by Julia Baird
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The first thing Victoria did was to ask for time alone. She ordered her bed to be moved out of her mother’s room, put on an unadorned black dress, and pinned her hair on top of her head in a braided coronet. She then breakfasted with Stockmar, Leopold’s trusted private secretary and adviser, whom Leopold gave to Victoria as a gift upon her becoming queen. She settled at her desk and wrote three letters: to Leopold, to her half sister, Feodora, and to the grieving Queen Adelaide, whom she insisted be addressed as Her Majesty. She wrote in her journal: “Since it has pleased Providence to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfill my duty toward my country; I am very young and perhaps in many, though not in all things, inexperienced, but I am sure, that very few have more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have.”
At 9 A.M. Victoria received the prime minister, “of COURSE quite ALONE as I shall always do all my Ministers.” The urbane Lord Melbourne immediately captivated her. During the meeting, he wrote a draft of her statement to the Privy Council, which was summoned to meet almost immediately, at 11 A.M. Across London, one hundred men frantically scrambled into official garb and rushed to Kensington Palace. There were other young queens then in Europe: the queen of Portugal (whom Victoria called the “fat queen”) was just a month older than Victoria, and the queen of Spain was just six years of age (her mother was regent). But Victoria was the youngest queen Britain had known, and it had been 123 years since the last female monarch, Queen Anne. While the Privy Council—a group of former or current members of Parliament who advised the monarch—usually met monthly, few members attended with anything resembling regularity. Today, there was a record turnout.
When Melbourne asked her if she would like to be accompanied into the room, she replied, “No, thank you. I shall walk in alone.” Her uncles the Dukes of Cumberland and Sussex led her to her throne. With the death of William IV, Cumberland had just become the king of Hanover, neatly ridding England of a widely loathed duke. Victoria swore her uncles in, then the Cabinet ministers and most of the Privy Counsellors. (With a gesture of kindness, she stopped the Duke of Sussex, who was “infirm,” from kneeling—and kissed his cheek so he would not need to stoop to kiss her hand.) Victoria then read out the declaration Lord Melbourne had drafted for her:
The severe and afflicting loss which the nation has sustained by the death of His Majesty, my beloved uncle, has devolved upon me the duty of administering the government of this empire. This awful responsibility is imposed upon me so suddenly, and at so early a period of my life, that I should feel myself utterly oppressed by the burden were I not sustained by the hope that Divine Providence, which has called me to this work, will give me strength for the performance of it, and that I shall find in the purity of my intentions, and in my zeal for the public welfare, that support and those resources which usually belong to a more mature age and to longer experience….Educated in England, under the tender and enlightened care of a most affectionate mother, I have learnt from my infancy to respect and love the constitution of my native country. It will be my unceasing study to maintain the reformed religion as by law established, securing at the same time to all the full enjoyment of religious liberty; and I shall steadily protect the rights, and promote to the utmost of my power the happiness and welfare, of all classes of my subjects.
It was a triumph of public performance. The gathered men gawked at the new queen, many of them touched to hear her speak in her calm, silvery voice. Several wept. They seemed astonished that a mere slip of a girl could read so well. The diarist Charles Greville, who was there as the clerk of the Privy Council, wrote:
There never was anything like the first impression she produced, or the chorus of praise and admiration which is raised about her manner and behavior, and certainly not without justice. It was very extraordinary, and something far beyond what was looked for. Her extreme youth and inexperience, and the ignorance of the world concerning her, naturally excited intense curiosity.
The accolades seemed to be unanimous. John Wilson Croker, a Tory, said she was “as interesting and handsome as any young lady I ever saw.” The Duke of Wellington, who was visibly moved, declared, “She not merely filled her chair, she filled the room.” “Our dear little Queen in every respect is perfection,” gushed the Whig politician and diarist Thomas Creevey. To the men assembled, she was a child, or even an “infant queen,” according to Lord John Russell. The simplest performance invited lavish praise.
