Victoria Victorious: The Story of Queen Victoria (21 page)

T
HE VERY NEXT
day Lord Melbourne called upon me.

“There is this matter of our friend Sir John Conroy to discuss with Your Majesty,” he said.

The very manner in which he said “our friend” implied that Sir John was far from that, and that Lord Melbourne disliked him as much as I did.

“Oh yes. It is a matter I should like to get settled as soon as possible.”

“The man is a mountebank.”

How clever of Lord Melbourne to have discovered that so quickly! Sir John had deceived so many—chiefly Mama; but also Aunt Sophia, and people like Flora Hastings had been ready to work for him.

“When I was leaving the Council yesterday,” went on Lord Melbourne, “I was approached by Baron Stockmar who said he wished to speak to me urgently about Sir John Conroy.”

“So soon?” I asked.

“There is a man who knows when the battle is lost. Your Majesty was indeed a formidable enemy…fighting the forces of evil, I must say, and never wavering.”

How well he understood!

“Baron Stockmar told me that Sir John has given his terms.”

“Terms?” I cried.

“Oh yes. A sort of treaty. But he does not seem to realize he is the defeated. He is making the most exorbitant demands. He wants three thousand pounds a year, the Grand Cross of the Bath, a peerage and a seat on the Privy Council. I can tell Your Majesty that when I saw what was written in the paper, I dropped it in my disbelief.”

“I am not surprised.”

“Indeed not, Ma'am.”

“It is outrageous. I shall say no.”

“Quite so, Ma'am. There is a point. Unless we come to some compromise, he may still remain in the Duchess's service. Your Majesty can dismiss him from yours, which you have so rightly done. But the Duchess's service is another matter.”

“But we shall not give way to his demands.”

“It is a delicate matter, Ma'am.”

“Delicate? But I want to be rid of him.”

“And so do we all. We have taken the measure of Master Conroy and wish him … out. Let us wait a while, Your Majesty. Let him simmer in his uncertainty.”

“I should like to know that he was out and that I should never have to see him again.”

“There is no need for you to see him. Indeed, I fancy he will be ashamed to look Your Majesty in the face. At least, he should be. But will he be? He is a slippery customer.”

“I should like to be rid of him once and for all.”

“Ah. ‘…'Tis a consummation devoutly to be wished.' But let us be diplomatic, Ma'am. Let us leave it alone for a while. That can do no harm.”

“And meanwhile he will stay with my mother.”

“That is a matter for the Duchess to decide.”

“But if I wish…”

He looked at me, his head on one side, and there was a very tender expression in his beautiful eyes. He said, “Your Majesty's wish is law to her Prime Minister. Believe me, Ma'am, if I could wave a wand and grant your wishes, that is what I would do. But this…it is a difficult matter and when one is faced with a tricky situation, it is always better not to take hasty action.”

“I will take your advice, Lord Melbourne.”

He took my hand and kissed it.

And although I was a little sorry not to make a clean cut and get rid of Sir John without preamble, I was sure that Lord Melbourne knew best.

I W
AS SEEING
Lord Melbourne every day and my regard for him grew rapidly.

I no longer looked for Uncle Leopold's letters with quite the same eagerness. I did not need advice from him now that I had someone near at hand.

I wondered whether he sensed this. If I did not write to him so regularly and so fully, he must understand that I had my new duties and that my position had changed considerably.

He wrote to me:

I felt faintly irritated by Uncle Leopold's criticism of the English. But, after all, I told myself, he is not an Englishman, and foreigners are inclined to regard us with certain dislike … as perhaps we regard them. Lord Melbourne seemed to me to be the perfect English gentleman, and it is hard to find a more agreeable type of man.

How lucky I had been in Lord Melbourne!

I had heard that he was a man who had what is referred to as “a past.” He had been involved in two divorce cases, and had had a tempestuous marriage. His only son had died. And yet he was full of good humor and always appeared to me to find life comical and amusing.

I longed to hear all about him but of course I could not ask him personally.

There were means of finding out.

I had appointed Harriet Leveson-Gower, Duchess of Sutherland, Mistress of the Robes. She was a very beautiful woman and I had always been drawn to beautiful people. She loved clothes and gossip, although she was involved in all kinds of good works. In fact she was a very interesting
companion; and best of all she loved to talk and seemed to know a great deal about everyone at Court.

I found it easy to slip into conversation with her about Lord Melbourne.

She agreed that he was indeed a fascinating man. “And what is most amazing,” she went on, “is that he could have gone through all that scandal and yet become Prime Minister.”

I did not get the whole story all at once and I could not make Lord Melbourne the topic of conversation every time I was alone with Harriet, but I always tried to bring the talk around to him and after a few weeks I had acquired most of the facts.

His name was William Lamb, and he had inherited the title on the death of his elder brother. Even his birth was romantic. His mother had been the beautiful Elizabeth Milbanke, whose father was a Yorkshire baronet. Her family was more noble than that of the Lambs, for Lord Melbourne's father was only the first viscount. The Lambs had been lawyers who had built up a great fortune and were comparative newcomers to the peerage.

Lady Melbourne was fond of admiration. One of her lovers was said to be the Earl of Egremont.

“Lord Melbourne bears a striking resemblance to the Earl,” Harriet told me, “and I heard that he, as a boy, spent a great deal of time at Petworth, where the Earl made a great fuss of him. As his brother did not accompany him, it seemed rather significant that William was singled out. So perhaps the story is true.”

“How very shocking!” I said delightedly.

“But romantic,” added Harriet, and secretly I agreed with her. Everything about Lord Melbourne seemed romantic.

