On the whole, the laudatory biographies of Queen Victoria have shown great injustice to William IV. The writers of those biographies, painfully anxious to please living people, have not allowed themselves to exercise either sound criticism or sound judgment. They have made the King a vulgar, brutal monster, always ready to insult “defenceless women,” and have extolled the Duchess of Kent as a miracle of propriety and wisdom. As a matter of fact, both of them, in different ways, were wanting in self-control; both were people of passionate temperament, the King hotly so, the Duchess in a more reserved but equally intractable way. At that time William still had a faint hope that his wife might bear children—a fact that is shown in the negotiations concerning the Regency, and in various little significant events. For that reason he insisted upon Princess Victoria being regarded as Heir Presumptive, which was keenly resented by the Duchess, who thought that the right title should be Heir Apparent. Thus when all the papers detailed the events of the Duchess’s tours through the country, and gave in full many loyal speeches and their acknowledgments, or if they did not give them in full were particular to pick out the most striking passages, it is scarcely to be wondered at that the soul of the King was shaken with rage, for these speeches were sometimes a little too anticipatory to be pleasant to him. “The Princess who will rule over us,” was a common phrase, to which the Duchess responded freely with “your future Queen,” softening the expression, however, with the pious wish, “I trust at a very distant date.”
These progresses, lasting sometimes for a couple of months or even longer, gave the young Princess much information, and showed her something of England; she probably liked the novelty at first, and all through enjoyed some incidents and the kindness offered her. She is said to have displayed wonderfully precocious powers of shrewdness (a cheap bit of praise!), and to have written long letters to her governess, describing, “with an accuracy, minuteness, and spirit quite extraordinary,” her impressions of the manners, customs, and peculiarities of the people in the various towns she visited. But there were times when she was bored to death. The absurd triumphal meanderings through this town and that, bowing here, bowing there, surrounded by crowds sometimes so dense that the carriage could not move, cheered, gazed at, addressed by mayors and popular speakers—all this became dull and tedious to her. A young thing who should have been playing at ball and learning French verbs had to sit for hours playing, instead, at being grown up, and when she entered a house as a guest had to retain a dignified manner, had to lead off the dance with a middle-aged host instead of romping with his young people, and for dreary weeks had to assume a mock royalty. There must have been also moments of acute pain; for a girl of that age, at least in the present day, will turn scarlet with anger if she and her qualities are discussed before her face, without perhaps quite comprehending why she feels that such a course is a dire and undignified offence, by inference depriving her of her sensibility and relegating her to the position of the unthinking creatures who cannot understand what is said.
Yet little Victoria had to listen daily to the speeches made by her mother, in which her education, her tendencies, and the desires concerning her were fully described to the “great unwashed.” Such instances as the following were of common occurrence. When, in 1833, mother and child attended the ceremony of opening the pier at Southampton, the Mayor offered a loyal address, to which the Duchess replied, among other things, that it was a great advantage to the Princess to be thus early taught the importance of being attached to works of utility, adding that it was her anxious desire to impress upon her daughter the value of everything recommended by its practical utility to all classes of the community.
On another occasion she said to the public crowd,“I cannot better allude to your good feeling towards the Princess than by joining fervently in the wish that she may set an example in her conduct of that piety towards God and charity towards men which is the only sure foundation either of individual happiness or national prosperity.”
Again she would say that “it was the object of her life to render her daughter deserving of the affectionate solicitude she so universally inspired, and to make her worthy of the attachment and respect of a free and loyal people.” These sentiments were quite natural and laudable, the only thing wrong about them being that they were expressed publicly and with considerable ceremony before the child of whom they were spoken. For these responses were generally written, and when the moment came for their delivery, John Conroy, standing by the Duchess’s side, would hand up her answer, “just as the Prime Minister hands the King the copy of his speech when opening Parliament.” This habit was specially noticed when, in 1835, the royal pair went through the north-east of England, to York, Wentworth House, Doncaster (where they witnessed the races), Belvoir Castle, Burghley, Lynn, Holkham, and Euston Hall. At Burghley the loyal address spoke of the Princess as one “destined to mount the throne of these realms,” and most splendid preparations were made by Burghley’s master, the Marquis of Exeter, for the lodgment of his guests. The dinner was a great function and all went well until a clumsy or nervous servant slipped and turned the contents of an ice-pail into the Duchess’s lap, “which made a great bustle.” The Princess opened the ball with Lord Exeter, and then, like a good child, went off to bed.
