indicative of good will.” He said that they treated her with profound
respect and the greatest attention. He made it a rule to address her
as he would a _sensible man_, laying all matters before her, with
the reasons for the advice he tendered, and he thought this was the
most legitimate as well as judicious flattery that could be offered
to her, and such as must gratify her, and the more because there was
no appearance of flattery in it, and nothing but what was right and
proper--so right and proper that it is not easy to see where the
flattery comes in. The way of explaining business to a sensible woman
must be much the same, one would imagine, as the way of explaining it
to a sensible man; but this simple view of the facts was by no means
perceived intuitively in 1841, but was only arrived at by demonstration
from actual experiment. However this may be, when Peel and his
colleagues learned their lesson, they learned it thoroughly. In this
second series of interviews between the Queen and the leaders of the
Tory Party, when a new Ministry was being formed in 1841, all passed
off most satisfactorily. Peel said the Queen behaved perfectly to him;
he was more than satisfied with her bearing towards him. To the Duke of
Wellington she was equally gracious. She reproached him for not taking
office himself, and he assured her that his one object was to serve her
and the country in every way he could, and that he thought he could
do this more effectually by making way for some of the younger men.
It is true that there was still some talk about Peel’s shyness making
the Queen shy; and Greville has a little hit about Peel, after dinner
at Windsor, talking to the Queen in the attitude of a dancing-master
giving a lesson, and says that the Queen would like him better if he
would keep his legs still; but this gossip probably reflects Greville’s
sentiments rather than the Queen’s. Her respect for Peel and attachment
to him grew with her growing knowledge of his character and powers. In
1843 the Queen wrote of him to her uncle, the King of the Belgians, as
“undoubtedly a great statesman, a man who thinks but little of party,
and never of himself.” In February, 1846, Lady Canning, who was then
in Waiting on the Queen, notes in her journal, “The Queen is very keen
about politics, and has an immense admiration for Sir Robert Peel.”