The Captive of Kensington Palace

Chapter XIV ‘THE QUEEN HAS DONE IT ALL’

When Adelaide returned to England after her trip on the Continent it was to find the King ill and fretful. He was, however, delighted to see her, and when she arrived at St James’s Palace hurried out to welcome her and embrace her warmly.

‘I’m glad to see you back,’ he cried. ‘It’s not the same without you.’

It was a wonderful welcome home.

Many ceremonies had been arranged for her and by the end of a week she was exhausted; so that when the day came for her to go to the City to receive a congratulatory address on her safe return she was unable to attend and the King went alone. Adelaide’s detractors preferred to see this as an insult to the City although it passed off without much comment.

The FitzClarences had grown to dislike her actively, the main reason being that she had been so good to them, and their arrogant natures would not allow them to admit her generosity while they did not hesitate to accept it. Adelaide was the Queen; and they were the children of their father’s mistress. This was a fact they could not forget. They hated her for being in the position which they reckoned should have belonged to their mother; and they were constantly reminding each other of what life would have been if their parents had been married. The fact that the King acknowledged them as his children, that they had titles and honours, did not satisfy them. They wanted more, and to appease their frustrated anger, like the people, they chose meek Adelaide as their scapegoat.

At one moment she was a fool with no intelligence; at another she was possessed of great cunning. She led the King and she was responsible for his opposition to the Reform Bill; she was an alien – a German, and there had been too many Germans in the royal family.

Those who had accompanied her to Saxe-Meiningen reported that the Castle of Altenstein where she had spent her childhood was certainly not worthy to be known as such. They had seen the room which Adelaide and her sister had shared – a little room without a carpet and containing two small beds with calico curtains. An English maid would complain at being given such a room. And this was the woman who sought to manage the affairs of England!

While aware of this hostility Adelaide pretended not to see it because she did not wish to upset William. He loved his wife; he loved his children; in the early days of his marriage the harmony which had existed between them – and which was of Adelaide’s making – had delighted him; and his mind was not strong enough, Adelaide decided, for her to introduce new conflicts. She must forget the unkindness of William’s children and delight with him in the adorable grandchildren who made no secret of their love for her.

Windsor Castle and St James’s were the homes of many of them; they ran about shrieking and playing their games, and no one restrained them, for the King and Queen enjoyed hearing their noisy play; and if there was silence, began to fret that they might be ill.

Soon after her return London was shocked by the fire which destroyed the Houses of Parliament. The King grew overexcited and many people said it was an omen. The verdict was that had the fire been dealt with promptly the building might have been saved. But nothing had been done and a minor outbreak had resulted in a mighty conflagration.

There should be some means of preventing fires spreading, the Government decided; a kind of brigade which could go into action with the minimum of delay was needed.

William was excited and discussed it with Adelaide.

‘They seem to think there should be some sort of Fire Brigade – men just waiting for a call with everything ready to deal with the flames before they’ve done too much damage.’

Adelaide thought this was an excellent idea; and was very interested in the formation of the London Fire Brigade.

It was much more comforting to discuss the building up of such an organisation than the depressing affairs of the Government.

‘That fellow Melbourne has been to see me again,’ William told her. ‘He says he can’t get the support he needs and that he thinks the Government will have to make concessions to these radical ideas if it’s to stay in power.’

‘They cannot make concessions. It will be the Reform Bill all over again.’

‘That’s what I tell him, but he stands firm. Melbourne will have to go.’

‘Will this bring Wellington back?’ asked the Queen hopefully.

‘We’ll have to see.’

Shortly after this the King dismissed the Melbourne Ministry, an action which was ill-timed, for he had played straight into the hands of the Queen’s enemies.

It was well known that she had opposed the Reform Bill; she had no sooner returned from her trip abroad than Melbourne was dismissed. It was easy to see that the Queen wanted to bring back the Tories and that she was against reform.

The Times was the first with the news.‘The King has turned out the Ministry and there is every reason to believe that the Duke of Wellington has been sent for. The Queen has done it all.’

It seemed that all London was against the Queen. The FitzClarences discussed her in their Clubs and the houses of their friends with venom. The dismissal of Melbourne was an attempt to obstruct a Government influenced by the people. And this had been brought about by an ugly woman with a German accent who had come from a ‘doghole’ in Germany and had slept in a room which an English housemaid had scorned!

Adelaide was wretched. She almost wished that she had stayed abroad. William, oddly enough, was less excitable over major events than over small domestic difficulties.

‘Stuff!’ was his comment.

The people were parading the streets with banners on which were painted the words: ‘The Queen has done it all.’

