Victoria

by Julia Baird

  “I hope you are amused”: Countess Grey to Creevey, October 10, 1837, Maxwell, The Creevey Papers, 327, lordbyron.cath.lib.vt.edu/​monograph.php?doc=ThCreev.1903&select=vol2.toc.

  not passionate about politics: Melbourne’s view was that a passage of one bill a year was enough: the English Municipal Bill in 1835, the Irish tithe bill in 1837, and the Irish Poor Law. See Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, 162.

  “That beautiful pale face”: Clarke, Shelley and Byron, 51.

  Caroline was shattered: Caroline refused to accept Byron’s retreat, turning up at his house unannounced and usually dressed as a page, swaddled in an enormous coat. She would sneak into his rooms to try to catch him with another lover, or simply to scrawl “Remember me” across a book he had left lying open. The book was Beckford’s Vathek. He wrote, in return:

  Remember thee! Remember thee!

  Till Lethe quench life’s burning streams

  Remorse and shame shall cling to thee

  And haunt thee like a feverish dream

  Remember thee! Aye, doubt it not,

  Thy husband too shall think of thee,

  By neither shalt thou be forgot,

  Thou false to him, thou fiend to me!

  Byron by now loathed her and declared she had no redeemable quality. She was, he said in his dramatic fashion, an “adder in my path.” The final dramatic incident came at a ball held by Lady Heathcote in July 1813. Jealous that Byron was talking to another woman, Caroline created a scene: after she brandished a knife, a skirmish ensued, and she cut herself with broken glass before being dragged out.

  not a prized virtue: Ziegler, Melbourne, 16.

  “a remarkable woman, a devoted mother”: Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, 5.

  “the practice was too common”: Cecil, The Young Melbourne, 9.

  “threw buckets of ordure”: Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, 74.

  he paid an annuity: After Melbourne died, the payments were taken over by his estate, according to Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, 217. Lady Branden’s husband alleged that Melbourne had seduced his wife, though the evidence produced was thin, and the case was dismissed; it appears Lord Melbourne transferred a decent sum of money to Lord Branden as a result. He then cooled toward Lady Branden, who lost her husband, her honor, as well as her powerful lover, and was reduced to alternately begging and remonstrating in letters to Lord Melbourne, who told her sharply that he would never marry her. Men could continue in society as before, after having been accused of immorality and adultery; the women fell far further, and were often banished and banned from seeing their children.

  “I don’t think you should give a woman”: QVJ, July 19, 1839.

  his experiences at Eton: Melbourne told Victoria, “I don’t think he flogged me enough, it would have been better if he had flogged me more.” Esher, Girlhood of Queen Victoria, 2:30.

  “had always an amazing”: QVJ, October 15, 1838.

  consent from an orphan girl: When she had children of her own, Churchill wrote to Lord Melbourne jokingly about what he had done to her, saying how he made her laugh, and asking if he thought her ten-month-old baby was too young to whip. She wrote: “A propos of children I have not forgotten your practical lessons upon whipping and follow up the system with great success upon Caroline at least, for William is too young, don’t you think so? He is only 10 months. I remember as though it was yesterday the execution, then being thrown into a corner of a large couch there was at Brocket you used then to leave the room and I remember your coming back one day and saying “well cocky does it smart still?” at which of course I could not help laughing instead of crying. Does the Queen whip the royal princes I should like to know?” From the Panshanger MSS, quoted in Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, 214.

  “He is certainly a queer fellow”: Pearce, The Diaries of Lord Greville, 131.

  he embodied governments of the past: Ziegler, Melbourne, 203: Melbourne told Victoria “all government has to do is prevent and punish crime, and to preserve contracts.” Ziegler writes: “The concept that each government would arrive in office brandishing an imposing array of new laws which it proposed to implement evolved slowly over the nineteenth century. The eighteenth-century idea of government was rather that it should concern itself only with defence, foreign policy and the administration of the country. New laws were only needed to meet specific crises. In subscribing to this view Melbourne spoke for the majority of political leaders, Whig or Tory. Russell and Peel were the men of the future: Melbourne, Holland, Lansdowne, Palmerston, for the Whigs; Wellington, Aberdeen, Lyndhurst for the Tories; reflected the traditional wisdom of the past.”

