Charlie Fenton > Recent Status Updates

‘I look at him with compassion. How will anyone ever find the courage to tell him anything that does not please him? How will this indulged boy ever learn wisdom in manhood if nobody ever dares to say no to him? How will he learn to judge a liar from a true man if everyone, even the truest, cannot speak a word to him that is not good news?’

I really can’t imagine losing that many children and knowing that your husband is drifting further and further away with each loss. I really do feel sorry for Katherine.

‘We have to wait for the next girl that Henry takes to his bed, who will wind her arms around his neck and whisper in his ear that look! see! God does not bless his marriage. It had only been twenty months and yet there have been three tragedies: one miscarriage, one child vanished clear away from the womb, one baby dead in its cradle.’

‘He gave me his name, and death does not take it away from me. Now I am Lady Margaret Pole the widow, as I once was Lady Margaret Pole the wife. But the important thing is that his name is not buried with him. I can keep it. I can hide my true self behind it; even in death he will keep me safe.’

‘The duchess may have made mistakes in the raising of her daughter, but she never left Victoria in any doubt as to her unswerving devotion. This was mainly expressed in a series of affectionate little notes that she placed in her daughter’s bedroom at Kensington. These required the same effort that the duchess urged in her daughter, because they were written in English’

‘In 1824 Louise Lehzen was appointed governess to Princess Victoria. The daughter of a village clergyman from Lagenhagen, near Hanover, Lehzen was 40 when she took up her new position. She had previously been governess to Princess Feodore, and had travelled with her to England five years earlier. A rather stern woman, she was nevertheless devoted to her new charge.’

‘Managing the duchess’s public and private accounts was Conroy’s most important responsibility. Having been appointed comptroller of her household, he approved staff salaries and household expenses and signed off the accounts every months. By 1826 he was actively controlling Victoria’s education with the duchess and was approving payments to tutors for the princess’s lessons’

Really enjoying this! I love the mix of personal stories of those on the Titanic and the actual sinking. So much I didn’t know.

‘The sky had lifted to a leaden grey by the time Frances reached the Tower. She had half an hour at most before she must board a boat back to Whitehall. At sight of the dark outline of the imposing keep, Frances felt a chill run through her. Would she soon return here a prisoner - a traitor? She knew all too well the horrors that Tom and his fellow plotters had suffered.’

‘Tender letters that the duke and duchess wrote to one another in the weeks and months following the christening of their baby daughter reveal their genuine affection for one another. While he was away, she supplied her ‘sweet husband’ with loving reports of the daily activities of their ‘little angel’.’

‘The idea that Cecil was gone seemed impossible. He has been a constant, menacing presence ever since her first arrival at court eight years before. Even the years she had spent at Tyringham had been blighted by the knowledge that he had set someone to watch her. He had superintended her torture as a suspected witch and had hounded Tom to his death.’

‘his plan to help Seymour visit his new wife. But she had reasoned that even if such visits took place, the chances of their resulting in a pregnancy were surely remote. Certainly she had hoped so. More and more, she found the idea of this arrogant and headstrong woman on the throne utterly repellent. Queen Anne was right: Arbella served her own interests, not those of the faith.’

‘Victoria had not yet seen him, but at three that morning, Bertie had arrived at Windsor from Cambridge, summoned by telegram by his sister. She hadn’t contacted Bertie herself, for she blamed him for his father’s illness. Albert’s discovery of ‘that dreadful business in the Curragh’, Victoria believed, had burdened his mind so heavily that his resistance to illness was reduced.’

‘Bertie, her second, brought with him an episode of severe postnatal depression. Victoria began to see visions, ‘spots on peoples faces, which turned into worms’, while ‘coffins floated’ before her eyes. Even Albert grew worried... Victoria came to understand that her depression was a distinct malady that came and went, but which affected her particularly during and after pregnancy.’

‘“I fear it will create great disappointment,” Victoria replied, immediately seeing the implications of the baby’s gender. It would have been better politics to have produced a male heir straight away, as she and Albert “had so hoped & wished for. We were, I am afraid, sadly disappointed.”‘

‘“I pledged no more than this and would not place those I love in any greater danger than I have already.”
Sir Walter lowered his face so that it was almost touching hers. She could feel his breath hot against her mouth. “You have no choice,” he whispered, eyes glinting. “If you make a pact with Satan, then he marks you for ever as his own. You are the devil’s slave, Lady Frances.”’

