Gradually she learned to interfere less with ministers, although that didn’t apply to Palmerston. She feared revolutions and, despite her Whig instincts, was essentially an autocrat. “Obedience to the laws and to the Sovereign is obedience to a Higher Power,” she wrote in 1848. “Divinely instituted for the good of the people, not of the Sovereign who has equally duties and obligations.”
She deplored Palmerston’s “blustering” and considered his successor as Prime Minister, Russell, “weak and miserable”. But she ended by recognising that Palmerston’s handling of the Crimean War had been effective. She was very proud of “Her Navy” and reviewed her returning, victorious troops majestically, in a scarlet jacket with gold braid, in Bartley’s words, with “pomp and splendour”. She initiated the Victoria Cross, giving it to 47 men, and, never one to bear grudges, gave Palmerston the Order of the Garter.
But Albert’s death in December 1861 changed everything. Without his support and guidance she fell back into what was dubbed the “luxury of woe”. She refused to appear in public, wouldn’t open Parliament and insisted on wearing black at all times, losing the sympathy of the public.
She had relied on strong influences — first Melbourne, then Albert. Now, after 1861, she was alone, the Great Matriarch.
Initially she disliked Disraeli, considering him obnoxious and detestable, “thoroughly Jewish”. Yet he befriended her, indeed flirted with her. She found his parliamentary reports gossipy, “his curious notes were just like his novels, highly coloured”. Her dislike she kept for Gladstone who treated her as an intellectual equal, “lost [her] in the fog of [his] long and far from lucid sentences” and so failed to gain her support on the Irish Question or on many of his radical reforms.
Bartley’s book is far from being a hagiography. It provides a frank and refreshing view of Victoria. By allowing her to speak for herself through her letters and journals she confirms many of the criticisms expressed by Dilke and later by Charles Trevelyan. But it is hard not to be charmed by her vulnerability and impressed by the way she applied herself to her role as monarch for 60 years, steering Britain through a century in which it could easily have fallen apart.
She deplored Palmerston’s “blustering” and considered his successor as Prime Minister, Russell, “weak and miserable”. But she ended by recognising that Palmerston’s handling of the Crimean War had been effective. She was very proud of “Her Navy” and reviewed her returning, victorious troops majestically, in a scarlet jacket with gold braid, in Bartley’s words, with “pomp and splendour”. She initiated the Victoria Cross, giving it to 47 men, and, never one to bear grudges, gave Palmerston the Order of the Garter.
But Albert’s death in December 1861 changed everything. Without his support and guidance she fell back into what was dubbed the “luxury of woe”. She refused to appear in public, wouldn’t open Parliament and insisted on wearing black at all times, losing the sympathy of the public.
She had relied on strong influences — first Melbourne, then Albert. Now, after 1861, she was alone, the Great Matriarch.
Initially she disliked Disraeli, considering him obnoxious and detestable, “thoroughly Jewish”. Yet he befriended her, indeed flirted with her. She found his parliamentary reports gossipy, “his curious notes were just like his novels, highly coloured”. Her dislike she kept for Gladstone who treated her as an intellectual equal, “lost [her] in the fog of [his] long and far from lucid sentences” and so failed to gain her support on the Irish Question or on many of his radical reforms.
Bartley’s book is far from being a hagiography. It provides a frank and refreshing view of Victoria. By allowing her to speak for herself through her letters and journals she confirms many of the criticisms expressed by Dilke and later by Charles Trevelyan. But it is hard not to be charmed by her vulnerability and impressed by the way she applied herself to her role as monarch for 60 years, steering Britain through a century in which it could easily have fallen apart.
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