QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  Lord George Hamilton thought that it would be as well not to make any more enquiries which might exacerbate this 'Court commotion'. He felt sure that the 'little storm' would soon subside, and that the Munshi would 'hereafter be on the decline'. Bigge assured him that the Household would ensure that the Munshi would now be put in his 'proper place'.

  The Queen was determined, however, that the Munshi should not be humiliated. She had already 'got into a most violent passion' with Dr Reid who, with the support of the Prince of Wales, was brave enough to tell her that there were 'people in high places' who were saying to him that the 'only charitable explanation' of her support and defence of the Munshi was that she was not sane. She raged against Fleetwood Edwards for daring to oppose her giving way to the Munshi's demands that he should be appointed a Member of the Victorian Order. In enormously long letters to Dr Reid she complained of the distorted and exaggerated stories which were spread about her 'poor friend' who was so shamefully persecuted; and on Christmas Day 1897 during 'a most stormy talk for three quarters of an hour with the Queen about the Munshi', she grew, in Reid's words, 'quite mad with rage'.19 She berated the India Office for suggesting that he was not a gentleman; when the Aga Khan came to Windsor she saw to it that he had a conversation with her 'Indian Secretary'; she told Lord Curzon, who succeeded Lord Elgin as Viceroy of India, not to believe the derogatory rumours circulating about the Munshi and his family; she asked the Lord Chamberlain, the Earl of Hopetoun, to set a good example at Windsor by being polite to him. She was equally attentive to the interests of Rafiuddin Ahmed to compensate for the 'disgraceful affair' of his being expelled from Cimiez, requiring that he be invited to a court ball, suggesting that he be employed in gathering information from Mohammedans that might be useful to the Government, and asking that he should be awarded a Jubilee medal which, after all, was given to 'clergymen, actors, artists', so why not to him?

  Before her penultimate holiday at Cimiez, the Queen, who had long since taken to ending letters to the Munshi with the words, 'Your loving Mother', wrote to the Munshi to say: 'I have in my Testamentary arrangements secured your comfort and have constantly thought of you well. The long letter I enclose which was written nearly a month ago is entirely and solely my own idea, not a human being will ever know of it or what you answer me. If you can't read it I will help you then burn it at once. Your faithful true friend VRI.'20

  She had already made her peace with Frederick Ponsonby whose revelation of the occupation of the Munshi's father had so offended her. Not once having invited him to dinner or even addressed a word to him during that year's visit to Cimiez - although one of the reasons for wanting him as an equerry was his good command of French, an ability of which she had taken note when seeing him perform in a French play at Osborne - she turned to him as she was leaving and said, 'What a pity it is to leave Nice in such beautiful weather!' For her, it was a kind of apology.21

  After her return from Cimiez the gentlemen of the Household found the Munshi rather less obtrusive; but he retained his office and his cottages, and he retained the Queen's professed regard. And, although she confessed to Dr Reid that she sometimes quite dreaded seeing him because of the further 'trouble and mischief he was liable to provoke, she resisted all hints that he should be sent back to India.22 Indeed, Lord Salisbury was of the opinion that she quite enjoyed the squabbles he provoked since they were 'the only form of excitement she can have'.[lxix]22

  Chapter 59

  DIAMOND JUBILEE

  'No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me.'

  'Today is the day,' the Queen wrote in her journal on 23 September 1896, 'on which I have reigned longer, by a day, than any English sovereign. '1

  That autumn was a happy time for her. General Kitchener was doing well in the Sudan; Lord Salisbury's third Cabinet, formed the year before, was proving so much more amenable than any of Mr Gladstone's: 'Every day,' she told Salisbury, 'I feel the blessing of a strong Government in such safe and strong hands as yours.'2 And, towards the end of September, Princess Alice's beautiful daughter, Alexandra, known as Alicky, came with her husband, Tsar Nicholas II, to stay at Balmoral.

