I, Victoria Read online

  When I was young I preferred a spirited horse that gave me something to do, and liked nothing better than a good gallop. I suppose I must have been a sadly wild young thing! Certainly under Albert’s influence I came to see that it is not at all the thing for a young woman – indeed, for any woman – to ride ventre à terre like a Hussar; and I scolded Vicky quite fiercely after her marriage for rushing about the countryside on big, strong horses, instead of confining herself to a ladylike amble in the park. And Alice’s daughter Victoria was another who liked to ride men’s horses, which I told her roundly was neither seemly nor good for a woman’s health. Yet sometimes I still have wistful dreams about galloping full out with the wind rushing past my cheeks and the exhilarating sound of drumming hooves beneath me. Plainly there is a wicked, unrepentant part of me somewhere that my darling did not quite manage to reform!

  But such galloping was all in the future. My early life at Kensington was marked by austerity, to which I have always attributed my distaste for grand occasions, gorgeous robes and glittering palaces. And yet, since the purpose of this essay is to be honest with myself, I must admit I did not show any great dislike of fine clothes and grand occasions when I first became Queen. Banquets and balls and ceremonials and dressing-up seemed very fine to me for the first two years of my reign; it was only after I married that I began to yearn after the simple life of a private citizen. Ah, that was all my dear, dearest Albert’s influence! How he did improve and refine me, to be sure!

  In Mamma’s household we lived simply, and the nursery food was always very plain. Mutton and rice pudding featured so much on the menu, that by the time I became Queen I vowed to myself I would never have mutton on my table again, and I still can’t care for it, though I will eat lamb if it is young, and roast. The sweet and the exotic – rich sauces, made dishes, cakes and custards and jellies – oh, all the things the palate delights in – these never appeared before me. That of course is just as it should be, and how I brought up my own children. Once I was Queen and could have what I liked, I indulged my thwarted appetite to the extent that within a year I was having my dresses made a size larger; and as I am a very short person, not even five feet in height, the full-bodiedness has in time rendered me almost spherical. Reid tries to tell me now and then that I should eat less, or at least avoid the richer dishes, but I ignore him. I have not reached eighty years of age to be told – even by my personal physician – to eat dry toast and milk-pudding again?

  Now here is a thought which has just come to me: if I had been more indulged at the table in childhood, would I have been more rational about food in adulthood, and not rushed helter-skelter after all the sweetmeats and delicacies I had been denied? Bertie, who was brought up by the same spartan rule of mutton and rice-pudding, has also turned out a prodigious eater of dainties, and perhaps if they had not been ‘forbidden fruit’ he might not care about them now? But no, it does not follow, now I think of it, for Albert was brought up under a spartan regime, but he never came to care about food. And anyway, it would not do for children to be allowed to have everything, for what would there be then to look forward to? And since it seems we must always rebel against something, we would undoubtedly embrace some far worse sin than gluttony if nothing were forbidden us in our childhood!

  I was a naturally good-natured child, I believe: certainly my desire was always to love and please those around me, and I had always sooner laugh than scowl; but I was born with a strong will and a passionate temper. A child born into a large family has to learn to share everything, but I had no-one near me to dilute my infant conviction that I was the centre of the universe. All in my circle were grown-ups, except for Feo, and she was twelve years older than me; all adored me and conspired to spoil me by consulting my whims and placating my temper. In consequence my wilfulness grew unchecked like a Russian vine, and if I were crossed in the slightest thing, I exploded in a tantrum. Mamma, my nurse Boppy (Mrs Brock), dear sentimental Späth (Mamma’s lady-in-waiting), sweet, loving Feo, and of course all the servants, tended and watered my natural obstinacy, and my predisposition to want my own way. I could hardly help knowing I was important, when my every appearance in public aroused such interest. Whenever I played on the lawns at Kensington, an admiring crowd would gather beyond the railings to stare and murmur and applaud; and I, conceited little wretch, would bow and smile and kiss my hand to them, and if I could escape Boppy’s clutches I would scamper across to them and let them make love to me, which they were much disposed to do. I adored attention, and I was an attractive child, fat and fair, rosy-cheeked and blue-eyed, always wreathed in smiles (as long as I was having my own way); and especially interesting to my future subjects by virtue of my obviously Hanoverian looks.

