Queen Victoria

by Bartley, Paula;

  Victoria and Albert’s children would always have servants to look after them but their parents wanted them to experience how to make things and how to cook. At Osborne, the children were given their own gardens, their own garden shed and their own tools, in which the children grew vegetables and flowers. In 1853 the foundation stone for a Swiss cottage, a children’s house which was a smaller replica of an adult home, was built. All the children, including three-year-old Arthur, laid the first stone, ‘each putting on some mortar and striking the stone with a small hammer. . . . Bertie read aloud the inscription of the date, with all the signatures, written at full length on a piece of parchment. This was deposited in a bottle, which was put into a hole in the stone work. The Children were greatly excited and delighted.’62

  In 1852 the Queen and Prince Albert bought a house in Balmoral, Scotland and again pulled it down to build a larger and more modern country house in its place. Queen Victoria adored Scotland, spending six weeks there every summer when parliament was in recess. Here the family went on pony expeditions, walked in the hills, ate picnics, went deer-stalking, shooting and fishing and collected wild flowers to press into books. In the evenings they sometimes listened to, or danced to, Scottish bagpipes:

  All the Highlanders are so free from anything like bluster, so straightforward, – no flattery, so simple, and honest. They are never vulgar, never take liberties, are so intelligent, modest and well bred. I also like the other gillie, John Brown, very much, a good-looking tall lad of 23, with fair curly hair, so very good humoured and willing, – always ready to do whatever is asked, and always with a smile on his face.63

  Matrimonial affairs

  The eldest, Vicky, was the first to marry. As the Princess Royal, she was expected to make a top rank dynastic marriage. When Vicky was only four, her parents discussed the possibility of a match with the Prussian heir to the throne, Prince Frederick. Both parents wished to secure an Anglo-Prussian alliance which would act as a safeguard against French or Russian ambitions in Europe. Undoubtedly, this was a political match. Vicky’s Liberal English upbringing was thought beneficial to Germany and it was hoped that it would influence her new husband. ‘It may be God’s will, that this dear Child should some day play, if not openly, still really a great part in Germany, which. . . may be a great blessing to both Countries!’64 The two sets of parents connived for the two to meet. In September 1855, when Vicky was 14, the 24-year-old Prince Frederick was invited to stay, with the intention of securing a marriage alliance. ‘The visit’, Queen Victoria noted in her journal, ‘makes my heart beat as it may, and probably will decide the fate of our dear eldest child.’65 Prince Frederick (Fritz) duly complied as:

  after breakfast and talking with Fritz, there was a momentary pause, when he said a new life was opening out to him – his great wish to belong to our family. I could only squeeze his hand and say how happy we should be. . . . he thought the Princess Royal so sweet and charming, so clever, and natural. . . . Albert equally expressed our great pleasure, adding with what joy and complete confidence we should give our child to him! . . . (Fritz) begged however that she should know nothing of it at present. . . . to this we agreed . . . The marriage itself should not be till she was 17. The matter was therefore to be kept an entire secret.66

  The Princess Royal was not party to the discussion. The Queen may have insisted on marrying the man of her choice but had no desire to allow her eldest daughter the same rights. The Queen was nonetheless anxious that Vicky might refuse and ‘slept very little all night, being so excited and agitated. Of course now we are agitated about what Vicky herself may feel and think, and so anxious she should love Fritz as he deserves, and as I do not doubt she will.’67

  Parents from the upper classes were expected to provide their daughters with a dowry, usually a large sum of money, when they married. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert thought it was the responsibility of the government to finance it. After much discussion, the government gave a dowry of £40,000 and an annuity of £8,000 per annum to the Princess Royal on marriage. The Queen not only expected the government to provide Vicky’s dowry but fiercely defended her family’s right to be kept by the British taxpayers. Latterly she had been annoyed when the government refused to increase the Royal grant, more than once complaining that such alleged parsimony by the state ‘put me out a good deal for to see all one’s economy and care, all that one has done to keep out of debt with such a large family, and such reduced incomes, repaid by the answer that as one had done this, one could go on without any further grant, is very hurtful to one’s feelings’.68 Here the Queen was disingenuous, as it was money saved from the British taxpayer that had bought Osborne House and Balmoral. Before she became queen, Victoria was virtually impoverished. Undoubtedly, Victoria liked money. In 1852 she was astounded and pleased to be told that a man had died without any relations and ‘leaving all his personal property amounting to ½ million of money to me!! . . . We were astounded – and of course greatly pleased, for it is a mark of loyalty and confidence, which is very gratifying.’69 ‘I shall have £12,000 a year by it!! This is as much as the Duchy of Lancaster yields.’70

