Chapter XII: A Crown Lost, and a Grave Won (2)

It is said that when the news of the death of George IV. was announced to the Duchess of Clarence the new Queen burst into tears. The prayer-book she held in her hand at the moment she conferred on the noble messenger, as a memorial of the incident and of her regret. The messenger looked, perhaps, for a more costly guerdon; but she was thinking only of her higher and stranger duties. If Queen Adelaide really regretted that these now had claims upon her, not less was their advent regretted by certain of the labouring poor of Bushey, whose harvest-homes had never been so joyous as since the Duke and Duchess of Clarence had been living among them.

The course of life of the new Queen was only changed in degree. Her income was larger, so also were her charities. Her time had more calls upon it, but her cheerfulness was not diminished. Her evenings were generally given up to tapestry work, and as she bent over the frame many of the circle around her already sorrowingly remarked that the new Queen, though not old in years, seemed descending into the vale of life.

The esteem of her husband for her was equal to her merits. His affection and respect were boundless; and when the senate granted her, on the motion of Lord Althorpe, 100,000_l._ per annum, with Marlborough House and Bushey Park, in case she survived the King, the good old monarch was the first to congratulate her, and was pleased to put her in office himself, by appointing her Perpetual Ranger of the Park, which was to become her own at his decease.

William IV. was not forgetful of his old loves, and Queen Adelaide was not jealous of such memories. She looked more indulgently than the general public did on the ennobling of his children of the Jordan family. If that step could have been met by objections in these later days, it was at least supported by that amazingly powerful but sometimes perilous engine, precedent. Though indeed there was precedent for the contrary; and perhaps the husband of Queen Adelaide would have manifested a greater sense of propriety on this occasion had he rather followed the decent example, in a like matter, of the scrupulous Richard the Third than that of Henry the Eighth or the Second Charles.

There was another ennobling, however, which the public as warmly approved as the Queen heartily sanctioned. In 1834, her husband raised to the dignity of a Baroness the lady who had declined to share with him whatever of higher or more equivocal honour he could have conferred by marrying her. In that year Miss Wykeham became, by the grateful memory and good taste of her old royal lover, Baroness Wenman of Thame Park, Oxon. This testimony of the memory of an old affection was an act to be honoured by a Queen, and to it that royal homage was freely tendered. Inquirers, on turning over the peerage books, may discover many honours conferred on women too ready to listen to the suit of a monarch; but here, for the first time, was a title of nobility presented to a lady who had declined to give ear to royal suit, paid in honesty and honour. Baroness Wenman bore her honours with grace and dignity till her death, in 1870.

There was something chivalrous in the bearing of the King towards ladies; hearty, but a courteous heartiness. This sort of tribute he loved to render to his wife; and there was nothing so pleasant to hear, in his replies to addresses after his accession, as the gallant allusions to the qualities of the Queen, who stood at his side serenely satisfied. This heartiness was not an affectation in him. It was of his nature; and another phase of his character was manifested by King William at the first dinner after he ascended the throne, at which his relations only were present. On that pleasant occasion, although it was a family dinner, he gave as a toast, ‘Family peace and affection;’ it was the hearty sentiment of a citizen King who loved quiet and simple ways, who walked the streets with his intimate friends, and often occupied the box-seat of his open carriage, turning round to converse with the Queen inside. King William took much interest in the first lady whom his brother, George IV., had married. Mrs. Fitzherbert resided some part of the year at Brighton. The King visited her, and invited her to the Pavilion. He authorised her to put her servants in the royal livery, and to wear widow’s weeds for his late brother. On Mrs. Fitzherbert paying her first homage to Queen Adelaide, the King went down to her carriage to meet her, took her by the hand, and introduced her to his consort and all the members of his family who were present. Mrs. Fitzherbert told Lord Stourton that ‘she was herself much surprised at the great composure with which she was able to sustain a trial of fortitude which appeared so alarming at a distance.’ After this she was frequently a guest. Queen Adelaide was a gentle hostess, and the royal Sunday dinners were as elegant as they were comfortable. Mrs. Fitzherbert very decidedly declined being made a Duchess.

When Adelaide became Queen-consort some persons who would not have been ill-pleased to see her fail affected to fear that the homely Duchess would prove to be unequal to the exigencies of the queenly character. One exalted person hinted that, in this matter, she would not do ill were she to take counsel of the Princess Elizabeth of Hesse Homburg, ‘than whom none could better record to her Majesty the forms and usages and _prescriptions_ of the court of Queen Charlotte.’ But Queen Adelaide needed no such instruction as the good daughter of George III. could give her. She observed the forms and usages that were worthy of observance; and as for _prescriptions_, she could prescribe readily enough when duty demanded the service, as the Church felt, with mingled feelings, when she declined to invite clergymen to her state balls or her dancing _soirées_. The dancing clergy had their opportunity for censure when the King and Queen gave dinner-parties on the Sunday.

The court was essentially a homely court. The two sovereigns fed thousands of the poor in Windsor Park, and looked on at the feasting. The Queen went shopping to Brighton fancy fairs, and when on one occasion she bent to pick up the ‘reticule’ which an infirm old lady had dropped, as much was made of it as of the incident of King Francis, who picked up (or did not pick up) Titian’s pencil, and handed it to that sovereign gentleman among artists.

