Queen Victoria

  Notes

  1 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) January 1st 1840.

  2 Ibid. August 28th 1841.

  3 Ibid. August 28th 1841.

  4 Ibid. May 6th 1841.

  5 Ibid. May 9th 1841.

  6 Ibid. February 24th 1844.

  7 Ibid. March 16th 1842.

  8 Ibid. February 23rd 1843. See Angela V. John’s By the Sweat of Their Brow: Women Workers at Victorian Coal Mines, Routledge, 1980 and Coalmining Women: Victorian Lives and Campaigns, Cambridge University Press, 1984 for a discussion of the effects of the 1842 Act on women.

  9 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) March 23rd 1844.

  10 Ibid. July 5th 1847.

  11 J.F.C. Harrison, Early Victorian Britain, 1832–51, Fontana Press, 1989.

  12 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) August 13th 1842.

  13 Ibid. August 13th 1842.

  14 Ibid. August 16th 1842.

  15 Ibid. August 16th 1842.

  16 Ibid. August 17th 1842.

  17 Ibid. February 23rd 1845.

  18 Ibid. June 23rd 1843.

  19 Charles, Kill the Queen!

  20 See ibid.

  21 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) May 29th 1843.

  22 Ibid. February 15th 1844.

  23 Ibid. April 15th 1845.

  24 Ibid. November 9th 1845.

  25 Ibid. November 20th 1845.

  26 Ibid. December 23rd 1845.

  27 See James Loughlin, Allegiance and Illusion: Queen Victoria’s Irish Visit of 1849, The Historical Association, 2002.

  28 Ibid.

  29 Hector Bolitho, ‘Queen Victoria and Ireland’, The English Review, May, 1934, p. 534.

  30 Leopold’s eldest son married Marie Henriette of Austria, daughter of Archduke Joseph of Hungary; his daughter Charlotte married Maximilian I of Mexico, the former Archduke of Austria. One of Prince Ferdinand’s sons married the Queen of Portugal; another son and a daughter married into the French royal family of King Louise Philippe. Prince Alexander’s son also married into French royalty.

  31 Prince William married a German princess, Prince Ernest a German princess, Princes Augustus, Duke of Sussex, married twice, both English ladies; Prince Adolphus, the Duke of Cambridge, married a German princess; Charlotte, Princess Royal, married Prince Frederick of Wurttemberg; Princess Elizabeth to a German prince.

  32 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) March 30th 1845.

  33 Ibid. April 5th 1845.

  34 Ibid. April 6th 1845.

  35 Ibid. September 1st 1844.

  36 Ibid. April 14th 1844.

  37 Miles Taylor, ‘Queen Victoria and India’, Victorian Studies, Winter, 2004.

  38 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) March 10th 1842.

  39 Ibid. March 11th 1842.

  40 Ibid. March 10th 1842.

  41 Ibid. July 14th 1842.

  42 Ibid. November 23rd 1842.

  43 Ibid. April 23rd 1844.

  44 Ibid. April 24th 1844.

  45 Taylor, ‘Queen Victoria and India’.

  46 Walter Arnstein, ‘The Warrior Queen: Reflections on Victoria and Her World’, Albion, 30(1), Spring 1998.

  47 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) June 10th 1846.

  48 Ibid. July 3rd 1846.

  49 Ibid. December 20th 1845.

  50 Philip Magnus, Gladstone, John Murray, 1954, p. 80.

  51 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) June 30th 1846.

  52 Ibid. July 3rd 1846.

  53 Ibid. Monday July 6th 1846.

  54 Ibid. May 2nd 1848.

  55 Ibid. Friday July 21st 1848.

  56 Ibid. August 6th 1849.

  57 Ibid. August 3rd 1849.

  58 Ibid. August 6th 1849.

  59 Ibid. April 3rd 1848.

  60 Ibid. April 3rd 1848.

  61 Ibid. April 4th 1848.

  62 Ibid. April 10th 1848.

  63 Ibid. June 29th 1846.

  64 Ibid. July 5th 1846.

  65 Brown, Palmerston, p. 280.

  66 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) January 27th 1847.

