We Two: Victoria and Albert (79 page)

51
Over the years, Victoria amply repaid
It was impossible for Victoria and Feodora to correspond freely before Victoria’s accession, but Feodora understood better than anyone what Conroy was capable of. From Germany, she tried to keep informed about the situation at Kensington Palace, and she wrote to King William IV and to King Leopold to seek their protection for Victoria when Conroy’s dictatorship seemed to threaten Victoria’s happiness or even her life.

52
Louise Lehzen became Victoria’s mother
This is the report from biographers such as Longford, who have read the full transcripts of the Queen’s diaries in the Royal Archives. The published sections of the diaries systematically omit references to Baroness Lehzen. The editors, writing in the early part of the twentieth century, were anxious to conceal the fact that Queen Victoria had been abused by her mother in her youth and was barely on speaking terms with her between 1837 and 1840.

52
At Amorbach Castle, her recent home
Stuart,
The Mother of Queen Victoria
, p. 6. 52
Lehzen once told a member
Katherine Hudson,
A Royal Conflict
, p. 19.

52
More controversially
Davys was made a bishop as a reward for his work as Queen Victoria’s tutor.

53
However, in the documentation
For the upbringing of Queen Victoria’s eldest children, the Princess Royal and the Prince of Wales (Vicky and Bertie), see chapters 24 and 25.

54
She went pink with delight
There is some discussion in the literature as to whether Queen Victoria is correct in assigning this event to 1826.

55
Who knew, whispered Conroy
Ernest Cumberland (later king of Hanover) was always at daggers drawn with Queen Victoria and Prince Albert over matters of precedence, and the prince was inclined to share the Duchess of Kent’s paranoia about Cumberland. However, as Woodham-Smith shows in an appendix, Queen Victoria in her private papers scrupulously insisted that Conroy had been quite wrong to claim that Cumberland attempted to harm her as a child.

55
At Amorbach, Victoire
For more on this incident, see chapter 8.

55
The duchess herself had fortunately arrived
Caroline Bauer recounts this incident in her memoirs. Just as Victoria was gazing at Fräulein Bauer and her mother, Frau Christina Bauer, the Duchess of Kent (who had known Christina since childhood) rode up and hurried her daughter away.

56
“I must unequivocally state to you
Woodham-Smith, p. 60.

56
“When I look back upon
Woodham-Smith, pp. 55 and 62.

56
But he was only thirty-two
Princess Feodora’s marriage to Prince Ernest of Hohenlohe-Langenburg was generally seen in English court circles as a mésalliance, the crowning proof that the Duchess of Kent placed her own interests and pleasures ahead of her elder daughter’s. The families of the two sisters were assiduously intertwined. Queen Victoria married her granddaughter Alexandra of Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg to Feodora’s son, also named
Ernest of Hohenlohe. Ernest and Alexandra’s son Gottfried married his cousin Margarita of Greece, another direct descendent of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. Most important, Augusta of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg, one of Feodora’s granddaughters, was the bride chosen by Victoria’s eldest grandson, Kaiser William II of Germany.

57
“He [Conroy] has never lived
Woodham-Smith, p. 72.

Chapter 5:
THE KENSINGTON SYSTEM

59
The Kensington System, as it later came
The term “the Kensington System” seems to have been coined by Charles von Leiningen, Queen Victoria’s half brother, who, at the request of Prince Albert, wrote up a long account of Conroy’s role in his sister’s life before her accession. Prince Leiningen first came to England in 1824 and was initially impressed by Conroy’s affability and his devotion to the Duchess of Kent. Conroy counted Leiningen as an ally. The prince’s account is now in the Royal Archives at Windsor (M.
7/
67). See Longford, p. 69.

59
The Kensington System became more oppressive
The facts about Queen Victoria’s difficult childhood and the Duchess of Kent’s blind deference to the abusive Conroy were hidden from the public for some thirty years after the Queen’s death in 1901. The Conroy story was first pieced together in the 1930s by Kurt Jagow, using German archival sources. It was taken up for the English public by Woodham-Smith in the late 1950s, and amply confirmed in 2000 with materials from the Royal Archives in Christopher Hibbert’s magisterial biography
Queen Victoria: A Personal History
, New York: Harper Collins, 2001.

59
At four, Vickelchen
The expression is the Queen’s own, from the recollections of her childhood she set down in 1872.

62
Darnley called her “unexampled
Alison Plowden,
The Young Victoria
, New York: Sutton, 2000 (first published 1981), p. 61.

62
Unsurprisingly, the King was outraged
According to Philip Ziegler, “The Duchess of Kent seemed to have considered [William IV’s] reign as an undesirable and inconsiderately protracted interregnum between the black wickedness of the Georges and the radiant paradise to open with the accession of Queen Victoria”
(King William IV
, London: Fontana, 1973, p. 277).

63
The duchess replied that the Princess
Sir Walter Scott was permitted to meet the Princess Victoria in May 1828, around the time of her ninth birthday. Scott wrote in his diary: “This little lady is educating with much care, and watched so closely that no busy maid has a moment to whisper ‘You are heir to England.’ I suspect if we could dissect the little heart we should find some pigeon or other bird of the air had carried the matter” (quotation from Sir Walter Scott’s diary, Theodore Martin,
The Life of the Prince Consort
, vol. 1, New York: Appleton, 1875, p. 23). Queen Victoria insisted that Scott was wrong, and that she did not know that she would be “heir to England.” It is interesting that the great novelist in a brief and formal visit was impressed by how closely the Princess Victoria was watched and kept even from conversing with the maids.