‘In modern times people might worry about the generic consequences of first cousins mating, but in a century when people believed that they could only marry within their social class, the pool of potential spouses was smaller - for royalty, the pool was a puddle - and needs must. It would be impossible for Victoria to find a socially acceptable suitor to whom she wasn’t in some way related.’

‘Flora might be pregnant despite her virginity: ‘one could not tell if such things could not happen.’ Indeed, the London Medical and Physical Journal had recently reported on the curious case of a pregnant woman who had not experienced penetrative sex. After all, there were other forms of sexual intimacy.’

I have no words for this.

‘Despite these precautions, when Victoria was weighed at the end of her first year as queen, she found - to her ‘horror’ - that she weighed 8 stone 13 (56.6kg)... Her reported weight would give Victoria, at 1.52 metres tall, a modern body mass index of 24.4. It is healthy, but only just. She was very close to being classed, in today’s terms, as obese.’

‘The encounter with Cecil had been unsettling enough, but the idea of making her obeisance before a king she despised - and whom she had resolved to help destroy - was almost too much for her. With luck, he would pay her little heed - she was, after all, of the wrong sex to hold his interest for long.’

‘Budgeted at £70,000, it was to be cheap, but not cut-price like the previous coronation, which had been staged for Victoria’s uncle William IV. Costing just £30,000, this one had caused disappointment, and subsequently became known as the ‘Half-Crown-ation’. Yet Victoria’s would nowhere near approach the £240,000 cost of the one before that, her uncle George IV’s, which was considered over the top.’

‘During the course of the next few days, Albert gave the impression that he was a little too young, and a lot too naïve, to know exactly what a prince was supposed to do when he met a princess. He had a strong sense of pride, but lacked savoir faire. He failed to join in properly, remaining detached from and uncommitted to the programme his aunt had arranged.’

‘But the typhoid wasn’t even the worst of it. Conroy and her mother now tried to take advantage of Victoria’s weakness to bully her into consolidating their position. Although she was ‘very ill’ Victoria wrote, they now attempted to force her to promise that she would make Conroy her Private Secretary and chief advisor. He wanted to be the power behind her throne.’

‘Everyone knew that the Regent must make the final choice.
“Alexandrina,” he pronounced. The name would be a compliment to the baby’s godfather, the Tsar of Russia.
But it was quietly suggested that she needed more than one name.
“Give her the mother’s name also then,” he conceded, grumpily.’

‘If only Iris had come to him. If only she had come when he invited her to his shop, when he asked her to the Exhibition. Things could have been so different. If only Flick hadn’t teased him but had walked next to him and taken his hand in hers. He merely wanted to be their friend. And really, they only have themselves to blame.’

‘Edward’s prayers were answered. After a short, smooth labour of six hours, it was 4.15 on the morning of 24 May 1819 that ‘a pretty little princess, plump as a partridge’ was born. Edward’s ‘Mayflower’, as he called her, was perfect in his eyes, ‘truly a model of strength and beauty combined’.’

‘Victoria’s father, then, was a tortured man, unsure of his life’s purpose. Duty had taken him to Germany, Switzerland, Spain and Canada, but he really longed for home, security and romantic happiness. He tried to make himself feel better with absurdly spendthrift behaviour, particularly in the matter of houses and interior decoration. He ran up such huge debts‘

This is becoming very much like The Collector now, a book I really enjoyed reading.

‘It is Iris. Lifelike, perfect, stilled. The exactness of it astonishes him. He feels as if he could climb in and join her in the painting, feel the warm pulse of her throat... Silas notices a group of men admiring the painting, but they must not gaze on her. He does not want these imposters absorbing the puck of her lip, the twist of her collarbone, the wide spacing of her eyes. She is his Queen.’

This is an odd mixture between non-fiction and fiction, I’m not 100% sure how I feel about it, writing about how all the various people involved felt, did etc.