The Life and Times of Queen Victoria; vol. 4 of 4

The letter—one of the most remarkable ever written by a sovereign to and of a subject—is worth quoting, not only on account of its biographical interest, but as a model of sincerity, tenderness, and good taste exhibited in an order of composition usually disfigured by artificiality both of sentiment and style.

The lions of the London season of 1872 were two foreign embassies—one from Japan and one from Burma. The Japanese were Envoys from a great Asiatic monarch, and were nobles of the first rank specially chosen to represent their Sovereign. Their refined manner, shrewd observations, quick intelligence, and mastery over the English tongue, rendered them general favourites. The so-called “Ambassadors” from Burma came to England on a different footing, and some authorities on Eastern affairs complained that they received an amount of attention and hospitality far beyond their deserts or their importance. It was said that they were officials chosen because of their low rank for the purpose of publicly slighting England; that they were sent to this country in order to establish a precedent for ignoring the Indian Viceroy, and enabling the King of Burma to treat with the Queen of England as a Peer. The Indian Viceroys had certainly been averse from permitting the Burmese Court to form direct diplomatic relations with European Courts; but in the East, Missions of Compliment are sometimes sent from Sovereigns to each other, and such Missions do not necessarily engage in diplomatic business. In this case the Burmese King Mindohn, by far the ablest ruler of the Alompra dynasty, had accepted the arrangement by which the diplomatic relations of Burma and the British Empire were carried on through an agent of the Indian Viceroy at Mandalay.[47] Indeed, one of the chief diplomatic difficulties between the two Governments—the great “Shoe Question,” as it was called—was not one capable of direct discussion between the Courts of St. James’s and Mandalay.[48] As to the rank of the Burmese Envoy, misconceptions on that point arose because Englishmen failed to understand that in Burma there was no such thing as hereditary rank outside the royal family of Alompra, the hunter king. Rank was conferred solely by official position, and the head of the Burmese Mission was a high official of the first grade, who was really President of the Hloht or Council of State. Under King Theebaw, who succeeded Mindohn, he became better known as the Kin-Woon Mingyee, and represented the party of peace and order at Mandalay with great ability and honesty of purpose. The Queen was rather better informed as to the antecedents of these distinguished visitors, and accordingly on Friday, the 21st of June, she received them at Windsor Castle. They brought with them many costly presents to her Majesty, of which an exceptionally magnificent bracelet, made of seven pounds of solid gold, was much talked about at the time. They also delivered a letter from the King, which began, “From His Great, Glorious, and Most Excellent Majesty, King of the Rising Sun, who reigns over Burma, to Her Most Glorious and Excellent Majesty Victoria, Queen of Great Britain and Ireland.” After her Majesty had received the presents, and made her acknowledgments through Major MacMahon, late Political Agent at Mandalay, the Embassy withdrew, and returned to London.

On the 1st of July the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh, Princess Louise, Princess Beatrice, and Prince Leopold visited the National Memorial erected in Hyde Park to the memory of the late Prince Consort. This was a strictly private visit, the monument being at the time incomplete.

Between the 15th and 20th of August the Queen broke her journey to Balmoral, and resided at Holyrood Palace, Edinburgh, for a few days. Though her visit was private, she was so gratified with the reception she everywhere received that she caused Viscount Halifax to address the following letter to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh:—

The death of the amiable and accomplished Princess Feodore of Hohenlohe-Langenburg on the 23rd of September plunged the Queen into deep despondency. The Princess was half-sister to her Majesty, and the tie that bound them together through life had been close and affectionate. “All sympathise with you,” wrote the Princess Louis to the Queen when she heard of her mother’s bereavement, “and feel what a loss to you darling aunt must be, how great the gap in your life, how painful the absence of that sympathy and love which united her life and yours so closely.”

CHAPTER XVIII.

GOVERNMENT UNDER DIFFICULTIES.

