Victoria

by Julia Baird

  loathsome Duke of Cumberland: Ward, “Editing Queen Victoria,” 202. In March 1904, Benson came across a memo and correspondence to Victoria from Conroy’s daughter. Victoria had crossed everything out in the memo. Benson wrote in his diary: “Sir J.C. was a really mischievous, unscrupulous, intriguing man. He established such an ascendancy over the Dss of Kent that he was thought to be her lover….The Queen had a perfect horror of him. The horror of him appears (tho’ this is very mysterious) to date from a time when the Duke of Cumberland with characteristic brutality said before her, when she was just a girl, that Conroy was her mother’s lover.”

  “a real Mephisto”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 55.

  “proceed from witchcraft”: Hudson, A Royal Conflict, 51.

  the man she called a “monster”: The Kensington System backers included Leopold, Lady Flora Hastings, Princess Sophia, Prince Charles of Leiningen, and the Duke of Sussex. Conroy’s powerful friends were unaware of his inability to handle money; thousands of pounds went missing on his watch, and there is strong evidence of impropriety (Victoria decided he was a swindler when her mother’s and Aunt Sophia’s dubious financial records were released).

  Chapter Five: “Awful Scenes in the House”

  “They plague her”: Williams, Becoming Queen, 281.

  workers found corks: Hollingshead, Underground London, 71.

  “I trust in God”: Ibid., 367.

  Charles of Leiningen: Before he went, Stockmar told Charles not to see “treachery, lies and fraud as the weapons of success.” Stockmar said, frankly but cautiously, that while he often agreed with Conroy, his moodiness and tactlessness were so extreme that even if they managed to make him private secretary, “he would, through his own folly, break his own neck in no time at all.” Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 130.

  Leopold to tell Victoria: Albert, Queen Victoria’s Sister, 86.

  “more conscious of”: Hudson, A Royal Conflict, 102.

  “They plague her”: Williams, Becoming Queen, 281.

  pointed out repeatedly: On Victoria’s eighteenth birthday, the Duchess of Kent made a public statement of martyrdom, saying: “I gave up my home, my kindred, and my duties, to devote myself to that duty which was to be the whole object of my future life.” Minutes of the Proceedings of the Court of Common Council, no. 13, June 2, 1837. Records Office, Corporation of London, quoted in Hudson, A Royal Conflict, 127.

  “Felt very miserable & agitated”: QVJ, May 19, 1837.

  Ignorant of any other: First, she asked her mother that the Dean of Chester be her Privy Purse. Her mother said no. Victoria then asked if she could see Lord Melbourne on her own—again the answer was no. Her mother did not even tell her that Lord Melbourne—who was quite unaware of the depths of Victoria’s torment—had offered a compromise deal, where they would accept the king’s offer, but the duchess would get two-thirds of Victoria’s money.

  “Victoria has not written”: Williams, Becoming Queen, 252. On June 6, Victoria dictated a memo to Lehzen, outlining the recent events. She wrote: “I have objected on the 19th of May [when the king offered her the extra ten thousand pounds a year] as well as always before to allowing John Conroy any interference in my affairs. Whatever he has done, it has been by order of my Mother, as I requested in her name, without making me responsible for any of her actions, as Sir John Conroy is Her private secretary and neither my Servant, nor Adviser, nor ever was.”

  a bright flag bearing one word flapped: Morning Post, May 25, 1837.

  women had fainted: Paterson, Voices from Dickens’ London, 45.

  “entirely took away”: The Liverpool memo is kept in the Royal Archives. See Longford, Victoria R.I., 59.

  Gypsies were maligned: Behlmer, “The Gypsy Problem,” 231.

  poor people would respond: In the 1830s, there was a protracted public debate about poverty as the population boomed, along with the numbers of homeless people. In 1834, Prime Minister Lord Melbourne passed the “poor law,” which codified a previously uncoordinated system of poor relief into a formal system of workhouses. Intended to counter the cost of looking after the needy during recessions—landowners were taxed personally for those requiring aid in their area—the laws also aimed to reduce the number of poor and make the conditions inside the workhouses so awful that no one would stay for long. They were much like prisons, intended to cure poverty instead of criminality. Charles Dickens, who lived close to a workhouse, and whose own father had been jailed for debt, wrote in Oliver Twist in 1839 that workhouse boards “established the rule, that all poor people should have the alternative (for they would compel nobody, not they), of being starved by a gradual process in the house, or by a quick one out of it….They…kindly undertook to divorce poor married people…and, instead of compelling a man to support his family, as they had therefore done, took his family away from him and made him a bachelor!” See also Richardson, Dickens and the Workhouse.

