The task confronting Albert as husband of the British queen was no simple one. His position was virtually without precedent, for Queen Anne's husband had been content with his nonentity, Queen Elizabeth had not married, and Queen Mary had married the ruler of a foreign country who only occasionally visited her. Moreover Albert's character was not of a kind to recommend him either to the British aristocracy or to the nation. He was stiff and shy, studious, laborious, pedantic and exact, entirely indifferent to "sport." At first the queen herself was the greatest of his difficulties, for in spite of her personal devotion she was determined to exclude him as rigorously from political affairs as she had already excluded her mother. Melbourne was her sole partner in public life; Lehzen, the promoted governess, was supreme over the royal household ; nothing apparently remained for Albert but to be the father of her children. But, with Stockmar at his elbow, he made his way. Melbourne was dis missed by the general election of 1841. Victoria's prejudice against Peel gave Albert his opportunity, and he negotiated a satisfactory compromise on the "Bedchamber" question. Peel, with his earnest middle-class temperament, was to Albert a comparatively con genial spirit, and Victoria soon learnt to like him. Albert became the queen's partner in politics, and, being her superior in intellect and knowledge, became inevitably her master and guide. Lehzen returned to her native Germany. Meantime the queen had be come a mother. The "Victorian Age" had begun in earnest.
It will be convenient to summarize at once the growth of the royal family. The Princess Royal (the "Vicky" of the Letters) was born in November 1840; in 1858 she married the crown prince of Prussia and was the mother of the Emperor William II. The prince of Wales (Edward VII.) was born in 1841. There fol lowed Princess Alice, afterwards grand duchess of Hesse, 1843; Prince Alfred, afterwards duke of Edinburgh and duke of Saxe Coburg-Gotha, 5844; Princess Helena (Princess Christian), 1846; Princess Louise (duchess of Argyll), 1848; Prince Arthur (duke of Connaught), 1850; Prince Leopold (duke of Albany), 1853; Princess Beatrice (Princess Henry of Battenburg), 1857. The queen's first grandchild was born in 1859 and her first great grandchild in 1879. There were 37 great-grandchildren alive at the time of her death.
The growing cares and joys of family life combined with the influence of Albert to produce a complete change in the queen's habits. Gone was the love of idle splendour and "mere amuse ment." The early 'forties were the "hungry 'forties," and Victoria expressed to Peel a desire to cut down the expenses of the court in order to give more of her income to charity. Sir Robert dis couraged an impulse which seemed to him all too human. "I am afraid the people would only say," he replied, "that Your Majesty was returning them change for their pounds in half pence." A sovereign, he said, must do all things in order, not seeking praise for doing one particular thing well, but striving to be an example in all respects, even in the giving of dinner parties. The dinner-parties of the royal pair were indeed a con spicuous example of decorum, but the guests found them stiff and by no means amusing. At the same time it should be said that the young queen's dignity and discretion made a great impression upon the royal visitors from abroad. Among such in the first ten years of her married life were Frederick William IV. of Prussia, Louis-Philippe of France, and the Tsar Nicholas I.
of the Horse, whose business it was to provide for the queen's journeys, was much put out by this innovation. He visited the station and inspected the engine several hours before it was due to start; and when the journey was about to begin the queen's coachman insisted on mounting the engine and presiding over its manipulation. It is said that his scarlet livery got so much soiled on the journey that he did not insist upon repeating the experiment. A few weeks later the queen used the railway for her first journey to Scotland. Railway travel, the most character istic innovation of the queen's reign, made an important contribu tion to her happiness, for it enabled her, without losing contact with her ministers, to reside for long periods of each year in the country houses she built for herself at Osborne in the Isle of Wight, and at Balmoral in the Highlands of Scotland. Politicians sometimes complained, not without reason, of the labours and delays occasioned by the queen's addiction to these resorts, especially to the distant Balmoral; but at a later period the delays of correspondence were reduced by another innovation, the telegraph. Telegraphic communication was established be tween London and Balmoral in the early 'sixties. At the same time, it was usually expected that members of the Cabinet should take turns in "doing service," as Lord Palmerston called it, of residence with the queen when at Balmoral.
The estate at Osborne was purchased by Peel's advice, and the residence built, in 1846, out of the queen's savings from her income. The lease of the original (and quite small) Balmoral House was taken two years later. In 1852 the estate was bought, and the great palace in "Scotch baronial" style completed in 1855. At Balmoral her happiest days were spent. "Every year," she wrote, "my heart becomes more fixed in this dear Paradise, and so much more so now, that all has become my dear Albert's own creation, own work, own building, own laying-out ;—and his great taste, and the impress of his dear hand, have been stamped everywhere." The queen held the Highlanders in more esteem than any other section of her subjects. Her favourite servant, the Highlander John Brown, was her inseparable attendant down to his death in 1883. Protestant to the core, she felt a more entire sympathy with the Presbyterian Established Church of Scotland than with the English Church. It is probable that she esteemed no English minister of religion so highly as the Scottish Presbyterian, Norman MacLeod. When he died in 1872 she wrote :—"There was in beloved Norman MacLeod such geniality with true piety, and the strongest belief, the largest, widest Christian love . . ." ending with the words, "he was a thorough Highlander." The Great Exhibition of 1851 belongs to the career of Albert rather than Victoria. The old Houses of Parliament had been burnt down and the problems connected with the building of the new Houses suggested to Peel the desirability of a royal commission to consider the best means of promoting the arts and sciences. He invited Albert to preside over the commission, and its work suggested to the prince the idea of the Exhibition. That Exhibition, the first of its kind, held in the Crystal Palace erected in Hyde Park, owed everything to Albert's organizing energy. The work of the commission led to the creation of the Museum and the Science and Art Department at South Kensing ton, and to the founding of art schools and picture galleries all over the country.