CHAPTER IV

PRINCESS VICTORIA’S SUITORS

“What warmth is there in your affection towards any of these princely suitors that are already come?”--_Merchant of Venice._

All the world knows that Princess Victoria made a love match, and that Nathaniel P. Willis’s prognostication that she would be married solely for reasons of State was never fulfilled, but it is probable that few people know that she, like other girls, made little flights into the region of romance, and that a small crowd of young men presented themselves at the English Court, as it were, on approbation. The influx began in the spring of 1836, and, of course, produced fresh unpleasantness between the King and the Duchess. The latter had already decided upon the person whom she would wish for a son-in-law, and it is almost needless to say that in that case King William was likely to prefer any other young man in Christendom.

The only fount of information on such a subject as this is the contemporary Press, with here and there some allusion in letters of the time. When comparing the Press of to-day with the Press of seventy or eighty years ago, it is wonderful to note the difference of interest which was shown in such matters. To-day we not only pretend to believe that Royalty is perfect, but we publicly express that belief whenever opportunity offers. We are always very polite. In the time of King William and in the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign it seems to have been the custom to regard Royalty as very imperfect indeed; to find evil motives for even the most obviously good actions; to lay bare every secret, and to leave the poor monarch of the realm not a shred of moral clothing with which to cover his thoughts or designs. A little while ago a report was published without comment that the matrimonial fate of our present Prince of Wales was already settled. No one troubled about it or took the matter up, there was not the slightest idea of making political capital out of it; and when he really does marry we shall all be decorously delighted. It is quite unlikely that the newspapers will give columns of criticism to his bride, will rake up or make up evil stories about her, point out what a disastrous effect she will have upon England, or indeed do anything but wish the young people well, and pass on to the next subject. Of course, the Princess Victoria presented a special case; she was believed to be shy and adaptable in character, and there was some ground for imagining that it would be the Duchess of Kent who would really rule when the time came--she and the chosen husband; therefore there was an especial wave of agitation whenever the idea of an alliance was started.

The same thing applied to the Royal Family as a whole. One set of papers would make banal announcements as to the doings of the King, Queen, or Dukes; whereupon another set would fasten upon these seemingly simple incidents, show that they held hidden significance which was contrary to the nation’s welfare, and would then well belabour the unlucky Royal subject. Now the banal announcement may appear, and a few subservient papers amplify them and fall down and worship, but most will let them pass without comment. There is one story which has been appearing weekly somewhere or other for the past year to the effect that Queen Mary spends her evenings among her ladies knitting coarse garments for the poor. This pleases the sentimental ideas of the lovers of tit-bit publications, so it is a constant recurrer; but most sensible people shrug their shoulders at it; they know that a Queen has more important things to do, and that it would be a greater act of charity on her part to pay some poor folks to make the clothes. But no one tries to prove any connection between this and a possible German war, or make it a peg upon which to hang tales of poverty, as they would have done a century ago.

In reality, the people of England know nothing about the Court; in the old days they knew too much. The causes of this change are probably three: the greater security of social and foreign affairs to-day, the lessening power of the Crown, and the reticent attitude which the Prince Consort insisted upon concerning Royal doings and surroundings, a habit which loosened a little under King Edward, but which seems to be strengthening under his successor. However, “the good have no story” may be said, generally speaking, to be true of families, and it is probable that if sensational events came to pass in the Palace, all the papers would once again regard them as legitimate matter for praise or stricture. In the old days they did not wait for sensational events; they took a commonplace happening and dressed it in lurid language, which sold the papers in spite of the tax upon them, and pleased their readers.

In reproducing some of these highly coloured comments it must not be believed that my loyalty is peccable. I merely recognise that words that inflamed people eighty years ago are amusing now, and for those who can take from them the little spark of truth they are also to some extent serviceable as illuminators of the past.

Prince Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg had already settled the career of his eldest son, and he saw no reason why--like a good matchmaking parent--he should not try to find a kingdom for his second son Augustus, who was much the less attractive of the two. As soon as they arrived everyone was on the watch, the pity was that none of the gossip-mongers could be present when intentions were talked over. Because they were not there, no one can now tell whether intentions were mentioned at all, or whether things were left to develop in an ordinary way. In any case, Prince Ferdinand must have been disappointed, for Augustus was a silent lad, and did little to make himself agreeable, while the handsome Ferdinand the younger is said to have been captivated by his fresh young cousin--they were all cousins--at first sight.

