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FOR THE LAST quarter-century of her reign Queen Victoria was revered; she became the awe-inspiring, almost mythical Queen-Empress, a fittingly imperious and venerable monarch of a global empire on which the sun never set.
Much of the credit for Victoria’s coming out of retirement is due to two men: John Brown and Benjamin Disraeli. Brown with his steadfast devotion and common sense had forced her to start living again. Disraeli brought romance back into her life. He inspired her with the possibilities of her position. Instead of remaining in seclusion, becoming more lethargic and unpopular by the year, Victoria emerged with new energy and zest for life. For the first time since Melbourne’s day, politics became fun again.
Victoria had a taste for the exotic. Disraeli, whom Albert had dismissed as ‘no gentleman’, was exotic and, more, he shared Victoria’s fascination with the exotic. ‘India should belong to me…’ she had stated emphatically when the India Bill was passed in 1858, transferring India from East India Company rule to governance under the British crown. Disraeli quite agreed. The people of the East, he surmised, needed a monarch to relate to, a mother figure, not a chartered company. At the time, Disraeli had reassured Victoria that the India Bill was ‘only the ante-chamber to an imperial palace’. Eighteen years later he made her Empress of India.
For years Disraeli had been feeding the Queen with colourful missives from the House of Commons. Parliamentary debates were made to sound as compelling as his novels. But what really endeared Disraeli to Victoria was his unsparing praise of the late Prince Consort. Mr Disraeli, she said, was the only person who appreciated her beloved Albert, the only one who could understand the depth of her loss. By happy coincidence, just as Victoria was coming out of the worst decade of her life, Disraeli became Prime Minister for the first time, in February 1868. All he could offer her was devotion, he wrote on the first day of his premiership. It would be ‘his delight and duty, to render the transaction of affairs as easy to your Majesty, as possible’.
‘He is full of poetry, romance and chivalry,’ she enthused to Vicky. ‘When he knelt down to kiss my hand which he took in both of his he said “in loving loyalty and faith”.’ He was so attentive, so considerate, so obliging. He never seemed to disagree with her; only put his head on one side and had a way of saying ‘Ma’am…’ He knew how to amuse and interest her; she relaxed in his presence. Unlike others, he never lectured, badgered or pressured her. He had no need to. Treating her as a woman first, he had only to invite her to comply, to flatter and charm her, and he won her round.
Disraeli’s letters and reports of proceedings in the House which, as Leader, he was constitutionally bound to submit to the Queen, continued to be written in the vivid, dramatic, even racy, style of a novelist. ‘Dizzy writes daily letters to the Queen in his best novel style,’ Lady Augusta Stanley reported to Clarendon, ‘telling her every scrap of political news dressed up to serve his own purpose, and every scrap of social gossip cooked to amuse her.’ He was treating the Queen as a human recipient of gossipy letters. Victoria, who admitted that she had never before known everything, relished the correspondence.
Victoria had always been inhibited by what she saw as her intellectual shortcomings. Albert – so dominant, so controlling, so superior – had not encouraged her to think otherwise. But Disraeli had the happy knack of drawing Victoria out. He appeared interested in everything she had to say. One of the Queen’s granddaughters later put it succinctly when she said, ‘When I left the dining room after sitting next to Mr Gladstone, I thought he was the cleverest man in England. But after sitting next to Mr Disraeli, I thought I was the cleverest woman in England.’ It was just the sort of confidence booster that Victoria needed at this low point in her life. Although she would not be able to bring herself to open the book of piano duets she had played with Albert until 1876, with Disraeli’s encouragement she began to trust and rely on her own intuition; instead of slavishly following the traditions established by Albert, Victoria branched out, taking holidays in the sun-drenched Mediterranean.
Disraeli sent the Queen a complete set of his novels, and she returned the compliment by giving him a copy of her recently published Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands. As part of his charm offensive, the Prime Minister experienced Balmoral for himself, braving the freezing, fireless rooms, which Victoria so relished, to everyone else’s discomfort, and the hideously dull evenings. Never again! he promised himself. ‘There is a freshness and fragrance about the book like the heather amid which it was written,’ he told her unashamedly. Flattery never came amiss, he told Matthew Arnold, ‘and when you come to royalty, you should lay it on with a trowel’. Victoria basked in his praise. ‘We authors, Ma’am,’ he would say conspiratorially.
