by Lucy Worsley
‘And that’s why your becoming her friend is a grave responsibility,’ my father continued, looking perhaps more solemn than I’d ever seen him before. ‘I am trusted to be near her. I hope that if you continue to please, Miss V, you will be trusted too. We need to know what she’s thinking and feeling, just to keep her safe, of course. But we must see how this visit unfolds before we shall know for sure if she’ll come to trust you, if you can be really useful.’
He had his fingers raised into a tent, appraisingly, as if he was hoping that I would pass the test but was not quite sure.
‘Very few others are admitted to the princess’s presence,’ he explained. ‘There’s danger everywhere. The princess’s mother is not well and is unable to care for her properly. But I, and Madame de Späth and Baroness Lehzen, we must keep her safe. It is a sacred duty. And I hope that I might be able to count upon you too, as a true Conroy, to help us in this vital work.’
I had an inkling of such things – the great cares of state, the great dangers and decisions that fall upon royal shoulders – for I had read about them in stories. I had never thought that they would touch my own life. Surely girls were just to be seen and not heard? That was what my mother had said.
I was good at being seen and not heard. But this was a completely new challenge.
There was much to think about as I finished my tea. One cloud of worry had passed, at least. Of course my father was wise and good. I had been foolish to doubt him for one instant. But, staring into the fire, I realised that I now had a new worry. I knew that I could not let myself fail the task that he had given me. I too must give all my attention to this vital work of keeping the heir to the throne safe and well. Whatever might happen. Whatever might happen.
Chapter 7
Lessons
That first night I was so tired I could hardly keep my eyes open long enough to examine my new attic bedroom at Kensington Palace.
It was far from palatial, but it was certainly snug. Much smaller than my room at home, it was nevertheless nicely furnished with a blue jug and basin, a fine glossy quilt and a window looking down upon gardens far below. They were dripping in the March rain, but I thought drowsily as I went off to sleep that they must be green and pleasant in summer. I imagined Dash and I walking in them together, just us two. He’d like that. The parks and gardens all around meant that at Kensington Palace we didn’t seem to be in London at all. I could not decide if this was delightful or a tiny bit menacing – as if no one would come if you screamed.
The next morning, the rain still falling, my father put up his umbrella to escort me across the courtyard to the princess’s apartment. In that murky, dark green room we were soon seated around the circular rosewood table and Lehzen (as the princess seemed to call her) made us read from Shakespeare.
This was to be the first of the regular morning lessons I’d been told to expect during our stay at the palace. But the work was hardly taxing, certainly nothing like as hard as that I’d done with Miss Moore back at home.
‘… and our whole kingdom,’ read Victoria, ‘To be … contracted – is it? – in one brow of woo?’
Lehzen looked at me.
‘… and our whole kingdom / To be contracted in one brow of woe,’ I said quietly. ‘It’s like the entire nation is frowning. The king who speaks is distressed because his brother has died.’
After a while, I noticed that the baroness would always have me read first, and then have the princess follow me. It did not take me long to suspect that I was in fact giving the lesson. My father had explained that it was necessary for the princess to lose that Germanic tinge to her speech, and that I was to help her to do it by speaking good plain English that she might copy.
In the afternoon, we once again went behind the sofa, and the princess showed me her dolls. The dolls were numerous and finely dressed. At home I also had dolls, if not half so many. It had been a good while since I had played with them, for I had come to spend my time with Dash, my piano and Sir Walter Scott. I had forgotten what a lovely thing it was to play at make-believe, and soon we were deeply engrossed.
Victoria, it seemed, could do nothing without making a lot of noise and action, and she upturned an ebony box so that its contents of tiny dolls’ furniture gushed out on to the floor. From among the mess she picked up and hurled aside one bent and bald-headed doll that had lost its clothes. The naked wooden figure aroused my pity, and I picked it up to cradle it. I longed to freshen up its pink cheeks and give it new hair. ‘Poor old doll!’ I said. ‘This one needs some love.’
