Queen Victoria

by Bartley, Paula;

  Married life

  Victoria and the Victorians used to be synonymous with sexual repression: the phrase that Victoria and women more generally were expected to ‘lie back and think of England’ is a well-worn cliché. Women were thought to have little sexual appetite. A leading physician, William Acton, claimed that as a general rule, ‘a modest woman seldom desires any sexual gratification for herself. She submits to her husband’s embraces, but principally to gratify him; and, were it not for the desire of maternity, would far rather be relieved from his attentions.’34 Sexual desire in women, Acton believed, was a sign of nymphomania or of a tendency towards prostitution. This interpretation held sway until historians challenged the myth, and with it the notion of Victoria being non-sexual. For the eroticism between Victoria and Albert was unmistakeable. The newly wedded wife wrote in her journal that ‘we both went to bed; (of course in one bed) to lie by his side, and in his arms, and on his dear bosom, and be called by names of tenderness, I have never heard used to me before – was bliss beyond belief! Oh! This was the happiest day in my life.’35 A joyfully sensuous Victoria recorded the first few days of her married life. ‘When day dawned (for we did not sleep much)’ she wrote ‘and I beheld that beautiful angelic face by my side, it was more than I can express! He does look so beautiful in his shirt only.’36 When she found Albert asleep on the sofa, she ‘woke him with a kiss. He took me in his arms (in bed) and kissed me again and again, and we fell asleep arm in arm, and woke so again.’37 The next day, her ‘dearest Albert put on my stockings for me. I went in and saw him shave.’38 The two may have been mutually incompatible in personality – Victoria was a bubbly, extroverted, emotional and fun-loving night owl whereas Albert was an introverted, cerebral lark – but their strong mutual physical attraction and active sex life kept them close. The couple bought a lot of erotic art: on Albert’s thirty-first birthday, Victoria gave him a markedly sensual painting of voluptuous naked women bathing in a stream.39 It was hung opposite their writing desks in the Queen’s sitting room at Osborne House. When advised after the birth of her last child, Beatrice, that she should have no more children, Victoria is reputed to have said, ‘Oh Doctor, can I have no more fun in bed?’

  Unfortunately, there were three people in the marriage: Queen Victoria, Prince Albert – and Baroness Lehzen. From the outset, relations between Albert and Lehzen were frosty, not helped by the latter’s continuing attempts to take Victoria’s side in any marital argument and thus inadvertently undermining the Royal Prince. Albert, not wishing to confront two challenging females on a daily basis, wanted to weaken, and ultimately end, the close and mutually supportive relationship the two women enjoyed. His plan was to dismiss ‘the old hag’. He regarded her as too powerful a figure, responsible for the breach between Victoria and her mother. The Queen, whose self-esteem was regularly boosted by Lehzen’s unconditional love, defended her beloved governess from Albert’s criticisms and heated arguments regularly broke out between the married couple. The first time Victoria and Lehzen separated, the Queen confided to her journal that she was ‘feeling a little low, at my 1st real separation from my dear Lehzen, which, since my 5th year, has never occurred before’.40 Eventually, in July 1842 Victoria conceded defeat and agreed that Lehzen could retire to Hanover with a hefty pension. Albert

  told me he had seen Lehzen, who had expressed the wish to go to Germany in 2 months time. . . . Naturally I was rather upset, though I feel sure it is for our and her best. . . . I went to see my dear good Lehzen and found her very cheerful, saying she felt it was necessary for her health to go away. Felt rather bewildered and low, at what had taken place, and naturally the thought of the coming separation from my dear Lehzen, whom I love so much, made me feel very sad.41

  Victoria, who had nobody else to confide in, would be isolated and forced to rely solely on Albert for her emotional and psychological health. Albert was delighted. He had removed the one woman who might have seriously limited his power over his wife.

