QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER MOTHER

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 200, 12 November 1927, Page 24 (Supplement)

QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER MOTHER

Aucklander Edits Letters of Famours Lady-in-Waiting

The Dean or Windsor and Yfr. Hector Bolitho. of Auckland, recently collaborated in editing “The Letters of I.ady Augusta Stanley." The jollowinrj review by P. H*. 'Wilson in the 2Cew York “Times" Book Review will be found of interest. Lady Augusta Stanley was a ladit-in- waiting to Queen Victoria's mother and. later, the confidante of Queen Victoria. IT has been with a numerous progeny that, as a rule, the noble but impecunious House of Elgin has been blessed, No fewer than 11 children were born to the seventh holder of the title, and the tenth of them, Lady Augusta Bruce, was not sorry to be appointed Lady-in-Waiting to Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, and later as resident Woman-of-tlie-Bedchamber —otherwise confidential secretary—to the Queen herself. Her salary was £3OO, or £SOO. a year, and in due course she was kindly but insistently married to Dean Stanley.

To Her younger sister. Lady Frances Baillie, Augusta wrote those voluminous and adjectival epistles that were then the custom, In which the “precious” doings of the “darling” Duchess and the fascinating if tragic vicissitudes of the still more “beloved” Majesty were set. down at a length and with a rapture only to be described as indefatigable Like the curate’s egg, such letters are good in parts, yet the very trivialities in which they abound, their innumerable nothings, enable us once again to share the weariness of a lady whose humble i duty it was ecstatically to submit to a “

routine, so weari- Duchess of Kent some. We are not surprised that even Lady Augusta demanded a vacation, which, needless to say, Victoria “begs” her to postpone. Even the recreations were chilly. I very much hope that these letters will victim from Balmoral) my liking for exercise and my horror for cold, but found that H. M. does not share the latter and quite accepts the idea of sitting for hours, perishing on a pony going at a foot's pace and coming home frozen! Tliat being the case, there is nothing to be said. That Lady Augusta was in a position to furnish posterity with what the professor calls his source materials is obvious. Not only did she witness great functions like the obsequies of the Duke of Wellington, of which there were many spectators, but she saw and heard what was heard and seen by few, indeed sometimes by none others. She was in the room when the Prince Consort died and was the only Court lady afterward in attendance on the widowed Queen: The poor Queen exclaimed: “Oli. yes, this is death! I know it. 1 have seen this before.” Darling, so had 1 twice, and oh, howdreadful it was. The Queen fell upon him, called him by every endearing name; then sank into our arms and let us lead or carry her away to the adjoining room, where she lay on the sofa; then she summoned the children around her to clasp them to her heart and assure them she would endeavour, if she lived, to live for them and her duty and to appeal to them from henceforth to seek to walk in the footsteps of him whom God had taken to Himself. It. is thus no wonder that the son of Lady Frances Baillie has been “rummaging among the old faded letters with great delight.” We also should have liked to rummage and possibly we should have rummaged with less restraint.

Fov it cannot l)e denied that Dr. j Baillie finds himself in a somewhat delicate predicament. He-owns what belongs to the annals of a great period. But he cannot forget that, as godmother Queen Victoria was “very kind ’ to him, that he “knew her intimately” and that she was “personally dear.” Also, he happens to be himself the Dean Of Windsor —indeed, it is from the actual castle that this book is issued—ami such Deans, whatever their dogmas, must never fail in discretion. In his revelations the Dean has thus to discriminate. We are allowed to know that at King Edward’s wedding the future Emperor William of Germany spent liis time during the ceremony biting his British cousins and throwing as much of his dirk as he could break off across St. George’s Chapel. But when it comes to Victoria the Dean cannot bring himself j “to provide food for the gossiping discussion of her faults and virtues which has been so common of late | years.” Although the last of these letters is dated as early as the year 1563, j although Lady Augusta died in 1576, although the Queen has rested a quarter of a century in her grave, there must be no lese-majeste. We take it that the arch-offender is Lytton Strachey. At any rate, while his views are quoted, his name is too obnoxious to be mentioned. Yet how does the Dean handle the culprit? “A cold catalogue of faults and virtues,” he says, “is irritatingly untrue.” We agree. But whatever we may think of our Strachey and his disciples, at least they cannot be accused of compiling cold catalogues. Possibly their “synthesis” of character was not, as the Dean thinks that it should have been, “the estimate of love.” But even the Dean adds that love should not be blind, and it is a blind love that, at times, he has applied to his task as editor. It is the opinion of the Dean, then, that these letters will correct some false impressions. He is, indeed, so courageous as to pooh-pooh the quarrel between Victoria and her mother. We read: T very much hope that these letters will suggest a, new understanding of the Duchess’s character. The generally accepted view is that the Queen, when she came to the throne, snubbed her, and that she retired into a somewhat morose and disappointed obscurity in which there was little intercourse between mother and daughter. Nothing could be further from the truth. Since Dr. Baillie was not born when the quarrel developed, his statement