“He must have been very handsome when he was young,” went on Harriet.

“He is still very handsome,” I replied firmly.

“Indeed yes. Men like that are attractive from the cradle to the grave. What is so fascinating about him is that he does not seem to
care
…I mean he is never striving for anything. He just takes everything that comes as his right, as it were. He seems unhurried. I don't mean about people. His manners are beautiful. I mean about what happens to him. He is always so unruffled, so unperturbed.”

“I think that is because he is so much a man of the world,” I said.

She agreed.

“He
is
a man of the world. He goes everywhere. He was very friendly with George IV… especially when he was Regent. He was at Carlton House, Holland House and of course the Bessboroughs' place at Roehampton. That was where he met Lady Caroline Ponsonby—Lord Bessborough's youngest daughter. They say she was very attractive. They called her Ariel…Sprite and the Fairy Queen.”

“She must have been lovely,” I said, “and I daresay you are going to tell me that he fell in love with her.”

“Unfortunately for him … he did.”

“Why unfortunately?”

“At first her family did not think he was worthy of her.”

“Lord Melbourne… not worthy!” I cried indignantly.

“He wasn't Lord Melbourne then, only plain William Lamb. But then his brother died and Lord Melbourne was the heir, of course, and they changed their minds. At first the married pair were happy, and then she became … wild.”

“Wild? In what way?”

“Doing unconventional things.”

“Poor Lord Melbourne!”

“They said he endured it by developing that aloofness, that indifference. It was his only way of coping with that strange wife of his. And there was a child…a little boy who was never quite like other boys.”

“You mean he was mentally deficient?”

“Yes, I mean that.”

“My poor, poor Lord Melbourne. How wonderful he is! He is so merry… always.”

“But do you find him a little cynical?”

“I would say that he is laughing at the world…finding it amusing. He is very clever, I am sure of that.”

“He just shuts himself away with his books.”

“He is so well read.”

“Oh yes, he is certainly that.”

“And what happened about Lady Melbourne?”

“The great scandal was due to Lord Byron.”

“The poet?”

“Yes. She conceived a passion for him, and of course Your Majesty will have heard of his reputation.”

“Most scandalous.”

“She pursued him. He was very cruel to women. He took them up
and discarded them. He took up Caroline Lamb, after she had made a shameful exhibition of herself, chasing him everywhere. He lived for a while at Melbourne Hall… about nine months, rumor has it. But of course he tired of her as he did of all women, and then, in the normal way, he discarded her.”

“And what happened then?”

“She was wild with jealousy and that meant that she behaved more outrageously than ever. She wrote a novel. I found an old copy and read it. It was called
Glenarvon
. The heroine, Lady Avondale, was of course Caroline herself. Lord Avondale was Lord Melbourne and the wicked Glenarvon was Byron. It had a big circulation. The whole of society was reading it. Poor Lord Melbourne separated from her, and then went back to her, and they lived in the same home but led separate lives, I believe.”

“How could Lord Melbourne endure such a life?” I asked.

“I have heard it said that his nature helped him. He cultivated that quality of aloofness which he has now. He was able to get outside events and view them from the edge. He did not allow himself to get involved. He devoted himself to his books. They say that he never fails to read every publication even now. It was his books which were so important to him. They enabled him to shut himself away from everyday life. He was just indifferent. Of course that maddened Caroline. She would have liked him to be frantically jealous of all her love affairs; but he would not be. He just smiled at them and let them pass over his head. Perhaps that is the only way to survive in such a situation.”

“He is a wonderful man. And what happened to her? She died, I know.”

“The end came when Byron died. She discovered this by accident and it was a terrible shock to her. She became really mad then and had to be shut away. She went down to Brocket, one of the Melbourne residences, and she died there.”

“That must have been a happy release for poor Lord Melbourne.”

“Indeed it must have been. He was already a Member of Parliament and he became Chief Secretary for Ireland in Canning's government. He went to Ireland and there he got caught up in another scandal. There was a certain Lady Brandon there with whom he became friendly and Lord Brandon accused him of improper intimacy with his wife, and sued him.”

“I daresay he was just being friendly with her. He is a very friendly man.”

“The Lord Chief Justice who tried the case pointed out to the jury that nobody could give a word of proof against Lord Melbourne who firmly denied the accusation, as did Lady Brandon. The case was dismissed.”

“I am sure that was the right verdict.”

“Then later there was the case of Caroline Norton.”

“I have heard of her. Was she not the playwright Sheridan's granddaughter?”

“She was. A very attractive woman, Your Majesty, and married to a rather insignificant man who was several years older than she was. He was a Member of Parliament but when the Reform Bill was passed and several boroughs were absorbed into others, he lost his seat. Caroline Norton asked Lord Melbourne's help to find a post for her husband. Lord Melbourne did help to find him something.”

“He is always so kind.”

“There was a friendship between Lord Melbourne and Caroline Norton, for she was a very intelligent woman and liked good conversation. She quarreled with her husband and he said he would divorce her and cite Lord Melbourne as co-respondent.”

“So that was the second divorce case in which he was involved.”

“There was a great deal of noise about that as you can imagine, he being Prime Minister; and of course the Tories thought this would be of great use to them and they decided to make the best use of it they could. The Norton servants gave evidence, and it was proved that they had been bribed, and many of them were far from reputable characters. The verdict in due course, much to the chagrin of the Tories, was in Lord Melbourne's favor.”

“I am sure it was the right one.”

“Your uncle, the King, was delighted, but he did say that Melbourne was lucky to have gotten away with it, and his friends induced him to be more careful in future. He
was
really very lucky both in the Brandon and Norton cases. He did offer to resign.”