Victoria Confesses (9781442422469) (4 page)

“King Henry was a terrible tyrant. Catherine of Aragon, mother of Mary Tudor, was virtuous but much older than Henry and he did not much like her. Anne Boleyn, mother of Elizabeth, was certainly the most beautiful, though she was rather giddy and thoughtless.”

I had not gotten to the rest of Henry's wives when the bishop interrupted. “And Elizabeth? Your thoughts on her queenship?”

“Elizabeth was a great queen but certainly not a very good woman and treated her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, most cruelly. Elizabeth surely inherited her harshness from her father and delighted in having her rival in her power.”

“Well answered,” rumbled the archbishop, and we continued in this manner. At last the great man pronounced himself satisfied, Mamma, too, was finally satisfied, and I was VERY relieved to have it finished.

Soon after the archbishop's visit, Daisy placed a history book on my writing table and pointed out the large, folded sheet
inserted in the back of the book. “Your mother wishes you to look at this very carefully,” she told me, hovering at my elbow. I thought she seemed rather nervous, unusual for her.

An elegantly drawn chart outlined the royal succession, hundreds of years of the past kings and queens of England. I traced my finger down through one generation after another until I reached the name of my grandfather, King George III. My finger moved across the page to note his several sons: Uncle King—George IV—followed by the duke of York with a black cross next to his name and the date on which he'd died; Uncle William, duke of Clarence; my father, Edward duke of Kent, also with the black cross and date; Uncle Cumberland, whom everyone feared and despised, perhaps because he was monstrously ugly; dear, eccentric old Uncle Sussex; and then Uncle Cambridge. Beneath my uncles' names were the names of their legitimate children—no
bâtards
. There were scarcely any. It was just as Fidi said.

I easily found my own name. The chart made it clear: After Uncle William, I was next in line. There was no one else. When King George died, Uncle William would become king. And after he died, I almost certainly would become queen. Not for a long time, perhaps, but someday. I was just two steps away from the throne.

If Mamma believed the secret had been kept from me until now, she was mistaken. It is not a secret when everyone knows it, even if no one actually speaks of it. And Fidi did speak of it. Baroness Späth had hinted at it. But now I saw with my own eyes the size and shape of my future. I considered this for a moment. Daisy was waiting for me to say something.

I did NOT say the first thing that came into my head:
When I am queen, I will send Sir John far, far away.

I said the next thing I thought of. “I will be good,” I told her.

I was not speaking of practicing the piano or attending to my studies, or even behaving faultlessly as was expected of a royal young lady. I was not sure precisely what I did mean, only that I wished to assure her that I understood the enormity of the challenge.

“Yes, I will be good.”

“Of course you will, Victoria,” Daisy replied, with tears shining in her eyes. She turned away and quietly folded the chart. Her shoulders were heaving.

Then I realized that nothing would ever be the same, and I too began to cry. I crawled onto her lap as though I were once again a little child. But I knew that I had said the proper thing.

In June of 1830, King George IV died. Uncle William, duke of Clarence, was declared King William IV. I was eleven years old and just one step away from becoming queen.

The day after Uncle King's death, with the whole court in mourning, Mamma wrote to Parliament, asking that I be named heir to the throne with herself as regent. If King William should die before I turned eighteen, Mamma would govern in my place until I was of age. But I knew it was not Mamma who would have the real power. It would be Sir John. Mamma could barely conceal her satisfaction when Parliament approved, and Sir John strutted about with his usual arrogant air and his chest puffed out.

I truly loved Uncle William, as he wished me to call him, and not “Uncle King.” He and his dear wife, Queen Adelaide, invited me to come to court quite often, and it was my greatest
wish to spend time with them. But Mamma disliked my uncle and nearly always refused, if she could think of an excuse. Something unpleasant was brewing; I could sense it.

Mamma and Sir John had determined that the time had come for the English people to become acquainted with the girl who would someday be their queen. Sir John arranged a carriage trip, and in late summer we left Kensington to visit places he believed I would find informative, such as the manufactory where steam engines were made, and to meet interesting people, like the man who invented the gaslight.

Victoire Conroy was my traveling companion. It was not that I disliked her, but I did wish there were other girls with whom to spend my time. Someone not so tedious! My favorite game was battledore and shuttlecock, played with a racket and a little feathered cork batted back and forth across a net. Victoire complained that it made her perspire to chase the shuttlecock. Victoire did not like to perspire, but I minded not at all. She did seem to enjoy card games, but one could endure only so much of
that
!

Before returning to Kensington, we traveled by steamer from Brighton to visit the Isle of Wight. Every evening after dinner the ladies gathered in the parlor and played games. My favorite was The Hen and Her Chickens, in which I loved to play the role of the Fox, and Mamma or Daisy agreed to be the Hen. Fox sat down in the center of a circle, looking sly and hungry, and Hen and her Chickens gathered round. “What are you doing, Fox?” asked Hen, and I replied in a foxy voice, “I am making a fire.”

“A fire?” Hen asked. “What for, Fox?”

And Fox replied, “To boil some water, Hen.”

“Pray, what is the water for, Fox?”

Fox, in his slyest manner: “To cook a chicken.”

