The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History

by Roland Perry

  ‘The scales then fell from his eyes,’ Lehzen noted. Clark never expressed, but probably thought, that the princess may well have been pregnant. (Although rumours that the princess was pregnant abounded at this time, especially as she was secluded and putting on weight, no concrete evidence emerged that supported this theory.)

  By late October 1835 Victoria’s mental state reached a low point. She sat in her study looking forlornly at her diary, which sat on her large desk.

  ‘I can’t bring myself to write anything!’ she lamented to Lehzen, ‘I haven’t touched it for weeks! I have written in it every day since I was 12, and now. . .’

  Her voice trailed off. She sobbed.

  Lehzen held her. ‘There, there, my darling princess,’ she said, ‘you’ll get back to it, in your own good time; when you have the strength.’

  ‘I feel my life—my hopes for the future—have come to a crashing, horrible end!’

  ‘My dear, you are but sixteen! This is one travail of many you will face as queen.You will overcome it!’

  ‘I’ve let down everyone,’ she cried.

  Conroy burst into Victoria’s apartment the next morning clutching a set of papers.Victoria was sitting in a chair, dozing, a book in her lap.

  ‘You are required to sign these,’ he said, standing over her.

  ‘What?’ she asked, startled.

  Conroy thrust the papers into her hands. She began reading. They were legal documents that, if signed, would cause her to relinquish her position of ‘monarch’ to her mother, who would become ‘regent’, on King William’s demise. This would apply whether or not Victoria had turned eighteen before King William’s death. Conroy would be Victoria’s private secretary. In effect, she would be passing all the intrinsic power and position of the monarch to her mother, leaving Conroy to pull all the strings, including those of the monarch’s purse as dispersed by the treasury.

  Victoria threw the papers on the floor, just as Lehzen entered the room.

  ‘I shall not sign. Never!’Victoria said. Conroy picked up the papers and took several steps towards her.

  ‘You are not fit to be a monarch,’ he declared.‘You have proven this through your continued immaturity and your stupidity!’

  ‘I shall be queen in my own right!’

  ‘You are too irresponsible! You know nothing of government, of affairs of state, of parliament.’

  ‘I shall learn, but not with your help or that of the duchess.’

  The skeletally thin Lehzen moved close and stood between Conroy and the princess.

  ‘I think you should leave,’ Lehzen said. ‘The princess is not well enough for this!’

  Conroy stormed from the apartment.

  After the confrontation, Victoria fell into a deep depression and lost weight too rapidly. She wept most of the time. She was listless. Her hair began to fall out. Her condition weakened further. Clark medicated her but nothing could revive her spirits. At the beginning of November, after hardly leaving her bed for weeks, Lehzen coaxed her to sit at a desk in her bedroom and attempt to write a diary entry. Lehzen opened the diary and placed a pen in her hand.Victoria seemed barely able to lift it.

  ‘I . . .just . . .can’t think what to say . . .I’m confused . . .’ she whispered, seemingly exhausted from the thought of writing. At that moment, Conroy entered with the papers she had rejected a week earlier. He pushed her diary out of the way to put the papers in front of her.

  ‘Sign these,’ he ordered. ‘You must sign over the regency to avoid a public disaster. Already there are rumours about your behaviour.’

  ‘No!’Victoria said.

  Lehzen pushed her way between Conroy and her princess, blocking him. A shouting match ensued. Conroy rounded on Lehzen for not strictly monitoring her movements.

  ‘You fool!’ a furious Conroy yelled at Lehzen, ‘you let this stupid child out of your sight. It’s your fault she was led astray—’

  Conroy manhandled Lehzen, trying to force her out of the way. Showing surprising strength for one so thin, she held her ground. Victoria slumped in the chair, overcome with the shock. Conroy backed off, with Lehzen screaming at him to leave.

  He was relentless. He returned the next day with the sharp-tongued lady-in-waiting Lady Flora Hastings and the duchess, who began with cajolery, but descended into harsh words for her daughter. Conroy confronted Victoria a third time. Lehzen once more interposed herself between the three abusers and her delicate charge.