When the Session of 1873 opened, it is a curious fact that in London the universal complaint was that politics had become depressingly dull. But the lull really presaged a storm, in which the Government was wrecked. It was known that Mr. Gladstone intended to make the question of Irish University education the chief business of the Session, and it was admitted that next to this question the one of most consequence to the Government was that which was raised by the Dissenters, who demanded the extension of School Boards, and the establishment of compulsory education all over England, together with the repeal of the 25th clause of Mr. Forster’s Education Act. The bye-elections, which had been disastrous to the Ministry, showed that the Dissenters were in revolt, and that they “sulked in their tents,” instead of supporting Ministerial candidates. The Irish University Bill could not possibly be carried without Nonconformist support, and that could obviously not be hoped for if anything like “concurrent endowment” for the Roman Catholics defaced it. On the other hand, if the revenues of Trinity College were shared with Catholic scholars, Liberals like Mr. Fawcett and Mr. Vernon Harcourt would support Mr. Disraeli in opposing the measure. The Cabinet resolved to neutralise the expected secession of the small Fawcett-Harcourt group, by rendering their Bill acceptable to their powerful Nonconformist contingent, and Liberal tacticians were full of joyful anticipations when it leaked out that this plan was contemplated. As will be seen, one important contingency was never taken into consideration—the possible desertion of Mr. Gladstone’s Roman Catholic followers; and yet it was their desertion which wrecked the Bill and destroyed the Government.

The Queen’s speech was read to Parliament by Commission on the 6th of February, and it promised an Irish Education Bill, a Judicature Bill, a Land Transfer Bill, an Education Amendment Act, a Local Taxation Bill, and a Railway Regulation Bill. In the debate on the Address the Opposition leaders dwelt mainly on foreign questions, pressing the Government to say whether they were prepared to recommend the rules under which the Alabama case had been decided to the European Powers; and if so, whether they would recommend them as interpreted by the legal advisers of the Crown, or as interpreted by the majority of the arbitrators. Mr. Gladstone first said that the rules had been recommended for adoption by the Powers, but without any special construction being put on them. Then he had to correct himself before the debate closed, by explaining that he had made a mistake, for the rules had not yet been brought under the notice of Foreign Governments. This confession naturally forced the public to conclude that the Tories could not be far wrong when they declared that foreign affairs were neglected because Lord Granville was indolent and Mr. Gladstone neither knew nor cared anything about them.

On the 13th of February Mr. Gladstone introduced the Irish University Education Bill. It affiliated several other educational institutions besides Trinity College to the University of Dublin. Two of the Queen’s Colleges, established by Sir Robert Peel, were to be associated with the University, and the Queen’s University itself was to be abolished. Queen’s College at Galway was to be suppressed, because it had failed to attract students to its classrooms. The so-called Catholic University and several other Roman Catholic seminaries were also, in the same manner, to be attached to the Dublin University. The new University was to have an income of £50,000 a year, a fourth of which was taken from Trinity College, a fourth from the endowment for Queen’s University, three-eighths from the Irish Church surplus, whilst fees, it was expected, would make up the balance. It was to have professors for teaching in Dublin all academical subjects excepting history and mental philosophy, which were tabooed as too controversial for Ireland. Bursaries, Scholarships, and Fellowships were liberally endowed. Tests were to be abolished, the Theological Faculty of Trinity College was to be transferred—with an endowment—to the Disestablished Church, and the prohibited subjects, History and Philosophy, were not to be compulsory in examinations for degrees. The constituency of the University was to consist of all graduates of the affiliated colleges. The governing council of twenty-five was to be nominated in the Bill, after which, vacancies were to be filled up alternately by co-optation and Crown nomination. After ten years, however, equal numbers of the council were to be chosen, by the Crown, by co-optation, by the professors, and by the graduates. The Bill, according to the Bishop of Peterborough—by far the ablest Protestant ecclesiastic Ireland has produced in the Victorian period—“was as good as could be under the circumstances,” and “ought to have pleased all parties.”[49] Unfortunately it pleased nobody, and its weak point was obvious. It attempted to provide for separate denominational education in the affiliated colleges, and for mixed secular education in Trinity College and the University of Dublin, to which they were affiliated—the one system being as incompatible with the other as an acid with an alkali. As Mr. Gathorne-Hardy said, the exclusion of History and Philosophy rendered the new University a monster cui lumen ademptum. The proposal to make the Irish Viceroy its Chancellor recalled, he declared, the lines of Milton,

