Queen Victoria eBook

(*) The Duke of Bedford told Greville he was “sure there was a battle between her and Melbourne...  He is sure there was one about the men’s sitting after dinner, for he heard her say to him rather angrily, ‘it is a horrid custom-’ but when the ladies left the room (he dined there) directions were given that the men should remain five minutes longer.”  Greville Memoirs, February 26, 1840 (unpublished).

Occasionally, there were little diversions:  the evening might be spent at the opera or at the play.  Next morning the royal critic was careful to note down her impressions.  “It was Shakespeare’s tragedy of Hamlet, and we came in at the beginning of it.  Mr. Charles Kean (son of old Kean) acted the part of Hamlet, and I must say beautifully.  His conception of this very difficult, and I may almost say incomprehensible, character is admirable; his delivery of all the fine long speeches quite beautiful; he is excessively graceful and all his actions and attitudes are good, though not at all good-looking in face...  I came away just as Hamlet was over.”  Later on, she went to see Macready in King Lear.  The story was new to her; she knew nothing about it, and at first she took very little interest in what was passing on the stage; she preferred to chatter and laugh with the Lord Chamberlain.  But, as the play went on, her mood changed; her attention was fixed, and then she laughed no more.  Yet she was puzzled; it seemed a strange, a horrible business.  What did Lord M.

think?  Lord M. thought it was a very fine play, but to be sure, “a rough, coarse play, written for those times, with exaggerated characters.”  “I’m glad you’ve seen it,” he added.  But, undoubtedly, the evenings which she enjoyed most were those on which there was dancing.  She was always ready enough to seize any excuse—­the arrival of cousins—­a birthday—­a gathering of young people—­to give the command for that.  Then, when the band played, and the figures of the dancers swayed to the music, and she felt her own figure swaying too, with youthful spirits so close on every side—­then her happiness reached its height, her eyes sparkled, she must go on and on into the small hours of the morning.  For a moment Lord M. himself was forgotten.

V

The months flew past.  The summer was over:  “the pleasantest summer I ever passed in my life, and I shall never forget this first summer of my reign.”  With surprising rapidity, another summer was upon her.  The coronation came and went—­a curious dream.  The antique, intricate, endless ceremonial worked itself out as best it could, like some machine of gigantic complexity which was a little out of order.  The small central figure went through her gyrations.  She sat; she walked; she prayed; she carried about an orb that was almost too heavy to hold; the Archbishop of Canterbury came and crushed a ring upon the wrong finger, so