  The forceful interventions by Conroy created further lassitude in Victoria that stopped her from writing. She turned instead to something that would tax her brain less—sketching. She loved her crayon work, and she had more than a modicum of talent.

  Victoria sat in front of her dresser mirror, contemplating her appearance. She drew a self-portrait.There was both pain and beauty in the result.The large eyes in the sketch were sad yet most attractive.The drawing took her much longer than normal as she drank in her own despondent reflection. But the exercise calmed her and generated her first signs of revitalisation. Victoria’s only joy from the illness was her dramatic loss of weight. She had slipped to barely 44 kilograms, a loss of approaching 16 kilograms in just a few weeks. Her cheekbones were evident, appearing through a pale face, her chin sharper. Other features became prominent, especially sensuous lips. She had captured her youth on paper but the eyes reflected anxiety. They were clouded windows, suggesting experience that had aged her. Perversely, she liked what she saw. She would keep this one drawing of herself forever, she decided. Victoria had sketched herself before. Most other portraits had been torn up or discarded. She could never be considered an exceptional, conventional beauty, yet she was attractive. She had a vibrancy and drive. Even as a child, her bearing was confident. Victoria also had extraordinary and precocious sex appeal and charm.

  The sketch lifted her self-confidence for the first time in weeks. She found herself drawing two people—herself and a Horse Guard captain—riding in a field. Then she outlined a further drawing, this time of the two horses in the first sketch, but they were riderless and grazing.This whimsical, even cheeky, second effort left the whereabouts and activity of the riders to the imagination.

  2

  THE LOVER

  The thought of one person gave her a rudimentary strength that allowed the fragile girl to cling to her sanity, just, in those dark days of late 1835. This was her lover, the dashing Scottish captain of the Horse Guards: the 28-year-old, tall, thirteenth Lord (John) Elphinstone. Reflections on this lean Highlander were on her mind during and after the prolonged illness. She was in love. He was her first. Their secret relationship had been blissful and, considering the exacting ‘Kensington system,’ the rigidly protective regime at Kensington Palace, it had also been defiant. It had been implemented in 1825 by Conroy to protect, cosset and restrict Victoria. The palace became a mini-fortress, making it difficult for anyone to enter without invitation.

  The near-incarceration was exacerbated by the palace’s location in a small hamlet, cut off from London by fields, parks, country lanes and market gardens.Yet Kensington’s prison-like disciplines brought out the stubbornness, wilfulness and defiance in Victoria as she blossomed into mid-teenage years.This left her open to seduction from a more mature, experienced person offering everything her guardians were not. The princess and Lord Elphinstone had met a year earlier, and assignations had occurred throughout 1835. Despite the Kensington system, there had been plenty of opportunity for this ‘attachment’. If she found an excuse to visit Windsor Castle, always chaperoned by Lehzen, Victoria might find him there, where he was often stationed. If she ventured to the fields and gardens near Buckingham Palace, including Green Park and St James’s Park, there was a chance she might encounter him.There were balls, dances and parties that a select few of the titled members of the Horse Guards would attend.There was also the occasional innocent-looking rendezvous at church on Sunday. The churches St Martin-in-the-Field and St James were two favoured meeting places. It w
as her solo, short-term ‘disappearances’ while being chaperoned by Lehzen close to Kensington Palace that led to suspicions and even more rigid rules.

  Lord Elphinstone, a carefree aristocrat, had been drawn to Victoria. Their love and care of horses had been the initial common denominator. Ever since she could remember, she had been enchanted by the Horse Guards, whom she saw as her ‘knights in shining armour’.Their steeds with their plumes, prancing and procession were always thrilling to observe.Victoria first became aware of the young Scot when he joined the Guards as a cornet, aged eighteen in 1826 after being educated at the Royal High School, Edinburgh, and centuries-old Eton College, Windsor, the most elite school in the empire. She was not yet seven. He was made a lieutenant in 1828 and captain late in 1832, when he turned 25 and she was an impressionable thirteen-year-old.