Then the new sovereigns paid more private visits than any pair who had hitherto occupied the British throne. While the Queen called on Sir David and Lady Scott at Brighton, her royal husband, with whom she had just previously been walking on the Esplanade, would suddenly appear at the door of some happy but disconcerted old admiral, and invite the veteran and his wife to dinner. To the hearty ‘Come along, directly,’ if there was a glance from the lady at her toilet, the citizen King would encourage her by an intimation never to mind it, for he and his wife were quiet people; ‘and, indeed,’ as he once remarked, ‘the Queen does nothing after dinner but embroider flowers.’ Which, indeed, was true enough, and, to tell the truth, very dull did the finer people find it.

The consequence of this familiarity of the sovereigns with their humbler friends was a rather audacious familiarity ventured upon by people who left their queer names in the book at the King’s door, and more than once successfully passed it, and penetrated to the Queen’s drawing-room. This evil, however, was soon remedied. There were other matters Queen Adelaide was bold enough to, at least, attempt to remedy. Indecorousness of dress in a lady she would censure as sharply as Queen Charlotte; and if, when Mrs. Blomfield appeared at her first drawing-room in a ‘train of rich immortal velvet,’ as the fashionable chroniclers of the day called it, she did not even hint surprise, it was, perhaps, out of respect for the successor of the Apostles, of whom that good but richly velvetted lady was the honoured wife.

The letter-writers who dealt with court incidents at the period of the accession of this domestic couple tell of various illustrations of the simplicity of the new sovereigns. When the Duke of Norfolk had an interview with William IV. at Bushey, on the affair which had brought him thither being concluded, the King declared he must not leave the house without seeing the Queen; and, thereupon ringing the bell, he bade the official who answered the summons to ‘tell the Queen I want her.’

This lady, at the time when her husband was Duke of Clarence and Lord High Admiral, had been accustomed, on her visits to Chatham, to be received and entertained by the daughters of the then Commissioner, Cunningham. As soon as the Duchess became Queen, among her first invited visitors to Bushey were these ladies. At the meeting they offered to kiss her Majesty’s hand, but ‘No, no,’ said Queen Adelaide, ‘that is not the way I receive my friends. I am not changed;’ and therewith ensued a greeting less dignified, but not less sincere.

Queen Adelaide and King William kept a ‘state’ at Brighton which had a burlesque element in it. They were the last sovereigns who held a court or entertained friends at the Pavilion--that place of big and little domes, which made Lord Alvanley say of it that it looked ‘as if St. Paul’s had come down to the sea-side and pupped.’ It was not etiquette for any guest (of an evening) to stir till Queen and King retired, which was at midnight. On one occasion, when Captain and Mrs. Marryat were present, and anxious to go to a second party, the King remarked that the lady often looked at the clock. Being asked the reason, she frankly told him. ‘Why don’t you go then?’ said his Majesty. ‘Sir,’ answered the lady, ‘we cannot move till her Majesty and yourself have departed.’ ‘Oh, d--n it!’ rejoined the royal sailor, ‘take my arm; I’ll smuggle you out.’ At the Pavilion balls, after the ladies had kissed the Queen’s hand, the King kissed the ladies, who then passed into the ball-room, where one of the Fitzclarences used to greet them with: ‘Well, has Dad bussed you yet?’

There are other stories told of incidents at Windsor which indicate the difference of the court going out from that of the court coming in. This change required the removal from the palace of a little household, the head lady of which reluctantly gave way to the new Queen. People generally rejoiced in seeing a ‘wife’ installed where ‘queans’ used to rule it; and, when William IV. was seen walking arm-in-arm with Watson Taylor or some other happy courtier, they added one incident to the other, and, comparing the new court with the old, exclaimed, ‘Here is a change indeed!’ No one ever dreamed at that moment that the time would come when party-spirit would stir up the ‘mobile’ against the sovereigns; that the Queen would be accused of plotting with the Duke of Wellington against reform; that stones would be cast at the royal carriage as it bore the King and his Consort from the theatre; and that, when matters went adversely to the humour of the ultra-chiefs of the popular movement, the first lady in the land should be marked out for vengeance by the famous cry in the _Times_, ‘The Queen has done it all!’

The drawing-room at which good Mrs. Blomfield appeared in ‘immortal velvet’ was remarkable for another incident, related in ‘Frazer’s Magazine,’ by John Wilkes, ex-M.P. for Sudbury, in his ‘Regina’s Regina’:--‘The drawing-room of her Majesty Queen Adelaide, held in February, 1831, was the most magnificent which had been seen since that which had taken place on the presentation of the Princess Charlotte of Wales, upon the occasion of her marriage. No drawing-room excited such an interest when compared with that as the one held by Queen Adelaide, at which the Princess Victoria was presented on attaining her twelfth year. It was on this occasion that the Duchess of Kent and her illustrious daughter arrived in state, attended by the Duchess of Northumberland, Lady Charlotte St. Maur, Lady Catherine Parkinson, the Hon. Mrs. Cust, Lady Conroy, La Baronne Letzen, Sir John Conroy, and General Wetheral. This was the first public appearance of the Princess Victoria at court. Her dress was made entirely of articles manufactured in the United Kingdom. Victoria wore a frock of English blonde, simple, modest, and becoming. She was the object of interest and admiration on the part of all assembled, as she stood on the left of her Majesty on the throne. The scene was one of the most splendid ever remembered, and the future Queen of England contemplated all that passed with much dignity, but with evident interest.’

