by D M Potts
When Prince Leopold and his secretary and physician, Dr Stockmar, reached Sidmouth they were taken into the duke’s sickroom. Stockmar felt the anaemic, ailing man’s pulse and told the duchess in German, ‘Human help can no longer avail’. Edward was roused sufficiently to sign his will, which he did painfully slowly, letter by letter, with the same meticulousness that had characterized his life.
He died at 10 a.m. on Sunday 23 January, two weeks after the illness began. In a way it was remarkable he had lived so long. Years after the death Dr Manton continued to mutter, ‘He would have borne more depletion’, meaning more blood should have been removed. In life the Duke of Kent had been an appalling general, flogging and hanging men for military irrelevancies; he died in the care of a naval surgeon dispensing irrelevant and painful therapies.
After Edward’s death, the duchess and her three children returned to London where they lived very modestly on £3,000 a year allowed by their wealthy relative, Prince Leopold. Leopold, determined that Victoria should have the best possible chance of inheriting the throne, insisted that his niece be brought up in England. They were given a set of rooms in Kensington Palace, a heavy, asymmetrical building which had grown to a semblance of grandeur in easy steps, beginning as a private house and becoming a royal residence under William III. Drina, bright-eyed and fair-haired, played with her collection of dolls with porcelain faces and a handmade musical box with an animated lady playing the pianoforte.
Immediately after Victoria’s birth, Mrs Siebold the midwife had hurried back to attend the confinement of the teenage wife of Ernst, Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Saalfeld, elder brother of Leopold and of Victoire, whom we met in Chapter 2. On 26 August 1819 she delivered her second son and called him Albert. Madame Siebold remarked he would make a fine husband for his cousin Victoria.
FOUR
THE UGLY DUCKLING
Between 1841 and 1857 Queen Victoria delivered nine children. One son was a haemophiliac and two daughters carried the gene. From her birth until her marriage Victoria’s future reproductive capacity was subject to manipulation by an older generation. Later, when queen, she planned, worried over and attempted to control the mating patterns of her own children and grandchildren. Unfortunately, she never understood the inheritance, importance or consequences of the gene for haemophilia, which she spread throughout the royal houses of Europe.
During Victoria’s early years her succession to the British throne was sometimes in doubt, but this did not hinder the political machinations of Prince Leopold, the prime dynastic climber. He later wrote ingratiatingly to Victoria about the events immediately after her father’s death: ‘I do not know what would have become of you and your Mama, if I had not then existed. You poor soul about 9 months old!! the state of affairs of your poor Father so bad that there was no means for the journey back to Kensington, [and] on the highest quarter, the greatest animosity and the wish to drive the Duchess to the continent.’
Leopold did help the family, although he avoided bringing his sister and her child back to his home at Claremont because a measles epidemic was raging in the area. Baby Drina (Victoria) was not only a painful reminder to him of the heir he had lost but also an opportunity to manipulate affairs in new directions. Victoria’s claim to the throne, however, was not immediately secure. In December 1820 the hopes of Leopold and his sister were dashed when the Duchess of Clarence, later Queen Adelaide, wife of William IV, gave birth to a girl. She was six weeks premature but survived and was christened Elizabeth Georgina Adelaide. As the child of an older brother of the late Duke of Kent, she took precedence over Victoria. Elizabeth died in March 1821 of ‘an entanglement of the bowels’, or volvulus, but in August of the same year yet another threat to Victoria’s succession arose. Queen Caroline, who had been estranged from her husband since her wedding night, died unexpectedly. King George IV was fifty-nine and free to marry and perhaps replace the dead Charlotte with a new half-brother or sister. Those around the monarch expected ‘he will pick something up’ [namely, one fertile European princess] on a trip he planned to Hanover and Austria before Christmas 1821. However, he remained a bachelor, perhaps because he was becoming increasingly ill. There is very good evidence that he had inherited porphyria from his father.1 He began to experience severe bladder pain and to take stupefyingly heavy doses of laudanum. He died in June 1830 and his brother William came to the throne. William, as we have seen, had no surviving legitimate heir.
