The Billy Black of Britain’s Isle,
By turns a Whig or Tory.”
While the Bill was pressing its turbulent passage through the Commons, and during the subsequent troubles, the idea took stronger hold upon the people that the Queen was the motive of the King’s continued vacillations. They went further still, and said that she was influenced by Lord Howe, who was believed to entertain a romantic attachment for her. Indeed, letters of hers are in existence more or less proving that there was truth in the idea of the influence. Her desire was to dismiss the Whigs and form a Tory Government, and in one letter to Lord Howe she notes that “the King’s eyes are open, and he sees the great difficulties in which he is placed, that he really sees everything in the right light,” adding that he thought the Tories not strong enough to form an administration.
Lord Howe voted against the measure, and Lord Grey, seeing how the Government was being defeated by members of the Royal household, forced the King to dismiss him. This the Queen regarded as an outrage. She refused to allow another chamberlain to be appointed, and Howe attended the Queen as assiduously as ever, the two working unceasingly against the Government. This led to something like popular hatred of Adelaide, and to the universal spread of the horrid reports which were being circulated about her and her late Chamberlain, proofs of which animosity were forthcoming every time she appeared in public. The Court Journal deplored the fact that when she drove out the Queen experienced almost daily insult from the populace, being hissed as she passed. Raikes tells us that he saw the King and Queen at the Duke of Wellington’s fête at Apsley House, that His Majesty looked tired, and Queen Adelaide was out of spirits. “She had attended a review in Hyde Park in the morning, when the sovereign mob thought proper to greet her with much incivility and rudeness.” The King himself by no means escaped the hostility of the people, for he no sooner showed himself on the stand at Ascot than a stone hit him full in the forehead. Fortunately it did him no serious injury, and the ruffian who threw it was found to be half-witted.
Socially the affair with Lord Howe assumed serious proportions. The Queen was so angry at his dismissal that, to placate her, it was suggested that he should be reinstated, a condition being made that, though he should not be asked to vote against his conscience, he should undertake not to vote against the Bill. This condition he indignantly refused, and the Queen was not conciliated.
Greville, who much disliked Queen Adelaide, notes of the Court held at Brighton at Christmas, 1832:—“The Court is very active, vulgar, and hospitable. King, Queen, Princes, Princesses, bastards, and attendants constantly trotting about in every direction.... Lord Howe is devoted to the Queen, and is never away from her. She receives his attentions, but demonstrates nothing in return; he is like a boy in love with this frightful spotted Majesty, while his delightful wife is laid up with a sprained ankle and dislocated joint on the sofa.” Indeed, everyone looked upon him as an ardent lover, and noted that he was dining every day at the Pavilion, riding with the Queen, and never quitting her side, keeping his eyes always fixed on her face. Adelaide herself was very careful; she was surrounded by the Fitzclarences, who would have been delighted to prove her in the wrong, and even they could not find fault with her attitude to her quasi-Chamberlain.
Lady Howe, when again able to go to Court, was vexed to death about it, and induced Greville to warn her husband of the scandalous stories afloat. Greville did this, but it only annoyed Lord Howe, who, however, by his manner convinced that worldly man that there was nothing in the matter but folly and the vanity of being confidential adviser to the Queen. As a result of this conversation, Howe suggested to Her Majesty that she should appoint a new Chamberlain, and that he should wait upon the King to inform him of the fact. This, however, the Queen absolutely forbade, and Howe stayed on, with the result that a year or two later Queen Adelaide’s name was in every mouth in a very discreditable way.
Greville was horribly prejudiced against the Queen, and very much taken with Lady Howe, but the latter seems to have been a curiously irresponsible person. Once, when she and her husband were driving with the Queen, she, being tired, coolly put her feet up on to her husband’s knee, and then rested them on the window-ledge, saying innocently to his distressed lordship, “What do you mean by shaking your head?”
On another occasion the Howes were assisting Adelaide to ticket things for a bazaar, and Lady Howe fell in love with some shoes; so, fitting one on, she put her foot on the table to show how well it set. Can anyone imagine a woman behaving like that before Queen Victoria? The autocratic manners of the Duchess of Kent are but a tale to us now, but her training of her daughter in modesty and decorous ways was a reality of which we still feel the benefit.
Queen Adelaide was the most confiding and rash of women; her theory of life was so simple that when one of her ladies tried to suggest caution to her in relation to Lord Howe, saying that the newspapers had been very ill-natured about her friendship for him, she replied that she knew that, but truth would always find its way. It did in her case, but she had personally to run the gauntlet of scandal. Lady Bedingfield remarked of her, “The Queen is so good and virtuous that she has no idea people could fancy that she likes him (Howe) too much.”