  Queen Victoria adored her husband. The tenderness of their relationship can be seen in the following excerpt from her journal:

  It was as hot as in the middle of July, with a light blue sky and not a cloud to be seen, – the half moon, clear and white, – in the distance, and all colouring so soft. I never saw Windsor in greater beauty, or more lovely and peaceful, in the evening hour, – everything so fresh green, and everything out, or coming out, – the lilacs in full bloom and fragrance. Albert picked me some.42

  However, outside the Palace and the intimate domestic circle, Albert was not liked. He was seen to be ‘cold and distant in manner’ and too characteristically German for British tastes.

  Victoria, Albert and children

  Once safely wed, Victoria needed to produce an heir to the British throne. There was great rejoicing when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s first child, Victoria (Vicky), was born nine months after the wedding on 21 November 1840. The couple were fecund. Early the following year, the Queen was pregnant again and on 9 November 1841 Albert Edward (Bertie), the Prince of Wales, heir to the throne, was born. Seven others – Alice (1843), Alfred (1844), Helena (1846), Louise (1848), Arthur (1850), Leopold (1853) and Beatrice (1857) – followed. For 18 years between the ages of 20 and 38, Victoria was generally either pregnant or recovering from giving birth. In this sense, the Queen shared the experience of most married women. Over 40 per cent of married women had at least seven babies and a particularly fertile 15 per cent had ten or more. The average wife was either pregnant or breastfeeding for a lot of the time between marriage and the menopause. There was no maternity leave for a monarch and Victoria, as with the rest of her female subjects who were in paid employment, was expected to keep working. Planning a pregnancy was not an option. At the time of her marriage, birth control literature was illegal and the technology of birth control in its infancy: the condom, which, until the vulcanisation of rubber in the 1840s, was made from animal intestines on the sausage-skin principle, was the only contraceptive device available. Condoms, however, were used with prostitutes as a prophylactic against venereal disease; therefore married women like Queen Victoria were not only reluctant to use them themselves but also saw them as encouraging immorality in others. As late as 1877, Annie Besant and Charles Bradlaugh horrified the Queen by publishing a pamphlet on birth control. Of course she may have thought differently if Albert had still been alive.

  The Queen, a number of historians claim, hated being pregnant, suffered from post-natal depression, found breastfeeding abhorrent, thought newborn babies unattractive, was a poor mother and left household affairs to Albert. Certainly, it is safe to say that Victoria did not conform to the idealised version of a married woman: happy to be pregnant, happy to breastfeed and happy to be a mother. Indeed, Queen Victoria was despondent when she became pregnant one month after her marriage. Her later letters to her eldest daughter warned her of the lot of a married woman, telling her of the ‘enjoyments to give up . . . constant precautions to take’ and telling Vicky that she herself had to ‘put up’ nine times, which tried her sorely.43 She called pregnancy the ‘shadow side’ of marriage and disliked the fact that it interrupted her sex life. ‘What made me so miserable’ she confided ‘was to have the two first years of my married life utterly spoilt by this occupation.’44 When her eldest daughter became pregnant, she told her that ‘what you say of the pride of giving life to an immortal soul is very fine, dear, but I own I cannot enter into that; I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments; when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic’.45 In Victoria’s opinion, women who were always ‘enceinte’ were quite disgusting: they were more like rabbits or guinea-pigs than anything else. Children, she believed, should come at a leisurely pace, otherwise life was wretched, as one became so ‘worn out and one’s nerves so miserable . . . it is very bad for any person to have them very fast’.46 The belief that Victoria disliked babies was largely because of the letters she wrote – much later – t
o her eldest daughter. However, in her journals, Victoria described her babies with as much love and admiration as the most doting mother.

