‘Oh, it is all so lovely!’ I cried, whirling on the spot with my hands clasped ecstatically before me. ‘No more mould in the cupboards! No more black beetles! But how did you manage to persuade Uncle William, Mamma? Why did he change his mind?’
Mamma hesitated for a moment, and I saw Lehzen looking at her grimly, as though she, too, wanted to hear the answer.
‘It was for your health,’ Mamma said at last. ‘Doctor Clark says you must have dry, airy rooms if you are not to get ill again. The ground floor apartment was very bad for your health.’ I would have asked her more, but she went on quickly, ‘Why don’t you run down to your old room, my love, and begin fetching up your books and dolls?’
‘Oh, yes, Mamma!’ I cried, and rushed away, too pleased and excited to notice that there was something a little strained about Mamma’s voice, as though she had been reluctant to answer me.
20th March 1900
AFTER THE excitement of settling in, I returned to my dull life. My health improved, thanks to a new regime instituted by Dr Clark. He decreed that I was not to work for too long together, that I should do some lessons at a standing-desk to vary my position, that I was to have plenty of walking exercise in the fresh air (especially in bracing air – the air at Kensington he thought too relaxing), and that I should have exercises with Indian clubs to improve my figure and circulation. The walks prescribed were taken in Hampstead, Highgate, Finchley, Harrow and such places, and I enjoyed the variety of scene and the air and views from these high places very much. But though Clark prescribed the air, Mamma prescribed the company for the expeditions, and between Lady Flora Hastings and Victoire Conroy there was not much recreation for a gregarious soul. I was a normal, lively, passionate girl of seventeen and I longed for amusement and gaiety and fun and oh! for pleasant company! I wanted bread, and they gave me a stone.
For the rest, I continued with my lessons with Mr Davys – the Dean of Chester as he was by then – and law and constitution were added to my curriculum, and a regular reading of the newspapers, which I regret to say did not much interest me. The news of this thrilling period of history were of small moment to me beside my longing for balls and parties. Every evening I sat down to dinner with Mamma, Sir John and Lady Conroy, and Princess Sophia – which was rather like an oyster sitting down to dinner with the Walrus and the Carpenter. This tedium was interrupted by a fortnightly visit to the theatre or the opera, and occasional attendance at a Court function.
At one of these latter, my kind uncle took my hand in both of his (he had developed chalk deposits in his knuckles, and they were growing pitifully crooked) and with an earnest look told me that he meant to ‘hold on’ and reign until I reached my majority.
‘I hope, indeed, sir, that you live many years,’ I said falteringly.
‘Ha! Don’t you worry, m’dear!’ he replied. ‘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! I shall hold on as long as I can.’
These few words brought tears to my eyes, as did any hint of sympathy in those days; but also alarmed me, as they reminded me that he was seventy years old, and suffering from asthma and gout. His death was no remote possibility; and if he died, what would become of me?
It was that year, 1836, which witnessed the dreadful scene at Windsor. Aunt Adelaide’s birthday was on the 13th of August, and Uncle William’s was on the 21st, while Mamma’s fell between them on the 17th. Uncle William, with more propriety than Mamma showed, did his best to remain on terms with her, and he invited her with a very cordial note to come to Windsor for Aunt Adelaide’s birthday celebrations on the 13th, and remain until after his own on the 21st. Mamma replied coldly that she preferred to spend her birthday at Claremont but that she would come to Windsor on the 20th; of Aunt Adelaide’s birthday she made no mention at all. For arrogance, rudeness and tactlessness this letter hadn’t its equal, and the astonishing thing is that Uncle William, who fiercely resented any slight to his Queen, did not erupt at once.
