by Julia Baird
Quentin Bryce, the former governor-general of Australia, provided singular support during her time in office, as she did for so many women. Without her championing, and that of Stephen Brady, then Dame Quentin’s official secretary, I would not have been able to procure permission to study in the Royal Archives. For this I will always be deeply grateful. Lady Michaela and Lord Alexander Reid from Lanton Tower, Scotland, generously allowed me unfettered access to the diaries and journals of Dr. James Reid as well as their family scrapbooks, which were fascinating.
My research assistant, Catherine Pope, did excellent work on the long march of Victoria, and her diligence, wit, patience, and keen eye were critical, and hugely appreciated (especially her assistance with the cast of characters). Other valuable assistance came from Jo Seto, Libby Effeney, Sam Register, Lucy Kippist, Madeline Laws, and Cecilia Mackay. Those who read my manuscript and offered important insights include John Barrington Paul, Avery Rome, and Professor Sean Brawley from Macquarie University. Evan Camfield was a ballast in a sea of grammatical imperfections, made some crucial corrections, and has been as cheering as the rest of the team at Random House, whom I have been lucky to work with. Yvonne Ward from La Trobe University generously lent me her files from Germany and Windsor. Carolyn Foley and Geoffrey Robertson provided sage and timely advice, as did Robert Newlinds, who also assisted with some exemplary footnote research.
I am also grateful for my brilliant friends, all of whom helped in myriad ways: most especially Martha Sear, Jill Davison, Annabel Crabb, Damien Drew, Cathie Forster, Josie Grech, James Hooke, Kerri Ambler, Sarah Macdonald, Ali Benton, Ian Leuchars, John Harwood, Briony Scott, Leigh Sales, Mia Freedman, Judith Whelan, Emma Alberici, Richard Scruby, Morgan Mellish, Ellie Wainwright, Bernard Zuel, John Cleary, Pete Baker, Jonathan Darman, Sterling Brain, Elizabeth Hawke, Kimberley Lipschus, Lisa Wilkinson, Jacqui Maley, Kendall Hill, Jo Dalton, and Sacha Molitorisz. And of course my NYC crew: Katie Maclennan, Kerri Kimball, Lisa Hepner, Mary Morgan, Laura Weinbaum, Bonnie Siegler, and Andrew Sherman.
My colleagues at the ABC understood and enabled my mad urge to write, particularly Tony Hill, Steve Cannane, Gaven Morris, and Mark Scott, as well as the Drum team (Bonnie Symons Brown, Tanya Nolan, Annie White, as well as Emily, Jade, Lily, Mike, and Bennett). Many others helped in ways too numerous to mention: Pat Irving, Annabel Andrews, Ian Macgill, Norman Swan, Walter Shapiro, Meryl Gordon, Darren Saunders, Naama Carlin, Niall Tangney, Jane and Bob Maclennan, and Alex Ellinghausen (for snapping my author shots at midnight during the election campaign). My high school teacher Cate Vacchini taught me that history is more than dates and po-faced portraits, but trenches and pamphlets, propaganda and literature, blackouts and silk stockings as well. And that human hands wrought brutal destruction and exquisite beauty at exactly the same time. I would wish a teacher like her for all children.
Some I must single out for special thanks: the loyal Tim Dick for reading drafts and, with the wonderful Cath Keenan, never failing to take me to the line of hilarity with the rest of the beloved Yum Cha crew; Vanessa Whittaker for camaraderie and her infinite store of droll insights; James Woodford for understanding, goodness, and an uncanny ability to sift chaff from grain; Caitlin McGee for being the kindest, gentlest person I know; Jo Chichester for being hilarious and cool and steadfast, sticking by my side like the best kind of glue; the blazing Lisa Whitby for plucking me from flotsam, believing in me, and plugging ideas to electricity; Peter Fitzsimons, my honorary third brother and the hare to my tortoise in a race in which the hare never sleeps, for egging me on; the singular Maureen Dowd for an uncommon friendship and a thousand NYC adventures; Jonathan Swan for unswerving, unnuanced support; Jo Fox for housing me so magnificently in Notting Hill for many months and ensuring that my writing bouts were punctuated with music festivals and muddy boots; Jacqui Jones, sage and strumpet, for laughter, loyalty, phosphorescence, and endless capacity for conversations about everything, every day, during our decades-long hunt for the horns of Elfland. You are the best.
