Victoria and Her Prime Ministers

As to be expected, the relationships between Victoria and her Prime Ministers varied greatly, depending on the political sensibilities of both parties, as well as personalities.  However, there was one constant; regardless of Victoria’s wishes, she could not do without a Prime Minister, although he could do without her.  Unlike the Stuarts, she could not avoid Parliament, and would remain dependant on the opinions of her ministers throughout her political career.

The Prime Minister at the time of her accession was perhaps her most loved one, William Lamb, 2nd Viscount Melbourne.  A Whig, or liberal, he was responsible for shaping the young Queen’s tastes.  After her quiet childhood, the dose of sophistication that he offered was intoxicating.  Not only did he educate her in the arts, but also he “lectured her on the duties of a constitutional monarch…[her] greatest need.”[xxiii]  As Charles Greville, a Member of Parliament at the time, noted, “It is become his [Melbourne] province to educate, instruct and form the most interesting mind and character in the world.”[xxiv]  It was under his guidance that she became a rabid Whig, though Victoria had little grasp of liberalism.  However, Melbourne’s government was not without its faults.  He was the first, though not the last Prime Minister to omit information from reports to his Queen.  Since her wishes, particularly at the start of her reign, were not vital to the governing of England, the country was not overly penalized for such.  Since the shift of power to Parliament it was no longer of pressing need for the monarch to be fully informed about the country’s situation.

For Victoria Melbourne was more than an advisor, he was a father figure that she, a young inexperienced girl could completely rely upon.  Indeed, the relationship between the two was often referred to as akin to that between a father and a daughter.  In such a manner was the political relationship domesticated, in keeping with the cult of Domesticity.  Victoria was a ‘modern woman’, understanding her only honorary membership in the public sphere.

Prince Albert later convinced Victoria that her liberal tastes were dangerous to the country, and ought to be repressed.[xxv]  After her marriage not only did Albert become an unofficial second Prime Minister, at least in regards to the Queen, but she began to favor conservatives, such as Tory Robert Peel.  Although she initially loathed him, his “character, his paternalism, protectiveness and probity were calculated to appeal to the Queen.”[xxvi]  The very qualities that had created a fatherly bond between Victoria and Melbourne helped strength the relationship between Victoria and her other Ministers.  The Queen, it seemed, very much liked paternalistic men.  In some manner psychologically, it may have helped her redress the deficiencies of her sex; by inviting a strong male presence to help her govern she was minimizing her potentially disastrous effect as a female outside of the private sphere, and away from her ‘natural environment’ of the hearth.

Another great conservative Prime Minister, a favorite of Victoria, was Benjamin Disraeli, a handsome Jew.  He attracted her interest after the death of Albert, and in many respects was similar to Melbourne.  He too, did not tell Victoria upsetting news, especially if he regarded it as unimportant.  Although he convinced her that power rested largely in her hands, he preferred to allow “her majesty to settle minor matters and reserving the great decisions for himself.”[xxvii]  In short, here was another father—or elder brother—figure for a girl that had never known her own father.

For Victoria, the position of Prime Minister was a very important and influential one.  Her favorite men, among which were Melbourne, Peel and Disraeli, were all men that behaved in a fatherly, paternalistic manner.  Although, regardless of the monarch’s gender, the British Prime Minister by this era was not overly bound by his sovereign’s wishes—the rise of the constitutional monarchy had seen to that—many of her Prime Ministers used their paternalistic relationship with the Queen to withhold unpleasant information, such as that about the working conditions of the day.  Victoria, if anything, was less of an absolutist monarch, than a female, partially content to let her trusted male acquaintances advise her closely on all important matters.

Endnotes

[xxii] Barry St-John Nevill.  Life at the Court of Queen Victoria (Salem House, New Hampshire, 1984), p.13.
[xxiii] Elizabeth Longford, Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), P. 67.
[xxiv] Grevile, Vol, IV, p.41.
[xxv] Victoria (queen)," Microsoft® Encarta® 98 Encyclopedia.
[xxvi] Cecil Wooodham-Smith, Queen Victoria: From her Birth to the Death of the Prince Consort (New York: Alred A. Knopf, 1972), p. 250.
[xxvii] Longford, P. 356.