Never had I been so happy to see Kensington as I was on the day our carriage again rolled through the palace gates. I devoutly wished it would be a VERY long time before I had to spend another day like the previous twenty-five.
Chapter 14
UNCLE LEOPOLD, 1835
At the end of September we did travel again, but this time for the happiest of reasons: My dearest uncle Leopold came from Belgium by steamer, and we met him and Queen Louise in Ramsgate. What a joy to throw myself into the arms of my uncle, who had always been like a father to me! I had not seen him for four years and two months. This was the first time I had met my aunt, and I loved her at once. Such a perfection! She had a very pretty, slight figure, hair of a lovely fair color, light blue eyes, and a charming expression. She was dressed simply in light brown silk with a sky-blue bonnet. She was only seven years older than I, and in a very short time we became like sisters.
Uncle Leopold came to my room only an hour after their arrival. “I will be here for just one week,” he said, sitting down by my side, “and we must make the most of our time, for there are serious matters to be dealt with.”
Dear Daisy quietly slipped away, leaving us alone. “The most serious matter is John Conroy,” I told him bluntly.
“I’ve heard this from more than one source, and I’m not surprised,” replied my uncle. “I once thought highly of Sir John, but he seems now to be suffering from a form of madness. He desperately wants authority as a means to raise himself and his family to the level he believes he deserves. The way to that is obviously through you. Tell me what he does that offends you.”
At last, I could speak to someone who understood and could help me! “He treats me like a foolish child,” I said, “one who must be guided in her every word and act by a strong, intelligent person like himself. He boasts about his dreadful Kensington System with a strict rule for everything I do, and he isolates me from the king and queen and nearly everyone else. The second serious matter is Mamma. I’m still not permitted to descend the stairs without holding someone’s hand! I’m still not permitted to have my own bedroom! Mamma allows Sir John to speak to everyone of my youth and inexperience and to use that as an excuse for exercising authority if dear King William should die before I come of age.”
Once started, I could hardly stop.
Uncle Leopold strode to the window and stared out toward the sea, frills of whitecaps now under heavy gray clouds. “We are aware that the king is in failing health. We pray for his strength to endure until you are of age—and well beyond, if it be God’s will. In the event that he dies before your eighteenth birthday, your mother will rule in your stead as regent, but it is Sir John who will pull the levers. Even after you’re of age, he’ll look for ways to control you.”
“Mamma says I may not come of age until I am twenty-one.”
“She said that?” Uncle Leopold let out a bark of laughter. “It is not your mamma’s place to decide!” he exclaimed and continued his restless pacing. “I shall have a frank talk with my sister. And with Sir John Conroy as well.”
I nearly wept with gratitude. I hoped Mamma would see that I was becoming more capable every day and took my duties VERY seriously, that I was not a silly, foolish child but a young woman with my eyes fixed on my future responsibilities. I did not need her lectures, and I most certainly did not need Sir John’s.
I was still exhausted from our tour and had felt poorly for several days. My throat was sore and my head ached. Daisy had given me a dose of tincture of rhubarb—nasty stuff—that was her usual treatment when I complained of being unwell, but it did little to improve me. Worried, Daisy had suggested that my physician, Dr. Clark, should be called down from London to examine me. Mamma and Sir John had disagreed, and I was determined not to allow my fatigue or my illness to interfere with my time with my DEAR uncle and aunt. But now, in the midst of this VERY important conversation with my uncle, the room began to spin.
“Victoria? Can you hear me, dear niece?”
Uncle’s voice seemed to be coming from a great distance. Somewhere a bell rang, and another voice called out, “Send for Dr. Clark!” Uncle Leopold murmured close to my ear. “I will not allow him to be turned away without examining you.”
I slept, and time passed. The physician came and sat by my bedside, peering down at me. Mamma was with him. He asked me how I felt.
“I feel so very tired,” I began.
“The princess is given to whims,” Mamma quickly interrupted. “And her companion Baroness Lehzen has a vivid imagination.”
