Victoria
Page 1
Copyright © 2016 by Julia Baird
Maps and family tree copyright © 2016 by David Lindroth, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint and division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and the HOUSE colophon are registered trademarks of Penguin Random House LLC.
Illustration credits can be found beginning on page 651.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Names: Baird, Julia
Title: Victoria the queen : an intimate biography of the woman who ruled an empire / Julia Baird.
Description: New York : Random House, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015025297 | ISBN 9781400069880 | ISBN 9780679605058 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819–1901. | Queens—Great Britain—Biography. | Great Britain—History—Victoria, 1837–1901.
Classification: LCC DA554.B18 2016 | DDC 941.081092—dc23 LC record available at lccn.loc.gov/2015025297
Ebook ISBN 9780679605058
www.atrandom.com
Book design by Dana Leigh Blanchette, adapted for ebook
Cover design: Belina Huey and theBookDesigners
Cover painting: Franz Xaver Winterhalter, portrait of Queen Victoria, 1843 (© Royal Collection Trust/Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II/Bridgeman Images)
v4.1
ep
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Cast of Characters
Maps
The British Empire Under Queen Victoria
Victoria's Royal Residences
The Crimean War, 1853–1856
German Unification: Germany, 1815
German Unification: Germany, 1871
Italian States in 1858
Italian Unification 1859–1870
The Crimean War, 1853–1856
German Unification: Germany, 1815
German Unification: Germany, 1871
Italian States in 1858
Italian Unification 1859–1870
Genealogy
Introduction
Part 1: Princess Victoria: “Poor Little Victory”
Chapter 1: The Birth of “Pocket Hercules”
Chapter 2: The Death of a Father
Chapter 3: The Lonely, Naughty Princess
Chapter 4: An Impossible, Strange Madness
Chapter 5: “Awful Scenes in the House”
Part 2: The Teenage Queen
Chapter 6: Becoming Queen: “I Am Very Young”
Chapter 7: The Coronation: “A Dream Out of The Arabian Nights”
Chapter 8: Learning to Rule
Chapter 9: A Scandal in the Palace
Part 3: Albert: The Man Some Called King
Chapter 10: Virago in Love
Chapter 11: The Bride: “I Never, Never Spent Such an Evening”
Chapter 12: Only the Husband, and Not the Master
Chapter 13: The Palace Intruders
Chapter 14: King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey”
Chapter 15: Perfect, Awful, Spotless Prosperity
Chapter 16: Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year
Chapter 17: What Albert Did: The Great Exhibition of 1851
Chapter 18: The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War”
Chapter 19: Royal Parents and the Dragon of Dissatisfaction
Part 4: The Widow of Windsor
Chapter 20: “There Is No One to Call Me Victoria Now”
Chapter 21: “The Whole House Seems Like Pompeii”
Chapter 22: Resuscitating the Widow of Windsor
Chapter 23: The Queen’s Stallion
Chapter 24: The Faery Queen Awakes
Part 5: Regina Imperatrix
Chapter 25: Enough to Kill Any Man
Chapter 26: “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone
Chapter 27: The Monarch in a Bonnet
Chapter 28: The “Poor Munshi”
Chapter 29: The Diamond Empire
Chapter 30: The End of the Victorian Age: “The Streets Were Indeed a Strange Sight”
Illustration Insert
Dedication
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Illustration Credits
About the Author
[Queen Victoria did not] belong to any conceivable category of monarchs or of women, she bore no resemblance to an aristocratic English lady, she bore no resemblance to a wealthy middle-class Englishwoman, nor to any typical Princess of a German court….She reigned longer than the other three queens put together. Never in her life could she be confused with anyone else, nor will she be in history. Such expressions as “people like Queen Victoria,” or “that sort of woman” could not be used about her….For over sixty years she was simply without prefix or suffix “The Queen.”
—ARTHUR PONSONBY
We are all on the look-out for signs of illness in the Queen; but…the vein of iron that runs thro’ her most extraordinary character enables her to bear up to the last minute, like nobody else.
—LADY LYTTELTON
Cast of Characters
VICTORIA’S FAMILY
PRINCE EDWARD, later DUKE OF KENT (1767–1820). The fourth son of George III, and father of Queen Victoria. He was strong and upright, a harsh disciplinarian as a military officer but a tender husband and father. After a controversial career as governor of Gibraltar and field marshal of the forces, Edward applied himself to producing an heir to the succession. He died, of pneumonia, only six days before his father, George III, and less than a year after the birth of a daughter, of whom he was enormously proud.
MARIE LOUISE VICTOIRE, DUCHESS OF KENT (1786–1861). The mother of Queen Victoria and of Feodora, princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg. The Duke of Kent persuaded the widowed Victoire to marry him and move from Germany to England. The relationship of mother and daughter was tempestuous and septic; the estrangement that began in Victoria’s teenage years was drawn into public view when she became queen. But they eventually reconciled, and when her mother died in 1861 Victoria was inconsolable.
