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Chapter V
TWO DAYS IN JUNE

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At 5 o’clock in the morning of Tuesday June the 20th 1837, two gentlemen of grave and distinguished aspect might have been heard knocking vainly at the door of Kensington Palace. It was with difficulty that they were able to rouse the porter, and when they had done so, and explained that they were the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain, and that they must see the Princess immediately, the porter refused point-blank to disturb her. At length, however, after an hour had been passed in heated argument, he consented grumblingly to rouse Baroness Lehzen, who fluttered downstairs with a rustling sound like that of a bird dashing through leaves, breathless with excitement and curiosity, and who, on hearing the news, flew to the Duchess. Together, the ladies awoke the Princess, and in a few moments a little figure, with a shawl wrapped round her dressing-gown, her fair hair streaming down her back, and her tiny feet thrust into bedroom slippers, walked downstairs alone for the first time in her life; the door of the room where the Archbishop and Lord Conyngham were waiting was opened, and the eighteen-year-old Queen of England entered the room. Lord Conyngham dropped on his knee, kissed her hand, and spoke in a low voice of the King’s death: the Archbishop followed suit, and the little Queen, with tears in her eyes and her hands clasped, spoke of her aunt the Queen Dowager, inquired if she was broken with grief, asked what could be done to comfort her.

She had been fond of her bustling, self-important, but good-natured old uncle, who had always been kind to her—once her “stony stare” had been forgiven—and who had wished to make her an allowance of £10,000, so that she should be independent of her mama; the fact that Mama and Uncle Leopold had spent much of their time quarrelling with him had seemed to her no reason why she should dislike him; and so there were tears of grief in the Queen of England’s eyes as she walked upstairs to dress in the plainly furnished little room leading out of the bedroom which she shared with the Duchess of Kent. They were tears springing from real grief; but she was eighteen, her vitality was of an extraordinary character, and who can be surprised if the excitement of this, the greatest event of her life, filled her with a kind of exultation, mingling with the grief. There would be no more darned muslin dresses, no more scoldings from Mama—she would never sleep again in a bed in Mama’s room, for the Queen of England would have a room of her own. An odd hardening changed for a moment the little sweet but self-willed mouth, the blue childish eyes seemed for a fleeting while more prominent—but perhaps this change was only due to the summer sunlight drifting through the half-closed shutters in dust like that of the sweet lime-bloom. It was a look, however, that was to be seen many times in after years by Sir Robert Peel, once by Prince Bismarck, and, above all, most often by Lord Palmerston.

She dressed quickly and ran downstairs into a room flooded with happy living sunlight, to find that breakfast was laid already, and that dear kind Baron Stockmar, her uncle Leopold’s great friend and adviser, was waiting for her, grave-faced because he had heard the news, but with a strange quiet look of triumph too. The Baron, on his side, had eaten even less breakfast than usual, because the sudden excitement—and, of course, sorrow for the death of the late King—had brought on symptoms which threatened a return of the dyspepsia from which he suffered; but he was full of kind advice, and he was at once respectful and fatherly to the little Queen.

After breakfast a hasty letter to her dear uncle, so far away in Belgium, must be written, and another to her sister, and then, before the big clock in the tower had struck 9 o’clock, the Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne—such a handsome and at the same time fatherly man—wearing full court dress, sought an audience with his sovereign. “It has long been my intention,” she said to him in her lovely youthful voice, “to retain your lordship and the rest of the Ministry at the head of affairs.” Lord Melbourne left her presence, and then came the moment to write a letter of condolence to her dear aunt Queen Adelaide, who had always been so kind to her. This was scarcely finished, when the Duke of Sussex, her uncle, arrived, and would have knelt before the new Queen, but she would not allow it and, putting her arms round him, kissed him warmly. Then came the great, the venerable Duke of Wellington, and all were so respectful, so kind to her; she was no longer the little Princess Drina, she was Alexandrina Victoria, Queen of England.

But the excitements of that busy day were not yet over. At 11 o’clock, Lord Melbourne reappeared, and sought a fresh audience of his sovereign, and at half past eleven came the greatest moment of that most sad yet wonderful day: the Privy Council, hastily assembled, waited for the presence of their Queen. Her uncles the Dukes of Cumberland and Sussex, elderly ministers of state, grave bishops and generals, all were waiting: then, as Mr Strachey[39] wrote: they “saw the doors thrown open and a very short, very slim girl in deep plain mourning come into the room alone and move forward to her seat with extraordinary dignity and grace”. Being seated, she read a speech that had been carefully prepared by Lord Melbourne. She spoke of “this awful responsibility imposed on me so suddenly and at so early a period of my life”; she said that she had been “educated in England under the tender and enlightened care of a most affectionate mother; she had learned from her infancy to respect and love the constitution of her native country.”

She not only filled her chair, said the Duke of Wellington, a few hours after the Council, she filled the room; and not only the Duke, but all who were present, Sir Robert Peel, Lord Melbourne, even bad-tempered Mr Croker and cross, grumbling Mr Greville, were overcome with astonishment at the perfection of the queenly manner. The lovely birdlike youthful voice read the speech aloud, and then, to quote Mr Strachey once more, “they saw a small figure rise and, with the same consummate grace, the same amazing dignity, pass out from among them, as she had come in, alone.”[40]

Her Majesty crossed the anteroom leading from the Council Chamber, and found that most affectionate mother, under whose tender and enlightened care she had been educated in England, waiting for her daughter. At last, thought the Duchess, swelling with pride, the triumph, the power for which she had waited during those eighteen weary years of battles and of making two ends meet, were within her grasp. Her daughter entered the room and paused: “And now, Mama,” inquired her dutiful child, “am I really and truly Queen?” “You see, my dear, that this is so,” replied the eager woman. “Then, dear Mama, I hope you will grant me the first request I make to you, as Queen. Let me be by myself for an hour.”

