Party-spirit was, doubtless, aggravated on either side by the tone of the press. Influential cities announced their refusal to pay taxes, and tavern-clubs possessing pictures of King and Queen turned them heels uppermost, with an intimation that they should be righted as soon as the originals had made themselves right with the people. If Tories of eminence talked of coercing the King, Whigs equally exalted hinted at the possibility of sending his Consort to Germany, and of rousing the men of the provinces in order to make an impression upon people in high places. One well-known ‘man about town,’ presiding at a public dinner, refused to propose the Queen’s health, and among the lower caricature-shops she might be seen pictured wending her way, the ejected of England, to a dull, dreary, and unwelcoming Germany.
Publicly, however, she had her champions too. Mr. Baring, from his place in parliament, protested against the language of the Whig papers generally. His own description of it, as applicable to the Queen, was, that it comprised foul slander against the highest personage of a sex, from insulting which every manly mind would recoil. The gallant champion added, with less discretion, perhaps, that the full measure of scornful indifference and silent contempt with which the Queen repaid all the insults heaped upon her had elevated her in the hearts of those whose homage was a worthy tribute. Mr. Hume, ultra-reformer as he was, exhibited very excellent taste on this occasion, and pointed out in a few words marked by good common sense that the name of the exalted lady in question should never be dragged into the debates, the discussions, and the dissensions of that house.
Less, perhaps, by way of championship than in the character of consolers, did the bishops, or a certain number of them, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at their head, address Queen Adelaide. They had, previously, ‘been up’ to the King, who was just then being counselled in various ways by everybody, from wary old politicians to the ’prentice-boys of Derry. They brought to his Consort the usual complimentary phrases—but, in the present instance, they carried weight with the Queen, for amid the din of abuse with which she was assailed a few words of assurance and encouragement, of trust, counsel, and consolation, must have fallen pleasantly upon her ear. She said as much, at least, in a brief phrase or two, indicative of the satisfaction she experienced at hearing such words from such men, at a period when she was the object of so much undeserved calumny and insult.
The scene was, undoubtedly, made the most of by those who rejoiced most in its occurrence; perhaps too much was made of it; and this induced the ridicule of the opposite side. The ‘Times’ courageously denied its existence. The presentation of the prelates was admitted, but the Queen’s speech was defined as a hoax. There was nobody by, it was said, but the knot of diocesans and a body of maids of honour—and, of course, any report emanating from such a source was to be received with more than ordinary suspicion.
Long before the press had commenced directing an undesired notice upon the Queen private circles were canvassing her conduct with regard, especially, to this matter of reform. ‘By-the-bye,’ says Moore in his diary, ‘the Queen being, as is well known, adverse to the measure which is giving such popularity to her royal husband, reminds me a little of the story of the King of Sparta, who first gave his assent to the establishment of the Ephori. His wife, it is said, reproached him with this step, and told him that he was delivering down the royal power to his children less than he had received it. “Greater,” he answered, “because more durable.” This is just such an answer as William IV. would be likely to give to his wife. But the event proved the Spartan Queen to have been right, for the Ephori extinguished the royal power; and if Queen Adelaide’s bodings are of the same description, they are but too likely to be in the same manner realized’—a curious avowal from Lord Lansdowne’s Whig friend.
There are few things which more forcibly strike a student of the political literature of this period than its wide difference from that which now generally prevails. It seemed, in those days, as if no public writer could command or control his temper. The worst things were expressed in the worst forms, and writers had not reached, or did not care to practise, the better style by which a man may censure sharply without doing undue wrong to the object of his censure, without losing his own self-respect or forfeiting that of his readers.
