Queen Victoria

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. From birth to accession to the throne
2. The marriage with Albert
3. Her children
4. Her life after Albert's death

1. From birth to accession to the throne:

Victoria was born on a bright spring day, 24th May 1819, at Kensington Palace, in the then quiet suburb of London. "Plumb as a partridge" was her father's description of the baby, and she certainly bore a marked resemblance to her sturdy and robust Hanoverian ancestors who had ruled Great Britain for little more than a century at the time of her birth. "Her parents were Prince Edward, Duke of Kent, a son of King George III and Victoire of Saxe-Coburg- Saalfeld.

A month after her birth, the Kent baby was baptised. After much debate in the royal family she was named "Alexandrina Victoria", after her chief godfather, the Russian Tsar Alexander, and her mother. The name "Victoria" was then completely unknown in England, though it had long been in use in the forms "Victoire" and "Victoria" on the Continent. For the first few years the child was known as "Drina", but in one of her copy-books is limned the name "Victoria" by which she came to be known in later childhood.

Despite the fact that the Kents had married "for convenience" their union proved remarkably happy. Edward had never known the comforts of settled home in England, nor had he ever enjoyed so much approval from his family as this new domesticity brought. For Victoire, the change in her circumstances was delightful: with her new baby and with a husband who doted on her, she was well content.

Unfortunately, however, this happy state of affairs did not last long. The family moved down to Sidmouth in Devon in December 1819 and there, on 23rd January 1820, Edward, Duke of Kent, suddenly died. He, who had no serious illness in his life, caught a cold and took no special care of himself, so that he turned to pneumonia.

In abject grief and almost penniless, the widowed Duchess allowed her brother Leopold to make all the arrangements for her return to London. For months she remained in seclusion, at Kensington or at Leopold's house at Claremont in Surrey. It was a testing time for too, in that she had to decide whether to return to the familiar German countryside which had been her home for any or to remain in England, where she was still a comparative stranger. But the fact that her baby was now third in line to the throne - for George III had died only days after his son Edward - steeled her duty: for the sake of the baby's future inheritance, she would stay in England and bring up her child as an Englishwoman, ready to succeed to the throne.

The new King George IV had had very little affection for his late brother, so unlike him in character and principles and he was not enamoured of the idea of having to contribute to the support of his widowed sister-in-law. Fortunately for Victoire, she had her own brother Leopold at hand, because he had decided to make his home in England after the death of his

wife Charlotte and out of his own allowance he provided most of the Duchess's income. Victoria was no model child. She had her fair share of the royal temper, screaming and stamping when she was crossed, throwing a pair of scissors at Lehzen, her half-sister Feodora's governess in a right royal rage. All her life the future Queen would be stubborn and obstinate, but when he became calm after an uncontrolled fit of temper, she would always be contrite and wheedling for forgiveness.

But Queen Victoria's childhood was not idyllic by any means. As she grew up, she came to realise how narrow the circle admitted to Kensington Palace; she agreed with her half-sister that only at Claremont, on their holiday, had she been completely happy. The darkest shadow over her young life was one John Conroy, the Comptroller of the Duchess's household at Kensington and the virtual controller of all the Duchess's attitudes and aspirations. Conroy had been the Duke of Kent's aid-de-camp, a military man who made more success of his social studies than he ever had of active service. He was a flamboyantly good-looking Irishman, possessed of an ample measure of charm and an overweening ambition. The Duchess of Kent was no simpleton, but she was used to having her life ruled by men and could not accustom herself to having to make independent decisions. A better guide would have been her brother Leopold, but he, after a few years of carefully supervision of his sister's affairs, took a mistress of whom she could not approve, which drove a wedge more frequently. Finally, in 1831, he departed permanently to take up the crown of the newly- created kingdom of Belgium. Left alone in England, daunted by her responsibly as mother of a future Queen, Victoire of Kent relied increasingly on the soothing blandishments of her Comptroller. It was Conroy who insisted that Victoria should be strictly guarded, playing on her mother's fear of a fatal "accident. It was also Conroy who urged a suitable match for Feodora with a German prince, when it seemed likely that he widower King George IV himself might offer for her hand to beget heirs of his own.

