Queen's House (20 page)

‘I am pleased with my rooms,' she wrote to her half-sister, Princess Feodora, in October. ‘They are high, pleasant and cheerful.,' It was not so much the pictures she admired in the long gallery: unlike George IV and her grandfather she had no plans to become a great art collector. But the portraits of her ancestors fascinated her. Most of all the Palace gave her space. ‘There are no less than five fine large rooms,
besides
the Gallery and dining room,' she wrote to Louise, Queen of the Belgians, ‘and they are so high, the doors so large and they lie so well near one another that it makes an ensemble rarely seen in this country.'
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She could not wait to show it all to her and Uncle Leopold. One of her earliest concerns was to have a suite prepared for them on the ground floor. Even today those rooms are still called the ‘Belgian Suite'.

For the first time in her life she was free. She banished her mother, the Duchess of Kent, to a suite a long way away, to her fury. In her Palace bedroom Queen Victoria slept alone. But one of her first demands was that a door should be made between her room and that of Lehzen. Independent and free as she was, she still needed the support of her old governess.

Best of all she hoped she had got rid of her mother's evil genius, Sir John Conroy. Perhaps she suspected that her mother was his mistress; certainly the Duke of Wellington, when questioned, had said, ‘I suppose so.' Whether it was rumour or truth, she hated him, and was delighted when Wellington had offered him a ‘golden bridge' to the Continent. Now she could ride in freedom: for the previous two years she had refused the gallops she loved because her mother had insisted that Conroy accompanied her. Now she could even ride on parade beside the Duke of Wellington. He had disapproved, but Queen Victoria had looked the victor of Waterloo in the eye and had won her battle.

In the excitement of the first months, Queen Victoria had no time
to consider the running of the Palace. Unlike George III and her uncle George IV, Queen Victoria was never particularly interested in furnishings. She enjoyed comfort and convenience, but she was perfectly happy to accept Duncannon's elegant taste. If the kitchens were damp and smelt, if the windows were not cleaned, if the footmen misbehaved – those were problems for her Master of the Household and Lehzen, who also acted as her secretary. Unaccustomed to dealing with a large income, she soon began to wonder how she was running up such bills.

But the Queen rapidly realized how much she had to learn in her brave new world. Fortunately she found in her Whig Prime Minister not only an excellent tutor, but also a man she could love like a father. To her mother she was still a girl; Lord Melbourne made her feel like a woman and a queen. Even at fifty-eight he was still charming and handsome enough to win the love and admiration of an impressionable young woman.

William, 2nd Lord Melbourne, was immensely experienced both in politics and in life. Born William Lamb, he had been spoilt by his remarkable but somewhat scandalous mother Elizabeth, Lady Melbourne. At his father's houses, Brocket Hall in Hertfordshire and Melbourne House in Piccadilly, leaders of the Whig party were frequent visitors. At Eton College and Trinity College, Cambridge, Lamb was a brilliant student. He was called to the Bar in 1804 but gave up the law for politics. In 1805 he married the notorious Caroline Ponsonby, the only daughter of the 3rd Earl of Bessborough and the sister of Duncannon. After years of patient kindness and tolerance, Lamb finally left her in 1825. She died three years later, a sad wreck.

At this time, although Queen Victoria had been protected from acquaintance with William IV's ‘bastards', she was a child of the Regency and had been brought up among the older generation, and Melbourne taught her tolerance. However, he taught her no such tolerance in the world of politics. Although he himself could be relaxed and balanced in his judgement of his political opponents, the Queen was violently partisan. She had been brought up in the Whig world, had visited the grandees in their country houses and had absorbed their attitudes.
William IV had been surrounded by Tories: to Queen Adelaide Whigs, radicals and revolutionaries were all the same, all out to destroy the monarchy. William IV had genuinely tried to maintain some balance. But Queen Victoria hated the Tories with a blind passion. She would have no Tories to her first banquet in Buckingham Palace, nor to her Coronation nor later to her wedding. When Melbourne insisted that she at least invite the Duke of Wellington to the banquet, she grudgingly agreed. But his place card read ‘The Chancellor of the University of Oxford'. Wellington was amused and preserved the card.