  By the time I was five years old, therefore, I was almost beyond governing, and Mamma, who was not a very determined person, often despaired of me. She would wring her hands and cry, ‘Vickelschen is so ausgelassen! The ladies of the household will spoil her, and I do not know how to stop them. Brock cannot manage her, and when she screams my poor nerves are all to pieces.’

  Screaming was my most effective tool, and hardly to be borne in the confined spaces of our small apartments. Some of my own children turned out to be roarers, too, but in Buckingham Palace and at Windsor it was possible to get far enough away from them for it to be ignored. I can quite understand Mamma’s placating me, though it was the wrong thing to do. In later years she told me of a significant exchange we once had when I was a very little girl. ‘When you are naughty, Victoria, you make me and yourself very unhappy,’ she said reproachfully. ‘No, Mamma,’ I said promptly – and probably smugly, for I was an abominable child, though very truthful – ‘I don’t make myself unhappy, only you.’

  But when I was five I came under a new influence which was the saving of me: the influence of one who was not in awe of my Hanoverian temper, and who loved me well enough to understand that the greatest unkindness would be to give in to my rages. Baroness Lehzen had come to join our household in 1819 as Feo’s governess, and so had known me since I was a few months old. Now that Feo was seventeen she no longer needed a governess; so after consulting with Uncle Leopold, Mamma sent Boppy away, and Lehzen took me into her charge. It was the beginning of a relationship which had a great effect on my character. Lehzen, intelligent, sensitive, principled and determined, devoted herself to moulding me into a rational, useful human being. It was not easy at first. The storms did not cease overnight. I did not take easily to lessons or to discipline, and I was often naughty and defiant. Once in a fit of rage I even threw a pair of scissors at her – point first! – which might easily have blinded her. But she was always calm, always just, and though she was very strict with me, I had wit enough to see that hers was a truer love than that of those who spoiled me. I was a good deal in awe of her at first, but I came at last not only to mind her but to love her; and for her part, she devoted herself entirely to me, and in the thirteen years she was my governess she never once left me. She never took a day’s holiday, and never – despite her susceptibility to migraines and (at female times) dreadful abdominal cramps – absented herself from duty one day on account of sickness.

  Three

  26th February 1900, at Windsor

  I HAVE just had my little ‘nightcap’ of whisky-and-polly, to help me sleep – although it won’t. Dear John Brown introduced me to whisky (I never liked the taste of brandy) and I’ve always been grateful to him. He called it John Begg’s Best, or the Water of Life – and so it was for him in the end, poor man, the water of his life, and probably the means of his death too. In the beginning he used to put a ‘grand nip’ in my afternoon tea without my knowing it: it was years before I realised why he was the only person in my service who could make a good cup of tea! There is a very strong Total Abstinence movement in the country now, and I expect the good burghers and their wives would be shocked to learn that their Queen partakes of strong liquors. They have a way, the respectable middle-classes, of taking o
ver: their ideals, their tastes, their morality, must be the rule for all. They mount my picture on their parlour walls, and think they own me; but I am not to be judged by their standards – and nor are those whom I choose to protect. It was the whisky that killed my John in the end, but I would not have separated him from the second greatest love of his life, even if I had been able. People are what they are.

  How I miss him, my dear John! He had such a cheery, original way of saying things, and such a warm sympathy no matter how large or small one’s trouble. And he was the great debunker: he observed no distinctions of rank except mine. For him there was the Queen, and then everyone else. How he annoyed them, the high-borns, with his refusal to accord them the deference they thought their due! But all who were not the Queen were equal in his eyes.

