Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 (5 page)

Princess Victoria burst into tears. The Duchess of Kent ordered her carriage forthwith, and was only prevailed upon to remain another day with great difficulty.

Over Christmas 1836, which was spent at Claremont, the Princess became greatly fascinated by a gypsy encampment nearby – in her words, ‘the chief ornament of the Portsmouth Road.’
²⁵
She longed to do something for these poor yet proud, cheerful people. The contrast between their affection for each other and her own unhappiness at home was painful, and she was frustrated when her efforts to help were mocked. She and Lehzen both read the Revd George Crabbe’s
Gipsies’ Advocate
, and were convinced that poor folk would respond to kindness; one should not be ashamed to speak to them. It was a view which apparently found no favour with Conroy, presumably because he objected to the idea of Princess Victoria thinking for herself in this manner. Such lack of prejudice was not only fitting in a future Queen, it was characteristic of the only child of a royal Duke who had been regarded with suspicion by most of his brothers for his liberal, if not left-wing, views. Nevertheless, she persuaded the Duchess of Kent to send them soup and blankets.

It is rather touching to read from her journal that on Christmas Day, she and Lehzen visited them in the afternoon, particularly to enquire after the health of one of the women who had had a baby nine days previously. She longed to ask them to call the child Leopold, after her uncle King Leopold, on whose birthday the child had been born, but instead the baby was named Francis. ‘I cannot say how happy I am that these poor creatures are assisted,’ she wrote, ‘for they are such a nice set of Gipsies, so quiet, so affectionate to one another, so discreet, not at all forward or importunate, and
so
grateful; so unlike the gossiping, fortune-telling race gipsies . . . I shall go to bed happy, knowing they are better off and more comfortable.’
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In February 1837 the Princess saw a train for the first time: ‘We went to see the Railroad near Hersham, & saw the steam carriage pass with surprising quickness, striking sparks as it flew along the railroad, enveloped in clouds of smoke & making a loud noise. It is a curious thing indeed!’
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No less curious, perhaps, was the outcome of the power struggle at Kensington. King William had publicly expressed, albeit in somewhat embarrassing terms, his intention of living to see his niece and heir celebrate her eighteenth birthday, and thus be spared a regency under the Duchess of Kent and ‘King’ John Conroy. His wish was granted. He offered her a grant of £10,000 a year entirely free of her mother’s control, an independent Keeper of her Privy Purse, and the right to appoint her own ladies-in-waiting. Although the letter was delivered personally to her (after the Duchess and Conroy had attempted to intercept the messenger), she was forced to decline the offer. As the King knew only too well, ‘Victoria has not written that letter’.
²⁸
Yet she did not have long to wait. On 19 June 1837 it was evident that the King had only a few hours left, and at six o’clock the following morning, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King’s Lord Chamberlain, Lord Conyngham, drove to Kensington Palace, demanding to see ‘the Queen’.

Awakened by her mother, ‘I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room (only in my dressing-gown) and
alone
, and saw them,’ she noted in her journal. They told her that the King had died shortly after 2 a.m., ‘and consequently that I am
Queen
’.
²⁹

*Jointed wooden dolls, usually carved from pinewood in Germany and Austria, named thus as a corruption of ‘deutsch’, or according to another theory as they were imported into England via Holland. They were succeeded by papier-mâché dolls, which could be moulded and easily painted, and, from about 1830, dolls with porcelain or glazed china heads.

*Allegations that Princess Victoria had witnessed over-familiar behaviour between Conroy and the Duchess of Kent, and spoken to Späth who then remonstrated with Conroy, remain unproved.

Q
ueen Victoria and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha were married at the Chapel Royal, St James’s, on 10 February 1840. Early the following morning, the diarist Charles Greville noticed them walking in the park. He thought it ‘strange that a bridal night should be so short’, and concluded that this was no way to provide the country with a Prince of Wales.

Until they had children, the heir was her uncle Ernest Augustus, Duke of Cumberland and, since the death of King William IV, King of Hanover. Although he proved himself a capable ruler, he was the most unpopular member of the royal family as far as the British public was concerned. He was credited (quite unjustly) with various crimes, including incest with one of his sisters and the murder of his valet, and the Whig government detested his ultra-Tory politics, which they had considered an adverse influence on the last two Kings.

