Queen Victoria's Gene

by D M Potts

The second of Bullock’s scrolls in the Royal Society of Medicine Library covers Victoire’s ancestors over seventeen generations. One, Ludovicus II, was called ‘Ohne Haut’ (literally ‘skinless’ or ‘hideless’) and lived in Hungary from 1506 to 1526. He himself left no descendants. However, his sister Anna (born 1503), the wife of King Ferdinand I, had fifteen children who married into several royal lines and who included among their descendants Charles II of Spain (1661–1700), Louis XV of France (1710–44) and Charles I of England. Among this whole vast, historically visible family, William Bullock found no bleeders. Neither did he among any of the ancestors of Ludovicus II, whom he followed back to the thirteenth century. It must be concluded that however Ludovicus got the epithet ‘Ohne Haut’ it was not because of haemophilia.

  Information for the Royal Society of Medicine scroll was collected within a few years of Queen Victoria’s death. The scholarship involved was never published because Bullock failed to find a bleeder among Victoria’s ancestors and thus deepened the puzzle of the royal disease. If there are no haemophiliacs among Victoria’s ancestors, then either the gene was a new mutation, or Victoria was not the child of Edward, Duke of Kent. Both explanations appear at first sight unlikely; the historical question is which explanation is the least implausible.

  It is possible to calculate the chance of a mutation for haemophilia in Queen Victoria or her parents within broad limits. The disease tends to disappear eventually, for the simple reason that haemophiliacs fail to reproduce as frequently as other people. Victims sometimes die before puberty and those who do survive may be crippled and, overall, are less likely to marry and father children. On average the survival rate of the haemophiliac gene is somewhere between two-thirds or three-quarters per generation, so a quarter or more of all haemophiliacs are due to new mutations. In the early nineteenth century the birth and death rates were both higher, but the proportions may have been similar. In the USA there are approximately 10,000 haemophiliacs and this number is roughly constant. If a genetic disease is rare but consistently present, then every gene lost, on average, must be replaced by a newly mutated one. Based on this argument it is estimated that the mutation for haemophilia occurs between 1 in 25,000 and 1 in 100,000 people per generation. So, while the individual with the condition has a 1 in 2 chance of getting the disease if his mother is a carrier, he has only 1 in 25,000 to 1 in 100,000 chances of developing the disease as a result of a mutation in his mother’s ovary, or if his mother were a carrier, in his grandfather’s testes. If Victoria’s mother was not a carrier or the Duke of Kent really was Victoria’s father, the mutation is most likely to have occurred in the Duke of Kent. Mutations and chromosome damage increase slowly with age and the Duke was over fifty when Victoria was conceived. This would have increased the chances of a natural mutation slightly.

  In the case of Queen Victoria, we have an interesting detective problem. One in 25,000 is a rare event; it is not impossible, but has about the same probability as being killed by lightning. By contrast, extramarital sexual relations, perhaps particularly among eighteenth- and nineteenth-century European aristocrats, were very considerably more common.

  As we have seen, the Duchess of Kent’s marriage was not a love match. Edward courted his bride partly with the intention of meeting some of his £200,000 debt, and partly to produce an heir to the throne. Indeed, soon after Princess Charlotte’s death the Morning Chronicle reported on ‘the intended marriage of the truly amiable and excellent Duke of Kent with a Princess of the House of Saxe-Coburg, one of the sisters of Prince Leopold’.

  Edward was a rather old fifty, pot-bellied with dyed, receding hair, while Victoire, Princess of Leiningen, was thirty-two. Before their marriage they had only met once. More importantly, the duke had previously lived with a mistress for many years. Madame de St Laurent had been procured for the duke’s pleasure in 1790 and he had been faithful to her for twenty-seven years. Yet significantly for our story, she never seems to have borne him any children. Was she or the Duke of Kent sterile?

