QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  The man angered her just as much when, in writing to congratulate her on Sir Garnet Wolseley's victory over the Egyptian nationalists led by Arabi Pasha at Tel-el-Kebir in September 1882, he totally neglected to note the part played in the battle by her son, Prince Arthur, the Duke of Connaught, commander of the 1st Guards Brigade, who had been described by Wolseley as 'a first rate Brigadier-General'.

  This offence was followed by the Government's proposal to withdraw troops from the Sudan where a Muslim mystic, Muhammad al-Mahdi, rallying thousands of followers behind him, had proclaimed a mission to free Egypt from foreign domination. The Queen, convinced that the Mahdi must be overthrown, bombarded the Cabinet with messages urging the need for speedy and forceful action; and she was outraged when, belatedly and after ten thousand Egyptian soldiers had been killed by the rebels, General Charles George Gordon, who had been sent out to report on the situation there, found himself besieged in Khartoum.

  Furious with Gladstone's Government for not acting sooner, she sent letter after letter requesting firm action. 'The Queen trembles for Gen. Gordon's safety,' she wrote to Gladstone. 'If anything befalls him, the result will be awful. '12 But Gladstone was extremely slow in sending out troops to save Gordon, since the Mahdi's followers were 'rightly struggling to be free'; and when at last a relief force was despatched under General Wolseley, it arrived too late. General Gordon was stabbed to death near the gate of the palace in Khartoum on 26 January 1885. His head was then cut off and sent to the Mahdi and hung on a tree for three days. The Queen was aghast. She sent identical telegrams to Gladstone, Hartington, the War Minister, and Granville, the Foreign Secretary: 'These news from Khartoum are frightful, and to think that all this might have been prevented and many precious lives saved by earlier action is too frightful. '13 All these telegrams were sent en clair so that there could be no doubt in the public mind what she thought of her Government. This highly unconstitutional act provoked Gladstone into declaring that he would 'never set foot in Windsor again';14 while the Queen announced that her Prime Minister would 'for ever be-branded with the blood of Gordon, that heroic man'.15 The Queen was quite as cross with Hartington, who was 'very idle and [hated] business', as she was with Gladstone; and when the War Minister complained to Ponsonby of her communicating directly with generals in the field, she sent a blistering reply: 'The Queen always has telegraphed direct to her Generals, and always will do so ... She thinks Lord Hartington's letter very officious and impertinent in tone... The Queen won't stand dictation. She won't be a machine.'16

  She certainly intended to communicate with whomsoever she chose; and, having written to Gordon's sister to express her grief at her brother's death and the 'stain left upon England' by the way it had come about, she wrote also to General Wolseley to warn him that the Government, some of whose members were 'very unpatriotic', might propose withdrawal from the Sudan. He was to resist such a proposal; he must also burn her letter as it was 'so very confidential'. She had already written to Lady Wolseley asking her to press her husband to 'THREATEN to resign if he does not receive strong support. It must never appear or Lord Wolseley ever let out the hint I give you. But I really think they must he frightened.'17

  Nor did she intend to leave Gladstone in any doubt as to her views. It would be 'fatal' to the country's reputation and honour to withdraw from the Sudan, she told him. It would be seen as a humiliating surrender by British arms to 'savages'.

  Despite the political crisis the Queen declined to come down from Balmoral. Gladstone must go to her: it was 'impertinent' of him to expect otherwise. The Prince of Wales was induced to add his voice to those pressing her to return to London or Windsor, hinting that her position as sovereign might be weakened if she did not. She remained obstinate and immovable. She could not 'rush about as a younger person and a man might do'. Mr Gladstone seemed to forget that she was a lady and an old lady at that whose strength had been severely taxed by forty-eight years of her arduous reign. 'He seems to think,' she wrote, 'that I am just a machine to run up and down as he likes.’18 Besides, her journey by train could not be arranged without due notice. Moreover, it was Ascot week and there would be so many people milling around Windsor for the races that it would be 'extremely inconvenient and unpleasant' at the Castle.19

  * * *

  The reprimand which Gladstone had received from the Queen after she had heard the news of Gordon's death was handed to him by a station master on his way back to London from Lancashire; and it had induced him for a time to consider handing in his resignation.

