indignation against Haynau were not confined to Britain. Thinking better than to send it, he decided that the issue was too trivial to merit resignation and sent a new, modified despatch.

  The truce was clearly not going to last, and Palmerston’s overconfidence a year later proved his undoing. In December 1851 Louis Napoleon proclaimed himself President of the new Republic of France. The Queen and Russell agreed to adopt an attitude of neutrality at first but, to their annoyance, they soon found that Palmerston had already assured the French ambassador of British support. This was too much even for Russell to stomach, and he demanded his Foreign Secretary’s resignation. The Queen’s relief was short lived, for before long Palmerston had brought down Russell’s government over the question of a need for a national militia, bringing Lord Derby to power for an administration which would last only ten months in 1852, at the end of which year Palmerston returned to government as Home Secretary.

  Queen Victoria liked and respected Derby, her new head of government, but had her doubts about the calibre of his new cabinet. ‘We have a most talented, capable, and courageous Prime Minister,’ she wrote to King Leopold, ‘but all his people have no experience.’4 Derby’s administration was seriously weakened after elections in July, and following a defeat in the House of Commons in December he resigned, with the amenable, ‘safe’ Lord Aberdeen replacing him as prime minister.

  In September 1853 Aberdeen sent Palmerston, his Home Secretary, to Balmoral as minister in attendance. Lady Palmerston did not accompany her husband there, but warned him to conduct himself as tactfully as possible in the presence of his sovereign. ‘Remember you have only one week to remain there, so you should manage to make yourself agreeable and to appear to enjoy the society.’5 He evidently took her advice to heart, and when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert returned south later that year, they appeared to think more favourably of this maverick minister.

  Unfortunately, the good impression he made was soon destroyed again when he provoked royal wrath by suggesting that the Queen’s cousin, Princess Mary of Cambridge, should marry Emperor Napoleon III’s cousin and heir, Prince Napoleon Jerome. The latter was thoroughly unsuitable, as he was not only a Bonaparte and therefore strictly a parvenu, but also a Roman Catholic. Lord Derby did not improve matters when he informed the Queen rather thoughtlessly that the French prince would probably make a far better husband than ‘some petty Member of a petty German Princes House’.6 Neither Mary nor Napoleon showed any enthusiasm for such a match, and the scheme was quietly dropped.

  By this time, a new crisis was threatening to disturb the peace. England and France had long feared that Russia was proposing to dismember the Turkish Empire and take the Dardanelles under Russian control. In February 1854, when the outbreak of hostilities seemed all but certain, Queen Victoria admitted that her heart was ‘not in this unsatisfactory war’. When she discussed it with Lord Aberdeen, he warned her that whatever happened, Palmerston was likely to succeed him as prime minister before long. She told him she would never feel safe with the latter, whereupon Aberdeen replied sadly that he feared Her Majesty ‘would not be safe with me during war, for I have such a terrible repugnance for it, in all its forms’. Despite his pacifist caution, Victoria insisted that an immediate war would be the lesser of two evils, as it would prevent a worse one later; ‘patching up was dangerous’.7

  Aberdeen begged to differ, but in the end there was to be no patching-up. Three days later, on 28 February, Britain formally declared war against Russia in support of Turkey and in alliance with France. English and French warships were sent to the Black Sea to prevent Russian landings, and later that year troops were sent to the Crimea.

  To those who knew him, it came as little surprise that Aberdeen proved an indecisive prime minister and reluctant head of government. In January 1855 the cabinet refused to accept a motion for a committee of inquiry into the management of the war, and a vote of no confidence was carried against the government. Aberdeen resigned and, as he had foreseen, only Palmerston was strong enough to form a ministry. He was accordingly appointed prime minister.

