Sons, Servants and Statesmen (12 page)

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 particularly 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 in 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.

Naturally flattered and overwhelmed by his loyalty, she sent him a copy of the Prince Consort’s speeches bound in white morocco, personally inscribed to Disraeli ‘In recollection of the greatest and best of men from the beloved Prince’s broken-hearted widow.’ It was accompanied by a letter expressing ‘her deep gratification at the tribute he paid to her adored, beloved, and great husband. The perusal of it made her shed many tears, but it was very soothing to her broken heart to see such true appreciation of that spotless and unequalled character.’
²²

One year later, Queen and politician saw each other from a distance. At the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra in March 1863, seated in St George’s Chapel, he caught sight of the Queen, partly hidden in the balcony above, overlooking the ceremony. He looked at her through his eyeglass, but she gave him such a penetrating look in return that ‘I did not venture to use my glass again.’
²³