I watched her carefully to see if she would notice that I hadn’t said ‘Your Royal Highness’, and to my relief she let it pass.
‘Oh, that nasty old thing,’ she said at once. ‘He doesn’t belong. It’s the German SPY appointed to watch the others having fun.’ She grabbed it and tossed it back into the box, snapping down the lid.
‘There,’ she said, with some satisfaction. ‘I wish I could shut Späth and Lehzen into a box, instead of having them always hanging about and watching me.’
I bent my head down to the dollies, adjusting their little dresses, so as to avoid having to comment.
I was supposed to become her friend. But if she hated my father, would she believe me if I explained the truth that they weren’t spies, that she was at risk and needed protection?
An uncomfortable chill gradually made itself felt in the pit of my stomach as I realised that I had so many secrets to keep. It would not be easy.
‘Be careful!’ Victoria said sharply. ‘That gown belongs to Thumbelina’s baby sister. Can’t you see it’s too small to go on? And you’ve got it upside down as well.’ I quickly returned my attention to the more pressing business at hand.
At four o’clock, Madame de Späth opened the door to a tall, fat footman. She gave him her usual excitable welcome, addressing him as Adams and whisking her handkerchief across a small table before she would allow him to set down his tray. He had brought in tea and bread-and-milk. Princess Victoria’s was served in a tarnished, if not outright dirty, silver basin, and mine in a plain china dish. But it was cold and sour.
‘Why aren’t you eating, Miss V?’ Victoria asked. I could not answer that the tea was stone cold, weak and disgusting, that the milk looked almost blue and had black specks floating in it.
‘I’m not hungry,’ I said.
‘Well, you are almost as thin as Thumbelina,’ said the princess. I glanced up at her, surprised. She had spoken almost protectively. ‘Here, you can have my bowl. You do look like you need feeding up.’ I forced down a couple of mouthfuls to please her, and it was worth it because an eager little smile came out for a second or two to brighten up her suspicious face.
When I got back to our own rooms after tea, my father was on the hearthrug, pacing up and down.
‘Well?’ he said sharply, as I came in. ‘What did she say? What did she do?’ I stood still in the middle of the room, racking my brains, frozen in the act of taking off my bonnet. I scarcely knew where to begin.
‘Well, Papa …’
He was standing and waiting and watching me, and I began to panic.
‘Well, this morning we read Shakespeare – Hamlet, you know – and then later on we played with the dolls …’
‘Come, come, Miss V! You can do better than that. Come on, let me take this.’ Now he was taking my bonnet and swinging my cloak over his arm, and leading me towards the fire. ‘Are there any matters of high import to report? Any compromises to the princess’s safety?’
I pondered the matter carefully, sinking down to the sofa and holding out my hands to the flames to warm them while I thought. It was a difficult question, but I felt a small thrill of pride that he was interested in what I had to say. This was not like an Arborfield teatime, where it had always been Jane who amused him while I sat silent and dull.
‘Well …’
She had used the word ‘spies’ again about her German ladies. Could it be right that she did so when they we
re only there for her own protection?
‘I fear that the princess …’ I began, but found it difficult to go on. My father was still standing over me, looking down at me, and his silence compelled me to continue speaking. I had observed the same thing when my brothers encountered the still, smooth waters of a pond; they felt a violent urge to throw stones into it.
‘I fear that the princess does not understand the System and is afraid of it, and that she might somehow work against it, leading herself into danger.’ The words all came out in a rush.
It was the right thing to say. My father’s pent up energy was released. He took his eyes off me and started his swinging walk up and down the carpet.
‘I knew it!’ he muttered under his breath. ‘What a cunning little baggage she is! And how ungrateful!’
I almost gasped out loud at his words. What a way to talk about the princess! But I dared not let my surprise show. He turned back to me, and the bottom of my stomach dropped a little as I saw that his eyes were angry.
‘What did she say about me?’ he said.
