QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  But to most observers she was a model of dignity and composure as she received the welcome accorded by the boys of Westminster School, whose traditional privilege it was to shout a Latin greeting to the monarch on such occasions. She was equally dignified as she turned from side to side to acknowledge the congregation's shouts of 'God Save Queen Victoria', and as she undertook to 'govern the people of this United Kingdom ... according to the statutes in Parliament ... to cause law and justice, in mercy, to be executed in all [her] judgements ... [and] to maintain the laws of God, the true profession of the Gospel and the Protestant Reformed religion established by law.'

  'All this,' she replied to the Archbishop of Canterbury in a clear and steady voice, 'I promise to do.'9

  She appeared undaunted by the solemnity of the occasion, the blaze of diamonds, the glittering gold plate on the altar, the splendid uniforms of foreign dignitaries, the magnificent robes of the peeresses, the hundreds of faces peering down at her from the specially erected galleries draped with red cloth fringed with gold, and the solemn moment when - as she sat in St Edward's Chair with four Knights of the Garter holding a canopy of cloth of gold over her head - she was anointed by the Archbishop with holy oil, 'as Kings, priests and prophets were anointed'.

  She appeared equally composed when the crown was placed upon her head and the peers and peeresses put on their coronets and the bishops their caps to cheers and drum beats, to the notes of trumpets and the firing of guns at the Tower and in the royal parks. Indeed, although in doubt from time to time as to what she was expected to do, she seemed far more calm than the clergy, who, as Charles Greville said, 'were very imperfect in their parts and had neglected to rehearse them'.10 She was also far calmer than Lord Melbourne who was, she noticed, 'completely overcome and very much affected' when the crown was placed on her head and who, kneeling down to kiss her hand, could not hold back his tears as she 'grasped his with all [her] heart'.11

  Lord John Thynne, who, as his deputy, took the place of the elderly, infirm Dean of Westminster, admitted that 'there was a continual difficulty and embarrassment, and the Queen never knew what she was to do next'. She whispered to Thynne, who appeared to know more than his colleagues did, 'Pray tell me what to do, for they don't know!' Certainly Edward Maltby, the scholarly, 'remarkably maladroit' Bishop of Durham, who had an important role in the ceremony, 'never could tell [the Queen],' so she complained, 'what was to take place'. At one point he lost his place in the prayer book and began the Litany too soon. When the time came for the ring to be placed on her little finger, the Archbishop endeavoured to place it on her fourth. She told him it was too small; but he persisted, pressing it down so hard that she had 'the greatest difficulty' in getting it off again in the robing room afterwards and had to apply iced water to her fingers for half an hour. When she was given the extremely heavy orb she asked what she was meant to do with it. She was told that she was to carry it; but it then transpired that she had been given it too soon. By this time the Archbishop '(as usual) was so confused and puzzled and knew nothing' that he went away. She, too, was sent away to St Edward's Chapel and had to be summoned back from it when it was discovered that George Henry Law, Lord Ellenborough's brother, the Bishop of Bath and Wells, had turned over two pages at once, thus omitting an essential part of the service.12

  Nor were the lay peers and trainbearers any more adroit than the clergy. The peers gave the Queen a headache, so her Mistress of the Robes said, by 'very unceremoniously' knocking her crown instead of touching it gently in their act of homage. One of them 'actually clutched hold of it, while others might well have knocked it off altogether had she not 'guarded herself from any accident or misadventure by having it made to fit her head tightly'.13 As for the bearers of the Queen's train, they carried it 'very jerkily and badly', one of them admitted, 'never keeping step as she did, even and steadily and with much grace and dignity, the whole length of the Abbey'.14 Two of them could be heard chattering to each other throughout the service as animatedly as they might have done had they been at a ball.15 And, when the coronation medals were thrown about in the choir and lower galleries by Lord Surrey, the Treasurer of the Household, everybody scrambled 'with all their might and main to get them, and none more vigorously than the maids-of-honour!'

