I, Victoria

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  I knew where to lay the blame; and I silently saluted Lehzen’s restraint in Conroy’s presence, and tried to emulate it myself. She would become quite colourless when he was in the room, like a toad pretending to be a stone. She would say yes and no and little more, and nothing betrayed her hatred of him but a slight tightening of her lips, and a sparkling look in her eyes when he left us again. For myself, I was too young and my character too straightforward to pretend to accept him, but under his goad I was learning to deny him the satisfaction of my pain, assuming a grim expressionlessness which was very foreign to my nature.

  Stone by stone I erected a wall between myself and him, and consequently between myself and Mamma. It is a hard thing for a child to think ill of her mother, a bitter thing to be brought to such a pass. The wound of it went deep; and though in later years I came to love Mamma, and to enjoy with her the proper warmth and intimacy of our relationship, I bore and still bear the scars of being bent out of my nature in those Kensington years.

  The dismissal of Späth had one further evil consequence. Aunt Adelaide, partly on her own account, and partly at the prompting of the King, wrote to Mamma a very blunt warning about Conroy:

  It is the general wish in the family that you should not allow Sir JC too much influence over you, but keep him in his place. He has never lived before in good society, so naturally he offends sometimes against the traditional ways, for he does not know them. In the family it is noticed that you are cutting yourself off more and more from them with your child. This they attribute to Conroy, whether rightly or wrongly I cannot guess; they believe he tries to remove everything that might obstruct his influence, so that he may exercise his power alone, and alone one day reap the fruits of his influence. He must not be allowed to forbid access to you to all but his family, who in any case are not of so high a rank that they alone should be the companions of the future Queen of England.

  This, and much more. Mamma must have been mortified to receive such a letter; but Conroy must have been even more taken aback, to discover that what he had thought of as his secret plan was completely transparent even to such a simple woman as Aunt Adelaide. He dictated a reply for Mamma to send, something very angry and insolent, as I understand, which very much hurt Aunt Adelaide. Uncle Clarence adored his wife, and could not bear her to be upset, and so was furious with Mamma and Conroy. From then on, it was open warfare between the two camps.

  This was a very unfortunate circumstance, because at this time my uncle King was sinking under the weight of his ailments, and only five months later, on the 26th of June 1830, he died, and Uncle Clarence became King William IV. Aunt Adelaide, as can be seen from the letter, had ceased to hope for a child of her own, and my uncle was therefore the only life left between me and the Throne. This was the point at which I ought to have taken my place at Court, to learn its ways and get to know my future courtiers; and my bluff, kindly uncle and gentle, pious aunt would have been glad to have taken me to their hearts like their own daughter; but with the prize so nearly in his grasp, that was the last thing Conroy would permit.

  12th March 1900

  OF MY uncle King George IV, Greville wrote, ‘He had not been dead three days before everyone discovered that he was no loss.’ When you are Queen of England, it is a disagreeable fact that you are thought of as public property, and however little you like it, you have to accustom yourself to a certain amount of unjust criticism of yourself and abuse of the relatives you love. Uncle King was very kind to me, and I cried very much when he died. Oddly, it was from a Frenchman, Prince Talleyrand, that he received the most sympathetic treatment: Talleyrand called him un roi grand seigneur – ‘There are no others left.’ That was true. George IV had surrounded himself with splendour, ostentatious extravagance, gorgeous display – almost like an oriental despot of old; and in his time, that was what was expected of a king. But times change, and our century was more critical and down-to-earth than the eighteenth. If monarchy was to survive, it had to change with the times, and prove its worth.

  The new King, my uncle William, was a hearty, kindly old gentleman with a loud, quarterdeck voice and a disposition to be friendly towards everyone. He suited the new thinking, for he disliked pageantry, ceremonial, elaborate clothes, ‘fallals’ and French food. He adored his wife, was fond of and badgered by his brood of illegitimate children, and liked nothing better than a simple dinner and a quiet evening at home, dozing in front of the fire while Aunt Adelaide knitted. He was a tallish, stoutish, pink-faced man with the family bright blue eyes, and there was nothing odd about him except the shape of his skull, which sloped rather towards the crown and had given him the nickname, in his Navy days, of ‘Coconut’.

