Childhood at Court, 1819-1914 Read Online Free PDF Page A

her right hand, she uttered the famous words, ‘I will be good.’ 18
    The story sounds too much like legend, and in her old age Lehzen undoubtedly added her own touch of drama to the recollections. Such phrases sound rather beyond all but the most precocious infant of ten. As her biographer Monica Charlot has suggested, the language seems stilted and unchildlike, and from other accounts the young princess did not seem such a prig as this story makes out. Moreover, the veracity of the account is open to question, as it is in effect a reconstruction long after the event. 19 Nevertheless Queen Victoria, whose powers of recall remained remarkably sharp well into her later years, and who was always eager to dismiss sugary stories about her childhood, never rejected this one. On the margin of Lehzen’s memoirs, she wrote, ‘I cried much on learning it and ever deplored this contingency.’
    In June 1830 King George IV died at Windsor, and the Duke of Clarence ascended the throne as King William IV. It was now obvious to all but the most optimistic that his consort, now Queen Adelaide, would never produce a healthy heir to the throne, and increasingly inevitable that Princess Victoria of Kent would succeed him.
    The new King and Queen were well disposed enough towards the Duchess of Kent and fond of her daughter, though they were suspicious of Conroy’s influence at Kensington Palace. Princess Victoria had not been allowed the close acquaintance with her kindly uncle and aunt that she would have liked, though she knew enough about the Queen’s tragic attempts at motherhood to hope that she would have the child she craved. The Duchess of Kent kept her daughter away from the ‘Acquatics’ as she contemptuously dubbed them, because – it was said – she looked askance at King William IV’s illegitimate brood, the adult children of his long liaison with the late actress Dorothy Jordan. The distance she put between herself and her brother- and sister-in-law, however, was part and parcel of Conroy’s plan of keeping the Kents in splendid isolation, under his influence.
    In July 1830 Princess Victoria attended a Garter ceremony at St James’s Palace, and her small, withdrawn figure in black veil and weepers reaching to the ground, walking behind Queen Adelaide, was commented on by the German Ambassador. The next month, she was invited to court for the celebrations of Queen Adelaide’s thirty-eighth birthday. Though happy to be at the festivities, she was ill at ease and too frightened of her mother’s anger to smile and appear too friendly. King William complained later that she had stared at him stonily.
    If the King had had his way, Princess Victoria would not have been called thus for much longer. Soon after Christmas, he instructed his Prime Minister, Lord Grey, to tell the Duchess of Kent that he wanted the Princess’s name to be changed to an English one. As the girl bore an Anglicized version of her mother’s name, Victoire, the request was hardly a tactful one, but the King stood by ‘his sole aim being that the name of the future Sovereign of this country should be English’. Elizabeth and Charlotte were mentioned as possible alternatives. With reluctance, the Archbishop of Canterbury informed that it might be legally possible to change a name by Act of Parliament, but the Duchess put up such a show of resistance that the idea was soon dropped.
    It was a portent of clashes to come. The Duchess and her daughter were commanded to attend the Coronation in September 1831, and Princess Victoria was to be assigned a place in the procession behind the surviving Royal Dukes. As heiress presumptive, the Duchess of Kent maintained that her daughter should be allowed to walk directly behind the sovereign. Neither side would give way, and the Duchess refused to attend the ceremony or allow the Princess to participate, making excuses that they could not afford the expense, and that she feared the strain on her daughter’s