I closed my eyes. How can she say that? But I felt too ill, too dispirited, to argue.
“Allow me, your highness,” said Dr. Clark, and placed his ear against my chest. “Nothing to be concerned about,” he concluded after listening for a moment. “A dose or two of rhubarb tincture and she will be right as rain.”
He went away, even when Daisy told him she had already tried that remedy.
Mamma still insisted there was nothing wrong with me.
In a day or two I began to feel somewhat recovered; no doubt it was the relief of having Uncle Leopold and his delightful wife there with me. Aunt Louise had completely won my heart during their short visit. One afternoon she brought her French hairdresser to try arranging my hair in several different ways, “in the style of the Continent,” she said. A maid followed with her arms full of dresses from Aunt Louise’s own wardrobe.
“That is the perfect color for you,” Aunt Louise announced when I held up a rich ruby velvet. “It goes beautifully with your fair skin.”
“Mamma favors very pale colors, and she prefers white above all,” I told her. “To emphasize my youth and innocence.”
“You are sixteen, are you not? Perhaps it is time to emphasize your maturity and elegance, as the French would,” said Aunt Louise. “No doubt your mother will dislike this purple gown as well.” She spread out the rustling taffeta skirt.
I laughed. “She’ll hate it!”
“Why not try it on?”
I did not need to be coaxed. The dress was too long and the sleeves hung over my fingers, but Aunt Louise used pins to make a few tucks here and there until it fit perfectly. I gazed at my image in the looking glass.
“Very sophisticated,” she said approvingly. “Allow me to make you a gift of it, if you’d like to have it. Your seamstress can make the adjustments.”
“Oh, yes!” But then I said, sighing, “Mamma will not permit me to wear a dress that is, as you say, so sophisticated.” Reluctantly I began to remove the elegant dress.
“I am sure you find it hard to imagine,” Aunt Louise said as helped me out of it, “but one day soon you will be free to decide what you wish to wear. You will no longer have to dress for a role that Sir John or anyone else has chosen for you.”
On the day they were to leave, Aunt Louise selected four lovely dresses to leave with me, among them the beautiful purple one that I loved most of all. “Soon you will be wearing it,” she said gaily. “And I shall send you several more,” she promised. “Hats, too.”
We traveled from Ramsgate to Dover by carriage to see them off. Uncle Leopold insisted that I be allowed to ride with him for one last conversation before they boarded the steamer bound for Belgium. Mamma and Sir John no doubt disapproved of this arrangement, but they could not forbid it.
“I have spoken sternly to Conroy and to your mother,” Uncle Leopold assured me. “They do not dare get rid of Baroness Lehzen, and you know that you can rely on her support. But you must be on guard: Conroy is determined to have himself installed as your private secretary even before you come of age. Then, when you become queen, Sir John will be precisely where he intends.” Uncle lifted my chin with his finger and gazed at me earnestly. “Do not allow him the slightest opportunity to point out your youth and inexperience. Discipline, my dear, is the key.”
“I will not disappoint you, dearest uncle,” I promised.
“Of course you won’t, Victoria,” he said, patting my ha
nd.
As the steamer moved slowly away from the Dover pier, I stood with Mamma and the Conroys and Lady Flora. Uncle Leopold waved his hat, and Aunt Louise fluttered a white handkerchief until the ship was swallowed up in the mist.
Chapter 15
VILLAIN, 1835
I would not allow anyone, especially Sir John, to see how wretched I felt after Uncle Leopold and Aunt Louise had gone. But I could not keep up appearances for long, and a few days later I gave in to my illness. I was feverish and barely able to swallow. Daisy, truly frightened, asked Mamma to summon Dr. Clark again. But Mamma dismissed Daisy’s worries as needless.
“Your mother persists in her belief that it is all our imagination, that you only think you are ill,” Daisy reported, her lips pressed in an angry line.
“Mamma, please,” I begged when my mother came to see me. Speaking seemed SUCH an effort. “I am so very, very ill.”
