QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  She had already had a conversation with 'good, faithful' Baron Stock-mar over breakfast, written to her uncle, King Leopold, signing herself for the first time 'your devoted and attached Niece, Victoria R.' and to Princess Feodora, assuring her that she would 'remain for life' her 'devoted attached Sister, V.R.'.[vii] She had also written a letter of condolence to her aunt, Queen Adelaide, whom she addressed as 'Her Majesty the Queen, Windsor Castle' and, when it was intimated to her that she should have written 'Her Majesty, the Queen Dowager', she replied, 'I am quite aware of Her Majesty's altered status, but I would rather not be the first person to remind her of it.'3 In her letter she assured her that she must remain at Windsor Castle just as long as she liked.

  At nine o'clock she had received the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, talking to him 'of COURSE quite ALONE' as she intended 'always' to do with all her Ministers, and assuring him, as King Leopold had advised her to do, that she intended to 'retain him and the rest of the present Ministry at the head of affairs and that it could not be in better hands than his'.4 She had had another brief conversation with him before entering the Red Saloon for the Council meeting, going into the room by herself 'quite plainly dressed, and in mourning'.[viii] She had been asked if she would like to be accompanied by the Great Officers of State, but she had decided to go in 'quite alone'.5

  There never was anything like the first impression she produced [Charles Greville wrote in his diary], or the chorus of praise and admiration which is raised about her manner and behaviour, and certainly not without justice. It was very extraordinary, and something far beyond what was looked for. Her extreme youth and inexperience, and the ignorance of the world concerning her, naturally excited intense curiosity to see how she would act on this occasion, and there was a considerable assemblage at the Palace, notwithstanding the short notice which was given.6

  She bowed to the company, took her seat, read a short speech written for her by Lord Melbourne in 'a clear, distinct' voice 'without any appearance of fear or embarrassment', then offered her hand to be kissed by the Privy Councillors who came forward to be sworn one after the other, following her two uncles, the Dukes of Cumberland and Sussex,[ix] and blushing 'up to the eyes', so Greville noticed, as these 'two old men' knelt before her to swear allegiance.

  Her manner to them was very graceful and engaging; she kissed them both and rose from her chair and moved towards the Duke of Sussex, who was farthest from her and too infirm to reach her. She seemed rather bewildered at the multitude of men who were sworn ... [But] she went through the whole ceremony (occasionally looking at Melbourne for instruction when she had any doubt what to do, which hardly ever occurred) and with perfect calmness and self-possession, but at the same time with a graceful modesty.7

  She was 'perfectly composed and dignified', 'though a red spot on either cheek showed her mental agitation', Lord Dalmeny confirmed; while the Duke of Wellington declared that 'if she had been his own daughter he could not have desired to see her perform her part better': her personality not only filled her chair, 'she filled the room'. It was noticed with satisfaction that not by a smile or gesture did she indicate partiality, favour or disapproval for any of the Councillors who came forward to kiss her hand.

  Her voice [one of the Tory Councillors, John Wilson Croker, said] which is naturally beautiful, was clear and untroubled and her eye was bright and calm, neither bold nor downcast ... There was a blush on her cheek which made her look both handsome and interesting; and certainly she did look as interesting and handsome as any young lady I ever saw.8

  Such praise of her modest yet regal demeanour could be heard all over London during the next few days as she fulfilled one engagement after another. When the Council meeting was over on the first day of her reign (and she was seen through the glass door rubbing her hands and skipping away like a schoolgirl) she saw both Lord Melbourne and Baron Stockmar again; she also saw the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Home Secretary, Lord John Russell, and the Master of the Horse, Lord Albemarle. She appointed Dr James Clark her physician and created a special office in the Household, that of Attendant on the Queen, for Baroness Lehzen who wisely declined accepting an official position for fear of arousing jealousy but who, the Queen said, must 'ALWAYS remain' with her as her 'friend'.9 She dismissed Sir John Conroy from her Household and would have liked to have had him dismissed from her mother's also, but this she could not yet contrive to do. She had her bed removed from her mother's room and arranged for a doorway to be made between Lehzen's bedroom and the room where she herself was to sleep. Before going to bed that night, she went downstairs to say 'goodnight to Mama etc'.10

