Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 (2 page)

No more was heard from the Prince Regent until the evening before the christening. A list of names had been submitted to him, and it was assumed that he would raise no objection, but on Sunday evening he sent a message to the Duke of Kent that the name Georgina was not to be used, as the Regent did not wish to place his name before that of the Tsar of Russia, and he could not allow it to come afterwards. With regard to the other names, he would speak to the Duke of Kent at the ceremony. Unknown to the parents, he had already approached Prince Leopold, asking him to prevent the name Charlotte from being given.

When the modest company assembled in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace the next day the Regent, determined to be as cold as possible, did not exchange a single word with the Duke of Kent. As the Archbishop of Canterbury held the Princess in his arms, waiting for the Regent to pronounce the first name, he announced gruffly, ‘Alexandrina’. He then stopped, and the Archbishop waited. The Duke of Kent suggested Charlotte, Augusta, and Elizabeth. All these met with fierce disapproval from his brother, who coldly said she could be baptized with her mother’s name, ‘but it cannot precede that of the Emperor’. By the time Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent had been christened, the Duchess of Kent was sobbing.

That evening the Duke and Duchess gave a dinner party at Kensington Palace. Not surprisingly, the Prince Regent was not invited.

The Princess was regularly known among the family as ‘Drina’, though she and her mother preferred the name Victoria. As a baby, her mother called her ‘Vickelchen’, and lulled her to sleep each night with German cradle songs.

On 2 August 1819 she became the first royal baby to be vaccinated against smallpox. The six-week-old child of Colonel Eliot, MP, was brought to Kensington Palace. Vaccine lymph was taken from the vesicle, the cavity filled with pus resulting from the insertion of the vaccine on the arm of Colonel Eliot’s child, and inserted into two places on the Princess’s left arm and one on her right. By the twenty-sixth day after vaccination, the scabs had dropped off, leaving ‘a small radiated and rather depressed cicatrix’. The vaccination had been successful, and the Princess suffered no side-effects.

Although bitterly resented by the brother who was King in all but name, the Duke of Kent, his wife and child were leading an apparently contented life. Their cosy domesticity was the subject of some gentle mockery on the part of Mary, Duchess of Gloucester, who noted that on a visit to Windsor in September they retired to bed at the almost unheard-of-hour of 9 p.m.

Yet financial troubles continued to dog the family, and pursue the father to his grave – if not indirectly lead him to it. The Duke of Kent could not afford to live in London; to economize, it was necessary to live somewhere in the country. Returning to Germany, which would at least take them out of sight of resentful relatives, would be too expensive, and as he was determined that his daughter (and perhaps he himself before her) would one day ascend the throne, it would not do for them to go back into self-imposed exile.

A suggestion was made that they should visit, perhaps stay in, Devonshire. This would be a good way of preserving appearances, as the Duke had announced his intention of taking the Duchess to benefit from sea air after her confinement. He and his equerry, Captain John Conroy, went to look at houses in Dawlish, Torquay, Teignmouth and Sidmouth. Between them they decided that Sidmouth would be most satisfactory, and they rented Woolbrook Cottage, close to the seafront.

On 2 November, back at Kensington Palace, the Duke celebrated his fifty-second birthday with what was rather grandly described as a ‘family festival’. This consisted of the presentation of a letter written by the Duchess and presented to him by the Princess, now aged five months, dressed in a white frock with bows of red and green ribbon, and wearing a Scottish bonnet. Princess Feodora sang some verses composed for the occasion, and from his school in Geneva Prince Charles of Leiningen wrote a letter in English to ‘please my dear father’, sending ‘filial congratulations’.

On 3 December 1819 one of the decisive influences on the Princess’s early life arrived at Kensington Palace. Louise Lehzen, the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman in the village of Lagenhagen, Hanover, was engaged by the Duke of Kent to become governess to Princess Feodora. He intended that she should also become Princess Victoria’s governess when her nurse, Mrs Brock, left. Thirty-five years old, Fraulein Lehzen had been governess to three daughters in the von Marenholtz family. Highly recommended, and described by diarist Charles Greville as ‘a clever agreeable woman’, her strength of personality would lead to some stormy scenes within the next couple of decades.

