PRINCESS VICTORIA’S TUITION IN POLITICS
“Confound their politics.”--_National Anthem._
Queen Adelaide, being in a high place, had many detractors, though she
was certainly a kind and gentle woman. Her two faults in the eyes of
the English people were that she was drawn from a poor German family,
and that she exercised, or was said, perhaps erroneously, to exercise a
strong political influence in great matters over the King. It was the
time of the fight over the Reform Bill, when the whole country was in a
ferment, and everyone, down to the children, took sides, whether they
understood the question or not. When it became known that the Queen
was opposed to the passage of the Bill, the papers published skits and
cartoons against her, accusing her of plotting against the people and
even against the Crown, so that the populace did not hesitate to show
its animus. Thus on one occasion when an election was exciting the
passions of all, the King arranged to pay a State visit to the City,
and the Lord Mayor, somewhat foolishly, illuminated the streets the day
before. The glare and light seem to have been the one thing too much
for the inflamed minds of the mob, which showed its joy by breaking
windows and creating a general uproar. The Queen had, unfortunately,
gone that evening to a concert without guards, and as she was returning
she was recognised, her carriage being surrounded by a roaring crowd,
some of whom tried to thrust their heads into the windows. The footmen
used their canes freely to beat them off, and the coachman managed to
reach the Palace safely; but the poor lady was much alarmed and thought
herself in danger of her life. The King, worried at her late return,
paced from room to room waiting her, and when at last she arrived he
caught hold of Lord Howe, her Chamberlain, who preceded her, asking in
agitated voice:
“How is the Queen?”
Howe, being an eager anti-reformer, replied that she was much
frightened and proceeded to make the very worst of the occurrence, with
the result that the King, in a fury, determined to cancel his proposed
visit to the City, much to the chagrin of his Ministers.
[Illustration: WILLIAM IV.]
As for William himself, he blew hot and cold over the Bill, as everyone
knows, and it became a duel between Lord Grey and Queen Adelaide, so
it was said, as to which should gain the greatest power over the King,
and William began to get the reputation of being a hen-pecked husband.
At one point Grey desired to go to the country that he might prove that
the Lords were the impediment in the way of the Bill, and the King
consented to a dissolution, actually taking leave of his Minister. The
next day, however, actuated by some hidden motive, he absolutely and
flatly refused to countenance the change, thus forcing Lord Grey to
persevere in what seemed a hopeless attempt to get the Bill passed
through the House of Lords. The Whig press was furious, and published
such outspoken opinions as the following:--
“Hail, thou conundrum of our age,
Britannia’s great first fiddle,
By turns a fool, by turns a sage,
A puzzling royal riddle.
By turns you make us weep or smile,
Your country’s curse or glory,
The Billy Black of Britain’s Isle,
By turns a Whig or Tory.”
While the Bill was pressing its turbulent passage through the Commons,
and during the subsequent troubles, the idea took stronger hold upon
the people that the Queen was the motive of the King’s continued
vacillations. They went further still, and said that she was influenced
by Lord Howe, who was believed to entertain a romantic attachment for
her. Indeed, letters of hers are in existence more or less proving
that there was truth in the idea of the influence. Her desire was to
dismiss the Whigs and form a Tory Government, and in one letter to Lord
Howe she notes that “the King’s eyes are open, and he sees the great
difficulties in which he is placed, that he really sees everything in
the right light,” adding that he thought the Tories not strong enough
to form an administration.
Lord Howe voted against the measure, and Lord Grey, seeing how the
Government was being defeated by members of the Royal household,
forced the King to dismiss him. This the Queen regarded as an outrage.
She refused to allow another chamberlain to be appointed, and Howe
attended the Queen as assiduously as ever, the two working unceasingly
against the Government. This led to something like popular hatred of
Adelaide, and to the universal spread of the horrid reports which
were being circulated about her and her late Chamberlain, proofs of
which animosity were forthcoming every time she appeared in public.
