by Jean Plaidy
Everyone was so relieved that I was unharmed that after being sternly reprimanded, the boy was forgiven.
Meanwhile my father's cold was developing into something worse; in a week it had turned to pneumonia and he had taken to his bed. Uncle Leopold came hurrying down to Sidmouth with young Dr. Stockmar, in whom he had the utmost trust, but it soon became clear that my father could not survive.
It was a great shock to all for he had always been more healthy than any of his brothers.
What disturbed him more than anything was the prospect of leaving us. He had had such hopes of grooming me for the throne; and he was very worried as to what would happen to my mother with a young child—and in the position that I was—to care for.
Naturally he turned to Uncle Leopold.
It was from my mother that I heard of those anxious days. She was always dramatically vehement in her hatred of her husband's family, tearfully affectionate toward her own. In those days when I was very young I thought of my father's family as monsters and the Saxe-Coburg relations as angels.
“There we were,” my mother told me, “in that little house in Sidmouth…your father dead. What was to become of us? We had so little… not even enough to travel back to Claremont. And Claremont, of course, was not our home. It had only been lent to us by your dear Uncle Leopold. I was frantic. There was one matter that gave me some relief. Your father had appointed me your sole guardian, which shows what trust he had in me. Do you know, his last words to me were ‘Do not forget me.' So you see he was thinking of me until the last.”
I wept with her and wished as I always have done that he had lived long enough for me to have known him.
“He was a great soldier,” she told me. “He wanted you always to remember that you are a soldier's child.”
“Oh I will, Mama,” I said. “I will.”
“He was a great liberal too… and a friend of the reformer, Robert Owen. He was talking about visiting him at New Lanark just before his death. For him to die… he, who was so strong…His hair was black and so was his beard. Mind you, he did color them a bit…but never mind. They looked fine and so did he. So young, so full of vigour…and there he was…in such a short time… dead.”
Mama loved drama and although at that time I wept with her I did wonder afterward whether she really did feel so strongly about his death. She was one who liked to have her own way, although she did bend a little to Sir John Conroy. I was told that Sir John looked something like my father, so perhaps that was one of the reasons why she thought so highly of him.
Mama went on to tell me how she was left bereft … no husband, very little money, in a strange land where she could scarcely speak the language.
“I could hope for little help from your father's family,” she said with that snort of contempt she often used when speaking of them. “True, the miserly Parliament had granted me six thousand pounds a year in the event of my widowhood. I daresay when they granted me that—it was a year before you were born—they had thought they would not have to pay it for a long time.”
“Mama,” I said. “They did give you our home in Kensington Palace.”
“A few miserable rooms!” she retorted. “And there I was… with so little and all your father's debts on my shoulders. I shall of course do my very best to settle them … in time.”
That was very honorable of her, I thought. She was very good, I was sure; but I did wish she was not so venomous toward my father's family.
“I had thought there was only one thing for us,” she had gone on, “and that was to go back to Germany, but your dear Uncle Leopold was against that. He said, ‘In view of her prospects the child must stay in England. She must speak English. She must be English. There must be no trace of anything else. The people here like their own kind.' And so I stayed here and dear Leopold…he gave up so much to stay with us! What I should have done without him I cannot imagine.”
“Dear dear Uncle Leopold,” I murmured.
“He is wonderful. You are fortunate indeed to have such an uncle and such a mother to care for you. True, you are fatherless, but you have had so much to make up for that.”
I replied fervently that I had, but I was thinking of Uncle Leopold rather than my mother, for I was just moving into that state when I was beginning to draw away from her.
“He is so careful of both you and your dear cousin Albert, who has the same reason to be grateful to him as you have. He is three months younger than you so you could say that you are of an age.”
“I am hoping one day I shall meet Albert.”
“I am sure your Uncle Leopold, who so likes to please you as well as instruct you, will arrange a meeting one day.”
“That will be wonderful.” I spoke with honest fervor, but I could not know then how wonderful it was going to prove to be.
Of course Uncle Leopold was right. And because we had not enough money to make the journey from Sidmouth, he paid for our transport to Kensington Palace and there we remained for some years to come.
It appeared that my father had appointed Sir John Conroy as one of the executors of his will and that seemed to me, as I grew older, not a very good choice. My mother did not share that opinion, but it was very repugnant to me that Sir John should actually live in our household.
My mother relied on him a great deal. She was always saying that she had few friends, but while she had Uncle Leopold and Sir John Conroy she felt ready to face the hostile country in which—on my account—she was forced to live.
There were some members of my father's family who tried to be friends. There were my two aunts, Princess Sophia and the Duchess of Gloucester. They were old then. Sophia had never married but long ago she had been at the center of a scandal. A certain General Garth had fallen in love with her and she with him. The consequences were grave and Sophia had to be hustled out of the palace to give birth to a child. The voluminous skirts proved useful and her sisters helped to smuggle her to Weymouth where she was delivered of a boy. Sophia was unrepentant; she had loved the general and she loved her son, who still came to see her. The children of George III had been brought up so oddly that they all seemed to be involved in scandalous situations. My grandfather had refused to allow any of his girls to marry. He had loved them dearly… too dearly. Poor Grandpapa! He must have been mad for a long time before people realized it. Well, Sophia offered friendship to my mother and so did Aunt Mary of Gloucester, who had married Silly Billy Gloucester late in life.