  He had never expected to be King, and took a little while to adjust himself to it. Once, in the early days of his reign he slipped out of St James’s Palace and went for a walk about the streets as he had been used to doing as Duke of Clarence. Of course he was soon recognised, and collected an excited crowd about him, who followed him in noisy admiration which his natural friendliness did nothing to dampen. When at last he was kissed on the cheek by a cheerful prostitute on the pavement before White’s Club, the scandalised membership came out in a body and escorted its sovereign back to the Palace; where his household, frantic with relief, tried to convince him that kings simply could not ‘pop out’ and walk about London alone like that.

  Uncle William couldn’t see what the fuss was about. ‘Oh, never mind all this,’ he said, waving his hand towards the hilarious mob lingering in the street in the hope of another excursion. ‘When I have walked about a few times they will get used to it and take no notice.’ It was left to Aunt Adelaide to tell him severely that he must not do it again, whereupon he hung his head meekly and said, ‘If you say so, my dear …’

  I love that story! It is so exactly the Uncle William I remember. But though he had not expected to be King, now it had happened he was determined to do the thing properly. He had a very strong sense of duty (one of the traits I’m glad to say we shared), and a methodical way of going about things. The Duke spoke very highly of him: he rose early and worked long hours, left nothing undone at the end of the day, and when presented with business he did not understand, asked questions until he did understand it. ‘Which was in distinct contrast with his predecessor,’ said the Duke (though not to me, of course), ‘who was at pains never to acknowledge ignorance on any topic!’ The Duke found he was able to get through as much business in ten minutes with Uncle William as in ten days with his late master; and was particularly impressed with the way Uncle William tackled the mountain of business left over from the previous reign, including the signing of some forty thousand documents George IV had ‘put off’. Sir Herbert Taylor, Uncle William’s secretary, said that Uncle sat up late night after night, signing away until his chalky old hands were aching with cramp, in order to catch up and ‘make everything ship-shape’.

  Unkind and very unfair legends have grown up that Uncle William was stupid – which was very far from the case, though his bluff and simple manner could not have recommended itself to the languid sophisticates of society – and also that he was a thoughtless reactionary, which was likewise untrue. He had a strong sense of what was due to the Crown, but he also believed that the King owed absolute loyalty to his ministers, who were there to advise him. When the Government told him there must be Parliamentary Reform to get rid of the nomination seats, he accepted it; and though he disliked the idea very much, he never wavered in his support of Lord Grey until the Act was through, even though it meant upsetting Aunt Adelaide, who was far more strongly against it than him.

  That was the Reform Act of 1832, of course, which was only the beginning of a process I have seen continue throughout my reign; and I don’t suppose it is over yet. The franchise has been extended twice – in 1867 and again in 1884. I am ‘all for’ giving the vote to decent, hard-working, God-fearing men like my dear John Brown, but there is agitation now to enfranchise every man over twenty-o
ne, no matter how little he contributes to the common weal. It has always seemed to me that the vote ought to be a privilege, that one should do more to deserve it than simply be born. Well, it will not be my problem, thank God! Bertie, I expect, will hold out against it (he is much less democratically minded than I am: I think secretly he would like to rule absolutely like a grand seigneur of old!). But in the end the universal franchise will come. Over a long reign I have come to see that there are things which happen not because anyone in particular wills them, but because the tide of history is flowing in that direction. We may choose to act Canute, but we can only expect the same degree of success.

  But I digress. The new reign was not a day old when Conroy fired his opening salvo. He wrote a letter, which Mamma signed and sent to the Duke, with demands to be laid before the new King: that I should be acclaimed as Heiress Presumptive, and Mamma made sole Regent by Act of Parliament; that a noblewoman, preferably a Duchess, should be appointed my official governess in recognition of my status; and that Mamma should be given the title of Dowager Princess of Wales (to which she had no shadow of a claim, I might mention!) and an income suitable to her rank. No extra grant should be made to the Princess Victoria, added Conroy unblushingly under Mamma’s hand: until she was of age, it was in the Princess’s interest that all her affairs were handled by her mother.