  In her long diary entry for that day this was the first mention of the Duchess since she had been awakened by her at six o'clock that morning. It was immediately apparent that the relationship between her mother and Conroy and herself was now to be transformed. On this the first night of her reign she had her dinner alone, and was clearly determined to demonstrate her independence: her mother was not to presume to come to her whenever she liked. 'I had to remind her,' she told Lord Melbourne, 'who I was.' 'Quite right,' Melbourne commented, 'disagreeable but necessary.'

  Lord Melbourne advised her not to answer the notes the Duchess sent her and to let him reply to them formally on her behalf. 'My appeal was to you as my daughter,' the Duchess replied crossly, ignoring the Prime Minister's missives, 'not to the Queen.'

  When the Queen and her mother did dine together for the first time there was trouble over the precedence accorded to the Duchess who was placed at table below the Queen's aunts. 'Oh! what a scene did she make.' Then there was trouble over the Duchess's demand for the rank and precedence of Queen Mother which her daughter rejected immediately. 'It would do my mother no good,' she said, 'and would no doubt, offend my aunts.' Frequently she discussed her relationship with the Duchess with Lord Melbourne to whom she admitted her dislike of her. Melbourne advised her to be patient and polite, however much her mother exasperated her by her constant complaints and criticisms, her protestations that she ate too much or went to the theatre too often: it would never do if the Queen were held responsible for a formal break in their relationship. All the same, Melbourne made no secret of his own opinion of the Duchess in his talks with the Queen. She was 'a liar and a hypocrite'; he had never known 'so foolish a woman'. This was 'very true', the Queen agreed and they both laughed. For her daughter's nineteenth birthday the Duchess pointedly presented her with a copy of King Lear.'11

  It was all the more galling to the Duchess because her daughter was, by contrast, especially respectful and affectionate in her dealings with Queen Adelaide, the Queen Dowager, and generous towards the late King's bastard children whose existence her mother continued to ignore as completely as she could.

  The antipathy between mother and daughter was also exacerbated by the Duchess's insistence that Sir John Conroy and his family should be received at Court and the Queen's determination that they should certainly not.

  I thought you would not expect me to invite Sir John Conroy after his conduct towards me for some years past [she told her mother in one characteristic letter], and still more so after the unaccountable manner in which he behaved towards me, a short while before I came to the Throne.12

  The Queen also declined to grant permission for the Duchess to take Sir John and their friend, Lady Flora Hastings, to the proclamation ceremony, on the advice, so she said, of Lord Melbourne; a refusal which provoked an angry protest from her mother: 'Take care, Victoria, you know your prerogative! Take care that Lord Melbourne is not King.'13

  Yet another angry letter from the Duchess was prompted when Conroy was refused an invitation to a banquet at the Guildhall. In this 'extraordinary' letter the Duchess maintained that not to invite him would 'look like the greatest persecution'. 'The Queen should forget what dis pleased the Princess,' her mother added. 'Recollect that I have the greatest regard for Sir John, I cannot forget what he has done for me and for you, although he had the misfortune
to displease you.'14

  The Queen, however, was not to be moved: she could not, she said, depart from the line of conduct she had adopted, upset though she was by the scenes her mother made and the letters she received from her. She was soon to decide that her mother never had been very fond of her.

  There was also trouble over the Duchess's debts which by the end of 1837 were to amount to well over £50,000. Prompted by Conroy, she had asked her daughter to contribute £30,000 towards the repayment of this sum. She herself would find the rest of the money, provided her income was suitably increased. After the matter had been considered by the Cabinet, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Thomas Spring-Rice, was authorized to say that they were prepared to recommend to Parliament the payment of those debts which had been incurred before the Queen came to the throne. This offer the Duchess promptly and indignantly rejected, declaring at the same time that she would not in any case negotiate with her Majesty's servants: she would rather state her case directly to Parliament.

