Memoir of Queen Adelaide, Consort of King William IV.

The household at Bushey was admirably regulated by the Duchess, who had been taught the duties as well as the privileges of greatness. The fixed rule was, never to allow expenditure to exceed income. It is a golden rule which, when observed, renders men, in good truth, as rich as Croesus. It is a rule which, if universally observed, would render the world prosperous, and pauperism a legend. It was a rule the more required to be honoured in this case, as the Duke had large calls upon his income. When those were provided for, old liabilities effaced, and current expenses defrayed, the surplus was surrendered to charity. There was no saving for the sake of increase of income, – economy was practised for justice-sake, and the Duke and Duchess were so just, that they found themselves able to be largely generous. With the increased means placed at their disposal by the death of the Duke of York, there was but trifling increase of expenditure. If something was added to their comforts, they benefitted who were employed to procure them; and, if there was some little additional luxury in the rural palace of Bushey, the neighbouring poor were never forgotten in the selfish enjoyment of it.

In 1824, the Duke and Duchess of Clarence had apartments in St. James's Palace, where, however, they seem to have been as roughly accommodated, considering their condition, as any mediaeval prince and princess in the days of stone walls thinly tapestried and stone floors scantily strewn with rushes. The Duke cared little about the matter himself, but he gallantly supported the claims of his wife. In a letter addressed to Sir William Knighton, the King's privy purse, in 1824, he thus expresses himself – from St. James's Palace: —

"His Majesty having so graciously pleased to listen to my suggestion respecting the alteration for the Hanoverian office, at the palace, I venture once more to trouble you on the point of the building intended for that purpose. To the accommodation of the Duchess, this additional slip at the back of the present apartments, would be most to be wished and desired, and never can make a complete Hanoverian office without our kitchen, which the King has so kindly allowed us to keep. Under this perfect conviction, I venture to apply for this slip of building which was intended for the Hanoverian office. I am confident His Majesty is fully aware of the inconvenience and unfitness of our present apartments here. They were arranged for me in 1809, when I was a bachelor, and without an idea at that time of my ever being married, since which, now fifteen years, nothing has been done to them, and you well know the dirt and unfitness for the Duchess of our present abode. Under these circumstances, I earnestly request, for the sake of the amiable and excellent Duchess, you will, when the King is quite recovered, represent the wretched state and dirt of our apartments, and the infinite advantage this slip would produce to the convenience and comfort of the Duchess … God bless the King and yourself, and ever believe me, &c. – WILLIAM."

Though often as ungrammatical and inelegant, it was seldom the Duke was so explicit in his correspondence as he is in the above letter. Generally, he wrote in ambiguous phrases, very puzzling to the uninitiated; but when his Duchess Adelaide was in question, and her comfort was concerned, he became quite graphic on the "state and dirt" in which they passed their London days, in the old, dingy, leper-house palace of St. James's.

With the exception of the period during which the Duke held the office of Lord High Admiral, 1827-28, – an office which may be said to have been conferred on him by Canning, and of which he was deprived by the Duke of Wellington, – with the exception above noted, this royal couple lived in comparative retirement till the 26th of June, 1830, on which day, the demise of George IV. summoned them to ascend the throne.

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 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.

I shall not anticipate matters very violently, or unjustifiably, perhaps, if I notice here, that William IV. was not forgetful of his old loves, and that 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. Enquirers, 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.

The fact is that 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 carriage, turning round to converse with the Queen, inside.

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 should prove to be unequal to the exigencies of the queenly character. One person, I remember, 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 proscriptions, she could proscribe 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 to 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, as I am assured, 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 call 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.

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. These incidents, however, belong rather to the Chronique Scandaleuse than to mine. I will only add, therefore, that people generally rejoiced in seeing a "wife" installed where "queans" used to rule it; and that, 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, "The Queen has done it all!"

The drawing-room of which I have before spoken, at which good Mrs. Blomfield appeared in "immortal velvet," was remarkable, however, for another incident, which I will relate in the words of a writer in "Frazer's Magazine," John Wilkes, ex-M.P. for Sudbury, who thus relates it 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; – as if money spent in the country, and made to circulate rapidly through many hands, would not have been 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."