  67 Ibid. September 10th 1846.

  68 Ibid. September 23rd 1846.

  69 Ibid. September 26th 1846.

  70 Ibid. September 28th 1846.

  71 The Bradford Observer, Jan 1st 1852.

  72 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) August 6th 1848.

  73 Ibid. September 19th 1848.

  74 Ibid. February 2nd 1848.

  75 Ibid. January 22nd 1849.

  76 Ibid. February 23rd 1848.

  77 Ibid. February 24th 1848.

  78 Ibid. February 25th 1848.

  79 Ibid. February 28th 1848.

  80 Ibid. February 27th 1848.

  81 Letter to Lady Pembroke, February 28th 1848, Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, Lady Lyttelton, 1787–1870, edited by Mrs Hugh Wyndham, John Murray, 1912, p. 320.

  82 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) February 27th 1848.

  83 Stanley Weintraub, Uncrowned King: The Life of Prince Albert, John Murray, 1997, p. 194.

  84 Ferdinand was the father of Princess Victoire who was married to Prince Louis, Duke of Orleans, the son of the deposed French king.

  85 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) May 16th 1848.

  86 Ibid. April 2nd 1848.

  87 Ibid. June 25th 1848.

  88 Ibid. July 1st 1848.

  89 Ibid. July 24th 1848.

  90 Ibid. August 6th 1848.

  91 Ibid. August 11th 1848.

  92 Ibid. May 23rd 1848.

  93 Ibid. October 13th 1848 .

  94 Ibid. December 8th 1848.

  95 Ibid. August 12th 1848.

  96 Ibid. May 21st 1848.

  97 Ibid. October 8th 1848.

  98 Ibid. November 28th 1848.

  99 Ibid. March 9th 1849.

  100 Prince Felix zu Szhwarzenberg’s Dispatch to Austrian representatives abroad, quoted in Langer, Political and Social Upheaval, 1832–1852.

  101 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) December 7th 1849.

  102 Letters May 22nd 1848 quoted in Brian Connell, Regina v Palmerston, The Correspondence between Queen Victoria and Her Foreign and Prime Minister, 1837–1865, Evans, 1962, p. 74.

  103 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) August 4th 1848.

  104 Ibid. July 20th 1849. Since 1794, passports have been issued by the secretary of state.

  105 Ibid. April 13th 1848.

  106 Ibid. April 13th 1848.

  107 Ibid. August 8th 1848.

  108 Ibid. October 13th 1848.

  109 Lines from ‘Dicsöséges nagyurak’, March 1848, translated by Frank Szomy 1972, privately printed. I am grateful to Teresz Kleisz for this reference.

  110 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) October 7th 1848.

  111 Brown, Palmerston, p. 286.

  5 Victoria and motherhood: 1842–1861

  Queen Victoria has often been characterised as a domestic tyrant, who disliked the heir to the throne, was over-protective of the haemophiliac Leopold, over-indulged the youngest Beatrice and was generally a control freak. Victoria, of course, was no ordinary mother and had to cope with the tensions between her role as parent and her role as monarch. Her position as queen may have interfered with her responsibilities as a mother whereas the regularity of her pregnancies may have undermined her effectiveness as queen. True, Victoria and Albert enjoyed a lot of help. The young couple, in common with many aristocratic families, had a raft of nannies, governesses, nursery maids and other staff to help look after their children. In April 1842 Lady Lyttelton was put in charge of the nursery and remained there until 1850 when she was replaced by other aristocratic ladies. But each night Prince Albert visited the children’s nursery to make sure that the locks were secure and that the children were all tucked in safely.

