Victoria: A Life by A. N. Wilson

Author:A. N. Wilson [Wilson, A. N.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2014-10-23T00:00:00+00:00

For some years now, General Grey had been looking for a way to resign as the Queen’s private secretary. Although relations between the wise old soldier and his monarch had deteriorated – she found him ‘often very irritable and excited’3 – she would not hear of his resignation. The burden of work was heavy. Grey kept to Prince Albert’s system of filing, which required multiple copies being made of important documents. Clerks were kept on hand at Buckingham Palace and at Osborne for the purpose, but anything of a confidential character needed to be copied by Grey himself. As noted in the previous chapter, the Queen was indignantly resistant to Grey’s suggestion that she play a more public role. He in turn was exasperated by what he considered to be her selfishness and sensuality. It was particularly frustrating to Grey, during this period of political change and turmoil, that she forbade any political discussions at dinner – even though contemporary politics had been the stuff of the late Prince Consort’s table talk. So, while the Government of Gladstone came to terms with the convulsions in Europe, and such crises at home as the threatened peace and stability of Ireland, with educational and army reform, Grey was obliged, during his many dinners with the Queen, to keep off all these subjects. As the nephew of the author of the 1832 Reform Bill, Grey must have found this worse than exasperating.

On 26 March, Grey suffered a stroke. He was paralysed down one side, was unable to recognize anyone and on 31 March he died. The next day, accompanied by Princess Louise, Colonel Henry Ponsonby and Jane Churchill, a lady-in-waiting, the Queen went up to town from Windsor. The party went at once to Grey’s house. The Queen found his widow ‘wonderfully resigned and patient in her grief. How I feel for her, having gone through the same terrible misfortune myself!’4

It is not recorded how Mrs Grey felt to be visited by the Queen on the very day after her husband’s death. ‘After talking for a little while, she took me into the room where the dear General lay, looking so peaceful, nice and unaltered, without that dreadful pallor one generally sees after death. His bed was covered with flowers, of which he was so fond. Poor dear General, I could not bear to think I should never look again on his face in this world.’5

Grey’s departure, or merciful release, had been something which the Queen had anticipated; and she does not appear to have had any doubt about who should succeed him. This was Colonel Henry Ponsonby, who had been at Court since 1857. Ponsonby, himself from an aristocratic Whig family, was married to Mary Bulteel, a niece of General Grey.

The Ponsonbys were, on superficial levels, surprising choices for the Queen. While she was increasingly Tory, they were unabashed Gladstonian Liberals. In religion, they were High Church, like Gladstone, whereas the Queen was her own distinctive brand of Broad Church Pantheist/Presbyterian. Mary Ponsonby was highly educated, and a feminist; Queen Victoria deplored feminism.

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