Victoria Confesses (9781442422469) (22 page)

Lord Melbourne merely nodded and raised one dark eyebrow.

“And speaking of looking very fat,” I went on, feeling that a change in the direction of this conversation was in order, “have
you taken notice of late of Lady Flora Hastings? Her figure looks so distended that not even tightening her laces seems to help.”

“I have noticed, yes. Is it fat, do you think?”

“Is there something else that one might conclude?” I asked, noticing his tone.

“Difficult to say, your majesty.” That was all I could get out of him.

It was no secret that I had disliked Lady Flora since the day my mother brought her into the household as my chaperone. She no longer served in that role, but now took her place among Mamma's ladies. Lady Flora was a VERY GOOD friend of Sir John and could be counted upon to repeat to him everything she heard. Further, her sharp tongue had too often been used to belittle my dearest Daisy. Lady Flora made SUCH unkind remarks about my loyal friend, even suggesting that her aromatic caraway seeds were used to disguise an overindulgence in ale.

I observed Lady Flora closely when she next appeared at dinner, taking her accustomed place near Mamma. Surely it could not be true! Yet to my eyes her condition was unmistakable. Now what was to be done about this shocking situation?

After dinner I put the question to Daisy, “Does it appear to you that Lady Flora, an unmarried lady, is with child?”

“It does indeed,” she said. “I have discussed the matter with Lady Tavistock.”

“Then you had best tell me what you've heard.”

Lady Tavistock, my senior lady of the bedchamber, had confided to Daisy that Lady Flora had consulted with my own Dr. Clark, claiming that she was not well. He prescribed tincture of rhubarb and other remedies for intestinal disturbances. When
her condition did not improve, Lady Flora asked for a further consultation.

“But when the good doctor asked her to remove her stays and permit him to lay his hands on her abdomen, she refused to allow it,” Daisy said. “And then she wept and claimed that Lady Tavistock and Lady Portman and the other court ladies were gossiping about her.”

For the moment there seemed to be nothing I could do. I counted on Lady Flora admitting to her grievous wrongdoing and leaving the court. But this did not happen. Lady Flora's belly continued to grow in size. No one could possibly look at her and have any doubt that she was with child. Yet she refused to confess it. Lady Tavistock took it upon herself to discuss the matter with Lord Melbourne, who then reported to me.

“The ladies are convinced that Lady Flora is pregnant,” he said, “and they insist that something must be done to protect their purity.”

I well understood the importance of shielding the ladies of the court from any hint of improper conduct. For this reason, I insisted that my maids of honor be chaperoned in every sort of situation, so that there was no possibility of damage to their reputations, which would then reflect badly on mine. I had always been suspicious of the friendship between Sir John and Lady Flora. Rumors were accepted as fact that the two had traveled together unchaperoned in a post chaise when Lady Flora had gone to visit her family in Scotland at Christmas. If they had been so indiscreet then, there were undoubtedly other occasions as well.

“What must be done, Lord Melbourne?” I asked. “I've discussed the matter with Baroness Lehzen, and we too have no
doubt that Lady Flora is, to use plain words, with child. We are quite sure of the horrid cause of Lady Flora's plight—that monster, Sir John Conroy.”

I could not allow Lady Flora to dine with me or to be among my guests. Such a thing was impossible—surely she understood that! The situation must be resolved without delay.

Dr. Clark urged her to confess her wrongdoing. She protested her innocence and at last agreed to an intimate examination. She asked her own physician, Dr. Charles Clarke—he spelled his name with an “e”—to attend her, along with Dr. James Clark, my own physician. Both physicians agreed that no pregnancy existed. They certified that Lady Flora was a virgin.

Lady Portman, who had been present during the examination—though she kept her eyes averted—brought me the results of the doctors' examination.

“Thank God!” I cried, and I promptly sent Lady Flora a note telling her that I sincerely regretted all that had happened and asking her to call upon me. She replied that she did not feel well enough to do so at that time.

