When Victoria was born, the House of Hanover was undoubtedly at a low ebb, both physically and morally. King George III’s sons had produced no legitimate heir and the sexual incontinence of Victoria’s ‘wicked uncles’ had undermined respect for the monarchy. By the end of her reign, Queen Victoria had secured the dynasty and had established a new moral probity in the royal palaces: she banned divorced women from the court and forbade loose talk while she was present. Her early impish personality, when she had enjoyed scurrilous gossip with Melbourne, had faded away while she transformed herself into a symbol of morality. But she was no prude. She had an astonishingly high sexual libido and liked to give nude paintings and mild erotica to Albert on his birthday. And she very much liked to have fun in bed.
As she grew older, Queen Victoria became obese and increasingly frumpy. In her later years photographs often depict her sideways, perhaps to disguise her increasing bulk. Yet this little old lady dressed in black with a white bonnet on her head managed to stamp her identity on the nineteenth century. This was partly because Victoria lived longer, reigned longer and was the head of a larger part of the world than any previous monarch. With a reign of 63 years, 7 months and 2 days, she was Queen for nearly two-thirds of the nineteenth century. She appointed ten prime ministers, fifteen foreign secretaries, eleven lord chancellors, six army commanders, and five archbishops of Canterbury and witnessed the inauguration of eighteen US presidents.3 The sheer length of Queen Victoria’s reign provided a measure of continuity – and stability – in stark contrast to the dramatic changes that took place elsewhere.
The transformation of Britain during Victoria's reign
Queen Victoria is associated with the metamorphosis of the United Kingdom into a world power but perhaps her greatest achievement is the fact that the nineteenth century is called the Victorian age. Yet the Queen did not define the age, rather she was defined by it. In many ways her reign marked the change from old Britain to new Britain, associated as it is with unprecedented transformations in so many areas. Victoria witnessed the development of her realm into an industrialised country, noticed its technological and scientific revolutions, its progress in transport, its political and social advances and its transformation into a world power. On 16 August 1858 the Queen sent one of the first telegraph messages across the transatlantic cable to the American president. Indeed, the Queen saw more technological innovation than any of her forbears: the railway and the steamship; the telephone and the telegraph; gas and electric light; the sewing machine and the typewriter; the bicycle and the glider aeroplane; the machine gun and dynamite; anaesthetics and antiseptics. And the newly invented camera recorded it all. Victoria might also have seen, and given her sweet tooth perhaps even ate, the first Easter egg and the first jelly-baby.
Queen Victoria observed the biggest population boom that Britain had ever experienced. At the time of her birth, the population of Britain was approximately 13 million; by the time of her death it had risen to about 42 million. She of course contributed to the population growth by giving birth to nine babies, all of whom reached adulthood, married and produced lots of children themselves. By the time of Victoria’s death, most of the population lived in towns rather than the countryside. New cities had sprung up and older cities had increased in size dramatically: in 1800 the population of Manchester was 90,000 but by 1900 it had increased to 543,900; Sheffield jumped from 31,000 to 409,100. The water and sewage systems were unable to cope with this vast increase in the population and health problems soon followed. No one, not even the aristocracy and the royal family, was immune. Both the Queen and her son survived typhoid, a bacterial disease spread by poor hygiene and sanitation. Prince Albert is said to have died from it.
By 1901 the standard of living had risen, life expectancy had increased, there was better health care, improved sanitation, higher pay and fewer hours of work. It is well known that Victoria popularised the use of chloroform, thus making childbirth a less painful experience, even though she played little part in other improvements. At the time of the Queen’s birth, schools were virtually non-existent for the children of the poor but by the time she died, education was compulsory and free. In 1819 a poacher, a picket-pocket and someone out at night with a blackened face could be sentenced to death by hanging; by 1901 the death penalty had been abolished for over 200 types of crime. Britain was becoming civilised. Nonetheless, the poor were helped more by charity than the state. The Poor Law Amendment Act 1834 had consolidated the notorious workhouse system to the detriment of the unemployed, whether they were children, adults or the very old. Charities stepped in to ameliorate the distress. The Victorian era was one of intense philanthropy and many of our modern charitable institutions – the Salvation Army, the Children’s Society and the RSPCA – were founded in this period. The Queen was a patron of about 150 of them, often donating money. In 1882 she gave £12,535 to 230 different charities; she also gave one-off donations for the victims of fires, famines and colliery disasters.
In 1837, when Victoria came to the throne, taxes were levied on 1,200 items. Beer was taxed at 200 per cent, sugar, tea and coffee were taxed, bread was taxed, newspapers and even light was taxed. Even today one can still see older houses with windows blocked up, a reminder of the days when the window tax made it worth the owner’s while to shut out the daylight. In 1842 Peel reduced the number of indirect taxes and re-introduced a tax on incomes above £150 a year. Most of the population was exempt because few earned so much. Queen Victoria was not obliged to pay income tax but Peel persuaded her to do so by assuring the Queen that it would be a temporary measure. Income tax remained: Disraeli and Gladstone promised to abolish it because, as Disraeli put it, it was ‘unjust, unequal and inquisitorial’. Yet still income tax continued. Between 1886 and 1896 Queen Victoria grudgingly paid an average of £6,673 a year income tax; when she died the standard rate of income tax was levied at 2 per cent. Great differences in wealth remained throughout the century as the gap between the rich and the poor widened: a quarter of the entire population lived in poverty; 40 per cent of the country’s wealth remained in the ownership of 5 per cent of the population.