Conroy could see himself as the chief adviser to the future Queen Victoria, the father -figure who would be the girls eminence grise, the "power behind the throne" of her reign and he did all he could to prepare his glorious future. Having made himself indispensable to the Duchess by his administration of her household and his advice to her as to the care of her child was not averse to a little more personal interest too: Conroy, a married man, never became the Duchess's lover - she was far to circumspect and was far too fearful of scandal for such a situation to develop, but he knew hot to make himself agreeable to a lonely widow. The child Victoria once witnessed "some familiarities" between her mother and Conroy and prattled of them to lady-in-waiting Spath. When the horrified Baroness rebuked her mistress, she received short shrift and was sent packing by Conroy, of course, to the safe distance of Feodora's new home in Germany. Sir John could not risk malicious gossip: if it were ever thought that the Duchess of Kent was an unfit moral influence on her daughter, the child might be swept off to other guardians.

In fact, by the modern standards of royal training, Victoria's education was somewhat deficient. Lehzen and the visiting tutors who were brought in, gave the child a good grounding in English, French and German though her Latin, which she began at 8 years, never progressed very far. More interesting to the Princess were her music and dancing lessons and she actually chose to learn Italian from her passion for the Italian opera. Her reading in history, however, was prodigious: at 15 she was immersed in Clarendon's dry History of the rebellion and Sully's Memoirs, so that though she was thought no political theory or philosophy, Victoria came to have a good appreciation of the mistakes and achievements of past rulers.

Apart from her tutors, Victoria's contacts with the outside world were few in her early years. Conroy induced the Duchess of Kent to discourage visits from the royal family, who might, he feared, either woo Victoria's affections away from her mother or enquire too closely of his own influence. Occasionally, the Princess might be allowed to attend a children's ball or a little girl might be brought in to play with her but usually she had only the company of the Conroy girls, Jane and Victoire, and so much had she come to hate their father that they never became her friends.

How soon Victoria realised how baneful was the influence of Sir John Conroy in her life is hard to say. But certainly, once she had come to realise her own significance and her destiny, it would not be too difficult for even a child to see through his wiles. It has often been affirmed that she never knew for years that she would one day be Queen and did not understand why men stare at her in the Park, sweeping off their hats and bowing. If so, there could well be a good deal of truth in the often told story of Lehzen's slipping a family tree of the royal dynasty into the child's history book in 1830: when Victoria realised the significance of her own place in the royal family, she pondered: "I'm nearer to the throne than I thought." Then she said the memorable words," I will be good."

In 1827, the heir to the throne, the Duke of York, died, followed in 1830 by his brother King George IV. Now only the frail life of King William IV, already in his sixties, stood between the Princess Victoria and the throne. As presumptive heir to William IV from 1830, Victoria became an important personage in the Kingdom. Her mother (that is, Conroy) was careful to keep the Princess's name totally disassociated from that of the King; while William IV was reviled throughout the nation for his opposition to the Parliamentary Reform Bill of 1832, the Duchess, via Conroy, courted the Radical and Whig politicians of the Opposition. While stones were thrown at the royal carriage in London streets, Victoire and Victoria were everywhere cheered as they made a summer "progress" through the provinces. As these journeys continued every summer, the King became increasingly resentful. In petty spite, he forbade the firing of gun salutes at the appearances of his niece and he mother. At first Victoria found these journeys enthralling, a wonderful escape from Kensington. But by 1835 the strenuous journeys had lost their appeal. Conroy had planned a series of visits to the great houses of the aristocrats very much to the advantage of the Duchess's popularity. Victoria balked at the idea. So violent was the quarrel between the princess and her mother over this issue that the Duchess had to resort to writing a letter to her daughter, for she could not control her anger in conversation. She demanded that Victoria recognise her responsibilities to show herself to "the people". Victoria conceded the victory, but throughout the "progress" she complained vehemently of head-ache and back-ache and other ailments. Only a few weeks after the family settled at Ramsgate to recuperate from the journey, Victoria fell really ill, most probably of a severe case of tonsillitis. Having recovered from a fever, she was still every week for more than a month, losing a good deal of weight and continually complaining of cold, through bad circulation. Sir John Conroy was not the man to miss such a chance of taking advantage of the girl's debility. The Princess's antipathy to him was becoming ever more apparent, and he had by than given up the hope of obtaining future power through her affections. While Victoria was still weak from her illness, he put before he the demand that he should become her secretary when she succeeded the throne. He actually produced a document for her to sign, binding her to the promise.