  To answer this question we need to trace the lives of both the Duke of Kent and his mistress prior to the establishment of their liaison in 1791. It is difficult to track down illegitimate children in any age and in the case of early nineteenth-century royalty, malicious commentators were as likely to invent fictitious offspring as parents were to conceal them. Any test of Edward Duke of Kent’s fertility is further complicated by the efforts Queen Victoria and her mother appear to have made to obliterate the record of Kent’s long liaison with Madame de St Laurent. Missing records and odd financial payments, which two centuries later can no longer be accounted for, have encouraged the suggestion that the duke and his beloved mistress had up to seven children. However, Mollie Gillen2 makes a convincing case that the twenty-seven years of partnership were sterile. In a world where the duke’s younger brother, the Duke of Clarence, could have his bastard children received by the queen, there seems no reason why Kent would have been reticent in according recognition to any issue of an obviously loving relationship. Canadian traditions that the duke left several illegitimate children, or that he selected a family called Whyte to provide shelter for Madame de St Laurent and her children, are shown by Gillen to be false; both claims can be demolished by careful scrutiny of existing Canadian and British records. If the union with Madame de St Laurent was sterile was it the duke or his mistress who was infertile?

  Thomas Creevey, a member of Parliament, recorded the following conversation with the Duke of Kent, held in 1817, when he was contemplating marrying Victoire:

  . . . It is now seven and twenty years that Madame de St Laurent and I have lived together; we are of the same age, and have been in all climates, and in all difficulties together; and you may well imagine, Mr Creevey, the pang it will occasion me to part with her. . . . Before anything is proceeded with in this matter, I shall hope and expect to see justice done by the Nation and the Ministers to Madame de St Laurent. She is of very good family and has never been an actress, and I am the first and only person who ever lived with her . . .

  Taken at its face value this would suggest that Madame de St Laurent was a virgin when she met the duke and, in turn, must raise the suspicion that perhaps the duke was infertile. However, the actual history of both the duke and his mistress is a bit more complicated than the duke himself romantically described to Creevey.

  While it seems certain that the duke and Madame de St Laurent had no children, neither came to the relationship a virgin. In January 1790 the duke, who was then just past his twenty-second birthday, returned prematurely from studies in Geneva, had a stormy meeting with his father, George III, and was dispatched to Gibraltar, all in under a month. The General Evening Post wrote:

  The return of an Illustrious Gentleman to this country has, it is said, excited some displeasure in very Great Persons. Permission was not given for this visit, and the departure of the young gentleman, it is thought, will be the necessary step to appease the resentment! An incident of a pathetic nature operated in a degree to induce him to leave Geneva: a young lady, of French birth, is said to have engaged a share of his attachment, and after an intimacy of some duration, she appeared in a state of pregnancy. Her death happened a short time since; she died in childbed, and left a charming little girl behind her. During her indisposition, the unremitted [sic] care and solicitude shewn by her admirer, demonstrated a heart rich in the finest feelings of nature!3

  The historian Paul Turnbridge identified the ‘young lady’ as Adelaide Dubus and dates her death in childbirth as 15 December 1789. The child, christened Adelaide Victoire Auguste, was cared for by Adelaide’s sister, Victoria, whom the duke also invited to become his mistress, but when this failed he paid her an allowance. It is an odd coincidence that both of Edward’s daughters were christened Victoria. The last traceable payment from Coutts, the London bankers, was made as late as 1832.

  If the duke fathered a child in 1789 but none for twenty-seven years with Madame de St Laurent, then sever
al possibilities exist. The first and most obvious is that his mistress was infertile and we will examine the evidence for this in a moment. Secondly, he might have avoided pregnancy by the use of condoms, coitus interruptus or Madame de St Laurent could have had one or more induced abortions. Thirdly, the duke might have suffered from secondary infertility. On the whole, secondary infertility in men, that is where a man fathers one child but not a second, is less common than the corresponding condition in women. There is no evidence of the duke having mumps as an adult and even if he picked up a sexually transmitted disease it is unlikely to have made him infertile. He might have developed a varicocele which, by allowing the blood to enter the testis at body temperature, would curtail sperm production, but this is also relatively unlikely for a man in his twenties.

  Contraception and abortion were available. Condoms, made from animal intestines, not latex, had been available for many years. In the previous century King Louis XV of France had instructed his London ambassadors to obtain a supply. However, consistent and effective use of voluntary family planning over twenty-seven years is unlikely, even with today’s improved methods. Abortion through a variety of mechanical techniques was used, but in view of the duke’s openness in recruiting his mistress and in living with her, it would seem out of character to have avoided children.