Another one who would have been kind to her was Adelaide, at that time Duchess of Clarence; but my mother regarded the Clarences as the enemy and was very suspicious of Adelaide who, when she was Queen, I came to know as one of the kindest ladies it had ever been my good fortune to meet. But there was no overcoming Mama's prejudices. So she need not have been so entirely without friends as she liked to believe herself to be.
Nine days after my father's death, there occurred another one of the greatest importance.
Poor Grandpapa, blind and mad, passed away, and the Prince Regent became King George IV.
LOOKING BACK IT is difficult to decide between what I remember and what was told me. There are certain things though, which stand out very clearly in my mind and one was the visit to Windsor and my meeting with the King.
I was playing with the dolls and talking to Feodore about them. I adored my sister. She was very pretty and twelve years older than I, so she seemed very grown up. I was about seven at this time, so she must have been nineteen. I also had a half-brother, Charles, who was three years older than Feodore, but he was in Leiningen looking after his estates there, although he did come to England now and then. Feodore was with us all the time, and I do believe she loved to be with me as much as I did with her.
She was very interested in the dolls—almost as interested as Lehzen. Lehzen thought they were wonderful. It had been her idea that I should start the collection in the first place; and she and I made some of the costumes together.
Being Lehzen, who al
ways had her eyes on education, she pointed out that the dolls represented historical characters. Of course we had Queen Elizabeth. “The great Queen,” Lehzen called her, but when I learned more about her, I did not like her so very much. She seemed to have acted in a way that was not always good.
Aunt Adelaide, who always showed affection for me and would have liked to see me more often if Mama would have permitted it, gave me a beautiful doll. It was bigger than all the others and it had such splendid clothes that Lehzen said we should not attempt to dress it in any other way. So among my collection of historical dolls, it was just the Big Doll, and she always reminded me of kind Aunt Adelaide.
Feodore was saying that Queen Elizabeth's dress had a little rent in it. I knew this. I had torn it myself when I had thrown her down rather roughly. I had just heard that when she had died there had been three thousand dresses in her wardrobe, which was an excessive number. She had clearly been very vain and I was going to let her have a rent in her skirt for a while.
“She is the most beautiful of the dolls,” said Feodore. “I am sure Lehzen will mend that tear very soon.”
“It won't hurt her to have a torn skirt for a while, the vain creature.”
Feodore laughed. “I believe you do not like Queen Elizabeth very much,” she said.
At that moment Mama came in. She was quivering. Mama often seemed to quiver, either in rage or excitement. It was because of all the feathers she wore, and the pendants about her neck and in her ears, the frills on her bodices and the rustling of her skirts. It gave an impression of perpetual violent emotion.
She had something to tell us. Normally she would have sent for us and we should have had to go to her, not forgetting to curtsy respectfully. We must always show our respect for Mama, always remember what she had done for us, sacrificing herself all the time for our good.
But as this was a matter of great importance, she had dispensed with the usual formalities.
“At last,” she announced, “that man has seen fit to invite us to Windsor.”
I knew at once that she was talking of my uncle, the King, for he lived at Windsor.
“I am of two minds as to whether I shall accept the invitation, but …” began Mama.
I knew she meant that she would accept the invitation and I happened to have gleaned that it was a source of irritation to her that we had not been invited before.
“I suppose, as after all he does call himself King…”
“Do not other people call him King?” I asked innocently. I was very direct, and as Mama and Lehzen constantly told me, at this stage of my development I took what people said too literally. In any case, Mama had implied that it was only the King who called himself King.
“You must learn not to make foolish interjections,” said Mama, quivering more than before. “The fact is we are going to Windsor. I shall insist that we are treated with due respect. Hold your head up. Have you been wearing your holly necklace?”
“Yes, Mama, but I think I can manage without it.”
“It does not appear to be so. I shall decide when you may dispense with it. Why are you not wearing it now?”
“Lehzen said that when I was playing with the dolls I could leave it off.”
She was referring to the sprig of holly attached to a cord that I had to wear around my neck to induce me to hold my head high, for when I did not my chin came into contact with the prickles. It was a form of torture that I greatly disliked, and whenever I could I would inveigle Lehzen into letting me go without it.
I could see that Mama's annoyance with me was really her dislike of the King; but at the same time she was pleased that he had invited us to Windsor.
She looked at her elder daughter and said, “You shall accompany us, Feodore.”
“That will be lovely, won't it, Sissy?” I said.
Feodore hugged me. I sometimes felt that she wanted to protect me from Mama's severity.
“You will enjoy the visit,” she said.
“Yes, especially if you are there.”
Mama softened a little. She liked to see the affection between us two.