  All in all, Benjamin Disraeli, one of the recently elected Members of Parliament for the borough of Maidstone, told his sister, 'the want of rehearsal' was very obvious: 'Melbourne [who, feeling ill, had dosed himself with laudanum and brandy] looked very awkward and uncouth, with his coronet cocked over his nose, his robes under his feet, and holding the great Sword of State like a butcher ... The Duchess of Sutherland ... full of her situation ... walked, or rather stalked up the Abbey like Juno ... Lord Lyndhurst [the former and future Lord Chancellor] committed the faux pas of not backing from the presence ... I saw Lord Ward after the ceremony ... drinking champagne out of a pewter pot, his coronet cocked aside, his robes disordered, and his arms akimbo.'16

  Nor were Melbourne and Ward the only peers to appear dishevelled in their robes. Indeed, only two of them apparently knew how to wear them properly, both of these being practised performers in amateur theatricals. If Disraeli had gone into St Edward's Chapel - 'a small dark place behind the altar', as the Queen described it - he would have seen what Melbourne represented as being 'more unlike a Chapel than anything he had ever seen; for, what was called an Altar was covered with sandwiches, bottles of wine, etc'

  It was almost five hours before the ceremony was over; but conscious that she deserved Lord Melbourne's words of praise - 'You did it beautifully - every part of it, with so much taste; it's a thing that you can't give a person advice upon; it must be left to a person' - the Queen did not yet appear to be tired. After an hour spent changing into her purple robe of state in the robing room, then waiting there until half past four, she was taken back through crowds as dense as ever, carrying her sceptre and, heavy as it was, the orb, her close-fitting crown on her head, and the people cheering her all the way to Buckingham Palace where she dashed upstairs to give a bath to her beloved dog, Dash.17

  After dinner she went into the Duchess of Kent's room; but it was not so much to see her mother - who had burst into tears at the sight of her daughter kneeling alone in the Abbey to receive the Sacrament - as to go out on to the balcony to watch the fireworks in Hyde Park where the next day a grand fair was to be held until the following Monday night. She remained on the balcony until after midnight, when she admitted at last to feeling rather weary. 'You may depend upon it,' Melbourne told her solicitously, 'you are more tired than you think you are.' She herself, she decided, would 'ever remember this day as the proudest' of her life.18

  Chapter 10

  THE HASTINGS AFFAIR

  'I at length expressed to her my uneasiness respecting her size, and requested that at my next visit, I might be permitted to lay my hand upon her abdomen with her stays removed.'

  One day in the week after the coronation the Queen recorded in her diary that she was 'quite cross ... annoyed and put out'. Irritated as she often was by other people's illnesses, she was particularly exasperated by Lord Melbourne who had taken to his bed. He had obviously been exhausted by the service in the Abbey where he had appeared quite worn out by the weight of the Sword of State which it had been his duty to carry. 'It was most provoking and vexatious', the Queen complained, that she should be deprived of the 'agreeable daily visit' of her Prime Minister, who would talk to her so amusingly, sitting beside her so comfortingly and protectively, letting Dash, or another of her dogs, a Scotch terrier called Islay, lick his hand. 'All dogs like me,' he said complacently.

  The Queen was also put out whenever he did not come to dinner. 'Lord Melbourne dines with Lady Holland,' she wrote after one of these Melbourneless evenings. 'I wish he dined with me.' She was jealous and admitted it. She was also jealous of the beautiful Duchess of Sutherland, who often sat next to Lord Melbourne at dinner and made it almost impossible for him to talk to anyo
ne else.

  His absence was particularly tiresome at this time, as she had a meeting of the Privy Council to attend on 4 July; and there she must be without the person who made her 'feel safe and comfortable'.

  She was not feeling very well herself. A rash had broken out on her hands; and, as the summer turned into autumn, she grew increasingly prone to headaches, outbursts of irritation and bouts of lethargy during which she found it an effort to get out of bed in the morning, get dressed, or even brush her teeth. Her handwriting suffered: she wrote indistinctly, misspelling words and leaving others out.

