Queen Victoria: A Personal History. Christopher Hibbert

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СКАЧАТЬ the sacrifices Conroy had made, both professionally and financially, to serve the Duchess so selflessly and the conditions which he required before he could consider retirement: they were a peerage, the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, and a pension of £3,000 a year.² ‘This is really too bad! Have you ever heard such impudence,’ exclaimed Lord Melbourne as the paper fell from his hands.³ Soon, however, he came to agree with Baron Stockmar that the man’s retirement was the ‘only measure’ which might help to improve the Duchess of Kent’s relationship with her daughter who was, indeed, prepared to promise almost anything to the dreadful fellow provided he left the country; and, since Conroy protested that he was far from content with the mere baronetcy accorded him, he was given an undertaking that, if Melbourne ‘should continue as her Majesty’s adviser’, he would be raised to an Irish peerage as soon as a new creation could be made. Melbourne had hoped that this offer would induce Conroy to leave the country; but Sir John declined to fulfil his part of the bargain until the Queen had fulfilled hers. So he and his family remained at Kensington where, so Princess Lieven heard, he bullied the Duchess as vigorously as ever. All this, Lord Liverpool observed to Baron Stockmar, was ‘the result of Lord M.’s careless way of doing things’.

      As the months went by, however, Conroy’s position and reputation in England became increasingly insecure. He felt obliged to lodge an action for libel when The Times in a prominent article hinted at gross mismanagement of the Duchess of Kent’s financial affairs by ‘a certain newly created baronet’ who had also been enabled to buy ‘a certain estate in Wales’ with money not his own. Then there were complaints from the Duchess of Kent’s Coburg relations that the sitting room which had been made available to them on their visits to England was insolently invaded by this Irish interloper who was accustomed to come in and sit there as if he, too, were a member of her family. Following upon these complaints came a letter from James Abercromby, by now the highly respected Speaker of the House of Commons, who bluntly informed Conroy that it was ‘everywhere boldly asserted’ that his ‘remaining in the family of the Duchess of Kent’ was the main if not the only cause of the sorry state of the relationship between the Queen and her mother. If he withdrew from London he would be doing a service of the ‘greatest public importance’.⁴

      At length the Duke of Wellington, always delighted to be involved in such delicate situations, was called upon for help as, indeed, he had been in the Lady Flora Hastings case upon which both the Duchess of Kent and the Marquess of Hastings had sought his advice.

      After a conversation with Wellington, Conroy agreed to leave the country, a decision for which the Duke with evident satisfaction took full credit, telling Charles Greville that he had persuaded the man to go by means of cajoling and flattery, using ‘plenty of butter’, and assuring Conroy that his decision to leave was ‘an honourable and manly course’.⁵

      Unfortunately the departure of Sir John Conroy for Italy did not improve relations between the Queen and the Duchess who, having assured Conroy that she still retained for him ‘the most unshaken esteem’, was kept quite as much at arm’s length at Buckingham Palace as she had ever been at Kensington. She was required to seek permission before visiting her daughter in her apartments and was not infrequently told that Her Majesty was too occupied with affairs of state or other matters to receive her. One day the Queen was talking to Lord Melbourne in the Blue Closet when her mother ‘unceremoniously opened the door, but on [the Queen’s] holloaing out, begged pardon and retired’.

      The ill feeling between mother and daughter was exacerbated by complaints from the Duchess that the apartments allowed to her and her household were uncomfortably small when compared with those of the Queen who slept in a large bedroom between those of her maid and Baroness Lehzen, her ‘ANGELIC, dearest Lehzen…the most estimable & precious treasure’ she possessed and ‘EVER SHALL POSSESS’.⁶

      The comfort of having Lord Melbourne to talk to, and support her when plagued by such problems as were posed by her mother, made life so much more agreeable than it might otherwise have been; and when, at the beginning of May 1839, the Queen learned from the Home Secretary, Lord John Russell, that their Government was facing defeat on a colonial issue in the House of Commons and that her beloved Prime Minister would have to resign, she received the news with horrified dismay. Some weeks earlier the possibility of his Government’s defeat had distressed her beyond measure: ‘I am but a poor helpless girl who clings to him for support and protection, & the thought of ALL ALL my happiness being possibly at stake, so completely overcame me that I burst into tears and remained crying for some time.’⁷

      Now, distressed as she already had been by the Lady Flora Hastings affair and the presumptuous demands of the now mercifully departed Conroy, she was even more distraught: ‘The state of agony, grief and despair into which this [defeat of the Government] placed me may be easier imagined than described!’ she wrote in her diary. ‘That happy peaceful life destroyed, that dearest kind Lord Melbourne no more my minister…I sobbed and cried much.’⁸

      ‘I really thought my heart would break,’ she added after Melbourne had been to see her to confirm the terrible news himself and she had begged him ‘ever to be a father to one who never wanted support more than she does now’, ‘He was standing by the window; I took that kind dear hand of his in both mine and looked at him and sobbed out, “Don’t forsake me.” I held his hand for a little while, unable to leave go; and he gave me such a look of kindness pity and affection, and could hardly utter for words, “Oh! no!” in such a touching voice.⁹ We then sat down as usual and I strove to calm myself…After a pause he said, “You must try and be as collected as you can and act with great firmness and decision”…I went on crying and feeling as thoroughly wretched as human mortal can be.’¹⁰

      When he had gone she wrote him three letters beseeching him to come to see her again and to stay for dinner. He would not come to dinner, he replied: it would not be proper to do so while negotiations for a new Government were in progress; but he would come to see her that afternoon.

      In the meantime Lord John Russell called to see her; but she could not stop crying and she was still in tears when Lord Melbourne returned with a paper in which he recommended her sending for the Duke of Wellington who would probably suggest that she send for Sir Robert Peel, who had been Prime Minister in the Tory administration of 1834–5. If the Duke did so, she must try to make allowances for Peel’s stiff, shy, awkward manner.¹¹ Certainly Peel was ‘an underbred fellow’ for all his time at Harrow and Christ Church. He was, after all, ‘not accustomed to talk to Kings and Princes’ as Melbourne himself was, yet he was ‘a very able and gifted man’.¹²

      ‘I burst into tears and said, “You don’t know what a dreadful thing it is for me,”’ the Queen continued in her diary entry. ‘He looked really so kindly at me and seemed much affected…I sobbed much, again held his hand in both mine…as if I felt in doing so he could not leave me…He then got up…and he kissed my hand, I crying dreadfully.’ When he had gone she wrote to beg him to ride tomorrow in the Park so that she could ‘just get a glimpse’ of him; it would be ‘such a comfort’. ‘Ld. Melbourne may think this childish but the Queen really is so anxious it might be; & she wld bear thro’ all her trials so much better if she did just see a friend’s face sometimes…’

      That evening she ‘could not touch a morsel of food’ СКАЧАТЬ