The visitors went first to Kensington, and then to Windsor, where they were royally entertained, and returned to pass two weeks at Kensington Palace. The Prince and Augustus went home, hoping nothing, and still Ferdinand remained, in spite of his bride awaiting him in Lisbon. A lady diarist of the day says that he lingered from day to day, “nay, week after week,” allured by “the fascinations of Kensington’s Royal bowers.” However, this was something of an exaggeration, as Ferdinand had to be in Lisbon by a certain date for his marriage in April. At last he had to go, and he travelled with the Duchess and Princess to Claremont. There he took an “affectionate leave,” and went his solitary--but for a few attendants--way to the sea.

He met his young and dark bride kindly, and within a week or two took the same disease of the throat which had killed his predecessor less than a year earlier. Being a young man of great determination, he absolutely refused the kind ministrations of the Portuguese doctors, and was cured by his own German attendant. Whether he was happier alive than he would have been dead it is not easy to say, for his new subjects prepared a nice little quarrel for him before he arrived, and he was soon in the midst of mutinies and revolutions.

The first young man who probably caused a real flutter in the Kensington home was not of Royal blood at all. This was young Lord Elphinstone, to whom it was said the Princess had lost her heart, and who was therefore thought sufficiently formidable to make the Duchess take a very extreme step. He was Lord of the Bedchamber to King William, was handsome, well-mannered, unassuming, always ready to help in small matters, and eminently fitted to catch a girl’s fancy. He was also, as one paper put it satirically, a most convenient person to engage to do the amiable at balls and parties, and beyond all doubt was a most useful and agreeable master of the ceremonies of fashion. It was said that he had not only lost his heart to the pretty Princess, but had taken hers in return. He would sit and watch her surreptitiously in church, and on one occasion so far forgot his religious duties as to make a sketch of her while there, which sketch he was later imprudent enough to present to her. Maternal care took alarm; Sir John Conroy was consulted, and a whole set of hidden wires were pulled to put a stop to love’s young dream. The result was to be read in every morning paper one day at the beginning of 1836:--

“Lord Elphinstone has been appointed Governor of Madras. The Court of Directors (of the East India Company) ratified the nomination on Wednesday.” So ran the announcement. The _Satirist_, much annoyed, commented, “The appointment of Lord Elphinstone is certainly not one to be applauded.... To send him out as the Governor of Madras is, to say the very least of it, unwise”; and it went on to point out that many a man better fitted for the post had been overlooked that he might have it. “A Lord of the Bedchamber spoiled in a Governor of Madras! Lord Elphinstone _may_ have qualified for the appointment, but the public surely has a right to demand tried ability and weight of character,” was another comment. And so, though gossip awoke several times later to nod and hint, the young lord left his goddess and his native land, not to return for seven long years.

The _Age_, ultra-Tory and virulently anti-Catholic in its sentiments, outspoken to the verge of libel, and unscrupulous in its assertion of wild facts, had something to say weekly at this time about the Princess’s lovers. It started the campaign by asserting the obvious truth that the Princess Victoria was now becoming the object of the highest and purest interest to England, and must not be lightly bestowed, adding, “The gentleman who with a few _sons_ lives at the Tuileries would perhaps like to nibble here--but until the established Protestant religion is overthrown he has no chance. A German paper mentions that a rumour is current that Prince Augustus of Saxe-Coburg is likely to win the Princess Victoria. Whether or not the desire be father to the thought we know not, nor do we care; to omit all other objections to a union such as the one hinted at, it is sufficient to state that the Prince alluded to is a Catholic.”

