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In a room at Kensington Palace, shuttered against the flaunting heat, Baroness Lehzen sat writing a letter to her sister in Germany; scratching away busily, her pen covered the pages with long descriptions of the Princess’s progress in goodness, of the Duchess’s veiled unkindness to the writer, of Sir John Conroy’s rudeness, and the queer way in which, when Lehzen entered a room, she invariably found the Duchess and Sir John sitting in close proximity, and talking in low voices. But most vivid of all was the Baroness’s description of what she had suffered from Lady Flora Hastings, the Duchess’s lady-in-waiting—the sharp looks and the sharp remarks and the derision at the caraway seeds which, as the recipient of the letter very well knew, brought back such happy memories of dear Germany to the writer. Ah.. h . h ... the Baroness’s lips were drawn into a still tighter line as she remembered one particular sneer.... Let her wait ... the Baroness had eyes in her head, she knew the kind of person that Lady Flora was, with that flippancy and that bird-sharp brightness. It was only a question of waiting....

At this point, a high clear sound of youthful laughter was heard, and in ran the little fourteen-year-old Princess in her darned white frock, and two boys, the Princes Alexander and Ernest of Würtemberg, the sons of the reigning Duke and the Duchess’s sister, who were paying a visit to their aunt at Kensington Palace. The Princess noted in her diary that both the Princes were extremely tall, Alexander was very handsome, and took such care of his cousin when getting out of a boat, and Ernest had a very kind expression and was equally assiduous. “Both these young gentlemen were EXTREMELY amiable,” and Her Royal Highness, chaperoned by the ubiquitous Lehzen and her enemy Sir John Conroy, shared with her cousins the great experience of hearing, for the first time, Signor Paganini play the violin. “He played by himself, some Variations most WONDERFULLY,” she stated in her diary, and added of this physical mimicry of all-conquering Death: “he is himself a curiosity.”

The Princess was very sad when these cousins returned to Würtemberg; standing on the beach with Lehzen she watched them sailing away in their barge, and for many days afterwards longed for their company.

Two years after this time, two other cousins came, who were almost more delightful—the Princes Ferdinand and Augustus—dear Ferdinand who elicited universal admiration from all parties, who was so very unaffected, and had such a very distinguished appearance and carriage, who was handsomer than Augustus because his eyes were so beautiful and he had such a lively clever expression. There was something quite beautiful in his expression when he spoke and smiled, and he was so good. But then dear Augustus was very amiable too, and, when known, showed much good sense. The Princes spent a great deal of time with their cousin, who noted in her diary that “Dear Ferdinand came and sat near me and talked so dearly and sensibly. I do so love him. Dear Augustus sat near me and talked to me, and he also is a dear good young man, and is very handsome.”^[29]

But oh, most wonderful, most exciting of all, was the first visit paid to Kensington Palace by her dear cousins Prince Ernest and Prince Albert, the sons of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg. She loved all her dear cousins, but much the most precious, the dearest of all, were Ernest and Albert.

Their visit took place in May 1836, when the Princess was just seventeen years old; and King William, who was perfectly aware that King Leopold had determined from the moment that his nephew Albert was born that he should become the husband of the future Queen of England, decided to annoy that water-drinking monarch by inviting various other young men in order that they might serve as rivals to the Saxe-Coburg Princes. He accordingly invited King Leopold’s enemy the Prince of Orange and his two sons, and the youthful Duke of Brunswick, to stay at St James’s Palace, at exactly the time of Prince Ernest and Prince Albert’s visit to Kensington. The Prince of Orange had a particular antipathy to the King of the Belgians, of whom he said, “Voilà un homme qui a pris ma femme et mon royaume,” for he had wished to marry Princess Charlotte; the King of the Belgians cordially returned this dislike, and the visit was designed to annoy King Leopold to the full. It led to an endless flow of grumbling, an outpouring of complaints from King Leopold to his niece.

