The Victorian Royal Nursery 1840-1865

The Victorian Royal Nursery attempts to shed more light Mariusz Misztal on the nursery for the children of Queen Victoria. It examines the creation, organisation, and financing of the nursery, with a consideration of the most important individuals who looked after the Royal children, namely the medical staff, wet nurses, monthly nurses, permanent nurses, governesses and subgovernesses. The study is based mostly on the numerous The Victorian Royal Nursery unpublished documents from the Royal Archives at Windsor as well as the hitherto little-known or unknown sources like

the journal of the royal accoucheur Dr Robert Ferguson 1840-1865 1840-1865 or the diary of head-nurse Mrs Ann Thurston. Creation, Organisation, Staff, Financing sery

From the review of The Victorian Royal Nursery, 1840–1865: Nur

This is an original and important research project [… ]. oyal In The Victorian Royal Nursery Mr Misztal brings a scholarly, R tightly-focussed approach to a part of the Victorian Royal Household which until now has only received passing references in the literature. This superb study gives a full, definitive account of a part of the life of Queen Victoria which has been largely

neglected [… ]. Victorian No one has written in such detail about the royal nursery, and that in itself represents a vital contribution to royal scholarship. The new material which Misztal has discovered sheds new light The on the Queen’s mental and emotional state after childbirth… This gives substance to Albert’s later fears about Victoria’s mental state and the rumours that she had inherited the madness of King George III. [… ] The footnotes are excellent and full of additional material [...]. Misztal This is an outstanding piece of research. It is a definitive account, and it will become indispensable.

Professor Jane Ridley, Mariusz author of Bertie: A Life of Edward VII and Queen Victoria: A Short Life

Also available in ebook format

www.universitas.com.pl universitas The Victorian Royal Nursery 1840-1865

Mariusz Misztal

The Victorian Royal Nursery 1840-1865

Creation, Organisation, Staff, Financing

Krakow Publikacja dofinansowana przez Uniwersytet Pedagogiczny im. Komisji Edukacji Narodowej w Krakowie

ISBN 978-83-242-3618-3 e-ISBN 978-83-242-6485-8 TAiWPN UNIVERSITAS

Reviewed by Professor Jane Ridley

Edited by Agnieszka Boniatowska

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity

Frontispiece The Royal Children in the Nursery, c.1846-50s, lithograph printed by Dean & Co. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/© Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. A scene of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in the nursery of their children. The Queen sits at the left with the infant Helena on her knee, with Prince Alfred and Princess Alice on either side. Prince Albert stands at the centre, with the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal to the right. Attended by a female figure and with a view of the interior of the nursery in the background.

Cover design Sepielak

www.universitas.com.pl Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 9 INTRODUCTION 11 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS 13 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN 13 2. 1846–1857: THE YOUNGER CHILDREN 65 II. THE ORGANISATION OF THE NURSERY 93 1. NURSERY RULES AND THE FIRST NURSERY SUPERINTENDENTS 93 2. THE CONFIDANTE: LOUISE LEHZEN 100 3. BARON STOCKMAR’S 1842 NURSERY MEMORANDUM 121 4. THE GOVERNESS: LADY LYTTELTON 129 5. LADY CAROLINE BARRINGTON AND THE SUB-GOVERNESSES 161 III. THE MEDICAL STAFF AND MONTHLY NURSES 175 1. PHYSICIANS AND APOTHECARIES 175 2. MONTHLY NURSES 187 IV. THE NURSERY STAFF 193 1. THE WET NURSES 193 2. THE PERMANENT NURSES AND NURSERY MAIDS 212 V. THE FINANCING OF THE NURSERY 223 NOTE ON THE VALUE OF THE POUND STERLING 233 REFERENCES 235 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 347 1. MANUSCRIPT SOURCES 347 2. PUBLISHED SOURCES, BOOKS AND ARTICLES 353 3. UNPUBLISHED DISSERTATIONS 367 4. NEWSPAPERS CONSULTED 367 INDEX OF PERSONS 369 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

1. The Royal Children in the Nursery, c.1846-50s, lithograph printed by Dean & Co. RCIN 605924. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 2. Journal of Dr Robert Ferguson, Queen Victoria’s Accoucheur Physician. Courtesy of Royal College of Physicians, London. 3. Recognition of the Royal Princess by the Privy Councillors of England. c.1840s. Lithograph by W. Clerk. RCIN 605927. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 4. Sketches and Caricatures: Royal Dry Nursing Extraordinary, c. 1843. Lithograph with Hand-colouring, published by W. Kohler & Co. RCIN 605958. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 5. Sketches and Caricatures: Tender Annuals, c. 1843. Lithograph published by W. Kohler & Co. RCIN 811282.ap. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 6. Sketches and Caricatures: The Easter Offering c. 1843. Lithograph published by W. Kohler & Co. RCIN 811282.as. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 7. Sketches and Caricatures: 1855; or, A Scene in Perspective c. 1855. Lithograph published by William Spooner. RCIN 811282.aa. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 8. Victoire, Duchess of Kent by John Lucas, 1841. RCIN 406730. Courtesy of Royal Col- lection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 9. Christian Frederick, Baron Stockmar by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1847. RCIN 405830. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 10. George E Anson by George Richmond, 1849. RCIN 451898. Courtesy of Royal Col- lection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 11. Louise, Baroness Lehzen, by Carl Friedrich Koepke, 1842. RCIN 420414. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 12. Sarah, Lady Lyttelton, after Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1846. RCIN 406476. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020.

7 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

13. Lady Caroline Barrington, c. 1859. RCIN 2910678. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 14. Sir James Clark, Baronet by John Jabez Edwin Mayall, 1860. RCIN 2906879. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 15. Sir Charles Locock [Royal Household Portraits. Volume 55.] 1860. RCIN 2910377. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 16. Mrs (Mary) Lilly [Royal Household Portraits. Volume 54.] 1864. RCIN 2910173. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 17. Mrs (Ellen) Innocent [Royal Household Portraits. Volume 54.] 1864. RCIN 2910212. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 18. Mrs (Jane) Sly [Royal Household Portraits. Volume 54.] c.1860-5. RCIN 2910214. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 19. Mrs Mary Ann Hull (née Cripps) [Royal Household Portraits. Volume 54.] c.1860-5. RCIN 2910183. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 20. Mrs (Jenny) Jones, a coloured chalk drawing by Queen Victoria, 30 March 1851. RCIN 981687. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 21. Princess Beatrice with her wet nurse, Mrs (Elizabeth) Hughes, by Leonida Caldesi, 26 June 1857. RCIN 2900104. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 22. The First Six Children of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert [with Mrs Thurston], after a daguerreotype by William Edward Kilburn, 1848. RCIN 2106393. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 23. The Queen and Prince Albert with their Nine Children at Osborne by Leonida Caldesi, May 1857. RCIN 2106422. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 24. Princess Louise, Princess Helena and Miss Agnes Illhardt by Ernst Becker, September 1854. RCIN 2900044. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. 25. At the Crystal Palace, Sydenham 1854, by Philip Henry Delamonte. RCIN 2932748. Courtesy of Royal Collection Trust/©Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II 2020. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to thank Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II for graciously allowing access to documents in the Royal Archives at Windsor, and for permitting extracts from these documents to be published. I wish to thank all at the Royal Archives for their friendliness, knowledge, encouragement and patience, especially Allison Derrett, LVO, who, with the other archivists and assistants, Julie Crocker, Kathryn Johnson, Laura Hobbs, Colin Parrish and Lynne Beech (happy retire- ment, Lynne!), provided the numerous documents I needed, answered my endless questions and spent hours in the research room with me. I thank Allison Derrett also for her always very professional advice and meticulous comments at the different stages of my research and for her special “presents”, such as the virtually unknown Diary of Mrs Lilly, Queen Victoria’s monthly nurse. I want to congratulate and thank Oliver Walton once more for compiling the Windsor part of the Common Heritage volume, which is essential for anyone planning to undertake any research at the Royal Archives. I also remember fondly the conversations during the lunch breaks in the Round Tower common room, and I am so grateful for the coffee and tea (with milk!). Although the Royal Archives provide by far the most vital and abundant sources for this book, there are many other important manuscript sources elsewhere, and I am most grateful to the staff of the Royal Society of Phy- sicians in London, especially Felix Lancashire, who were all very helpful in providing me with the documents in their possession connected with Queen Victoria’s medical staff, especially the journal of Dr Robert Ferguson. I also thank the Royal Society of Physicians in London for granting me permission to publish extracts from his journal relating to Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and their Household.