Later that month the entourage set out for Devon. Breaking their journey at Salisbury, they toured the Cathedral and the Duke caught a heavy cold. Although the winter of 1819 to 1820 proved unusually cold, with rain and gales adding to the rigours of exceptionally low temperatures, he refused to fuss, insisting that he would outlive all his brothers. They arrived at Sidmouth on the afternoon of Christmas Day in a fierce snowstorm.

The rest of the family also caught severe colds, and on 28 December while sitting in the drawing room with the infant Princess, the Duchess was terrified as a shot shattered the window. The culprit was a local apprentice boy named Hook, who had been shooting birds. Despite their alarm, the Duke and Duchess made light of the incident. Relieved that it was not some underhand assassination attempt, the Duke observed that his daughter had stood fire as befitted a soldier’s daughter. Meanwhile they asked Conroy to write to the local magistrates, asking them to help ensure the prevention of such an occurrence, but requesting particularly that the boy should not be punished.

On 6 January 1820 the Duke wrote to Admiral Donnelly, whose house he had occupied in Brussels, enquiring about arrangements for returning to Amorbach in the spring. In the same letter he observed that ‘our little Girl now between seven and eight months looks like a child of a year, and has cut her two first teeth without the slightest inconvenience’.
⁶

It was the last letter he ever wrote. Despite his cold, he insisted on going out walking in all weathers. Returning one evening chilled and soaked through, he refused to change his boots. Within a few days his chill had turned to high fever, delirium and vomiting. Medical attention could do little to alleviate his sufferings. On the morning of 23 January he passed away.

The disconsolate, fatherless family returned to Kensington Palace. On their journey the carriages were very bad, and, the Duchess wrote to her confidante, Polyxene von Tubeuf, ‘poor little Vickelchen got very upset by the frightful jolting’.
⁷
Returning to Kensington, they learned that King George III’s phantom existence had come to an end. Outliving his fourth son by six days, he died on 29 January aged eighty-one.

Widowed for the second time, with daughters aged twelve years and eight months, living in a strange country whose language she could scarcely speak, the Duchess of Kent was sorely tempted to return to Germany. Only the insistence of her brother Prince Leopold persuaded her to settle permanently in England. For the next seventeen years she would oversee the childhood of the woman who would give her name to the age.

The childhood of Queen Victoria was anything but luxurious. Not only did she lack a father, but she had very few of the creature comforts which her uncles or aunts had known, or indeed which her children were to enjoy: ‘I never had a room to myself; I never had a sofa, nor an easy chair; and there was not a single carpet that was not threadbare.’
⁸

Her education began, tentatively, when she was four years old. The Revd George Davys, who took services in Kensington Palace Chapel, was her first tutor. He started with a box of letters and some coloured cards, on which he wrote simple words, and placed them around the room. He then called out a word and the Princess had to find it with the aid of the letters.

‘I was not fond of learning as a little child,’ the Queen recalled in 1872, ‘and baffled every attempt to teach me my letters up to 5 years old – when I consented to learn them by their being written down before me.’
⁹

So many legends have grown up about her education, with frequently conflicting stories about her childhood published within her lifetime, that one is grateful for her recollections, and the fact that she annotated several of the inaccurate accounts in her own hand. For example, it has often been accepted as fact that she heard only German spoken until the age of three, when she began to learn English.
¹⁰
When presented with a copy of Miss Agnes Strickland’s
Victoria from Birth to Bridal
, published in 1840, she found mention of the ‘fact’ that ‘many caressing phrases were addressed by the little Princess to her Royal Mother in German’. In the margin, she wrote, ‘Not true. Never spoke German until 1839, not allowed to. Not true her mother stimulated her to speak German.’
¹¹

The educational process began in earnest in 1827, when she was eight years old, and Davys was appointed her Principal Master. A regular timetable was drawn up for her. Morning lessons were from 9.30 to 11.30 a.m., after which she was allowed to play or go for a walk until dinner at 1 p.m. Afternoon lessons, which included drawing, lasted from 3 to 5 p.m., after which she learnt poetry by heart for an hour, in English, French and German. Wednesday afternoons were given over to learning her catechism, and religious instruction from Davys. On Thursday she had her dancing lesson, and on Friday morning she was taught music and singing by Mr Sale, the organist at St Margaret’s, Westminster. She had a soprano voice, ‘not powerful but remarkably sweet and true’.