  Victoria has even been accused of disliking her children. In December 2012, one BBC documentary, Queen Victoria’s Children, portrayed her as a needy and domineering mother who resented her children. This is not the case at all. Her first child, ‘Baby’ as young Vicky was initially called, was adored and Victoria’s journals are full of comments about her, and her many sketches of Vicky and her other children are those of a devoted mother. Like all very young first
-time mothers, the Queen worried about Vicky and ‘never thinks the baby makes progress enough or is good enough. She has her constantly with her, and thinks incessantly about her.’1 Most mothers boast about their children and Victoria was no exception, writing that ‘our dear little Child. . . gets daily prettier, and is so “éveillé” [wide awake] for her age. . . . She has large, bright, dark blue eyes, a nice little nose and mouth, a very good complexion, with a little colour in her cheeks, very unusual for so young a Baby.’2 The Queen thought that Vicky ‘was so dear and merry; she is quite a little toy for us and a great pet; always smiling so sweetly, when we play with her’.3 By April 1841, she had been nicknamed Pussy. Victoria’s journals are full of love for her daughter, speaking of ‘our dear little Victoria’, who was ‘such a darling’, proudly commenting that ‘she now always sits up, taking such notice of everything and looking about her’, or saying she ‘looked such a duck, for she has beautiful little arms’. The Queen was delighted when Pussy came down and ‘sat on my lap and was very dear and very good’, insisting that her daughter ‘really gets more intelligent each day’. She liked it when her infant daughter ‘came into my room, and was so playful and funny, sitting on the sofa and playing so sweetly with her Papa’. When Victoria returned home after a day out, she ‘went up to the Nursery, where we found dear little Victoria, just out of her bath, looking such a duck, and so pretty. We were quite delighted with her.’ Victoria, like many a mother, took delight in the progress of her first-born child. She took one of her favourite aunts upstairs ‘to see Victoria take her food, which she does so nicely. . . Pussy came down, looking so pretty with blue ribbons, and having to our great delight, cut a 3rd tooth. She says “Papa” and “Mama” to us now, and can stand alone, with a little help.’ She clearly enjoyed watching Vicky grow, taking ‘such a pleasure to see her improve so, and to watch the developing of the little mind’.4 When she visited the nursery, she spoke of how ‘Ly Lyttelton and I, nearly died of laughter at Pussy’s drollness; she laughed and talked, inventing words and laughing at her own funniness. Albert came in as she was running round the bath without any clothes, trying to climb up into the bath.’5 Sometimes ‘Vicky was so absurd, that it made us die of laughter; she makes funny remarks, like a grown up person.’6

  As with most young mothers, Queen Victoria was most worried when her young daughter fell ill, ‘went up several times to see Pussy, who was very languid and wretched. It is such a worry.’ When Vicky was teething, she was anxious about her ‘ailing state, though not dangerous, fusses and worries me so much’. At times the Queen admitted ‘feeling very low about our poor dear little one, who certainly is not well. . . . Till the end of August she was such a magnificent, strong, fat child, that it is a great grief to us to see her so thin, pale and changed.’ It made her ‘so melancholy to see a poor little thing like that suffering, and unable to express what it feels’.

  She saw the infant Princess every day and missed her on the rare occasions she was absent from home, complaining that she was ‘deeply grieved at leaving our darling little Pussy’ and ‘Missed Pussy so.’7 However, when she later corresponded with Vicky, she spoke of how she had never seen a ‘more insubordinate and unequal-tempered child’ than her eldest daughter and told her of how she used to stand on one leg, laugh violently, cram food into her mouth and deliberately waddle when walking. ‘The Trouble’, Victoria wrote her daughter ‘you gave us all – was indeed very great.’8 But it was said with obvious love and affection.

  It is often the fate of the second child, and certainly the third, fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth and ninth, to be overlooked. As Victoria wrote to her eldest daughter, one made more fuss about the first than the rest. ‘We used’ she said ‘constantly to see you and Bertie in bed and bathed – and we only see the younger ones – once in three months perhaps’ at bath time and at bedtime.9 Victoria did not write about her later children with the same intensity but her love for them was evident. Some historians believe that her second child, and heir to the throne, Albert (Bertie), whose title was Prince of Wales, Earl of Chester, Duke of Cornwall and Rothsay, Earl of Carrick, Baron of Renfrew, Great Steward of Scotland and Duke of Saxony (as Albert’s son), was less liked. It is thought that Victoria’s annoyance at having two babies so soon, one after the other, combined with the difficult labour she had endured, had given him ‘a bad start in life’.10 However, Bertie’s eventual inheritance meant that the parental lens was focused more intently on his behaviour, character and upbringing than on the others. Expectations were high as Victoria and her husband wanted the future sovereign of Britain and its empire to be a good king. And so, the heir to throne, perhaps the least able of all the children, carried all the hopes and aspirations of his demanding parents and of Victoria longing for him to be a carbon copy of his father.