Nearly three-quarters of a century had elapsed since a Queen-consort had been crowned in Great Britain. On the present occasion, such small pomp as there was was confined to the religious part of the ceremony. The procession to and from Westminster Hall, the banquet there, and the dramatic episode of the entry of the Champion were all dispensed with. There was an idea prevalent that the cost would be too great, and that the popular voice would be given to grumble--others thought that money spent in the country, and made to circulate rapidly through many hands, would be a public benefit rather than a public injury. The ministry, however, would only sanction the maimed rites which were actually observed; the privileged people were deprived of many a coveted perquisite which might have dipped deeply into the public purse, and the heir of Marmion and the owner of Scrivelsby kept his horse and his defiance at home in the domain of the Dymokes. The public, cheated of their show, called it a ‘half-crownation.’

There was only one incident at this ceremony which is worth narrating. The Queen-consort’s crown was a rich little toy, sparkling but small. It would hardly fit a baby’s head, and, accordingly, Queen Adelaide’s hair was turned up in a knot, in order that on this knot the little crown might safely rest. The Archbishop of Canterbury, in place of fitting the crown down upon this knot of hair, only lightly placed the glittering toy on the top of it. Had the Queen moved she would have been discrowned in an instant, and all the foolish people whose footsteps go wandering on the borders of another world, instead of going honestly straightforward in this, would have had a fine opportunity of discussing the value of omens. But, in a case of adornment, the ladies had their wits about them, and were worth the whole episcopal bench when the matter at issue was surmounting a head of hair with its supreme adornment of a crown. Some of those in attendance stepped forward, saved their embarrassed mistress from an annoyance, and Queen Adelaide was crowned in Westminster Abbey by a couple of ladies-in-waiting!

It may be that the Archbishop was not so much to blame on this occasion. The little crown was made up at the Queen’s expense for the occasion, by Rundell, out of her own jewels, and it may not have fitted easily. She had a dread of unnecessary outlay, and, perhaps, remembered that at George the Fourth’s coronation the sum charged by Rundell merely for the hire of jewels by the King amounted to 16,000_l._, as interest on their value. The whole expense of the double coronation of William and Adelaide did not amount to much more than twice that sum.

The Queen herself was not ill-dressed on this occasion, as will be seen by the record made by those who have registered the millinery portion of the ceremony:--‘Her Majesty wore a gold gauze over a white satin petticoat, with a diamond stomacher, and a purple velvet train, lined with white satin, and a rich border of gold and ermine. The coronet worn by Her Majesty, both to and from the Abbey, was most beautiful. It was composed entirely of diamonds and pearls, and in shape very similar to a mural crown.’

When the modest coronation of William and Adelaide was yet a subject of general conversation, the expensive finery of that which preceded it was actually in the market, and was subsequently sold by public auction. Out of the hundred and twenty lots ‘submitted’ by Mr. Phillips, the new King and Queen might have been tempted to secure a _souvenir_ of their predecessor; but they had no taste for ‘bargains,’ perhaps small regard for their defunct kinsman. Nevertheless, so thrifty a lady as the Queen may have sighed at the thought of the coronation ruff of Mechlin lace going ‘dirt cheap’ at two pounds; and she may have regretted the crimson velvet coronation mantle, with its star and gold embroidery, which, originally costing five hundred pounds, fetched, when yet as good as new, only a poor seven-and-forty guineas. There was the same depreciation in other articles of originally costly value. The second coronation mantle of purple velvet fell from three hundred to fifty-five pounds; and the green velvet mantle, lined with ermine, which had cost the Czar, who presented it to the late King, a thousand guineas, was ‘knocked down’ at a trifle over a hundred pounds. Sashes, highland-dresses, aigrette-plumes-- rich gifts received, or purchases dearly acquired--went for nothing; and, after all, seeing into what base hands coronation bravery is apt to fall, the economical King and Queen were not without justification in setting an example of prudence, which was followed at the next great crowning.

Perhaps not the least remarkable incident in connection with this coronation was the absence of the heiress-presumptive to the crown, the Princess Victoria. No place had been assigned to her, nor any preparation made in expectation of her gracing or witnessing the ceremony. It has been said that Earl Grey, the prime minister, obstinately opposed all idea of inviting the Princess to be present. But the grounds for such opposition are so unapparent that it is difficult to give credit to them at all. By others it has been asserted that the Duchess of Northumberland, the governess of the Princess, in the exercise of a superior and enlightened judgment, and in consideration of the then alleged delicate health of her young charge, advised that her pupil should not be present at the coronation of King William and Queen Adelaide. This reason seems hardly to account for the fact. In the absence of a better, it was accepted by those at least who did not throw the blame of that ‘conspicuous absence’ on Queen Adelaide herself and her royal consort; but, as an anonymous writer remarked, ‘Who that knew the good King William and his incomparable Queen would believe that any slight was put by them on their well-beloved niece and the heiress-presumptive to the throne?’ The same enemies also stated that ‘the Duchess of Northumberland was seeking to give a political bias to the education of the Princess, and some uneasiness was therefore created in the palace.’ The ‘Times’ asserted, with iteration, that the Duchess of Kent had ‘refused to attend, yes, refused to attend,’ and reproved Her Royal Highness, in the harsh terms which illustrated many of the controversies of the day, for the impertinence of the widow of a mediatized German Prince, in withholding her daughter from a ceremony at which she could never, at one time, have expected to see daughter of hers, as heiress-presumptive to the crown of England! Other papers made this alleged refusal rest on the course taken by Lord A. Fitzclarence, who, in marshalling the coronation procession on paper, had assigned a place to the Princess Victoria after the other members of the royal family, instead of next to the King and Queen. Finally, the ‘Globe,’ on authority, declared that the Duchess, having pleaded the delicate state of her daughter’s health, had obtained the King’s sanction to her absence--a version of the end of a story which began, nevertheless, more like the current report of it than would seem here to be indicated. As marked an instance of absence as that of the Princess was that of the whole of such members of the preceding administration as happened to be members of the House of Commons. This, however, little affected the King, who, at the subsequent dinner at St. James’s Palace, gave, as a toast, ‘the land we live in,’ and declared that, except as a formality and memorial, the coronation was a useless affair, as far as he was concerned, for no oath he had there taken could bind him more stringently to fulfil his duty towards the people than he felt himself to be bound by as soon as the responsibility of his position had fallen upon him.

