Queen Victoria | Page 3

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QUEEN VICTORIA BY LYTTON STRACHEY
NEW YORK HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, 1921
CONTENTS
CHAPTER I
. ANTECEDENTS II. CHILDHOOD III. LORD MELBOURNE IV.
MARRIAGE V. LORD PALMERSTON VI. LAST YEARS OF THE
PRINCE CONSORT VII. WIDOWHOOD VIII. MR. GLADSTONE
AND LORD BEACONSFIELD IX. OLD AGE X. THE END
BIBLIOGRAPHY

QUEEN VICTORIA

CHAPTER I
. ANTECEDENTS
I
On November 6, 1817, died the Princess Charlotte, only child of the
Prince Regent, and heir to the crown of England. Her short life had
hardly been a happy one. By nature impulsive, capricious, and
vehement, she had always longed for liberty; and she had never

possessed it. She had been brought up among violent family quarrels,
had been early separated from her disreputable and eccentric mother,
and handed over to the care of her disreputable and selfish father. When
she was seventeen, he decided to marry her off to the Prince of Orange;
she, at first, acquiesced; but, suddenly falling in love with Prince
Augustus of Prussia, she determined to break off the engagement. This
was not her first love affair, for she had previously carried on a
clandestine correspondence with a Captain Hess. Prince Augustus was
already married, morganatically, but she did not know it, and he did not
tell her. While she was spinning out the negotiations with the Prince of
Orange, the allied sovereign--it was June, 1814--arrived in London to
celebrate their victory. Among them, in the suite of the Emperor of
Russia, was the young and handsome Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.
He made several attempts to attract the notice of the Princess, but she,
with her heart elsewhere, paid very little attention. Next month the
Prince Regent, discovering that his daughter was having secret
meetings with Prince Augustus, suddenly appeared upon the scene and,
after dismissing her household, sentenced her to a strict seclusion in
Windsor Park. "God Almighty grant me patience!" she exclaimed,
falling on her knees in an agony of agitation: then she jumped up, ran
down the backstairs and out into the street, hailed a passing cab, and
drove to her mother's house in Bayswater. She was discovered, pursued,
and at length, yielding to the persuasions of her uncles, the Dukes of
York and Sussex, of Brougham, and of the Bishop of Salisbury, she
returned to Carlton House at two o'clock in the morning. She was
immured at Windsor, but no more was heard of the Prince of Orange.
Prince Augustus, too, disappeared. The way was at last open to Prince
Leopold of Saxe-Coburg.
This Prince was clever enough to get round the Regent, to impress the
Ministers, and to make friends with another of the Princess's uncles, the
Duke of Kent. Through the Duke he was able to communicate privately
with the Princess, who now declared that he was necessary to her
happiness. When, after Waterloo, he was in Paris, the Duke's
aide-de-camp carried letters backwards and forwards across the
Channel. In January 1816 he was invited to England, and in May the
marriage took place.
The character of Prince Leopold contrasted strangely with that of his

wife. The younger son of a German princeling, he was at this time
twenty-six years of age; he had served with distinction in the war
against Napoleon; he had shown considerable diplomatic skill at the
Congress of Vienna; and he was now to try his hand at the task of
taming a tumultuous Princess. Cold and formal in manner, collected in
speech, careful in action, he soon dominated the wild, impetuous,
generous creature by his side. There was much in her, he found, of
which he could not approve. She quizzed, she stamped, she roared with
laughter; she had very little of that self-command which is especially
required of princes; her manners were abominable. Of the latter he was
a good judge, having moved, as he himself explained to his niece