We Two: Victoria and Albert (9 page)

Fortunately, she was not without protectors. There was her brother Leopold. He and she had been close as children. Even though he had turned into a pedantic bore, forever lecturing her on English history and nagging her about money, Leopold’s brilliance and acumen were legendary in the family. There was Stockmar, a tiresome hypochondriac and inveterate busybody, but the supreme man of business. Last but not least, there was Captain John Conroy (or Major Conroy as he now generally preferred to be known), who was so forceful and manly and so devoted to her interests. Leopold and Stockmar were forever going off on some mysterious political errand, but dear John could be relied upon to stay right by her side.

WITHIN DAYS OF THE DEATH
of the Duke of Kent, Prince Leopold assumed the direction of his widowed sister’s affairs. It was clear to him and to Stockmar that the duchess was ill equipped to deal with the problems facing her. It was also clear to them that the chances Leopold’s niece Victoria had of becoming Queen of England one day would be jeopardized if she were brought up abroad. English monarchs were peculiarly at risk. The English parliament had already beheaded Charles I, sent James II into permanent exile, and on two occasions chosen a new king. It was xenophobic enough to refuse a German queen and choose one of her male cousins to rule instead.

To ensure that Victoire did not return to their family in Germany, Leopold settled the rent for the Sidmouth cottage, got the duke’s body off to Windsor for burial, and paid the travel expenses to London for his sister and her household. He prevailed on Mary, the Duchess of Gloucester, George IV’s favorite sister, to intercede with the King and secure for the dowager Duchess of Kent and her household the apartments at Kensington Palace that had been her husband’s. In March 1820, Leopold arranged for Victoire formally to give up all claims on her late husband’s estate for both herself and her child, leaving the creditors to pick those meager bones.

Leopold then arranged to let his sister have an additional three thousand pounds a year from his personal funds. One thousand was to be earmarked for summer holidays at the sea or in the country, since the duchess had no country residence. He also enabled his sister to take on debt by guaranteeing a loan. In early 1820, the Duchess of Kent, Prince Leopold, and General Wetherall together floated a bond with Coutts the bankers for
twelve thousand pounds, which translated into six thousand in cash. The duchess used this money to establish her household at Kensington Palace, buying furniture, linen, plate, a carriage, horses, and so forth. The duchess borrowed a further six thousand pounds in April 1821. This time, since little Princess Elizabeth of Clarence had just died and Princess Victoria was once again third in line of succession after her senior uncles, Victoire was able to find other gentlemen apart from her brother willing to guarantee the loan.

In later years, Leopold often recalled with what tender affection and alacrity he had taken on the role of surrogate father to Queen Victoria. At best this was half the story. During the infancy of his niece Victoria, Prince Leopold was a gloomy hypochondriac known in the British press as His Parsimonious Highness. He lived well but had few outlets for his abilities, energies, and ambitions. Ostracized at the English court, where George IV would barely even acknowledge him, Leopold spent at least half the year traveling in Europe, visiting relatives, taking the waters, cultivating his political connections, and discreetly indulging his sensual appetites. A mistress was essential to Leopold throughout his life, and, whereas he successfully advocated a life of purity and connubial exclusivity to his niece Victoria and his nephew Albert, he did not practice what he preached.

Family pride and personal ambition were Prince Leopold’s prime motivators, and the calculations he had made when promoting the Kent marriage in 1819 still held good. The fat little girl baby with the runny nose whom he at last took in his arms in the icy Devon cottage where her father had died stood a reasonable chance of being Queen of England one day, and she was half Coburg. The gratitude of monarchs is a very valuable commodity, so it made sense to Leopold to invest in this niece’s future. He certainly had the time and money to play the role of darling uncle for a few weeks a year.

And the financial aid Prince Leopold gave to his widowed sister cost him remarkably little. The prince assumed none of his brother-in-law Kent’s debts: Queen Victoria settled these as one of her first orders of business after ascending the throne. As to the not inconsiderable debts that the Duchess of Kent incurred between 1820 and 1837, these too were settled not by her brother Leopold but by her daughter once Victoria became queen.

The fifty thousand pound annuity he was given by parliament when he became Princess Charlotte’s husband was almost the whole of Prince Leopold’s fortune. Thus the three thousand pounds he allotted his sister for a few years came from the British taxpayer, not the Coburg family. Furthermore, Leopold did not give up his parliamentary stipend when in 1831 he
went off to Belgium to be king. Instead his agent Stockmar negotiated a settlement with the English government whereby the new king would repay his debts, maintain his English property support his English charities, pay his English servants and pensioners, and then generously give the remainder of his appanage back to the British exchequer.

To the outrage of the British government and public, the king’s expenses turned out to account for most of the fifty thousand a year for a great many years. Until the end of his life, King Leopold was able to come to England regularly and to offer Claremont to deposed members of European royal families without digging into his own pocket. The debts he claimed to have run up in England between 1818 and 1830 turned out to amount to a whopping eighty-three thousand pounds, and the king declined to give an account of them. So much debt was puzzling for a man known to be extremely careful with expenses and an excellent money manager. The accumulated payments to his sister may well have been bundled into the declared debt. If so, the English taxpayer paid twice for the financial support that King Leopold claimed to have so generously afforded the Kents.

