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Lord Aberdeen, who spoke his mind with the sincerity and simplicity of a perfectly honest man, said of Stockmar; "I have known men as clever, as discreet, as good, and with as good judgment; but I never knew any one who united all these qualities as he did." Melbourne was jealous of his reputed influence, but testified to his sense and worth.
A very few people, in very high places, and exceptionally well-informed, knew that Baron Stockmar was a most important person: that was enough. The fortunes of the master and the servant, intimately interacting, rose together.
"I want nothing for myself," he invariably answered; "When I press something on you, it is from a conviction that it is for your interest and for your good." Among the members of the household at Claremont, near Esher, where the royal pair were established, was a young German physician, Christian Friedrich Stockmar.
The reception by the people of England of all the fugitives has been beautifully kind." That day the Queen wrote sadly to Baron Stockmar: "I am quite well; indeed, particularly so, though God knows we have had since the 25th enough for a whole life anxiety, sorrow, excitement; in short, I feel as if we had jumped over thirty years' experience at once.
The Prince writes in a half tender, half humorous fashion, of the young couple to Baron Stockmar, "The young man, 'really in love, 'the little lady' doing her best to please him."
After a year at Bonn, the time had come for a foreign tour, and Baron Stockmar arrived from England to accompany the Prince on an expedition to Italy. The Baron had been already, two years previously, consulted by King Leopold as to his views upon the proposed marriage of Albert and Victoria. His reply had been remarkable.
It was the knowledge of this, and the consciousness that a less conscientious policy might have rescued the Queen of Spain from a dreadful fate, that rendered the Queen of England and Stockmar so indignant when it turned out that the French Government had been far less scrupulous, and had not only forced on the marriage of the Queen to a man she detested, but had also married the other Infanta to Montpensier.
She saw him alone, and repeated to him the lesson which, no doubt, the faithful Stockmar had taught her at breakfast. "It has long been my intention to retain your Lordship and the rest of the present Ministry at the head of affairs;" whereupon Lord Melbourne again kissed her hand and shortly after left her. She then wrote a letter of condolence to Queen Adelaide.
There is, however, no reason to doubt that the union of Leopold and Charlotte was one of the happy exceptions to the general character of Royal marriages. Its tragic end plunged a nation into mourning. Stockmar, with a prudence on which perhaps he reflects with a little too much satisfaction, refused to have anything to do with the treatment of the Princess from the commencement of her pregnancy.
Then followed a quiet happy time, among the pleasures of which were the daily visits from the little grandchild, the renewal of intercourse with Baron Stockmar, whom Germans called the familiar spirit of the house of Coburg; the acquaintance of the great novelist, Auerbach; a visit to Florrschutz, the Prince's old tutor, in the pretty house which his two pupils had built for him.
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