CHAPTER II.
CHILDHOOD AND EDUCATION.
The previous chapter dwelt upon some serious drawbacks to the Queen’s happiness as a child. But if she was unfortunate in living in an atmosphere too highly charged with contention, her childhood was in another respect remarkably fortunate. Very few heirs to the throne have been brought up from infancy with an education carefully designed as a preparation for their future exalted station, combined with almost all the simplicity and domesticity of private life. But this unusual combination was secured for the Queen by the circumstances of her childhood. At the time of her birth the chances were decidedly against her succession. Even down to the last few months of his life, William IV. continued to speak of her as “Heiress Presumptive,” not as “Heiress Apparent” to the throne. He never probably completely relinquished the hope of having a child of his own to succeed him. In 1835 there had been rumors, which seemed well authenticated, that Queen Adelaide was about to give birth to a child. The absence of absolute certainty in the Princess Victoria’s prospects of the succession, the reluctance of her uncles and of Parliament to establish her and her mother with an income suitable to their rank and her future position, all worked together, in combination with the good sense of her mother, to secure for the little Princess a childhood free from much of the pomp, formality, and flattery from which an heir to the throne seldom even partially escapes.
While she was thus protected from many of the disadvantages associated with her rank, its advantages were not neglected. The Duchess of Kent gathered about her at Kensington Palace a great many of the representatives of the foremost minds of the day in literature, science, and in social reform. Nearly all the memoirs of distinguished men and women of that period contain some mention of their gracious reception at Kensington Palace by the Duchess, and the interest they had felt in seeing the little Princess. Among those who were received in this way may be mentioned Sir Walter Scott, Wilberforce, and Mrs. Somerville.
The Duchess of Kent made the suitable education of her child the one absorbing object of her life; and she seems to have realized that education does not consist in merely learning facts or acquiring accomplishments, but should also aim at forming the character and disciplining the whole nature, so that it may acquire conscientiousness and the strength which comes from self-government. Keeping this end ever in view, and aided, no doubt, by a responsiveness in the child’s own nature, the little Princess was trained in those habits of strict personal integrity which are the only unfailing safeguard for truthfulness and fundamental honesty in regard to money and other possessions. All observers who have been brought into personal relationship with the Queen speak of her as possessing one of the most transparently truthful natures they have ever known. The Right Hon. John Bright, with his Quaker-bred traditions as to literal exactitude in word and deed, said that this was the trait in her character of which he carried away the most vivid impression. An anecdote is given in “The Life of Bishop Wilberforce,” illustrative of the Queen’s truthfulness as a child. Dr. Davys, Bishop of Peterborough, formerly preceptor to Princess Victoria, told Dr. Wilberforce that when he was teaching her, one day the little Princess was very anxious that the lesson should be over, and was rather troublesome. The Duchess of Kent came in and asked how she had behaved. Baroness Lehzen, the governess, replied that once she had been rather naughty. The Princess touched her and said, “No, Lehzen, twice; don’t you remember?”
The financial side of truthfulness is honesty; and here again the Queen has instituted a new order of things in English royalty. We are so accustomed to the sway of a Sovereign who regards it as dishonest to owe more than she is ready and willing to pay, that we have almost forgotten that this was very far from being the case with her predecessors. Even the highly respectable Prince Leopold could not live within his income of £50,000 a year, and was £83,000 in debt when he became King of the Belgians in 1831.
Great attention was given to exactitude with regard to money in the Queen’s early training. There are many stories of the little Princess visiting shops and relinquishing some desired purchase because she had not money enough to pay for it. One of these anecdotes is preserved at Tunbridge Wells, and tells how the Princess Victoria, not having money enough to buy some greatly desired toy, so far went beyond her accustomed self-control as to ask the shopkeeper to reserve it for her till she had received a fresh instalment of her allowance for pocket-money, and that the child came on her donkey as early as seven o’clock in the morning to claim possession of the object she had set her heart on, the very instant she had the money to pay for it. Perhaps these lessons had their source from the frugal German Court of Coburg; but whatever their origin, they have stood the Queen in good stead, and have enabled her to set a perpetual good example to her subjects of the blessedness of obedience to the injunction, “owe no man anything.” It must not be forgotten, too, that she was not, throughout her girlhood, without an object lesson in the disagreeable consequences of extravagance. Her father had died in debt, and unless his creditors differed from the race of creditors in general, they did not fail during the seventeen years which elapsed between the Duke’s death and his daughter’s accession to remind his widow of the fact. One of the first acts of the young Queen on ascending the throne was to pay her father’s debts, contracted before she was born.
The scrupulousness with regard to money which was enjoined on her as a child has been one of the Queen’s many claims to the loyalty of her people. Miss Martineau, in her “Thirty Years’ Peace” (written about 1845), speaking of this aspect of Her Majesty’s education and character, has said, “Such things are no trifles. The energy and conscientiousness brought out by such training are blessings to a whole people; and a multitude of her more elderly subjects, to this day, feel a sort of delighted surprise as every year goes by without any irritation on any hand about regal extravagance—without any whispered stories of loans to the Sovereign—without any mournful tales of ruined tradesmen and exasperated creditors.”
A trifling circumstance may here be mentioned illustrative of the Queen’s economy in personal expenditure. A Paris dressmaker, of world-wide fame, recently (1893) brought an action against a rival who was trading under the same name. In the course of evidence given at the trial the celebrated modiste stated that he had made dresses for every Royal lady in Europe except Her Majesty the Queen of England. Indeed, every one who has seen the Queen, either in public or private, will agree that she is not indebted either to the dressmaker or milliner for the regal dignity which undoubtedly marks her bearing.
Of the Queen’s personal appearance as a child and young woman we have many contemporary records. Some of these speak in enthusiastic terms of her extreme loveliness as a child. One lady writes of a recent visit to the widowed Duchess: “The child is so noble and magnificent a creature that one cannot help feeling an inward conviction that she is to be Queen some day or other.” Other writers speak of her lovely complexion, fair hair, and large expressive eyes. Greville is less complimentary; but he was writing of a later period. Speaking of a child’s ball given at Court for the little Queen of Portugal in 1829, he says: “It was pretty enough, and I saw for the first time ... our little Victoria.... Our little Princess is a short, plain-looking child, and not near so good-looking as the Portuguese.” It was when this ball was first talked of that Lady Maria Conyngham gave dire offence to George IV. by saying, “Do give it, sir; it will be so nice to see the two little Queens dancing together.” There is no necessary inconsistency in these different accounts of Princess Victoria’s appearance. It is possible that a lovely infant may have become a plain child at ten years old. Of her appearance as she approached womanhood, Mr. N. P. Willis, an American, writing in 1835, describing his visit to Ascot, says: “In one of the intervals I walked under the King’s stand, and saw Her Majesty the Queen (Adelaide) and the young Princess Victoria very distinctly. They were leaning over the railing, listening to a ballad-singer, and seeming to be as much interested and amused as any simple country folk would be.... The Princess is much better looking than any picture of her in the shops, and for the heir to such a crown as that of England, quite unnecessarily pretty and interesting.”