63
The conversation went as follows
Woodham-Smith, p. 76. This is the account given by Baroness Lehzen in 1867 in a private letter to Queen Victoria. The Queen annotated the letter in the margins and confirmed its accuracy. She remembered how much she cried to hear of what the future held for her and how much she prayed that her aunt Adelaide would indeed have children.

Chapter 6:
FIGHTING BACK

65
As Queen Victoria recalled
Dearest Child: Letters Between Queen Victoria and the Princess Royal, 1858–1861
, ed. Roger Fulford, New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1964, p. 72.

66
As she understood very well
Just after her newly married daughter Vicky had left for Prussia,
Queen Victoria wrote to tell Vicky how much affectionate interest had been shown in the marriage by people of every class in England. “People are so kind about you! … Lord Shaftesbury said, there was nothing in history like the feeling shown on this occasion— and the great affection, not for us only—but for you personally … Tell this to Fritz [soon to be Crown Prince of Prussia] for you know (and he ought to know) that such a feeling in England is worth a great deal—as it is the real feeling of the people, not merely a sense of respect—which can be put on, for you cannot force people here to be enthusiastic if they don’t choose”
(Dearest Child
, p. 63).

66
Her voice was her greatest beauty
The great nineteenth-century actress Fanny Burney once remarked on the Queen’s marvelous voice as one professional performer to another.

66
It was warm, clear, ringing
By contrast, Victoria’s own children, especially the four eldest who were brought up mainly by their German father, apparently retained slight traces of German pronunciation. Vicky, the eldest child and her father’s favorite, was equally at home in English and German but was said to have a German accent in English and an English accent in German.

67
Nonetheless, in one of the many
Charlot, p. 65.

68
Amenorrhea is a common symptom
The letters between King Leopold and Baroness Lehzen point to amenorrhea, though, of course, such intimate female matters could not be discussed with medical accuracy.

69
As she later told Lord Melbourne
Charlot, p. 66, who cites “RA, Queen Victoria’s Journal, 26 February 1838.” This entry is not included in Esher’s edition of Queen Victoria’s Journal.

69
However, Queen Victoria herself was told
Just before the prince consort died of typhoid, Queen Victoria wrote to her uncle Leopold: “It is the first time I ever witnessed anything of this kind although I suffered from the same at Ramsgate and was much worse”
(Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals
, ed. Hibbert, p. 155).

70
“I talk to you at length
The quotations in this and the following paragraph are taken from Woodham-Smith, pp. 122–123.

71
“I trust in God that my life
Woodham-Smith pp. 126–127, quoting apparently from the account left by Lord Adolphus FitzClarence, one of the King’s illegitimate sons, who heard the whole tirade and immediately set down an account for the history books.

72
“The Monster and Demon Incarnate”
The quotations are from the Queen’s diary of 1842 and 1843, when she was at last free to write frankly about her life under Conroy See Hibbert,
Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals
, pp. 42 and 71.

73
“Her feelings seem
Woodham-Smith, p. 136. Woodham-Smith gives an unequaled blow-by-blow account of the days just preceding the accession of Queen Victoria, full of hitherto unpublished quotations from archival sources.

73
Despite everything her mother claimed
According to Katherine Hudson, Conroy himself left a different account of the medical crisis in Ramsgate, which puts the blame for neglecting the princess’s serious condition on the duchess and on Dr. Clark.

74
Conroy gave Stockmar a list
Longford, p. 82.

75
“Tuesday, 20th June
The Childhood of Queen Victoria
, ed. Esher, vol. 1, pp. 196–197. Let me repeat that this entry forms part of that section of Queen Victoria’s diaries that was transcribed by Esher before Princess Beatrice could take her scissors to it and is therefore pretty close to what the Queen actually wrote.

Chapter 7:
VICTORIA, VIRGIN QUEEN

77
At last Victoria was permitted
Alan Hardy,
Queen Victoria Was Amused
London: John Murray, 1976, p. 164.

78
“I felt for the first time
Esher,
The Girlhood of Queen Victoria
, vol. 1, p. 227. This vision of the young Queen Victoria on horseback will stir the memories of elderly Britons like myself. I remember well from my youth the seductive images of Queen Elizabeth II as a young
woman reviewing the household cavalry on horseback, riding sidesaddle, marvelously elegant in her cocked hat and tightly fitting military uniform.

79
“Everything is new and delightful
Woodham-Smith, p. 141.

79
To her half sister Feodora
Charlot, p. 101.

79
To her uncle King Leopold
Benson and Esher,
The Letters of Queen Victoria
, vol. 1, p. 79.

81
She had an exceptional memory
For the fact that the Queen in private called Lehzen “Daisy” or “Mother” see Longford, p. 107, quoting an unpublished section from the Queen’s journal.

82
She paid her personal servants
Vera Watson found the Queen’s annotations on bills in the records of the Lord Chamberlain’s department. See
A Queen at Home: An Intimate Account of the Social and Domestic Life of Queen Victoria’s Court
, London: Allen, 1952.

82
King Leopold had fully expected
Stockmar arrived in England just a month before the death of William IV and remained in England, in close communication with the Queen and with Melbourne, for some fifteen months. Stockmar came back to London, at the request of Prince Albert, a month before the prince himself arrived for his wedding in February 1840 (see
Memoirs of Baron Stockmar
, vol. ii, chapter XVIII).