QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  It was noticed that when Lord Melbourne was not by her side after dinner, she glanced repeatedly in his direction; Lord Hatherton observed that 'she could not bear that he should be out of her sight... if Melbourne even left the room her eyes followed him, and ... she sighed when he was gone';18 and when he was not at Court she was jealous of the hostess who had attracted his presence elsewhere. More often than she liked this was Lady Holland; and once, when she knew he had gone to Holland House, she lamented in her diary, 'I WISH he dined with me.' She told him that Lady Holland, who was old enough to be her grandmother, did 'not care for him half as much as she did, which made him laugh'. Indeed, she said, 'I am sure none of your friends are as fond of you as I am. '19

  Chapter 12

  'A HEADSTRONG GIRL'

  'They wished to treat me like a girl, but I will show them that I am Queen of England.'

  He was, said the Queen, capable of every villainy'. She and Lord Melbourne were once again, on 21 January 1839, talking about Sir John Conroy. Melbourne had remarked, apropos of the man's intimacy with the Duchess of Kent, Princess Sophia and Lady Flora Hastings, not to mention his wife, 'What an amazing scape of a man he must have been to have kept three ladies at once in good humour. '1

  Conroy, that 'Devil incarnate', had been giving trouble ever since she had come to the throne. On the very morning of the late King's death, as Lord Melbourne came out of the Privy Council meeting, he was handed a paper listing the sacrifices Conroy had made, both professionally and financially, to serve the Duchess so selflessly and the conditions which he required before he could consider retirement: they were a peerage, the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and a pension of £3,000 a year.2 'This is really too bad! Have you ever heard such impudence,' exclaimed Lord Melbourne as the paper fell from his hands.3 Soon, however, he came to agree with Baron Stockmar that the man's retirement was the 'only measure' which might help to improve the Duchess of Kent's relationship with her daughter who was, indeed, prepared to promise almost anything to the dreadful fellow provided he left the country; and, since Conroy protested that he was far from content with the mere baronetcy accorded him, he was given an undertaking that, if Melbourne 'should continue as her Majesty's adviser', he would be raised to an Irish peerage as soon as a new creation could be made. Melbourne had hoped that this offer would induce Conroy to leave the country; but Sir John declined to fulfil his part of the bargain until the Queen had fulfilled hers. So he and his family remained at Kensington where, so Princess Lieven heard, he bullied the Duchess as vigorously as ever. All this, Lord Liverpool observed to Baron Stockmar, was 'the result of Lord M.'s careless way of doing things'.

  As the months went by, however, Conroy's position and reputation in England became increasingly insecure. He felt obliged to lodge an action for libel when The Times in a prominent article hinted at gross mismanagement of the Duchess of Kent's financial affairs by 'a certain newly created baronet' who had also been enabled to buy 'a certain estate in Wales' with money not his own. Then there were complaints from the Duchess of Kent's Coburg relations that the sitting room which had been made available to them on their visits to England was insolently invaded by this Irish interloper who was accustomed to come in and sit there as if he, too, were a member of her family. Following upon these complaints came a letter from James Abercromby, by now the highly respected Speaker of the House of Commons, who bluntly informed Conroy that it was 'everywhere boldly asserted' that his 'remaining in the family of the Duchess of Kent' was the main if not the only cause of the sorry state of the relationship between the Queen and her mother. If he withdrew from London he would be doing a service of the 'greatest public importance'.4

  At length the Duke of Wellington, always delighted to be involved in such delicate situations, was called upon for help as, indeed, he had been in the Lady Flora Hastings case upon which both the Duchess of Kent and the Marquess of Hastings had sought his advice.