  The Duke was taken aback by the effrontery of the letter and declined to lay it before the King. Probably guessing its true authorship, he told Mamma warningly that he would not even mention its contents to his colleagues, but treat it as a private and confidential communication. The affairs of the Duchess of Kent and her august daughter, he said, would come before Parliament in the next session, and it was far better that they should be dealt with through the regular channel than that a claim should be put forward by Mamma.

  A sharp reply to this went back to the Duke: Mamma insisted on the Regency against her own inclinations, purely for her daughter’s good; and if she did not put forward her feelings, she was not likely to be asked for them, undervalued as she was by the whole Court. The Duke replied that there was no-one in the country who had any idea of injuring her interests or those of the Princess, and he entreated her ‘not to allow any Person to persuade you to the contrary’. This obvious reference to Conroy angered Mamma, who saw him as her only true friend and champion. She could not understand why other people slighted him and tried to turn her against him, and for a long time thereafter she refused to speak to the Duke or to receive him.

  Conroy need not have worried, however. When the question of the Regency came up in Parliament in November 1830, it was unanimously recommended that it should be vested in Mamma. By precedent, the next heir after me had the right to be named Regent, but in my case that was my uncle Cumberland. He was feared and hated by nearly everyone at Court and by the population at large, and a pretext was hastily found for denying him the Regency. The Throne of Hanover, joined to that of England since George I, could not come to me because Hanover operated under Salic law, by which only males could succeed. Therefore when Uncle William died the crowns would part company, and Uncle Cumberland would become King of Hanover. It was plainly impossible for a foreign ruler to be Regent to the Queen of England, and so Uncle Cumberland was passed over and Mamma nominated as sole Regent, to everyone’s great relief.

  Fortified by this triumph, Conroy and Mamma settled down to a campaign of increasing their own prestige and royal style, and thwarting and insulting the King and Queen on every possible occasion. Isolated in the schoolroom, I did not witness much of the action, though I was aware, of course, that I did not see Uncle William and Aunt Adelaide as often as I would have liked. Loving me as they did, they would have overlooked many of the Conroyal insults, but Mamma carried the war into their own front parlour by her attitude towards my Fitzclarence cousins. Uncle William was a fond father, and since Aunt Adelaide accepted his bâtards wholeheartedly into her home circle he saw no reason why my mother should do otherwise. But she refused to acknowledge them, and even if she met them under the King’s own roof she ignored or snubbed them. Poor Uncle William! When I became Queen, I made a point of being civil to them, confirmed them in their Court posts and continued their pensions – though it was too late to make amends to him, of course.

  The squabbles between the Court and Kensington Palace continued, and although they stopped short of open breach, they made life very unpleasant. Together with my continual persecution by Conroy, they began to damage my health, and during the years of my ‘teens’ I suffered recurrently from headaches, backaches, biliousness and insomnia – all attributable, I’m sure, to the miserable and unnatural life I was leading.

  There were breaks in the monotony, as welcome to me as they were infrequent. Mamma and Conroy wished me to be presented to society, and so I was brought down to the drawing-room to curtsey to the company when Mamma gave a great dinner. And there were invitations to court functions which it was not possible for Mamma to refuse on my behalf – like the juvenile ball Uncle William gave in honour of my fourteenth birthday in May 1833.

