The Queen and Lord M (31 page)

‘Mrs Melbourne!’ she told Lehzen. ‘They called me that.’

Lehzen said: ‘Everything you do is noted. It’s talked of and often exaggerated. He has apartments at the Palace. He dines here almost every night. And of course this affair of the Bedchamber Ladies … They are saying that the reason you made it impossible for Peel to take office was because you wouldn’t part with Lord Melbourne.’

‘But
Mrs
Melbourne!’

‘Yes, Mrs Melbourne,’ said Lehzen a trifle severely. She wanted to be first in the Queen’s estimation and did not enjoy taking second place even to the Prime Minister.

Lord Melbourne called as usual. He had been at the races and had heard the hisses and boos and the epithet hurled at her. She was never one to hide her feelings so she asked him at once what he thought of it.

He shrugged it aside with his usual elegant ease. ‘People will say anything.’

‘I believe I know who started it. It was the Duchess of Montrose and Lady Sarah Ingestre.’

‘Tory bitches,’ said Lord Melbourne and for a second she smiled; but she was immediately grave.

‘Others quickly took it up. Oh dear, they should be severely punished.’

‘Your ancestors would have had their heads off.’

‘It’s a pity customs have changed,’ said the Queen angrily.

‘Are you sure it was these women who started it?’

‘Quite sure.’

‘They were really attacking me you know.’

‘And me too. But you heard it. You know you did.’

‘Yes, I heard it,’ admitted the Prime Minister.

‘It must have made you angry.’

‘On your account, yes. I am used to being attacked on all sides. A Prime Minister is blamed for most things.’

She could not settle down to a cosy chat. She kept hearing those words echoing in her mind: ‘Mrs Melbourne’.

One early morning in July Victoria wakened to find the Baroness at her bedside.

‘What is it?’ cried Victoria, starting up in bed.

‘I have bad news,’ said Lehzen, ‘Lady Flora Hastings died early this morning.’

‘Poor soul!’

‘This will mean everything is revived, you know.’

‘At least,’ said the Queen, ‘it will be an end of the matter.’

‘There will be a post mortem,’ said the Baroness. ‘She has left instructions that there shall be one performed by any doctor, providing he is not Sir James Clark.’

‘That will surely settle the matter,’ said the Queen as Lord Melbourne would have said.

But she knew it could not be settled immediately. There was sure to be trouble. The press, the Tories, the scandal-mongers and the Hastings family were not going to let it rest.

The autopsy was presided over by five distinguished doctors and the verdict was that Flora had died from a large tumour on the liver which pressing downwards had produced an enlargement of the abdomen.

The Hastings declared publicly that bowed down with grief as they were, at least their honour was vindicated.

The
Morning Post
came out openly against the Queen; so did Lord Brougham in the Lords, who tried to induce Lord Tavistock to defend his wife’s character at the expense of the Queen’s. Pamphlets were written against her. (‘There have always been the pamphleteers to write against Royalty,’ said Lord Melbourne comfortingly.) The Queen saw one of these which made her shiver. It was called ‘A voice from the Grave of Flora Hastings to her most gracious Majesty the Queen’.

Victoria wept with rage and despair. Life had become wretched. She wondered whether she would ever be happy again. She even remembered that Lord Melbourne had advised her to act as she had and told herself she should never have allowed the scandal to persist. She should have given Flora the benefit of the doubt.

An alarming thought had come to her. Was it possible that Lord Melbourne could be wrong?

When she ventured into the streets she was hissed. She strained her ears for the taunt, Mrs Melbourne. How different from what it had been like such a short while ago when the people had smiled and waved and loved her.

She wondered whether she should go to the funeral and asked Lord Melbourne when he called.

He thought it would be unwise for her to go personally but her carriage should be sent in the procession as an honour to the living Hastings and a mark of respect to the dead one.

‘But,’ said Lord Melbourne, ‘we shall have to proceed with great care. The press are working the people up to a fever of excitement and that is not good. Heaven knows what they might do if sufficiently worked up.’

‘I know,’ said the Queen, ‘that my uncles were shot at once or twice and so was my grandfather and he never did anything that he thought was not good for the people.’

‘The mob is unpredictable and like the poor, always with us. No one should know whether or not your carriage will be following. Unfortunately the lady died here in this very Palace which is most awkward. How much more convenient it would have been if she had gone home to the bosom of her family to expire.’

‘That was Mamma. She was determined to keep her here to die.’

‘And discountenance us!’ said Lord Melbourne. ‘Never mind. We will put it out that the coffin will be removed from the Palace at six a.m. and shall arrange for it to go at four. We will have the Guards and Life Guards on duty the night before … all through the night and until the coffin is safely away. This will be to show respect to the dead of course … and we will make sure of protection at the same time.’