  In childbirth Victoria suffered similar indignities, pain and exhaustion as the rest of her female subjects. Victoria feared childbirth, a reasonable anxiety, since childbirth was dangerous. Women going into labour faced a one in five chance of survival. Maternal mortality was even high in fit young women who had been well before pregnancy – the previous heir to the throne, the young healthy Princess Charlotte, had died in childbirth after a 50-hour labour, the birth of a stillborn son and severe haemorrhaging – a fact of which Queen Victoria was well aware. Puerperal or childbed fever, an infection of the uterus following childbirth, was the most common cause of death. (Women are prone to infection directly after giving birth because the placenta leaves a large wound in the uterus, which takes about a month to heal.) High standards of hygiene were essential to prevent this occurring but unfortunately precautions were rarely taken. Doctors were often the major sources of puerperal fever because they were carriers of infection. The historian of sexuality, Angus McLaren, noted that the doctor could and did carry to the woman in labour ‘laudable pus from his surgical cases, droplets from scarlet fever cases and putrefaction from the corpses he dissected’. 47 The Hungarian obstetrician Semmelweiss blamed doctors for carrying puerperal fever from patient to patient but the rest of the medical profession vilified his ideas. Germs, they believed, were air-borne. When Semmelweiss suggested that doctors scrub their hands with carbolic soap before examining patients, his advice was ridiculed. Sadly, childbirth remained a life-threatening experience for women until the development of blood transfusions after the First World War and penicillin after the Second.

  In the nineteenth century, most women gave birth at home where they were cared for by doctors or midwives, family and neighbours. All the Queen’s children were born at home and delivered by doctors but, unlike other women, she also had to suffer the indignity of high-ranking courtiers and officials listening to her groans when she was in labour. This was because official witnesses always attended royal births to make sure that the newborn baby was alive, well and not substituted by another. The Queen disagreed with this convention, objected to the number of people generally present to witness a royal birth and only allowed her doctor, a nurse and Albert to be in the room with her. For the birth of her eldest child, Vicky, the cabinet ministers, the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London and the Lord Steward of the Household, Lord Erroll48 all stayed in the next room ‘with the door open so that Lord Erroll said he could see the Queen plainly and hear what she said’.49 Queen Victoria’s home may have been palatial with the best doctors looking after her but her experiences mirrored that of her subjects. In addition, Victoria suffered from being so short – she was only 4'11" – and must have experienced more discomfort than taller women. Just before the early hours of the morning of 21 November 1840, the Queen noted that:

  I felt very uncomfortable and with difficulty aroused Albert from his sleep . . . by 4, I got very bad and both the Doctors arrived. . . . After a good many hours suffering, a perfect little child was born at 2 in the afternoon, but alas! a girl and not a boy, as we both had so hoped and wished for. We were, I am afraid, sadly disappointed.50

  Fortunately, both mother and baby survived, Doctor Locock was paid £1,000 and the newly washed baby brought out for the inspection of the government.

  Victoria suffered in one way or another with seven of her nine childbirths. On 25 April 1843, ‘after getting hardly any sleep’,51 her third baby was born. And like most parents, the couple ‘discussed what names the new little girl should have, and we nearly settled they should be: Alice, Maud and perhaps Mary’. She pronounced Alice ‘an extremely pretty little thing and decidedly larger than the other 2 at that age; she already takes notice and smiles’.52 As with most mothers, even after ‘severe suffering’, Victoria’s joy at giving birth to her fourth child, Alfred (known as Affie), made her ‘forget all I had gone through: It was such a happiness to us both.’53

  By the time of her eighth child, Leopold, Victoria decided to diminish the pain of childbirth by using chloroform. It was a controversial decision: some religious leaders criticised its use because it interfered with God’s natural order. It was believed that pain was a natural consequence of giving birth and should be endured. The Queen did not agree. She employed Dr Snow to administer ‘that “blessed Chloroform” and the effect was soothing, quieting and delightful beyond measure’.54