GEORGE III (1738–1820). King of Great Britain (and then the United Kingdom) from 1760 to 1820, and grandfather of Victoria. Although he is the third-longest-serving monarch (behind Elizabeth II and Victoria) and led an upright, spartan life, George III is best known for his erratic, uncontrollable bouts of madness and for the loss of the colonies in the American Revolution. The specter of his insanity—and the possibility of its inheritance—would haunt Victoria (and arm her critics) for decades.
GEORGE IV (1762–1830). After serving as Prince Regent during George III’s illness, Prince George Augustus Frederick became king on January 29, 1820. An extravagant, big-bellied man, George IV despised and persecuted his wife, Caroline of Brunswick, and lived instead with his mistress. His only child, Princess Charlotte, died giving birth. His relationship with his niece Victoria was at times strained, but he pleased her by giving her a donkey and staging Punch and Judy shows for her in his garden.
PRINCESS CHARLOTTE AUGUSTA OF WALES (1796–1817). The only child of George IV. She was much-loved and it was expected that she would be a great queen, but she died after a torturous labor, setting off a competition among her portly, middle-aged uncles to produce a legitimate heir to the throne. She also left behind a devastated widower, Victoria’s dashing, ambitious, and kindly uncle Leopold.
WILLIAM IV (1765–1837). The third son of George III, and successor to his brother, George IV. He retired from the navy at age twenty-four and became king forty years later. By then, he h
ad had ten illegitimate children with his mistress. He went on to marry the well-regarded Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, but none of her babies survived infancy, which meant that when he died the crown passed directly to his niece Victoria.
ERNEST AUGUSTUS (1771–1851). The fifth son of George III became king of Hanover after Salic law barred his niece Victoria from succeeding to the Hanoverian crown. An extreme Tory, Ernest—also known as the Duke of Cumberland—was the subject of great fear and gossip due to his scarred face and reams of unproven rumors that he had bedded his sister, sexually harassed nuns, and murdered a valet.
PRINCE AUGUSTUS FREDERICK, later DUKE OF SUSSEX (1773–1843). The sixth son of George III. He disqualified himself from the succession by twice marrying women his father did not approve of, thereby contravening the Royal Marriages Act.
PRINCE ADOLPHUS, later DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE (1774–1850). The seventh son of King George III. He was also the grandfather of Mary of Teck (the wife and Queen Consort of George V) and the great-great-grandfather of Queen Elizabeth II.
VICTORIA’S HUSBAND AND CHILDREN
ALBERT OF SAXE-COBURG-GOTHA (1819–1861). Prince Consort to Queen Victoria. Born three months after Victoria at Castle Rosenau, near Coburg, Albert’s childhood was marred by his parents’ rather brutal marital breakdown. A polymathic, disciplined man, Albert aspired to greatness as well as moral goodness, and Victoria adored him. While clearly talented, he was a divisive figure: some called him “Albert the Good,” but others dismissed him as “Albert der King”—a foreign interloper. He was universally feted for his brilliant staging of the Great Exhibition of 1851. His relentless hard work and poor health led to his early death in December 1861, at the age of forty-two.
PRINCESS VICTORIA ADELAIDE MARY LOUISE (1841–1901). The first child of Victoria and Albert. While she was a precociously clever child, once her brothers were born she would never be able to inherit the throne. At seventeen, she married the future emperor Frederick of Prussia. Her marriage was happy but her life in Germany was miserable; she felt alienated, misunderstood, and alone. Two of her sons died in childhood, and her eldest, Wilhelm, was deliberately cruel. Vicky and her mother confided in each other in vast reams of intimate letters for decades, and they died six months apart.
ALBERT EDWARD, PRINCE OF WALES, later EDWARD VII (1841–1910). The second child of Victoria, and first in line to the throne. The tempestuous, gregarious “Bertie” was never as clever as his older sister, and his parents judged him sorely for it. Victoria blamed him and his immoral escapades for the early death of his father and refused to allow him any serious responsibilities while she was alive. Despite his parent’s reservations, Bertie would become an effective, well-liked king during his short reign. His son, George V, succeeded him.
PRINCESS ALICE MAUD MARY (1843–1878). Victoria’s second daughter and third child. A rebellious child who was close to her older brother, Bertie, Alice’s affectionate character was most obvious as she devotedly cared for her dying father, and then for her grieving mother. Her wedding to Prince Louis six months later was a grim occasion, and the marriage would be an unhappy one. While living in Darmstadt, she threw herself tirelessly into nursing, most notably during the Franco-Prussian War. She was only thirty-five when she died, from diphtheria, on December 14, 1878, exactly seventeen years after her father’s death. She inherited the hemophilia gene from her mother and passed it on to several of her children, including Alexandra, the wife of Tsar Nicholas II, who would eventually employ Rasputin to heal her hemophilic son.
PRINCE ALFRED ERNEST ALBERT (1844–1900). The second son of Victoria and Albert, “Affie” would become the ruler of the tiny province of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha in Germany. A competent naval officer (though his long absences at sea would frustrate the queen), Affie had to abandon his naval career when he became the Duke of Coburg. He was a conscientious ruler, but his unhappy marriage and his son’s suicide plunged him into a spiral of alcoholism. He died in July 1900, six months before his mother.