It happened that on the 20th of August Uncle William was in London for the proroguing of Parliament, and afterwards, on his way back to Windsor, he broke his journey (prompted by who can say what demon?) at Kensington, where he made a tour of inspection of the palace. At ten o’clock that evening Mamma and I were assembled after dinner with the other guests in the drawing-room at Windsor when the King arrived. It was plain from the moment he appeared in the doorway that something was wrong, for his pink face was a darker shade than usual, and his bright blue eyes seemed to bulge slightly under his frowning brows. He swept a glance round the room, and then came straight towards me. I was alarmed, but his expression cleared as he approached me, and he took both my hands in the most cordial way and said, ‘Ha! There you are, m’dear! I am pleased to see you, very pleased indeed. We don’t see enough of you at Court, your aunt and I, not by a long thought.’
Then he released my hands and turned to my mother. His expression underwent an alarming change: the smile disappeared, and the thunder clouds drew down over his brows. Mamma made him the shallowest curtsey she could have got away with, to which he responded with a slight bow. Then he said in a loud and angry voice, plainly meant to be heard by all, that a most unwarrantable liberty had been taken with one of his palaces.
‘I have just come from Kensington, madam. What have you to say to that?’
A most unpleasant sensation began in the pit of my stomach. I looked towards Mamma, and though she was wearing her loftiest expression, I could see that she was apprehensive.
‘Why, sir, what should I say to it?’ she replied frigidly.
The King simply roared. ‘By God, madam, do you pretend not to know? Seventeen rooms have been stolen from me – yes, stolen I say! Apartments taken possession of without my consent! Walls put up, walls taken down, workmen instructed, bills run up, all without consulting me – indeed, contrary to my express commands! What are you about, madam? I cannot understand such conduct!’
Mamma had blanched, but she was not half so white as I felt. So that was it! I had been rejoicing in our new accommodation, never dreaming that I was a usurper – and I had a brief, ignoble sense of relief that I had never happened to thank my uncle for giving them to us and thus brought the storm down on my own head. I was trembling so much with anxiety now that I did not properly hear what Mamma replied, except that it was something about me – the necessity on grounds of my health and what was due to my station.
Uncle William was not placated, but he seemed disinclined to continue the quarrel at that moment. He muttered under his breath, like thunder fading over the horizon. ‘Station, eh? Whose station I wonder? But it is all of a piece, all of a piece!’ And then one last shell burst over Mamma’s unrepentant head: ‘I will no more endure such disrespectful conduct towards me! Mark me, madam!’ before he turned away to speak to his other guests. I felt weak with distress and shame, but Mamma seemed not to have any such feelings in her. Her eyes were bright and her lips compressed with anger, but there was also something of satisfaction in her expression. Considering what she had gained by way of accommodation, that short outburst was a small enough price.
But she underestimated my uncle’s irritation against her. The Birthday Dinner the next day was called a private one, but still it involved about a hundred guests – relatives, courtiers, and prominent local dignitaries. Mamma was placed on the King’s right hand, and I had the seat opposite him – the positions of honour. At the end of dinner the loyal toast was drunk, in the form chosen for the occasion by the Queen: ‘His Majesty’s health, and long life to him!’
The King’s part should then have been to respond with gracious thanks, but instead his pent-up rage seemed to burst from him in an uncontrollable tirade, provoked by those unlucky words.
‘Long life? Aye, long life indeed! I trust to God that my life may be spared, at least for nine months longer, after which if I die there will be no cause for a Regency! I s
hould then have the satisfaction of leaving the royal authority to the personal exercise of that young lady opposite’ (he pointed at me where I sat as though nailed to my chair-back with astonishment), ‘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 herself is incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which she would be placed.’ His voice rose now as he went on, ‘I have no hesitation in saying I have been insulted – grossly and continually insulted – by that Person, but it has gone past all endurance, and I will not stand it any longer. No, by God!’ He thumped his fist down on the table, making the glass drops of the epergne nearby ring like little protesting voices. His glaring eyes now fixed on me, and I shrank into myself in distress, though his rage was not directed towards myself. ‘Aye, aye, and amongst the many offences of that Person, I have particularly to complain about the way in which she has kept that young lady away from my Court! She has been repeatedly kept from my Drawing-rooms, at which she ought always to have been present, as befitted my niece and my heiress – but I am fully resolved this shall not happen again! I would have that Person know that I am King, and that I am determined to make my authority respected, and in future I shall insist and command that the Princess shall on all occasions appear at my Court, as it is her duty to do!’
