A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain

by Michael Paterson

  Since the Prince Regent refused to have any further children by his wife, Parliament was reduced to badgering his brothers to procreate. The Duke of Kent was successful. Abandoning his mistress, he married a German princess, Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and went to live with her in the dukedom of Gotha. There the child was conceived. For dynastic reasons, however, it was necessary for the birth to take place in Britain. In haste and in some confusion, the couple and their entourage travelled to London, where their daughter was born on 24 May 1819.

  Unusually for a royal child, Victoria had no siblings. She did not know her father, who died in 1820, and she was brought up in genteel poverty by her mother and a German governess. Though it was in many respects a somewhat dull and lonely childhood, Victoria was a bright and lively girl, gifted at singing and drawing, articulate in her use of words (she spoke well, and kept a journal from 1832 until the end of her life), interested in ballet and passionately keen on opera, and with an immense collection of dolls, to all of whom she gave names and identities.

  The personification of the country’s future – the ‘Nation’s Hope’ – she was the subject of great public interest from early youth. George IV, as the Regent became in 1820, allowed her to live in Kensington Palace. Parliament voted her an allowance, and William IV tried to befriend her. The increasingly bitter feud between her mother and William, however, kept Victoria away from Court, and she did not attend his coronation in 1831.

  The girl’s early years were dominated by her mother and the ambitious comptroller of her household, Sir John Conroy, who isolated her from the tainted Hanoverians – a successful move that increased her popularity – but both also wished to exert influence through her once she was Queen, a fact that she was shrewd and strong-minded enough to resent and resist. Nevertheless she gained important qualities from her upbringing – her governess taught her the value of regular and conscientious work; her mother taught her always to be kind and appreciative toward servants, an attitude that she was to display through the whole of her life. As well as excellent manners, she learned from the Duchess to discipline her temper, and to regard her position with relative modesty.

  As a child she became increasingly aware of her destiny, famously stating at the age of eleven that, as sovereign, ‘I will be good.’ By the time she was an adolescent, her training had already begun. She studied history, and was inspired by the personality of Queen Elizabeth. From the age of fourteen she received a thorough grounding in how to rule from her Uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians and husband of the deceased Princess Charlotte, who took a paternal interest in the girl and had a significant influence on her character. To acquaint her with her future realm, she embarked with her mother on a series of annual tours throughout the country, staying at the homes of local aristocracy.

  This visibility added to her appeal, and her eighteenth birthday was widely celebrated in May 1837, a significant date because she then came of age (this was the customary age among heirs apparent, or presumptive, rather than twenty-one), and was thus eligible to succeed the ailing William IV. Had he died sooner her mother would have had to act as Regent, and he had been determined to live long enough to prevent this. Victoria reached her majority with impeccable timing, for less than a month later her uncle died. On 19 June she wrote to Leopold that: ‘I look forward to the event which must occur soon with calmness and quietness. I am not alarmed at it, and yet I do not suppose myself quite equal to all.’1 It did occur soon – the following morning she was woken at Kensington Palace with the news that she was Queen.

  The great historian Thomas Carlyle wrote at this time: ‘Poor little Queen, she is at an age when a girl can hardly be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself, yet a task has been laid upon her from which an archangel might shrink.’2 She did not shrink from it. Over the succeeding months she proved extremely adept at performing her various duties, for she had not only studied and absorbed much of what was necessary, but clearly loved her role as sovereign. She had a good memory, a flair for languages and a head for figures. A strong-willed, even imperious young woman, on the threshold of adulthood and enjoying the chance to exercise influence, she felt ready to become queen and was undaunted by the challenges involved. She brought youth, vigour, humour and tremendous enthusiasm to an office that had seen none of these things within living memory. She was so naturally regal that, it was said, she never in her life looked behind her before sitting down – someone would always have placed a chair. Another observer commented that: ‘Everything goes on as if she had been on the throne six years instead of six days.’3 Despite her youth and the advanced age of many of the courtiers and politicians who surrounded her, she could deploy her famous temper to effect. The Duchesse de Prasline recorded that: ‘Ministers tremble when this young being shows discontent at anything,’ for she ‘could not hide anger or annoyance.’4

