the hand, and expressing great concern at what had happened, and my wish that all should be forgotten, she expressed herself exceedingly grateful to me, and said that, for Mama’s sake, she would suppress every wounded feeling and would forget it, etc.’15
The Hastings family were not prepared to forget it, though; nor was Lady Flora’s friend, Sir John Conroy, who was quick to seize this opportunity to make trouble for those who had thwarted his ambition; nor were certain Tory propagandists who recognized in this scandal at Court a useful stick with which to beat Melbourne and the Whigs whom the Queen so openly supported; and nor, on reflection, was Lady Flora herself who wrote to her uncle by marriage, Captain Hamilton Fitzgerald, then living in Brussels, informing him that her honour had been ‘most basely assailed’.
Fitzgerald left for London immediately. Lord Hastings, Lady Flora’s brother, was equally determined to avenge this slur on his family’s good name. Having seen his sister, he was convinced that Lord Melbourne was responsible for promoting the scandal, and he announced that he would challenge him to a duel. But, having talked to him, he was forced to conclude that the Prime Minister had tried to keep everything quiet and that he must look elsewhere for a culprit. His sister generously maintained that the Queen herself was not responsible. She was quite sure, she said, ‘that the Queen does not understand what they have betrayed her into. She has endeavoured to show her regret by her civility to me, and expressed it most handsomely with tears in her eyes.’16 Even so, her brother demanded an audience with the Queen which Lord Melbourne tried to prevent, thereby provoking an outraged letter from Lord Hastings:
Having waited two days in the hope of having an audience with Her Majesty which I requested (if not as a matter of right as a Peer, at least as one of feeling), my patience being exhausted, and being anxious to return to the bosom of my afflicted and insulted family, I am forced to resort to the only means now left in my power, of recording my abhorrence and detestation of the treatment which my sister has lately sustained.17
He shared his sister’s belief that the Queen was not directly responsible for this treatment, declaring that responsibility rested with the ‘baneful influence’ which surrounded the throne and declaring that if he discovered any more relevant facts about the whole affair he would return to Court from whose ‘polluted atmosphere’ he for the time being retired.
The ‘baneful influence’ Lady Flora herself identified in her letter to Hamilton Fitzgerald as ‘a certain foreign Lady’, Baroness Lehzen, whose ‘hatred of the Duchess of Kent [was] no secret’. Lady Flora also blamed Lady Portman, her ‘accuser’ in this ‘diabolical conspiracy’. ‘Good bye, my dear uncle,’ her letter ended. ‘I blush to send you so revolting a letter, but I wish you to know the truth, and nothing but the truth – and you are welcome to tell it right and left.’18
Excerpts from this letter were accordingly sent to the press;* so were letters written to both the Queen and Lord Melbourne by Lady Flora’s mother, the Dowager Marchioness of Hastings, who praised the behaviour of the Queen’s ‘admirable mother’, contended that Her Majesty’s honour demanded that ‘the criminal inventor’ of the falsehoods spread about her daughter should not ‘remain without discovery’, and demanded as a ‘mark of public justice’ the removal of Sir James Clark from the Queen’s Household. To this last request Melbourne replied, ‘The demand which your Ladyship’s letter makes upon me is so unprecedented and objectionable that even the respect due to your Ladyship’s sex, rank, family and character would not justify me in more, if indeed it authorizes so much than acknowledging the letter for the sole purpose of acquainting your Ladyship that I have received it.’ This letter, with the rest of the correspondence, was published in the Morning Post.19
By now Lady Flora’s humiliation, the Queen’s supposed failure to make a proper apology for it, as well as her failure to dismiss her Scottish doctor, Sir James Clark, from her Household as he had been dismissed from her mother’s, were the subject of intriguing gossip in almost every drawing room in London.
Lord Melbourne characteristically advised the Queen to take no notice of such gossip, nor of the letters which were appearing in the newspapers. But the Queen could not bring herself to ignore them; and the more she fretted about them the more she worked herself up into a fury with Lady Hastings, that ‘wicked, foolish old woman’, and with ‘that wretched Ly. Flo.’.20 She would like to see the whole Hastings family hanged alongside the editor of the Morning Post. As for her mother, who had taken Lady Flora’s side and was reported to have looked after her when she was ill as though she had been her own child, her behaviour had been unforgivable. Indeed, it was her mother’s behaviour which angered the Queen quite as much as that of the Hastings family. She confessed to Lord Melbourne that she felt ‘a growing dislike for Mama’, and that it was like ‘having an enemy in the house’.
Day after day she spoke in these terms, week after week the atmosphere in the Palace became more charged, and the coolness between the rival households of the Queen and the Duchess became more marked. Lady Tavistock, fearful that Lord Hastings would challenge her husband to a duel, followed Lady Flora about in an effort to make amends. ‘Won’t you speak to me? Won’t you shake hands?’ she pleaded. ‘That is quite impossible,’ Lady Flora said.21
She became increasingly ill, while the Queen, dismissive as usual of other people’s complaints and always most reluctant to change an opinion once formed, continued to deny the seriousness of Lady Flora’s illness which she felt sure was just ‘a billious attack’. Her mother insisted that, on the contrary, the poor woman was gravely ill; she was ‘in a dreadful state’ about her; indeed, she thought Lady Flora was dying. The thought that she might die greatly alarmed Lord Melbourne. That would certainly lay the Queen open to reproach; it would be wise to send to enquire after her. ‘First of all,’ he said, ‘because she is under your roof, and then because it shows feeling.’
But the Queen’s dislike of the woman had become so intense that she could not show such feeling. While her mother, who now refused to sit next to Lady Tavistock at the whist table, kept crying and insisting that Lady Flora was mortally ill, her daughter attended a ball and enjoyed herself ‘excessively’.
There then, however, came very grave reports from Sir William Chambers, one of the leading physicians in London, who had succeeded Sir James Clark as the Duchess of Kent’s physician. The Queen was advised to postpone another ball which was due to be held on 26 June. This she did and sent word that she would go to see Lady Flora that afternoon. But the dying woman felt too ill to see her then. Chambers advised her to go to her as soon as she could the next day.
I went in alone [the Queen recorded of this distressing visit]. I found poor Lady Flora stretched on a couch looking as thin as anybody can be who is still alive; literally a skeleton, but the body very much swollen like a person who is with child; a searching look in her eyes, a look rather like a person who is dying; her voice like usual, and a good deal of strength in her hands; she was friendly, said she was very comfortable, and was very grateful for all I had done for her, and that she was glad to see me looking well. I said to her, I hoped to see her again when she was better, upon which she grasped my hand as if to say ‘I shall not see you again.’ I then instantly went upstairs and returned to Lord M. who said, ‘You remained a very short time.’22
Four days later Lady Flora was still clinging weakly to life. The Queen said to Lord Melbourne that she found it very disagreeable and painful ‘to think there was a dying person in the house’.23 On 5 July in the early hours of the morning, over a week since the Queen had last seen her, Lady Flora died. A post mortem was conducted by the distinguished surgeon, Sir Benjamin Brodie,