by Anna Kirwan
Contents
Cover
Title page
England, 1829
1 April 1829: Kensington Palace, London, England
Later
Later
2 April
Later
Later
3 April
Later
5 April
6 April
7 April
8 April
Later
9 April
10 April
Later
Later
12 April
22 April
24 April
Later
6 May
Later
29 May
Later
1 June
Later
Later
2 June
6 June
7 June
12 June
Later
13 June
17 June
22 June
2 July: Claremont
Later
5 July
7 July
Later
9 July
11 July
12 July
13 July
14 July
16 July
20 July
21 July
Later
22 July: Bletchingley
Later: Chevening
24 July: Luddesdown
26 July: En route
Later
26 July: Faversham
28 July: Ramsgate
30 July
1 August
2 August
4 August
5 August
6 August
7 August
8 August
9 August
10 August
12 August
13 August
17 August
25 September: Kensington Palace
27 September
1 October
8 October
9 October
10 October
31 October
Later
1 November
Later
2 November
5 November
6 November
8 December
9 December
29 December
Later
30 December
14 January 1830
16 January
25 January
10 February
16 February
17 February
Later
24 February
Later
28 February
1 March
2 March
3 March
4 March
5 March
6 March
7 March
8 March
15 March
Later
4 April: Carling Sunday
16 April
26 May
Later
26 June
27 June
17 July
19 July
20 July
26 July
27 July
28 July
30 July
Later
2 August
8 August
23 September
Later
10 October
17 October
20 October
20 November
1 December
2 December
27 December
3 January 1831
5 January
6 January
26 January
13 February
26 February
9 April
10 April
Later
16 April
24 April
25 May
11 June
8 August
8 September: East Cowes, Isle of Wight
14 September
Later
Epilogue
Historical note
The Hanover-Coburg family tree
Glossary of characters
My Story – a series
Copyright
England, 1829
1 April 1829
Kensington Palace, London, England
This book was not given to me, nor did I buy it with my own pocket money. You might say that I found it, but that would not be completely truthful. It is of a convenient small size, with many empty pages left, having only some lists of cows written in it here and there. The cover is brown, mottled paper, and someone has pasted on a white label. On the label, in very curly letters, it says Herd Record.
For, yes, I stole the book – from an out of the way, cornermost cupboard in the hall outside the harness room in the stable. I saw the cupboard swinging open once a few weeks ago, when I ducked aside to adjust my undergarments. They were binding me mercilessly before my excellent governess, the Baroness Lehzen, and I were to ride out in the carriage. I was itching, so Lehzen bid me go around the corner privately to compose myself and make myself presentable. (Meanwhile, she watched out for anyone who might accidentally interrupt.)
So I did, and there was a little built-in cupboard with the hook-and-eye latch undone. Inside were ledgers, twenty or so, I should say. One was lists of pigs, by name! One was carrier pigeons; one was geese and guinea fowl and such; several were sheep. None was horses – I should have preferred horses. From whose farm these records were, I know not, save, the years marked on them were between 1813 and 1815, four to six years before I was even born.
When Lehzen and I went out today, I recalled seeing the ledgers last time I was in the harness room. I made the same excuse, to hitch up my petticoat and stockings. (I was wearing the blue ones, and in fact, they were rather stretched out. I fancy the embroidery on them, though.) I slipped quickly into the back hall. And, although it was stealing, I took the ledger. I was dreadfully put to it, to conceal it behind me all the time when I came out. It was tied around my waist with only the sash of my pinafore, and ready to slide loose at any moment!
I don’t mean to be unkind, but it almost seemed good fortune for me that Lehzen has had the bad luck to have a sniffling cold this week. She was preoccupied with her nose in her handkerchief on the way back home, and so I managed to fetch in my stolen treasure. I repent sincerely at the bitter knowledge that I have broken a Commandment – still, I trust I have done no other person harm by so doing.
Later
I had to hide my little journal, as Lehzen came into the room, looking for her pincushion. I stuck my book and my pen under the tapestry footstool.
The reason I hid this ledger is that I do not wish anyone to know that it exists. Really, I must have a place to pour out my curious thoughts privately and sort through them. I never get to be truly alone. Mamma says it would be quite unsafe for a maiden princess to be unguarded by her ladies. So, someone is always nearby – across the room, just out in the hall, in the anteroom. It is not enough that I must sleep in Mamma’s bedchamber: I am the only person I know who is not permitted to walk down a flight of steps without holding someone’s hand.
Yet sometimes when I am sitting at the window reading or, as now, writing quietly, it is almost as if I am as alone and peaceful as a deer in the forest.