The Queen had her eyes downcast, her lips trembling with distress. Mamma seemed to have been turned to stone, and was facing straight before her with her eyes fixed rigidly on the empty air. I could feel the helpless tears slipping down my cheeks, though I struggled with them desperately, not wishing to add any further breach of etiquette to the already shattered occasion. Perhaps Uncle William was moved by the sight of them, for his voice softened, and he said, as though placating me, ‘Well, well, it is only what is right and proper after all. The Princess must be seen at Court, for she will reign over you all when I am gone – and a fine Queen she will make, too, for she is a very good girl indeed, as I have often had cause to tell her, both as my niece and my heiress – or I would have done, had I been given the opportunity. And that’s all I have to say.’
All! The half of it would have been twice too much! But there was only a moment or two more to endure, of feeling the eyes of half the company on me, and then the Queen stood up, rather unsteadily, I thought, and at that signal all we ladies rose to follow her out of the room. As soon as we reached the drawing-room, Mamma came up to me and seized my arm in a grip so hard that I found a bruise there next morning.
‘Come, Victoria,’ she said in a voice meant to penetrate to all parts of the room, ‘we are leaving. I shall order the carriage, and we shall go at once. I will not remain under a roof where I am so publicly insulted, and for no reason whatever. It is not to be borne.’
Aunt Adelaide, I could see, was almost in tears at these words, and I wanted most of all to withdraw my arm from Mamma’s heedless grip and run across the room to her. Publicly insulted, yes, and that was bad – but for no reason? My gentle aunt who had always been so kind to me, who had befriended Mamma when she was first widowed, and had never offered the least offence, had been continually snubbed, slighted and insulted by Mamma and Conroy. Uncle William’s conduct had been hasty and injudicious, even unmannerly, but it was not unprovoked. It was agonising for me to be caught between them, and I felt the misery acutely; but behind my present mortification was a deeper sorrow from the knowledge that after this, Mamma would be doubly determined to keep me away from Court, and prevent me from having anything to do with my dear uncle and aunt. The King might be determined to command my presence, but when it came to determination, he was the merest tyro next to Mamma and Conroy. An essentially kind and easy-going person will never win against the malicious, the self-seeking and the bad-tempered.
Fortunately there were enough well-wishers amongst the assembled ladies, who surrounded Mamma in the drawing-room and persuaded her that we must not leave until the morning, when we had planned to end our visit, or there would be the most dreadful public scandal. Later, as we walked along the corridors to our bedchamber, Mamma gave me a dreadful scolding for ‘making up to’ Uncle William and taking the part of someone who insulted my own mother, and my tears flowed again. The next morning we left early and went back to Claremont, and as our chaise pulled away I felt I would have been glad never to see Windsor again.
22nd March 1900
THE YEAR of 1837, in which I would attain my majority, opened in a suspenseful quiet, like the oppressive silence that sometimes comes before a thunderstorm. Lehzen and I huddled together and kept as still as possible, like fieldmice, in the hope of escaping attention. It was one of the worst aspects of my childhood that in order to survive the intrigue and duplicity with which I was surrounded, I was obliged to practise what was foreign to my nature. I was by nature straightforward, open, candid; I had to learn to dissemble, to hide my feelings, to be guarded, discreet – secretive. By the age of eighteen I could hold my tongue and control my features like an elder statesman, and though they proved valuable skills for a monarch, still they had their price. For one thing, I am sure the worry and torment I endured stopped me growing, as I told Lord M.; and for another, because I had so little opportunity of meeting other people, I never outgrew my childhood shyness. I am still, to this day, paralysed by shyness when I meet someone new; and I have no small-talk. (Lord M. gave me valuable advice on that head – the more one tried to think what to say, the more tongue-tied one became, he said. Better to say anything, however foolish or commonplace, than silently to search for something witty or wise.)