The family of Queen Victoria. Carriers of haemophilia underlined, haemophiliacs boxed
As soon as Victoria’s place in the succession stakes was restored Leopold began solidifying his plans. For Victoria trips to visit her uncle in Claremont became the ‘brightest epoch in my otherwise rather melancholy childhood’.2 Even while she was a child Leopold pressed the advantages of a marriage to Victoria of his nephew Albert. Victoria’s mother, however, was coming more and more under the influence of an Irish army officer called John Conroy. Captain Conroy had been a friend of the Duke of Kent and after Edward’s death he manoeuvred himself to be master of Victoire’s household. While Leopold planned little Victoria’s future marriage, Conroy planned to dominate her utterly through his increasing influence on her widowed mother. A remarkable picture of the relationship between Captain Conroy and Victoire Duchess of Kent can be found in the Greville diaries. Charles Cavendish Fulke Greville is an unimpeachable source. Grandson of the Duke of Portland, who had been prime minister on two occasions, and great-grandson of the Earl of Warwick, his social standing and his occupation both placed him in a position to know and interpret the affairs of state and of men and women. As clerk to the Privy Council for many years he was in close personal contact with King George IV, King William and with the young Victoria. He was also a close friend of the Duke of Wellington and was intimate with the leaders of British society from the aristocracy to MacAuley and Sidney Smith. His diaries are comparable with those of Pepys in content and frankness. They were written for his own amusement, and as an informed, intelligent observer he had few peers. He did his best to sift fact from fiction, noting that ‘Half the things one hears are untrue’ and ‘it is the business of every man who keeps a journal to contradict on one page what he has written in the preceding’.
It is clear from the Greville diaries that Victoria’s mother was arrogant and ambitious, attempting to dominate Victoria and to keep her isolated at Kensington when she should have been taking part in Court life in London as the heiress apparent. Sir John Conroy was in his forties and the same age as Victoire, a balding man with sideburns, tight-lipped, with a slightly arrogant tilt of his head. He would cross his arms as if to hold his personality secret. Yet he was not without character and was the man whom the duchess saw most frequently and most intimately. Their extraordinary behaviour suggests that the Duchess of Kent hoped to become the power behind the throne after Victoria’s accession and Regent if William IV died before Victoria was eighteen, while Sir John planned to become the power behind the power behind the throne. How far the characteristics of the mature woman reflected those of the young widow who had married the Duke of Kent fifteen years earlier must remain uncertain.
In 1801 Conroy had married the seventeen-year-old daughter of Major General Fisher, a lifelong friend of the Duke of Kent, and later his aide-de-camp. At Major General Fisher’s death Conroy slipped himself into the duke’s household staff. At first he regarded the appointment with some disappointment, but when the Duke of Kent died and he saw himself as the most important member of the household of the likely future Queen of England, his attitude changed. He had four sons and two daughters by his wife, but by the time he had become the dominant individual in the life of the Duchess of Kent, his marriage was taking second place to his personal ambitions. The Duchess of Kent was completely dominated by him, forgiving his mistakes and pleading for his advancement, even in the face of manifest political opposition. Conroy played the leading role in marrying the duchess’s eldest and exceedingly attractive daughter, Pr
incess Feodora, to a minor German prince, Ernst of Hohenlohe Langenburg. It seems his prime motive was to isolate Victoria, who was very fond of her half-sister.
The duchess’s arrogance infuriated many who had dealings with her. When she borrowed the royal yacht she insisted on so many royal salutes from passing ships that even the amiable King William IV intervened, but Conroy, as her confidential adviser, persuaded her not to give way. In the end, the king had to make an order in Council that the yacht should only be saluted by His Majesty’s ships when the king or queen themselves were on board. In her attempts to isolate Victoria the duchess even prevented her from attending the coronation of her uncle William IV. Conroy encouraged the duchess to believe that the Duke of Cumberland, next in line, had designs on Victoria’s life.3 King William generously gave Victoria £10,000 p.a., but this did little to improve relations. In 1836 the duchess refused to visit Windsor on the queen’s birthday. She did condescend to go on the king’s birthday but her visit coincided with the discovery that she had appropriated a suite of seventeen rooms in Kensington Palace, contrary to the king’s specific instructions. This led to an explosion from the king at his birthday dinner, which was attended by about a hundred guests. After the king’s health had been drunk, he made a long speech which throws a flood of light on Victoria’s mother.
