Books: Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1.

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Kensington Palace had been bought by William III. from Daniel Finch,
second Earl of Nottingham. His father, the first Earl, had built and
named the pile of brick-building Nottingham House. It was comparatively
a new, trim house, though Evelyn called it "patched up" when it passed
into the hands of King William, and as such might please his Dutch taste
better than the beautiful Elizabethan Holland House--in spite of the
name, at which he is said to have looked, with the intention of making it
his residence.

The Duke of Sussex, as well as the Duke and Duchess of Kent, had
apartments in the palace. He dwelt in the portion of the southern front
understood to belong to the original building. His brother and
sister-in-law were lodged not far off, but their apartments formed part
of an addition made by King William, who employed Sir Christopher Wren as
his architect.

The clumsy, homely structure, with its three courts--the Clock Court, the
Princes' Court, and the Princesses' Court--had many interesting
associations in addition to its air of venerable respectability. William
and Mary resided frequently in the palace which they had chosen; and both
died under its roof. Mary sat up in one of these rooms, on a dreary
December night in 1694, after she felt herself stricken with small-pox,
seeking out and burning all the papers in her possession which might
compromise others. The silent, asthmatic, indomitable little man was
carried back here after his fall from his horse eight years later, to
draw his last breath where Mary had laid down her crown. Here Anne sat,
with her fan in her mouth, speaking in monosyllables to her circle.
George I.'s chief connection with Kensington Palace was building the
cupola and the great staircase. But his successors, George II. and Queen
Caroline, atoned for the deficiency. They gave much of their time to the
palace so identified with the Protestant and Hanoverian line of
succession. Queen Caroline especially showed her regard for the spot by
exercising her taste in beautifying it according to the notions of the
period. It was she who caused the string of ponds to be united so as to
form the Serpentine; and he modified the Dutch style of the gardens,
abolishing the clipped monsters in yew and box, and introducing
wildernesses and groves to relieve the stiffness and monotony of straight
walks and hedges. The shades of her beautiful maids of honour, "sweet
Molly Lepell," Mary Bellenden, and Sophy Howe, still haunt the Broad
Walk. Molly Lepell's husband, Lord Hervey (the "Lord Fanny" of lampoons
and songs), composed and read in these rooms, for the diversion of his
royal mistress and the princesses, with their ladies and gentlemen, the
false account of his own death, caused by an encounter with footpads on
the dangerous road between London and the country palace. He added an
audacious description of the manner in which the news was received at
Court, and of the behaviour of the principal persons in the circle.

With George II. and Queen Caroline the first glory of the palace
departed, for the early Court of George III. and Queen Charlotte took its
country pleasures at Kew. Then followed the selection of Windsor for the
chief residence of the sovereigns. The promenades in the gardens, to
which the great world of London flocked, remained for a season as a
vestige of former grandeur. In George II.'s time the gardens were only
thrown open on Saturdays, when the Court went to Richmond. Afterwards the
public were admitted every day, under certain restrictions. So late as
1820 these promenades were still a feature on Sunday mornings.

Kensington Palace has not yet changed its outward aspect. It still
stands, with its forcing-houses, and Queen Anne's banqueting-room--
converted into an orangery--in its small private grounds, fenced off by
a slight railing and an occasional hedge from the public gardens. The
principal entrance, under the clock-tower, leads to a plain, square, red
courtyard, which has a curious foreign aspect in its quiet simplicity, as
if the Brunswick princes had brought a bit of Germany along with them
when they came to reign here; and there are other red courtyards, equally
unpretentious, with more or less old-fashioned doors and windows. Within,
the building has sustained many alterations. Since it ceased to be a seat
of the Court, the palace has furnished residences for various members of
the royal family, and for different officials. Accordingly, the interior
has been divided and partitioned off to suit the requirements of separate
households. But the great staircase, imposing in its broad, shallow steps
of black marble and its faded frescoes, still conducts to a succession of
dismantled Presence-chambers and State-rooms. The pictures and tapestry
have been taken from the walls, the old panelling is bare. The
distinctions which remain are the fine proportions of the apartments--
the marble pillars and niches of one; the remains of a richly-carved
chimneypiece in another; the highly-wrought ceilings, to which ancient
history and allegory have supplied grandiose figures--their deep colours
unfaded, the ruddy burnish of their gilding as splendid as ever. Here and
there great black-and-gold court-stools, raised at the sides, and
finished off with bullet heads of dogs, arouse a recollection of
Versailles or Fontainebleau, and look as if they had offered seats to
Court ladies in hoops and brocades, and gentlemen-in-waiting in velvet
coats and breeches and lace cravats. One seat is more capacious than the
others, with a round back, and in its heavy black-and-gold has the look
of an informal throne. It might easily have borne the gallant William, or
even the extensive proportions of Anne.