There are five people who have been pivotal to the conception and execution of this book. Jon Meacham, my brilliant former editor at Newsweek, must shoulder much of the blame for my decision to write the life of Victoria. His keen eye and insight were crucial in the early stages. Evan Thomas first lured me to New York to work and has taught me more than he knows. My inimitable agent, Binky Urban, has been an unflagging support from the moment Victoria’s name was mentioned. I have also been extremely lucky to have Anna Pitoniak and Kate Medina from Random House as my editors. Anna provided a calm, steady eye and unceasing encouragement, and made many valuable suggestions. Kate was always incisive, thoughtful, and enthusiastic, and immediately, instinctively understood what the book was about.
Which was, in part, to tell the girls I know—especially Ava, Anna, Frances, Evelyn, Sophie, Mary, Grace, Ariel, Rose, Sybilla, and my own daughter, Poppy—that an eighteen-year-old woman ran an empire. You all will reinvent and rule the world.
Finally, my wonderful parents, Judy and Bruce, have always told me to do what I love. Their support has been unstinting and immeasurable. As has that of my steadfast, funny brothers, Mike and Steve; my grace-full sisters-in-law, Kerryn and Annemaree; and my much-loved nieces and nephews: Laura, Cate, Luke, Elijah, and Oscar. My children, Poppy and Sam, are my twin north stars. You have taught me love and made me laugh so hard. This book is for you.
Notes
Abbreviations
QVJ: Queen Victoria’s Journal
RA: Royal Archives
CL: The Collected Letters of Thomas and Jane Welsh Carlyle
General note: All passages that discuss what Victoria was thinking, feeling, or wearing are based directly on journal entries, letters, and other contemporaneous evidence referenced below.
Epigraphs
“belong to any conceivable category”: Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, 70.
“We are all on the look-out”: Wyndham, Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, July 1844, 348.
Introduction
“One feels that the Queen”: Dyson and Tennyson, Dear and Honoured Lady, 76.
“Such a little vixen”: Rev. Archer Clive, quoted in Clive, Mrs. Archer Clive, 87. The full quote reads: “I followed the crowd and found myself en face a picture of Prince Albert well enough painted. If he resembles it he is good-natured but decidedly soft and weak, and that won’t do for such a little vixen as he is to marry.”
“the fair white rose of perfect womanhood”: A Lady of the Court, Victoria’s Golden Reign, 2.
“I have now received from the Librarian”: Beatrice to Bertie [George VI], May 10, 1943, Braubridge ark, Sussex, RA, AEC/GG/012/FF2/13.
“I know that the Prince and the Queen”: Morshead to Lascelles, May 14, 1943, RA, AEC/GG/012/FF2/14.
Beatrice made her mother tamer: Benson wrote in his diary that Esher had told him that Beatrice was “engaged in copying from the [Queen’s] Diary what she thinks of public interest”—which Benson took to mean “the dullest part.” Benson Diary, July 25, 1903, 35:81–83; Ward, Censoring Queen Victoria, 32.
“knowledge and particularly sharp or terse opinions”: Ward, Censoring Queen Victoria, 188.
“excessively assertive, unfeminine or insulting”: Ibid., 309.
Even worse, men wrote most: Ibid., 327. They had a particular bias in favor of Lord Melbourne, whom both Benson and Esher “adored.” In the first volume there were excerpts from 35 letters from Queen Victoria to Lord Melbourne, and from 139 of his letters in return. In 1837, six of Melbourne’s letters were published, versus four of Victoria’s. In 1838, three of her letters were included, but twenty of Melbourne’s. Ibid., 191.
Victoria wrote an average: Giles St. Aubyn wrote: “If she had been a novelist, her complete works would have run into seven hundred volumes, published at the rate of one per month!” (Queen Victoria, 340.) But this is a conservative estimate.
“prison-like”: On October 21, 1858, Victoria wrote to Vicky: “I have no f
eeling for Windsor—I admire it, I think it a grand, splendid place—but without a particle of anything which causes me to love it—none, I feel no interest in anything as if it were not my own; and that of course lessens all the enjoyment of one’s existence.” She repeated six days later: “How you can call Windsor ‘dear’ I cannot understand. It is prison-like, so large and gloomy—and for me so dull after Balmoral too, it is like jumping from day into night—fine as it is!” Fulford, Dearest Child, 140–41.
