It was judged that Prince George of Cambridge stood a good chance, for did not his Queen-cousin open the first State Ball in May, 1838, by dancing a quadrille with him? It is true that she also danced with young Prince Esterhazy—who married the daughter of the Earl of Jersey—with the Earl of Douro, the Earl of Uxbridge, and other noblemen, but then George was first honoured and was of her own age. While writing of this Ball, I must mention the Austrian Prince’s wonderful clothing at the third State Ball, which was given on June 18th, the second having been on Her Majesty’s birthday. He wore a pelisse of dark crimson velvet, his sword-belt thickly studded with diamonds, the hilt of the sword and scabbard simply encrusted with them; round his hussar cap were several rows of pearls, edging a string of diamonds, and all fastened with a diamond tassel. His Order of the Golden Fleece (suspended round his neck) and the stars and jewels of his other orders of knighthood were all set in diamonds and other precious stones. He must surely have looked like Prince Charming in a pantomime, and if any old men were there, he probably reminded them of the Regent who once went to a ball in pink satin, wearing a hat adorned with five thousand beads.
Of the first State Ball Greville says, with his usual touch of acidity: “Last night I was at the ball at the Palace—a poor affair in comparison with the Tuileries. Gallery ill-lit; rest of the rooms tolerable; Queen’s manner and bearing perfect. Before supper and after dancing she sat on a sofa somewhat elevated in the drawing-room, looking at the waltzing; she did not waltz herself. Her mother sat on one side of her, and the Princess Augusta on the other; then the Duchesses of Gloucester and Cambridge and the Princess of Cambridge; her household with their wands, standing all round; her manners exceedingly graceful, and blended with dignity and cordiality, a simplicity and good humour when she talks to people which are mighty captivating. When supper was announced she moved from her seat, all her officers going before her—she first, alone, and the Royal Family following; her exceeding youth contrasted with their maturer ages, but she did it well.” Lady Bedinfield commented upon the Queen at this ball: “The young Queen danced a good deal; if she were taller and less stout, she would be very pretty.”
However, to return to the suitors. What the Ministers, the Court, or even the Queen did not know on this matter the papers did, for they caught and crystallised in type every rumour, adding sufficient information to make them read like truth. In January, 1838, people said that the Queen was recalling Lord Elphinstone from the post which really spelt banishment for him. They added that she had sent him an autograph letter which greatly disconcerted the Cabinet, and that he would arrive before the Coronation, at which a new office would be created for his benefit. One commentator upon this remarked: “Our Ministers will find a young girl as difficult to manage as an old man; the vivacity of youth proves as perplexing as the obstinacy of age. The question of our hereditary government will shortly be agitated as well as that of our hereditary legislation; since it is quite certain that the King of Hanover, knowing his chance of succession, even should he survive the Queen, to be extremely doubtful, will stir up his party in this country to protest against Her Majesty’s free choice. The sooner the time comes the better.” This report was repudiated by The Times and The Morning Chronicle. However, The Satirist asserted that the matter was debated in the Cabinet and that a certain personage was with difficulty prevented from sending a letter she had written. The Times then declared that the Queen had never spoken to Lord Elphinstone. To which The Satirist answered with copies of two letters purporting to be written by Her Majesty, in the first of which she asked Elphinstone to return before her Coronation, promising to make him a Duke, which would ensure his attendance upon her. In the second absurd and vulgar production, quite obviously fictitious, she was made to say:
“I am so enraged I can scarcely hold the pen in my hand. That old pest, daddy Melbourne, having found out through Ma, who was told by the baroness that you and I were carrying on a correspondence—that horrible old pest, who certainly is the plague of my existence, has just been here to advise me—not to break off the match, for that I told him at once would be useless—but to relinquish the idea of having you home before I arrive at the age of twenty-one. The giving of this advice he said was a ‘duty’ which ‘State reasons’ compelled him to perform. I wish he were at Jerusalem. He would let me have nothing my own way if he could help it. Here I must remain now for nearly three years before I am permitted even to see you. Is it not dreadful? But I won’t, I’m determined I won’t wait so long as he says. I’ll get rid of him the very first opportunity, and if the Prime Minister will not consent to your immediate return, I’m determined that I’ll have no Prime Minister at all. For the present, however, I suppose I must yield to ‘State reasons,’ which are, in my mind, no reasons at all. But they sha’n’t keep you there much longer, be well assured of that.”
Whatever the young Queen’s desires may or may not have been, Lord Elphinstone did not see his native land again until about 1843, when Victoria was the happy mother of several children, and he was not invited to Court until 1846, being made a Lord-in-Waiting the following year.
Though, as has been said, the young Prince of Orange came over again he does not seem to have done himself much credit, eliciting the judgment from one diarist that he had made a great fool of himself here supping, dancing, and indulging in little (rather innocent) orgies at the houses of Lady Dudley Stuart and Mrs. Fox, who, the story went, escorted him—when, to his infinite disgust, he had to go home—as far as Gravesend, “where they (the ladies) were found the next day in their white satin shoes and evening dresses.”
Behind all other rumours, however, lurked the idea that Albert of Saxe-Coburg would be Victoria’s bridegroom, an idea which more or less oppressed the girl-Queen. Whether there was any real truth in the report about Lord Elphinstone, or whether she wished to wield her power independently for a time, it is impossible to say, but early in 1838, and again in July, 1839, she wrote to her uncle Leopold that she had no intention of marrying for several years to come; and after her accession she entirely ceased corresponding with her cousin. The Coburgs were not regarded by those about the Queen as likely to prove attractive to her, being criticised as “simple” and too “Deutsch.” Palmerston said of them: “After being used to agreeable and well-informed Englishmen, I fear the Queen will not easily find a foreign prince to her liking,” and the national prejudice showed itself in such contemptuous phrases about anything they did as, “How unlike an Englishman!”
But the Queen’s attitude did not seem seriously to trouble Leopold, who went on training his nephew, writing of him to Stockmar on one occasion: “If I am not much mistaken in Albert, he possesses all the qualities required to fit him completely for the position he will occupy in England. His understanding is sound, his apprehension clear and rapid, and his feelings correct. He has great powers of observation, and possesses much prudence, without anything about him that can be called cold or morose.”
In later years Victoria was sad over her decision not to marry, saying that she could not think without indignation of her wish to keep the Prince waiting, at the risk of ruining his prospects, perhaps for three or four years until she felt inclined to marry, and she put her vacillation down to the fact that the sudden change from the seclusion of Kensington Palace to the independent position of being Queen Regnant diverted her mind entirely from marriage. She went so far as to “bitterly repent” this very natural result of her early life and her peculiar position; yet she might have known that, given the circumstances and her temperament, it was the only result to expect.
But Victoria at this time did not entirely break off the engagement, and as a sign of this she instructed Stockmar to journey with the Prince when he travelled through Italy in search of that thing so zealously desired in the early part of the nineteenth century, “the completion of his education.”