Unhappily, Disraeli’s first ministry lasted only a few months and in November the Queen had to send for Mr Gladstone to form a government. She had been thoroughly in accord with Disraeli’s politics. His popular Conservatism recognized the importance of social reform and, indeed, there was to be more legislation passed during Disraeli’s two premierships to ameliorate the lot of the working classes than in the whole of the rest of Victoria’s reign. More to the point, however, as far as Victoria was concerned, was that he stood for ‘a spirited foreign policy’, the greatness of Britain and the consolidation of empire, as opposed to Gladstone’s ‘Little England’ policy. Even Gladstone had to recognize that imperialism offered a distraction from problems at home. The cultivation of national patriotic feeling that accompanied the promotion of imperialism could heal or disguise class divisions. All would be enriched by the expansion of overseas empire, or at least that was the theory.
Albert had approved of Gladstone but, even so, Victoria never took to him and was predictably disgusted when she heard of Gladstone’s sexual predilections and his obsession with ‘saving’ fallen women. Nor could she summon up any enthusiasm for his agenda for domestic reforms. Years later, she was gratified that he seemed to agree with her on the subject of education: ‘it being carried too far … it entirely ruined the health of the higher classes uselessly, and rendered the working classes unfitted for good servants and labourers.’ This is not to say that she did not have the interests of the poor at heart. In April 1871 she objected to his proposed new match tax, ‘which is said to be the sole means of support of a vast number of the very poorest people and little children, especially in London, so that this tax, which it is intended should press on all equally, will in fact be only severely felt by the poor, which would be very wrong and most impolitic at the present moment’. The idea was dropped.
Gladstone was much preoccupied with ‘the royalty question’. His awe of the institution of monarchy led him to set too exacting a standard for the individual who represented it. His mistake was to treat Victoria not as a woman, not even as Queen Victoria, but always as the crown. The only way to mend the malaise currently affecting the monarchy, he decided, was for the Queen to come out of seclusion and the Prince of Wales to be given useful employment. Encouraged by the success of the St Paul’s thanksgiving in February 1872, the following year Gladstone presented Victoria with his master plan. Ireland might be pacified if the Prince were to become her Viceroy there.
Apart from the attractions of the racing, Dublin had no more appeal for Bertie than the troublesome country had for Victoria. Her love and loyalty had always been reserved for Scotland, to Ireland’s detriment. More concerned than anyone about the Queen’s invisibility, since he had a personal stake in the future of the monarchy, Bertie had worked hard to fill the vacuum left by his mother’s abdication of her duties in society. He and the Princess of Wales stood in for the Queen at levees and drawing rooms and, as the leaders of the fashionable Marlborough House set, entertained in style.
Jealous of any attention being diverted from her, Victoria looked askance at her son’s extravagant pursuit of pleasure and had no higher opinion of his abilities than she ever had. He had never been allowed access to the despatch boxes and she had no intention of trusting him in any official capacity. She pretty much told Gladstone to mind his own business. Disraeli would have known when to retreat, but Gladstone doggedly wrote her a series of letters – the dry memoranda that she loathed – in which he set out to prove under separate headings that her objections to his plan were unfounded. Victoria was incredulous. ‘The Queen therefore trusts … that this plan may now be considered as definitely abandoned,’ she concluded hopefully after his third attempt. When he wrote a fourth time, she told him emphatically that it was ‘useless to prolong the discussion’.
In February 1874 Gladstone lost his majority and Victoria sent for Disraeli with relief. True to form, the sixty-nine-year-old premier fell to his knees before her. ‘I plight my troth to the kindest of mistresses.’ The idyll had begun in earnest. Relations between the two were suffused with a rich halo of romance. Soon he was calling her Queen Titania or the Faery Queen, after Edmund Spenser’s poem for Elizabeth I. When she took to sending him primroses from Windsor and violets from Osborne, his response was that ‘your Majesty’s sceptre has touched the enchanted isle.’
