The Queen and Lord M (14 page)

‘What a lot of money!’

‘In addition to that of course you have the revenues from the Duchies of Cornwall and Lancaster.’

‘So much money!’ cried the Queen, her blue eyes wide.

‘You are the first Sovereign who has thought it so much.’

‘Surely anyone would think it a great deal?’

‘Oh, you are very careful with money. You will never be in debt as your uncles continually were, and even your grandfather George III, parsimonious as he was, couldn’t make ends meet!’

‘I always budgeted,’ said the Queen. ‘That dreadful man Conroy laughed at me for it.’

‘He couldn’t understand wise spending. He has been a poor choice for Household Comptroller as your mother’s affairs have shown.’

‘He was supposed to have settled my father’s debts but he never did. Now that I have so much money that is what I shall do. All my father’s creditors shall be paid in full.’

Lord Melbourne’s eyes filled with tears.

‘A noble suggestion,’ he said, ‘and one that does not surprise me one little bit.’

‘It is very unfair to one’s creditors not to pay one’s debts. I am surprised that my father did it.’

‘It is a tradition of princes to live beyond their means.’

‘A sad tradition for the poor tradesmen.’

‘Oh, they expect it.’

‘They must also expect to be paid sometimes.’

‘But not by Royalty.’

‘Then I shall surprise them. Was my father very extravagant?’

‘No more so than his brothers. He resembled King George IV more than King William. He was charming and affable and very popular.’

‘I’m glad of that. But I’m sorry he was extravagant. I should like to think he was a good man.’

Lord Melbourne smiled benignly at her and wondered if she had heard rumours of her father’s liaison with Madame Saint Laurent. It had, it was true, been as respectable in its way as William’s with Dorothy Jordan; and like William on his State marriage he had abandoned the woman who had been as a wife to him for … was it twenty years or so? These Royal Dukes would have been faithful husbands if the State had allowed them to be. But it had all happened a long time ago and although Victoria must have asked her mother, and those who would have known him, what her father was like, it was almost certain that no one would have mentioned Madame Saint Laurent.

‘Your mother might take charge of those debts. She has been granted an extra £8,000 which means she will now have an annual income of £30,000.’

‘That should please her. But I can see I must be the one to pay my father’s debts because if I left it to her Comptroller (I can scarcely bring myself to say his name!) he would never do it. I must think of those poor creditors.’

‘I can tell you that the sole reason why she was granted this money was out of respect for you. So she has you to thank for it.’

Lord Melbourne fixed his tenderly tearful gaze upon her and she was happy.

Life could not be all happiness and Victoria was very sad because news had come to her that old Louie was very ill and not expected to live.

‘Of course she is very old,’ said Lord Melbourne.

‘But it is very sad all the same.’

‘We all have to go sometime,’ replied Lord Melbourne.

He was right, of course, but she was very unhappy. She kept thinking of those visits to Claremont when Louie had greeted her with her own special kind of curtsy and then had carried her off to her own room and had chatted about Princess Charlotte.

The Court was leaving for Windsor, but before she went she must go and see dear Louie.

What a shock to find her so changed! She was quite distressed because she could not rise from her bed and make that very special curtsy.

‘Dearest Louie,’ cried Victoria, kissing her.

‘Your Majesty!’ murmured Louie, overcome by the honour.

‘Foolish Louie! Did you expect me to love you less because I am the Queen?’

‘It’s wrong that I should be lying here and Your Majesty standing.’

‘Then I’ll sit and you lie still. That is an order. I give orders now.’

Louie laughed. ‘You always did.’

‘Oh yes. I could be very demanding, I am sure. Oh, they were happy days and how I used to look forward to them! I remember so well your having breakfast in your room in your neat morning gown and then in the evening dressed in your best. You always stood up so straight and the curtsy you gave me was so dignified … it was like no one else’s. I think you thought me a little like Charlotte.’

Louie nodded.

‘And sometimes I declare you mistook me for her.’

‘Yet you are so different. Charlotte could be very naughty and you were on the whole such a good little girl.’

‘Mamma would not agree. She was constantly accusing me of having storms.’

‘Ah, that temper of yours. Is it still as fiery?’

‘I fear it is, Louie. I am very hot-tempered. I get really angry sometimes. Although not so much lately. Perhaps it is because I am Queen or it may be because Lord Melbourne makes everything so easy for me.’

‘You have good advisers. You will be a great queen. I wish I could live to see it.’

‘Oh, Louie,’ said Victoria and the tears began to fall down her cheeks.

‘But Your Little Majesty mustn’t cry for me,’ said Louie shocked.

Victoria leant over her and kissed her. She couldn’t stop crying because she knew that it was for the last time.

She was at Windsor when the news came of Louie’s death. She wept bitterly and sat down at once to write to Uncle Leopold about it because of Louie’s having been so close to Princess Charlotte, she was sure he would want to know.

