Queen Victoria-The Young Years Essay, Research Paper
Victoria was born on a spring day, May 24th, 1819, at Kensington Palace, in the then quiet suburb of London. “Plumb as a partridge” was her father’s description of the baby, and she certainly bore a marked resemblance to her sturdy and robust Hanoverian ancestors who had ruled Great Britain for little more than a century at the time of her birth.
By 1798 Victoria’s grandfather, King George III, had reigned for nearly sixty years, but he was now old and feeble. The symptoms of his terrible illness, porphyria, seemed to his doctors to be those of madness, and for years the King had be confined in Windsor Castle while his eldest son, George, Prince of Wales, ruled in his stead. Victoria’s father, Edward, Duke of Kent, was the old King’s fourth son, but since his three elder brothers were without heirs, there seemed a good chance that he might one day himself become King. He had married late in life, when he was over 50, to supply an heir to the throne in the younger generation. Between the seven princes and five princesses of the royal family, not one of them had a legitimate child to carry on the succession, until 1819 saw three royal births within two months.
The Prince of Wales had one child, the Princess Charlotte, who in time would have become Queen, but she died in childbirth in the autumn of 1817. It was her death, which drove her uncles into marriage, to father heirs to replace her in the line of succession. Indirectly, Charlotte herself had found her uncle Edward his bride: the Princess had married a minor German prince, Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and, deeply in love with him, suggested to the Duke of Kent that he would find a wife in Leopold’s widowed sister, Victoire. In fact, Edward and Victoire met in 1816, but then there seemed no urgency in the matter of their marriage. But soon after Charlotte’s death, Edward proposed to Victoire, and the couple was married the following summer.
Victoire of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was 31 years old when she married the English Duke, a pretty woman with dark hair, with a fine figure and lively ways. She had been married once before to Emich Charles who died in 1814, leaving his widow with two small children and the many demands of nobility which forced to test her wits and strength. Her marriage with the Duke of Kent seemed to promise Victoire a brighter future, taking her away from her narrow existence in the village of Amorbach, into one of the leading Courts of Europe, with the chance of one day becoming a queen.
In the summer of 1818, Edward brought his bride to England, but then, after a few months in London “society”, it was back to Amorbach and the familiar daily round, for the Duke was so burdened with debts that he could not afford to keep up appearances as a royal individual in England. But he was determined that his child should be born in his native land, and by borrowing from his long-suffering friends, he managed to bring his wife back to England in time for the baby’s birth.
Edward was not disappointed that the baby was a girl and not the long-hoped-for male heir: “I am decidedly of the opinion that the decrees of Providence are at all times the wisest and the best,” he wrote to a friend.
A month after her birth, the Kent baby was baptized. After much debate in the royal family she was named “Alexandrina Victoria”, after her chief godfather, the Russian Tsar Alexander, and her mother. The name “Victoria: was then completely unknown in England, though it had long been in use in the forms “Victoire” and “Victoria” on
the Continent. For the first few years the child was known as “Drina”, but in one of her first copy-books is the name “Victoria” by which she came to be known in later childhood.
Despite the fact that the Kents had married “for convenience” their union proved remarkably happy. Edward had never known the comforts of a settled home in England, nor had he ever enjoyed so much approval from his family as this new home brought. For Victoire, the change in her circumstances was great: with her new baby, and with a husband who doted on her, she was well content.
Unfortunately, however, this happy state of affairs did not last long. The family moved down to Sidmouth in Devon in December 1819, and there, on January 23rd, 1820, Edward, Duke of Kent, suddenly died. He, who had no serious illness in his life, caught a cold and took no special care of himself, so that it turned to pneumonia.
Grieving and almost penniless, the widowed Duchess allowed her brother Leopold to make all the arrangements for her return to London. For months she remained in seclusion, at Kensington or at Leopold’s house at Claremont in Surrey. She had to decide whether to return to the familiar German countryside which had been her home for her whole life or to remain in England, where she was still practically a stranger. The fact that her baby was now third in line to the throne made her stick to her duty: she would stay in England and bring up her child as an Englishwoman, ready to succeed to the throne.
The new King George IV had had very little affection for his late brother, he was not happy of the idea of having to contribute to the support of his widowed sister-in-law. Fortunately for Victoire, she had her own brother Leopold at hand, for he had decided to make his home in England after the death of his wife Charlotte, and out of his own allowance he provided most of the Duchess’s income.
Queen Victoria’s infancy was of people with kind faces. Her mother who always anxious and prudent for the child’s health. Her half-sister Feodora was ten years older then Victoria but was her constant companion. Old Baroness Spath was the Duchess’s German lady-in-waiting, and the adoring nurse, Mrs. Brock, replaced when Victoria was 4 years old by Fraulein Lehzen, Feodora’s governess. There were numerous aunts and uncles of the Royal family. Her favorites were Aunt Adelaide, Duchess of Clarence, and her bluff husband William, as well as the devoted Uncle Leopold from Germany. On the other hand, there was “Uncle Sussex” who lived next door and who, it was always threatened, would be angry if his niece’s raised voice reached his ears. And the sinister “Uncle Cumberland”, next in line to the throne after the little Victoria, who, it was rumored, was not incapable of “removing” such an irritating, small rival to his aspirations to the crown.
