Victoria - 1819 - Early Life
Alexandrina Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Empress of India, only child of Edward, duke of Kent, fourth son of King George III, and of Princess Victoria Mary Louisa of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (widow of Prince Emich Karl of Leiningen, by whom she already had two children), was born at Kensington Palace on 24t May 1819. The duke and duchess of Kent had been living at Amorbach, in Franconia, owing to their straitened circumstances, but they returned to London on purpose that their child should be born in England.
In 1817 the death of Princess Charlotte (only child of the prince regent, afterwards George IV, and wife of Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, afterwards king of the Belgians), had left the ultimate succession to the throne of England, in the younger generation, so uncertain that the three unmarried sons of George III, the dukes of Clarence (afterwards William IV), Kent and Cambridge, all married in the following year, the two elder on the same day. All three had children, but the duke of Clarence's two baby daughters died in infancy, in 1819 and 1821; and the duke of Cambridge's son George, born on 26 March 1819, was only two months old when the birth of the duke of Kent's daughter put her before him in the succession.
The question as to what name the child should bear was not settled without bickerings. The duke of Kent wished her to be christened Elizabeth, and the prince regent wanted Georgiana, while the tsar Alexander I, who had promised to stand sponsor, stipulated for Alexandrina. The baptism was performed in a drawing-room of Kensington Palace on 24 June by Dr Manners Sutton, archbishop of Canterbury. The prince regent, who was present, named the child Alexandrina; then, being requested by the duke of Kent to give a second name, he said, rather abruptly, "Let her be called Victoria, after her mother, but this name must come after the other." Six weeks after her christening the princess was vaccinated, this being the first occasion on which a member of the royal family underwent the operation.
The question of her name, as that of one who was to be queen, remained even up to her accession to the throne a much-debated one. In August 1831, in a discussion in parliament upon a grant to the duchess of Kent, Sir M. W. Ridley suggested changing it to Elizabeth as "more accordant to the feelings of the people"; and the idea of a change seems to have been powerfully supported. In 1836 William IV approved of a proposal to change it to Charlotte; but, to the princes' own delight, it was given up.
In January 1820 the duke of Kent died, five days before his brother succeeded to the throne as George IV. The widowed duchess of Kent was now a woman of thirty-four, handsome, homely, a German at heart, and with little liking for English ways. But she was a woman of experience, and shrewd; and fortunately she had a safe and affectionate adviser hi her brother, Prince Leopold of Coburg, afterwards (1831) king of the Belgians, who as the husband of the late Princess Charlotte had once been a prospective prince consort of England. His former doctor and private secretary, Baron Stockmar, a man of encyclopedic information and remarkable judgment, who had given special attention to the problems of a sovereign's position in England, was afterwards to play an important role in Queen Victoria's life; and Leopold himself took a fatherly interest in the young princess's education, and contributed some thousands of pounds annually to the duchess of Kent's income.
Prince Leopold still lived at this time at Claremont, where Princess Charlotte had died, and this became the duchess of Kent's occasional English home; but she was much addicted to traveling, and spent several months every year in visits to watering-places. It was said at court that she liked the demonstrative homage of crowds; but she had good reason to fear lest her child should be taken away from her to be educated according to the views of George IV. Between the king and his sister-in-law there was little love, and when the death of the duke of Clarence's second infant daughter Elizabeth in 1821 made it pretty certain that Princess Victoria would eventually become queen, the duchess felt that the king might possibly obtain the support of his ministers if he insisted that the future sovereign should be brought up under masters and mistresses designated by himself.
The little princess could not have received a better education than that which was given her under Prince Leopold's direction. Her uncle considered that she ought to be kept as long as possible from the knowledge of her position, which might raise a large growth of pride or vanity in her and make her unmanageable; so Victoria was twelve years old before she knew that she was to wear a crown. Until she became queen she never slept a night away from her mother's room, and she was not allowed to converse with any grown-up person, friend, tutor or servant without the duchess of Kent or the Baroness Lehzen, her private governess, being present. Louise Lehzen, a native of Coburg, had come to England as governess to the Princess Feodore of Leiningen, the duchess of Kent's daughter by her first husband, and she became teacher to the Princess Victoria when the latter was five years old. George IV in 1837 made her a baroness of Hanover, and she continued as lady-in-attendance after the duchess of Northumberland was appointed official governess in 1830, but actually performed the functions of governess and then of private secretary till 1842, when she left the court and returned to Germany, where she died in 1870. The Rev. George Davys, afterwards bishop of Peterborough, taught the princess Latin; Mr ].B. Sale, music; Mr Westall, history; and Mr Thomas Steward, the writing master of Westminster School, instructed her in penmanship.
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