Alexandra of Denmark
born 1841 1863
(King Edward VII) |
                                 |
      ------------------------
----------------------------
      | | | | | |
      | | | | | |
Albert Victor George Frederick, | | | Prince Alexander
(Duke of Clarence) Prince of Wales, | | | born 1870
born 1864 born 1865 | | |
                   (King George V), | | |
                   m., 1893, Princess | | |
                   Victoria Mary of Teck | | |
                                         | | |
                      -------------------- | --------------
                      | | |
                      | | |
              Princess Louise Princess Victoria Princess Maud
              (Duchess of Fife) born 1868 (Queen of Norway)
              born 1867 born 1869

CHAPTER VI:  Strife

“Two men I honour, and no third.  First, the toilworn Craftsman that with earth-made Implement laboriously conquers the Earth, and makes her man’s. . . .  A second man I honour, and still more highly:  Him who is seen toiling for the spiritually indispensable; not daily bread, but the Bread of Life. . . .  Unspeakably touching is it, however, when I find both dignities united; and he that must toil outwardly for the lowest of man’s wants, is also toiling inwardly for the highest."[4]

[Footnote 4:  Carlyle, Sartor Resartus.]

To understand the many and bewildering changes which followed one another in rapid succession during the early years of Victoria’s reign it is necessary to read the literature, more especially the works of those writers who took a deep and lasting interest in the lives and work of the people.

Democracy, the people, or the toiling class, was engaged in a fierce battle with those forces which it held to be its natural enemies.  It was a battle of the Rich against the Poor, of the masters against the men, of Right against Might.  England was a sick nation, at war with itself, and Chartism and the Chartists were some of the signs of the disease.  The early Victorian age is the age of Thomas Carlyle, the stern, grim prophet, who, undaunted by poverty and ill-health, painted England in dark colours as a country hastening to its ruin.

His message was old and yet new—­for men had forgotten it, as they always have from age to age.  This was an age of competition, of ‘supply and demand’; brotherly love had been forgotten and ’cash payment’ had taken its place.  Carlyle denounced this system as “the shabbiest gospel that had been taught among men.”  He urged upon Government the fact that it was their duty to educate and to uplift the masses, and upon the masters that they should look upon their workers as something more than money-making machines.  The old system of Guilds, in which the apprentice was under the master’s direct care, had gone and nothing had been put in its place.