CHAPTER VII NURSERY DAYS-FIRST LESSONS AND IMPRESSIONSPARENTAL SUPERVISION 1843-1845 FROM this time forward both the Queen and Prince Albert took an active part in the education of their children, and especially in that of the elder ones, around whose cradles the controversy of the pamphleteer had raged. Now we hear of the Queen hearing the Princess Royal read or giving her history lessons in the course of these early yachting tours, when the places visited afforded a convenient text; now Prince Albert impresses some useful object-lesson on the plastic mind of his eldest son. Tutors and governesses are engaged; the services of "eminent professors" are utilised, but the personal superintendence and the watchful vigilance of the parental eye is never for a moment relaxed. It was very many years after reserved for the Princess Christian, herself a woman of more than ordinary ability, to edit with affectionate care the posthumous memoirs and letters of her sister the Princess Alice. Her father had been many years dead, and his favourite daughter had followed him to the tomb on the same fatal December 14. In the preface to the work in question appears the following • Princess Helena, born May 6, 1846. tribute to the care bestowed on their children's upbringing both by the late Queen and the Prince Consort: “One of the main principles observed in the education of the Royal children was this-that though they received the best training, of body and mind, to fit them for the high position they would eventually have to fill, they should in no wise come in contact with the actual Court life. The children were scarcely known to the Queen's ladiesin-waiting, as they only now and then made their appearance for a moment after dinner at dessert, or accompanied their parents out driving. The care of them was exclusively entrusted to persons who possessed the Queen and Prince Consort's entire confidence, and with whom they could at all times communicate direct. The Royal parents kept themselves thoroughly informed of the minutest details of what was being done for their children in the way of training and instruction. After the first years of childhood were past, the Royal children were placed under the care of English, French, and German governesses, who, again, were under a Lady Superintendent, and accompanied the children in their walks and watched over them during their games." In an interesting little volume on the "Life of Queen Victoria in the Isle of Wight," already referred to, it is stated that "the Prince Consort often spent hours daily with the children, and not only furnished a general plan for their instruction, but superintended it himself. He not only appointed to each one his or her teachers, but thought it his duty to read every book that was about to be put into their hands." The late Professor Tyndall, Queen Victoria's Unselfishness at the inauguration of the Birkbeck Institute, alluded in almost identical terms to his own experiences when he visited Osborne, where he gave lectures to several of the royal children. Between 1842 and 1857, many tutors and governesses were employed in assisting the Queen in the great educational work which, in the case of the younger children, went on for some time after their father's death, when the Prince of Wales had arrived at years of discretion, and his elder sister the Princess Royal was married and herself a mother. For all of them the Queen invariably showed the greatest kindness and consideration. Mr. J. George Hodgkins in his little book published nearly forty years ago, relates the following anecdote on the authority of Grace Greenwood (Mrs. Lippincott), who communicated it to the Chicago Advance: "When I was in England I heard several pleasant anecdotes of the Queen and her family from a lady who had received them from her friend, the governess of the Royal children. This governess, a very interesting young lady, was the orphan daughter of a Scottish clergyman. During the first year of her residence at Windsor her mother died. When she first received the news of her serious illness she applied to the Queen to resign her situation, feeling that to her mother she owed even a more sacred duty than to her Sovereign. The Queen, who had been much pleased with her, would not hear of her making this sacrifice, but said in a tone of the most gentle sympathy: Go at once to your mother, child. Stay with her as long as she needs you, and then come back to us. I will keep your • "Sketches and Anecdotes of Her Majesty the Queen," by J. George Hodgkins. Sampson Low, Son and Marston. London, 1868. place for you. Prince Albert and I will hear the children's lessons, so in any event let your mind be at rest in regard to your pupils." " In the year of Queen Victoria's death a volume appeared on the subject of her private life,* containing many interesting statements which have since been corroborated and are in perject accord with the spirit of her journals. Her Majesty frequently supervised in person the riding and driving lessons of her children in the great Riding School at Windsor. The school-rooms in the various royal residences were always close to the Queen's own apartments, that at Windsor being next to her private audience-chamber, and only one room away from her own sitting-room. Its connection with the first ten years of the life of King Edward VII. is a very close one.† The opinions of the late Queen on the subject of religion have been already spoken of in connection with the Stockmar correspondence. The author of the "Private Life of Queen Victoria' says: "The religious training of the Royal children was entirely mapped out by the Queen, who herself drew up a memorandum, which, if it were given to the world in full, would prove of inestimable benefit to all parents, so kindly, so truly sympathetic, so earnestly and womanly is it. Touching the Princess in particular, she says: "I am quite clear that she should be taught to have great reverence for God and for religion, and that she should have the feeling of devotion and love which our Heavenly "Private Life of Queen Victoria," by one of her Majesty's Servants. London, C. Arthur Pearson, 1901. † Post, see p. 346. |