  The Queen had at first been much against Alicky's proposed marriage to the Tsarevich. She had hoped that she would marry her grandson, Prince Albert Victor, whom she had described, without too strict a regard for the truth, as not only 'kind' and 'affectionate' but also steady;3 and she had viewed the prospect of the girl's marriage to the Tsarevich with alarm 'on account of the country, the policy and differences with us and the awful insecurity to which that sweet child will be exposed'. When his father, Tsar Alexander III, died in November 1894 the Queen's fears for the future were increased by the thought of the 'sweet innocent gentle' girl being placed on 'that very unsafe Throne' and having her life 'constantly threatened'.4 It was a 'great additional anxiety' to her in her 'declining years'.

  Yet when she got to know Nicky she could well understand why Alicky wanted to marry him: she had 'never met a more amiable, simple young man, affectionate, sensible and liberal-minded'. Besides, Anglo-Russian relations might well be improved by his marriage to Queen Victoria's granddaughter.

  Nicky himself, who had stayed at Windsor in 1894, was made to feel quite at home. 'It feels funny to me,' he had told his brother Georgy, 'the extent to which I have become part of the English family. I have become almost as indispensable to [the Queen] as her Indians and her Scotsmen; I am, as it were, attached to her and the best thing is that she does not like me to leave her side ... She exudes such enormous charm.'5

  She much enjoyed the Tsar's company when he returned from Russia to stay at Balmoral in 1896; but he was not so taken with life in Scotland. He complained of having to go out shooting 'all day long'; and of the house being 'colder than Siberia'; and of suffering from toothache and a cheek 'much swollen from irritation at the stump of a decayed molar'.6 On a particularly wet and stormy day he and the Tsarina were required to go to church where Lady Lytton thought it was 'very interesting seeing the two pews full of the Royalties and the Emperor and Empress standing by the Queen even in the Scotch Kirk [at Crathie] where all is simple and reverent'.7 As though in relief that the visit was over, the Tsar gave the Master of the Household £1,000 to be distributed amongst the servants upon his departure, and to Sir James Reid who had cured his toothache he gave 'a gold cigarette case with his Imperial arms in gold and diamonds in the corner'.8

  While he was still at Balmoral numerous telegrams 'kept coming in all day' to congratulate the Queen on her having reigned even longer than George III. 'People wished to make all sorts of demonstrations,' she wrote in her journal, 'which I asked them not to do until I had completed the sixty years next June.'9

  Preparations for these celebrations in June had already begun; and the suggestion put forward by Joseph Chamberlain that, rather than European royalties as guests, prime ministers from the countries of the Empire should be invited to the Diamond Jubilee was gratefully accepted by the Queen who was profoundly thankful that she would not therefore have to fill Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle with unwelcome relations and their suites and especially gratified that she would have a perfect excuse for not inviting the Kaiser. She did, however, invite her cousin, the King of the Belgians, and his younger daughter, Princess Clementina. It was also proposed that, in view of the Queen's age, the programme of events should be less demanding than it had been ten years before. There was to be a family service in St George's Chapel on Sunday 20 June at eleven o'clock to coincide with services at other places of worship all over the country. At the Royal Family's service Prince Albert's Te Deum was to be sung as well as a Jubilee hymn set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan.[lxx] Alfred Austin, by now Poet Laureate, had offered the words for this hymn; but Sullivan had rejected them as unsuitable and the hymn had been written instead shortly before his death by Walsham How, Bishop of Wakefield, at the request of the Prince of Wales.

  On 22 June the early morning was over
cast, but at a quarter past eleven, as cannon boomed in Hyde Park to announce the departure of the Queen from Buckingham Palace to St Paul's Cathedral, the sun came out as it had done for her Golden Jubilee in obedience to the tradition which had become known as 'Queen's Weather'. Wearing a black silk dress, which was rendered less lugubrious by panels of grey satin, and with white flowers and a white aigrette in her bonnet, the Queen drove to the Cathedral in an open landau with the Princess of Wales and Princess Helena who was taking the place of Her Majesty's eldest daughter since Vicky's rank as Empress prevented her sitting with her back to the horses. The acclamations which greeted the Queen moved her to tears. 'How kind they are,' she said more than once, as the Princess of Wales leant forward to pat her hand in a gesture of both sympathy and congratulation. 'No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me, passing through those six miles of streets,' she wrote in her journal. 'The crowds were quite indescribable, and their enthusiasm really marvellous and deeply touching. The cheering was quite deafening, and every face seemed to be filled with real joy.'10

  'We were seated under the right wing of the National Gallery & could see right down Pall Mall & right up Charing Cross,' wrote Lady Monkswell in her account of the procession. 'It was overwhelming looking round upon the sea of people.'

