William IV
‘The King never calculated upon the use of
Buckingham Palace for any purpose of state.’1
LORD HOLLAND
The Palace at Pimlico
With the death of George IV on 26 June 1830, Nash lost his strongest supporter: now there was no hope of the knighthood he so longed for. On 22 October 1830 Nash was suspended from the office of Architect to the Board of Works. As Prime Minister the ‘Iron Duke’, the Duke of Wellington, had been stringent enough; now Nash could expect even less generosity from the Whigs who won the elections in November. In fact the waste and extravagance of the ‘Palace in Pimlico’ was exactly the kind of corruption they had been elected to root out.
Lord Grey, the new Whig Prime Minister, appointed a Select Committee to investigate the Palace affair. It was particularly concerned about the structural safety. It must have galled Nash to hear of his old colleagues, Smirke and Soane, being appointed to judge the safety of his building. They found this difficult: without ripping up the floors it was not possible to judge, because of what they called ‘the extensive and peculiar use of iron’. Nash had been one of the pioneers of cast-iron construction and was so confident of its strength that he suggested that they should bring in the Army to march on every floor. The Committee did not share his confidence but could not prove his cast-iron work faulty. Indeed their conclusion was that, though Nash had been guilty of ‘inexcusable irregularity and great negligence’, he had committed no crime and was not to be prosecuted. In December the brief report of the Committee was published and their Lordships directed that Nash’s appointment as architect responsible for the work on the Palace be withdrawn.
The full report of October 1831 was damning. Not only were there complaints of incompetence, but the Committee had also received suggestions of malpractice. Nash had sent Joseph Browne to Italy to purchase Carrara marble for the Marble Arch: his account was questioned. There had been ‘no fair competition’ for the purchase of iron.
Upon the whole, my Lords see in the paper before them no justification of Mr Nash’s conduct. The estimate submitted to and sanctioned by Parliament has been exceeded to a large amount; the progress of such excess has been concealed from my Lords and their earlier interposition therefore prevented. My Lords feel it incumbent upon them to mark their sense of such conduct by every means in their power.2
There were still criticisms of the use of cast-iron and the Committee considered that some of the constructional defects which ‘at present render the building ineligible as a royal residence’ could be remedied. However, they still regretted the site chosen; they thought it might have been cheaper to have built on a new site. As Nash’s biographer, Sir John Summerson, has calculated, ‘The cost of converting Buckingham House into Buckingham Palace estimated in 1826 at £252,690 had increased to £331,973 in 1827, to £432,926 in 1828, to £496,169 in 1829, and now stood at £613,269. It would cost still more to finish the work.’3
During his last years, Nash spent most of his time at his castle on the Isle of Wight, leaving his London office to the care of his wife’s cousin, James Pennethorne. This young man, who was destined to play an important part in the Palace improvements in Queen Victoria’s reign, had great talent. Nash started him off in his own office and then paid for his further training, first as a pupil of the architect, A. C. Pugin, and then two years’ study abroad. Through Nash he met many of the talented artists and architects of the day; he travelled from the mainland with Turner when the great artist came to stay at the castle. He must have been closely concerned with Nash’s final work for the West Strand improvements and for the building of Clarence House, and certainly would have been consulted by Blore on the work at Buckingham Palace. Pennethorne owed much to Nash and never forgot his great debt.
Nash was harassed in his retirement by his creditors, for though he had amassed a fortune, much was invested in property. He died in 1835 and was buried in the churchyard at East Cowes. Buckingham Palace was Nash’s creation. He was an architect well trained in the classical tradition but a visionary with a fertile imagination: a risk-taker, an innovator, a gambler with a lofty disregard for accounts, he certainly merited Taylor’s furious rebuke, ‘harum scarum’. But his energy, fun and charm intrigued even his critics; and there is an underlying harmony that graces most of his work. A new wing now encloses the forecourt and hides Nash’s impressive façade. But today the visitor to Buckingham Palace has only to look up to Nash’s ceilings to appreciate the astonishing imaginative vitality of his work. He was, in the words of John Bull, ‘in fact a most extraordinary man’.
