Victoria

by Julia Baird

  LADY LYTTLETON (1787–1870). One of Victoria’s ladies of the bedchamber and later lady superintendent—or manager—of the royal nursery. She was an astute observer of royal life who marveled at Victoria’s innate “vein of iron.”

  LADY JANE CHURCHILL (1826–1900). A lady of the bedchamber from 1854 until her death in 1900, Lady Churchill often acted as the queen’s intermediary. She would inform people of the queen’s displeasure if they breached etiquette—being late for functions, for example, or laughing too loudly over dinner. She also read to the queen from novels written by the likes of Jane Austen and George Eliot. Lady Churchill loyally served Victoria for almost half a century, dying just a month before her queen. As she left behind no journals or memoirs, her discretion has remained impeccable.

  GEORGE EDWARD ANSON (1812–1849). Prince Albert’s private secretary and one of his most trusted advisers. Anson proved to be indispensable and frequently acted as a mediator between the often fractious royal couple. Albert was crushed by his sudden, early death.

  SIR HOWARD ELPHINSTONE (1829–1890). A Crimean War veteran and recipient of the Victoria Cross, in 1859 Elphinstone was appointed as governor to Prince Arthur, and later to Prince Leopold.

  SIR CHARLES PHIPPS (1801–1866). Keeper of the queen’s Privy Purse and treasurer to the Prince of Wales. He was knighted in 1858 and was a member of the trusted inner circle present at Albert’s deathbed.

  GENERAL CHARLES GREY (1804–1870). A military officer and politician, and the queen’s private secretary in the years immediately following the death of Albert. Much of his time was spent making excuses for Victoria’s failure to appear in public.

  SIR HENRY PONSONBY (1825–1895). The queen’s loyal, insightful, and wryly funny private secretary. He served for thirty-eight years and was rewarded with a knighthood in 1879.

  SIR ARTHUR BIGGE (1849–1931). He became the queen’s private secretary in 1895 and was knighted in the same year. After the death of Victoria, Bigge served both Edward VII and George V, and was made a member of the House of Lords in 1911.

  JOHN BROWN (1826–1883). A Highlander who was hired to work as a ghillie, or outdoor attendant, for Albert at Balmoral. He was summoned to England to help Victoria when she was mourning her husband. She quickly came to rely on him, and an intense relationship ensued, one that would become the subject of enduring scandal. Victoria’s children loathed him, calling him “the Queen’s Stallion.” When Victoria was buried, Brown’s mother’s wedding ring was on her hand. After Victoria’s death, Edward VII burned any potentially compromising letters.

  ABDUL KARIM (1862 or 1863–1909). The queen’s Indian secretary and “munshi,” or clerk. Karim’s rapid rise in the royal household from servant to trusted adviser caused much resentment in the royal household, particularly among the queen’s children, but Victoria was blind to his pretension and deceit. Following the queen’s death, King Edward ordered a bonfire of the munshi’s papers, so we can only speculate as to the true extent of his influence.

  SIR JAMES REID (1849–1923). The queen’s favorite personal physician. He attended to John Brown during his fatal illness in 1883 and delivered all four of Princess Beatrice’s children. Reid’s discretion, skill, and reliability made him indispensable to the queen. Reid was the one the queen entrusted with her final requests for burial. She died in his arms.

  OTHER ROYALS

  FEODORA, PRINCESS OF HOHENLOHE-LANGENBURG (1807–1872). Queen Victoria’s much-loved half-sister, Feodora, was the Duchess of Kent’s daughter by her first husband. When Victoria was just eight, the fetching Feodora married and moved to Germany. The half-sisters wrote to each other religiously for decades; Victoria was wretched when Feodora died in 1872.

  LEOPOLD I, KING OF THE BELGIANS (1790–1865). Victoria’s beloved uncle and widower of Princess Charlotte. Intent on betrothing Albert and Victoria from the time they were small children, Leopold was like a father to Victoria; he provided a stream of advice and took interest in her education, health, spiritual development, and marriage.

  LEOPOLD II, KING OF THE BELGIANS (1835–1909). The son of Leopold I. His rule in the Congo was characterized by ruthless, barbaric exploitation and mass murder.