“I am really astonished,” he wrote^[30], “at the conduct of your old uncle the King; this invitation of the Prince of Orange and his sons, this forcing him on others is very extraordinary.... Not later than yesterday I got a half-official communication from England insinuating that it would be highly desirable that the visit of your relatives should not take place this year.... The relations of the Queen and the King, therefore, to the God-knows-what degree, are to come in shoals and rule the land, when your relations are to be forbidden the country, and that when, as you know, the whole of your relations have ever been very dutiful and kind to the King.” His Majesty hoped this outrageous behaviour would rouse his niece’s spirit, for “Now that slavery is even abolished in the British Colonies, I do not comprehend why your lot alone should be to be kept a white little slavey in England, for the pleasure of the Court, who never bought you, as I am not aware of their ever having gone to any expense on that head, or the King’s ever having spent a sixpence for your existence. I expect that my visits to England will be prohibited by an order in Council. Oh, consistency and political or other honesty, where must one look for you?”

“I have not the least doubt that the King, in his passion for the Oranges, will be excessively rude to your relations. This, however, will not signify much; they are your guests and not his, and will therefore not mind it.”

The Princes arrived with their father, bringing the little Princess a present of “a most delightful lory”, which was so tame that it would sit on her hand, and would never bite if she put her finger inside its beak. Its plumage was very brilliant, and the colours scarlet, blue, brown, yellow, and purple; and Kensington Palace now echoed with the sound of happy youthful laughter and of Haydn duets. “Ernest,” wrote his cousin, “has dark hair and fine dark eyes and eyebrows, but the nose and mouth are not good; he has a most kind, honest and intelligent countenance, and has a very good figure. Albert, who is just as tall as Ernest but stouter, is extremely handsome; his hair is about the same colour as mine, his eyes are large and blue, and he has a beautiful nose with a very sweet mouth and fine teeth; but the charm of his countenance is his expression; which is most delightful.” A few days later, the Princess’s journal tells us that she sat between her two dear cousins on the sofa and they looked at drawings; that both of them drew very well, but particularly Albert, and that they both played very nicely on the piano. And, three weeks after this time, we learn that “Dearly as I love Ferdinand and good Augustus, I love Ernest and Albert more than them, oh yes, MUCH more. Augustus,” she added, with a faint touch of youthful priggishness, “was like a good affectionate child, quite unacquainted with the world, phlegmatic and talking but very little; but dearest Ernest and dearest Albert are so grown up in their manners—Albert always used to have some fun and some clever witty answer at breakfast ... he used to play and fondle Dash so funnily too.”^[31]

When her dearest beloved cousins and her dear uncle left England, the future Queen wrote: “I cried bitterly, very bitterly.” Then, when she had dried her tears, she sat down and wrote with a curious mixture of egotism and warm-heartedness to her dearest uncle, of whose plans she was perfectly aware, thanking him for “the prospect of great happiness you have contributed to give me, in the person of dear Albert.... He possesses every quality that could be desired to make me perfectly happy. He is so sensible, so kind, and so amiable too. He has, besides, the most pleasing and delightful exterior and appearance you could possibly see.

“I have now only to beg you, my dearest Uncle, to take care of the health of one now so dear to me, and to take him under your special protection. I hope and trust that all will go on prosperously and well on this subject of so much importance to me.”^[32]

Prince Albert, on his side, remarked merely that he found his cousin “very amiable”, and then turned his thoughts to other matters. Pursued by his uncle’s exhortations to virtue, his recommendations to develop “an earnest frame of mind, which is ready of its own accord to sacrifice mere pleasure to real usefulness”, haunted by Baron Stockmar’s homilies on the subject of the whole duty of princes, he, with his brother Ernest, went to complete his education at Bonn University, where they speedily became renowned for their virtues. Prince Albert’s biographer, Mr Bolitho, tells us that an Englishman, who was at the University at this time, in after years described Prince Albert’s costly banquets, “to parties of between twenty and thirty students, selected entirely for their personal worth and talents”. It appears, also, that “the Princes themselves could hardly be said to partake of the rare luxuries provided for the occasion, so rigidly temperate were they both, and more especially Prince Albert”.^[33]

Meanwhile, from both Belgium and England, the sound of new grumbling, fresh quarrelling arose. The King of the Belgians, it seems, was perpetually being affronted, not only by the King of England, but by the English people, and in especial by the newspapers: “An infamous Radical or Tory-Radical paper, the Constitutional,” he wrote to his niece on the 18th of November 1836, “seems determined to run down the Coburg family. I don’t understand the meaning of it; the only happiness poor Charlotte knew was during her short wedded existence, and there was but one voice on that subject, that we offered a bright prospect to the nation.