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The country was in love. The Spectator dubbed the infectious fever “Reginamania.” A cartoon titled “Figaro in London” showed John Bull willing to cut off his ears if the little queen wanted him to. Writers rhapsodized about her attributes. Thomas Creevey described the time Victoria found the new lady-in-waiting Lady Charlemont, whom she had not yet met, in the corridor with a large armful of books from the library, and roared with laughter; and he added the fact that she was paying pensions out of her personal accounts for some unlikely people, such as the FitzClarences, the illegitimate cousins her mother had kept her away from but for whom Victoria nonetheless cared. Sallie Stevenson, wife of the American ambassador, wrote to her sisters in Virginia that everyone was “mad with loyalty to the young Queen….In all societies nothing is talked about but her beauty, her wisdom, her gentleness, and self-possession. A thousand anecdotes are related to her goodness, and the wonderful address with which she manages everybody and everything.” It had been little over half a century since Americans had successfully rebelled against King George III, and just a quarter of a century since they had fought England again in the War of 1812, but now even they were intrigued by the new queen.
The young queen charmed older men, often to their surprise. Lord Holland reported he came back from a visit “quite a courtier & a bit of a lover.” “Though not a beauty & not a very good figure,” he conceded, “she is really in person, in face, & especially in eyes and complexion, a very nice girl & quite such as might tempt.” She may have gobbled her food while dining, and shown unattractive gums when she laughed, Creevey wrote, but he was prepared to overlook those handicaps because she “blushes and laughs every instant in so natural a way as to disarm anybody. Her voice is perfect, and so is the expression of her face, when she means to say or do a pretty thing.” The artist George Hayter, who painted her portrait and would become a court favorite, was “quite in love with her” and “spoke most scientifically of the extraordinary character of her eye.” Not all eyewitness accounts are reliable, though—Creevey, after all, reported that he had never seen a “more pretty or natural devotion” than Victoria had for her mother.
Some women—less concerned with how physically tempting the new queen was—feared for her, wondering what all the pomp, noise, and weight of obligation would do to a girl of eighteen. Even the tough-minded social reformer Harriet Martineau wrote, “We are all somewhat romantic about our young Queen, poor thing! What chance has she of growing up simple & good?” She saw little chance that Victoria could “turn out much.”
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As Melbourne walked out of Victoria’s first Privy Council meeting, wiping tears from his eyes, Baron Stockmar approached and thrust at him a letter from John Conroy containing an audacious list of commands. “My reward for the Past,” wrote Conroy, “I conceive should be, a peerage—the red ribbon—and a pension from the Privy Purse of £3,000 a year.” He was asking for more money than a government minister would have received. Melbourne dropped the paper and cried, “Have you ever heard such impudence?” In a day of mourning the king and celebrating the new queen, Conroy was thinking only of himself. Albert later wrote next to a list Victoria had made of the “monster’s” demands: “The King had died that very morning.”
In a flash, Victoria dismissed Conroy from her household, a moment that was as delicious in execution as it was in anticipation. To defuse tension, Lord Melbourne decided to give Conroy a pension and a baronetcy, and he promised that when he was able to c
reate a new Irish peer, he would make Conroy one. He added that the queen assented to such a plan. This would prove to be an error of judgment. By granting Conroy a peerage that would take many years to eventuate—he needed to wait until an existing Irish peer died—he gave Conroy room to continue to scheme for revenge on Victoria. Conroy intended to stay in the Duchess of Kent’s household until the queen fulfilled all her promises. (Lord Liverpool told Stockmar that Melbourne had been “duped.”) Conroy never was made an Irish peer, and the hateful resentment of his family is still palpable in the scrapbooks they kept, stuffed with clippings of newspaper articles critical of Victoria. They gloried in the moments when she stumbled, and relished attacks on her.