‘You see,’ said Adelaide, ‘that is what happened in France. They chose the Queen because she was a foreigner to them, just as the people here have chosen me. I hope that I shall be as brave as Marie Antoinette when my time comes.’

The King’s ‘Stuff!’ was some consolation. ‘We all get mud thrown at us now and then. My brother George was the most unpopular man in the country but he died in his bed. Stop fretting.’

Wellington advised that the King should send for Sir Robert Peel and ask him to form a Government, and messengers were immediately sent to Rome where Peel was at that time. Meanwhile Wellington became First Lord of the Treasury and Home Secretary, and carried on the Ministry until Peel’s return. Then Wellington took on the post of Foreign Secretary.

Such a hastily formed Government was an uneasy one, although it sufficed to carry the country through a rather ugly situation; it did last for four months, and the campaign against the Queen subsided.

The Times even went so far as to publish an apology to her, and the Queen was relegated to the position of a rather stupid woman, a nonentity who had failed to give the King the heirs for which he had married her, who was not even handsome enough to grace ceremonies; and therefore was to be regarded with contempt.

The FitzClarences added their criticism. She was a fool; she had an execrable German accent; she was no use nor ornament to the throne.

Adelaide, painfully aware of her unpopularity, grew thinner and her cough returned to trouble her.

Buckingham Palace had now been completed and even that was used as a condemnation against the Queen.

There had never been such a lack of taste displayed in any of the royal palaces. Did the people remember George IV? He might have been extravagant and a voluptuary controlled by women, but at least he had good taste. Think of Carlton House; think of what he had done to Windsor; think of the buildings round Regent’s Park and Nash’s Regent Street. And then think of Buckingham Palace!

‘Every error of taste imaginable has been committed.’ The pillars – and there were many of them – were painted in a shade of raspberry. Thomas Creevy, the old gossip, had had a look over it and said those raspberry pillars made him feel sick and that instead of being called Buckingham Palace it should be called Brunswick Hotel.

The most vulgar thing of all was the wallpaper for the Queen’s apartments which she had chosen herself.

And this was the palace on which a million pounds had been spent!

William himself did not like it when he went to look over it with Adelaide.

‘I suppose we’ll have to move in. They’ll expect it of us … after all that money’s been spent on it.’

William was thinking of the FitzClarence grandchildren playing hide and seek behind the raspberry pillars. They would not like it he was sure. Not like Old St James’s for all its gloom, or Windsor for all its grandeur. And there was nothing like Bushy with its homeliness and memories of the old days with Dorothy when the children were all growing up and were much more respectful and affectionate towards the Duke of Clarence than they were to the King of England.

‘Why not offer it to the country?’ suggested Adelaide. ‘It could take the place of the Houses of Parliament.’

‘Capital!’ cried the King. ‘That’s what we’ll do.’

He was disappointed when the Government announced that it did not believe that Buckingham Palace would be suitable as the Houses of Parliament. Moreover, plans were hastily going ahead to rebuild them on that spot on the river where the old ones had stood.

How glad Adelaide was to go to Brighton for a respite! It was so pleasant not to have to worry every time she drove out that she would be confronted with one of those horrid placards about herself. The sea air was good too, even though it was autumn and the winds blowing in from the sea were bitterly cold.

One of her greatest comforts, apart from the grandchildren, was George Cambridge, who was growing into a very handsome boy, and was devoted to her. There was one who showed gratitude. But she had to face the fact that he was growing up and she supposed he would have to take up some training – military perhaps, which would entail his going away, probably to Germany where it seemed to be the custom to send royal Princes. But that was not yet and she would enjoy this period in Brighton.

The FitzClarences, however, would not allow her to be at peace, so they started a rumour that the Queen was pregnant.

When the Duchess of Kent heard this news she was wild with rage. She stormed up and down her drawing-room declaring that it was impossible. It could not be. That poor pale sick creature! How could it possibly come about? There was a mistake. Sir John must tell her it was a mistake.

Sir John did; but he shared her horror. If indeed it should be true, if Adelaide produced that child and it lived … then this would be the end of all their hopes.

Victoria said to Lehzen: ‘Do you think this story is true that the Queen is going to have a child?’

‘It has been neither denied nor confirmed,’ said the judicious Lehzen.

‘Lehzen, think what it will mean! I shall not be the Queen after all.’

‘My dear Princess, will that make you very unhappy?’