“Since that period I have (though been abused and vilified merely for drawing an income which was the sequence of a Treaty ratified by both Houses of Parliament, and that without one dissenting voice, a thing not very likely to happen again) done everything to see England prosperous and powerful. I have spared her, in 1831, much trouble and expense, as without my coming here very serious complications, war and all the expensive operations connected with it, must have taken place. I give the whole of my income, without the reservation of a farthing, to the country; I preserve unity on the Continent, have frequently prevented mischief at Paris, and to thank me for all that, I get the most scurrilous abuse, in which the good people from constant practice so much excel. The conclusion of all this is scurrilous abuse of the Coburg family. I should like to know what harm the Coburg family has done to England? But enough of this.”^[34] To which his niece replied: “My most dearly beloved Uncle, you cannot imagine how happy you have made me by your very dear, kind, long, and interesting letter of the 18th.... Your letter is so interesting and instructive I could read it over and over again.” ... Curiously evasive, thought His Majesty, as he read this letter for the second time. What could the dear child have in her mind? Had he but known it, that evasiveness would be found more than once in the dear child’s answers to her uncle’s letters, after she became Queen of England.

In England, the quarrelling between the Duchess of Kent and the King of England grew worse and worse, so that it became obvious that before long there would be an open battle. The August of 1836 was particularly hot, and the weather inflamed the tempers of both the parties concerned. The Duchess was aggrieved because, owing to the fact that she had received the royal salute from ships in the Solent, the King had forbidden the firing of these to be accorded to any ship unless the reigning monarch or his consort were on board. The King was enraged by the “royal progresses” on the part of the heiress to the throne and her mother, to which I have already referred—for during the last four years she had presented prizes at the Eisteddfod, laid the first stone of a boys’ school near Plas Newydd, and as a result of her tour in Wales Princess Victoria was the theme for the poetic competition at the Cardiff Bardic Festival.

It must be admitted that, much as the King resented these “progresses”, they were a cause of endless excitement to his niece, who on the occasion of the Eisteddfod visited Sir Richard and Lady Bulkeley; and who chronicled the minutest details in her diary. “We were received at the door,” she wrote, “by Sir Richard and farther on by Lady Bulkeley whose dress I shall describe. It was a white satin dressed with blonde, short sleeves and a necklace, ear-rings, and sevigne of peridots and diamonds with a wreath of orange-flowers in her hair. We then went upon the terrace and the band of the Anglesea Militia played ‘God Save the King’. We then presented all the bards and poets with medals.... At 5 we went to dinner which was in a temporary building, which was lined in the inside with pink and white linen. The dinner was splendidly served, and the china was rich and beautiful. The fruit was magnificent. After dessert was over Sir Richard made a speech and brought out a toast in honour of Mama and me. We then went upstairs into Lady Bulkeley’s pretty little dressing-room. Her toilet table was pink with white muslin over it trimmed with beautiful lace and her things on the toilet table were gold. We then went downstairs and took coffee and Lady Williams’ famous dog, Cabriole, played tricks.” Then she had visited Chester and had declared open a new bridge over the River Dee, naming it “Victoria Bridge”. She had visited Strutt’s Cotton Mills at Belper, and on every occasion her bustling self-important mother had been more in the foreground than she. The King resented all these activities, and his anger grew deeper still, when in this hot August weather he invited the Duchess and the Princess to stay at Windsor on the 12th of August for eleven or twelve days, during which the birthdays of both the King and Queen were to be celebrated, and the Duchess refused to come before the 20th. This put the King in a fury, and matters were made still worse, for as soon as they had arrived the King went to London for the day in order to prorogue Parliament, and whilst there, the idea flew into his head that he might as well pay a visit to Kensington Palace in order to find out what “that nuisance of a woman is doing”. He found out! She had just gone into occupation of a suite of seventeen rooms, in spite of the fact that he had directly forbidden her to do so. His Majesty’s wrath now knew no bounds, and the excited Mr Greville tells us that “when he arrived at Windsor and went into the drawing-room (at about 10 o’clock at night) where the whole party was assembled, he went up to the Princess Victoria, took hold of both her hands, and expressed his pleasure at seeing her there, and his regret at not seeing her oftener. He then turned to the Duchess and made her a low bow, almost immediately after which he said that ‘a most unwarrantable liberty’ had been taken with one of his palaces; that he had just come from Kensington, where he found apartments had been taken possession of not only without his consent, but contrary to his commands, and that he neither understood nor would endure conduct so disrespectful to him! This was said loudly, publicly, and in a tone of serious displeasure.”

