The season, certainly, was not one for monarchs to be abroad in with joyous exterior. In the summer of this year there passed through London a princess whose story bore with it a great moral to the wearers of crowns—the Duchess of Angoulême, the daughter of Louis XVI. She had experienced the widest extremes of fortune, but had been longest and most intimately acquainted with misfortune. She was again a fugitive and an exile—one never destined to behold her country again. The Queen visited her at her modest apartments in Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, and she took leave of that illustrious victim of many revolutions with evil forebodings of the issue of the spirit of the then present time. Her Majesty did not, indeed, lack a certain spirit of her own wherewith to meet the other and revolutionary spirit. Thus, when her friend and faithful servant, Lord Howe, was compelled to give up his office of chamberlain to the Queen, his mistress would never accept the nomination of any other person to the same post. Lord Howe remained in attendance upon his mistress unofficially; but he positively refused to be reinstated by Lord Grey, to whom his reply was, ‘That he had been wantonly dismissed by him, and would receive no favour at his hands.’ The act of Lord Grey was, probably, far more keenly felt at court than that of the two new radical members (Messrs. Wigney and Faithful) returned for the royal borough of Brighton, and who, ‘under the very nose of the court,’ as it was said, ‘talked openly of reducing the allowance made to the King and Queen.’ This was a foolish speech; but there was an even more indiscreet tongue within the Pavilion than those of the new radical senators without. In 1833, the King himself declared in favour of a republican form of government! What must the feelings of Queen Adelaide have been—she who had a horror of revolutions and a hatred for republicanism—on that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday evening, the 6th of January, 1833? The American Minister was a guest at the dinner table that evening. At the dessert, the King, instead of wisely going to sleep, as he was accustomed to do after his second glass of wine, would be lively and talkative. When he was in this vein he was addicted to make speeches, and on this occasion, before the ladies had retired, he delivered himself of a very notable one, considering the times and the speaker, in which he expressed his great regret that he had not been born a free, independent American, seeing that he entertained deep respect for the United States, and considered Washington to be the greatest man that ever lived. Queen Adelaide must have been astounded when listening to this profession of political faith, and to this eulogy of a man who had struck the brightest jewel out of the crown of his panegyrist’s royal father!
To old royalists such a speech as the above savoured of that period which is called ‘the end of the world.’ Speculative individuals who heard of it were amazed. ‘The aristocracy are hourly going down in the scale; royalty is become a mere cypher.’ Well might Mr. Raikes make this entry in his journal, when a King of England manifested a liking for ‘rowdyism.’ The influences of these passing events, even on men of intellect, are well marked by a contemporary passage in the diary of the merchant, whose commercial affairs were going the way he fancied the monarchy was tending. ‘I was walking the other day,’ he writes, in February 1833, ‘round the Royal Exchange, the enceinte of which is adorned with the statues of all our Kings. Only two niches now remain vacant; one is destined to our present ruler, and that reserved for his successor is the last. Some people might say it was ominous.’ So, indeed, it proved to be; half-a-year after the accession of Queen Victoria, when there were as many niches as there had been sovereigns, and room for no more, destruction ensued, but it was the Royal Exchange that fell (by fire), and not the monarchy. That has grown stronger. May it ever so flourish!
Meanwhile, it is to be observed that Queen Adelaide after this time began to re-conquer the popular esteem. When, in July 1834, she embarked at Woolwich as Countess of Lancaster, on board the royal yacht, for Rotterdam, in order to visit her relations in Germany, the spectators of the scene received her with demonstrations of great respect, and on her return, in the following month, she landed at the same place amid acclamations of loyalty and welcome.
It was after her return that the King began to bear symptoms of restlessness and fatigue, which betokened that decay which gradually made progress, and was ultimately accelerated in 1837, when his daughter, Lady de Lisle, died, to the grief of many, but especially to the heart of her father.