“We lived in a very plain manner”, reminisced the Queen later, “breakfast was at half past eight, luncheon at half past one, dinner at seven – to which I came generally (when it was not regular large dinner-party) — eating my bread and milk out of a small silver basin. Tea was only allowed as a great treat in my later years.” (British Heritage, P.2, 1998) “A few pen-pictures of the young Victoria were written by contemporaries: the plump toddler attempting to water the flowers in the Palace gardens but pouring most of the contents of her watering-can over her shoes; a straight backed infant atop an ambling donkey, with a sweet-faced elder sister to guide her; a solemn little girl at church at Esher, so wrapped in her own thoughts that she failed to notice the threatening bumble-bee buzzing inside the rim of her bonnet.” (B.H., P.4, 1998)
Victoria wasn’t a model child. She had her fair share of the royal temper, screaming and stomping when she was crossed, throwing a pair of scissors at Lehzen in a royal rage. “When you are naughty, you make me and yourself very unhappy,” her mother rebuked her on one occasion. “No, Mamma,” corrected the child, “not me, mot myself, but you!” (Erickson, P.12, 1997) All her life the future Queen would be stubborn and obstinate, but when she became calm after an uncontrolled fit of temper, she would always be apologetic and looking for forgiveness. “She was bright enough, quick at her lessons and shrewd in personal relationships: when her uncle George IV whisked her off to hear the band at Windsor one day, and gave her choice of a “number”, the artful child requested “God Save the King.” (Farley, P.4, 1998)
But Queen Victoria’s childhood was not picturesque by any means. As she grew up, she came to realize how narrow the circle admitted to Kensington Palace. She agreed with her half-sister that only at Claremont, on their holiday, had she been completely happy. The darkest part of her young life was one John Conroy, the Comptroller of the Duchess’s household at Kensington and the virtual controller of all the Duchess’s attitudes and aspirations. Conroy was a military man who was a flamboyantly good-looking Irishman, possessed of an ample measure of charm and an arrogant ambition.
The Duchess of Kent was no simpleton, but she was used to having her life ruled by men and could not accustom herself to having to make independent decisions. A better guide would have been her brother Leopold but, he, after a few years of carefully supervision of his sister’s affairs, took a mistress of whom she could not approve, which drove a wedge between them. Then, as he tired of inactivity in England, he began to travel abroad more frequently. Finally, in 1831, he departed permanently to take up the crown of the newly created kingdom of Belgium. Left alone in England, frightened by her responsibility as mother of a future Queen, Victoire of Kent relied increasingly on the soothing blandishments of Conroy.
“It was Conroy who insisted that Victoria should be strictly guarded, playing on her mother’s fear of a fatal “accident” at the hands of the Duke of Cumberland. It was Conroy who urged a suitable match for Feodora with a German prince, when it seemed likely that the widower King George IV himself might offer for her hand (thus snatching the little Victoria’s chance of a crown by begetting heirs of his own)”. (Erickson, P.16, 1997) Conroy could see himself as the chief adviser to the future Queen Victoria, the father-figure who would be the girls enemy, the “power behind the throne” of her reign, and he did all he could to prepare his glorious future.
In 1827, the heir to the throne, the Duke of York, died, followed in 1830 by his brother King George IV. Now only the frail life of King William IV, already in his sixties, stood between the Princess Victoria and the Throne. By 1830 the Duchess of Kent — or rather, Conroy — had plans already in progress in case the princess should succeed while still a minor. Victoire, should be her daughter’s regent should Victoria come to the throne before she reached the age of eighteen.
In fact, by the modern standards of royal training, Victoria’s education was somewhat deficient. Lehzen, and the visiting tutors, who were brought in, gave the child a good background in English, French and German. More interesting to the Princess were her music and dancing lessons, and she actually chose to learn Italian from her passion for the Italian opera. Her reading in history, however, was immense. At 15 she was immersed in Clarendon’s
dry History of the Rebellion and Sully’s Memoirs, so that though she was taught no political theory or philosophy, Victoria came to have a good appreciation of the mistakes and achievements of past rulers.
Apart from her tutors, Victoria’s contacts with the outside world were few in her early years. Conroy persuaded the Duchess of Kent to discourage visits from the royal family, who might, he feared, either woo Victoria’s affections away from her mother or enquire too closely of his own influence. Occasionally, the Princess might be allowed to attend a children’s ball or a little girl might be brought in to play with her. “You must not touch those, they are mine,” declared the Princess to a child who wanted to play with the royal toys, “and I may call you Jane, but you must not call me Victoria!” (Erickson, P.11) Usually she had only the company of the Conroy girls, Jane and Victoire, and she had come to hate their father because they never became her friends.
