Виктория Холт - The Captive of Kensington Palace

How they laughed together! They were so easily amused and yet they could be so grown up.

They were the most fascinating cousins anyone could have.

Her seventeenth birthday came. But there was little time for writing in the Journal now. She did record it though.

‘I awoke at seven. Today I completed my seventeenth year; a very old person I am indeed.’

A very old person! One more year and she would be quite grown up. She was really looking forward to that very much.

Then she began to wonder what life would be like when the cousins had gone. How desolate! Not to walk with dear Albert … and Ernest; not to listen to their merry jokes and marvel at the way they suddenly became very solemn and grown up and talked about serious matters!

I shall be far more sad than when Ferdinand and Augustus went, she thought.

* * *

‘I’ll not have those damned Coburgs at Windsor,’ said the King.

‘Perhaps a brief visit,’ suggested Adelaide.

‘Just a brief one,’ Lady de l’Isle backed her up.

The King growled and supposed he’d have to receive them. He had to entertain the Oranges in any case.

‘But they’ll not get a ball,’ he insisted.

Never mind. He received them and there was no friction during their brief stay at Court.

They and Victoria were glad to be back in Kensington where the Duchess gave a ball for them and Victoria had the pleasure of dancing with her cousins.

Albert secretly found it all rather tiring. He was not fond of the social life and he thought the rooms overheated. He would have liked to be in his room reading – perhaps to Victoria – but not dancing which he found rather fatiguing.

He tried not to give any indication of this; he was aware that Uncle Leopold – that oracle of wisdom – wished him to like Victoria and her to like him, and he was determined to do his duty. Apart from the physical exertion required this was no hardship, for Victoria was an enchanting girl; she was so eager to please. He liked the times better when they talked or played the piano or sang and sketched together. The manner in which he was expected to stand at levees tired him considerably. He did not like the late hours which so delighted Victoria; he longed for his bed. Stockmar had said that he was growing too fast and that was why he was so drowsy early in the evenings. Once he grew so pale and looked so ready to faint that Victoria noticed. She was ‘all concern and there was that sweet anxious voice beside him. Dear Albert, are you sure you feel quite well?’

He assured her that he did and that it was merely the heat of the rooms which had overwhelmed him. He did not tell her that he was fighting off the desire to go to sleep all the time.

After that he saw his cousin regarding him anxiously. But he could always make her laugh with his quick wit, and even the way he played with Dash amused her. He wished that she did not enjoy dancing so obviously. What a pleasant companion she would have been if she only cared for the less demanding pleasures of life. But she was charming and he could not help being eager to please her.

* * *

At last the day came for the departure. When the last farewells had been said Victoria wept bitterly. Her only comfort was her Journal.‘At nine we all breakfasted for the last time together. It was our last happy, happy breakfast with this dear uncle and those dearest cousins whom I do love so very very dearly; much more dearly than any other cousins in the world. Dearly as I loved Ferdinand and also good Augustus, I love Ernest and Albert more than them. Oh yes, much more. Augustus was like a good affectionate child, quite unacquainted with the world, phlegmatic, and talking very little; but dearest Ernest and dearest Albert are so grown up in their manners, so gentle, so kind, so amiable, so agreeable, so very sensible and reasonable and so really and truly good and kind-hearted … Albert is the more reflecting of the two. They like talking about serious and instructive things …‘At eleven dear Uncle and my dearest beloved cousins left us … I embraced both my dearest cousins most warmly, also my dear Uncle. I cried bitterly.’

She had written to dear Uncle Leopold. She knew that he would be eagerly awaiting for her verdict on the cousins and particularly on Albert; and that very soon he would be seeing her uncle and cousins and asking them their opinion of England and her.

So before they left she had given Uncle Ernest the letter and asked him to hand it to Uncle Leopold when they met.‘I must thank you, my beloved Uncle,’ she wrote, ‘for the prospect of great happiness you have contributed to give me in the person of dear Albert …‘He possesses every quality that could be desired to make me perfectly happy. He is so sensible, so kind, so good and so amiable too. He has, besides, the most pleasing exterior and appearance you can possibly see. I have only now to beg you, dearest uncle, to take care of the health of one so dear to me and to take him under your special protection …’

When he received her letter Leopold smiled complacently. He had known he could rely on Victoria.

When the cousins had left the Duchess decided that they would go and stay for a while at Claremont. Victoria was delighted. She loved Claremont – the home of dear Uncle Leopold where he had once been so happy with Princess Charlotte; and she could enjoy it even better now because Uncle Leopold was happily married to Aunt Louise – and even Charlotte, Victoria decided, could not have been more charming. So now there need be no sad thoughts at Claremont.

She had tried to adjust herself to the daily routine after the departure of the cousins and found herself talking of them constantly to Lehzen, of how Albert had done this and that and how very sensible he was.

‘Darling Dashy misses him. Oh, Lehzen, wasn’t he funny when he played with Dash?’

Lehzen thought: She has too much affection. She is ready to believe the best of everyone and love them. She is inclined to think that all people are as honest as she is, as kind and eager to be good.

What a credit the Princess was to her, for Lehzen believed in her heart that the Princess’s excellent qualities were the result of her upbringing rather than the Duchess’s. Charming, young, with such a defined sense of duty – what a Queen she would make!