  At first she was proud of her new ‘Baby’, writing in her journal how he ‘now stands up at a sofa or chair and crawls extremely well and quickly’.11 ‘The Baby also came down, and it was so funny to see my dear Albert dancing the 2 Children, to the time of the organ, one on each knee. The Baby is very fond of his Father.’12 Her journals are full of the ‘dear little Boy’, who looked ‘so healthy and well, and so rosy and pretty. It was a great pleasure to us.’13 No mention was made in her journals of Bertie’s well-known tantrums and temper, his violent screaming, stamping of feet and habit of throwing things around the room. However, Victoria sometimes wrote about her disappointment with her eldest son. For example, Bertie was the only child who did not perform on one of Victoria’s birthdays: Arthur and Alice sang a duet, Louise said a poem, Alice and Affie played the violin, Alice played a complicated piece by Beethoven but ‘the only one of all the children, who neither drew, wrote, played or did anything whatever to show his affection. . . was Bertie. Oh! Bertie alas! Alas! That is too sad a subject to enter on.’14

  The other children, like children in most large families, bundled along as best as they could. Victoria was extremely proud of Alice who was as ‘placid and happy as possible, cries very little, and begins to laugh and even crow, which at six weeks old is early’.15 She spoke with pride when Alice was able to sit up ‘since 10 days and is really very pretty, so chubby, and had such nice little features; she is so intelligent, and laughs so dearly, whenever one speaks to her’.16 Alfred, who was destined to inherit the Coburg kingdom, was thought fearless because he climbed out of windows 30 feet high and balanced on the ledge outside, slid down banisters and jumped over streams before he could swim. Victoria was delighted when her fifth child Helen (Lenchen) appeared ‘fat and healthy. . . runs about delightfully by herself’.17 On her second birthday, Victoria called her ‘our good funny little pet’18 and generally found her to be ‘very talkative and very amusing’.19 ‘Little Lenchen’, Victoria believed, ‘is the drollest most amusing child I have ever seen.’20 Louise, the sixth child, although at times very naughty, was thought ‘a very sweet child, of the most placid and amiable disposition’.21

  Arthur, the seventh child, was a favourite son. When he was eight years old, Victoria told Albert that ‘this Child is dear, dearer than any of the others put together, thus after you he is the dearest and most precious object to me on Earth’.22 Victoria and Albert’s eighth child, ‘poor Leopold’, suffered from haemophilia and ‘still bruises as much as ever, but has not had accidents of late. He is tall, but holds himself worse than ever, and is a very common looking child, very plain in face, clever but an oddity – and not an engaging child though amusing.’23 Victoria and Albert’s last child, Beatrice, was over-indulged and there is no doubting the love that Victoria felt towards her:

  Our precious little Beatrice’s first birthday! No words can express what that sweet, pretty, intelligent little creature is to us! . . . The darling little birthday child, looking lovely, in a very pretty frock . . . was in ecstasies, over all her fine toys, and kept clapping her hands, as she always does when she wants anything. She is so engaging, and such a delight to kiss and fondle. If onl
y she could remain, just as she is.24

  Beatrice remained ‘Baby’ to her mother well into adult life and remained spoilt in comparison to the other children. Victoria’s journals are full of adulatory comments about her latest child. Beatrice ‘is too great a duck; when she is in the greatest good humour she says: “dee, dee little Mama, and dee little Papa”’.25 In November 1859, when the family attended an army parade, the two-year-old Beatrice ‘had hold of my hand; at first she did not mind the firing, but towards the end got a little unhappy, and kept saying to herself “good little girlie, good little girlie”’.26 The proud mother wrote that her youngest was ‘extraordinarily sharp and forward for her age, speaking so plainly, reciting little verses and understanding everything. She is quite the pet of the family.’ 27 On Victoria’s forty-second birthday, when Beatrice was four years old, the Queen was delighted that ‘sweet little Baby was there, chatting away, amusing all, by her perpetual funny remarks. She begged to stop for my health being drunk, and Albert made her propose it, which she did standing up on a chair.’28