‘Nothing today!’ I replied eagerly and truthfully. ‘She only complained about Lehzen and Späth. She said they were spying on her.’
‘Spying!’ he said scornfully. ‘She does not know how lucky she is to live in a palace and to have so much care taken about her health and her safety. What a little madam.’ He swung back towards me.
‘Now mind this, Miss V. If she says anything disrespectful or distrustful about me …’ He broke off and quickly corrected himself. ‘Or more properly, I mean to say, about her servants or her mother, I need to know it. It is for her own good.’
‘Of course, Papa.’ I said it meekly. It was with a great sense of relief that I saw him go over to the tea table as if the matter were closed.
The table was set out with cakes and fruit and warm milk. It was so much nicer and cleaner than the princess’s own tea in the German household. In future, I decided, I would refuse the food there and wait until I got home to have tea with my father.
Now he was pouring out my milk and bringing it over to me. He patted me casually on the head as he handed me the cup, just as I might myself pat Dash if he had been good. It made me smile.
I was glad that he seemed to have accepted my report of the day’s events. My task was daunting, but so far I had been satisfactory. And perhaps even more than that.
Chapter 8
‘I Will Be Good’
After a few more days of Shakespeare, I began to wish that we could study something different for a change. My wish was granted when I came into the dull green room one morning to discover that Lehzen had spread a large chart or family tree out upon the table instead of our copies of A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
She began talking to us of kings and queens.
‘What is the chief duty of a good monarch?’ she asked.
‘Mainly,’ said Victoria at once, ‘it’s to design new uniforms for his army every year. And to insist upon the changing of all the buttons. Gold to brass, silver to gold, that sort of thing.’ As usual, she wasn’t taking the question seriously.
I had to turn my face aside to hide a smile. Of course she was quite wrong to joke about it, but the idea of the mad ruler of the Kingdom of Buttons sounded like something from the story of Gulliver’s Travels.
‘Your Royal Highness! You know better than that.’ Lehzen sternly refused to smile.
‘But Lehzen, the king is obsessed with those ridiculous uniforms, and everyone knows it.’ It was undeniably true. Even I knew that Victoria’s uncle King George the Fourth loved clothes and uniforms and was obsessed with them, as the newspapers harped on about it constantly. However, the patient Lehzen did not give up.
‘Your Royal Highness, you are born to a high position. It is important that you understand the responsibilities of such a place in the world.’
At this I sighed. I thought of what these responsibilities might be. I thought of our brave soldiers, the poor people who had nothing to eat, babies whose mothers had died. Surely these must be the things that kept the king awake at night? Not his buttons. But Victoria had not finished.
‘My high position, as you call it, Lehzen, is not so very high at all. The only person who does what I want is Miss V. Unless I cry and scream, of course,’ she said in a threatening manner.
I bowed my head, unwilling either to annoy Lehzen or Victoria herself.
I could see that Lehzen wanted to get off the all-too-familiar topic of Victoria’s tantrums. She gestured now to the great chart spread across the green velvet tablecloth, with the names of the latest generations marked in with a pen. Yet Victoria made another attempt to divert the lesson in the direction of her own amusement and turned towards me.
‘What of the House of Conroy?’ she asked. ‘Can we hear about that? Why do you never speak of your mother and your sister, Miss V?’
‘Well …’ I looked to Lehzen, to see if she preferred to return to the family tree, but she gave me one of her clipped little nods.
‘My mother is an invalid, Baroness Lehzen,’ I said carefully. ‘She spends her days on a sofa, rather like that one there. And my sister Jane is older than me. She is interested in society and dances and dresses.’
The princess laughed. ‘And, as we know, you have no time for such things! I think I should like to meet your sister. Perhaps she could take me to the theatre.’
But Victoria had tried Lehzen’s patience long enough.
‘And now,’ said Lehzen crisply, ‘to the family tree of the House of Hanover. You see, girls, that the old king, George the Third, had fifteen children. An immense number. And his eldest son is our king now, King George the Fourth.’