‘She is going to be taken up to Scotland, you know.’

‘Yes, tiresome of her. But in view of all the fuss the sooner she gets there the better.’

There was a lack of ease throughout the Palace.
How
everything is changed, sighed the Queen.

In the early hours of the morning of July 12th crowds of people were waiting outside the Palace. Even though it had been said that the body of Flora Hastings was to be removed at six, people had waited all night so there were many to see it leave at four a.m. Sir Robert Peel’s police force were out in strength too. The first contingent would accompany the procession to Temple Bar where the City Police would take their place.

As the cortège progressed the crowds grew thicker and some of them were bent on mischief. The press had worked on their emotions with their diatribes against the Queen and her scandal-mongering ladies and the pamphlets like
The Victim of Scandal
and the
Palace Martyr
had had their effect. The crowd was all in sympathy with the dead and full of reproaches for the living.

The heroine of the occasion was without doubt Flora Hastings and the villainess the Queen.

As they neared the wharf where Lady Flora’s coffin was to be placed on a ship to be taken up to Scotland someone threw a stone at the royal carriage; others followed but fortunately the stone throwing was not taken up with much enthusiasm and the people contented themselves with words.

‘What’s the good of her gilded trumpery after she has killed her?’ called a voice.

And another: ‘This is the victim. Where’s the murderer?’ Another: ‘This is a case of murder against Buckingham Palace.’

But at last Lady Flora’s coffin was placed on board the ship which was to take it to Scotland and the danger was over.

‘Just a few repairs to the royal carriage,’ said Lord Melbourne lightly when he reported to the Queen.

‘The indignity!’ she cried. ‘They stoned
my
carriage.’

‘A mercy that you were not in it.’

She was angry. ‘Oh how dared they! They misunderstood. I only wanted to be kind to her … at the end.’

‘At the end,’ said Lord Melbourne. ‘But that was
after
all the fussing.’

‘I visited her. I asked her if there was anything I could do for her and she was grateful to me. She was indeed.’

‘She was honoured of course, but it was an unfortunate business.’

‘Thank God it is now done with.’

‘Yes,’ said Lord Melbourne, ‘providing the Hastings will let it die down. They’ve got so used to hounding a scapegoat that it might be hard for them to do without one. They will doubtless decide on poor old Clark next.’

‘Is there no end to this affair?’

‘It’s like a stone being thrown into a pond,’ said Lord Melbourne. ‘The ripples go on for a long time afterwards.’

She could not settle down. She was restless and ill at ease. Perhaps she was more upset by those words which had been flung at her than by anything else. Mrs Melbourne!

There was only one meaning to it. It disturbed her. But I am only twenty, she thought. I suppose I ought to marry.

Lord Melbourne was having his portrait painted. It was at her request that this was taking place and she had imperiously commanded that it should be done at the Palace so that she could watch the work in progress. Moreover she could talk to Lord Melbourne while he sat and that as he said would kill two birds with one stone, for naturally a busy Prime Minister would have little time to sit for his portrait.

‘I want a picture of you,’ she had told him, ‘so that I can look at it when you are not there. Therefore I shall need a good likeness.’

She would sit watching the artist at work with the utmost amusement.

‘Lord Melbourne,’ she told him severely, ‘you are
not
a good sitter. Is that not so?’ she demanded of the artist.

The artist looked a little embarrassed and Lord Melbourne said, ‘Oh, it is always wise to agree with the Queen.’

‘That is not only wise but true. You are always being told to hold your position and keep your head where it was. You move continually. Mr Grant,’ she said to the artist, ‘Lord Melbourne is
not
a good sitter, is he?’

‘His Lordship is solemn one moment and appears to be deep in thought and the next he is amused and laughing aloud. No, Your Majesty, it is certainly not easy to catch him.’

‘There, Lord Melbourne. You see you are not easily caught.’

‘Oh, I am very elusive,’ said Lord Melbourne.

She was happy watching the work progress. And it was fun to take one of the dogs with her – usually darling Dashy who was particularly fond of Lord Melbourne, but dear Islay sometimes went. And Lord Melbourne would talk to Dash and Dash would put his head on one side in such a way which drove her into fits of laughter and the poor artist into despair.

‘It is an
exact
likeness,’ she declared, which made Lord Melbourne grimace and Mr Grant so happy.

As she later wrote in her Journal: ‘It will be such happiness for me to have that dear kind friend’s face which I do like and admire so. His face is so handsome and his expression and there is his
air
. It is all just as he is with his white hat and cravat, waistcoat and coat … all just as he wears them.’

It was hard to tear herself away from the room. But even those sessions had been spoilt by the memory of those words: Mrs Melbourne.