By Anna McCaleb

George III, King of England, was by no means fortunate in his sons, for there was in the most of them little of which a father could be proud. Edward, Duke of Kent, the fourth son, was by far the best; he was honorable, generous and charitable, so much so in fact that he lived far beyond the small income which his royal father was willing to allow him. This son married, and to him was born on the twenty-fourth of May, 1819, in the Palace of Kensington at London, a daughter.

One month after her birth the child was baptized with great ceremony, a gold font being brought from the Tower for the purpose, and the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London officiating. The Prince of Wales, at that time acting as Prince Regent in the place of his father, who was insane, was the chief sponsor for the child, and he gave her the name of Alexandrina in honor of Alexander, Emperor of Russia. The Duke of Kent wished her to bear her mother’s name also, and George IV added the name Victoria. “Little Drina,” the child was usually called when she was small, but when she grew older she decided that her mother’s name should stand second to no other, and desired that she be called simply Victoria. There were uncles and cousins and her own father between the little princess and the throne, and it did not look as if her chances of becoming queen were very great, so that people used to laugh indulgently when the Duke of Kent would produce his baby and say proudly, “Look at her well; she will yet be Queen of England.”

Victoria’s father died when she was but eight months old, but the child knew no lack, for her mother superintended her training and her teaching in a very wise manner, for she thought that it was possible, if not probable, that her child would one day have the chief place in the kingdom, and she wanted to fit her for it. Very simply was the little princess brought up; her clothing as well as her food was of the plainest, and habits of economy and regularity were impressed upon her and stayed with her all her life. Her governess, Baroness Lehzen, was German, as were all of her teachers until the time she was twelve years old, and it is said that she spoke English with a German accent.

Of course Victoria’s life was different from the lives of other children, and this she must early have perceived. There are, however, little stories of her childhood which show that she was really not so different from ordinary children as some of her serious biographers would have one think. She was very fond of dolls, and had, it is said, one hundred and thirty-two of them who lived in a house of their own. Even with these, however, she was not allowed to play just as other children did, for her governess made use of them to teach her little charge court etiquette. And indeed, some means of teaching the child court etiquette was necessary, as her mother refused to allow her to appear at the royal court and receive her lessons there at first hand. The court of George IV was most disreputable, and the Duchess of Kent wisely judged that it was no place for her little daughter. When William IV came to the throne in 1830, Victoria’s mother still refused to allow the child to be much at court, for though the new king was in some ways better than his predecessor had been, he was far from being a moral man.

When Victoria was twelve years old her mother felt that it was time she should know of the high destiny to which she might be called, for there now stood no one between her and the throne, William IV’s children having died in infancy. Accordingly, the governess placed in a book which the princess was reading, a genealogical table, so that the princess might come upon it as if by accident. Victoria examined it gravely and then exclaimed, “Why I never saw this before!”

“It was not necessary that you should see it,” replied the governess.

“I am nearer the throne than I supposed,” said the child, and then, with a seriousness beyond her years, she added, “It is a great responsibility, but I will be good.”

Kept as she was from the court world, Victoria was the subject of intense interest and curiosity to the English people. England had always been fortunate in her queens if not always in her kings, and it was felt that if Victoria should come to the throne, England would be the better morally. Certain it is that the young girl was adored by the British people generally; her simplicity, her prettiness, her fresh girlishness appealed to them, and the thought of what she would probably be called upon to do lent more than a touch of romance to all that concerned her. Nathaniel P. Willis, the American writer, who had seen Victoria during a visit to England, wrote: “The princess is much better looking than any picture of her in the shops, and for the heir to such a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting.”

Her “Uncle King,” as she called William IV, was very wrathful because his young niece was not allowed to appear at all court affairs, and at one time when the Duchess of Kent and Victoria were present, with about a hundred other guests, at his birthday celebration, he made a most remarkable speech.

“I only hope,” he said, “that I may live for nine months longer, until the Princess Victoria is of age, so that I may leave the power in her hands and not be forced to entrust it to a regent in the person of a lady who sits near me.”

At this insult to her mother, Victoria burst into tears, but the Duchess herself made no reply.

In 1837 Victoria became of age, and her birthday was celebrated with rejoicing throughout the country. Schools were closed, feasts were held, and the city of London was brightly illuminated. But at the great ball which was given that night, the king could not be present; for he was that very day taken ill, and in less than a month he died.

Early in the morning of June twentieth, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain hastened to Kensington Palace to acquaint Victoria with the fact that she was queen of England. They reached there in the gray dawn and found no one stirring. After much waiting and knocking, they were shown into the palace, and finally succeeded in having the princess’s special attendant sent to them. They asked her to inform her mistress that they desired to see her immediately on very important business; whereupon the attendant told them that she preferred not to waken her mistress, who was sleeping soundly. With great dignity then the Archbishop said, “We are come on business of State to The Queen”; and thus, startled out of her sleep, Victoria was told by her attendant that she was now the first person in Great Britain.

