by Roland Perry
‘I am serious about the grand opportunities for you, my lord. Half the Raj males frequent bordellos. If you don’t know this, you should.’
All the speculations and murmurings about Victoria and Elphinstone fuelled more than caution in Prince Leopold. He was aware of the affair and was worried that his niece might rekindle the relationship because she could. He was concerned about advice from the remnants of King William’s court. Leopold was further vexed by the possibility that Victoria might do something on her own volition now she was beginning to see that, within bounds, her wishes were others’ commands. By telling her to shut down all talk of a personal nature to those not close to her, he hoped to avoid her doing something precipitate regarding her lover in exile. Leopold used Stockmar to monitor the situation. Stockmar’s suggestions were subtle. Many were geared towards isolating her, at least mentally, from any move she might consider concerning a marriage partner. Leopold was banking on young Albert developing to a point where he would be an attractive, more practicable husband than Elphinstone.
Victoria needed little prompting on how to handle inquisitors regarding her private affairs. Within months she had perfected a most disapproving look, which seared itself into the nerves of others. Her big eyes narrowed; her small mouth tightened, pursed and pulled down. Victoria’s gaze held and pierced for extra seconds that froze and intimidated the most ferocious of women, or the most arrogant and bullying of men. She had had more than enough practice in her final years as princess in dealing with the intimidating Conroy and her mother. She also invoked the stinging phrase ‘we are not amused’, which ended conversations and peppered her diaries.
Victoria’s first problem as queen was the decade-old one for her as princess: John Conroy. Aware that he would be frozen out of the new monarch’s court, he made a bold early blackmail move soon after the first Privy Council meeting by sending Lord Melbourne a paper via Stockmar. It listed the sacrifices he had allegedly made on the duchess’s behalf. Conroy claimed he could not depart unless three demands were met. First, he wanted a pension of £3000 a year. Second, he wanted the decoration of the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath. And third, he desired an Irish peerage, preferably ‘Viscount of Elphin, Co Roscommon’ (County Roscommon, in the heart of Connaught, in the West of Ireland). Melbourne was stunned at the propositions.
‘This is really too bad!’ he exclaimed to Stockmar. ‘Have you ever heard such impudence?’
He knew that Victoria would be against giving Conroy anything except, as Robert Browning noted, ‘the Royal Order of the Boot’.Yet he had an ace in the Elphinstone affair and, although Conroy did not mention it to Melbourne, the prime minister feared he was reckless enough to make it all public and he had to be appeased. Melbourne conceded that an Irish peerage would be granted ‘as soon as one became available’. The other demands would be given serious consideration. In the meantime, Melbourne said Conroy would have to leave Kensington Palace. Conroy responded that he was not yet ready to leave, at least until the other two matters were settled. But it could not end there. Conroy controlled the Kent household and, while Victoria was single, he and the duchess would be close to her. It was untenable for Victoria to live alone, despite having her own household. The duchess would accompany her everywhere, although the queen had made sure from the first day of her reign that they did not share the same bedroom. They were estranged, but for the sake of appearances, and to avoid gossip and rumour, they were presented as having a normal mother–daughter relationship. Conroy had no intention of leaving the Kent household, even when he received his demands, which he knew he would. The duchess had no-one else and was not about to cut him loose. When Victoria moved to Buckingham Palace, Conroy would take up residence there. She could not get rid of him, short of murder. He held the card of her secret relationship with Elphinstone: it was his job security.