There is a word dropped of "old kings" having died in the closed rooms
behind these doors. George II., in his old age? or William, worn out in
his prime? or it may be heavy, pacific George of Denmark, raised to the
kingly rank by the courtesy of vague tradition? The old chapel was in
this part of the house. Leigh Hunt tells us it was in this chapel George
I. asked the bishops to have good short sermons, because he was an old
man, and when he was kept long, he fell asleep and caught cold. It must
have been a curious old chapel, with a round window admitting scanty
light. The household and servants sat below, while a winding staircase
led round and up to a closed gallery in near proximity to the pulpit. It
was only a man's conscience, or a sense of what was due to his physical
well-being, which could convict him of slumbering in such a peaceful
retreat. It is said that her late Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent
objected to the obscurity of this place of worship, and, to meet her
objections, the present little chapel was fitted up.

The Duchess of Kent's rooms were in an adjacent wing; spacious rooms
enough, and only looking the more habitable and comfortable for the
moderate height of the ceilings. In a room with three windows on one
side, looking out on the private grounds, the Queen was born. It was
thinking of it and its occupants that the warm-hearted, quick-witted
Duchess-mother, in Coburg, wrote: "I cannot express how happy I am to
know you, dearest, dearest Vickel, safe in your bed, with a little
one.... Again a Charlotte--destined, perhaps, to play a great part one
day, if a brother is not born to take it out of her hands. The English
like queens; and the niece (by marriage) of the ever-lamented, beloved
Charlotte, will be most dear to them."

In another wide, low room, with white pillars, some eighteen years later,
the baby Princess, become a maiden Queen, held her first Council,
surrounded by kindred who had stood at her font--hoary heads wise in
statecraft, great prelates, great lawyers, a great soldier, and she an
innocent girl at their head. No relic could leave such an impression as
this room, with its wonderfully pathetic scene. But, indeed, there are
few other traces of the life that budded into dawning womanhood here,
which will be always linked with the memories of Kensington Palace. An
upper room, sunny and cheerful, even on a winter's day, having a pleasant
view out on the open gardens, with their straight walks and great pond,
where a child might forget sometimes that she had lessons to learn, was a
princess's school-room. Here the good Baroness who played the part of
governess so sagaciously and faithfully may have slipped into the book of
history the genealogical table which was to tell so startling a tale. In
another room is a quaint little doll's-house, with the different rooms,
which an active-minded child loved to arrange. The small frying-pans and
plates still hang above the kitchen dresser; the cook stands unwearied by
the range; the chairs are placed round the tables; the tiny tea-service,
which tiny fingers delighted to handle, is set out ready for company. But
the owner has long done with make-believes, has worked in earnest,
discharged great tasks, and borne the burden and heat of the day, in
reigning over a great empire.

CHAPTER II
CHILDHOOD.

In the months of March and May, 1819, the following announcements of royal
births appeared in succession in the newspapers of the day, no doubt to
the satisfaction alike of anxious statesmen and village politicians
beginning to grow anxious over the chances of the succession:--

"At Hanover, March 26, her Royal Highness the Duchess of Cambridge, of a
son; and on March 27, her Royal Highness the Duchess of Clarence, of a
daughter, the latter only surviving a few hours."

"24th May, at Kensington Palace, her Royal Highness the Duchess of Kent,
of a daughter."

"27th May, at her hotel in Berlin, her Royal Highness the Duchess of
Cumberland, of a son."

Thus her Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria first saw the light in Kensington
Palace on the 24th of May, 1819, one in a group of cousins, all, save
herself, born out of England.