The land he now lived in speedily became agitated by that wave of revolution which was shaking many of the monarchies of Europe. England endured as great revolution as any of them, but with this difference, that here it was effected according to law, and, albeit not exempt from very vast perils, was carried through to its natural consequences, to the mutual advantage of the government and the governed.

When the first rumours began to spread of an opposition establishing itself at court against the progress of reform, the press manifested particular desire to exonerate the Queen from the charge of participating in or heading such a course. The ‘Times’ at first interfered to protect that lady from similar aspersions. Papers of less influence, but of like principles, had openly named Queen Adelaide, the two daughters of George III., Elizabeth (Princess of Hesse Homburg), and Mary (Duchess of Gloucester) as mischievously active in impeding the popular will. In answer to such accusations, the ‘Times’ (April 9, 1831), in a brief but spirited and courteous leader, denounced the falsehood, and showed the improbability and the unfairness of such allegations. On a like occasion, that paper fairly urged that, whatever opinions might be expressed by members of the household, they were not to be attributed to the mistress of that household. At the same time, on these members and on the fair frequenters of drawing-rooms who there gave utterance to sentiments which they carried into action elsewhere against the great consummation sought by the people, the pro-reform paper thundered its bolts and showered its sarcasm with unsparing hands. On most occasions, however, so much was made of the apparent heartiness of the King, that excess of praise in that direction took the form of censure on the lukewarmness, if not the hostility, of the Queen. Contrasts rather than parallels were the favourite medium for turning the public attention to the two sovereigns. The Ex-Chancellor Eldon was said to have assured Queen Adelaide that, if reform was carried, the days of her drawing-rooms were numbered, and that royalty would do well to follow a counsel which was given by Earl Grey to the bishops--namely, set its house in order. On the other hand, we hear of the new Chancellor Brougham attending the court with his huge official purse so full of petitions in favour of parliamentary reform that, as he continued to extract and present them, he apologized to King William for troubling him with such piles of the public prayers or demands. Whereupon the King is said to have remarked, in the hearing of the Queen, ‘My Lord Chancellor, I am willing to receive anything from that purse, except the seals!’ The wit was small, but the suggestiveness was considered important, and gossips, on both sides, jumped to conclusions which had questionable affinity with the premises.

While the Queen was thus treated with a certain degree of moderation by the press, she is said to have been seriously coerced by the liberal ministry of the day. The charge was distinctly made, after the Queen’s death, in a funeral sermon, preached by the Rev. Mr. Browne, Vicar of Atwick. The occasion was so solemn that an honest man was not likely to be led even into exaggeration, much less into deliberate misrepresentation. These are the preacher’s own words:--

‘The Queen-consort had witnessed in her father-land some of the dreadful effects of the French revolutionary movements; and she was known to disapprove, out of womanly feeling and fear for her husband’s safety, of popular tumults and agitations. With the narrow-minded and impure suspicion is proof, and is followed by resentment. This pure being was a sufferer by the machinations and exactions of the ephemeral favourites of the misguided populace. Her influence over her royal husband was too great to be trusted, and she was forbidden--I speak advisedly, and mean nothing less than “forbidden”--to have a kindred spirit near her during the agitation and intimidation by which the measure called the Reform Bill was supported and carried.’

It was when that bill was in jeopardy, when the King--who had made so many knights that the very pages called them the ‘Arabians,’ the ‘Thousand and One’--hesitated to create a sufficient number of new lords to secure the passing of the bill in the Upper House; it was then that the press began to admonish the King and to menace the Queen. On one occasion, when they attended at the opening of the new Staines Bridge, where, by the way, they were so closely pressed upon by the mob that maids of honour and gentlemen-in-waiting had their pockets picked, the Conservative wits remarked that the King might make new bridges, but that he must leave the _peers_ alone. The Whig party at once assumed that Queen Adelaide was at the head of a faction whose object was to give reality to such jokes, and thenceforward the Queen was little spared. The ‘Times’ asserted that it was by ‘domestic importunity’ alone that the free action of the King’s mind was impeded. The Queen was compared to Queen Amata, in the ‘Æneid,’ cajoling or raging at her older consort, Latinus, because the latter preferred Æneas to Turnus as a husband for their daughter Lavinia. There was not much alike in the two cases, for Amata was a staunch Conservative, who detested the idea of a foreign prince obtaining the hand of her daughter, and exercising influence within the limits of Latium. But there were strong terms in the original which suited the purpose of the hour, and the Queen was pelted with them most unmercifully.