Hastily taking off her nightcap and throwing a shawl over her nightgown, Victoria descended to receive the official announcement of her succession to the throne of England, and to receive on her hand the kiss of allegiance from these two great lords of the realm.

Her first reported words after she was made queen were to the Archbishop of Canterbury—“I beg your Grace to pray for me;” and one of her very first acts after the august messengers had left her was to write to the widowed queen of William IV, Adelaide, offering her condolences and begging that she would remain as long as she chose in the royal palace. She addressed the letter to “Her Majesty the Queen,” and when some one standing by said to her, “you are now the queen, and your aunt deserves the title no longer,” she replied, “I know that, but I shall not be the first to remind her of that fact.”

Later in the same day, the eighteen-year-old queen was called upon to meet the council of the high officers of Church and State. Dressed in her simple mourning she looked dignified and calm, and her behavior corresponded well with her looks. Of course all the great statesmen who were thus called on to meet her, felt much curiosity as to how she would carry off her new honors, and one of the greatest. Sir Robert Peel, said afterward that he was “amazed at her manner and behavior; at her apparent deep sense of her situation, her modesty and at the same time her firmness. She appeared to be awed but not daunted.”

On the following day she was publicly proclaimed at Saint James’s Palace, and all of those who had gathered to watch the ceremony, which was performed at a window looking out on the courtyard, were as deeply impressed as the peers and princes had been on the preceding day. It must have been difficult for the simple, unassuming young girl to preserve her calm dignity when she heard the singing of that grand national anthem, God Save the Queen, and knew that it was for her.

In midsummer the queen moved to Buckingham Palace, and on July seventeenth she took part in her first elaborate public ceremony—that is, she drove in state to dissolve Parliament. All were impressed with the manner in which she read her speech, and one distinguished observer said to another, “How beautifully she performs!”

A pleasant story is told of the young queen shortly after her accession. The Duke of Wellington, whom Victoria greatly admired, brought to her for signature a court-martial death sentence. The queen, horrified, and feeling that she could not sign her name to such a document, begged the Duke to tell her whether there was not some excuse for the offender.“None,” said the Iron Duke; “he has deserted three times.”

“Oh, think, your Grace,” Victoria replied, “whether there be not something in his favor.”

“Well,” said the Duke, “I am certain that he is a very bad soldier, but he may, for aught I know, be a very good man. In fact, I remember hearing some one speak for him.”

“Oh, thank you!” exclaimed the queen, as she joyously wrote the word “Pardoned” across the document.

It soon became evident that the tender-hearted queen would never be able to deal with questions of this sort—that there was danger of all offenders being pardoned; and a commission was finally appointed to attend to such matters.

On June twenty-eighth, 1838, after she had been queen for over a year, Victoria was formally crowned at Westminster Abbey. The crown worn by her predecessors was far too large for her, so a new crown was made at a cost of over five hundred thousand dollars. The spectacle was a most impressive and inspiring one, and the queen went through her part in it, as she had gone through her part at all ceremonies in which she had participated, in a manner which roused anew the enthusiasm of her subjects. When the prime minister finally placed the crown on Victoria’s head, all the peers and peeresses placed their coronets on their heads and shouted God Save the Queen. Carlyle said of her at that time, “Poor little Queen! She is at an age at which a girl can hardly be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself, yet a task is laid upon her from which an archangel might shrink.”Another writer, however, said, “I consider that it would be impossible to exaggerate the enthusiasm of the English people on the accession of Victoria to the throne.” And it was this enthusiasm on the part of her subjects, joined with her own extraordinary common sense, which enabled her to bear up under circumstances which might well have daunted an older and a wiser sovereign.

Of course one of the chief questions with regard to the new queen was that of her marriage. Usually the marriage of a sovereign was practically settled as a question of statecraft, but Victoria showed no inclination to allow her domestic life to be regulated by her ministers. In 1836 there had visited her at Kensington Palace her cousin Albert of Saxe-Coburg, and Victoria had looked upon him very favorably. Her uncle Leopold of Belgium, who had always been one of her chief advisers, desired her to marry Albert, and urged the matter after her accession to the throne, but Victoria’s answer was, “I am too young and he is too young. I shall not think of marrying for four years yet.” However, when in 1839 Albert and his brother came to England, it was unnecessary for uncle or ministers to urge upon Victoria the wisdom of a speedy marriage; her own heart was her counselor, and Albert had not been long in the palace, before the queen, to whom it was impossible that he should propose marriage, proposed marriage to him. She persisted in looking upon it as a sacrifice on Albert’s part, but we may readily believe that he looked upon it in no such manner. They were married on February 10, 1840, and then began a life of domestic happiness which was unbroken until the death of Albert.Immediately after the wedding the young couple drove to Windsor, passing through over twenty miles of frantically cheering, loyal subjects. On their return, after a brief season of seclusion, to Buckingham Palace, Victoria turned her attention at once to her royal duties, and Albert showed himself from the outset a man peculiarly fitted to aid and advise her. His one desire was to sink his own individuality in that of the queen, but this was by no means her desire. She could not bear that her husband should be regarded as in any way subordinate to herself—that he should be forced to take a lower seat, or to walk behind her; and it was a real grief to her that she was not able to bestow upon him the title of “King Consort” rather than that of “Prince Consort.” In one of her first letters after her marriage, Victoria said of her husband, “There cannot exist a purer, dearer, nobler being in the world than the prince,” and this same attitude toward her husband she kept throughout her life.

