I, Victoria

by Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

  27th February 1900

  STILL NO reliable news from Ladysmith, which is very nerve-racking. I have seen Salisbury, who is looking very old and quite ‘played out’. It is too much for him to be Foreign Secretary as well as Prime Minister, but who can one trust? I try to keep cheerful however, and to encourage an optimistic spirit about the house, which I think is most important in time of war. God knows I have had enough practice. What a troubled century this has been!

  I visited the Military Hospital at Netley again with Baby and Lenchen. It was so very interesting and moving to talk to the sick and wounded. Some of their stories rend one’s heart so, and their loyalty and affection is so very touching. Baby and I spoke to the committee about some ideas to help those who have been too badly wounded to work again, and about a fund for all the families. It is particularly sad to see so many of them suffering from heart disease from overwork and hard marching, which one feels could have been avoided with better management – although the African climate is very trying, I know, and there is nothing one can do about that. The news have reached the men that they are each to be given a tin box bearing my portrait with a slab of chocolate inside, which is my Christmas present to them. They talked more of that than of their wounds, in fact, which is so typical of their courage and chivalry. One man who had lost a leg said he would rather give up his other leg than go without his chocolate! I am very glad that I can be sure this at least will get to them. During the Crimean War I was often arranging for little things to be sent out for the men, only to find that the officers had got them all, which was not at all what I intended.

  I thought I would be very tired after the visit, for I was out more than six hours altogether, and two walking round the wards and talking to the men, which is something at my age. But I feel such a keen interest in them and their circumstances that I have no attention to spare for fatigue. I felt sleepy enough after dinner, however, to go to bed early, but having slept two hours, I am now wide awake again, and so I shall take up the pen and go on with my story.

  In May 1825 I had my sixth birthday, and it prompted a new debate in Parliament about my establishment. The Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, proposed that I should be voted £6,000 a year for my support and education, and in a rare burst of unanimity, both Houses agreed, with no single dissension. Lord Eldon and Lord Brougham even used the occasion to pay some very pretty compliments to my mother on her exemplary conduct in bringing me up, and I imagine the praise cheered Mamma almost as much as the money, for she must always have been aware that in spite of my father’s Will, it was possible for the State to take me away from her if she was judged to be an undesirable influence over me. Hitherto she knew that the royal family hated and disapproved of her, and had no reason to think that Parliament did otherwise; now suddenly I was being referred to as the Heiress Presumptive, and she as a Devoted and Virtuous Mother.

  What had caused this strange volte-face? I believe it was my uncle King’s doing. His attitude towards me had been changing gradually. Since my cousin Elizabeth of Clarence had died in 1821, Aunt Adelaide had had only one pregnancy, which had ended sadly in miscarriage, so it was beginning to look very much as though there would be no live child from the union. (This must have struck him, or at least Aunt Adelaide, as being horribly ironic, given the existence and rude health of the ten Fitzclarences. But man proposes and God disposes after all.) Since the King himself and Uncle York were both unmarried, I was third in line to the Throne, and that was a fact like a quickset hedge: not to be got over.

  I know now that at that time Uncle King had begun to feel a marked decline in his health, which must have brought the question of the Succession to the front of his mind. He may have felt that as his heiress I was far too much under Coburg (that is, German) influence – being in the sole charge of my mother and supported by my uncle Leopold – and that he ought to do something to ensure my loyalties were in the right place. But I like to think also that his better nature at last rebelled against continuing to ignore and insult his own niece, even if she was the child of his most disliked brother. He did have a better nature, no matter what people say of him; and I think the more he saw of me the more he recognised that I was a true Hanoverian. We were alike, and not only in appearance. Whatever he was, he was a king, and that is something no-one who has not experienced it can understand.