  To the Queen's profound relief he was soon afterwards forced to do so after a vote against the Budget. She declined to shake hands with him when he came with the other Ministers to deliver up the seals of their offices. He asked if he might kiss her hand. She held the tips of her fingers towards him with evident distaste, and was obviously much relieved when he had gone. General Wolseley, who went to Osborne soon after this uncomfortable interview, reported to the Duke of Cambridge that the Queen was 'so rejoiced and happy to be rid of Gladstone and his filthy lot!!' She was 'like a school girl set free from school'.20

  The Conservative Government of Lord Salisbury which succeeded Gladstone's in June 1855 lasted but a few months, however; and in her efforts to avoid a further series of unwelcome meetings with Gladstone, the Queen once again overstepped the limits of her prerogative. At first she refused to accept the resignation of Lord Salisbury, to whom she had grown attached, then, having done so, and having given him a bronze bust of herself and offered him a dukedom, she made repeated efforts to prevent her 'dear great country' from falling into 'the reckless hands of Mr Gladstone' who would lead it to 'UTTER ruin'. Informed that the Liberals were severely critical of the delay, she sharply retorted, 'The Queen does not the least care but rather wishes it shd. be known that she has the greatest possible disinclination to take this half crazy & really in many ways ridiculous old man.'[liv]21

  In the end, of course, she was forced to take him and did so with such an ill grace that he was 'dreadfully agitated and nervous' at his first audience.22

  'I have been forced to confide the formation of a Government to that old crazy man Merrypebble, as Louis calls him,' she told Princess Frederick. 'And I made it a condition that Pussy [Lord Granville] should not go to the FO [the Earl of Rosebery was appointed Foreign Secretary], as well as that the foreign policy should not be changed. But the bother and nuisance is dreadful ... It is a great misfortune to lose such a man as Lord Salisbury who is one of the most intelligent and large minded and unprejudiced statesmen I ever saw.'23

  Throughout the few months of this, Gladstone's third administration in 1886, she continually consulted Salisbury, seeking his advice as to the best method of ensuring that Gladstone's policies on Home Rule for Ireland were defeated and defying the convention that it was her constitutional duty to support the government in office.24 In June 1886 Gladstone's Home Rule Bill was defeated, as she had hoped, believing Home Rule to be 'calamitous for Ireland, hazardous for England and tending towards separation'.25 She accepted his resignation with unconcealed satisfaction and welcomed back Lord Salisbury who was so infinitely more understanding, who saw to it that she was not bothered unnecessarily and that, being an old lady, she was 'not to be overpressed', never dictated to. It was easy to see she was very fond of Salisbury, wrote a guest in his house, La Bastide, on the French riviera to which the Queen used regularly to go, often without warning, when she was on holiday near Nice at Cimiez. 'Indeed, I never saw two people get on better, their polished manners and deference to and esteem for each other were a delightful sight and one not readily to be forgotten.'25

  'I cannot help feeling relieved,' the Queen wrote in her journal after the defeat of the Home Rule Bill, 'and think it is best for the country.' Surely now she would not have to deal with Mr Gladstone again. He was seventy-six years old, in failing health and, in her eyes, looking ill and agitated. In the elections which followed the dissolution, Gladstone's supporters took 276
seats, Salisbury's 394.

  'The elections are beyond man's understanding,' a visitor remarked to Mrs Gladstone, 'the course of events can only be guided by the One above.'