The Uninspired Blore
William IV was perfectly comfortable at Clarence House, rebuilt for him as Duke of Clarence, and did not want Buckingham Palace. He was essentially a simple man with nothing of his brother’s folie de grandeur. He immediately understood that it was not the time to spend money on palaces.
When King William came to the throne the battle for Parliamentary reform was at its height. Finally in 1832 and with great difficulty, Lord Grey and the Whigs managed to get the Reform Bill through Parliament and to persuade the King to give his assent. At a time like this the King had the sense to realize that Whigs and radicals would fiercely oppose extravagant expenditure on the Palace. William IV’s sympathies lay more with the Tories but he tried to keep above party politics, although he had great difficulty in restraining his ultra-Tory wife, Queen Adelaide. He told Lord Holland that ‘the expense of his brother’s coronation had been £250,000 … a wasteful display … it was prudent nay incumbent upon persons in his situation … to advise every means of curtailing useless expense and unnecessary parade’.4
As the contemporary historian, Robert Huish, wrote, ‘The representatives of the people could not be brought to vote any further sum for the completion of this palace, and it now stands as a monstrous insult upon the nation, and a monument of the reckless extravagance of its projector.’
The King had determined he would never make it his home and ‘he never calculated upon the use of Buckingham Palace for any purpose of state’. Huish considered that:
This cumbrous pile now hangs as a dual weight upon the nation. It is never intended to finish it as a royal residence, and, like York House, it may one day become the residence of some opulent nobleman. It is computed that half a million is yet required for its completion independently of furniture. The Duke of Northumberland is spoken of as the most probable purchaser, it having been refused by Lord Grosvenor.5
Unlike his brother George IV, William IV had simple tastes and, according to the diarist, Thomas Creevey,
the King never ceased to impress upon Duncannon that all he and the Queen wish for is to be comfortable.
… as for removing to Buckingham House, he will do so if the Government wish it, tho’ he thinks it a most ill contrived house; and if he goes there he hopes it may be plain and no gilding for he dislikes it extremely.
He would have been happy to ‘live in Marlborough House, which is Crown land and the lease nearly out’. And, added Creevey, ‘Billy says if he might have a passage made to unite this house with St James he and the Queen could live there very comfortably indeed.’6
The new architect, Edward Blore, wanted to begin straightaway planning his completion of the Palace: but while Parliament was debating its future, work was halted. William IV, determined that he would never have it, still hoped to steer the great white elephant into someone else’s patch. In 1831 he suggested the Palace should be a barracks: the 1,500 Footguards at Knightsbridge needed a new home. In 1833 he suggested that ‘the present Houses of Parliament and their appendages might be converted into a residence for the Lord Chancellor and into Courts of Law’, and then honourable members could take over the Palace. God appeared to be on his side: in 1834 the Houses of Parliament went up in flames. William IV went to inspect the ruins, exulting among the ashes. Sir John Hobhouse and the Speaker watched him: the King was ‘gratified as if at a show’. ‘Buckingham Palace,’ he insisted, ‘would as a Parliament building, be the “finest thing in Europe”.’ As he left the smouldering ruins he called Hobhouse and the Speaker to his carriage: ‘Mind, I mean Buckingham Palace as a permanent gift … mind that!’
The King’s ministers shuddered at the thought of presenting demands for even more expenditure to the newly elected Parliament. Prime Minister Lord Melbourne, master of delaying tactics, in the time-honoured way, asked for a report: Blore would have none of it: such a conversion was impossible. ‘But,’ shouted the King, ‘it was the King’s prerogative to appoint the place at which Parliament should meet.’ Then Melbourne, with all the tact that in later years he would use on Queen Victoria, suavely suggested to His Majesty that if the Palace were rebuilt as Parliament, ‘it will be very difficult to avoid providing much larger accommodation for spectators as well as for members, and Lord Melbourne need not recall to your Majesty’s mind the fatal effects which large galleries filled with the multitude have had upon the deliberations of public assemblies’.7 That clinched it. William IV accepted the inevitable, but he was deeply offended that the press had misunderstood his offer of a gift and attacked him for wanting to shift the expenditure on to the public.