all the more that

At first the Bill was very well received, and there was a general disposition to admit that, in view of the limiting conditions of the problem, it was impossible to find a solution less offensive to the Protestants, and more generous to the Catholics of Ireland. But in a few days it became apparent that the measure was doomed. Ministers had been led to believe by their colleague, Mr. Monsell, who was the spokesman of the Catholic clergy, that the compromise would be accepted by them. But the Catholic Bishops met in secret, and decided to oppose the Bill.[50] As the Catholics opposed it for giving them too little, the Protestants opposed it because it gave the Catholics too much. The apostles of culture opposed it because it cut History and Philosophy out of the University curriculum, and in doing so they furnished all discontented Liberals with a good non-political excuse for voting against the Government. The Bill was defeated on the 12th of March by a vote of 287 to 284, the votes of 36 Catholic Members and 9 Liberals[51] having turned the scale. To the very last moment the issue was uncertain, because it was known that if Mr. Gladstone had offered to abandon the teaching clauses of the Bill, he would have won over a sufficient number of Catholic votes to carry it.[52]

Mr. Gladstone’s defeat was followed by the resignation of his Ministry, and the crisis was a most embarrassing one for the Queen. Mr. Disraeli, when sent for by the Sovereign, attempted to form a Cabinet, but did not succeed, mainly because Mr. Gathorne-Hardy objected to the party holding office on sufferance. When Mr. Disraeli reported his failure to the Queen, she again consulted Mr. Gladstone, who, however, suggested that some other Conservative leader—obviously hinting at Lord Derby—might succeed where Mr. Disraeli had failed. But Lord Derby was at Nice when the crisis became acute; and though the Tory Party felt that he was in a special sense their natural leader at such a juncture,[53] they knew that it was decidedly inconvenient for the Prime Minister to be a member of the Upper House, and that he would refuse to enter into anything like rivalry with Mr. Disraeli. Yet a restful Ministry, competent in administration, under a cool-headed, sensible Conservative aristocrat, was what the majority of the people, alarmed by harassed “vested interests,” desired at the time. Be that as it may, Mr. Disraeli, when appealed to a second time by the Queen, refused to assist her out of the difficulty, and Mr. Gladstone was again summoned to the rescue. He returned to power with his Cabinet unchanged and disavowed any intention to dissolve Parliament. Mr. Disraeli’s refusal to take office had given the Queen infinite anxiety, and his defence of his conduct was lame and halting. He was, he said, in a minority; he had not a policy, and could not get one ready till he had been for some time in office, so that he might see what was to be done. He did not desire to experience the humiliation of governing the country under a régime of hostile resolutions. The Queen and the country were alike conscious of the flimsiness of these excuses. Mr. Disraeli never met the question—which, to the Queen, seemed unanswerable—Why did he paralyse the existing Administration, if he was not prepared to put another in its place?

Mr. Disraeli in refusing to govern England himself whilst he prevented Mr. Gladstone from governing it, was pursuing a policy which was as unconstitutional as it was unpatriotic. When he said he could not take office because he must dissolve in May in any case, and that he could not dissolve because he had not a policy to go to the country with, and when he explained that till he had time to study the archives of the Foreign Office he could not tell what ought to be done with questions such as the Russian advance on Khiva, and the Three Rules of the Washington Treaty, men smiled cynically. They asked each other if Lord Palmerston in 1869 was afraid to take the place of the Tory Government because he wanted time to form an opinion on Lord Malmesbury’s policy towards the Italian war of Liberation. Yet Mr. Disraeli gave a truthful account of his motives. He had no policy. Hence when he dissolved Parliament, as he was bound to do after winding up the business of the Session, he must have gone to the country on a purely personal issue between himself and Mr. Gladstone. Doubtless at a time when the nation was getting wearied of restless statesmen, a contest of the sort would have been disastrous to Mr. Gladstone, but not when raised by Mr. Disraeli, who was notoriously even flightier than his antagonist. To have won a General Election on such an issue the Tories must have fought under Lord Derby’s banner. Mr. Disraeli, however, had no intention of giving way to Lord Derby, and his followers did not dare to put him aside, more especially as he had in view a clever scheme of strategy. His idea was to force Mr. Gladstone to dissolve on a positive programme, and then to defeat him by a running fire of destructive criticism. These tactics might bring the Tories back to office under his own leadership, absolutely uncommitted to any definite policy whatever.