The Duke of Sussex, the Duke of Wellington, and other officers of State
were in attendance on the occasion, though the probability of her
succession to the throne was then very doubtful. The Prince Regent had
already made overtures towards procuring a divorce from the Princess of
Wales. If he were to revive them, and prove successful, he might marry
again and have heirs. The Duchess of Clarence, who had just given birth to
an infant that had only survived a few hours, might yet be the joyful
mother of living children. The little Princess herself might be the
predecessor of a troop of princes of the Kent branch. Still, both at
Kensington and in the depths of rural Coburg, there was a little flutter,
not only of gladness, but of subdued expectation. The Duke of Kent, on
showing his baby to his friends, was wont to say, "Look at her well, for
she will be Queen of England." Her christening was therefore an event of
more than ordinary importance in the household. The ceremony took place a
month afterwards, on the 24th of June, and doubtless the good German
nurse, Madame Siebold, who was about to return to the Duchess of Kent's
old home to officiate on an equally interesting occasion in the family of
the Duchess's brother, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, carried
with her flaming accounts of the splendour of the ceremonial, as well as
pretty tales of the "dear little love" destined to mate with the coming
baby, whose big blue eyes were soon looking about in the lovely little
hunting-seat of Rosenau. The gold font was brought down from the Tower,
where for some time it had been out of request. The Archbishop of
Canterbury and the Bishop of London officiated, as they had done the year
before at the re-marriage of the Duke and Duchess. The godfathers were the
Prince Regent, present in person, and Alexander, Emperor of Russia, then
at the height of his popularity in England, represented by the Duke of
York. The godmothers were the Queen-dowager of Wurtemberg (the Princess
Royal), represented by Princess Augusta, and the Duchess-dowager of Coburg
(mother of the Duchess of Kent, and grandmother of both the Queen and the
Prince Consort), represented by the Duchess of Gloucester (Princess Mary).

It is said there had been a proposal to name the little princess Georgiana
also, after her grandfather and uncle, George III. and George, Prince
Regent; but the idea was dropped because the latter would not permit his
name to stand second on the list.

Among the other privileged guests at the christening was Prince Leopold,
destined to be the child's second father, one of her kindest and wisest
friends. It is not difficult to comprehend what the scene must have been
to the young man whose cup had been so full two years before, who was how
a widower and childless. We have his own reference to his feelings in a
letter to one of the late Princess Charlotte's friends. It had been hard
for him to be present, but he had felt it to be his duty, and he had made
the effort. This was a man who was always facing what was hard, always
struggling and overcoming in the name of right. The consequence was that,
even in his youth, all connected with him turned to him as to a natural
stay. We have a still better idea of what the victory cost him when we
read, in the "Life of the Prince Consort," it was not till a great
misfortune happened to her that Prince Leopold "had the courage to look
into the blooming face of his infant niece." With what manly pity and
tenderness he overcame his reluctance, and how he was rewarded, we all
know.

In December, 1819, the Duke and Duchess of Kent went for sea-air to
Woolbrook Cottage, Sidmouth, Devonshire.

The first baby is always of consequence in a household, but of how much
consequence this baby was may be gleaned by the circumstance that a
startling little incident concerning the child made sufficient mark to
survive and be registered by a future chronicler. A boy shooting sparrows
fired unwittingly so near the house that the shot shattered one of the
windows of the nursery, and passed close to the head of the child in the
nurse's arms. Precious baby-head, that was one day to wear, with honour, a
venerable crown, to be thus lightly threatened at the very outset! One can
fancy the terror of the nurse, the distress of the Duchess, the fright and
ire of the Duke, the horror and humiliation of the unhappy offender, with
the gradual cooling down into magnanimous amnesty--or at most dignified
rebuke, mollified by penitent tears into reassuring kindness, and just a
little quiver of half-affronted, half-nervous laughter.

But there was no more room for laughter at false alarms at Woolbrook
Cottage. Within a month the Duke was seized with the illness which ended
his life in a few days. The particulars are simple and touching. He had
taken a long walk with his equerry and great friend, Captain Conroy, and
came in heated, tired, and with his feet so wet that his companion
suggested the propriety of immediately changing his boots. But the baby of
whom he was so fond and proud came in his way. She was eight months old,
able to stretch out her little arms and laugh back to him. He stayed to
play with her. In the evening it was evident he had caught a chill; he was
hoarse, and showed symptoms of fever. The complaint settled at once on his
lungs, and ran its course with great rapidity. We hardly need to be told
that the Duchess was his devoted nurse, concealing her anxiety and grief
to minister to him in everything.