  Ministers then proposed increasing the Duchess's income from £22,000 to £30,000 a year, and this was accepted. At the same time the Queen's income was settled at £385,000 a year, including £60,000 for her Privy Purse and £303,760 for the salaries and expenses of her Household. In addition she enjoyed the revenues of the duchies of Lancaster and Cornwall at that time worth about £30,000 a year.

  The Queen, who had been taught to be careful with her pocket money as a girl, had frugal instincts; but, now that she was so well provided for, she was generous with her new-found wealth, continuing pensions to those who had received them in her predecessor's time and offering, for instance, £300 to her relatively poor half-sister, Feodora, for her expenses whenever she was able to come over to England to visit her. She also settled her father's debts as she had long had in mind to do; but finally settling her mother's was a much more difficult and vexatious problem and led to the Queen's receiving further angry letters from the Duchess who had soon overspent the increase in her allowance, even though she had been most generously helped by Coutts & Co., the bankers, both before and after her daughter's accession.14 'Got such a letter from Mama, oh, oh such a letter,' the Queen was later to write in her diary on 15 January 1838.15 She and Conroy really ought to remember, she added, 'what incalculable falsehoods they have told about these debts. During the King's [William IV's] life they said there were no debts and that it was all a calumny of the King's - which is really infamous'. She was 'much shocked' by it all, and even more so when she heard that her mother's debts had appreciably increased despite the additional income she was receiving. She was likely to get into 'a dreadful scrape', Lord Melbourne observed. The Queen said that she really ought to be able to manage on the handsome income now allowed her. 'Yes, if her income really were well managed,' Melbourne said, 'but not if he makes money by it.'16

  Chapter 8

  MELBOURNE

  'It has become his province to educate, instruct and form the most interesting mind and character in the world.'

  As the days passed people spoke of the new Queen with mounting enthusiasm. A large crowd stood in the courtyard of St James's Palace and cheered her loudly as she stood by an open window to hear the heralds proclaim her Queen and it was 'most touching' to see the colour drain from her cheeks and the tears well up in her eyes. She was cheered again quite as vociferously when she drove to the House of Lords for the dissolution of Parliament for the first time on 17 July 1837 and, later, when she went to the Lord Mayor's dinner in Guildhall. It really was 'most gratifying', she told Princess Feodora, 'to have met with such a reception in the greatest capital in the World and from thousands and thousands of people. I really do not deserve all this kindness for what I have yet done. '1

  Charles Greville said that at her second Privy Council meeting she presided 'with as much ease as if She had been doing nothing else all her life.' 'She looked very well, and though so small in stature, and without any pretension to beauty, the gracefulness of her manner and the good expression of her countenance give her on the whole a very agreeable appearance, and with her youth inspire an excessive interest in all who approach her.'2

  Princess Lieven, not the most indulgent of critics, was much impressed by the contrast between her childish face and sometimes rather diffident smile and the dignity of her queenly manner. Lord Palmerston, the Foreign Secretary, said that 'any Ministers who had to deal with her would soon find that she was no ordinary person'.

  Many of those who saw her now for the first time were surprised to see how very small she was, surely no more than five feet in height if that. She herself told Lord Melbourne that the 'worry and torment' of the 'Kensington System' had stunted her growth. She said as much to King Leopold whose letters frequently referred to her diminutive size and who wrote to her teasingly as though she could do something about it if she put her mind to it: in one letter he told her that he had heard reports that she was growing at last and expressed the hope that she would 'persist in so laudable a measure'. He had, however, he later regretted, 'not been able to ascertain that she had really grown taller lately'; he felt he 'must recommend it strongly'. In a subsequent letter, thanking her for sending him a portrait of her, he commented that 'she shone more by her virtues than by her tallness'.

