When Victoria was just a child, she was next in line for the throne of Great Britain. Her
uncle was king William Iv and he did not trust Victorias mother or her “evil advisor”.
You see Victorias father had died when she was young and her mother, the Duchess of Kent
found her self relying on tbe assistance of a man named sir John conroy. He was the comptroller
of the duchesses household and he essentially had her under his thumb. You see he had promised
to protect the Duchess after the death of the Duke of Kent and she soon came to depend
on him. But this was all detrimental to the then young Victoria. She therefore experienced
a childhood that was cruel and lacking of motherly love which Victoria so desperately
wanted. You see sir John monitored everything Victoria did. From what she ate. What she
read. Whom she played with. Everything. Sir John was essentially the main reason why Victoria
was almost completely cut off from the rest of the royal family. You see it all boiled
down to this. Sir John and the Duchess of Kent wanted two things. Victoria was going
to be Queen. But, they wanted sir John to become her private secretary and for her mother,
the Duchess to become Regent if the king died before Victoria became of age and turned 25.
Victoria however repeatedly said no and turned the request down. She hates John Conroy and
she hated the effect he had on her mother.
However due to Victorias refusal the Kensington system was born. This system had one aim.
To make Victoria so reliant on her mother that the public would see no other option
than to assign the duchess as regent.
The Kensington system was in a sense quite cruel. Maybe sir John thought he was doing
the right thing. But the mental strain it had on the then Princess Victoria was horrendous.
the System was for the young Victoria’s personal safety. It demanded
she be kept in semi-seclusion at Kensington Palace. Behind the garden walls, she’d be
isolated from both disease and assassination attempts. Secondly, the fact that she was
rarely seen at court distanced her, in people’s minds, from the unpopular regime of her uncles,
Kings George and then William IV. As a possible future queen, she’d remain untainted by
association with them. She would be a fresh start – or, as Conroy put it, “the Nation’s
Hope”.
But thirdly – and sinisterly – the System also seems to have been about breaking Victoria’s
spirit, and getting her to submit.
It contained an element of surveillance: she wasn’t allowed to sleep alone, play with
other girls or even walk downstairs without having someone holding her hand. Victoria
had her every move closely monitored. She wasn’t allowed to sleep alone. To walk almond.
To play with other children and she was not even allowed to walk down the stairs without
holding someone’s hand. And each day she had to write in her ‘Behaviour Book’ how
well – or badly – she’d behaved.
Victorias education was given by her mother “nothing and no one should be able to tear
the daughter away from her.” Secondly, it was to “give the Princess Victoria an upbringing
which would enable her in the future to be equal of her high position” and to “win
her so high a place in the hearts of her future subjects, even before her accession, that
she would assume the sceptre with a popularity never yet attained and rule with commensurate
power.” At the age of 5 Victorias education began.
To start with she was tutored by the dean of Chester. He instructed her on scripture.
Her mother would then after every lesson drill her. Then at 8 Victoria started to learn how
to hold herself as a lady and decorum. She learnt how to read and write. She also learnt
Greek, Latin, Italian, French and German. A strict daily schedule was imposed by the
duchess and Morning lessons began at 9:30 sharp with a break at 11:30. Lessons would
resume for the afternoon at 3:00 and would last until 5:00.
The system was an utter failure and Victoria grew to hate her mother because of it.
Victoria was never allowed to be apart from her mother, her tutor or her governesses (baroness
lehzen and the Duchess of Northumberland). She was kept apart from other children and
both her mother and sir John would strictly monitor and record her every movement and
action and also whom she was allowed to meet with.
During her childhood, Victoria was only allowed to have two play friends, Princess feodora
of leiningen and sir johns Daugher victoire. Although she didn’t particularly get along
with sir johns daughter.
Victoria was also unable to leave the grounds of tbe palace in which she called home. On
only two recorded occasions was she able to visit claremont to see her uncle leopold I
of Belgium greatly influenced Victoria's opinion on the System. As previously mentioned, when
the duchess and sir John knew that Victoria would soon inherit the throne , they threatened
her to try and obtain so sort of power for themselves. But Victoria was stronger than
that and she stood her ground.
As said, King William IV did not trust the duchess or sir John and he made this know
at his last birthday meal. A birthday which would be his last. He shouted how the duchess
had evil advisors and in turn the duchess left the room in a huff and the young Victoria
was left in tears.