  I remember hearing a story that once when he returned to Balmoral after being in London, a villager of his acquaintance asked wistfully if Brown hadn’t been meeting a powerful lot o’ grand folks in London. Brown put on his loftiest look. ‘Aye, it’s so,’ he conceded, ‘but me an’ the Queen pays ’em no regard.’ It amused me enormously, but it was not an attitude likely to commend him to my Household, or those who were tender of their precedence. Once when we were at Osborne I sent him to inform the gentlemen which of them were to dine at my table that evening. Great was the resentment when he poked his head round the billiard-room door, scanned the company briefly, and bawled, ‘All what’s here dines wi’ the Queen!’ Another time when he had brought to me a request from the Mayor of Portsmouth to attend some or other review, he carried back my answer to the Mayor verbatim: ‘The Queen says sairtainly not!’

  It made me laugh very much to see my blunt-spoken Highlander take the proud folk down a peg or two. He did it not to mock, or to set himself above anyone else, but because in his eyes he was simply my mouthpiece, so he issued my commands without dilution. The high-borns did not understand: they thought it arrogance. And they called familiarity what was single-minded devotion, and impudence what was lack of servility. Servility is not in the Highland people, though they understand service very well. John served me because it pleased him to, and because he loved me, and he did it wholeheartedly. He devoted his whole life to me, night and day, body and mind, without reserve, and only ‘sickness unto death’ was able at last to keep him from my side.

  Well, well, I am now both sleepless and alone; so I shall lift my glass in a toast to my old friend, and continue with my story.

  Papa’s death left Mamma in dire financial straits. His entire estate was taken up by the creditors, who had removed even the basic necessities of establishment. When Mamma came back from Devon to Kensington she had no furniture, plate or linen, not a spoon or a napkin to call her own. Her sole income was the £6,000 a year settled on her by Parliament at the time of her marriage, and that was not enough to keep her, her children and her servants – let alone to pay the interest on the capital sum of £12,000, which she had to borrow straight away to buy those necessary napkins and spoons.

  The new King felt that in granting us rooms at Kensington Palace, he had done all that was necessary, and he refused to consider giving Mamma so much as a sixpence to enable us to remain in them. His great desire was to drive Mamma – and therefore me – back to Germany in the hope that he would never see us again. Lonely and miserable, Mamma longed for Amorbach, and for a while considered how she might manage to go back there; but the problem was money, always money. Even if she could find enough for the journey, Papa had run up debts at Amorbach, too, which she had no means of paying off.

  Then just a month later, in the February of 1820, while everything was still in a state of uncertainty, my uncle the King fell desperately ill with pleurisy. For some time his life was despaired of, threatening both to make his reign one of the shortest in English history, and to place little Vickelschen, as Mamma called me, within two elderly lives of the throne. After (or perhaps in spite of) a great deal of bleeding, the King recovered; but Uncle Leopold took the occasion to remind Mamma how important I was in the succession, and how it had been Papa’s urgent desire that I should be brought up in England as an English child. There must be no possible excuse, on that day which was to come, to deny me the crown Papa had wished for me.

  So there was no more talk of Amorbach. Regretfully Mamma gave up her regency on behalf of my brother Charles and tried thereafter to think of England as home. That still left the problem of money. Uncle Leopold could not see his sister and nieces starve, and generously made Mamma an allowance of £3,000 a year. Unfortunately, when Parliament met in July to consider the pensions for all the royal family, they declared that since Prince Leopold had taken our support upon himself, there was no need for the House to vote us anything more. The fact was, of course, that foreigners were always disliked in England, and at that time Germans were the most hated of all. Englishmen of every degree begrudged the £50,000 a year voted to poor Uncle Leopold for life when he married Princess Charlotte, and deeply resented the fact that it could not be stopped now that she was dead. All that good English gold going into German pockets! The least he could do, they thought, was to spend some of it on his sister’s baby. As my uncle King said, ‘Her uncle is rich enough to take care of her. I’ll be damned if I agree to a pension for her.’