One thing, however, he was determined to shift on to his government’s shoulders: the responsibility for supervising the completion of the Palace. Unlike his brother, George IV, he had no intention of turning architect or interior decorator. The Prime Minister accordingly appointed two ministers to supervise the work – Lord Althorp and Lord Duncannon, the new Whig minister who had been appointed in 1834 as the First Commissioner of Woods and Forests. It was the latter who supervised the furnishing of the Palace. This was a fortunate choice. Lord and Lady Duncannon had run their estates in Ireland with great competence.
The work on the Palace was completed with remarkable speed, in spite of strikes on the site. For this the credit must go mainly to Edward Blore and to Duncannon. His department was responsible for Crown lands and the First Commissioner was a political appointment, which changed with the government. The other department concerned with the care of public and government buildings was the Board of Works under a Surveyor-General, responsible to the Treasury. It was to this department that the three architects, Nash, Soane and Smirke had been attached. An enquiry of 1828 had revealed much waste and confusion, with which, in his brief Tory ministry, Wellington had tried to deal. In 1830, however, the new Whig government under the premiership of Lord Grey, and with Duncannon at Woods and Forests, undertook a major reorganization of the departments responsible for expenditure on palaces and public works.
The new Whig Chancellor of the Exchequer, Lord Althorp, asked for detailed accounts from the Surveyor General, Benjamin Stephenson, and he wanted to know who and how many were accommodated in the royal palaces, and what was the cost of their upkeep. The days of unlimited and unquestioned royal expenditure were numbered.
Duncannon inherited from his predecessor, Agar Ellis, a plan for reorganization which Duncannon proceeded rapidly to put into practice: he brought in a bill to amalgamate Woods and Forests with the Board of Works. Later he was to supervise the initial planning stages of the new Houses of Parliament, the building of the new National Gallery and the replanning of the streets of Westminster. That such a major reorganization was carried through with less fuss than might have been expected was due to Duncannon’s particular skills not only as an efficient administrator but also as a friendly and charming conciliator. Yet, indispensable though he was to Grey and his government, he never made much impact in Parliament, since he was acutely conscious of an embarrassing stammer.
Duncannon, born John William Ponsonby, had been made an Irish peer in 1793 and in 1834 became 4th Earl of Bessborough. He was one of the great Whig ‘Cousinage’ that dominated the government of the day, yet another of those aristocrats who, to the confusion of the reader, changes his name with each step up the noble ladder: Cavendish became Duke of Devonshire; Viscount Althorp became Earl Spencer; William Lamb became Viscount Melbourne (later to be Prime Minister).
The network of the ‘Cousinage’ was formidable. Duncannon’s mother was the sister of the ravishing Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. His sister was the scandalous Caroline who married William Lamb. Lord Althorp, the Chancellor of the Exchequer when Duncannon took office, was his first cousin. Agar Ellis, his predecessor, was also his cousin by marriage. All these were Whigs, but he also had links with the Tories. His wife, the sweet and gentle Maria, was the younger sister of the formidable Sarah, Lady Jersey, once the ‘companion’ of George IV and the queen bee of contemporary society. Refurbishing a palace was no great problem for Duncannon, who had stayed, en famille, in the great country houses – Chatsworth (Derbyshire), Brocket Hall (Hertfordshire) and Althorp (Northamptonshire). And although he had two other Commissioners working with him, he did not need to waste time consulting them. Decisions could be swiftly taken in the libraries or while riding around the estates of the great Whig houses. So he had the confidence to deal with the problems of the Palace and with the royal family. He could forbid the Duke of Sussex to cut down trees in Green Park and when William IV was difficult, knew how to manage him. It was Duncannon who encouraged the appointment of Blore, having seen his work in the houses of members of his family. He knew he would keep to time and cost.
Edward Blore was born in Derby on 13 September 1787. Encouraged by his historian father, he showed early a talent for careful drawings. He worked on his father’s History of Rutland, which was published in 1811. He also made a particular study of county histories, sketched York and Peterborough for Britton’s Cathedrals and developed a special interest in Gothic architecture. His chance came in 1816 when Sir Walter Scott employed him to build a house in the Gothic style at Abbotsford, Roxburghshire, Scotland.
