I, Victoria Read online

  This evening will put an end, dear well-beloved Victoire, to the year 1818, which saw the birth of my happiness by giving you to me as my guardian angel …

  All my efforts are directed to one end, the preservation of your dear health and the birth of a child who will resemble you, and if Heaven will give me these two blessings I shall be consoled for all my misfortunes and disappointments …

  I would have wished to be able to say all this to you in pretty verses, but you know that I am an old soldier who has not this talent, and so you must take the good will for the deed …

  Remember that this comes from your very deeply attached and devoted husband, for whom you represent all happiness and all consolation …

  So I tell you in the language of my country, God bless you, love me as I love you …

  As soon as he knew of Mamma’s condition, Papa was determined to bring her home to England. Amorbach was not a healthy place for a confinement – badly ventilated and fifty miles from the nearest town; and besides, Papa was determined that his child would be born on English soil. It could perhaps be the heir to the Throne, and if it was born on foreign soil, its legitimacy as heir might one day be questioned.

  ‘He was always quite sure in his own mind that his child would succeed to the Throne,’ Mamma told me. ‘He used to say to me, “Victoire, I am the strongest of the family, and I have lived a regular life, not like my brothers. I shall outlive them all, and the crown will come to me and my children.”’ She sighed. ‘He expected to be King himself one day, you see, poor Edward!’

  It should have been a blow to his hopes when the news arrived from Hanover, where the Clarences and Cambridges were all living, that both duchesses were also with child, and due to be confined in March or April. Papa was only the fourth son, and although the Regent and my uncle York might be discounted as providers of heirs, and any Cambridge child would come after Papa’s, still my uncle Clarence’s child would come before his.

  ‘All the same,’ Mamma said, pursing her lips, ‘childbirth is always an uncertain thing; and I had already had two healthy children, while the Duchess of Clarence was approaching my age and quite untried. Twenty-six is a great age for a primipart after all. Without wishing her ill in any way, one never knew what might happen. Papa believed it was essential we go back to England.’

  It was easier wished than done, for a man deep in debt. Papa wrote frantic letters to everyone he could think of to try to raise the necessary money for the journey, but it was not until March 1819 that he had managed to collect enough. Then he wrote in triumph to the Regent to say that they would be arriving at Calais on the 18th of April, and requesting the use of the royal yacht to make the crossing, and the use of the apartment at Kensington Palace which had formerly been occupied by Caroline of Brunswick. Since it would cost him nothing, the Regent agreed, though reluctantly, adding that he deeply regretted his brother should have decided on such a journey so late in the day. He had some reason for his objection: Mamma was only eight weeks away from the date of her confinement.

  Two

  15th February 1900, at Osborne

  A MUCH better day today, the storms all cleared away; even a little sunshine, so we shall have a pleasant drive this afternoon. Georgie and May and the little boys are to come to luncheon. Of course I could never say so in front of them – indeed, I would never say so to anyone, though I’m sure many people must think it – but I can’t help feeling it is a good thing for my country that the Throne will go to Georgie at last, after Bertie, instead of to Georgie’s poor brother. I grieved when Eddy died, and truly I was very fond of the poor boy, but there was something unsatisfactory about him all the same – slack-twisted, they used to say when I was a girl – and I doubt whether he would have made a good king. God arranges these things for the best, though one does not always see it at the time. One must have faith. Georgie will be a hardworking, conscientious king, and May is a very sensible, clever girl and will make the most of him. She is my poor dear cousin Mary Cambridge’s daughter, but could not be more different from her ramshackle, hoydenish mother! Those tight little, plump little hands of May’s will never throw money about as Cousin Mary did. (When Mary died just three years ago it was discovered she had not even made a Will, which caused a great deal of trouble. And then the embalmers did not do their work properly which was shocking and most disagreeable! It upset me so much that I at once made very detailed arrangements for my own funeral, and made sure that copies were distributed to several people so that there can be no mistakes when the time comes.)