Victoria as she grew into her late teens had finally had enough of her mother and sir John.
Since a young age she had been restricted by the following 8 rules of tbe Kensington
system.
1. Victoria was not allowed to spend time by herself and she always had to sleep in
her mother’s room. 2. Victoria could not walk downstairs without
holding the hand of an adult in case she fell. (It sounds melodramatic, but Victoria did
actually confirm in later life that this was a rule she had to abide by.)
3. Victoria was not allowed to meet any strangers or third parties without her governess being
present. 4. The young Victoria had to write in a ‘Behaviour
Book’ how well she’d behaved each day, so that her mother could assess her progress. Sometimes
it was good, sometimes “VERY NAUGHTY”. 5. Victoria could only appear in public on
carefully stage-managed ‘publicity tours’. This was to distance her from the unpopular regime
of her uncles, Kings George IV and William IV, and to present her as “the Nation’s
Hope”. 6. Victoria was not allowed to dance the scandalous
and intimate new dance called the waltz, not even (as is often said) with other royal relations. She
would never waltz until married to Prince Albert.
7. Victoria had to build up her strength by exercising with her Indian clubs [a pair of
bowling-pin shaped wooden clubs] and a machine with pulleys and weights, and was mandated
to have plenty of fresh air. She would be a life-long devotee of open windows, to the
extent that her courtiers would always be shivering.
8. The young Victoria was not allowed to gorge on her food. She was allowed to eat bread
with milk and plain roast mutton, and was restricted from eating her favourite things:
sweetmeats and fruit.
As Victoria approached her 18th birthday, king William IV, her uncle, offered Victoria
her own household and an allowance. This did not o down very well with sir John or the
duchess. They were furious.
On 20 June 1837, the King died, and Victoria became Queen at last. Her first actions as
queen were simple. She was now queen and she could finally have her freedom from her mother
and sir John. All her life Victoria had shared a bedroom with ten duchess and she now wanted
her bed and things moved to her own room. And secondly she wanted some time to herself.
She ordered that for an hour a day she would be able to go on independent walks.
“The home-loving Victoria would become the perfect pin-up for a country tired of the
debauchery and excesses of previous kings”
The damage had been done in terms of the queens relationship with her mother. She refused
to change her mother’s rank and did not want Sir John as her private secretary. It
was only when Victoria married and her children came along that the relationship somewhat
defrosted. The duchess was a doting grandmother and and upon the death of Sir John Conroy,
the Duchess of Kent wrote to Victoria, “He has been of great use to me, but unfortunately
has also done great harm.” Victoria Said to her mother in response that
the days she spoke about were king in the past and therefore long forgotten.
When the Duchess of Kent was ill in 1859, a worried Victoria wrote to her uncle, King
Leopold I of Belgium, “I hardly myself knew how I loved her, or how my whole existence
seems bound up with her, till I saw looming in the distance the fearful possibility of
what I will not mention.” The Duchess recovered this time, but her fatal illness came in March
1861. Victoria sat by her mother’s bedside on a footstool holding her mother’s hand
when she realised that she had stopped breathing. The Duchess of Kent died on 16 March 1861.
Albert took Victoria into the next room and a devastated Victoria wrote to her uncle,
King Leopold, “On this, the most dreadful day of my life, does your poor heartbroken
child write one line of love and devotion. She is gone!” Victoria cried for weeks and
deeply regretted their estrangement.
So Victoria grew up under a regime of strict rules that essentially took her childhood
from her. She wished her mother had been more doting and less under the control of an evil
man and even in the end. After everything. She wished she and her mother could have been
better together. After the birth of her children, Victoria really got to know her mother. The
mother she could have been.
There is no doubt that Conroy was indeed a manipulative bully, but there is also something
more to his poor reputation among historians than just Victoria’s well-recorded dislike.
The snobbish court establishment looked down on his lack of an aristocratic background.
Sir John conroy had obtained his position all by his own efforts.
Something that some over time have found quite troubling.
The system had three parts essentially and actually the first two were successful. Victoria
was kept safe and through all the carefully planned and staged public appearances, Victoria
, once queen was met with an enormous amount of warmth. And sadly but possibly true, you
could argue that although the harsh upbringing of Victoria did not in fact break her, it
was in fact the making of her reign.