‘I don’t think I have
ever
been so much overcome or distressed by anything as by the death of my earliest friend … I always loved Louie and shall cherish her memory …’

Lord Melbourne, finding her red-eyed and disconsolate, immediately expressed his concern.

‘She was really my earliest friend,’ explained Victoria. ‘I feel that the first link has been broken with my childhood.’

‘As we get older,’ said the philosophical Lord Melbourne, ‘such broken links are so numerous that one scarcely notices them.’

‘How terrible!’

‘Nothing is so bad when one becomes accustomed to it,’ replied Lord Melbourne. ‘You have lost an old friend but you have new ones. That is the compensation of life.’

So she looked at dear Lord Melbourne and was comforted, reminding herself that poor Louie
was
old, her time had come and she went peacefully.

‘She was prepared I am sure, although she thought she would get better,’ she explained. ‘What I mean is she was so good all her life that she was ready at any time to die.’

‘She was always very neat and her soul would be in as orderly a condition as her kitchen.’

Lord Melbourne was rather wickedly flippant, but one would not expect him to make
ordinary
remarks; and he never shocked her, although he did some people, because she knew what a good kind man he was. In any case his light-hearted comments made her feel less unhappy and she told him so. She was therefore comforted.

‘To bring comfort to Your Majesty is the main purpose of my life,’ he answered.

So of course she had to smile and try to put aside her grief.

‘There is the matter of a Coronation,’ went on Lord Melbourne.

‘Have you fixed a date for it?’

‘Most certainly it must be June – the month of your accession.’

‘I hope I shall not disappoint anyone.’

‘I have no fear whatsoever of such an occurrence. Now,’ he went on briskly, ‘if Your Majesty will be kind enough to give me a list of the ladies whom you would like to carry your train, that will be a beginning. You will, I know, consider the position of the young ladies and select them with that in mind.’

‘I shall try not to offend anyone.’

‘That will, I fear, be an impossibility because every young lady at Court will wish for the honour of carrying Your Majesty’s train, and will be offended if she is not chosen.’

‘Oh dear, how sad that one cannot please everyone.’

‘As one can’t, let us think of those who will be pleased and forget the others.’

‘It seems a little
unfeeling
.’

‘Good sound sense often does to those whom it affects adversely,’ said Lord Melbourne.

‘I hope I shall look well in my Coronation robes. How I wish I were even a few inches taller. Everyone seems to grow but me.’

‘I think you have grown in the last months.’

‘Do you really think so or are you being kind?’

‘If I were not kind I should deserve to be kicked out of the Castle; and when I say you have grown I am not necessarily referring to inches. Of what importance are they? You have grown in wisdom, dignity, understanding, sympathy. These are the qualities of sovereignty, not inches.’

‘Dear Lord Melbourne. You are
such
a comfort. But I do wish I were good looking – like Harriet Leveson Gower for instance.’

‘She is an old woman compared with you. She would make a very poor Queen.’

‘Now why do you say that, Lord M?’

‘Because she would never take the advice of her Prime Minister.’

She threw back her head and laughed. Then she was sorry because she should really be crying for Louie. Trust Lord Melbourne to amuse her so much that she forgot her sorrow.

Victoria’s first thought when she awoke in her bedroom in Buckingham Palace on the 19th of May was: This is my birthday. My first birthday as Queen of England!

What a sobering thought. She had been Queen for eleven months and she was nineteen years old.

This was going to be a very special birthday, different from the last when she had been under the control of her mother. Now she would say what the celebrations would be and she had already chosen a ball.

We shall dance all night, she thought, and I shall not go to bed until four in the morning … five if I wish.

She remembered the ball Uncle William and Aunt Adelaide had given for her and how Mamma had been so angry that she had made the Kensington Palace party leave when it had only been in progress an hour. How angry Uncle William had been, but Mamma had very rudely ignored the fact that he was King, just as she now forgot that Victoria was Queen.

Well, there would be no interference this time. It would be her first State ball as Queen of England, and it was going to be the grandest and most magnificent occasion. Everyone was going to enjoy it thoroughly – most of all the Queen.

First of all there would be the receiving of presents. Mamma had always been a great giver of presents. In the old days at Kensington they used to be set out on tables and at Christmas she, Feodora and Mamma had had their own tables. How fond Mamma was of giving bracelets and brooches containing a lock of her own hair!

There was a knock on the communicating door which she had had cut in the wall between her bedroom and that of Lehzen.

The Baroness entered.

‘Many happy returns of the day.’

‘Oh, thank you, Lehzen.’

They embraced.

‘Nineteen. Really I am growing up, but at no time more than this past year. Lord Melbourne says there is a great change in me.’

Not wanting her to start on a eulogy of Lord Melbourne – the easiest thing in the world for her to do it seemed – the Baroness reminded her of the busy day ahead of her and asked if Her Majesty would care to get up now and if she wished to breakfast alone.