The _Court Journal_ deplored the fact that when she drove out
the Queen experienced almost daily insult from the populace, being
hissed as she passed. Raikes tells us that he saw the King and Queen
at the Duke of Wellington’s _fête_ at Apsley House, that His
Majesty looked tired, and Queen Adelaide was out of spirits. “She had
attended a review in Hyde Park in the morning, when the sovereign mob
thought proper to greet her with much incivility and rudeness.” The
King himself by no means escaped the hostility of the people, for he
no sooner showed himself on the stand at Ascot than a stone hit him
full in the forehead. Fortunately it did him no serious injury, and the
ruffian who threw it was found to be half-witted.
Socially the affair with Lord Howe assumed serious proportions. The
Queen was so angry at his dismissal that, to placate her, it was
suggested that he should be reinstated, a condition being made that,
though he should not be asked to vote against his conscience, he should
undertake not to vote against the Bill. This condition he indignantly
refused, and the Queen was not conciliated.
Greville, who much disliked Queen Adelaide, notes of the Court held at
Brighton at Christmas, 1832:--“The Court is very active, vulgar, and
hospitable. King, Queen, Princes, Princesses, bastards, and attendants
constantly trotting about in every direction.... Lord Howe is devoted
to the Queen, and is never away from her. She receives his attentions,
but demonstrates nothing in return; he is like a boy in love with this
frightful spotted Majesty, while his delightful wife is laid up with
a sprained ankle and dislocated joint on the sofa.” Indeed, everyone
looked upon him as an ardent lover, and noted that he was dining every
day at the Pavilion, riding with the Queen, and never quitting her
side, keeping his eyes always fixed on her face. Adelaide herself was
very careful; she was surrounded by the Fitzclarences, who would have
been delighted to prove her in the wrong, and even they could not find
fault with her attitude to her quasi-Chamberlain.
Lady Howe, when again able to go to Court, was vexed to death about
it, and induced Greville to warn her husband of the scandalous stories
afloat. Greville did this, but it only annoyed Lord Howe, who, however,
by his manner convinced that worldly man that there was nothing in
the matter but folly and the vanity of being confidential adviser to
the Queen. As a result of this conversation, Howe suggested to Her
Majesty that she should appoint a new Chamberlain, and that he should
wait upon the King to inform him of the fact. This, however, the
Queen absolutely forbade, and Howe stayed on, with the result that a
year or two later Queen Adelaide’s name was in every mouth in a very
discreditable way.
Greville was horribly prejudiced against the Queen, and very much
taken with Lady Howe, but the latter seems to have been a curiously
irresponsible person. Once, when she and her husband were driving with
the Queen, she, being tired, coolly put her feet up on to her husband’s
knee, and then rested them on the window-ledge, saying innocently to
his distressed lordship, “What do you mean by shaking your head?”
On another occasion the Howes were assisting Adelaide to ticket things
for a bazaar, and Lady Howe fell in love with some shoes; so, fitting
one on, she put her foot on the table to show how well it set. Can
anyone imagine a woman behaving like that before Queen Victoria? The
autocratic manners of the Duchess of Kent are but a tale to us now, but
her training of her daughter in modesty and decorous ways was a reality
of which we still feel the benefit.
Queen Adelaide was the most confiding and rash of women; her theory of
life was so simple that when one of her ladies tried to suggest caution
to her in relation to Lord Howe, saying that the newspapers had been
very ill-natured about her friendship for him, she replied that she
knew that, but truth would always find its way. It did in her case, but
she had personally to run the gauntlet of scandal. Lady Bedingfield
remarked of her, “The Queen is so good and virtuous that she has no
idea people could fancy that she likes him (Howe) too much.”
In 1834 the Queen went on an extended tour to her home in
Saxe-Meiningen, taking with her presents of no less than eleven
carriages and many other things, much to the anger of the people,
who were then in a starving condition. On her return in September
she was ill, being quite knocked up with the festivities in Germany,
and a report was started--being first whispered at the Lord Mayor’s
banquet--that the Queen was with child. This was confirmed by her
ladies, and in February the medical men, though still uncertain, leaned
to the decision that such was the case. _The Court Journal_
went so far as to announce that her Majesty was said to have derived
peculiar benefit from drinking at a spring in Germany known as Child’s
Well; so the papers all debated the facts, and the Royal hangers-on
were in a state of great commotion.