  “nothing at all”: Cecil, The Young Melbourne, 216.

  “the degree of repression”: Ziegler, Melbourne, 72.

  “very important &”: QVJ, July 18, 1837. Similarly, on August 8: “Talked over many things which were of great and painful interest to me; things gone by, and past, I mean. Lord Melbourne is so kind, so feeling, and entered quite into my feelings.” On July 17, she had written that he was her friend: “I know it.”

  “sensitive and susceptible temperament”: Longford, Victoria R.I., 66.

  “for a long time”: QVJ, February 6, 1839.

  “Which is very true”: Cecil, The Young Melbourne, 413.

  “he looks loving”: Quoted in ibid., 394.

  “die with laughing”: QVJ, December 23, 1837.

  “did not like any of the Poor”: Lord Melbourne to John Russell, October 24, 1837, from Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, 282n.

  used “we” in referring: QVJ, May 25, 1838.

  Melbourne was naturally conservative: Many of Melbourne’s private views were conservative, and he associated frequently with Tories. Victoria developed a fierce loyalty for the Whig party, in other words, without realizing what Whigs really were. Whig orthodoxy then was liberty, low taxation, enclosure of land, antidespotism, and democracy. See Cecil, The Young Melbourne, 7.

  “nasty wretch”: QVJ, January 27, 1840; Cecil, The Young Melbourne, 336.

  “It is a fact that the”: Longford, Victoria R.I., 70.

  “With the young foolish Queen”: Mitchell, Lord Melbourne, 240.

  “I felt how unfit I was”: QVJ, December 15, 1838.

  “By God, I am at it”: February 19, 1840, Greville, The Great World, 180.

  “cross and low”…“incredible weight for my size”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 163.

  “full with a fine bust”: Longford, Queen Victoria, 88.

  “perhaps rather more appearance”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 162.

  “I told Lord Melbourne”: Cecil, The Young Melbourne, 424.

  “just like the nurse”: Rhodes James, Albert, Prince Consort, 64.

  Chapter Nine: A Scandal in the Palace

  “[Melbourne] has a young and inexperienced”: September 16, 1838, Parry, Correspondence of Lord Aberdeen, 1:113.

  “They wished to treat me like a girl”: May 10, 1839, Pearce, The Diaries of Charles Greville, 181.

  “Those two abominable women”: QVJ, June 21, 1839.

  she was an “odious” spy: QVJ, April 25, 1838.

  “awkward business”: QVJ, February 2, 1839.

  Melbourne had told her: QVJ, January 18, 1839.

  “loathe one’s own sex”: QVJ, February 2, 1839.

  “perhaps the most incompetent”: Pearsall, The Worm in the Bud, 5.

  any other conditions: In The Court Doctor Dissected, 1839, John Fisher Murray, MD, strongly condemned James Clark’s lack of medical insight, listing a dozen other ailments that produced pregnancy-like symptoms, such as abdominal tumors, hepatic diseases, digestive organ problems, splenic disease, mesenteric aneurismal disease of the abdominal arteries, dropsy, or umbilical hernia.

  a “coarse” Dr. Clark: On March 13, Lady Flora told her mother James Clark had been irritated by her denial, and “became violent and coarse, and even attempted to browbeat me.” The Times, September 16, 1839, 3.

  “most rigid examination”: Ibid.

  “n
o grounds for believing”: Ibid.

  “I must respectfully observe”: Martin, Enter Rumour, 41.

  might still be pregnant: Victoria wrote to her mother: “Sir C. Clarke had said that though she is a virgin still that it might be possible and one could not tell if such things could not happen. That there was an enlargement in the womb like a child.” Longford, Victoria R.I., 99.

  sacked Dr. Clark: Martin, Enter Rumour, 48–49: Lady Sophia wrote to her family that at least one of his aristocratic patients had dismissed him because of what he had done, and that “many medical men have refused to meet him in consultation, as they, and Sir Henry Halford among them, say he has cast an odium on the profession.” In QVJ, April 8, 1839, Victoria recorded that Clark had suffered a good deal from the whole affair, and had lost a good many patients, “and that the country papers abused him so.”

