by Julia Baird
Victoria then took off her crown and received the sacrament. Eerily on cue, a ray of sunlight illuminated her head. The Bishop of Bath and Wells skipped a page of the order of ceremony and prematurely ended the coronation. The queen then had a brief interlude in the Confessor’s Chapel, where the altar was covered with sandwiches and Melbourne drained a full glass of the priest’s red wine. After that, the choir sang “Hallelujah” as she made a final, formal exit. She then returned to the robing room, where she tried to pull the ring off her throbbing fourth finger. Already self-conscious about her short fingers, Victoria had to soak her hand in ice water for half an hour before it would budge.
Outside the Abbey, Constable John Robinson was grappling with a man who was trying to force his way inside so he could ask Victoria to marry him. When a magistrate later asked the man, Captain Thomas Flower of the Thirteenth Light Dragoons, his profession, he replied, “Profession or business has nothing to do with the question. I am merely a candidate for the hand of Her Majesty.” He had already been charged twice for disturbing the peace and had previously “created a great disturbance” at the Italian Opera House trying to gain admission to Victoria’s box. He was declared insane and sent to Tothill Fields, a house of correction in central London. (Tom Flower was not the first man to attempt to propose to Queen Victoria. One had already been committed for stalking the princess, and another was arrested for trying to break into the Chapel Royal.)
Victoria had performed perfectly, her poise almost concealing the gaffes made by those around her. On the way back to Buckingham Palace, she was tired but relieved. The hordes kept cheering, and the ladies waved scented handkerchiefs from their positions on windowsills, balconies, and scaffolding. Victoria was starving, but as soon as she got back, she grabbed her little dog Dash and placed him in a tub to wash him, gently pouring water over his fur.
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Once the procession had passed, at around 11 A.M., thousands of people started pouring into Hyde Park for the fair. It was a dazzling sight: almost one thousand booths spread across fifty acres. There were stalls, marquees, and tents displaying colorful banners and flags from all nations. There was plentiful beef, ham, chicken, salad, beer, and wine. Fairgoers wandered by stalls selling nuts, toys, gingerbread, ices, and oranges as bands played, men beat gongs, and acrobats tumbled past. They stopped to gaze at the fashionable panoramas and dioramas displaying landmarks and historical moments, including Niagara Falls (somehow contained in a box), the Death of Nelson, and the Capture of Napoleon. Most were there, though, for the drinking and dancing booths manned by clowns, “crowded to suffocation” and bedecked with curtains and British flags, where they smoked, caroused, and flirted. Within a few hours of the fair opening, the wife of a gingerbread worker gave birth. The baby was named Hyde Park and became a star attraction in its own right—the stall was kept open for days after the fair closed, and women brought presents for mother and child. The night of the coronation, a twenty-three-year-old man died in a dancing booth of suspected epilepsy, or, officially, “the visitation of God.”
Some of the most popular booths and tents housed the “freak shows,” a curious and usually cruel staple of Victorian entertainment. There were fat men and women, spotted boys, children with two heads, and animals with no heads. There were also dozens of monkeys, a skinny elephant, and fortune-telling ponies; a serpent handler; dwarves; “living skeletons”; twin giantesses from America; the two-headed lady; and the much-admired Madam Stevens, the “Pig-Faced Lady,” who was actually a brown bear with shaved paws and a shaved face, dressed in white gloves, bonnet, shawl, cap, and dress, strapped into a chair and poked by a hidden boy with a stick when her master asked her a question.
Charles Dickens walked past one of the shows and laughed, shaking his head: Why was it that the canvas tents of the giants were always the smallest? He was the most celebrated author in England. He had left Twickenham, where he was on holiday, to watch the coronation celebrations in Hyde Park. So many people were snobs when it came to working-class pleasure, he thought: they accused them of all kinds of sinful and indulgent revelry—but look at how wonderful this was! It was a “very pleasant and agreeable scene.” It was estimated that two-thirds of the population of London attended the fair. As Greville wrote, “To amuse and interest [the people] seems to have been the principal object” of the coronation. This was unusual, and it marked the beginning of a new era in the relationship between monarchy and citizenry.