  We did not pay any attention to the first 7 carriages [she continued]. But we woke up very wide when those containing the little Batten-berg, Connaught and Albany children came by, the children bowing their little best & beginning to look [very tired] ... The papers say the little Duke of Albany fainted before he got home, & I can quite believe it... Then we beheld the dear old Queen, - & what a cheer they gave her, it made the tears come to my eyes. She was sitting quite upright & brisk in the carriage not looking flushed or overcome, but smiling & bowing. She was dressed in grey & black, & held in her hand the very long-handled black lace parasol lined with white, given her by Mr. Charles Villiers, the oldest M.P. [Lady Lytton's uncle, Member for Wolverhampton since 1835]. She held it high up so that we could see her face. Now I reflect upon it, her attitude expressing so much vigour, her bows which made so much impression upon me (I got one to myself at a Drawing-room & remember it now, & her keen blue eyes) what she had already done that week & what she had still to do. I cannot believe that she is in her 79th year.

  When she was passed & we felt that we had done our Jubilee I had an over-powering emotion of thankfulness & satisfaction that I, with husband & sons, had been present at this great, this tremendous occasion.11

  The Queen rode along, the tears occasionally trickling down her cheeks, the Commander-in-Chief, Lord Wolseley, trotting in front of her, the Earl of Dundonald, colonel of the 2nd Life Guards, immediately behind, having some trouble with his mare and calling out 'Steady, old lady! Whao, old girl!' - injunctions which the Queen at first supposed to be addressed to her.12

  After a short service conducted beside the Cathedral steps, the Queen drove on across London Bridge and through the gaily decorated streets of the East End which were filled with cheering people who seemed, she said, 'delighted to see their little old Queen'. She crossed Westminster Bridge, drove through Parliament Square, past Horse Guards Parade and up The Mall back to the Palace. All had 'gone off splendidly' in the words of the Prince of Wales, the only mishap occurring when the 75-year-old Lord Howe, overcome by the heat, fainted and fell off his horse.

  As in 1887, after the Golden Jubilee parade, the next few days were busy and tiring. Again there were receptions and garden parties, military reviews, banquets and parades of troops from all over the Empire, and a march past of some four thousand boys from several public schools, all cheering as they passed Her Majesty, the Eton and Harrow boys looking, she thought, rather smarter than the rest.

  She was given a welcome quite as vociferous three years later when, after the relief of Ladysmith in February 1900, the second war against the Boers in South Africa seemed to be reaching a not too inglorious conclusion. Throughout both wars, the first to be fought against a white enemy since the Crimean War, she had maintained an indomitable confidence, condemning the Boers as a 'horrid people, cruel 8c over-bearing', bidding farewell to her soldiers with a lump in her throat, sending them parcels of knitted garments and 100,000 tins of chocolate, welcoming them home on their return, vainly endeavouring to ensure that coloured troops should serve alongside white in battle, visiting hospitals, and going to open one in Bristol, visiting Woolwich Arsenal where the cheers of the thousands of workers 'quite drowned out' the band playing 'God Save the Queen', confessing that reading telegrams always made her feel ill, often breaking down and crying, so Frederick Ponsonby said, over the long lists of casualties,13 yet all the time insisting, even at the most worrying periods, that there was no one depressed in her own Household, that the war must be won even if the whole army had to go out. When A. J. Balfour, First Lord of the Treasury, came to Windsor with a gloomy report shortly after the British reverses in the 'Black Week' of December 1899, 'he was at once cut short with the characteristic, quick little bend of the head in which all regality seemed concentrated: "Please understand that there is no depression in this house; we are not interested in the possibilities of defeat; they do not exist." '14

  As she had done during the Crimean War the Queen took great interest in the distribution of medals. 'There was a pathetic moment yesterday,' Reginald Brett wrote in his diary after one investiture, 'when the Queen was wheeled up to Findlater and the other wounded V.C, both sitting in chairs. They were ordered to rise but the Queen said, "Most certainly not," and raised herself without help (a very unusual thing) and stood over them while she decorated them with the Cross.'15

  Chapter 60

  LIFE AT COURT

  'It was a great crime to meet her in the grounds ... and we all took good care that this should never happen.'