On Saturday the hours were shorter. She went over the lessons she had learned during the week till 11 a.m. and was then free until a German lesson at 3 p.m.; from 4 to 5 p.m. she wrote letters and from 5 to 6 p.m. had French repetition. The Duchess of Kent stated that she herself ‘almost always . . . attended every lesson or a part’, an assertion that her daughter later vehemently denied. Although the Queen insisted that she was ‘not allowed to’ speak German until 1839, a rather strange remark in view of the fact that by then she had been on the throne for two years, the accounts of others make it evident that she began learning the language at an early age – even if she was apparently not allowed to speak it.

Brought up in the Church of England, the Princess could repeat her catechism by the time she was eleven, and had a thorough understanding of the principal doctrines of the Church of England.

Great emphasis was placed on modern languages. Her French tutor, M. Grandineau, was very impressed with her progress. When she was ten, he reported that she could carry on a conversation in French; her grammar was excellent and her accent would eventually be perfect, though she did not write French as well as she spoke. Her German tutor was the Revd Henry Barez, a Lutheran clergyman, who reported that at the same age she had acquired ‘a correct German pronunciation, particularly remarkable for its softness and distinctness’. She constantly studied a German grammar which had been specially written for her. Davys also taught her Latin, with the aid of a standard contemporary grammar produced particularly for the boys of Eton, but she found the subject difficult and ‘was not so far advanced’.

Her writing master, Mr Steward, also taught her arithmetic. He considered she had a particular talent for it, working out sums correctly and understanding his explanation of the rules. In geography and history, also under Davys, she was ‘better informed than most young persons of the same age’. She read poetry aloud ‘extremely well’, and had a talent for drawing. Good deportment was regarded as essential, and in order to make her sit up straight, a sprig of holly was pinned to the front of her dress just under her chin.

Lehzen read aloud to her while she was dressing and while her hair was being brushed. Only educational and informative books were permitted, fiction not being allowed. For the first twenty years or so of the nineteenth century, only ‘improving books’ were considered suitable for children. Works of ‘fiction and fancy’ were deemed a bad influence, particularly adventure stories, most of which featured either war, piracy or murder, and thus infected the young mind with harmful ideas. Only stories with a moral, in which marvellous things happened to the good child and dreadful things to the terrible one, were approved.

The Princess’s greatest failing was inattention, described politely by the tutors as ‘absence of mind’. Reports produced for the Duchess of Kent were, not surprisingly, quite flattering; to some extent, the tutors’ future employment depended on proof that they were doing their job properly, but the Princess was not a model pupil. Like many schoolgirls before and since she disliked learning, and looked forward eagerly to ‘holly days’.

In 1827 she had her first drawing lesson from Richard Westall. From then until his death nine years later, he called at Kensington Palace twice a week to give her lessons lasting about an hour. He taught her drawing and sketching, but not painting in oils. He had also illustrated modern editions of Goethe’s
Faust
, Byron’s
Don Juan
, and Walter Scott’s poems, although his pictures lacked the imagination and energy of those by artists of the previous generation such as William Blake and Henry Fuseli. Princess Victoria was his first, and only, pupil, and she faithfully copied his drawings of hands, eyes and horses. Although he supported a blind sister on his meagre income, he declined to accept any payment for the lessons he gave the Princess, though his sister received some financial assistance from the Duchess of Kent.

Romantic ballet and opera were all the rage in London during the 1820s and ’30s, and Princess Victoria was an enthusiastic patron. She might be taken to Covent Garden by her mother, Lehzen and the Conroys two or three times a week in spring to see a show. She was particularly taken with La Sylphide, danced by Marie Taglioni, ‘like a fawn’, on a set made more magnificent by its revolutionary use of gas lighting. She also saw the most celebrated interpreters of Italian opera on the stage, performing works by Bellini, Meyerbeer, Rossini and Donizetti. At the same time she was brought up to appreciate drama, and Shakespeare productions starring Edmund Kean and Fanny Kemble were a vital part of her education as well as providing entertainment value.