At Holkham a crowd of people were waiting in the brilliantly illuminated Egyptian Hall while the Princess was dragged for miles in her carriage by navvies, making her two hours late. At last a carriage arrived at the Hall containing three ladies, and Mr. Coke, with a lighted candle in each hand, made a profound bow. When he resumed the perpendicular the visitors had vanished, and the host was told that he had been making his obeisance to the dressers! Soon after this, their Royal Highnesses appeared, and the Princess won all by her pleasant courtesy.
It is more than probable that among those who were personally affected by these journeys they were popular, but on the whole they were harshly criticised, not only by those who surrounded the King, but by the diarists of that time, and among those who guided the tone of the newspapers; and these we must suppose gave voice to the general sentiment. It was an age which preferred the retirement of women, and many people were shocked at the publicity of it all. The Duchess went, they affirmed, “to fish up loyalty in the provinces, and to prepare her daughter for the business of sovereignty, which, however, in this free and high-spirited country is merely to be hooted at, cheered, gazed at, dragged in triumph and addressed by the populace.” On one occasion they dined at Plymouth, the blinds up to show the illuminated room to the dense crowd which filled the area of the hotel, “a vulgar process which appears to have excited fresh enthusiasm among the herd of minions who accompanied with adulatory yelps the course of the visitors.”
Apart from the spiteful tone of all this, the charge was true; but the Duchess was right. She was following a certain system of education; she was bringing up a Queen, teaching her the social duties of her station and training her in those habits of self-control and savoir faire which made Victoria astonish England at her accession by her coolness and dignity. Without her mother’s training the Princess would have been far more like the Georges in outward manners than she was; with it she became perhaps too conscious of what was due from others to herself, too ready to be offended if all did not bow to the wishes of “the Crown”; but the gain was the country’s, and the country has largely to thank the Duchess of Kent for a revolution in the character and moral position of the English Sovereign.
It was during the second visit to Norris Castle, in the Isle of Wight, in 1833, that another quarrel took place between the King and his sister-in-law. At Osborne Lodge—the site of the later Osborne Cottage built by Victoria—Sir John Conroy had his residence, where he entertained the two Princesses. They also went to East Cowes, to Whippingham, and crossed over at different times to Portsmouth, to Weymouth, and to Plymouth. They inspected the dockyards, made a cruise to Eddystone Lighthouse, went to Torquay, Exeter and Swanage; the Princess presented new colours to the Royal Irish Fusiliers stationed at Devonport, during which ceremony the Duchess told the troops that “her daughter’s study of English history had inspired her with martial ardour.” Day after day they were crossing and recrossing the Sound, and every time they appeared salutes were fired. It is true that William could not hear the guns at Windsor or at St. James’s, but the knowledge of the daily, and more than daily, recurrence annoyed him. To be saluted on arrival and on departure was one thing, but to have a “continual popping” going on was quite another. So William called a Council, and dignified statesmen had to go to Court to discuss the matter. Greville’s account runs as follows:—
“The King has been (not unnaturally) disgusted at the Duchess of Kent’s progresses with her daughter through the kingdom, and amongst the rest with her sailings at the Isle of Wight, and the continual popping in the shape of salutes to Her Royal Highness. He did not choose that the latter practice should go on, and he signified his pleasure to Sir James Graham and Lord Hill, for salutes are matters of general order, both to Army and Navy.”