  When in 1894 Frederick Ponsonby had arrived at Osborne aged twenty-seven, he had found that all the senior gentlemen of the Household had grown old in the Queen's service - two of them were eighty - and that he himself as Junior Equerry had very little to do. After breakfast he went to the equerries' room where he read the newspapers and wrote private letters. At noon the Queen went out in her pony-chair, accompanied by a lady-in-waiting, a maid-of-honour or one of her daughters, regardless of the weather: it was not considered in the least surprising that Princess Beatrice suffered from rheumatism at an early age. As soon as the Queen had driven away, the Household, who had to remain indoors so long as the Queen was in the house, walked out too. 'But it was like a lunatic asylum,' Ponsonby said, 'as everybody went alone in different directions.'

  Luncheon for the gentlemen was served at two o'clock, the Master of the Household carving at one end of the table and the Junior Equerry at the other. 'These luncheons were always very amusing,' Ponsonby discovered, 'as there was much wit among the older men.'

  At three o'clock the Queen went out driving again, this time in a carriage and pair with an outrider in front and, if she were going to Cowes or some other town on the island, an equerry riding alongside the carriage, two equerries being required when Her Majesty had to attend some sort of function. Again the gentlemen took the opportunity of the Queen's departure to go out themselves, either for a walk or a ride, using only those particular carriages, divided into five categories, which were allotted to their use, and making sure that they did not come across her, since, as Ponsonby said, 'it was a great crime to meet her in the grounds ... and we all took good care that this should never happen. If by any unlucky chance we did come across her, we hid behind bushes. Sir William Harcourt [the Chancellor of the Exchequer], walking one day with my father, looked up and saw the Queen coming down the path. There was only one small shrub near, and Harcourt asked whether he was expected to hide behind that, but as he was six feet four inches high, my father suggested that the wisest thing to do was to turn back.' Nor was it only Ministers and members of the Household who were required to avoid Her Majesty: new servants were not all
owed to look her in the face, and when receiving orders had to gaze at the ground at her feet. If by chance they came across her in a corridor she would look straight ahead as though she had not noticed they were there.1

  The Queen was in the habit of protesting strongly against the social prejudices of the upper classes. 'The division of classes is the one thing which is most dangerous & reprehensible,' she once wrote, 'never intended by the law of nature & wh the Queen is always labouring to alter.' Yet, the social hierarchy of her own Household was a rigid one: it was possible to cross the barriers, as John Brown had done, but the barriers were never lowered.

  Having evaded the Queen, the members of the Household returned to the house when she did, the gentlemen being served tea in their own rooms, the ladies having 'a big tea' together. Then 'there was nothing for [Ponsonby] to do until dinner'.

  The next year, however, Ponsonby was appointed Assistant Private Secretary and he then found his time fully occupied in cyphering and decyphering messages; dealing with a mass of correspondence which Arthur Bigge left for his attention; making notes of all the papers which were sent to the Queen in case an important document, which she might keep for as long as a week, did not return; copying out parts of despatches which the Queen wanted to keep for her files; learning shorthand; improving his German and studying the Almanac de Gotha so that he could make himself more familiar with the complicated ramifi- cations of the royal family tree. He was also responsible for preparing the data on which the Queen based certain entries in her diary as she liked to be quite sure of the complete accuracy of her facts, though evidently she was not above allowing the occasional misstatement to appear when it cast her in a favourable or flattering light. Thus it was that in recounting the Queen's review of her colonial troops in 1897, Ponsonby - while knowing it to be false - included a statement, which had appeared in the newspapers, to the effect that Her Majesty had spoken to the Indian officers in Hindustani. When this was read out to her she objected, 'That's not true. I did not speak in Hindustani, but in English.' She was therefore asked if this part of the account should be omitted. 'No,' she decided. 'You can leave it, for I could have done so had I wished.'2