receive the Duchess’s daughter-in-law, the wife of Charles, Prince of Leiningen, on the grounds that she was not of royal blood and therefore by tradition barred from the Closet at St James’s Palace.11 Then there was further trouble when the King required the gentlemen of the Duchess of Kent’s household to leave the Throne Room during the course of a drawing room there because, so he said, only gentlemen of the King’s and Queen’s household enjoyed the privilege of attendance at such a reception in such a place, the households of other members of the Royal Family being limited to ladies only.12
These, however, were relatively minor incidents when compared with an outrageous and distressing contretemps at Windsor Castle on 21 August 1836. This was the King’s birthday. He had invited the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria to come to Windsor for the Queen’s birthday party on 13 August and then to stay on for his own on the 21st. The Duchess, rudely taking no notice of the invitation to the Queen’s birthday party, replied that she intended to be at Claremont for her own birthday celebrations on 17 August but would bring her daughter to Windsor on the 20th.
This put the King into a fury [Charles Greville was informed by one of the King’s illegitimate sons, Adolphus FitzClarence, who was living in the Castle at the time]. He made, however, no reply, and on the 20th he was in town to prorogue Parliament, having desired that they would not wait dinner for him at Windsor. After the prorogation He went to Kensington Palace to look about it; when He got there He found that the Duchess of Kent had appropriated to her own use a suite of apartments, seventeen in number for which She had applied last year, and which he had refused to let her have. This increased his ill-humour, already excessive. When he arrived at Windsor [suffering from the effects of sleepless nights and asthmatic attacks] and went into the drawing-room (at about ten o’clock at night), where the whole party was assembled, he went up to the Princess Victoria, took hold of both her hands, and expressed his pleasure at seeing her there and his regret that he did not see her oftener. He then turned to the Duchess and made her a low bow, almost immediately after which he said that ‘a most unwarrantable liberty had been taken with one of his Palaces; that He had just come from Kensington, where He found apartments had been taken possession of not only without his consent, but contrary to his commands, and that he neither understood nor would endure conduct so disrespectful to him.’ This was said loudly, publicly, and in a tone of serious displeasure. It was, however, only the muttering of the storm which was to break the next day. Adolphus went into his room on Sunday morning, and found him in a state of great excitement. It was his birthday, and though the celebration was (what was called) private, there were a hundred people at dinner, either belonging to the Court or from the neighbourhood. The Duchess of Kent sat on one side of the King and one of his sisters on the other, the Princess Victoria opposite. Adolphus sat two or three from the Duchess, and heard every word of what passed. After dinner, by the Queen’s desire, ‘His Majesty’s health, and long life to him’ was given, and as soon as it was drunk He made a very long speech, in the course of which he poured forth the following extraordinary and foudroyant tirade: – ‘I trust in God that my life may be spared for nine months longer, after which period, in the event of my death, no Regency would take place. I should then have the satisfaction of leaving the royal authority to the personal exercise of that Young Lady (pointing to the Pss.), the Heiress presumptive of the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which She would be placed. I have no hesitation in saying that I have been insulted – grossly and continually insulted – by that person, but I am determined to endure no longer a course of behaviour so disrespectful to me. Amongst many other things I have particularly to complain of the manner in which that young Lady has been kept away from my Court; she has been repeatedly kept from my drawing-rooms, at which She ought always to have been present, but I am fully resolved that this shall not happen again. I would have her know that I am King, and that I am determined to make my authority respected, and for the future I shall insist and command that the Princess do upon all occasions appear at my Court, as it is her duty to do.’ He terminated his speech by an allusion to the Princess and her future reign in a tone of paternal interest and affection, which Adolphus told me was excellent in its way.
This awful philippick (with a great deal more which I forget) was uttered with a loud voice and excited manner. The Queen looked in deep distress, the Princess burst into tears, and the whole company were aghast. The Duchess of Kent said not a word. Immediately after they rose and retired, and a terrible scene ensued; the Duchess announced her immediate departure and ordered her carriage, but a sort of reconciliation was patched up, and she was prevailed upon to stay till the next day.13
The Duke of Wellington’s comment upon all this was characteristically laconic: ‘Very awkward, by God!’
The Princess’s distress was alleviated by the thought that her beloved Uncle Leopold was coming to England to stay at Claremont in three weeks’ time. Her delight in his company was as profound as ever: ‘He is so clever,’ she recorded in her diary, ‘so mild and so prudent; he alone can give me good advice on every thing.’ She loved Queen Louise, too, she protested, and ‘very much regretted’ that she was unable to come to England with her husband as she was expecting a second child. Louise sent ‘lovely’ presents, however, a silk dress and a satin bonnet, the dress ‘made by Mlle Palmyre, the first dressmaker of Paris’.
Her uncle’s visit was soon over, however; and thereafter week after week passed at Claremont with ‘the usual society’, including that of Conroy’s daughter, Victoire, whom she increasingly grew to dislike the more she hated the girl’s father, and she longed to return to London for the season, yearning for the opera and the theatre and ‘for some merriment after being so very long in the country’ with such companions as she was obliged to live with there. Yet, when she did return to Kensington, life there was far from gay: Conroy was as detestable as ever and more than ever determined not to lose his influence in the Duchess of Kent’s household when her daughter came of age. The Duchess herself was just as much under Conroy’s influence as she had ever been.
Shortly before her eighteenth birthday Princess Victoria received a letter from the King in which he told her that he proposed applying to Parliament for a grant of £10,000 a year to be entirely at her own disposal. He intended her also to have the right to appoint her own Keeper of the Privy Purse, suggesting Sir Benjamin Stephenson whom the Duchess much disliked, for this post. The Princess was, in addition, to have the right to form her own household. When the Lord Chamberlain brought this letter to Kensington, Sir John Conroy insisted upon its being delivered to the Princess in the Duchess’s presence. Once the Princess had read it she handed it to her mother who was, of course, appalled by its contents. Having satisfied herself that the King had consulted the Cabinet before writing the letter, she wrote an extremely angry reply to Lord Melbourne, the Prime Minister, then, having summarily dismissed suggestions by her daughter that her tutor, the Revd George Davys, now Dean of Chester, might be appointed her Keeper of the Privy Purse, and that the Princess might have a private conversation with Lord Melbourne, the Duchess, with Conroy’s help, wrote a letter to the King which the Princess, who had felt ‘very miserable’ the evening before and had refused to go down to dinner, was required to copy. ‘I wish to remain in every respect as I am now in the care of my Mother,’ ran this letter which the Princess had for a time resisted in copying. ‘Upon the subject of money I should wish that whatever may be necessary to add, may be given to my dear Mother for my use, who always does everything I want in pecuniary matters.’14
When he read this letter the King commented, before laying it aside, that Victoria had not written it.15 To a later letter, offering a compromise – £4,000 a year for the Princess and £6,000 for herself – the Duchess replied curtly, rejecting it without even consulting her daughter who by now no longer spoke to her when they were alone together.
By this time the King was clearly very ill. He had arranged