With the end of April arrived further papas with two sons each, and then began the duel between King William and his sister-in-law. The latter had, as has been said, quietly made choice of her daughter’s bridegroom, being guided in the selection by her brother Leopold, and we are told that her nephew Albert had been taught from his early childhood that he would one day marry his cousin Victoria. However, he did not see his destined mate until May, 1836, when he was nearly seventeen, and when he and his elder brother Ernest, escorted by his father, the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, paid a visit of a month’s duration to Kensington. King William hated the idea, and he did his little best to spoil the scheme, which was too unformed to allow of any open action. He had behind him the Tories generally and all the Tory Press, while the anti-Catholics wasted much good energy in traducing Leopold, the Prince whom long before everyone had received with open arms. Leopold had married the daughter of the King of France, and was suspected of having become a Catholic, thus adding to the dislike which was felt for him in England. One paper said of him at this time, “The name of Leopold is the most unpopular in the kingdom, and is accompanied with certain sordid associations of which our national ledger gives ample and disgraceful evidence.”

So, to counterbalance the schemes of the Duchess, King William invited to England the young Duke of Brunswick, also the Prince of Orange and his two sons, William and Alexander, who were reported to be fine young men, though stiff and formal in their manner. These were as heartily welcomed by the King’s supporters as the others were traduced. “There is something in the very name of William of Orange which is encouraging in these times of Popish assumption and pseudo-Protestant treachery. Whether our fancies as to a certain union be verified or not, time will prove. Should it take place, we think the people of England will not object, whatever the malignants of Ireland may say against one of the same family as the Hero of the Boyne.”

Those who looked on enjoyed the situation, and there is little doubt but that the Prince of Orange, on behalf of his son, would have won in the contest if it had depended on the sympathies of the English people. In his youth the Prince had been an aspirant for the hand of Princess Charlotte, his rival being the successful Leopold, who had not only taken his hoped-for bride, but later half of his Principality. When Leopold was mentioned in his presence, Orange would say, “_Voilà un homme qui a pris ma femme et mon royaume._” Gossip went that he intended to place his sons at an English university, that he might make them as English as possible; and there were those who affirmed that the House of Orange had great claims upon the country’s gratitude, but that we had satisfied in full any claim that the House of Saxe-Coburg might put forward. Advice was offered freely to the Duchess of Kent; she “is a shrewd and sensible woman, and will not, we hope, misunderstand our loyalty when we say, ‘We must have no more Coburgs.’ One fair rose of England has been gathered by a Coburg, and there shall be no further sacrifice of a future Queen to them.” The Coburgs were dubbed a mercenary, good-for-nothing set by one section, while another put all the German princes into the same category. “All the multitudinous progeny of the small peoples of the Saxe-Gotha, Saxe-Coburg, and their cousin Saxes are racing against each other for the hand of the Princess Victoria, to say nothing of a brace of Brunswicks and a Prince of Orange and his two sons, who probably thinks he should be given first chance, as he was done out of the Princess Charlotte. The Duke of Cumberland’s son is quite _hors-de-combat_, and the simple child, George of Cambridge, is not encouraged by the Government on account of his mental incapacity. The Saxe tribe are the most hungry, the most persevering, and the most lucky.”

Indeed, the English might have been excused some annoyance at the favour shown to the great Teutonic nation, for, in addition to the nine or ten gentlemen mentioned, there were also here in England during the same spring the Prince of Leiningen, Victoria’s half-brother, Prince Ernest of Hesse-Philippthal, and Prince Edward of Carolath. These last three and Prince Ferdinand with his sons were all invited to a great ball which the Duchess of Kent gave at the end of March, just as at the end of May she gave a brilliant ball at which her own guests and those of the King were naturally present. King William entertained the Coburgs as graciously as he did the lad from Brunswick and the Oranges, and, indeed, did his utmost to ensure that Victoria should meet them all together as often as possible. But it was inevitable that at Kensington Palace there should be many opportunities for the young Saxe-Coburgs to talk with their cousin. An aide-de-camp of the Duke of Cumberland’s, and Lord de Lisle, son-in-law of King William, watched Victoria and Albert pacing the Palace garden one day.

“Do you think they are lovers?” one man asked the other; and he shook his head dubiously, answering in non-committal way, “They seem to be good friends, anyhow.”