  'Oh, yes,' Mrs Gladstone replied, 'and if you wait he'll be down to tea in five minutes.'26 Yet, even now the Queen had not seen the last of the 'abominable' old man who returned to power after a Liberal victory in the election of 1892, a victory won by a narrow margin which prompted the Queen to comment, 'These are trying moments & it seems to me a defect in our much famed Constitution, to have to part with an admirable Govt like Ld Salisbury's for no question of any importance or any particular reason, merely on account of the number of votes.'27

  She did not hesitate to announce in the Court Circular that she took leave of Lord Salisbury 'with regret'; nor did she trouble to conceal her reluctance to entrust the government of the country and the protection of her empire 'to the shaking hand of an old, wild, incomprehensible man of 82V2'. When he came for his first audience he seemed quite as old as that, 'greatly altered & changed, not only much aged, walking rather bent, with a stick, but altogether; his face shrunk, deadly pale, with a weird look in his eye, a feeble expression about the mouth, & the voice altered'.28 He forgot to kiss hands; and subsequently remembering the omission, he repaired it just before dinner. The Queen said coldly, 'It should have been done this afternoon.'29

  At least, the man's frailty, so she hoped, would make it easier for her to refuse to accept as members of his Cabinet men of whom she disapproved, whatever the country's 'much famed constitution' might be supposed to say on the subject. She objected, for instance, to Henry Labouchere, the Radical Member for Northampton, both on moral grounds - he had lived with his wife, an actress, before marriage - and for political reasons - his attacks on the monarchy in his weekly journal, Truth, were unforgivable.30 Labouchere complained to Ponsonby that it was unconstitutional of her to object to his appointment; but she said it did not matter what the man said: she would not agree to have him in the Cabinet. Gladstone gave way; and, with characteristic loyalty to the throne, took upon himself the responsibility of excluding Labouchere without mentioning the Queen's veto.31 When the men whose appointment she did accept appeared before her, she found them 'a motley crew', particularly Sir William Harcourt, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, who had grown to resemble an elephant. She was studiedly distant with them all, and thought they looked too absurd when, instead of rising to their feet after having been sworn in, they crawled forwards to kiss her hand on their knees. As for Gladstone he was more didactic than ever, 'half crazy, half silly', as well as deaf. It was really 'a farce' having to deal with the 'deluded old fanatic' on such terms as they were. He truly was impossible. That winter at Balmoral she grew quite red in the face one Sunday with the effort of suppressing her laughter when the Minister in his thick Scottish accent prayed that the Lord would bestow His wisdom upon the Queen's Cabinet 'who sorely needed it'.32 At the wedding of the Prince of Wales's son, Prince George, to Princess May of Teck, in the summer of 1893, not long before his eighty-fourth birthday, Gladstone took it upon himself to sit down in the Queen's marquee even though she had declined to shake hands with him, merely giving him 'only a very stiff bow'. 'Does he perhaps think,' she asked a cousin indignantly, 'that this is a public tent?'[lv]33

  Gladstone struggled on for another eight months until, at the end of February 1894, 'the deluded old fanatic', losing his sight and hard of hearing, felt obliged to tender his resignation. The occasion was painful for them both: she could not bring herself to express the sentiments which he longed to hear, nor even to thank him for his long service; and the letter she wrote to him afterwards was scarcely less formal than her manner. She would confer a peerage on him, she said; but she knew he would not accept it.34

  To Mrs Gladstone she behaved less coldly. She asked her and her husband to stay at Windsor the night before his resignation. The next morning after breakfast Catherine Gladstone, in tears, assured the Queen that her husband had always been devoted to Her Majesty and to the Crown. 'She repeated this twice,' the Queen wrote, '& begged me to allow her to tell him that I believed it which I did; for I am convinced it is the case, though at times his actions might have made it difficult to believe. She spoke of former days & how long he had known me & dear Albert. I kissed her when she left.'35

  Without asking for Gladstone's advice as to a successor, the Queen sent for Lord Rosebery.

