Jean Plaidy - The Sixth Wife: The Story of Katherine Parr

There I was, a healthy baby— “plump as a partridge,” some said. “Determined right at the start,” said Lehzen, with a twitch of her lips and a nod of her head, “to have your own way.”

Feodore said that I was the most adorable baby that ever was. I daresay when she had her own she changed her mind about that! And I did wonder how many babies she had been acquainted with— but no matter. That she should think so was a sign of her love. Not only was there excitement in Kensington but in Saxe-Coburg too. The Coburg relations always stuck together and rejoiced in the advancement of the family; they were very different from my English relations who were always in conflict with each other.

My maternal grandmother, the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, referred to me as the May Blossom, which I thought rather charming when I heard it. “The English like queens,” she added, “and the niece—and also the first cousin—of the ever-lamented and beloved Charlotte will be most dear to them.” It was true that the English had liked queens ever since the reign of Elizabeth. How the people had revered that one! The greatest monarch ever to sit on the throne, some said—and a woman! Yes, after Elizabeth, the English must like queens.

There was a great deal of controversy about my name and that ended with a scene in the Cupola Room.

My uncle, the Regent, had taken a great dislike to my mother— so had Uncle William. Feodore told me that our mother said it was because she was young and healthy, and they, poor things, were decrepit old gentlemen who had no hope of getting healthy children. The Regent even hated the way my mother dressed. She loved feathers and rustling silks and lots of flounces, which the Regent said was Bad Taste. He was known throughout the kingdom, in spite of all his failings, as the arbiter of Good Taste. I have never known much about that, noticing that people are apt to believe that what they like is good taste and that all those who have different opinions have bad. However, that dislike was there and my mother—such a forceful lady—would always feel that there was something very wrong with those who criticized her.

There had, so Feodore told me, been a great deal of trouble about choosing my names. My father was so sure that I was going to be a queen that it was imperative that I should have a name suitable for one. After a great deal of thought it was decided that my first name should be Georgiana. There had been three Georges and likely to be a fourth, so that seemed the best choice. This was to be followed by Charlotte (after the Princess who had made this possible), Augusta Alexandrina (after the Tsar) and Victoria after my mother.

Etiquette, of course, demanded that the names be submitted to the Regent for his approval. My mother had argued, so said Feodore. “Why all this fuss about a name?” One might have asked the same of her. Of course my name was important and I have no doubt that the Regent regarded me with suspicion. After all, when one holds a position, it is not the most pleasant thing in the world to view one’s successor. There is a feeling of being edged towards the grave. All monarchs feel it at some time—and particularly when one is obese, overcome with gout and other ailments, desperately trying to appear young, and handsome as one has been in one’s youth.

My parents knew that there would be trouble because on the very evening before the ceremony he sent a brief note saying that the name of Georgiana could not be placed before that of the Emperor of Russia; and he could not allow it to follow.

I am sorry that I cannot recall that scene from personal experience—although I was at the center of it. The Cupola Room must have looked very grand with the golden font which had been brought from the Tower and the crimson velvet curtains which had come from the chapel in St. James’s. I had three distinguished sponsors, the most important of these being Alexander the First, Tsar of Russia; the second was my Aunt Charlotte, the Queen of Württemberg (who had been the Princess Royal of England), and the third my maternal grandmother, the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. These illustrious sponsors were not present in person, of course, but were represented by my uncle, the Duke of York, and my aunts the Princess Augusta and the Duchess of Gloucester.

The Prince Regent at length arrived and from that moment there was trouble. I can imagine the animosity which must have flashed between him and my mother. There we were assembled in that splendid room before the golden font, my mother preparing for battle. Many times have I seen her in the mood she must have been in on that occasion.

The Archbishop held me in his arms waiting. He asked the Regent to announce my first name.

“Alexandrina,” he said, and then he paused.

The Archbishop was waiting.

“Charlotte,” whispered my father.

But the Regent shook his head reproachfully to show definite disapproval.

“Augusta?”

“Indeed not,” said the Regent. “Let her be named after her mother. Alexandrina Victoria.”