Whether there were too many from which to choose, or whether it was true that Victoria was, for the best of all reasons, proof against their attractions, this tribe of young men came and went, making no impression. She danced with them all, for she dearly loved dancing, talked German to them all, for it is doubtful whether one of them could speak English, and said good-bye to them all with an equable smile, and probably with a sigh of relief that now she would be free to go her own way to some extent.

The papers showed as much interest in their going as in their coming. All had an idea that, though nothing had been announced, something had been fixed up. Those who had no animus against the German “invasion” were contented with such ventures as, “I hear to-day that the young Prince of Saxe-Coburg is the destined husband of our Princess Victoria,” or, “It is rumoured that the two rival suitors (Coburg and Orange) for the highest and fairest hand in the kingdom, returned home without making any impression on the heart of the interesting lady in question.” One grumbler observed that the Princess had been prevented from going to Ascot, as she was kept at home to entertain “these round-faced youths.” But those who feared the youths lashed right and left, speaking of the impolitic liberality of certain high personages, and the dogged good nature of John Bull which gained for him the appellation of fool from all the world for allowing his means to be squandered over German fortune-hunters. The worst tirade was naturally given by the _Age_, which used Leopold as a whipping boy, and in rhythmic sentences announced:--“This King Leopold has become the Sovereign of a Popish country, the husband of a Popish Princess, and the son-in-law of a Popish Monarch. King Leopold was the accepted of Protestant England’s welcome--the chosen of Protestant England’s hope--and the son-in-law of Protestant England’s Sovereign. What a contrast! Nay, further--King Leopold, if not a convert to Popery, at least conforms to its rites; and mark this, the nephew whose matrimonial agent he had the arrogance to be _is a member of the Roman Catholic Church_; although, following his uncle’s example, the youth would also no doubt _change his religion_--for a Crown!”

As for the young people themselves, they were probably quite as unconscious of the agonised flutter which their meeting had raised in journalistic dove-cots as they were unmoved by love for each other. _He_ thought _she_ was very amiable and astonishingly self-possessed; _she_ commended his welfare to her uncle’s protection, for the whole project had been explained to her, and her reason as well as her family affection had found good in it. So in her letter to Leopold she acknowledged this by saying, “I hope and trust that all will go on prosperously and well on this subject, now of so much importance to me.”

And so for a space the matter ended. But it is really worthy of note that among all the young visitors from Germany and elsewhere, there were no girls; no smart young cousins came to rival Victoria’s charms, and she had the field entirely to herself. This, at least, gives some justification for the belief that matchmaking was in the air.

After this, for some reason the Duchess of Kent withdrew Victoria entirely from Court. William and Adelaide sent her invitations in vain, and the irascible Monarch grew more and more angry over the matter. It may be, of course, that the Duchess was annoyed at the King’s very transparent attempt to frustrate her plans for her daughter, and showed her resentment in this somewhat trivial way, or she may have aimed more strenuously at removing the girl from influence which she had always deemed bad. It was quite useless for the King to fume, as all the Kents had to do was to go to Claremont and get out of his reach; and the only revenge he could take was that of denouncing the Duchess at any and every opportunity, and advertising his increasing dislike of her to all who would listen.

[Illustration: H.R.H. THE DUCHESS OF KENT.]

In August, 1837, this simmering hatred came to the boil, and readily flowed over into the public ears. William invited the Duchess and her child to stay at Windsor from early in the month until after the 21st, hoping that they would be present to celebrate Queen Adelaide’s birthday on the 13th and his own on the 21st, for which latter two dinners were arranged, as the 21st was a Sunday; thus there was to be a family dinner on that day, and a more public one on the 22nd. The Duchess seems to have had an unfortunate knack of writing crude--not to say rude--letters. To this invitation she responded that as she wished to keep her own birthday on the 15th at Claremont, she could not be at Windsor until the 20th; and she entirely ignored all mention of the festivities for the Queen. There seems to have been little reason for this direct snub to Adelaide, and it was probably caused more by a want of imagination than through a definite desire to annoy, but it naturally resulted in irritating the King anew. He, however, made no reply to this letter, but that did not mean that the Duchess was not in his thoughts. Perhaps someone had given him a hint, or perhaps William suspected that the Duchess was taking liberties; but on the afternoon of the 20th, when he had prorogued Parliament, and when he probably knew that the Duchess would already have started for Windsor, he went down to Kensington Palace. There he found what he perhaps had expected to find, that his sister-in-law had appropriated to her own use seventeen extra rooms, of which a year before he had refused her the accommodation. He went straight from Kensington to Windsor, where the Duchess and her daughter had already arrived. Without waiting to change, he marched straight to the drawing-room, kissed the Princess, holding both her hands and telling her in fatherly way how pleased he was to see her. He then made a low bow to the Duchess, and, like the old dunderhead that he was, immediately began the battle.

