Jean Plaidy - Victoria in the Wings

Free … at fifty-nine. It would soon be his sixtieth birthday.

Too late, he thought sadly. Ah, too late.

But was it? He had overcome his melancholy. I’m free, he kept telling himself. She can plague me no longer. There was no need to look for evidence for divorce. Fate had stepped in with the most final of all separations, the most conclusive of all divorces.

‘Your Majesty will wish there to be a period of mourning?’ he was asked.

He was not going to pretend. Some might have expected him to play the part of bereaved husband but he was too good an actor for that. It would be a part which no one would believe in. So since it would be ridiculous to play the mournful widower, he would be the widower who was too honest to pretend to anything but the relief Caroline’s death had brought him.

The Court might have six weeks mourning. That would be expected; but it would be foolish to make it longer; as for him, he was on a State voyage; he was going to visit his Irish subjects; he wanted them to like him. They would not care for a miserable man.

He remembered how he had always loved the Irish. He hoped they would remember it now. His greatest friend had been Richard Brinsley Sheridan who had died some four or five years ago – a witty Irishman if ever there was one. Why even his present dearest friends the Conynghams were Irish. He anticipated a happy time.

And how could it be otherwise? If he exerted all his prodigious charm they could not fail to succumb; he was already rehearsing what he would say to them. ‘I feel I have come among my own people,’ he murmured.

He dressed with the utmost care in blue – blue neckcloth, blue breeches, blue coat – all of course of the most exquisite cut, and blue was the colour which suited him perhaps best of all. The only contrasting colour was the yellow of his coat buttons – quite dashing while they detracted not in the least from his general air of elegance.

He would speak to them from the heart as though the words came naturally. They would never guess what careful thought he had given to them. If his English subjects rejected him, that should not be the case with his Irish ones.

He was not disappointed. His emotional approach, his sentimental words were exactly what fitted the occasion best. Crowds had come to cheer him and escort his carriage to the Lodge in Phoenix Park.

There he addressed the multitude – a grand, imposing and decidedly regal figure.

‘This is one of the happiest days I have ever known. My heart has always been Irish. I have always loved Ireland and now I know that my Irish subjects love me.’

He was going to drink their health, he told them, as he hoped they would drink his. It would be in Irish whiskey punch.

How they cheered! How they loved him! He had the gift of words. He must have kissed the blarney stone. He knew exactly how to win their hearts.

A real fellow of a King, they said.

And so began his first State visit. Nothing could have been more successful. They loved their King; he loved his subjects. It was so long since he had heard such cheers.

A beloved monarch. A free man. If he had been twenty years younger how happy he would have been! But even in the midst of his triumphs a voice within him kept reminding him, ‘Too late. It has come too late.’

VICTORIA WAS GROWING up. She was almost three. She chattered constantly, mostly in German; but as Uncle Leopold said, it was essential that she speak English equally well.

Victoria was intelligent and was already aware that she was important not because of her charm and beauty but because of Another Reason, which was most intriguing. Mamma did not speak of this Other Reason. It was something she must not know of yet because she might in a moment of indiscretion betray that she knew to someone like Uncle Frederick, Uncle William or Aunt Adelaide, which would make them very cross – although she could not believe that Aunt Adelaide could ever be cross; and Uncles Frederick and William were most benevolent whenever she saw them.

There was another uncle – the most important of all: Uncle King. She saw very little of him, although sometimes she had been held up to see him pass by in his carriage. He was an enormous, glittering being who thrilled Victoria merely to look at him. She respected Uncle Leopold, of course; she adored Aunt Adelaide and she loved Mamma, Sissi and Charles dearly, but for Uncle King she had a feeling of reverence. It would be a glorious day when he joined the band of Victoria worshippers. But he never came to Kensington Palace, nor was she invited to Carlton House. The oddest thing about Uncle King – in Victoria’s opinion – was that he seemed unaware of Victoria.

