Queen Victoria | Page 8

the House had been divided between the Albertine and Ernestine
branches: from the former descended the electors and kings of Saxony;
the latter, ruling over Thuringia, became further subdivided into five
branches, of which the duchy of Saxe-Coburg was one. This
principality was very small, containing about 60,000 inhabitants, but it
enjoyed independent and sovereign rights. During the disturbed years
which followed the French Revolution, its affairs became terribly
involved. The Duke was extravagant, and kept open house for the
swarms of refugees, who fled eastward over Germany as the French
power advanced. Among these was the Prince of Leiningen, an elderly
beau, whose domains on the Moselle had been seized by the French,

but who was granted in compensation the territory of Amorbach in
Lower Franconia. In 1803 he married the Princess Victoria, at that time
seventeen years of age. Three years later Duke Francis died a ruined
man. The Napoleonic harrow passed over Saxe-Coburg. The duchy was
seized by the French, and the ducal family were reduced to beggary,
almost to starvation. At the same time the little principality of
Amorbach was devastated by the French, Russian, and Austrian armies,
marching and counter-marching across it. For years there was hardly a
cow in the country, nor enough grass to feed a flock of geese. Such was
the desperate plight of the family which, a generation later, was to have
gained a foothold in half the reigning Houses of Europe. The
Napoleonic harrow had indeed done its work, the seed was planted; and
the crop would have surprised Napoleon. Prince Leopold, thrown upon
his own resources at fifteen, made a career for himself and married the
heiress of England. The Princess of Leiningen, struggling at Amorbach
with poverty, military requisitions, and a futile husband, developed an
independence of character and a tenacity of purpose which were to
prove useful in very different circumstances. In 1814, her husband died,
leaving her with two children and the regency of the principality. After
her brother's marriage with the Princess Charlotte, it was proposed that
she should marry the Duke of Kent; but she declined, on the ground
that the guardianship of her children and the management of her
domains made other ties undesirable. The Princess Charlotte's death,
however, altered the case; and when the Duke of Kent renewed his
offer, she accepted it. She was thirty-two years old--short, stout, with
brown eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, cheerful and voluble, and
gorgeously attired in rustling silks and bright velvets.
She was certainly fortunate in her contented disposition; for she was
fated, all through her life, to have much to put up with. Her second
marriage, with its dubious prospects, seemed at first to be chiefly a
source of difficulties and discomforts. The Duke, declaring that he was
still too poor to live in England, moved about with uneasy precision
through Belgium and Germany, attending parades and inspecting
barracks in a neat military cap, while the English notabilities looked
askance, and the Duke of Wellington dubbed him the Corporal. "God
damme!" he exclaimed to Mr. Creevey, "d'ye know what his sisters call
him? By God! they call him Joseph Surface!" At Valenciennes, where

there was a review and a great dinner, the Duchess arrived with an old
and ugly lady-in-waiting, and the Duke of Wellington found himself in
a difficulty. "Who the devil is to take out the maid of honour?" he kept
asking; but at last he thought of a solution. "Damme, Freemantle, find
out the mayor and let him do it." So the Mayor of Valenciennes was
brought up for the purpose, and--so we learn from Mr. Creevey--"a
capital figure he was." A few days later, at Brussels, Mr. Creevey
himself had an unfortunate experience. A military school was to be
inspected--before breakfast. The company assembled; everything was
highly satisfactory; but the Duke of Kent continued for so long
examining every detail and asking meticulous question after meticulous
question, that Mr. Creevey at last could bear it no longer, and
whispered to his neighbour that he was damned hungry. The Duke of
Wellington heard him, and was delighted. "I recommend you," he said,
"whenever you start with the royal family in a morning, and
particularly with THE CORPORAL, always to breakfast first." He and
his staff, it turned out, had taken that precaution, and the great man
amused himself, while the stream of royal inquiries poured on, by
pointing at Mr. Creevey from time to time with the remark, "Voila le
monsieur qui n'a pas dejeune!"
Settled down at last at Amorbach, the time hung heavily on the Duke's
hands. The establishment was small, the country was impoverished;
even clock-making grew tedious at last. He brooded--for in spite of his
piety the Duke was not without a vein of superstition--over the
prophecy of