  Historian Philip Ziegler described the poor law as “a well-intentioned piece of legislation which probably contributed more to the sum of human unhappiness than any other single measure of the nineteenth century.” (Ziegler, Melbourne, 163.) A series of scandals involving inhumane treatment and near-starvation led to a revision of the law a decade later.

  Conroy did not: QVJ, January 19, 1837.

  “He was always personally”: QVJ, June 19, 1837.

  “oppressed Person”: Stockmar wrote: “The struggle between the Mama and daughter is still going on. She [the duchess] is pressed by Conroy to bring matters to extremities and to force her Daughter to do her will by unkindness and severity.” If the truth were to come out, “the Princess must appear what she is, an oppressed Person, and everybody I am sure would fly to her assistance.” Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 137.

  “live on outwardly”: Williams, Becoming Queen, 281.

  she wrote to the Duchess: Princess Feodora to the Duchess of Northumberland, March 25, 1835. RA, VIC Addl. Mss U/72/15; Vallone, Becoming Victoria, 160.

  “awful scenes in the house”: Hudson, A Royal Conflict, 219.

  “I shall not, at all events, fail”: Princess Victoria to King Leopold, June 1837, Benson and Esher, Letters of Queen Victoria, 1:95.

  Chapter Six: Becoming Queen: “I Am Very Young”

  “I was never happy until I was eighteen”: Williams, Becoming Queen, 288.

  “It will touch every”: Arthur Ponsonby, Queen Victoria, 13.

  “The severe and afflicting”: Tuer and Fagan, First Year, 6–7.

  “There never was anything like the first impression”: Greville, The Great World, 113.

  “handsome as any young lady I ever saw”: Williams, Becoming Queen, 265.

  “she filled the room”: Greville, The Great World, 113; Arnstein, Queen Victoria, 32.

  “in every respect is perfection”: Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal History, 53.

  A cartoon titled: Williams, Becoming Queen, 292.

  “mad with loyalty”: Ibid., 296; Sallie Stevenson to her sisters, July 12, 1837, Boykin, Victoria, Albert and Mrs. Stevenson, 74

  “Though not a beauty”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 140.

  shown unattractive gums: Creevey was not the only one to make unkind remarks about the queen’s teeth. While praising her voice, “very good” bust, feet, and large blue eyes, Sallie Stevenson said that the queen’s mouth was “her worst feature.” It was “generally a little open; her teeth small and short, and she shows her gums when she laughs, which is rather disfiguring.” Boykin, Victoria, Albert and Mrs. Stevenson, 107–8. Feodora told Victoria to close her mouth when she sat for her portrait, but the Duchess of Kent said, “No, my dear; let it be as nature made it.” Weintraub, Victoria, 111.

  “quite in love with her”: September 25, 1837, Gore, Creevey, 379.

  “growing up simple & good”: Martineau, The Collected Letters, 3.

  wiping tears from his eyes: Victoria often noted Melbourne’s tears, which seemed easily bid. He cried on a host of occasions, in
cluding her coronation, her first appearance at Parliament, when talking about her future, the parliamentary vote to increase the Duchess of Kent’s annuity, the “glories” of England, and the honor of the Duke of Wellington.

  the red ribbon: “The red ribbon” was an idiomatic reference to a knighthood in the Most Honourable Order of the Bath. St. Aubyn, Queen Victoria, 68.

  “Have you ever heard such impudence?”: Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal History, 90.

  relished attacks: The family nursed the perceived wrong to John Conroy for generations, and became openly vindictive. In the front of one family notebook, stuffed with clippings of Lady Flora Hastings and widespread criticism of the queen, a quote from Lord Byron was scrawled. The words were telling:

  …and if we do but watch the hour

  There never yet was human power

  That can resist—if unforgiven

  The patient search and vigil long

  Of him who treasures up a wrong.

  Conroy Family Collection, Balliol College Archives, Conroy Papers, 2C Residue C.

  summon her: Strickland, Queen Victoria, 220–21.

  “Her emotion was”: Ashton, Gossip in the First Decade, 4.

  “sweet as a Virginia”: Weintraub, Victoria, 111.

  “I delight in the business”: Williams, Becoming Queen, 291.

