Victoria

by Julia Baird

  thirty or more: Chesney, The Anti-Society, 14.

  her most recent British ancestor: Sophia, the Electress of Hanover, was George I’s mother and Victoria’s great-great-great-great-grandmother. All four of Victoria’s grandparents were German.

  “What business has that infant here?”: St. Aubyn, Queen Victoria, 11.

  “Ei hoeve to regret”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 46; Longford, Victoria R.I., 20.

  “a real thorn in their side”: Van der Kiste, George III’s Children, 121.

  he hated his wife: Princess Caroline of Brunswick was spoiled, rude, and rebellious. She was disgusted by the indulgent life the Prince Regent led, and said her husband and his courtiers were constantly drunk; she regularly found them passed out on the sofa, wearing boots, snoring. Popular opinion would have agreed with her. The Prince Regent married her because his mistress urged him to find someone who would not supplant her, and who would allow him to pay off some of his large debts. The fact that Parliament usually raised the annual incomes of the royal offspring when they officially married was responsible for much heartbreak.

  “fatigue and depression”: Berridge, Opium and the People, 31.

  extremely potent and addictive: The 1868 Pharmacy Act limited the sale of the drug to professional pharmacists, who had existed only since the 1840s.

  “the vivacity or serenity of one’s intellect”: Berridge, Opium and the People, 59.

  “I wonder which ones?”: Duff writes that when the duke was at Woolbrook, a fortune-teller came to Sidmouth and told him, “This year two members of the Royal Family will die.” (Duff, Edward of Kent, 281.) Others claim it was at the military review at Hounslow Heath. For example, Stuart, The Mother of Victoria, 87.

  “too healthy, I fear”: Duff, Edward of Kent, 279. A good account of all this can be found in Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal History, 14.

  The duke said she stood fire: Fulford, Royal Dukes, 203.

  “hardly a spot on”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 43.

  “Human help can no longer avail”: Ibid., 44.

  “Do not forget me”: Longford, Queen Victoria, 25.

  His death came as a great shock: The Duke of Cumberland said, “I never was so struck in my life” as with the news of his older brother’s death. (Duke of Cumberland to the Prince Regent, February 4, 1820, Aspinall and Webster, Letters of George IV, vol. 2, letter 790.) The court was surprised by the loss of a man Croker called “the strongest of the strong”: “Never before ill in all his life, and now to die of a cold when half the kingdom have colds with impunity. It was very bad luck indeed. It reminds me of Aesop’s fable of the oak and the reed.” Charlot, Victoria the Young Queen, 34.

  “That Hercules of a man is no more”: Creston, Youthful Queen Victoria, 85.

  especially among the women: On February 4, 1820, Princess Augusta wrote to Lady Harcourt from Windsor Castle about how distressed the Duke of Clarence had been by Edward’s death, adding, “In all my own sorrow I cannot yet bear to think of that good, excellent Woman, the Duchess of Kent, and all Her trials; they really are most grievous. She is the most pious, good, resigned little Creature it is possible to describe.” William told Princess Adelaide to go see her every day—said she was a great comfort to her—they could talk the same language—“it makes them such real friends and Comforts to each other.” It was a great shame the duchess was unable to reciprocate, or nurture, these friendships. It may well have been because she was jealous: when Adelaide gave birth to a daughter, Elizabeth, in 1820, John Conroy wrote, “We are all on the kick and go. Our little woman’s nose has been put out of joint.” (Charlot, Victoria the Young Queen, 40). Elizabeth died three months later.

  a happy union: Even Queen Victoria, when she read her mother’s notebooks after she died, was taken aback by the devotion her mother felt for her father: “How very, very much she and my beloved father loved each other. Such love and affection, I hardly knew it was to that extent,” she wrote. Benson and Esher, Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:560.

  “symptoms of wanting”: Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal History, 17.

  Chapter Three: The Lonely, Naughty Princess

  “[Victoria] is watched so closely”: Scott, Journal, 2:184, May 19, 1828.

  “You see there is no must about it”: Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal History, 18.

  Baroness Louise Lehzen: George IV made Lehzen, who had initially been hired as a governess for Feodora, a Baroness in 1827.