Across England, Scotland, Ireland, and Wales, citizens of every kind participated in coronation festivities, both rowdy and orderly: picnics, official lunches, church services, street parties, dinners, and fetes. Those in workhouses and jails were given roast and boiled beef with vegetables, plum pudding, beer, tobacco, tea, and sugar. Paupers were given a coronation allowance. In Newgate, sheriffs gave prisoners beef, potatoes, bread, and a pint of strong beer. Those locked in solitary confinement were briefly allowed to mingle with the others. At country fairs, men over fifty ran races for a good waistcoat, and women over fifty competed for half a pound of snuff.
The queen rode past Hyde Park on the day after the coronation, after the rain cleared. Victoria, thrilled that Lord Melbourne had told her she had performed “beautifully—every part of it, with so much taste,” stood on her balcony at midnight to watch the fireworks show that night. The crowd was dazzled by thousands of popping stars and lights, serpents, squibs, and rockets. But most exciting of all was the final spectacle—an illumination of Victoria in her full coronation robes, stretching across the sky in lights, twinkling.
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The day after the coronation, Melbourne took to his bed with a strong dose of calomel. He did not return to the Cabinet for a week, but he found no sympathy at Buckingham Palace. On July 4, the queen wrote: “This is most provoking and vexatious, and makes me quite cross, for I’m so spoilt and accustomed to see this kind and I may venture to say even dear friend…every day that I’m quite annoyed and put out when my agreeable daily visit does not take place….And I’ve a Council today…and there I must be, as it were, without the person who makes me feel safe and comfortable.” (She hastened to add, knowing that a jealous Lehzen would be reading her entries, that he could be of comfort only when Lehzen was not with her.)
A few months later, the coronation was the centerpiece of Madame Tussaud’s new premises at Baker Street. Victoria had allowed exact replicas of her robes to be made for the ambitious display that included a papier-mâché copy of the interior of Westminster Abbey and captured a moment that would not be repeated for more than a century: a young woman being anointed the ruler of millions. The British were “fundamentally royalist,” Lady Cowper wrote to Princess Lieven: the queen “has only to show herself to be adored.” At this instant, all was glorious, golden, and cloaked in sunlight; the pretty queen was ascribed every virtue. It was “impossible,” wrote The Champion and Weekly Herald, given how young and lovely Victoria was, that “such a sovereign can have an enemy.” This state of affairs would change swiftly. It was not poise or boldness that she lacked as a young queen, as she was shortly to find out. It was wisdom. This would cause her star to plummet as quickly as it had risen.
CHAPTER 8
Learning to Rule
You lead rather an unnatural life for a young person. It’s the life of a man.
—LORD MELBOURNE
Victoria immediately developed a crush on Lord Melbourne. Her prime minister was unattached and intensely appealing: good-looking and charming, with unruly dark hair and an air of studied nonchalance. She clung to each word he spoke, commented often on how well he looked, especially when he wore the red and blue Windsor uniform or when the wind ruffled his hair, and recorded his quips in detail in her journal. She loved him “like a Father,” she wrote. “He has such stores of knowledge; such a wonderful memory; he knows about everybody and everything; who they were and what they did….It does me a world of good; and his conversations always improve one greatly.” She was a father
less young woman who had been bullied by her mother’s adviser; he was a widower who had been severely burned by the spectacular infidelity of his wife, and whose only child had died the year before. He loved being needed, admired, and important; she adored his affection and attention. As Greville astutely noted, Victoria’s feelings were probably “sexual, although she did not know it.” Gossips whispered about the inordinate amount of time they spent together. “I hope you are amused at the report of Lord Melbourne being likely to marry the Queen,” wrote the Countess Grey to Thomas Creevey.
