“And then she will look to her husband, not to me,” Melbourne said. “Yes, Emma, I know.”
Emma knew better than to say more.
The playing stopped, and Victoria got up and walked over to where they stood. “Do you care to play cards, Lord M? I have missed our games of piquet.”
Melbourne looked down at her and smiled. “So have I, ma’am. So have I.”
BOOK THREE
CHAPTER ONE
“There is a letter for you, Majesty, from Brussels.” Lehzen produced the letter from a pocket in her skirts.
Victoria sighed. “I don’t want to read it now, Lehzen. Not today.”
Lehzen put the letter on the dressing table and retreated. Skerrett was unpinning Victoria’s hair from the elaborate style she had worn for the State Opening of Parliament. Victoria looked at the letter balefully. Today had been exhausting; she had been on view from morning till now. Riding to Parliament in the glass coach, waving and smiling to the crowds all the while, whether they waved back or not, and then in Parliament itself she had been under the scrutiny of all those grey men, as she mentally called the members of the House of Lords and the Commons. The worst thing was having to read the speech that outlined the government’s plans for the next Parliamentary session. It was always so long and with such cumbersome phrases.
She had complained to Lord M that it was like reading the sort of sermon that put her to sleep when she went to church, but Melbourne had laughed and said that no one could fall asleep when she was talking or they would be arrested for treason. But even Lord M could not understand the effort of keeping her voice steady as she read the speech in front of that audience. Every time she looked up from the page, as Lord M had encouraged her to do, she would see some red-faced peer cupping his hand to his ear in a pantomime of deafness, or some cadaverous MP smirking because he considered her pronunciation peculiar. She never looked up to the right, where she knew that the Duke of Cumberland was sitting, waiting and hoping for her to make a mistake. There were very few instances in which she would have preferred to have been born a man, but today’s ordeal made her wish for a baritone voice that never struggled to be heard.
There had been one moment when she had felt quite hoarse and had wished for a sip of water. Knowing, however, that everyone was watching for such a sign of weakness, she had swallowed and continued, allowing herself at the end of the sentence to look up and catch Melbourne’s encouraging smile.
All she wanted to do now was to fall into bed, close her eyes, and fall asleep, but the letter was still lying on the dressing table. It was from her uncle Leopold, her mother’s brother, who five years ago had been asked by the new country of Belgium to be its king. Before Victoria was born, he had been married to Princess Charlotte, the heir to the English throne, until she had died in childbirth, together with their child. To be King of Belgium was some consolation for not being the husband of the Queen of England, but not quite enough, so Uncle Leopold had decided that to be uncle of the Queen of England was a grave responsibility he must fulfill whether his niece liked it or not. He wrote to her at least once a week with advice on how she should conduct herself as Queen. If she did not reply immediately he wrote again reproachfully, reminding her that he was the only person who would offer her “disinterested advice,” because
My dear niece, I write not only as uncle to niece but as one sovereign to another. So you would do well to listen to what I say and remember that your welfare is my only concern.
Although Victoria longed to write back that the welfare of his subjects should be his only concern, she was not quite brave enough. She wondered what would be in this letter; the last one had been a lecture on her folly over refusing to give up her ladies to Sir Robert Peel.
The duty of a constitutional monarch is to put public duty before the exercise of personal inclination. I know that you are attached to your ladies and of course to the estimable Lord Melbourne, but you must realise that by such a blatant display of personal attachment you lay yourself open to charges of partiality and bias. The Queen of England must be seen to be above the machinations of party, and to preside not to interfere. If you do not realise the folly of your behavior, then your people may cease to revere you as their monarch, and begin to wonder why they are being reigned over by a thoughtless young girl.
She had torn that letter up and sat down to write to her uncle that she never wished to hear from him again. But even as her quill scratched furiously across the paper, she knew this was a letter she would never send.