  “Conduct Books”: Four of these books still remain in the Royal Archives, as Lynne Vallone discovered, and they contain a record of outbursts entirely absent from her diaries. In her first, dated October 31, 1831, to March 22, 1832, there are dozens of references to being “rather naughty and peevish,” “naughty with Mamma,” and “very exceedingly naughty.” She was also “very ill-behaved and impertinent to Lehzen,” and “naughty and vulgar.” Vallone, Becoming Victoria, 24.

  she made up stories: Ibid., 22.

  “sweet-meats in her hand”: Ibid.

  “Two storms, one at dressing and one at washing”: Ibid., 43.

  “you may not call me Victoria”: Longford, Oxford Book of Royal Anecdotes, 358.

  “It was a sort of idolatry”: Victoria herself said she had been “too much an Idol in the House,” and was “very much indulged by everyone and set pretty well all at defiance.” Benson and Esher, Letters of Queen Victoria, 1:19.

  her childhood as rather melancholy: Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal History, 19.

  “did not know what a happy domestic life was”: Fulford, Dearest Child, 111–12.

  “To have been deprived of all intercourse”: Charlot, Victoria the Young Queen, 52.

  holly was pinned: This may have been irritating but it was far better than the iron collars that were placed around the throats of some other girls. Mrs. Sherwood, the author of The Fairchild Family, describes being forced to wear a collar, which was linked to a blackboard, strapped across her shoulders: “I was subjected from my sixth to my thirteenth year. It was put on in the morning and seldom taken off till late in the evening: and I generally did all my lessons standing in stocks….I never sat on a chair in my mother’s presence….Even before I was twelve I was obliged to translate fifty lines of Virgil every morning, standing in these same stocks with the iron collar pressing on my throat.” Creston, Youthful Queen Victoria,148.

  Victoria burst into tears: The Reverend Davys had a different account of Victoria’s discovery: one that gives him a more central role. He said he told her, the previous day, “Princess, to-morrow I wish you to give me a chart of the kings and queens of England.” In the morning she gave him a chart, which he scanned closely. He said, “It is well done, but it does not go far enough. You have put down ‘Uncle King’ as reigning, and you have written ‘Uncle William’ as the heir to the throne, but who should follow him?” Victoria, hesitating, said, “I hardly liked to put down myself.” Davys says he then told the duchess, who wrote to the Bishop of London informing him that Victoria was now aware of her standing. Tappan, Days of Queen Victoria, 33.

  “but there is more responsibility”: Martin, The Prince Consort, 1:13.

  the Duchess of Kent was happy: Duchess of Kent to the Bishops of London and Lincoln, March 13, 1830, ibid., 1:34.

  “& even deplored this contingency”: Vallone, Becoming Victoria, 45.

  Florence drew up a table: Gill, Nightingales, 90.

  crafting immaculate compositions: Eliot was an outstanding student, and was the best pianist in the school. Hughes, George Eliot, 24–25.

  “The Princess was her only”: Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal History, 21, and Vallone, Becoming Victoria, 208.

  “not created, but nourished”: Baroness Lehzen to the Duchess of Kent, June 13, 1837, RA M7/48, translated and quoted in Hudson, A Royal Conflict, 72.

  “model of perfection”: Ibid., 19. Victoria was not a great admirer of Queen Anne’s, either. At fourteen, she reprimanded her uncle Leopold for sen
ding an extract about Queen Anne, writing, “[I] must beg you as you have sent me to show what a Queen ought not to be, that you will send me what a Queen ought to be.” Leopold described her letter as “very clever, sharp” and responded that he would rise to the task in his next letter on December 2, 1834.

  “but not weakness”: Ibid.

  “bright pretty girl”: Charlot, Victoria the Young Queen, 52.

  “the most charming child”: Bamford and Wellington, The Journal of Mrs. Arburthnot, 2:186, quoted in Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal History, 29.

  “Girls should be taught”: Works of Hannah More, 2:376–67.

  “a submissive temper and a forbearing spirit”: Ibid., 2:568.

  “a hundred walks and rides”: Princess Victoria to King Leopold, April 26, 1836, Benson and Esher, Letters of Queen Victoria, 1:60.

  “We shall miss them at breakfast”: QVJ, July 13, 1833. (Three years later, in 1836, her other cousins Ferdinand and Augustus came to visit, partly to celebrate Ferdinand’s marriage to the Queen of Portugal.)