I trust in God that my life may be spared for nine months longer, after which period, in the event of my death, no regency would take place. I should then have the satisfaction of leaving the royal authority to the personal exercise of that young lady (pointing to the Princess Victoria), the heiress presumptive of the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers, and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which she would be placed. I have no hesitation in saying that I have been insulted – grossly, and continually insulted – by that person, but I am determined to endure no longer a course of behaviour so disrespectful to me. Amongst many other things I have particularly to complain of the manner in which that young lady has been kept away from my Court; she had been repeatedly kept from my drawing rooms, at which she ought always to have been present, but I am fully resolved that this shall not happen again. I would have her know that I am King, and I am determined to make my authority respected, and for the future I shall insist and command that the Princess do upon all occasions appear at my Court, as it is her duty to do.
‘He terminated his speech by an allusion to the Princess and her future reign in a tone of paternal interest and affection, which was excellent in its way.’4
The Duke of Wellington’s opinions of the duchess are also recorded by Greville. ‘What he (Wellington) told me then throws some light on her ill humour and wrong-headedness. In the first place, the late King (George III) disliked her, the Duke of Cumberland was her enemy and George IV was always talking of taking the child (Victoria) from her.’5 While those around Victoria fought to manipulate her, she herself was maturing into a short, slightly plump, dark-haired, intelligent and increasingly independent young woman. We do not know when she first menstruated, but it may have been as late as age fourteen or fifteen.6 When Victoria was seventeen, and despite Conroy’s influence, Leopold persuaded his sister to invite cousins Albert and Ernst to London. King William was furious, as he favoured an alliance with the Dutch royal house. Leopold’s response was typical. He wrote to Victoria: ‘I am really astonished at the behaviour of your elder uncle. The invitation to the Prince of Orange, the forcing him upon others is extraordinary. Now when slavery has been abolished in England, I cannot understand why you alone are to be treated as a white slave girl.’
Albert was seasick crossing the North Sea and tended to fall asleep at 10 p.m., even at important social gatherings. Victoria called Albert and his brother her ‘dearest and most beloved cousins’ but she was to tell Leopold later, ‘I may not have the feeling for him which is requisite to ensure happiness’.
King William’s wish that he would live until Victoria reached the age of eighteen, so that a regency would be avoided, was granted and she became queen on 20 June 1837, less than one month after her eighteenth birthday. On Victoria’s accession to the throne a remarkable metamorphosis occurred. She demonstrated great poise and good sense. Conroy was ignored and she symbolized her independence from her mother by moving into her own bedroom. She received Lord Melbourne, her prime minister, ‘of COURSE quite Alone as I shall always do all my ministers’.7 For some time after Victoria became queen, Leopold attempted to manipulate her by letter, but eventually he overplayed his hand and Victoria established her independence. She noted, ‘I have received a disagreeable letter from Uncle Leopold. My poor uncle seems to be out of humour because I have not asked his advice, but it is dear uncle’s foible to imagine that his mission is to rule everywhere. I myself see no need for that.’ However, he was sufficiently tactful to maintain good relations with his niece. He continued to visit Victoria every year until his death in 1865, which was caused in part by a cold caught in the freezing rooms of Buckingham Palace. The young Victoria confided in her journal that Leopold was her ‘‘‘solo padre!” for he is indeed like my real father’. Yet she was getting tired of being badgered over Albert. ‘I am not guilty of any breach of promise, for I never gave any’, she wrote to Leopold. When it came to dynastic opportunities, however, Leopold never gave up. Two years after Victoria’s coronation he once again contrived that Albert should visit England, although by this time Albert was also getting fed up with the family pressure and he decided to use the visit to end the affair ‘with quiet but firm resolution’.