So, to the fury of my mother and the consternation of my father, I, who was to have emerged from the Cupola Room enriched by so many grand names suited to a future queen, came out with only two.

The Regent had shown his disapproval of what he called my parents’ presumption. He was not dead yet, and he clearly hoped that one of his other brothers would provide the heir to the throne, for his animosity towards my frilled and feathered mother—as I believe he called her—was great.

And there I was— “plump as a partridge”— full of lusty health and ready to start my life—a possible heir to the throne.

WE WERE VERY POOR. My father had many debts. Indeed, the hope of getting these settled was one of the reasons for his marriage—a secondary one, it is true, but none the less a reason. He was apparently disappointed in his hopes in that direction, and the need for economy was urgent.

As was to be expected, Uncle Leopold—dear Uncle Leopold— came to the rescue. Uncle Leopold, who was to mean so much to me, was my mother’s brother—and he it was who had been the devoted husband of Princess Charlotte. He had won her affections so whole-heartedly and kept her in restraint so admirably that he had become a person of some standing in England, although he was no favorite of the Prince Regent and Uncle William. Uncle Leopold was abstemious, careful, so right in everything he did, and people of less moral rectitude are inclined to dislike such people, I suppose because they bring home to them too forcibly their own shortcomings. One of the accusations Uncle William brought against Uncle Leopold was that he did not drink wine at dinner. He was quite angry about it and on one occasion said severely: “Sir, gentlemen do not drink water at my table.” Some might have been cowed but Uncle Leopold was quite unperturbed and went on drinking water.

However, Uncle Leopold had retained Claremont, where he had lived in such amity with Princess Charlotte, and because we were in such financial difficulties he lent us the house. So to Claremont we came.

When I grew older I came to love my visits to Claremont dearly. It was small as royal residences go, but Uncle Leopold told me once how delighted Charlotte had been when she had first come to it. She had said it was the perfect setting for married lovers for they could shut themselves away from the fashionable world and live there simply. I loved it, partly for itself, partly because it was Uncle Leopold’s and I loved everything about him. Looking back over a great many years, I see that he was the first man to win that devotion which I was so eager to give. I think now that it was because I needed a man in my life to be all important to me, a father when I was a child, a husband later. He had to be there, because although I was most imperious, so certain of my destiny which was to rule, in a way I wanted to be ruled—and thus it ever was. How strange people are, and how little we know ourselves. But when one looks back in serenity tempered by sorrow and perhaps wisdom gleaned over the years, one sees so much which one missed before.

So to Claremont we went—Claremont with its thirteen steps to the entrance. I always counted them when I ran up eager to be greeted by Uncle Leopold. I loved the Corinthian pillars which held up the pediment; and it thrilled me to enter the large rooms on the ground floor. There were eight of them, I remembered. Uncle Leopold used to take me through them and talk of what he and Charlotte had done and said to each other; and we would mingle our tears, for Uncle Leopold cried easily, which I always felt showed deep sensitivity in a man.

I know my mother was very resentful about the incident at the christening. It seemed to her so shocking—Lehzen told me afterwards—that I should have only two names, and names which were not well known in England. Alexandrina was very foreign. They called me Drina in those days and it was only later that it was changed to Victoria.

There was a great deal of resentment from the uncles—Cumberland particularly—because he had a son and I came before him; and Uncle William, of course, for all his wife’s efforts to bear children came to nothing. The tension had by no means ceased with the royal marriages. It had become like a race. Perhaps more than any the Regent resented it. It seemed as though they were all waiting eagerly for his departure.

When my father took me to a military review the Regent was furious. He demanded loudly: “What is that infant doing here?”

I am sure my father smiled complacently. The possibility of my being the heir to the throne could not have escaped anybody—least of all the Regent.

I was vaccinated, which caused quite a stir. Some years before Dr. Edward Jenner had discovered that by injecting a person with cow pox he could prevent their catching smallpox. Many people were uncertain about this, but if it was considered good for a Princess they decided it was good enough for them. It was interesting, said Lehzen, how popular these injections became after I had set the fashion.

