by Edna Healey
There was one more formative influence on the young Queen. If Uncle Leopold was a substitute for the father she never knew, her governess, Lehzen, took the place of the mother from whom she had become estranged. During the difficult years before her accession, Princess Victoria would have been lonely indeed had it not been for Baroness Louise Lehzen, who should take an honoured place among the unsung teachers of the great. She came from a simple home, the daughter of a German Lutheran pastor in Hanover. Just as Bute had been mocked as an alien Scot, so Lehzen had to endure much anti-German prejudice. But if her own manners were uncourtly, as critics claimed, she certainly taught Queen Victoria grace and poise, and she gave her the warmth and affection that her mother found difficult to show.
In the early days of her reign, when the Queen was learning to stand on her own feet, Lehzen was indispensable. After the ordeals of councils and audiences she could return to the comfort of Lehzen – ‘Daisy’ as she called her. In the past she had learned her history from the stories Lehzen had told her while she brushed her hair, and Lehzen was still there to brief her. All those who had to deal with the Queen in these early days were astonished that this diminutive young woman was so well informed. Some of the credit for her education must go to Uncle Leopold, Stockmar and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, but it was Lehzen who made history palatable. She gave her a lifelong love of history, teaching it in the way she would always learn best, as an enthralling study of people.
History has not dealt too kindly with Lehzen but she won the admiration of that cultured old politician, Lord Holland, who was a guest at Windsor Castle on 14–16 September 1837 and was able to observe her at leisure. The Queen had said, he wrote in his journal,
she was never alone in a room with any person, her mother excepted, till within three days of her accession. I think she should also have excepted Mdme Letzen [sic] to whom I suspect She, and the country are chiefly indebted for the admirable education she has received and the happy fruits that it is likely to produce. Mdme de Letzen [sic] is a woman of sense and information, great judgement and yet greater strength of mind. She had been employed in superintending the education of another daughter* of the Duchess of Kent, half sister of Victoria, and she contrived without éclat and without too much subserviency with the Countenance of Leopold to maintain her post at Kensington against the wishes, as it is supposed of both the Duchess of Kent and Sir John Conroy and without furnishing either with any just cause of complaint. I was much struck with the frankness and sagacity of her conversation.6
High praise indeed from a man at whose table learned and witty conversationalists such as Macaulay and Sidney Smith regularly dined.
Where Lehzen and everyone else failed was in curbing the self-will that was Queen Victoria’s lifelong failing. It was, however, the other side of that independence of spirit that was her greatest strength.
Lord Holland, however, watching the Queen during the same Windsor visit, found her ‘a pattern of propriety without impairing the least the charm of youthful and lighthearted manners’. The only fault he could find was
the inconsiderate habit of keeping her Ladies standing too long. When the Ladies retire from dinner, she seldom sits down till the Gentlemen follow them, and I hear the Duchess of Kent first remonstrated and has since retired from the drawing room for half an hour every evening to repose herself in her own room, till she can return and sit by her daughter or at the Whist table in the Evening. It was droll enough to see the Ladies, young and old, married or unmarried, with all their rumps to the wall when we came from the dining to the drawing room and eagerly availing themselves of their release when the Queen took her seat on the Sofa.7
Royal attendants throughout the ages have had to bear with stoicism interminable periods of standing and waiting. Queen Victoria became even stricter as she grew older.
There were many who had helped in the shaping of the young Queen, but none of them, and not even Melbourne and Prince Albert in the future, could fundamentally change her. There is no doubt that Queen Victoria was, from childhood, directed by influences that were mainly German. She was, however, no soft clay in the hands of the Coburg potters. The set of the head and the firm little mouth in the early portraits were the outward signs of a uniquely strong personality. Queen Victoria shaped herself.
