Family and Early Life
Johanna Clara Louise Lehzen was born in Hanover on 3 October 1784, the youngest of seven daughters and two sons of Lutheran pastor Joachim Friedrich Lehzen and his wife Melusine Palm. Forced by circumstances to work for her living since she was young, Lehzen was employed by the von Marenholtzs, an aristocratic German family, where she earned glowing references.
Based on these references, Lehzen became part of the household of Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld in December 1819, when she served as governess to twelve-year old Princess Feodora of Leiningen, the daughter of the princess by her first husband, the Prince of Leiningen. Princess Victoria was married to the Prince Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, who was, at the time, fourth in line for the British throne. Lehzen and the entire household were moved to England in 1817 so that the new Duchess of Kent's child might be born there, strengthening the child's claim to the throne. The baby was a girl, christened "Alexandrina Victoria" after her mother and her godfather, Alexander I of Russia; she would grow up to be Queen Victoria.
Read more about this topic: Louise Lehzen
Famous quotes containing the words family and, family, early and/or life:
“O God, and the wedding! All her family and her friends
and only a handful of mine all scroungy and bearded
just wait to get at the drinks and food—”
—Gregory Corso (b. 1930)
“All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
—Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)
“The shift from the perception of the child as innocent to the perception of the child as competent has greatly increased the demands on contemporary children for maturity, for participating in competitive sports, for early academic achievement, and for protecting themselves against adults who might do them harm. While children might be able to cope with any one of those demands taken singly, taken together they often exceed children’s adaptive capacity.”
—David Elkind (20th century)
“The true colour of life is the colour of the body, the colour of the covered red, the implicit and not explicit red of the living heart and the pulses. It is the modest colour of the unpublished blood.”
—Alice Meynell (1847–1922)