  In the same year, Elphinstone was appointed a Lord of the Bedchamber, a courtier in the royal household of King William IV, which in effect made him an appointed ‘good friend’ of the monarch. Elphinstone became the most popular individual in King William’s court. Lady Granville remarked in 1832 that he was ‘the most amiable, loyal person I ever met’. The best-known diarist of the time, Henry Greville, could be brutal and scathing about everyone from monarchs and politicians to the public and press. When it came to assessing Elphinstone at close quarters, his pen was dripping not with invective but high praise. ‘A more perfect gentleman never existed,’ he wrote, ‘or one more full of sterling qualities.’

  Elphinstone’s duties included guarding King William in his bedchamber, and waiting on him while he ate in private. The role even included assisting the king with his dressing. At 25, the thirteenth lord also became a Scottish representative in the House of Lords. It all added up to a formidable, attractive, imposing figure: a man close to the monarch and who had inherited land in Scotland at age 21. He was considered to be a man of independent means with the extent of his riches being a debatable point.

  Elphinstone became, at least subliminally, the father figure, dream lover and friend Princess Victoria had never had. Her own father had died when she was eight months old. More prosaically, Victoria was simply having too much naughty, forbidden fun. Their relationship was furtive, restricted and not just sexual. They enjoyed each other’s company. Victoria was in need of more mature male company, or at least an attractive male she could look up to. The fact that she was in her youth and he was twelve years older was not unusual for the time. Elphinstone was a liberating influence in the near-imprisonment imposed by Conroy and the duchess, who had a vested interest in her remaining untouched in any way by those outside their control.

  Young Victoria had long been aware of her mother’s desire for her to marry a royal, preferably one from Prussia.The ‘eligible’ English royals were too poor, debauched, slack or amoral. There were no likely royal Scots. Even if ‘high-born’ and wealthy, the Highlanders were often too wild, unpredictable and uncontrollable. And manageability was what the duchess and Conroy (who hated Scots) wished.The duchess and Conroy feared Elphinstone, a strong character with liberal views, who would not be pliable. He was also neither German nor royal and therefore on several counts they considered him not ideal for marriage with Victoria. The previous twelve Lords Elphinstone—landowners, warriors and military class—reached back to 1510 when the peerage was created for Alexander Elphinstone. He had been one of more than 10,000 Scots killed three years later in the biggest clash ever between the Scots and the English, at the Battle of Flodden in the north of England.The thirteenth lord’s strong character, wealth, background and good looks, made him feel inferior to no man, station or court. In his eyes, and those of several other Scottish families, the royals from Germany’s House of Hanover who now ruled the British Empire were johnny-come-lately foreigners and inferior to their own breeding. There would never be a sense of inferiority or complexes in dealing with the interlopers.

  It was just this demeanour that attracted the young princess and had drawn out her amorous instincts and Hanoverian characteristics. She and he had discovered her lusty soul. She was precocious in the bedchamber (and in the outdoors) and always, unusually hungry for satisfaction. Modern psychiatrists would diagnose her as exhibiting characteristics of a manic depressive, who often needed intense bedroom theatrics. Perhaps, more simply, she had a very healthy libido.

  By 3 November 1835, Victoria could, without Lehzen’s aid, sit at a desk and write to her Uncle Leopold. She had gushed over him as a father figure of sorts despite or perhaps because of his effete nature. His flamboyance had attracted and amused her. Leopold wore 7 centimetre platform shoes to cover for his lack of height and, for his vanity, a feather boa, rouged cheeks, thick make-up and extravagant wigs.

  The princess was still weak. She struggled to hobble a few paces. She remained thin and her hair continued to fall out. Lehzen cut most of it off, leaving Victoria nearly bald. Clark took control in an attempt to restore his image as a competent physician. He prescribed a 7.30 a.m. daily dose of quinine, dissolved in wine to make it more palatable.

  ‘This will counter your fever, pain and inflammation,’ Clark informed her. ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to conform to a strict diet: potato soup for lunch at midday; boiled mutton, rice and jelly for dinner. The aim is for a daily balance of carbohydrate and protein, with a little sugar.Your natural weight will return, daily and gradually.’ In this, Clark proved correct. He and Lehzen urged her to occupy her mind with knitting.Victoria found herself producing baby bonnets and booties.