I could be perfectly happy thus, for hours at a time, perhaps, if it were not for the way Certain Persons have of spying on me! I suffer greatly from Their lack of trust. (And now, I fear, my feelings have driven me actually to act against my own conscience – I mean, taking this old ledger in order to defy Their wishes. Though this is a journal, not a letter. They didn’t forbid me to write a journal. In fact, They didn’t forbid me to write letters, only my own opinions in my letters.)
&nb
sp; Of course, if anyone were to give me a pretty little leather-bound journal like the one Mamma’s own brother Uncle Leopold keeps, it would only end up being used as a copybook They could read whenever They chose, and then make impertinent remarks. Although I am a princess, His Majesty King George IV’s niece Victoria, I am treated this way – with Remarks – too often.
I considered that I might go into the little shop where my art tutor, Mr Westall, stopped the carriage to buy us lemon squashes to drink that hot day we went out landscape sketching. I might in that way manage to purchase one of the little memorandum books – so charming, with a little pencil attached. But They would know I’d done it, as soon as Captain Conroy made me account for what I’d spent. (Why he must be Mamma’s financial advisor and confidential secretary, I do not know!) I’d either be scolded for spending the money, or spied on as to anything I wrote, or both.
How do I know this is so? Because Mamma herself took the letter I was writing yesterday to my darling sister, Feodora. She took it away from that bully, Captain Conroy, at least. In the process of doing so, she behaved every inch the Duchess of Kent and Princess of Saxe-Coburg and Saalfeld.
But then she ripped it up and tossed it onto the fire! Which was, of course, burning low for economy’s sake. So I had to watch the pages slowly blacken and shrivel. And I had not made a fair copy of it yet, so it was the only one! I had made it quite an interesting letter, too, for Feo, and I regret that I shan’t be able to recall all the remarks as I worded them there. I was in a witty mood when I wrote them, not glum as I am now. I am so vexed!
“These things you write about us and our System here at Kensington are unbecoming and unkind,” is all Mamma said at first.
Victoire Conroy, that traitorous, cowardly snip, the tale-carrier, was so horridly goody-good just then, saying, “I thought it for your safety to tell, Your Highness. Papa says you could be Prey to Others’ Interests.” Fine words, from someone who reads what one is writing over one’s shoulder!
Toire would do or say anything to get her father to think more about her than about me. And I heartily wish he would. He is not my father, he is not even in my family. He is only my dear, dead Papa’s equerry, his personal officer – a servant, if one thinks about it. But he is a military man, and Mamma admires the way he orders things. And I am to be persuaded that Their concern for me makes it all right for him to raise his voice and make himself frightful, hammering his fist on the rickety old side table with the twisted barley-sugar-stick legs. He pretends he is angry at my supposed enemies, my “rivals” for His Majesty’s favour – mostly my own Uncles! – but I feel as though he is angry at me and at Mamma.
“Your wicked Uncle Ernest would be grateful to be able to show this to the King!” he accused me. Oh, he was quite beyond his usual, inattentive Oh, hmm, oh, hmm, out of the question! level of temper. Quite! He thundered! “He and the Tories would use it against those of us who have only your interests at heart!” The Tories are the political party for old-fashioned Royal rights, and nothing modern.
And Mamma said, “What you put in writing, Vickelchen, can turn up in the newspapers. You do not understand the need to be … to be… Ach, Gott in Himmel – Stille. Ruhe…”
To which, the baleful O’Hum thundered, “English! English! Speak to her in English! If you want Parliament to ever raise your income, they must not think of her as German!”
Mamma still stood straight as a duchess, but her sweet voice was very meek.
“Victoria, you must understand how to keep quiet, that was the word I wanted, how to be … restrained.”
Child though I am, I do understand – to a degree. The Royal Family is paid for their services to the nation according to the voting of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. They pay for Mamma and me because of my Duke Papa, but I have so many uncles and aunts and cousins, they do not pay us much. Some of my relatives own estates and treasures, and some have to borrow from their friends.
I hear the grown-up people discuss these subjects, but I suppose I am too young to know what is important. I should be seen but not heard.
But – if I can’t tell even Feo my true thoughts, how can she advise me as only a sister can, and console me in my troubles as only a sister can? Hohenlohe is so far away! Why had she to marry? It is very VERY bad when your dear sister has gone to live in a foreign land.
I would give all the rubies in India to be able to talk to Feo right now.
I hear Grampion the footman coming.
Later
Book under plaid cushion in Fanny’s dog basket, just in time. Grampion moved the footstool over by the fireplace, to put my damp boots on. When he went out, I slipped my hand underneath the dog cushion to get my book, and also found the bit of ham bone Cook gave Fanny for barking at the rat in the umbrella stand. I have been going off, distracted, and did not finish confessing why I got this book. I suppose one reason to write regularly … is so as to be certain to tell all. Some days, a great deal occurs. Other days, scarcely anything but weather, hems being let out (or getting tripped on and ripped out), and what sort of pudding was served at tea. I shall attempt to be thorough in thinking about all that happens and what I am learning. I shall have to become a v fast writer. (For example, that is a fast way to write “very”!)
