by D M Potts
Victoire might have slept with another man on one of these August or September days in London, but would she have chosen a haemophiliac? The chances are small, but substantially greater than the chance of a mutation. Many male haemophiliacs have fathered children.
The Coburg world.
Black = countries ruled by monarchs of Coburg descent on the male side
Hatched = countries ruled by monarchs of Coburg descent on the female side
The Brazilian monarchy was deposed before Isabella could ascend the throne. When Victoria became queen the territory of Columbia, now part of the USA, was under British control.
There is nothing in the character of the Duchess of Kent to suggest that she would have baulked at sleeping with another man if she had decided the duke was unable to give her a child, and several aspects of her behaviour would fit with a secret knowledge that Victoria was illegitimate. As we have seen, William IV had a large brood of ten children by Mrs Jordan – the FitzClarences – who were given titles, entertained at court and generously accepted into the royal household by Queen Adelaide. In marked contrast the Duchess of Kent had an almost hysterical fear and hatred of the royal bastards and the contemporary diarist, Charles Greville, recalls how when the court was at Windsor or St James she would rise and ostentatiously withdraw from the room whenever one of her illegitimate nephews or nieces entered. Victoria’s mother told the Duchess of Northumberland, ‘I never did, neither will I ever, associate Victoria in any way with the illegitimate children of the royal family; with the King they dine. Did I not keep this line, how would it be possible to teach Victoria the difference between vice and virtue?’ This sanctimonious behaviour might have been overcompensation for a guilty conscience, and is all the more hypocritical as she was having an affair with her secretary Conroy at the time.
Greville records, ‘I said I concluded he [Conroy] was her lover. And he [Wellington] said he supposed so.’ He backed up this inference by two observations. One was Victoria’s obvious hatred of Conroy and her total exclusion of him once she ascended to the throne, and the second was the sudden and otherwise inexplicable dismissal of Baroness Spaeth from the Kensington Household in 1829, which may have been due to Spaeth’s knowledge of circumstances which Victoire wished to conceal. The baroness had been with the Duchess of Kent for twenty-five years. Spaeth had been Victoire’s closest companion when Victoire was a young and somewhat neglected bride of the Prince of Leiningen. She was with her on the journey from Germany when she was seven months pregnant with Victoria; she loved and played with Victoria and kept the duchess company after the duke died. Then suddenly, when Victoria was ten, Spaeth was summarily sent away to be a lady-in-waiting to Princess Feodora and to live in the cold and relatively isolated Langenburg Palace. It was a painful episode in the tight community that had grown up at Kensington. The Duchess of Clarence said it would kill Spaeth to send her away. One gentleman-in-waiting burst into tears and said, ‘Going! Impossible!’ and Spaeth herself said she ‘would endure any privation’ as long as she could see Victoria.
Wellington’s explanation of the otherwise inexplicable dismissal seems cogent. ‘Victoria had seen her mother and Conroy in some sort of intimate situation. What She had seen She had repeated to the Baroness Spaeth and Spaeth not only did not hold her tongue, but . . . remonstrated with the Duchess herself on the subject. The consequence was that they [Conroy and Victoire] got rid of Spaeth and,’ continued Wellington, ‘they would have got rid of Lehzen too if they had been able.’ This last remark is independently verified by Prince Leopold in a confidential letter he wrote to Lehzen, Victoria’s governess, in 1836. ‘Had I not stood firm’, he wrote, ‘you would have followed Spaeth.’ Baroness Lehzen, ‘best and truest friend’, according to Victoria’s private journal, had been with the family for many years, having previously been Feodora’s governess. It must have been painful for the duchess, who could on occasion be genuinely kind-hearted, to lose her faithful companion of twenty-five years, but if Victoria were a bastard, it would have encouraged her to accept Conroy’s arguments to be rid of her old friend, who more than anyone else might have had embarrassing knowledge of the heir to the throne’s parentage. It seems most likely that Conroy and the duchess were physically intimate. Victoria herself was quick to suspect the worst of Conroy and when, ten years later, her ladyin-waiting, Flora Hastings, appeared to be bulging in the wrong places under her crinoline, Victoria confided in her journal: ‘We have no doubt that she is – to use psalm words – with child! . . . the horrid cause of all this is the monster and Demon Incarnate, whose name I forbear to mention . . .’ The monster was Conroy, who had travelled back alone with Lady Flora in the post-chaise from Scotland some months earlier. Lady Flora had in fact been appointed to the household as a ‘companion’ for Victoria, but Victoria had always disliked her. The accusations against Conroy and Lady Flora turned out to be mistaken and Lady Flora, who was only thirty-three, had an enlarged liver and probably had episodes of ascites, or the accumulation of fluid in her abdomen. The accusation was to damage Victoria’s political credibility and helped to bring down Lord Melbourne’s government, but it is noteworthy how quickly Victoria was willing to think the worst of her mother’s closest friend and advisor. Greville comments, ‘Whether she secretly suspects the nature of her mother’s connection with him or is only animated by a sort of instinctive aversion is difficult to discover’4, but after Victoria ascended the throne Wellington provided further details. ‘The cause of the Queen’s alienation from the Duchess and hatred of Conroy the Duke said was unquestionably owing to having witnessed some familiarities between them’.
The possibility that the young, ambitious duchess was unfaithful to her elderly husband must also be considered against the background of contemporary behaviour. Even from our own more lax times it is difficult to comprehend the sexual mores of the aristocracy in the first half of the nineteenth century when viewed through the window of Victorian moral standards. A memorandum in the Royal Archives from the Duke of Clarence (later William IV) to the Prince Regent reads, ‘Last night I fucked two whores – I hope I don’t catch a dose’.
The Duke of Cumberland, one of the sons of George III and Victoria’s uncle, was widely believed to be the father of his sister’s illegitimate child, and one morning he attempted to rape the wife of the Lord Chancellor.
Letters from Princess Sophia, sister of the Duke of Cumberland and Victoria’s aunt, to her elderly confidant General Garth, about her brother’s [Cumberland] behaviour created a scandal. Taylor, the king’s secretary, told Greville that Garth was paid £1,500 p.a. and had half his debts paid in return for the letters.5 Garth handed over the letters but kept attested copies of the papers in a box which he showed widely. ‘Lord Bathurst told me likewise that Taylor [the King’s secretary] had discovered that Garth had retained copies of the papers when he gave up the originals, that General Garth certainly is the Father (which I believe he certainly is not) and that the letters which affect the Duke of Cumberland are letters from her to Garth complaining of his having made attempts upon her person. It is notorious that the old Queen forbade the Duke’s access to the apartments of the Princess. There is another story which I am inclined to believe, that he is not the son of the Duke or Garth, but of some inferior person (some say a page of the name of Papendy).’ One must conclude either that the duke was the father or that he made an unsuccessful assault upon his sister while she was having an affair with someone else.
Greville also recounts an attempt by the Duke of Cumberland to rape Lady Lyndhurst. Lord Lyndhurst was born in Boston but the whole family fled to England during the American Revolution. A self-made man, he became Master of the Rolls and later Lord Chancellor and was so well respected that he could have displaced Wellington as leader of the Tory party.6 ‘There is a story current about the Duke of Cumberland and Lady Lyndhurst which is more true than most stories of this kind. The Duke called upon her, and grossly insulted her; on which, after a scramble, she rang t
he bell. He was obliged to desist and go away, but before he did he said “By God, Madam, I will be the ruin of you and your husband, and will not rest till I have destroyed you both’’.’7
A few days later8 Lady Lyndhurst gave Greville her account of the affair. ‘I took a long drive with her, . . . and asked her to tell me about it. . . . She said that the Duke called upon her and had been denied [entry to the house] . . . that on a subsequent day he had called so early that no orders had been given to the Porter and he was let in, that he had made a violent attack upon her, which she had resisted, that his manner and his language were equally brutal and indecent, that he was furious at her resistance and said he would never forgive her for putting him to so much annoyance.’