Sometimes she forgot him when she was playing with her dolls. She loved her dolls. People knew this and were constantly giving them to her. Sissi helped her dress them and knew all their names. Aunt Adelaide, dear gentle Aunt Adelaide, had just sent her a beautiful big one – the biggest she had ever seen, almost as big as Victoria herself and dressed in a blue silk dress with a sash, like Victoria’s.

‘She could be called Victoria,’ she had told Sissi, ‘but then who would know whether she was being called or I was.’

Sissi covered her with kisses and said she was the cleverest little girl in the world and thought of the most sensible things.

Of course she must be sensible because of That Reason; and there could not be three Victorias in the family; there were already Mamma and herself.

As it was a Wednesday afternoon Uncle Leopold left his beautiful house at Esher – Claremont which Victoria and her Mamma visited now and then – to come to Kensington Palace where he spent a long time talking to Mamma; and Victoria could not help knowing that she was often the subject of their conversation. She would be brought in to stand before Uncle Leopold and answer his questions while Mamma looked on, never missing any little lapse of good conduct, of which Victoria would be told afterwards. She must always be careful to behave as one in her position should. One in her position! It was a phrase she was constantly hearing; and she did not fully understand it except that it was involved with That Reason.

Uncle Leopold was asking her questions – in English, which he spoke differently from the people of the household, and she answered in English, now and then bringing in a German word, which made him frown.

‘She has not started lessons yet?’ he asked Mamma.

‘A little. She is learning to read. But she is only three.’

‘So young,’ said Uncle Leopold tenderly picking up one of her curls in his hand and twirling it.

She leaned against his knee examining his odd boots; they had thick soles so that when he took his boots off – she had once seen him do this at Claremont when he had come in on a very wet day – he sank down and became a much smaller man.

Uncle Leopold liked to talk of his ailments.

‘My rheumatism has been more painful even than usual this last week. It’s the damp weather.’

Sometimes it was the hot weather that did not agree with him and gave him headaches; the cold got ‘on to his chest’ and made him suffer ‘agonies’. Poor Uncle Leopold, and he was so good looking that she liked to watch his face while he talked. His hair was a magnificent mass of curls. Victoria, watching it, touched her own smooth locks, which Fräulein Lehzen spent a long time inducing to curl. They all said she had pretty hair, but it was not grand and glorious like Uncle Leopold’s. His was not always the same either – the colour varied, which made it even more interesting.

When she asked Sissi about it and Sissi whispered: ‘It’s a wig,’ that seemed even more clever – to have hair that came off and could be put on a stand at night.

Of course, she had been very young when she thought that. Now she knew lots of people had wigs. Uncle King’s mass of nut-brown curls might well be one, she supposed. But perhaps a King could command hair to grow. She had asked Sissi this and Sissi had laughed and said she thought of the funniest things.

But here was Uncle Leopold, studying her intently, asking her questions and telling Mamma what she should do.

Then he lifted her up on his knee. How were the dolls? Would she show them to him? And was she speaking English more than German? Yes was the answer to the two last questions.

‘Now,’ she told him; and he went with her to the nursery where the dolls all sat obediently awaiting their orders from her.

‘They obey your orders, I hope,’ said Uncle Leopold jocularly.

‘Oh yes, you see I am the Queen.’

Uncle Leopold and Mamma exchanged a somewhat odd glance – as though she had said something alarming.

While they were looking at the dolls Aunt Adelaide arrived and they went back to the drawing-room to receive her. She often called and Victoria knew why. It was to see her.

‘Do you wish I were your little girl?’ Victoria had asked her.

And the answer had been a fierce hug which had been very gratifying. And the big doll was from Aunt Adelaide – her favourite among them all. There had never been such a doll. How I wish she could be named Victoria, thought Victoria. That was the only name for such a big fine doll.

Aunt Adelaide had a look of happiness about her. Victoria presumed it was because she had come to see her. She threw herself at her aunt – forgetting Mamma’s instructions but Aunt Adelaide did not mind at all; she picked her up and kissed her many times and Victoria put her arms round Aunt Adelaide’s neck.