Victoria was keen to ride again, eighteen months after the illnesses she endured at Ramsgate. It was her second-favourite pastime. She had ridden for miles with Elphinstone, sometimes in the company of 30 other riders; other times, with Lehzen’s tacit consent, just the two of them together.Victoria loved the experience. The rush on the hard galloping and rebellious Barbara or the serene, long-striding Leopold, especially with her lover pacing with her, was a passion ranked close to her lovemaking. Since Elphinstone had been banished to India, and Clark had forbidden riding until she had recovered from her illness, her two biggest passions had been taken from her. It made her miserable. While she could only be in contact with Elphinstone through correspondence, she attended the stables every day, longing to jump on a horse and stride across the fields. Like many a small-statured person who could ride well, she grew in the saddle. Victoria felt it; she knew she was taller. She loved the fluidity of movement, the sensuality of controlling a beautiful, powerful steed beneath her. Observers viewed her at the peak of her beauty in a black velvet riding habit, top hat and veil, which contrasted nicely with cheeks of rouge and fair hair.
Victoria believed she was fit enough in June 1837 to review her troops in Hyde Park on horseback. Her mother wrote her a note, saying she thought this would be unwise. Melbourne agreed.
‘Your mother is right,’ he said at their daily meeting. ‘You can do it from a carriage.’
Victoria’s face clouded.
‘I am strong enough to hold any horse in the stables,’ she said with indignation. ‘I wish to ride between Wellington and Lord Hill.’
‘Too dangerous, majesty.’
‘I refuse to sit in a carriage like a creaking old dowager with an attendant!’
‘Your mother thinks—’
‘I care not what my mother thinks,’ Victoria interrupted. ‘We are not speaking.’
There was a pregnant pause.
‘Your majesty, there is just too much risk—’ Melbourne began.
‘Very well, my lord, very well,’ she told him haughtily, with the first expression of defiance he had experienced from her. ‘Remember: no horse, no review.’
But the prime minister held firm. There would be no horse for her, and would be no review. Victoria was so incensed that she ignored Clark’s directives and ordered Leopold be prepared for a ride. She demanded that young Lord Paget, one of her gentlemen riders, who had ridden with her and Elphinstone in the heady days of 1835, come with her. With all the admonitions and warnings about how she could ‘kill herself’ on a ride, it took courage for this slip of a girl to mount even docile Leopold. Like a race jockey who had been thrown, she steeled herself to get back on, refusing any assistance from hand-wringing household ladies-in-waiting and a nervous Paget.There were no problems on her first canter. Each day she rode out until there could be no argument that she had the strength to handle any mount in the royal stables.
Victoria moved into Buckingham Palace on 13 July 1837 and began to ostracise her mother, who took apartments some distance from her daughter.Victoria had her own household of ‘merry’ maids of honour, which remained Whig in nature. There were no Tory wives. She was warned such an imbalance might cause problems in the future, especially if a Tory government took power. But Victoria paid no heed to such issues and Melbourne was never going to disabuse her of her political leanings, which mirrored his. Victoria further isolated her mother by either sending notes to say she was too busy to see her, or by having Melbourne respond to the duchess formally. Her mother was hurt but Victoria did not care.
Melbourne was spending sometimes six hours a day with Victoria. He endorsed her approach, especially in isolating Conroy. Meanwhile Lehzen seemed to be taking over the role of ‘mother’. She slept in a room next to Victoria’s bedchamber.Victoria’s fear of the night caused her to have a hole knocked in the wall so that Lehzen had access. The young queen had been frightened by Melbourne’s claim to have seen ghosts and his certainty that they inhabited Buckingham Palace. Victoria never saw one, but having Lehzen nearby was comforting in the huge building. It was draughty and eerie at night with the creaking of water pipes and
the howl of wind through the corridors.
8
MELBOURNE MUNIFICENT
There was no chance of Victoria being stopped from reviewing her troops at Windsor in August 1837, two months after her disagreement with the Duchess and the prime minister. She looked proud in a variation of the Windsor uniform and wearing the striking green Garter ribbon, in a two-and-a-half-hour review sitting on Leopold. She demonstrated her fitness by going for an even longer ride on Barbara, but sensibly at a canter, for even Victoria was not yet prepared to risk a full gallop with the feisty mare.
