Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 1Tytler, Sarah
History
Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 1
Tytler, Sarah
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901
From the Princess's fifth year Dr. Davys, afterwards Bishop of
Peterborough, was her tutor. When it became clear that the little girl
would, if she lived, be Queen of England, a prelate high in the Church was
proposed to the Duchess of Kent as the successor of Dr. Davys in his
office. But the Duchess, with the mild firmness and conscientious fidelity
which ruled her conduct, declared that as she was perfectly satisfied with
the tutor who had originally been appointed (when the appointment was less
calculated to offer temptations to personal ambition and political
intrigue), she did not see that any change was advisable. If a clergyman
of higher rank was necessary, there was room for the promotion of Dr.
Davys. Accordingly he was named Dean of Chester.
The Baroness Lehzen was another of the Queen's earliest guardians who
remained at her post throughout her Majesty's youth. Louise Lehzen,
daughter of a Hanoverian clergyman, came to England as governess to
Princess Feodora Leiningen and remained as governess to Princess Victoria,
entering on her duties in 1824. In 1827 she was raised to the rank of a
Hanoverian Baroness, by George IV., at the request of Princess Sophia.
From that time Baroness Lehzen acted also as lady in attendance. On her
death, so late as 1870, her old pupil recorded of her, in a passage in the
Queen's journal, which is given in the "Life of the Prince Consort," "My
dearest, kindest friend, old Lehzen, expired on the 9th quite gently and
peaceably.... She knew me from six months old, and from my fifth to my
eighteenth year devoted all her care and energies to me with the most
wonderful abnegation of self, never even taking one day's holiday. I
adored, though I was greatly in awe of her. She really seemed to have no
thought but for me.... She was in her eighty-seventh year." This constancy
and permanency in the family relations were in themselves inestimable
boons to the child, who thus grew up in an atmosphere of familiar
affection and unshaken trust, for the absence of which nothing in the
world could have compensated. Another lady of higher rank was of necessity
appointed governess to the Queen in 1831, when she became next heir to the
throne. This lady, the Dowager Duchess of Northumberland, appears also as
the Queen's friend in after life.
The late Bishop Wilberforce was told by Dr. Davys an interesting anecdote
of his former pupil. "The Queen always had from my first knowing her a
most striking regard to truth. I remember when I had been teaching her one
day, she was very impatient for the lesson to be over--once or twice
rather refractory. The Duchess of Kent came in, and asked how she had
behaved. Lehzen said, 'Oh, once she was rather troublesome.' The Princess
touched her and said, 'No, Lehzen, twice, don't you remember?' The Duchess
of Kent, too, was a woman of great truth."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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