Queen Victoria made the royal family rich. When she inherited the throne, the monarchy was in debt yet by the end of her life the Queen was the richest person in Britain. Throughout her reign, Queen Victoria had used her Civil List money, a fixed annual payment awarded by the government to support the royal household in performing its public duties, to build up her private fortune. The purchase and renovations of Osborne House and Balmoral, costing an estimated £400,000, had been funded by savings from the Civil List.4 There is no doubt that the Queen was economical – newspaper squares were used instead of toilet paper in the lavatories at Windsor castle – but such parsimony cannot account for the vast wealth which Victoria amassed during her reign. She left her fortune to her younger children: her heir to the throne only inherited Balmoral and Osborne House. Bertie found the upkeep of the latter too expensive and was happy to donate Osborne House to the State.
Queen Victoria held firm to the belief that a woman’s place was in the home not in the workplace, seemingly oblivious that staying at home was an unattainable luxury for the majority of her female subjects. The Queen professed to be envious of Florence Nightingale’s work in the Crimea, yet made few comments about the work of other middle-class women. When Victoria married Albert, she enjoyed a superior status to her new husband – no other British wife could by law claim such a privilege. By the time of her death, the nature of the marriage contract had changed considerably. Legal reforms ensured that women were no longer considered the goods and chattels of their husbands, could no longer be locked up and beaten, were able to own property and goods and could keep their earnings from their work. Victoria made no comment about these changes, yet her attitude was consistent: she was pleased that women remained disenfranchised. She may have been the most important woman in the world but in spite of that she preferred to appear as the domestic ideal
of a passive female whose interests centred on her family. Queen Victoria had no desire to be a role model for women’s equality.
In truth, Queen Victoria reinforced gender roles. During her reign, monarchy is said to have become feminised. Just as a pretty, jewel-bedecked nineteenth-century wife was used by her husband to demonstrate his own wealth and power, so the Queen was expected to showcase the strength of the British Empire by dressing up for ceremonial events. Indeed, Bagehot’s principles of monarchy – the right to be consulted, the right to encourage and the right to warn – are seen more as the rights of a wife than those of a sovereign. William Kuhn even argues that Bagehot helped ‘secure the monarchy’s future by describing the constitution as a perfectly-adapted marriage between masculine efficiency and feminine dignity’.5 In one sense, Queen Victoria liked to bolster this image by presenting herself as the epitome of the middle-class female, the quintessential faithful wife and devoted mother living a life of domestic bliss. Yet, once widowed, she had no desire whatsoever to act as the glamour arm of the British Empire and face the gaze of unknown multitudes. The Queen considered ceremonial displays vulgar and in bad taste and for much of her reign steadfastly refused to take part in them.
To be seen and not heard: towards a ceremonial monarchy
When Victoria ascended the throne, many of the principles of constitutional monarchy were either fluid or untested so that both the Queen and politicians sometimes found it difficult to apply them. Nevertheless, political commentators try to impose neat theoretical frameworks on the rather messy Victorian era. In 1867, at a time when activists were campaigning for further parliamentary reform, Bagehot’s book The English Constitution was published. He divided the British constitution into two parts: the dignified part, that is, the crown (solely a figurehead); and the efficient centres of power, that is, parliament and the courts (where decisions were taken). Following on from this, the twentieth-century historian Vernon Bogdanor suggests that even in the emerging constitutional democratic monarchy of Victorian Britain there were two offices: a head of state – the monarch – and a head of government – the prime minister.6 Under this system, the monarch had three main functions. There were the constitutional functions such as appointing ministers; there were ceremonial functions such as the opening of parliament; and there was a symbolic function whereby the monarch represented and symbolised not just the state but the nation. However, real life – even historical life – is much too varied to fit into such neat categorisations. Indeed, the triangular relationship between Victoria, her government and her subjects was never constant: it shifted according to the changing status and expansion of the electorate, the governing political party and the foibles, caprices and innate obstinacy of the Queen herself.
Queen Victoria disliked the ceremonial part of her role and tried to avoid it. Clearly, this undermined her effectiveness as a symbolic head. During the last 39 years of her reign, she opened parliament only seven times;7 she did not prorogue parliament after 1854; and during the last 15 years of her reign she did not appear within the Palace of Westminster at all. Victoria’s disdain for the tradition of monarchs opening and closing parliament, of the ceremonial and theatrical aspects of monarchy did much to weaken her hold on government and her subjects. Very often, even at moments of ministerial crisis, Victoria was away from London. In effect the Queen’s non-appearance in parliament and her tendency to travel to Osborne, Balmoral or to mainland Europe seriously diminished her influence. Victoria’s travels were personal: if one added up her trips to Balmoral, she spent about seven years there – time that many of her subjects thought should be spent on government affairs.