In September 1837 Melbourne told Victoria it was better to pay off Conroy with the requested £3000-a-year ‘pension’, and to make him a baron. The peerage was promised too, as long as Melbourne was still prime minister and in a position to confer it. Conroy was not budging without his three demands being met but the intervention of Melbourne on Victoria’s behalf did relieve the pressure on her in handling the problem. She resigned herself to the fact that Conroy would be lurking nearby while her mother was close to her, and that situation would remain until Victoria was married. Only then could she separate her new household from her mother’s. The internecine war drew Victoria to Melbourne, whom she soon viewed as her saviour. For a start, he had taken over the role of her private secretary, which Conroy had coveted so much.
What Victoria lacked in natural intelligence was usurped by a desire to learn and a strong motivation to be a successful, loved monarch. She intended to replace indolence with industry in the role. The young Victoria was aware that the monarchy was under scrutiny and her performance would dictate if it survived. Melbourne seemed to meet her needs.They built a remarkable bond for two people with a 40-year age difference. He began to fill the gap in her life left by Elphinstone’s exile. While Elphinstone was her dashing knight on a black charger, Melbourne was a truer father figure, who would not attempt to bed her. There would be no conflict of passions between the girl desiring a lover and the child wanting a father. Her needs made her vulnerable, yet the prime minister became the important mentor whom she required until she matured into a monarch with a true mind of her own. She fed off his political acumen, philosophy and scholarly style. Melbourne’s opinions influenced his attentive student. Politically he had moved from being a radical in his more formative years at Eton and Cambridge to the centre once he entered parliament in 1806 at 27. In middle age, Melbourne became a rather fatigued conservative keen on the status quo. He was from an aristocratic family who backed the Whigs, the political party that supported a constitutional monarchy but which was opposed to absolute rule (by the monarch). Melbourne had associated at university with romantic radicals, including Percy Shelley and Lord Byron. He found himself imparting his views and observations to Victoria and not always with impartiality. He was not above gossip and character analysis or assassination, which, along with all his other stories of experience, the young queen absorbed, often with raw fascination.
She wrote in her diary: ‘Such stories of knowledge; such a wonderful memory; he knows about everybody and everything; who they were and what they did. He has such a kind and agreeable manner; he does me the world of good.’ Another entry said: ‘He is such an honest, good, kind-hearted man and is my friend, and I know it.’
They had a kind of romance, albeit a sexless one. Melbourne was a widower. His wife had gone mad and died. His son had died of epilepsy. Melbourne was gun-shy from scandal after being co-respondent in two divorce suits and he was unlikely to philander with the young Victoria, however tempting. In other circumstances with other women, Melbourne had been less circumspect. He had sadomasochistic sexual fetishes, including everything from mild spanking sessions with aristocratic ladies to whippings administered to orphan girls he had taken into his household in acts of charity. This may well have been precipitated by his experiences at Eton, where disciplinary lashings of the rod by masters and prefects were de rigueur and an unhealthy tradition.
Melbourne was aware of Victoria’s juvenile lust. There would have been moments when he experienced her coquettish side, but he checked any temptations. He swapped his seductive arts to training her in the political arts and recent history. Melbourne poured on the charm and kept her amused with his sometimes dry, sardonic and ‘tired’ wit, which he injected into observations about people, events, society, class, foreigners and Victoria herself.
‘I have a concern about my height,’ she told him at a daily meeting, ‘I am not even five foot [1.52 m].’
‘Oh, my dear majesty,’ Melbourne said with a benevolent smile, ‘great things come in small packages.Think of Napoleon.’
Victoria beamed, and from the cheeky glint in Melbourne’s eye knew that this was an ambivalent remark. The British elite had always ridiculed the French emperor.
‘Your lack of vertical elevation is already a forgotten thing,’ he said with a wave of his hand. ‘Your character has seen to that. Already your dignity bolsters a favourable image with everyone.’
Victoria blushed. This was a reason for loving her prime minister. He always boosted her feelings about herself. In a moment of vanity she touched her nose.
‘I don’t like this,’ she said with a frown. ‘It is too big and it has a slight hook.’