Victoria firmly resisted. Despite her physical frailty, she had the strength of her hatred of Sir John to give her resolution. At the same time, she had the encouragement of Baroness Lehzen, her governess, who was always her ally against Conroy. For years this woman had attempted to shield her charge from him and to open the Princess's eyes to the scope of his enormities. Despite Lehzen's power over Victoria, which was grounded on sincere affection and bulwarked on common cause against the enemy, Conroy dare not act against the governess, to oust her as he had the lady-in-waiting Spath. He knew only too well that Lehzen enjoyed the confidence of both King William IV and King Leopold of the Belgians, the Duchess's brother. Infuriated by this impotence, he only made matters worst by continually sniping at Lehzen in Victoria's presence.

Nevertheless, the girl's life was not completely unhappy and for quite long periods Kensington Palace could be free of raised voices and sudden bursts of tears. Victoria would spend many quiet hours with Lehzen, dressing her large collection of dolls as characters from history of fabricating tiny trinket boxes from odds and ends of silk and coloured beads. There was a stream of letters from Feodora to cheer Victoria with news of her growing gamely, or the screeds of advice from her uncle Leopold, who fancied himself as mentor to the future Queen. Although the Duchess had not encouraged visits from her own German family in the early years, she had made sure that Victoria learned a large measure of devotion to her unseen aunts and uncles to make up for her deprivation of closer ties. When the Princess was in her early teens, several of the German relations were invited to Kensington Palace, including, in the summer of 1836, her cousins Ernest an Albert, sons of Victoir's eldest brother, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. Victoria was open to teenage enthusiasms and she threw herself whole - heartedly into entertaining her cousins and could not sufficiently praise their books and accomplishments.

However, King William was not so rapturous. He had suspicions that the Duchess, or the King of the Belgians whom he had never liked, was angling for a Coburg match for Victoria, which was certainly not to his tastes. His reception of the Prince or Orange and his eligible sons was timed to coincide with that of the Coburgs. For once, Victoria did not side with her English uncle against her mother and she assured her uncle Leopold that Ernest and Albert were perfectly to her waste while the Oranges were detestable.

By the middle of 1836, relations between the King and his sister-in-law were at breaking point. Matters came to a head in August when William IV openly insulted the Duchess at a public dinner in honour of his birthday.

It was a bombshell. From that moment Conroy became desperate and Victoria more resolute. Recognising that the future Queen would never willingly allow in him any power in her future government, Sir John began to make out a case for her unworthiness to govern and need for guardians. He was forever harping on her emotional instability and inciting her mother repeatedly to draw attention to her faults. But though the Princess was certainly unbalanced in her emotions after such years of strain at home, she was by no means unfit to rule. And above all, she had the will to do her duty, to "be good". On 24th May 1837 Victoria celebrated her 18th birthday. At last she was free of the impending regency. But she had had a narrow escape by that date her uncle William was already close to death. Conroy panicked. In the last days of William IV's life, he stepped up his campaign. He tried to convince Lords Liverpool and Melbourne, the leading politicians of the day, that Victoria was totally unfit to govern, but they were not taken in. He put pressure on the Duchess of Kent and her son Charles of Leiningen, Victoria's half-brother, to force the Princess into signing away her independence. But already it was too late. King Leopold, realising now how precarious was his niece's position, sent over his own trusted adviser, Baron Stockmar, both to report to him on the situation and to attempt to hold it in check.

At last Conroy ruined everything. He told the Duchess, if Princess Victoria will not listen to reason, she must be coerced. Victoire was already becoming apprehensive: realising that she had lost her daughter's trust, she was now hesitant to take any more drastic measures. Even Charles Leiningen, formerly a pawn of Conroy's by his reliance on financial loan, saw that Sir John had gone too far and advised his mother not to obey him. For the last few days of King William's life, Kensington was in a state of uneasy truce.