As her daughter spoke, a slight shadow fell over the Duchess’s heart, a little feeling of chilliness in spite of the heat of the June day. What had happened to the child, that she should insist on her position as Queen to her own mother?—say that she must be alone, she who had never known what solitude meant, even for half an hour.... The Queen smiled at her mother, she walked through the door, and when she reappeared at the end of an hour it was to order that her bed should be removed from her mother’s room.

When the Duchess heard the order, her plump, rather inexpressive hands sank into her lap apathetically, her feathers, her silks no longer flew like banners on a wind of hope. It was for this, then, that she had laboured for eighteen years, for this that she had dedicated her life to the moulding of her daughter’s character. She had hoped, she had intended to be virtual ruler of England; it was because of this hope that her daughter had been educated with such rigidity, watched over with so much care.

With disillusioned eyes, the Duchess looked at a vision of the future. That she would be treated with all the respect due to the mother of the Sovereign, she knew—she would have nothing to complain of on that score; but she knew, too, that a door had been shut, and would never more be re-opened.

So much the Duchess foresaw, as she passed a handkerchief over her trembling mouth. “Il n’y a pas d’avenir pour moi,” she told Madame de Lieven, “je ne suis pour rien.” Her forebodings were justified. She who had given eighteen years of her life to her child—“mon amour, mes délices”—scolding for the child’s good, nudging and snatching, was now to be relegated to a position far from the child’s life. Lehzen, quiet respectful Lehzen, had the confidence of the Queen of England, Lehzen was told everything. And when, a short time afterwards, the household of the Queen was removed to Buckingham Palace, the mother of the Queen was given a suite far removed from that of her daughter, whilst Lehzen occupied the bedroom next to that of the Queen.

Upstairs, the child in question was scratching away in her diary: “Since it has pleased Providence,” she wrote, “to place me in this station, I shall do my utmost to fulfil my duty towards my country. I am very young, and perhaps in many, though not in all things inexperienced, but I am sure that very few have more real good will and more real desire to do what is fit and right than I have.”[41]

Late that night, as she lay in her narrow little bed, in a room far removed from that of Mama, looking at the moonlight as it shone through the curtains, she heard the distant sound of music, or could it be only her imagination? ... How strange it sounded, as it spoke of many things! Romance—love—the greatness of her country. Now it sounded still farther away, and seemed only the sound of the faint summer wind in the trees.

The next day, there was a new life from the moment she awoke till the moment, very late at night, when she blew out her candle. She must drive in state to St James’s Palace to attend the proclamation of her accession to the throne, in the morning of the glittering June day. Standing at the open window of the Privy Council Chamber, between Lord Melbourne and Lord Lansdowne, she looked across the courtyard at a sea of faces whilst the heralds spoke their announcement, and the immense crowd of her subjects, touched by the sight of this youthful and gentle-looking little creature, cheered and waved their handkerchiefs. “At the sound of the first shouts, the colour faded from the Queen’s cheeks,” wrote Lord Albemarle, the Master of the Horse, “and her eyes filled with tears. The emotion thus called forth imparted an additional charm to the winning courtesy with which the girl-Sovereign accepted the proffered homage.” And perhaps the old gentleman’s thoughts went back to a lovely day in May, eight years before, when looking through a sweet-briar hedge he had seen a little girl in a darned muslin frock watering a little garden of her own, in which grew sweet-williams, dark velvety pansies, mustard and cress, and pink-cheeked radishes.

The proclamation had been made, and Her Majesty, returning into the shadow of the room, granted an audience to the Lord Chancellor; and the Commander-in-Chief; then, at noon, she held her second Council—this time at St James’s Palace—and later in the day the proclamation was repeated at Trafalgar Square, Temple Bar, and the Royal Exchange.

The summer day seemed too short for all the excitements, all the events that must take place, and the Duchess of Kent’s tightened mouth, her reddened eyelids, dusted over carefully with powder, her sudden gestures of reproof checked almost before they were born, passed unnoticed. Victoria was Queen of England, and, as Mr Strachey says, “Among the outside public there was a great wave of enthusiasm. Sentiment and romance were coming into fashion; and the spectacle of the little girl-queen, innocent, modest, with fair hair and pink cheeks, driving through her capital, filled the hearts of the beholders with raptures of affectionate loyalty.”[42]

“We have had glorious female reigns,” said Lord John Russell, the Home Secretary in Lord Melbourne’s government, shortly after this time: “those of Elizabeth and Anne led us to great victories. Let us now hope that we are going to have a female reign illustrious in its deeds of peace—an Elizabeth without her tyranny, an Anne without her weakness. By the total abolition of slavery,” he added, “by a more enlightened method of punishing crime, and by the improved education of the people, the reign of Victoria might prove celebrated among the nations of the earth and to our posterity.”[43]

Soon the name Victoria was to be the symbol of all that was good and beautiful. When a light carriage was invented, soon after the Queen’s accession to the throne, it was named after her; a great water-lily, which was brought to England from Guiana in 1838, blooming for the first time in 1849, when Her Majesty was presented with the faultlessly shaped and glamorous flower, was given the name of Victoria Regina. But most wonderful of all, the terminus of the London, Chatham, and Dover, and London, Brighton, and South Coast Railways was honoured with her name in the year 1846.

[39] Queen Victoria, p. 44.

[40] Queen Victoria, p. 44.

[41] The Girlhood of Queen Victoria, Volume I, pp. 195-6. Strachey, op. cit., p. 43.

[42] Strachey, op. cit., pp. 45-6.

[43] The Life of Lord John Russell, by Sir Spencer Walpole, Volume I, p. 284. Lee, op. cit., p. 55.

Victoria of England

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