is not evidence, but what w e ar . customed to call propaganda iTi * c ‘ his Aunt Augusta herself is not a ness. For. as the Dean trulv the cause of the trouble was th • vourite of the Duchess. Sir John r rov. who was -tactless and ill-judA” —which is putting it mildlv-anri c S ro>-s “influence” was obliterated, years before Augusta arrived at Co'!.’ Any one who thinks that i. Queen and the Duchess sent s out each other's eves is of Mc “ eii mistaken. Even when at its height, the decencies and e the language of religion were ? served. Etiquette itself prevented public recrimination. The ladi.. * braced. At least, the Duke of wtr ington told them that thov ought ' embrace. But as we read these letters thevin dicate that there never was a re vitiation. When the Duchess fell jm her final illness, it was not theQn". ' but Lady Augusta who was to in the sick-room. Indeed, a visit f re », iter Majesty was anticipated as som I thing of an ordeal. On the l*th the Queen was to ; <‘ume down, but before being dresUa l was sent for t«» beg that the vUi, might be deferred. H R H. feeling tks she would be better nble for n latlV IX Q T>?- -Vr. C T' < «® J , * I V 1 „ IT " asa a mutual pleasure—the last words chanced to i be God bless you both The did not show she was stru. k bv looking ill. but was very .«ad on k j ing home. Indeed, in her very description of the death scene Lady Augusta re\eal* to us unwittingly how complete had been the estrangement between the two women. All was still—only the ticking ,-nd striking of the clock watch the Quor n used to hear in her childhood most all the things in the bedroom were Kensington things, or older, and The Queen had scarcely seen them . By that time the Duchess was unconscious: The poor Queen had promised to try and rest till she was called, bur i she could not—three times she stole down with her little lamp and Weiss j in her white dressing gown, and knelt* kissing the hand and whispering •Mama” so lovingly and earnestly as if the sound must rouse her. That Victoria wept when “all was over” goes without saying. She was human and tears are none the less genuine when they are salted with a savour of remorse. Indeed, ther? were few occasions at Windsor when one did not weep. In a rigid court the eyes were a safety valve, and jov, like grief, was not merely an emotion but a ceremony. What troubled the Duchess of Kent, as Dean Baillie suggests, was not a lack of family affection but the fact that, as a Coburg, she did not like to be put in a corner Dr. Baillie considers that the later estimates of Queen Victoria are inadequate. Was she not a woman “before whom Bismarck, never dazzled by crowns, stood in awe?” How, then, are we “to account for the impression she made on her contemporaries?” The point is well taken. But we cannot pretend that we find in the letters of the Lady Augusta, couched as they are in the dialect of an exorbitant adoration, a secret that explains the terrors of a Bismarck. It i is true that, in her sorrow. Victoria displayed at times an “ineffable sweetness” and a “gentle submission which she is too truthful to call resignation.' 1 But read Victoria’s letters and you will find that the ineffable sweetness and the gentle submission stopped short of any doorstep across which dispatches were handed to monarch? and statesmen.