Victoria’s sole mention of her mother in her journal on the day she became queen came at the end, when she wrote, “Went down and said good-night to Mamma, etc.” The duchess was wounded. Earlier in the day, she had written to Victoria asking if she could take Conroy to her proclamation—underestimating, as ever, her daughter’s visceral hatred of him. The duchess argued that others would notice and “remarks would be made which you should certainly avoid the first day.” The queen responded that it was Lord Melbourne’s “decided opinion” that he should not go. The duchess wrote a condescending reply: “You do not know the world. S.J. [Sir John] has his faults, he may have made mistakes, but his intentions were always the best….This affair is much tattled and very unhappily. Take care Victoria, you know your Prerogative! take care that Melbourne is not King.”
From this day on, the duchess was forced to observe the etiquette that meant she would have to wait for Victoria to summon her before she could be seen. Victoria luxuriated in her controlled solitude. She met with the “very kind” Melbourne twice more that day. She then dined in her room, by herself. On this first day, she wrote the word “alone” five times in her journal—“alone…& of COURSE quite ALONE…quite alone…& alone…alone.” At last.
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A month later, Victoria appeared in Parliament to close the session. It was her first time there, and she was garbed magnificently in a white satin dress embroidered with gold, a crimson velvet robe and train trimmed with ermine and gold lace, and a tiara. As she walked into the House of Lords, she fixed her eyes on Lord Melbourne, who was walking in front with the Sword of State. An evening paper gushed: “Her emotion was plainly discernible in the rapid heaving of her bosom, and the brilliancy of her diamond stomacher, which sparkled out occasionally from the dark recess in which the throne was placed.” As would become customary at the young queen’s early appearances, the great men of state wept openly. Lord Grey cried “from pleasure at the Queen’s voice and speech,” Charles Sumner declared, “I never heard anything read better in my life,” and the Duke of Sussex was seen wiping his eyes when she finished. The American Sallie Stevenson, who was sitting in the diplomats’ gallery, described her voice as “sweet as a Virginia nightingale’s.” Victoria’s mother was overwhelmed when she watched her daughter, laboring under the heavy robes usually worn by men, finally sit on the throne. Outside, the police were unable to prevent people from clambering into the trees to try to get a glimpse of the queen; they hung on the branches like coconuts for hours in the rain.
In her new role, Victoria immediately established a routine. She rose at eight, read the Bible, and wrote dispatches until breakfast at ten, when her mother joined her. She saw her government ministers between 11:00 A.M. and 1:30 P.M. The two kings who had reigned before her had not been fond of hard work, so her industry was widely admired. She wrote proudly to her cousin Albert, with the hint of a boast, “I delight in the business which I have to do and which is not trifling either in matter or quantity.” Uncle Leopold, who was now king of the Belgians, continued to advise her closely. He told her to be discreet, form her own opinion, and immediately change the conversation if people dared to bring up private matters without her consent. He also recommended she deliberate, just as Lehzen had: “Whenever a question is of some importance it should not be decided on the day when it is submitted to you.” England’s next ten prime ministers would be stymied by this approach.
Nonetheless, Victoria thrived on her new workload. She described it as “the greatest pleasure to do my duty for my country and my people, and no fatigue, however great, will be burdensome to me if it is for the welfare of the nation.” She was finally useful and necessary to her country, and she was invigorated by it. When Leopold said she should spend more time at Claremont, his estate, she retorted, “I must see my ministers every day.” Victoria had very little time off. As her maids tugged combs through her long, fine hair each day, she worked her way through large piles of papers and official boxes. She often worked late into the night.
Victoria had been queen for only a few weeks before remarks were made about her “slight signs of a peremptory disposition” and her “strong will.” She was confident in her opinions. When she knighted Moses Montefiore, the first Jewish knight in English history, she dismissed any objections with “I was very glad I was the first to do what I think quite right, and as it should be.” She also challenged conventions she considered redundant. She did not like the traditional gender segregation that occurred after dinner, for example, when the men went to another room to drink. She would not allow her male guests to do this for more than fifteen minutes, and she refused to take her seat in her drawing room until they walked in. Her female attendants were forced to stand too.*
The politician Arthur Ponsonby, the son of Henry Ponsonby, who would be Queen Victoria’s private secretary later in life, wrote in 1933 that “from the first she showed a disposition to conform strictly to her own standard of conduct rather than adapt herself to some expected standard.” Her self-reliance became “an abiding and dominant feature” throughout her life. But what he failed to note was that this trait would almost completely evaporate when she married. Victoria was most certain of herself when she was single.
