After this, events crowded thick and fast, and one of the first was the Royal removal to the New, or Buckingham, Palace, a place which Creevy stigmatised as “the Devil’s Own,” saying that there were raspberry-coloured pillars without end, enough to turn you sick to look at, and that the costly ornaments in the State rooms exceeded all belief in their bad taste and every kind of infirmity. It seems to-day strange to regard the London residence of the Monarch as being at Pimlico, and yet that is its true locality. On this removal The Times condescended to ask a conundrum: “Why is Buckingham Palace the cheapest that was ever built?” and proceeded to supply the answer, “Because it was built for one sovereign and furnished for another.” When the simply arranged bedroom at Kensington, which had for nearly eighteen years been shared by mother and child, was finally deserted, Victoria gave orders that the room should remain as it was, and nothing be removed or added.
There was the necessary Levée to be held, and so great was the curiosity that such a crowd attended as had never before been seen at such a function. Over two thousand people were present to kiss the Queen’s hand; diamond buckles were broken and lost, orders and decorations torn from their wearers, and epaulettes rubbed from the shoulders of officers. The Drawing Room the next day, in spite of torrents of rain, was more fully attended than it had been for many years. At the Levée Her Majesty was “black as a raven from head to foot, her hair was plainly dressed without ornament, but she wore the Ribbon of the Garter, with the Star on her left breast and the buckle on her left arm.”
When she found that the Garter had to be worn, the Queen sent for the Duke of Norfolk, and asked anxiously, “But, my Lord Duke, where shall I wear the Garter?” The Duke could only think of a portrait of Queen Anne, in which the Garter was placed on the left arm, and Victoria decided to follow that precedent.
At the Levée there is room for suspicion that the Queen did forget her good manners, though the lapse was not caused by girlish fright or nervousness. Among those whom she received was Lord Lyndhurst, and although she had shown “her usual pretty manner” to all who preceded him, as soon as he approached she drew herself up as though she had seen a snake, at which Lyndhurst turned as red as fire, and afterwards looked as fierce as a fiend.
Having just held a brief for the Queen’s good manners, I feel that this incident is somewhat awkward, especially as I cannot really tell why she was rude to Lyndhurst. She may have been affected by his lordship’s wonderful system of “ratting,” for he had a habit of making a speech against a Bill, say the Catholic Emancipation Bill, for example, or the Municipal Reform Bill, which became famous, and then when he found it good policy to change his views, would make another notable speech in its favour. Early in his career he held republican opinions, and thought little of the Whigs because their notions of reform were so mild; but when he showed himself extremely clever in defending a noted case, Lord Castlereagh—“carotid-cutting Castlereagh”—is reported to have said, “I can discover in him something of the rat, and I will set my trap for him, baited with Cheshire cheese”—meaning that he would offer him the office of Chief Justice of Cheshire.
The trap was set, and Lyndhurst, then plain John Copley, quietly—and perhaps gratefully—walked into it, and on the first vacancy became Solicitor-General to the King. It was said about him that he had danced round the Tree of Liberty to the tune of “Ça ira,” and yet became one of the most virulent opponents of all movements towards freedom. However, as Mackintosh said to Lord John Russell, it was with the Whig prospects, not their views, that he quarrelled, and it may have been just this which made the young Queen scorn him, and feel, as she once owned to Lord Melbourne, a personal dislike of him.
There is a little incident on record which shows just how complaisant he could be in any matter affecting his interest. A story got about, and was published in the newspapers, that the Duke of Cumberland had called upon Lady Lyndhurst, of whom Creevy said “she has such beautiful eyes and such a way of using them that quite shocked Lady Louisa and me,” and so grossly misbehaved himself that he was turned out of the house. He went a second time, when he contented himself with uttering coarse abuse of Lyndhurst. When this affair was made public, Cumberland sent a copy of a journal in which the paragraph appeared to the Lord Chancellor, as Lyndhurst then was, and asked that he should have Lady Lyndhurst’s permission to contradict “the gross falsehood.”
The thing was true, however, and the Chancellor felt in a fix; he could not fight a Royal Duke, and yet he wished to warn him not to repeat the offence. So he temporised; said he had not before seen the paragraph, which was no doubt one of a series of calumnies to which Lady Lyndhurst had for some time been exposed. This, however, did not satisfy Duke Ernest, who was anxious that his shady character should be cleared of this stain; so he wrote again, demanding a definite sanction to contradict the report. Upon this Lyndhurst, it is said, though seeing the result one hardly believes it, went to the national adviser, the Duke of Wellington, who counselled him to reply that he did not wish to annoy Lady Lyndhurst by speaking of this matter to her. To this he added that, as to excluding the Duke from their home, the grateful attachment they both felt for their Sovereign made that impossible. So the matter ended. Lyndhurst had cleverly evaded giving the Duke a straightforward answer—which was more like himself than like the Duke of Wellington—and had practically assured him that he would be received as a guest again in the house which he had abused. Lyndhurst would have seemed more admirable if he had been more of a man and less of a diplomatist; and it is quite likely that other incidents of this kind had occurred to make the young Queen, in her youthful zeal for probity, show her dislike for him publicly. Besides, had she not just inculcated virtue by proclamation, and declared the way in which she would reward evil-doers?
To do Lyndhurst justice, however, he seemed to bear her no malice, and when the storm, raised by The Times, gathered strength from her friendship for Melbourne and broke in fury upon her before she had been Queen many weeks, Lyndhurst sincerely lamented it. The Tories could not control their disappointment and anger when it was announced that Lord Melbourne was to continue Prime Minister, and they vilified the Queen at every opportunity. To quote from Lord Campbell, a contemporary: “The practice was to contrast her invidiously with Adelaide, the Queen Dowager, and at public dinners to receive the Queen’s health with solemn silence, while the succeeding toast of the Queen Dowager was the signal for long continued cheers. Some writers went so far as to praise the Salic law, by which females are excluded from the throne, pointing out the happiness we should have enjoyed under the rule of the Duke of Cumberland, but consoling the nation by the assurance that his line would soon succeed, as the new Queen, from physical defects, could never bear children.”
Well, after all, there was some reason for pitying the young, sonsie lassie who was then Queen of England!