  LOUIS PHILIPPE, KING OF FRANCE (1773–1850). Forced to abdicate after the revolution of 1848, Louis Philippe was exiled to Great Britain and lived at Claremont in Surrey. His daughter, Prince Louise-Marie, was the second wife of Victoria’s uncle Leopold.

  VICTORIA’S CONTEMPORARIES

  THOMAS CARLYLE (1795–1881). A cantankerous but celebrated Scottish author and historian, Carlyle provided many eyewitness accounts of events during Victoria’s lifetime.

  CHARLES DICKENS (1812–1870). Dickens had no great reverence for the monarchy; he thought himself a greater celebrity than his sovereign and tried to avoid her. It was Victoria who greatly admired him and devoured his tales of the London underworld. The two did not meet until 1870, just three months before his death. She described him as “very agreeable, with a pleasant voice & manner.”

  FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1820–1910). A brilliant nurse who revolutionized medical care in the military, most notably in the Crimean War. She inspired generations of women, including the queen and her daughters Alice, Vicky, and Helena. Despite her own ill heath, Nightingale continued to lobby for structural and cultural change in hospital and health management. She was the first woman to be awarded an Order of the British Empire, in 1907.

  ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON (1809–1892). The brilliant poet laureate, who lived near the queen on the Isle of Wight, became a confidant during her period of mourning, when his poems provided great comfort. He was awarded a peerage in 1883.

  PRIME MINISTERS

  LORD MELBOURNE (1779–1848). The young queen’s first and most completely trusted prime minister. Having endured a chaotic and painful personal life, Melbourne grew as attached to the eighteen-year-old monarch as she was to him. When his government eventually fell, Victoria was distraught. Later in life, she would be embarrassed by the intensity of her feelings for her first PM.

  SIR ROBERT PEEL (1788–1850). Prime minister after the fall of Lord Melbourne’s government. At first, Victoria resented him for ousting Melbourne and was irritated by his social reserve. But her respect grew as she witnessed his competence and willingness to fight for his beliefs despite personal cost. Although a conservative Tory, Peel was intent on reform and successfully repealed the unpopular, protectionist Corn Laws, making him a hated figure in his own party. Albert came to think of him as a father.

  LORD RUSSELL (1792–1878). A liberal reformer and two-time prime minister. He was the architect of the 1832 Reform Act, a point to which some peg the beginning of the decline of the direct power of the monarchy. His great failure was his inability to come to the aid of the Irish during the famine of the late 1840s, poisoning relations with the impoverished country for decades to come.

  LORD PALMERSTON (1784–1865). Foreign secretary and prime minister. Palmerston was initially popular with both Victoria and Albert, but later they clashed with him repeatedly over his liberal interventionist foreign policy and what they saw as an insulting lack of consultation. Victoria repeatedly called for his firing.

  LORD DERBY (1799–1869). Derby served as prime minister three times, albeit in short-lived minority governments, and was leader of the Conservative Party for a record twenty-two years. Possibly his greatest achievement was ensuring the passage of the Second Reform Bill through Parliament in 1867, thereby doubling the size of the electorate and enfranchising large swathes of the middle class.

  BENJAMIN DISRAELI (1804–1881). First Earl of Beaconsfield, flamboyant novelist, Conservative politician, and two-time prime minister. While he was a practicing Anglican, he was the first—and only—British PM to have been born Jewish. Disraeli’s respectful flattery, facility with language, and entertaining anecdotes charmed Victoria. A skilled diplomat, Disraeli also pursued an aggressive foreign policy and pushed progressive legislation through Parliament.

&
nbsp; SIR WILLIAM GLADSTONE (1809–1898). A Liberal leader and four-time prime minister, Gladstone was known as the Grand Old Man of British politics. He was a deeply religious man who retreated to his country estate to chop down trees for months at a stretch and had a curious obsession with rescuing “ladies of the night” from prostitution. Despite his obvious seriousness about governing, Gladstone never earned the respect of Queen Victoria. She would devote considerable energy to trying to prevent him from becoming PM.

  EARL OF ROSEBERY (1847–1929). A reluctant Liberal prime minister who was coerced by Victoria into assuming the premiership instead of Gladstone. He held it for little more than a year.

  LORD SALISBURY (1830–1903). Victoria’s last prime minister, Salisbury served for three terms and joined her in vehement opposition to Irish Home Rule and its chief proponent, Gladstone. She would grow very fond of his genteel, respectful ways. A keen imperialist, Salisbury advocated a policy of “splendid isolation,” eschewing the idea of forging alliances with other powers.