Greville and the rest of her subjects need not have worried. The Queen hated and dreaded the idea of childbearing, and wanted at least a year of ‘happy enjoyment’ with Albert before any children came along to disturb their tranquillity. Nevertheless, within a few weeks she was
enceinte
. Her confinement was expected in December, but she went into labour three weeks early. On 21 November 1840, at ten minutes to two in the afternoon, her first child, a daughter, was born at Buckingham Palace.

The Queen had expressed an objection to having large numbers of people present at the birth to attend as witnesses. Only Dr Locock, the nurse Mrs Lilly, and Prince Albert himself, were present. In the next room were several Cabinet ministers, including the Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, Palmerston, and Lord John Russell, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, and Lord Erroll, Lord Steward of the Household. They heard Dr Locock’s voice through the open door; ‘Oh, Madam, it is a Princess.’ ‘Never mind, the next will be a Prince,’ the Queen declared. The baby was wrapped in flannel, taken into the room and laid upon a specially prepared table for their inspection, then returned to her room to be dressed.

‘A perfect little child was born,’ the Queen wrote, ‘but alas a girl and not a boy, as we both had so hoped and wished for. We were, I am afraid, sadly disappointed.’
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This disappointment was shortlived. Almost twenty years later, on the birth of her first granddaughter, she would write to the mother (this newly born daughter) that girls were ‘much more amusing’.

All the Queen’s children were born at home, either at Buckingham Palace or Windsor Castle. The same nurse, Mrs Lilly, assisted her during all nine confinements, and Prince Albert remained by her side most of the time to carry, comfort and assist her, to read and sing, or summarize despatches and deal with visitors throughout the two weeks or so following the birth while she remained in bed.

As the birth had not been expected until early December, the wet-nurse – Mrs Southey, sister-in-law of the poet – was still at home in the Isle of Wight. A page was sent for her, and brought her over in an open boat from Cowes to Southampton, so she arrived at the Palace by 2 a.m. the following day. The Queen’s dressing-room was fitted up as a temporary nursery, until apartments were ready for the Princess. Among the fittings were a marble and a silver bath, and a cradle in the form of a nautilus.

Before the end of the Queen’s ‘lying-in’, another child – this time uninvited – was in the Palace. About ten days after the birth, Mrs Lilly was woken shortly after 1 a.m. by a noise in the Queen’s sitting-room. She called a page, Kinnaird, to help her investigate. Kinnaird looked under the Queen’s sofa, and hurriedly backed away without saying anything. Meanwhile the ever-faithful Baroness Lehzen had appeared. She pushed the sofa aside, to reveal a boy curled up on the floor. He was recognized as ‘the boy Jones’, who had paid a similar clandestine visit to the Palace two years previously. Proudly, he claimed that he could get over the wall on Constitution Hill and creep through one of the windows. When asked why he entered Her Majesty’s apartment, he said that he wanted to know ‘how they lived at the Palace’. He had no weapons or stolen property, but boasted that he had sat on the throne, ‘that he saw the Queen and heard the Princess Royal squall’. He had slept under one of the servants’ beds, and helped himself to food from the kitchens.

Home Office officials established that he was Edmund Jones, the son of a Westminster tailor. Aged seventeen, he was stunted in growth and looked very young for his age. He was sent to a House of Correction in Tothill Street as a rogue and vagabond for three months, and put to work on the treadmill. Undaunted, he paid another such visit after his release in March the following year, and after a similar punishment he was sent to sea.

Meanwhile the Queen and her daughter throve. The Queen sat up for the first time since the birth on 6 December and got out of bed again the following day. On 19 January 1841 the hereditary style and distinction of Princess Royal was conferred on the new Princess. The previous holder of the style, Charlotte, Queen of Württemberg, had died in 1828.