  The first time I remember noticing his changed attitude was in the summer of 1826, when I was seven years old. Uncle King was staying at the Royal Lodge at Windsor with his mistress Lady Conyngham and her husband and children (such an odd set-up! Did Conyngham know, I wonder? But surely he must have!) and he invited Mamma, Feo and me to stay at Cumberland Lodge for a few days. You may believe Mamma went very unwillingly to visit the man who for so long had snubbed and insulted her, refused her financial aid and obliged her to live in a ramshackle palace away from all the fun; but an invitation from the King is by way of a royal command, so she could not refuse. Feo and I went in a daze of excitement and anticipation of better food and far more diversion than we ever had at home.

  On the day after we arrived I was taken up to the Royal Lodge to be presented. (I had been presented once before, when I was four years old, but did not remember it, so for me this was the first meeting face to face with my illustrious uncle.) Though I was naturally nervous of meeting so eminent a personage, and though it had been impressed upon me that I must please, my curiosity and excitement were greater than my fear. This was something new, after all, and I relished new experiences, having so few of them in everyday life. Besides, as I walked towards him, clutching Mamma’s hand tightly, I could not help knowing I was the centre of attention, and that always pleased me. The King was sitting down, for his legs were swollen with gout and his feet, which were small for a man of his size, hurt him if he stood for long. I am told that he looked old and unwell, and even to me he was certainly an extraordinary sight. His bloated face appeared between his high, choking stock and his wig like a full moon that had got trapped between banks of clouds. He had always been a tall, big man, but now he was enormously fat as well, and his tight corsets had the effect of moulding the excess flesh into a unified vastness, like the façade of a building, which seemed to have little to do with the human form.

  And yet he seemed to me very grand, in his silk and jewels and snowy linen, brilliantly coloured, deliciously scented; the very type of an oriental potentate in a fairy story. As I paused before him, gazing at him with interest and astonishment, he seemed to exude both majesty and a strangely luminous charm, as though there were a lamp inside him, which he could unmask when he wished for the dazzling of willing little moths like me. He beamed at me, with a smile that seemed new-minted for me and me alone, stuck out his large fat hand, glittering with rings to the knuckles, and said in a blunt and friendly way, ‘There you are! Give me your little paw!’

  Reminded by the downward pressure on my shoulder of Mamma’s hand I curtseyed and said, ‘Good day, Your Majesty,’ as I had been taught. But rising from the curtsey I looked up into his face and reserve melted like frost in the sun of his kindness. I put my tiny hand into his, and as it disappeared into his grasp I found myself returning his smile quite naturally.

  That seemed to please him. ‘What a smile she has!’ he chuckled. ‘Showing me all those pretty little teeth! Pray God you keep ’em, niece: pretty teeth are a woman’s best asset, especially when she knows how to use ’em. Well, Victoria, you ain’t afraid of me, then? Come, come, will you sit on my lap, hey?’

  I put up my arms and was scooped up and placed on that plump, well-filled bolster of a knee. A moment’s anxiety struck me as I felt how slippery it was: I could get no purchase on it, and it would not be protocol, I was sure, to dismount before I was ordered to. But a strong, bulky arm came round my waist and held me firmly, an arm which knew its business, and which I knew instinctively I could trust. I relaxed against it, and my uncle said comfortably, ‘That’s right!’ The face I found myself in close proximity to
was painted all over with maquillage, which struck me as strange, though on consideration really rather a jolly idea. Why not use the bare face as a canvas for painting on? I was of a nature to be stimulated rather than repelled by oddness; and though I was shy, I was always quick to sense good will in others, and I felt only kindness coming from this large, brightly coloured man. The pale, china blue eyes blinked, and a kiss was demanded of me, which I gave heartily. The cheek felt oddly slippery under my lips from the maquillage, but it had a nice smell, like beeswax and roses, which along with the other smells of lemon-water, cedar and lavender which were engulfing me were beginning to make me feel rather drunk, like a bee in a rose garden. Silk and satin, lace and lavender, that’s what kings are made of, I thought tipsily.

  He asked me a question or two about my lessons and my likes and dislikes, which I answered easily, and with a certain frankness that made him chuckle once or twice. And then, as if it were a concluding question which arose out of all the others, he asked me suddenly, ‘D’you like peaches, hey?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir, for I’ve never had one, but I think I should,’ I answered judiciously.