IF HIS INITIAL
motivation was less than altruistic, Prince Leopold’s occasional watchful presence and his brotherly influence on Victoria’s mother were undoubtedly important factors in the girl’s early childhood. Though she saw her uncle quite rarely, Queen Victoria remembered that her happiest times as a child were spent at Leopold’s country estate at Claremont or at the seaside hotel his money paid for. At Claremont she was agreeably spoiled by Louise Louis, her dead cousin Charlotte’s old dresser, who greeted her like the Second Coming. She enjoyed the fact that Leopold talked to her seriously, as if she were a grownup, and she used to weep when she had to leave her “Dearest Uncle.”

In her London home too, Victoria, until age ten, had a measure of her uncle’s protection. Even when abroad, by letter and through Stockmar, Leopold kept in touch with the Duchess of Kent’s affairs. When he returned to England, it was in no small part to see his niece Victoria. With each passing year, the odds on her succeeding to the throne of England improved, and Leopold set out to charm the child and command her affection just as he had once charmed and won the affection of his wife, Princess Charlotte. He succeeded. Queen Victoria herself declared in later life that her uncle Leopold was the only father she had ever known and that she adored him. Leopold probably loved Victoria as much as he was capable of loving anyone, and the bond between the two proved strong and lasting.

However, by 1827, when Victoria was eight, Leopold and Stockmar were spending more and more time in Europe, first negotiating the possibility that Leopold would become king of the new kingdom of Greece, and finally settling him on the equally new throne of Belgium. The dream Leopold had long entertained of one day becoming regent in England for his niece Victoria faded before the reality of being king in his own right. From 1831 King Leopold was fully occupied defending Belgium against the furious Dutch, warding off the power of France, keeping the rival Belgian political factions in check, forging dynastic alliances for Coburg family members, and beginning a new Belgian dynasty with a new teenaged wife. There was little time to worry about his niece in England.

Victoria never bore them a grudge, but her uncle Leopold’s departure for Brussels and the simultaneous disappearance of Stockmar to Coburg were a disaster for her. She was now left to the tender mercies of her mother’s right-hand man, the newly minted baronet of the Guelphic Order of Hanover, Sir John Conroy.

JOHN CONROY WAS
a career adventurer, expert manipulator, and domestic martinet. An Irishman born in Wales, he had small means, some ability, and mighty ambition. He believed he could trace his ancestry back to the ancient kings of Ireland.

He made his career in the British army during the Napoleonic wars but, to the disdain of fellow officers, steered clear of battles. Conroy moved up the ranks by marrying Elizabeth Fisher, the tall, handsome, vacuous daughter of his superior officer, Major General Fisher, whom he served in various administrative capacities in Ireland and England. When General Fisher died suddenly in 1814, Conroy entered the Duke of Kent’s household through the good offices of Bishop Fisher, his wife’s uncle, who had been Kent’s tutor. This seemed like a step up. Though the duke was not known for paying the members of his household, he promised Conroy advancement in his military career. As it turned out, the Duke of Kent was the last man to get favors out of the army bureaucracy at Whitehall, and when he died, Conroy was still a captain. With a tiny Irish estate and a minor civil servant’s sinecure on which to keep a wife, a mother-in-law, and a growing family, Conroy needed to find a new source of revenue fast.

Conroy was with the Kent family in the Devon cottage when the duke died. Named an executor to the duke’s will, he at once established himself as a useful man, devoted to the interests of the duchess. Victoire of Saxe-Coburg had always relied on men to run her life for her. When Emich
Charles of Leiningen, her first husband, died, she quickly fell under the control of Leiningen’s steward, Herr Schindler. Now she came under Conroy’s dominance, leaning on his strong right arm, weeping on his manly shoulder, and allowing him to worry about the money for her.

Conroy was especially valuable in the duchess’s German-speaking household in the early days because he was a native speaker of English. Hitherto the duchess had resisted all efforts to teach her the language, but Conroy succeeded where the Duke of Kent and Prince Leopold had failed. Though always happier in German and French, the Duchess of Kent could henceforth pass muster at dinner parties and court ceremonies in her adopted country.

The Duchess of Kent brought Conroy with her to Kensington Palace. There he unearthed a gold mine in the shape of King George IV’s aging spinster sister, Princess Sophia. This lady, once beautiful and full of longing, had had a disastrous liaison with one of her father’s less prepossessing courtiers, which resulted in the birth of an illegitimate son. This secret shame prevented Sophia from ever marrying, and her son, once he came to adulthood, was a constant thorn in her side. John Conroy charmed Princess Sophia and won her complete confidence. He took over control of her affairs, had no trouble facing down the importunate son, and made Sophia a regular part of the Duchess of Kent’s social circle. In return for Conroy’s gallant company and filial care, Sophia became Conroy’s spy, reporting in detail on what was said and done at Kensington Palace in his absence and at the Court of St. James’s, where she had access to the private society of her brother kings, George IV and William IV. She also gave him money and estates that enabled Conroy to live like a rich man.