The political storms of 1832 appear to have broken noiselessly against the walls of Kensington Palace, for in the little Princess’s Journals there is no sign that she was aware of them. The King’s worries, however, so affected his temper, that it was impossible for the Princess and her mother not to feel its reflex action. In the Journals no mention is made of the domestic troubles which have been described elsewhere, and we know, from expressions of Queen Victoria’s in later years, that she had purposely refrained, in compiling her Journals, from referring to her mother’s worries and her own.
During the four years that immediately preceded Princess Victoria’s accession to the Throne, from 1832 to 1836, these Journals give us the picture of a young life passed amid the tranquil surroundings of Kensington Palace, its educational monotony only varied by attendance at the opera or the theatre, by autumnal trips into the provinces, or by welcome visits from foreign cousins. These autumnal trips were the “royal progresses,” as he called them, against which King William was wont to protest in vehement language. They evidently gave intense pleasure to the Princess. Her Journals contain records of them all. Some examples have been given, in these extracts, of her method of describing her visits to provincial cities and towns, to seaside summer resorts, and to a few of the great homes of those who were afterwards to be her Ministers or subjects.
It was during this period that she got her first glimpse of the Isle of Wight, where so much of her life was afterwards to be spent. The fact that Sir John Conroy, whom she disliked, lived for many years at Osborne Lodge seems not to have prevented her from subsequently becoming deeply attached to that quiet home amid beautiful surroundings created by her and Prince Albert upon the site where Osborne Lodge had stood. Whippingham Church, to be so closely connected with her and her children, was first visited in the year 1833.
Enough has been included in these extracts to show her liking for the opera and for the theatre, her pleasure in music, her devotion to the pursuit of riding, and that love for animals which characterised her through life.
When she was sixteen she went to Ascot for the first time, and figured in the royal procession. It began to be recognised that the young Princess had passed the threshold of girlhood. In that year her Confirmation took place at the Chapel Royal, St. James’s, and Archbishop Howley, believed to be the last prelate who wore a wig, officiated. During the autumn she visited Yorkshire and stayed with Archbishop Harcourt at Bishopthorpe and with Lord Fitzwilliam at Wentworth. Coming south, she was the guest of the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir, of Lord Exeter at Burghley, and of Lord Leicester at Holkham. In the following year, 1836, she met for the first time her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. He and his elder brother Ernest visited Kensington Palace at the instance of her uncle Leopold. The fact that Prince Albert had been thought of years before by the King of the Belgians as a possible husband for Princess Victoria was sufficient to set King William IV. against the match. The King, however, was not uncivil to the brothers when they visited London, but he had ideas of his own about the future of his niece, and he tried hard to lay the foundations of an alliance between the young Princess and the younger son of the Prince of Orange. Prince Albert on this occasion made no deep impression upon Princess Victoria’s mind or heart, but her loyalty to her uncle Leopold and her regard for his opinion led her to show the graceful young Coburg Prince marked preference over the somewhat ungainly candidate of King William. Her heart was clearly untouched, but she was willing to be guided by the advice of that counsellor and friend to whom in preference to every one she had already begun to turn for help and guidance. As this became obvious to King William, his jealousy and dislike for the Duchess of Kent increased; and in the autumn of this year, 1836, having invited his sister-in-law to a state banquet, he scandalised Society by delivering an after-dinner speech charged with recrimination and insult to his guest.
This was the Princess’s penultimate year as a minor. King William had for a long time been haunted with the fear that he would die before his niece came of age, and that a regency would devolve upon his hated sister-in-law. He was spared what he would have considered this final humiliation, for on May 24, 1837, the young Princess came of age, just a month before the King died at Windsor.
During the final years of her minority she was thrown freely into the society of many of the eminent and distinguished persons soon to be her subjects. The Duchess gave a series of entertainments at Kensington Palace, and the Princess was brought into contact with her mother’s guests. Accounts of these dinners and concerts, and full lists of the guests, are all minutely recorded in the Journals. Comments, however, beyond an occasional expression of delight at the music and admiration for its performers, are excluded. Her life was still the life of a child, and her days were mostly spent with her preceptors, under the auspices of the Duchess of Northumberland, her official governess, and of the Dean of Chester, her tutor.
She had been parted some years before from her half brother and sister by the usual exigencies of time. Prince Charles of Leiningen had become a sea-officer, and Princess Feodore was married. Into the inner orbit of her young life there penetrated only Sir John Conroy, whose person was odious to her, and Baroness Lehzen, the daughter of a Hanoverian clergyman, who had been the Princess’s governess since 1824, and to whom she was deeply attached. Lablache, her singing-master, a man of some originality and charm, was a constant source of interest and amusement to the young Princess, and she preferred his lessons to all others.
It was during these last few years before her accession that the final touches were given to her character by the subtle influences of her environment. The position occupied by Sir John Conroy in her mother’s house inspired and fortified her subsequent resolve to avoid intimacies with members of her household. She became distant and reserved to those about her, and her relations with her mother were chilled. Her mind acquired an impression that family ties, however binding from the point of view of duty, might be superseded by those of friendship. It is undoubtedly the case that Baroness Lehzen occupied at this time the first place in her pupil’s thoughts and affections; while the dawning necessity felt by Princess Victoria for sympathy, and for those intimate communings so attractive to sentimental natures, had a very distinct influence upon the mind and conduct of the Queen in subsequent years. Her Journals afford proof, if proof had been wanting, that, in spite of the opinions of her attainments vouchsafed by eminent clerics, the Princess had not been afforded an education specially designed to fit her for the situation she was to occupy.
She was, at eighteen, as moderately and indifferently equipped as the average girl of her age. If her conversation was not brilliant, her heart was kindly and her judgment sound. She was shrewd and eminently truthful. In spite of her small stature, she was curiously dignified and impressive. Her voice was musical and carried far. And above all things, her rectitude was unassailable, and her sense of duty so keen and high that it supplied any lack of imagination or spiritual deficiency. She was humble-minded, but not, perhaps, very tender. She was passionate and imperious, but always faithful. She was supremely conscious of the responsibilities and prerogatives of her calling, which she was convinced, then and always, were her appanage by the gift of God.