Bradshaw seemed miserable and upset, and saying that he could not live without honour, expressed himself ready to say anything that the two seconds agreed upon. So George Anson drew him up an apology. Horsman took back his words, and the matter ended.
At Ascot, in 1839, as the Queen’s cortège drove up the racecourse it was greeted with silence, only broken by occasional hisses. Poor little Queen! to have come to this in two years! This reception led to silly reports with—if they were true—sillier action behind them. The papers all got hold of some version of the same affair, and the substance of the article that appeared in The Morning Post was that Lady Lichfield had told the Queen that two of the most prominent among those who had thus annoyed Her Majesty were the Duchess of Montrose and Lady Sarah Ingestre; and, further, that those two ladies were informed—whether officially or not is not said—that the Queen knew of their action. The Duchess and Lady Sarah immediately saw Lady Lichfield, who denied that she had said anything about them, and on pressure gave an explicit denial in writing. When a Ball at Buckingham Palace followed the Ascot festivities, the two suspected of hissing discovered that they were out of favour; so the Duchess went to the Palace and requested an audience of Her Majesty. After being kept waiting for two hours, the Earl of Uxbridge told her she could not be admitted to an audience, as only Peeresses in their own right could demand such a privilege. Upon this, her Grace insisted that the Earl should take down in writing what she had to say and lay her communication immediately before the Queen. So the matter rested, until the Duke of Montrose thought it needful to open a correspondence with Melbourne on the subject. Then on July 5th The Times published a denial of part of the report, one which by no means exonerated the two accused ladies. “We are authorised to give the most positive denial to a report which has been inserted in most of the public papers, that the Countess of Lichfield informed the Queen that the Duchess of Montrose and Lady Sarah Ingestre hissed Her Majesty on the racecourse at Ascot, and there could have been no foundation for so unjust an accusation.” Thus Lady Lichfield was practically cleared, but the other two suspects were “where they were”; and the Queen? She remained under the unspoken imputation of being pettish and injudicious. But in those days she had not learnt the wisdom which came to her later, and when her dignity was wounded she was often too angry to use any tact, and would let the wound fester until it caused much ill-will.
CHAPTER XI
QUEEN VICTORIA’S TRAGIC MISTAKE
“It is really horrible that any family should be reduced to thank God for the blessing of depriving them of one of its dearest members.”—Lady Sophia Hastings.
“I think everyone should own their fault in a kind way to anyone, be he or she the lowest—if one has been rude to or injured them by word or deed, especially those below you. People will readily forget an insult or an injury when others own their fault, and express sorrow or regret at what they have done.”—Queen Victoria.
It was in 1839 that the most sad and regrettable event in the personal story of Queen Victoria’s reign took place, the affair known as the Lady Flora Hastings Scandal. Lady Flora, who was the eldest daughter of the Marquis of Hastings and of Lady Hastings—Countess of Loudoun in her own right—had been Lady in Waiting to the Duchess of Kent since 1834. Her name occurs as attending the Duchess at all Royal functions, and there was a feeling of real affection between her mistress and herself. In 1839 she was thirty-three years of age, a woman who had proved her uprightness and sincerity, yet, because of dissension at Court, because of the curious friction between the Queen and her mother, she was subjected to the bitterest calumnies.
Ever since her accession the gulf between the Queen and the Duchess had been widening, and there can be little doubt that Lehzen on the one hand and Conroy on the other were the people who, willingly or otherwise, were the cause of this. Victoria seems to have put the Baroness so high in her regard as to give her the place which the Duchess, with every justice and right, should have held. This was shown publicly as well as privately, for I have seen a paragraph in one paper of the day, that is to say of January, 1839, commenting upon the fact that the Queen had been three times to the theatre, accompanied on each occasion by the Baroness Lehzen, but not at all by the Duchess. The two Royal ladies lived, it is true, in the same house, and the Queen’s mother attended the Royal dinner table, and sat in the drawing-room afterwards with her daughter’s guests; but beyond that they were drifting towards a real and painful separation. The stories of Lehzen’s rudeness to the Duchess were not without foundation, and her spite against the Conroy family had in no way abated; thus, as Lady Flora was friendly with the Conroys and was regarded as one of the “set” around the Duchess she also was not much in favour.
In all quarrels there is some exaggeration, and some imagination as well as some truth; there is also generally great difficulty in justly deciding who is to blame; therefore it was only natural at the time that there should have been many who believed the calumnies against Lady Flora in spite of all the evidence in her favour. But to-day it is quite certain that she is fully exculpated, that she alone comes out of the trouble with honour.
Lady Flora returned from Scotland early in the year to her duties about the Duchess, feeling very unwell; so much so that she consulted Sir James Clark, physician both to the Duchess and to Her Majesty. The medical treatment and the exercise prescribed did her good, the swelling in her body subsided, and she thought she would soon be quite well. But this enlargement of her figure had given rise to a certain suspicion in the mind of the physician, which he was not man enough to mention delicately or professionally to his patient. He thought about it first, and then went to Lady Portman, one of the Queen’s ladies in waiting, and told her what he believed. Hearing such a thing from the doctor who had been in attendance upon Lady Flora made the suggestion a fact to Lady Portman.
The story goes that she confided in Lady Tavistock, who thought it her duty to repeat the information to Lord Melbourne, and eventually some or all of them laid the matter before the Queen. What share Baroness Lehzen bore in this little plot—for the way in which it was guarded from the persons really interested gave it the semblance of a plot—it is not easy to say, but later she was accused of being the centre of offence. It is probable that advice was all she tendered, but if that is so it was very bad advice, and it led the young Queen, who should have been above all meannesses, to do that which should and did cost her passionate regret and many tears. In the first instance, she was impulsively harsh and suspicious; when it was proved that there was no cause for either harshness or suspicion, she was just as repentant and eager to make amends. But when in the bitterly disturbed state of society the scandal grew out of hand and some signal mark was needed from her to clear Lady Flora’s honour, all her kindliness froze. She would neither take the blame nor allot it, but treated the whole affair with a stony silence. This was a terrible mistake! If only she could have put into practice the bravery of her own words, quoted at the head of this chapter, how much better it would have been!