Taken altogether, the year 1832 may be said to have been the most eventful and the least felicitous in the life of Queen Adelaide. It was a year which opened gloomily for the court, both politically and personally. At one of the small festivities held at the Pavilion, the King’s old friend, Mr. Greenwood, of the firm of Cox and Greenwood, Army Agents, was playing whist, after dinner, with the Queen for a partner, and the King and Sir Herbert Taylor for adversaries. During the progress of the game he was taken ill, became insensible, and, on being removed from the room by Sir Herbert and Lord Erroll, died in an adjoining apartment, within a quarter of an hour. The Queen was very much shocked at this incident, and the elder ladies about court, who thought it ominous of a fatal year—for already were movements hostile to monarchy becoming active—considered the next month’s omen of unpleasant significance too, when the fog in London, on the night of the anniversary of the Queen’s birthday, was so dense that not a lamp of illuminations was visible through the mist. Then ensued, in the subsequent spring, the unpleasant feud with the Sefton family, in which Queen Adelaide’s name was so prominent.
Soon after the temporary resignation of the Grey ministry, King William invited the Jockey Club to dinner at St. James’s Palace. Among the invited was old Lord Sefton, who was a Whig and something more, and who was resolved to avenge on the King the wrongs inflicted, as he assumed, by that dissembling monarch on his friends of the late administration. Lord Sefton accordingly withdrew from the club. The unsuspicious King at once invited him as a friend, but Lord Sefton was ungracious enough to absent himself, and did not condescend to restore the sovereign to favour till Lord Grey was once more at the helm of the national ship—steersman and captain too. His lordship and family appeared at the ball given by the Queen in May, to which, of course, they had been all invited. Meanwhile, however, the King had learned how he stood in the estimation of the Earl, meeting whom in the Queen’s ball-room, he turned his royal back upon him, publicly. Thence arose embittered feelings on the part of the offended peer. Vivere sat, vincere, ‘to conquer is to live enough,’ is the Sefton motto, and the bearers of it seem to have been determined to have this taste of life, by putting down the royal offenders, and appearing before them to enjoy their humiliation. ‘Lord Molyneux’ (Lord Sefton’s son, says Mr. Raikes, in his Diary) ‘has attended a public meeting at Liverpool, where he made a speech, and, actuated by his father’s feelings, alluded very bitterly to the conduct of both the King and Queen. He afterwards came to town, and appeared, with his family, at the ball. On the following day, the King commanded Mr. W. Ashley, as vice-chamberlain to the Queen, to write to Lord Molyneux, and request he would not appear at court again. Nothing could be more just. This is only a slight instance,’ adds the Tory Diarist, ‘of Whig insolence and ingratitude. Sefton has been made a peer, and treated with the most marked courtesy and attention by the present King.’
In the following June, Lord Lichfield, master of the buckhounds, prepared a list of guests invited by him to meet the King, at the conclusion of Ascot races, at dinner, at Lord Lichfield’s house, Fern Hill. The King expressly ordered that Lord Sefton should not be invited. Considering the offence, it was singular that any one should have thought of winning the Queen over to use her interest in influencing her husband to withdraw the command. Lady Lichfield, however, did so, intimating to her Majesty that, if the King had been moved by what was reported to have passed at the Jockey Club, she was enabled to say how that matter had been much misrepresented. The Queen confined all reply and comment to the words, coldly uttered, that she hoped it was so.
It certainly was not a period when Queens could expect to be cordial with people who insulted them, and whose speeches in public were exercising a very unwholesome influence on the more ignorant of the lower orders. At the above very Ascot races the King was grievously assaulted, in the Queen’s presence, by a ruffian in the crowd. Their Majesties had just taken their seats in the grand stand, and the King had then risen to salute the people in view, when the ruffian in question flung a stone at him, which struck the King on the forehead, but did not inflict any serious mischief. The assailant was let cheaply off; but Queen Adelaide was much distressed by his act, and the impression it made upon her was only increased, a week later, when she appeared with the King at the review in Hyde Park. There she was treated with such incivility and rudeness that at the fête at the Duke of Wellington’s, in the evening, where they held a little court, the Queen wore a spiritless and sorrowing aspect, while King William, his buoyant spirits all quenched, looked aged and infirm, weary of his vocation and vexations.