Victoria as a Girl: The Patient Rebel

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• 1. 'Horribly naughty'
• 2. Melodramatic flair
• 3. Placating others
• 4. Female influences
• 5. Male companionship
• 6. Find out more
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'Horribly naughty'

In the spring of 1819, the Duke and Duchess of Kent hurried from their rented accommodation in Amorbach, Bavaria, to return to the Duke's native land, 'in order,' he wrote, 'to render the Child [my wife] bears, virtually as well as legally English.' Thus, the robust English Princess Alexandrina Victoria was born on 24th May 1819 in Kensington Palace, London. Just after her baptism, however, the debt-ridden Kents moved from London to Devonshire, where they found it easier to live cheaply. The death of the Duke of Kent less than a year later brought the infant Victoria, her mother, and her half-sister Feodora, back to Kensington Palace, where they lived a quiet life away from the bustle and intrigues of court life.

'...Queen Victoria would describe her childhood as particularly dreary...'

Although later in life Queen Victoria would describe her childhood as particularly dreary, her early upbringing enforced regular habits and was thus similar to that of any upper-class English girl of her time; her days were filled with lessons in languages, writing, music, history, drawing, arithmetic, geography and religion. As a child, Victoria ate a simple diet, retired early, and was given plenty of opportunity to exercise in the fresh air. Princess Victoria was very fond of her many pets (though she teased the canaries), of playing dressing-up, and riding horses - the faster the better. In 1828, at the marriage of her sister to Prince Ernest of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, Victoria lost one of her best-loved companions, and her relationship with her governess, Louise (afterwards the Baroness) Lehzen, grew even closer.

From 1830, Lehzen began to monitor Victoria's conduct through a series of 'Behaviour Books'. Victoria herself was obliged to record assessments of her attitude and comportment throughout the day. Although she was often 'good' at her lessons or in her conduct, there were numerous notations through 1832 in which Victoria's behaviour is described negatively, often extravagantly so: for example, she was 'naughty and vulgar' on 1st November, 1831 and (each word is underlined four times) 'VERY VERY VERY VERY HORRIBLY NAUGHTY!!!!!'; in late September 1832. Victoria's own journal, which she began keeping from July 1832, however, blandly remarks on this day, 'The heat was intollerable'[sic].

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Published: 2001-04-01