The Victoria Letters: The official companion to the ITV Victoria series

Having lost his wife and child, Leopold made it his life’s mission to prepare Victoria for the throne that Charlotte should have occupied.

VICTORIA’S DELIGHTED FATHER PRONOUNCED his new baby daughter ‘as plump as a partridge’ and was ridiculously proud and protective of her.

‘Don’t drop her! Don’t drop her! You might spoil a queen!’ he had told the Bishop of Salisbury when he visited soon after and took the baby awkwardly in his arms. Mindful of his daughter’s royal prospects, the Duke announced that he wished her to be named Elizabeth after the great Tudor monarch, but at her christening the Prince Regent instead chose the name Alexandrina, after the baby’s godparent Tsar Alexander I of Russia, who had recently been Britain’s ally in the war against Napoleon. Then, after some prevarication, and with everyone gathered expectantly around the font, he allowed a second name, Victoire, after her mother. Fondly nicknamed Mai-blühme, or May Blossom, by her German mother and grandmother throughout her early childhood, the princess who would become Queen in 1837 was generally known as Drina.

The first happy months of Drina’s life were, however, brought to a sudden end when, in January 1820 while staying by the sea at Sidmouth in Devon, her father caught a chill and died of pneumonia. His last words were to beg God to protect his wife and child.

Although she would never have more than the most distant recall of her father, Victoria later remarked, ‘I was always taught to consider myself a soldier’s child.’ She nursed a somewhat rosy view of her father’s long and not altogether distinguished military career, which was to give her a lifelong admiration for the army. But she missed his presence and throughout her life, as if to compensate, she would latch on to a succession of strong father figures.

Six days after the Duke’s death, his father King George III also died. In less than a week little baby Drina was propelled a great deal closer to the throne.

The Duke of Kent, Victoria’s father and fourth son of George III.

Kensington Palace, Victoria’s childhood home.

Feature:

KENSINGTON PALACE

‘My dear old home’

– Victoria –

THE ORIGINAL KENSINGTON PALACE, built on the western edge of Hyde Park in 1661, was a red-brick Jacobean mansion situated in what was then a beautiful, tranquil park of chestnut and beech trees. It was bought by the royal family in 1689 for King William III, because the damp riverside palace at Whitehall had aggravated his asthma. During William’s reign the interior of the house underwent extensive renovations designed by the architect Sir Christopher Wren. Queen Anne loved it so much that in 1704 she added a grand orangery, and George I ordered its beautiful gardens to be laid out in 1723–27 by the landscape gardener William Kent.

Little money, however, was spent on maintaining the exterior fabric of the building and it fell into disuse as a royal residence after the death there of George II in 1760. Once Buckingham House (later Palace) was built in central London, George III preferred to live there and Kensington instead became a home for minor royals. The Duke of Kent had been allocated two floors of apartments in 1798, which he furnished, at considerable expense, with new upholstery, curtains and bed hangings. The new furnishings, however, did little to enhance the dark and gloomy interior, which had long been infested with black beetles and other insects, and the Duke’s mounting debts drove him to seek refuge abroad.

By the time Victoria was born, Kensington Palace’s only remaining occupant was her rather frightening and eccentric Uncle Sussex. She later recalled:

My earliest recollections are connected with Kensington Palace, where I can remember crawling on a yellow carpet spread out for that purpose – and being told that if I cried and was naughty my Uncle Sussex would hear me and punish me, for which reason I always screamed when I saw him!

VICTORIA’S REMINISCENCES OF HER EARLY CHILDHOOD, WRITTEN IN 1872

Uncle William and Aunt Adelaide send their love to dear little Victoria with their best wishes on her birthday, and hope that she will now become a very good Girl, being now three years old. Uncle William and Aunt Adelaide also beg little Victoria to give dear Mamma and to dear Sissi a kiss in their name, and to Aunt Augusta, Aunt Mary and Aunt Sophia too, and also to the big Doll. Uncle William and Aunt Adelaide are very sorry to be absent on that day and not to see their dear, dear little Victoria, as they are sure she will be very good and obedient to dear Mamma on that day, and on many, many others. They also hope that dear little Victoria will not forget them and know them again when Uncle and Aunt return.

LETTER FROM THE DUCHESS OF CLARENCE TO VICTORIA, 24 MAY 1822

My dearest Uncle – I wish you many happy returns on your birthday; I very often think of you, and I hope to see you soon again, for I am very fond of you. I see my Aunt Sophia often, who looks very well, and is very well. I use every day your pretty soup-basin. Is it very warm in Italy? It is so mild here, that I go out every day. Mama is tolerable well and am quite well. Your affectionate Niece, Victoria.

P.S. I am very angry with you, Uncle, for you have never written to me once since you went, and that is a long while.

LETTER FROM VICTORIA TO LEOPOLD, 25 NOVEMBER 1828

FOR THE MOST PART, life at Kensington Palace was unremittingly quiet and uneventful for the young Victoria:

We lived in a very simple, plain manner; breakfast was at half-past eight, luncheon at half-past one, dinner at seven – to which I came generally (when it was no regular large dinner party) – eating my bread and milk out of a small silver basin. Tea was only allowed as a great treat in later years.

~ VICTORIA’S REMINISCENCES OF HER EARLY CHILDHOOD, WRITTEN IN 1872

The Duchess, seeking to protect her precious daughter at Kensington from the pernicious influence of court and her predatory Hanoverian uncles, installed little Drina’s chintz-curtained bed on one side of her own. ‘I was brought up very simply, never had a room to myself till I was nearly grown up and always slept in my Mother’s room till I came to the throne,’ Victoria later wrote.