  Victoria was not considered beautiful. George Eliot said unkindly that her looks were: ‘utterly mean in contour and expression . . . worse the more one looks at her.’5 At just under five feet tall she was somewhat short (she therefore liked to be seen on horseback, and rode frequently in Rotten Row). She had a long nose, slightly prominent teeth, eyes that had a tendency – increasing as she grew older – to protrude, and fair hair that was to darken to brown when she reached adulthood, before turning white in her latter years.

  Even as a young woman she was inclined towards plumpness, a trait exacerbated by her love of eating. She was persuaded that this increased girth enhanced the regal aspect of her appearance. Nevertheless she smiled readily, and had beautiful china-blue eyes. Her appearance was regarded as pleasing. Popular prints of the young sovereign, which gave her greater beauty than she possessed, sold briskly and created a horde of admirers. Charles Dickens was one of them. He wrote to a friend that: ‘I am sorry to say I have fallen hopelessly in love with the Queen, and wander up and down with vague and dismal thoughts of running away with a maid of honour.’6 Her voice was much complimented. Lady Lyttelton, who saw her prorogue Parliament in 1839, remembered that it was: ‘quite that of a child, a gushing sort of richness with the most sensible, cultivated and gentleman-like accent and emphasis’.7

  Her coronation took place almost exactly a year after her accession, on 28 June 1838. It marked the beginning of the modern British monarchy, for the new Queen – cheerful, pleasant and simple in her tastes – captured the imagination of the public and the affection of the rising middle class, the sector of society that has provided the most consistent support for the institution ever since. Her coronation was the first for some time to be celebrated with genuine enthusiasm.

  Despite her confidence, Victoria would have been lost without the guidance of her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne. He attended her daily in his official capacity, as well as devoting many afternoons to riding and evenings to dining with her (they became so close that she was jeered in public as ‘Mrs Melbourne’). He provided her with a thorough apprenticeship in her craft, as well as being a father figure. She appreciated his wit, experience, wisdom and amiability, but he also strengthened in her an existing – and unconstitutional – bias toward the Whig party, to which he belonged. When he was obliged to resign in 1839 and Victoria was faced with the prospect of the Tory Sir Robert Peel as Prime Minister, she engineered a crisis by refusing to replace any of her Whig court ladies. Peel, seeing this as evidence that she did not have faith in him, refused to form a Government, and Melbourne resumed the premiership – a heady victory for an inexperienced ruler.

  ‘Albert the Good’

  The most significant influence in Victoria’s life appeared in 1839, when she became engaged. It was considered necessary that she marry as soon as possible and produce an heir. Despite her position and consequent desirability as a bride, her options were limited. She could marry either a cousin within her own family or a foreign prince – so long as he were Protestant. This effectively limited the choice to northern Europe, but a suitable candidate had been unofficially earmark
ed almost from birth as a future husband. Her uncle, King Leopold, was responsible for the choice of Albert, Prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, and had been preparing the young man since childhood. The younger son of a dissolute minor princeling, Albert was a few months younger than Victoria. He was Leopold’s nephew and Victoria’s cousin. She had met him once already, when both were seventeen, and had found him pleasant enough. She had recorded in her journal that he was: ‘Extremely handsome, his hair is about the same colour as mine; his eyes large and blue, and he has a beautiful nose, and a very sweet mouth with fine teeth; but the charm of his countenance is his expression, which is most delightful.’8 In what was almost a carbon copy of Victoria’s childhood vow to be good, Albert had made a similar youthful commitment: ‘I intend to train myself to be a good and useful man.’9 It was a promise he was resoundingly to fulfil.