  So Mamma was left to struggle on with an income of £9,000 a year. Of course it wasn’t enough: Mamma was a royal duchess, and had to keep a certain degree of state; and she had two daughters to rear and a household to maintain. Besides, much as I came to love her in later life, I have to admit that she never had the slightest understanding of the value of money, nor the least idea of economy. To Papa’s mountain of debt she began adding promising foothills of her own, and it was hand to mouth with her from then onwards. (There was also, though we did not know it at the time, a further drain on her finances which meant that she could never have kept out of debt even if she had been as frugal as a nun.) All she could hope to do was to hold on, and wait for the day of my succession, when everything would be put right and all debts paid. It is hard to blame her, outcast that she was, if she watched the lives of those between me and the Throne with hungry eyes.

  In the early years her fortunes ebbed and flowed like the tides. In August 1820 the Duchess of York died, leaving my uncle York free to marry again. He was fifty-seven, but quite hale: our tide was out and Mamma was on tenterhooks. Uncle King urged him with all his skills of persuasion to marry: he and York had not always seen eye to eye, but anything was better than his brother Kent’s child succeeding. But Uncle York told him firmly that he was absolutely determined not to remarry, and would never change his mind.

  So our fortunes were on the flow again; but four months later it was slack-water, when in December 1820 Aunt Adelaide gave birth to a baby girl, premature but healthy. Mamma was in despair: it was the one thing that Papa had known might spoil his plan, and Uncle Clarence having amply proved his fertility, it was to be expected that a string of Clarence babies might now follow. The King made no effort to hide his delight that I was no longer the heiress, and nothing could have been more pointed than his behaviour over my new cousin’s Christening. I had been roughly forbidden any name that had the slightest royal ring to it; but the Clarence princess, with the King’s fervent agreement, was given the names Elizabeth and Georgina to add to her mother’s name.

  But the tide turned again in March 1821, when my little cousin Elizabeth of Clarence, only three months old, died at St James’s Palace of a twisted bowel. I was heir again. Poor, dear Aunt Adelaide! It is a measure of her great goodness that only two months after the death of her own baby, she sent me a birthday present together with a note (which I have still) which opens: ‘My dear little Heart, I hope you are well, and don’t forget Aunt Adelaide, who loves you so fondly …’ She longed for children of her own, though no more fervently than the King longed for them on her behalf. Well, she was only twenty-nine, and Uncle Clarence was enormously robust, and so the King did not yet despair.

>   He continued to ignore Mamma and me; and in August 1821 he must have thought himself quite safe: his estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick, died unexpectedly, and he was free to marry again and get an heir of his own to ‘wipe the Duchess of Kent’s eye’. In spite of his age – he was fifty-nine – and his growing infirmities, he set off in high good humour on a trip to Ireland and thence to Hanover (where he was also King, of course) and afterwards to Vienna, where, it was popularly supposed, he would ‘pick up something in the princess way’ and bring her back before Christmas.

  He didn’t. A fall from horseback in Hanover gave him a swollen knee and brought on painful gout, and anyone who has ever suffered from that will tell you it is not possible to go courting under its influence. He hobbled home to England, and putting the idea of nubile and probably temperamental young princesses gratefully aside, resumed his peaceful life of domesticity with his elderly mistress, Lady Conyngham (Lord M. most improperly used to refer to her as the Vice-Queen, which I’m afraid made me laugh very much!). It’s an odd thing about my uncle King that from his young-manhood he only ever fancied women much older than himself; and in my opinion it is a great pity that he was not able to marry Mrs Fitzherbert (whom he was sincerely attached to) in the proper manner, for he might then have led a more regular and satisfactory life. The Royal Marriages Act, again! But of course, I was forgetting that Mrs Fitzherbert was a Roman Catholic, so he couldn’t have married her anyway unless he had given up the Succession, and I can’t believe any Prince of Wales would do that.