Victoria was thoughtful. ‘I think I shall be very disappointed. You see, everything that has happened has been leading up to that. But I can’t help thinking of Aunt Adelaide. She is a sweet kind woman, you know, Lehzen, and I love her dearly. I know what she wants more than anything in the world is a baby of her own. Oh, she loves all the King’s grandchildren – whom I am never allowed to see – and she loves the Georges and I believe she loves me too – when Mamma allows her to see me – but she does long for her own baby. So if I lost the throne and Aunt Adelaide gained a baby … Really, Lehzen, I can’t honestly say, but I think I should feel happy for Aunt Adelaide.’

Lehzen was moved to comment. ‘You have your storms and tantrums, but I think you have great honesty and that is a very fine characteristic to have.’

Victoria smiled. ‘I can’t help thinking too that George Cambridge has a much happier time than I do. He is not told he must not do this and that; he is allowed to be alone sometimes. So perhaps I feel too that there is a great deal to be said for not being the heir to the throne.’

Lehzen said calmly: ‘I am glad you see it in this way, because if you should not be Queen you will still make a very happy life for yourself.’

The Duchess was far less philosophical.

‘This is monstrous!’ she cried. ‘That old fool could not beget a child. And who is the man who is always beside the Queen, eh? Earl Howe. She is known to have a fancy for him. If the Queen is with child, then depend upon it, Earl Howe is the father.’

The Duchess’s suspicions were of course those of the FitzClarences.

‘She is two or three months gone,’ said the Earl of Munster, that George FitzClarence whom Adelaide had nursed during her honeymoon when he had broken his leg. ‘There is going to be a big scandal over this.’

It was whispered of in the streets. A fine thing. This German ‘frow’ who had lived in a housemaid’s bedroom before she came to the Court of England was about to give birth to a bastard and foist him on to the throne of England.

At length the rumours came to Adelaide’s ears. How had they started? she wondered. Why did people make up these cruel stories about her? If it were possible for her to be pregnant, how happy she would be! But alas, it was not so. She would never be a mother now.

And how dared they say such cruel things about her relationship with Earl Howe? It was true theirs was a tender friendship; he treated her as though she were an attractive woman, something which for all his affection the King had never done. But the Earl was just a dear friend; she had been too rigorously brought up, she was too conscious of her duty for it to be otherwise.

There was nothing to do but show the King the newspapers which she knew his secretaries had been keeping from him.

He read them and threw them from him in contempt.

‘Damned stuff,’ he said.

And when the scandal was proved to be groundless it was forgotten.

The Duchess of Kent regained her serenity. ‘How could we have thought that poor creature possibly could! No, it can never happen now. The throne is safe for Victoria.’

The Duchess complained continually of her apartments in Kensington.

‘Really,’ she said to Sir John, ‘it is a scandal. We are expected to live in these rooms which are scarcely better than servants’ quarters.’

This was far from true but Sir John never contradicted his Duchess unless it was absolutely necessary to his interests to do so and the Duchess’s antagonism towards the King was never that.

‘I think I have been patient too long. Good Heavens, doesn’t that man realise that Victoria is the heiress to the throne?’

‘It can scarcely be called my dear Duchess’s fault if he does not,’ replied Sir John with one of his ironical smiles.

‘I have long thought we should have a larger apartment. Why not? There are plenty of rooms available in the Palace. Why, therefore, should we be confined to these miserable few? I have decided to write to His Majesty and tell him that I require a larger apartment. There are seventeen rooms which I could take over and no one would be the worse for it. Then I might be able to provide apartments for my daughter comparable with her rank.’

‘Why not write to the King and ask his permission to take over the rooms you have chosen?’

‘Oh, how infuriating. To have to ask the permission of that … of that …’

‘Buffoon?’ supplied Sir John; and they both laughed.

Dear Sir John! What a blessing that with all she had to put up with from her most tiresome brother-in-law, she had Sir John with whom to share a little jocularity.

‘I shall write immediately,’ she said. ‘I see no reason to delay.’

As Sir John did not either, she sat down and wrote her request to the King in her usual imperious manner.

When her letter was put before William, his eyes bulged with rage.

‘So the apartments are not good enough for Madam Kent, eh? She would like more space. She will take over seventeen more rooms and she has already chosen them. By God, that woman will go too far one of these days. Write to her. Ask her when she proposes to take over St James’s and when she would like me to vacate Windsor so that she can move in. Or perhaps that’s not grand enough for her. Seventeen rooms! No, I say. She will stay in her present apartments. And the answer to her request is No, No, No!’

When the Duchess received his reply she was so angry that she tore it up and flung it from her.

‘Ill-mannered, uncouth, vulgar …’ she stammered.

‘Buffoon,’ supplied Sir John, smiling tenderly at her.

She laughed.

‘But,’ she added, ‘I shall never allow the creature to get the better of me.’