Then why Vic drives the Prince is plain
To any common view—
The Sovereign who holds the rei(g)n
Should have the whip hand too.”
Yet privileges were yielded and concessions were made from time to time. Melbourne gave up his work to the Prince as private secretary; in August, when the Queen prorogued Parliament, Albert sat in an armchair next the throne, waiting doubtless for the protest from the Duke of Sussex, which had been threatened, but which did not get uttered. When the Queen had to look forward to illness, the Prince was appointed regent, much to the disgust of the once genial and fatherly Sussex, who considered that “the family” was being slighted by such a course, and who, in these the last years of his life, was not so kind to his niece as he had hitherto been. The next, but by no means the least, of the Prince’s small triumphs was that he gently but firmly returned the Baroness Lehzen to her native country.
Life had not been quite so smooth with the Baroness since the Queen’s marriage, and there were occasions when she was subjected to hitherto unknown criticisms. The Duchess of Northumberland once sent by her some communication to Victoria, which was never transmitted, and this caused the Duchess to make a personal explanation to the Queen, and ask why her message had received no notice. This little matter, only one of many, being sifted, necessitated an ample apology from the lady behind the Throne.
Then again the Baroness was not liked by some of the people who now surrounded the Queen, and in spite of the strict reserve which Victoria always practised in regard to this mentor and friend of her youth, vague indications of this appear here and there. In June of 1841 the Queen and the Prince went on a visit to Nuneham, near Oxford, the home of the Archbishop of York, and did not take Lehzen with them, excusing the omission on the plea that it would be wiser if she remained with the baby Princess. The next month the Queen went to Woburn Abbey, which caused George Anson to note with satisfaction that this was the second expedition on which the Baroness had not been required to accompany them; and this remark he followed by a review of the Prince’s progress since his marriage, in which he mentions that the schemes of those who wished to prevent His Royal Highness from being useful to Her Majesty for fear that he might touch upon the Queen’s prerogatives, had been completely foiled. “They thought they had prevented Her Majesty from yielding anything of importance to him by creating distrust through imaginary alarm. The Queen’s good sense, however, has seen that the Prince has no other object in all he seeks but a means to Her Majesty’s good.”
By August of that year Prince Albert had been so harassed by the Baroness Lehzen that when a dissolution was threatened he spoke of the matter to Melbourne, describing how her interference kept him in a constant state of annoyance, and begging Lord Melbourne to help him to get rid of her, saying, “It will be far more difficult to remove her after the change of Government than now, because, if pressed to do it by a Tory Minister, the Queen’s prejudice would be immediately aroused.” Melbourne’s knowledge of the Queen, and his own temperament also, led him to deprecate any definite measures. Victoria was already expecting the birth of a second child, and with fatherly care the Prime Minister did his best to save her from what he knew would be a painful event, which could not be accomplished without an exciting scene. He advised the Prince to be on his guard, and patiently abide the result, assuring him that people were beginning to understand that lady’s character much better, and time must surely work its own ends. So Albert continued loyally to bear this burden, and it was not until the beginning of October, 1842, that the Baroness was induced to go on a visit to her family and friends, a visit from which she never returned.
It must not be supposed that Baroness Lehzen was generally disliked or was an unpleasant woman. The Maids of Honour always found her kind and friendly; if a new Maid arrived, the Baroness would go to her room to welcome her and to give her her badge of office, a picture of the Queen surrounded with brilliants fastened to a red bow. Greville, no great friend to the Prince, says that she was much beloved by the women and much esteemed by all who frequented the Court, that she was very intelligent and had been a faithful friend to the Queen from the time of her birth, and that she was sent away simply because she was obnoxious to the Prince. This is written with considerable partiality. Lehzen may have been as faithful a friend as she knew how, but her views were limited. She fostered pride and an overweening sense of importance in her charge, and in an eager desire to be the most confidential person about the Queen, she set her against any who might rival her influence. She tried her strength against the Duchess of Kent, and won; she did what she could against Melbourne, but she was incapable against his position and his knowledge. Then she hoped to keep the Prince at a respectful distance from Victoria as the Queen, however near he might be to her as his wife, and fortunately, though after a long struggle, she failed, and was packed off to Germany. The Queen thought she was coming back, but in her heart even she, infatuated as she was, could not but have known that the position was impossible for the man—her “dearest Angel”—upon whom she lavished such warm words of love. Thus we hear no more of Lehzen, except that she settled with a sister in a comfortable, small house at Bückeburg, covering the inner walls of her home with prints and pictures of the Queen whom she had served more lovingly than wisely.
Victoria’s popularity was enhanced by her marriage, but decreased again owing to the popular fear of foreigners. She was sometimes greeted with silence, sometimes with cries of “no foreigners!” when she went to the theatres. It was a time of great hardship, yet the Queen gave dances and banquets, the accounts of which were exaggerated a hundred times as they percolated through the newspapers to the poor, many of whom were starving. We get many allusions to these gaieties. On January 29th, 1842, there was a little dance at Windsor to amuse the young Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, with just enough ladies to make up a quadrille. It finished with a country dance, including every sort of strange figure. “The Queen must have been studying some old books and concentrated the figures of several centuries into this one country dance.”