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The relationship between Queen Victoria and her prime minister Lord Melbourne is one of the great platonic romances of modern history. Both the young, fatherless queen and the curiously apolitical politician had much to gain from the relationship—guidance for her and added status for him. Both fell a little bit in love. Victoria’s infatuation had developed quickly. “I am so fond of him and his conversations do me much good,” she wrote in her diary. She had been queen for only three days when she told Leopold, “My poor mother views Lord Melbourne with great jealousy.” (The editors of her letters were later embarrassed by the intimate, affectionate way Victoria wrote about Melbourne, and they deleted some for fear people might conclude they were lovers.)
Melbourne, who had lost his wife and son, was able to devote himself to his new charge. He tutored Victoria in the ways of politics, but his greatest gifts to her were genuine affection and affirmation. Greville described it as a “passionate fondness” that he might have for a daughter, from “a man with a capacity for loving without anything to love.” On August 30, 1837, Greville noted:
[Victoria] has great animal spirits, and enters into the magnificent novelties of her position with the zest and curiosity of a child. No man is more formed to ingratiate himself with her than Melbourne. He treats her with unbounded consideration and respect, he consults her tastes and her wishes, and he puts her at ease by his frank and natural manners while he amuses her by the quaint, queer, epigrammatic turn of his mind and his varied knowledge upon all subjects.
The subjects they discussed were varied: diet, Dickens, chimney sweeps, her wicked uncles, her father and mother, teeth, Dr. Johnson, history, philosophy, and etiquette. There was always much to talk about. The political tumult had quieted somewhat after the 1832 Reform Act, but the working-class Chartist movement, which rumbled for decades in its fight for democracy and against corruption, was just beginning. The world took on a new fascination for Victoria now that she was part of it. In the year she became queen, Charles Dickens began the serialization of Oliver Twist; Caroline No
rton published her radical pamphlet arguing that mothers should have some custody of their young children after divorce; and a national antislavery convention was held in America, in which British women were thanked for their support. Inventors patented the electric telegraph, the first daguerreotype was successfully exposed, and the Grand Junction Railway, which ran between Manchester and Birmingham, was completed. The momentum for massive change had begun to gather pace.
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Victoria wanted to live in Buckingham Palace immediately. George III had bought it in 1761 and George IV had rebuilt it, but it was not yet an official royal residence, and the renovations and repairs were not finished. Victoria sent written instructions insisting it be done by July 13. A host of extra men were hired so her wishes could be met. “So much,” wrote the wife of the American ambassador, Sallie Stevenson, “for a young Queen!” On July 14, the palace was in a state of chaos with maids scrubbing floors and workmen laying carpets, but Victoria was serene in the midst of it all. She summoned Sigismund Thalberg, reputed to be the greatest pianist on earth, to perform in late July, and asked Strauss to compose for her balls.
After the gloominess of Kensington Palace, Victoria was thrilled with the light and space of her new home; huge mirrors reflected the gardens outside and chandeliers sparkled in ballrooms. Her rooms were far away from her mother’s. (Victoria never took a great interest in interior design, like George III and George IV; when she did, in later years, covering everything in tartan, it was generally considered an affront to the senses.) In time, Victoria would grow to hate Buckingham Palace, with its smoking chimneys, poor ventilation, and smells of rotting food, and she would feel oppressed by the dank air and crowds of London—as well as the soot that fell in black flakes on her gardens. But now it was centrally located, freshly painted, and sufficiently grand. She wrote to Feodora: “Everybody says that I am quite another person since I came to the throne. I look and am so very well, I have such a pleasant life; just the sort of life I like.”