This was bad enough, but the next day was to be the occasion of a far more violent outbreak. The scene was the banquet in honour of the King’s birthday, and a hundred or more guests were present. The Duchess of Kent, looking sulky, and fidgeting restlessly, sat on the King’s right hand, the Princess sat directly opposite. At the end of dinner His Majesty rose to reply to the toast of his health—and then came the deluge. Scarlet in the face with anger, in a loud violent voice the King denounced his sister-in-law. In nine months’ time, he said, the Princess would come of age; he hoped, he prayed, that his life might be spared for that nine months in order that there should be no danger of the regency of “a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which she would be placed. I have no hesitation in saying that I have been insulted, grossly and continuously insulted, by that person—but I am determined no longer to endure a course of behaviour so disrespectful to me. Amongst many other things I have particularly to complain of, is the manner in which this young lady has been kept away from my Court; she has been repeatedly kept from my Drawing-rooms, at which she ought always to have been present; but I am fully resolved this shall not happen again. I would have her know that I am King and I am determined to make my authority respected, and for the future I shall insist and command that the Princess do upon all occasions appear at my Court, as it is her duty to do.”

At the end of this tirade, a complete silence fell. The hundred and more guests, aghast, held their breath; gentle Queen Adelaide blushed until she was as red as the King; the Princess burst into tears. But the Duchess, pale with humiliation and anger, said not a word.

This silence remained unbroken until the company had left; then the Duchess, beside herself with fury, jumped to her feet and called for her carriage; she would return that night to Kensington, she declared. It was only after some time and with considerable difficulty that she was induced, at last, to remain at Windsor till next day.^[35]

From that moment, the detestation in which the King held his sister-in-law, the intense dislike she felt towards him, were perfectly undisguised. And even with her departure from Windsor she could not find peace, for there was her own household to contend with. Lehzen was always interfering and making mischief or contracting grievances, Sir John Conroy and she quarrelled almost unceasingly. And then came the final blow. The Duchess had grown more fond of Sir John Conroy than her position and his marriage rendered desirable; there were affectionate passages between them, and one day Princess Victoria interrupted a scene of the kind. Much shocked, she told the Baroness, and the Baroness’s greatest friend, Baroness Späth.... Lehzen pursed her lips and pondered. So she had been right in her suspicions! But Baroness Späth did not give herself time to ponder; she was just as voluble and not so discreet as Lehzen; not only did she gossip, but she actually went to the length of reproving the Duchess, with the result that she was instantly dismissed. But to dismiss Baroness Lehzen was a very different matter. She remained irritatingly non-committal, her manner, her speech were obstinately respectful, and what she thought, she kept to herself. And the King, too, would have to be dealt with if Lehzen were sent away. He thoroughly approved of her conduct and of the way in which she had brought up his niece, and he would hear nothing against her. She remained; and, from that day, Kensington Palace echoed with the sound of warfare. The Duchess, it is true, had Sir John Conroy, his affection, and his advice to rely upon, and she had the devotion of Lady Flora Hastings, who could always be relied on to be amusing at Baroness Lehzen’s expense. But then, as against this, there was the strange silence of Princess Victoria; the curious hardness that from time to time replaced the usually mild expression of her eyes, when she looked at her mother. The Duchess knew only too well that she could hope for no support from her daughter, whose youth and whose natural tendencies made her regard moral slipshodness without a trace of pity, and who, as well, was devoted to Späth who had been dismissed, and to Lehzen whom the Duchess would have liked to dismiss. The Duchess felt hot with mortification. How could she have let herself wander into such an impasse? For there was no help for it; she had lost ground with the Princess—that she knew—she whose hold upon her had been largely founded on religious teaching, and the stern moral outlook which the Duchess, aided by the Dean of Chester and Lehzen, had inculcated.