Whereupon all the Chickens gasped, and Hen asked, “And where will you get a chicken, Fox?”

Fox cried, “Out of your flock, Hen!” and pounced on one of the hapless Chickens, creating a great deal of make-believe squawking and laughter.

The game went on until someone observed that Sir John and the other gentlemen would soon rejoin the ladies. This was the signal that my bedtime had come and I must say good night to the company. Sir John was perfectly suited to play the role of Fox without any need to pretend to be sly and hungry, and I felt like Chicken, unable to squawk or run away.

In February of 1831 I made my first public appearance at court. The occasion was the Queen's Drawing Room, Aunt Adelaide's reception for a very large number of people, held at St. James's. I loved my gown, English blonde lace over white satin, and Mamma allowed me to wear a pearl necklace and a diamond ornament in my hair. Mamma's gown had a pink velvet train trimmed with ermine and a headdress made of feathers and diamonds. Mamma and I rode in state in a carriage sent by the king; with us were the unavoidable Sir John and Lady Conroy and Miss Victoire Conroy, and my dearest Daisy. The gentlemen were all in black evening dress, and the ladies wore white satin gowns, all of British manufacture, with a profusion of feathered headdresses and glittering diamonds. Everyone said it was the most magnificent since the drawing-room presentation of Princess Charlotte when she married dear Uncle Leopold.

Dear Aunt Adelaide was seated on her throne, and it was
my duty to stand on her left. King William, on her right, spoke to me very kindly from time to time, but Mamma had advised me to remain quiet and dignified. We were present because we had to be. I knew that Mamma disliked the king because she felt he did not give her her due, and the king disliked Mamma for demanding
more
than her due. King William later complained that I had looked at him stonily, and I realized that my silence and my attempt to appear dignified had succeeded only in offending him.

Matters grew especially tense when Mamma decided that I was not to attend Uncle William's coronation in September. She forbade it, and for what I considered an utterly ridiculous reason: She had been informed that my other uncles—monstrously ugly Cumberland, eccentric Sussex, and harmless Cambridge—were to take precedence over me in the coronation procession through Westminster Abbey. They would walk ahead of me, signaling to everyone that they ranked higher than I did.

This angered Mamma. “Parliament has recognized that you are the heir apparent, Victoria, and you should walk
ahead
of the dukes, not
behind
them. I find this insulting, and I will not allow you to be insulted.”

There was scarcely anything on which King William and Mamma agreed, and this was just one more sticking point. I blamed Sir John for much of it; he had convinced Mamma to stand firm when it would have been better to compromise. But there was one subject on which I did think Mamma was in the right: King William wished me to change my name. He did not like either of my names, Alexandrina or Victoria!

“Too foreign-sounding for an English princess,” he informed Mamma. “The child would do much better to have a proper
English name. I propose that she take the name of Elizabeth. And if not Elizabeth, then certainly Charlotte.”

Elizabeth!
I did not like the name very much, and I did not wish to be named for a queen who treated her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, so cruelly. Further, I could not imagine now being called Charlotte.

“You have been given my name!” Mamma cried, outraged by the king's proposal. “Now King William wishes to change it to something
he
likes better! Well, I will not give in to that! You are Victoria, a very high-sounding name, and Victoria you shall remain.”

Then there was the matter of my title. I was always to be referred to as “Her Royal Highness.” When some person in the king's household mistakenly left off the “Royal” in writing to Mamma, my mother became extremely upset. It took only one word to upset her. It may have been because Mamma always made such a fuss about everything that King William decided not to give me precedence in his procession. Whatever the reason, it so infuriated Mamma that she decided I would not be in the procession at all. And I would not attend the coronation.

I was not consulted about any of this. I learned of it only after Mamma had sent word to the king. Surely, I thought, she would get over her temper and allow it. She must! I didn't mind if I walked behind my three uncles—I simply wanted to be part of the coronation.

“But
why
, dearest Mamma? How I should love to be there!” I pleaded. “I adore Aunt Adelaide and I love Uncle William, and I know they'll be disappointed if their dear niece does not attend. They are always
so very kind
to me!”

Mamma refused to listen. She was unmoved by my tears or my pleading.

“I really cannot afford the expense, Victoria,” she told me. I could not argue with that, for I knew nothing of money matters. “Besides, my dear child, your health is much too delicate for such an undertaking. I have written to King William that your attendance is out of the question. Now, let us speak no more of it.”

My health was not delicate! Mamma was simply inventing that as an excuse. I suspected the real reason, besides my being shunted to a place in the procession behind the dukes, was that Mamma did not approve of King William, because of
les bâtards
. All of his illegitimate FitzClarence children actually lived at Windsor Castle with him and Aunt Adelaide. I had visited Windsor only a very few times, though I loved going there and would have happily accepted every invitation. But if any of the young FitzClarences happened to enter the room where we were sitting, Mamma rose, seized my hand, and led me away, always making sure everyone saw her. It was most
horribly
embarrassing.
Les bâtards
were the cause of my rarely being allowed to visit Windsor. I couldn't imagine what harm could come to me if I happened to glimpse them accidentally, or even if one of them spoke to me.