Lord Howe’s name was on everyone’s lips, and the less dignified papers
did not hesitate openly to hint what society people were whispering.
Alvanley, the wit of the time, suggested that the psalm, “Lord,
_how_ wonderful are Thy works,” should be generally sung, and
cartoons and ribald verses appeared everywhere. One of the latter ran:
“How(e) wondrous are thy works, my lord,
How(e) glorious are thy ways!
How(e) shall we sing thy song, my lord?
How(e) celebrate thy praise?”
Another such rhyme tells us how
“Poor little Vicky, in a fright
Disjointed feels her royal nose.”
and goes on to explain that
“Her Grace, the Duchess-Mother pouts,
And General Conroy’s in the dumps,
He dreams no more of Ins-and-Outs,
His suit is now no longer trumps.
The little Princes in a flutter,
Throw all their whips and tops away,
And quarrel with their bread and butter,
And mope and sulk the live-long day.
The whiskered Ernest rubs his eyes,
Poor Georgie Cumberland loudly groans,
While little Cambridge yells and cries,
That such new cousins he disowns.”
However many people may have believed it to be true that Adelaide
expected another child, there were not many about the Court who could
have credited the scandalous part of the story. As Greville said,
“Of course, there will be plenty of scandal. It so happens, however,
that Howe had not been with the Court for a considerable time.” In
May, newspapers that had given many inches to spreading the belief,
announced in two lines that the report that an heir was expected to the
Throne was untrue, and so vanished the last of William’s hopes that he
might be succeeded in the direct line.
I think it was Lady Cardigan who said that Lord Howe had named his
three daughters after three of his former loves, Lady _Georgina_
Fane, Queen _Adelaide_, and _Emily_ Bagot.
When William IV. first came to the throne he was imbued with a
determination to rule justly and irrespective of party, but he was
in the midst of Tory influence while the Government was Whig. His
Ministers became exhausted by the long effort they had to make to keep
him consistent on the question of Reform, and the passing of the Bill
may be said to have begun his outwardly expressed leaning towards
Toryism. This increased as time went on, and in 1834 one of the most
remarkable political events took place.
The leadership of the House of Commons was vacant owing to the death
of Earl Spencer, by which his son, Lord Althorp, took his seat in the
higher chamber. The Whigs were in a majority of a third of the House,
but were obliged to fight the Lords for the passage of their Bills.
Lord Melbourne went to consult the King as to the new leader, and
William, with vague grumblings and irritable manner, seemed to agree
with Melbourne’s plans; however, in the morning before he left Windsor
a letter was handed to the Minister from the King dismissing the
Government. This letter was anything but dignified, as it indulged in
personal reflections upon Lord John Russell and Mr. Spring-Rice.
“But conceive our poor friend’s desperation
When, in answer to this application,
Turning coolly about,
Said the Sovereign, ‘You’re out!
And I’ll form a new Administration.’”
Melbourne spent the day in inducing his Monarch to alter his letter
so that it should cause no more heart-burnings than could be avoided,
and he talked the matter over with Palmerston that night. Lord Brougham
came in late, and, under a promise not to divulge until the next day
what had happened, he also heard the story. Brougham kept his promise
in a way, for he waited until after midnight and then communicated the
whole matter to the _Times_. So the next morning the keepers of
this grave secret found a flourishing announcement in the leading Tory
paper. “The King has taken the opportunity of Lord Spencer’s death to
turn out the Ministry, and there is every reason to believe that the
Duke of Wellington has been sent for. The Queen has done it all.”