  Lord Melbourne, by then recovered from his illness, told her she ate too much, was too fond of highly spiced food, drank too much ale and not enough wine; and did not take enough exercise: she ought to walk more in the open air. She protested that walking made her feel tired as well as sick, and she got stones in her shoes and her feet got swollen. As for Lord Melbourne's contention that she should eat only when she was hungry, she was always hungry, she retorted, so, if she followed his advice, she would be eating all day long. In any case, the Queen of Portugal was always taking exercise, yet she was very fat. It was certainly true that Victoria was putting on weight: she was weighed on 13 December and, to her consternation, discovered that she was only one pound under nine stone.1 Her skin had taken on a yellowish tinge; her eyes were sore and troublesome - she once showed Melbourne a stye which rather disgusted him - and she feared she might be going blind, as her grandfather, George III, had done. Moreover, her hands were always cold in winter and her fingers red and swollen. She admitted herself that she was 'cross and low'. By the end of the year she was given to lamenting that she was 'unfit for [her] station'; and it took all Melbourne's tact and powers of persuasion to get her to think otherwise.

  Baron Stockmar reported to King Leopold that she had become rather difficult of late, over-conscious of her exalted position, quick to take offence, impatient of advice and thoroughly out of sorts. By the beginning of the next year she was still far from being as lively and happy as she had been in the months immediately following her accession, and quite unprepared to deal rationally with a scandal concerning Lady Flora Hastings that now engulfed the Court.

  She had never liked Lady Flora, known to her friends as 'Scotty'. The woman was an 'amazing spy who would repeat everything she heard', an 'odious' person. It was 'very disagreeable having her in the house'.2 The Queen was quite ready to believe the worst of her when it appeared from her distended figure that she might be pregnant. Both the Queen and Baroness Lehzen, who much resented Lady Flora's teasing of her, became convinced that she was pregnant. So did others; and 'the horrid cause' of this condition, so the Queen decided, was undoubtedly that 'Monster and demon Incarnate', Sir John Conroy who, so it was believed, had travelled back from Scotland overnight in a post-chaise alone with his friend, the 'amiable & virtuous' Lady Flora, after spending the Christmas holidays with her mother, at Loudon Castle.3 Conroy had taken the opportunity - 'to use plain words' - to get her 'with child.4 Lady Tavistock - who, as senior Lady of the Bedchamber, had been approached by other ladies to protect their purity from this contamination - was authorized to consult Lord Melbourne.

  Melbourne had already heard something about Lady Flora's supposed condition from Sir James Clark, who had been appointed Physician in Ordinary to the Queen in 1837, and predictably gave the advice that he was wont to do when faced with a difficult problem that had no easy solution. He had once told the Queen, 'All depends on the urgency of a thing. If a thing is very urgent, you can always find time for it; but if a thing can be put off, well then you put it off.' So, on this occasion, he advised that the 'only way' was 'to be quiet and watch it'.5 If no fuss was made it would no doubt all blow over. Similar advice was later given to Lord Hastings, Lady Flora's young brother, by the Duke of Wellington, who was generally consulted, and loved to be consulted, in such tracasseries: the wisest plan, the Duke advised, was to hush the whole matter up.6

  Unfortunately, Lady Flora, concerned about her condition, consulted Sir James Clark who, as a man who had started his professional life as a surgeon in the Navy, was not as well qualified as he might have been to give advice on female complaints. He did not 'pay much attention' to her ailments, Lady Flora said, or, perhaps, he 'did not understand them'. He prescribed rhubarb and ipecacuanha pills and a liniment largely composed of camphor and opium.7 However, having felt her stomach over her dress, he discovered a 'considerable enlargement of the lower part of her abdomen'. But 'being unable to satisfy myself as to the nature of the enlargement,' he reported, 'I at length expressed to her my uneasiness respecting her size, and requested that at my next visit, I might be permitted to lay my hand upon her abdomen with her stays removed. To this Lady Flora declined to accede.'8 Clark then said, according to Lady Flora's own account, that Lady Portman and others of the Queen's ladies were talking about her; he considered that they did so with justification; he thought no one could look at her and doubt that she was pregnant; he urged her to confess as 'the only thing' to save her; nothing but a thorough medical examination 'could satisfy the ladies of the Palace, so deeply were their suspicions rooted'.9

  After this unpleasant conversation Clark consulted the Duchess of Kent, who refused to believe that her lady-in-waiting was pregnant. However, Lady Portman, who also went to see the Duchess, insisted that it was 'impossible that the honour either of the Court or of the Lady can admit of the least doubt or delay in clearing up the matter'.10

  So the Duchess, rather than allow Lady Flora to leave Court under unwarranted suspicion, advised her to agree to what Sir James Clark had proposed.

