Queen Victoria (4 page)

The effect of this visit was to make France somewhat suspicious, and the Queen expressed her wish that it might not prevent the visit which had been promised by King Louis Philippe.

There was at one time actually danger of war over trouble in the East, but King Leopold, whose kingdom was in the happy position of having its independence guaranteed by the Powers,[2] was able to bring his influence to bear, and the critical period passed over, to the great relief of the Queen.

[Footnote 2: This, however, did not protect Belgium in 1914, when Germany did not hesitate to attack her.]

In 1844 King Louis Philippe paid his promised visit, of which the Queen said, “He is the first King of France who comes on a visit to the Sovereign of this country. A very eventful epoch, indeed, and one which will surely bring good fruits.”

The King was immensely pleased with everything he saw, and with the friendly reception he received. He assured the Queen that France did not wish to go to war with England, and he told her how pleased he was that all their difficulties were now smoothed over.

During his stay he was invested with the Order of the Garter - an Order, it is interesting to recollect, which had been created by Edward the Third after the Battle of Cressy, and whose earliest knights were the Black Prince and his companions.

The Corporation of London went to Windsor in civic state to present the King with an address of congratulation. He declared in his answer that “France has nothing to ask of England, and England has nothing to ask of France, but cordial union.”

But in 1848 the Orleans dynasty was overthrown, France proclaimed a republic, and King Louis Philippe, his wife and family were forced to flee to England. Here in 1850, broken in health, the King died.

In 1852 Louis Napoleon, who had been elected President for life, created himself Emperor, and in 1855, after the conclusion of the Crimean War and the death of the Emperor Nicholas, he visited England.

A State Ball was held of which the Queen wrote: “How strange to think that I, the granddaughter of George III, should dance with the Emperor Napoleon, nephew of England’s great enemy, now my nearest and most intimate ally, in the Waterloo room, and this ally only six years ago living in this country an exile, poor and unthought of! . . . I am glad to have known this extraordinary man, whom it is certainly impossible not to like when you live with him, and not even to a considerable extent to admire. I believe him to be capable of kindness, affection, friendship, and gratitude. I feel confidence in him as regards the future; I think he is frank, means well towards us, and, as Stockmar says, ‘that we have insured his sincerity and good faith towards us for the rest of his life.’“

The Queen and her husband paid frequent visits, and made many tours during their early married life. It was a great source of pleasure to both of them to feel that everywhere they went they were received with the greatest delight and enthusiasm.

In 1847 they visited Cambridge University, of which Prince Albert was now Chancellor. “Every station and bridge, and resting-place, and spot of shade was peopled with eager faces watching for the Queen, and decorated with flowers; but the largest, and the brightest, and the gayest, and the most excited assemblage was at Cambridge station itself. . . . I think I never saw so many children before in one morning, and I felt so much moved at the spectacle of such a mass of life collected together and animated by one feeling, and that a joyous one, that I was at a loss to conceive how any woman’s sides can bear the beating of so strong a throb as must attend the consciousness of being the object of all that excitement, the centre of attraction to all those eyes. But the Queen has royal strength of nerve.”[3]

[Footnote 3: The Duke of Argyll,
 
Queen Victoria
.]

In 1849 they paid their first visit to Ireland, and received a royal welcome on landing in Cork. The Queen noticed particularly that “the beauty of the women is very remarkable, and struck us much; such beautiful dark eyes and hair, and such fine teeth; almost every third woman was pretty, and some remarkably so.”

The royal children were the objects of great admiration. “Oh! Queen, dear!” screamed a stout old lady, “make one of them Prince Patrick, and all Ireland will die for you.”

In Dublin, the capital of a country which had very recently been in revolt, the loyal welcome was, if possible, even more striking.

The Queen writes: “It was a wonderful and striking spectacle, such masses of human beings, so enthusiastic, so excited, yet such perfect order maintained; then the numbers of troops, the different bands stationed at certain distances, the waving of hats and handkerchiefs, the bursts of welcome which rent the air - all made a never-to-be-forgotten scene.”

Lord Clarendon, writing of the results of the Irish tour, said, “The people are not only enchanted with the Queen and the gracious kindness of her manner and the confidence she has shown in them, but they are pleased with themselves for their own good feelings and behaviour, which they consider have removed the barrier that hitherto existed between the Sovereign and themselves, and that they now occupy a higher position in the eyes of the world.”

In 1850 they visited for the first time the Palace of Holyrood. This was a memorable occasion, for since Mary, Queen of Scots, had been imprisoned there, no queen had ever stayed within its walls.

The Queen took the liveliest interest in the many objects of historical interest which were shown to her. “We saw the rooms where Queen Mary lived, her bed, the dressing-room into which the murderers entered who killed Rizzio, and the spot where he fell, where, as the old housekeeper said to me, ‘If the lady would stand on that side,’ I would see that the boards were discoloured by the blood. Every step is full of historical recollections, and our living here is quite an epoch in the annals of this old pile, which has seen so many deeds, more bad, I fear, than good.”

Both the Queen and her husband had an especial love for animals, and the Queen’s suite, when she travelled, always included a number of dogs. Her favourites were Skye terriers and the so-called ‘turnspits’ which were introduced into this country by Prince Albert. One of the Queen’s great delights at Windsor was to walk round the farms and inspect the cattle, which are still, owing largely to the careful methods of feeding and tending instituted by the Prince, among the finest in the world. Kindness to animals was a lesson she taught to all her children, and pictures and statuettes of all her old favourites were to be found in her homes.