  I opened that ball (as I did others in subsequent years) with my cousin Prince George of Cambridge. It was a funny thing about poor George – we were, of course, just the same age, and there was a general assumption on the part of many people that we would eventually marry. It seemed a good solution, particularly to my paternal relatives, of what might otherwise be a vexed question; Aunt Adelaide especially would have liked it, because George was her particular pet. But George and I both hated the idea. We never discussed it with each other, of course; the whole thing was completely unspoken; but whenever we were brought together at balls and such-like, we would grow very cold and distant, and treat each other with a wooden civility intended to convince onlookers that there could be no question of our ever being in love. I firmly believed that I disliked him very much, that he was ugly and stupid; and he thought pretty much the same about me. But as soon as I was engaged to Albert, and we were safe from each other, our manners towards each other changed, and I found him an agreeable person and grew quite fond of him. He became rather a rake, and was sent into the army (he was my Commander-in-Chief until 1895) to keep him out of trouble, but when he was twenty-eight he married an actress, Louise Fairbrother. It was a shocking mésalliance, of course, and pretty well drove his father, my uncle, to his grave; but it was a love-match, and it had the effect of settling him down. He was devoted to Mrs Fitzgeorge, as she became known, and she gave him three Fitzgeorge sons. When she died in 1890 it broke his heart.

  That birthday, in 1833, was also the time when I was allowed to adopt as my own the King Charles spaniel, Dash, that John Conroy had given to my mother a few months before. Every child needs someone on whom to bestow caresses, and though I loved Lehzen dearly, I was also in awe of her. She was not physically affectionate, nor would she have permitted me to touch her: she would not have deemed it proper. So it was dear little Dashy who received my kisses and cuddles. I adored him, and a better-natured, more faithful dog there never was. He was and remained the only thing I ever had to thank John Conroy for. Dash was with me from 1833 until he died, in the year Vicky was born; and a very handsome marble monument he has now over his grave in the garden of Adelaide Cottage, here at Windsor.

  14th March 1900 – near midnight

  VOICES, VOICES … When I close my eyes, they come to me, faint and echoing, like dry, dead leaves blown rattling across a pavement.

  The King’s, pitched for the open air, a kind of muted roar, with those old-fashioned vowel sounds you never hear any more, except perhaps in parts of Norfolk and Lincolnshire. ‘Ha! Don’t you worry, m’dear! I may be a simple fellow, just an old sea-dog, but these eyes of mine have always been sharp, and I can see what’s goin’ on under my own nose, dammit!’

  Mamma’s, soft and sibilant, turning upwards at the end of each sentence like a question-mark, so that even her firmness became strangely hesitant, as though she were saying things against h
er will. ‘Zo, Victoria my love, you must not tsink zat I am angry with you, when I only try to show you where you are wrong? You know you can be headstrong and wilful? Your mother must know better zan you what is good for you, nicht? You cannot understand as I do what your position demands?’

  Conroy’s, loud and hectoring, with a hint of Irish in it, like sour milk in tea, and a hint of temper under it that might erupt at any moment. ‘There’s nothing worse than a young female setting up her own opinion against those of her betters. That’s a thing I can’t abide, now! I won’t have it in my own girls, and I tell you, Duchess, wherever I see it, it makes me want to stamp it out, double quick!’

  Now there is another voice, added in the summer of 1834 – the vinegar tones of Lady Flora Hastings, eldest daughter of the Marquess; a clever, sharp woman of twenty-eight, elegant, not ill-looking, but with a mind that would have done better in a man’s body, and a disposition soured by the realisation of the same. She came as my mother’s lady-in-waiting, but it was not long before I understood that her arrival marked the beginning of a new phase in the battle to rid me of my one protector, my dearest Lehzen, and put me under the complete control of Conroy. Soon my drives out with Lehzen ceased to be little havens of peace in the storms of my life, for on Mamma’s instructions Lady Flora came along too as an unwelcome third, stifling intercourse between Lehzen and me by our rapid realisation that she was Conroy’s spy. She and That Man soon had an excellent understanding between them, and a mutual respect that bordered almost on affection. I believe she was ambitious, and saw Conroy as the way ahead, while he saw such a useful tool in her that he was almost willing to forgive her for being female. Certainly his usual coarse manner was modified in her case, and though he still treated her familiarly, there was less of the patronising tone he used with other women.