At 6 o'clock on the morning of 20th June 1837 the Duchess of Kent woke her daughter with the news that William IV was dead.

All her life Victoria had been used to receiving visitors in the company of her mother; now for the first time, she went alone into the room where the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain were waiting. All through that day of mixed grief and triumph, Victoria undertook her first duties alone, emphasising that word in her account of the day in her journal with immense relish. That night, for the first time, she did not sleep in her mother's bedroom.

Victoria was no longer a child. She was now a woman and a Queen. All her accounts were paid in full: Lehzen became her closest attendant, remaining her confidante; her mother though treated with deference in public, was shunned at home - often, in reply to the Duchess's request to see her daughter, Victoria would send a note with the one word "Busy"; Conroy was forbidden access to the Queen's private rooms at Buckingham Palace. She avoided both her mother and Conroy, who continued to work for the Duchess of Kent. Two years after Victoria's accession Conroy was indirectly involved in one of the greatest scandals of her reign. One of the Queen's unmarried ladies-in-waiting, Flora Hastings, showed signs of pregnancy and Victoria believed her to be carrying Conroy's child. In fact, Hastings was a virgin, and her symptoms were caused by an illness which killed her. Victoria's unkind treatment of Hastings which she came bitterly regret caused a public outcry. As a result of the Hastings scandal Conroy resigned his post in the Duchess of Kent's household and left the country.

2. Her marriage with Albert

Albert, prince of Saxe-Coburg Gotha was Victoria's first cousin. As mentioned before they had first met at the age of sixteen. Although they did not fall in love immediately, they enjoyed each other's company. Their family wanted them to marry and Victoria readily agreed. Albert visited England again in 1839, when Victoria was nineteen and Queen. This time Victoria fell in love at first sight. She described Albert as excessively handsome and such beautiful eyes. She soon proposed to him and Albert accepted.

An ecstatic love affair was rapidly transformed into a devoted marriage. The wedding took place on 10th February 1840 in the Chapel Royal of St. James's Palace. In a brief moment of privacy afterwards, snatched from the crowded ceremonies of the day, husband and wife promised each other that there must never be an unshared secret secret; more than twenty years later, a desolate widow noted: "There never was."

Albert rode and shot, fenced and danced superbly; he was highly intelligent, widely travelled and well read; he was a conscientious and unremitting worker, and his judgement was at least as sound as that of most English politicians; he was a man of the highest integrity and principle. But he lacked ease and confidence, as is the way of a man who makes duty do service for vitality; he never quite fitted into any section of English society; as the Queen's foreign husband, his position was always ambiguous and often suspect; in the end, perhaps, the cynical English just found him too good to be true.

Victoria and Albert had nine children. Because the queen was confined by her multiple pregnancies, Albert undertook many of her responsibilities. Victoria herself said that Albert was King in all but name. In fact, she wished to give him the title "King", but that was something the English people would not accept. At first Albert was unpopular, but in time his hard work brought him greater acceptance. In 1857 the Queen persuaded Parliament to officially grant him the title "Prince Consort".

Albert's health was always poor. In November 1861 he contracted typhoid fever; he died the following month at the age of 42.

3. Her children:

Princess Victoria Adelaide Mary Louise was born in 1840. Her nickname in the family was "Vicky." She married Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia when she was 17. Her husband became emperor of Germany, but died of throat cancer after a three-month reign. Vicky had seven children. her eldest son became German emperor Wilhelm II; her daughter Sophie married a Greek prince and in time the queen of Greece.

Prince Albert Edward was born in 1841. His nickname was "Bertie." In 1863 he married Princess Alexandra of Denmark. They had six children, including a daughter named Maud who became the queen consort or Norway. After Queen Victoria's death in 1901, Bertie ascended to the throne as King Edward VII. He died in 1910 and was succeeded by his son, King George V.

Princess Alice Maud Mary was born in 1843. At age 18 she married Prince Ludwig or Louis of Hesse (later Grand Duke Louis XIV). Their seven children included a daughter Alix, who became the wife of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II. The first of Queen Victoria's children to die, Alice succumbed to diphtheria in 1878 at the age of 35.

