Sidney Lee

“ All current politics and society came under the satirists' lash. But the burden of the indictment, phrased in various keys of scurrility, was that the prince's conduct was unfitting him for succession to the throne. The recrudescence of Queen Victoria's popularity and the manifest good-nature and public spirit of the prince soon dissipated for the most part the satiric censure. Yet an undercurrent of resentment against reputed indulgences of the prince's private life never wholly disappeared. ”

“ The prince was no party politician, and he cherished no rigid political principles. His interest lay in men rather than in measures, and his native tact enabled him to main-tain the best personal terms with statesmen whose policy he viewed with indifference or disapproval. Gladstone's considerate treatment of him conciliated his self-esteem without affecting materially his political opinions. The personal tie between the political leader and the heir-apparent was involuntarily strengthened, too, by the comprehensive differences which separated Queen Victoria from the liberal statesman. ”

“ Though Queen Victoria had modified her seclusion in her latest years, her age and her dislike of ceremonial functions had combined to maintain the court in much of the gloom in which the prince consort's death had involved it. The new king had a natural gift for the exercise of brilliant hospitality, and he sought to indulge his taste with liberality. London became the headquarters of the court for the first time for forty years. No effort was spared to make it a prominent feature of the nation's social life. ”

“ Furnivall deemed Maurice and the college council to be not only unduly conservative in their religious views but imdemocratic in refusing working men admission to the council. Fumivall's activity in the affairs of the college ceased only with his life. He never lost his early tone of impatience with those colleagues whose religious or political views differed from his own. But he retained to the last the ardent devotion of the students, and the social development of the institution stood deeply indebted to him. ”

“ He had watched more closely the course of foreign politics. His constant habit of travel, his careful maintenance of good relations with his large foreign kindred, his passion for making the personal acquaintance of interesting men and women on the continent, gave him much knowledge of foreign affairs both political and social. Yet the diplomatic details of foreign policy lay outside his range of study. While he was desirous of full information from his ministers, he soon came to view them as responsible experts whose procedure was rarely matter for much personal comment. ”

“ Disraeli on the platform had already sneered at him as an 'itinerant spouter of stale sedition' and as a ’wild man of the cloister going about the country maligning men and things.' In 1870 the statesman published his 'Lothair,' and there he rancorously introduced an unnamed Oxford professor 'of advanced opinions on all subjects, religious, social and political, of a restless vanity and overflowing conceit, gifted with a great command of words and talent for sarcasm, who was not satisfied with his home career but was about to settle in the New World. ”

“ Queen Victoria for the greater part of her reign was a widow and a recluse, who divided all her thought with unremitting application between politics and family affairs. The new king had wider interests, Without his mother's power of concentration or her tenacity of purpose, he distributed his energies over a more extended field. ”

“ But the cry of 'Canada First' made little headway, and Smith next flung himself into the movement for a commercial union with the United States. He had come to the new conclusion that annexation with the United States was the destiny appointed to Canada by nature, and that the removal of the tariff barrier was the first step to that amalgamation of the two countries, which could alone be safely effected by peaceful means. ”

“ Of the theatre and the opera he was from boyhood an ardent admirer, and both in London and Paris he enjoyed the society of the dramatic and musical professions. The lighter forms of dramatic and musical entertainment chiefly attracted him. But his patronage was comprehensive. Wagner's operas he attended with regularity, and Irving's Shakespearean productions at the Lyceum Theatre from 1872 onwards stirred his enthusiasm. With Irving, the leader of the dramatic profession through a great part of the prince's career, his social relations were of the friendliest. ”

“ The prince's married life was mainly spent at Marlborough House. But Sandringham constantly drew him from London ; he visited friends in all parts of the country for sport or society, and was in Scotland every autumn. Nor was his habit of foreign travel long interrupted. Part of the early spring was soon regularly devoted to Cannes or Nice in the Riviera, and part of the early autumn to Homburg, while tours on a larger scale were not infrequent.
Outside London his career for the most part resembled that of any man of wealth and high station. ”

“ His place in the royal succession soon seemed to him inconsistent with that perpetual tutelage, from which Queen Victoria deemed it wrong for him to escape in her lifetime. Open conflict was averted mainly by the prince's placable temper, which made ebullitions of anger of brief duration; but it was a serious disadvantage for him to be denied by the queen any acknowledged responsibility in public affairs for the long period of nearly forty years, which intervened between his father's death and his own accession to the throne. ”

