Lady Bloomfield
LADY BLOOMFIELD.
THIS lady was maid-of-honor to Queen Victoria for some years. The queen, it appears, has in her
service eight young ladies thus entitled, who are in attendance in the palace three months of every year, so that
there are always two "in waiting." The compensation of these honorable maidens is four hundred pounds a year
each, or two thousand dollars. It costs, therefore, sixteen thousand dollars a year to provide the Queen with this
portion of her "court," without reckoning the expense of their maintenance.
As for the duties of the position, they are not very
arduous. The business of a maid-of-honor is to make herself agreeable to the royal family when more important
guests are not present, and to assist in entertaining personages of distinction. The queen has her breakfast at
ten o'clock, her lunch at two, her ride in the afternoon, her dinner at eight, and goes to bed about midnight. The
maids-of-honor usually attend on these occasions, ride with her, play whist with her, and join in whatever game
happens to be the favorite at the moment. According to Lady Bloomfield, who has written a. book about her life at
courts, there is only one regular task imposed upon the maids.
" Our chief duty," she says, " seems to consist in giving
the queen her bouquet before dinner, which is certainly not very hard work! And even this only happens everyother day. I am left entirely to myself, and can employ
my time as I like."
But this was far from being the opinion of Lady
Ravensworth, the mother of the young lady. When her daughter received her appointment as maid-of-honor, she
wrote her a long and very affectionate letter of advice; and if any reader should ever be appointed maid-of-honor
to a queen, she could not do better than to study this remarkable epistle. She tells her daughter that her chief
duty should be to please the queen; not by base flattery or servile cringing, but by the most assiduous attention to
her desires, even iii the merest trifles, and by the most exact and cheerful obedience to every command.
"You must accustom yourself," her mother wrote, "to
sit or stand for hours without any amusement save the resources of your own thoughts, and your natural good
sense will show you that the least rudeness of manner or appearance of fatigue is incompatible with high breeding
and the respect due to the sovereign."
She enjoins it upon her daughter also to keep whatever
she saw, or heard, or thought entirely to herself, to avoid "all idle gossip about dress, balls, and lovers," to avoid
showy and expensive dress, to beware of the least appearance of flirtation with any of the gentlemen about the
court, to be invariably considerate of her servants, to pursue her studies with regularity, and practice her music
and drawing, just "as she would at home." She advises her to spend half her salary in clothes, a quarter in
charity and journeys, and to save the other 'hundred to be invested at three per cent., " as a little nest egg for any
future emergency."
This letter gives an interesting insight into many
things. It is a curious mixture of fervent piety and worldly wisdom.
" To your companions," says this mother of two maids-of-honor, " be as kind, as obliging, and as agreeable as possible, but have no confidence in any one, and avoid
intimacies."
The lady who wrote this prudent letter was the mother
of several daughters, and the reader will not be surprised to learn that they made great matches, and enjoyed a
good share of the good things that were going in England in their day.
Fortified with this letter of advice the young maid-of-honor entered upon her duties with some confidence and
more trepidation. She arrived at Windsor Castle late in the afternoon of January 20, 1842, and was happy to find
that she was to have a nice warm parlor and bedroom, with a piano, as well as a share of a large drawing-room
down stairs, in which to receive her friends. A lady of the court came to her bringing her the badge of her
office, which was the miniature of the queen surrounded by diamonds and placed upon a bow of red ribbon.
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When the dinner hour approached, she took her place
with her comrades near the door of the queen's room, and waited for her coming. When the queen appeared, who
was then little more than twenty years of age, the lady-in-waiting presented the new maid-of-honor, who thanked the
queen for her appointment, and kissed her hand, as all persons do on their appointment to similar posts. The
queen asked concerning her family, after which they all went into dinner, the queen continuing to talk to her new
maid about her journey, and her friends.
After dinner, as the family was alone, the queen, Prince
Albert and some of the ladies sat down at a round game of cards, playing for very small stakes. The stakes were
indeed so small that our maid-of-honor, after playing a long time, would find herself the winner of three or four
pence. The whole court were obliged to keep on hand a supply of new coins, such as shillings, sixpences, and
penny pieces, since it is a breach of etiquette to play at court with old money. All the evenings passed very
much as they do with any civilized family, in singing, cards, games, conversation, and telling stories.