  Both of them knew of the plan to bring them together, but he was somewhat reluctant. He had heard that she was wilful and short-tempered, and was inclined to withdraw from any putative arrangement. She made clear that she would only marry for love, and insisted that any alliance must wait two or three years, for she had just emerged from an austere and restricted childhood into a life of complete independence, and had no wish to be imprisoned by a husband. Her heroine, Queen Elizabeth, had not married at all, and she toyed with the notion of remaining single. When Albert arrived with his brother at Windsor for a visit, there were no grounds for assuming that the match would win the enthusiasm of either party.

  In the event, within a few days they were deeply in love. Victoria was overwhelmed by his handsome appearance, recalling that: ‘Albert’s beauty is most striking, and he is so amiable and unaffected – in short very fascinating.’10 She determined to marry him, and Melbourne urged that the arrangements be made at once. The Queen mused whether ‘I hadn’t better tell Albert of my decision soon . . . for in general such things were done the other way.’11 Five days after his arrival he was summoned by the Queen for reasons that were obvious. No one could propose to the sovereign, therefore it was she who asked him. He accepted at once. Their engagement lasted only three months, and they married at the Chapel Royal in St James’ Palace on 10 February 1840.

  The relationship was of great significance for both the monarchy and the nation. Royal families were not known for love matches, and this – one of history’s great romances – set the seal of impeccable respectability on Victoria’s reign. The couple were mutually devoted, though the Queen’s temper and her consort’s frequent frustrations made their home-life extremely volatile: Victoria once reputedly tipped a cup of scalding tea on his head, and she frequently followed him, shouting, from room to room (he would control his temper, withdraw, and continue the exchange by letter). Nevertheless he answered a need in her nature for the guidance of a mature masculine figure. As an only child she lacked the security of a large family, and she was always in search of a substitute for the father she never had. Leopold and Melbourne had both provided this, as Disraeli would at a later stage. Albert’s intelligence, his wide interests and his devotion to duty – though almost entirely unappreciated by the public during his lifetime – were to prove a gift of inestimable value to his adopted country.

  Thanks to Leopold’s grooming Albert had arrived in England with a working knowledge of the country’s language, laws and customs, yet he found himself unpopular. Among his wife’s family – and royalty in general – he was snubbed as a nonentity. The aristocracy – amoral, hedonistic and anti-intellectual – resented his earnest and puritanical nature (even his wife was irritated by his habit of retiring to bed early: if required to stay up late, he might fall asleep in his chair). The British public distrusted him as a foreigner – during the Crimean War there were widely believed rumours that, as a German and therefore presumably pro-Russian, he was to be imprisoned for treason in the Tower of London. They found his poverty in relation to the Queen a source of some amusement. Though he was not – as was widely believed – entirely lacking in humour, this was never obvious outside his family. He had no small-talk and his manner in public – a combination of natural shyness, intellectual snobbery and stiff German etiquette – was seen by many as insufferable. Courtiers were offended that he and Victoria spoke to each other in German at meals, excluding others from the conversation.

  Constitutionally, he had no power or position. At first, the sole function he was allowed to fulfil was applying the blotter when the Queen had signed a document, and only gradually did he create a meaningful role for himself. It was, of course, understood that he also had responsibility for providing the country with an heir, and this matter was swiftly addressed. The Queen, who regarded sex as ‘a foretaste of heaven’ but who was to dread childbearing (‘I think of being like a cow or a dog at such moments’) was expecting within weeks of marriage, and her first child – a girl, named Victoria but known as Vicky – was born in November 1840. Eight others were to follow: the Prince of Wales (‘Bertie’) in 1841, and then Alice (1843), Alfred (1844), Helena (1846), Louise (1848), Arthur (1850), Leopold (1853) and Beatrice (1857). There were so many children that ‘the taxpayer groaned’, for Buckingham Palace had to be extended. These frequent, exhausting pregnancies were to preoccupy the Queen throughout much of the first two decades of her reign, and her husband found himself deputizing for her, in both a ceremonial and a consultative capacity, increasingly often.