They were by no means alone, the whole houseparty being assembled, all of whom were astounded to hear their Monarch say in loud, harsh accents that he had just come from Kensington, where he had found that a most unwarrantable liberty had been taken. Someone had possessed themselves of apartments not only without his consent, but against his expressed commands, and he ended up with, “he neither understood nor would endure conduct so disrespectful to himself.”

What happened further we are not told, but there can be no doubt that all through this very trying evening the Duchess of Kent behaved with perfect dignity; she might be wanting in politeness privately, but publicly nothing upset her control. Adolphus Fitzclarence was present, and sat within two or three of the Duchess at the dinner, thus he heard plainly all that was said. A little later he fully retailed the scandal to Greville. He says that on the Sunday morning the King had by no means got over his excitement, which lasted more or less through the day. At dinner, though this was supposed to be a family function, at least a hundred people were present, either belonging to the Court or gathered from the neighbourhood. On one side of the King sat the Duchess of Kent, directly opposite him was Princess Victoria next the Queen. Everything went well until the time of speeches arrived, and the first health to be proposed was naturally that of His Majesty. At that this incomparably tactless King got upon his feet and straightway began to express all the anger he felt. The part particularly interesting to the Duchess ran:--

“I trust in God that my life may be spared for nine months longer, after which period, in the event of my death, no Regency would take place. I should then have the satisfaction of leaving the Royal authority to the personal exercise of that young lady (pointing to the Princess), the heiress presumptive to the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which she would be placed. I have no hesitation in saying that I have been insulted--grossly insulted--by that person, but I am determined to endure no longer a course of behaviour so disrespectful to me. Amongst other things, I have particularly to complain of the manner in which that young lady has been kept away from my Court; she has been repeatedly kept from my Drawing Rooms, at which she ought always to have been present, but I am fully resolved that this shall not happen again. I would have her know that I am King, and I am determined to make my authority respected, and for the future I shall insist and command that the Princess do upon all occasions appear at my Court, as it is her duty to do.”

It is said that His Majesty finished his tirade by speaking of the Princess in a fatherly and affectionate way, saying that though he had seen so little of her, he took no less interest in her, and the more he saw of her in public and in private the greater pleasure it would be to him.

Before he had got to this, however, the Princess was crying, the Queen looked terribly distressed, and the whole company sat aghast, their eyes on the table. When a dead silence fell after this awful philippic, all must have wondered what was to happen next, but the Duchess, who had more sense than her assailant, uttered no word, and the Queen gave the signal for retiring. Then we are told that the Duchess had her say, and that there was an awful scene between the pair; she ordered her carriage, but all concerned did their best to change her determination of going from the Castle at once, and some sort of a reconciliation ensued.

The King might relent, might change his mind or forget things, but he does not seem ever to have repented his foolish deeds. Thus the next day he asked Adolphus what everyone said of his speech, and that young man made a diplomatic answer, saying that though everyone thought the Duchess merited his rebuke, it ought not to have been given at his own table before a hundred people; he ought to have sent for her to his closet, and said all he felt and thought there. To which William answered that he did not care where or before whom he said what he thought, and that, “by God, he had been insulted by her in a measure that was past all endurance, and he would stand it no longer.”

What a terrible exhibition of inhospitality and bad taste! Yet we have to realise that the King had been much provoked, and, being the man of severe limitations that he was, he took the only course which occurred to him. There can be no doubt that a real affection existed between William and his niece, that he knew that but a small span of life remained to him, and that he was constantly refused the society and the sight of his successor. Though the autocratic Duchess had married into the Guelph family, she never seemed to understand the exceedingly primitive characters of the people who composed that family, or, if she did understand them, she gave them little credit for their virtues, but recognised to the full all their sins of omission and commission.