As the King’s health began to give way, so also did his temper more easily yield before such provocations, and more freely did he indulge in that early acquired habit of using strong expletives which has been noted, in her diary, by Fanny Burney. William the Conqueror, it is said, used to ungallantly beat his wife, Matilda, of whom he was otherwise so fond. William the Fourth was guilty of an offence only next to it in criminality—by swearing in presence of his consort, Adelaide. There is a well-known instance of this told in connection with a visit to the Royal Academy, in 1834. The occasion was that of a private view, with a very large public attendance at Somerset House. The President of the Royal Academy received the illustrious visitors, and accompanied them through the rooms. In the course of their progress he pointed out to the King the portrait of Admiral Napier, who had recently been in command of the Portuguese fleet for Don Pedro. The King’s political wrath was too strong for his infirmity, and, without forgetting the presence of his wife, nay, making such presence an excuse for not breaking forth into greater unseemliness, he exclaimed: ‘Captain Napier may be d——d, sir! and you may be d——d, sir! and if the Queen was not here, sir, I would kick you down stairs, sir.’ Such a scene indicated as much infirmity as bad taste on the part of the chief actor, and must have sorely tried the patience and shaken the dignity of the Queen. She now, perhaps, as much or more than ever, required the support of those nearest to her. The old prejudices of the reform time against her had not yet died out, and to these was to be added certain malignity in foreign papers; a malignity which culminated in 1835 in the ‘Gazette de France,’ which paper seriously asserted that England was endeavouring to revolutionize Spain and Portugal, with ulterior purposes of pursuing the same course in Germany and Italy as she had done in Belgium and in Greece; and that at the head of this conspiracy for reconstructing Europe were William the Fourth, the Duke of Wellington, and Queen Adelaide! Thus, the lady who had seldom during her life desired more than to be permitted to enjoy it tranquilly, and who had but little perplexed herself touching the ways of others, was held up, after being accused of being a political meddler at home, as being a political conspirator abroad.
When her royal consort’s indisposition assumed an appearance of increased gravity, Queen Adelaide at once took her place by his couch, and never left but when compelled by gentle restraint put upon her by those who loved her, and who feared for her own health. ‘Les reines’ (says a French writer) ‘ont été vues pleurantes comme de simples femmes,’ and she was one of them. Her constancy only gave way, and she broke into profuse but silent tears, on the eve of the old King’s death, as the Archbishop of Canterbury concluded the service of the sick, by pronouncing the solemn words of the benediction as contained in the Liturgy of the Church. The good old monarch looked with affection upon his sorrowing Queen, and with as cheerful a voice as he could put on, and almost in nautical phrase, begged her to be of good heart and to ‘bear up! bear up!’
The Rev. Mr. Browne, Vicar of Atwick, rendering testimony to her conduct on this occasion, said in a funeral sermon: ‘She was by the King’s bedside, a being so full of devoted love and pious resignation, of such meekness, gentleness, and goodness, and sweetness, that an angel might have beheld her with satisfaction and delight, and almost with advantage.’ She did her duty like a true wife and tender woman; and Mr. Browne thought that, altogether, Queen Adelaide might have afforded an useful hint or two even to angels! It is more than the good Queen ever dreamed of.
The Archbishop of Canterbury was in close attendance upon the King during the last days of his life, in 1837, and in the course of his ministrations saw more of Queen Adelaide than any other individual there present had the opportunity of doing. At a meeting of the Metropolitan Churches’ Fund Society, the primate went fully, but tenderly and sensibly, into this solemn matter; and after rendering due, but not over-piled, measure of justice to the King, spoke in these words of his consort:—‘For three weeks prior to his dissolution the Queen sat by his bedside, performing for him every office which a sick man could require, and depriving herself of all manner of rest and refection. She underwent labours which I thought no ordinary woman could endure. No language can do justice to the meekness and to the calmness of mind which she sought to keep up before the King, while sorrow was preying on her heart. Such constancy of affection, I think, was one of the most interesting spectacles that could be presented to a mind desirous of being gratified with the sight of human excellence.’
The spectacle at the close was one most touching of all, for old King William, threescore and twelve, died at last in a gentle sleep, as he sat up on his couch, his hand resting, where it had lain undisturbed for hours, on the shoulder of the Queen. Such had been her office at various times, daily, for the preceding fortnight; and when it shall have been a little more hallowed by time, it will be a fitting subject to be limned by some future artist competent to treat it.
Since the death of Charles II. no King of England had died under the same roof with his wife; and then there was no such touching scene as the above, but only a few words of decent reconciliation before the royal pair parted for ever, and the wife (leaving the husband to die at leisure and commend worthless women to his brother’s protection) went to her chamber to receive the formal news of his death, and finally to receive the condolence of visitors, lying the while on a state bed of mourning, in a chamber lighted with tapers, the walls, floor, and ceiling covered with black cloth. Queen Adelaide stayed by her husband to the last, then laid his unconscious head upon the pillow, and, quietly withdrawing to her chamber, looked for consolation to other sources than the visits of courtiers shaping their faces to the humour of the hour.