For William IV Buckingham Palace had been a burden: for Queen Victoria it was a fitting setting for the Great Queen she hoped to be. She could not wait to take up residence, to make a break with her mother and the past. On 13 July she moved from Kensington Palace, even before Buckingham Palace was ready for her. When, on the next day, Sir John Hobhouse, President of the Board of Control, had his first audience, he found the Palace ‘in great disorder: the apartments were full of housemaids on their knees scrubbing the floors, and attend-ants putting down the carpets’. But Queen Victoria, already at ease, ‘placed herself on a sofa and desired him to take a chair on the opposite side of the room’.8 Later she would allow no such freedom: subjects stood in her presence.
In the magical early days in the Palace, the Queen suddenly realized that she had only to wave her wand and the magnificent State Rooms would echo to the sound of the most exquisite music. Immediately she sent for Sigismund Thalberg, who was said to be the finest pianist in the world, and within days a concert was organized. ‘J’étais en extase,’ she said. Johann Strauss the Elder composed waltzes for her state balls and on a May evening before her Coronation she danced until four in the morning, finishing with Strauss’s specially composed waltz, which began with ‘Rule Britannia’ and ended with ‘God Save The Queen’.
In the whole history of Buckingham Palace only George III and Queen Charlotte moved in with such pleasure and excitement. Queen Victoria and George III had much else in common: both were young, idealistic, determined, in Queen Victoria’s words, to be ‘good’. Both had tremendous, almost manic, energy with corresponding black troughs. Both were to have huge families – Queen Charlotte had fifteen children, Queen Victoria was to have nine; both families, after a while, outgrew Buckingham Palace.
Queen Victoria was enchanted with her new home – with its high ceilings, huge mirrors and immense, brilliant chandeliers. Others might mock the bright colours of the mock marble pillars, the brashness of the décor, but for her it was all space and light and colour.
‘I am pleased with my rooms,’ she wrote to her half-sister, Princess Feodora, in October. ‘They are high, pleasant and cheerful.,’ It was not so much the pictures she admired in the long gallery: unlike George IV and her grandfather she had no plans to become a great art collector. But the portraits of her ancestors fascinated her. Most of all the Palace gave her space. ‘There are no less than five fine large rooms, besides the Gallery and dining room,’ she wrote to Louise, Queen of the Belgians, ‘and they are so high, the doors so large and they lie so well near one another that it makes an ensemble rarely seen in this country.’9 She could not wait to show it all to her and Uncle Leopold. One of her earliest concerns was to have a suite prepared for them on the ground floor. Even today those rooms are still called the ‘Belgian Suite’.
For the first time in her life she was free. She banished her mother, the Duchess of Kent, to a suite a long way away, to her fury. In her Palace bedroom Queen Victoria slept alone. But one of her first demands was that a door should be made between her room and that of Lehzen. Independent and free as she was, she still needed the support of her old governess.
Best of all she hoped she had got rid of her mother’s evil genius, Sir John Conroy. Perhaps she suspected that her mother was his mistress; certainly the Duke of Wellington, when questioned, had said, ‘I suppose so.’ Whether it was rumour or truth, she hated him, and was delighted when Wellington had offered him a ‘golden bridge’ to the Continent. Now she could ride in freedom: for the previous two years she had refused the gallops she loved because her mother had insisted that Conroy accompanied her. Now she could even ride on parade beside the Duke of Wellington. He had disappro
ved, but Queen Victoria had looked the victor of Waterloo in the eye and had won her battle.
In the excitement of the first months, Queen Victoria had no timeto consider the running of the Palace. Unlike George III and her uncle George IV, Queen Victoria was never particularly interested in furnishings. She enjoyed comfort and convenience, but she was perfectly happy to accept Duncannon’s elegant taste. If the kitchens were damp and smelt, if the windows were not cleaned, if the footmen misbehaved – those were problems for her Master of the Household and Lehzen, who also acted as her secretary. Unaccustomed to dealing with a large income, she soon began to wonder how she was running up such bills.
But the Queen rapidly realized how much she had to learn in her brave new world. Fortunately she found in her Whig Prime Minister not only an excellent tutor, but also a man she could love like a father. To her mother she was still a girl; Lord Melbourne made her feel like a woman and a queen. Even at fifty-eight he was still charming and handsome enough to win the love and admiration of an impressionable young woman.