  “when it is submitted to you”: King Leopold to Queen Victoria, June 27, 1837, Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 1:104.

  this approach: Greville wrote in his diary on August 30, 1837, that the queen “seldom or never” gave an answer on the spot, and blamed Melbourne. But Melbourne believed it was ingrained, telling Greville, “Such is her habit even with him, and that when he talks with her upon any subject upon which an opinion is expected from her, she tells him she will think it over, and let him know her sentiments the next day.” Strachey and Fulford, The Greville Memoirs, 3:394; Greville, The Great World, 133.

  “the greatest pleasure to”: Williams, Becoming Queen, 291.

  worked late: Thomas Creevey wrote on July 29, 1837: “One day at dinner Lady Georgiana Grey sat next to Madame Lützen, a German who has been Vic’s governess from her grave, and according to her there never was so perfect a creature. She said that now Vic was at work morning to night; and that, even when her maid was combing out her hair, she was surrounded by official boxes and reading official papers.” Note that he prefaced these remarks with the fact that while Victoria was “idolised,” the Duchess of Sutherland was not so smitten with the queen after she snubbed her for being half an hour later for dinner. Maxwell, The Creevey Papers, 665.

  “slight signs of”: Greville, July 30, 1837, Strachey and Fulford, The Greville Memoirs, 3:390. He continued: “It is impossible not to suspect that, as she gains confidence, and as her character begins to develop, she will evince a strong will of her own. In all trifling matters connected with her Court and her Palace, she already enacts the part of Queen and Mistress as if it had long been familiar to her.”

  “I was very glad”: Weintraub, Victoria, 110.

  “an abiding and”: Arthur Ponsonby, Queen Victoria, 10.

  “In spite of Mama and you”: Longford, Queen Victoria, 76.

  “I am so fond”: QVJ, August 22, 1837.

  The editors of: Ward, “Editing Queen Victoria,” 269–71.

  “passionate fondness”: Healey, The Queen’s House, 136.

  “a man with a capacity”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 144.

  “[Victoria] has great animal”: Greville, The Great World, 133.

  “So much”: Boykin, Victoria, Albert and Mrs. Stevenson, 76.

  “Everybody says that”: Williams, Becoming Queen, 292; Vallone, Becoming Victoria, 199.

  “The whole thing went off beautifully”: QVJ, September 28, 1837.

  “You have it in your power”: Williams, Becoming Queen, 297.

  little influence on: Baron Stockmar to King Leopold, June 24, 1837, RA, Add. A 11/26.

  “The Queen should forget”: Longford, Queen Victoria, 72.

  “such a letter”: QVJ, January 15, 1838.

  “plaguing”: QVJ, January 16, 1838.

  All the letters: According to Yvonne Ward, when Benson sent the first installment of the manuscript in March 1904 to John Murray for printing, Murray admitted he could not resist spending the night reading through the selections. Murray wrote: “Many of the letters are of the greatest importance. I am struck by some of those from the Queen to her mother. Her position was a most delicate one in regard to the Duchess of Kent both shortly before and after her Coronation, and these letters display much firmness of character and sense of justice.” (Murray to Benson, March 22, 1904, John Murray Archives.) But, Ward writes, “within two months, Benson was asking Murray to return those MSS sections as he had just been directed by Esher that ‘certain matters’ had to be eliminated.” (Benson to Murray, May 17, 1904, ibid.) There was no further mention of any letters between Victoria and the Duchess of Kent from 1837, and none published. Ward, “Editing Queen Victoria,” 244.

  “ill-used” by both: Pearce, The Diaries of Charles Greville, 162 (July 28).

  “pining to death”: Hudson, A Royal Conflict, 170.

  “I have never heard”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 149.

  “The Queen is a new”: November 13, 1837, Wise, Diary of William Tayler, 57.

  Chapter Seven: The Coronation:

  “A Dream out of The Arabian Nights”

  “I shall ever remember this day”: QVJ, June 28, 1838.

  “Poor little Queen, she”: Longford, Victoria R.I., 83; St. Aubyn, Queen Victoria, 63.

  “The coronation day”: The Champion and Weekly Herald, July 1, 1838.

  something “very awful” was going to happen: QVJ, June 27, 1838; Williams, Becoming Queen, 274.

  twenty-one-gun salute: On the day of the coronation, there were twenty-one guns at sunrise, twenty-one guns when Queen Victoria left Buckingham Palace, twenty-one guns when she arrived at Westminster Abbey, forty-one guns when the crown was placed on her head, twenty-one guns when she left the Abbey, and twenty-one guns on her return to Buckingham Palace.

