On the King's birthday, the 21st August, the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria were at Windsor Castle on a visit. In spite of some soreness over the old grievance, the King proposed the Princess Victoria's health very kindly at the dinner. After he had drunk the Princess Augusta's health he said, "And now, having given the health of the oldest I will give that of the youngest member of the royal family. I know the interest which the public feel about her, and although I have not seen so much of her as I could have wished, I take no less interest in her, and the more I do see of her, both in public and private, the greater pleasure it will give me." The whole thing was so civil and gracious that it could hardly be taken ill, but, says Greville, "the young Princess sat opposite and hung her head with not unnatural modesty at being thus talked of in so large a company."
In the September of that year the Duchess and the Princess went again to Ramsgate, and stayed there till December. It was their last visit to the quiet little resort within a short pilgrimage of Canterbury—the great English shrine, not so much of Thomas a Becket, slain before the altar, as of Edward the Black Prince, with his sword and gauntlets hung up for ever, and the inscription round the effigy which does not speak of Cressy and Poictiers, but of the vanity of human pride and ambition. It was the last seaside holiday which the mother and daughter spent together untrammelled by State obligations and momentous duties, with none to come between the two who had been all in all with each other. In their absence a storm of wind passed over London, and wrought great damage in Kensington Gardens. About a hundred and thirty of the larger trees were destroyed. In the forenoon of the 29th of November "a tremendous crash was heard in one of the plantations near the Black Pond, between Kensington Palace and the Mount Gate, and on several persons running to the spot twenty-five limes were found tumbled to the earth by a single blast, their roots reaching high into the air, with a great quantity of earth and turf adhering, while deep chasms of several yards in diameter showed the force with which they had been torn up…. On the Palace Green, Kensington, near the forcing-garden, two large elms and a very fine sycamore were also laid prostrate."
In the following summer (1837) the Princess came of age, as princesses do, at eighteen, and it was meet that the day should be celebrated with, all honour and gladness. But the rejoicings were damped by the manifestly failing health of the aged King, then seventy-one years of age. He had been attacked by hay fever—to which he had been liable every spring at an earlier period of his life, but the complaint was more formidable in the case of an old and infirm man, while he still struggled manfully to transact business and discharge the duties of his position. At the Levee and Drawing-room of the 21st May he sat while receiving the company. By the 24th he was confined to his rooms, and the Queen did not leave him.
At six o'clock in the morning the Union Jack was hoisted on the summit of the old church, Kensington, and on the flagstaff at Palace Green. In the last instance the national ensign was surmounted by a white silk flag on which was inscribed in sky-blue letters "Victoria." The little town adorned itself to the best of its ability. "From the houses of the principal inhabitants of the High Street were also displayed the Royal Standard, Union Jack, and other flags and colours, some of them of extraordinary dimensions." Soon after six o'clock the gates of Kensington Gardens were thrown open for the admission of the public to be present at the serenade which was to be performed at seven o'clock under the Palace windows, with the double purpose of awaking the Princess in the most agreeable manner, and of reminding her that at the same place and hour, eighteen years ago, she had opened her eyes on the May world. The sleep of youth is light as well as sound, and it may well be that the Princess, knowing all that was in store for her on the happy day that could not be too long, the many goodly tokens of her friends' love and gladness—not the least precious those from Germany awaiting her acceptance—the innumerable congratulations to be offered to her, was wide awake before the first violin or voice led the choir.
The bells rang out merry peals, carriages dashed by full of fine company. Kensington Square must have thought it was the old days of William and Mary, and Anne, or of George II and Queen Caroline at the latest, come back again. The last French dwellers in Edwardes Square must have talked volubly of what their predecessors had told them of Paris before the flood, Paris before the Orleanists, and the Bonapartists, and the Republic—Paris when the high-walled, green-gardened hotels of the Faubourg St. Germain were full of their ancient occupants; when Marie Antoinette was the daughter of the Caesars at the Tuileries, and the bergere Queen at le Petit Trianon. Before the sun went down many a bumper was drunk in honour of Kensington's own Princess, who should that day leave her girlhood all too soon behind her.
