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Updated: June 21, 2025
Neither nature nor the Baron had given him a sanguine spirit; the seeds of pessimism, once lodged within him, flourished in a propitious soil. He "questioned things, and did not find One that would answer to his mind; And all the world appeared unkind." He believed that he was a failure and he began to despair. Yet Stockmar had told him that he must "never relax," and he never would.
Her Majesty could not quit Germany without revisiting Coburg, hard as the visit must have been to her. One of the chief inducements was to go to one who could no longer come to her, the aged Baron Stockmar, whose talk was still of "the dear good Prince," and of how soon the old man would rejoin the noble pupil cut off in the prime of his gifts and his usefulness.
Did he never wonder whether, perhaps, he might have accomplished not too little but too much? How subtle and how dangerous are the snares which fate lays for the wariest of men! Albert, certainly, seemed to be everything that Stockmar could have wished virtuous, industrious, persevering, intelligent. And yet why was it all was not well with him? He was sick at heart.
The Prince, after hours of watching, had left the room for a few moments' rest; and Stockmar had now to tell him that his wife was dead. At first he could not be made to realise what had happened. On their way to her room he sank down on a chair while Stockmar knelt beside him: it was all a dream; it was impossible. At last, by the bed, he, too, knelt down and kissed the cold hands.
"One word more about the credulity of the public," wrote Prince Albert to Baron Stockmar; "you will scarcely credit that my being committed to the Tower was believed all over the country; nay, even 'that the Queen had been arrested! People surrounded the Tower in thousands to see us brought to it."
Victoria would assist him; a Stockmar, no doubt, she could hardly be; but she could be perpetually vigilant, she could mingle strictness with her affection, and she could always set a good example. These considerations, of course, applied pre-eminently to the education of the Prince of Wales.
In accordance with the prudent counsels of Baron Stockmar, the Opposition as well as the Ministry were taken into account and consulted.
But he was not left to himself: Stockmar saw to that. For ever at his pupil's elbow, the hidden Baron pushed him forward, with tireless pressure, along the path which had been trod by Leopold so many years ago. But, this time, the goal at the end of it was something more than the mediocre royalty that Leopold had reached.
What this friend was, may be gathered from what shrewd people thought of him. Lord Palmerston, no partial critic, declared, 'I have come in my life across only one absolutely disinterested man, and that is Stockmar. Subtle aphorisms on the conduct of life may be culled, almost at random, from his letters to the royal pair.
His character is reflected in the portrait which forms the frontispiece to the biography, and on which those who pursue his calling will do well sometimes to look. By his son, Baron E. Von Stockmar. Translated from the German by G. A. M. Edited by F. Max Muller. In two volumes.
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