Occasionally, there was a truth mixed up with the harder words, which even ultra-Tories could not gainsay, as when the ‘Times’ remarked that ‘a foreigner was no very competent judge of English liberties, and politics are not the proper field for female enterprise or exertion.’ When this strong hint was taken to have failed, and Queen Adelaide was still supposed to be conspiring with the daughters of George III. to turn King William from his liberal views, this was the tone with which the royal lady was lectured by the press:--‘There is a lady of high rank who must be taught a salutary, though a very painful, lesson. She may be bold as an amazon, be troublesome, importunate, or overbearing, but her present course is one from which can follow naught but final wretchedness. Why has she so eagerly, within these few hours, bidden her gossips _not to despair_? Why such haste to tell them, _all will be well? The King will do without the Whigs._ Yes, madam, but England will not. Still less will England do without the unmutilated Bill.’

At another time Queen Adelaide was reminded that if a female influence drove Necker from the court of Louis XVI., one of the consequences was the destruction of the most influential lady; another, the ruin of the country. The influence being assumed to be still active, allusion was made to the ‘foreign woman whom the nation may have too easily adopted.’ Reports were rife that intrigues were on foot, the object of which was to induce liberal peers to betray their party, and then the public censor showered imprecations on ‘blandishments and entreaties, urged with a force and pertinacity which, coming from a monarch, are difficult to be refused.’

On the other hand, the Conservative press drew its own inferences and made its own accusations. When the cholera was raging, during the reform fever, Queen Adelaide’s drawing-room happened to be very thinly attended. The real cause was lost sight of, and her Majesty was respectfully assured that the scanty attendance was entirely owing to Lord Grey’s revolutionary government, beneath which all old English energy, vitality, and spirit had become so extinct that it was unequal to the exertion of even manifesting respect for an English Queen. As much injury was inflicted on Queen Adelaide by the Tories who blazoned her name on their banners and boasted of having her on their side as by the Whigs and Radicals who, by their calumny, exposed her to popular insult. When Lord Chancellor Brougham coerced the King to go and dismiss the unreformed and unreforming Parliament, one part of the royal remonstrance took the form of: ‘What! Would you have me dismiss in this summary manner, a Parliament which has granted me so splendid a Civil List, and given my Queen so liberal an annuity, in case she survives me?’ Lord Brougham answered that he would, and that he had taken upon himself to order out the Horse Guards to escort the King down to the House.

Old English qualities manifested themselves at a Conservative festival in Gloucestershire, where the health of ‘the Queen’ was ‘received with great applause.’ Upon which announcement the ‘Times’ significantly asked, ‘Is that meant as a compliment to her Majesty, or will it sound as such in the ears of the unanimous people?’ Then, when reiteration was made of the alleged co-operation of the sisters of William IV. with Queen Adelaide in efforts to overthrow the Reform Bill, the ‘Times’ stepped forward with the following testimony in favour of those ladies and their mother, with the accompanying admonition to the Queen:--‘No one will be persuaded that any daughter of George III. could so mistake her position in this country or so disregard her duty. Queen Charlotte was advised by her mother, before she ever touched the shores of England, to make entire and religious abstinence from politics the rule of her life as a British Princess; and for twenty-eight years, till the question of the first Regency forced Queen Charlotte upon the stage as a reluctant actress, she had satisfied herself with being a modest spectatress, living in strict observance of maternal counsel; and what was the consequence? Down to the above-mentioned period of her wedded life, her Majesty enjoyed, in a degree not experienced by any Queen-consort for centuries past, the respect and good-will of the whole community. Is it then to be supposed that the leading maxim of her own mother was not impressed by that judicious and estimable woman upon the minds of her daughters, the six Princesses, two of whom still adorn the court of England with their constant presence? The Princess Augusta and the Duchess of Gloucester owe little to the gossips who thus abuse the delicacy of their illustrious names.’

Party-spirit was, doubtless, aggravated on either side by the tone of the press. Influential cities announced their refusal to pay taxes, and tavern-clubs possessing pictures of King and Queen turned them heels uppermost, with an intimation that they should be righted as soon as the originals had made themselves right with the people. If Tories of eminence talked of coercing the King, Whigs equally exalted hinted at the possibility of sending his Consort to Germany, and of rousing the men of the provinces in order to make an impression upon people in high places. One well-known ‘man about town,’ presiding at a public dinner, refused to propose the Queen’s health, and among the lower caricature-shops she might be seen pictured wending her way, the ejected of England, to a dull, dreary, and unwelcoming Germany.

Publicly, however, she had her champions too. Mr. Baring, from his place in parliament, protested against the language of the Whig papers generally. His own description of it, as applicable to the Queen, was, that it comprised foul slander against the highest personage of a sex, from insulting which every manly mind would recoil. The gallant champion added, with less discretion, perhaps, that the full measure of scornful indifference and silent contempt with which the Queen repaid all the insults heaped upon her had elevated her in the hearts of those whose homage was a worthy tribute. Mr. Hume, ultra-reformer as he was, exhibited very excellent taste on this occasion, and pointed out in a few words marked by good common sense that the name of the exalted lady in question should never be dragged into the debates, the discussions, and the dissensions of that house.

