Виктория Холт - The Queen and Lord M

‘It’ll pass,’ said Lord Melbourne philosophically. ‘It always does.’

‘How right you were when you impressed on me how important this affair could become.’

‘And you listened to me. Therefore let us regard it as a lesson.’

That lifted her spirits a little. Lord Melbourne said that any experience was worth while if one learned from it. She had certainly learned from this. And she still had dear Lord Melbourne as her companion.

And that, she reminded herself, was a great deal for which to be thankful.

The Palace feud had intensified, and the happiness the Queen had experienced during the ‘pleasantest summer’ had completely disappeared. The Duchess was becoming more and more tiresome and seemed to do everything possible to make life difficult. She kept Lady Flora constantly in her company, was over-solicitous for her health as though to draw attention to her own compassion compared with her daughter’s heartlessness. The Flora Hastings scandal was still discussed and of course by this time it was obvious that she would not be pregnant and was really ill.

Victoria was touchy, irritable, snapping at dear Daisy and sometimes being imperious even with Lord Melbourne. Of course his extreme tact and rather cynical jocularity overcame these moods and he would laugh at her in a funny respectful way, bow with exaggerated formality and call her Majesty, so that she would have to laugh and feel better for a while.

She raged against the Tories and their horrid paper, the Morning Post, which had blown up the silly Palace intrigue to a mighty scandal; she referred to Flora Hastings as that ‘nasty creature’; she worried about putting on weight, her lack of inches and her health. She was getting really melancholy and that, she once told Lord Melbourne, was how it probably started with her grandfather.

Lord Melbourne said it was not in the least like her grandfather. He had had a rash and had been unable to stop talking. Lord Melbourne thought where she did show a lack of balance was in comparing herself with him. Yet look how angry she had been when she had been likened to Queen Charlotte and the Duke of Gloucester!

That made her laugh.

‘Dear Lord M!’ she cried. ‘What should I do without you? Whenever I feel melancholy I remember that you will be coming in to see me and that makes me feel much better.’

Lord Melbourne looked a little thoughtful and wondered whether he ought to tell her about the uncertain position of the Government. Was it better to do so and prepare her or let the inevitable burst upon her? It would certainly do nothing to relieve her present gloomy feelings; on the other hand he did not wish it to come as a surprise.

Better perhaps to prepare her gradually.

‘Colonies can try us sorely,’ he said. ‘There are troubles looming in Jamaica now.’

‘I am sure my Government with you at its head will be able to handle them successfully.’

‘Oh, I have the utmost confidence in Lord Palmerston. There are, however, so many questions to be settled. There is controversy over the apprentices there. The prisons are overcrowded. Some of the planters are far from humane and they clap their workers into prison for the slightest offence which results of course in this dreadful overcrowding. We brought in a Bill to improve all this but the Colonial Assembly were hostile to it. “Trouble! Trouble! Boil and Bubble.” If it isn’t Canada it’s Jamaica. Who would have Colonies?’

‘Having them we must look after them.’

‘Quite so,’ said Lord Melbourne. ‘We are going to bring in a Bill to suspend the Jamaican Constitution temporarily but Sir Robert Peel and his merry men are not going to agree with us on this point.’

‘How tiresome they are!’

He looked at her more closely. She had not grasped the implication. He had been trying to tell her for some time that the Whig Parliament was on the brink of disaster. One could not govern in the present circumstances. The strength of the Tories was increasing; that of the Whigs diminishing; and Sir Robert Peel was poised at the ready to leap into Lord Melbourne’s shoes.

No, she was too sad for him to drive home the point now, but he had sown the seeds. She would go away and think about the Jamaican situation and the powerful Sir Robert Peel who could – and most probably would – in a very short time be here with her talking to her of the country’s affairs in the place of Lord Melbourne.

He allowed the conversation to slip back to the Flora Hastings affair which, unpleasant as it was, would he knew be more tolerable to the Queen.

‘When the press takes up a royal scandal we can be sure it will be with us for a long time.’

‘That wretched Morning Post!’

‘You should not take it to heart. The Tories are always looking for a chance to attack us and they are trying to make me the scapegoat of this affair.’

