Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/405

 aunts, the Princess Augusta and the Duchess of Gloucester. The rite was performed by Dr. Manners Sutton, archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by the bishop of London. The prince regent, who was present, declared that the one name of 'Alexandrina,' after the tsar, was sufficient. The Duke of Kent requested that a second name should be added. The prince regent suggested 'Georgina.' The Duke of Kent urged 'Elizabeth.' Thereupon the regent brusquely insisted on the mother's name of Victoria, at the same time stipulating that it should follow that of Alexandrina. The princess was therefore named at baptism Alexandrina Victoria, and for several years was known in the family circle as 'Drina.' But her mother was desirous from the first to give public and official prominence to her second name of Victoria. When only four the child signed her name as Victoria to a letter which is now in the British Museum (Addit. MS. 18204, fol. 12). The appellation, although it was not unknown in England [see -, Suppl.], had a foreign sound to English ears, and its bestowal on the princess excited some insular prejudice.

When the child was a month old her parents removed with her to Claremont, the residence which had been granted for life to her uncle, Prince Leopold, the widowed husband of the Princess Charlotte, and remained his property till his death in 1865. In August the princess was vaccinated, and the fact of her being the first member of the royal family to undergo the operation widely extended its vogue. Before the end of the month the Duchess of Kent learned from her mother of the birth on the 26th, at Rosenau in Coburg, of the second son (Albert) of her eldest brother, the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld (afterwards Gotha). Madame Siebold, the German accoucheuse, who had attended Princess Victoria's birth, was also present at Prince Albert's, and in the Saxe-Coburg circle the names of the two children were at once linked together. In December 1819 the Duke and Duchess of Kent went with their daughter to Sidmouth, where they rented a small house called Woolbrook Cottage. The sojourn there did not lack incident. The discharge of an arrow by a mischievous boy at the window of the room which the infant was occupying went very near ending her career before it was well begun. After a few weeks at Sidmouth, too, the child's position in the state underwent momentous change.

On 14 Jan. 1820 her grandfather, King George III, who had long been blind and imbecile, passed away, and the prince regent became king at the age of fifty-eight. Six days later, on 20 Jan. 1820, her father, the Duke of Kent, fell ill of a cold contracted while walking in wet weather; inflammation of the lungs set in, and on the 23rd he died. Thus the four lives that had intervened between the princess and the highest place in the state were suddenly reduced to two—those of her uncles, the Duke of York, who was fifty-seven, and the Duke of Clarence, who was fifty-five. Neither duke had a lawful heir, or seemed likely to have one. A great future for the child of the Duchess of Kent thus seemed assured.

The immediate position of mother and daughter was not, however, enviable. The Duke of Kent appointed his widow sole guardian of their child, with his friends General Wetherall and Sir John Conroy as executors of his will. Conroy thenceforth acted as major-domo for the duchess, and lived under the same roof until the accession of the princess, by whom he was always cordially disliked. The duchess was obnoxious to her husband's brothers, especially to the new king, to the Duke of Clarence, and to their younger brother, the Duke of Cumberland, the next heir to the throne after her daughter. Speaking later of her relations with the heads of the royal family, she said that on her husband's death she stood with her daughter 'friendless and alone.' Not the least of her trials was her inability to speak English. Although the duke had made a will, he left no property. He only bequeathed a mass of debts, which the princess, to her lasting credit, took in course of time on her own shoulders and discharged to the last penny. Parliament had granted the duchess in 1818 an annuity of 6,000l. in case of her widowhood; apartments were allowed her in Kensington Palace, but she and her daughter had no other acknowledged resources. Her desolate lot was, however, not without private mitigation. She had the sympathy of her late husband's unmarried sisters, Sophia and Augusta, who admired her self-possession at this critical period; and the kindly Duchess of Clarence, who, a German princess, like herself, conversed with her in her mother-tongue, paid her constant visits. But her main source of consolation was her brother Leopold, who proved an invaluable adviser and a generous benefactor. As soon as the gravity of the duke's illness declared itself he had hurried to Sidmouth to