Less, perhaps, by way of championship than in the character of consolers, did the bishops, or a certain number of them, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at their head, address Queen Adelaide. They had, previously, ‘been up’ to the King, who was just then being counselled in various ways by everybody, from wary old politicians to the ’prentice-boys of Derry. They brought to his Consort the usual complimentary phrases--but, in the present instance, they carried weight with the Queen, for amid the din of abuse with which she was assailed a few words of assurance and encouragement, of trust, counsel, and consolation, must have fallen pleasantly upon her ear. She said as much, at least, in a brief phrase or two, indicative of the satisfaction she experienced at hearing such words from such men, at a period when she was the object of so much undeserved calumny and insult.

The scene was, undoubtedly, made the most of by those who rejoiced most in its occurrence; perhaps too much was made of it; and this induced the ridicule of the opposite side. The ‘Times’ courageously denied its existence. The presentation of the prelates was admitted, but the Queen’s speech was defined as a hoax. There was nobody by, it was said, but the knot of diocesans and a body of maids of honour--and, of course, any report emanating from such a source was to be received with more than ordinary suspicion.

Long before the press had commenced directing an undesired notice upon the Queen private circles were canvassing her conduct with regard, especially, to this matter of reform. ‘By-the-bye,’ says Moore in his diary, ‘the Queen being, as is well known, adverse to the measure which is giving such popularity to her royal husband, reminds me a little of the story of the King of Sparta, who first gave his assent to the establishment of the Ephori. His wife, it is said, reproached him with this step, and told him that he was delivering down the royal power to his children _less_ than he had received it. “Greater,” he answered, “because more durable.” This is just such an answer as William IV. would be likely to give to _his_ wife. But the event proved the Spartan Queen to have been right, for the Ephori extinguished the royal power; and if Queen Adelaide’s bodings are of the same description, they are but too likely to be _in the same manner realized_’--a curious avowal from Lord Lansdowne’s Whig friend.

There are few things which more forcibly strike a student of the political literature of this period than its wide difference from that which now generally prevails. It seemed, in those days, as if no public writer could command or control his temper. The worst things were expressed in the worst forms, and writers had not reached, or did not care to practise, the better style by which a man may censure sharply without doing undue wrong to the object of his censure, without losing his own self-respect or forfeiting that of his readers.

Taken altogether, the year 1832 may be said to have been the most eventful and the least felicitous in the life of Queen Adelaide. It was a year which opened gloomily for the court, both politically and personally. At one of the small festivities held at the Pavilion, the King’s old friend, Mr. Greenwood, of the firm of Cox and Greenwood, Army Agents, was playing whist, after dinner, with the Queen for a partner, and the King and Sir Herbert Taylor for adversaries. During the progress of the game he was taken ill, became insensible, and, on being removed from the room by Sir Herbert and Lord Erroll, died in an adjoining apartment, within a quarter of an hour. The Queen was very much shocked at this incident, and the elder ladies about court, who thought it ominous of a fatal year--for already were movements hostile to monarchy becoming active--considered the next month’s omen of unpleasant significance too, when the fog in London, on the night of the anniversary of the Queen’s birthday, was so dense that not a lamp of illuminations was visible through the mist. Then ensued, in the subsequent spring, the unpleasant feud with the Sefton family, in which Queen Adelaide’s name was so prominent.

Soon after the temporary resignation of the Grey ministry, King William invited the Jockey Club to dinner at St. James’s Palace. Among the invited was old Lord Sefton, who was a Whig _and something more_, and who was resolved to avenge on the King the wrongs inflicted, as he assumed, by that dissembling monarch on his friends of the late administration. Lord Sefton accordingly withdrew from the club. The unsuspicious King at once invited him as a friend, but Lord Sefton was ungracious enough to absent himself, and did not condescend to restore the sovereign to favour till Lord Grey was once more at the helm of the national ship--steersman and captain too. His lordship and family appeared at the ball given by the Queen in May, to which, of course, they had been all invited. Meanwhile, however, the King had learned how he stood in the estimation of the Earl, meeting whom in the Queen’s ball-room, he turned his royal back upon him, publicly. Thence arose embittered feelings on the part of the offended peer. _Vivere sat, vincere_, ‘to conquer is to live enough,’ is the Sefton motto, and the bearers of it seem to have been determined to have this taste of life, by putting down the royal offenders, and appearing before them to enjoy their humiliation. ‘Lord Molyneux’ (Lord Sefton’s son, says Mr. Raikes, in his _Diary_) ‘has attended a public meeting at Liverpool, where he made a speech, and, actuated by his father’s feelings, alluded very bitterly to the conduct of both the King and Queen. He afterwards came to town, and appeared, with his family, at the ball. On the following day, the King commanded Mr. W. Ashley, as vice-chamberlain to the Queen, to write to Lord Molyneux, and request he would not appear at court again. Nothing could be more just. This is only a slight instance,’ adds the Tory Diarist, ‘of Whig insolence and ingratitude. Sefton has been made a peer, and treated with the most marked courtesy and attention by the present King.’