This caused a series of convulsions in every stratum of society. The
King accused Melbourne of having published a matter which should have
been kept secret until correctly announced at the correct moment; the
Government blamed Melbourne all round. Everyone believed that the
whole thing had been preconcerted, but of them all the consequences
fell heaviest upon Queen Adelaide. The sentence, “The Queen has done
it all,” was placarded all over London, and the people believed that
now there was no doubt but that they had a real grievance against the
Queen, and they hated her bitterly. Yet it is fairly certain that the
Queen was as astonished as everyone else; no one but the King knew
what the King had planned, and it is probable that he did not know
until he suddenly made up his mind after seeing Melbourne that evening.
He appointed the Duke of Wellington First Lord of the Treasury and
Secretary of State, and he had to send someone off in a hurry to Italy
to find Sir Robert Peel; but the new Government only lived until April
of the following year, when it was defeated, and Melbourne came back to
office.
William took this as well as he could, but he grew to hate the Whigs.
There were times when he would neither see nor speak to one of them,
when he treated his Ministers with open insult. Over and over again
in the last two years of his reign one reads of the way in which he
refused to acknowledge them. At the Queen’s birthday dinner-party in
1836 not one of the Ministry nor a Whig of any sort was invited; and
at his own birthday party no one at all connected with the Government,
except the members in his household, was asked to be present. He was
evidently resolved that, if he had to see them in London, the gates
of Windsor should be closed to them. On the other hand, he chose his
guests deliberately from the Tories, the men he liked best being Lord
Winchilsea and Lord Wharncliffe, both holding violent views, and the
Duke of Dorset, who was an extreme Tory. It was said that for the
Tories stood the King, the House of Lords, the Church, the Bar and all
the law, a large minority in the House of Commons, the agricultural
interest, and the monied interest generally; while for the Whigs stood
a small majority in the Commons, the manufacturing towns, and a portion
of the rabble. Of course, those who triumphantly asserted this blinked
the fact that the majority of the whole country stood for the Whigs, as
the Tories could not, with all their interest, form a Government which
would be acceptable.
Greville notes in 1836: “To-day we had a Council, when His Most
Gracious Majesty behaved most ungraciously to his confidential
servants, whom he certainly does not delight to honour.”
Sometimes the King made a very special effort to hurt his Ministers.
Lord Aylmer had been recalled from Canada by the Whig Government for
some irregularities, and he was introduced at the reception of the Bath
in 1837. As he approached the throne William called up Palmerston,
Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and Lord Minto, First Lord of the
Admiralty, making them stand one on either side of Aylmer, that they
might hear every word that was said. He then announced that he wished
to take that, the most public opportunity, of telling him that he
approved most entirely of his conduct in Canada, that he had acted like
a true and loyal subject towards a set of traitors and conspirators,
and behaved as it became a British officer to do in such circumstances.
In fact, he mortified his Ministers as much as he could, and gratified
Aylmer to the same extent.
It is not to be supposed that the Ministers liked to be treated with
such rudeness, nor to be ignored, but they took it quietly, made no
public grumble, went on with their work, and left such insults to be
forgotten; only the King’s attitude made this difference, they began
to look upon themselves as Ministers to the House of Commons rather
than to the Crown, which tended to lessen the kingly power. A little
later, when Victoria sat on the throne, and, being a Whig, paid honour
to her Ministers, but showed dislike to the Opposition and indifference
to the nobles of Tory tendencies, the outcry was loud and deep. Her
inexperience, her sex, her age, were blamed as the reasons; open
disloyalty was shown her, and sometimes marked rudeness. Yet she was
but following the ways of her predecessor in somewhat milder fashion.
She was one of a family which never hid its preferences, and she had
learned the lesson--bad as it was--at the Royal board of a man whom she
loved.
Victoria had been bred a Whig. Her father and mother were Whigs, and
all her mother’s counsellors and friends held the same views; Lord
Durham went further even, being regarded as the leader of the Radicals.
Lord Ashley once gave it as his opinion that from her earliest years
the Princess had been taught to regard the Tories as her personal
enemies. “I am told that the language at Kensington was calculated to
inspire her with fear and hatred of them.”