As we were so poor my parents thought it would be cheaper to live in Germany than in England and they were contemplating making the move. In the meantime it seemed a good idea to rent a house by the sea where not only could we save ourselves expense but profit from the sea breezes—so good for us all and particularly for Baby Drina.

On the way down to the coast we stopped at Salisbury where, on a bitterly cold day, my father went for a tour of the cathedral. He caught a cold and by the time we reached Sidmouth it had not improved.

An alarming incident occurred there which might have been the end of me. I was in my cradle when suddenly the glass of the window was shattered and an arrow sped into the room coming so close to me that it pierced the sleeve of my nightgown. By a miracle—Providence, they all said—I was not hurt, but if the arrow had pierced my body, as it might well have done, it would most certainly have killed me.

I could imagine the consternation which must have spread through the household. Some must have given thought to the uncles, particularly Cumberland and his wife, who had both been involved in mysterious deaths. But finally it was discovered that the arrow had been shot by a mischievous boy. He had meant no harm, he insisted; he had only been playing wars.

Everyone was so relieved that I was unharmed that after being sternly reprimanded, the boy was forgiven.

Meanwhile my father’s cold was developing into something worse; in a week it had turned to pneumonia and he had taken to his bed. Uncle Leopold came hurrying down to Sidmouth with young Dr. Stockmar, in whom he had the utmost trust, but it soon became clear that my father could not survive.

It was a great shock to all for he had always been more healthy than any of his brothers.

What disturbed him more than anything was the prospect of leaving us. He had had such hopes of grooming me for the throne; and he was very worried as to what would happen to my mother with a young child—and in the position which I was—to care for.

Naturally he turned to Uncle Leopold.

It was from my mother that I heard of those anxious days. She was always dramatically vehement in her hatred of her husband’s family, tearfully affectionate toward her own. In those days when I was very young I thought of my father’s family as monsters and the Saxe-Coburg relations as angels.

“There we were,” my mother told me, “in that little house in Sidmouth…your father dead. What was to become of us? We had so little… not even enough to travel back to Claremont. And Claremont, of course, was not our home. It had only been lent to us by your dear Uncle Leopold. I was frantic. There was one matter which gave me some relief. Your father had appointed me your sole guardian, which shows what trust he had in me. Do you know, his last words to me were ‘Do not forget me.’ So you see he was thinking of me until the last.”

I wept with her and wished as I always have done that he had lived long enough for me to have known him.

“He was a great soldier,” she told me. “He wanted you always to remember that you are a soldier’s child.”

“Oh I will, Mama,” I said. “I will.”

“He was a great liberal too… and a friend of the reformer, Robert Owen. He was talking about visiting him at New Lanark just before his death. For him to die…he who was so strong…His hair was black and so was his beard. Mind you, he did color them a bit … but never mind. They looked fine and so did he. So young, so full of vigor… and there he was…in such a short time… dead.”

Mama loved drama and although at that time I wept with her I did wonder afterward whether she really did feel so strongly about his death. She was one who liked to have her own way, although she did bend a little to Sir John Conroy. I was told that Sir John looked something like my father, so perhaps that was one of the reasons why she thought so highly of him.

Mama went on to tell me how she was left bereft…no husband, very little money, in a strange land where she could scarcely speak the language.

“I could hope for little help from your father’s family,” she said with that snort of contempt she often used when speaking of them. “True, the miserly Parliament had granted me six thousand pounds a year in the event of my widowhood. I daresay when they granted me that—it was a year before you were born—they had thought they would not have to pay it for a long time.”

“Mama,” I said. “They did give you our home in Kensington Palace.”

“A few miserable rooms!” she retorted. “And there I was…with so little and all your father’s debts on my shoulders. I shall of course do my very best to settle them … in time.”

That was very honorable of her, I thought. She was very good, I was sure; but I did wish she was not so venomous toward my father’s family.

“I had thought there was only one thing for us,” she had gone on, “and that was to go back to Germany, but your dear Uncle Leopold was against that. He said, ‘In view of her prospects the child must stay in England. She must speak English. She must be English. There must be no trace of anything else. The people here like their own kind.’ And so I stayed here and dear Leopold…he gave up so much to stay with us! What I should have done without him I cannot imagine.”