Disraeli’s promise to do whatever the Queen wished was soon put to the test when Archibald Tait, Archbishop of Canterbury, introduced the Public Worship Regulation Bill, to purge the Anglican Church of the Romish practices that had been creeping in. Disraeli, a Jew who had been brought up Christian, was not remotely interested, until he saw that Gladstone was vigorously opposed to it. The bill had the Queen’s wholehearted approval. Her preference was for the simple, plain service of the Church of Scotland, which she enjoyed at Crathie Church whenever she was at Balmoral. ‘But here [in England] flowers, crosses, vestments, all mean something most dangerous!’ she moaned to Vicky. ‘Thank God the Scotch Church is a stronghold of Protestantism, most precious in these realms.’
Taking seriously her responsibility as Supreme Governor of the Church, Victoria wrote to Disraeli: ‘The Queen is deeply grieved to see the want of Protestant feeling in the Cabinet.’ He ‘should state … how strongly the Queen feels and how faithful she is to the Protestant faith, to defend and maintain which, her family was placed upon the Throne! She owns she often asks herself what has become of the Protestant feeling of Englishmen.’
Disraeli did not disappoint and afterwards travelled down to Osborne to convey the good news, allowing her the impression that it was her personal intervention that had saved the day. ‘I can only describe my reception by telling you that I really thought she was going to embrace me,’ he told his friend Lady Bradford. ‘She was wreathed with smiles and, as she talked, glided about like a bird.’
Ever solicitous of his comfort, the Queen took the unprecedented step of inviting Disraeli to sit down. He did not at this stage avail himself of the invitation, but was gratified that he had been asked. It was a singular mark of royal favour. When Lord Derby had been recovering from a severe illness, Victoria had commiserated and apologized that etiquette forbade her from asking him to sit. ‘She says I am never to stand,’ Disraeli confided to Lady Bradford. Later in their relationship, Disraeli did indeed sit down, as by then his conversations with the Queen were running way beyond the allotted time. On one occasion, they were so engrossed in conversation that Disraeli nearly missed his train back to London. ‘Run away, run away directly,’ the Queen urged him, prompting Disraeli to report gleefully to Lady Bradford, ‘and so at an audience instead of being dismissed, I dismissed my Sovereign.’
The Queen and her Prime Minister were soon enjoying such a cosy relationship that some worried about the constitutional propriety of it. Disraeli offered Victoria friendship, as well as a compatible and fulfilling political partnership. He found her female wiles endearing: ‘there came a most perplexing, but most agreeable telegram from Balmoral, giving me a great deal of trouble; but in so feminine a manner that it was delightful,’ he wrote to Lady Bradford. ‘I must say that I feel fortunate in having a female Sovereign. I owe everything to woman; and if in the sunset of life I have still a young heart, it is due to that influence.’
Within a few months of taking office, he managed something Gladstone had never, in his wildest dreams, been able to do. He actually persuaded the Queen to defer her departure for Balmoral for two days, so as to welcome Tsar Alexander II. ‘My head is still on my shoulders. The great lady has absolutely postponed her departure!’ he told Lady Bradford. ‘Everybody had failed, even the Prince of Wales … Salisbury says I have saved an Afghan war, and Derby compliments me on my unrivalled triumph.’
‘Nobody can have managed the lady better than you have; but is there not just a risk of encouraging her in too large ideas of her personal power, and too great indifference to what the public expects?’ the more prosaic Derby cautioned him. ‘I only ask; it is for you to judge.’
Disraeli had an instinct for showmanship which appealed to Victoria. His first great opportunity came in 1875 when he heard that the debt-ridden Khedive of Egypt was looking to sell his shares in the Suez Canal. Built by the French and largely owned by them, the canal meant more to the British, since it was the gateway to India. Neither the Queen nor Disraeli wanted to see the canal wholly owned by the French. Disraeli urgently needed £4 million to buy the Khedive’s shares, but how to get the money when Parliament was not sitting? Having persuaded a reluctant Cabinet of the wisdom of the enterprise, he sent his secretary, Montagu Corry, round to Baron Lionel de Rothschild.
The Prime Minister, Corry told him, needed £4 million.
‘When?’ Rothschild asked.
‘Tomorrow,’ came the reply.
‘What is your security?’ he asked.
‘The British Government,’ Corry answered.
‘You shall have it,’ Rothschild pronounced.