Through the years of King William’s reign, when he, poor man, was in
a constant state of ebullition with his Ministers, his people, or
members of his family, the Princess Victoria changed from a child to
a woman. She listened quietly, as children did listen in those days,
to the politics talked in her mother’s circle, and became imbued with
very strong views; she visited, and played at Royalty like a well-made
automaton; she studied music, French, English, singing, and dancing
under various tutors, and thought a great deal about the time when she
would be England’s Sovereign.
Leopold, who, it is said, was soon deadly sick of his Belgian crown
and wishful to abdicate, thinking it better to be an English Prince
with fifty thousand a year and uncle to the Queen, than to be monarch
of a troublesome little kingdom which all its neighbours regarded
with an evil or a covetous eye, still kept Claremont in good order,
having given the mastership of the house over to Sir John Conroy. And
there Victoria was taken when she seemed to flag. She loved the place,
for were not the happiest moments of her girlish life spent there?
It was there that she met her grandmother, the Dowager Duchess of
Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, who, on seeing her, made the first suggestion that
she might do worse than marry into the Saxe-Coburg family, and she had
definitely in her mind her grandson Albert. The gardens at Claremont
were well cultivated, and all that the Duchess of Kent did not use was
sent to Leopold, a thing which caused many a joke at his expense.
The Duchess of Kent and her daughter stayed quietly sometimes at
Margate, sometimes at Tunbridge Wells, but their real home was at
Kensington. There the Princess’s life was a quiet one; she saw little,
too little, of the Court, and still went to bed at nine o’clock.
Occasionally the Duchess gave dinner-parties at which Victoria appeared
before and after the meal. Thus, in 1833, Her Royal Highness did her
best to mollify the King’s resentment against her by giving a large
party in his honour; and Croker writes of dining with the Duchess “with
a large Conservative party--four Dukes and three Duchesses, and the
rest of thirty people in proportion. I was the only untitled and almost
the only undecorated guest. The little Princess ceases to be little.
She grows tall, is very good-looking, but not, I think, strong; yet she
may live to be plain Mrs. Guelph.” A suggestion which, as we have seen,
appeared nearing fulfilment some time later.
Two of Victoria’s first cousins came over that year, Princes Alexander
and Ernest of Wurtemburg, and even at that date the matchmakers
wondered whether there was not some ulterior motive for their coming.
As on an earlier occasion, King William gave a juvenile ball at St.
James’s Palace. But in spite of the gossip the young men came and went,
leaving no tit-bit of news for the talkers to discuss. This marriage
of the Princess had occupied some minds almost from the day of her
birth; and when she was but nine years old it was said that she must
marry either the son of the Duke of Cumberland or the son of the Duke
of Cambridge, a proceeding which would have been entirely gratifying to
the father of whichever boy was chosen.
One of the Princess’s favourite amusements was studying music, and
she must have found it much more entertaining than the pretensions of
boy lovers; indeed, she liked it so much that in 1834 Mrs. Brookfield
said that her teachers had been obliged to keep her music under the
smotherings of less delightful studies, or it would have run away with
her; adding that “the Duchess of Northumberland has no sinecure of her
governorship, but really fags with her pupil.”[3]
Princess Victoria loved the Italian opera, went often to the theatre,
and for her soul’s health she was given every possible opportunity of
listening to sacred oratorios, with the result that Handel was anathema
to her in later life. Indeed, music occupied so much time and interest
that the papers announced the appointment of Mr. George Herbert
Rodwell--Director of Music at Covent Garden--as composer to the Duchess
of Kent and Princess Victoria. This led to many satirical comments, in
which it was suggested that they went through their daily life to an
accompaniment of suitable music. A humorous journal gave the following
scene as taking place in Victoria’s boudoir:
“A tooth-brush, O.P., upper entrance, looking-glass in flat,
toilet-table, P.S., tooth-powder in centre, rouge in the background,
pincushions in the distance, combs, hair-brushes, &c., in confusion.