‘I shall never allow that.’

‘This is one of the matters in which Your Imperious Majesty has no say, alas. This affair is making as much noise as the troubles of George IV and his wife.’

‘She was tried … for adultery. That must have been very shocking.’

‘Yes, but the people like a heroine. They could hardly make one of her and your royal Uncle was scarcely cast for the role of hero at that time. It was very different when he was a young man. Then he was a real Prince Charming. When I was a boy I remember the talk of him. He was in and out of scrapes but the people adored him. He was good-looking and gallant and even when Mary Robinson threatened to publish his love letters they were still on his side against his virtuous and let us confess it rather dull father.’

‘Poor Grandfather! And it seems so unfair that people should be loved and admired because of their good looks. Grandfather tried so hard to be good; and Uncle George didn’t care – yet they were on his side.’

‘The people love romance. When you marry, you will see how they adore you.’

She avoided his eyes. Marriage was a matter she did not wish to discuss with him. Uncle Leopold was constantly hinting at it and mentioning the virtues of her cousin Albert, and she had thought Albert most attractive when she had met him on his brief visit to England before her accession; but now she felt differently. A husband would interfere and she wanted no interference.

Lord Melbourne was aware of her feelings, but marriage like the results of a division on the Jamaican Bill was something which would have to be discussed sooner or later.

She was depressed at the moment so he would try to cheer her.

‘I love hearing your accounts of my family,’ she said. ‘How wonderful to think that you lived through so much and saw it at first hand.’

‘I am not so sure. It betrays the fact that I am a somewhat aged gentleman.’

‘Some people are ageless. Dear Lord M, you are one of them.’

‘Your Majesty is in a complimentary mood today.’

‘You are cheering me considerably … as you always do. Tell me about your family.’

‘Ah,’ he said, ‘they are not illustrious like yours.’

She giggled. ‘I fear some of mine have been far from illustrious. In fact they have been wicked and scandalous.’

‘Not really more so than the less exalted,’ he assured her. ‘They have had power some of them, unlimited power, and how do any of us know how we would act with such a weapon in our hands? Now mine is a very much more sober history. Most of it is wrapped in obscurity.’

‘Tell me what you know.’

‘Well, it was like this: a fellow called Peniston Lamb was born in Southwell in the year 1670. He was poor but he managed to go to London and study law. He went into business and made a fortune.’

‘That was clever of him considering he was born poor.’

‘Very clever. When he died he left his fortune to two nephews.’

‘Did he have no sons?’

‘No sons, only two nephews. One of these, Matthew, was my grandfather. He married a Miss Coke of Melbourne, a little spot not far from Derby. He knew how to multiply the money left to him and made a large fortune. He was knighted and when he died my father, who was Peniston after the founder of our fortunes, inherited his father’s money and the title. My father became very friendly with Lord Bute, who was a great friend of your grandfather’s mother, the Princess Augusta.’

Victoria nodded. ‘I believe there was some scandal.’

‘She and Lord Bute were great friends, particularly after the death of Augusta’s husband, Frederick, Prince of Wales.’

‘It reminds me of Mamma and Sir John Conroy.’

‘It was rather similar. Lord Bute advised the Princess and your grandfather was then Prince of Wales, his father Frederick having died and George II (his grandfather) still being alive. Lord Bute was a man of great influence and remained so until George, having become King, threw him off. But what I wanted to tell you was that my father had some connection with Lord Bute, and Lord North (the Prime Minister who lost us the American Colonies, with the help of your grandfather of course) made my father a Baron and that was how he became Viscount Melbourne. Then the Prince Regent (your Uncle George) made him a peer of England. There you have the Melbourne history and you see that it is not nearly as exciting as your own.’

‘It is far less shocking.’

‘Oh, that is because it is obscure.’

‘There are too many quarrels in our family.’

‘The Hanoverians were noted for their family quarrels. George II quarrelled violently with George I; Frederick, Prince of Wales, who died before his father and so missed the crown, quarrelled with George II; and George III lost his father so he couldn’t quarrel with him, but his son George IV made up for it by quarrelling with his father and having the most gigantic public quarrel with his wife which ended in the famous trial.’