Not surprisingly, the Queen became unpopular and a wave of Republicanism threatened to topple the monarchy. Her people wanted their Queen to be seen: if she was not seen, then she was not reigning. Most of her subjects would not, and could not, ever see a monarch in person but newspapers would have published Queen Victoria’s activities . . . if there were any. The seclusion of the Queen occurred at about the same time as revolution was breaking out in France and these two circumstances encouraged the growth of Republicanism in Britain. The early 1870s marked the high point of an organised republican movement as mass meetings were held in Birmingham and Nottingham, Republican Clubs were set up in over 50 towns and cities and Liberal MPs such as Charles Bradlaugh, Charles Dilke and Henry Fawcett questioned the benefits of funding a monarchy which was expensive to maintain and which did little for the country. Indeed, in some radical circles there was a feeling that monarchy was incompatible with democracy. In 1870 Bradlaugh wrote in his paper, The National Reformer, that ‘the experience of the last nine or ten years proved that the country can do quite well without a monarch, and may therefore save the extra expense of monarchy’.8
The monarchy was saved in late 1871 when the Prince of Wales became desperately ill and for many weeks it was feared that he would die. There was a ‘universal feeling of sympathy’ for the Prince ‘expressed in the press throughout the country’.9 On 2 December 1871 alarming reports that the Prince had ‘passed a very bad night, and that for a certain time the gravest apprehensions were entertained’ evoked widespread compassion.10 The daily sympathetic accounts of Bertie’s illness which appeared in the press helped to restore the popularity of the Queen and with it the Crown. Gladstone consolidated this trend by organising a National Thanksgiving on 27 February 1872. Newspapers saw this as a ‘great event’ which was celebrated ‘throughout the country’ and ‘marked with every manifestation of loyalty and rejoicing’.11 It also, claimed one paper, led to Republicans renouncing their programme because the ‘manifested national loyalty of the last few months’ demonstrated without doubt that ‘loyalty has been evoked and displayed in a manner and to an extent which clearly shows that the throne of these realms is firmly based on the intelligence and affections of the great mass of the people’.12 William Gladstone’s meticulous organisation of the event, the public appearance of Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales, and the subsequent reverential reporting in newspapers consolidated the trend towards a decline in Republicanism and the beginning of a new kind of royal performance.
Later ceremonial events, particularly the Golden and Diamond Jubilees, further enhanced the status of the monarchy. These were carefully stage managed and methodically organised theatrical affairs which aimed to consolidate the emblematic role of the Queen. The ceremonies, it is argued, ‘helped transform the monarchy from an institution with dwindling political power into a tremendously attractive centrepiece’.13 Equally important was the establishment of Queen Victoria as a new-style monarch: a symbol of the nation, of imperialism, of British world-wide dominance and of continuity, stability and tradition in a world of constant change. In addition, Queen Victoria’s gradual emergence from seclusion undercut republican arguments that the monarchy contributed little to national life.
To be heard and not seen: Victoria and constitutional change
Politicians may have wanted their sovereign to represent Bagehot’s dignified part of the constitution but after widowhood she did not want to be seen: Queen Victoria wanted to be heard. The monarch of Great Britain merely cocooned herself from public events, not from politics, engaging fully in debates that interested her. Her fundamental purpose was to keep the monarchy intact and her constitutional prerogatives unchanged. In some ways, Queen Victoria was blinkered, refusing to acknowledge the many changes taking place in the relationship between crown and country. When Victoria was born, Britain was ruled by the elite. The electoral reforms of 1832, 1867 and 1884, and the accompanying growth of modern parties and political machines, challenged the very basis of monarchical power by making it virtually impossible for the Queen to control her ministers let alone have her own way with parliament.
In the eighteenth century, monarchs felt more able to appoint prime ministers of their own choosing, confident that their choice would be able to control the House of Commons. Gradually, and spurred on by electoral reform, the C
rown lost influence as the House of Commons became more and more powerful. It became increasingly difficult for Victoria to exercise what she thought were her monarchical rights in an age of expanding democracy. Queen Victoria never really adapted to this new situation and her political meddling would sometimes threaten to damage the monarchy. Theoretically the Crown enjoyed – and still enjoys – the prerogative to appoint the prime minister, but in practice the sovereign has to choose someone who can command a majority in the House of Commons. In 1839 Queen Victoria was able to keep Melbourne in power and Robert Peel out of office largely because neither the Whigs nor the Tories enjoyed electoral majorities, nor were there strong party organisations to support them. The ‘bedchamber crisis’ may have been thought a victory for the Crown, yet the incident eroded Victoria’s popularity and brought her image as a constitutional monarch into disrepute. Nevertheless, Queen Victoria continued to test her monarchical limits, often fighting hard to preserve her powers rather than submit willingly to their reduction. At key moments, the Queen was prepared to use all means available to achieve her goals: sometimes she drew on her femininity; at others she threatened. Most of the time, and especially when political parties enjoyed healthy majorities, the Queen lost the battle. Characteristically, she never quit struggling, as witnessed by her opposition to Gladstone and other ministers she found unacceptable. And these struggles helped establish new constitutional parameters.
Queen Victoria Page 36