Prince Alfred Ernest Albert was born in 1844. His nickname in the family was "Affie." In 1874 he married Grand Duchess Marie, the daughter of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. When Alfred was 50 he became the duke of Saxe-Coburg. his only son, also named Alfred, died in 1899 as the result of a self-inflicted gunshot wound, so when Affie died in 1900 he was succeeded by his brother Leopold's son, Charles. The eldest of Affie's four daughters, Marie, married the crown prince of Romania, who later became King Ferdinand I.

Princess Helena Augusta Victoria was born in 1846. Her nickname was "Lenchen." In 1866 she married Prince Christian of Schleswig - Holstein, with whom she had five children. Their marriage lasted 51 years. Lenchen died in 1923.

Princess Louise Caroline Alberta was born in 1848. At the age of 23 she married John Campbell, Marquis of Lorne (later the Duke of Argyll). It was a troubled marriage, and they had no children. Princess Louise lived until 1939.

Prince Arthur William Patrick was born in 1850. In 1897 he married Princess Luise Margarete of Prussia. They had three children. Queen Victoria's longest surviving child, Prince Arthur lived until 1942, when he died at the age of 92.

Prince Leopold George Duncan was born in 1853. In 1882 he married Princess Helena Frederica of Waldeck. They had two children. Prince Leopold was a hemophiliac, and just two years after his marriage he died at the age of 30. In 1900 his son Charles Edward became the Duke of Saxe-Coburg.

Princess Beatrice Mary Viktoria was born in 1857. Her nickname in the family was "Baby." She married Prince Henry of Battenberg in 1885, despite Queen Victoria's disapproval of the match. Beatrice and henry had four children, including Victoria Eugenie, who became the Queen of Spain. Beatrice died in 1944.

4. Her life after Albert's death:

Victoria was distraught. Queen Victoria remained in seclusion for many years after her husband died and wore black for the rest of her life. Albert's rooms were maintained exactly as they had been when he was alive; the servants even brought hot water for shaving to his dressing room each morning. None of this was particularly unusual during the Victorian era, however. In time Victoria's depression lifted and she resumed her royal duties, but she never ceased mourning for Albert. Queen Victoria visited Germany in the summer after Albert's death. Among her attendants on the trip was John Brown, an outspoken Scot who had been a favourite of the Prince Consort. The following years Victoria was involved in two carriage accidents and both times Brown was on hand to save the day. In 1864 Brown was brought to England to lead the Queen's pony when she went riding. The next year Victoria wrote in her diary: "Have decided that Brown should remain permanently and make himself useful in other ways besides leading my pony as he is so very dependable."

Brown quickly became the most important person in the Queen's life. He was a good-looking man, five years younger than the Queen, and their close relationship caused much gossip. It is highly doubtful that Brown and Victoria were actually lovers, although the Queen's daughters jokingly called Brown "Mama's lover." His intimacy with the Queen did not please Victoria's family, but Brown was indispensable to her and remained her confidante for nearly twenty years. The scandals faded in time as people became accustomed to his constant presence.

When John Brown died in 1883, the Queen wrote "The shock, the blow, the blank, the constant missing at every turn of the one strong, powerful reliable arm and head almost stunned me and I am truly overwhelmed." Victoria erected a statue of Brown at Balmoral. His room like Albert's became a shrine. A flower was placed on his pillow every day until Victoria herself died. The Queen was so grief-stricken that she could not walk for a year; for the rest of her life she used a cane or wheelchair.

During Victoria's reign, Britain expanded into an empire. Victoria became an icon and symbol of her age. The fiftieth year of her reign, 1887, was marked with a Golden Jubilee of public celebration, followed ten years later by a Diamond Jubilee.

Queen Victoria died on 22nd January 1901, at the age of 83 at Osborne House, Isle of Wight. She had left elaborate instructions for her funeral. As she had wished, her own sons lifted her into the coffin. She wore a white dress and her wedding veil. Because Victoria had disliked black funerals, London was festooned in purple and white. She was buried beside Prince Albert in the Frogmore Royal Mausoleum at Windsor Castle. Victoria had reigned for nearly

64 years - the longest reign in British history.