  Was Madame de St Laurent infertile? Thérèse Bernardine was the middle child of a family of five born to Jean and Claudine Montgenet of Besançon near the Swiss border, and was christened on 30 September 1760. The family was prosperous and why she became a high-class courtesan is not clear. Perhaps she was seduced, perhaps she fell in love. It does seem likely that she had at least two sexual relationships before responding to Duke Edward’s practical and unromantic invitation.

  The second affair was with a revolutionary nobleman, the Marquis de Permangale. Mollie Gillen draws attention to a legal record sold at public auction in Paris in 1864: Item 3210 in Catalogue No. 176 of Saint-Helion as ‘Action of the Baron de Fortisson against the Marquis de Permangale who lured away his mistress, 1786, piquant details given by the plaintiff, contemporary manuscript’. Unfortunately, it is not known who bought this manuscript and what piquant details it contained. There is no direct link to Thérèse Bernardine, then twenty-six years old, but today’s descendants of the Marquis de Permangale claim the family acknowledged an association with the Duke of Kent’s mistress, and personal letters to this effect existed until the 1900s when the grandfather of the current marquis destroyed them. We do know that by 1790 the marquis had lost his estates in the French revolution so he may have had to economize by dropping his mistress, and if Thérèse Bernardine is the woman in question, then she would have been willing to accept the duke’s invitation.

  Madame de St Laurent was also directly linked to the Marquis de Permangale by Colonel Symes, a conscientious observer who was given the task of watching over the Duke of Kent when he was posted to Gibraltar. In the Royal Archives (Add. 7/1485) for 15 December 1837 is a List of Simple Contract Creditors of the late Royal Highness the Duke of Kent presented to the young Queen Victoria, which includes an item referring to Alphonsine Thérèse Bernardine de St Laurent, Countess Mongenet and Mqs de Permangale. The relationship is further confirmed by the fact that after Madame de St Laurent had parted from the Duke of Kent, she met the marquis once again in Paris. He was then sixty-three and his name appears in the registration of her sister’s death in 1818. The marquis, like Madame de St Laurent, had led an adventurous life, having been imprisoned in 1793 and actually prepared for the guillotine in 1794, only to be secretly rescued by a former student. English newspapers and Canadian groups in 1800 also associated her name with Baron de Fortisson. The de Fortisson family was a large one but Pierre, Baron de Roquefort, married in 1786 and, interestingly, was childless.

  There is, therefore, convincing evidence that Madame de St Laurent was not a virgin when she met the Duke of Kent. Judging by her portrait, she was a woman who in face and figure could be called beautiful and who history suggests was sexually experienced, but there is no evidence that she had ever been pregnant. Did she acquire a sexually transmitted disease from her first lover or lovers? Biologically, women are more at risk than men to infertility after gonorrhea or chlymidial infection. Or did she abort one or more pregnancies by Edward or a previous lover? Aristocrats and their mistresses were certainly no strangers to abortion. Later in the nineteenth century Edward VII’s mistress Lillie Langtry and Lady Elcho, mistress of James Balfour, Foreign Secretary in the First World War, both had abortions.

  Victoire, unlike her predecessor in Edward’s bed, was obviously fertile and had had two healthy children. However, the duke grieved after parting from his mistress and wrote to a friend just before the wedding in decidedly unromantic phraseology: ‘I hope I shall have the energy to do my duty’. Victoire, for her part, approached the wedding with amiable pragmatism. The ceremony took place at Coburg on 29 May 1818, and there was a honeymoon in Coburg before a slow journey through Brussels to Dover and on to London. There was great pressure on Victoire to conceive and we can assume that she at least was eager for sexual relations. Her newly acquired elder brother-in-law, the Duke of Clarence, later William IV, married Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen on 11 July 1818, and Edward and Victoire were married a second time, in the Church of England, in a double ceremony. Her brother-in-law, Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, became engaged only one month later. If Adelaide failed to conceive, any child Victoire bore would be heir to the throne of the richest and most powerful nation in the world at that time, and her own and her family’s future would be ensured.

