One of the silliest customs of the Coronation was the flinging of medals about behind the throne, that is to say, between the altar steps and the choir. On this occasion Lord Surrey, the Lord Treasurer of the Household, flung them right and left, and there was a pretty scramble; maids of honour, peers, generals, goldsticks, robed aldermen wrestled and fought, some getting more than their share, and some less. The judges, however, felt themselves enclosed in the dignity of the law, they did not scramble or move, but pathetically wooed the fates by standing stiffly erect and holding out their hands. Such a “good boy” attitude ought to have been rewarded, but alas, not one of them caught a falling piece of silver.
Lord Dalhousie was struck with the absence of popular enthusiasm and of reverence inside the Abbey, and Carlyle’s commentary upon the event is scarcely cheerful. He had been invited to the Montagues’ window to see the procession, and he went there, though he gave away his invitation ticket to the Abbey.
“Crowds and mummery are not agreeable to me. The Procession was all gilding, velvet and grandeur; the poor little Queen seemed to have been greeting; one could not but wish the poor little lassie well; she is small, sonsy, and modest—and has the ugliest task, I should say, of all girls in these Isles.” He added to this, “She is at an age when a girl can hardly be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself; yet a task is laid on her from which an archangel might shrink.”
C. R. Leslie, the artist, told of her that as soon as she returned to Buckingham Palace after this long day she hurried to put off all the splendid signs of royalty that she might give her spaniel Dash its bath. A similar incident is related of her return from opening her first Parliament. An old Court official watched her as she re-entered the Palace, being much impressed with her dignity as she crossed the rooms of St. James’s. He wondered if this would last when she was alone, and curiously followed her as she went through a door leading to the staircase which led to her own apartments. There at the foot of the staircase he saw her roll her train round her arm, pick up her dress all round, and run up two steps at a time, calling to her dogs.
This mixture of dignity and girlishness is very endearing, as those who have watched youthful womanhood well know.
The year of the Coronation was a year of small things as far as the Court was concerned, a year of steady tramping along the road of disaffection among the better-class politicians, and a year of endeavour to do the right thing on the part of the Queen, relieved by an occasional autocracy of manner which led her to do the wrong thing. Relations between herself and her mother became more and more strained, so much so that it was a matter of public comment. Conroy still hung about the Duchess and was still maligned in the papers, The Times toward the end of the year being found guilty of libelling him by saying that he bought property in Wales which he had paid for, though not with his own money. On the other hand, the tradesmen who served the Duchess of Kent presented Sir John Conroy with plate to the value of £400, to show their appreciation of the kindness and urbanity with which he had invariably treated them.
The Age now changed its tone; instead of vilifying the Duchess and all her friends, it chose to regard her as a martyr, against whom plots were formed by the foreign Camarilla, which included Leopold, Lehzen, Stockmar, Sir James Clark (Physician), Sir Henry Seton, and any foreigners who might be at Court or passing through. It asserted now that the ruin of Conroy was part of a plot for alienating mother and daughter, and placing the latter more firmly under foreign influence; but there are people who would scarcely consider £3,000 a year pension as ruin.
The Baroness Lehzen, of whom Lady Normanby said that she was a kind and motherly person to the young Maids of Honour, retained her position with the Queen, and the more firmly she seemed to be established the more furiously did one section of the public and the Press hate her. One or two examples will show the way in which the more outspoken papers wrote of her; and all had the idea at the back of their anger that she was pushing forward with all her influence the pretensions of Albert of Saxe-Coburg, who, surrounded by Catholic belongings, would do some frightful, undescribed, and impossible deeds when settled in power. It was all wild, stupid, and hysterical, yet somewhat amusing to look back to now.
It should be remembered that Fräulein Lehzen was the daughter of a Lutheran clergyman, and that she came to England with the Duchess of Kent as a governess or nursery governess to Princess Féodore. A Lutheran clergyman was not likely to be a man of any particular rank, but he was at least a man of thought; he may have been very poor, as a large proportion of clergymen have been all through the ages, and his daughters may have, most likely did, help in the work of the house and gardens. This, however, is but surmise in an endeavour to explain the absurd reproaches levelled at the Baroness. Thus writes the Age, which was bitterly hated by the Whigs, because it published every little fault and prank of the men of their party; a paper which they naturally, under the circumstances, said to be simply a lying, scandalous rag, but which, as a matter of fact, was often very astute, and told the truth with just that touch of exaggeration which gave it the necessary allurement.
“On public grounds we are determined to let the country know the detestable schemes by which a foreign Camarilla rules in the Palace [now Buckingham, not Kensington, Palace], to which the noble and virtuous of the land are not invited—nor would they go if they were. [The last sentence is somewhat reminiscent of the fox and the grapes.] We do not object to the Baroness because she was originally a milk girl, but because of her manner and behaviour, especially to the Duchess of Kent. She has rendered herself most hateful to the people of England, because her connection with Leopold, through his creature Stockmar, is calculated to inflict the deepest injury upon the Sovereign and the country generally; because she is a bad-hearted woman; and because she is trying to bring about a union at once mercenary and distasteful.”