“Two men I honour, and no third. First, the toilworn Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man’s. . . . A second man I honour, and still more highly: Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the Bread of Life. . . . Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man’s wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest.”[4]

[Footnote 4: Carlyle,
 
Sartor Resartus
.]

To understand the many and bewildering changes which followed one another in rapid succession during the early years of Victoria’s reign it is necessary to read the literature, more especially the works of those writers who took a deep and lasting interest in the lives and work of the people.

Democracy, the people, or the toiling class, was engaged in a fierce battle with those forces which it held to be its natural enemies. It was a battle of the Rich against the Poor, of the masters against the men, of Right against Might. England was a sick nation, at war with itself, and Chartism and the Chartists were some of the signs of the disease. The early Victorian age is the age of Thomas Carlyle, the stern, grim prophet, who, undaunted by poverty and ill-health, painted England in dark colours as a country hastening to its ruin.

His message was old and yet new - for men had forgotten it, as they always have from age to age. This was an age of competition, of ‘supply and demand’; brotherly love had been forgotten and ‘cash payment’ had taken its place. Carlyle denounced this system as “the shabbiest gospel that had been taught among men.” He urged upon Government the fact that it was their
 
duty
 
to educate and to uplift the masses, and upon the masters that they should look upon their workers as something more than money-making machines. The old system of Guilds, in which the apprentice was under the master’s direct care, had gone and nothing had been put in its place.

The value of Carlyle’s teaching lies in the fact that he insisted upon the sanctity of work. “All true work is religion,” he said, and the essence of every true religion is to be found in the words, “Know thy work and do it.”

The best test of the worth of every nation is to be found in their standard of life and work and their rejection of a life of idleness. “To make some nook of God’s Creation a little fruitfuller, better, more worthy of God; to make some human hearts, a little wiser, manfuler, happier - more blessed, less accursed! It is work for a God. . . . Unstained by wasteful deformities, by wasted tears or heart’s-blood of men, or any defacement of the Pit, noble, fruitful Labour, growing ever nobler, will come forth - the grand sole Miracle of Man, whereby Man has risen from the low places of this Earth, very literally, into divine Heavens. Ploughers, Spinners, Builders, Prophets, Poets, Kings: . . . all martyrs, and noble men, and gods are of one grand Host; immeasurable; marching ever forward since the beginnings of the World.”[5]

[Footnote 5: Carlyle,
 
Past and Present
.]

Carlyle was, above all things, sincere; he looked into the heart of things, and hated half-beliefs. Men, he said, were accustoming themselves to say what they did not believe in their heart of hearts. The standard of English work had become lower; it was ‘cheap and nasty,’ and this in itself was a moral evil. Good must in time prevail over Evil; the Christian religion was the strongest thing in the world, and for this reason had conquered. He believed in wise compassion - that is to say, he kept his sympathy for those who truly deserved it, for the mass of struggling workers with few or none to voice their bitter wrongs.

His teachings are a moral tonic for the age, and though for a long time they were unpopular and distasteful to the majority, yet he lived to see much accomplished for which he had so earnestly striven.

Literature was beginning to take a new form. The novel of ‘polite’ society was giving place to the novel which pictured life in cruder and harsher colours. The life of the toiling North, of the cotton spinners and weavers was as yet unknown to most people.

In 1848 appeared
 
Mary Barton
, a book dealing with the problems of working life in Manchester. Mrs Gaskell, its author, who is best known to most readers by her masterpiece
 
Cranford
, achieved an instant success and became acquainted with many literary celebrities, including Ruskin, Dickens, and Charlotte Brontë, whose Life she wrote.

Mary Barton
 
was written from the point of view of labour, and
 
North and South
, which followed some years later, from that of capital. Her books are exact pictures of what she saw around her during her life in Manchester, and many incidents from her own life appear in their pages.

North and South
 
shows us the struggle not only between master and men, as representing capital and labour, but also between ancient and modern civilizations. The South is agricultural, easy-going, idyllic; the North is stern, rude, and full of a consuming energy and passion for work. These are the two Englands of Mrs Gaskell’s time.

The ways of the manufacturing districts, which seem unpleasing to those who do not really know them, are described with a faithful yet kindly pen, and we see that each life has its trials and its temptations.

In the South all is not sunshine, and the life of the labourer can be very hard - ”a young person can stand it; but an old man gets racked with rheumatism, and bent and withered before his time; yet he must work on the same, or else go to the workhouse.”

In the North men are often at enmity with their masters, and fight them by means of the strike. “State o’ trade! That’s just a piece of masters’ humbug. It’s rate o’ wages I was talking of. Th’ masters keep th’ state o’ trade in their own hands, and just walk it forward like a black bug-a-boo, to frighten naughty children with into being good. I’ll tell yo’ it’s their part - their cue, as some folks call it - to beat us down, to swell their fortunes; and it’s ours to stand up and fight hard - not for ourselves alone, but for them round about us - for justice and fair play. We help to make their profits, and we ought to help spend ‘em. It’s not that we want their brass so much this time, as we’ve done many a time afore. We’n getten money laid by; and we’re resolved to stand and fall together; not a man on us will go in for less wage than th’ Union says is our due. So I say, ‘Hooray for the strike.’“

The story appeared in
 
Household Words
, a new magazine of which Charles Dickens was the editor. He expressed especial admiration for the fairness with which Mrs Gaskell had spoken of both sides. Nicholas Higgins, whose words are quoted above, is a type of the best Lancashire workman, who holds out for the good of the cause, even though it might mean ruin and poverty to himself - ”That’s what folk call fine and honourable in a soldier, and why not in a poor weaver-chap?”