Victoria’s faith in him was absolute—but not always deserved. Lord Melbourne was an unlikely leader, made prime minister for the second time two years before Victoria became queen largely because he was the least offensive candidate. He was not passionate about politics and couldn’t muster sufficient energy to care about social ills, let alone combat them. At times, when reformers visited him to put the case for improvements such as narrowing the death penalty or introducing compulsory education, he would pull feathers out of a pillow, toss them up in the air, and blow them across the top of his desk as they spoke. William Lamb, as he was christened, was a privileged, clever, Eton-educated Whig who had spent much of his life avoiding conflict or exertion. From his insouciant demeanor, you would not have been able to tell that his private life had been one of excruciating betrayal and loss. His relationship with the young queen was rare, consuming, and strangely affecting. To understand why—and how his need matched hers—we must first understand how the humiliation and pain of Melbourne’s private life had scandalized the aristocrats of London and caused him to cauterize his heart.
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On the day that Lord Melbourne, then William Lamb, gave his maiden speech in the House of Commons in December 1806, a tiny boyish figure sat in the public gallery listening with rapt attention. It was his wife, Caroline Lamb, an impish, eccentric creature who that day had dressed in her brother’s clothes. She was smuggled into the gallery—which at the time allowed only men—by the secretary of another Whig politician, Lord Morpeth. Her mother-in-law was furious.
Caroline Ponsonby was not considered particularly beautiful, but she was passionate, animated, and clever. Lord Melbourne was smitten, proposing to her almost as soon as he had the chance (once his older brother died, and he had become heir to an Irish peerage and considerable wealth). His family worried about her notorious rages and volatility, but Melbourne loved her, and they married in 1805. Their relationship was tempestuous, marked by his almost inexplicable tolerance of her destructive behavior. They had one child, a son who was epileptic and probably also autistic. The fact that Caroline was unable to have any more children was a source of great grief, and it amplified an already unstable emotional fault line. Just a few years into their marriage, William Lamb began receiving anonymous letters telling him of his wife’s adultery.
Caroline’s best-known lover was the glamorous poet Lord Byron, who was being feted by London after the publication of his adventures began in 1812, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Caroline read it immediately and, after insisting they meet, declared him to be, in a phrase that has been immortalized since, “mad, bad and dangerous to know.” They both were, in fact; their eyes locked in recognition as well as lust. “That beautiful pale face,” she wrote on their second meeting, “is my fate.” It was to be one of the most outrageous, legendary affairs of the century; a host of writers carved Caroline and Byron’s escapades into fictional characters. The pair scandalized London that summer, so publicly and shamelessly did they conduct themselves. Byron was flattered by the attentions of the clever wife of a politician. She had thrilled to his beauty, his fame, and, most of all, his literary ability with an intensity that, in time, would cause them to suffer. They wrote reams of love letters—to one, lying in a folder in the archives of the British Library, Caroline attached a bloodied clipping of her own pubic hair—and attempted to elope (some still believe they were married in secret).
After four intense months, Byron spurned his lover. Caroline was shattered, and after a particularly dramatic incident in which she slashed her arms with broken glass at a ball, she was banished to the country estate of Brocket, where she was put on a regimen of a bottle of sherry per day. She broke furniture, smashed crockery, poked servants with broomsticks, and appeared semi-nude in public. She was often drunk and stoned from opium. It exhausted Melbourne, who turned gray at the age of thirty-six. His political career floundered, but he neither left his wife nor sought divorce.
There are three likely reasons Lord Melbourne stayed: his enduring love for her, his passivity (as a schoolboy he had walked away from fights he knew he would not win), and the fact that the mores of the Whigs were hardly puritanical. In the late eighteenth century, when Melbourne grew up, marital faithfulness was not a prized virtue. Marriages were seen as companionable contracts within which one should produce a male heir. Melbourne’s own mother was, as he said himself, “a remarkable woman, a devoted mother, an excellent wife,—but not chaste, not chaste.” She had many lovers, with whom she had several children. It was widely known that Melbourne’s father was not his mother’s husband, from whom he took his name, but one of his mother’s lovers, Lord Egremont. What was surprising was that Melbourne stayed faithful to his own cuckolding wife. According to his biographer David Cecil, a married man was then thought peculiar if he did not have a “sprightly, full-bosomed” mistress. As for married women, “the practice was too common to stir comment.”