  After a conversation with Wellington, Conroy agreed to leave the country, a decision for which the Duke with evident satisfaction took full credit, telling Charles Greville that he had persuaded the man to go by means of cajoling and flattery, using 'plenty of butter', and assuring Conroy that his decision to leave was 'an honourable and manly course'.5

  Unfortunately the departure of Sir John Conroy for Italy did not improve relations between the Queen and the Duchess who, having assured Conroy that she still retained for him 'the most unshaken esteem', was kept quite as much at arm's length at Buckingham Palace as she had ever been at Kensington. She was required to seek permission before visiting her daughter in her apartments and was not infrequently told that Her Majesty was too occupied with affairs of state or other matters to receive her. One day the Queen was talking to Lord Melbourne in the Blue Closet when her mother 'unceremoniously opened the door, but on [the Queen's] holloaing out, begged pardon and retired'.

  The ill feeling between mother and daughter was exacerbated by complaints from the Duchess that the apartments allowed to her and her household were uncomfortably small when compared with those of the Queen who slept in a large bedroom between those of her maid and Baroness Lehzen, her 'ANGELIC, dearest Lehzen... the most estimable & precious treasure' she possessed and 'EVER SHALL POSSESS'.6

  The comfort of having Lord Melbourne to talk to, and support her when plagued by such problems as were posed by her mother, made life so much more agreeable than it might otherwise have been; and when, at the beginning of May 1839, the Queen learned from the Home Secretary, Lord John Russell, that their Government was facing defeat on a colonial issue in the House of Commons and that her beloved Prime Minister would have to resign, she received the news with horrified dismay. Some weeks earlier the possibility of his Government's defeat had distressed her beyond measure: 'I am but a poor helpless girl who clings to him for support and protection, & the thought of ALL ALL my happiness being possibly at stake, so completely overcame me that I burst into tears and remained crying for some time.'7

  Now, distressed as she already had been by the Lady Flora Hastings affair and the presumptuous demands of the now mercifully departed Conroy, she was even more distraught: 'The state of agony, grief and despair into which this [defeat of the Government] placed me may be easier imagined than described!' she wrote in her diary. 'That happy peaceful life destroyed, that dearest kind Lord Melbourne no more my minister ... I sobbed and cried much.'8

  'I really thought my heart would break,' she added after Melbourne had been to see her to confirm the terrible news himself and she had begged him 'ever to be a father to one who never wanted support more than she does now', 'He was standing by the window; I took that kind dear hand of his in both mine and looked at him and sobbed out, "Don't forsake me." I held his hand for a little while, unable to leave go; and he gave me such a look of kindness pity and affection, and could hardly utter for words, "Oh! no!" in such a touching voice.9 We then sat down as usual and I strove to calm myself... After a pause he said, "You must try and be as collected as you can and act with great firmness and decision" ... I went on crying and feeling as thoroughly wretched as human mortal can be.'10

  When he had gone she wrote him three letters beseeching him to come to see her again and to stay for dinner. He would not come to dinner, he replied: it would not be proper to do so while negotiations for a new Government were in progress; but he would come to see her that afternoon.

  In the meantime Lord John Russell called to see her; but she could not stop crying and she was still in tears when Lord Melbourne returned with a paper in which he recommended her sending for the Duke of Wellington who would probably suggest that she send for Sir Robert Peel, who had been Prime Minister in the Tory administration of 1834-5. If the Duke did so, she must try to make allowances for Peel's stiff, shy, awkward manner.11 Certainly Peel was 'an underbred fellow' for all his time at Harrow and Christ Church. He was, after all, 'not accustomed to talk to Kings and Princes' as Melbourne himself was, yet he was 'a very able and gifted
man'.12

  'I burst into tears and said, "You don't know what a dreadful thing it is for me,"' the Queen continued in her diary entry. 'He looked really so kindly at me and seemed much affected ... I sobbed much, again held his hand in both mine ... as if I felt in doing so he could not leave me ... He then got up ... and he kissed my hand, I crying dreadfully.' When he had gone she wrote to beg him to ride tomorrow in the Park so that she could 'just get a glimpse' of him; it would be 'such a comfort'. 'Ld. Melbourne may think this childish but the Queen really is so anxious it might be; & she wld bear thro' all her trials so much better if she did just see a friend's face sometimes ...'