“ The foreign press and public often made during his reign the error of assuming that in his frequent interviews with foreign rulers and statesmen he was personally working out a diplomatic policy of his own devising. Foreign statesmen and rulers knew that no subtler aim really underlay his movements than a wish for friendly social intercourse with them and the enjoyment of life under foreign skies, quite unencumbered by the burden of diplomatic anxieties. ”

“ Representatives were invited not only from all the colonies but, for the first time, from all manner of administrative institutions—county councils, borough councils, learned societies, friendly societies, and railway companies. The king desired to render the event memorable for the poor no less than for the well-to-do. He gave the sum of 30,000l. for a commemorative dinner to 500,000 poor persons of London, while the queen undertook to entertain the humble class of general servants in the metropolis. Two other episodes lent fresh grace to the ceremony. ”

“ He always retained through life a full mastery of all the complexities of the language. To his many German relations he spoke in no other tongue, and to his grand-uncle, King Leopold I of Belgium, and to that monarch's son and successor, King Leopold II, with both of whom he was through youth and manhood in constant intercourse, he talked in German preferably to French. ”

“ In his family circle there were some whose dislike of the young ruler was far more firmly rooted than his own. But the prince sought paths of peace and conciliation. The new emperor was his mother's favourite grandson and had at command a social charm which equalled his uncle's. When in 1890 the emperor dismissed Bismarck from his service and he became politically his own master, the outer world came to attribute to uncle and nephew a personal and political rivalry which hampered the good relations of the peoples. This allegation was without foundation in fact. ”

“ The prince's tact always more or less controlled his personal feelings. Gladstone detected only 'a little Danism' in the prince's conversation. If the prince was careful to prevent Count von Beust, the Austrian ambassador, whose hostility to Denmark was admitted, from even approaching the princess, he succeeded in establishing the best social relations between himself and the count. A passion for direct personal intercourse with all who dominated great events tended to override personal sentiment and prejudice. ”

“ From 1864 onwards the prince, stirred in part by the princess's anxiety for the fortunes of her family, was deeply interested in the wars which disturbed central Europe. Prussia and Austria continued their endeavours to deprive Denmark of all hold on Schleswig-Holstein. The prince's Danish sentiment was in accord with popular English feeling. But it caused embarrassment to Queen Victoria, who in spite of her private German leanings was resolved on the maintenance of England's neutrality. Her relations with her son were often strained by his warm support of the Danes. ”

“ The prince and his brother Alfred during the Crimean war were busy over miniature fortifications in the grounds.
The gravest defect in Prince Albert's deliberate scheme of education was the practical isolation which it imposed on the prince from boys of his own age. Prince Albert to a greater extent than the queen held that members of the royal family and especially the heir-apparent should keep aloof from their subjects, and deprecated intercourse save in ceremonial fashion. He had a nervous fear of the contaminating influence of boys less carefully trained than his own sons. ”

“ Although he wrote much on current literature, on religious speculation, and on the public affairs of the European continent, he applied his pen chiefly to the politics of Canada, England, and the United States. He adhered with tenacity and independence to the principles which he had upheld in England, and maintained warfare with undiminished vehemence on militarism, imperialism, and clericalism. In Canadian politics he always described himself as an onlooker or a disinterested critic. ”

“ Early in 1885, when his elder son came of age, the prince discussed the matter with the queen with the knowledge of the liberal ministry. There was no unwillingness on any side to treat his wishes considerately, but neither the queen nor her ministers showed undue haste in coming to close quarters with the delicate issue. Lord Salisbury was now prime minister, but the conservative government was as reluctant as any liberal government to lay a large fresh burden on the revenues of the state in the interests of the royal family. ”

“ As at his villas at Majano, Leader provided at Vincighata a spacious swimming-bath in the grounds, where he indulged his favourite pastime winter and summer till near his death. Although he lived part of each year in the restored castle, he freely opened it to the public. His pride in it increased with his years, and he delighted in conducting through it distinguished visitors. His visitors' book at Vincigliata abounded in autographs of persons of eminence in royal, artistic, and literary circles throughout Europe ”