Chapter One: The Birth of “Pocket Hercules”
“Poor little victory”: Thomas Carlyle to John A. Carlyle, April 12, 1838, carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu/cgi/content/full/10/1/lt-18380412-TC-JAC-01.
“the crown will come to me and my children”: Stockmar, Memoirs of Baron Stockmar, 1:77.
His Majesty’s ministers waited: The officials attending the birth of Victoria included the Duke of Wellington, who had defeated Napoleon at Waterloo four years earlier; the Archbishop of Canterbury; and a man Victoria would grow to despise in her teenage years: Captain John Conroy, her father’s Irish equerry, or attendant, who became her mother’s confidant.
it was in fact the mother’s child: Some have suggested that because Duke Edward did not have hemophilia and Victoria was a carrier, he was not her father. But there is no evidence for this, and roughly a third of hemophilia cases are a result of spontaneous mutation. It should also be noted that Victoria strongly resembled her father’s Hanoverian family. See Stephen Pemberton, The Bleeding Disease: Hemophilia and the Unintended Consequences of Medical Progress (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011), 45.
it was one of the factors: Worsley, Courtiers, 190.
“patience and sweetness”: Duke of Kent to Dowager Duchess of Coburg, May 24, 1819, trans. cited by Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 30.
“superbe—d’une beauté extraordinaire”: Martin, The Prince Consort, 1:2.
scandalous mutiny by Edward’s troops: In 1802 in Gibraltar, Edward narrowly escaped death at the hands of his own troops on Chrismas Eve. He had been sent to try to restore order to the remote British naval outpost on the southernmost tip of Spain; the undisciplined, often drunk troops had quickly come to loathe his severity and sobriety. After his men mutinied—unsuccessfully, partly because they had been drinking—the Duke of Kent executed three and sentenced eight to life transportation to Australia. (Several of the men escaped upon reaching Port Philip, in southeastern Australia. One disappeared into the bush and lived with the native Aborigines for decades.) The duke was summoned to return to England, and he began a long fight to have his name cleared of charges of brutality. A short time later, in 1804, a yellow fever epidemic swept through Gibraltar, killing most of the population. The mutiny had spared the duke from this likely fate, and also spared the infant daughter who would be born fifteen years later.
only twelve were still alive: Their two youngest sons died after being given smallpox inoculations when aged only four and almost two, and their youngest daughter, Amelia, was twenty-seven when she died of a skin infection that had followed the measles.
they were unable to save her: Sir Eardley Holland, writing in the Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology (December 1951), surmised: “It seems hardly possible to doubt that Charlotte died of post partum haemorrhage.” He scoffed at rumors that she died because she had not exercised when pregnant or had been starved during her long labor. If Sir Richard Croft made any mistakes, it was not using forceps due to “a mistaken system….of midwifery.” Quoted in Longford, Victoria R.I., 151.
rare metabolic disorder: Peters and Wilkinson, “King George III and Porphyria,” 3–19. See also holeousia.wordpress.com/2013/03/07/re-evaluating-the-porphyria-diagnosis-of-king-george-iiis-madness/. King George III had a severe brain fever in 1788, in which he talked ceaselessly and temporarily lost the ability to think rationally. The veins on his face were so swollen that his wife described it as looking like “black currant jelly” (Hibbert, George III: A Personal History, 261). Yet the following year, the king unexpectedly recovered and was well for some years. He finally relapsed after his youngest daughter, Amelia, died in 1810 following a bout of the measles.
“unpleasant laughing”: Fulford, Royal Dukes, 38.
His relationship with his wife, Princess Caroline: She was disgusted by his indulgent life and described his home as a brothel. He in turn treated her appallingly and spent decades trying to shame and destroy her. He claimed his wife was not a virgin when he married her, offering up as proof her comment that he had a large penis—which is rather a self-serving story, but it marks the beginning of his ongoing obsession with his wife’s sexual behavior. He tried to prove her infidelity in court so he could get a divorce, and failed. The proceedings were so humiliating and nasty that the public sided with Caroline. The Prince Regent even urged Parliament to pass a bill “to deprive her Majesty Queen Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of the title, prerogative, rights, privileges and exemptions of Queen Consort of this realm and to dissolve the marriage between his Majesty and the said Caroline Amelia Elizabeth.” The diarist Creevey wrote this should be titled “A Bill to declare the Queen a whore.” (Charlot, Victoria the Young Queen, 27.) The Prince Regent bribed people to testify against his furious wife, and in doing so severely damaged the standing of the monarchy.
like “wild beasts”: QVJ, January 3, 1840.