When Mr. Gladstone resumed office it was soon seen that he had not only wrecked his party, but compromised the prestige of the House of Commons. His was admittedly a weakened and discredited Ministry. It had been one of Mr. Disraeli’s favourite theories that whenever a feeble Ministry attempted to govern England, power passed from Parliament to the Crown. At one time, no doubt, the theory seemed plausible enough, but the Session of 1873 completely upset it. No sooner had Mr. Gladstone returned to office than power passed from the Crown and the House of Commons to the House of Lords. The will of the Peers was supreme over all. They said or did what they pleased, and quashed Bill after Bill without the least regard to the sentiments of the Queen, the desire of the Commons, or the interests of the country. The Peers rejected the Bill improving Church organisation contemptuously, though it had passed the Commons without a division. By asserting obsolete privileges of appellate jurisdiction over Scotland and Ireland, they disfigured the Judicature Bill, which consolidated the law courts and constituted a high court of appeal. They destroyed Mr. Stansfeld’s useful Rating Bill almost without debate. They opened a way for the reintroduction of purchase in the army, rejected the Landlord and Tenant Bill without even seeing it, and quashed a Bill, promoted by Mr. Vernon Harcourt and supported by the Government, to protect working men against being imprisoned under the law of conspiracy for non-statutable offences committed in the course of a strike. And the curious thing was that from the day Mr. Gladstone returned to office to lead a moribund Ministry and a disorganised House of Commons, the people submitted without a murmur to the resolute and decisive despotism of the Peers. Thus it came to pass that when the Session ended the Ministry seemed to have sunk into a dismal swamp of humiliation—a humiliation which was intensified by administrative scandals and internal feuds. It was shown that Mr. Lowe, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, prepared plans of his own for public works, without consulting the Public Works Office. Mr. Ayrton, as head of that Department, in his place in the House of Commons, repudiated all responsibility for the votes of money for his department which were altered without his knowledge and consent by Mr. Lowe. There was a painful “scene” in the House of Commons at the end of July when these disclosures were made, and when Mr. Ward Hunt formally asked the Government if its Chancellor of the Exchequer and Chief Commissioner of Works were on speaking terms. Mr. Baxter created another scandal by suddenly resigning office as Financial Secretary to the Treasury, because Mr. Lowe had ignored him in the matter of the Zanzibar mail contract. Mr. Lowe was proved to have given the contract for carrying letters from the Cape to Zanzibar to the Union Steam Company for £26,000, whereas the British India Steam Company had offered to do the work for £16,000. Mr. Lowe declared he had never heard of the offer; yet Lord Kimberley, the Secretary for the Colonies, knew of it, and the tender was transmitted by the Indian Postmaster-General to Mr. Monsell, the British Postmaster-General, who passed it on to the Treasury. At the Treasury Mr. Lowe concealed the papers relating to the contract from Mr. Baxter, avowedly because he was known to be hostile to it. A Committee of the House investigated the scandal, and disallowed the contract. This affair was also accompanied by the final revelation of the truth as to what was known as the telegraph scandal.