  OTHER FIGURES

  MADAME ALPHONSINE-THÉRÈSE-BERNARDINE-JULIE DE MONTGENÊT DE SAINT-LAURENT (1760–1830). Often referred to as “Julie,” she was the lover of the Duke of Kent for three decades before he married Victoria’s mother.

  ALEXANDRA OF DENMARK, PRINCESS OF WALES, later QUEEN ALEXANDRA OF GREAT BRITAIN (1844–1925). The wife of Bertie, “Alix” was elegant, kind, and forbearing. Although Alix’s Danish heritage was something of an inconvenience, mostly due to the knotty, complicated Schleswig-Holstein question, Victoria often said she preferred her daughter-in-law to her own daughters. The British people adored Alix, too—while raising eyebrows at her husband’s bacchanalian ways.

  SIR JOSEPH PAXTON (1803–1864). A landscape gardener and architect who was responsible for the soaring design of the Crystal Palace for the Great Exhibition of 1851.

  SIR JOSEPH EDGAR BOEHM (1834–1890). A distinguished Viennese sculptor to whom the queen gave more than forty royal commissions. Boehm was particularly close to Princess Louise, whom he tutored in the art of sculpture. Princess Louise was present when Boehm died suddenly in his studio; it was surmised that he had expired in the throes of vigorous sexual activity, speculation later further fueled by the destruction of Boehm’s papers.

  GENERAL CHARLES GORDON (1833–1885). An eccentric military hero much admired by Queen Victoria. In 1883, Gordon was sent on a mission to withdraw British and Egyptian troops from the Sudan after a local coup. Instead, Gordon dug in and a siege began. The reluctance of Gladstone to send reinforcements enraged Victoria and prompted public disgust. Gordon’s subsequent murder was blamed on Gladstone’s indecision. The queen never forgave Gladstone for this.

  ARTHUR BENSON (1862–1925) and LORD ESHER (1852–1930). Two old Etonians who took upon themselves the monumental task of editing Queen Victoria’s letters, a collection comprising more than 460 volumes of documents. Although they happily brought much of her writing out of the secretive, closeted archives and into public view, by expunging compromising episodes and anything they thought boring or trivial, such as motherhood, the two men warped our view of Queen Victoria for decades.

  Compiled with assistance from Catherine Pope

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  Introduction

  One feels that the Queen is a woman to live and die for.

  —EMILY TENNYSON

  Such a little vixen.

  —REV. ARCHER CLIVE

  She was ready.

  But when Victoria first sat on the throne, her feet did not touch the floor. Below the soaring arches of Westminster Abbey she was a mere dot, burning under the curious gaze of the gathered crowd, trying not to dangle her legs. Thousands thronged the streets of London before sunrise, hoping to claim a vantage point from which to glimpse Britain’s new queen, who was just eighteen years of age and less than five feet tall. The previous kings had been profligates, philanderers, opium-addled, or mad; now the country was infatuated with “the fair white rose of perfect womanhood,” their new ruler, the tiny teenager who was sitting uncomfortably in a large abbey festooned with gold drapes and exotic carpets as diamond-laden aristocrats stared at her.

  Victoria’s head ached under a heavy crown, and her hand throbbed—the ruby coronation ring had been jammed onto the wrong finger; it was later, painfully, removed with ice. Around her stood her older male advisers, in a state of disrepair. Her prime minister was half-stoned with opium and brandy, ostensibly taken to calm his stomach, and he viewed the entire ceremony in a fog. Her archbishop, having failed to rehearse, jumbled his lines. One of her lords tumbled down the steps when he approached to kiss her hand. But Victoria’s composure was impeccable. Her voice was cool, silvery, and steady. Once, the thought of becoming queen had terrified her, but as she grew, she had longed to work, to be independent, and to have some control over her life. And what she dreamed of most of all was sleeping alone, in her own room, and escaping her mother’s suffocating hands. Most teenagers are given an allowance; she was given a kingdom.