9 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to thank Dr Elizabeth Lomas, archivist of the Duchy of Cornwall, for her kind hospitality and interesting discussion with regard to the documents dealing with the finances of the Duchy during the reign of Queen Victoria, as well as the permission to copy some of the archival materials. I am grateful to the librarians of the Rare Materials Room at the Well- come Institute for the History of Medicine in London for their patience and ready advice. The archivists at the National Library of Scotland in Edinburgh must be thanked for providing me with the requested archival materials at very short notice and for making my hasty visit to Edinburgh so fruitful and rewarding. I would also like to thank the librarians of the Special Collections of the University of Edinburgh Library for allowing me to make a copy of the very rare volume of letters written by Lady Lyttelton that were published in 1873 for private circulation. I would also like to thank Emma Stuart and Elizabeth Ashby, curators at the Royal Library at Windsor Castle, for allowing me to view the same volume which is in the Royal Collection, for their kind hospitality and assistance in locating other books in the collection that related to the education of Queen Victoria’s children, as well as making it possible for me to undertake my research in the Royal Library and accommodating me despite the maintenance works that were in progress. My special thanks go to Michael Hunter, art curator at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, for kindly showing me around Osborne House, allowing me to consult the manuscript sources from the archives and especially for drawing my attention to, and allowing me to make a copy of the unpublished diaries of Mrs Thurston. I would like to thank my friends, Dr Paweł Romanek, a gynaecologist and obstetrician, as well as Dr Jakub Januszek, an anaesthesiologist, for their advice and comments on the relevant parts of the manuscript that were connected with the Queen’s pregnancies and confinements and the use of anaesthetic agents during labour. I am extremely grateful to Professor Piotr Borek, Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the Pedagogical University of Krakow, for his unfailing financial support of the project, which made my numerous research visits at the Royal Archives at Windsor possible. I would like to thank Professor Jane Ridley for reading the manuscript and for her kind comments. Finally, I would like to thank Ann Cardwell and Ewa Spohn for proof- reading the manuscript. And I have been extremely lucky to have Agnieszka Boniatowska as my editor. INTRODUCTION

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert had nine children who were born between 1840 and 1857. The royal parents were, however, busy with their official duties and therefore, following other aristocratic parents, they delegated the care of the children first to nurses and later to governesses and tutors. Thus, the royal children spent the first years of their lives in the nursery. A detailed study of the Victorian royal nursery does not exist, although biographies of the Queen and Prince Albert usually include some information about the nursery. Apart from the classic biographies such as those by Elizabeth Longford,1 Cecil Woodham-Smith,2 Monica Charlot,3 Christopher Hibbert,4 and most recently Lucy Worsley,5 only a very few studies are based on archival materials (especially those in the Royal Archives at Wind- sor), at least as far as the subject of the royal nursery is concerned. Most base their work on earlier research and secondary sources, for example, the very readable books by Stanley Weintraub6 and Giles St Aubyn,7 as well as the latest important additions to the list: the volumes by Julia Baird8 and N.A. Wilson.9 The biographies by Paula Bartley10 and Lucy Worsley make extensive use of Queen Victoria’s Journals, which were made available online in 2012. The biographies of the Queen’s children also devote relatively few words to the nursery years, perhaps with the notable exceptions of Jane Ridley’s Bertie11 and Charlotte Zeepvat’s Queen Victoria’s Youngest Son,12 which are both based on archival research. Matthew Dennison’s The Last Princess. The Devoted Life of Queen Victoria’s Youngest Daughter, which gives a detailed description of Princess Beatrice’s birth and infancy, is, however, based on secondary material.13 Almost the only original study of the nine royal children, that written by Daphne Bennett, is unfortunately somewhat lacking in any apparatus criticus.14

11 INTRODUCTION

Even if the books do consider the nursery to a certain extent, there is little information about the individuals who worked there with the exception of Lady Lyttelton, whose surviving letters allowed a more detailed presentation of her work as the nursery superintendent during the period 1842–1850. However, as noted by Helen Rappaport,15 the names of most of the nurses are unknown, that is the monthly nurses, wet nurses etc., who for twenty-five years, from the creation of the nursery in 1840 until it was closed in 1865, took care of the royal children. This study attempts to shed further light on the nursery of Queen Victoria’s children, and consists of two parts. The first volume deals with the creation, organisation, and financing of the royal nursery, with aconsideration of the most important individuals who looked after the royal children, namely the medical staff, wet nurses, monthly nurses, permanent nurses, governesses and subgovernesses. It starts with a detailed description of each of the pregnancies and accouchements of the Queen, as well as Baron Stockmar’s ideas and the practicalities concerning the organisation of the nursery. The second volume will present the everyday life of the royal children in the nursery. Although I read in depth the available published materials as well as studies on the subject of the royal nursery, whenever possible I tried to go back to the archival sources, especially those housed in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. Crucial among such sources were the volumes compiled by Prince Albert that were inscribed Confidential Family Papers,16 as well as Queen Victoria’s Journals,17 which, despite the heavy editing by her youngest daughter Princess Beatrice, are still an historical source of primary importance.18 Numerous documents from the Royal Archives have been published here for the first time. Among the other archives let me mention only two important sources. The first is the personal journal of one of the Queen’s accoucheurs, namely Dr Robert Ferguson. This document has been hitherto virtually unknown to historians.19 Acquired by the Royal College of Physicians in London in 2009, it includes, inter alia, Dr Ferguson’s personal opinions regarding the Queen’s character and mental health, as well as accounts of the disposition of Prince Albert and other members of the Household such as Baroness Louise Lehzen and Baron Stockmar. It also includes a detailed description of the arrangements for the birth of the Queen’s first child, the Princess Royal. The second source is the diary of Mrs Thurston who worked in the royal nursery from 1845 to 1865: first as a nurse and then as the head nurse. Her interesting diary, a copy of which was presented to Osborne House by Mrs Thurston’s descendants, has thus far never been used by historians. I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS

1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN

Queen Victoria and her cousin, Prince Albert, were married at the Chapel Royal in St James’s Palace on Monday, 10 February 1840.1 They were both very young, not yet 21. The general opinion was that apart from her youth- ful freshness, the Queen was rather plain. Indeed, one of her physicians, Dr Robert Ferguson, wrote that “no one would call her beautiful, few pretty”2 although he thought the Queen “one of the most extraordinary young women” he had ever seen:

She is singularly graceful for so short a figure, having such complete command of all her limbs, that every movement and action is natural and effortless. The eye is prominent and light and full of a range of expression that strikes the observer. The skin is too fine, so that complexion looks, at times, slightly purple and when she lowers and is vexed, the contrast of the darkening countenance and the light rapid movements of her blue large eyes suggests the aspect of a stormy sky in [sic] a summer day lit up with flashes of lightening [sic]. There is force, character, talent in her face, but no habitual repose or feminine gentleness, yet it cannot be said to be ill-tem- pered, and is the reverse certainly of the virago, being delicate in all its lines, save too great a roundness of the contour. It belongs to a fiery character and a nervous temperament.3

Ferguson also added that Leslie, the artist who painted the Queen,4 told him he could not catch her expression and that no-one had yet succeeded in

13 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS

conveying it onto canvas. As for Prince Albert, Dr Ferguson was clearly under his spell, claiming the Prince possessed “at once temper, talent, and beauty”:

His profile is cut in the grace of the Grecian art in its best age. The eye is bright and without fierceness and suits well with the calmness of his expression and the evenness of his colouring. His complexion is neither pale nor tinted, but of a clear white, thro’ which the red shines just strongly enough to save it from the charge of sickliness, while its character is that of a refined and delicate mind. He is nearly six feet high, wide shouldered, rather too short in the neck, well-proportioned as to the length of his limbs, tho’ the knees are not quite well clearly knit. There is a singular sweetness of expression in his grave-hilarity, which it is impossible to resist. His chiefest mental characteristics are good sound common sense and a thoughtfulness quite unusual at so young age (22). Perhaps it is this, which makes him look older than he is… All his tastes are those of a student of elegant literature and art. He is a musician and, I believe, a draughts- man, talented rather than original and though devoid of intellectual genius, possessing in a very unusual degree tact both in discovering character, and in managing it.5

After the wedding ceremony, the newlyweds went to Windsor for a sur- prisingly short – only three days – honeymoon.6 Many found it “a very curious affair, more strange than delicate” and even the Queen’s closest friends were shocked at her not conforming to the English customs which “modesty and native delicacy generally prescribe”.7 The Queen described their first evening and night together in her journal. After arriving at Windsor, they ordered dinner to be brought to their suite but she had “such a sick headache” that she could not eat anything and had to spend the rest of the evening lying on the sofa: “[…] but, ill or not, I never, never spent such an evening!! My dearest dearest dear Albert sat on a footstool by my side, and his excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness, I never could have hoped to have felt before! He clasped me in his arms, and we kissed each other again and again! His beauty, his sweetness and gentleness, really how can I ever be thankful enough to have such a Husband!” Then they “[…] both went to bed (of course in one bed); to lie by his side, and in his arms, and on his dear bosom, and be called by names