But London as well as Kensington rejoiced, and the festivities were wound up with a ball given at St. James's Palace by order of the poor King and Queen, over whose heads the cloud of sorrow and parting was hanging heavily. We are told that the ball opened with a quadrille, the Princess being "led off" by Lord Fitzalan, eldest son of the Earl of Surrey and grandson of the Duke of Norfolk, Premier Duke and Earl, Hereditary Earl Marshal and Chief Butler of England. Her Royal Highness danced afterwards with Prince Nicholas Esterhazy, son of the Austrian Ambassador. Prince Nicholas made a brilliant figure in contemporary annals—not because of his own merits, not because he married one of the fairest of England's noble daughters, whose gracious English hospitalities were long remembered in Vienna, but because of the lustre of the diamonds in his Court suit. He was said to sparkle from head to heel. There was a legend that he could not wear this splendid costume without a hundred pounds' worth of diamonds dropping from him, whether he would or not, in minor gems, just as jewels fell at every word from the mouth of the enchanted Princess. We have heard of men and women behind whose steps flowers sprang into birth, but Prince Nicholas left a more glittering, if a colder, harder track.
CHAPTER IV. THE ACCESSION.
On the day after that on which Princess Victoria celebrated her majority. Baron Stockmar arrived at Kensington. He came from the King of the Belgians to assist King Leopold's niece in what was likely to be the great crisis of her life. During Baron Stockmar's former stay in England he had been in the character first of Physician in Ordinary to Prince Leopold, and afterwards of Private Secretary and Comptroller of his household. In those offices he had spent the greater part of his time in this country from 1816 to 1834. He had accompanied his master on his ascending the Belgian throne, but had returned to England in a few years in order to serve him better there. Baron Stockmar was thus an old and early friend of the Princess's. In addition he had a large acquaintance with the English political world, and was therefore well qualified to advise her with the force of a disinterested adviser in her difficult position. In the view of her becoming Queen, although her three predecessors, including George III after he became blind, had appointed and retained private secretaries, the office was not popular in the eyes of the Government and country, and it was not considered advisable that the future Queen should possess such a servant, notwithstanding the weight of business—enormous in the matter of signatures alone—which would fall on the Sovereign. Without any recognised position, Stockmar was destined to share with the Prime Minister one portion of the duties which ought to have devolved on a private secretary. He was also to act as confidential adviser.
Baron Stockmar, [Footnote: "An active, decided, slender, rather little man, with a compact head, brown hair streaked with grey, a bold, short nose, firm yet full mouth, and what gave a peculiar air of animation to his face, with two youthful, flashing brown eyes, full of roguish intelligence and fiery provocation. With this exterior, the style of his demeanour and conversation corresponded; bold, bright, pungent, eager, full of thought, so that amid all the bubbling copiousness and easy vivacity of his talk, a certain purpose was never lost sight of in his remarks and illustrations."—Friedrich Carl Meyer.] who was at this time a man of fifty, was no ordinary character. He was sagacious, warm-hearted, honest, straightforward to bluntness, painstaking, just, benevolent to a remarkable degree; the friend of princes, without forfeiting his independence, he won and kept their perfect confidence to the end. He loved them heartily in return, without seeking anything from them; on the contrary, he showed himself reluctant to accept tokens of their favour. While lavishing his services on others, and readily lending his help to those who needed it, he would seem to have wanted comfort himself. An affectionate family man, he consented to constantly recurring separation from his wife and children in order to discharge the peculiar functions which were entrusted to him. For he played in the background—contented, nay, resolute to remain there—by the lawful exercise of influence alone, no small part in the destinies of several of the reigning houses in Europe, and through them, of their kingdoms. Like Carlyle, he suffered during his whole life from dyspepsia; like Carlyle, too, he was a victim to hypochondria, the result of his physical state. To these two last causes may be attributed some whimsicalities and eccentricities which were readily forgiven in the excellent Baron.
Baron Stockmar did not come too soon; in less than a month, on the 20th of
June, 1837, after an illness which he had borne, patiently and reverently,
King William died peacefully, his hand resting where it had lain for hours,
on the shoulder of his faithful Queen.