When a report appeared in the press the duke, in order to preserve the proprieties, wrote to Lyndhurst to ask for the authority of Lady Lyndhurst in contradicting it. A heated correspondence followed, but the Lord Chancellor, in consultation with the Duke of Wellington, refused to let Lady Lyndhurst issue any denial. It is clear that the Duke of Cumberland was prepared to sexually assault both his sister and the wife of the Lord Chancellor of England. The most that can be said in his defence is that he was not a very successful rapist.
The following year Lord Chancellor Lyndhurst himself was pursuing Lady Fitzroy Somerset, writing her note after note while on the bench, and was so preoccupied with her that he was unable to follow the legal arguments put before him.9 In January of the same year the Duke of Cumberland was discovered in an affair with Lady Graves which led to the suicide of the unfortunate Lord Graves. Lord Graves was perhaps exceptional in taking these matters so seriously. A year later the forgiving Lyndhurst was of the opinion that the Duke of Cumberland would make a very good king. Fortunately, Victoria intervened.
Princess Sophia’s baby and the Lyndhurst case are relevant as far as they throw light on the mores of the royal circle at that time. It seems unlikely that any moral scruples would have prevented Victoire from being unfaithful to her husband shortly after her marriage. If Queen Victoria were not the daughter of the Duke of Kent the remarkable difference in her attitude to her English and her German relatives, and indeed to England and Germany, would be more easily understandable. The Queen’s proclivity for Germans and Germany was notorious and Greville10 had complained, ‘However it shocks the people of England that the Queen takes no notice of her paternal relations, treats English ones as alien, and seems to consider her German uncles and cousins as her only kith and kin’. Her predilection for all things German was grotesque in an English queen, even though her mother and husband were German. When her first son (later King Edward VII) was born in 1841 she desired that his armorial bearings should quarter the arms of Germany with the royal arms of England, and when the baby’s arms were gazetted the absurd title Duke of Saxony, to which neither his father nor he had claim, was given precedence over his English and Scottish titles.11 During the Danish-Prussian confrontation she supported the Prussians, in defiance of both popular and informed opinion. When the British government attempted to rally Sweden, Russia and France to counter the Prussian and Austrian threat to Denmark in 1864 she protested, ‘This draft seems to the Queen to commit the Government too strongly to the Danish view of the Question (of Schleswig-Holstein) and to encourage too much hope of material assistance from England. The imputation also upon the motives of the German powers seems impolitic and uncalled for.’12 She even reprimanded (in English) the unfortunate Prince of Wales for having the temerity to write to his Danish fiancée in English, rather than in German. ‘The German element is one I wish to be cherished and kept up in our beloved home – now more than ever’ (after the death of Albert) . . . ‘as Alix’s parents are inclined to encourage English and to merge the German into Danish and English and this would be a dreadful sorrow to me.’
Some other factors are in favour of legitimate descent. Victoria had some facial resemblance to the Duke of Kent and perhaps a closer resemblance to George III. All three had round faces with receding chins and foreheads and protruding noses, particularly when elderly. The similarity is most marked in profile, as a comparison of George III and Victoria ‘old head’ coins will confirm, but this might be due in part to artistic licence in fitting the profile to a round coin. The Duchess Augusta wrote of Victoria that, ‘Her face is just like her father’s, the same artful blue eyes, the same roguish expression when she laughs’, but it is impossible to recognize a roguish expression in the stolid features of the Duke of Kent, in any of his portraits.
Greville’s diary provides evidence that Albert had no doubt of his wife’s Hanoverian ancestry. When Queen Victoria bullied and harassed her daughter after her marriage to the German Crown Prince, Stockmar courageously intervened, writing to the Queen ‘such a letter as she probably had never had in her whole life’. Prince Albert had not dared to control his wife because ‘the Queen is so excitable that the Prince lived in perpetual terror of bringing on the hereditary malady and dreaded saying or doing anything which might have a tendency to bring on the effect’. As Victoria was not a porphyriac his forbearance was uncalled for but even if she had not been the Duke of Kent’s daughter, nothing would have been gained and much might have been lost, if Albert had been informed by Leopold of any irregular features of his wife’s ancestry.