“Dr. Clark is in London,” she told Daisy, loud enough for me to hear. “It is unthinkable to summon him all the way to Ramsgate.”
“Then we must call in a doctor from the village!” Daisy insisted. “The princess is seriously ill.”
I lay quite still, my eyes closed. Sir John entered the conversation. “That would be a foolish thing to do,” I heard him say. “If word were to get out that the princess is ill, the whole town would be gossiping. It would be damaging to our reputation.”
“You would gamble with the princess’s life for political reasons?” Daisy demanded, raising her voice.
“The local press has already begun to ask embarrassing questions,” Sir John said sternly. “They claim to be making special inquiry into the rumor that their future queen is dangerously ill—‘hovering at death’s door,’ is how they have stated it.”
“And what exactly have you told them?” Daisy challenged.
“That one of the servants has fallen ill, and the princess suffers with a very slight indisposition. And that is what you must say, baroness, should anyone ask you.”
You lied to them, I thought, my head throbbing. Just as you lie to me, to Mamma, to everyone.
“We must let the princess rest,” Daisy said, her voice trembling with anger. “But I insist that she needs medical attention, and she needs it immediately.”
All three left the room, the door closed, and I fell into a feverish sleep. When I awoke, a new doctor hovered by my bedside. He produced a pocket mirror to reflect light into my throat and peered at it. “Dr. Clark will come down from London tomorrow,” he said kindly, and then he went away.
Dear Daisy wrung out a cloth in cool water and placed it on my forehead. “The town doctor did not wish to prescribe any treatment before your usual physician has seen you. A mistake, in my view.”
“My usual physician has been convinced by Mamma and Sir John that nothing is wrong with me,” I whispered. My throat was so swollen that I could not speak aloud. I drifted off to sleep again.
Dr. Clark did come the next day. He placed one end of a wooden tube against my chest and held the other end to his ear. He, too, looked into my throat. At the conclusion of his examination he told Mamma, “The princess suffers from a bilious fever. I recommend that she receive complete rest to allow her to recover. Under no account may she be taken back to Kensington until her fever has dissipated.”
This time Mamma did not protest that I was subject to whims or dear Daisy to flights of fancy.
For the next month I remained in the care of dear good Daisy. Mamma visited me every day and seemed much concerned about me, but Daisy rarely left my side. While I was ill, so weak that I had to be carried up and down stairs, Sir John always accompanied Mamma on her visits and told Lehzen to leave.
I dreaded these visits. The subject turned again and again to my future, and I was much relieved when one morning Mamma came alone. Daisy gave me a long look and left us.
Mamma drew a chair close to my bedside. “You must understand, dear Victoria, that it is very unlikely you will be fit to reign on your own, should you come to the throne even once you are eighteen,” Mamma explained in a syrupy voice. “This unfortunate illness proves that you will need a great deal of assistance in performing even the least demanding of a queen’s duties. Fortunately”—she smiled insincerely—“we have the ablest of persons here to be of service, to you and to the country.”
“I suppose by ‘ablest of persons’ you mean Sir John,” I muttered.
“Yes, I do refer to Sir John Conroy!” Mamma replied brightly. “Until you are eighteen I will be your regent, of course. But once you are eighteen, or more likely twenty-one, then a private secretary can be of the utmost help. And therefore, my darling Victoria, I have here a little paper for you to sign—a contract, we shall call it—in which you name Sir John to that position.”
“I do not wish to do this, Mamma,” I said as firmly as possible.
“It is wrong of you to refuse, when Sir John has done so much for you,” Mamma said in a tone intended to make me feel guilty.
“I will not sign.”
Cajoling and coaxing, Mamma tried every way to persuade me. I refused. When that failed, she tried to convince me that I was spoiled and ungrateful to refuse. Still I remained unmoved, until finally Mamma flounced angrily out of the room.