In the following June, Lord Lichfield, master of the buckhounds, prepared a list of guests invited by him to meet the King, at the conclusion of Ascot races, at dinner, at Lord Lichfield’s house, Fern Hill. The King expressly ordered that Lord Sefton should not be invited. Considering the offence, it was singular that any one should have thought of winning the Queen over to use her interest in influencing her husband to withdraw the command. Lady Lichfield, however, did so, intimating to her Majesty that, if the King had been moved by what was reported to have passed at the Jockey Club, she was enabled to say how that matter had been much misrepresented. The Queen confined all reply and comment to the words, coldly uttered, that she hoped it was so.

It certainly was not a period when Queens could expect to be cordial with people who insulted them, and whose speeches in public were exercising a very unwholesome influence on the more ignorant of the lower orders. At the above very Ascot races the King was grievously assaulted, in the Queen’s presence, by a ruffian in the crowd. Their Majesties had just taken their seats in the grand stand, and the King had then risen to salute the people in view, when the ruffian in question flung a stone at him, which struck the King on the forehead, but did not inflict any serious mischief. The assailant was let cheaply off; but Queen Adelaide was much distressed by his act, and the impression it made upon her was only increased, a week later, when she appeared with the King at the review in Hyde Park. There she was treated with such incivility and rudeness that at the fête at the Duke of Wellington’s, in the evening, where they held a little court, the Queen wore a spiritless and sorrowing aspect, while King William, his buoyant spirits all quenched, looked aged and infirm, weary of his vocation and vexations.

The season, certainly, was not one for monarchs to be abroad in with joyous exterior. In the summer of this year there passed through London a princess whose story bore with it a great moral to the wearers of crowns--the Duchess of Angoulême, the daughter of Louis XVI. She had experienced the widest extremes of fortune, but had been longest and most intimately acquainted with misfortune. She was again a fugitive and an exile--one never destined to behold her country again. The Queen visited her at her modest apartments in Charles Street, Grosvenor Square, and she took leave of that illustrious victim of many revolutions with evil forebodings of the issue of the spirit of the then present time. Her Majesty did not, indeed, lack a certain spirit of her own wherewith to meet the other and revolutionary spirit. Thus, when her friend and faithful servant, Lord Howe, was compelled to give up his office of chamberlain to the Queen, his mistress would never accept the nomination of any other person to the same post. Lord Howe remained in attendance upon his mistress unofficially; but he positively refused to be reinstated by Lord Grey, to whom his reply was, ‘That he had been wantonly dismissed by him, and would receive no favour at his hands.’ The act of Lord Grey was, probably, far more keenly felt at court than that of the two new radical members (Messrs. Wigney and Faithful) returned for the royal borough of Brighton, and who, ‘under the very nose of the court,’ as it was said, ‘talked openly of reducing the allowance made to the King and Queen.’ This was a foolish speech; but there was an even more indiscreet tongue within the Pavilion than those of the new radical senators without. In 1833, the King himself declared in favour of a republican form of government! What must the feelings of Queen Adelaide have been--she who had a horror of revolutions and a hatred for republicanism--on that never-to-be-forgotten Sunday evening, the 6th of January, 1833? The American Minister was a guest at the dinner table that evening. At the _dessert_, the King, instead of wisely going to sleep, as he was accustomed to do after his second glass of wine, _would_ be lively and talkative. When he was in this vein he was addicted to make speeches, and on this occasion, before the ladies had retired, he delivered himself of a very notable one, considering the times and the speaker, in which he expressed his great regret that he had not been born a free, independent American, seeing that he entertained deep respect for the United States, and considered Washington to be the greatest man that ever lived. Queen Adelaide must have been astounded when listening to this profession of political faith, and to this eulogy of a man who had struck the brightest jewel out of the crown of his panegyrist’s royal father!

To old royalists such a speech as the above savoured of that period which is called ‘the end of the world.’ Speculative individuals who heard of it were amazed. ‘The aristocracy are hourly going down in the scale; royalty is become a mere cypher.’ Well might Mr. Raikes make this entry in his journal, when a King of England manifested a liking for ‘rowdyism.’ The influences of these passing events, even on men of intellect, are well marked by a contemporary passage in the diary of the merchant, whose commercial affairs were going the way he fancied the monarchy was tending. ‘I was walking the other day,’ he writes, in February 1833, ‘round the Royal Exchange, the _enceinte_ of which is adorned with the statues of all our Kings. Only two niches now remain vacant; one is destined to our present ruler, and that reserved for his successor is the _last_. Some people might say it was ominous.’ So, indeed, it proved to be; half-a-year after the accession of Queen Victoria, when there were as many niches as there had been sovereigns, and room for no more, destruction ensued, but it was the Royal Exchange that fell (by fire), and not the monarchy. _That_ has grown stronger. May it ever so flourish!

Meanwhile, it is to be observed that Queen Adelaide after this time began to re-conquer the popular esteem. When, in July 1834, she embarked at Woolwich as Countess of Lancaster, on board the royal yacht, for Rotterdam, in order to visit her relations in Germany, the spectators of the scene received her with demonstrations of great respect, and on her return, in the following month, she landed at the same place amid acclamations of loyalty and welcome.

It was after her return that the King began to bear symptoms of restlessness and fatigue, which betokened that decay which gradually made progress, and was ultimately accelerated in 1837, when his daughter, Lady de Lisle, died, to the grief of many, but especially to the heart of her father.