The next day she decided that the best revenge was to write with such blandness that Leopold would be forced to wonder if she had read his insults. So she had written a long and rambling letter asking about her Coburg cousins and telling him in excruciating detail about all her recent ecclesiastical appointments. As King of the Belgians, Leopold had become a Catholic, and Victoria felt no little satisfaction in reminding him of her position as head of the Church of England.
“Will that be all, ma’am?” Skerrett hovered behind her. “Would you like me to put your curl papers in?”
“No, you may go,” she said, and the young dresser curtseyed and left the room.
Picking up the letter, Victoria lay down on the bed. When her moment of repose was interrupted by Dash, she pulled the dog up and ran her fingers through his soft, curly coat. “What do you think Uncle Leopold is going to lecture me about now, Dash? He wouldn’t like it if I wrote to him and told him how to run his foreign policy. I am just as royal as he is, in fact much more so, as my country has existed for a thousand years and his for just five.”
Dash looked up at her in adoration, his long tail wagging. Victoria kissed him on the nose. “If only everyone could be like you, Dash, how easy my life would be.”
Dash licked her hand in agreement. At last Victoria picked up the letter and broke open the seal. To her surprise it was not the usual long missive but a brief note that informed her that he would be visiting the following week, because he wished to talk to her about her cousin Albert. Victoria threw the letter across the room, which made Dash bark in alarm.
The interconnecting door opened, and Lehzen appeared in her wrapper, her hair in papers, her broad face worried. “Is something wrong, Majesty? Are you unwell?”
“Yes! Something is very wrong! My uncle Leopold has announced that he is coming to stay so he can talk to me about Albert. How dare he! I have no intention of getting married for years, and when I do, it won’t be to a milksop like Albert.”
Lehzen nodded. “I think your cousin Albert is not really a match for you.”
“Do you remember when he came with Ernst a few years ago? When there was dancing, he started to yawn and say that he was too tired to take part. Imagine anyone being too tired to dance! And he was so dull, always asking me how many acres there are in Windsor Great Park and whether I had ever visited the Royal Mint. Ernst is not so bad; at least he smiles occasionally and likes dancing, but Albert is such a baby. I mean he is only three months younger than I am, but it might as well be three years.”
“When is King Leopold arriving?” Lehzen asked.
“Next week. I don’t understand how he can just assume that I will be happy to receive him. I suppose he has already written to Mama, and she has told him he will be welcome. I expect the pair of them have been hatching this visit together. But I won’t have it. Nobody is going to choose my husband for me.”
“No, Majesty. It must be your choice.”
“Uncle Leopold doesn’t care whether Albert and I are suited; he just wants to make sure that the Coburgs are on the throne of every country in Europe. It makes him feel like an emperor instead of the king of a country that didn’t even exist five years ago. Who are the Coburgs, anyway? Just a minor princely family that have married well.”
Lehzen coughed. “Your mother is a Coburg, Majesty.”
“Yes, but my father was from a royal line that stretches back to William the Conqueror.”
“I am sure t
he King will understand when you tell him that you have no plans to marry at present.”
Victoria laughed. “He will put his head on one side and say,” she adopted a heavy German accent, “Ah, my little Maiblume, that is because you are a young girl who does not understand the way that the world is working. That is why you must listen to your elders.”
She sighed. “Uncle Leopold, Mama, they still think they can control me, but I won’t be told what to do, by them or by anyone else.”
She sounded so fierce as she said this that Dash growled in sympathy, which made both women laugh. Lehzen put her hand on Victoria’s, a gesture which she only allowed herself when they were together in private.
“Please don’t worry, Majesty. No one can make you do anything that you do not agree with. Not anymore.”
“No,” agreed Victoria. “Not anymore.”
The next morning, when Melbourne came to go through her boxes, Victoria had placed the miniature of Elizabeth Tudor that Lehzen had given her by her inkwell.
Melbourne noticed it at once, and glancing at Victoria for permission, he picked it up to examine it. “This is a lovely thing. What an arresting woman your predecessor was.”
“I wonder what her voice was like. I find it so hard to make mine loud enough to be heard.”