But most people outside of the world of the Whigs condemned their sexual indulgence. They risked ridicule and, for the women, ruin if their amours were exposed in the press or in court. Caroline’s openness shocked many people, especially when she wrote a thinly disguised book about her affair. Glenarvon, published in May 1816, was a bestseller, but it prolonged her husband’s shame. The book, wrote biographer L. G. Mitchell, “threw buckets of ordure into the faces of the whole Whig world.” Melbourne was devastated, but it would be years before his family persuaded him to separate. When Caroline was dying from dropsy, in January 1828, Melbourne traveled from Ireland to be by her side.
After his wife’s death, Melbourne had two spectacular liaisons that ended in court. Both were with astute, amusing married women who had husbands to whom Melbourne tossed political favors until they decided to sue him. Both trials also detailed his personal predilection for whipping, and both ended with his shunning the women involved, even though he was acquitted each time. The first was his Irish friend Lady Branden, to whom he paid an annuity for the rest of his life. The second was the beautiful author Caroline Norton, a highly intelligent woman whose brutish husband abused her. When her openly affectionate relationship with Melbourne became the subject of gossip, Mr. Norton took it to court. Melbourne swore for the rest of his life that he and Mrs. Norton were never lovers, though many, including his brother, were dubious. The case, held in June 1836, was lost in nine days. Although he was exonerated, Lord Melbourne was depressed for months and unable to sleep or eat. He became cruel, telling Caroline Norton not to fight for custody of her three sons and advising her to return to her violent spouse. Mrs. Norton went on to fight for more rights for mothers, and in 1839 a law was passed allowing women to seek custody of children under the age of seven. Victoria was sympathetic to her cause, and she reprimanded Melbourne when he did not even show up to vote for the bill. He said, “I don’t think you should give a woman too much right…there should not be two conflicting powers…a man ought to have the right in a family.” Even though, or perhaps especially because, he had lacked any power in his own.
As his female friends could attest, Lord Melbourne was obsessed with discipline. He even discussed it with Queen Victoria, particularly when it came to spanking children. It seems to have sprung from his experiences at Eton, where corporal punishment was widely practiced, though he was flogged only three times in three years, to his disappointment. These beatings, he told the queen, “had always an amazing effect.” For the rest of hi
s life, he advocated whipping as punishment for children or maids. There is some evidence that he indulged in the practice with his wife, at least one of his lovers, and a young orphan girl called Susan Churchill who lived with their family for some time.* His victims seemed willing enough, though it would be questionable to assume consent from an orphan girl. L. G. Mitchell believes Melbourne was trying to punish all women for the sins of the one who had betrayed him. The one woman who would adore him unquestioningly was the queen.
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“He is certainly a queer fellow to be prime minister,” wrote Greville. He had no agenda for reform, no vision for a new, improved country, and no policies he wished to see made law. His canniness was often underestimated, but stasis was Lord Melbourne’s preferred position. His favorite political dictum was “Why not leave it alone?” In this sense, he was not a man for his time; he embodied governments of the past that saw their central concerns as solely security, the avoidance of wars, and the managing of crises. At a time of tumultuous energy and massive change in England, the PM was most fond of the words “delay” and “postpone.” The irony was that Melbourne was a Whig. Previous Whig PMs, most notably Lord Grey between 1830 and 1834, had enacted welfare laws, ended slavery, and expanded the vote. But Melbourne even once told Archbishop Whately that he would have done “nothing at all” about slavery. Little wonder that the Whigs had lost momentum by the mid-1830s. Melbourne’s government accomplished little in the seven years he was PM, from July to November 1834 and then April 1835 to August 1841. He utterly failed to understand the root causes of any social uprisings. The most significant parliamentary debates of his time were not about which policies might transform a nation restless with inequality, but “the degree of repression that was necessary to keep the discontented workers—or more often the unemployed—securely in their place.”