14 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN

of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me before was bliss beyond belief! Oh! this was the happiest day of my life! – May God help me to do my duty as I ought and be worthy of such blessings!…”8 The next morning, she continued: “When day dawned (for we did not sleep much) and I beheld that beautiful angelic face by my side, it was more than I can express!”9 In the morning the Queen wrote a short message to Lord Melbourne about her “most gratifying and bewildering night”.10 A few weeks later she assured her cousin, Victoria (who was about to marry the Duke of Nemours, son of King Louis-Philippe of France) “you cannot imagine how delightful it is to be married”,11 although years later she admitted to her daughter that “God knows… all one’s feelings of propriety… receive a shock […] in marriage…”.12 She compared giving a girl in marriage to “taking a poor lamb to be sacrificed”13 and thought no girl would agree to be married “if she knew all” that she must go through. Thinking about her younger daughter Princess Alice (then 16), the Queen wrote that she saw and heard enough “(of course not what no one ever can know before they marry and before they have had children) […] to give her a horror rather of marrying”.14 The famous diarist Charles Greville, as ever malicious and biting, noticed that the newlyweds rose very early on the Tuesday morning to go walking, which was contrary to the Queen’s former habits, and remarked that it was “strange that a bridal night should be so short”, concluding that “this was not the way to provide us with a Prince of Wales”.15 On the Wednesday, the second day of their married life, they had a pleasant dinner party and on the third day the Queen chose to dance rather than spend the time alone with her husband.16 On the Thursday there was another dance, and on the Friday they returned to London. According to Greville, this suggested that the relationship between the newlyweds was not initially physically passionate.17 Greville recorded in his memoirs the impression of the Duchess of Bed- ford, the Queen’s Lady of the Bedchamber, that a few days after their wedding the Queen seemed “excessively in love” with Prince Albert “but he not a bit with her”. She also thought that the Prince was “not being happy”.18 A similar opinion was recorded by Dr Ferguson who asked the Queen’s personal doctor, Sir James Clark, whether he thought the Prince was in love. Clark answered that he thought he liked her. “On her side, however,” adds Ferguson, “I have no doubts. She is dotingly attached to him, and cannot bear him out of her sight”.19 The Queen’s jealousy was also noticed by Disraeli who gossiped to his sister Sarah that Albert “is very bored by his wife who is fearfully jealous”,20 and in March 1840, Princess Lieven

15 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS asked Lady Palmerston whether the Queen was “so much in love with her husband as to be already jealous of him?”21 She also inquired “What is to become of Prince Albert; will he always remain at his wife’s side? It will be a dreary situation”.22 However, Lady Palmerston thought it was “quite impossible for any two people to be more happy”23 and informed her friend, Margaret Elphinstone, that “The Queen and the Prince are very happy in their marriage, and there is no truth in any of the foolish stories that have been invented to the contrary”.24 Prince Albert was well known for his reticence, and if at first he did not really know how to react to his wife’s somewhat violent expressions of love25 he soon wrote to Baron Christian Stockmar, his trusted advisor,26 that she was “[…] the treasure on which my whole existence rests. The relation in which we stand to one another leaves nothing to desire. It is a union of heart and soul”.27 Additionally, in 1851 when he was absent for a single night, in a private note to his wife he wrote “You will be feeling somewhat lonely and forsaken, among the two and a half million of human beings in London; and I too feel the want of only one person to give a world of life to everything around me. I hope to fall into the arms of this one person by 7.30 tomorrow evening, and remain till then, your faithful and loving A.”28 Greville was not the only person who commented on the royal wedding night. Robert Monckton Milnes sent “notelets” to his friends, “mostly turning upon the Queen’s virginity”. In response, one of his friends, Robert Monteith, wrote from Scotland that he had received

[…] notelets from you containing the last indecencies on the subject of Royal venery [i.e. the gratification of sexual desire]; I burn with chaste and loyal indignation, shout with laughter and end with showing the documents right and left… How different our own simple provincial spirit! How sincere was the mighty bonfire I raised on a hill top – how spontaneous the gush of ale and porter which it cost 9 men’s toil to distribute, how cordial the vibrations of the catgut to which 800 people danced and reeled like Ball worshippers round the blazing summit […]!

Yet in England, Monteith continued,

[…] you representatives of an enthusiastic people with your hearts shrivelled with meanness and envy and hate and

16 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN

competition and debauchery could only make bawdy cha- rades on this solemn sowing of a new Royal [family] tree. Do you mean to insinuate he [i.e. Prince Albert] has dared to touch her [i.e. the Queen]?… You M.P.s must know better of course – we never thought anything could have happened so soon.29

All those bawdy jokes proved to be incorrect and soon the Queen knew she was pregnant. Whatever their mutual feelings and lack of sexual experience at the beginning of their married life, the young couple quickly discovered a long-lasting carnal compatibility.30 Indeed, a London cartoonist was closer to the truth when, in a broadside entitled “Counting the Chick- ens” published soon after the wedding, he showed the determined Queen informing a rather shocked Prince Albert about her decision regarding possible names for their future children:

I have decidedly made up my mind, Al, to have our first Boy named after my much respected Uncle Leopold, the next in honour of my Uncle Cambridge, Adolphus Frederick; then we must have one Augustus Fred for Uncle Sussex; and then, Al, in case of twins, Albert and Edward, we will call them; there’s my cousins of Hanover and Cambridge [both named George]; we mustn’t forget them, you know, and should girls intervene, we can call them, Mary’s, Caroline’s, Sophia’s, Wilhelmina’s, Louisa’s, Adelaide’s etc. etc.31

In fact, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were to have nine children: Victoria in 1840, Albert Edward in 1841, Alice in 1843, Alfred in 1844, Helena in 1846, Louise in 1848, Arthur in 1850, Leopold in 1853, and Beatrice in 1857.32 Interestingly enough, after the birth of the first child, when her uncle, Leopold, expressed his hope that Victoria would have many children, she answered in a manner which suggested a certain reluctance to become the mother of a numerous family:

You cannot really wish me to be the Mamma d’une nombreuse famille for I think you will see with me the great inconve nience a large family would be to us all, and particularly to the country,33 independent of the hardship and inconve nience to myself; men never think, at least seldom think what a hard task it is for us women to go through this very

17 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS

often. God’s will be done, and if He decrees that we are to have a great number of children why we must try to bring them up as useful and exemplary members of society.34

It can therefore be assumed that Victoria did not intend to have numerous children, yet despite this, in the first seventeen years of marriage she was pregnant for approximately eighty months – more than six years in total – and she spent considerably longer recovering from each birth. In practical terms, the Queen’s adult life was almost synonymous with childbearing.35 In this respect, the Queen did not differ much from other aristocratic women who were typically pregnant for periods lasting many years. The “typical” aristocrat married at 21 and gave birth to her last child at the age of 39. Lewis studied fifty aristocratic women, and of the thirty-six who had children, thirty-one were still rearing children after fifteen years of marriage. Indeed, nineteen would continue to have children after twenty years of marriage. The median childbearing span – from marriage to the final birth – for the entire group was eighteen years, resulting in the production of about eight children each.36

The first child of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert was born on 22 Novem- ber 1840, two or three weeks earlier than anticipated, therefore, the Queen must have conceived only a month after her wedding.37 On 4 March she had a bad headache which prevented her going to dinner and Albert stayed with her,38 but a few days later she took part in a ball until 2 a.m., dancing several quadrilles as well as valses, a gallop, and an English country dance, and she “kept up with great spirit”.39 On 16 March there were further dances, and again the Queen enjoyed herself immensely from 10 p.m. until 2 a.m.40 However, on 21 March she did not feel well all day and dined alone with Albert in his room. Perhaps this was because of the first signs of pregnancy, with Longford noting that she “cried bitterly”.41 The next morning she felt better but later became “very feverish” and spent a few hours in bed, although she was present for dinner. Two months before the wedding she wrote in her journal how much she was looking forward to marriage and how little to childbearing. When Melbourne told her that “the measure of married happiness is to have a great number of children”,

18 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN the Queen commented “which I’m sure I will never think” and added that having children “is the ONLY thing I dread”.42 It seems that Victoria was bitterly disappointed to be pregnant so soon. There is no information regarding this in the expunged journals, although it is highly probable that Princess Beatrice may have removed all such remarks, considering them as too intime, and so the earliest extant instances of Victoria’s “raging” against pregnancy come in June when she was already in her second trimester. To Albert’s stepmother she complained:

I must say that I could not be more unhappy. I am really upset about it and it is spoiling my happiness; I have always hated the idea and I prayed to God night and day to be left free for at least six months but been answered and I am really most unhappy. I cannot understand how any one can wish for such a thing, especially at the beginning of a marriage.43

To Uncle Leopold she wrote that “the thing is odious”44 and a few days later added: “[…] about myself: really it is too dreadful. I cannot in any way see the good side of this sad business”.45 A more complete view of the Queen’s repugnance of pregnancy and childbirth can be found in letters written in 1858 with the hindsight of cumulative experience to her then newly-married eldest daughter, the Princess Royal.46 Perhaps, as argued by a feminist historian, the unenthusiastic views on marriage and motherhood included in her letters to the Princess Royal “may have been avenues to release long-held repressed memories of the frightening physical aspects of sex and childbirth – which she had had no chance to release previously”.47 In answer to the Princess Royal’s observation that married women have much more liberty, the Queen agrees that marriage would be “a foretaste of heaven” and “unbounded happiness – if one has a husband one worships!” were it not for childbearing:

[…] if you have hereafter (as I had constantly for the first 2 years of my marriage) – aches – and sufferings and miseries and plagues – which you must struggle against – and enjoyments etc. to give up – constant precautions to take, you will feel the yoke of a married woman […] I had 9 times for 8 months to bear with those above-named enemies and real misery (besides many duties) and I own it tried me sorely;

19 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS

one feels so pinned down – one’s wings clipped – in fact, at the best (and few were or are better than I was) only half oneself – particularly the first and second time. This I call the ‘shadow side’ [of marriage]… And therefore, I think our sex a most unenviable one.48

The Queen described the first years of her marriage as “utterly spoiled by this occupation!” which made her “so miserable”. So, at the beginning of April 1858 she was happy that her daughter was not yet “in an unenviable position” and added that she “never can rejoice by hearing that a poor young thing is pulled down by this trial”.49 Alas, a month later she received “the horrid news” which upset her “dreadfully”. “I am so unhappy about you!”, she wrote to the Princess Royal, “It is well Fritz is not in sight just now or he would not be graciously received”.50 The Queen had prayed to be “left free” and “spared” for at least six months, but the majority of aristocratic women would give birth to their first child within a year of marriage.51 It can be speculated what reasons lay behind the Queen’s anger at being “caught” so quickly after the wedding.52 One such reason could be the physical discomfort and the animalistic nature of pregnancy, that showed the Queen that in this respect, she was just like all other, that is ordinary, women. In their study on men and women of the English middle class, Davidoff and Hall noted that “women when pregnant and thus incontrovertibly sexual beings, were associated with animalistic nature”.53 So, when in June 1858 the Princess Royal wrote of her first pregnancy as ‘the pride of giving life to an immortal soul’, the Queen tried to convince the naïve Princess that giving birth to children was not an exhilarating experience at all. She wrote:

What you say of the pride of giving life to an immortal soul is very fine, dear, but Iown I cannot enter into that; I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments; when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic.54

Her explicit words underline her deep resentment of the act of labour. Not only did she regard it as unpleasant in the extreme, but she also emphasised its reproductive, purely physiological nature, an act that had little in common with human feelings and emotions. Writing to the Princess Royal with reference to her first pregnancy, the Queen recalled that she was “furious” to be “in for it at once”

20 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN and how she resented being in “a state of constant malaise”, as well as emphasising the “sufferings and miseries and plagues” of pregnancy. Her physical state now dictated what she could and could not do. She had to take “constant” elaborate precautions against harming herself or the baby, giving up what she called the “enjoyments etc.” of an unrestricted life – dancing, late night parties, or riding, and subjecting herself to the stares of her guests.55 By “happy enjoyment with dear papa”56 the Queen must have also meant sexual relations which pregnancy virtually excluded, as medi cal theories of the day recommended extreme caution or abstinence from sexual relations throughout a pregnancy. The Victorians generally believed that “sexual indulgence” or even “amative excitement on the part of the mother, without indulgence” could damage the health of the unborn child or lead it into future “destructive vice”. In particular, “violent coition in sexual intercourse, should be cautiously avoided, to save the precious little being in the womb from displacement of its limbs, or spinal distortion, which might result in permanent physical deformity; for although remarkably well protected by surrounding membranes, fluids, and the muscular walls of the uterus, the foetus is sometimes deformed” by such actions.57

The Queen must have also been concerned about maternal mortality. Estimates of the number of women who died giving birth in the 1840s in England are about four or five women per thousand, with the usual reason for death given by doctors being “excessive mental emotion”.58 Victoria was also probably haunted by the death of her cousin Charlotte, wife of Uncle Leopold and the only legitimate grandchild of George III, who, having suffered at least one previous miscarriage died at the age of 21 shortly after giving birth to a stillborn son.59 Even before her marriage the Queen discussed Princess Charlotte with Lord Melbourne on several occasions.60 In June 1838, Melbourne told her about “a Miss Arklow”,61 the wife of Lord Spencer who died when lying-in, as did the child.62 Whatever the Queen’s initial thoughts on becoming pregnant, as time passed she began to view her condition somewhat differently and on 10 October 1840, exactly a year since she had received Albert and “beheld those dear beautiful eyes, which seemed to go to my soul then”, she wrote

21 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS

that she “should not only be his wife but in the eighth month of my pregnancy, on this same day, this year! I was happy on that day when I saw him, but how far happier I am now!”63 For an inexperienced woman, the first signs of pregnancy were not easy to detect. Dr Pye Chavasse’s Advice to a Wife on the Management of her own Health. And on the Treatment of some of the Complaints Incidental to Preg- nancy, Labour, and Suckling (1844) gave the signs of pregnancy, in order of appearance, as: “ceasing to be unwell” (i.e. menstruate); morning sickness, painful and enlarged breasts; “quickening” (which would not have been felt until the nineteenth week); an increase in weight. That meant that – relying solely upon this book – no woman could be certain she was pregnant until the fifth month.64 In the case of Queen Victoria it is difficult to judge who might have been her advisor on these matters. The Duchess of Kent was hardly on speaking terms with her daughter, Baroness Lehzen was an aged spinster, and the Queen’s half-sister Feodora – already an experienced mother – was too far away. By the end of April 1840, it was obvious that the Queen was expecting a child. She herself, following the evolution in terminology, wrote of “being in an interesting condition”65 rather than being “pregnant”66 or “with child”. Indeed, as early as 1791 a correspondent in the Gentleman’s Magazine stated:

All our mothers and grandmothers, used in due course of time to become with child or as Shakespeare has it, round wombed67… but it is very well known that no female, above the degree of chambermaid or laundress, has been with child these ten years past… nor is she ever brought to bed, or delivered, but merely at the end of nine months, has an accouchement antecedent to which she informs her friends that at a certain time she will be confined.68

In 1818, Lady Susan O’Brian noted how the language had changed since 1760: “No one can say ‘breeding’ or ‘with child’ or ‘lying-in’ without being thought indelicate. ‘In the family way’69 and ‘confinement’70 have taken their place.”71 With time, French euphemisms replaced English expressions, so the woman became enceinte72 or endured a grossesse,73 after which she either had a fausse couche or an accouchement.74 Queen Victoria, when talking about others, sometimes used the word ‘accouchement’75 or ‘lying-in’,76 but when talking about herself or her daughters usually used the phrases

22 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN

“an unhappy condition’, “an unenviable position”, “this trial”, “this occupation”, “a certain event”,77 or “confinement”.78 It was customary for women to conceal their pregnancies as much as possible and for as long as possible, nor did they allow much discussion of it.79 When, in 1839, Lady Lyttelton’s daughter-in-law refused the Queen’s invitation to dinner, “the Queen – impertinent little creature”, said to Lady Lyttelton: “so sorry not to see your new daughter Ly L but I suppose there are reasons’. ‘Oh Madame’, I said, ‘it is such early days! I should not suppose THAT’ (no more I did: I knew it, which is quite another thing), ‘but she is rather delicate and her long journey has knocked her up’”.80 When her eldest daughter became pregnant in 1858, the Queen informed her that she and Prince Albert had never mentioned the pregnancy but instead had told everyone that Vicky’s injured foot was the reason for her not going on a planned trip to Coburg to see her father. “I hope you do the same”, added the Queen, “and Fritz don’t [sic] allow his own people and relations to enter into such subjects; it is so indelicate. Papa never allowed it and I should have been frantic”.81 When the Queen heard that her daughter had discussed the arrangements for the birth of her first child with her Court Chamberlain, she was shocked. This was also her reaction when Princess Mary of Cambridge asked Albert whether Vicky suffered much from morning sickness82 – words which the Queen would never utter to “any gentleman”.83 The Queen thought all that “Nature decreed” about child-bearing is “a bad arrangement, but we must calmly, patiently bear it… and the more we retain our pure, modest feelings, the easier it is to get over it all afterwards”, adding that she was “very much like a girl in all these feelings, but since I have had a grown-up married daughter and young married relations I have been obliged to hear and talk of things and details which I hate – but which are unavoidable.”84 When the Queen’s pregnancy was confirmed to Melbourne he informed Albert that there would be no formal announcement regarding her being in an “interesting condition” as was customary abroad,85 despite the fact that it was “understood & known” that she was expecting a baby.86It was hardly surprising, however, that there was much interest in the Queen’s condition, a situation which led to considerable gossip. Writing to Lady Palmerston on 5 April 1840, Princess Lieven asked if the Queen was pregnant,87 and at the same time Baroness Lehzen and Lady Lyttelton told Mrs Stevenson that the hopes of the nation “were not yet to be realized”.88 A few days later, at the fete organised in honour of the royal newly-weds by the Marchioness of Lansdowne, the Queen “danced with the young noblemen of the Court,

