Well I have finally managed to sit down and finish Becoming Queen by Kate Williams and I loved every minute of it. As I said in an earlier post, Kate writes with great panache and verve and I am sure she won't 
mind me saying that she has a lovely gossipy, chatty style that makes you feel as if you, the reader, are sitting down having a good old catch-up on all the latest news.
'Have you heard what the Duchess of Kent has done now? That poor child. What she has to put up with, and that John Conroy, shouldn’t be allowed......”
Don't think I am being Miss Know it All here – I am not, but there was very little in this book that I did not know from a factual point of view, but Kate has certainly brought a new slant to it all and captured my interest in Victoria's childhood all over again. I have read many biographies of Queen Vic but her childhood was only a small part of the whole life and it was good to read a biography that honed in solely on this particular period.
Hard to understand the behaviour of Victoria's mother, the Duchess of Kent. Extenuating circumstances aplenty of course: married to the Duke of Kent years older than her in the great race to see who could produce a legitimate heir from all the offspring of George III's sons, after the death of Princess Charlotte, all of whom seemed to have a multiplicity of illegitimate children littering the landscape but nary a one with a claim to the throne; so over she comes to a country which is alien to her and where she is not made very welcome; then left a widow when Victoria was a baby; short of money; nowhere to live and badly treated by George IV, now sitting or perhaps sprawling on the throne would be a better description, the delightful Prince Florizel now a bloated drunkard – so what is she to do and how is she to survive?
The Duchess came under the influence of John Conroy who ran her household, siphoned money off to support his own family and generally behaved in a fraudulent manner, but he was handsome and supportive and hardly surprising the Duchess let him take her over. There were suggestions of an affair but it seemed to me that she was just one of these women who love to be dominated by a man and terrified of being left alone, and so allowed him full sway.
However, even taking all this into consideration, it is really difficult to feel much sympathy towards the Duchess and her partner in crime for the way they bullied and frightened Victoria as she grew older and the time when she could rule without a Regency came ever closer. William IV, loathed the Duchess so much that he determined that no matter how old and ill he was, he was going to cling to life until Victoria was eighteen and could accede to the throne..
Victoria was a tough cookie – she needed to be to resist the mental and physical bullying that carried on day and night. She was never alone, did not even have her own bedroom and was watched round the clock by servants and ladies in waiting provided by John Conroy. There was even an occasion when Victoria was quite seriously ill and in her fever had to fight off Conroy who tried to force her to sign a paper making him her private secretary.
And yet this so called 'Kensington system' of education and upbringing, the endless grand tours of the country to show Victoria to the people (much resented by William IV), prepared her for Queenship. She had tutors for languages, music, and political history and was tested frequently by them to see what standard she had reached. (Sounds like the Victorian version of SATS). The Duchess did her job properly from this point of view and it is surprising that Victoria always felt intellectually inferior to Albert all her life
when, in fact, she was very well educated indeed.
William IV achieved what he had set out to do and managed to stay alive until Victoria was old enough to ascend the throne direct at 18 years of age. Frighteningly young to take on such a huge responsibility and almost immediately she came under the influence of Melbourne, the Prime Minister, rakish and charming and just the sort of man that Victoria was always attracted to. She relied on him absolutely and developed a teenage style crush for him which infuriated his political enemies as, in her eyes, he could do no wrong.
Of course a honeymoon period never lasts and the dazzling popularity she enjoyed for a year or so began to dim, particularly over the scandal regarding her treatment of Lady Flora Hastings, who she accused of being pregnant when in fact the woman was ill with a tumour on her liver which ultimately killed her. The Queen's attitude to lady Flora, harsh though it seems, has to be viewed in the reader's knowledge that she was one of the ladies in waiting foisted on the young Victoria by John Conroy and who spied on her and reported back on all her activities. One could hardly expect the Queen to regard her in a friendly light.
But no matter, the public began to suspect their idol had feet of clay and Victoria herself began to realise that life was not all play but hard work, and the novelty of being Queen began to pall. She also began to get more and more short tempered and irritable and began to tire of spending all her time with adults so much older than her. She was only nineteen for heavens sake and it is fairly clear that she was feeling frustrated and irritable because, to be quite frank, she was still a virgin and not happy to be so. She was a full blooded Hanoverian, from a family of philanderers who led life to the full and she had inherited their nature.
She had initially told her uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians who was trying to push Albert, another member of the Coburg family into her orbit as a husband, that she was not yet ready to settle down. Albert was a tad upset by this as he knew he had been groomed to be her husband and now he was being rejected by the Queen which would do him no good in the courts of Europe in seeking an alternative bride. So, he was sent to England again and this time Victoria, restless and dissatisfied, viewed him in a different light.
Out of all the journal entries, letters and diaries I have read of Queen Victoria, this entry when Albert arrives at the palace, looking pale and interesting as he had just been sea sick on his voyage, is the one that I love the most. It is to the point, straight to the heart and simple and true (the italics are those of the Queen):
"It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert who is beautiful"
If you want to know more about this amazing woman, who I simply love and find fascinating, then go find a full biography and prepared to be enchanted, infuriated and amused by this diminutive, feisty and lion hearted Queen, but for an introduction to her life, her childhood and a rip roaring portrayal of her Regency relatives, then please read this wonderful book by Kate Williams.
I loved it.