When the two young people met something different happened. Albert had matured from a bilious youth into a striking young man and within hours of the reunion he had swept Victoria off her feet. ‘Albert really is quite charming and so excessively handsome.’ Within three days she told him she would be only ‘too happy if he would consent to what I wished’ – namely, marriage. Albert forgot about Victoria’s ‘incredible stubbornness’, and love triumphed. On 10 February 1840 they were married. ‘Oh to feel I was, and am, loved by such an Angel as Albert was too great a delight to describe’, wrote Victoria in her journal. Victoria had a ‘sick headache’ on her wedding night, but it does not seem to have dulled Albert’s ardour and she took up her diary to write, ‘ill or not, I never, never spent such an evening!! . . . He clasped me in his arms and we kissed each other again and again.’ Nevertheless, the young lovers were up at 8.30 a.m., stimulating Greville to observe this ‘is not the way to provide us with a Prince of Wales’. Family problems marred their early months together. The Duchess of Kent proved particularly tiresome. She suggested that she should move into Buckingham Palace with the newly weds, and when this was refused she complained to Albert that her own daughter had thrown her out of the house. At the same time Albert’s father, the Duke of Coburg, repeatedly attempted to persuade his daughter-in-law to pay off his numerous creditors.
Victoria wanted to wait before having children, but neither she nor Albert had the slightest idea how to avoid pregnancy. She menstruated once after the marriage and then conceived, delivering a girl on 21 November 1840, three weeks premature and after a twelve-hour labour. During the pregnancy Victoria ate heartily and there was none of the blood-letting that had characterized the royal delivery a generation earlier. The pregnancy was marred, however, by an attempted assassination by a mentally defective youth of eighteen.8
The baby was christened Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa – although her parents called her Pussy and later Vicky. On the whole, Victoria disliked little babies, talking of their ‘terrible frog-like action’, but both parents found great joy in their first-born. Vicky was not a carrier of haemophilia.
Queen Victoria, unlike her mother, did not breast-feed her babies. A wet-nurse had been identified in the Isle of Wight and as the birth was premature she had to be sent for unexpectedly, crossing the sea in an open boat. If a mother breast-feeds, and particularly if she breast-feeds on dema
nd and does not give supplementary food too soon, then ovulation will be suppressed for many months, sometimes for a year or longer. Victoria and her doctors never understood that breast-feeding is nature’s contraceptive. Indeed, one of her many strong opinions was an unusual disgust with the process of lactation. Later in life, when her own daughter Alice nursed her children, the queen said she was making a cow out of herself and a beast in the royal dairy was duly called Alice. Further, when Vicky, Victoria’s eldest daughter, acted as wet-nurse to Alice’s fifth child, Frittie (Frederick William), she dared not tell her mother in case of ridicule. The first child, the Princess Royal, had been healthy at birth but was soon thin, fretful and sick.
As Victoria was not lactating, her periods returned quickly and she conceived her second child when the Princess Royal was only three months old. At the beginning of the year she had written to Leopold, ‘I think dearest Uncle you cannot really wish me to be the ‘Mamma d’une nombreuse famille’ . . . men never think, at least seldom think, what a hard task it is for us women to go through this very often.’ Edward (later King Edward VII) was born on 9 November 1841. Again a wet-nurse was brought in and again Victoria fell pregnant quickly, delivering her second daughter Alice seventeen months after Edward’s birth. Later in her life, Victoria was to write to Vicky, ‘what made me so miserable was – to have the first two years of married life utterly spoilt by this occupation [pregnancy]. I c[ou]ld enjoy nothing, not travel about or go about with dear Papa. If I had waited a year – as I hope you will, it w[ou] ld have been very different.’ When grandchildren began to arrive Victoria said it was ‘a very uninteresting thing – for it seems to me to go on like rabbits in Windsor Park’.