  “It is inconceivable how Melbourne”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 167.

  “This made me laugh excessively”: QVJ, March 18, 1839.

  the ugliest woman: QVJ, January 14, 1839.

  “To a female sovereign”: Published in The Times, September 16, 1839, 3.

  without a word: Melbourne did respond to the letter, and was rather harsh. He was critical of the “tone and substance” of her letter, but said the queen would do all she could to “soothe the feelings” of Lady Flora and her family.

  “so unprecedented and objectionable”: Published in The Times, September 16, 1839, 3. In June, the Marquess of Hastings wrote to Lord Melbourne demanding an apology for the tone the PM took in this letter to his mother.

  “I blush to send you”: The Times, August 12, 1839, 5.

  “wicked foolish old woman”: QVJ, April 16, 1839.

  “The state of agony”: QVJ, May 7, 1839.

  “It was some minutes before”: Ibid.

  “The Queen ventures to maintain”: Hibbert, Queen Victoria: A Personal History, 93.

  “The Queen didn’t like his manner”: Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 1:200.

  “I said I could not give up”: Ibid., 1:208.

  plenty of Tory relatives: Martin, Enter Rumour, 62. Lady Harriet Clive was the only Tory among the queen’s ladies.

  [Peel had] behaved very ill: QVJ, May 9, 1839.

  “Do not fear that I was calm”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 174.

  In a chilly letter: Peel Papers, vol. 123, letter dated May 10, 1839, British Library Archives, Add. 40, 303, Extract: 40303.

  “very much put out”: QVJ, May 30, 1839.

  “Tories are capable of every villainy”: Ziegler, Melbourne, 299.

  “I was very hot about it”: October 30, 1897, Sir Arthur Bigge, in Longford, Victoria R.I., 114.

  “bilious attack”: QVJ, June 9, 1839.

  “exceedingly rude”: QVJ, April 5, 1839.

  “It does not occur to her”: Lady Flora never accused Victoria of malice, but wrote to her mother that the queen was “capable of kindliness of feeling occasionally, but self…has been so sedulously cultivated within the last year & half that it does it does not occur to her to feel for another—& in the present instance, be it childishness or be it want of that keen sense of female honor which ones wishes to see, I do not believe she understands that I can have been injured by a rumor which has been proved false.” Martin, Enter Rumour, 50.

  “I found poor Ly. Flora”: QVJ, June 27, 1839. In an account of this meeting, Lady Flora’s sister, Lady Sophia, wrote to her mother that: “I begin to think [Victoria] a positive Goose & a Fool—I believe She now pays attention from fear for the expression of interest & indignation is still so great in London that they dread the effect of any want of respect & attention.” Martin, Enter Rumour, 67.

  all she could think: QVJ, July 6, 1839: Lord Melbourne was uncharitable to the last. Told on June 29 that a motionless Lady Flora was in a “most Christian state of mind,” he retorted: “It’s easy to say that. I daresay she would like to do mischief again.” Victoria added: “which, were she to recover, I fear she would; but, I said to Lord M. I thought people must repent at last.” Victoria believed she had repented, but this did not prevent her from seeing the ailing as an inconvenience. (QVJ, July 1, 1839.) As she told Lord M. over dinner, it was awkward having someone dying in the house, because she could not go out, or ask people for dinner. (QVJ, July 3, 1839.)

  “& only just raised her hands”: QVJ, July 5, 1839.

  a protester wrote: Martin, Enter Rumour, 69.

  But the autopsy: The Champion and Weekly Herald, July 14, 1839.

  “the uterus and its appendages”: “The Post-Mortem Examination of the Lady Flora Hastings” was published in full in the Morning Post, July 9, 1839, 5. It was signed by five doctors. It read:

  There was great emaciation of the whole person.

  In the chest: the heart and lungs were in a perfectly healthy state; but there were extensive adhesions of the pleura (or membrane) covering the right lung, to that which lines the ribs—evidently of long standing.