‘It is just settled,’ Disraeli wrote triumphantly to the Queen at Osborne, ‘you have it, Madam.’
It was as if Disraeli had bought the entire canal and laid it as a gift at the Queen’s feet. In fact, he had acquired less than a half share, but it showed him to be a master of the grand gesture and it was a brilliant move.
It was the prelude to an even more magnificent coup. Victoria had long been affronted that while other rulers were emperors, she was merely a queen. Her old friend, Emperor Napoleon III, had, alas, been ejected, but the Habsburgs were still Emperors of Austria, the Tsar of Russia called himself an emperor and, since he had been made Emperor of Germany in 1871, the King of Prussia was also an emperor. This meant that when her son-in-law Fritz inherited, her eldest daughter Vicky would also be an empress and take precedence over her mother. Victoria’s son Alfred had married the Tsar’s daughter, Marie Alexandrovna; did she take precedence over Victoria’s other children as a grand duchess? The question of rank had already caused ill feeling when the Tsar had refused to allow his daughter to present herself at Balmoral for Victoria’s inspection; the Empress of Russia suggested that Victoria might see Marie in Germany if she cared to travel there. Victoria was apoplectic, writing to her daughter Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, who was liaising with the Russian court:
I do not think, dear Child, that you should tell me who have been nearly 20 years longer on the throne than the Emperor of Russia and am the Doyenne of Sovereigns and who am a Reigning Sovereign, which the Empress is not – what I ought to do. I think I know that. The proposal received on Wednesday for me to be at Cologne … tomorrow, was one of the coolest things I ever heard … I own everyone was shocked.
It was all very irksome. Naturally, Victoria wanted to be an empress too, and what was more appropriate than that she should be Empress of India – the jewel in her crown?
In 1875 the Prince of Wales, who was itching to experience the opulence of India and shoot some tigers, went on an exploratory tour, representing the British crown. Predictably, Victoria had been reluctant to let him go. Disraeli had had to tread a diplomatic tightrope, playing down the importance of it to Victoria and fending off the Princess of Wales, who was desperate to accompany her husband. At least if she was not there, there would be an excuse for Bertie’s amatory escapades. Too many of Bertie’s disreputable friends were going with him, in Victoria’s view, and it fell to Disraeli to convince them to behave themselves. Victoria refused to finance the trip, and Disraeli had to squeeze the funds out of a reluctant Parliament.
As it happened, the tour was a great success. The Prince of Wales was welcomed by maharajahs and people alike as the symbol of the British monarchy, suggesting that Victoria was as much the sovereign of India – and not just of India’s conquerors – as she was of Great Britain and Ireland.
The year 1876 was one occasion when the Queen was only too happy to open Parliament. When the Royal Titles Bill was introduced, however, Parliament was reluctant. There were sound reasons for making Victoria Empress of India: the assumption of the title would give an air of stability and permanence to British rule in India, and the presence of the British Queen-Empress across the North-West Frontier, metaphorically speaking, would sound a warning note to the Tsar of Russia in his drift east. It took all of Disraeli’s energy and skill to shepherd the bill through Parliament and on 1 May 1876 it was passed, with the proviso that the imperial title was to be used only in the context of India and in correspondence relating to the subcontinent. Victoria paid no attention, blithely sending Disraeli a Christmas card that year signed VRI – Victoria Regina et Imperatrix – the title she used at every opportunity forever after. In 1880 she insisted that Ind. Imp. – Empress of India – be engraved on the new coinage.
On 1 January 1877, at a durbar on the great Plain of Delhi, Victoria was officially proclaimed Empress of India by the Viceroy, Lord Lytton. How gratifying to know that she had been hailed, apparently with unfeigned joy, by her millions of Indian subjects as Shah-in-Shah Padshah – Monarch of Monarchs. At a sumptuous celebratory banquet at Windsor that night, Victoria appeared weighed down by her Indian jewellery. The huge, multicoloured gems would have suited some dark beauty; they were entirely inappropriate for a white-haired, fair-skinned, little old lady. Disraeli, newly created Earl of Beaconsfield, gave one of his most florid speeches, followed by the toast: ‘Your Imperial Majesty’. It was their finest hour.