When Scott published his Provincial Antiquities and Picturesque 'Scenery of Scotland, Blore assisted, contributing all the architectural drawings and acting as a manager for the work. In this capacity he met Turner, who provided some of the illustrations.
In 1824, Blore published his own work, The Monumental Remains of Noble and Eminent Persons. He was valued as a careful and competent draughtsman and gained a number of commissions, among them a palace in the Crimea for Prince Woronzow, a castle in Ireland and the government buildings in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. Much of his work was in churches and cathedrals, and he had some influence on the Gothic revival of the period.
He is usually criticized, with some reason, as a boring architect and certainly there is not much evidence of original or imaginative creative ability in his work. But he was exact and efficient and kept to time. He was also ruthless in cutting costs. All this endeared him to the government. Duncannon, and independent experts reporting to the Parliamentary commissioners, considered he ‘would discharge his duty in a most satisfactory manner’. So on 9 August 1831 the Treasury advised the King that Blore was the man to complete the Palace and on 10 August the King confirmed his appointment. Blore estimated that he would need £75,000 to remedy the defects and complete the building, excluding the additional furnishings needed. At least most of these could come from the Brighton Pavilion and Carlton House, as Nash and George IV had suggested. £100,000 was allotted for the work.
Blore now moved with his accustomed speed. He consulted the King – who was not particularly interested, except to insist that money should not be wasted on ‘the Decorations which he considers to form part of the Architectural Estimate, especially as he has never calculated upon the use of Buckingham Palace for any purpose of state’.8
Blore studied Nash’s plans, which he admired, and almost certainly consulted James Pennethorne, now Nash’s manager.
He planned some structural alterations. However the King intended to use the Palace, he and his successors would still need better servant accommodation and the small, damp kitchen improved. These could be achieved by building new offices and a servants’ hall on to the Pimlico wing of the Palace and an additional storey to the main block for additional bedrooms. So he could get rid of the much-mocked dome and the irrelevant little turrets.
Blore agreed with the many critics who had justly found ‘the want of an Architectural Connexion between the Marble Arch and the wings’. He considered that if the fence had been of stone instead of metal, the Arch would have seemed part of the building, instead of being ‘isolated and out of place’. He therefore substituted new piers in white Portland stone.
In the interest of economy, George IV’s splendid Marble Arch was simplified. The ‘attic’ with its planned sculptures was removed: Richard Westmacott had finished his carved reliefs of the Duke of Wellington and Prince Blücher of Prussia at the Battle of Waterloo, but these were now placed almost out of sight on the front of the new attic storey over the entrance.
As for the interior of the Palace, Blore kept as much as possible to Nash’s plans. At the entrance, the Grand Hall and Staircase were completed according to Nash’s plans and by his craftsmen. Joseph Browne, whom he had sent to Italy for marble, used it on the white Corinthian pillars and floor. The latter was inlaid with a border which echoed the swirling pattern of the plasterwork in the ceiling.
Undoubtedly George IV would have liked the walls to have been of marble too, but, instead, Browne lined them with the substitute, scagliola. Even then the cost was £4,000. Browne’s total bill for the work done in the Grand Hall was almost £8,000. In addition, Samuel Parker’s superb gilt bronze balustrade of the staircase cost £3,900, and Joseph Theakston was paid £1,000 for his magnificent marble chimneypiece. George IV, whose bust crowns the overmantel, had certainly been prepared to employ the finest craftsmen at whatever cost.
On the ground floor, where George Ill’s rooms had been, William IV set his mark. The new King had little use for books: his father’s libraries were dismantled and the contents sent to Windsor. The ground-floor rooms were simplified, but in the Household dining room, under the State Dining Room, Blore added white marble Ionic columns at either end.
Blore made a major alteration on the floor above. On the instructions of William IV the Music Room became the State Dining Room. He kept the two marble chimneypieces, with their carved ladies playing musical instruments, but otherwise recreated the room in his characteristic pedestrian style. One has only to compare his ceiling with that in Nash’s Blue Drawing Room to see the difference between great talent and competence.