In spring the working classes were profoundly disturbed by a rumour that the Government had seized the Savings Banks balances, and were building great extensions of telegraph lines with the money without consulting Parliament on the subject. The foundation for the story was a discovery made by the Auditor-General of Public Accounts. He reported that the Telegraph Department of the Post Office had for some time evaded the control of the House of Commons over its expenditure. Instead of submitting to the House estimates for proposed works, and asking for a vote on account, Mr. Scudamore, the Chief of the Department, a brilliant but too zealous official, took whatever money he wanted from the Post Office receipts, and spent it as he pleased on works of extension and improvement. He submitted no estimates in detail, but always asked the House of Commons for a sum for new works, which enabled him to replace the Post Office receipts which he had used. A large portion of the money thus spent was taken from the Savings Banks balances which everybody understood were always paid in for safety to the Commissioners of National Debt, who invested them in Consols. Though no money was missing, it shook public confidence in the Government to find its administrative power so feeble that it could not prevent its own servants from tampering with the Savings Banks Deposits, and further investigation aggravated the scandal. It was shown that Lord Hartington when Postmaster-General had, like Mr. Monsell, allowed Mr. Scudamore to manage the Telegraph Department without any supervision, and that the Treasury had so far condoned this gross and culpable negligence that when it did business with Mr. Scudamore it communicated with him directly, and not through either Lord Hartington or Mr. Monsell, who had meekly submitted to be treated as official “dummies.” It was shown that the Treasury knew of Mr. Scudamore’s irregularities in 1871, and condoned them; that in 1872 it knew of them again, and acted so feebly that even Mr. Lowe admitted he regretted his lack of firmness. It was utterly impossible to defend the conduct of Mr. Lowe, Lord Hartington, Mr. Monsell, and the Chief Commissioner of National Debt, for countenancing these grave irregularities, and the scandal was simply disastrous to the administrative prestige of the Ministry.

The Queen was alarmed at the dismal prospect of ruling England by means of a Cabinet so hopelessly discredited, and Mr. Gladstone was equally conscious of the gravity of the situation. Whenever Parliament was prorogued he tried to parry attacks on the administrative incapacity of his Cabinet by reconstructing it. To the great relief of the Queen, he himself took the Chancellorship of the Exchequer into his own hands, so that the public might have a guarantee that the era of chaos at the Treasury was closed.[54] Mr. Bruce was elevated to the Peerage as Lord Aberdare, and became President of the Council, Lord Ripon having retired for private reasons. Mr. Childers (also for private reasons) vacated the Chancellorship of the Duchy of Lancaster, and Mr. Bright took his place and re-entered the Cabinet. Mr. Lowe was removed to the Home Office, and ere the year closed Mr. Adam became Chief Commissioner of Works, Mr. Ayrton taking the office of Judge-Advocate-General. Mr. Monsell also retired from the Postmaster-Generalship, and was succeeded by Dr. Lyon Playfair. The death of Sir William Bovill, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas, in November, elevated Sir J. D. Coleridge to the Bench. Mr. Henry James accordingly became Attorney-General, and, to the amazement of the Bar, he was succeeded as Solicitor-General by Mr. Vernon Harcourt, whose attacks on the Ministry had thus met with their reward.

Mr. Gladstone’s hope was to reinvigorate the Government with a little new blood, and rehabilitate it by means of his influence and reputation as a financial administrator and Mr. Bright’s personal popularity among the Nonconformists. Yet the financial work of the Government alone, when administrative

blunders were detached from it, and relegated to their true place in political perspective, ought to have won for them the gratitude of the nation. Mr. Vernon Harcourt, who perpetually harassed the Ministry because of its growing expenditure—like many financial critics with an imperfect knowledge of book-keeping—failed to see that the apparent growth was not real because much of it was a mere matter of accounting.[55]

During their five years of power the Government had remitted £9,000,000 of taxation. They had reduced a chaotic Naval Administration to something resembling order, and not far removed from efficiency; and yet at the Admiralty there had been a saving of £1,500,000 on the Estimates of their predecessors. They had taken the Army out of pawn to its officers by abolishing Purchase, and had laid the basis for a compact military organisation; yet they had saved £2,300,000 a year at the War Office. The Army and Navy, though by no means efficient, were much more efficient than they had been when Mr. Gladstone’s Ministry came to power; and yet they were costing the country £4,000,000 less a year.[56] In spite of the great increase in Civil Service expenditure—much of which, like the Education Vote, being morally rather than financially reproductive, showed no “results” in figures on the credit side of the public ledger—there had been since 1857 a decrease in the drain on the taxes of about £1,500,000.[57] Mr. Lowe’s last Budget in 1873 did not discredit the Ministry. In spite of his reductions of taxation in the previous year, he had obtained £2,000,000 more than his estimated income. For the coming year (1873-4) he estimated a surplus of £4,746,000; but he could promise no great remission of taxation, for he had to pay the damages (£3,000,000) which had been awarded at Geneva to the United States Government. Still, he halved the sugar duties and took another penny off the Income Tax. With all his faults, he was accordingly entitled to claim credit for reducing the Income Tax to the lowest point it had ever touched (threepence in the £) since it had been imposed by Peel in 1842. And yet Mr. Lowe could not, even with such a Budget, refrain from expressing his thankfulness in an acrid gibe against the populace. Referring to the marvellous increase in the receipts from Customs and Excise, he said he had been able to produce a good Budget because the nation had drunk itself out of debt.