  That evening she 'could not touch a morsel of food' and spent a restless night. The next morning the Duke of Wellington called. He told her that he was really too old at seventy, too deaf, too out of touch with the House of Commons to think of becoming Prime Minister again. He recommended, as Melbourne had supposed he would, that she should send for Sir Robert Peel. The prospect of Peel as Prime Minister depressed her still further: he was so difficult to talk to, his shyness made her shy too, his nervous mannerisms were so distracting. Her uncle, George IV, had been driven in his presence to complain of his irritating habit of thrusting out his arms as he talked; the Queen herself said that the way he pointed his toes and shook down his cuffs reminded her of a dancing master. Charles Greville compared him to a 'dapper shopkeeper': 'he eats voraciously and cuts cream jellies with his knife.'

  Although Peel seemed 'embarrassed and put out' when he came into the Queen's presence that afternoon - and was 'such a cold, odd man ... oh, how different, how dreadfully different, to that frank, open, natural and most kind, warm manner of Lord Melbourne' - the interview was not as painful to her as she had feared it might be.13 Melbourne had advised her to express the hope that none of her Household except those engaged in politics would be removed. 'They'll not touch your ladies,' he had said, to which she had replied that they would not dare: she 'never would allow it'. She mentioned the subject of her Household to Peel, 'to which at present he would give no answer, but said nothing should be done without the Queen's knowledge and approbation'.14

  The next day the Queen received a letter from Lord Melbourne in which he suggested that she ought to 'urge this question of the household strongly as a matter due to yourself and your own wishes'. But, if Sir Robert Peel insisted upon certain changes she should not refuse them, nor break off negotiations upon the point.

  That, however, was precisely what she intended to do. During Peel's second audience that day, he came more firmly and directly to the question uppermost in both their minds. 'Now, Ma'am,' he said, 'about the Ladies.' The Queen, bridling at the implied question, replied that she could never give up any of her ladies, that she 'had never imagined such a thing'.

  Did she intend to retain all of them? Peel asked

  'All.'

  The Mistress of the Robes and the Ladies of the Bedchamber?

  'All.'15

  But some of these ladies were married to his Whig opponents, protested Peel, who, so the Queen noted with satisfaction, began to look 'quite perturbed'. It did not matter whom they were married to, she riposted: she never talked politics with her ladies. He would not ask her to change her younger ladies, Peel persisted; it was only some of the more important, senior ladies whom he would like to see replaced. But these, she countered, were just the ones she could not spare; besides, queens had not been asked to make such sacrifices in the past. Comparisons with past queens did not really apply, Peel pointed out; they had been queen consorts, she was a reigning queen: that made all the difference. 'Not here,' the Queen declared sharply, resolutely standing her ground.16

  'I never saw a man so frightened,' she reported triumphantly to Lord Melbourne. 'He was quite perturbed ... I was very calm but very decided, and I think you would have been pleased to see my composure and great firmness ... the Queen of England will not submit to such trickery. Keep yourself in readiness for you may soon be wanted. '17

  Some three hours later Peel returned to the Queen. He had already reassured her when she had asked him that he surely could not expect her to give up the society of Lord Melbourne. Nothing could be further from his thoughts, he had said: he would always 'feel perfectly secure in the honour of Lord Melbourne'. He was also perfectly agreeable to the appointment of the Queen's friend, Lord Liverpool, as Lord Steward. But the question of the ladies was a different matter. He tentatively suggested that some changes might be desirable to show that the new Government enjoyed Her Majesty's confidence but he again assured her that nothing would be done without her knowledge and approval. The Queen quickly rejoined that the only members of the Household with whom she could be expected to part were those gentlemen who were also in Parliament. Taking childish pride in her stiff demeanour, she remained, she said, 'very much collected, civil and high' throughout the interview. She found the man 'cold, unfeeling' and 'disagreeable' and took no trouble to disguise her distaste as Peel put forward the names of the men he proposed to her as Ministers. When he awkwardly took his leave and the door closed behind him she gave vent to her feelings in further floods of tears.

  Forced to conclude that he could do nothing more to persuade her to be less intransigent, Peel enlisted the support of the Duke of Wellington who found that the Queen had worked herself up into a state of 'high passion and excitement'.