A chord--enter the Princess through door in flat. Slow music, during
which the Princess opens the top of a chest of drawers, and takes out a
frill, which she puts on, and exit through door opposite. Slow music,
and enter the Duchess--she advances towards the toilet-table with a
start. Hurried music by Rodwell, composer to Her Royal Highness; she
sits down. A chord--opens window. Air and chorus of housemaids without.
She sits down. Crash--advances towards the rouge-pot. Slow music--she
takes it away. Crash--by Rodwell, and exit to hurried music.”
The writer adds to this that the curious in these matters will be
enabled to see through the moral of the delightful sketch, which
shows the anxiety of the Duchess to prevent the amiable little
Princess from applying rouge to her infantile cheeks, “a practice we
cannot sufficiently reprobate. The music is admirably adapted to the
situations by Rodwell, whose appointment as composer to the royal duo
we shall in future be able to appreciate.”
The two Princesses were, in fact, constantly going to concerts, and
William Henry Brookfield poked fun at them in a letter written to his
friend Venables--he who had broken Thackeray’s nose in a fight in
their schoolboy days. A three days’ musical festival was arranged at
Westminster, and he thus describes one afternoon:--“We went to town
for the fiddling, which it was the pill[4] of the day to cry down. I
was much gratified by the show and altogether. I sate by the Duke of
Wellington, who was good enough to go out and fetch me a pot of porter.
When ‘See the Conquering Hero Comes’ was sung in ‘Judas Maccabeus,’
all eyes were turned upon me. I rose and bowed--but did not think the
place was suited for any more marked acknowledgment. The King sang the
Coronation Anthem exceedingly well, and Princess Victoria whistled ‘The
Dead March in Saul’ with rather more than her usual effect. But the
_chef d’œuvre_ was confessed by all to be Macaulay in ‘The praise
of God and of the second Day.’ I rose a wiser and, I think, a sadder
man.”
It was probably at this festival that young Lord Elphinstone first
frightened the Royal mother by writing the following acrostic upon the
Princess’s name:--
“Propitious Heaven! who, midst this beauteous blaze,
Rapt in the grandeur of the Minstrel scene,
Is that young Innocent, on whom all gaze?
Nor conscious they the while of choral strain;
Could I command a Guido’s magic power,
Enthusiast grown, I’d catch thy vivid glow--
Serene, unsullied child of sun and shower!
Still on the parent stem allowed to blow.
Vain, worse than vain, the Bard who’d boldly try,
In his most brilliant page or loftiest lay,
Choice how he may be, to depict the eye,
The lovely eye, of that sweet smiling fay!
Oh,’tis the Maid, who wakes to plaudits loud,
Rich in the treasure of an angel face,
In every gift that makes a nation proud--
A mother’s joy--an honoured Monarch’s grace.”
Elphinstone did not dream that with these lines he was putting the
first nail in the coffin of his hopes of a career at Court or in
England.
In 1835 the Princess came more to the front, and probably this was
caused by the fact that she suffered early in the year from a serious
attack of typhoid, striking many people with consternation, and making
King William, who was feeling his age, yet more keenly desirous of
securing her company. So in June she went to Ascot in the same
carriage with the King and Queen. It is amusing to note that, in
spite of the simplicity of dress for which she is supposed to have
been so conspicuous, and for which everyone has so much praised the
Duchess of Kent, the Princess wore on this occasion a large pink
bonnet, a rose-coloured satin dress _broché_, and a pélerine cape
trimmed with black. The description, at least, is a little painful.
But N. P. Willis, the American literary man, speaks of her that day
as being quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting, and deplores
the probability that the heir to the English Crown would be sold
in marriage for political purposes without regard to her personal
character and wishes.
One writer described the Duchess of Kent on the same occasion in the
sentimental and fulsome way so much beloved by women writers about
Royalty. “Her brow seemed as if it would well become an imperial
diadem; such lofty and commanding intellect was there, united with
feminine softness and matronly grace. She looked fit to be the mother
of the Queen. The expression of maternal pride and delight with which
on this occasion she surveyed her child at every fresh burst of the
people’s affection is not to be forgotten by those who witnessed it.”