PRINCESS HELENA AUGUSTA VICTORIA (1846–1923). The third daughter and fifth child of Victoria, “Lenchen” married the unprepossessing Prince Frederick Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg and had four children with him. An admirer of Florence Nightingale’s, Helena became the president of the Royal British Nurses’ Association in 1889. She lived near her mother but largely escaped the extremes of Victoria’s maternal control as she carried out Victoria’s secretarial work while also acting as a patron of several charities.
PRINCESS LOUISE CAROLINE ALBERTA (1848–1939). Born during a year of revolution, Louise would always be seen as untamed and capricious. She became a talented sculptor and indulged in indiscreet behavior, notably with her tutor, Joseph Edgar Boehm. The beautiful Louise married the Marquess of Lorne, who proved an unsatisfactory if companionate husband. Despite the disapproval of her mother, who was surprised by the bluestocking bent of some of her daughters, Louise encouraged the establishment of the National Union for the Higher Education of Women and served as its first president. She died at the outbreak of World War II, aged ninety-one.
PRINCE ARTHUR WILLIAM PATRICK ALBERT (1850–1942). Victoria’s third son and seventh child. During four decades of military service, Arthur would become commander in chief of several armies. Perhaps sensibly, he acquiesced to his mother’s choice of bride, a Prussian princess, and was rewarded with a happy marriage (at least by royal standards). On the death of his elder brother Affie, Arthur became the heir of the duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, but his intention of ruling as an absentee, from Britain, prompted the German emperor to select another candidate. Thus Arthur narrowly avoided fighting his own family in World War I.
PRINCE LEOPOLD GEORGE DUNCAN ALBERT (1853–1884). Victoria’s fourth son and eighth child, and the first child she birthed with the aid of chloroform. An intellectual with strong conservative political views, Leopold’s life was blighted by hemophilia. His protective mother and doctors prevented him from engaging in normal activities. Nevertheless, he attended Oxford, sat in the House of Lords as the Duke of Albany, married Princess Helena of Waldeck and Pyrmont, and became father to a daughter. Leopold died a few days before his thirty-first birthday in 1884, before the birth of his only son.
PRINCESS BEATRICE MARY VICTORIA FEODORE (1857–1944). Victoria’s ninth and youngest child was also her most adored. Beatrice would be her mother’s most constant companion after the death of Albert, though she had a brief respite from this frequently suffocating role when she married Prince Henry of Battenberg. Despite Victoria’s reservations, “Liko” would prove to be a model son-in-law until his death in 1895. As an executor of Victoria’s will, Beatrice spent years rewriting and destroying the queen’s original journals and burning many of her letters, a grievous act of censorship.
VICTORIA’S GRANDCHILDREN
WILHELM II (1859–1941). Emperor of Germany, son of Princess Vicky, and first grandchild of Queen Victoria. Wilhelm’s birth was breech, and traumatic; his arm was born twisted and useless, and he would spend the rest of his life concealing it and compensating for it. He loathed his mother and was a brute to her. He ostensibly adored his grandmother, but his aggressive ambition for his country made relations competitive and then hostile. As emperor, he would declare war on his British cousin George V.
GEORGE V (1865–1936). The second son of Bertie and grandson of Victoria, George V reigned from 1910 to 1936, his older brother, Eddy, having died unexpectedly in 1892. (George also married his brother’s bride-to-be, Mary of Teck.)
MEMBERS OF THE ROYAL HOUSEHOLD
BARONESS LOUISE LEHZEN (1784–1870). Victoria’s German governess and later lady of the bedchamber. Throughout Victoria’s childhood, Lehzen was staunchly supportive, training her charge to be strong and defending her against critics and bullies. The queen relied heavily on Lehzen for guidance, a situation Albert would find intolerable. After a series of fights, Albert told the baroness to retire quietly to Germany; she packed her bags and left one mor
ning as Victoria was still sleeping.
SIR JOHN CONROY (1786–1854). First as an equerry to the Duke of Kent, then as an adviser to his widow, Conroy manipulated his way into the heart of Victoria’s family. Conroy was bent on acquiring personal power and tried to force Victoria to agree to make him her private secretary when she became queen. Victoria despised him and would never forgive his severe treatment; she banished him once she became queen.
LADY FLORA HASTINGS (1806–1839). A lady of the bedchamber and later lady-in-waiting to the Duchess of Kent. When Lady Flora developed an abdominal swelling, her court rivals gossiped that Sir John Conroy had impregnated her. Wanting to believe the worst, and buoyed by Sir James Clark’s medical incompetence, Victoria did nothing to stop the rumors. When Lady Flora died after a long and painful illness, the young queen was booed in public and openly attacked in the press.
SIR JAMES CLARK (1788–1870). The queen’s personal physician from 1837 to 1860. His long career in the royal household owed more to his diplomacy than to sophisticated medical ability. His demonstrated capacity for misdiagnosis and a desire to please the queen drew the court into a spectacular scandal in the case of Lady Flora Hastings.
BARON VON STOCKMAR (1787–1863). Trained as a doctor, he became a statesman and the unofficial diplomat of the royal household as secretary to Uncle Leopold, close adviser to Prince Albert, and nemesis of Baroness Lehzen.