There is a pathetic little reference to the last illness of the Duke of
Kent in one of the Princess Hohenlohe's letters to the Queen. This elder
sister (Princess Feodora of Leiningen) was then a little girl of nine or
ten years of age, residing with her mother and stepfather. "Indeed, I well
remember that dreadful time at Sidmouth. I recollect praying on my knees
that God would not let your dear father die. I loved him dearly; he always
was so kind to me."

On the afternoon of the 22nd his case was hopeless, and it became a
question whether he had sufficient consciousness to sign his will. His old
friend, General Wetherall, was brought up to the bed. At the sound of the
familiar voice which had always been welcome to him, the sick man,
drifting away from all familiar sounds, raised himself, collected his
thoughts for the last time, and mentioned several places and people
intelligently. The poor Duke had never been negligent in doing what he saw
to be his duty. He had been forward in helping others, even when they were
not of his flesh and blood. He heard the will read over, and with a great
effort wrote the word "Edward," looking at every letter after he wrote it,
and asking anxiously if the signature was legible.

In this will, which left the Duchess guardian to the child, and appointed
General Wetherall and Captain Conroy trustees of his estate for the
benefit of his widow and daughter, it is noticeable that the name in each
case is given in the French version, "Victoire." Indeed so rare was the
term in England at this date, that it is probable the English equivalent
had scarcely been used before the christening of the Queen.

The Duke died on the following day, the 23rd of January, 1820. Only six
days later, on the 29th, good old King George expired at Windsor. The son
was cut down by violent disease while yet a man in middle life, just after
he had become the head of a little household full of domestic promise, and
with what might still have been a great public career opening out before
him. The father sank in what was, in his case, the merciful decay of age,
after he had been unable for ten years to fulfil the duties and charities
of life, and after surviving his faithful Queen a year. The language of
the official announcement of the physicians was unusually appropriate: "It
has pleased the Almighty to release his Majesty from all further
suffering." To complete the disasters of the royal family this month, the
new King, George IV., who had been labouring under a cold when his father
died, was seized immediately after his proclamation with dangerous
inflammation of the lungs, the illness that had proved fatal to the Duke
of Kent, and could not be present at his brother's or father's funerals;
in fact, he was in a precarious state for some days.

The Duke of Kent was buried, according to the custom of the time, by
torchlight, on the night of the 12th of February, at Windsor. As an
example of the difference which distance made then, it took nearly a
week's dreary travelling to convey the Duke's body from Woolbrook Cottage,
where it lay in State for some days, to Cumberland Lodge, from which the
funeral train walked to Windsor. The procession of mourning-coaches,
hearse, and carriages set out from Sidmouth on Monday morning, halting on
successive nights at Bridport, Blandford, Salisbury, and Basingstoke, the
coffin being deposited in the principal church of each town, under a
military guard, till on Friday night Cumberland Lodge was reached. The
same night a detachment of the Royal Horse Guards, every third man bearing
a flambeau, escorted a carriage containing the urn with the heart to St.
George's Chapel, where in the presence of the Dean, the officers of the
chapel, and several gentlemen appointed for the duty, urn and heart were
deposited in the niche in which the coffin was afterwards to be placed.
The body lay in State on the following day, that it might be seen by the
inhabitants of Windsor, his old military friends, and the multitude who
came down from London for the two mournful ceremonies. At eight o'clock at
night the final procession was formed, consisting of Poor Knights, pages,
pursuivants, heralds, the coronet on a black velvet cushion, the body
under pall and canopy, the supporters of the pall and canopy field-marshals
and generals, the chief mourner the Duke of York, the Dukes of Clarence,
Sussex, Gloucester, and Prince Leopold in long black cloaks, their trains
borne by gentlemen in attendance.

These torchlight funeral processions formed a singular remnant of
mediaeval pageantry. How the natural solemnity of night in itself
increased the awe and sadness of the scene to all simple minds, we can
well understand. Children far away from Windsor remembered after they were
grown men and women the vague terror with which they had listened in the
dim lamplight of their nurseries to the dismal tolling of the bell out in
the invisible church tower, which proclaimed that a royal duke was being
carried to his last resting-place. We can easily believe that thousands
would flock to look and listen, and be thrilled by the imposing spectacle.
The show must have been weirdly picturesque when wild wintry weather, as
in this case, added to the effect, "viewed for the distance of three
miles, through the spacious Long Walk, amidst a double row of lofty trees,
whilst at intervals the glittering of the flambeaux and the sound of
martial music were distinctly seen and heard."

