It is said that when the news of the death of George IV. was announced to the Duchess of Clarence the new Queen burst into tears. The prayer-book she held in her hand at the moment she conferred on the noble messenger, as a memorial of the incident and of her regret. The messenger looked, perhaps, for a more costly guerdon; but she was thinking only of her higher and stranger duties. If Queen Adelaide really regretted that these now had claims upon her, not less was their advent regretted by certain of the labouring poor of Bushey, whose harvest-homes had never been so joyous as since the Duke and Duchess of Clarence had been living among them.
The course of life of the new Queen was only changed in degree. Her income was larger, so also were her charities. Her time had more calls upon it, but her cheerfulness was not diminished. Her evenings were generally given up to tapestry work, and as she bent over the frame many of the circle around her already sorrowingly remarked that the new Queen, though not old in years, seemed descending into the vale of life.
The esteem of her husband for her was equal to her merits. His affection and respect were boundless; and when the senate granted her, on the motion of Lord Althorpe, 100,000l. per annum, with Marlborough House and Bushey Park, in case she survived the King, the good old monarch was the first to congratulate her, and was pleased to put her in office himself, by appointing her Perpetual Ranger of the Park, which was to become her own at his decease.
William IV. was not forgetful of his old loves, and Queen Adelaide was not jealous of such memories. She looked more indulgently than the general public did on the ennobling of his children of the Jordan family. If that step could have been met by objections in these later days, it was at least supported by that amazingly powerful but sometimes perilous engine, precedent. Though indeed there was precedent for the contrary; and perhaps the husband of Queen Adelaide would have manifested a greater sense of propriety on this occasion had he rather followed the decent example, in a like matter, of the scrupulous Richard the Third than that of Henry the Eighth or the Second Charles.
There was another ennobling, however, which the public as warmly approved as the Queen heartily sanctioned. In 1834, her husband raised to the dignity of a Baroness the lady who had declined to share with him whatever of higher or more equivocal honour he could have conferred by marrying her. In that year Miss Wykeham became, by the grateful memory and good taste of her old royal lover, Baroness Wenman of Thame Park, Oxon. This testimony of the memory of an old affection was an act to be honoured by a Queen, and to it that royal homage was freely tendered. Inquirers, on turning over the peerage books, may discover many honours conferred on women too ready to listen to the suit of a monarch; but here, for the first time, was a title of nobility presented to a lady who had declined to give ear to royal suit, paid in honesty and honour. Baroness Wenman bore her honours with grace and dignity till her death, in 1870.
There was something chivalrous in the bearing of the King towards ladies; hearty, but a courteous heartiness. This sort of tribute he loved to render to his wife; and there was nothing so pleasant to hear, in his replies to addresses after his accession, as the gallant allusions to the qualities of the Queen, who stood at his side serenely satisfied. This heartiness was not an affectation in him. It was of his nature; and another phase of his character was manifested by King William at the first dinner after he ascended the throne, at which his relations only were present. On that pleasant occasion, although it was a family dinner, he gave as a toast, ‘Family peace and affection;’ it was the hearty sentiment of a citizen King who loved quiet and simple ways, who walked the streets with his intimate friends, and often occupied the box-seat of his open carriage, turning round to converse with the Queen inside. King William took much interest in the first lady whom his brother, George IV., had married. Mrs. Fitzherbert resided some part of the year at Brighton. The King visited her, and invited her to the Pavilion. He authorised her to put her servants in the royal livery, and to wear widow’s weeds for his late brother. On Mrs. Fitzherbert paying her first homage to Queen Adelaide, the King went down to her carriage to meet her, took her by the hand, and introduced her to his consort and all the members of his family who were present. Mrs. Fitzherbert told Lord Stourton that ‘she was herself much surprised at the great composure with which she was able to sustain a trial of fortitude which appeared so alarming at a distance.’ After this she was frequently a guest. Queen Adelaide was a gentle hostess, and the royal Sunday dinners were as elegant as they were comfortable. Mrs. Fitzherbert very decidedly declined being made a Duchess.
When Adelaide became Queen-consort some persons who would not have been ill-pleased to see her fail affected to fear that the homely Duchess would prove to be unequal to the exigencies of the queenly character. One exalted person hinted that, in this matter, she would not do ill were she to take counsel of the Princess Elizabeth of Hesse Homburg, ‘than whom none could better record to her Majesty the forms and usages and prescriptions of the court of Queen Charlotte.’ But Queen Adelaide needed no such instruction as the good daughter of George III. could give her. She observed the forms and usages that were worthy of observance; and as for prescriptions, she could prescribe readily enough when duty demanded the service, as the Church felt, with mingled feelings, when she declined to invite clergymen to her state balls or her dancing soirées. The dancing clergy had their opportunity for censure when the King and Queen gave dinner-parties on the Sunday.
The court was essentially a homely court. The two sovereigns fed thousands of the poor in Windsor Park, and looked on at the feasting. The Queen went shopping to Brighton fancy fairs, and when on one occasion she bent to pick up the ‘reticule’ which an infirm old lady had dropped, as much was made of it as of the incident of King Francis, who picked up (or did not pick up) Titian’s pencil, and handed it to that sovereign gentleman among artists.
Then the new sovereigns paid more private visits than any pair who had hitherto occupied the British throne. While the Queen called on Sir David and Lady Scott at Brighton, her royal husband, with whom she had just previously been walking on the Esplanade, would suddenly appear at the door of some happy but disconcerted old admiral, and invite the veteran and his wife to dinner. To the hearty ‘Come along, directly,’ if there was a glance from the lady at her toilet, the citizen King would encourage her by an intimation never to mind it, for he and his wife were quiet people; ‘and, indeed,’ as he once remarked, ‘the Queen does nothing after dinner but embroider flowers.’ Which, indeed, was true enough, and, to tell the truth, very dull did the finer people find it.
The consequence of this familiarity of the sovereigns with their humbler friends was a rather audacious familiarity ventured upon by people who left their queer names in the book at the King’s door, and more than once successfully passed it, and penetrated to the Queen’s drawing-room. This evil, however, was soon remedied. There were other matters Queen Adelaide was bold enough to, at least, attempt to remedy. Indecorousness of dress in a lady she would censure as sharply as Queen Charlotte; and if, when Mrs. Blomfield appeared at her first drawing-room in a ‘train of rich immortal velvet,’ as the fashionable chroniclers of the day called it, she did not even hint surprise, it was, perhaps, out of respect for the successor of the Apostles, of whom that good but richly velvetted lady was the honoured wife.