It is not possible to distinguish between a mutation and unfaithfulness on the basis of the historical evidence. There are, however, no records of a haemophiliac candidate. The puzzle is even more complex because there is another genetic defect, porphyria, which was prevalent in the British royal family for many generations, and which increases the probability that the Duke of Kent was not the father. Of course, modern DNA ‘fingerprinting’ techniques could settle the question if bone fragments or tissue samples from the Duke of Kent and Victoria were available.
For centuries before Victoria’s descendants suffered from haemophilia the Stuarts and Hanoverians were plagued by porphyria. Unlike haemophilia, porphyria is genetically dominant, that is, all those who carry the gene may display the symptom to some extent. Porphyria arises from a defect in the synthesis of porphyrin, a component of all cells and particularly of the blood pigment haemoglobin. Sufferers have one defective and one normal gene; two defective genes would prevent any porphyrin synthesis and would be fatal. Porphyrin is produced by a chain of complex reactions. The defective gene produces a bottleneck in the chain and the precursors may build up, causing the attacks. Attacks may be brought on by drugs, alcohol or anaesthetics. Some porphyriacs never have attacks and are unaware that they are at risk. During attacks the victim’s urine darkens on standing and may assume a deep purple-red colour. This conspicuous and unusual symptom helps to identify sufferers in earlier centuries, even when the medical records are very limited. The disease may also cause many other symptoms including severe abdominal pains and constipation, due to loss of muscular tone caused by inhibition of the autonomic nervous system. This may also complicate childbirth. Other symptoms include extreme sensitivity of the skin which may make clothing very uncomfortable, and nervous excitement characterized by rapid, continuous talking. The symptoms usually begin to appear in the second or third decade of life. The intensity of the disease fluctuates, severe episodes alternating with symptom-free interludes. Attacks may prove fatal but recovery from attacks is usually rapid.
The diagnosis of any disease in the long dead, from inadequate records, is always hazardous, but the peculiar nature of porphyria, the good documentation of royal diseases and the occurrence of the disease in several living descendants of George II make the diagnosis of royal sufferers of porphyria very convincing. There is little doubt that Mary Queen of Scots was a sufferer, as was her son James I of England and VI of Scotland and his son Prince Henry (Charles I’s elder brother), who died of the disease. It can probably be traced back to Margaret Tudor, the sister of Henry VIII, who married James IV of Scotland. Many descendants of James, including Queen Anne, Frederich the Great of Prussia, his father Frederi
ch I and George III of Britain, were also affected.13 George III’s attacks of ‘madness’ were due to this condition. George IV was also affected, as was probably his wife Queen Caroline, who was descended from Frederich the Great. Princess Charlotte could therefore have inherited the disease from either her father or mother. From the age of sixteen she suffered from abdominal pains and periods of nervous excitement, and porphyria may well have been a factor in her sudden collapse and death. At the age of sixteen she wrote, ‘I am far from well . . . My spirits rally but for a very short time’. Later it was reported, ‘The Princess is really not well. She looks ill – and has complained for some time past but more lately of a pain in her left side . . . the pulse is quick.’ When she was eighteen Dr Mathew Baillie wrote, ‘Her pulse is still too frequent, for it was yesterday 84 . . . Her Royal Highness complains of distension of the stomach from indigestion . . .’ Her own comments show that she was mystified by her symptoms, ‘Last night I had a slight nervous attack again, which always affects my spirits as well as my side . . . what I feel on these occasions is oppressed like as if my heart would burst or sigh itself out . . . I must say that I get every day more ignimatical to myself . . . At times I laugh and talk away as fast that you would think I had no cares at all.’14 She frequently suffered pain in her side, and colic. At her post-mortem her stomach and intestine were found to be dilated with fluid and air.