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young lady (pointing to the Princess), the heiress presumptive of the Crown, and not in the hands of a person now near me, who is surrounded by evil advisers and who is herself incompetent to act with propriety in the station in which she would be placed.’ 24
    Princess Victoria burst into tears. The Duchess of Kent ordered her carriage forthwith, and was only prevailed upon to remain another day with great difficulty.
    Over Christmas 1836, which was spent at Claremont, the Princess became greatly fascinated by a gypsy encampment nearby – in her words, ‘the chief ornament of the Portsmouth Road.’ 25 She longed to do something for these poor yet proud, cheerful people. The contrast between their affection for each other and her own unhappiness at home was painful, and she was frustrated when her efforts to help were mocked. She and Lehzen both read the Revd George Crabbe’s Gipsies’ Advocate , and were convinced that poor folk would respond to kindness; one should not be ashamed to speak to them. It was a view which apparently found no favour with Conroy, presumably because he objected to the idea of Princess Victoria thinking for herself in this manner. Such lack of prejudice was not only fitting in a future Queen, it was characteristic of the only child of a royal Duke who had been regarded with suspicion by most of his brothers for his liberal, if not left-wing, views. Nevertheless, she persuaded the Duchess of Kent to send them soup and blankets.
    It is rather touching to read from her journal that on Christmas Day, she and Lehzen visited them in the afternoon, particularly to enquire after the health of one of the women who had had a baby nine days previously. She longed to ask them to call the child Leopold, after her uncle King Leopold, on whose birthday the child had been born, but instead the baby was named Francis. ‘I cannot say how happy I am that these poor creatures are assisted,’ she wrote, ‘for they are such a nice set of Gipsies, so quiet, so affectionate to one another, so discreet, not at all forward or importunate, and so grateful; so unlike the gossiping, fortune-telling race gipsies . . . I shall go to bed happy, knowing they are better off and more comfortable.’ 26
    In February 1837 the Princess saw a train for the first time: ‘We went to see the Railroad near Hersham, & saw the steam carriage pass with surprising quickness, striking sparks as it flew along the railroad, enveloped in clouds of smoke & making a loud noise. It is a curious thing indeed!’ 27
    No less curious, perhaps, was the outcome of the power struggle at Kensington. King William had publicly expressed, albeit in somewhat embarrassing terms, his intention of living to see his niece and heir celebrate her eighteenth birthday, and thus be spared a regency under the Duchess of Kent and ‘King’ John Conroy. His wish was granted. He offered her a grant of £10,000 a year entirely free of her mother’s control, an independent Keeper of her Privy Purse, and the right to appoint her own ladies-in-waiting. Although the letter was delivered personally to her (after the Duchess and Conroy had attempted to intercept the messenger), she was forced to decline the offer. As the King knew only too well, ‘Victoria has not written that letter’. 28 Yet she did not have long to wait. On 19 June 1837 it was evident that the King had only a few hours left, and at six o’clock the following morning, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the King’s Lord Chamberlain, Lord Conyngham, drove to Kensington Palace, demanding to see ‘the Queen’.
    Awakened by her mother, ‘I got out of bed and went into my sitting-room (only in my dressing-gown) and alone , and saw them,’ she noted in her journal. They told her that the King had died shortly after 2 a.m., ‘and consequently that I am Queen ’. 29
    *Jointed wooden dolls, usually carved from pinewood in Germany and Austria, named thus as a corruption of ‘deutsch’, or according to