In August, Victoria was confirmed by the Archbishop of Canterbury and
the Bishop of London at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s. There is much
that is solemn at a confirmation, there should be much that is joyous
and brave as well; the girl should feel her responsibility, she also
ought to be glad at becoming really a member of God’s Church, and in
outward show, at least, a Child of God. But at this confirmation the
Archbishop made so solemn, so pathetic, so “parental” an exhortation
that the whole company wept. The Duchess of Kent sobbed audibly,
the Queen and her ladies also wept aloud, tears ran down the King’s
rubicund face, and the poor little Princess was not only drowned in
tears, but frightened to death. The whole tone of the affair seems
to have suited the spirit of the age, for one lady who was present
described it afterwards as a “beautifully touching scene.”
Through this part of the year there seems to have been something like
peace between William and his sister-in-law, though at his birthday
party there was thrown across the dinner-table a shadow of the storm
which later was to descend upon “the duo” from Kensington. William
never neglected the opportunity of making a speech; if he had anything
to say he said it, whether the moment was propitious or otherwise; if
he had nothing to say, he still got on to his feet and talked, probably
without any relevance to what was going on, and his matter was often
personal. After one dinner he talked disconnectedly about the Turf and
his wife, saying that the Queen was an excellent woman as everyone
knew. At this birthday party, in 1835, William said, among other
things:--
“I cannot expect to live very long, but I hope that my successor may be
of full age when she mounts the throne. I have a great respect for the
person upon whom, in the event of my death, the Regency would devolve,
but I have great distrust of the persons by whom she is surrounded.
I know that everything which falls from my lips is reported again,
and I say this thus candidly and publicly because it is my desire and
intention that these my sentiments should be made known.”
It could hardly be pleasant for the Duchess to be thus criticised
before a great party of her friends, but a year later criticism was
not the right word by which to describe the King’s tirade against the
Duchess. All those around His Majesty knew that he could not live
very long; not that his health was really bad, but his temper was
vacillating, he was at times so uncontrolled, so childish, and so
changeable that men of the world listened to his harangues unmoved. He
would deliberately insult one of his “confidential advisers,” and the
injured one would command his face as well as he could, bow, and let it
pass. It was not possible to make a serious matter of such an incident,
for to do that would have meant introducing new Ministers every week
at least. Those about him felt that the business of the country could
only be carried on by ignoring his humours, and that they were more or
less marking time until William’s successor sat on the throne. In fact,
the future alone was considered by all. The King prayed to live until
Victoria’s majority; the Duchess dreamed of a Regency, a throne, and a
husband for her daughter; and the Princess--who knows what she thought?
She contented herself with inspecting the young men who came to be
inspected while she waited.
One of the few children who made an impression upon the life of the
young Princess was Donna Maria, the young Queen of Portugal, who was
just a month older than herself. She came to England in 1829, and
was entertained by George IV., who, among other festivities, gave a
children’s ball, being urged thereto by one of the Court ladies, who
pushed the idea by saying to him with a naïve stupidity,“Oh, do; it
would be so nice to see the two little Queens dancing together.”
In 1833 Donna Maria went to France, where she was received with great
want of hospitality by Louis Philippe. William did not want her in
England, but the French King’s action spurred him to extend a warm
hospitality to her here, and thus she renewed a childish friendship
with Princess Victoria, in so far as the Duchess of Kent would allow it.
In 1835 this girl of sixteen married the Duke of Leuchtenberg, who,
poor fellow, only went to Lisbon to be poisoned by its foulness and
to die of throat disease in a month. By the autumn of the same year,
seeing that there was no chance of a successor to the throne appearing,
the callous counsellors determined that their young Queen must marry
again, and were in such a hurry that the two weddings took place within
twelve months. The second bridegroom chosen was Prince Ferdinand, the
elder son of Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg. _En route_ for his
difficult position in Portugal, this young man, who was exceedingly
handsome, came on a visit to England with his father and his younger
brother Augustus; and the mention of his name leads to the subject of
the Princess Victoria’s suitors.