Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey

Author:Lytton Strachey
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: 1837-1901, 1819-1901, Great Britain -- History -- Victoria, Victoria, Queens -- Great Britain -- Biography, Queen of Great Britain
Publisher: Standard Ebooks
Published: 2020-08-25T21:58:45+00:00

III

The Prince’s tri­umph was short-lived. A few weeks later, ow­ing to Palmer­ston’s in­flu­ence, the Gov­ern­ment was de­feated in the House, and Lord John resigned. Then, after a short in­ter­val, a co­ali­tion between the Whigs and the fol­low­ers of Peel came in­to power, un­der the premi­er­ship of Lord Ab­er­deen. Once more, Palmer­ston was in the Cab­in­et. It was true that he did not re­turn to the For­eign Of­fice; that was some­thing to the good; in the Home De­part­ment it might be hoped that his activ­it­ies would be less dan­ger­ous and dis­agree­able. But the For­eign Sec­ret­ary was no longer the com­pla­cent Gran­ville; and in Lord Clar­en­don the Prince knew that he had a Min­is­ter to deal with, who, dis­creet and cour­teous as he was, had a mind of his own.

These changes, how­ever, were merely the pre­lim­in­ar­ies of a far more ser­i­ous de­vel­op­ment. Events, on every side, were mov­ing to­wards a cata­strophe. Sud­denly the na­tion found it­self un­der the aw­ful shad­ow of im­min­ent war. For sev­er­al months, amid the shift­ing mys­ter­ies of dip­lomacy and the per­plexed agit­a­tions of polit­ics, the is­sue grew more doubt­ful and more dark, while the na­tion­al tem­per was strained to the break­ing-point. At the very crisis of the long and omin­ous ne­go­ti­ations, it was an­nounced that Lord Palmer­ston had resigned. Then the pent-up fury of the people burst forth. They had felt that in the ter­rible com­plex­ity of events they were be­ing guided by weak and em­bar­rassed coun­sels; but they had been re­as­sured by the know­ledge that at the centre of power there was one man with strength, with cour­age, with de­term­in­a­tion, in whom they could put their trust. They now learnt that that man was no longer among their lead­ers. Why? In their rage, anxi­ety, and nervous ex­haus­tion, they looked round des­per­ately for some hid­den and hor­rible ex­plan­a­tion of what had oc­curred. They sus­pec­ted plots, they smelt treach­ery in the air. It was easy to guess the ob­ject upon which their frenzy would vent it­self. Was there not a for­eign­er in the highest of high places, a for­eign­er whose hos­til­ity to their own ad­ored cham­pi­on was un­re­lent­ing and un­con­cealed? The mo­ment that Palmer­ston’s resig­na­tion was known, there was a uni­ver­sal out­cry and an ex­traordin­ary tem­pest of an­ger and hatred burst, with un­par­alleled vi­ol­ence, upon the head of the Prince.

It was every­where as­ser­ted and be­lieved that the Queen’s hus­band was a trait­or to the coun­try, that he was a tool of the Rus­si­an Court, that in obed­i­ence to Rus­si­an in­flu­ences he had forced Palmer­ston out of the Gov­ern­ment, and that he was dir­ect­ing the for­eign policy of Eng­land in the in­terests of Eng­land’s en­emies. For many weeks these ac­cus­a­tions filled the whole of the press; re­peated at pub­lic meet­ings, elab­or­ated in private talk, they flew over the coun­try, grow­ing every mo­ment more ex­treme and more im­prob­able. While re­spect­able news­pa­pers thundered out their grave in­vect­ives, half­penny broad­sides, hawked through the streets of Lon­don, reechoed in dogger­el vul­gar­ity the same sen­ti­ments and the same sus­pi­cions.249 At last the wild­est ru­mours began to spread.

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