  Doctors, fearing the Queen’s mental as well as physical health, advised Victoria not to have any more children; the Queen too felt sure that if she had another child she would sink under the trauma of it all. Yet, at 2 o’clock on 14 April 1857, Victoria, wearing the same shift she had worn in previous confinements, gave birth to her ninth and last child, again with the help of chloroform, after a ‘very long wearisome’ labour.55 She thanked God for granting her ‘such a dear, pretty girl, which I so much wished for’. Beatrice Victoria Feodore, as she was called, was a ‘pretty, plump, flourishing child’ who ‘delights everyone, and is the greatest pet, so fond of her dear Papa, and so good with me, so soft and delicious to kiss. . . . She is really a blessed little thing, as her name means!’56

  Giving birth to a healthy baby ought to result in euphoria but 10–15 women out of 100 suffer from post-natal depression, a recognised illness which makes women feel low, unhappy, exhausted and tearful rather than ecstatic. After the birth of her first son, Albert Edward (Bertie), the Queen felt ‘rather weak and depressed’57 and historians agree that the Queen was probably suffering from post-natal depression. In 1843, a month after the birth of Alice, Victoria was still feeling ‘very tired, and feeling stupidly weak. It is too annoying.’58 She ‘felt rather limp and depressed’.59 At the end of May, Victoria still felt fragile but believed that her ‘nerves are daily getting stronger’60 and continued to read and respond to government memorandums. After the birth of her last child, Beatrice, Victoria noted in her journal that she ‘felt better and stronger this time than I have ever done before’.61

  Victoria did not breastfeed her children. The idea of giving over her body to breastfeeding was anathema to her – her breasts, historians have argued, were sexual rather than maternal and for Albert’s pleasure and her own, rather than for supplying food for a baby.62 This may be a modern interpretation but it is safe to say that Victoria preferred to be a wife rather than a mother. She disliked the thought of her body being held captive to biology, so she employed a wet nurse to feed her babies. By this time the practice of wet nursing by the elite had fallen out of favour but the Queen revived it. Ideally, a wet nurse was a young strong healthy married woman with an upright moral character who lived in the countryside. In practice, the English wet nurse of the period was usually a city dwelling poverty stricken single mother whose own baby had either died or been taken into care. For her first baby, the Queen, by nature of her position, employed ‘a fine young woman, wife of a sail maker at Cowes, Isle of Wight’.63 This was a woman who ticked all the requisite boxes for a wet nurse: married, healthy, young and living in the countryside. The baby thrived. But not all wet nurses suited. Victoria appointed a ‘strong healthy Highland woman’ as Leopold’s wet nurse but ‘after weeks of sleeplessness and crying’ the wet nurse was changed. Some were even more inappropriate. In June 1854, Bertie’s former wet nurse murdered her six children. The news quite haunted the Queen, who saw her as ‘a most depraved woman. Morose, ill tempered and stupid she always used to be, when in our house!’64

  In Christian tradition women were ‘churched’ after the birth of a child. Feminists in the twentieth century criticised ‘churching’ as an expression of the Church’s misogyny in that women who had just given birth were thought of as impure and needed to be cleansed by a religious rite specified for the purpose. However, this interpretation has been revised. Recently historians have argued that rather than despising the idea of ‘churching’, it s
hould be seen as a celebration and thanksgiving, a ceremony which acknowledged the difficulties of giving birth and the perils attending it.65 Victoria was ‘churched’ after the birth of each of her children, giving thanks for her survival and that of her babies. Indeed, the Queen considered the ceremony as a necessary religious rite, speaking of how she ‘was dressed all in white and had my wedding veil on, as a shawl. . . . I look upon it as a holy charm, as it was under that veil our union was blessed for ever.’66

  Naturally, each child was christened. Vicky, the Princess Royal, was dressed in a Honiton lace christening gown specially commissioned by the adoring parents: each successive child would wear the same gown. Generations of royal babies wore it too until the gown became too fragile to use and a replica was made. Today this replica is sometimes on display at Buckingham Palace. At the christening of her third child, Alice,