  Mark you, Georgie, for all his sensibleness now, has had his wild moments. Once when he was a little boy he was being so naughty at the luncheon table that I told him he must sit underneath the table until he could behave himself. He disappeared under the cloth and was very quiet for a while, and then his little voice piped up, ‘I’m good now, Grandmamma. May I come out?’

  ‘Very well then, my dear,’ I said, and he lifted up the tablecloth and clambered out – stark naked! He had taken off every stitch under the table, and capered before me now displaying the wide grin of one who knows he has just played the ace of trumps. I almost choked with laughter, and had to put my napkin over my face so that he shouldn’t think I was encouraging him. I can never see him now, so solemn and bearded and grown up, without remembering that glorious moment and seeing in my mind’s eye that little naked, knock-kneed imp! He must wonder sometimes why I smile so broadly when he appears!

  Georgie’s eldest, David, is a fine little boy too – such a friendly, intelligent child. He doesn’t like to see me in my chair, and cannot understand why I do not get up and run about and play with him. He takes hold of my hand and tugs at it and says, ‘Get up, Gangan! Get up!’ and then tries to push my chair himself – but of course it is too heavy for him. So he looks about for a servant, and has a wonderfully imperious way of ordering them to push my chair for him. There is no doubt whose blood he has in him!

  I have done my ‘Boxes’ and written my ‘duty’ letters, so I have a little time to go on with my story. Really the sunshine today is so pleasant after the storms that I am quite rejuvenated. When Reid came up for the usual morning consultation, I felt so benevolent I allowed him to listen to my heart, just for a treat. He seemed considerably impressed with it.

  What a journey that must have been for Mamma! No railway trains then, but four hundred and fifty miles by carriage, and the Continental roads indescribably bad (indeed, they are not much better now in my opinion), and then at the end of it a sea-crossing over one of the worst stretches of water in the civilised world!

  ‘Weren’t you afraid?’ I asked Mamma.

  ‘Not very much,’ she said. ‘The eighth month is safer than the seventh, you know, and I trusted Papa. He would not have asked it if he thought it was too dangerous. And he thought of everything for my comfort. No woman could have taken more tender care of me than he did.’

  Papa drove Mamma himself in a light phaeton, which he thought would jolt her less over the frightful ruts than a heavier closed carriage; he was a fine whip, and the phaeton was drawn by his own pair of beautiful, silken-mouthed black mares, whom he knew to a hair. Such an extraordinary caravan followed in their wake: a landau carrying Feo’s attendants and the English maids, then a travelling barouche with Mamma’s woman, Baroness Späth, and the midwife, then the post-chaise, empty, in case of bad weather; another chaise carrying Feo and her governess, a cabriolet with two cooks, a cart loaded with plate, a spare phaeton drawn by Papa’s second pair, a gig carrying Papa’s valet and Mamma’s footman, another carrying the clerks (Papa’s correspondence was always very heavy); then a curricle driven by Papa’s physician (Dr Wilson, late of HMS Hussar) and finally another cart carrying Mamma’s bedstead and bedding.

  ‘How people stared as we passed! And how hard it was to find a place every night with room for us all,’ Mamma exclaimed to me. ‘We went by very easy stages, for Papa was afraid of tiring me too much – though indeed I was very w
ell, I assure you! – but oh, how sick I was of sitting day after day, for three weeks!’

  I knew just how she felt. I always hated travelling in carriages, being bumped and jolted until one was black and blue, aching in every muscle from the effort of keeping upright, and nauseous from the lurching and swaying. The ‘royal progresses’ I was forced to undertake in my youth were the most severe trial to me. Thank God we now have railways!

  They reached Calais safely by the appointed day, and there the news from Hanover was awaiting them: the Duchess of Cambridge had given birth to a healthy boy on the 26th of March, and on the 27th the Duchess of Clarence had had a baby girl, which had lived only a few hours.