  When they left, Victoria drew a picture: Eliza later died of tuberculosis at age twenty.

  “It is such a VERY VERY GREAT HAPPINESS”: Three years later her other half nephews, the children of Feodora’s brother Charles of Leiningen, came to stay and she was effusive again—in contrast to her terse recitals of the day’s lessons, etc. When they were just being demonstrative, she was totally thrilled: “Edward was beyond everything funny. He calls me Lisettche, and a number of other odd names. He has not respect for me, I fear, at all.”

  “Lehzen mended the baby”: Quoted in Vallone, Becoming Victoria, 187.

  “nearly unlearned laughing”: Bauer, Caroline Bauer and the Coburgs, 296.

  “dear little chicken”: Vallone, Becoming Victoria, 14.

  “most indispensable qualifications”: King Leopold to Princess Victoria, May 22, 1832, quoted in ibid., 102.

  “intoxicated by greatness”: King Leopold to Princess Victoria, May 21, 1833, Benson and Esher, Letters of Queen Victoria, 1:46.

  “which would astonish you”: Princess Victoria to King Leopold, December 28, 1834, ibid., 1:52.

  “nothing but a coat”: Thackeray, “George the Fourth,” 108.

  “le roi Georges”: Williams, Becoming Queen, 173.

  “little bit of the future, aged 7”: Creston, Youthful Queen Victoria, 117.

  “a wonderful dignity and charm of manner”: Hibbert, Queen Victoria in Her Letters, 10.

  “fondling an unpopular mistress”: Fulford, Royal Dukes, 100.

  monitored her every move: John Conroy had also earned the trust of Victoria’s aunt Sophia, but years of paperwork went missing when he took control of Princess Sophia’s financial affairs. Victoria was later convinced he siphoned off thousands of pounds for his own use (on top of the house Sophia bought him in Kensington in 1826 for four thousand pounds).

  “attached and disinterested friend I have”: QVJ, November 5, 1835.

  “obesity of the heart”: Gardiner, The Victorians, 4.

  Chapter Four: An Impossible, Strange Madness

  “The most formidably”: Cecil, Young Melbourne, 385.

  “All I underwent there”: QVJ, February 26, 1838.

  “My dearest best Lehzen”: QVJ, October 31 1835.

  “He imagined he”: King Leopold to Queen Victoria, March 9, 1854, RA Y79/35.

  Charles of Leiningen defined: Longford, Victoria R.I., 55.

  Conroy told the duchess: It was said Cumberland had already spread lies that the princess was “diseased in her feet” and would not be able to grow properly (Victoria blamed Conroy’s daughter Victoire for this rumor). When the Greville memoirs were published in 1875, Victoria said the claim that Conroy was trying to protect her from Cumberland was a lie.

  “all Sir John’s invention”: Hudson, A Royal Conflict, 208.

  New cities that had boomed: Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, 182.

  slavery was finally abolished: There were caveats, though—plantation owners were awarded twenty million pounds in government bonds—approximately 40 percent of the national budget—and the slaves were forced to work for free in an apprenticeship period. They were not officially free for five more years, until August 1, 1838.

  “since I lost the Duke of Kent”: Creston, Youthful Queen Victoria, 147.

  left immediately: Zeigler, King William IV, 278.

  encouraging military salutes: The king was furious. From Greville, July 4, 1833: “The King has been (not unnaturally) disgusted at the Duchess of Kent’s progresses with her daughter through the kingdom, and amongst the rest with her sailings at the Isle of Wight, and the continual popping in the shape of salutes to her Royal Highness.” They tried to convince the duchess to stop, as “salutes are a matter of general order, both to army and navy.” She refused, and subsequently an Order in Council was issued so that the Royal Standard was to be saluted only when the king or queen was on board. Reeve, Greville Memoirs, 3:4.

  “the most restless, persevering, troublesome devil possible”: Thomas Creevey, November 2, 1833, Gore, Creevey, 345.