  Despite the Queen’s reservations about accepting him in office, Palmerston proved as determined as his sovereign to give utmost support to the Army and win the war. The Queen noted in her journal that to change her ‘dear kind, excellent friend, Lord Aberdeen’ had been a trial, as the incoming Prime Minister ‘certainly does owe us many amends for all he has done, and he is without doubt of a very different character to my dear and worthy friend. Still, as matters now stand, it was decidedly the right and wise course to take, and I think that Lord Palmerston, surrounded as he will be, will be sure to do no mischief.’8

  After the conflict ended in victory for England and France, the Queen paid her head of government his due. She and Albert agreed that of all the prime ministers they had yet had, ‘Lord Palmerston is the one who gives the least trouble, & is most amenable to reason & most ready to adopt suggestions. The great danger was foreign affairs, but now that these are conducted by an able, sensible & impartial man [Lord Clarendon], & that he [Lord Palmerston] is responsible for the whole, everything is quite different.’9 After a general election the following year, Palmerston increased his majority, and his grip on European politics seemed to Victoria indispensable. Yet this did not augur well for the future, as at seventy-three he seemed to be ageing fast. She was particularly anxious about his frail appearance, apprehensive as to what they would do if anything should suddenly happen to him.

  Her concern for him was perhaps only increased when he went up in her estimation immeasurably by doing what each of his predecessors as prime minister had thought impossible. He persuaded a rather sceptical cabinet that they should assent to Prince Albert being made Prince Consort. On 25 June 1857 a Council was held at Buckingham Palace at which the delighted Queen conferred the title on her husband by Letters Patent.

  In January 1858 there was an attempt in Paris on the lives of Emperor Napoleon III and Empress Eugenie. During their interrogation, the conspirators revealed that they were part of a group that had members in England and that their bombs had been made there. Palmerston was irritated by the political activities of some of the refugees who had settled in Britain and wanted to draft a Bill empowering the Home Secretary to expel anyone whom he suspected of plotting against a foreign head of state or government. The cabinet agreed it would be simpler to introduce a Conspiracy to Murder Bill instead, by which the crime of planning a murder was promoted from a misdemeanour to a felony and made punishable by a long term of imprisonment. The result, the Conspiracy to Murder Bill, resulted in a defeat for Palmerston on a vote on the second reading in February.

  Professing herself ‘much vexed and thunderstruck’10 by the defeat, Queen Victoria sent again for Lord Derby to form a government. In March 1859 his ministry introduced a Parliamentary Reform Bill which had a troubled passage through the House of Commons before leading to a motion of no confidence three months later, on which Derby resigned and Palmerston once again took office as prime minister. The Queen disliked having to change governments at a time of European crisis, in this case war between Austria and France, but she readily admitted that when she sent for Palmerston, he ‘behaved very handsomely’.11

  This premiership was to prove relatively untroubled. In fact, the Prime Minister showed a degree of concern towards his sovereign throughout which she found most touching. This was never more apparent than in November 1861, when he was the first person outside the family to express serious anxiety over the condition of the Prince Consort, who had never been robust and seemed seriously run down after a p
articularly stressful year. While the Queen’s doctors blandly assured her there was nothing to be unduly concerned about, he recognised that the Prince was gravely ill and proposed calling a further physician, Dr Robert Ferguson. The Queen resented the suggestion, insisting that there was no need for further medical advice, and instructed Sir Charles Phipps, her Keeper of the Privy Purse, to thank the Prime Minister for his concern. The Prince, she said, was only suffering from ‘a feverish cold’.

