Victoria Victorious: The Story of Queen Victoria Read Online Free PDF Page A

were born—they had thought they would not have to pay it for a long time.”
    “Mama,” I said. “They did give you our home in Kensington Palace.”
    “A few miserable rooms!” she retorted. “And there I was… with so little and all your father's debts on my shoulders. I shall of course do my very best to settle them … in time.”
    That was very honorable of her, I thought. She was very good, I was sure; but I did wish she was not so venomous toward my father's family.
    “I had thought there was only one thing for us,” she had gone on, “and that was to go back to Germany, but your dear Uncle Leopold was against that. He said, ‘In view of her prospects the child must stay in England. She must speak English. She must
be
English. There must be no trace of anything else. The people here like their own kind.' And so Istayed here and dear Leopold…he gave up so much to stay with us! What I should have done without him I cannot imagine.”
    “Dear
dear
Uncle Leopold,” I murmured.
    “He is wonderful. You are fortunate indeed to have such an uncle and such a mother to care for you. True, you are fatherless, but you have had so much to make up for that.”
    I replied fervently that I had, but I was thinking of Uncle Leopold rather than my mother, for I was just moving into that state when I was beginning to draw away from her.
    “He is so careful of both you and your dear cousin Albert, who has the same reason to be grateful to him as you have. He is three months younger than you so you could say that you are of an age.”
    “I am hoping one day I shall meet Albert.”
    “I am sure your Uncle Leopold, who so likes to please you as well as instruct you, will arrange a meeting one day.”
    “That will be wonderful.” I spoke with honest fervor, but I could not know then how wonderful it was going to prove to be.
    Of course Uncle Leopold was right. And because we had not enough money to make the journey from Sidmouth, he paid for our transport to Kensington Palace and there we remained for some years to come.
    It appeared that my father had appointed Sir John Conroy as one of the executors of his will and that seemed to me, as I grew older, not a very good choice. My mother did not share that opinion, but it was very repugnant to me that Sir John should actually live in our household.
    My mother relied on him a great deal. She was always saying that she had few friends, but while she had Uncle Leopold and Sir John Conroy she felt ready to face the hostile country in which—on my account—she was forced to live.
    There were some members of my father's family who tried to be friends. There were my two aunts, Princess Sophia and the Duchess of Gloucester. They were old then. Sophia had never married but long ago she had been at the center of a scandal. A certain General Garth had fallen in love with her and she with him. The consequences were grave and Sophia had to be hustled out of the palace to give birth to a child. The voluminous skirts proved useful and her sisters helped to smuggle her to Weymouth where she was delivered of a boy. Sophia was unrepentant; she had loved the general and she loved her son, who still came to see her. The children of George III had been brought up so oddly that they all seemed to be involved in scandalous situations. My grandfatherhad refused to allow any of his girls to marry. He had loved them dearly… too dearly. Poor Grandpapa! He must have been mad for a long time before people realized it. Well, Sophia offered friendship to my mother and so did Aunt Mary of Gloucester, who had married Silly Billy Gloucester late in life.
    Another one who would have been kind to her was Adelaide, at that time Duchess of Clarence; but my mother regarded the Clarences as the enemy and was very suspicious of Adelaide who, when she was Queen, I came to know as one of the kindest ladies it had ever been my good fortune to meet. But there was no overcoming Mama's prejudices. So she need not