‘Oh, it is fine, majesty. I have never heard this mentioned anywhere. In any case, people with small features never achieve anything.’
Victoria’s expression turned to satisfaction. She knew Melbourne to be a keen phrenologist. He had often spoken of people’s characters in conjunction with their facial and other features. It was the fashion of the time and he was a leader.
‘I must confess that I am often frightened,’ she said, eyes well down, ‘very, very shy, prime minister.’
‘I must confess to you, majesty, that I have also suffered from this. But Wellington and I agree that it is a sign of high and right feelings.’
‘That is comforting, prime minister, but allied to this, this nervousness are my . . .my moods. Sometimes I feel I cannot face my subjects or even my own court. I wax and wane between a very real sense of helplessness and—dare I confess it—extreme anger.’ Before he could respond, she added: ‘What perplexes me most is that I don’t comprehend the source, the initiation of such extreme feelings.’
‘You lose control?’
Victoria nodded, eyeing the floor once more.
‘You have temper tantrums?’
She nodded almost imperceptibly. A tear trickled down her cheek.
‘Hmm,’ Melbourne uttered thoughtfully, ‘you know these moods, as you call them, are held by most people. They are often a strong sign of a sensitive and susceptible temperament.’
A look of relief swept Victoria’s face. She wiped the tear away and sniffed.
‘It’s simply choleric,’ he said.‘Most people experience an unreasonable and frequent frustration, which leads to anger. Nothing with which to concern yourself, majesty.The condition is often linked to those with extreme passion.’
Victoria liked that. It was how she saw herself. She believed it was closely tied to a sense of the erotic.Victoria wanted to ask him about her jealous rages, which perplexed and worried her. She hated, for instance, every moment Melbourne spent with the celebrated Whig hostess, Lady Holland. But she thought better of mentioning this and ‘consulted’ her diary instead. Later, when she was alone, she experienced a further sense of helplessness. She was depressed again. It was a feeling maintained and exacerbated by the pressures she experienced daily in her position of queen.
Melbourne’s commentaries about most things would have seemed either new or outrageous to the impressionable young woman. He did not seem to care about any reaction. He hardly ever said that she should keep his thoughts about others, or anything, to herself. There was a carelessness, a born-to-rule superiority in his utterances that vacillated between arrogance and insouciance. It all went to an attitude that in the past had led him into trouble. But this did not bother Victoria. She loved Melbourne’s trite remarks. His dram
atising of situations fitted with her view of life, which in her cosseted world came in large part from the opera and theatre, which she loved.
Melbourne attempted to drown any bubbling conscience in the queen by stating that any social protest or dissidence was caused by ‘a few agitators’. Victoria did not quite accept this explanation. She and Lehzen had been tutored in Irish history in the previous year and they believed Ireland’s people had been ill-treated. Melbourne himself had been responsible for martial law to suppress Irish activists.
One night at a dinner the next year with a dozen others present, including Lehzen, Victoria asked him: ‘What happened to the poor Irish: those evicted by their landlords?’
‘Oh,’ he said with a dismissive wave, ‘they have been absorbed somehow or other.’ He eyed Victoria’s full plate. ‘Besides, they eat too much.’ This brought a few sniggers from the others. Then he added: ‘There isn’t enough food for them and you!’
The other guests now laughed long and hard.Victoria went red.
Melbourne continued to berate rebels, and attempted to blunt any thoughts she may have had about the Irish cause. Those who rebelled were to be despised. When she and Lehzen seemed unconvinced, he said: ‘If you are so concerned, why don’t you visit Ireland and Scotland for yourself?’
Victoria blinked. He had called her bluff and she was not yet confident enough to challenge his assessments fully or make the trips suggested.
‘I have no time for dissidents,’ he opined. ‘There is only one thing for them: either execution or transportation to Australia.’
‘I have just finished reading Oliver Twist,’ Victoria said defiantly, trying to recover lost ground.