Queen Adelaide

“ This was a labor of love, for Queen Adelaide had always been devoted to her husband. With his head upon her shoulder, and her hand upon his breast, his majesty gently dropped into the sleep that knows no waking.
His remains lay in state at Windsor Castle until July 8, when he was buried at St. George's Chapel. For the last time the royal crown of Hanover was placed beside the imperial crown on the coffin of a King of England. Queen Adelaide, now Queen-dowager, was present in the royal closet. ”

“ Thus, the lady who had seldom during her life desired more than to be permitted to enjoy it tranquilly, and who had but little perplexed herself touching the ways of others, was held up, after being accused of being a political meddler at home, as being a political conspirator abroad.
When her royal Consort's indisposition assumed an appearance of increased gravity, Queen Adelaide at once took her place by his couch, and never left it but when compelled by gentle restraint put upon her by those who loved her, and who feared for her own health. ”

“ Browne, Vicar of Atwick, rendering testimony to her conduct on this occasion, said in a funeral sermon: "She was by the King's bedside, a being so full of devoted love and pious resignation: of such meekness, gentleness, and goodness, and sweetness; that an angel might have beheld her with satisfaction and delight, and, almost with advantage." She did her duty like a true wife and tender woman; and Mr. Browne thought that, altogether, Queen Adelaide might have afforded an useful hint or two even to angels! It is more than the good Queen ever dreamed of. ”

“ Queen Adelaide lived until the close of the year 1849. Parliament had made her rich by giving her a hundred thousand pounds, which she devoted to charity. Neither rank nor wealth ever spoiled the simplicity of her heart or her manners. She always respected the memory of her husband, over whose reign she had shed a respectability that did her credit. She was not what might be termed a woman of brains, and never influenced the king for good or for evil ”

“ When the first rumours began to spread of an opposition establishing itself at court against the progress of reform, the press manifested particular desire to exonerate the Queen from the charge of participating in, or heading such a course. The "Times" especially interfered to protect that lady from similar aspersions. Papers of less influence, but of like principles, had openly named Queen Adelaide, the two daughters of George III., Elizabeth, (Princess of Hesse Homburg,) and Mary, (Duchess of Gloucester,) as mischievously active in impeding the popular will. ”

“ On the other hand, the Conservative press drew its own inferences, and made its own accusations. When the cholera was raging, during the reform fever, Queen Adelaide's drawing-room happened to be very thinly attended. The real cause was lost sight of, and Her Majesty was respectfully assured that the scanty attendance was entirely owing to Lord Grey's revolutionary government, beneath which all old English energy, vitality, and spirit, had become so extinct, that it was unequal to the exertion of even manifesting respect for an English Queen. ”

“ When Adelaide became Queen Consort, some persons who would not have been ill-pleased to see her fail, affected to fear that the homely Duchess should prove to be unequal to the exigencies of the queenly character. One person, I remember, hinted that, in this matter, she would not do ill, were she to take counsel of the Princess Elizabeth of Hesse Homburg, "than whom none could better record to Her Majesty the forms, and usages, and prescriptions of the court of Queen Charlotte." But Queen Adelaide needed no such instruction as the good daughter of George III. could give her. ”

“ Queen Adelaide also was uniformly kind and loving to her niece. Her own two baby girls had died in their infancy, and she transferred a good deal of motherly tenderness to Princess Victoria. A meaner [Pg 27] nature would have resented the place of her own child being filled by another; but Queen Adelaide showed none of this littleness, and welcomed her niece with cordiality to her rightful place beside the throne. When the second of Queen Adelaide’s own little girls died, she wrote to the Duchess of Kent, “My children are dead, but yours lives, and she is mine, too!” ”

“ This lady, at the time when her husband was Duke of Clarence and Lord High Admiral, had been accustomed, on her visits to Chatham, to be received and entertained by the daughters of the then Commissioner, Cunningham. As soon as the Duchess became Queen, among her first invited visitors to Bushey were these ladies. At the meeting, they offered to kiss Her Majesty's hand, but "No, no," said Queen Adelaide, "that is not the way I receive my friends. I am not changed;" ”