  Princess Victoria, now aged 17, and Prince Frederick, now aged 27, were married on 25 January 1858 in the same chapel where her parents had married. The wedding nearly eclipsed Victoria and Albert’s wedding. European royalty: kings, princes, princesses, royal highnesses from Germany, Italy, Belgium and France all came to see the young couple get wed. Queen Victoria and Albert had arranged the match but the Queen was bereft. Her first letters to her daughter were full of remorse, telling the newly wed Vicky that her ‘first thoughts on waking were very sad – and the tears are ever coming to my eyes and ready to flow again’.71

  Soon Vicky became pregnant. In August 1858 Albert and Victoria went to visit her in Germany having ‘given up the idea, of coming over for her confinement (which everyone expected) . . . though I feel it bitterly to have to forego my natural right and duty to be with my dear Child in her hour of trial, as every mother does’.72 The Queen, naturally, worried about her daughter’s pregnancy. She was delighted that she was about to be a grandmother, wished that she could go through the pregnancy for her daughter and save her ‘the annoyance’.73 When news arrived that Vicky had delivered a healthy baby boy, she

  called all the Children in, and ran along to the Rubens Room where Albert was. . . to bring him the blessed news. Such joy! . . . Ran back to send numberless telegrams. . . . Truly grateful and happy, – relieved from a great weight, which we would not acknowledge, but which had pressed upon us both from morning till night. . . . Children in ecstasies at Uncle and Aunt-ship. Arthur shouting out ‘I’m an Uncle!’74

  Later on Victoria learned that she nearly lost both her daughter and her first grandson; and that the young Prince had been born with a permanently damaged left arm. She had a yearning to be with ‘our dear Child. It seems so dreadful not to be able, like almost every mother, to go and see her, and our 1st grand-child!’75 When her eldest daughter came to visit in May 1859, Victoria was delighted that she ‘could fold her in my arms! I could not speak for joy.’76 Victoria, still only 39 years old, was thrilled at being a grandmother, writing to her daughter to ‘never fear to tire me in writing about the darling, it gives me the very greatest pleasure and I shall be ready to spoil him as much as all grand-mamas’.77 Her youngest daughter, Beatrice, was only two years older than her first grandson.

  Figure 1 Victoria, Duchess of Kent, with Victoria. Royal Collection Trust © Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II, 2015/Bridgeman Images

  Figure 2 The Queen and Prince Albert at home. © Museum of London/Heritage Images/Getty Images

  Figure 3 The royal cake: dividing up the world. The Western empires sharing China between them. From left to right: Queen Victoria, Kaiser Wilhelm II, Tsar Nicholas II, Marianne and Mutsuhito, Emperor of Japan. © Private Collection/Archives Charmet/Bridgeman Images

  Figure 4 The extended family of Queen Victoria. © Universal History
Archive/UIG via Getty Images

  Figure 5 Queen Victoria. © FPG/Getty Images

  Notes

  1 Letter to Caroline Lyttelton, in Wyndham, Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, p. 320.

  2 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) December 11th 1840.

  3 Ibid. February 24th 1841.

  4 Ibid. May 22nd 1842.

  5 Ibid. July 10th 1842.

  6 Ibid. September 14th 1844.

  7 Ibid. January 11th 1842.

  8 Victoria to the Princess Royal, July 28th 1858, quoted in Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 125.

  9 Ibid. May 2nd 1859, p. 192.

  10 John Van Der Kiste, Queen Victoria’s Children, Sutton, 2003.

  11 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) August 11th 1842.

  12 Ibid. November 8th 1842.

  13 Ibid. October 2nd 1843.

  14 Victoria to the Princess Royal, May 26th 1858, quoted in Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 108.

  15 Letter to Hon Mrs Henry Glynne from Caroline Lyttelton, April 29th 1848, in Wyndham, Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, p. 381.

  16 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) August 1st 1843.

  17 Ibid. September 22nd 1847.

  18 Ibid. May 25th 1848.

  19 Ibid. October 5th 1848.

  20 Ibid. December 18th 1848.

  21 Ibid. March 18th 1851.

  22 See Van Der Kiste, Queen Victoria’s Children, p. 174.

  23 Victoria to the Princess Royal, November 24th 1858, quoted in Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 146.