The weeks passed, and everyone waited and watched the calendar and the King. Bulletins filtered through Princess Sophia to Mamma, and through Lehzen to me. He was seventy-two, and growing feeble, but though his asthma was troublesome he seemed otherwise in no immediate danger. In April my brother Charles arrived for a visit, with his wife and two children – after raking about the Continent for some years, he had married beneath him, to the family’s distress, to one of Grandmamma Coburg’s ladies-in-waiting, a woman of no lineage and no fortune. His wild and profligate lifestyle kept him in continual debt, which he applied shamelessly to Mamma to pay off, and this importunity and propensity to sponge on others led him into a natural alliance with Conroy. They were always muttering with their heads together, and bending over sheets of paper on which they sketched out, I suppose, ever more fantastic schemes for subordinating me to their wills. Charles had much to gain from promoting Conroy’s cause, for if Conroy held the purse strings, he might hope to be able to dip his hand pretty freely.
On the 18th of May the unsettling report reached us that the King had received sitting down, both at the levée and the drawing-room held that day – a circumstance which could only mean he was more than usually weak, or unwell. His doctor, Sir Henry Halford, reported that his health was ‘in a very odd state’ and that his breathing difficulties precluded his going to bed. ‘I trust he may get over it, but he is seventy-two.’
Perhaps his brush with the Great Determiner alarmed my uncle. The next day Lord Conyngham, the Lord Chamberlain, arrived and announced that he had a letter for me from the King. Conroy, who was with Mamma, of course, stepped forward and held out his hand for it, but Lord Conyngham kept a tight hold on the letter and said – with some satisfaction, I imagine – that he must deliver it into the Princess’s own hand.
‘By what authority?’ Conroy demanded sharply.
‘His Majesty’s,’ said Conyngham, and displayed the Sign Manual on the letter.
Mamma and Conroy exchanged a sharp, dismayed look. There were only a few days of my minority left – and now what new trouble was come to plague them? Mamma held out her hand now. ‘You may give the letter to me, my lord. I will see that my daughter receives it.’
Conyngham bowed. ‘I regret, madam, that I cannot comply. My instructions from His Majesty are quite specific. I am myself to place the letter in the hands of the Princess and of no other person.’
‘
Then you shall do so,’ Conroy said magnanimously, since there was no help for it, ‘but it must be in the presence of her august mother. The Princess does nothing without her mother’s help and advice.’
Thus I was fetched into the presence, and Lord Conyngham, with look both kindly and respectful, handed me the letter with a verbal assurance of my uncle’s goodwill and affection towards me. I trembled a little as I opened it, for Mamma and Conroy stood by, their hands hooked to tear the letter from me at the first opportunity, their eyes greedily fixed on my face as if they might read the contents reflected there, as in a glass.
I trembled a great deal more when I had read the letter, both in gratitude towards my uncle, and in fear of my enemies’ reaction. Dear Uncle William had held out to me the golden key to my cage! This is what he wrote: that when I came of age to reign on the 24th of May, he proposed to ask Parliament for an income of £10,000 a year for me, to be entirely at my own disposal. I myself was to appoint my Keeper of the Privy Purse, who was to be responsible solely to me, and I was to form my own separate Household if I wished it and appoint my own Ladies. Lord Melbourne, he added, had suggested Sir Benjamin Stephenson as a suitable Keeper of the Privy Purse. (Sir Benjamin was a great favourite of the King and Queen, but much hated by Mamma.)
Oh, Uncle! What a prospect to hold out before me at a moment like that: my own establishment, money enough to do as I liked, no Mamma nagging me, no Conroy doing hateful things in my name, no Victoire Conroy or Lady Flora amongst my Ladies! What caged bird has ever pressed itself so eagerly against the bars as I did with that letter in my hand? So eagerly, but so hopelessly – for the next thing I must do is to hand it to Mamma to read.
She paused only to get rid of Lord Conyngham, who, his duty done, could do no more to save me from my lawful guardian. When he had left, Mamma perused the letter eagerly, and Conroy leaned most familiarly over her shoulder and read with her. Their faces grew longer and longer as they read, and I hastened to put my word in before they could speak.
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