Memoir of Queen Adelaide, Consort of King William IV.Doran, Dr. (John)
History
Memoir of Queen Adelaide, Consort of King William IV.
Doran, Dr. (John)
Adelaide, Queen, consort of William IV, King of Great Britain, 1792-1849
Occasionally, there was a truth mixed up with the harder words, which
even ultra-Tories could not gainsay, as when the "Times" remarked, that
"a foreigner was no very competent judge of English liberties, and
politics are not the proper field for female enterprize or exertion."
When this strong hint was taken to have failed, and Queen Adelaide was
still supposed to be conspiring with the daughters of George III. to
turn King William from his liberal views, this was the tone with which
the royal lady was lectured by the press:--"There is a lady of high
rank, who must be taught a salutary, though a very painful, lesson. She
may be bold as an amazon, be troublesome, importunate, or overbearing,
but her present course is one from which can follow nought but final
wretchedness. Why has she so eagerly, within these few hours, bidden
her gossips not to despair? Why such haste to tell them, all will be
well! The King will do without the Whigs! Yes, madam, but England will
not. Still less will England do without the unmutilated Bill."
At another time, Queen Adelaide was reminded that if a female influence
drove Necker from the court of Louis XVI., one of the consequences was
the destruction of the most influential lady; another, the ruin of the
country. The influence being assumed to be still active, allusion was
made to the "foreign woman whom the nation may have too easily
adopted." Reports were rife that intrigues were on foot, the object of
which was to induce liberal peers to betray their party, and then the
public censor showered imprecations on "blandishments and intreaties,
urged with a force and pertinacity which, coming from a monarch, are
difficult to be refused."
On the other hand, the Conservative press drew its own inferences, and
made its own accusations. When the cholera was raging, during the
reform fever, Queen Adelaide's drawing-room happened to be very thinly
attended. The real cause was lost sight of, and Her Majesty was
respectfully assured that the scanty attendance was entirely owing to
Lord Grey's revolutionary government, beneath which all old English
energy, vitality, and spirit, had become so extinct, that it was
unequal to the exertion of even manifesting respect for an English
Queen.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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