Melbourne looked at her. “I am sure that people listened to her because she was the Queen, just as they listen to you.”
“You don’t think my voice is too slight for a queen? I thought people looked very disgruntled yesterday, Uncle Cumberland especially.”
“Your uncle Cumberland has looked disgruntled ever since I have known him. If others looked displeased, it is because they do not like my policies, not the way in which they are delivered. In my opinion, ma’am, you have a very beautiful speaking voice, and there could be nothing more dignified than the way in which you conducted yourself yesterday. Indeed, if I might say so, you were a great deal more regal than your late uncle, who could only get through the speech by consuming great quantities of snuff. I believe that the finer points of our policies were lost in the resulting explosions.”
Victoria laughed. “You always say the right thing, Lord M.”
“I assure you, ma’am, that the Tories do not agree with you. But you look listless this morning. Is there something the matter?”
“I am plagued by uncles. First I have Uncle Cumberland staring at me like a gargoyle, and now my uncle Leopold has written that he is coming to stay.”
Melbourne smiled. “How delighted you look at the prospect, ma’am.”
“He wants me to marry my cousin Albert.”
Melbourne looked at the miniature in his hand. “I believe you did not take to your cousin the last time you met him.”
“Indeed I did not.”
“Not all queens marry, ma’am.” Melbourne put the miniature of the Virgin Queen back on the desk.
Victoria looked at it and then at Melbourne. “Do you think she was lonely?”
Melbourne paused, and replied, “I believe she found … companions.”
Victoria glanced at him. “Well, I have no intention of marrying at present.” She paused. “I have not seen so many happy marriages.”
Melbourne sighed. “Neither have I, ma’am, neither have I.”
Seeing the pain in his face, Victoria realised that while she had spoken lightly, he had spoken from the heart. Before she could say anything more, Lehzen appeared in the doorway, looking apologetic but determined.
“Forgive me, Majesty, for interrupting, but there is a messenger from the House who says he must speak with Lord Melbourne urgently.”
Victoria saw an expression of alarm flicker across Melbourne’s face, which was quickly replaced by his usual half smile.
He made her a regretful bow. “Forgive me, ma’am, but I believe I must attend to this.” He began to back away from her.
“Of course.” Victoria nodded but, before she could stop herself, said, “Lord M, you will return?”
Melbourne paused and looked back at her. “Yes, ma’am.”
Victoria nodded and watched him go.
She was reminded that Lehzen was still in the room as the Baroness made a noise somewhere between a sigh and a click of disapproval.
Victoria turned to look at her. “Is there something wrong, Lehzen?”
Lehzen hesitated, and then blurted, “He will not be your Prime Minister forever, Majesty.”
“Do you imagine that I am unaware of that, Baroness?”
Lehzen put a hand to the wall for support. “No, Majesty, but sometimes I worry that you are unprepared. You rely on him so much and he cannot always be there.”
“Indeed.” Victoria’s tone was icy.
The older woman bowed her head. Then she said in a low voice, “I have cared for you, Majesty, since you were a little girl. It has been my vocation. So you must forgive me if sometimes I am caring for you beyond my position. Where you are concerned I am forgetting everything except your happiness.” At the end of this speech her voice was so quiet that Victoria strained to make out the words. When she had finished, Lehzen began to back out of the room.
“Wait!”
Lehzen stopped, and Victoria went over to her and took her hand. “I know how much you care for me, Lehzen, and I am grateful, but I have to make my own way.”
CHAPTER TWO
Leopold I, King of the Belgians, was a man of high colour and an even higher opinion of his own talents. As a young man he had been extremely good-looking and had turned the head of the greatest match in Europe, Charlotte the Princess of Wales, only child of George IV and heir to the English throne. Her father had looked for a more illustrious bridegroom than a penniless younger son from an obscure German duchy, but even he could not deny that Leopold cut a dashing figure in his Hussar’s uniform.