On the other side of the Duchess’s bed slept Feodora, her daughter from her previous marriage. With playmates very few and strictly vetted, Drina clung to her adored half-sister. Feodora cosseted her and would often take her into her own bed in the mornings; she liked nothing better than pulling her baby sister along in a hand-carriage in the gardens outside. But with the emphasis so much on Drina, Feodora remained a shadowy figure, a ‘timid onlooker’, as she herself said, of the life of her far more important half-sister.

Victoria adored her: ‘My dearest sister was friend, sister, companion, all to me, we agreed so well together in all our feelings and amusements,’ she later wrote. It hurt her that so little attention was paid to dearest Fidi, as she called her. ‘Why do all the gentlemen raise their hats to me, and not to Feodora?’ she once asked.

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Mrs Jenkins:

Funny to think she’s never slept a night alone or even walked down the stairs without her hand needing holding and now she is Queen.

Character Feature:

DUCHESS OF KENT

- Victoria’s Mother -

‘Like having an enemy in the house’

– Victoria –

THE DUCHESS OF KENT WAS born Marie Louise Victoire, daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld and his wife Augusta in 1786. She was the sister of Leopold, King of the Belgians, and Ernst I, Duke of Saxe-Coburg Gotha – Prince Albert’s father. At the age of seventeen she was married to the Prince of Leiningen, a man 23 years her senior, and had two children by him, Charles in 1804 and Feodora in 1807. Widowed in 1814, she was steered in the direction of the unmarried Duke of Kent by her ambitious brother Leopold, who knew that the Duke was keen to father a legitimate heir to the British throne. Although on paper it was an advantageous royal match for a relatively lowly Saxe-Coburg, the Duchess’s brief life with the Duke was plagued by financial insecurity and an endless and repeated flight around Europe from their creditors. When the Duke died unexpectedly in 1820, Victoire was left penniless and socially isolated until Leopold, with his eye on the prize of his niece’s accession to the throne, bailed her out with an annuity.

Alienated from the court and King William, who disliked her intensely, the Duchess immured herself and her daughter at Kensington Palace. Her vulnerability, isolated and friendless as she was, laid her open to the domineering influence of the controller of her household, Sir John Conroy, who brought out the worst in her by encouraging her ambitions to become Regent. Aware of this and infuriated by the Duchess’s constant demands over precedence, William willed himself to stay alive until his niece Victoria had reached her eighteenth birthday in May 1837.

Once upon the throne, Victoria ruthlessly relegated her mother to a separate suite of rooms and it was only later, thanks to Prince Albert, that mother and daughter were reconciled.

Catherine H. Flemming Plays the Duchess:

‘With all the political manoeuvring around the young Victoria, her mother didn’t want her to choose the wrong path. Conroy was guiding [the Duchess] and he was the only one she trusted. The Duchess stayed at court even though she was a complete lone wolf. She was never able to step into the bubble of the English royals. She was always someone on the side watching, as a spy, in order to protect her daughter.’

ONCE DRINA REACHED THE AGE OF FOUR, a carefully monitored regime, which became known as the ‘Kensington System’, was devised for her by the Duchess, on advice from the controller of her household, Sir John Conroy. Conroy had previously served as the Duke of Kent’s equerry and since his death had gained a considerable hold over the Duchess and her financial affairs. This system of concerted isolation of the young and impressionable child – and which Drina’s governess, Fräulein Louise Lehzen, assisted – was designed to exclude any outside influences that might dilute the little girl’s undivided loyalty to her mother and undermine her mother’s ambitions for Drina’s ascent to the throne and her own regency should this happen before she was eighteen. It was important to Conroy and the Duchess to control Drina’s dependence on them and resist any attempts by the King to insist that she, as heir to the throne, live with him at court. But in so doing, they turned a little girl’s love into resentment and ultimately hatred.

A daily register of Drina’s upbringing was meticulously recorded. After breakfast she would take exercise in the garden, often riding on her donkey or in a small pony cart until ten. For the next two hours her mother instructed her, assisted by Lehzen (who had originally been Feodora’s governess and was appointed subgoverness to Drina in 1824). ‘Dear Boppy’ – Mrs Brock, her nurse – provided more plain food for lunch at two, followed by lessons until four, after which Drina went outside again for exercise. Another very plain meal of bread and milk came at seven. Promptly at 9 p.m. she was tucked up in the bed next to her mother’s. At all times the child was watched, cosseted and protected from potential harm. She was not even allowed to go up and down stairs without an adult holding her hand.

A young Victoria.

When little Drina’s regular education began, her mother warned her tutor, the Revd. George Davys, ‘I fear you will find my little girl very headstrong, but the ladies of the household will spoil her.’ The Queen herself later freely admitted her early reluctance in the schoolroom, saying that she ‘baffled every attempt to teach me my letters up to five years old – when I consented to learn them by their being written down before me’.

It was Davys’s task to teach Drina her alphabet and elocution, and to try and soften the edges of the pronounced German accent she had assimilated from her mother. Feodora also helped with spelling, including the composition of one of the four-and-a-half-year-old’s first, very forthright, letters – addressed to the Revd. Davys:

MY DEAR SIR, I DO NOT FORGET MY LETTERS NOR WILL I FORGET YOU

~ VICTORIA

Reading was de rigueur – mainly the scriptures and a great deal of devotional literature. Her mother allowed some poetry, but very little fiction. Mr Stewart came over from Westminster School to teach Drina writing and arithmetic; Madame Bourdin arrived twice a week to teach dancing and deportment; Mr Bernard Sale from the Chapel Royal encouraged Drina’s musical talents and her singing; her riding master Mr Fozard ensured that she became a most accomplished horsewoman, while Richard Westall of the Royal Academy nurtured her considerable talent for painting and sketching, and she was also taught French by M. Grandineau and German by the Revd. Henry Barez; Latin and Italian were added later.

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