William, 2nd Lord Melbourne, was immensely experienced both in politics and in life. Born William Lamb, he had been spoilt by his remarkable but somewhat scandalous mother Elizabeth, Lady Melbourne. At his father’s houses, Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire and Melbourne House in Piccadilly, leaders of the Whig party were frequent visitors. At Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, Lamb was a brilliant student. He was called to the Bar in 1804 but gave up the law for politics. In 1805 he married the notorious Caroline Ponsonby, the only daughter of the 3rd Earl of Bessborough and the sister of Duncannon. After years of patient kindness and tolerance, Lamb finally left her in 1825. She died three years later, a sad wreck.
At this time, although Queen Victoria had been protected from acquaintance with William IV’s ‘bastards’, she was a child of the Regency and had been brought up among the older generation, and Melbourne taught her tolerance. However, he taught her no such tolerance in the world of politics. Although he himself could be relaxed and balanced in his judgement of his political opponents, the Queen was violently partisan. She had been brought up in the Whig world, had visited the grandees in their country houses and had absorbed their attitudes. William IV had been surrounded by Tories: to Queen Adelaide Whigs, radicals and revolutionaries were all the same, all out to destroy the monarchy. William IV had genuinely tried to maintain some balance. But Queen Victoria hated the Tories with a blind passion. She would have no Tories to her first banquet in Buckingham Palace, nor to her Coronation nor later to her wedding. When Melbourne insisted that she at least invite the Duke of Wellington to the banquet, she grudgingly agreed. But his place card read ‘The Chancellor of the University of Oxford’. Wellington was amused and preserved the card.
During the first years of her reign, she was completely besotted with her Prime Minister. As far as she was concerned, Melbourne was the fount of all wisdom: even her beloved Uncle Leopold took second place. But she became more and more imperious and wilful. Just as Melbourne had been unable to contain the extravagances of his wife, Caro Lamb, so he was unable to supply Queen Victoria with the discipline she needed. In private life and in politics he worked on the principle that fires would burn themselves out provided one did not poke them.
Melbourne was a Whig because of his upbringing, but he was more in sympathy with moderate Tories than with reforming Whigs such as Grey and Russell. Had he exerted himself he could have given some balance to Queen Victoria’s political judgement. But in fact the young Queen was always to be more interested in people than in politics.
In the organization and running of the Palace, Queen Victoria had surprisingly little help. In the first years Lehzen acted as her Private Secretary and was in part responsible for running the Household. Apparently Lehzen kept the Queen’s Ladies-in-Waiting happy and comfortable, but there were many clashes with Lord Conyngham, the Lord Chamberlain, who was a difficult man, unaccustomed to interference in the running of the Palace. There was a Lord Steward whose functions were largely nominal but who looked after the kitchens; and the head of the Office of Woods took care of the outside of the Palace. But these officials did not live in the Palace and for the last twenty years had been happy to take their perks and the salaries without taking much trouble. Consequently – as will be seen – the organization of the Palace was appalling.
The Queen was too inexperienced and too full of the excitement of her new Palace to notice; Melbourne, who should have seen, was blind to such things. His own homes were badly organized and he was the last person to advise Queen Victoria when she found her household expenses inexplicably enormous.
Early in her reign Queen Victoria was to face two crises: the case of Lady Flora Hastings, a Lady-in-Waiting to the Duchess of Kent, which was to bring Queen Victoria and the Court into ill-repute; and the problem of the Ladies of the Bedchamber. In both cases the Queen was too inexperienced and too headstrong to cope. If only Conroy had not been such a villain and her mother so ineffectual: she could have done with a competent major-domo and a wise older woman to advise her. In the following years the Queen was to learn that indeed ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown’! That perennial plague of palaces – jealousy and intrigue among family, courtiers and advisers – was to infect her Court.
