QUEEN VICTORIA
 
QUEEN VICTORIA
AS I KNEW HER
 
BY
SIR THEODORE MARTIN
K.C.B., K.C.V.O.
 
For Private Circulation
 
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
EDINBURGH AND LONDON
MCMI
 
All Rights reserved
STIFLE the throbbing of this haunting pain,
And dash this tearful sorrow from the eyes!
She is not dead! Though summoned to the skies,
Still in our hearts she lives, and there will reign;
Still the dear memory will the power retain
To teach us where our foremost duty lies,
Truth, justice, honour, simple worth to prize,
And what our best have been to be again.


She hath gone hence, to meet the great, the good,
The loved ones, yearn'd for through long toilsome years,
To share with them the blest beatitude,
Where care is not, nor strife, nor wasting fears,
Nor cureless ills, nor wrongs to be withstood;
Shall thought of this not dry our blinding tears?
 
Published in the 'Nineteenth Century,' February 1901.
[Pg 1]
QUEEN VICTORIA
AS I KNEW HER.
 
CHAPTER I.
 
My personal introduction to Queen Victoria was due to the circumstanceof my being chosen by Her Majesty to be the biographer of the PrinceConsort. The obvious difficulties of that task, to which I lookedforward with grave apprehension, could not have been successfullyovercome but for the personal confidence early reposed in me by theQueen, which led not only to her placing unreservedly at my disposal thevery complete collections made by the Prince Consort of confidentialState and other papers connected with Her Majesty's[Pg 2] reign, but also tothe frank communication of such personal details as, while theyillustrated the character of the Prince, threw the strongest light uponthat of the Queen herself.
After my book was completed, the same confidential relations continued.This gave me such unusual opportunity of observing Her Majesty'squalities of mind and heart, that I am tempted to place on record somuch of what I saw as may without impropriety be told. What she was as aSovereign will be for historians to tell; it is only of the woman as shebecame revealed to me that I would speak, using, where I may, her ownwords, as I find them in looking back upon the very voluminouscorrespondence with which I was honoured through many years. Theendearing qualities of the Queen have been acknowledged by all who knewher. They secured for her what might be truly called the affectionatedevotion of the men and women of her Court. I belonged to the outerworld, but by no one were these qualitie                        
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