Victoria Victorious: The Story of Queen Victoria Read Online Free

possible), Augusta Alexandrina (after the Tsar), and Victoria after my mother.
    Etiquette, of course, demanded that the names be submitted to the Regent for his approval. My mother had argued, so said Feodore. “Why all this fuss about a name?” One might have asked the same of her. Of course my name was important and I have no doubt that the Regent regarded me with suspicion. After all, when one holds a position, it is not the most pleasant thing in the world to view one's successor. There is a feeling of being edged toward the grave. All monarchs feel it at sometime—and particularly when one is obese, overcome with gout and other ailments, desperately trying to appear young and handsome as one has been in one's youth.
    My parents knew that there would be trouble because on the very evening before the ceremony he sent a brief note saying that the name of Georgiana could not be placed before that of the Emperor of Russia; and he could not allow it to follow.
    I am sorry that I cannot recall that scene from personal experience— although I was at the center of it. The Cupola Room must have looked very grand with the golden font that had been brought from the Tower and the crimson velvet curtains that had come from the chapel in St. James's. I had three distinguished sponsors, the most important of these being Alexander the First, the Tsar of Russia; the second was my Aunt Charlotte, the Queen of Württemberg (who had been the Princess Royal of England); and the third my maternal grandmother, the Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld. These illustrious sponsors were not present in person, of course, but were represented by my uncle, the Duke of York, and my aunts, the Princess Augusta and the Duchess of Gloucester.
    The Prince Regent at length arrived and from that moment there was trouble. I can imagine the animosity that must have flashed between him and my mother. There we were assembled in that splendid room before the golden font, my mother preparing for battle. Many times have I seen her in the mood she must have been in on that occasion.
    The Archbishop held me in his arms waiting. He asked the Regent to announce my first name.
    “Alexandrina,” he said, and then he paused.
    The Archbishop was waiting.
    “Charlotte,” whispered my father.
    But the Regent shook his head reproachfully to show definite disapproval.
    “Augusta?”
    “Indeed not,” said the Regent. “Let her be named after her mother. Alexandrina Victoria.”
    So, to the fury of my mother and the consternation of my father, I, who was to have emerged from the Cupola Room enriched by so many grand names suited to a future queen, came out with only two.
    The Regent had shown his disapproval of what he called my parents' presumption. He was not dead yet, and he clearly hoped that one of his other brothers would provide the heir to the throne, for his animositytoward my frilled and feathered mother—as I believe he called her—was great.
    And there I was—“plump as a partridge”—full of lusty health and ready to start my life—a possible heir to the throne.
    W E WERE VERY poor. My father had many debts. Indeed, the hope of getting these settled was one of the reasons for his marriage—a secondary one, it is true, but nonetheless a reason. He was apparently disappointed in his hopes in that direction and the need for economy was urgent.
    As was to be expected, Uncle Leopold—
dear
Uncle Leopold—came to the rescue. Uncle Leopold, who was to mean so much to me, was my mother's brother—and he it was who had been the devoted husband of Princess Charlotte. He had won her affections so wholeheartedly and kept her in restraint so admirably that he had become a person of some standing in England, although he was no favorite of the Prince Regent and Uncle William. Uncle Leopold was abstemious, careful, so
right
in everything he did, and people of less moral rectitude are inclined to dislike such people, I suppose because they bring home to them too