India was not the last of Disraeli’s offerings to his queen. In the summer of 1876 the story broke of atrocities carried out by the Turks on their Bulgarian subjects. Twenty-five thousand had been slaughtered. Disraeli was predisposed to prefer the Ottoman rulers to their subject peoples and made light of the reports, but Gladstone saw this as an opportunity to strike. His inflammatory pamphlet, The Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East, reflected the sympathies of the majority of the British people, which were with the oppressed subjects of the decaying Ottoman Empire. If the ‘Sick Man of Europe’ was to be carved up, who was going to benefit? While denouncing Gladstone as a mischief-maker and firebrand, Victoria was not about to sit back and give her old bête noire the Tsar of Russia, who had ostensibly come to the aid of his fellow Serbs in the Balkans, a free passage to Constantinople.
‘You say you hope we shall keep out of the war and God knows I hope and pray and think we shall – as to fighting,’ Victoria told her eldest daughter. ‘But I am sure you would not wish Great Britain to eat humble pie to these horrible, deceitful, cruel Russians? I will not be the Sovereign to submit to that!’
Disraeli was looking for a diplomatic solution, while trying to tamp down the Queen’s belligerence and at the same time using her bellicosity to coax his divided Cabinet into a more warlike frame of mind. It was not easy to quell Victoria’s impatience. While they prevaricated, Britain was losing its prestige and position abroad, she nagged, bombarding Disraeli with telegrams. The Russian Tsar would be before Constantinople in no time. ‘Then the Government will be fearfully blamed and the Queen so humiliated that she thinks she would abdicate at once. Be bold!’ she urged.
‘Oh, if the Queen were a man,’ Victoria cried, ‘she would like to go and give those horrid Russians, whose word one cannot trust, such a beating.’
It did not quite come to war. Disraeli had hoped that a show of British force would be enough to persuade Russia to climb down. He judged correctly. Bismarck’s Prussia put itself forward as the unlikely mediator. In June 1878 Disraeli represented Britain at the Congress of Berlin and stood up to and triumphed over Russian demands. ‘Der alte Jude, das ist der Mann,’ an admiring Iron Chancellor remarked of Disraeli’s sangfroid. He did not come home empty-handed: Britain had gained control of Cyprus, a base in the eastern Mediterranean from which to check any Russian advances in the area.
‘If we are to maintain our position as a first-rate Power … we must with our Indian Empire and large Colonies, be Prepared for attacks and wars, somewhere or other, CONTINUALLY, and the true economy will be to be always ready,’ Victoria sought to impress on her Prime Minister. ‘Lord Beaconsfield can do his country the greatest service by repeating that again and again, and by seeing it carried out.’ She was right, of course. In 1878 and 1879 alone, Britain was involved in wars in Afghanistan and South Africa, where the Zulus won a victory over British troops at Isandhlwana. Fierce criticism of these military engagements offered a splendid opportunity for Gladstone to speak of the poor, suffering Afghans and Zulus, the victims of Disraeli’s imperialist policy, those ‘false phantoms of glory’, in his election campaign. There was also a feeling that Disraeli’s close relationship with the Queen had allowed her too much power to influence events. The House of Commons debated the motion ‘that the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished’.
In the spring of 1880 Disraeli’s government was defeated and the Queen was confronted with the unwelcome prospect of Mr Gladstone’s return. As she told Ponsonby, ‘she would sooner abdicate than send for or have any communication with that half-mad firebrand who would soon ruin everything and be a Dictator. Others but herself may submit to his democratic rule, but not the Queen.’ She sent first for Lord Hartington, leader of the Liberals in the House of Commons, then for Lord Granville. Neither ‘Harty-Tarty’ nor ‘Puss’ Granville felt he could form a government, however, and Gladstone, at seventy the Grand Old Man, was certainly not prepared to serve under either of them.
Victoria, who prided herself on her prerogative of choosing her Prime Minister, found she was powerless. She had no option but to send for Gladstone. She obstructed some of the appointments he wished to make and strenuously objected to both Joseph Chamberlain and Sir Charles Dilke, because of their radicalism. It was to no avail. The growing size and importance of the electorate, especially after the passing of the Third Reform Act in 1884, combined with increased party consciousness, meant that she would have even less room for manoeuvre in future.