Apart from the political strife and Ministerial embarrassments which so severely taxed the nerves of the Queen, life at Court was not very eventful. Indeed, it centred chiefly round the Prince and Princess of Wales, who were discharging vicariously and with great popular acceptance most of the social duties of the Crown. This fact was recognised by the Queen herself in a curious indirect kind of way. The Prince of Wales, though very far from being a spendthrift, has never shrunk from incurring expenditure which, in his judgment, was necessary to maintain the dignity and prestige of the Crown in a manner worthy of the great nation whose Sovereignty is his heritage. But he has always refrained from appealing to Parliament for subsidies and subventions, either for himself or his family, other than those to which he is equitably and legally entitled by his official position in the State. This was all the more creditable to him, for two reasons. He was surrounded by companions, some of whom did not scruple to take advantage of his generosity. A considerable section of the public during the controversy that raged over the Princess Louise’s dowry had expressed a strong opinion in favour of limiting future Royal grants to an additional allowance to the Heir Apparent, for the purpose of meeting the unanticipated expenditure which he had incurred by taking the Queen’s place as the head of English Society. Sandringham, moreover, had not turned out a remunerative property, and the Prince was therefore under strong temptations to give a favouring ear to unwise counsels on this delicate subject. These, however, he put aside with manly common sense, and his affairs were arranged on a business-like basis, which would have met with the approval of his father, who was always of opinion that matters of the sort were best managed inside the family circle. The only public indication that was given of arrangements which must necessarily be spoken of with great reserve was afforded by Mr. Gladstone when, on the 21st of July, he introduced a Bill enabling the Queen to bequeath real property to the Prince of Wales, so that he could alienate it at will. The obvious advantage of such a measure was that it imparted a fresh elasticity to the financial resources of the Heir Apparent. For he had discovered a fact hitherto unrevealed in the history of his dynasty in England, namely, that though the Sovereign could bequeath to the Heir Apparent alienable personality, such as hard cash, land or real property so bequeathed, became, when vested in his person on ascending the Throne, the property of the State, and therefore inalienable. In fact, supposing the Queen had left Balmoral, an estate which she and her husband bought out of their private purse, to her eldest son, then, though it had been her own private property, it must become public property whenever the Prince of Wales became King. The state of the law on the subject was inequitable and inconvenient. For if the Queen wished to aid her eldest son in meeting expenses which he was every day incurring on her behalf, she had either to sell her private estates, endeared to her by a thousand tender family associations, or appeal to Parliament for a grant, a course which was as objectionable to her as to the Prince. On the other hand, if these private estates, when inherited by the Prince at her death, could be treated as private property, the Heir Apparent could easily obtain any additional subsidies he might need, by mortgaging his expectations. And yet the generous intentions of the Queen, and the honest purposes of the Prince which formed the motives for the Bill, were snappishly and churlishly misrepresented by several Radicals, and by at least one aristocratic Whig. Mr. George Anderson opposed the Bill because Sovereigns kept their wills secret. Sir Charles Dilke objected to it because he said it allowed the indefinite accumulation of private property in the hands of the Sovereign. His argument, in fact, came to this, that profligacy in the Monarch should be encouraged by the posthumous confiscation of his private estates. As for Mr. Bouverie, he asked what business the Sovereign had to possess large private means? The Bill, however, passed, and an incident which at one time threatened to be unpleasant for the Queen and her children was discreetly closed.