23 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS and the Prince with the daughters of the high nobility”.89 However, on 25 April the press reported that “it is whispered, in circles likely to be acquainted with the fact, that Her Majesty is in a way likely to prevent the succession to the throne from passing into any other90 than the direct line. The report derives strength from Her Majesty’s recent abstinence from her favourite exercise on horseback and also from dancing, in which she is known to take much pleasure”.91 On 12 May Lord Holland was reporting that “the knowing ladies are all confident she [the Queen] is with child”,92 and two weeks later Mrs Stevenson said that “to the great joy of her lieges she is, as ’Ladies will to be, who love their Lords’ and I suppose I may add in her case, who love their subjects”.93 On 15 May Prince Albert informed his stepmother: “We are now certain that Victoria is going to have a baby, and her confinement is expected for the end of November. This is most important event for us and will bring fresh developments into our life, and you will become a grandmother!”94

The advice given to pregnant women was to live normally during pregnancy. “Use moderate exercise and live as near as you can in your usual way” Lady Judith Milbanke (1751–1822) was advised by her aunt. As Lewis convincingly argued, contrary to popular opinion there was no social taboo against appearing in public when visibly pregnant, and indeed when pregnant women refrained from participating in social activities it was because of their health, rather than impropriety. Consequently, women usually stayed at home during the first trimester of pregnancy when nausea, dizziness, and vomiting were most likely to occur.95 Lady Frances Churchill, for example, went to the opera seventeen days before she gave birth while Lady Charlotte Guest gave a concert at her home only two weeks before her confinement and recalled, “At the beginning of the evening I attempted to sit down, but I was soon expelled from my seat by the crowd, and obliged to stand at the top of the staircase”.96 Heavily pregnant women were also accepted into the royal presence. In 1831, during the reign of William IV, Lady Clanwilliam attended the royal drawing room in her ninth month of pregnancy,97 Mary Elizabeth Lucy was presented at Court when she was five months pregnant,98 and Queen Victoria welcomed Lady Charlotte Guest who was six months pregnant to a ball at the Palace in 1840.99 In the case of Lady John Russell who visited the

24 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN

Court when heavily pregnant, the Queen even decided to circumvent the rules and allowed her to sit down although she took the precaution of placing another lady in front of her so that Prince Albert should not notice this breach of etiquette.100 As far as the Queen was concerned, public appearances were part of her everyday activities and in 1858 she recalled: “Think of me who at that first time [i.e. in 1840], very unreasonable, and perfectly furious as I was to be caught, having to have drawing rooms and levees and made to sit down – and be stared at”.101 She was aware of being “stared at” during all her official ceremonies, when she was on display for hours. Drawing rooms (during which ladies were officially presented) and levees (during which gentlemen were presented and sometimes knighted) held at St James’s Palace could last for a number of hours, with as many as 400 presentations.102 During the drawing room on 9 April 1840, which lasted from 2.30 p.m. to 4.00 p.m., the Queen stood the whole time and “was not a bit tired, but rested” when they returned.103 As the pregnancy progressed and it became obvious that she could not stand for hours during the presentations, Melbourne advised her that she should continue to hold them but be seated.104 Still, during the drawing room on 25 May she was “very obstinate & would not sit down, till Albert at last forced me to do so”.105 She did not have to sit down once during the drawing room on 25 June,106 but during the levee in July, when there were 400 presentations, she sat for the greater part and still was “dreadfully tired”.107 During her subsequent confinements Prince Albert would sometimes hold levees on behalf of the Queen,108 it having been agreed with the Prime Minister that all presentations to him were to be considered as equivalent to presentations to the Queen herself.109 Indeed, hated as it was by the Queen, her pregnancy was used on occasions as an excuse for avoiding something unpleasant. She seems to have used her main accoucheur Dr Locock to help her avoid certain public duties, for example, during her third pregnancy Prince Albert told the Prime Minister that doctor had forbidden the Queen to open Parliament in person.110 Her pregnancy was also the subject of comment, even by members of the royal family. In August 1840 Prince Albert was to receive the Freedom of the City. Since at that time the Queen’s ailing Aunt Augusta was much improved, after a “long parley” it was decided that the Prince should go to the ceremony but not stay for the banquet.111 On 28 August, when the Prince was in London, Victoria noted that it was her first dinner without him since their marriage. When the Prince returned before 11 p.m., he reported that all had gone well and he had been given a very kind

25 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS

reception.112 The next day, however, the newspapers reported that after the Prince left the Guildhall the Duke of Cambridge commented on his excusing himself from the dinner, saying:

“In fact the Prince had lately married a very fine girl, and they were somehow or other very fond of each other’s society (Laughter and immense cheering). He perceived that the Prince was readily excused. Indeed, there was not a lady or gentleman present who would not at once give him credit for the preference. (A laugh and cheering)”.113 Alluding to Victoria’s pregnancy, he added, that he thought that no-one present would deny the Prince credit for his “performances” to date.114

After the initial shock of her first pregnancy, the Queen seems to have been “in spirits”.115 In April, the Stevensons dined with the Queen (the first of the diplomats to be so honoured after the wedding) and Mrs Stevenson was delighted that the Queen looked “so happy that it was refreshing to see her with her handsome, manly-looking young husband sitting by her”. During the evening they frequently “conversed, and several times laughed with merry glee at the communications they made to each other”. The Queen appeared “much attached” to her husband and her manner was “certainly much more joyous and happy than I ever saw it before”.116 Despite the pregnancy, the Queen was not prepared to restrict her activi ties any more than was necessary, especially with regard to her favourite pastimes, dancing in particular. On 23 March she danced several quadrilles and waltzes, and a week later another evening party was organised during which she danced “several times” until 1.30 a.m., concluding with a quadrille that she danced with Count Valentine Esterhazy.117 However, on 31 March she felt very tired and had a “very nice little dinner” alone with Albert. The next day she rested till luncheon but was “being better”. On 2 April she did not feel very well and danced only one or two slow quadrilles rather than the more energetic gallops and waltzes.118 On 11 May she danced “only” three times – twice before supper and once after – but despite this, stayed until 3 a.m.. Writing at the end of May, Mrs Stevenson says that the Queen gave a ball “at which she was permitted to dance VERY LITTLE, and to take her steps with great circumspection”.119 Yet she continued to hold balls, and on 22 June danced the opening quadrille and another later on, although she did not join the waltzes or gallops.120 The ball finished at about 3 a.m., and Lord Holland expressed some concern

26 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN that if “he had been a nurse or man-midwife” he would not have approved of the Queen dancing in her condition.121 The Queen danced again three days later, but only the first quadrille before retiring to a sofa, while Albert danced several waltzes and other dances.122 Even on 20 July, she opened the ball by dancing a quadrille but was “rather knocked up”, adding, “I felt so vexed I could not join in the dancing, as I should have liked to do”.123 She only started to dance again on 22 January 1841, when she took “part in nearly all the dances” and greatly enjoyed herself.124 The Queen also continued to pursue her favourite sport of riding, although with time she no longer rode but drove in a pony phaeton and also went on long walks. In this way, she followed the accepted behaviour of aristocratic ladies. For example, on her arrival in London Lady Morley, who had previously ridden regularly even during the first months of pregnancy, gave up riding and instead took up walking as a form of exercise:

I have been trying my agility these last three months in taking a certain number of turns around the Square by which I calculate that I walk about two miles at a breathing this I believe is reckoned a good thing for all ladies under similar circumstances with myself, & for me I think it is quite necessary, as I have always been so much accustomed to air & exercise all my life, that if I was to be deprived of it like many London ladies I should lose all my faculties mental and corporal and fall into a state of utter imbecility.125

Lady Morley’s attitude was seconded by Mary Noel, who wrote to her niece: “As you are accustom’d to so active a life I fear you will be ill if you are too sedentary”.126 Later, the by then experienced Queen was to advise the pregnant Vicky not to keep her rooms too hot and to get as much fresh air as she could. “Your future health, your looks, your nerves and your power of usefulness depends on it”,127 adding that according to Dr James Clark, two hours daily of good air and exercise would insure her health.128 The Queen loved horse-riding and before her marriage she rode almost every day, weather permitting, although after she was married she gave up riding on 12 March, perhaps already suspecting she might be pregnant.129 Drives in a pony phaeton, as mentioned, replaced the rides. Before her marriage the Queen was not too fond of walking. She did take a walk now and then, and in bad weather even walked inside,130 despite complaining it bored her as she thought it tiring and disliked walking for

