by Julia Baird
“England’s sins and negligences”: Ackroyd, Dickens, 632.
“and I can’t bear that”: To Lavinia Watson, July 11, 1851, Hartley, Selected Letters of Dickens, 234.
which he alternately called a “Gigantic Birdcage”: Thomas Carlyle to John A. Carlyle, January 12, 1851, The Carlyle Letters Online, doi: 10.1215/lt-18510112-TC-JAC-01; CL 26: 12–14. carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu.
a “big Glass Soapbubble”: Thomas Carlyle to Joseph Neuberg, July 25, 1851, The Carlyle Letters Online, doi: 10.1215/lt-18510725-TC-JN-01; CL 26: 110–13. carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu.
“that ever was built in the world”: Thomas Carlyle to Jean Carlyle Aitken, June 10, 1851, The Carlyle Letters Online, doi: 10.1215/lt-18510610-TC-JCA-01; CL 26: 85–86. carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu.
calling it the “Exhibition of Winddustry”: Thomas Carlyle to Jean Carlyle Aitken, August 4, 1851, The Carlyle Letters Online, doi: 10.1215/lt-18510804-TC-JCA-01; CL 26: 118–19. He softened slightly once he had been there with his wife, Jane, but he remained grumpy about the ostentation and nuisance. January 29, 1851, doi: 10.1215/lt-18510129-TC-TSS-01; CL 26: 29-31. carlyleletters.dukeupress.edu.
“something of a prig”: Woodward, The Age of Reform, 106.
advancement of their public image by 1851: QVJ, June 20, 1851.
“native and [to] the manner born”: Bristol Mercury, May 3, 1851.
“follow the dictates of that spirit within”: McDonald, Florence Nightingale: An Introduction, 129.
“where no one of the three can be exercised”: Nightingale, Florence, Cassandra, 25–27. She continued: “We fast mentally, scourge ourselves morally, use the intellectual hair shirt, in order to subdue the perpetual daydreaming, which is so dangerous! We resolve: ‘this day, month I will be free from it;’ twice a day with prayer and written record of the times when we have indulged in it, we endeavor to combat it. Never, with the slightest success.”
“in nine cases out of ten”: Ibid., 40.
“ye women, all ye that sleep, awake!”: Nightingale, Cassandra.
Queen Victoria’s was Albert: To Florence Nightingale the opening of the Great Exhibition was like “the opening of a new era in the world.” She praised Albert for the two great ideas she saw contained in it (most men, she wrote, had “but half a one”): “the greatness of work, and not of rank or wealth or blood; the other, the unity of human race. It was the first time that workingmen and a Queen ever walked in procession together, that a Queen’s husband ever appeared as a working man….Idea the second, unity of human race: we have forever done with thanking God that we are not as other men are.” McDonald, Nightingale on Society and Politics, 5:187.
“grows daily fonder and fonder of politics”: Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 2:438.
“Alice & Affie have witnessed such an event”: QVJ, June 27, 1850.
and the cane was withdrawn from sale: A small article published in The New York Times in 1899 reported: “The cane with which Robert Pate, a retired Lieutenant, attacked the Queen in 1850, inflicting a wound upon her Majesty the scar of which she still carries, was advertised to be sold by auction this week, but the owner received an official communication from Osborne, Isle of Wight, in consequence of which he withdrew the cane for sale. Pate, who was sentenced to transportation for seven years for his assault upon her Majesty, died in 1895.” “The Cane That Wounded Royalty,” The New York Times, January 15, 1899.
“soothing, quieting and delightful beyond measure”: QVJ, April 22, 1853.
returned a surplus of almost £200,000: Rhodes James, Albert, Prince Consort, 110.
“imprudently heaping up a pile of combustibles”: Albert to Queen Victoria, Osborne, May 9, 1853, RA, VIC/MAIN/Z/140 9 to 18.
“beautiful strain of music”: Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, 14.
“untiring love, tenderness & care”: QVJ, April 22, 1853.
“when I have business elsewhere”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 329.
Chapter Eighteen: The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War”
“This unsatisfactory war”: Dyson and Tennyson, Dear and Honoured Lady, 39.
“with such courage and good humor”: Queen Victoria to King Leopold, October 13, 1854, Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:63.
“one feels wretched at being a woman”: QVJ, February 13, 1854.
the worry of staying behind: Chesney, Crimean War Reader, 29.