I am going to hide this diary, where no one will come across it, and I can get it without drawing attention, and write in it. The way today has proceeded, I expect I will have the most chances to write when the bedchamber is quiet and Mamma is abed, after Lehzen has lighted the night lights and dozed off. I cannot keep it under the mattress, for Lutie or the other maids would find it when they came in to change the linen on Mamma’s and my beds. For now, I will slip it behind the big, ugly mauve settee in the upstairs drawing room. No one moves the thing, even to dust, so my book is probably safe there.
When Feo comes back to England, or when I go to Hohenlohe or Coburg or Vienna as I long to, perhaps to visit Feo and her dear husband, Prince Ernest, there … to Feo, I will show this journal. Only to you, darling sister!
See, here is a list of cows’ names someone wrote in the ledger:
Baby
Dolly
Polly
Pet
Winner
Tully
Nellie
Nancy
Vinia
Rose
Agnes
Vashti
2 April
It is the most unfortunate thing for a girl not to remember her own father. Dear sister, Feodora, you must know this is so. Even you, who knew your own father for a while when you were small, and then had my own Duke Papa to be, as you said, the best of stepfathers to you and Charles – you must understand what I feel, to have no such store of recollections.
I try to push my memory back as far as I can make it go. Sometimes, I even pray a saint or guardian spirit will bless my memory. I would like to believe it is my own remembering that provides my idea of the tall man whose face filled the sky above my little bed. He speaks toward me, in this dream-memory I have of him, and he says, Victoire, Liebchen. Victory. I am not sure I remember him saying, Victoria.
Uncle King is the one who made them call me Alexandrina Victoria, I know. My Papa didn’t much like his brother George insisting my first name be in honour of Tsar Alexander – even if he is King George IV of England. Maybe Papa first called me Drina in order not to mix me up with Mamma being “Victoire,” and Captain Conroy already naming his daughter for her. Do you remember, Feo? When he died, I was only eight months old. Maybe what I remember is only what Mamma and you and our brother, Charles, and Uncle Sussex have told me. I wish my Duke Papa were still here.
Later
For breakfast this morning, we had eggs and sausages, and apples and onions fried in bacon drippings, and buns as hard as the back of your head. I asked our dear old de Spaeth, “Baroness, why is th
e bread so hard this morning?”
She has been Mamma’s lady-in-waiting for so many years, she is always at pains to be tactful. She said, “Perhaps it is because Sir John told Cook not to waste anything.” I am supposed to call Captain Conroy “Sir John” nowadays, but I shan’t, not in my own book.
Later, I asked my tutor, the Reverend Mr Davys, why Captain Conroy would do such a stingy thing as to deny us fresh bread. Mr Davys said, “Perhaps because it is Lent.” So I didn’t say anything about sausages and bacon to Mr Davys.
Toire Conroy, that sneak, hides behind curtains to listen in, and then tattles. Unless she’s lying, the bread was hard because her papa said Uncle Ernest might hire a poisoner if he goes mad, as Grandfather George did, so, there was no soft bread, which might conceal vile tinctures. Victoire says Uncle Ernest murdered his servant.
I said to her, “Did you see him do it?” She said, “No, but everyone says so.” I said to her, “I don’t say so, so, it’s not everyone, is it?” She said, “Your Highness is not everyone. And you are not told everything.” I said, “I never said I am. But you must not talk about the Duke of Cumberland, my Papa’s big brother, that way.” She said, “No, no one must say what you don’t like, must they, Your Highness?” But that was not my point.
She says “Your Highness” as if she is spreading treacle on toast. Treacle with ants in it.
Later
Feo, I asked Charles, who is here for Easter holidays, what he thought of people who put rocks in front of one when one wants a nice, soft, warm bun. Charles just laughed and said, “Why, Schnösel, it’s to remind Mamma to write notes to everyone who might notice your birthday’s next month.”
He means that Captain Conroy is hinting to Mamma that she should write to His Majesty, my Uncle King, that our household requires more income from him or from the public treasury, and that would be a good birthday present for me when I turn ten years old.
I myself would prefer a tame young giraffe, like the one Uncle King has in his menagerie. Or, possibly, another jewel like the one His Majesty gave me two years ago, with diamonds all around his little portrait painted on a bit of china, like a rose on a teacup. Only, I would rather it be a painting of someone else, someone good-looking. His Majesty is too puffy nowadays, I’m afraid. It is because he has been so unwell. Everyone whispers about his health with dread. I wish with all my heart that it were not so. But his face looks so purple sometimes, he looks more like a bunch of heliotrope than a rose. So, I suppose, diamonds or not, I’d rather have a sweet, dear giraffe, with its cunning little knobby horns.