  “one of the most solemn”: Victoria wrote a long, serious journal entry about her confirmation, in which she said she was sorry for her sin, and wanting to improve in obedience and in devotion as the daughter of a fretful woman. She wrote that she had gone there “with the firm determination to become a true Christian, to try and comfort my dear Mamma in all her griefs, trials and anxieties, and to become a dutiful and affectionate daughter to her. Also to be obedient to dear Lehzen, who has done so much for me.” (QVJ, July 30, 1835.) Her mother wrote to her with her usual fretfulness: “Providence has singled you out:—much more is required from you, than from other young Ladies of your age.—In making these comparisons, I feel naturally still more anxious for you, my beloved Victoria.” (Vallone, Becoming Victoria, 147.) The duchess warned her daughter that a great station in life wouldn’t bring her happiness, but a “good, virtuous and well-cultivated mind” would.

  “unhappily very fat”: Princess Victoria to Princess Feodora, October 30, 1834, Vallone, Becoming Victoria, 221.

  “unmentionable things”: Longford, Victoria R.I., 30.

  was “generally known”: Brumberg, Body Project, xviii. Lynne Vallone also believed menstruation occurred at about age fifteen. In an account of Victoria’s early years, Vallone traced how each month, in the third week, Victoria grew grumpy, lost her appetite, and became a little sad. In an entry that has since been omitted from the official edit of her journal and letters, as she was traveling across England she complained of the lack of hedges, the excessive number of ditches, and the dense mass of people she believed to be half drunk. Vallone, Becoming Victoria, 157. See also Ashdown, Queen Victoria’s Mother.

  “At such times, women”: Quoted in Showalter and Showalter, “Victorian Women and Menstruation,” 85.

  “very happy to hear”: Williams, Becoming Queen,188.

  “wildly about his face”: Longford, Victoria R.I., 55; Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 136.

  “bent on marrying”: Browning to Mr. and Mrs. William Wentworth Story, June 21, 1861, quoted in Weintraub, Victoria, 88.

  was sent to India: Elphinstone’s Dictionary of National Biography entry reads: “In 1837 Elphinstone left the guards on being appointed governor of Madras by Lord Melbourne. It was said at the time that his appointment was made in order to dispel a rumour that the young Queen Victoria had fallen in love with him.” The church episode is mentioned in Longford, Victoria R.I., 62: “At the beginning of February Dr. Clark allowed her to visit St. James’s Palace wearing her grey satin broche coat trimmed with roses which Aunt Louise had sent from Paris. She looked so bewitching that young Lord Elphinstone sketched her in church; the Duchess secured his banishment to Madras.”

  see him banished: These rumors were revived recently by an Australian writer, Roland Perry. In a book titled The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History (Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 2014), he claimed that
Victoria had an affair with Lord Elphinstone when she was fifteen and he was twenty-seven. Perry did not provide any documentation to back his claim, but in correspondence with this author, Perry said he “came to the story via the KGB,” which had obtained copies of unexpurgated correspondence between Victoria and her eldest daughter. To understand it, he said, you “need to be in front of the key players in Moscow and St. Petersburg.” No actual evidence was detailed for historians to build upon.

  Albert and his brother: King William IV tried to stop them, without luck. The king was keen to marry Victoria to one of the sons of the Protestant Prince of Orange, instead of a Catholic Coburg, but Victoria did not warm to them.

  “turned as pale”: Vallone, Becoming Victoria, 179.

  “I am sorry to say”: Princess Victoria to King Leopold, May 26, 1836, Hibbert, Queen Victoria in Her Letters, 18.

  “[Albert] is so sensible”: Princess Victoria to King Leopold, June 7, 1836, ibid.

  “his daughters were”: QVJ, January 21, 1839.

  “Why he outraged”: Hudson, A Royal Conflict, 20.

  written in code: Conroy Family Collection, Balliol College Archives and Manuscripts, Conroy 2C, John Conroy 3rd Baronet, 3D 9. See Hudson, A Royal Conflict, 33.

  Victoria’s half sister: Hudson, A Royal Conflict, 33, 34. Conroy’s belief that his wife, Elizabeth Fisher, was the illegitimate daughter of the duke was revealed in a journal from Conroy’s godson, and a deathbed confession from Edward, son of John: “Sir J, was proud and considered it indelicate to have let Dchss know about his wife’s relation to Pss. Victoria. Sir J has often expressed his idea that it was a disgrace to the honour, & as Ly C was sufficiently fond of Gen. Fisher she would never be told that it was true she was not his own child—hence the silence always observed on this subject, of which proof remains.” Conroy Family Collection, Conroy 6F papers, Deathbed confession of Edward Conroy. But the evidence is not convincing.