She wept to wear a crown!”
Elizabeth Barrett [Browning].
On May 24th, 1837, Princess Victoria attained her majority, being eighteen years of age; and the King knew that his prayer had been answered. He arranged a magnificent State ball in honour of the event; but his day for balls was over, for just as the nine months he had asked for expired, he was taken ill, and though he rallied several times he did not again show himself in public. Queen Adelaide did not fill the part of hostess either, for she was too anxious about her husband to leave him. She was a good wife and, notwithstanding all the evil said of her, a good woman. I have not in all my researches come across—apart from her political bias—a single instance of any act or word on her part which could be brought forward to her discredit. But to be no lover of pomp, show, or dress was a sufficiently serious omission to condemn any Queen in the eyes of her Court.
This wonderful birthday meant a busy time for the Princess. She was awakened in the morning by music outside her window, composed and arranged by Mr. Rodwell, concerning which a sneering comment was made that Rodwell had made “an ass of himself on the Princess’s birthday by braying under her window.” There were many costly gifts to receive—the King sent her a beautiful piano—and many deputations from public bodies to take her attention. With these the Duchess was in her element, for she was almost as fond of making speeches as was the King; but the Princess still, and for the last time, played the part of the child in public, standing by and listening to the wise and indiscreet sayings of her mother. Well, it was the Duchess’s last chance, too, though she did not know it, for her sun was setting just when she thought it was rising to the mid heavens.
When a deputation from the City of London came to make a pretty speech, Her Royal Highness was true to her custom of not forgetting an injury. Though eighteen years had passed, and George IV. had long been in his grave, she still nourished the slights that had been put upon her on her arrival in England. The Duchess of Clarence had not been welcomed with open arms, the Duchess of Cumberland had for years been ignored by the Royal Family, but these two ladies treated the matter in dignified silence. However, the Duchess of Kent had done everything she could to keep alive bad feeling, and on this day, which should have been given over to kindliness, she reminded the gentlemen from the City that when the Duke of Kent died she and the Princess “stood alone, almost friendless and unknown in this country. I could not even speak the language of it.” Then she went on to point out that, in spite of all, she had done her best to bring up her daughter to be the true Sovereign of the nation; that she had put her into intercourse with all classes of people, and had taught her that the protection of popular liberties and the preservation of the constitutional prerogatives of the Crown were the proper aims of a Monarch.
It was not a long speech, but it was scarcely calculated to be soothing reading for the irascible and ailing King.
The village of Kensington—it was a village in those days, the Duchess appreciating for her child the good air of the country lanes—was en fête for the birthday; a great flag of white silk, inscribed in gold with the name of Victoria, was hoisted over the Palace, and Union Jacks were run up on the church and on the Green, to say nothing of every house showing its regard by the exhibition of flags. A general holiday was declared, and at the State ball given that night it is safe to believe that Victoria grieved at the absence of the King and Queen, even though there was always fear of discomfort when they and her mother met. There had been further strained relations in April of this year, when Lady de Lisle, one of the King’s—his favourite—daughters, died at Kensington Palace, of which she was the custodian. During her illness the Duchess carried her resentment so far as to pay her no attention, and the Court Journal announced that a party, of distinguished guests who had been invited to dinner, was not put off, though Lady de Lisle lay dead in the Palace. A bitter comment upon this was made that, when the Duchess’s confectioner, being insane through drink, had committed suicide a little while earlier, all festivities had been stopped out of sympathy for the man’s wife.
At the May Drawing Room, probably in retaliation for this, all the men attached to the Duchess’s household were excluded by Royal mandate from being present, giving rise to the remark that “the necessity for this suspension of privilege must have been very great, as from what everybody knows of the kind disposition of the King, he would not have exercised his prerogative in a way that cannot otherwise be understood than as an act of censure.”
The poor old King was still in fear about his country; he did not believe, as many did, that Victoria was too delicate to live long, but he did think her too young to reign, for he knew that her general attitude was one of gentle obedience to her mother, and he thought that when he was dead the Duchess of Kent would be virtually Queen of England. It is said that about five days before he died he praised God for the good sleep he had had, and the Queen said:
“And shall I pray to the Almighty that you may have a good day?”