But for the queen the worst was very nearly over. After the election of 1885 Gladstone adopted a policy of Home Rule, and a section of his own party joined with the Conservatives in defeating the Home Rule Bill of 1886. Henceforth, with a brief Gladstonian interval in the early 'nineties, the Conservatives, under Salisbury, were in power. Imperialism after the queen's own heart became more and more the national mood. Before her death she saw the more deplorable of Gladstone's withdrawals reversed, with Kitchener at Khartoum and Roberts at Pretoria. A sunlit and glorious evening came to greet the end of her long laborious day. Gladstonian Liberalism was on the wane ; Socialism had not yet made effective entry into politics. After the acute industrial distress of the early 'eighties a period of unprecedented material prosperity set in—the "Jubilee period." The end of a century was approaching, and the end of an age, the Victorian Age. In the Jubilees of 1887 and 1897 the queen was accepted as the worthiest symbol of a great nation and an un paralleled empire. The end came in the first month of the new century, after a brief and painless illness. It was by four years the longest reign, and by three days the longest royal life, in British history.
The queen took a keen interest in ap pointments to vacant bishoprics, and undoubtedly valued as highly as Queen Elizabeth had done her position as the Head of the Established Church. She was herself deeply religious and her preference was for what would now be regarded as a somewhat old-fashioned type of Protestant piety, but her views on the exercise of her patronage were well abreast of the times. The foes of the Establishment and of true religion, in her judgment, were agnosticism and the "ritualism" of the Anglo-Catholic movement ; it is, she wrote to Disraeli in 1875, "of the utmost importance that really intellectual, liberal-minded, and courageous men should be appointed." The "materialistic tendencies" of the age could not be checked by "evangelical trash." Two years later we find her writing, "Unbelief can only be met by a full recognition of the rights of reason and science." Her preference was for Broad. Churchmen, and perhaps the most important ecclesiastical ap pointment of her reign, that of Tait to the Archbishopric of Canterbury, was her personal choice forced upon a reluctant prime minister. Her most trusted adviser in ecclesiastical mat ters was Dean Wellesley of Windsor, and after his death in 1882 she relied much on his successor, Dr. Randall Davidson, subsequently archbishop of Canterbury. It is characteristic of her eminent fairness of mind that she scrutinised with consider able suspicion the ecclesiastical recommendations of Disraeli, rebuking his attempts to use church preferment for the promotion of supposed Conservative interests, whereas she treated with far greater respect the recommendations of Gladstone who, whatever his political delinquencies, could never be accused of sacrificing the interests of the Church to those of his party.
Much might be said of the queen's pride and interest in the peoples of her far-flung empire. India was always near her heart and she encouraged her viceroys to write her long personal letters. In her later years she had a devoted Indian personal servant, and amused herself with learning the elements of Hindustani. The queen's devotion to her Indian subjects was amply appreciated and returned, alike by the chiefs and by the common people. Sir W. R. Lawrence writes (1928) in his book
The India we Served:—"From my verandah in the early morning of Feb. 2, 1901, I saw a sight which set me thinking. I saw the greater part of 'Calcutta's dense population file solemnly past on their way to the great park (Maidan) to sit there all day, without food, mourning for the great Queen-Empress who had made them her children." In 1863 we find her describing in her Journal with obvious relish the visit of certain Maori chieftains. "They all kissed my hand and behaved extremely well." On a later occasion the visitor was the redoubtable Cetewayo, and the queen's only regret was that he did not appear in his native costume, though there was apparently very little of it. In 1874 she conveyed, through her friend Dean Stanley, to Bishop Colenso of Natal, her warm approval of his championship of the rights of a native chief against the oppressive policy of the Natal Government. An amusing example of her good sense was afforded by the annexa tion of Fiji at the same date. Cabinet ministers agreed in finding this name "barbarous and unpleasing"; one suggested "the New Orkneys," another "Oceania," and Disraeli favoured "the Windsor Islands." Victoria held that "Fiji" was quite good enough, and Fiji it remains to this day.
The essential achievement of the great queen is plain for all to see : it is massive in its sim plicity. She received a crown that had been tarnished by inepti tude and vice; she wore it 63 years, and made it the symbol of private virtue and public honour. If a monarchy at once dignified and popular is of value to the nation and empire, then it was Victoria who gave back these long lost values to the crown. The achievement was one of character much more than of intellect. Opinions will differ as to the queen's political acumen, and as to the soundness of her interpretation of her duty towards her ministers. No one can question the intensity of her devotion to her duty, as wife, mother, and queen, nor the transparent honesty of her character. There are degrees of honesty even among honest men, and the queen's honesty was of the highest degree. After all, the two best things in the world, perhaps, are hard work and a happy family life, and the queen presented to her subjects a shining example of both. Her personal sympathies extended beyond her family to all her servants, and the humblest could always be the most sure of her sympathies. On occasions of mourning the queen's message was something more than royal; it was spoken from the heart of a widowed woman. When, five weeks after her husband's death, there was a bad colliery disaster at Hartley, the queen commanded her secretary to write:—"Her tenderest sympathy is with the poor widows and mothers; her own misery only makes her feel the more for them." It is but one example of many.
Perhaps a fit conclusion would be a prayer from the queen's Journal, one of many; it is dated Jan. 1, 1878. "May this year bring us peace, and may I be able to maintain strongly and stoutly the honour and dignity of my dear country! . . . God help me on in my arduous task!" The most important authority for the queen's life is the two series of Letters of Queen Victoria, 1837-1861 (1907), and 1862-1885 (1926– 27). There is an excellent popular life by Lytton Strachey (1921) and a detailed biographical article by Sidney Lee in the Dictionary of National Biography, to which a full bibliography is appended.
(D. C. So.)