Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/235

Albert cherished for years was about to be realised: ‘I had,’ he writes to her (24 Oct. 1839), ‘when I learned your decision, almost the feeling of old Simeon: “Now lettest Thou thy servant depart in peace!” Your choice has been for some years my conviction of what might and would be best for your happiness.’

On the prince's side it was no less clear that his heart was deeply engaged. ‘Victoria,’ he wrote (16 Oct.) to Baron Stockmar, ‘is so good and kind to me, that I am often puzzled to believe that I should be the object of so much affection. I know the interest you take in my happiness, and therefore pour out my heart to you.’ Stockmar heard the news with pleasure, but accompanied his congratulations with earnest counsels as to the future conduct of the prince. They accorded with the principles which the prince had thought out for himself. ‘An individuality,’ he wrote in reply, ‘a character which shall win the respect, the love, and the confidence of the queen and of the nation, must be the keystone of my position.’ He foresaw the many difficulties which must inevitably surround his position. But, as he wrote to his stepmother, ‘life has its thorns in every position, and the consciousness of having used one's powers and endeavours for an object so great as that of promoting the welfare of so many will surely be sufficient to support me.’ Prophetic words, because they were spoken from the settled conviction which never afterwards wavered or slept. Not less prophetic were the words of Stockmar (15 Dec.): ‘If the prince really possess the love of the queen and the respect of the nation, I will answer for it that after every storm he will come safely into port.’

Meanwhile the prince was the happiest of lovers; his joy was tempered by the humility which enters into all noble love. ‘What am I,’ he writes to the queen (21 Nov.), ‘that such happiness should be mine? For excess of happiness it is for me to know that I am so dear to you.’ Not all the splendour of the alliance could reconcile the grandmother at Gotha to losing the idol of her affection. ‘I cannot rejoice,’ she wrote to the prince's father. To his brother it was no less hard to part with him. ‘I love and esteem him more than any one on earth,’ he wrote to the queen (19 Dec.). ‘Guided by his own clear sense,’ he added, ‘Albert always walked calmly and steadily in the right path. In the greatest difficulties that may meet you in your eventful life, you may repose the most entire confidence in him. And then only will you feel how great a treasure you possess in him.’

The prince left Gotha on 28 Jan. 1839, followed by the earnest good wishes, but also by the regrets, of his countrymen of all classes. He reached Dover on 6 Feb., and was met with the heartiest welcome, which attended him all along the route till he reached Buckingham Palace on the 8th. The announcement of the marriage had given general satisfaction. Some absurd doubts as to the prince's protestant convictions had in the meantime been raised, only to be swept away, and a movement had been made in the House of Commons to reduce his annuity from 50,000l., the sum proposed by Lord Melbourne, to 21,000l. This motion had been negatived, but another, moved by Colonel Sibthorp and supported by Sir Robert Peel and his friends, was carried, reducing it to 30,000l. This seemed for the moment not to augur well for the prince's popularity; but if any feeling of this kind rested in his mind, it vanished before the cordiality with which he was hailed by the crowds who turned out to give him welcome from the moment he set his foot on the English shore.

His demeanour at the marriage in the chapel of St. James's Palace (16 Feb.) deepened the favourable impression which his appearance had produced—young and handsome as he was, and bearing himself with a quiet grace and dignity quite exceptional. The morning had been wet and dark, but before the sovereign and her husband left Buckingham Palace the sun had broken out with peculiar brilliancy, so that they were well seen by the thousands who lined the roads from the one palace to the other. ‘There cannot exist a dearer, purer, nobler being in the world than the prince,’ were the queen's words in writing to Baron Stockmar the next day. Of this faith he was to prove himself eminently worthy.

A man of a character so marked and a disposition so resolute was sure to find it no easy matter to obtain the independence and power with which alone he could be satisfied. There were naturally in the royal household some who were reluctant to surrender the control which had hitherto been in their hands; there were others who scarcely concealed their disappointment that the queen had selected her husband from abroad. All was happiness between the queen and himself, but so early as the following May the prince wrote to his friend, Prince von Löwenstein: ‘The difficulty in filling my place with the proper dignity is that I am only the husband, and not the master in the house.’ Such a state of things could not last long, when the queen herself was determined that in all matters, save those of state, the paramount authority was to be conceded to the husband