  My poor, dear aunt Adelaide! How she loved children, and how she longed for one of her own! But God did not mean it to be. It must have broken her gentle heart. I have never lost a baby – thank God! – though I have lost two of my children in adulthood. It is a pain that cannot be healed, to lose a child. But Aunt Adelaide’s loss at that time meant Papa’s expected baby was one step nearer the Throne, and his strange certainty that his line would inherit was strengthened.

  The wind did not come favourable until the 24th of April, and when they at last embarked the Channel was very rough. The strong wind at least meant a short crossing, but Mamma was very sick indeed all the way to Dover. Was I aware of it, I wonder, cradled in her womb? Did I carry the memory with me into the world? At all events, I am always sick on boats – though not, I have to say, as sick as my poor darling Albert, whose delicate stomach seized any opportunity to make its presence known to him. Still at last that evening, pale, weary and heartily sick of travelling, Papa and Mamma arrived at Kensington Palace. And there, a month later, on Monday the 24th of May 1819, I made my entrance into this sinful world.

  A chilly morning it was, with a light rain falling, sparrows calling to each other from the dripping hedges, and blackbirds running across the wet green lawns beyond the long windows. In the next room the Duke of Wellington waited, along with my uncle Sussex, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, the Marquess of Lansdowne, the egregious Mr Canning, the Secretary for War, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer. As the grey dawn broke over Kensington Papa led them into the lying-in chamber in order to sign, in their official capacity and according to custom, the birth certificate and the attestation that I appeared perfectly healthy.

  Indeed, there was no difficulty about that: it had been a short and easy labour (in so far as any labour ever is) and I was plainly a lusty child: ‘a pretty little princess, plump as a partridge’, was how Uncle Leopold’s secretary Dr Stockmar described me when he saw me soon afterwards.

  ‘But still, only a girl,’ I said to Mamma. ‘Wasn’t Papa very disappointed?’

  ‘Not at all. He said that the decrees of Providence were always the best and wisest. And besides,’ she added with a reflective smile, ‘he said that a gypsy fortune-teller he met in Gibraltar years ago had told him he would one day have a daughter who was destined to become a great queen.’

  Was it true? When I was young I believed in the gypsy story with all my heart; it showed my destiny was long foretold, and it fitted into the pattern of my belief that God had arranged everything deliberately to bring me to the Throne. But later when I discussed the story with Albert, he pointed out logically that it was much more likely Papa had only said that to comfort Mamma, who had more or less promised him a son, as women do, and must have been feeling disappointed. Of course, I saw immediately that Albert was right and that indeed it must have been so. But in recent years I have returned to my old belief. There are more things in heaven and earth than can be explained by simple logic. After all, Papa did not say, as he so easily might have (and as Albert and I did when Vicky was born) that the next baby would surely be a boy. He mentioned no next child, as if he had always known there would only be the one. From the very beginning he presented me to his friends as the future Queen of England; and he never wavered in his insistence that I should be brought up in England, as an English child, so that I should be fit to succeed to the Throne. I believe now that he knew in his heart I was to be his only child, and was to take Princess Charlotte’s place as the Hope of the Nation.

  Papa stayed with Mamma every moment all through the labour – as Uncle Leopold had stayed with Charlotte, as Albert always stayed with me. How lucky we were in our husbands, we three women! It is a strange coincidence that these were three constitutionally important marriages between Coburgs and Hanoverians, all marriages of great love and great happiness, and all cut off untimely. There are patterns, though we are not always clever enough to see them at the time, or to understand what they mean.

  My Coburg grandmother saw and believed. ‘Again a Charlotte!’ she wrote to Papa in reply to his letter announcing my birth. ‘Do not worry that it is not a boy. The English like Queens.’

  Now here is another pattern, of which even Albert had to admit the significance: in his letter to Grandmamma Coburg, Papa praised the conduct and skill of the midwife, Madame Siebold, saying no-one could have shown more activity, zeal and knowledge in the care of her patient. When Mamma was out of confinement, Madame Siebold returned to Coburg to take care of Mamma’s sister-in-law Louise, the pretty, nineteen-year-old wife of Mamma’s brother Duke Ernst, who was expecting her second child. And three months later, on the 26th of August, Madame Siebold delivered the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg of a fine boy, ‘as lively as a squirrel’. In due course he was christened with the names Francis Charles Augustus Albert Emmanuel; but he was always known in the family as Albert.