During the first years of her reign, she was completely besotted with her Prime Minister. As far as she was concerned, Melbourne was the fount of all wisdom: even her beloved Uncle Leopold took second place. But she became more and more imperious and wilful. Just as Melbourne had been unable to contain the extravagances of his wife, Caro Lamb, so he was unable to supply Queen Victoria with the discipline she needed. In private life and in politics he worked on the principle that fires would burn themselves out provided one did not poke them.

Melbourne was a Whig because of his upbringing, but he was more in sympathy with moderate Tories than with reforming Whigs such as Grey and Russell. Had he exerted himself he could have given some balance to Queen Victoria's political judgement. But in fact the young Queen was always to be more interested in people than in politics.

In the organization and running of the Palace, Queen Victoria had surprisingly little help. In the first years Lehzen acted as her Private Secretary and was in part responsible for running the Household. Apparently Lehzen kept the Queen's Ladies-in-Waiting happy and comfortable, but there were many clashes with Lord Conyngham, the Lord Chamberlain, who was a difficult man, unaccustomed to interference in the running of the Palace. There was a Lord Steward whose functions were largely nominal but who looked after the kitchens; and the head of the Office of Woods took care of the outside of the Palace. But these officials did not live in the Palace and for the last twenty years had been happy to take their perks and the salaries without taking much trouble. Consequently – as will be seen – the organization of the Palace was appalling.

The Queen was too inexperienced and too full of the excitement of her new Palace to notice; Melbourne, who should have seen, was blind to such things. His own homes were badly organized and he was the last person to advise Queen Victoria when she found her household expenses inexplicably enormous.

Early in her reign Queen Victoria was to face two crises: the case of Lady Flora Hastings, a Lady-in-Waiting to the Duchess of Kent, which was to bring Queen Victoria and the Court into ill-repute; and the problem of the Ladies of the Bedchamber. In both cases the Queen was too inexperienced and too headstrong to cope. If only Conroy had not been such a villain and her mother so ineffectual: she could have done with a competent major-domo and a wise older woman to advise her. In the following years the Queen was to learn that indeed ‘uneasy lies the head that wears a crown'! That perennial plague of palaces – jealousy and intrigue among family, courtiers and advisers – was to infect her Court.

Sir John Conroy was still fomenting bitterness between the Queen and her mother, for though he knew he had been beaten he was demanding too high a bribe for his departure, and was deeply involved in the first of the two great dramas that devastated the Queen in 1839.

The case of Lady Flora Hastings was a complicated one that is not clear even today. Briefly, in January 1839 it seemed from her physical appearance that Lady Flora might be pregnant. The Queen, Lehzen and her ladies noticed; even Sir James Clark, who had been consulted by Lady Flora for ‘protuberance of the stomach', told someone that she might indeed be with child. The fact that she was a close friend of Conroy's – who, the Queen told Melbourne, was ‘capable of every villainy' – was enough to convince his enemies that he might be the father. The doctor, who had only examined her fully dressed, now asked for a proper examination, which at first Lady Flora refused, then agreed but demanded a second opinion. Sir Charles Clarke – a specialist – was called in. He examined her and gave Lady Flora a certificate, signed also by the first doctor, which stated that ‘there are no grounds for believing pregnancy does exist or ever has existed'. Meanwhile Lady Flora, whom the Queen refused to see until her innocence could be
proved, was becoming increasingly ill. The Queen attempted to make amends by receiving Lady Flora; later she visited her as she lay dying and Lady Flora thanked her for all she had done for her. In July she died: the post-mortem showed that she had suffered from cancer of the liver. For months the Queen was subjected to fierce attacks from the press and political opponents.

Barely had the Hastings scandal died when the Queen faced a new trial. Throughout history courtiers have had a considerable, though often concealed, influence on the monarch. In this case it was fear of the political influence of the Ladies of the Bedchamber, wives of prominent Whigs, that caused the crisis.

Queen Victoria must have known that her cosy relationship with Lord Melbourne and the Whigs could not last for ever, but in her view the Queen's government should always be Whig, the party that had ridden into power in 1830 and achieved the triumph of the Parliamentary Reform Act of 1832. But the coalition of Whigs and radicals that had driven the successful campaign was now disintegrating. Some great radical reformers, such as Sir Francis Burdett, had joined the Tory party; others were pulling in the opposite direction and Melbourne was too easy-going and indolent to hold them together. The collapse came on 7 May 1839 when the government was brought down over a comparatively minor crisis – a revolt of Jamaican settlers.