Once Victoria had come to realize her own significance and her destiny, it would not be too difficult for even a child to see through Conroy’s deceptions. It has often been affirmed that she never knew for years that she would one day be Queen, and did not understand why men stared at her in the park, sweeping off their hats and bowing. “If so, there could well be a good deal of truth in the oft-told story of Lehzen’s slipping a family tree of the royal dynasty into the child’s history book in 1830: when Victoria realized the significance of her own place in the royal family, she pondered “I am nearer to the throne than I thought.” Then she said the memorable words, “I will be good.” (British Heritage, P.5, 1998)
As assumed heir to William IV from 1830, Victoria became an important personage in the Kingdom. Her mother (that is, Conroy) was careful to keep the Princess’s name totally disassociated from that of the King; while William IV was reviled throughout the nation for his opposition to the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832, the Duchess, via Conroy, courted the Radical and Whig politicians of the Opposition. While stones were thrown at the royal carriage in London streets, Victoire and Victoria were everywhere cheered as they made a summer “progress” through the provinces. As these journeys continued, every summer, the King became increasingly resentful. In petty spite, he forbade the firing of gun salutes at the appearances of his niece and her mother.
“The future Queen instituted the great disciplined life-work of her journals, in which, for the first time, a British monarch recorded conversations, impressions and feelings to the eternal benefit of her biographers.” (British Heritage, P.5, 1998)
Only a few weeks after the family settled at Ramsgate to recuperate from the journey, Victoria fell really ill, most probably of a severe case of tonsillitis. Having recovered from a fever, she was still very week for more than a month, losing a good deal of weight and continually complaining of cold, through bad circulation. Sir John Conroy was not the man to miss such a chance of taking advantage of the girl’s debility. The Princess’ antipathy to him was becoming ever more apparent, and he had by then given up the hope of obtaining future power through her affections. While Victoria was still weak from her illness, he put before her the demand that he should become her secretary when she succeeded to the throne. He actually produced a document for her to sign, binding her to the promise.
Victoria firmly resisted. Despite her physical frailty, she had the strength of her hatred of Sir John to give her decision. At the same time, she had the encouragement of Baroness Lehzen, her governess, who was always her ally against Conroy. For years this woman had attempted to shield her from him. Despite Lehzen’s power over
Victoria, which was based on sincere affection and defense against the same enemy, Conroy dare not act against the governess, to leave her as he had the lady-in-waiting Spath do. He knew only too well that Lehzen enjoyed the confidence of both King William IV and King Leopold of the Belgians, the Duchess’s brother. He was infuriated by this and only made matters worst by continually sniping at Lehzen in Victoria’s presence.
Nevertheless, the girl’s life was not completely unhappy, and for quite long periods Kensington Palace could be free of raised voices and sudden bursts of tears. Victoria would spend many quiet hours with Lehzen, dressing her large collection of dolls as characters from history or making tiny trinket boxes from odds and ends of silk and colored beads. There was a bunch of letters from Feodora to cheer up Victoria, with news of her growing family, or the outburst of advice from her Uncle Leopold, who imagined himself as mentor to the future Queen. Although the Duchess had not encouraged visits from her own German family in the early years, she had made sure that Victoria learned a lot of devotion to her unseen aunts and uncles to make up for her loss of closer ties. When the Princess was in her early teens, several of the German relations were invited to Kensington Palace, including, in the summer of 1836, her cousins Ernest and Albert, sons of Victoire’s eldest brother, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Victoria was open to teenage enthusiasms and she threw herself whole-heartedly into entertaining her cousins and could not adequately praise their looks and accomplishments.
However, King William was not so overjoyed. He had dark suspicions that the Duchess, or the King of the Belgians (whom he had never liked), was angling for a Coburg match for Victoria, which was certainly not to his tastes. “His reception of the Prince of Orange and his eligible sons was timed to coincide with that of the Coburgs. For once, Victoria did not side with her English uncle against her mother, and she assured her Uncle Leopold that Ernest and Albert were perfectly to her liking while the Oranges were detestable.” (Miller, P.3, 1999)
On May 24th, 1837 Victoria celebrated her 18th birthday. At last she was free but she had only made a narrow escape: by that date her Uncle William was already close to death.
“Conroy panicked. In the last days of William IV’s life, he stepped up his battle. He tried to convince Lords Liverpool and Melbourne, the leading politicians of the day, that Victoria was totally unfit to govern, but they were not taken in. He put pressure on the Duchess of Kent and her son Charles of Leiningren, Victoria’s half-brother, to force the Princess into signing away her independence.” (Farley, P.6, 1998) But it was too late. King Leopold, realizing now how unstable his niece’s position was, sent over his own trusted adviser, Baron Stockmar, both to report to him on the situation and to attempt to hold it in check.