She had already conceded to Hartington and Granville that she would be prepared to give the new government her support, ‘but that this must entirely depend on their conduct. There must be no democratic leaning, no attempt to change the Foreign policy … no change in India, no hasty retreat from Afghanistan, and no cutting down of estimates. In short no lowering of the high position this country holds, and ought always to hold.’
It was a tall order, and Gladstone was bound to disappoint. In January 1881 there was a major rumpus when the government sent Victoria the Queen’s Speech to be read out from the throne at the State Opening of Parliament, leaving it too late to amend. The speech was written for the monarch and outlined the government’s policy; she merely had to read it. Victoria felt that as it purported to be her speech, she should have some say over its content. The Afghan War of 1878–80 had resulted in the temporary occupation of Kandahar by British troops. The intention of the Liberal government was to quit the volatile country as quickly as possible, but Victoria strongly objected to the inclusion of a passage in the speech announcing ‘the abandonment of Kandahar, without my having heard a word about it’:
The war in Afghanistan has been brought to a close, and, with the exception of the Kandahar force, my troops have been recalled within the Indian frontier. It is not my intention that the occupation of Kandahar shall be permanently maintained; but the still unsettled condition of the country, and the consequent difficulty of establishing a native government, have delayed for a time the withdrawal of the army from that position.
When Lord Spencer, Lord President of the Council, was told that the Queen objected to the passage concerning Kandahar, his response was that it could not be changed. The Queen then refused to approve the speech. She complained to Ponsonby that ‘she was treated as a child by being kept in ignorance and then forced at the last moment to assent.’
The Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt, said ‘it should be explained that this was really the Cabinet’s speech. It was their policy, and any change was an interference with their policy.’ He was saying, in effect, that she was obliged to make it, whether she approved it or not. Sir William’s opinion, Victoria told Ponsonby, had ‘no weight whatsoever with her, for he has never been in office before and she thinks her experience of forty-three years more likely to enable her to know what is her position and standing than he does’.
It was too late by this time to call a Cabinet to discuss the matter, as the Leader of the Opposition had to have the speech by seven in the evening. Victoria complained to Ponsonby: ‘The Queen has never before been treated with such want of respect and consideration in the forty-three and a half years she has worn her thorny crown … she is kept (purposefully) in the dark and then expected simply to agree … Sir Henry must tell Mr Gladstone … that she will not stand such treatment.’
Solicited by the Queen for his view, Disraeli told her what she wanted to hear:
Madam, and Most Beloved Sovereign, The principle of Sir W. Harcourt, that the Speech of the Sovereign is only the Speech of the Ministers, is a principle not known to the British Constitution. It is only a piece of Parliamentary gossip. The Speech from the Throne must be approved in Council by the Sovereign, but to be so approved, it should be previously considered by the Sovereign. Ample time ought to be secured to the Sovereign for this purpose, so that suggestions may be made and explanations required and given … The unfortunate state of parties at this moment limits the power of the Throne, but that is no reason why the constitutional prerogative of the Crown should be treated as non-existing. Even under the present circumstances, Your Majesty has a right which it would be wise always to exercise, to express your Majesty’s opinion on every point of the policy of your Ministers and to require and receive explanations.
Put in its starkest terms, Disraeli’s summary was a denial of the principle of ministerial responsibility, but the point about the English constitution was that it was opaque – it could not be seen in terms of black and white. It depended on compromise and mutual trust. Was it not the sovereign’s right ‘to be consulted, to encourage, and to warn’? Courtesy, surely, and deference to Victoria’s long experience, demanded that she be consulted. The letter was the last service Disraeli paid to his sovereign. Before he died, in April 1881, someone asked if he would like to see the Queen to say goodbye. ‘Better not,’ came the witty response. ‘She will only ask me to take a message to Albert.’
