Plowden Alison - The Young Victoria

I n writing this book I have leant gratefully on the work and research of recent biographers of Queen Victoria, notably Queen Victoria (18191861), by the late Cecil Woodham-Smith (Hamish Hamilton, 1972) and Victoria R.I. by Elizabeth Longford (Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964). I would like to acknowledge the gracious permission of Her Majesty The Queen for the republication of material from the Royal Collection which is subject to copyright.

I am also grateful for permission to quote from the letters of the Dowager Duchess of Saxe-Colburg-Saalfeld, translated by Helen Cathcart, which appear in Royal Bedside Book by Helen Cathcart (W.H. Allen, 1969).

Other invaluable sources include The Greville Memoirs, edited by Lytton Strachey and Roger Fulford (Macmillan, 1938), The Letters of Queen Victoria, edited by A.C. Benson and Viscount Esher (1907) and The Girlhood of Queen Victoria, edited by Viscount Esher (1912) which contains selections from her early Journal.

It is with the most poignant grief we announce that H.R.H. the Princess Charlotte is NO MORE. This melancholy intelligence was at 7 oclock this morning communicated to the Lord Mayor by Lord Sidmouth.

The Times, 6 November 1817

A t Claremont House everything was ready for the happy event. The baby linen, chosen in the plainest style and the finest quality had been carefully laid out by the monthly nurse Mrs Griffiths, a respectable woman in the habit of attending the first families in the country on similar occasions for the past thirty years. Sir Richard Croft, the accoucheur, was already in residence, Dr Baillie, the family physician, and Dr Sims were standing by, while a bevy of important personages Earl Bathurst, Secretary for War, Viscount Sidmouth, the Home Secretary, Mr Vansittart, Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London had made their preparations to set out at a moments notice in response to a summons from Claremont.

Outside these exalted circles, the people of England waited in eager anticipation of an announcement that the heiress presumptive to the throne had presented them with a much needed addition to the royal family preferably a boy, whose arrival would, it was estimated, send the stock market up by at least six points. Princess Charlotte of Wales was only twenty-one. She looked to be a fine, healthy young woman, if a trifle on the stout side, and she would, of course, be getting the best available medical attention at her lying in. To the uninitiated there seemed no reason why anything should go wrong. So the nation waited hopefully, and went on waiting.

The Princesss doctors had calculated that she could expect to be confined at any time after 19 October, but it was not until the evening of Monday, 3 November that a message was sent round to the stables and the grooms were able to mount their ready-saddled horses and set out with the news that Her Royal Highnesss labour had begun at last. During the early hours of Tuesday the distinguished gentlemen whose presence was required to attest the birth were being set down at the pillared and porticoed entrance of Claremont House and Dr Baillie came hurrying over from Virginia Water. But there was, apparently, no urgent need for haste even now. At midday Sir Richard Croft announced that matters were in every way in as much forwardness as he would desire it, but the Princess had still not been put to bed and was walking about her room on her husbands arm. At three oclock another confident bulletin was issued, but that night Dr Sims, an expert in the use of instruments, was summoned from London, although he was not admitted to see the patient.

At 8.15 a.m. on Wednesday, 5 November, when Charlotte had been in labour for more than thirty-six hours, the bishops and Cabinet ministers keeping their weary vigil in the breakfast-room at Claremont were informed that considerable though very gradual progress had been made during the night, and the doctors hoped that the child would be born without artificial assistance. There was a strong prejudice against the use of forceps among the medical profession and, while in this case their use might have saved both mother and child, there was, at a time when antiseptic precautions were unknown, admittedly always a high mortality rate when instruments were used.

Wednesday dragged by interminably. The village of Esher, which lay on the edge of the Claremont estate, had filled up with journalists and sightseers and the Bear Inn was doing a roaring trade. At Claremont itself, the Princess, supported by her devoted husband, seemed to be bearing up well under her long, exhausting ordeal. Leopold of Saxe-Coburg had scarcely left her, holding her hand and sometimes lying down on the bed beside her. At nine oclock that night the child was born. It was a boy, well-formed and unusually large, but it showed no signs of life. Hastily plunged into a bath of hot water, shaken and slapped and rubbed with salt and mustard, it stubbornly resisted all attempts to persuade it to take an interest in its surroundings. But the mother was still doing extremely well. She had accepted the loss of her baby with stoicism, almost with indifference, and now, her amazing vitality and high spirits apparently unimpaired, she was chatting away to her attendants and sitting up eating toast and chicken broth. The witnesses dispersed thankfully to their homes and Prince Leopold went away to get some sleep. Even Richard Croft thought it safe to leave his patient to rest.

Soon after midnight Charlotte began to complain of nausea and ringing in her ears. Her pulse became rapid and although she had so far been able to keep her promise to Mrs Griffiths not to bawl or shriek, she was now obviously in great pain. Croft, hurriedly recalled by the nurse, found her very restless, breathing with difficulty and cold as any stone. Frantically the doctors tried to warm her, plying her with hot wine and brandy until the unfortunate girl protested that they were making her tipsy, and placing hot water bottles and hot flannel on the abdomen this despite the fact that the recognized method of arresting post partum haemorrhage was to use cold water. Presently terrible spasms set in and at two-thirty in the morning of 6 November 1817 the Daughter of England, on whom so many hopes had rested, was dead, almost certainly as the result of a pulmonary embolism.

For Richard Croft, Charlottes death marked the end of his professional career; he committed suicide three months later. For her husband, the penniless younger son of a small German duchy, it was a personal disaster from which he never fully recovered. Her father, the Prince Regent, was said to be prostrated, while the nation, stunned by the double tragedy at Claremont, reacted with an unprecedented demonstration of public mourning.

It is but little to say, remarked The Times in a leading article on 7 November, that we never recollect so strong and general an expression and indication of sorrow. In his autobiography Henry Brougham, the Whig politician who had known Charlotte well, was to remember vividly the feelings of deepest sorrow and most bitter disappointment which this most melancholy event produced throughout the kingdom. It is scarcely possible to exaggerate, he wrote, and it is difficult for persons not living at the time to believe, how universal and how genuine those feelings were. It was really as if every household throughout Great Britain had lost a favourite child. Countess Granville, in a letter to her sister Lady Georgiana Morpeth, felt quite unable to write upon any subject but one. We are all heart-sick at this terrible event. Poor Princess Charlotte Dorothea Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador, told her brother that the charming Princess Charlotte, so richly endowed with happiness, beauty, and splendid hopes, had been cut off from the love of a whole people. It is impossible to find in the history of nations or families an event which had evoked such heartfelt mourning, she went on. One met in the streets people of every class in tears, the churches full at all hours, the shops shut for a fortnight (an eloquent testimony from a shop-keeping community), and everyone, from the highest to the lowest, in a state of despair which it is impossible to describe.