  'Well,' he began, 'I am sorry to find there is a difficulty.' 'Oh, he began it not me,' she replied. 'It is offensive to me to suppose that I talk to any of my ladies upon public affairs.'

  'I know you do not ... But the public does not know this.'18

  The discussion continued for some time; but the old Duke was powerless in the face of the young girl's stubborn pertness. As Charles Greville observed, the Queen, 'a clever but rather thoughtless and headstrong girl', was 'boldly and stubbornly' using her ladies as a pretext to fulfil her 'longing to get back her old Ministers' and she was not prepared to abandon that pretext however unconstitutional it might be.

  Soon after Wellington had withdrawn from the battle, Peel returned to the Palace to say that unless there was some demonstration of her confidence in a Tory administration, and if she insisted on retaining all her ladies, his colleagues had concluded 'unanimously that they could not go on'. Having tartly observed that her 'Ladies were entirely her own affair and not the Ministers'' and that 'Sir Robert must be very weak if even the Ladies were required to share his political opinions', she wrote in triumph to Melbourne, 'This was quite wonderful! ... What a blessed and unexpected escape.'19

  Most of the senior members of the Cabinet were far readier than Melbourne himself to believe the Queen had done well to stand firm against Peel's demands. Melbourne noted with some concern that Peel had asked for some changes not a complete replacement of the entire household as was widely believed. But this did not much concern Lord John Russell, who considered it unthinkable to desert the Queen in her stand against the Tory demands, nor Lord Grey, the former Prime Minister, who believed Her Majesty had 'the strongest claims' to the Government's support 'in the line which she [had] taken'. So Lord Melbourne, not unwillingly, allowed himself to be persuaded. He read out to his colleagues a summary of two letters he had received from the Queen in which she sounded a highly triumphant note: 'Do not fear that I was not calm and composed. They wanted to deprive me of my Ladies, and I suppose they would deprive me next of my dressers and my housemaids; they wished to treat me like a girl, but I will show them that I am Queen of England.'20 That evening she gave a ball for the Tsarevich, the future Tsar Alexander II, noting in her diary afterwards that both Peel and the Duke of Wellington looked 'very much put out ... I left the ballroom at 1/4 to 3, much pleased, as my mind felt happy.'21 There was, however, a feeling in the country, and not only amongst Tories, that the Queen, as she herself was later to admit, had behaved unwisely and impetuously in this the first constitutional crisis of her reign.

  Charles Greville, as was so often the case, well expre
ssed the view of these critics of the Queen's behaviour:

  It is a high trial of our institutions when the caprice of a girl of nineteen can overturn a great Ministerial combination, and when the most momentous matters of Government and legislation are influenced by her pleasure about the Ladies of the Bedchamber ... The origin of the present mischief may be found in the objectionable composition of the Royal Household at the accession. The Queen knew nobody, and was ready to take any Ladies that Melbourne recommended to her. He ought to have taken care that the female part of her Household should not have a political complexion, instead of making it exclusively Whig as (unfortunately for her) he did. The simple truth in this case is that the Queen could not endure the thought of parting with Melbourne, who is everything to her ... In the course of the transaction She thought She saw the means presenting themselves of getting Melbourne back, and She eagerly grasped at, and pertinaciously retained them. Nothing else would have emboldened her to resist the advice and opinion of the Duke of Wellington and to oppose so unbendingly her will to his authority. There is something which shocks one's sense of fitness and propriety in the spectacle of this mere baby of a Queen setting herself in opposition to this great man ... She has made herself the Queen of a party.22

  Baron Stockmar, too, was concerned that a 'great Ministerial combination' had been overturned by 'the caprice of a girl of nineteen'. He wondered if, like her grandfather, King George III, she was mentally unbalanced. 'How could they,' he asked, 'let the Queen make such mistakes, to the injury of the Monarchy?'23

  Chapter 13

  GERMAN COUSINS

  'Cousins are not very good things ... Those Coburgs are not popular abroad; the Russians hate them.'