Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey (sites to read books for free TXT) 📕

“I do love a ship!” she exclaimed, ran up and down ladders with the greatest agility, and cracked jokes with the sailors.194 The Prince was more aloof. They visited Louis Philippe at the Château d’Eu; they visited King Leopold in Brussels. It happened that a still more remarkable Englishwoman was in the Belgian capital, but she was not remarked; and Queen Victoria passed unknowing before the steady gaze of one of the mistresses in M. Héger’s pensionnat. “A little stout, vivacious lady, very plainly dressed⁠—not much dignity or pretension about her,” was Charlotte Brontë’s comment as the royal carriage and six flashed by her, making her wait on the pavement for a moment, and interrupting the train of her reflections.195 Victoria was in high spirits, and even succeeded in instilling a little cheerfulness into her uncle’s sombre Court. King Leopold, indeed, was perfectly contented. His dearest hopes had been fulfilled; all his ambitions were satisfied; and for the rest of his life he had only to enjoy, in undisturbed decorum, his throne, his respectability, the table of precedence, and the punctual discharge of his irksome duties. But unfortunately the felicity of those who surrounded him was less complete. His Court, it was murmured, was as gloomy as a conventicle, and the most dismal of all the sufferers was his wife. “Pas de plaisanteries, madame!” he had exclaimed to the unfortunate successor of the Princess Charlotte, when, in the early days of their marriage, she had attempted a feeble joke. Did she not understand that the consort of a constitutional sovereign must not be frivolous? She understood, at last, only too well; and when the startled walls of the state apartments reechoed to the chattering and the laughter of Victoria, the poor lady found that she had almost forgotten how to smile.

Another year, Germany was visited, and Albert displayed the beauties of his home. When Victoria crossed the frontier, she was much excited⁠—and she was astonished as well. “To hear the people speak German,” she noted in her diary, “and to see the German soldiers, etc., seemed to me so singular.” Having recovered from this slight shock, she found the country charming. She was fêted everywhere, crowds of the surrounding royalties swooped down to welcome her, and the prettiest groups of peasant children, dressed in their best clothes, presented her with bunches of flowers. The principality of Coburg, with its romantic scenery and its well-behaved inhabitants, particularly delighted her; and when she woke up one morning to find herself in “dear Rosenau, my Albert’s birthplace,” it was “like a beautiful dream.” On her return home, she expatiated, in a letter to King Leopold, upon the pleasures of the trip, dwelling especially upon the intensity of her affection for Albert’s native land. “I have a feeling,” she said, “for our dear little Germany, which I cannot describe. I felt it at Rosenau so much. It is a something which touches me, and which goes to my heart, and makes me inclined to cry. I never felt at any other place that sort of pensive pleasure and peace which I felt there. I fear I almost like it too much.”196

V

The husband was not so happy as the wife. In spite of the great improvement in his situation, in spite of a growing family and the adoration of Victoria, Albert was still a stranger in a strange land, and the serenity of spiritual satisfaction was denied him. It was something, no doubt, to have dominated his immediate environment; but it was not enough; and, besides, in the very completeness of his success, there was a bitterness. Victoria idolised him; but it was understanding that he craved for, not idolatry; and how much did Victoria, filled to the brim though she was with him, understand him? How much does the bucket understand the well? He was lonely. He went to his organ and improvised with learned modulations until the sounds, swelling and subsiding through elaborate cadences, brought some solace to his heart. Then, with the elasticity of youth, he hurried off to play with the babies, or to design a new pigsty, or to read aloud the Church History of Scotland to Victoria, or to pirouette before her on one toe, like a ballet-dancer, with a fixed smile, to show her how she ought to behave when she appeared in public places.197 Thus did he amuse himself; but there was one distraction in which he did not indulge. He never flirted⁠—no, not with the prettiest ladies of the Court. When, during their engagement, the Queen had remarked with pride to Lord Melbourne that the Prince paid no attention to any other woman, the cynic had answered, “No, that sort of thing is apt to come later;” upon which she had scolded him severely, and then hurried off to Stockmar to repeat what Lord M. had said. But the Baron had reassured her; though in other cases, he had replied, that might happen, he did not think it would in Albert’s. And the Baron was right. Throughout their married life no rival female charms ever had cause to give Victoria one moment’s pang of jealousy.198

What more and more absorbed him⁠—bringing with it a curious comfort of its own⁠—was his work. With the advent of Peel, he began to intervene actively in the affairs of the State. In more ways than one⁠—in the cast of their intelligence, in their moral earnestness, even in the uneasy formalism of their manners⁠—the two men resembled each other; there was a sympathy between them; and thus Peel was ready enough to listen to the advice of Stockmar, and to urge the Prince forward into public life. A royal commission was about to be formed to enquire whether advantage might not be taken of the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament to encourage the Fine Arts in