A royal whipping

Reading a – disappointing – book the other day about the two eminent gentlemen who edited Queen Victoria’s letters for publication, I did find a few interesting phrases.

The future queen’s upbringing was supervised by Sir John Conroy, comptroller of her household and her late father’s equerry. The “strict program for the princess’s education” meant that he read all letters sent out by the princess and her sisters. Yet on one occasion her older half-sister Feodora:

“hid a note to the Duchess of Northumberland in a letter to Queen Adelaide, which she sent in the care of a private citizen; she hoped to avoid it being intercepted by Conroy.”

“Hoped” to avoid. Now a little online research reveals that:

Feodora was eager to permanently leave their residence at Kensington Palace, as her “only happy time was driving out” with Victoria and her governess Baroness Louise Lehzen because she could “speak and look as she liked”.

So it doesn’t take much to imagine that her note was discovered, and that it was found to contain a litany of complaints against Sir John. Nor to imagine that he would call for her to report to him in the drawing room in her nightclothes before bedtime that evening; that he would tell her that she was a disobedient, ungrateful and insolent girl, and that he intended to punish her severely.

That she would speak back to him, curtly, and be slapped smartly across the face. “Do you wish me to call for servants to hold you down whilst I whip you?”

That she would quieten, apologise, plead for mercy. That none would be forthcoming.

Bent over the end of a chaise longue, I feel. Nightdress lifted. Switches cut freshly that afternoon from a tree in the palace garden, used two at a time until they were worn and replaced with new ones.