Genre:

Biography, Serial

Subjects:

Rationalism, Education, Societies, Patronage, Medical Practitioners, Gender, Heterodoxy, Spiritualism, Race, Railways, Accidents

    Asserts that 'the Prince-Consort was a German rationalist, devout, no doubt, but with absolutely no room in his brain for the notions to which Anglican clerics attach supreme importance'. Indeed, the 'Prince-Consort, and therefore the Queen, was prepared to welcome the rationalist reformation' of the early nineteenth century, and in private letters he 'praises also Combe's excellent pamphlet on education, in which he defines the real mission of science and education'. (326) Notes that while the Queen gives her patronage to associations such as the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children which 'accord with the unanimous sentiment of all her subjects', she is 'by her position precluded' from 'commanding in person those adventurous associations of pioneers' with whom she might otherwise sympathise (332). On 'the cause of medical women', for instance, 'there can be little doubt as to the side on which the Queen must naturally stand, if only from her keen sympathy with the women of India' (331). Also insists that the widowed monarch 'not only believes but knows the truth of the doctrine of Spirit return', although no one would wish her to 'scandalise the prejudices of her subjects by becoming, let us say, a patron of the Spiritualist Alliance' (331–32).