“Well then,” she went on. “I shall make plans. Victoria, you must remember to behave perfectly so that there can be no criticism. The King is very insistent on good manners. It is the one virtue he himself has managed to retain. People will be watching you. Any little slip will be noticed, you can be sure. There will be malicious eyes on you and tongues to wag if you misbehave.”
I was already beginning to feel nervous. But Feodore pressed my hand reassuringly and I thought: She will be there, so it will be all right.
That this was a most important visit was obvious. Mama might express her contempt for all my paternal uncles—the King among them—but when all was said and done he was the King and we were all—even Mama—his subjects.
Lehzen tried to prepare me.
At Windsor Lodge, where I should be presented to the King, I should meet a lady in his company whom it would be quite important not to offend.
“A lady? Do you mean the Queen, Lehzen?”
“Well no… not the Queen, a lady. Lady Conyngham. She is a very great friend of the King.”
“I do know that the King and Queen don't like each other very much.”
Lehzen looked alarmed. “You must never say anything about that.” There were times when she was afraid she had told me too much. I was beginning to recognize signs like that.
“You may be surprised when you see the King,” she went on. “He is rather old.”
“Yes, Lehzen, I know. Mama has often said so.”
Lehzen looked even more alarmed. “You must guard your tongue. It would be wise to speak only when the King speaks to you and then only answer what he asks.”
I was beginning to feel more and more nervous.
“Don't worry,” said Feodore. “Say what is natural to you. I am sure that will be all right.”
Dear, comforting Feodore!
When we were riding in the carriage on the way to Windsor Lodge, Mama was giving instructions. “I hope you have practiced your curtsy. You must be grave. Do not laugh in that really vulgar way you seem to be developing … showing all your gums. Smile. Just lift the corners of your mouth … and remember that although he is the King, you are royal too.”
“Yes, Mama…Yes, Mama…”
I really was not listening. I was admiring the countryside and wondering what Uncle King would be like, and why there was all this pursing of the lips when Lady Conyngham and her family—who seemed to live at Windsor Lodge with the King—were mentioned. I would ask Lehzen. No, not Lehzen. She could be reticent at times. I would ask my other governess Baroness Spath…or Feodore. How wonderful to have such a dear sister who was so much older—grown up and yet not exactly a grown-up. Yes, I would ask Feodore.
My hand crept into hers and she pressed it reassuringly. I loved her so much and thought: We shall always be together.
We had arrived.
At length the great moment came and I was ushered into the presence of the King.
I saw a figure so huge that even the very large and ornate chair in which he sat seemed too small to hold him and he flowed over it as though someone had tried to pour him in and spilt some of him. The analogy made me want to giggle. I restrained myself severely and swept the most profound curtsy I had ever made in my life. It was effective, I am sure. It should have been. I had been practicing it ever since I had known I was to meet him.
“So this is Victoria.” His voice was soft and really musical, and I loved music. “Come here, my dear child.”
So I went and looked up into that huge face; his cravat came right up to his chins and his cheeks seemed to wobble. He had beautiful pink cheeks and his hair was a mass of luxuriant curls. I thought: Some parts of him are so beautiful.
He was watching me as intently as I was watching him.
Then he said, “Give me your little paw.”
Paw! What a strange name to give a hand! It seemed ver
y funny and I forgot Mama's instructions and laughed.
He took my hand in his, which was very large, white, and sparkling with rings.
He laughed with me, so at least he was not annoyed.
“Such a pretty little paw,” he said. He turned to the lady who was standing close to his chair. She was very beautiful though rather fat— but not nearly so fat as the King. Perhaps it was her clothes that made her seem so splendid. He said, “Lift her up, my dear. I want to see her closely.”
So I was set on his knee, which was soft and wobbly like a feather cushion. It was an odd sensation to be so close to his face. I was fascinated by the delicate pink of his cheeks and the curls of his hair, which looked as though they belonged to a young man, and yet the pouches under his eyes made him look like an old one.
He looked at me as though he found my appearance interesting and because of his lovely voice and his kindly looks I began to wonder why Mama hated him so much. He was not nearly so awe-inspiring as I had expected him to be. He seemed as though he wanted to please me as much as I wanted to please him.
He said how delighted he was that I had come to see him. “It was good of you,” he added.
“I was told I must come,” I said.
Then I felt that was the wrong thing to have said because it sounded as though I didn't want to. I went on hurriedly, “I was so excited. But there was a great deal to remember…so I hope I do not do anything wrong.”
He laughed. It was a very friendly laugh. He said, “My dear little Victoria, I very much doubt that anything you did would be wrong in my eyes.”
“But I do do things which are wrong…”
“Perhaps we all do…now and then.”
“Even you, Uncle King?”
There! I had said it! Mama would be listening. Oh dear, there would be a lecture.
He was smiling still. “Yes, even Uncle King.”
“Of course I should have said Your Majesty.”
“Do you know, I like Uncle King better.”
“Do you really…Uncle King?”
Then we both laughed again. I was so relieved and I quite liked sitting on his blubbery knee and watching his old-young face and wishing my hair curled as beautifully as his did, and thinking how different he was from what I had expected.