“ The consequence of this familiarity of the sovereigns with their humbler friends, was a rather audacious familiarity ventured upon by people who left their queer names in the book at the King's door, and more than once successfully passed it, and penetrated to the Queen's drawing-room. This evil, however, was soon remedied. There were other matters Queen Adelaide was bold enough to, at least, attempt to remedy. Indecorousness of dress, in a lady, she would censure as sharply as Queen Charlotte ”

“ With this, and one or two other formalities of that pomp and state from which she had asked to be spared, Queen Adelaide passed to the tomb,—a tomb capacious enough to contain whole generations of kings and queens, princes and princesses yet unborn. ”

“ Only two niches now remain vacant; one is destined to our present ruler, and that reserved for his successor is the last. Some people might say it was ominous." So, indeed, it proved to be; half-a-year after the accession of Queen Victoria, when there were as many niches as there had then been sovereigns, and room for no more, destruction ensued, but it was the Royal Exchange that fell (by fire) , and not the monarchy. That has grown stronger. May it ever so flourish!
Meanwhile, it is to be observed, that Queen Adelaide after this time began to re-conquer the popular esteem. ”

“ On one occasion, when they attended at the opening of the new Staines Bridge, where, by the way, they were so closely pressed upon by the mob, that maids of honour and gentlemen in waiting had their pockets picked, the Conservative wits remarked, that the King might make new bridges, but that he must leave the peers alone. The Whig party at once assumed that Queen Adelaide was at the head of a faction, whose object was to give reality to such jokes, and thenceforward the Queen was little spared. ”

“ Sagan, December 10, 1849.—I was very sorry to read the day before yesterday in the newspapers the announcement of the death of Queen Adelaide of England. The news carried me back to that pleasant time when I had the honour of seeing her, and was treated by her with a kindness which I shall never forget. She was a noble woman who bore herself with grand and simple dignity in positions that were difficult for several reasons. ”

“ Another woman might have had just the same appearance and thoroughly good character, and by adding to it a pleasant manner have been a favourite with everyone. But Adelaide’s manner was bad, and she was generally disliked. William, however, found a good wife in her—though there are some sly allusions to his [9] being hen-pecked—and little Victoria could always depend on kindly affection from Queen Adelaide. ”

“ At another time, Queen Adelaide was reminded that if a female influence drove Necker from the court of Louis XVI., one of the consequences was the destruction of the most influential lady; another, the ruin of the country. The influence being assumed to be still active, allusion was made to the "foreign woman whom the nation may have too easily adopted." ”

“ When this strong hint was taken to have failed, and Queen Adelaide was still supposed to be conspiring with the daughters of George III. to turn King William from his liberal views, this was the tone with which the royal lady was lectured by the press:—"There is a lady of high rank, who must be taught a salutary, though a very painful, lesson. She may be bold as an amazon, be troublesome, importunate, or overbearing, but her present course is one from which can follow nought but final wretchedness. Why has she so eagerly, within these few hours, bidden her gossips not to despair? ”

“ It was a mere unattested memorandum; and he pronounced, as the legal phrase is, for the original will. Of greater interest is the subjoined document, which pleasantly contrasts with the wills of many of her lady predecessors, whose minds were engaged on the disposal of their state beds, their mantles, and their jewellery, to the exclusion of all other subjects. Thus wrote the dying Queen Adelaide:—
"I die in all humility, knowing well that we are all alike before the throne of God; and I request, therefore, that my mortal remains be conveyed to the grave without any pomp or state. ”

“ This led to something like popular hatred of Adelaide, and to the universal spread of the horrid reports which were being circulated about her and her late Chamberlain, proofs of which animosity were forthcoming every time she appeared in public. The Court Journal deplored the fact that when she drove out the Queen experienced almost daily insult from the populace, being hissed as she passed. Raikes tells us that he saw the King and Queen at the Duke of Wellington’s fête at Apsley House, that His Majesty looked tired, and Queen Adelaide was out of spirits. ”