A slight instance of the small way in which she annoyed them is given in the “Tales of My Father,” already referred to. The Duchess of Cumberland sent an aide-de-camp to the Duchess of Kent with a message about the illness of young George. When the young man had told Her Royal Highness all that she wished to know, she invited him to dine and stay the night. His answer was that he could not do so, as he had no leave, and the Duke was most particular on that point.

“I will manage all that!” the Duchess haughtily replied. “I should like to present you to the Princess Victoria.” So a message was sent to the Duke of Cumberland that the captain had been commanded to remain at Kensington, with the result that the next morning a letter arrived for the guest from the Duke, informing him that his business was to look after Prince George, not to be nursery governess to Princess Victoria; that he had slept out of St. James’s without leave; and that if he did not come back at once he would be put under arrest. In this there was no deference shown to the will of the Duchess, nothing but annoyance expressed at the excess of hospitality to his messenger.

After that terrible birthday party the Duchess stayed for yet another dinner at the Castle, and it seems that she was somewhat long in entering the drawing-room the second evening. The Queen would not go in without her, which caused William loudly to demand the whereabouts of his wife. When he was told that she was waiting for the Duchess, he said just as loudly:

“That woman is a nuisance!” No one can wonder that the Duchess hated him; it is only possible to feel what a pity it was that things had been allowed to come to such a pass.

From that time history gives no account of meetings between St. James’s and Kensington.

It was during her last year at Kensington Palace that Victoria was troubled by the first of the mad suitors who for three years were recurrent factors in her life. This was a Mr. Hunnings, a man of about forty, who was the owner of considerable property near Tunbridge Wells, where he first saw Victoria. He may have been sane enough in other ways, but he was certainly mad in his regard for the heiress to the Throne. He spoke of her as his “little Princess,” and lamented the fact that her cruel guardians kept her from him. He haunted Kensington Gardens, and the Duchess and her daughter scarcely left the Palace but they found this man stationed near the door, bowing most gracefully with his hand on his heart. He would follow the two at a distance until they turned some corner out of his sight, and then at a smart run would either overtake them or by a short cut get ahead, so that they would find him again and again facing them and making most respectful salutes. He regularly attended the services in the Chapel Royal attached to Kensington Palace, sitting where he could obtain a full view of the Royal pew, and would generally put half a sovereign in the plate.

Of course, this matter soon became public property, and was too good a subject for joke to be ignored. Wags would do their best to encourage the hopeful lover by writing him letters, and he once showed a policeman such a missive purporting to be signed by the Princess, expressing a deep love for him, and asking him to write to her, placing his answer under a certain tree, as she would have no chance of speaking to him. The police had, of course, to be on the alert in case he did anything more than usually extravagant, and he complained bitterly of their surveillance, saying that he felt it to be most degrading.

He was for ever trying some new way of keeping the Princess Victoria under his observation, and at last hit upon the idea of having a barouche exactly like that of the Duchess of Kent, his servant being dressed in Royal undress livery, a dark pepper-and-salt coat and glazed hat with broad purple velvet band, and in this he would follow his “little Princess” when she drove out. On Victoria’s eighteenth birthday he licensed a cab to which he gave her name, decorated it with ribbons, and persuaded the proprietor to allow it to be illuminated with lamps at night. His own house was illuminated from top to bottom, and during the day he invited everyone who passed to stop and drink the health of the Princess. By evening a dense crowd had gathered before his door, most of those who composed it being ready to drink again and again to their future Queen, and already in such a state of intoxication that the police interfered and put a stop to his liberality. The whole affair would have been nipped in the bud had it occurred at the present time, but eighty years years ago the police were few and given but scanty powers.

On the accession of Victoria to the Throne this annoying lover was somehow pushed into the background, and we hear no more of him, excepting that at a fancy bazaar at Lincoln he eagerly purchased some things worked by Her Majesty and was eventually locked up for assaulting the Mayor.

