The Lords Russell and Palmerston
Victoria felt Peel's loss even more keenly since his successor was the Liberal Lord John Russell, son of the Duke of Bedford. He was a short and emaciated man, not noticeably taller than his dumpy monarch - who found him stubborn, opinionated and graceless.
Worse than this, he either could not or would not curb the excesses of his tiresome, high-handed Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, who provided her with drafts of despatches after the originals had been sent, took no notice of her or her husband's suggested amendments to them, and, having agreed to mend his ways, carried on as before. The Queen told Russell more than once that the day would come when she would have to insist on Palmerston's dismissal.
This, however, was not to be; and in 1855, during the war against Russia in the Crimea, Palmerston came to power as the only one of her ministers considered capable of leading the country to victory. The Queen was horrified: the rude old man was over 70 by then, deaf and short-sighted with wobbly false teeth and dyed hair.
Palmerston, moreover, had greatly shocked Prince Albert by stumbling into the bedroom of one of the Queen's ladies-in-waiting at Windsor, in the unfulfilled hope of seducing her. Yet, against all expectations, difficult as he had been as Foreign Secretary, Palmerston proved perfectly amenable in office, polite and accommodating.
'The Queen told Russell more than once that the day would come when she would have to insist on Palmerston's dismissal.'
Prince Albert agreed that of all the Prime Ministers they had had, Lord Palmerston was the one who gave the least trouble. It was fortunate that he had mellowed, for it was he who had to deal with the queen when she was overwhelmed with grief at the death of her beloved husband in 1861. She was inconsolable at her loss, and retreated from the affairs of state into a lonely purdah from which, for many years, it proved impossible to entice her.
At first in her distress she feared she would go mad. She felt she could not bear to see her ministers alone, and she told the Prime Minister that they would have to conduct their business either through one of her daughters or through General Grey, her Private Secretary.
When Lord Palmerston pressed her to accept the fact that this method of conducting business was impossible, she gave way with great and tearful reluctance. But she insisted that she was not up to the strain of attending meetings of the Privy Council. In this difficulty a strange compromise was reached.
The recently appointed Clerk of the Council was Arthur Helps, an astute and tactful man whom the Queen came to like and to trust; it was agreed that he and the requisite number of councillors should stand in one room while the Queen should sit in the next with the door between them open. She would then authorise Helps to give her assent to the matters laid before the councillors for their approval.
Published: 2001-01-01
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