Queen Victoria Read online

  There were downsides to this relationship. Melbourne’s manner to the Queen, observed Greville, and hers to him, were embarrassing: ‘his, so parental and anxious, but always so respectful and deferential; hers, indicative of such entire confidence, such pleasure in his society. She is continually talking to him. . . he always sits next her at dinner’.43 It was not a relationship expected between sovereign and prime minister. Moreover, he prophesised that if ‘Melbourne should be compelled to resign, her privation will be the more bitter on account of the exclusiveness of her intimacy with him’.44

  More importantly, the strong relationship between the Queen and her premier was detrimental to the development of constitutional monarchy. The Queen admired Melbourne even though his government was thought ‘miserably weak, dragging on a sickly existence. . . and so incapable of standing, on any great principles, that at last they have, or appear to have, none to stand on’.45 Between 1837 and 1840 the Whigs were too politically frail, and Melbourne too indolent, to carry out important measures. In reality, and only with the support of the Queen and the Irish MPs, were Melbourne and his party – just about – able to cling to office.

  A weak government cannot deliver a programme of reform, so only minor changes were made, mostly tidying up legislation of the previous Whig government. There was a Municipal Corporations Act; a Marriage Act that gave people the right to marry in a local register office; and a Chimney Sweeps Act that raised the minimum age of apprenticeship to 16. In addition, there were various Acts to abolish the death penalty for a number of statutory offences – forgery, piracy, shooting, stabbing and for having or procuring an abortion – and replacing it with transportation for life; a Slave Compensation Act which compensated former slave owners for the loss of their freed slaves; and a Custody of Infants Act which allowed mothers custody of their children up to the age of seven, and for the right of access to older children. The Queen thought the Custody of Infants Act a good thing and criticised one lord who ‘wanted to exclude Roman Catholic women from having the same, which I do think too atrocious’.46

  At the time of the Queen’s accession, only a tiny percentage of men were able to take part in the parliamentary process. Women still did not have the vote. Even so, the Queen had no wish to widen the franchise further. In 1838, a Chartist petition put forward six demands, including a vote for every man over the age of 21, a secret ballot, annual parliaments, equal electoral districts, the abolition of property qualifications for MPs and payment for MPs. The Queen paid little attention to it. A year later, after a widespread national campaign, the Chartists took a large petition to parliament only to have parliament refuse to accept it. Several outbreaks of violence occurred. In November 1839 one of the most serious outbursts occurred in Newport, Monmouthshire, when a crowd of about 20,000, large numbers of whom were armed with rifles, marched on the town. The Mayor called out the troops: a violent and bloody battle took place and about 22 Chartists died in the fracas. The main leaders of the march were found guilty of high treason and sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered. Queen Victoria had little sympathy for the rebels and rejected a petition to pardon them. In her view, riots were a precursor of revolution. In the end, after a nationwide petitioning campaign and direct lobbying of Melbourne, the government commuted the sentence. The Queen, possibly in protest, invited the Mayor of Newport, who had suppressed the demonstration, to dine at the Palace, ‘thanked him for his services and said he had set an excellent example to . . . the country’.47 He was also knighted.

  Britain may have been the workshop of the world but the exploited majority who helped create this wealth went unrewarded. The 1833 Factory Act made it illegal to employ children under the age of nine and restricted the hours of children between 9 and 13 years of age. Nevertheless, conditions in factories remained abominable: children were beaten, malnourished and often worked on unguarded machines. Accidents were common. Melbourne informed the Queen that the accounts of factory children were ‘greatly exaggerated. . . He says it’s better children should work than be idle and starve.’48 The British cotton industry depended on slave-grown cotton for its factories. Britain abolished the slave trade in 1807 and slavery in 1833. However, the notorious ‘apprenticeship’ system replaced it. In this egregious system, former slaves had few rights and remained subject to the same punishments they had endured as slaves. In 1838, an Amendment to the Abolition of Slavery Act made it unlawful for female apprentices to be placed on a treadmill, in a penal gang, in chains, or to be punished by whipping, beating or cutting off her hair. It also forbade the whipping or beating of male slaves. Queen Victoria noted in her journal that ‘I must just observe that the necessity of this Act shows how shockingly cruel and cheating the Masters are’.49

  Political crises

  On 24 Friday, May 1839, Victoria wrote in her journal that ‘this day I go out of my teens and become 20!’50 A sweet enough entry in her journal but her juvenile naivety was evident. At first, the young, attractive and vivacious queen had enchanted her loyal subjects. This changed dramatically in early 1839 when she became embroiled in two political scandals, one regarding the private life of a Tory lady-in-waiting, the other concerning her manipulation of government. An older, wiser queen might have avoided such injudicious scandals: they were the blunders of an immature, egocentric and opinionated girl.

