Queen Victoria Read Online Free Page A

1837)
    Conformably with the custom of the Church of England, the infant daughter of the Duke and Duchess had, as soon as possible after her birth, been baptised at Kensington Palace; the rite being administered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was assisted by the Bishop of London. The Prince Regent stood as sponsor, with the Duke of York who represented the Emperor of Russia. The godmothers were the Duchess Dowager of Coburg, the maternal grandmother of the Princess, represented by the Duchess of Gloucester; and the Queen of Wurtemberg, Princess Royal of England, who was represented by her sister, the Princess Augusta. The names given were Alexandrina Victoria, the first after the Emperor of Russia, the second after her mother. For a short time the pet name “Drina” was used, but later it was superseded by the universally honoured name of Victoria. One of the Queen’s earliest signatures, in capital letters and in pencil, written by her when four years old, and using this name only, is in the British Museum.
    Immediately after her father’s death she was brought back, with her widowed mother, by Prince Leopold, from Sidmouth to Kensington, which was to be her future home till, by the death of her uncle, William IV, she succeeded to the throne. The Duchess of Kent in after years, in reply to an address of congratulation on the attainment of her majority by her daughter, has thus described the motives of her conduct in her new position: “I pass over the earlier part of my connection with this country. I will merely briefly observe, that my late regretted consort’s circumstances and my duties obliged us to reside in Germany; but the Duke of Kent, at much inconvenience, and I, at great personal risk, returned to England, that our child should be ‘born and bred a Briton.’ In a few months afterwards my infant and myself were awfully deprived of father and husband. We stood alone - almost friendless and alone in this country; I could not even speak the language of it. I did not hesitate how to act. I gave up my home, my kindred, my duties (the Regency of Leiningen), to devote myself to that duty which was to be the whole object of my future life. I was supported in the execution of my duties by the country. It placed its trust in me, and the Regency Bill gave me its last act of confidence. I have, in times of great difficulty, avoided all connection with any party in the State; but, if I have done so, I have never ceased to impress on my daughter her duties, so as to gain, by her conduct, the respect and affection of the people. This, I have taught her, should be her first earthly duty as a Constitutional Sovereign.” No words could better convey a sense of the principles which guided the mother in the education of her child, and of the manner in which, not always without opposition, she fulfilled the task she had set before herself to perform.
    For the first few years of her life at Kensington, then really a suburb - for London itself ended at Tyburn Gate and at Hyde Park Corner - the Duchess watched most carefully over the health and physical development of her daughter. Whenever the weather permitted the Princess was to be seen in the gardens, generally accompanied by her half-sister, the Princess Feodore, and in charge of her nurse, Mrs. Brock, whom she called her “dear, dear Bobby.”
    Many stories are related of the manner in which the child would recognise any ladies of the neighbourhood who happened to meet the royal party; but most of these, if they ever had any small foundation in fact, have been overlaid with exaggeration and the most improbable details. One instance of the manner in which what must have been a very trifling incident has grown in the telling, is the story related by an old soldier named Maloney, who claimed the honour of having saved his sovereign’s life in her infancy. The pony drawing the chair in which the Princess took her morning ride, frightened by a dog, swerved, and overturned