  In the abdomen: there were universal adhesions of the peritoneum (or membrane which lines the cavity and covers the viscera), so that it could not be said that there was a single organ which was not, at every point on its surface, intimately connected with the parts in its vicinity. The liver was very much enlarged, extending downwards as low as the pelvis, and upwards so as very materially to diminish the capacity of the right cavity of the chest. The gall bladder contained a small quantity of bile. The liver was of a very pale color, but its structure was not materially different from what exists in the healthy state. The stomach and intestines were distended with air; their coats, especially the muscular, were very much attenuated. The spleen and pancreas were free from disease. Some of the mesenteric glands were enlarged. There were a few small deposits of unorganized yellow matter, apparently in the substance of the adhesions.

  The uterus and its appendages presented the usual appearances of the healthy virgin state.

  From the character of the adhesions it was plain that they could be referred only to inflammation at some former and distant period of time. The effect of them must have been to interrupt the passage of the contents of the stomach and intestines, and in various ways to interfere with the due performance of their functions.

  “her own country”: QVJ, April 20, 1839.

  were later destroyed: Hibbert, Queen Victoria in Her Letters, 5.

  “precocious knowledge”: To M. V. Brett, March 13, 1904, Brett, Journals and Letters, 1:49.

  “What is the good”: Martin, Enter Rumour, 73.

  overwhelming urge to roll: Longford, Victoria R.I., 124.

  she was often directly blamed: See the Spectator coverage. Quoted in the Morning Post, July 22, 1839, 3. (The Leamington Spa Courier wrote that “the continuance in office of Sir J. Clark gives some color to the rumor that her Majesty, and not the physician, was the original author of the slander.” Martin, Enter Rumour, 57.)

  accused the court of murder: The Era said the mental distress and physical neglect killed her—and it was MURDER, they wrote in capital letters. A letter writer also called it murder, in the Morning Post, July 22, 1839, 3. The Morning Post ran a long, vehement campaign against the queen and her court. The Examiner (quoted in the Caledonian Mercury, July 18, 1839) said Lady Flora had been “destroyed in the flower of her days by the slanders and insults of Court minions, sufficiently profligate and unprincipled to aim at Royal favor by this work of death, and sufficiently fortunate, so far as yet appears, to have attained their object by this cruel and fatal means!” The Examiner continued: “Here is in direct terms the wicked charge, that the Queen’s favor was to be gained by effecting the death of Lady Flora Hastings, and that the Royal favor has actually been obtained by such means.” It was a shocking allegation.

  “For myself I feel this trial”: Martin, Enter Rumour, 54–55.

  “Forgive my poor Child?”: Ibid., 67–68.

  “The whole ceremony”: The Times, July 20, 1839, 6.

  �
��Her memory is embalmed”: The Corsair, August 31, 1839, 5

  “At her accession, I was agreeably”: Martineau, Harriet Martineau’s Autobiography, 418.

  Chapter Ten: Virago in Love

  “I told Albert that he had come”: Quoted in Hudson, A Royal Conflict, 183.

  “Queen Victoria, even when she was most infatuatedly”: Shaw, November 21, 1908, Collected Letters, 2:817, cited in Weintraub, “Exasperated Admiration,” 128.

  a “virago queen”: Aronson, Heart of a Queen, 53.

  “enjoy two or three years more”: Victoria would later deeply regret this delay, writing that she could not now “think without indignation against herself, of her wish to keep the Prince waiting for probably three or four years, at the risk of ruining all his prospects for life, until she might feel inclined to marry!…The only excuse the Queen can make for herself is in the fact that the sudden change from the secluded life at Kensington to the independence of her position as Queen Regnant at the age of eighteen, put all ideas of marriage out of her mind, which she now most bitterly repents.” Quoted in Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 243.

  “May I pray you to think”: Jagow, Letters of the Prince Consort, 14.

  she “may not have the feeling”: Benson and Esher, Letters of Queen Victoria, 1:177–78.

  “thinks seriously of making an offer”: The (Portsmouth) New Hampshire Journal of Literature and Politics, August 5, 1837, documented a report in the Salem Register, from Massachusetts, which read: