‘I’m glad to see you back,’ he cried. ‘It’s not the same without you.’
It was a wonderful welcome home.
Many ceremonies had been arranged for her and by the end of a week she was exhausted; so that when the day came for her to go to the City to receive a congratulatory address on her safe return she was unable to attend and the King went alone. Adelaide’s detractors preferred to see this as an insult to the City although it passed off without much comment.
The FitzClarences had grown to dislike her actively, the main reason being that she had been so good to them, and their arrogant natures would not allow them to admit her generosity while they did not hesitate to accept it. Adelaide was the Queen; and they were the children of their father’s mistress. This was a fact they could not forget. They hated her for being in the position which they reckoned should have belonged to their mother; and they were constantly reminding each other of what life would have been if their parents had been married. The fact that the King acknowledged them as his children, that they had titles and honours, did not satisfy them. They wanted more, and to appease their frustrated anger, like the people, they chose meek Adelaide as their scapegoat.
At one moment she was a fool with no intelligence; at another she was possessed of great cunning. She led the King and she was responsible for his opposition to the Reform Bill; she was an alien – a German, and there had been too many Germans in the royal family.
Those who had accompanied her to Saxe-Meiningen reported that the Castle of Altenstein where she had spent her childhood was certainly not worthy to be known as such. They had seen the room which Adelaide and her sister had shared – a little room without a carpet and containing two small beds with calico curtains. An English maid would complain at being given such a room. And this was the woman who sought to manage the affairs of England!
While aware of this hostility Adelaide pretended not to see it because she did not wish to upset William. He loved his wife; he loved his children; in the early days of his marriage the harmony which had existed between them – and which was of Adelaide’s making – had delighted him; and his mind was not strong enough, Adelaide decided, for her to introduce new conflicts. She must forget the unkindness of William’s children and delight with him in the adorable grandchildren who made no secret of their love for her.
Windsor Castle and St James’s were the homes of many of them; they ran about shrieking and playing their games, and no one restrained them, for the King and Queen enjoyed hearing their noisy play; and if there was silence, began to fret that they might be ill.
Soon after her return London was shocked by the fire which destroyed the Houses of Parliament. The King grew overexcited and many people said it was an omen. The verdict was that had the fire been dealt with promptly the building might have been saved. But nothing had been done and a minor outbreak had resulted in a mighty conflagration.
There should be some means of preventing fires spreading, the Government decided; a kind of brigade which could go into action with the minimum of delay was needed.
William was excited and discussed it with Adelaide.
‘They seem to think there should be some sort of Fire Brigade – men just waiting for a call with everything ready to deal with the flames before they’ve done too much damage.’
Adelaide thought this was an excellent idea; and was very interested in the formation of the London Fire Brigade.
It was much more comforting to discuss the building up of such an organisation than the depressing affairs of the Government.
‘That fellow Melbourne has been to see me again,’ William told her. ‘He says he can’t get the support he needs and that he thinks the Government will have to make concessions to these radical ideas if it’s to stay in power.’
‘They cannot make concessions. It will be the Reform Bill all over again.’
‘That’s what I tell him, but he stands firm. Melbourne will have to go.’
‘Will this bring Wellington back?’ asked the Queen hopefully.
‘We’ll have to see.’
Shortly after this the King dismissed the Melbourne Ministry, an action which was ill-timed, for he had played straight into the hands of the Queen’s enemies.
It was well known that she had opposed the Reform Bill; she had no sooner returned from her trip abroad than Melbourne was dismissed. It was easy to see that the Queen wanted to bring back the Tories and that she was against reform.
The Times was the first with the news.‘The King has turned out the Ministry and there is every reason to believe that the Duke of Wellington has been sent for. The Queen has done it all.’
It seemed that all London was against the Queen. The FitzClarences discussed her in their Clubs and the houses of their friends with venom. The dismissal of Melbourne was an attempt to obstruct a Government influenced by the people. And this had been brought about by an ugly woman with a German accent who had come from a ‘doghole’ in Germany and had slept in a room which an English housemaid had scorned!
Adelaide was wretched. She almost wished that she had stayed abroad. William, oddly enough, was less excitable over major events than over small domestic difficulties.
‘Stuff!’ was his comment.
The people were parading the streets with banners on which were painted the words: ‘The Queen has done it all.’
‘You see,’ said Adelaide, ‘that is what happened in France. They chose the Queen because she was a foreigner to them, just as the people here have chosen me. I hope that I shall be as brave as Marie Antoinette when my time comes.’
The King’s ‘Stuff!’ was some consolation. ‘We all get mud thrown at us now and then. My brother George was the most unpopular man in the country but he died in his bed. Stop fretting.’
Wellington advised that the King should send for Sir Robert Peel and ask him to form a Government, and messengers were immediately sent to Rome where Peel was at that time. Meanwhile Wellington became First Lord of the Treasury and Home Secretary, and carried on the Ministry until Peel’s return. Then Wellington took on the post of Foreign Secretary.
Such a hastily formed Government was an uneasy one, although it sufficed to carry the country through a rather ugly situation; it did last for four months, and the campaign against the Queen subsided.
The Times even went so far as to publish an apology to her, and the Queen was relegated to the position of a rather stupid woman, a nonentity who had failed to give the King the heirs for which he had married her, who was not even handsome enough to grace ceremonies; and therefore was to be regarded with contempt.
The FitzClarences added their criticism. She was a fool; she had an execrable German accent; she was no use nor ornament to the throne.
Adelaide, painfully aware of her unpopularity, grew thinner and her cough returned to trouble her.
Buckingham Palace had now been completed and even that was used as a condemnation against the Queen.
There had never been such a lack of taste displayed in any of the royal palaces. Did the people remember George IV? He might have been extravagant and a voluptuary controlled by women, but at least he had good taste. Think of Carlton House; think of what he had done to Windsor; think of the buildings round Regent’s Park and Nash’s Regent Street. And then think of Buckingham Palace!
‘Every error of taste imaginable has been committed.’ The pillars – and there were many of them – were painted in a shade of raspberry. Thomas Creevy, the old gossip, had had a look over it and said those raspberry pillars made him feel sick and that instead of being called Buckingham Palace it should be called Brunswick Hotel.