  The Queen’s popularity plummeted when she became embroiled in the first of these episodes. It concerned Lady Flora Hastings, a single woman from an aristocratic and powerful Tory family and one of her mother’s ladies-in-waiting. Lady Flora’s stomach was seen to swell: Victoria and Lehzen had no doubt ‘that she is – to use the plain words – with child!! . . . the horrid cause of all this is the Monster and demon Incarnate’,51 that is, the detested John Conroy. Interestingly, at a time in history when girls were kept in sexual ignorance, Victoria seemed very knowledgeable about pregnancy and its causes. She certainly appeared scandalised by a young, unmarried, aristocratic lady being pregnant and asked Melbourne to sort it out. Victoria’s attitude towards Lady Flora suggests a young woman of strong moral rectitude but, in reality, it was more a malicious revenge against her mother and her mothers’ ladies-in-waiting. Victoria loathed Flora Hastings and her Tory politics, regarding her as a spy of John Conroy. Indeed Queen Victoria never forgave Lady Flora for giving support to Conroy when he harassed the young Princess at Ramsgate.

  Victoria’s hasty accusations were shown to be false. When Lady Flora was eventually medically examined, it was found that she had advanced cancer of the liver. Soon the slanders experienced by Lady Flora filled the newspapers, especially after Flora’s mother, Lady Hastings, published her letters to Melbourne. These letters showed the Queen in a distinctly unfavourable light. Queen Victoria was furious that the ‘wicked old foolish woman Lady Hastings has had her whole correspondence with Lord Melbourne published in the Morning Post. . . I could have and would have wished to have hanged the Editor and the whole Hastings family for their infamy.’52 She never blamed herself for the slanderous gossip. Lady Flora died on 5 July, a few months after the scandal first broke. Lytton Strachey observed that ‘the tide of opinion turned violently against the queen and her advisers; high society was disgusted by all this washing of dirty linen in Buckingham Palace; the public at large was indignant at the ill-treatment of Lady Flora’.53 The young queen’s popularity began to evaporate; she was publicly insulted, hissed at during Royal Ascot and when she sent a representative to the funeral of Lady Flora, the carriage was stoned. The Queen ‘used to ecstatic huzzas from Parliament and the newspapers reacted violently against the unexpected hostility’.54 Rather than stand back and reflect on the loss of her popularity, the Queen attacked the Tories. The Tories, she later told Prince Albert, ‘really are very astonishing; as they cannot and dare not attack us in Parliament, they do everything that they can to be personally rude to me’.55 Once more, Queen Victoria’s partiality was disturbingly evident, leading Tories to accuse her of acting as the queen of t
he Whigs, not as queen of Britain. Certainly Victoria appeared to be too young and inexperienced to realise that she had brought the Crown into disrepute.

  Meanwhile, a second scandal began in May 1839 when Melbourne’s majority was whittled down to five and he was forced to resign. For Victoria, ‘the state of agony, grief and despair into which this placed me, may be easier imagined than described. All, all my happiness gone! . . . I felt quite in despair and did nothing but cry.’56 In her view, Melbourne had the

  ‘confidence of the Crown’, God knows! No Minister, no friend, ever possessed it so unboundedly as this truly excellent Lord Melbourne possesses mine! But I am but a poor helpless girl, who clings to him for support and protection, – and the thought of all all my happiness being possibly at stake, so completely overcame me, that I burst into tears, and remained crying for some time.57

  When the Queen insisted that she hated the Tories, Melbourne tried to restrain such bigotry by telling Victoria that she ‘should have no dislikes, you should treat them all as a pack of cards’.58 The Queen valued her friendship with Melbourne, ignored the political convention that monarchs should not fraternise with former party leaders and invited him to dinner as usual, an invitation Melbourne sensibly refused. He wrote to Victoria saying that it would be unwise to ‘dine with your Majesty. . . It would create feeling, possibly lead to remonstrance, and throw a doubt upon the fairness and integrity of your Majesty’s conduct.’59 Once more, Queen Victoria disregarded his advice and continued to write to Melbourne, thus imperilling her own position and that of the Crown. Victoria needed to learn that a queen’s personal view of politics and politicians should be judiciously exercised or else kept well hidden.

  Melbourne advised the Queen to send for the Duke of Wellington, a former Conservative prime minister and commander-in-chief of the army. When he arrived, Wellington refused office and so Robert Peel was summoned. Peel was very different from Victoria’s previous experience of a charming, sophisticated and light-hearted prime minister: the young Queen thought Peel a cold, odd man and confided to Melbourne that ‘I don’t like his manner’.60 Peel was in a difficult position for he was trying to form a government with a minority in the House of Commons and needed the support of his sovereign. His anxiety increased when he asked the Queen to replace some of her Whig ladies-in-waiting – in effect royal personal assistants – with those of a Tory persuasion to reflect the governing party and royal confidence in his ministry. Victoria – angry, upset, reckless, prejudiced, immature and politically inexperienced – refused. Melbourne was partly to blame. When Victoria ascended the throne, he had recommended a number of ladies-in-waiting, all of whom were related either to himself or to his Whig colleagues. The mistress of the robes and the ladies of the bedchamber were all Whigs.61 Naturally, Victoria formed strong attachments to them and did not wish to replace them with other, inimical, political appointments. However, Peel did not wish to create ‘the impression that the confidence of the Queen was bestowed on his enemies and not himself’.62