In March, the Queen’s refusal to permit the persons who represented England at the French Exhibition of 1867 to accept decorations, was made the subject of debate by Lord Houghton in the House of Lords. Her Majesty’s prejudice against introducing Foreign Orders and titles into England had often given offence to naturalised stockjobbers and pushing parvenus. She never even took kindly to the use of the title of “Baron” by the Rothschilds, though she tolerated it for reasons of an entirely exceptional nature. But if the Orders were admitted the titles must soon follow, and society might be inundated some day with Russian “Counts,” who, as the French say, had “a career behind them,” or with Austrian “Barons,” who had bought their honours out of the profits of financial gambling. The English Court, for this reason, has such strong opinions on the point that even English nobles, inheriting foreign titles, conceal them so successfully that few people ever suspect that the Duke of Wellington is a Portuguese prince, the head of the House of Hamilton a French duke, or Lord Denbigh a Prince of an uncrowned branch of the Imperial House of Hapsburg. It need not be said that Lord Houghton’s complaints were generally admitted to be frivolous, and that the Queen’s feeling that she must be the sole fountain of honour in England, was shared by the nation. If the services which an individual has rendered abroad have benefited England or mankind, or if it is possible to form a correct estimate of their value in England, the Queen held she must either reward them herself, or retain the right to permit the individual to receive a foreign decoration for them. There never has been any practical difficulty in dealing with such cases, and no self-respecting person has ever felt aggrieved because he was debarred from accepting Foreign Orders.[58]

On the 4th of January the Queen was grieved to hear of the death of the ex-Emperor of the French, at Chislehurst. Her tender sympathy was freely bestowed on the ex-Empress, who was prostrated by her misfortunes and her sorrow. Five years before, the death of this strange man, whose Imperial life seemed ever shadowed by the great crime of the coup d’état, would have convulsed Europe. Now the world seemed quite indifferent to it, and when politicians spoke of it, all they said was that by disorganising the Imperialist party in France, it lessened the labours of M. Thiers in founding the Third Republic. The English people, whom Napoleon III. had kept in feverish dread for two decades, and whose support and friendship he had rewarded with the perfidy of the Benedetti Treaty, did not pretend to mourn over his grave. They spoke of his character, which was a moral paradox, and his career, which was a political crime, without prejudice or ill-feeling. But as they thought of the horrors of the Crimean War, the wasted millions which Palmerston spent in fortifying the South Coast, and the final act of treachery which the German Government had revealed in July, 1870, there were some who considered that the Queen might have been less demonstrative in her manifestations of sorrow. But Her Majesty has never been free from the defects of her qualities. Quick to resent betrayal, her anger passes away as swiftly, when the betrayer broken by an avenging Destiny, and prostrate amid the wreck of his fortunes and his reputation, appeals to her sympathies. When Louis Philippe stood before her as a hunted fugitive, the Queen forgot the Spanish marriages. When Charles Louis Bonaparte fled for refuge to Chislehurst, she was too generous to remember his scheme for stealing Belgium.

When spring came round, “the great joyless city,” as Mr. Walter Besant calls the East End of London, was gladdened by the Queen, for on the 2nd of April her Majesty went there to visit Victoria Park. She was accompanied by the Princess Beatrice, and drove from Buckingham Palace to the park in an open carriage. Her route was along Pall Mall, Regent Street, Portland Place, Marylebone Road, and Euston Road to King’s Cross, up Pentonville Hill to the “Angel” at Islington, beyond which point along Upper Street, Essex Road, Ball’s Pond Road, through Dalston and Hackney, surging crowds of people lined both sides of the entire way. Streamers of gaudy bunting floated overhead from house to house across Islington Green. The Dalston and Hackney stations of the North London Railway, the Town Hall, and shops of Hackney were conspicuously decorated, and it was noticed that the Queen went among the poor of the East End without any military escort, a feat that few European Sovereigns would have dared to emulate. At the Town Hall she halted and received a bouquet, while the people sang the National Anthem. At the temporary entrance to Victoria Park a triple arch, of triumph had been erected, deep enough to resemble a long marquee in three compartments, open at both ends. It was handsomely fitted up in scarlet and gold, and here was stationed a guard of honour of the Fusiliers, while an escort of Life Guards was in waiting to conduct her Majesty round the park. Even the slums in this dismal quarter exhibited meagre decorations, eloquent alike of loyalty and indigence. A poor shoemaker, having nothing better to show, hung out his leather apron, on which the Queen saw with a thrill of interest that he had chalked up in flaming red letters, “Welcome as flowers in May. The Queen, God bless her.” The enthusiasm of the populace on this occasion was due to a curious idea that prevailed all over the East End. This visit, they said, was no ordinary one, because the Queen had come of her own free will to see the East End—a very different thing from the East End going westwards to see her. Hence a hurricane of cheers greeted the Queen wherever she went, and was more gladsome to her ears than the ornate language of the loyal addresses which she received. Her Majesty returned by Cambridge Heath Road, and when she came to Shoreditch the way was rendered almost impassable by an eager crowd. From Bishopsgate Street to the Bank she was hailed with passionate loyalty, which seemed to lose all restraint when on passing the Mansion House she rose in her carriage and smilingly bowed to the Lord Mayor, who stood in his State robes under the portico and saluted her. She then drove along the Embankment to the Palace, having charmed the sadder quarters of London with a visit which the people took to mean that they were not forgotten or ignored by their Queen.