  Palmerston was laid low at the time with gout, and although he genuinely mourned the death of the Prince Consort in December, he was privately a little relieved that in her grief the Queen did not wish to see anybody apart from members of her immediate family and household at first. He knew that she would be difficult to deal with, now that the prudent Albert was no longer there to guide or restrain her. He wrote to Russell after Christmas that he believed her determination ‘to conform to what she from time to time may persuade herself would have been at the moment the opinion of the late Prince promises no end of difficulties for those who will have to advise her’, and that they would need to deal with her gently.12

  On 29 January 1862 Victoria received Palmerston at Osborne, for the first time since the Prince’s death. He was deeply moved by the sight of her suffering, and in her words he could ‘hardly speak for emotion’. On his first sight of her, sitting on the sofa in the drawing room at Osborne, he too wept unashamedly for the man they had lost. His colleagues later saw tears in his eyes when he referred to the Prince Consort, and his sympathy for the bereaved Queen was beyond doubt. He assured her ‘what a dreadful calamity it was’ and agreed that the loss of his father was terrible for the Prince of Wales. The Queen was genuinely moved by her statesman’s attitude ‘and would hardly have given Lord Palmerston credit for entering so entirely into my anxieties’.13

  During the crisis that arose over the disputed duchies of Schleswig and Holstein, ruled by Denmark, the Queen was on the side of counter-claimants Austria and Prussia, unlike her eldest son, the Prince of Wales, who had just married the daughter of the new King of Denmark, Christian IX. Most of her subjects strongly supported the Danish claims to the duchies, as did Palmerston. This led to a renewal of ill-feeling between him and the Queen, until he found it necessary to write to her that he could quite understand her reluctance ‘to take any active part in measures in any conflict against Germany, but he is sure that Your Majesty will never forget that you are Sovereign of Great Britain’.14 She wrote to King Leopold complaining about Palmerston and Russell, ‘those two dreadful old men’. Britain stayed neutral during the ensuing war between Austria and Prussia on the one hand and Denmark on the other. Palmerston would have liked to go to the assistance of Denmark, but the majority of his cabinet colleagues opposed any declaration of hostilities on behalf of the Scandinavian kingdom.

  Palmerston survived to the age of eighty, dying on 18 October 1865. Victoria mourned his death sincerely, admitting that he ‘had often worried and distressed us, though as Prime Minister he had behaved very well. To think that he is removed from this world, and I alone, without dearest Albert to talk to or consult with!’15

  In November 1865 Palmerston was succeeded by Lord Russell, who was keen to introduce further reform to the electoral system. He found his position weakened, as one wing of his supporters was strongly opposed to any such measure. Though she had no objection to such reform, the Queen lacked confidence and had no stomach for what could potentially be the worst ministerial crisis since the bedchamber affair. The general outlook was exacerbated by Prussia’s recent declaration of war on Austria, and should the conflict escalate further in Europe, the last thing Victoria wanted was political instability at home. Lord Derby told her he could not support reform, and she begged him not to make it into a party question.

  Russell insisted he would get his measure through Parliament, as his supporters would not allow it to be dropped, but he proved unsuccessful. In June 1866 he resigned after the defeat of his contentious Reform Bill, and Lord Derby formed an administration with Benjamin Disraeli as his Chancellor of the Exchequer. The Reform Bill passed its third reading the following year, and one million voters were newly enfranchised. Yet Derby’s health was failing, and in February 1868 he resigned, to be succeeded by his Chancellor.

  The Queen’s attitude towards the colourful Disraeli had long been ambivalent. As a member of parliament he had attended her coronation and less than two years later, with other members of the House of Commons, was part of a deputation sent to Buckingham Palace to deliver a loyal address congratulating the Queen on her marriage. Naturally, she would not have remembered him from these occasions as one of many, yet she was aware of his career as a novelist, of his marriage to a widow twelve years older than himself and of his reputation as a politically ambitious social butterfly. It is, however, doubtful whether she was aware of his pseudonymous letter to The Times during the bedchamber crisis (see p. 46).

  The fall of Russell’s first ministry in February 1852 had brought a Tory administration under Lord Derby to power (as it would again in 1866), with Disraeli his Chancellor of the Exchequer and Leader of the House. Though Derby assured them of his ability, from what they had heard the Queen and Prince Albert initially found it hard to approve of a politician whom they considered pushy, irresponsible and unprincipled. In 1846 the Queen had called him ‘that detestable Mr Disraeli’ and denounced his opposition to repealing the Corn Laws as ‘unprincipled and reckless’, while Albert claimed that he ‘had not one single element of the gentleman in his composition’.