  Queen Victoria, acting more like a young head-strong girl who had had her wish thwarted rather than a reigning monarch, complained to Melbourne. Peel, she claimed, ‘has behaved very ill, he insisted on my giving up my Ladies, to which I replied that I never would consent, and I never saw a man so frightened. . . Keep yourself in readiness, for you may soon be wanted.’63 The crisis lasted four days, encouraged by Melbourne who met regularly with the Queen and wrote to her daily. He recommended that she write to Peel saying ‘the Queen having considered the proposal made to her yesterday by Sir Robert Peel to remove the Ladies of her Bedchamber, cannot consent to adopt a course which she conceives to be contrary to usage, and which is repugnant to her feelings’.64 The Queen wrote exactly as suggested. She won the battle. Peel resigned and Melbourne returned for a further two years, still with a small majority and still leading a rather unstable government.

  The Queen’s behaviour over what was termed the ‘bedchamber crisis’ drew forth an enthusiastic burst of loyalty from the Whigs. The Whig papers denounced Peel, maintaining that

  the attempt of Sir Robert Peel to ‘ride roughshod through the Queen’s Palace’ has roused a spirit in her MAJESTY which has blighted the full-blown hopes of the Tories. In her resistance to the unbecoming dictation of the Tory leader, QUEEN Victoria will have the cordial approbation and sympathy of her subjects, both male and female. . . To carry the political changes into the inner apartments of a female sovereign, to insist on the removal of her female attendants, her chosen friends, is nothing less than tyranny.65

  In contrast, the Tories ‘gnashed their teeth with rage’.66 Traditionally, Tories were strong royalists, loyal to the monarch, but the young Queen tested their values severely. Lord Greville observed that ‘among other bad signs of these times, one is the decay of loyalty in the Tory party’. They seemed ‘not to care one straw for the Crown, its dignity, or its authority, because the head on which it is placed does not nod with benignity to them’.67 Speeches against the Queen were common. According to Greville, ‘the Tories, the professors and protectors of Conservative principles, the abhorrers of changes, who would not have so much as a finger laid upon the integrity of the Constitution, are ready to roll the Crown in the dirt, and trample it under their feet’.68 The Times newspaper, generally strongly monarchist but also strongly Tory, complained that the female clique at the palace ‘have done their Royal mistress such unmerited and almost irreparable mischief. Here, then, is an Administration about to attempt to resume office – the country against them; the House of Lords against them; not possessing the confidence of the house of Commons; but supported by a female “array” of petticoat influence at the Palace’.69

  The damage to the Queen’s reputation was severe. ‘It is a high trial to our institutions’ complained Greville, when the wishes of a 19-year-old queen could overturn a great ministry. The Whigs had resigned because they no longer enjoyed parliamentary support, yet they remained in office ‘for the purpose of enabling the Queen to exercise her pleasure without any control or interference’. 70 The whole affair was seen as ‘utterly anomalous and unprecedented and a course as dangerous as unconstitutional’.71

  It may have seemed a victory for the Queen but it was to be the last time a British monarch was able to block the formation of a government. Victoria had won but at a cost to her popularity. The crisis lasted four days, days which cast a long shadow over the Queen and her government. The impropriety of continuing to deal with a previous government, combined with the Queen’s obvious hostility to the incoming one was unsound practice. Victoria may have triumphed but her popularity had disappeared in a flash.

  Palmerston and foreign policy: 1837–1841

  Queen Victoria took a greater interest in foreign policy than in domestic, especially in matters affecting the interests of her extended family. Her first foreign secretary, the Whig politician Lord Palmerston (1784–1865), is remembered both for his robust foreign policy during a period when Britain was at its most powerful and for his disagreements with the Queen. This was not always the case. In the early years of her reign, Queen Victoria simply approved of whatever her foreign secretary recommended, often asking him for advice on how to compose official letters or even who to invite for state dinners. Encouraged by the rapport he enjoyed with his sovereign, Palmerston began to send off dispatches to foreign governments without seeking royal approval, a practice that in future years would cause increasing tensions between himself and his – by now less impressionable – young sovereign.

  In Palmerston’s view, the main aim of foreign policy was to safeguard the interests of Britain in the world, keep the balance of power in Europe, and advance the cause of constitutional monarchy whenever possible; in contrast, Queen Victoria grew to believe that foreign policy should help protect her royal relatives against revolutionary republicanism. Under Palmerston’s aegis, Britain’s imperialist expansion continued unabated: the first Anglo-Afghan war occurred between 1839 and 1842;
Beirut and Acre were attacked; the British East India Company captured Aden; unrest in British Canada led to the establishment of the Province of Canada; and New Zealand was colonised; David Livingstone left for Africa and the construction of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square was begun.

  At first, relationships between Queen Victoria and Palmerston were cordial even though she disapproved of his character. Palmerston was well known as a notorious philanderer who had fathered several illegitimate children. During a visit to Windsor in 1839, he outraged the Queen by entering the bedroom of one of Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting, locking the door behind him and placing furniture in front of the other. The lady in question jumped out of bed and called for help. Victoria never forgave Palmerston’s sexual incontinence.