The Duke's funeral only anticipated by a few days the still more
magnificent ceremonial with which a king was laid in the tomb.

But the real mourning was down in Devonshire, in the Sidmouth cottage. It
would be difficult to conceive more trying circumstances for a woman in
her station than those in which the young Duchess--she was but little over
thirty--found herself left. She had lost a kind husband, her child would
miss a doting father. She was a foreigner in a strange country. She had
entered into a divided family, with which her connection was in a measure
broken by the death of the Duke, while the bond that remained, however
precious to all, was too likely to prove a bone of contention. The Duke
had died poor. The Duchess had previously relinquished her German
jointure, and the English settlement on her was inadequate, especially if
it were to be cumbered with the discharge of any of her husband's personal
debts. It was not realised then that the Duchess of Kent, in marrying the
Duke and becoming his widow and the guardian of their child, had given up
not only independence, but what was affluence in her own country, with its
modest ways of living--even where princes were concerned--for the
mortification and worry of narrow means, the strain of a heavy
responsibility, the pain of much unjustifiable and undeserved interference,
misconception, and censure, until she lived to vindicate the good sense,
good feeling, and good taste with which she had always acted.

But the Duchess was not altogether desolate. Prince Leopold hurried to her
and supported her then, and on many another hard day, by brotherly
kindness, sympathy, and generous help. It was in his company that she came
back with her child to Kensington.

One element of the Coburg character has been described as the sound
judgment and quiet reasonableness associated with the temperate blood of
the race. Accordingly, we find the Duchess not only submitting with gentle
resignation to misfortune, but rousing herself, as her brother might have
done in her circumstances--as doubtless he urged her to do--to the active
discharge of the duties of her position. On the 23rd of February, before
the first month of her widowhood was well by, she received Viscount
Morpeth and Viscount Clive, the deputation bearing to her the address of
condolence from the House of Commons. She met them with the infant
Princess in her arms. The child was not only the sign that she fully
appreciated and acknowledged the nature of the tie which united her to the
country, it was the intimation of the close inseparable union with her
daughter which continued through all the years of the Queen's childhood
and youth, till the office of sovereign forced its holder into a separate
existence; till she found another fitting protector, when the generous,
ungrudging mother gave way to the worthy husband, who became the dutiful,
affectionate son of the Duchess's declining years.

Five months after these events the Duchess, at her own request, had an
interview with William Wilberforce, then living in the house at Kensington
Gore which was occupied later by the Countess of Blessington and Count
D'Orsay. "She received me," the good man wrote to Hannah More, "with her
fine, animated child on the floor by her side, with its playthings, of
which I soon became one. She was very civil, but, as she did not sit down,
I did not think it right to stop above a quarter of an hour; and there
being but a female attendant and a footman present, I could not well get
up any topic so as to carry on a continual discourse. _She apologised
for not speaking English well enough to talk it_; intimated a hope that
she might talk it better and longer with me at some future time. She spoke
of her situation, and her manner was quite delightful."

The sentence in italics opens our eyes to one of the difficulties of the
Duchess to which we might not otherwise have given much consideration. We
are apt to take it for granted that, though there is no royal road to
mathematics, the power of speaking foreign languages comes to royal
personages, if not by nature, at least by inheritance and by force of
circumstances. There is some truth in this when there is a foreign father
or mother; when royal babies are brought up, like Queen Victoria, to speak
several languages from infancy, and when constant contact with foreigners
confirms and maintains the useful faculty. Even when a prince or a
princess is destined from his or her early youth to share a foreign
throne, and is brought up with that end, a provision may be made for an
adopted tongue to become second nature. But the Duchess of Kent was not
brought up with any such prospect, and during her eleven years of married
life in Germany she must have had comparatively little occasion to
practise what English she knew; while, at the date of her coming to
England, she was beyond the age when one learns a new language with
facility. Any one of us who has experienced the fettered, perturbed,
bewildered condition which results from being reduced to express ourselves
at an important crisis in our history through a medium of speech with
which we are but imperfectly acquainted, will know how to estimate this
unthought-of obstacle in the Duchess of Kent's path, at the beginning of
her widowhood.

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