  It was generally agreed that, as well as being very short, she was a little too plump and really, it had to be admitted, rather plain with the protuberant blue eyes and receding chin of her Hanoverian grandfather, George III. Within a few weeks of Victoria's accession, the wife of Andrew Stevenson, the American Minister in London, watched her at a dinner. 'Her bust, like most English women's is very good,' Mrs Stevenson wrote, 'hands and feet are small and very pretty ... Her eyes are blue, large and full; her mouth, which is her worst feature, is generally a little open; her teeth small and short, and she shows her gums when she laughs, which is rather disfiguring.'3 The laugh itself, however, Mrs Stevenson decided on a later occasion, was 'particularly delightful', 'so full of girlish glee and gladness'. Others also spoke of this pleasing, uninhibited laugh and a voice which was, and remained, exceptionally clear and melodious. Her smile, too, was described as enchanting, and her deportment at once graceful and impressive.

  Thomas Creevey, who was invited to dine at Brighton Pavilion in October, said that 'a more homely little being you never beheld, when she is at her ease, and she is evidently dying to be always more so. She laughs in real earnest, opening her mouth as wide as it can go, showing not very pretty gums ... She eats quite as heartily as she laughs, I think I may say she gobbles ... She blushes and laughs every instant in so natural a way as to disarm anybody. Her voice is perfect, and so is the expression of her face, when she means to say or do a pretty thing.'4

  After a conversation with her, Lord Holland, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, came away 'quite a courtier' and 'a bit of a lover'. 'Like the rest of the world', he later decided, he was both 'captivated and surprised'.[x]5

  Although shy and often uncertain of herself in the presence of people whom she took to be intellectually superior to herself, she was already capable of assuming an alarming hauteur and fixing those who had offended her in a glare of disapproval from faintly hooded eyes, the disconcerting gaze of the basilisk. She had not been Queen for long when her Mistress of the Robes, the grand, young and beautiful Duchess of Sutherland, was half an hour late for dinner. She did not hesitate to give her 'a very proper snub', telling her she 'hoped it might not happen another time'. She had occasion to reprimand her Maids-of-Honour also. She did not like doing this, she told Lord Melbourne; but, he said, she must start as she meant to go on, otherwise they would take advantage of her. She was determined not to let them do that.

  As Charles Greville observed, the young Queen had already begun to exhibit 'signs of a peremptory disposition, and 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'.

  She could also be self-centred, apparently
quite unaware of the difficulties and discomforts she was imposing upon others. In September that year she was riding in her carriage at Windsor when, feeling the cold, she had got out to walk. 'Of course, all her ladies had to do the same,' Lady Tavistock told Thomas Creevey, 'and the group being very wet, their feet soon got into the same state. Poor dear Lady Tavistock, when she got back to the Castle, could get no dry stockings, her maid being out and her cloathes all locked up ... I am sure [she] thinks the Queen a resolute little tit.'6

  So did some of her other ladies who were inconsiderately required to stand in the drawing room until the gentlemen came up after dinner, which they were required to do soon after the ladies had withdrawn. '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,' Lord Holland related. '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 room and eagerly availing themselves of their release when the Queen took her seat on the sofa.'7

  Nor did most guests find the evenings very lively thereafter. Charles Greville, invited to dine one day in March 1838, described a characteristic large dinner party attended by, amongst others, Lord Rosebery and his wife, Lord and Lady Grey, Lord Ossulston and the Hanoverian Minister, Baron Munchhausen. Just before dinner was announced the Queen entered the room with the Duchess of Kent, preceded by the Lord Chamberlain, Lord Conyngham, and followed by her six ladies.[xi]

  She shook hands with the women, and made a sweeping bow to the men, and directly went in to dinner, conducted by Munchhausen, who sat next to her, and Conyngham on the other side ... After the eating was over the Queen's health was given by [her Chief Equerry] who sat at one end of the table: a vile, vulgar custom, and, however proper it may be to drink her health elsewhere, it is bad taste to have it given by her Officer at her own table ... However it has been customary in the last two reigns ...8