‘Oh, Uncle Georgy!’ said Victoria, rolling her eyes.
‘That’s no way to speak of His Majesty,’ said Lehzen sternly.
‘But he’s so fat,’ Victoria whispered to me mischievously. ‘And jolly. He gives me presents.’ But then her eyes dropped down to the green tablecloth. ‘Yet he won’t let me and Mother go to live with him at Windsor Castle, and we have to stay in this prison instead. It is so unfair.’
Lehzen clicked her tongue, exasperated. But the little pause lengthened. I observed that she was oddly reluctant to go on with the lesson. It did cross my mind to wonder if she secretly agreed with what Victoria had said.
‘Anyway,’ said Lehzen, gathering herself. ‘You’ll see that His Majesty’s daughter, the Princess Charlotte – your cousin, Victoria – is dead, leaving behind her husband, your Uncle Leopold. It’s a complicated business, isn’t it?’
‘My Uncle Leopold is very kind,’ Victoria told me confidentially, as if Lehzen wasn’t even present. ‘He’s my mother’s brother. He sends me long letters from Belgium full of all sorts of advice, and invites me to stay at his house when he’s in England. I wish we could live with him; even that would be better than being stuck here.’
Again Lehzen redirected our attention to the page, printed with the names and titles of all Victoria’s relatives.
‘So, George the Fourth, yes, has no sons, and his daughter is dead. This means his brother will be king after him. That will be King William the Fourth.’
‘Silly Billy!’
‘Vickelchen! Where do you learn all these naughty names?’
Victoria sniggered, and I had to swallow a smile of my own. I suspected that Adams, the fat footman, had a hand in her knowledge.
‘But, as you know, King William the Fourth has no children either. And who comes next? It would have been your own father, the Duke of Kent, would it not?’
This had the effect of bringing Victoria back to earth. ‘He died when I was a baby, you know,’ she told me soberly, ‘leaving me and my mother all his debts.’
Once again I marvelled that this family who lived in a palace seemed to worry so much about money – far more so than my own family. Arborfield Hall was not, of course, a great country estate, but it was so warm and comfortable compared to Kensington Palace.
; ‘And who …’ Lehzen took off her spectacles, and put them on again, settling them over her ears with a little cough.
‘Who is next in line for the throne after the king’s brother William?’ I said, completing Lehzen’s question for her.
She nodded. There was a pause. Then I believe that the princess and I had the same idea at the same time.
‘Is it … me?’ Victoria asked tremulously.
There was a long silence. We could almost hear wheels turning in Victoria’s head. She was transparent like that. Lehzen bowed her head slowly, emphatically.
‘I am nearer to the throne than I thought.’
Lehzen gave a sort of savage smile. ‘Yes, Vickelchen, you are very near the throne. There is much splendour, but there is more responsibility. That is why we are so careful to protect your health.’
We both sat quietly. I hardly knew where to look. My father had told me some of this, but I now saw that I had failed to understand fully the significance of Victoria’s tangled family tree. Victoria was much, much more important – and much more vulnerable – than I had thought. How well she is taking it! I thought. If it were me, I would be frightened.
But then, to my horror, I saw Victoria’s hands curling into fists on the table, and those familiar tremors starting in her arms and shoulders. She was about to burst into tears.
‘But I don’t want to be queen!’ she bawled. ‘I just want to go to balls and parties, and live like other children do, with a mother and father!’
Floods of tears were running down her face, almost as if someone had dashed a glass of water into it. She had turned bright red, and she screwed up the corner of the family tree and made as if to rip it up.
Lehzen quickly whisked the chart aside.
‘There is no “want” about it,’ she said sternly. ‘Girls in your high position cannot want things. They can do only their duty. And how will this outburst go down when your mother hears about it? She might ask Sir John to punish you!’
At that my eye inevitably slid over to the parrot’s cage. I had not yet met Victoria’s mother, but if she was anything like her pet, she was formidable.