  24 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) April 14th 1858.

  25 Ibid. October 28th 1859.

  26 Ibid. November 9th 1859.

  27 Ibid. November 21st 1859.

  28 Ibid. May 24th 1861.

  29 Ibid. November 9th 1843.

  30 Letter to Caroline Spencer, February 1844, in Wyndham, Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, p. 339.

  31 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) May 31st 1861.

  32 Ibid. June 5th 1861.

  33 Van der Kiste, Queen Victoria’s Children, p. 175.

  34 Quoted in Longford, Victoria, p. 186.

  35 Whipping was a blanket term used to cover a wide range of physical punishments, from a slap through to a cane. The cane was abolished in British state schools in 1987 and in private schools in 1999. Today ‘reasonable’ physical chastisement of children by parents is still not unlawful in Britain.

  36 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) December 12th 1847.

  37 Ibid. February 12th 1852.

  38 Ibid. November 9th 1854.

  39 Ibid. March 27th 1855.

  40 Ibid. June 3rd 1856.

  41 Ibid. August 6th 1856.

  42 Victoria to the Princess Royal, February 29th 1860, quoted in Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 235.

  43 Ibid. March 8th 1858, p. 73.

  44 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) February 11th 1846.

  45 Ibid. February 21st 1845.

  46 Ibid. November 6th 1844.

  47 Ibid. November 1st 1846.

  48 Ibid. April 21st 1850.

  49 Ibid. January 5th 1850.

  50 Ibid. April 25th 1846.

  51 Ibid. April 14th 1859.

  52 Ibid. April 25th 1848.

  53 Ibid. January 25th 1836.

  54 Ibid. June 11th 1849.

  55 Ibid. December 20th 1843.

  56 Ibid. February 1st 1850.

  57 Ibid. February 27th 1853.

  58 Ibid. February 25th 1842.

  59 Ibid. March 30th 1845.

  60 Ibid. May 10th 1845.

  61 Ibid. July 30th 1847.

  62 Ibid. May 5th 1853.

  63 Ibid. October 3rd 1850.

  64 Ibid. June 18th 1856.

  65 Ibid. September 14th 1855.

  66 Ibid. September 20th 1855.

  67 Ibid. September 21st 1855.

  68 Ibid. January 6th 1850.

  69 Ibid. September 3rd 1852.

  70 Ibid. September 4th 1852.

  71 Victoria to the Princess Royal, February 4th 1858, quoted in Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 30.

  72 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) August 22nd 1858.

  73 Victoria to the Princess Royal, June 30th 1858, quoted in Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 120.

  74 RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ (W) January 27th 1859.

  75 Ibid. January 28th 1859.

  76 Ibid. May 21st 1859

  77 Victoria to the Princess Royal, March 16th 1859, quoted in Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 168

  6 Queen Victoria, Palmerston and political interference: 1850–1860

  The Whigs continued to be the most powerful political party in Britain. Lord Russell remained as prime minister until 1852. Queen Victoria appointed three more prime ministers during this ten-year period: the Earl of Derby, a Whig (1852 and 1858–9); Lord Aberdeen, a Tory (1852–5); and Lord Palmerston, a Whig (1855–8 and 1859–65). For much of this period, to the Queen’s exasperation, Russell and Palmerston alternated the roles of prime minister and foreign secretary.

  In 1850 the Queen reigned over a country in which scientific, technological, engineering and industrial advance was clearly visible. Victoria’s journals rarely record Britain’s colossal domestic achievements, the one exception being the 1851 Great Exhibition organised by Prince Albert. The Exhibition attracted 13,000 exhibitors from all over the world and six million visitors. The Queen visited the Exhibition the day before its official opening and returned

  quite dead beat and my head really bewildered by the myriads of beautiful and wonderful things, which now quite dazzle one’s eyes. . . . We went up into the Gallery and the sight from there into all the Courts, full of all sorts of objects of art, manufacture etc – had quite the effect of fairyland. The noise was tremendous as there was so much going on, of all kinds and sorts, and at least 12 to 20,000 engaged in work of every kind. The collection of raw materials is very fine; the clocks and articles of silver, stuffs, English ribbon, lace etc are beautiful. Indeed it shows off what immense use to this country this Exhibition is, as it goes to prove that we are capable of doing almost anything.1

