Queen Victoria eBook

The visits to Claremont were frequent enough; but one day, on a special occasion, she paid one of a rarer and more exciting kind.  When she was seven years old, she and her mother and sister were asked by the King to go down to Windsor.  George IV, who had transferred his fraternal ill-temper to his sister-in-law and her family, had at last grown tired of sulking, and decided to be agreeable.  The old rip, bewigged and gouty, ornate and enormous, with his jewelled mistress by his side and his flaunting court about him, received the tiny creature who was one day to hold in those same halls a very different state.  “Give me your little paw,” he said; and two ages touched.  Next morning, driving in his phaeton with the Duchess of Gloucester, he met the Duchess of Kent and her child in the Park.  “Pop her in,” were his orders, which, to the terror of the mother and the delight of the daughter, were immediately obeyed.  Off they dashed to Virginia Water, where there was a great barge, full of lords and ladies fishing, and another barge with a band; and the King ogled Feodora, and praised her manners, and then turned to his own small niece.  “What is your favourite tune?  The band shall play it.”  “God save the King, sir,” was the instant answer.  The Princess’s reply has been praised as an early example of a tact which was afterwards famous.  But she was a very truthful child, and perhaps it was her genuine opinion.

III

In 1827 the Duke of York, who had found some consolation for the loss of his wife in the sympathy of the Duchess of Rutland, died, leaving behind him the unfinished immensity of Stafford House and L200,000 worth of debts.  Three years later George IV also disappeared, and the Duke of Clarence reigned in his stead.  The new Queen, it was now clear, would in all probability never again be a mother; the Princess Victoria, therefore, was recognised by Parliament as heir-presumptive; and the Duchess of Kent, whose annuity had been doubled five years previously, was now given an additional L10,000 for the maintenance of the Princess, and was appointed regent, in case of the death of the King before the majority of her daughter.  At the same time a great convulsion took place in the constitution of the State.  The power of the Tories, who had dominated England for more than forty years, suddenly began to crumble.  In the tremendous struggle that followed, it seemed for a moment as if the tradition of generations might be snapped, as if the blind tenacity of the reactionaries and the determined fury of their enemies could have no other issue than revolution.  But the forces of compromise triumphed:  the Reform Bill was passed.  The centre of gravity in the constitution was shifted towards the middle classes; the Whigs came into power; and the complexion of the Government assumed a Liberal tinge.  One of the results of this new state of affairs was a change in the position of the Duchess of Kent and her daughter.  From being the protegees of an opposition clique, they became assets of the official majority of the nation.  The Princess Victoria was henceforward the living symbol of the victory of the middle classes.