she was thinking and feeling and makes no mention of the difficulties she faced as a late teenager. Nothing in the journals could be used against the duchess and Conroy.
Conroy built a wall between Victoria and everyone in the world except her mother, himself, and his family, but the wall was made of glass so that the princess could be constantly on view to the world. This combination of isolation and exposure, of constraint and performance, placed enormous stress on Victoria’s youthful mind and body.
When resident at Kensington Palace, Victoria was taken out each day for exercise in the gardens, which were open to the public. Londoners spotted the princess on her outings, first pushed by her nurse in a baby carriage; then walking hand in hand with her older sister and escorted by a huge footman; then riding, first a donkey, then a pony, then a horse. In the summer, as a tiny creature, she could be viewed just outside her mother’s ground-floor apartments, bowling her hoop or gravely watering her feet along with the flowers. On her seaside holidays, she could be observed playing on the sands. Visitors allowed inside Kensington Palace were enchanted to see the princess at the far end of her mother’s sitting room, playing quietly with her large collection of dolls. These were small, plain, inexpensive creatures, 132 in all, for which Victoria and Lehzen created identities, composed dramas, and sewed costumes. The dolls were the friends Victoria was not allowed to have, and she played with them until she was fourteen.
WHILE KEEPING AN increasingly tight grip at home, Conroy worked to promote the political and financial interests of the Duchess of Kent in the outside world. The man was a blackguard, as many gentlemen in England asserted in private, but he was a brilliant and resourceful agent with a preternaturally modern understanding of public relations.
Conroy was middle class despite his fanciful family tree. Unlike the aristocratic sycophants who haunted the Court of St. James’s, he had a sense of the rapidly growing power of the middle classes in England and of the Protestant evangelical values they espoused. Change was in the air. The excesses of the French Revolution had led to a grassroots rejection of the freethinking, free-loving, atheistic, liberal society of the late eighteenth century. Conroy understood that in England king and government had less unchallenged authority than in any other monarchy and could not risk flouting public opinion. He saw that the English people hated George IV becausehe was corrupt, promiscuous, and profligate, and that none of George’s brothers was capable of raising the reputation of the house of Hanover in England.
So, in preparation for the reign of the virgin Queen Victoria, over which he intended to preside, Conroy built an image of purity, modesty, and decorum around the Duchess of Kent. It had little basis in the lady’s Coburg past, but it worked because it was so in tune with the spirit of the age. Victoria as princess was formed in the image dreamed up by Conroy. As queen she patented, registered, and made it her trademark. Victoria hated Conroy, but still she learned from him.
In 1825 Conroy successfully lobbied parliament to increase the Duchess of Kent’s allowance by six thousand pounds a year. To Kensington Palace’s vast satisfaction, the Princess Victoria was referred to in the House of Commons as the heir presumptive even though her uncles York and Clarence were both alive. One of Conroy’s allies, Lord Darnley complimented the Duchess of Kent upon the “propriety, domestic affection, and moral purity” with which she was rearing her child. Darnley called her “unexampled in prudence, discretion, and every amiable quality that could exalt and dignify the female character.”
When the Duke of Clarence came to the throne as William IV in 1830, the childless royal couple tried to take custody of their little Kent niece, for whom they felt great
Conroy built a wall between Victoria and everyone in the world except her mother, himself, and his family, but the wall was made of glass so that the princess could be constantly on view to the world. This combination of isolation and exposure, of constraint and performance, placed enormous stress on Victoria’s youthful mind and body.
When resident at Kensington Palace, Victoria was taken out each day for exercise in the gardens, which were open to the public. Londoners spotted the princess on her outings, first pushed by her nurse in a baby carriage; then walking hand in hand with her older sister and escorted by a huge footman; then riding, first a donkey, then a pony, then a horse. In the summer, as a tiny creature, she could be viewed just outside her mother’s ground-floor apartments, bowling her hoop or gravely watering her feet along with the flowers. On her seaside holidays, she could be observed playing on the sands. Visitors allowed inside Kensington Palace were enchanted to see the princess at the far end of her mother’s sitting room, playing quietly with her large collection of dolls. These were small, plain, inexpensive creatures, 132 in all, for which Victoria and Lehzen created identities, composed dramas, and sewed costumes. The dolls were the friends Victoria was not allowed to have, and she played with them until she was fourteen.
WHILE KEEPING AN increasingly tight grip at home, Conroy worked to promote the political and financial interests of the Duchess of Kent in the outside world. The man was a blackguard, as many gentlemen in England asserted in private, but he was a brilliant and resourceful agent with a preternaturally modern understanding of public relations.
Conroy was middle class despite his fanciful family tree. Unlike the aristocratic sycophants who haunted the Court of St. James’s, he had a sense of the rapidly growing power of the middle classes in England and of the Protestant evangelical values they espoused. Change was in the air. The excesses of the French Revolution had led to a grassroots rejection of the freethinking, free-loving, atheistic, liberal society of the late eighteenth century. Conroy understood that in England king and government had less unchallenged authority than in any other monarchy and could not risk flouting public opinion. He saw that the English people hated George IV becausehe was corrupt, promiscuous, and profligate, and that none of George’s brothers was capable of raising the reputation of the house of Hanover in England.
So, in preparation for the reign of the virgin Queen Victoria, over which he intended to preside, Conroy built an image of purity, modesty, and decorum around the Duchess of Kent. It had little basis in the lady’s Coburg past, but it worked because it was so in tune with the spirit of the age. Victoria as princess was formed in the image dreamed up by Conroy. As queen she patented, registered, and made it her trademark. Victoria hated Conroy, but still she learned from him.
In 1825 Conroy successfully lobbied parliament to increase the Duchess of Kent’s allowance by six thousand pounds a year. To Kensington Palace’s vast satisfaction, the Princess Victoria was referred to in the House of Commons as the heir presumptive even though her uncles York and Clarence were both alive. One of Conroy’s allies, Lord Darnley complimented the Duchess of Kent upon the “propriety, domestic affection, and moral purity” with which she was rearing her child. Darnley called her “unexampled in prudence, discretion, and every amiable quality that could exalt and dignify the female character.”
When the Duke of Clarence came to the throne as William IV in 1830, the childless royal couple tried to take custody of their little Kent niece, for whom they felt great
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