27 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS

walking’s sake. Notwithstanding this, Melbourne insisted that she should get out more in the fresh air (and be prudent about her diet) if she did not want to continue gaining weight. Melbourne’s advice was seconded by Uncle Leopold, who also urged her to walk and said that “not walking had hurt” Princess Charlotte so much.131 Greville, as previously mentioned, noticed that the morning after her wedding night the Queen was seen walking with Prince Albert, a change from her former habits.132 Indeed, after the wedding the Prince soon estab- lished a new daily routine. Instead of sleeping in in the morning, they had their breakfast at 9 a.m. and took a walk early every day unless the weather made it impossible. Then they would work together until lunch, which was served at 2 p.m., after which the Queen would meet Melbourne to discuss official business. Between 5 p.m. and 6 p.m. the Prince usually drove the Queen in a pony phaeton or, when he went riding, she drove with the Duchess of Kent or her ladies. Dinner was at 8 p.m., and after playing games or conversing with their guests the Queen and Prince Albert retired, usually before 11 p.m..133 Only when they went to the opera or the theatre would they go to bed later. At the end of July 1840, Prince Albert wrote to his stepmother that the Queen “[…] stands her condition satisfactorily though it is trying to be kept so long in town… I look forward with thankfulness and pleasure, to the move to Windsor, which will be so good for her in every way and where she can remain quietly till she has to return to town for the great event”.134 While pregnant, on most days the Queen continued to walk with Albert, weather permitting. On 12 August they took their last walk in the Buckingham Palace gardens before moving to Windsor for the summer, and the Queen commented that “when we return in November it is for an event, which I cannot say I am quite looking forward to with pleasure”.135 In Windsor, they also took their “usual walk” after breakfast,136 generally for half an hour. In September, Lady Lyttelton noticed that the Queen “looks in very good health, and is very active; out walking before ten this morning, and seeming determined to bear up and complain of nothing.”137 In October, she wondered how the Queen could walk so much and never be tired, “but so it is”.138 The walk was not missed even if the weather was windy or cold: “We walked out after breakfast, & there was a tremen- dously high wind, but I am so strong & active, that I brave all that”, wrote the Queen a few days before her confinement,139 but sometimes, usually because of rain, they remained indoors and “walked about in the corri- dor”.140 Now, accompanied by her “beloved Albert”, the Queen enjoyed

28 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN walking immensely. Even when they returned to Buckingham Palace in mid-November they did not fail to walk, although the weather was “very cold and raw”, taking their last walk just one day before the confinement.141

Pregnancy was often described as an illness, and “I was ill” meant “I was in labour”.142 On the other hand, many doctors believed that pregnancy was a normal, healthy, and even desirable condition.143 The guiding principle of prenatal care was to focus on the natural, and good health meant that all the elements of the human constitution, that is the four humours, had to be perfectly balanced, avoiding both weakness and plethora, or fullness. Most pregnant women were thought to be plethoric and were treated via a lowering system, which included bloodletting by leeching or cupping, or administering doses of an “opening” (laxative) medicine. However, the most important part of the lowering system was diet: pregnant women were given “cooling foods” such as fruits and vegetables, and prohibited from eating “heating foods” such as meat, eggs, and spices. They were also forbidden ‘heating” beverages, like coffee, tea, and alcohol.144 It was generally believed that Princess Charlotte “might have been saved if she had not been so much weakened”145 by a lack of exercise, but despite this view her doctor, Croft, was criticised for having weakened her by the diet he prescribed. She was not allowed eggs or food from animals for breakfast, for lunch she had the choice of “fruit and sweet meat” with “Bread or Biscuits”, and for dinner – “plain dressed Meat… that which is most easy of digestion, and not to exceed two glasses of Wine at and after Dinner and this is to be the only Wine taken in the course of the day”.146 Even if Princess Charlotte had obeyed the doctor’s orders – and she did not easily accept orders from anyone – her diet would have been substantially more nutritious than that of many of her pregnant contemporaries.147 Melbourne’s advice on learning of the Queen’s pregnancy was that she should eat and drink heartily, for which she needed little prompting. The Queen enjoyed eating and drinking, and even when she was still a girl Uncle Leopold wrote jokingly that he had heard that “a certain little princess… eats a little too much, and almost always a little too fast”.148 By the age of sixteen she was complaining to her half-sister of being “unhappily very fat”.149 Thomas Creevey, describing the Queen in 1837, said:

29 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS

A more homely little being you never beheld, when she is at her ease, and she is evidently dying to be always more so. She laughs in real earnest, opening her mouth as wide as it can go, showing not very pretty gums… She eats quite as heartily as she laughs, I think I may say she gobbles.150

“Gobbling” resulted in her gaining weight, and in 1838 she weighed almost 9 stone, “an incredible weight for my size”,151 and was described by a courtier as having “perhaps rather more appearance of a full habit of body than nice and nervous observers would quite approve”.152 Melbourne suggested that she should eat only when she was hungry, to which the Queen answered that she would have to eat all day since she was always hungry. She also loved to drink beer, although it was so fattening (and some also suspected it was not a suitable drink for the royal table), and tea, despite it “disagreeing” with her.153

It seems that during the pregnancy the Queen felt “as well as can be expected”. Morning sickness, vomiting, sleeplessness, and various aches and pains were viewed as good signs for an expectant mother. Morning sickness, one of the most frequent complaints of pregnant women, was believed to be desirable since it was thought that those susceptible to the complaint would not miscarry.154 Towards the end of a pregnancy sleeplessness was often a major complaint as women found it difficult to find a comfortable position. Denman thought that those who suffered most from insomnia usually gave birth to the healthiest children. He advocated the use of lax- atives, and as pregnant women were usually believed to be overheated, or plethoric, and so needed to be cooled, he suggested this could be achieved by dipping a towel in cold water and wrapping it around the hand, with one corner hanging over the edge of the bed. He did not advise opium as it might have been dangerous to both infant and mother.155 The Queen suffered from sleeplessness during her pregnancies, as did Vicky, who in 1858 asked her for advice on what to do. She responded:

I sent you today a bottle of camphor lozenges which I always have standing on my night table near my bed, whenever I go – since they were first recommended to me by Locock, when

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I was so restless before you were born, and I found them very soothing… They are perfectly simple and innocent, he said he found them the answer with ladies – and so have I”.156

She complained from time to time of “a dreadful headache, with which I awoke, & was obliged to lie down the whole morning”,157 “not feeling very well”,158 feeling very tired,159 awaking feeling “rather poorly & out of sorts”,160 feeling “as if I should faint”,161 of the need to rest often, or of bad162 or restless nights,163 but on the whole the pregnancy was uneventful. Even the attack by Edward Oxford on Constitution Hill (on 10 June 1840), when the Queen was four months pregnant, had no harmful effects on her health.164 Indeed, the next day Prince Albert wrote that his “[…] chief anxiety was lest the fright should have been injurious to Victoria in her present state, but she is quite well, as I am myself. I thank Almighty God for His protection. […].”165 This attempted assassination increased the Queen’s popularity dramatically and also led to the Regency Bill being passed, which appointed Prince Albert as Regent in the event of her dying before her child reached adulthood.166 Lady Lyttelton relates that when the Prince was asked by Lord Wriothesley Russell, a Canon of Windsor, if a prayer for the Queen’s “peculiar circumstances” should be added during the service, he said, “‘No, no. You have one already in the Litany – all women labouring of child. You pray already five times for the Queen. It is too much.’ Lord W. – ‘Can we pray Sir, too much for Her Majesty?’ Prince – ‘Not too heartily, but too often’”.167 The Queen’s pregnancy was not officially announced, but in May the physicians who were to be her accoucheurs, namely Charles Locock, Robert Ferguson, and Richard Blagden, were informed of their respective appoint- ments.168 The Queen had her Physician-in-Ordinary, Sir James Clark, but as he did not specialise in obstetrics he thought it prudent to call in renowned accoucheurs.169 The Queen met Dr Locock for the first time on 5 August 1840, and he “thought me, as I am, very well”.170 Dr Clark adds in his memorandum that Locock expressed himself “greatly pleased” with her appearance and excellent state of health and said he thought he had never seen the Queen looking so well.”171 Two days later she met Dr Ferguson “(the other ‘Accoucheur’)”, who also thought the Queen “uncommonly well” and hoped she would have “a very easy confinement”.172 Dr Ferguson says he continued to see the Queen during the summer, approximately every 10 days until the time she was confined, and usually found her very well.173

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Indeed, he expressed himself very much satisfied, saying he had rarely seen any lady before looking better and less altered in health. From the time of the Queen’s arrival at Windsor Castle on 12 August, Dr Clark saw her every third day and sometimes more often, and during the last three months of pregnancy he thought it appropriate that one of the accoucheur physicians should visit the Queen with him.174 There are no extant notes of the Queen’s “case” relating to her first pregnancy, apart from several entries in her journal and the memorandum by Dr Clark. On 9 July 1840, the Duchess of Kent noted in her journal that she dined at the Palace and “[…] dearest Albert told me that Victoria felt the life of her child. It made me very happy to hear it”.175 On 10 November, the Queen wrote to her half-sister Feodora that she was “[…] wonderfully well, really the Doctors say they never saw anybody so well. I take long walks, some in the highest wind, every day, and am so active, though of a great size I must unhappily admit.”176 In connection with the “great size” of the Queen, the letter written by Charles Arbuthnot177 to the Duke of Wellington is usually quoted in which he reports what Lady Mahon, a mutual friend of both himself and Dr Locock, had told him. Locock was certain that the Queen will be “[…] very ugly and enormously fat. He says that Her figure now is most extraordinary. She goes without stays or anything that keeps Her shape within bounds; and that she is more like a barrel than anything else”. Locock also informed Lady Mahon that no-one was to be at the delivery except himself, a nurse, and Prince Albert. Lady Mahon commented that no doubt the Queen would be very relieved at this privacy, “upon which [Locock] remarked that he verily believed from Her manner as to delicacy, She would not care one single straw if the whole world was present.”178