“ The king's heartfelt sympathy went out to the new king of Portugal, the late king's younger son, Manoel, and in November next year he entertained the young monarch at Windsor, investing him with the order of the Garter, and greeting him at a state banquet on 16 Nov. as 'the heir of our oldest ally in history.' King Manoel was King Edward's last royal guest. There was some irony in the circumstance. King Manoel's royal career was destined to be brief, and within five months of King Edward's death his subjects established a republic and drove him from his throne to seek an asylum in England. ”

“ The king came to the throne in his sixtieth year endowed with a personality of singular charm and geniality, large worldly experience, wide acquaintance with men and women, versatile interests in society, and philanthropy, enthusiasm for sport, business habits, and a resolve to serve his people to the best of his ability. ”

“ The royal family was bound to experience many episodes of sorrow as well as joy. The prince was pained by the death in 1878 of his second sister, Alice, princess of Hesse-Darmstadt, who had helped to nurse him through his illness of 1871. To his acute distress, too, his youngest brother, Leopold, duke of Albany, died suddenly while on holiday at Cannes (24 March 1884) , and the prince at once went thither on the melancholy errand of bringing the remains home. Subsequently he unveiled with much public ceremony a statue of the duke at Cannes. ”

“ From 1868 to 1871 he served, too, as editor of the 'Alpine Journal.' But mountaineering appealed to Stephen not only as a sport but also as an incentive to good-fellowship. Many of his closest friendships were formed in the Alps. With his guide Melchior Anderegg, whom he regularly employed from his first season in 1858, he was always on the best of terms. Anderegg was Stephen's guest in London in 1861 and 1888. Stephen felt deeply the beauty of the mountains, and it was his Alpine experiences which led him to become an author. ”

“ Smiles was drawn to the study and writing of biography, in which he made his chief reputation, by the sanguine belief that concrete examples of men who had achieved great results by their own efforts best indicated the true direction and goal of social and industrial progress. On the death in 1848 of George Stephenson, with whom he had come into occasional contact at Leeds, he wrote a memoir in 'Eliza Cook's Journal' in 1849, and afterwards persuaded Stephenson's son Robert to allow him to write a full life. ”

“ Collins pursued undaunted his crusade for the recognition of English literature at Oxford. He collected the views of leading public men, and published them in the ‘Pall Mall Gazette’ (Dec. 1886) . He re-stated his case in a ‘Quarterly’ article, ‘A School of English Literature’ (January 1887) , in an essay in the ‘Nineteenth Century’ (Nov. 1887) on ‘Can English Literature be taught?’ and in a volume ‘The Study of English Literature’ (1891) . While his strenuous temper excited much hostility, Collins won his point. ”

“ But the increased publicity attaching to the king's movements in his exalted station misled some domestic and many foreign observers into the error of scenting a subtle diplomatic purpose in his established practice of exchanging at intervals visits of courtesy with his royal kindred on the European continent. With his insatiable curiosity about men and things, he always liked frank discussion of European politics with foreign statesmen, and he continued the practice till his death. ”

“ When the duke of Abruzzi came at the end of 1906 to lecture to the Royal Geographical Society on his explorations of the Ruwenzori mountains in east Africa, the king was present and with impromptu grace and manifest desire to prove his interest in foreign policy moved a vote of thanks to the lecturer, whom he hailed as a kinsman of his ally the king of Italy (2 Jan. 1907) . At stated seasons he was the guest for shooting or merely social recreation at many country houses, where he met at ease his unchanging social circle. ”

“ The Irish secretary, Lord Hartington, the prince's intimate friend, favoured the proposed Irish palace. But the queen was unconvinced. She doubted whether the duties of the Indian council were onerous enough to keep the prince employed. In Ireland the prince's intimacy with the family of the duke of Abercorn imbued him with Orangeism. She evasively allowed that increased occupation would be advantageous to the prince, and she gave vague assurances of assent to Gladstone's general proposition. But her unwillingness to pursue the matter in detail brought the negotiation to an end. ”

“ While Smith's political theories continued to offend Canadian opinion, his labours in other than the political sphere, his obvious sincerity, his intellectual eminence, and his growing years ultimately won him almost universal respect in Toronto and indeed throughout Canada. In matters of education, social reform, and public benevolence the value of his work, despite occasional friction with colleagues, could not be seriously questioned. ”