In the midst of these troubles, and only a few days before the Princess’s eighteenth birthday, the news reached Kensington Palace that the King was desperately ill. His will-power, however, and his strong constitution carried him through this illness, so that the Princess was able to celebrate her birthday, the plans for which included a visit to the Royal Academy, a Drawing-room, and a state ball.

Early in the morning, the Princess was awakened by an aubade, performed outside the Palace by the villagers of Kensington, and then received her birthday presents, which included a grand piano sent by the King. After this, as Sir Sidney Lee remarks, gloomily, “addresses from public bodies were presented to her mother”. The Duchess, forgetting her troubles in the excitement of the moment, was as voluble, as bustling, and quite as indiscreet as ever. She made a long and elaborate speech, prepared for her by Sir John Conroy, in answer to an address presented by the Corporation of London, in which she referred to her daughter’s “royal progresses” and her knowledge of all classes of society, and in which she complained bitterly about the slights put upon her by the royal family. The rest of the speech, which might have been delivered by a reigning monarch, dealt with the “diffusion of religious knowledge, the preservation of the constitutional prerogatives of the Crown, and the protection of popular liberties as the proper aim of a sovereign”.

After the addresses had been presented and the deputations had gone, lighter joys were indulged in. The Princess visited the Royal Academy, whose exhibition was then held in the building which is now the National Gallery, in Trafalgar Square. Here she was welcomed by vast crowds of her uncle’s subjects; she shook hands with and had a conversation with Mr Rogers the poet, and, on being told that Charles Kemble the actor was in the room, asked that he should be presented to her. And that evening, greatest joy of all, the Court Ball was given in honour of her coming of age, though neither the King nor Queen was able to be present, owing to the state of the King’s health. At this ball, Count Eugène Zichy, “renowned”, as she told the King of the Belgians, “for his magnificent turquoises and his famous valsing”, and who was “a good natured elegant”, was presented to her, and she noted, afterwards, that he was very good-looking in uniform, but not in plain clothes. Count Waldstein, too, was presented, looking remarkably handsome in his splendid Hungarian uniform. But, alas, the Princess could not dance with him, although she would have liked to do so, because he could not dance quadrilles, and in her station it was unsuitable that she should waltz or galop.

The day passed happily, and even the Duchess forgot her resentment at her own indiscretion. But, a few days later, a fresh humiliation was in store for her. Lord Conyngham, the Lord Chamberlain, arrived at Kensington Palace bearing a letter from the King to the Princess. When he was ushered into the room where the Princess and the Duchess were sitting, the latter at once put out her hand to take the letter, but Lord Conyngham with a grave air begged her pardon, saying he had received instructions to give the letter to nobody excepting the Princess herself. The Duchess, with a thunderous look, drew back and the Princess opened and read the letter. It contained the King’s offer to make the Princess an allowance of £10,000 a year, a sum which was to be for her own use, and which might not be disposed of by her mother. The Duchess was furious. Was it for this, she inquired, that she had brought up her daughter with such admirable simplicity? £4000 a year would have been ample as an allowance for the girl and, as for the remaining £6000, it would only have been just and right if it had been offered to the Duchess.

As for the King of the Belgians, he wrote an excited letter to his “dearest child”, saying: “You have had some battles and difficulties of which I am completely in the dark. The thing I am most curious to learn is what the King proposed to you concerning your establishment.... I shall reserve my opinion till I am better informed, but by what I heard I did not approve of it, because I thought it ill-timed.... Two things seem necessary: not to be fettered by an establishment other than what will be comfortable to you, and then to avoid any breach with your mother.... I am very curious to know what he proposed; you will have it in your power to modify his proposition, as it will be difficult your approbation should be dispensed with.”^[36] For, thought His Majesty, should his niece have an establishment of her own, might it not be a little more difficult to keep that watchful parental eye over the thoughts and doings of the future Queen of England? But the “dearest child” had, before she received this letter, written to King William, thanking him for his kindness and accepting his offer. And as she did so that strange look came once more into her eyes. Her mouth was set in a by now not unfamiliar line.