In the north wing on this floor new apartments were created for the King and Queen, although William IV and Queen Adelaide had little desire to live in the Palace.
By October 1834 most of the structural work had been completed, but there was still much to be done. The Treasury allowed an additional £55,000 for furnishing the Palace, which was at the disposal of Lord Duncannon, who continued to be responsible for the work, even though he was now at the Home Office.
Finally George IV’s treasures, packed and stored in the Carlton House Riding School (which had been kept as a store and was now demolished), were brought across the Park. The great chandeliers, which had been supplied by Parker & Perry for Carlton House in 1811, now were cleaned and hung. Sofas and chairs, some of which had belonged to Queen Charlotte, were brought in. The French furniture which George IV had acquired over many years, graced the State Rooms. More furniture and fittings came from Windsor and the Royal Pavilion, Brighton.
In 1835 the King decided that he would like to live in the Palace after all; Queen Adelaide had probably been overwhelmed by its splendour.
The King wanted to take over the Palace as soon as possible. Blore, in desperation, asked for an additional grant, since he could not possibly complete the work in two or three months without employing extra workers. Duncannon therefore told the King’s secretary, Sir Herbert Taylor, that he could not hand the building over unfinished. There was a further delay after it was decided to light the forecourt and some of the interior with gas.
It was not until May 1837 that Duncannon was able to hand over the building to the King, requesting the appointment of a Clerk of the Works. In fact, William IV and Queen Adelaide were never to occupy Buckingham Palace.
Duncannon’s organizing ability had been exceptional. He kept his eye on every detail of the work at Buckingham Palace, yet never became bogged down. The diarist, Creevey, who stayed with him at Bessborough, his country home in Ireland, gives a revealing description of Lord and Lady Duncannon sitting at home at Bessborough, choosing the chintz for Queen Adelaide’s sitting room at Buckingham Palace. Duncannon rejected those chosen by his wife, Mary, and Creevey, preferring the cheapest.
… as … Duncannon manages all the palaces, so yesterday brought him a collection of patterns for him to choose out (such manufacture!) for the furniture of the Queen’s apartment at Buckingham House. Lady Duncannon and I were quite agreed about which she should have, but Duncannon would not hear of it as being much too dear; he would not go beyond six shillings a yard.
Queen Adelaide has received the credit for choosing silks woven in Ireland for Buckingham Palace in order to help the deprived population. In fact that decision sounds much more like Duncannon’s. His devotion to Ireland was passionate; he even remained on friendly terms with the firebrand, Daniel O’Connell, whereas Queen Adelaide was quite convinced that he and his comrades would soon be bundling her into the tumbrel on the way to guillotine. In spite of Duncannon’s cost-cutting exercise, there was still much anger at the expense of the ‘Palace at Pimlico’.
When the Palace was almost finished, Creevey visited it and was furious. ‘As for our Buckingham Palace,’ he spat,
never was there such a specimen of wicked, vulgar profusion. It has cost a million of money, and there is not a fault that has not been committed in it. You may be sure there are rooms enough, and large enough, for the money; but for staircases, passages, etc., I observed that instead of being called Buckingham Palace, it should be the ‘Brunswick Hotel’. The costly ornaments of the state rooms exceed all belief in their bad taste and every species of infirmity. Raspberry coloured pillars without end, that quite turn you sick to look at; but the Queen’s paper for her own apartments far exceed everything else in their ugliness and vulgarity … the marble single arch in front of the Palace cost £100,000 and the gateway in Piccadilly cost £40,000. Can one be surprised at people becoming Radical with such specimens of royal prodigality before their eyes? to say nothing of the characters of such royalties themselves.9
William, Duke of Clarence, and Mrs Jordan
If William IV is remembered, it is usually either as a bluff and somewhat stupid seadog, strolling along the seafront at Brighton, chatting affably to the passers-by, or as one who heartlessly deserted Mrs Jordan, his companion for more than twenty years and the mother of his ten children, and allowed her to die, exiled in poverty. But he was neither stupid nor heartless. He was an affectionate father and took responsibility for all his children; and he never ceased to feel the deepest sense of guilt at his treatment of Dora Jordan.