  And so Lady Flora changed her mind about submitting to a proper medical examination. She consented to undergoing one, provided Sir Charles Clarke, an experienced accoucheur and leading practitioner in midwifery, who had known the Hastings family for years, was present in the room with Sir James Clark. The two doctors accordingly conducted their examination in the presence of Lady Portman, who stood by the window with her head in her hands, and Lady Flora's maid, who was in tears throughout.11 After this examination a formal declaration was issued in both the doctors' names:

  We have examined with great care the state of Lady Flora Hastings with a view to determine the existence, or non-existence, of pregnancy, and it is our opinion, although there is an enlargement of the stomach, that there are no grounds for suspicion that pregnancy does exist, or ever has existed.12

  This report was expected to settle the matter. But in a conversation with Lord Melbourne, Sir Charles Clarke remarked that there were cases when, despite appearances of virginity, pregnancies had occurred. Sir Charles had observed such cases himself.13 Melbourne reported this conversation to the Queen and was evidently persuaded that Lady Flora's condition was one of those which Sir Charles had mentioned. When the Queen remarked that Lady Flora had not been seen in the Palace for some time because she was so sick, Melbourne repeated, 'Sick?' with what the Queen described as 'a significant laugh'.14

  Having read the doctors' report, the Queen agreed with Melbourne that the whole matter was getting 'very uncomfortable' and she thought that it would be as well that she should see Lady Flora and conciliate her. So she sent a message of regret to her through Lady Portman, who had already apologized herself, and offered to see her immediately. Lady Flora replied that she was too ill to see the Queen at present. A few days later, however, she appeared in the Queen's sitting room. 'She was dreadfully agitated,' the Queen wrote, 'and looked very ill, but on my embracing her, taking her by the hand, and expressing great concern at what had happened, and my wish that all should be forgotten, she expressed herself exceedingly grateful to me, and said that, for Mama's sake, she would suppress every wounded feeling and would forget it, etc.'15

  The Hastings family were not prepared to forget it, though; nor was Lady Flora's friend, Sir John Conroy, who was quick to seize this opportunity to make trouble for those who had thwarted his ambition; nor were certain Tory propagandists
who recognized in this scandal at Court a useful stick with which to beat Melbourne and the Whigs whom the Queen so openly supported; and nor, on reflection, was Lady Flora herself who wrote to her uncle by marriage, Captain Hamilton Fitzgerald, then living in Brussels, informing him that her honour had been 'most basely assailed'.

  Fitzgerald left for London immediately. Lord Hastings, Lady Flora's brother, was equally determined to avenge this slur on his family's good name. Having seen his sister, he was convinced that Lord Melbourne was responsible for promoting the scandal, and he announced that he would challenge him to a duel. But, having talked to him, he was forced to conclude that the Prime Minister had tried to keep everything quiet and that he must look elsewhere for a culprit. His sister generously maintained that the Queen herself was not responsible. She was quite sure, she said, 'that the Queen does not understand what they have betrayed her into. She has endeavoured to show her regret by her civility to me, and expressed it most handsomely with tears in her eyes.'16 Even so, her brother demanded an audience with the Queen which Lord Melbourne tried to prevent, thereby provoking an outraged letter from Lord Hastings:

  Having waited two days in the hope of having an audience with Her Majesty which I requested (if not as a matter of right as a Peer, at least as one of feeling), my patience being exhausted, and being anxious to return to the bosom of my afflicted and insulted family, I am forced to resort to the only means now left in my power, of recording my abhorrence and detestation of the treatment which my sister has lately sustained.17

  He shared his sister's belief that the Queen was not directly responsible for this treatment, declaring that responsibility rested with the 'baneful influence' which surrounded the throne and declaring that if he discovered any more relevant facts about the whole affair he would return to Court from whose 'polluted atmosphere' he for the time being retired.