  Few would have bet Victoria would become queen of the British Isles. Her father, after all, was not the first son of a king, but the fourth. It was, as so often with inherited power, due only to a series of tragedies—the deaths of family, including infants, a woman giving birth, and two corpulent uncles—as well as luck—her soldier father avoiding being murdered by mutinous troops and somehow persuading her mother to marry a middle-aged, almost bankrupt prince—that on June 20, 1837, the destiny of a nation wheeled, spun, and came to rest on the small frame of an eighteen-year-old girl. A girl who read Charles Dickens, worried about the welfare of Gypsies, adored animals, loved to sing opera, was fascinated with lion tamers, and hated insects and turtle soup; a girl who was bullied by those closest to her until her determination set like concrete; a girl whose heart was wound tight with cords of sentiment and stoicism.

  It had not been simple. Before she reached the age of one, Victoria lost her father. Before she turned eighteen, she had become estranged from her mother. Many times the Crown almost slipped from her grasp; others had tried to wrest it from her for years. She had needed to draw on the innate iron vein in her character and cultivate a stubborn strength. But the toddler who stamped her feet, the child who slammed piano lids, and the teenager who stared down tormentors was now queen. The first thing she did when she got home from her coronation was to give her dog a warm, sudsy bath, laughing as he flicked soap onto her face and clothes.

  —

  We forget, now, how long Victoria ruled alone. She may have married Albert only a couple of years after she was crowned, but following his death, she ruled for thirty-nine years on her own. Yet we know little about this period. This is largely because of the enormous, enduring spectacle of her grief. To walk the streets of London today is to be reminded that Victoria mourned loudly and for a long time. It is clear to anyone, then and now, that she loved her German husband with a particular intensity: a sudden love that took her by surprise and lasted until her death. Two decades after Albert died, she was still erecting memorials—in Hyde Park his muscular statue juts into the sky, with strong golden thighs, surrounded by angels and the Virtues, looking godlike. Victoria never fully recovered, and when she later found happiness in the company of another man, she guiltily consulted a priest.

  Yet the great volume of Victoria’s grief meant that a myth sprang up almost immediately, which many still believe today: that she stopped ruling when Albert died, and that she had abdicated almost all of her authority and power to her clever husband when he was alive. When she was crowned, people were amazed that Victoria could think clearly and speak without stumbling; when she married, they were convinced she had deferred all major decisions to Albert; and when he died, she was castigated as a remote, grieving widow. All this is wrong. Queen Victoria was a decisive ruler who complained of the weight of her work while simultaneously bossing prime ministers about daily, if
not hourly. “The Queen alone,” said Prime Minister Gladstone, “is enough to kill any man.” Yet our generation, almost as much as the Victorian, seems to fail to understand how such a woman could wield power ably and with relish. Part of the reason for this failure is the sheer difficulty of digging through the mass of legend and hyperbole to reach the real Victoria.

  —

  To properly understand this task, we must fly back to May 10, 1943, when the Second World War was raging. On this day, Adolf Hitler extended his dictatorship indefinitely, American troops were preparing to oust Japan from islands in Alaska, and Winston Churchill was arriving in Washington for a critical meeting with Franklin D. Roosevelt, a day before the Axis powers surrendered to the Allies in North Africa. Eighty-six-year-old Beatrice, Victoria’s daughter, sat down in her home in Sussex, England, trembling. Decades earlier, she had been charged with the unfortunate task of editing the queen’s voluminous diaries. She did this over ten years, writing them out in her own hand into blue copybooks and burning the originals, in one of the greatest acts of historical censorship of the century. Now she was an elderly woman who was occupying herself with translating her family archives as a distraction from the “anxieties” of war. That day, she pulled out a sheet of stationery to write a beseeching letter—never before published—to her great-nephew, King George VI, the father of Queen Elizabeth II. The most recent batch of archives had appalled her. Addressing him as “Bertie,” she wrote:

  I have now received from the Librarian a book with short letters from my Father to my Mother, both in English & German, but of such an intimate nature, dealing with little personal momentary squabbles, which I cannot possibly undertake or deal with. There were also jottings about my mother’s various confinements. These papers are of no historical or biographical value whatever, & if pried into could only be misconstrued to damage her memory. You may not know that I was left my Mother’s library executor, & as such, I feel I must appeal to [you to] grant me the permission to destroy any painful letters. I am her last surviving child & feel I have a sacred duty to protect her memory. How these letters can ever have been…kept in the Archives, I fail to understand.