Daisy had not yet returned when Sir John appeared, smiling broadly, joking as usual. “You’re looking very well, Victoria! Ready to get up and dance a quadrille, I should say!” He asked what I had eaten that day.
“A dose of quinine and a little veal broth,” I answered.
“Good, good! And if in fact you’re not ready to dance, perhaps you’d enjoy a promenade in the garden?”
I shook my head.
“Ah, but look how the sun is shining! It will do you a great deal of good! I will carry you down. Just for a few minutes.”
“No,” I said.
“Very well,” said Sir John less agreeably. He sat down and leaned toward me, his face only inches from mine. “Now I want to have a serious talk with you, my dear princess.” He went over the same arguments that Mamma had advanced—how I would need help, how he was the one person in the world to provide that help, how I must now sign the paper making it so.
“You waste your time, Sir John. I will not sign,” I repeated wearily. “Now please leave me to rest.”
I turned my head away and closed my eyes. I felt him bending over me, his breath on my face. “Stubborn, insufferable termagant!” he hissed in my ear.
My eyes flew open. I, a termagant? A quarrelsome scold? He had never spoken to me so harshly. I gathered my strength and sat up. “Get out of my sight, Captain Conroy,” I said, spitting out the words. “Do not come here again and attempt to coerce me. I will not sign your paper.”
We glared at each other. Sir John moved away, and I fell back on my pillow. He paused at the door and turned to utter one last threat. “Your rebellious behavior is very painful to your dear mother. It could bring great harm to her health.”
“I am very sorry that she finds it so,” I said, staring him down. “But I will not change my mind, and I will not sign.”
The door slammed behind him. I lay in my bed, trembling, for what seemed an interminable length of time until dear Daisy burst in, breathless. “I would have returned much sooner,” she explained, “but your mother wished to speak to me on several matters and kept me for much longer than I wished. I could not seem to get away.”
“It’s all right, Daisy. I know why she detained you,” I said, and described my visit from Sir John.
“That villain!” she cried. “He’s clearly becoming desperate. Is there nothing I can do to keep him away from you?”
“Dearest Daisy,” I said, “I’m more concerned about keeping him away from you. My greatest fear is that while I’m ill, Mamma and Sir John will find a way to dismiss you, and I won’t be able to prevent it.”
“You may not be able to do much, Victoria, but there are others who can,” she reassured me. “The duchess of Northumberland is
aware of the situation and has written to your sister. Fidi advised the duchess to go to King William himself. Lady Charlotte has great influence with the king, and if his majesty directs that I must stay, then I stay. I believe that at least for now my position is secure.”
Her words were reassuring. There were only four people in the world in whom I could put my whole trust: dearest Daisy and Fidi, and my uncle Leopold and aunt Louise. Excluded from the list was Mamma, whom I had come to despise. So long as she remained in the thrall of the man I hated, I would never trust her. It was dearest Daisy who would forever be my true mother.
As the days and weeks crawled by, Daisy watched over me tirelessly and cared for me tenderly. She massaged my feet whenever I asked and read to me to make the hours pass more pleasantly. Mamma’s visits were brief. More often, she sent gifts. Once it was a print showing the harbor at Ramsgate. Another time, it was a china figurine, a shepherdess carrying a small sheep, with a note attached: “You are my dearest lamb.”
Sir John made no further attempts to bully me. I did wonder if he had given up, or if he was planning some other devious way to get the power he craved.
Chapter 16
RECOVERY, 1836
During my illness that autumn I did not make any entries in my journal, but as my health improved I resumed the habit. I began to draw again and attempted a self-portrait by sketching my image in the glass—a good likeness, though the mouth was too small. I wrote to Uncle Leopold, who never failed to send me his weekly letter, and assured him that I was feeling much better.
In January, Dr. Clark pronounced me well enough to leave Ramsgate and issued explicit instructions for improving my health. “Regular walks every day without fail, indoors if the weather is intolerable. Take care not to sit too long at your lessons but get up frequently and move about. A standing desk would be advisable.”
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