Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/439

 sentations were repeated in the Rubens room at the castle during each Christmas season. On 28 Dec. 1848, at the first performance, 'The Merchant of Venice' was presented, with Mr. and Mrs. Kean and Mr. and Mrs. Keeley in the cast. Thirteen other plays of Shakespeare and nineteen lighter pieces followed in the course of the next thirteen years, and the actors included Macready, Phelps, Charles Mathews, Ben Webster, and Buckstone. In 1857 William Bodham Donne succeeded Kean as director ; and the last performance under Donne's management took place on 31 Jan. 1861. More than thirty years then elapsed before the queen suffered another professional dramatic entertainment to take place in a royal palace. The most conspicuous encouragement which the queen and her husband bestowed on art duri.ig this period was their commission to eight artists (Eastlake, Maclise, Landseer, Dyce, Stanfield, Uwins, Leslie, and Ross) to decorate with frescoes the queen's summer house in the gardens of Buckingham Palace. The subjects were drawn from Milton's 'Comus.' The work was completed in 1845.

Under Prince Al bert's guidance, the queen's domestic life was now very systematically ordered. The education of the growing family occupied their parents' minds almost from the children's birth. Prince Albert frequently took counsel on the subject with Stockmar and Bunsen, and the queen consulted Melbourne (24 March 1842) even after he had ceased to be her minister. In the result Lady Lyttelton, widow of the third Baron Lyttelton, and sister of the second Earl Spencer (Lord Althorp), who had been a lady-in-waiting since 1838, was in 1842 appointed governess of the royal children, and, on her retirement in January 1851, she was succeeded by Lady Caroline Barrington, widow of Captain the Hon. George Barrington, R.N., and daughter of the second Earl Grey ; she held the office till her death on 28 April 1875. The office of royal governess, which thus was filled during the queen's reign by only two holders, carried with it complete control of the 'nursery establishment,' which soon included German and French as well as English attendants. All the children spoke German fluently from infancy. The queen sensibly insisted that they should be brought up as simply, naturally, and domestically as possible, and that no obsequious deference should be paid to their rank. The need of cultivating perfect trust between parents and children, the value of a thorough but liberal religious training from childhood, and the folly of child-worship or excessive laudation were constantly in her mind. She spent with her children all the time that her public engagements permitted, and delighted in teaching them youthful amusements. As they grew older she and the prince encouraged them to recite poetry and to act little plays, or arrange tableaux vivants. To the education of the prince of Wales as the heir apparent they naturally devoted special attention, and in every way they protected his interests. Very soon after his birth the queen appointed a commission to receive and accumulate the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, the appanage of the heir apparent, in their son's behalf, until he should come of age, and the estate was administered admirably. Although the queen abhorred advanced views on the position of women in social life, she sought to make her daughters as useful as her sons to the world at large, and, while causing them to be instructed in all domestic arts, repudiated the notion that marriage was the only object which they should be brought up to attain (Letters to Princess Alice (1874), p. 320). She expressed regret that among the upper classes in England girls were taught to aim at little else in life than matrimony.

The queen and Prince Albert regulated with care their own habits and pursuits. Although public business compelled them to spend much time in London, the prince rapidly acquired a distaste for it, which he soon communicated to the queen. As a young woman she was, she said, wretched to leave London, but, though she never despised or disliked London amusements, she came to adopt her husband's view, that peace and quiet were most readily to be secured at a distance from the capital. The sentiment grew, and she reached the conclusion that 'the extreme weight and thickness of the atmosphere' injured her health, and in consequence her sojourns at Buckingham Palace became less frequent and briefer ; in later life she did not visit it more than twice or thrice a year, staying on each occasion not more than two days. Windsor, which was agreeable to her, was near enough to London to enable her to transact business there without inconvenience. In early married life she chiefly resided there. The Pavilion at Brighton she abandoned, and, after being dismantled in 1846, it was sold to the corporation of Brighton in 1850 to form a place of public assembly. Anxious to secure residences which should be personal property and free from the restraints of supervision by public officials, she soon decided to acquire private