  16th February 1900

  THE NEWS are much better today, which together with the improvement in the weather makes me feel vastly more cheerful. General Buller is advancing again (though not nearly fast enough in my view), and Lord Roberts’ feint to draw the Boers off seems to be working, for we have had reports that they are beginning to melt away in front of Ladysmith. Thank God White refused to surrender! If only he can hold out a while longer, I am sure Lord Roberts’ stratagems will work. He has sent French (youngest of our generals and a good, energetic man – I do not hold a man must be ancient to be wise) with the cavalry round to the north to the aid of Kimberley, so we are waiting for news on two fronts now. And orders are to go out at last for the 8th Division – though if I had carried my point they would have been sent three weeks ago and would be on hand already. However if Roberts can take Bloemfontein he will have the advantage of the railway to bring up supplies and men, which will make all the difference to his campaign.

  I am godmother now to three little boys whose fathers have been killed in South Africa. Today was the Christening-day of one of them (he is to be called Albert Victor, for my sake, and then Thomas after his father) and the circumstance reminds me of my own Christening, which I will write about to keep my mind off the waiting for telegrams.

  Sadly, my Christening was the occasion of a great deal of ill-feeling. The fact of the matter was that the Regent had always hated Papa, and now that his own, only child was in her grave, it must have been gall and wormwood for him to see Papa so happy in possession of a new and vigorously healthy baby – ‘more like a pocket Hercules than a pocket Venus,’ as Papa once described me. ‘My daughter is too healthy to please some of my family,’ he said, and the idea that Papa’s blood might inherit the Throne certainly seemed to drive the Regent to distraction. Besides, Papa was not the most tactful of men, and he let it be known that he regarded my infant vigour as the just reward for the rectitude of his own life. ‘My health remains unimpaired,’ he said, ‘as I have a right to expect from the life I have always led.’ His brother the Regent, grossly fat and unwell, with his swollen legs, violent headaches, and pains in the stomach and bladder, could not have heard such comments with much pleasure.

  Papa had asked the Regent to be my godfather, along with Tsar Alexander of Russia, and he had already chosen the names for me: Victoire (after Mamma) Georgina (after the Regent) Alexandrina (after the Tsar) Charlotte (a
fter the late Princess Charlotte of Wales) and Augusta (after Grandmamma Coburg). He submitted the names for approval to the Regent with his usual breezy self-confidence; and as he heard nothing more, he assumed they were acceptable. It was for the Regent to fix the date for the Christening, and he chose Monday the 24th of June, but he did not announce it even to Papa until the Friday, giving him only two days’ notice on purpose to annoy. And then he announced that it was to be held in the Cupola Room at Kensington Palace, not in the Chapel Royal, and was to be a private ceremony only. That meant no uniforms were to be worn and there were to be no foreign dignitaries or eminent guests. How disappointed Papa must have been! No gold lace, no swords, no feathers, no glitter, no pomp – just immediate members of the family in plain, dull frock coats, as if I were just anyone’s baby being ‘dipped’. The Regent didn’t want anything to suggest that I was in any way important to anyone but my parents. ‘The plan,’ Papa said furiously to Mamma, ‘is evidently to keep me down. Some members of the family seem to regard my little girl as an intruder!’

  A further blow came when as late as the Sunday evening, a message arrived from the Regent that I could not be given the name Georgina, after him, since it would not be protocol for the name to precede that of the Tsar, and he did not care to have it follow. As to the other names, the message continued, the Regent would speak to Papa about them at the ceremony.

  That was leaving it to the last minute, indeed! In fact, according to Mamma, it was not until the Archbishop of Canterbury actually had me dangling over the font that the Regent suddenly announced the names Charlotte and Augusta were not to be used either.