As Princess Victoria neared her majority all the newspapers showed unrest; they devoted daily leaders and paragraphs to their hopes and fears; there were hints of plots and schemings, of arrangements made at Kensington, of members chosen to form the new Royal Household as soon as William was dead. The names of everyone around the Duchess were paraded in print, to their praise or detriment. The _Newcastle Chronicle_ got frightened over a scheme which, it said, had been fixed up between Sir John Conroy and Lord Durham, who was then Ambassador Extraordinary at St. Petersburg.

When the Princess came of age, they said, she would, of course, be given an establishment of her own. Lord Durham would return from Russia before that, so as to be ready to put himself at the head of Victoria’s household, his ambition being, however, to make that position but a step to the Premiership. Meanwhile, he would be keeping the post warm for Sir John Conroy, who coveted the headship of the household for himself. This--the paper pointed out--would only need a little management. Lord Durham was a personal friend of Leopold’s, so he would arrange the Coburg marriage, and both men would gain their promotion through the gratitude of the Duchess and her brother.

Poor Victoria! she evidently did not count in this matter at all; she was but a peg on which two ambitious men were supposed to hang their schemes for advancement. Yet this note was sounded in all the diatribes upon her suggested marriage. What the King wished, what the Duchess and her brother wished, what this or that party wished, all these were discussed to the full, but what the Princess herself wished was thought scarcely worthy of any attention.

So in the spring of 1837 the Princess’s future husband was as fertile a subject of interest as it had been in the spring of the year before. In Brussels her marriage with Prince Albert was talked of as an assured thing, for he and his brother were residing there, “in a hired house of no very distinguished class, and obtaining their dinners from the Restaurateur Dubois for themselves and tutors and servants at twenty-five francs a day,” said one bad-tempered article, adding, “We mention this to show the extent of their income and the princely generosity of their uncle, the King of the Belgians, in not giving them an attic in his palace.”

There had always been whispers about the Kensington clique or the Kensington camarilla, and from this time forward those who a year or two before would have been prominent members of the Orange League never lost an opportunity of gibing at and traducing the foreigners who surrounded the Princess on the score of intrigue and cupidity. What was the motive of all the outcry it is difficult to say, but when now and then it seemed necessary to give it some form, it nearly always resolved itself into a hatred or terror of Popery. Those who shouted so much seemed to be unaware that, while they expressed loyalty to the Duchess, it was her own brother whom they so violently traduced, and that she was as foreign as he, while Victoria had the same blood and the same traditions. However, discrimination cannot be expected of political fanatics, for whatever happens can be made to fit any theory by those interested.

The politicians of others countries looked on and wondered, and sometimes dug some fact out of history with which to urge the grumblers onward. Thus the _Gazette de France_ gravely published an article in 1836 to prove that King William was a mere impostor, and that the Princess Victoria had no right of succession, the only legitimate Queen of England being Mademoiselle de Berry. This is how the writer of the article proved it; and if there had been no law concerning the Protestant succession, and also, I think, if James II. had left no son, he would have been right. But they are rather big “ifs”:--

(i) Henrietta, daughter of Charles I.

(ii) Anne-Marie of Orléans, daughter of Henrietta.

(iii) Victor Amédée III., King of Sardinia and Duke of Savoy, son of Anne-Marie.

(iv) Marie-Thérèse of Savoy, daughter of Victor Amédée.

(v) Louis-Antoine, Duc d’Angoulême, Comte d’Artois, son of Marie-Thérèse.

(vi) In default of direct issue the right of succession would go to Mademoiselle de Berry, daughter of the Duc de Berry, and niece of the Duc d’Angoulême.

The article concluded with:--“Monseigneur the Duc d’Angoulême, for the Catholics of Ireland, Scotland, and England, ought incontestably to be considered King of Great Britain, and Mademoiselle heiress presumptive to the Crown, in the place and instead of William IV. and the Princess Victoria, who reigns only by virtue of a Protestant law of usurpation and revolution.”

However, the energetic anti-Catholic gentlemen in England were perfectly well aware that England--and, incidentally, themselves--were quite safe from the rule of any Catholic monarch, and though they used a thing like this as a peg upon which to hang their diatribes, they did it with tongue in cheek--and a very bad-tempered cheek, too.