It was required by law that the birth of royal children should be witnessed by a number of ministers and other dignitaries. This was to ensure that a recently born infant was not smuggled into the bedroom as allegedly happened in 1688.179 However, when Queen Charlotte gave birth to a royal child in 1762, although the officers of state were summoned to attend it was only the Archbishop of Canterbury who was admitted into the chamber, with the others remaining in an adjoining room, the door to which was left open.180 When Queen Victoria herself was born, the Duke of Wellington,

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the Archbishop of Canterbury, and other officials also waited not in the lying-in chamber itself but in an adjoining room.181 In the case of Queen Victoria, who was a reigning monarch and who met her ministers and officers of state on daily basis, it was understandable she did not want them to witness the birth of her child. The Queen described the births of her children and the days that followed in her journal, usually summarising the days between the actual birth and the time when she was able to write once again. However, for her first confinement we also have the detailed reminiscences of Dr Ferguson, one of the three royal accoucheurs, who underlined that these were “merely such as may be told without infringing the sacred ties that bend together the minister to wants of the Body in Suffering and his Patient”. Royal births traditionally took place in London. Most aristocrats also chose to travel to London for their confinement, especially when it was their first child.182 The process of “going to town” was a custom,183 and in the case of royalty it was also a political statement. In fact, a good example of the political need for a birth to take place publicly in London was the birth of Queen Victoria herself. The heavily pregnant Duchess of Kent was driven to London in appalling conditions by her husband, trav- elling over 400 miles from Germany in only 20 days184 so that the potential heir to the throne could be born on English soil in the presence of official witnesses.185 All Queen Victoria’s children were born at Buckingham Palace, with the exception of Prince Alfred who was born at Windsor. The Queen usually went to London a few weeks before the expected confinement, although unfortunately serious miscalculations could occur.186 The usual method of determining the probable date of a confinement was to ascertain on which day the woman was last “unwell” [i.e. menstruated] and then count nine months forward and add seven days.187 In the case of the Queen’s first child she travelled from Windsor to Buckingham Palace on 13 November, “nearly a month before the usual expected time” as determined by Dr Locock, yet the child was born 8 days later. Dr Locock and his “right-hand woman”, Mrs Lilly, had been in attendance at Windsor Castle from 10 November, but until 20 November he was allowed to go to town every day.188 Dr Locock saw the Queen in London on 15 November and found her “very well & thinks the event likely to come off the 1rst days of next month”.189 Dr Ferguson was also “desired to wait on her” and claims he found such symptoms “as made me suspect that labour would occur very shortly”.190 Indeed, three days later, on the Saturday, the Queen was confined.

33 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS

It was, as she remembered years later, a “dark, dull, windy, rainy day with smoking chimneys”.191 On 17 November she had “rather a restless night”,192 yet on 19 November when the Duchess of Kent dined at the Palace she noted that “Victoria looked well and was also in good spirits”.193 Two days later, “just before the early hours of the morning of the 21rst,” the Queen writes,

I felt very uncomfortable & with difficulty aroused Albert from his sleep, who after a while, got Clark sent for. He came at ½ p. 2, Albert bringing him into the Bedroom. Clark said he would go to Locock.194 Tried to get to sleep again, but by 4, I got very bad and both the Doctors arrived.195 My beloved Albert was so dear & kind. Locock said the Baby was on the way & everything was all right. We both expressed joy that the event was at hand, & I did not feel at all nervous”.196

Dr Ferguson fills in more details. He arrived at 6 a.m. to find his col- leagues, that is Dr Clark, Dr Locock, and Mr Blagden already there. They were ushered to the Private Apartments in the north wing of the Palace and into a small, hot room, where they stayed until the labour was more advanced at which point they were called to the adjoining room in which the Queen was lying. The problem was that the doctors did not have clear guidelines as to what their respective tasks would be. The Queen remembered years later that her confinement was “far from comfortable or convenient” as the doctors were unsure how to treat her and because of “disputes and squab- bles”, chiefly caused by Baroness Lehzen who “would meddle” despite Prince Albert trying in vain to send her away.197 Dr Ferguson writes that he thought the public expected that the Queen’s confinement should be supervised by more than one doctor. Therefore, as the Queen’s personal physician he had written to Dr Clark in September to ascertain what was expected from each doctor but received no definitive answer. Additionally, as the confinement took them somewhat by surprise they did not have time to discuss their respective positions, which he calls “most unwise, and unsafe”. He suspected that Dr Locock would – if everything went smoothly – attempt to exclude them, and indeed, as the labour progressed, when Ferguson and Blagden wanted to wait on the Queen in the room where she was lying, Locock refused to countenance it and produced “a hurried message” that the

34 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN

Queen desired that none but he should be in the room. This meant, con- cluded Ferguson, that Dr Locock bore sole responsibility, although they were from time to time informed of the actual progress of the labour until the final stage was at hand. Thus, Dr Locock, the nurse – Mrs Lilly,198 and Prince Albert (as well as, for a time, the troublesome Lehzen) were the only people present in the green silk lying-in chamber.199 The Duchess of Kent arrived at the Palace before breakfast and briefly saw the Queen twice but did not remain in the lying-in chamber, waiting impatiently in Prince Albert’s room accompanied by Baron Stockmar.200 In the eighteenth century, husbands had been notoriously uninvolved in the birth of their children. When Caroline, Princess of Wales, gave birth to Princess Charlotte in 1796, no-one whom she herself had wished to be present was with her. She was attended by Dr Underwood, the accoucheur of Lady Melbourne, her husband’s mistress, officers of state including the Archbishop of Canterbury, and three noblemen who attended “at the special invitation of the Prince [of Wales]”. When Princess Charlotte gave birth in 1817 she had chosen Dr Richard Croft to be her accoucheur (and not Dr Knighton, who was suggested by her father).201 Her husband Leopold was present throughout the confinement, but her father and her grandmother – who had much experience as a mother herself – were not present, for which they were criticised.202 Prince Albert’s presence during the Queen’s confinements gave rise to a discussion on the appropriate conduct of husbands in the pages of The Lancet in 1841. Only one letter suggested it was neither “delicate nor decent” for the husband to be there, with the other six letters encouraging the presence of the spouse. “If husbands were present”, one physician wrote, “they would be less likely to question the propriety of the physician’s conduct”.203 It was accepted by that point in time that the presence of family members created an emotionally sympathetic atmosphere.204 Soon, Albert was “so dear & kind…, [he] hardly left me at all, & was the greatest support & comfort”.205 This was borne out by Dr Ferguson, who noted:

[…] nothing could exceed the tender anxiety of the Prince to his wife. He sat by her bedside during the whole time, cheered and sustained her – and covered her face with kisses ‘in the acme’ of her sharpest throes. He was pale and obviously very anxious, but this tho’ apparent in his

35 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS

bloodshot eye, and haggard expression, did not render his conduct tumultuous and unsettled in the smallest degree.206

As the Queen requested that the requisite official witnesses at the birth of an heir to the throne remain outside her lying-in chamber during her labour, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Prime Minister, the Foreign Minister, and the others assembled in a room which was “three removed” from that of the Queen, with the whole communicating by a line of folding doors. In the morning, Prince Albert wrote to Lord Melbourne announcing that the Queen was “taken ill” at about 5 a.m. and was going on perfectly well. As the physicians thought she would not be delivered until the evening, Albert suggested making the necessary arrangements for the ministers to come to the Palace by 2 p.m. but asked Melbourne to arrive earlier, as “many things might want settling”.207 In aristocratic families, childbirth did not take place in ancestral, four-poster beds but on a lightweight portable bed. This made the changing of sheets easier and allowed the doctors and nurses access to the woman,208 who was usually placed on the side of the bed so that after the delivery she could be moved to its dry centre.209 Clarke recommended that the woman “should be [dressed in] a shift tucked up under the arms with a short petticoat placed about the hips which is to be removed after labour and the dry shift drawn down”.210 In this way, both comfort and modesty were protected. Queen Victoria was rather superstitious,211 and after the birth of her first child she used the same “lucky” shift for each of her following eight confinements. Later, in 1863, she lent it to her second daughter, Princess Alice, for her first lying-in.212 Usually, the position assumed for delivery was the Sims position, in which the woman lay on her left side with her back towards the edge of the bed and her knees bent and drawn up to her abdomen.213 Denman regarded the position to be “by far the most convenient as well as decent”.214 The left side was preferred for undertaking examinations “[…] without the patient seeing either the practitioner or what he is about, which is of the greatest consequence…. It is the position of all others in which a woman can be delivered in accordance with that high and sensitive feeling of delicacy which at all times, and more particularly at this, pervaded the female breast”.215 The Sims position was also recommended because the accoucheur and patient did not have to look at each other, enabling the mother to “save face” in what was assumed to be an embarrassing situation. “Certainly no one is justified in exposing the patient, and STILL LESS IN LOOKING, and

