QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER MOTHER

Greymouth Evening Star, 26 November 1927, Page 9

QUEEN VICTORIA AND HER MOTHER

Aucklander Edits Letters ©f ~ ■ ■ Famous Lady-in-Waiting

The Dean of Windsor and Mr. Hector Bolitho, of Auckland, recently collaborated in editing “The Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley.” The following review by P. IV. Wilson in the New York “Times” Book Review will be fbund of interest. Lady Augusta (Stanley was a lady-in-waiting to Queen Victoria’s mother and, later, the confidante of Queen Victoria. Phas 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-the-Bedchamber —otherwise confidential secretary —to the Queen herself. Her salary was £3OO, or £5OO, 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 duty it was ecstatically to submit to a

routine, so wearisome. We are* not

surprise ’. 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! That being the case, there is nothing to be said. That Lady Augusta was m 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: “Oh, yes, this is death!. I know it. I have seen this before.” . Darling, so had I twice, and oh, how dreadful 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.

For it cannot be denied that Dr. 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—and such Deans, whatever their dogmas, must nevei’ 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 his 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 “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 1863, although Lady Augusta died in 1876, 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 as 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: •

l 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 tho 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 we are accustomed to call propaganda. Indeed, his Aunt Augusta herself is not a witness. For, as the Dean truly says, the cause of the trouble was the favourite of the Duchess, Sir John Conroy, who was “tactless and ill-judging” —which is putting it mildly—and Conroy’s “influence” was obliterated ten years before Augusta arrived at Court. Any one who thinks that the Queen and the Duchess scratched out each other’s eyes is, of course, mistaken. Even when the quarrel was at- its height, the decencies and evfcn the language of religion were observed. Etiquette itself prevented a public recrimination. The ladies embraced. At least, the Duke of Wellington told them that they ought to embrace.

But as we read these letters they indicate that there never was a reconciliation. When the Duchess fell into her final illness, it was not the Queen but Lady Augusta who was to be seen in the sick-room. Indeed, a visit from her Majesty was anticipated as'soinething of an ordeal. v, On the ISth'the. Queen was to have come down, but before being 1 dressed. I was sent for to beg that the visit might be deferred, H.R.H. feeling that she would be better able for it later. The Queen, however, came, to our great joy, and it was a mutual pleasure—the last words chanced to be "God bless you both." The Queen did not show she was struck by her looking ill, but was very sad on going home.

Indeed, in her very description of the death scene Lady Augusta reveals to us unwittingly how complete had been the estrangement between the two women.

All was still—only the ticking and striking of the clockwatch the Queen used to hear in her childhood. Almost all the things in the bedroom were Kensington things, or older, and The Queen had scarcely seen them since. •a-; By that time the Duchess was unconscious: ' i

The poor Queen had promised to try and rest till she was called, but she could not—three times she stole down with her little lamp and Weiss, 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, there were few occasions at Windsor when one did not weep. In a rigid court the eyes were a safety valve, and joy, like grief, was not merely an emotion but a ceremony. What troubled the Duchess of Kent, as Dean Baillie sug- / gests, 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?” 11 How, then, are we "to account for the impression she made on her cop temporaries?” 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 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.” 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 monarchs and statesmen? ,