  He in any case held a host of titular posts as patron of societies, chairman of committees or honorary colonel of regiments. Many of these were worthy but dull. The innumerable addresses he delivered to assorted bodies were summed up by one biographer in the unkind comment: ‘Albert’s speeches were stupefyingly boring.’12 Nevertheless, he expanded many of his honorary positions into active roles that enabled him to exert an important influence, and in doing so he became the prototype of a figure that would become increasingly familiar in the twentieth century – the working royal. Under his guidance the Queen, too, attained a higher visibility in terms of ‘good works’. She had always been a generous donor to the needy (an often-repeated story that she gave only £5 to relieve hardship after the Irish potato famine is entirely unfounded). Now she increasingly took on the patronage of charitable organizations, and was ultimately connected with over 150 of them.

  A talented composer and musician, and a connoisseur of art with ability of his own, interested equally in arts and sciences, Albert had much to contribute to British culture. It was Peel who saw his potential and gave him the opportunity to do so, for in 1841 he was appointed chairman of a Fine Art Commission to decorate the new Houses of Parliament. He proved an extremely able administrator, and his other positions, both honorary and effective, came to him as a result. The Queen bestowed on him the title ‘Prince Consort’ in 1857. He was to serve, among other things, as Field Marshal (he declined to become Commander-in-Chief), Colonel of the Grenadier Guards and the Rifle Brigade, Master of Trinity House, Chancellor of Cambridge University, President of the Royal Society, the Society of Arts, the Anti-Slavery Society and the Society for Improving the Conditions of the Labouring Classes.

  He introduced the ‘Balmoral’ tartan still worn by the Royal Family and the helmets worn by the Household Cavalry, as well as the hideous and cumbersome funeral car used at the burial of the Duke of Wellington. He jointly designed the Victoria Cross (with the Queen, who proposed the motto: ‘For Valour’) and the Italianate Osborne House (with the architect Sir Thomas Cubbitt). He was responsible for the ‘model dwellings’ for the working class that were shown at the Great Exhibition. In addition, he reorganized the Royal Household, previously a byword for inefficiency, and made the Windsor estates profitable. He created a ‘model farm’ there, and his livestock competed successfully for prizes at agricultural shows. As a patron of the arts he was undoubtedly important. He built a significant collection of paintings that was later acquired for the nation, and he and Victoria took it upon themselves to rescue English theatre from the doldrums by having frequent perfor
mances staged at Windsor.

  ‘Dual Monarchy’

  While he filled his diary with cultural and philanthropic activity, he also assumed an increasing significance in the conduct of royal business, becoming de facto his wife’s private secretary. She recorded that, ‘Albert grows daily fonder and fonder of politics and business, while I grow daily to dislike them more and more.’13 He had, since their marriage, exerted an important influence on the Queen’s outlook (he even helped her choose her bonnets). She had already begun to leave behind her youthful frivolity, but his example encouraged her to develop the serious and dutiful side of her nature, and she became increasingly dependent on his advice. He read state papers, condensing complex issues for her perusal, and he normally dictated her letters. Though she might sometimes alter the tone of a sentence or a paragraph, she almost invariably followed his advice. How closely they worked together can be appreciated by present-day visitors to Osborne, who are shown their side-by-side desks. Albert sat to the left of the Queen, reading documents, adding comments and passing them to her for approval and signature. As Laurence Housman observed: ‘Without the Prince Consort to train her, she would not have been a good Queen.’14

  Albert wanted Victoria to claim foreign policy as a personal sphere. It was to her that ambassadors presented their credentials, and he therefore saw the Queen as legitimately entitled to exert influence. This was, he considered, necessary because Lord Palmerston, who was Foreign Secretary or Prime Minister during much of her first two decades, was reckless and confrontational. It was also obvious that Victoria could deal directly with other monarchs in a way that her Government could not. It was the Queen who, by making a private visit to King Louis-Philippe in 1843, began to develop cordial official relations with France for the first time in centuries. This friendship survived a change of dynasty, for in 1855 she journeyed to Paris to see Napoleon III, and both French monarchs reciprocated by coming to England. These connections (interestingly, both monarchs settled in England after being overthrown) set a precedent in Anglo-French friendship that was to be significant in the following century.