  For two months the new duke and duchess were together in London living in Kensington Palace, and Victoire’s continuing menstruation must have been both a disappointment and a worry. In September the duke and duchess left London and travelled slowly to Amorbach, the German estate of the duchess’ first husband, the Duke of Leiningen, which her son would one day rule. Parliament granted only £6,000 of the £25,000 promised, and to economize the duke had borrowed another £10,000 to bring the palace at Amorbach up to his discriminating standard, but before they had time to settle in the duchess found she was pregnant. At the same time both his elder brother, the Duke of Clarence and his younger brother, the Duke of Cambridge, who were also living on the continent in Hanover, found that they were to be fathers. While his brothers were content that their children should be born on the continent, the Duke of Kent insisted that his heir must be born in London. At this time he was so impecunious that he had difficulty in finding the money for the return journey, but eventually he succeeded in raising a small loan. Unable to afford a coachman he put his wife, his stepdaughter, a nurse, a maid, two lap-dogs and his wife’s canaries, in the coach and took the reins himself. The other maids, his doctor and the midwife, Madame Siebold, followed in other vehicles. An English tourist could hardly believe her eyes when she recognized the duke on the box driving ‘an unbelievably old caravan’.

  The future Queen Victoria was born on 24 May 1819, and was a healthy and apparently full-term baby. Therefore, her mother’s last period was probably about 17 August 1818. In fact, 17 August had been Victoire’s birthday and a dinner was held in her honour at Carlton House, London. Queen Victoria was probably conceived in London, or possibly on the continent as the duke and duchess had sailed from Dover in early September. If Victoire, keen to produce a child who might well be heir to the British throne, had suspected her husband’s fertility, she might well have tried to improve her chances with another man.

  The main outline of the Kents’ activities in London during the relevant time, and their continental itineraries, can be reconstructed from the Court Circulars. On 6 August, they visited Victoire’s brother Prince Leopold at Claremont and stayed until the 12th. On that day it was announced that the Duchess of Cambridge was pregnant. The child would be heir to the throne unless the Clarences or Kents had children. It is interesting that the Duke and Duchess of Kent returned that evening to Kens
ington Palace, while Prince Leopold visited the Cambridges the same day and then dined with Edward and Victoire that evening. As they had already spent six days together, the topic of conversation must have been the new potential heir. On 15 August Leopold left Claremont in order to visit Germany for the first time in several years. On 22 August The Times reported that the Kents would also remain in Britain until Leopold returned, but on the 28th this was contradicted by the announcement that the Kents would leave for Germany on 6 September. Their last three weeks were spent at Kensington Palace and the duke visited his mother, Queen Charlotte, who was dying, at Kew, almost every day. The couple also exchanged visits with the duke’s brothers and sisters and their spouses, the Duchess of Cambridge on 17 August, the Prince Regent on 30 August, Princess Sophia on 6 September. In between, they visited a penitentiary at Millbank (22 August) and a commercial premises on 18 August. On 7 September they sailed from Dover, reaching Cambrai on the 8th and Valenciennes on the 10th, when they reviewed the British troops who were still stationed in Belgium following the defeat of Napoleon. By the 16th the Duchess was indisposed with a cold caught at the review, which detained them in Brussels until 3 October when they were scheduled to leave for Amorbach, but from 15 October to 25 October they visited Switzerland. Prince Leopold had visited Switzerland earlier, but by 5 October he was in Coburg.

  Victoria’s conception must be viewed against the extraordinary dynastic ambitions of her uncle, Prince Leopold. Prince Leopold was particularly eager to see his sister pregnant. He was, by any measure, the most successful dynast the world has ever seen. The younger son of a minor German duke, he might have been expected to have passed a life of total obscurity, yet by determination and personality he had gained the hand of the Crown Princess of Britain. When Princess Charlotte and her baby died, a lesser man might have settled down to enjoy his pension of £50,000 a year, but he arranged instead to marry his widowed sister to the Duke of Kent, consequently becoming uncle to the British queen, and then married a nephew, Albert (who was possibly his own son), to her. His position as uncle to the British heir apparent helped him to gain the throne of Belgium for himself. He married another nephew to the Crown Princess of Portugal and in a generation raised himself and his family to a unique position of power and influence. The foundation of his success was his close kinship with the heir to the British throne. The ambition was there; would he have accepted defeat if the Duke of Kent had been infertile or inadequate, or would he have encouraged his sister to take corrective action when they learned that the younger brother’s wife was expecting a potential heir or heiress?