But the very next day the doctors admitted that they were still unsure. There was, in their view, a
possibility
that even with the evidence of their examination, Lady Flora might be carrying a child. The doctors expressed this revised opinion to Lord Melbourne, who told me. On the basis of this new opinion, I continued to believe that Lady Flora was with child, though as time passed it did appear that she might be ill.

Every effort had been made to keep the gossip within the palace walls, but that proved impossible; it seemed that all of London was talking of little else. The Hastings family was outraged. They blamed Lehzen for spreading the vile rumor. They
blamed Lord Melbourne for doing nothing to prevent the slander. The press blamed the physicians for their misdiagnosis and demanded in print to know why I had not dismissed them. They blamed Lady Tavistock. They blamed Lady Portman. Most of all, they blamed
me
! And all because of that
nasty woman
, Lady Flora, whom I had never liked, not since her first days at court.

The one person who was
not
blamed was Mamma, who had stood loyally by Lady Flora and believed in her innocence.

My mother and I still had to appear together publicly to avoid any perception of antagonism between us. We barely spoke, and when we did, our conversation was usually filled with acrimony.

As we walked in the gardens one day in April—the affair was well into its fourth month of rumor and denial—Mamma said, “I do not understand how my own daughter could behave in such a heartless manner. Have you no compassion for the poor, sick woman who has been so badly maligned, through absolutely no fault of her own?”

“What do you mean, ‘no fault of her own'?” I retorted. “What business had she to travel unchaperoned in the company of your great friend, Sir John? As I tell my ladies repeatedly, one expects a member of the court to be above the suspicion of any sort of compromised conduct.”

“Once again you prefer to accept as truth the rumors spread by those who have reason to cast doubt on her virtue,” Mamma snapped.

“I imagine that you refer to Baroness Lehzen,” I said through clenched teeth.

Mamma kept her gaze straight ahead, her jaw rigid. “You may imagine whatever you wish, Victoria,” she said bitterly. “As
you like to remind me as often as you can, you are the queen of England, and I am nothing.” She inclined her head slightly and swept away.

The whole sordid matter had brought back in vivid detail the memory of that moment long ago when I had glimpsed Mamma and Sir John in an embrace. I had not forgiven her. I
would
not.

I am right,
I told myself, staring after her receding figure.
She is wrong and I am right.

But my confidence was badly shaken, and I felt VERY sad. This was my LOWEST DAY since I had become queen.

My bleak mood became even darker.

“I cannot abide having my mother living under my roof,” I complained to Lord Melbourne. “It's like a serpent dwelling in one's house. You can't imagine the terrible scenes I've endured with her and Sir John, and I don't wish to describe them. Now she blindly insists upon the total innocence of Lady Flora! Perhaps Mamma would be willing to move to another palace,” I suggested hopefully. “Back to our old apartments at Kensington, for example. That might even please her—the Conroys are still there. And if not there, somewhere close by.”

“Impossible, your majesty,” replied the prime minister with the arched eyebrow I had come to know so well. “As an unmarried woman, you may not properly live alone.”

“I would not be living alone, Lord Melbourne,” I argued—very reasonably, I thought, though I was by now quite out of sorts. “Baroness Lehzen would be with me, as she always has been.
The ladies of the bedchamber: Lady Tavistock, Lady Portman, Lady Charlemont, Lady Lansdowne”—I ticked them off on my fingers—“and all the others would be here, according to their schedules. And of course, my mistress of the robes is here whenever her children can spare her. That is hardly ‘living alone.' ”

“Properly, you must have a lady of equivalent rank in residence, madam.”

“My mother is duchess of Kent,” I insisted stubbornly. “That's scarcely equivalent in rank to the queen, though she did want her rank raised to queen mother, which of course I refused.”

Lord Melbourne sighed. “There is really only one solution to the problem, my dear Queen Victoria. If you may not live unchaperoned in your unmarried state, then it follows that you must be married.”

I glared at him. “That is out of the question.”

Lord Melbourne shrugged. “Out of the question for now,” he said. “But perhaps not for long.”