  He chuckled. ‘I think you should too, puss! You shall have as many as you can eat from my succession-house. D’ye hear that, ma’am?’ he barked suddenly at my disapproving mother. ‘Let her gorge herself for once! And now,’ he added to me, ‘I have something to show you – have you it there, Maria?’

  Lady Conyngham stepped forward and handed him something, which he held up before me. It was an oval miniature, set in gold with diamonds around the rim, and fixed, like an order, to a square of blue ribbon.

  ‘It’s a likeness of me. What d’you think of it, hey?’ said the King.

  ‘It’s very beautiful, sir,’ I said sincerely.

  ‘My sisters each have one just like it. They wear it on the left shoulder as a mark of their rank and my favour. It is a great honour to wear it. I was thinking of giving one to you. Do you think you deserve it?’

  I pondered a moment. ‘Yes, Uncle,’ I said at last. The only other possible answer was ‘No, Uncle’, and that did not appeal to me at all, besides being, in my view, untruthful.

  The King roared at that, pinched my cheek, and set me down off his knee, saying that I was a clever puss, but deuced heavy. He sounded suddenly tired. He handed the miniature back to Lady Conyngham and directed her to ‘pin it on, Maria’. Lady Conyngham stooped and pinned the ribbon on to the shoulder of my white muslin dress, but I hardly noticed her: it was the King who held my attention. As I received the honour of his order, he held my eyes with a serious, yet kind look, which made me feel that I was sharing something particular with him; that he and I were connected in a way that was different from everyone else in the room. He has chosen me, I thought with pride, and not Mamma. Abominable, ungrateful little wretch that I was, I was glad to be more important than her!

  We were dismissed then, and I was taken away by my mother. But the King had not forgotten his promise: very soon a page arrived to take me to the succession-house, and there I crammed my little face with delicious peaches, by the King’s express orders. Quite well aware that for once no-one could deny me, and that the chance was unlikely ever to come again, I did full justice to the royal command. The experience was made all the more wonderful by my usually plain diet, and by my mother’s evident disapproval of such sensual indulgence. I had never before, and don’t think I have ever since, found anything so exotic as those plump, delicately flushed and meltingly juicy fruit!

  But that was only the beginning. The next day, while we were out walking, the King’s phaeton overtook us. It was a beautiful, glossy thing, black paint shining like glass, and drawn by the most magnificent chestnuts I had ever seen (and despite my youth, I already had my father’s eye for horses). The footmen behind wore glorious scarlet liveries; my uncle King was driving, clad in a splendid, caped greatcoat and an old-fashioned, low-crowned beaver, with Aunt Mary Gloucester sitting beside him. The phaeton rushed past us with a hissing of wheels and a spatter of gravel, blowing Mamma’s feathers over her face. I gazed after it longingly, and as if my thoughts had power, it suddenly drew to a halt a few paces on, the horses snorting like dragons and champing restively at their bits in disapproval of this check. Lehzen was holding my hand, and I felt her grip tighten as though some danger had threatened me, and when I looked up at her, her expression was at its most forbidding. But Aunt Gloucester was beckoning to us, and Mamma was already hurrying forward, and we could only follow. As we reached the side of the phaeton, the King, craning round Aunt Gloucester, shouted perfunctorily, ‘Morning, madam. I trust I see you well.’ He gestured towards me with his whip. ‘I dare say the princess would like a spin. Pop her in!’