Now a weeping Queen said goodbye to her Prime Minister: ‘All my happiness gone! that happy peaceful life destroyed,' she sobbed in her journal, ‘that dearest kind Lord Melbourne no more my Minister.'
¹⁰
She saw Wellington, significantly not in that little Blue Closet where she had always sat at ease with Lord Melbourne, but in the formal Yellow Drawing Room. She had not lost her hostility to and fear of the Iron Duke.

On his recommendation she sent for Sir Robert Peel. The contrast between the urbane and relaxed Melbourne and the shy and awkward Peel appalled her: she made the interview as difficult as possible. She was to tell Melbourne that she was ‘very much collected, civil and high'. But when she realized that Peel expected her to change her Ladies of the Bedchamber – who were all Whig supporters – she was not just ‘high': she was outraged. She wrote in her Journal: ‘I said I could
not
give up
any
of my ladies, and never had imagined such a thing. He asked if I meant to retain all. “All,” I said. “The Mistress of the Robes and the ladies of the Bedchamber?” I replied, “All.”'
¹¹

In fact Peel probably had not meant to be so sweeping, but the Queen managed to manoeuvre him into resigning over the issue. Melbourne, to the Queen's rapture, but to his embarrassment, was back. Peel was told that the changes proposed in the Queen's Household were ‘contrary to usage and repugnant to her feelings' and the Whigs returned to power.
¹²

Queen Victoria was triumphant. ‘The Queen of England,' she had written to Melbourne, ‘will not submit to such trickery.' Her repeated use of the phrase ‘Queen of England' is significant. Queen Victoria already saw herself performing on the world stage. Melbourne and the Whigs might belong to their own powerful ‘cousinry'; Queen Victoria's ‘cousinry' crossed national boundaries.

The next night, 10 May 1839, she could bask in the glory of her triumph at a magnificent ball she gave at the Palace in honour of her guest, the Tsarevich Alexander, a relation of her Uncle Leopold. The Queen of England was a match for the Imperial might of Russia – in more senses than one. Now that she could put behind her the unpleasant business of being a Queen, she could enjoy the excitement of being young, and of being whirled round the ballroom night after night by the handsome Tsarevich. He taught her the mazurka: he was ‘so very strong, that in running round, you must follow quickly, and after that you are whisked round like in a Valse, which is very pleasant'. He also taught her a German country dance in which the tiny Queen and the tall Tsarevich had to creep under a pocket handkerchief arch and the Tsarevich caught his hair in her wreath. ‘I never enjoyed myself more. We were all so merry.'
¹³

For Melbourne all this gaiety in the Palace was so much more wearing than his relaxed chats in the little Blue Closet. It was with some relief that he saw the Tsarevich's departure. But Queen Victoria confided in her Journal, ‘I felt so sad to take leave of this dear amiable young man whom I really think (talking jokingly) I was a little in love with.'
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That May week Queen Victoria's fancy was beginning to turn, if only lightly, to ‘thoughts of love'.

Uncle Leopold and Baron Stockmar heard with some apprehension of Queen Victoria's political triumphs and May revels. The affair of the Ladies of the Bedchamber and her increasingly imperious behaviour were making her unpopular. The Tories, furious at being deprived of office, whipped up press and public hostility.

The innocent young Queen who had so enchanted all parties had become not only domineering and violently partisan: she and her Court were now tainted with a sleazy scandal and she herself appeared to be cruel and insensitive. The Queen was hissed at Ascot, where there were even cries of ‘Mrs Melbourne'. Baron Stockmar wrote, ‘The late events in England distress me. How could they let the Queen make such mistakes, to the injury of the monarchy?' He shrewdly realized that she had become her own worst enemy. ‘She was', he wrote, ‘as passionate as a spoilt child, if she feels offended she throws everything overboard without exception.' And the adoring Lehzen made things worse, ‘Just like the nurse who hits the stone that tripped the child up'.
¹⁵
The only person she would listen to was Melbourne, but he was growing weary and had been little help to her in the double crisis. Queen Victoria was so exhausting, able to ride at a gallop all day and dance till four in the morning, whereas Melbourne was arthritic and no longer young.