M. was Prime Minister once more, and he was by her side.[1]
Happiness had returned with Lord M., but it was happiness in the midst of agitation. The domestic imbroglio continued unabated, until at last the Duke, rejected as a Minister, was called in once again in his old capacity as moral physician to the family. Something was accomplished when, at last, he induced Sir John Conroy to resign his place about the Duchess of Kent and leave the Palace for ever; something more when he persuaded the Queen to write an affectionate letter to her mother. The way seemed open for a reconciliation, but the Duchess was stormy still. She didn't believe that Victoria had written that letter; it was not in her handwriting; and she sent for the Duke to tell him so. The Duke, assuring her that the letter was genuine, begged her to forget the
- ↑ Letters, I, 154–72; Girlhood, II, 163–75; Greville, IV, 206–217, and unpublished passages; Broughton, V, 195; Clarendon, I, 165. The exclamation "They wished to treat me like a girl, but I will show them that I am the Queen of England!" often quoted as the Queen's, is apocryphal. It is merely part of Greville's summary of the two letters to Melbourne, printed in Letters, 162 and 163. It may be noted that the phrase "the Queen of England will not submit to such trickery" is omitted in Girlhood, 169; and in general there are numerous verbal discrepancies between the versions of the journal and the letters in the two books.