  I heard the words with a thrill of excitement. Mamma and Lehzen exchanged an alarmed and disapproving glance, but there could be no possibility of disobeying the King, and so I was lifted up by them, got my foot on the step, and scrambled aboard into Aunt Gloucester’s arms. She tucked me down unceremoniously between her and the great bulk of my uncle, who today smelled of leather and wool, starch and delicious bay rum; and almost before I was seated my uncle dropped his hands and the horses dashed off, and I was pressed back in my seat by the forward momentum. It all happened in an instant, but I had one glimpse of the consternation on Mamma’s face as she was left behind us by the track. In my innocence I thought She is afraid I will fall out and be killed. How silly! I am perfectly safe. We drove at a rattling fine pace, and I was thrilled with the speed and the fine action of the horses, the wind dashing past our faces and the deer scattering like blown leaves as we flew past their resting-places. There’s little to compare with a well-sprung phaeton and good, forward-stepping horses for smoothness and speed, and Uncle King was an excellent whip, knowing exactly how to get the best out of his beasts. When we had gone a good way, he slowed them to a walk to breathe them, and engaged me in delightful conversation which seemed to treat me as an equal. He neither peppered me with questions nor lectured me, but chatted as though I were a friend and as though I understood all he said. It was a delicious experience, and by the time I was restored to my mother I was half in love. What else could one do but admire the man who had once driven a three-horse rig to Brighton in under five hours, including changes (a record no-one to my knowledge has ever broken)?

  The whole week was full of delights for me: an expedition to the Fishing Temple on Virginia Water, where everyone went on board a barge and fished, while another barge floated nearby with a band playing on it; a visit to the King’s menagerie at Sandpit Gate; an entertainment by a troupe of Tyrolean dancers; a picnic luncheon on a boat on the Thames; a drive to Eton to have tea and pastries at a tea-shop by the river. Novelty and pleasure undiluted by lessons would have been delightful in any circumstances; but the best of all for me was the King’s interest in me, his obvious desire to charm me.

  I was quite ready to be charmed, and to charm in return. After dinner one night I was taken down to the Conservatory, which was splendidly decorated with coloured lights, to hear the band playing. The King called me over during a pause and asked me what tune I would like the band to play next.

  Even at seven, I was quick-thinking. ‘If you please, Uncle King, I should like God Save the King better than any other tune,’ said I.

  His face creased into an appreciative grin. ‘Oh-ho, Miss Politic, who taught you to flatter?’ he said. ‘Well, you shall have it then, and you shall sit with me while they play it.’

  It was very agreeable to find that I knew just how to please him: it gave me a sense of power, which is something I think children often feel the lack of; and it was agreeable, too, to feel that my approval was something valuable to him. At the end of the tune he kept me by him, chatting, and under cover of the next piece asked me which of the week’s treats I had most enjoyed. I had no hesitation in answering, ‘The ride I took with you in your phaeton,’ and it was not politic, but the plain truth.

  He looked at m
e then without smiling – almost sadly – and yet I knew he was pleased with me, that my answer had given him pleasure. ‘I have a gift for you,’ he said, ‘which I shall give to your mother before you leave. It is a pair of diamond bracelets.’

  I couldn’t think of anything to say. Diamonds? I was only a child, but I already understood that the financial value of a gift from the King was taken by the world to demonstrate the strength of the King’s regard. Diamond bracelets would be useless to a seven-year-old child, but I understood what was being offered me, and was grateful.

  ‘You have not been often enough at Court,’ he went on, with a serious, kindly look, ‘but that will change from now on. You and I must get to know each other much better. I want everyone to see you at Court in future and to understand your position. What do you think about that, hey?’

  ‘I shall like to see you again, Uncle,’ I said hesitantly. I could not help thinking Mamma would not like it. ‘I wish I might stay here always.’

  At that his lips moved in a faint smile, and he stooped his head to kiss me. ‘You and I are of a kind, little Victoria,’ he whispered, his breath tickling my ear. ‘We know something they do not.’

  At first I thought by ‘they’ he meant merely Mamma and Lehzen; then I thought he meant the rest of the royal family, my uncles, aunts and cousins; and that the ‘something’ was our friendship. That was intoxicating enough. But later, at home, when I recalled his words and his look and went over and over them in the quiet moments before sleep, as I did in the weeks and years to come, I concluded that he meant something else: that he and I were different from all other people in the country, because we shared a special destiny. It thrilled me and pleased me, but at the same time it made me feel very solemn, as though a heavy yoke were being placed on my neck. It was a burden which I would gladly never have been given, and yet which, being mine, I would not have dreamed of trying to avoid, even if such a thing were possible.