On the 3rd of April, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the Duke of Cambridge, as President of Christ’s Hospital—the famous Blue-coat School—visited the Queen at Buckingham Palace to present the boys of the Mathematical School, who had come to exhibit their drawings and charts to her Majesty. A number of gentlemen connected with the Hospital had the honour of being presented by the Duke to the Queen when she entered the Drawing-room. Her Majesty then inspected, apparently with great interest, the maps and charts which were held before her by each boy separately.

The foreign curiosity of the London season in 1873 was the Shah of Persia. Soon after the Queen’s visit to the East End ceased to be discussed, the coming of the Shah was the favourite topic of talk. At the end of April his departure from Teheran amidst the blessings of an overawed crowd of 80,000 subjects was chronicled. On the 12th of May he was heard of, painfully navigating the waters of the Caspian in a Russian steamer, and wonderful tales of his progress were told. He had three wives, and nobody knew how many other ladies in his train holding brevet-matrimonial rank. Was he going to bring them to England? If so, could more than one of them be received, and in that case how were the rest to be disposed of? A cloud of despondency began to settle over the subordinates in the Lord Chamberlain’s department. Would it be possible, it was asked, to persuade the Queen to invite each of the Shah’s wives separately—one to Buckingham Palace, one to Windsor, and one to Osborne? Later on it was reported that not only was the Shah bringing his harem, but his Cabinet Ministers also. Was his visit likely to be free from danger? Might not people begin to cherish strange fancies, if the Shah thus gave them ocular proof that an ancient country could get on wonderfully well without a sovereign and without a government? Gradually astounding rumours of his wealth were sent round. He had brought only half a million sterling for pocket-money, because there had just been a famine in Persia; still the sum would meet the modest wants of his exalted position. Indeed, through a telegraphic blunder, the sum was first stated as £5,000,000. He was said to be covered with jewels and precious stones, and he wore a dagger which blazed with diamonds, so that one could only view it comfortably through ground glass. In June the officials of the Court were relieved from a supreme anxiety. Ere he got half-way over Europe the Shah had sent his harem back to Persia. As he approached England he was described as looking terribly bored, and his black velvet doublet, covered with diamonds, and ornamented with emerald epaulettes, was said by one irreverent journalist to give him the appearance of “a dark shrub under the early morning dew.” To the good English people he was a mighty Asiatic potentate, representing an ancient dynasty, and the popular cry was that he must be impressed with the power of England. Had they understood that his great grandfather was a petty chief, who at a time of revolution established a dynasty, and promptly began, with the aid of his relatives, to ruin Persia, and that their visitor himself ruled over a country with the population of Ireland and twice the area of Germany, they might have made themselves less ridiculous. Mr. Gladstone was even pestered on the subject, and had to turn the matter off with a smiling suggestion that it would be well to let the Shah fix his own programme, and not put him in chains when he landed on our shores. But in Court circles it was whispered with dread that it might be well to fetter the bedizened barbarian, for he had odd notions of etiquette, and had even rudely poked the august arm of the German Empress, when he wanted to call her attention at the theatre to something on the stage. On the 18th of June, however, the long-expected guest landed at Dover from Ostend. The cannon of the Channel fleet thundered forth a salute, and the Duke of Edinburgh and Prince Arthur welcomed him as he stepped