Dorothea Jordan (known as Dora), born in 1761, was four years older than William, Duke of Clarence. When the Duke fell in love with her she was one of the greatest actresses on the London stage. The essayist William Hazlitt remembered her: ‘Her face, her tears, her manners were irresistible. Her smile had the effect of sunshine and her laugh did one good to hear it … She was all gaiety, openness and good nature.’10 She brought the Duke much happiness; and their steady relationship and her obviously good effect on him persuaded George III to give them Bushey House on the Hampton Court estate. Here they lived happily with their ten children. Although Mrs Jordan was almost continually pregnant she still enchanted her audiences and often paid the Duke’s debts with her considerable earnings from the stage. Their children were to marry into the aristocracy: their daughter Mary, for instance, married the natural son of Lord Holland.
When the Duke’s brother became Regent, the Duke was in such debt that he considered he must marry an heiress or make a royal marriage and beget an heir: then Parliament would provide him with an additional allowance. The death of Princess Charlotte, George IV’s only daughter, made him heir to the throne, and therefore he made haste to take a royal bride. In 1818 he married a German princess, Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen, who was half his age.
In October 1811 he had parted from Mrs Jordan, making an allowance for her and her children, stipulating that it would be reduced if she went back on the stage. He took care of the children, but she kept in close touch with them all. Swindled by a son-in-law, harassed by creditors, she finally fled to France. She went back on the stage. On 5 July 1816 she died alone and in poverty, in cold, bleak rented rooms in the village of St Cloud.
After his marriage he still kept her portraits. He showed them to friends saying, ‘she was a good woman’. Queen Adelaide had two children by William IV, both of whom died. Surprisingly, she accepted the King’s past with good grace and was fond of his grandchildren.
When he became King, William IV commissioned Sir Francis Chantrey to make a marble statue of Mrs Jordan with two of their children, which he intended to be placed with the wives of kings in Westminster Abbey. However, the Dean of Westminster refused to have the actress in the Abbey, so the statue remained unclaimed. Queen Victoria was interested in the story but did not want this reminder of her uncle’s irregular life. It remained in Chantrey’s studio until after his death in 1841.
The statue’s subsequent history is a curious tale. One of the sons of William IV and Mrs Jordan, Lord Augustus Fitzclarence, became the vicar of St Margaret’s, a little church in Mapledurham. He took the statue and placed it in his church, where it remained for sixty years, unexplained and possibly considered to be a representation of the Madonna with child. The village church was more tolerant than West-minster Abbey. In 1956 and 1972 Mrs Jordan’s statue appeared at exhibitions at the Royal Academy. The 5th Earl of Munster, a descendant of William IV and Mrs Jordan, built a garden pavilion for her at Sandhills, Surrey, where the ‘child of nature’ would have been happy. He was childless and decided to bequeath the statue to Queen Elizabeth II. So finally in May 1980 Mrs Jordan was brought to Buckingham Palace and given a place in the Picture Gallery beneath paintings of kings and queens.
Queen Victoria Takes the Stage
Queen Adelaide and the King were fond of his niece Princess Victoria, now the accepted successor to the throne, but hated her mother. William IV had been furious when, in 1830, the Duchess of Kent had been made by Parliament ‘sole regent’ until Princess Victoria should come of age in May 1837. The King was determined to thwart the Duchess and live until then. Soon after his accession, in a fit of xenophobic prejudice, he decided that his successor should change her names, Alexandrina Victoria. ‘The two … names she bears are unsuitable to our national feeling,’ he declared. The name Victoria ‘is not even German, but of French origin’. In this battle the Duchess won: Princess Victoria kept her name. He had, however, defeated the Duchess at his Coronation. He insisted that Princess Victoria should walk in the Coronation procession behind his brothers, so the Duchess refused to allow the Princess to attend.