Victoria and Albert had nine children, the first the Princess Victoria, being born in November, 1840, and the second, the Prince of Wales, afterward Edward VII of England, being born in November, 1841. The pictures that we have of the home life of this royal family; of the discipline, loving but firm, to which the children were subjected, and of the way in which the parents really lived with their children, are most charming. A little story tells how the Princess Victoria, when but a child, was told that if she persisted in speaking to the family physician simply as “Brown” without prefixing either “Mr.” or “Dr.,” she should certainly be sent to bed. When the doctor came the next morning, the little girl said, “Good-morning, Brown,” and then hastily added, “and good-night, Brown, for I am going to bed.”

Of course the life of this queen of the greatest of all European countries, and that of her husband, were not all made up of pleasant domestic duties, and journeyings from Buckingham Palace to Osborne, the summer home on the Isle of Wight, and to Balmoral in Scotland; infinite in number were the demands made by the State on Victoria’s time and on her clear intelligence. Prince Albert, too, was unweariedly busied on public matters. No great enterprise was considered fairly launched, no public building was thought properly opened without a speech from the Prince Consort. Victoria could not well have been made prouder of him than she was on her marriage day, but she was happy beyond words to find that the English people were coming to recognize his worth. They had been suspicious of him at first, and had found fault with almost every act of his. And indeed, they did not come to do him full justice until after his death.

That men should have been found ready and willing to make attempts on the life of this queen, who showed herself no less wise in ruling than she was loving and womanly in her domestic life, seems well-nigh incredible; but as one writer has said, Victoria was “the greatest royal target in Europe.” Repeated attempts were made to assassinate her, but they were always made by fanatics or insane men, and were in no wise the result of any general movement against her. Indeed, at each attempt she endeared herself the more to her people by her firmness and fearlessness, and by her willingness to show herself bravely in public.The exquisitely happy home life of the queen was brought to a close, and new public burdens were laid upon her, by the death of Prince Albert on December fourteenth, 1861. Throughout his illness of but two weeks, the queen was constantly with him, and not until the end was almost at hand did she admit even to herself that there was no hope. She had so earnestly desired that they might grow old together and that she might never be left after his death, that she could not persuade herself that he was really to die. Her account in her diary of his illness and death is most beautiful. His tenderness for her never failed, and when, shortly before his death, when he knew no one else, she bent over him and whispered, “It is your own little wife,” he knew her and kissed her.

After her husband’s death the queen withdrew largely from public affairs, and her place was most admirably taken on all social occasions by her daughter-in-law, Alexandra of Denmark, whom the Prince of Wales married in 1863. When, however, the queen felt that her presence was necessary on any public occasion, she was always ready and willing to set aside her personal feelings, and let herself be seen by her subjects. To the last, too, she maintained her hold on affairs, directing business, political and domestic matters, with the same excellent judgment that she had shown all her life.

A most notable event in the queen’s life occurred in 1897. This was the celebration of the sixtieth anniversary of her reign, and it was commemorated throughout her dominions with an enthusiasm which was without parallel. Processions, illuminations, and speech-making took place in every town in Great Britain, and city vied with city in erecting memorials of the occasion. The queen’s strength was greatly taxed during the Jubilee period, but she speedily regained her customary vigor.

Somewhat less than four years later, however, in January of 1901, the entire nation was made anxious by the news that the queen was ill. She grew steadily worse, and late in the afternoon of January 22nd, she died, to the intense grief, not only of her own subjects, but of all peoples in the world.

In this brief sketch of the life of England’s great queen, practically no reference has been made to political affairs; her life has been treated merely from the personal, or domestic, side. However, it is not to be for a moment supposed that the queen was so absorbed in her family and her friends, dear as these always were to her, that she neglected matters of state. Every important project that was attempted during her reign had her consideration, and all of her ministers united in regarding her opinion as valuable beyond words. The influence of this wonderful woman on the history of her times was incalculable, and further study of her life and character will only deepen and intensify the respect and love which all must hold for her memory.