The Sixth Wife_ The Story of Katherine P - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,132
myself as well as others.
But now, at this time, I am my own mistress, and in my lonely years when the one who was all the world to me has been taken away, I can indulge my whim. I like to spend long hours remembering the past, re-reading my journals and setting it down as I should have done had it been for my eyes alone. There are differences now from what I wrote then, and in the writing I seem to see myself more clearly, to know myself—and the task absorbs me. I recall days of childhood in Kensington Palace—the prison, as I called it. I like to think back to that time when I first realized that I was not as other children about me, that I was Victoria who was destined for a crown.
That destiny dominated my childhood; it was the reason for Mama’s concern. How she longed for the crown to be mine—far more than I ever did—preferably before I was of age so that she could reign in my stead. How she hated poor old Uncle William because he refused to die! How she hated all my paternal uncles! She was protecting me from them, she would say. I must never forget how much I owed her. Poor Mama, she did not know that one cannot wholeheartedly love, however much one wants to, just because it is one’s duty. There were times when Mama could become quite wearisome.
Now I can write for my eyes alone without consideration of what may be construed by my words, without the probing eyes of Mama or Lehzen finding in my simple observations characteristics which must be suppressed. Poor Mama! Dear Lehzen! They are beyond passing judgement on me now. And I am a lonely widow, with only memories of happier days left to me and the hope of finding comfort in the memory of time past.
The Wicked Uncles
IF MY COUSIN CHARLOTTE HAD NOT DIED SO TRAGICALLY— and her baby with her—I should never have been born and there would never have been a Queen Victoria. I suppose there is a big element of chance in everybody’s life, but I always thought this was especially so in mine. But for that sad event, over which the whole nation mourned, my father would have gone on living in respectable sin—if sin can ever be respectable—with Madame St. Laurent who had been his companion for twenty-five years; my mother would have stayed in Leiningen, though she might have married someone else, for although she was a widow with two children, she was only thirty-one years old and therefore of an age to bear more children. And I should never have been born.
It is hard to imagine a world without oneself, as I remarked to my governess, Baroness Lehzen, when she told me all this. She was a gossip and she liked to talk about the scandals which seemed perpetually to circulate about my family. She excused herself by pointing out that it was history, and because of what lay before me—although it was not certain at that time that I should come to the throne—it was something I should know.
It was unfortunate that my family—on my father’s side—had a flair for creating scandal—although this made those conversations with Lehzen more interesting than if they had been models for virtue. Almost all the uncles behaved without the decorum expected of a royal family; there were even rumours about the aunts. Poor Grandpapa, who had been a faithful husband and kept strictly within the moral code—so different from his sons—had to be put under restraint because he was mad; and Grandmama Queen Charlotte, even though she had been equally virtuous had never found favor with the people. So many queens in our history had failed to win approval because they could not produce an heir; Queen Charlotte had overdone her duty in that respect and fifteen children had been born to her. “Encumbrances,” “A Drain on the Exchequer,” it was said. How difficult it was to please the people!
I was always interested in hearing of my cousin Princess Charlotte, which was natural since I owed my life to her death. Her father, who was the Prince Regent when I was born and became King George IV when I was about seven months old, had created more scandal than any of his brothers and one of the greatest scandals in that family of scandals was the relationship between Charlotte’s parents.