There was a great deal of resentment from the uncles—Cumberland particularly—because he had a son and I came before him; and Uncle William, of course, for all his wife's efforts to bear children came to nothing. The tension had by no means ceased with the royal marriages. It had become like a race. Perhaps more than any the Regent resented it. It seemed as though they were all waiting eagerly for his departure.
When my father took me to a military review the Regent was furious. He demanded loudly, “What is that infant doing here?”
I am sure my father smiled complacently. The possibility of my being the heir to the throne could not have escaped anybody—least of all the Regent.
I was vaccinated, which caused quite a stir. Some years before, Dr. Edward Jenner had discovered that by injecting a person with cow pox he could prevent their catching smallpox. Many people were uncertain about this, but if it was considered good for a Princess they decided it was good enough for them. It was interesting, said Lehzen, how popular these injections became after I had set the fashion.
As we were so poor, my parents thought it would be cheaper to live in Germany than in England and they were contemplating making the move. In the meantime it seemed a good idea to rent a house by the sea where not only could we save ourselves expense but profit from the sea breezes—so good for us all and particularly for Baby Drina.
On the way down to the coast we stopped at Salisbury where, on a bitterly cold day, my father went for a tour of the cathedral. He caught a cold and by the time we reached Sidmouth it had not improved.
An alarming incident occurred there that might have been the end of me. I was in my cradle when suddenly the glass of the window was shattered and an arrow sped into the room coming so close to me that it pierced the sleeve of my nightgown. By a miracle—Providence, they all said—I was not hurt, but if the arrow had pierced my body, as it might well have done, it would most certainly have killed me.
I could imagine the consternation that must have spread through the household. Some must have given thought to the uncles, particularly Cumberland and his wife, who had both been involved in mysterious deaths. But finally it was discovered that the arrow had been shot by a mischievous boy. He had meant no harm, he insisted; he had only been playing wars.
Everyone was so relieved that I was unharmed that after being sternly reprimanded, the boy was forgiven.
Meanwhile my father's cold was developing into something worse; in a week it had turned to pneumonia and he had taken to his bed. Uncle Leopold came hurrying down to Sidmouth with young Dr. Stockmar, in whom he had the utmost trust, but it soon became clear that my father could not survive.
It was a great shock to all for he had always been more healthy than any of his brothers.
What disturbed him more than anything was the prospect of leaving us. He had had such hopes of grooming me for the throne; and he was very worried as to what would happen to my mother with a young child—and in the position that I was—to care for.
Naturally he turned to Uncle Leopold.
It was from my mother that I heard of those anxious days. She was always dramatically vehement in her hatred of her husband's family, tearfully affectionate toward her own. In those days when I was very young I thought of my father's family as monsters and the Saxe-Coburg relations as angels.
“There we were,” my mother told me, “in that little house in Sidmouth…your father dead. What was to become of us? We had so little… not even enough to travel back to Claremont. And Claremont, of course, was not our home. It had only been lent to us by your dear Uncle Leopold. I was frantic. There was one matter that gave me some relief. Your father had appointed me your sole guardian, which shows what trust he had in me. Do you know, his last words to me were ‘Do not forget me.' So you see he was thinking of me until the last.”
I wept with her and wished as I always have done that he had lived long enough for me to have known him.
“He was a great soldier,” she told me. “He wanted you always to remember that you are a soldier's child.”
“Oh I will, Mama,” I said. “I will.”
“He was a great liberal too… and a friend of the reformer, Robert Owen. He was talking about visiting him at New Lanark just before his death. For him to die… he, who was so strong…His hair was black and so was his beard. Mind you, he did color them a bit…but never mind. They looked fine and so did he. So young, so full of vigour…and there he was…in such a short time… dead.”
Mama loved drama and although at that time I wept with her I did wonder afterward whether she really did feel so strongly about his death. She was one who liked to have her own way, although she did bend a little to Sir John Conroy. I was told that Sir John looked something like my father, so perhaps that was one of the reasons why she thought so highly of him.
Mama went on to tell me how she was left bereft … no husband, very little money, in a strange land where she could scarcely speak the language.
“I could hope for little help from your father's family,” she said with that snort of contempt she often used when speaking of them. “True, the miserly Parliament had granted me six thousand pounds a year in the event of my widowhood. I daresay when they granted me that—it was a year before you were born—they had thought they would not have to pay it for a long time.”
“Mama,” I said. “They did give you our home in Kensington Palace.”
“A few miserable rooms!” she retorted. “And there I was… with so little and all your father's debts on my shoulders. I shall of course do my very best to settle them … in time.”
That was very honorable of her, I thought. She was very good, I was sure; but I did wish she was not so venomous toward my father's family.
“I had thought there was only one thing for us,” she had gone on, “and that was to go back to Germany, but your dear Uncle Leopold was against that. He said, ‘In view of her prospects the child must stay in England. She must speak English. She must be English. There must be no trace of anything else. The people here like their own kind.' And so I stayed here and dear Leopold…he gave up so much to stay with us! What I should have done without him I cannot imagine.”
“Dear dear Uncle Leopold,” I murmured.
“He is wonderful. You are fortunate indeed to have such an uncle and such a mother to care for you. True, you are fatherless, but you have had so much to make up for that.”
I replied fervently that I had, but I was thinking of Uncle Leopold rather than my mother, for I was just moving into that state when I was beginning to draw away from her.
“He is so careful of both you and your dear cousin Albert, who has the same reason to be grateful to him as you have. He is three months younger than you so you could say that you are of an age.”
“I am hoping one day I shall meet Albert.”
“I am sure your Uncle Leopold, who so likes to please you as well as instruct you, will arrange a meeting one day.”
“That will be wonderful.” I spoke with honest fervor, but I could not know then how wonderful it was going to prove to be.
Of course Uncle Leopold was right. And because we had not enough money to make the journey from Sidmouth, he paid for our transport to Kensington Palace and there we remained for some years to come.
It appeared that my father had appointed Sir John Conroy as one of the executors of his will and that seemed to me, as I grew older, not a very good choice. My mother did not share that opinion, but it was very repugnant to me that Sir John should actually live in our household.