Too far down the succession: King George III’s sixth son, the popular, amiable Augustus Frederick, the Duke of Sussex, was not particularly interested in becoming king, and the seventh son, Adolphus, the Duke of Cambridge, a garrulous man who wore thick blond wigs, was also too far down the line of succession to be a real threat, even though he was the first to marry after Charlotte died.
King George III’s five surviving daughters: Of the six daughters, none had children, and only one was married. The eldest girl, Charlotte, who was painfully shy, wed the Prince of Württemberg in 1797. She had only one child, a girl, who was stillborn. The loss of her daughter broke her heart: she treasured the baby clothes she had brought over from England until the end of her life. Her five younger sisters, Augusta, Elizabeth, Mary, Sophia, and Amelia (who died in 1810), were forced to stay with their mother at Windsor, on the grounds that they were required to keep her nerves still after their father, King George III, went mad. They spent the long days sewing, playing music, and drawing, but they grew frantic with boredom. Two had affairs with servants. They were not even permitted to go to the decadent party their eldest brother, the Prince of Wales, threw for himself when he became Regent, featuring a flowing brook, with fish swimming inside it, down the center of an enormous dining table bordered by green moss and flowers. One sister, Princess Elizabeth, complained: “We go on vegetating as we have done for the last twenty years of our lives.” Fulford, Royal Dukes, 38; Williams, Becoming Queen, 47.
a marriage proposal…to which she agreed: The third son in line, a sailor and the future King William IV, who had ten illegitimate children with an actress whom he had dumped by letter in 1811, also successfully proposed, to the dignified and kind Princess Ameliée Adelaide. But she had a series of traumatic pregnancies and births. Her first baby was premature and died within a few hours, she miscarried her second, and her third died at four months. In 1822, she gave birth to stillborn twins.
“the crown will come to me and my children”: Stockmar, Memoirs of Baron Stockmar, 1:77.
In response, Edward was tender: He also wanted her to become pregnant; the prospect of the next brother in line—Ernest, the Duke of Cumberland—seizing the crown was unbearable. Ernest had a scarred face and extreme Tory views; there were relentless but unsubstantiated rumors that he had sexually assaulted a nun, killed his valet, and impregnated his sister. He had also married a glamorous, twice-widowed German princess who was suspected of murdering at least one of her husbands. Frederica became pregnant, but the child was stillborn.
Chapter Two: The Death of a Father
insisted on breastfeeding: The Du
chess of Kent said while “everybody is most astonished,” she “would have been desperate to see my little darling on someone else’s breast.” Her husband took a great interest in the swelling and emptying of his wife’s breasts in a practice he called “maternal nutriment” and “an office most interesting in its nature.” Stuart, The Mother of Victoria, 76.
“for she will be Queen of England”: Longford, Queen Victoria, 24.
starved as a result: Some deaths also occurred from excessive doses. According to the Registrar General’s reports, most opium poisoning deaths occurred in young children, especially infants. Between 1863 and 1867, 235 babies under age one had died, as well as fifty-six children between the ages of one and four; 340 children and adults over five had died. Berridge, Opium and the People, 100. Note that today opium—or laudanum tincture—is used to treat the withdrawal symptoms of babies born to mothers who are heroin addicts.
“ignorant hireling nurse(s)”: “Protected Cradles,” 108.
drew attention away from the real issues: Berridge, Opium and the People, 97.
“rather a pocket Hercules, than a pocket Venus”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 33.
“a model of strength and beauty combined”: Plowden, The Young Victoria, 35.
“pretty little Princess”: Memoirs of Baron Stockmar, 1:78.
Victoria’s uncles: In June, the duke told a friend that his brother the Regent had not announced Victoria’s birth to the courts of Europe, despite her high place in the succession line: “The plan is evidently to keep me down.” Three days after Victoria was born, the Duchess of Cumberland gave birth to a son, George, who was next in line. He would grow up to be the blind King of Hanover.