36 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN

then apologising by saying she was not conscious, just as if it was possible, which I maintain it is not, for the accoucheur to tell whether the patient was or was not conscious of being exposed. Women do not make known all the wounds they receive on those occasions from imprudence.”216 In the case of the Queen, when labour reached its final stages sometime past noon, her bedroom door was opened and an ordinary French bedhead was seen to have been placed in the doorway, in the very centre of the line of folding doors by which the whole suite of apartments was connected. This meant that the officials could see the actual bed but not the Queen herself, because a screen had been erected at the footboard of the bed on which she lay. The nurse, Mrs Lilly, and Dr Locock could be seen on the left, and Prince Albert on the right. The Queen was quite invisible and, underlines Ferguson, despite her pains quite inaudible even to the doctors in the anteroom, “so firmly did she suppress her anguish”.217 This must have come as a surprise to Prince Albert, as a few weeks earlier the Queen had asked Locock whether she would “[…] suffer much pain. He replied that some pain was to be expected, but that he had no doubt Her Majesty would bear it very well. ‘Oh yes,’ said the Queen, ‘I can bear pain as well as other People’”. Despite this, Prince Albert told Locock that he did not think she would bear pain well at all, and that he expected “She would make a great Rompos”.218 As soon as the doors were opened, Ferguson and Blagden entered the room but Locock immediately made clear it that the Queen did not desire their presence. For a few moments, the child remained as yet unborn and Ferguson began to be afraid that if not assisted, it [the child] would be stillborn. However, its cries were soon heard and in an instant it was declared that a princess had been born. Thus, “after a good many hours suffering” wrote the Queen, “a perfect little child was born at 2 in the afternoon”.219 It is usually stated that on realising the sex of the child, Dr Locock declared, “Oh, Madam it is a princess”, and that the Queen replied: “Never mind, the next will be a prince”.220 These statements are based on Grenville’s report of his dinner on 18 December with the Earl of Erroll, Lord Steward of the Household, and one of the officials present at the accouchement. Erroll agreed to share with Greville “some gossip- ing details” of the Queen’s accouchement221 and told him that from the room [three rooms away from that in which the Queen was in labour] where he and the other officials were waiting, “he could see the Queen plainly the whole time and hear what she said”. This belies what Fergu- son wrote, namely that the officials could see the bed but not the Queen,

37 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS

because of the screen – and he even included in his report a drawing of the screen sheltering her from the eyes of the ministers. Also, it is not likely that Erroll could hear clearly the conversation between the Queen and Dr Locock. If so, why were the words of the Queen not heard by the other officials who would certainly have shared them with others? On the other hand, the report of Dr Ferguson, who was very close to the bed of the Queen, stated that on hearing Dr Locock declare that a princess was born, “the very first words which I heard were from the Queen [:] ‘I fear it will create great disappointment’”. Erroll also told Greville that later the baby was “brought stark naked” into the room where the ministers were and was laid on a table (already prepared). Ferguson writes that “as soon as the Child was removed from the Bed it was carried by Mrs Pegley the monthly nurse for the Infant,222 naked and wrapped in a flannel thro’ our room, direct to the Ministers – who looked on it and then rapidly disappeared”.223 The Observer adds:

Her Royal Highness was for a moment laid upon the table for the observation of the assembled authorities; but the loud tones in which she indicated her displeasure at such an expo- sure, while they proved the soundness of her lungs and the maturity of her frame, rendered it advisable that she should be returned to her chamber to receive her first attire.224

Lord Leveson informed his father, Lord Granville, that the Queen “does not mind its being a girl, she said, we must hope it will be a boy next time.”225 Whatever the Queen’s exact words after learning the sex of the child, she was disappointed. In June she had written to her Uncle Leopold that if her “plagues” were to be “rewarded only by a nasty girl”, she would drown it.226 However, she now noted in her journal: “After a good many hours suffering, a perfect little child was born at 2 in the afternoon, but alas! a girl & not a boy, as we both had so hoped & wished for. We were, I am afraid, sadly disappointed…”227 The Queen was, however, grateful for get- ting through the ordeal safely. Prince Albert too, was rather disappointed: “Albert, father of a daughter, you will laugh at me!” he wrote to his broth- er, Ernest.228 “I should have preferred a boy, yet as it is, I thank heaven”, he wrote two days later.229 Years later the Queen wrote to Vicky saying she remembered “dear Papa’s great kindness and anxiety – though he was disappointed you were not a boy”.230 The Duchess of Kent also admitted that “we were a little disappointed that it was not a Boy”.231 When in 1858

38 1. 1840–1844: THE FIRST FOUR CHILDREN

the Queen learned that Vicky was pregnant, she wrote to her that in 1840 she had “[…] much wished for a girl, as boys cause so much more suffering, and sometimes one buys the experience with one’s first child and therefore a girl is sometimes better. But I know that after Bettie was born with whom I suffered far the most severely, the doctors said it was a mercy it had not been the first child as it would have been a very serious affair. But as it is, and as your darling child is so healthy and strong it is much better it should be a boy”.232 When writing to Lord Granville, Lord Clarendon was straightforward in saying that both parents “were much disappointed at not having a son, I believe because they thought it would be a disappointment to the country”, but, he added, the English people were happy “to have a life more, whether male of female” interposed between the succession and the hated Duke of Cumberland (King of Hanover), who until then had been next in line to the throne.233 Granville also received a letter from his son, who informed him that at Court “they pretend that the despatch announcing the safe delivery of the Queen to the King of Hanover, only contained the design of a little naked boy going snook, i.e. with his finger up to his nose.”234 The Observer added, “[…] that the offspring of the royal marriage should be a female no one will regret; the constitution of this country has so provided for the transition of the royal dignity, that it becomes a matter of slight importance, to the nation. The young Princess becomes the heir apparent, and in default of male issue succeeds to the Crown, as did her Mother.”235 Yet, one of the sketches known as Political Hits showed Melbourne as the nurse holding the baby, offering John Bull a cup of the caudle, saying, “I hope the caudle is to your liking, Mr. Bull, it must be quite a treat, for you have not had any so long”. To which Bull answers, “Why, to tell you the truth, Mother Melbourne, I think the caudle the best of it, but why was it not a boy?”. On hearing this, Prince Albert, who is present, promises “one leetle poy” next year.236 The traditional aristocratic confinement, or lying-in, was highly ritu- alied, usually lasting between four and six weeks before ending with the “churching”, which represented the return from childbirth to society. The new mother was traditionally confined to “[…] a room whose every crevice was kept shut, with the windows battened down with shutters, curtains and blankets. The hinges of the door were greased, and the very keyholes blocked out”, and her diet consisted mostly of broth and gruel.237 Traditionally, communal caudle-drinking would take place during the lying-in. Caudle was a hot mixture of wine and thin gruel given to women

39 I. THE PREGNANCIES AND CONFINEMENTS to ease their labour pains, but it was also viewed as beneficial for the sick and convalescent.238 It was made from fine oatmeal (or sometimes Naples biscuits crushed in a mortar) beaten with egg yolks, mixed with spiced or sweetened wine or ale, and boiled.239 In the case of the royal children, for several days after their birth members of society as well as ordinary people paid their respects and enquired after the health of the royal mother and child – they were rewarded with “cake and caudle”.240 After the birth of the future King George IV in 1762, the new-born Prince was displayed in his cradle at St James’s Palace between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. so respects could be paid to him, with £500 worth of cake consumed and about 80 gallons of caudle drunk every day.241 When the youngest daughter of George III, Princess Amelia, was born, the ceremony of caudle-drinking lasted for two weeks from 10 a.m. to noon every day. An individual who took part in the ceremony describes it thus:

It [caudle] was served in the spacious room next the presence chamber, in St. James’s Palace. It was drawn from two large boilers placed behind a bar, by a lady, and then given to two of the gentlemen of the Household in full-dress, and by them to the company, on splendid silver salvers. The cups which held the caudle held about a quarter of a pint each. There was both brown and white, of which the person to whom it was presented made choice. Another of the Household handed a slice of seed and plum cake to the company, who having been thus regaled, were directed to leave the chamber immediately to make room for others. 242

Some historians claim that by 1770 “the doctors outlawed caudle”,243 but at the Royal Court caudle-drinking survived at least until 1841 although it is difficult to say how common it was by then. In November 1840, Lord Leveson was at Buckingham Palace when Queen Victoria gave birth to her first child and he was invited to drink caudle with the Lady-in-Waiting and Maids of Honour.244 It seems he did not view caudle-drinking as unusual.245 After the birth of the Prince of Wales in 1841, the “royal caudle was served to all the Foreign Ministers and their ladies” and to visitors of “a certain rank and station” who called personally at Buckingham Palace to make their enquiries “after the state of the Queen and the infant prince”. The ceremony took place every day until Thursday, 18 November.246