His Majesty, meanwhile, seemed to have recovered temporarily from his illness, although it had left traces upon him which resulted in the Court becoming even duller than before. Lady Grey, who paid a visit to Windsor Castle at about this time, told Mr Creevey, “in her own distressed manner”, that “she was really more dead than alive”. She said^[37] “all the boring she had ever endured before was literally nothing compared with her misery of the two preceding nights. She hoped she never should see a mahogany table again, she was so tired with the one that the Queen and the King, the Duchess of Gloucester, Princess Augusta, Madame Lieven and herself had sat round for hours—the Queen knitting or netting a purse—the King sleeping, and occasionally waking for the purpose of saying—‘Exactly so, ma’am!’ and then sleeping again.”

But this recovery was not for long. The poor rather kindly old man, of whom his niece had said that he was “odd, very odd and singular”, but that “his intentions were often ill-interpreted” and that “he was always kind to me”, suddenly collapsed; and soon it was known that he was dying. The King of the Belgians, in a state of great excitement, wrote to his niece:^[38] “Be not alarmed at the prospect of becoming perhaps sooner than you expected Queen; aid will not be wanting, and the great thing is that you should have some honest people about you who have your welfare really at heart. Stockmar will be in this respect all we can wish, and we must hope that useful occupation will prevent his health from suffering”—for the King knew that his friend was, to some degree, a malade imaginaire.... The next letter, written a week later, contained these lines: “You may count upon my faithful good offices in all difficulties, and you have at your command Stockmar”—and he added, for a sense of humour was not His Majesty’s strongest point: “my object is that you should be no one’s tool.” The King of the Belgians could indeed hardly resist coming in person to supervise the conduct and policy of his niece; but it would be better, it would be wiser, he felt, if he did not give way to this impulse. “The result of my examen,” he wrote, “is that I think it better to visit you later. If, however, you wanted me at any time, I should come in a moment. People might fancy I came to enslave you, while I glory in the contrary; and thirdly, they might be jealous, or affect it at least, at my coming, as if I thought of ruling the realm for purposes of my own.”

Meanwhile his former enemy, the poor good-natured old sailor King, with his “Wapping air” and his “quarter-deck gestures”, was dying fast. On Sunday the 18th of June, the dying man, awakening with the memory that this was the anniversary of Waterloo, said to Dr Chambers: “Let me live over this memorable day—I shall never live to see another sunset.” Dr Chambers said “I hope your Majesty will live to see many.” “Oh that’s quite another thing, that’s quite another thing,” replied the King.

That evening, when the Archbishop of Canterbury entered the King’s room, he was greeted by a feeble voice which said “I am sure the Archbishop is one of those persons who pray for me,” and as he left, the King, crossing his hands upon his breast, said: “God bless thee, dear, excellent, worthy man; a thousand, thousand thanks.” Next morning, though he was within a few hours of his death, he whispered to the Queen: “I shall get up once more to do the business of the country,” and when being wheeled in his chair from his bedroom to his dressing-room, he turned round and waved his hand with a kindly smile to the Queen’s attendants who were standing in tears near the door.... Though the last flicker of life was nearly extinguished, he could still find strength to comfort those about him; that night, when the Archbishop performed the service for the Visitation of the Sick in the dying man’s bedroom, the King, seeing that the Queen was, for the first time since his fatal illness, giving way unrestrainedly to her grief, said to her comfortingly: “Bear up! Bear up!”

As the night wore on, the Queen, as she knelt by the bedside, still holding her husband’s hand, felt that hand still warm in hers, and could not believe that he had left her for ever.

[29] The Girlhood of Queen Victoria, Volume I, pp. 150-3. Strachey, op. cit., p. 32.

[30] Letters, Volume I, pp. 47-8. Strachey, op. cit., pp. 36-7.

[31] The Girlhood of Queen Victoria, Volume I, pp. 157-61.

[32] Letters, Volume I, p. 49.

[33] Bolitho, op. cit., p. 49.

[34] Letters, Volume I, p. 53.

[35] See The Greville Memoirs, Volume III, pp. 374-6. Strachey, op. cit., p. 38.

[36] Letters, Volume I, pp. 67-8.

[37] The Creevey Papers, Volume II, p. 262. Strachey, op. cit., p. 41.

[38] Letters, Volume I, p. 70.