  Though his post as chancellor did not involve frequent audiences with the Queen, it involved writing letters regularly to her. As befitted a novelist and a man of his reputation, these were no ordinary letters. Almost at once she received interesting reports from him, presenting parliamentary debates in a vivid and entertaining style which greatly impressed her. Speeches might be ‘elaborate, malignant, mischievous’, or ‘statesmanlike, argumentative, terse and playful’, which constituted a pleasant change from the tedious factual accounts that had been sent her by others. As she had copied a number of Lord Melbourne’s phrases into her journal, she now took to adding some of Disraeli’s more picturesque observations likewise. His ‘curious notes’, she thought, were ‘just like his novels, highly-coloured’.16 For the first time since Melbourne’s resignation, politics had become more interesting and less of a chore.

  In April 1852 she invited the Disraelis to dinner at Buckingham Palace. She had already met Mrs Disraeli once before and found her ‘very singular’. Now, for the first time she could see this fascinating couple close at hand. At almost sixty, Mary Anne Disraeli was dressed in her usual youthful fashion, her tinted hair crowned with an extravagant wreath of diamonds, velvet leaves and feathers, her dress an elaborate confection of white satin trimmed with looped-up flounces of gold lace and glittering with jewels. Such a startling appearance, and her frank conversation, did not impress the Queen, who thought her ‘very vulgar’. Her husband she found ‘most singular, – thoroughly Jewish looking, a livid complexion, dark eyes & eyebrows & black ringlets. The expression is disagreeable, but I do not find him so to talk to. He has a very bland manner, & his language is very flowery.’17

  Within a year the government had fallen, and on leaving office Disraeli wrote letters to thank the Queen and Prince for their help and kindness. To Albert, he said that he would ‘ever remember with interest and admiration the princely mind in the princely person’.18 Ironically, not long before this Albert had had a conversation with Lord Derby about Disraeli, during which he remarked that he admired the latter’s talents but suspected him of being a dangerous radical, if not a revolutionary, ‘not in his heart favourable to the existing order of things’. Despite Derby’s protestations that the man was greatly attached to the British constitutional system, Albert would not be deflected from his views. Disraeli, he was convinced, had ‘democratic tendencies’, and the potential to become ‘one of the most dangerous men i
n Europe’.19 He was not to know that the future Lord Beaconsfield would become such a doughty champion of the royal prerogative, while his chief political adversary during his premiership, Gladstone (a man whom Albert greatly admired), would turn out to be the standard bearer of ‘dangerous radicalism’ and a critic of the House of Lords, to a degree which would greatly perturb the Queen.

  In April 1862 Disraeli was invited to spend the night as a guest at Windsor. Before leaving to attend parliament, he was granted an audience with the Queen, partly intended as a mark of favour for his appreciation of Albert and partly an opportunity for her to ask him not to try to displace Palmerston, to whom she had developed something of an attachment. She was anxious that there should be no governmental crisis ‘brought about wantonly, for, in her forlorn condition, she hardly knew what she could do’.20 He reassured her that her comfort and well-being were of prime importance. She was anxious about the Prime Minister, who was ‘grown very old’, and she feared she had seen ‘a very great change’ in him, though Disraeli was able to assure her that his voice in debate was as loud as ever.

  That same afternoon, Disraeli was in the House of Commons to debate a suitable memorial to the Prince. He advocated a monument which should ‘represent the character of the Prince himself in the harmony of its proportions, in the beauty of its ornament, and in its enduring nature. It should be something direct, significant, and choice, so that those who come after us may say: “This is the type and testimony of a sublime life and a transcendent career, and thus they were recognised by a grateful and admiring people.”’21 Anxious that the Queen should receive an accurate report of his speech, he wrote a copy out in his own hand and sent it to Windsor.