The problem was that while Victoria had been almost totally in accord with Disraeli’s Conservative policies, she had no sympathy whatsoever with Liberal governments. When the Liberals were in power, she never regarded herself as bound to behave impartially or even constitutionally. She felt shut out. While Disraeli had informed her of everything that went on in the Cabinet and of the views of each individual, Gladstone informed her only of what had been decided. She hated not to be kept fully informed. It made her overreact and increase her vigilance. As Sir Charles Dilke complained:
The Queen does interfere constantly; more, however, when Liberal Ministers are in power than when she has a Conservative Cabinet, because on the whole the Conservatives do what she likes, as she is a Conservative; whereas the Liberals are continually doing, and indeed exist for the purpose of doing, the things she does not like. But it is very doubtful how far her interference is unconstitutional, and it would be quite impossible to prove it, unless Mr Gladstone, for example, were to publish her letters – a not very likely supposition. The Queen is a woman of great ability … She writes to her Prime Minister about everything she does not like, which, when he is a Liberal, means almost everything that he says or does. She complains of his colleagues’ speeches. She complains, with less violence, of his own. She protests against Bills. She insists that administrative acts should not be done without delay, for the purpose of consulting … persons whose opinions she knows will be unfavourable. This is not unconstitutional, however.
Victoria did not trouble herself with constitutional rectitude in trying to defeat Gladstone’s policy of Home Rule for Ireland. Surreptitiously and without the advice of her Prime Minister, she tried to promote a ‘loyal’ and ‘constitutional’ ‘national government, in order to defeat the Liberal Party’. None of this was reconcilable with the functions of constitutional monarchy, but Victoria excused herself by claiming Home Rule was not a party question. Never sympathetic to the Irish problem, she refused to contemplate the diminution of her sovereignty that Home Rule would entail.
As late as 1893, Victoria was still insisting on her right to amend the Queen’s Speech and a strict adherence to the truth, writing to Gladstone: ‘I cannot say that his measure [his Second Home Rule Bill] will be for the better government of Ireland. Can you leave out “better”?’
Victoria’s condemnation of Gladstone was most emphatic on the occasion of the death of General Gordon. Gordon had advanced to Khartoum in the Sudan and found himself besieged by the mystic prophet, the Mahdi, and a host of thousands. Egypt must not be allowed to fall to the Mahdi, she warned Gladstone. ‘It would be a disgrace to the British name, and the country will not stand it. The Queen trembles for General Gordon’s safety. If anything befalls him, the result will be awful.’
Gladstone was slow to act. ‘Gordon is in danger: you are bound to try and save him,’ Victoria pressed. ‘Surely Indian troops might go from Aden: they could bear the climate. You have incurred fearful responsibility.’
The following month, March 1884, she wrote again, protesting that the relief forces Gordon requested five weeks ago had still not been forthcoming. ‘If only for humanity’s sake, for the honour of the Government and the nation, he must not be abandoned!’
She wrote to Vicky deploring her powerlessness. To be a constitutional sovereign and ‘unable to prevent grievous mistakes is a very hard and ungrateful task. This Government is the worst I have ever had to do with. They never listen to anything I say and commit grievous errors.’ She was justifiably angry, therefore, when in February 1885, after months of cajoling Gladstone to do something, the worst happened: ‘Khartoum fallen, Gordon’s fate uncertain! All greatly distressed. Sent for Sir H. Ponsonby, who was horrified. It is too fearful. The Government is alone to blame, by refusing to send the expedition till it was too late. Telegraphed en clair to Mr Gladstone, Lord Granville, and Lord Hartington, expressing how dreadfully shocked I was at the news, all the more so when one felt it might have been prevented.’
To telegraph the Prime Minister en clair was tantamount to a public announcement of the sovereign’s lack of confidence in him. Gladstone had to consider whether to resign or not. He was deeply wounded when after a lifetime of public service Victoria accepted his resignation in 1894, ostensibly on the grounds of failing health, after the defeat of Home Rule, without a word of appreciation, sympathy or gratitude. After his final interview, in which as ever she was scrupulously courteous but cold, he received a curt note from her, ending: ‘The Queen would gladly have conferred a peerage on Mr Gladstone, but she knows he would not accept it.’ He confided in his diary that he had asked her that the details of his painful relationship with her be kept secret and, of course, he chivalrously shielded her from the consequences of her prejudices against him and his party.
Four years later when Gladstone died, she felt no more kindly disposed towards him: ‘I am sorry for Mrs Gladstone,’ she said, when pressed to make some comment, ‘as for him, I never liked him, and I will say nothing about him!’ Gladstone had always respected Victoria’s adherence to the truth.