  She liked Rosebery; but his relationship with her, complicated by his acute shyness which sometimes brought out her own, was not an easy one. She treated him as though he were a small boy in constant need of advice and admonition, perpetually criticizing his speeches which ought to be 'less jocular', more 'serious' in tone, 'more befitting a Prime Minister'. A speech at Bradford in which he referred to the House of Lords, 'that permanent barrier against the Liberal Party' as 'a great national danger', was particularly objectionable. She reprimanded him sternly for speaking in such a manner without consulting her, without 'obtaining her sanction'.36 His policies, she objected, often seemed framed merely 'with the sole purpose of flattering useless Radicals'. His Government, weak and divided, was short-lived; and Rosebery, unhappy in office, was by no means sorry to see it disintegrate. The Queen welcomed back Lord Salisbury who remained in power for the rest of her reign.

  When Gladstone died in May 1898 the Queen could not bring herself to feel the least regret and was much annoyed when the Prince of Wales, who had the greatest respect for Gladstone, a man utterly unlike himself, acted as pall-bearer at his funeral. What advice had he taken and what precedent had he followed for doing such a thing? his mother demanded to know. In a mood of rare defiance, the Prince replied shortly that he had not taken any advice and knew of no precedent.37

  Nor could the Queen bring herself at first to write to Mrs Gladstone to express her regret at her husband's death. She had to concede 'he was a good & vy religious man', that he was 'full of ideas for bettering the advancement of the country', that he was always 'most loyal' to her personally and 'ready to do anything for the Royal Family'; but she could not agree that he was a great Englishman. He was 'a clever man, full of talent, but he never tried to keep up the honour and prestige of Gt Britain. He tried to separate England from Ireland and to set class against class.' The harm he did could not 'easily be undone'.38 When Harriet Phipps asked her if she really was not going to write to Mrs Gladstone, she said, 'No, I did not like the man. How can I say I am sorry when I am not?'39 All she could do was to tell the widow, in a tribute afterwards printed in The Times, that her husband was 'one of the most distinguished statesmen of [her] reign' and that she would 'gratefully remember how anxious he always was to help and serve me and mine in all that concerned [her] personal welfare and that of [her] family'.40

  She could never, however, bring herself to recognize fully Gladstone's great talents and virtues, either in his lifetime or after his death. His 'mixture of politics and religion' was objectionable; his tendency to treat her opinions and the information she was able to relay to him without apparent interest was exasperating; his appeal to the people and the respect which they felt for him aroused her deepest jealousy; the impression that he gave of being satisfied that he always knew best she found profoundly irritating. She was amused when Lord Salisbury told her that no one could understand how Gladstone managed to listen to a sermon without rising to his feet to reply.41

  Yet Gladstone was almost pathetically grateful when the Queen's behaviour to him was gracious, when, most unusually, he and his wife were asked to Windsor, and when, on the occasion of their last meeting in France in March 1897, she was 'very decidedly kind' and actually shook hands with him, a privilege which he 'apprehended was rather rare with men' and which, so he said, 'had never happened with me during all my life'.42

  Gladstone compared the Queen's attitude towards him to that of his own towards a mule which had carried him for miles when he had been on holiday in Sicily. 'I had been on the back of the beast for many
scores of miles ... It had rendered me much valuable service. But ... I could not get up the smallest shred of feeling for the brute. I could neither love nor like it.'43

  Chapter 50

  GOLDEN JUBILEE

  'Never, never can I forget this brilliant year.'

  'Never, never can I forget this brilliant year,' the Queen wrote in her journal as 1887, the year of her Golden Jubilee, came to an end, a year 'so full of marvellous kindness, loyalty & devotion of so many millions which I really could hardly have expected. '1

  She was not the only person to be surprised, since there had recently been a resurgence of criticism in the press of her continued avoidance of those appearances in public from which she still shrank; and at a Liberal parliamentary dinner a large number of the guests remained in their seats when the loyal toast was proposed, several of them not only declining to stand but even hissing.