“ The days are past when it would be either pleasurable or profitable for the Queen of the British empire to spend her days, like Matilda or Katharine, “in poring over the interminable mazes of tapestry;” but it is well known that Queen Adelaide, and, in consequence of her Majesty’s example, those around her, habitually occupied their leisure moments in ornamental needlework ”

“ In 1835 there had been rumors, which seemed well authenticated, that Queen Adelaide was about to give birth to a child. The absence of absolute certainty in the Princess Victoria’s prospects of the succession, the reluctance of her uncles and of Parliament to establish her and her mother with an income suitable to their rank and her future position, all worked together, in combination with the good sense of her mother, to secure for the little Princess a childhood free from much of the pomp, formality, and flattery from which an heir to the throne seldom even partially escapes. ”

“ Queen Adelaide and King William kept a ‘state’ at Brighton which had a burlesque element in it. They were the last sovereigns who held a court or entertained friends at the Pavilion—that place of big and little domes, which made Lord Alvanley say of it that it looked ‘as if St. Paul’s had come down to the sea-side and pupped.’ It was not etiquette for any guest (of an evening) to stir till Queen and King retired, which was at midnight. On one occasion, when Captain and Mrs. Marryat were present, and anxious to go to a second party, the King remarked that the lady often looked at the clock. ”

“ The Ex-Chancellor Eldon was said to have assured Queen Adelaide, that if reform was carried, the days of her drawing-rooms were numbered, and that royalty would do well to follow a counsel which was given by Earl Grey to the bishops,—namely, set its house in order. On the other hand, we hear of the new Chancellor Brougham attending the court with his huge official purse so full of petitions in favour of parliamentary reform, that as he continued to extract and present them, he apologized to King William for troubling him with such piles of the public prayers or demands. ”

“ By others, it has been asserted that the Duchess of Northumberland, the governess of the Princess, in the exercise of a superior and enlightened judgment, and in consideration of the then alleged delicate health of her young charge, advised that her pupil should not be present at the coronation of King William and Queen Adelaide. ”

“ From the income of this building her father had insisted that Adelaide must pay all her expenses. As Madame’s boarding school was a fashionable one, the margin left, after the payment of tuition, to be divided between dress and charity, was not very large.
Mr. Armstrong knew that Adelaide’s weakness was a love for beautiful clothing; that she delighted in sumptuous velvets, in the sheen of satin, and the shimmer of gauze. Her regal beauty would not have been over-powered by a queen’s toilette, but she adorned the simplest costume, and set the fashion in hats for the school season. ”

“ Addresses were presented by loyal citizens, the delighted Duchess, swelling in sweeping feathers and almost obliterating the diminutive Princess, read aloud, in her German accent, gracious replies prepared beforehand by Sir John, who, bustling and ridiculous, seemed to be mingling the roles of major-domo and Prime Minister. Naturally the King fumed over his newspaper at Windsor. "That woman is a nuisance!" he exclaimed. Poor Queen Adelaide, amiable though disappointed, did her best to smooth things down, changed the subject, and wrote affectionate letters to Victoria ”

“ In the absence of a better, it was accepted by those at least who did not throw the blame of that "conspicuous absence" on Queen Adelaide herself and her royal consort; but, as an anonymous writer remarked,—"Who that knew the good King William and his incomparable Queen, would believe that any slight was put by them on their well-beloved niece and the heiress-presumptive to the throne?" The same enemies also stated that "the Duchess of Northumberland was seeking to give a political bias to the education of the Princess ”

“ Queen Adelaide was the most confiding and rash of women; her theory of life was so simple that when one of her ladies tried to suggest caution to her in relation to Lord Howe, saying that the newspapers had been very ill-natured about her friendship for him, she replied that she knew that, but truth would always find its way. It did in her case, but she had personally to run the gauntlet of scandal. Lady Bedingfield remarked of her, “The Queen is so good and virtuous [65] that she has no idea people could fancy that she likes him (Howe) too much.” ”