Three weeks later, on the Queen’s first wedding anniversary, the Princess was christened in the throne room at Buckingham Palace. She was given the names Victoria Adelaide Mary Louisa, the second after the Queen Dowager, the third and fourth in honour of the Duchess of Kent, both of whom were among the sponsors. The others were the Queen’s aunt Mary, Duchess of Gloucester, her uncles the Duke of Sussex, Leopold, King of the Belgians, and Albert’s father, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg Gotha. The latter was so offended by Albert’s refusal to demand a personal allowance for him and his dissipated lifestyle from the Queen that he did not even answer an invitation to attend the ceremony. In his absence, the Duke of Wellington was asked to stand proxy for him.

Also present was Lord Melbourne, who remarked about the Princess, ‘How she looked about her, quite conscious that the stir was all about herself. This is the time the character is formed!’
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A new font was used, made of silver gilt in the shape of a water lily supporting a large shell. Inside the rim of the small shell were water lilies floating around the edge, and water was brought specially from the river Jordan.

‘The Christening went off very well,’ Prince Albert wrote to the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Gotha Altenburg. ‘Your little greatgrandchild behaved with great propriety, and like a Christian. She was awake, but did not cry at all, and seemed to crow with immense satisfaction at the lights and brilliant uniforms, for she is very intelligent and observing.’
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Although this daughter was the first of nine children, Queen Victoria was not particularly maternal by nature. Until a baby was six months old, she thought it ‘froglike’ and ugly. The very idea of childbirth revolted her; to her it was ‘the shadow-side of marriage’, or
die Schattenseite
, an indelicate subject which sounded less repulsive in a different language. According to Elizabeth Longford, memories of the Flora Hastings affair* may have accounted for ‘her almost Jansenist disgust for the things of the body, which combined strangely with her healthy Hanoverian nature.’
⁴

The Queen firmly refused to breast-feed her children. Prince Albert begged her to, and the Duchess of Kent, who had given her daughter ‘maternal nourishment’ supported his argument, but she would not be swayed. It has been suggested that her main influence in the matter was that of Lehzen, who told her of the old wives’ tale prevalent in Germany that hereditary taints were passed on through the mother’s milk.
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Breast-feeding was considered unusual for a lady at the time of the Queen’s accession, but by the 1840s manuals on childcare were recommending the practice, and it became popular among the aristocracy.

King Leopold had correctly predicted that the Princess Royal would be the first of several children in the royal nurseries, and told his niece so. She did not welcome the prospect:

I think, dearest Uncle, you cannot
really
wish me to be the ‘Mamma d’une
nombreuse
famille,’ for I think you will see with me the great inconvenience a
large
family would be to us all, and particularly to the country, independent of the hardship and inconvenience to myself; men never think, at least seldom think, what a hard task it is for us women to go through this
very often
.
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To her sometimes ill-concealed fury the Queen discovered, about the time of the christening, that she was ‘in for it’ again. Her first pregnancy had been comparatively easy, but the summer of 1841 was a difficult one, not least because of the fall of the government and the resignation of her beloved mentor Lord Melbourne. His successor, Robert Peel, was particularly admired by Prince Albert – who was at pains to keep the crown above party politics – but at first the Queen treated him with hostility.

Prince Albert was very protective of his daughter, or ‘Pussy’ as her parents affectionately called her for the first few years of her life. Before her birth he had asked Queen Adelaide why her little girls had died in infancy. The Queen Dowager told him that they had been weak from the start, slow to gain weight, and uninterested in their food. He watched cautiously for similar signs in the Princess Royal, and was relieved that she appeared to thrive at first. He was equally apprehensive that she might be killed in a carriage accident. Having seen a young Coburg cousin killed by a bolting horse, and mindful of the bad state of English roads, his fear of accidents bordered on the obsessive. When the court went to Windsor for Christmas, he held his month-old baby in his arms himself, warning the coachman repeatedly to watch out for ice or pot-holes on the journey.

He adored his daughter and visited her several times in the day, oblivious to stony looks from the nurses and gentle teasing from the Queen. ‘I think you would be amused to see Albert dancing her in his arms,’ she wrote to King Leopold (5 January 1841); ‘he makes a capital nurse (which I do not, and she is much too heavy for me to carry), and she always seems so happy to go with him.’
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