Sir John Conroy was still fomenting bitterness between the Queen and her mother, for though he knew he had been beaten he was demanding too high a bribe for his departure, and was deeply involved in the first of the two great dramas that devastated the Queen in 1839.
The case of Lady Flora Hastings was a complicated one that is not clear even today. Briefly, in January 1839 it seemed from her physical appearance that Lady Flora might be pregnant. The Queen, Lehzen and her ladies noticed; even Sir James Clark, who had been consulted by Lady Flora for ‘protuberance of the stomach’, told someone that she might indeed be with child. The fact that she was a close friend of Conroy’s – who, the Queen told Melbourne, was ‘capable of every villainy’ – was enough to convince his enemies that he might be the father. The doctor, who had only examined her fully dressed, now asked for a proper examination, which at first Lady Flora refused, then agreed but demanded a second opinion. Sir Charles Clarke – a specialist – was called in. He examined her and gave Lady Flora a certificate, signed also by the first doctor, which stated that ‘there are no grounds for believing pregnancy does exist or ever has existed’. Meanwhile Lady Flora, whom the Queen refused to see until her innocence could be proved, was becoming increasingly ill. The Queen attempted to make amends by receiving Lady Flora; later she visited her as she lay dying and Lady Flora thanked her for all she had done for her. In July she died: the post-mortem showed that she had suffered from cancer of the liver. For months the Queen was subjected to fierce attacks from the press and political opponents.
Barely had the Hastings scandal died when the Queen faced a new trial. Throughout history courtiers have had a considerable, though often concealed, influence on the monarch. In this case it was fear of the political influence of the Ladies of the Bedchamber, wives of prominent Whigs, that caused the crisis.
Queen Victoria must have known that her cosy relationship with Lord Melbourne and the Whigs could not last for ever, but in her view the Queen’s government should always be Whig, the party that had ridden into power in 1830 and achieved the triumph of the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1832. But the coalition of Whigs and radicals that had driven the successful campaign was now disintegrating. Some great radical reformers, such as Sir Francis Burdett, had joined the Tory party; others were pulling in the opposite direction and Melbourne was too easy-going and indolent to hold them together. The collapse came on 7 May 1839 when the government was brought down over a comparatively minor crisis – a revolt of Jamaican settlers.
Now a weeping Queen said goodbye to her Prime Minister: ‘All my happiness gone! that happy peaceful life destroyed,’ she sobbed in her journal, ‘that dearest kind Lord Melbourne no more my Minister.’10 She saw
Wellington, significantly not in that little Blue Closet where she had always sat at ease with Lord Melbourne, but in the formal Yellow Drawing Room. She had not lost her hostility to and fear of the Iron Duke.
On his recommendation she sent for Sir Robert Peel. The contrast between the urbane and relaxed Melbourne and the shy and awkward Peel appalled her: she made the interview as difficult as possible. She was to tell Melbourne that she was ‘very much collected, civil and high’. But when she realized that Peel expected her to change her Ladies of the Bedchamber – who were all Whig supporters – she was not just ‘high’: she was outraged. She wrote in her Journal: ‘I said I could not give up any of my ladies, and never had imagined such a thing. He asked if I meant to retain all. “All,” I said. “The Mistress of the Robes and the ladies of the Bedchamber?” I replied, “All.”’11
In fact Peel probably had not meant to be so sweeping, but the Queen managed to manoeuvre him into resigning over the issue. Melbourne, to the Queen’s rapture, but to his embarrassment, was back. Peel was told that the changes proposed in the Queen’s Household were ‘contrary to usage and repugnant to her feelings’ and the Whigs returned to power.12
Queen Victoria was triumphant. ‘The Queen of England,’ she had written to Melbourne, ‘will not submit to such trickery.’ Her repeated use of the phrase ‘Queen of England’ is significant. Queen Victoria already saw herself performing on the world stage. Melbourne and the Whigs might belong to their own powerful ‘cousinry’; Queen Victoria’s ‘cousinry’ crossed national boundaries.