  Victoria maintained that the day of the Exhibition’s opening on 1 May was one of the ‘greatest and most glorious days of our lives, with which, to my pride and joy the name of my dearly beloved Albert is for ever associated! . . . my beloved Husband the creator of this great “Peace Festival”, inviting the industry and art of all nations on earth, all this, was indeed moving, and a day to live forever.’2 The Great Exhibition, Victoria insisted, ‘had taught her so much. . . had brought her into contact with so many clever people. . . and with so many manufacturers’.3

  The 1851 Exhibition marked the beginning of an economic boom. For some of the 18 million people who lived in Britain, it was an age of improvement: the manufacturers, merchants, managers, business executives, bankers and stockbrokers enjoyed unprecedented prosperity in their suburban mansions. It was the ‘golden age’ of farming and landowners enriched themselves as the price of corn and other farming produce increased. Others benefited very little: the agricultural labourer, the casual labourer, the sweated worker remained in desperate poverty, subsisting on starvation-level wages, living in overcrowded slums and sharing an outside lavatory sometimes with hundreds of others. Queen Victoria was not indifferent to poverty: between 1837 and 1871 she gave away 15 per cent of her privy purse each year to various charities – in 1852 she donated £100 to Great Ormond Street hospital – and became patron of 150 institutions, ranging from those which provided relief to aged, infirm and distressed printers to homes for Scottish children orphaned by wars. Nonetheless, her journals, her memos and her private letters show little concern for the plight of her unfortunate subjects dislocated by industrialisation.

  Queen Victoria did not have to contend with any large-scale domestic political measures in this period. Lord Russell tried hard to bring in franchise reform to allow more men to vote but his Bills either failed or were thwarted by war. Lord Palmerston, in the short time he was home secretary, was responsible for some social reform. He put forward a Factory Act which made it illegal to employ young people between 6pm and 6am; a Truck Act wh
ich stopped employers paying their workers in goods rather than cash; a Smoke Abatement Act to control pollution; a Vaccination Act which made the vaccination of children against smallpox compulsory; an Act which outlawed the burying of dead inside churches; and an Act which ended transportation to Tasmania. In 1857 Palmerston personally supervised one of the most important domestic reforms of this period – the Matrimonial Causes Act, often viewed as a watershed in legal history because it established civil divorce for the first time. Previously, if couples wanted to divorce, they had to apply for a costly and lengthy special Act of Parliament. Under the new legislation, men were able to divorce their wives for adultery. It was not so easy for women to sue for divorce as wives could only divorce their husbands for bigamy, rape, sodomy, bestiality, cruelty or long-term desertion. Queen Victoria approved of the Bill but was anxious in case the stories told in the new Divorce Court would be made public. Divorce cases, she wrote to the Lord Chancellor, ‘fill now almost daily a large portion of the newspapers, and are of so scandalous a character. . . None of the worst French novels. . . can be as bad as what is daily brought and laid upon the breakfast-table. . . and its effect must be most pernicious to the public morals of the country’.4 Newspapers, driven by increased sales, reported the salacious details of divorce cases, which later prompted the Queen to ask the Bishop of London to find ‘some means. . . to prevent the publication of these horrible proceedings in the Divorce Courts’.5

  Queen Victoria was not immune from the daily life of her subjects. In the unseasonably hot summer of 1858, the problem of sanitation reached a new level when the Thames overflowed with sewage and the smell overpowered Londoners. It was known as the Great Stink. The population of London had soared from one million to 2.5 million, which meant the pressure on London’s 200,000 cesspools increased, with calamitous results. London was filthy and exceedingly malodourous: streets were caked with excrement, rubbish lay uncollected, cemeteries overflowed with only partially buried bodies and the air was polluted with noxious fumes from factories and workshops. When the Queen travelled on her barge to Deptford, she was ‘really half poisoned with the fearful smell of the Thames!’6 Not surprisingly, there were further epidemics of cholera. In the Queen’s Speech at the close of the parliamentary session, the government granted £3,000,000 to enable the Metropolitan Board of Works to purify the river. In 1858 a revised Public Health Act was passed which abolished the Central Board of Health and replaced it with local boards responsible for preventative action. The clean-up of England was set to begin: Joseph Bazalgette designed a new sewer system which Londoners, including the present royal family, still use today.