  Rumours and gossip were part of court life. By early 1836, King William IV heard of the plight of his niece, Victoria. The scuttlebutt was that she was being abused by her mother and Conroy, who were pressuring her over regency. King William was unfazed when he heard a wild rumour about Victoria giving birth, such was her isolation. He himself, from his younger days as the Duke of Clarence, had had ten illegitimate children (five sons and five daughters) to the comic actress Dorothy Bland, known as Mrs Jordon, a name that had given rise to his own observation that he had been ‘bathing in the River Jordan’. There were respectable and not-so-respectable FitzClarences and other illegitimate families scattered throughout England’s royal landscape. There was no stigma attached, only admiration for his (former) reproductive prowess. More important than any outrageous rumours was William’s detestation for John Conroy. The king was angered to learn that he and the duchess had pushed the girl to the limit about signing over the regency in the expectation of his own death before Victoria’s eighteenth birthday.William hated his brother’s wife for keeping the loving niece, whom he adored, from him. He asked his court spies to discover if a birth had taken place and, if so, the identity of the father. William, a cantankerous man, yet one of strong character, would not spoil Victoria’s chances of being crowned queen by making her plight public. Instead, he considered a little royal mischief.

  The king’s secret investigation did not reveal a royal bastard but had found the identity of the princess’s lover, for whom she was pining.Those in and around the court whispered only one name: John Elphinstone, the thirteenth lord. Young poet Robert Browning, who mixed in court circles, noted that Victoria was ‘lame and unable to stand upright,’ yet ‘bent on marrying nobody but Lord Elphinstone.’

  ‘A romance hung around this nobleman,’ Scottish biographer William Fraser wrote. ‘He was a favourite of King William IV. When Queen Victoria was about sixteen, Lord Elphinstone was a handsome young guardsman, and it was currently reported and believed that the youthful pair had formed a mutual attachment.’

  Victoria refused to tell her mother or Conroy her lover’s name, fearing that they would take action to have him banished in some way. But she yearned to make contact with him. The chance came in late February 1836, when Clark felt she was well enough to visit St James’s Palace. She wore her grey broche coat trimmed with roses, which young Aunt Louise (Uncle Leopold’s wife) had sent from Paris. It was Sunday and she attended church, knowing that her lover, Lord John, wou
ld be there.Victoria used Lehzen to pass word to him that she would be in attendance. They had not seen each other for five months. It was to be a heart-stopping moment for both. Elphinstone had a sketchbook with him. Sitting across the aisle from Victoria, he spent most of the one-hour service drawing her. The Duchess of Kent noticed. She was stunned. When she saw the two chatting coyly outside the church, she knew who Victoria’s lover was and she was furious.

  Later, in the princess’s quarters at Kensington Palace, the duchess confronted her daughter.Victoria was still recovering from her multiple ordeals, including an undiagnosed ‘fever’ and depression. Yet she was strong enough to resist her mother with even more defiance.

  ‘I shall continue to see him!’

  ‘You are forbidden.’

  ‘I want to. I will marry him!’

  ‘He is not royal. I will not allow it.’

  ‘I do not care. I shall be queen. I will marry whom I choose.’

  In the argument that followed the duchess pointed out that the scandal that would surely erupt if they were to attempt to marry would mean Victoria would never be queen.This struck a nerve with Victoria, who had been groomed for the throne and was close to that attainment. Her eighteenth birthday was just 21 months away and the king’s demise was perhaps even closer.

  Still Victoria was rebellious and bold. She would marry Elphinstone. She would break with the tradition of the near-incestuous intermarriage of European royal families. The duchess was shocked at her daughter’s intransigence and disobedience, which was near-mutiny for the household. Such a tryst of Hanover and Scotland would wreck her plans for the right kind of royal marriage. The confrontation led to the princess proclaiming her intentions to Lehzen and even Flora Hastings, the duchess’s close friend, who sided with the duchess and Conroy against Victoria, often with spite. After this, it promised to be a house divided. The duchess moved to have Elphinstone banned from the princess’s presence, even in church.