The pressure of this hostility on an adolescent girl was intense. It was increased by her own hatred of her mother’s financial adviser, Sir John Conroy. The late Duke of Kent’s equerry had taken control of the Duchess, her purse and, some said, her person. In the last years of the King’s life, Conroy tried to secure Princess Victoria’s promise to make him her Private Secretary when she became Queen. This she adamantly refused to do.
Not surprisingly the general strain made her ill, giving the Duchess the excuse to appropriate better rooms in Kensington Palace (where a number of apartments were used by the royal family), in spite of the King’s express command. The Duchess had been allocated ‘dreadfully dull and gloomy lower rooms’. She now took over ‘lofty and handsome rooms two flights upstairs with a sitting room nicely furnished’ for Princess Victoria, and a large airy bedroom where she slept with her mother until the day she became Queen.
The Duchess could now celebrate Princess Victoria’s seventeenth birthday in style. Encouraged by Leopold, her brother (now King of the Belgians), and her friend Stockmar, who had plans for the future, she invited her brother, the Duke of Coburg, and his sons, Princes Ernest and Albert, to stay for the festivities.
The King gave a birthday ball for Princess Victoria at St James’s Palace, for Buckingham Palace was not yet ready. Neither the King nor Queen Adelaide attended the magnificent ball given by the Duchess in the State Rooms at Kensington Palace. The two German princes and their father were present, but the succession of late-night parties exhausted Prince Albert, who took to his bed for most of the time. King Leopold had chosen Prince Albert as a possible consort; but the cousins parted as friends but without a firm commitment. Prince Albert’s time would come.
The battle between King and Duchess raged on, culminating in a public scene at the King’s birthday dinner at Windsor, when the King accused the Duchess of ‘disrespectful’ behaviour and of ‘attempting to keep Victoria away from my drawing room’.
In May 1837 the King gave a gala ball at St James’s Palace for Princess Victoria’s eighteenth birthday, when cheering crowds filled the Mall and the courtyard. She was now of age to succeed to the throne, but, since she was a minor, Conroy and her mother still attempted to take control. The King had been taken ill in May. As soon as it was clear that William IV was dying Leopold sent Stockmar, now a Baron, to London. His mission was to heal the breach between the Queen-to-be and her mother and to give Princess Victoria constitutional advice. The Duchess had become dominated by the ruthless and sinister Conroy and hoped, even now, to compel Princess Victoria to promise to give her the powers of a regent; Conroy the control of her money; and Conroy’s daughter a privileged place in her household. The shrewd Baron quietly summed up the situation. When he heard the whole story from Princess Victoria of her personal observation of Conroy’s influence and his relationship with her mother, Stockmar accepted the inevitable. In the past she had accepted guidance, if unwillingly; now she was adamant. She must have decided well in advance that one of her first acts as Queen would be to remove her mother’s bed from her room and from then on to sleep and act alone. On the evening of 19 June 1837, Princess Victoria was warned that the King was dying. He died at Windsor early the next day.
William IV had been a better king than anyone expected. The diarist Charles Greville had thought him a ‘mountebank bidding fair to be a maniac’. Certainly the King’s after-dinner speeches were often alarmingly wild. But Lord Holland, whose son Charles was at the King’s bedside when he died, praised his absence of guile, kindness and sense of duty. The King’s character had been so, Lord Holland added, ‘since his accession to the Crown and he was on the whole the best King of his race and perhaps of any race we have ever had, and the one who has left the greatest name as a Constitutional sovereign and the first magistrate of a free and improving people’.11 A surprising obituary, but considering its author, one that must be taken seriously.
Certainly he had shown sense and judgement, and had sailed through the high seas of the Reform Bill storm without falling overboard or wrecking the ship of state; above all, in his reign the Palace improvements were at last completed.
At six o’clock on the morning of 20 June 1837 Princess Victoria was awakened in her bedroom at Kensington Palace. The Lord Chamberlain, Lord Conyngham, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King’s doctor had travelled directly from William IV’s death bed at Windsor and wished to see the Queen. At the door of her sitting room, Victoria, wearing a dressing gown over her night dress, put aside her mother’s hand and went in alone, as Queen.