  “a thing that you can’t give a person”: QVJ, June 28, 1838.

  the world was “alive with men”: “The Queen’s Coronation,” Examiner, July 1, 1838, 403. Attributed to Dickens by the Pilgrim editors, Letters of Charles Dickens, 1:408.

  “It is as if the population”: Strachey and Fulford, The Greville Memoirs, June 27, 1838, 4:69.

  Nelson Lee struck a gong: Frost, The Old Showmen, 327–28.

  “Many as there were the day I went”: Benson and Esher, Letters of Queen Victoria, June 1838.

  “making more use”: Strickland, Queen Victoria, 320.

  insisted that no harsh measures: Ibid., 320–21.

  “There are more drunken women”: Hensel, The Mendelssohn Family, 2:41. “A drunken woman, with bare shoulders and hair hanging down, tried to dance, and when the police attempted to stop her would shriek out nothing but the word ‘coronation’; but a humorous neighbor succeeded in removing her by means of familiar jokes and rough boxes on the ear. So far as I have observed, there are more drunken women here than drunken men: it is incredible how much whisky they can swallow.”

  “Their hearts”…were “in their voices”: [Dickens], “The Queen’s Coronation,” Examiner, July 1, 1838, 403.

  “One had to pinch”: Hensel, The Mendelssohn Family, 2:42.

  “I have never before”: Martineau, Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, 421.

  “cast a dancing radiance”: Ibid., 421.

  in Victoria’s words, “completely overcome”: QVJ, June 28, 1838.

  “very awkward and uncouth”: Disraeli to Sarah Disraeli, June 28, 1838, Weibe et al., Letters of Benjamin Disraeli 1860–1864, 7:466.

  “undoubted queen of this realm”: The Illustrated London News, Illustrated London News & Sketch Limited, 1887, 90:704.

  “Pray tell me what I am to do”: The Greville M
emoirs, June 29, 1838, 4:111.

  “dearly beloved Lehzen”: QVJ, June 28, 1838.

  “so small as to appear puny”: Martineau, Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, 125.

  Imperial State Crown: This crown was embedded with an enormous heart-shaped spinel that had been worn by Edward of Woodstock, the Black Prince, before it was placed into the helmet of Henry V at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415. The crown also had a sapphire that was found on a ring on the corpse of Edward the Confessor when his tomb was cracked open in 1163 (this is thought to be the oldest jewel owned by the royal family). Another 16 sapphires, 11 emeralds, 4 rubies, 1,363 brilliant diamonds, 1,273 rose diamonds, 147 table diamonds, 4 drop-shaped pearls, and 273 round pearls completed the crown. It weighed almost a kilogram.

  “appalling prospect”: Rusk, Reign of Queen Victoria, 105.

  “I am merely a candidate for the hand of Her Majesty”: The Times, June 29, 1838, 8.

  “crowded to suffocation”: Morning Chronicle, quoted in Ashton, Gossip in the First Decade, 59.

  women brought presents: Frost, The Old Showmen, 328.

  “Pig-Faced Lady”: Sanger, Seventy Years a Showman, 74.

  “very pleasant and agreeable”: Charles Dickens, “The Queen’s Coronation,” Examiner, July 1, 1838, 403.

  “To amuse and interest [the people] seems”: Pearce, The Diaries of Charles Greville, June 29, 1838, 174.

  performed “beautifully—every part of it”: QVJ, June 28, 1838.

  “This is most provoking”: QVJ, July 4, 1838.

  “has only to show herself”: Weintraub, Victoria, 114.

  It was “impossible”: The Champion and Weekly Herald, July 1, 1838.

  Chapter Eight: Learning to Rule

  “You lead rather an unnatural life”: Cecil, Young Melbourne, 469.

  “like a Father”: QVJ, September 4, 1838.

  Gossips whispered: The Diaries of Charles Greville, 4:93. In September, Princess Lieven wrote to Lord Grey that “Lord Melbourne is so assiduous in his attendance on the Queen—as being so constantly and so perpetually with her—that I for myself cannot help imagining that she must be going to marry him. It is all, however, according to rule, and I find it both proper and in his own interest that Lord Melbourne should keep himself absolute master of the situation. He will stand before the new parliament in the position of one very high placed in Court favor; but will this be enough to keep him in office?” Le Strange, Correspondence of Princess Lieven, 3:244.