I had not wanted to bring up the subject, but perhaps it couldn't be avoided, and this was as good a time as any. I drew a deep breath. “Uncle Leopold urges me to marry my cousin Albert,” I said. “He writes to me, not once but several times, that it is his greatest wish.”

“And what have you told him?”

“That I do not wish to marry—Albert or anyone else. Certainly not now. Perhaps not ever.”

“Marriage is a very great change, a very serious thing indeed,” Lord Melbourne said agreeably. “What has King Leopold responded to your statement?”

“That we should revisit the question at a later time.”

“An excellent idea,” said Lord Melbourne. “But perhaps that time is coming sooner than rather than later.”

I truly had no desire to marry. None whatsoever! In fact, I dreaded the idea of marrying. I was so accustomed to having my own way that I could not imagine yielding to anybody. The only positively
good
thing I could see about marrying was that it would allow me to remove Mamma from my household. Having her there was
perfectly awful
! She intruded constantly, popping into my apartments when I was in the midst of VERY serious business, though I had asked her NOT to do so. But would a husband, a consort, be any
less
intrusive, really? Was there any guarantee of that?

We ended our discussion of marriage for that day. Later, when I was in a less vexatious mood, Lord Melbourne proposed, and I agreed, that we would have a calm and objective deliberation on the subject. We sat side by side at my writing table and went over a list of potential consorts.

“How does one even know if one can bear to be with a person one has never seen or spoken to?” I asked. “The queen of Portugal married my cousin Ferdinand without ever having set eyes on him.”

“A serious question,” he replied. “But one cannot be certain of that even if one has been acquainted with the other person for quite some time.”

We pondered the name at the top of the list:
Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

Lord Melbourne admitted that he was not a great partisan of Albert. “Cousins are not very good things,” he said. “Someone from outside the family offers less chance for jealousies to arise. Besides that, Albert is a Coburg, and they are not at all well liked abroad. The Russians positively hate the Coburgs, and the English, of course, dislike all foreigners.”

I was quite aware of the English attitude; my mother was also
a Coburg, the sister of Albert's father, and her German-ness had made life difficult for her in England. It was nearly impossible, though, as we went down the list, to think of ANY PERSON who
would
be a “good thing.” Certainly not one of those two oafish creatures from the Netherlands whom King William had favored. There were no men of appropriate rank anywhere in Europe who would do. Marrying a subject was simply out of the question, for that would make him my equal—though I could not help thinking momentarily of Alfred Paget, my excessively handsome equerry who accompanied me whenever I went out riding. He sat a horse with such easy elegance, his smile was so brilliant, his eyes the deepest shade of blue. . . .

“Everyone wants to see you married,” Lord Melbourne was saying, drawing me away from thoughts of Paget's blue eyes and back to the list in front of me. “But no one can agree on who it should be. There are those who insist it should be an Englishman, and those who say it must be anyone
but
an Englishman.”

I tossed aside the pen with which I had been jotting little notes as we worked our way through the field. “Then I suppose we are back to Albert,” I said grudgingly. “But not yet. Not until I have seen him again. And not for several years—three or four, at a minimum. In the meantime, he needs to improve his English. I noticed certain weaknesses during his visit. And his French as well.”

I was VERY definite about that, and dear Lord Melbourne quite agreed.

But that still did not solve the problem of what to do about Mamma in the meantime.

The very thing I dreaded above all else actually came to pass. On Tuesday, the seventh of May, I received a note from Lord Melbourne; a vote had been called in Parliament on a colonial issue, and the Whigs had lost the necessary majority. Lord Melbourne was forced to step down. Dearest, kind Lord Melbourne, no more my prime minister!

Distress overwhelmed me. I was a poor, helpless girl, clinging to Lord Melbourne, as close to me as any beloved father, for protection and support. In one blow ALL, ALL my happiness was gone, my happy, peaceful life utterly destroyed. There would be no more riding out together once we had gone over the work of the day, no more of his amusing conversation at dinner, no more comfortable evenings of chess or whist. It was all finished! I could not bear it!