“Oh, do!” answered the King. “I wish I could live for ten years for the sake of the country. I feel it my duty to keep well as long as possible.”
Just after the birthday King William wrote to the Duchess of Kent, offering to form an independent household for the Princess; but this she sharply declined, and we are told the reply was couched “in very unsatisfactory terms.”
But William could not bear that this girl should not benefit in some way personally from her majority, so he wrote her a letter, offering her the sum of ten thousand a year from his own purse which was to be regarded as her very own, independent of her mother’s income. This letter was given to the Lord Chamberlain, then Lord Conyngham, with instructions that he was to give it to no one but the Princess. Conyngham went to Kensington and was received by Sir John Conroy, who met his request to see the Princess by asking on what authority did he make such a demand—which certainly seems to justify the King’s doubt as to there being fair play at Kensington, and also proves that Victoria was not allowed to receive visitors.
“On the authority of His Majesty the King,” replied Lord Conyngham.
Upon this Conroy disappeared, and after an interval the Chamberlain was ushered into the presence of the Duchess and the Princess. Bowing low, Conyngham said he had been charged by His Majesty with a letter for the Princess Victoria, and at this the masterful mother at once held out her hand to receive the precious missive.
“Pardon me, madam,” said the courtier, “I have been expressly commanded by the King to deliver this into the Princess’s own hand.”
It must have been a humiliating moment for the proud woman, and it was but the first of many such. The Princess took the letter, and Conyngham bowed himself out of the room. To the intense anger of the Duchess, her daughter wrote affectionately to her uncle, accepting the kind offer made to her. William then named a responsible person who was to receive this money for her, and the usual dispute began, for the Duchess thought she should be the disburser of the sum, of which she proposed taking six thousand pounds and giving Victoria four thousand.
This is true, though it reads with all the dramatic interest of fiction, and the effect is heightened by our ignorance of the girl who was the unhappy and unwilling cause of these quarrels. For seven years she had suffered from these violent and futile disputes between two persons whom she loved, and who, though loving her well, yet loved their own conception of what was good for her so much that they were ready to make her miserable. Who uttered the last word in this quarrel no one knows, for it was never settled, and Victoria had no need of the ten thousand a year.
Everyone knew now that the King was dying. The Court dreaded death, for there was no forecasting events. What would happen to the country with a bit of a girl at its head—a girl who had been rarely seen among them, who never came to Court, and who seemed timid and retiring? One cannot wonder that the forgotten dislike of Leopold rose to fever heat, that the wildest stories were told of the Camarilla at Kensington, and that it was reported that the new Royal Household was all planned and the members of it named—all entirely without taking the Princess into consideration. She did not count with the public or with the Press; she was the merest cipher. She would be Queen, of course—that was admitted—but the people with whom England would have to deal would be the Duchess and Leopold, Conroy and Lord Durham, the Coburgs, and the tribe of Germans who had already inflamed resentment in some quarters. Lord Durham was on his way home, and his return was regarded with keen curiosity, for it was felt that he would probably play a great political part, and would influence materially the Councils of the Queen.
A few years later, however, it was a well-known fact, though since forgotten, that the whole of the appointments to be filled in the Royal Household upon the death of William IV. and the formation of Her Majesty’s domestic establishment had been arranged in accordance with the political notions, not of the Duchess of Kent, but of Victoria’s uncle, the Duke of Sussex, in conjunction with Lord Melbourne, in both of whom she reposed great confidence.