In the end Charlotte’s infatuation and Leopold’s glamour had won the day, and George had consented to the marriage. His daughter had inherited much of her mother’s willfulness, and the sooner she had a husband to keep her in check, the better. Leopold and Charlotte, who had been genuinely in love, were delighted when Charlotte had discovered that she was expecting a child soon after their wedding.
Leopold had thought so much of that child and how it would seal the place of the Coburgs at the heart of European power forever. But as the pregnancy progressed and Charlotte grew fatter and more breathless, the doctors had begun to look grave and to produce their instruments of torture: the leeches, the cupping bells. Leopold begged his wife to send them away, but she felt that she must listen to them because she was carrying the heir to the English throne. When the doctors told her that she was getting too fat, she had even stopped eating the marrons glacés that she loved beyond anything. But, as Leopold had known all along, all the doctors and their rigmaroles could not save his son, who was born large, handsome, but quite dead, or his wife, who had been consumed by a fever that killed her the next day.
Leopold had mourned his wife most sincerely, but he had also mourned the loss of the dreams that had come with his marriage. In the year that followed, as the unmarried brothers of George IV scrambled to find themselves wives in order to secure the succession, he saw that there might still be an opportunity, albeit a slim one, for the Coburgs to find a way to the British throne. He had suggested to his brother-in-law, Edward the Duke of Kent, who like his other brothers was scouring Europe for a suitable Protestant princess, that he might care to pay his addresses to Leopold’s widowed sister Victoire. She was pretty, fertile—she had borne her first husband two children—and unlike some of the horse-faced young women on offer from Brunswick or Mecklenburg Strelitz, had some experience of how to please a husband. Leaping at the suggestion, Edward had abandoned Madame St. Laurent, his mistress of the past twenty-five years, in Nova Scotia, to sail to Germany, where he wooed and won Victoire in less than a week.
Of course the alliance was far from ideal. Edward’s older brother William, the Duke of Clarence, had also got married, and
his children would take precedence in the line of succession. But as Leopold wrote to his sister, “This Princess Adelaide does not have your experience with men, my dear sister, or your evident skill in this area.” Victoire had repaid his faith in her by falling pregnant a few months after the marriage.
They were living in Victoire’s home in Amorbach, as the Duke’s debts meant that he could not afford to support a wife in London, but Leopold had urged his sister to return to England for the birth. “Otherwise they will not view the child as English. But make sure you take a midwife with you. The English doctors are nothing more than butchers.” Following her brother’s advice, Victoire had embarked on the difficult journey across Europe when she was seven months pregnant, with her husband, her silver, a parrot, and Frau Siebold the midwife. There were times when it looked as though the future heir to the throne of England might be born in a hired post-chaise somewhere in rural Normandy, but the Duchess had held on until the royal party arrived in England, where she gave birth to a small but healthy little girl.
Leopold had, of course, been present for the christening in St. James’s Chapel, where there had been an unseemly dispute about what the infant should be called. Her father had wanted to call her a royal name like Elizabeth or Mary, with Charlotte as a second name, but the King, who resented the idea that his despised younger brother’s child might one day become Queen, had vetoed this idea. So there had been much rumination around the font, with names being suggested by the parents and rejected by the petulant monarch. At last agreement was reached on calling the baby Alexandrina, after her godfather, Alexander, the emperor of Russia. Then there was a question of a second name. The King’s watery and malevolent blue eyes fixed on his sister-in-law, and he said with disdain, “Use one of the mother’s names.” More confusion, as the Duchess’s first name, Marie-Louise, sounded too Catholic, so in the end they settled on Victoire, which was anglicised as Victoria. It was a funny-sounding name, one that the archbishop who was conducting the ceremony stumbled over. Afterwards, though, the Duke of Kent walked up and down the chapel holding the baby in his arms, chanting “Alexandrina Victoria, Alexandrina Victoria,” and saying to anyone who would listen, “Do you know, I think it has a most triumphant sound. Victoria is quite a fitting name for a soldier’s daughter, don’t you think?”
Victoria Page 21