As the King’s health began to give way, so also did his temper more easily yield before such provocations, and more freely did he indulge in that early acquired habit of using strong expletives which has been noted, in her diary, by Fanny Burney. William the Conqueror, it is said, used to ungallantly beat his wife, Matilda, of whom he was otherwise so fond. William the Fourth was guilty of an offence only next to it in criminality--by swearing in presence of his consort, Adelaide. There is a well-known instance of this told in connection with a visit to the Royal Academy, in 1834. The occasion was that of a private view, with a very large public attendance at Somerset House. The President of the Royal Academy received the illustrious visitors, and accompanied them through the rooms. In the course of their progress he pointed out to the King the portrait of Admiral Napier, who had recently been in command of the Portuguese fleet for Don Pedro. The King’s political wrath was too strong for his infirmity, and, without forgetting the presence of his wife, nay, making such presence an excuse for not breaking forth into greater unseemliness, he exclaimed: ‘Captain Napier may be d----d, sir! and _you_ may be d----d, sir! and if the Queen was not here, sir, I would kick you down stairs, sir.’ Such a scene indicated as much infirmity as bad taste on the part of the chief actor, and must have sorely tried the patience and shaken the dignity of the Queen. She now, perhaps, as much or more than ever, required the support of those nearest to her. The old prejudices of the reform time against her had not yet died out, and to these was to be added certain malignity in foreign papers; a malignity which culminated in 1835 in the ‘Gazette de France,’ which paper seriously asserted that England was endeavouring to revolutionize Spain and Portugal, with ulterior purposes of pursuing the same course in Germany and Italy as she had done in Belgium and in Greece; and that at the head of this conspiracy for reconstructing Europe were William the Fourth, the Duke of Wellington, and _Queen Adelaide_! Thus, the lady who had seldom during her life desired more than to be permitted to enjoy it tranquilly, and who had but little perplexed herself touching the ways of others, was held up, after being accused of being a political meddler at home, as being a political conspirator abroad.

When her royal consort’s indisposition assumed an appearance of increased gravity, Queen Adelaide at once took her place by his couch, and never left but when compelled by gentle restraint put upon her by those who loved her, and who feared for her own health. ‘Les reines’ (says a French writer) ‘ont été vues pleurantes comme de simples femmes,’ and she was one of them. Her constancy only gave way, and she broke into profuse but silent tears, on the eve of the old King’s death, as the Archbishop of Canterbury concluded the service of the sick, by pronouncing the solemn words of the benediction as contained in the Liturgy of the Church. The good old monarch looked with affection upon his sorrowing Queen, and with as cheerful a voice as he could put on, and almost in nautical phrase, begged her to be of good heart and to ‘bear up! bear up!’

The Rev. Mr. Browne, Vicar of Atwick, rendering testimony to her conduct on this occasion, said in a funeral sermon: ‘She was by the King’s bedside, a being so full of devoted love and pious resignation, of such meekness, gentleness, and goodness, and sweetness, that an angel might have beheld her with satisfaction and delight, and _almost with advantage_.’ She did her duty like a true wife and tender woman; and Mr. Browne thought that, altogether, Queen Adelaide might have afforded an useful hint or two even to angels! It is more than the good Queen ever dreamed of.

The Archbishop of Canterbury was in close attendance upon the King during the last days of his life, in 1837, and in the course of his ministrations saw more of Queen Adelaide than any other individual there present had the opportunity of doing. At a meeting of the Metropolitan Churches’ Fund Society, the primate went fully, but tenderly and sensibly, into this solemn matter; and after rendering due, but not over-piled, measure of justice to the King, spoke in these words of his consort:--‘For three weeks prior to his dissolution the Queen sat by his bedside, performing for him every office which a sick man could require, and depriving herself of all manner of rest and refection. She underwent labours which I thought no ordinary woman could endure. No language can do justice to the meekness and to the calmness of mind which she sought to keep up before the King, while sorrow was preying on her heart. Such constancy of affection, I think, was one of the most interesting spectacles that could be presented to a mind desirous of being gratified with the sight of human excellence.’

The spectacle at the close was one most touching of all, for old King William, threescore and twelve, died at last in a gentle sleep, as he sat up on his couch, his hand resting, where it had lain undisturbed for hours, on the shoulder of the Queen. Such had been her office at various times, daily, for the preceding fortnight; and when it shall have been a little more hallowed by time, it will be a fitting subject to be limned by some future artist competent to treat it.

Since the death of Charles II. no King of England had died under the same roof with his wife; and _then_ there was no such touching scene as the above, but only a few words of decent reconciliation before the royal pair parted for ever, and the wife (leaving the husband to die at leisure and commend worthless women to his brother’s protection) went to her chamber to receive the formal news of his death, and finally to receive the condolence of visitors, lying the while on a state bed of mourning, in a chamber lighted with tapers, the walls, floor, and ceiling covered with black cloth. Queen Adelaide stayed by _her_ husband to the last, then laid his unconscious head upon the pillow, and, quietly withdrawing to her chamber, looked for consolation to other sources than the visits of courtiers shaping their faces to the humour of the hour.

The respect of the royal widow for the deceased King did not cease here. On Saturday night, the 8th of July, she attended the funeral ceremony, at Windsor, being present in the royal closet during the whole ceremony. She is the only Queen of England who saw a King, her consort, deposited in the tomb.