The Princess’s face was flushed with pleasure now because a singing lesson was due. She wished, she had said, that she had singing lessons every day. She admired her singing master with all the fervour of her nature. He was the great operatic singer Luigi Lablache and when he sang Victoria laughed and wept with delight.

She would talk of him endlessly if Lehzen permitted it.

‘He is such a patient master, Lehzen. So good-humoured, pleasing and I’m sure he’s so honest. It is such a pleasure to hear his fine voice and to sing with him is a privilege. Throughout my life I shall remember my lessons with him. How the time flies when we are together. How active he is for his size. I feel so very small beside him, I love the way he comes in and gives that wonderful dignified bow.’

‘You are too ready to admire people,’ chided Lehzen.

‘Oh, Lehzen,’ cried Victoria mischievously, ‘is that why I admire you?’

Victoria was laughing as she went off for her session with dear Lablache.

And now to Claremont where dear Louisa Lewis would be so excited because she was coming. She could curtsy in that slow dignified way which was different from the way other people curtsied; and then when Victoria had made her quite sure that she was still the same girl who had sat and watched her eat her breakfast in her own room at Claremont, the barriers would be broken down and Louisa in her white morning dress looking so neat and clean would tell stories of Charlotte as she always did; and she would somehow imply that Victoria now had the place in her heart which had once belonged to Charlotte.

Dear Claremont!

* * *

The King’s health had deteriorated in the last months and Adelaide was constantly urging him to rest.

‘A fine one to talk,’ he said indulgently. ‘That cough of yours doesn’t get any better. I’m a good few years older than you and I have a right to be ill at my time of life.’

‘I only want you to take care.’

‘I know. I know. You’ve been a good wife to me, Adelaide. In the beginning I didn’t want you … I didn’t want you at all. But then I grew to love you.’

Tears fillxed his eyes and she smiled at him.

‘We have done well together, William.’

‘And we’ll go on, eh? I’m not finished yet. Don’t you think it. I’ve got to live till Victoria’s of age. I’ll refuse to go until that woman hasn’t a chance of the Regency.’

‘That’ll be next year. You must go on long after that.’

Sometimes he wondered, but he mustn’t worry Adelaide.

‘I will, you see,’ he assured. He added to change the disagreeable subject: ‘It’ll be your birthday on the thirteenth. We’ll celebrate it with a ball and we’ll let the celebrations go on until mine as the twenty-first is so close.’

‘We should ask Victoria.’

‘Oh dear, that means that woman.’

‘I can’t see how she could possibly be left out.’

‘For two pins I would leave her out.’

‘It would be impossible. We must ask her; and I hope that she will behave well.’

‘That’s where you’re asking the impossible, my dear.’

Adelaide sighed.

‘The Coburg visit went off all right.’

‘And don’t think I don’t know how hard you worked to make that happen. You’re too good, Adelaide. I’ve told you so before.’

‘It’s just that I hate quarrels and I think they do the family harm.’

‘The greatest harm the family ever did to itself was to bring that woman into it. The pity is that she is the mother of Victoria.’

‘Perhaps she would have been more bearable if she had not been. In any case I will write to her and invite her to the Castle and pray that during her stay all goes well.’

* * *

When the Duchess received Adelaide’s invitation she laughed.

‘So,’ she said to Conroy. ‘I am graciously asked to go to Windsor to celebrate Adelaide’s birthday. She forgets mine is on the seventeenth. Mine is, I suppose, of no importance. I shall go, of course, to the King’s because that is an occasion at which the heiress to the throne should be present.’

‘You will refuse an invitation from the Queen?’

‘My dear Sir John, do you doubt it?’

‘Of course I don’t.’

‘You will see.’

She sat down at her desk and wrote to the Queen.

She could not come to Windsor at the date the Queen suggested because she wished to celebrate her birthday at Claremont. She would, however, come on the twentieth, which date would not conflict with any of her arrangements.

When she had written it she showed it to Sir John.

‘Well?’

‘It might be the Sovereign writing to one of her subjects.’

‘I shall soon be the mother of the young Sovereign.’

‘And Adelaide is, of course, only the wife of the old one.’

They laughed together; it was so gratifying to know that however rudely she behaved William and Adelaide could do nothing to oust her from her position.

* * *

The King was in a bad temper. He had to come up from Windsor to prorogue Parliament. He was finding breathing difficult and was feeling irascible as he always was when he was not well.

That Woman again, he thought.

Adelaide would have kept the letter from him if she could have done so; she always wanted to save him irritation. But of course he had to know that she had declined the invitation to celebrate Adelaide’s birthday. It wasn’t that they couldn’t do without her. They could – most happily. It was the effrontery, the impertinence. He had demanded to see the letter and when he had read it his face had grown scarlet; the veins in his temples had stood out, and he had almost choked with rage.

She wanted to celebrate her birthday. No mention of Adelaide’s! That was what maddened him. It was an insult to Adelaide. When he came to think of it that was why she angered him so. It was because she was continually insulting Adelaide. He wouldn’t have Adelaide insulted. She was a good woman, the best wife in the world, and people must pay proper respect to her or answer to him.