The most remarkable thing is that there was nothing
remarkable about it. The evenings were passed in the most ordinary, simple, and agreeable manner.
The Queen, it appears, sang really well, played well,
danced with girlish hilarity, and liked both to hear and to tell a funny thing. One of the Queen's stories was of
a girl who was going into service to a Duke, and her mother told her that, if ever the Duke spoke to her, she
must say "Your Grace." A few days after, the Duke met her in a passage, and asked her a question. Instead
of answering, the girl immediately obeyed her mother's direction, and said her grace : "For what I have received
the Lord make me truly thankful."
Indeed, they all seem to have been very glad to relieve
the tedium of court life by a little boisterous fun. Sometimes the young Queen would send one of the young
ladies to the piano, and then catch another round the waist and go whirling about the room in a waltz. Even
so grave a personage as Sir Robert Peel appears in Lady Bloomfield's hook as a teller of comic anecdotes. He
told one of the Lord Mayor of London, on the occasion of the first visit of the youthful Queen to the city. As the
Mayor was obliged to appear in a court dress, and wished to keep his stockings and low shoes perfectly
clean until the Queen arrived, he put on over them a pair of enormous high boots. These boots proved to be
so very tight, that when the Queen approached he could not get them off, and there he stood, in the presence of a
crowd of grand personages, with one leg stuck out, and several men tugging at the boot, trying to get it off.
After immense exertions, one of the boots was got off, but no amount of force could stir the other, and, mean-while, the Queen was coming nearer and nearer. The
Lord Mayor was in an agony of fright, with one hoot off and the other on, until at last he was almost beside himself, and shouted:
" For heaven's sake put my boot on again!"
This was done just as the Queen came up, and the poor
man was obliged to wear the tight boots in torment all through the long banquet before he could divest himself
of his incongruous and agonizing terminations. People in England are fond of relating such anecdotes
of the Mayor and Aldermen of London. Sir Robert Peel told another story to the ladies of the court of a Lord
Mayor's dinner, when Mr. Canning sat opposite Alderman Flower, a man of great note in the city. The
Alderman said to Canning:
"Mr. Canning, my Lord Ellenborough was a man of
uncommon sagacity."
The great orator bowed assent, and asked the Alder
man why he happened to make the remark just then." Why, sir," said Flower, " had he been here, he would
have told me by a single glance of his eye which is the best of those five haunches of venison."
Soon after, Lord Ellenborough himself came to court,
and he told the ladies a comic tale of another Lord Mayor's dinner. The Duke of Wellington being called
upon to propose the health of the Lady Mayoress, who happened to be a little, dried-up old woman, he spoke of
her as the model of her sex." After dinner, Ellenborough asked the Iron Duke how he could call that ugly
little thing the model of her sex.
"What could I call her?" said the Duke; "I had
never seen her before."
Our maid-of-honor held her office for about three years,
accompanying the Queen on her journeys, and associating with the dignitaries of the kingdom. Then happened
the great event of her life. Perhaps the reader would like to see the brief and matter-of-fact way in which an
English maid-of-honor can relate the romance of her existence.
"I found my father talking to a gentleman, and when I entered he said to me, ' Georgic, don't you recollect Mr. Bloomfield ?' My father was anxious to finish some letters, and desired me to show Mr. Bloomfield the garden. So we took a walk together, and from that moment his intentions were very evident, as he took every opportunity of meeting me and showing me attentions. Our marriage was settled on July 26th."
This gentleman, the English Minister at the Russian court, was at home on leave of absence, and took this direct and simple mode of getting a wife to go back with him. He soon became, by death of his father, Lord Bloomfield. They passed many succeeding years in Russia, Prussia, and Austria, as the representatives of the
majesty of England.
Upon reading Lady Bloomfield's reminiscences, which have been recently published, we cannot help thinking
again of the remark of the old statesman to his son: "Post thou not know, my son, with how little wisdom the world is governed ?"
Prince Albert and Queen Victoria are presented in these volumes in an amiable and attractive light ; but
the persons who controlled the governments on the continent of Europe appear to have been singularly unfitted
by temperament, by disposition, and mental quality, to be at the head of nations. With the exception of Louis
Napoleon, all of them seem to have meant well; but when the happiness and security of millions of human
beings are at stake, good intentions are not enough.
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