“I shall never forget the touching, beautiful sight”: QVJ, February 28, 1854.
when she first mentioned the possibility of conflict: QVJ, February 9, 1854.
out of a population of about thirty-five million: Faroqhi et al., Economic and Social History, 2:778.
without seeking her consent: She wrote on October 10: “We were a good deal concerned at finding we were pledged to a very dangerous policy which Ld Aberdeen himself did not like, & which I ought previously to have been asked about.” Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:552.
precariousness of an exclusive alliance with France: Stockmar, Memoirs of Baron Stockmar, 2:475.
offering support to Turkey without having bound it: Not even the Crown had that power, she pointed out to Lord Clarendon.
unable to slow the momentum to fight: Queen Victoria to the Earl of Clarendon, October 11, 1853: “It appears to the Queen, moreover, that we have taken on ourselves in conjunction with France all the risks of a European war without having bound Turkey to any conditions with respect to provoking it.” Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 2:456.
“It is an anxious state of things”: QVJ, December 20, 1853.
“I told him this would never do”: QVJ, February 25, 1854.
a short, relatively bloodless war: QVJ, March 24, 1854.
“is a great thing”: Bostridge, Florence Nightingale, 203.
“Never such enthusiasm seen among the population”: Chesney, Crimean War Reader, 47.
“as a careful nurse would a small baby”: “Campaigning in the Crimea,” The Times, October 21, 1854, 9.
“the groans of the wounded went through me”: “The Battle of the Alma,” The Times, October 18, 1854, 8.
“a mass of putridity”: “Turkey: From Our Own Correspondent,” The Times, October 13, 1854, 8.
who were, wrote the correspondent, “totally useless”: Ibid.
the rest succumbed to disease: The death rate was not brought down until mid-1855, after a sanitary commission sailed to Scutari from England and undertook substantial changes to the hospital, with large-scale reengineering. Overall, about 650,000 died in the war. Most were Russian—475,000—French deaths numbered 95,000 (75,000 from disease). Roughly half of the British deaths were from cholera, diarrhea, and dysentery, and more than 5,000 died from typhus, malaria, typhoid, frostbite, and scurvy. Ponting, The Crimean War, 334.
“What will be said when it is known”: “The Crimea: From Our Own Correspondent,” The Times, October 12, 1854, 7.
Victoria Theatre donated one night’s ticket sales: Grey, The Noise of Drums and Trumpets, 104. The Times’s reporter was the Irishman William Howard Russell, the first war correspondent of modern newspapers, whose candid, wrenching accounts changed the way the public viewed the war.
inefficiency, incompetence, and stupidity: The great paradox of what became the Florence Nightingale legend was that she was lionized as a tender nurturer bearing aloft a lamp, while her real talent was in her keenly honed analytical skills and ken for organization.
Her trip was quickly arranged: Having decided she now wanted to take three to four nurses, on that Saturday Nightingale sought the advice of the Secretary at War, a friend, Sidney Herbert, who was out of town. Coincidentally, Sidney Herbert wrote to her on Sunday and asked her if she would lead a group of nurses, provided for by the government, to the Scutari hospital. See Bostridge, Florence Nightingale, 205–6. This made it official.
“My whole soul and heart are in the Crimea”: November 14, 1854, Benson and Esher,
The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:66.
before they had even cocked a gun at the enemy: Rappaport writes that about ten thousand British and French soldiers were either dead or out of action due to cholera. Queen Victoria, 106.
saw dead bodies bobbing in the Scutari harbor: “William Howard Russell, the Times correspondent, reported seeing dead bodies rising from the bottom of the harbor and bobbing around in the water, ‘all buoyant, bolt upright, and hideous in the sun.’ ” Bostridge, Florence Nightingale, 203.
their incompetence revealed to enemies and allies alike: Russell became famous—Victoria even mentioned him in her diary. In her journal on February 16, 1855, she wrote: “The French however also suffer dreadfully, only they have no “Times” reporter to trumpet it out, which we do, to our eternal shame.”
“the misery, the suffering”: QVJ, May 28, 1855.
her “beloved” troops were constantly in her thoughts: Queen Victoria to Lord Panmure, March 5, 1855, Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:143–44.
and downplayed the newspaper reports: Sir John McNeill said even the lack of preparation had been grossly exaggerated—contradicting evidence Florence Nightingale was to give—and falsely vowed to the queen that her “sick and wounded soldiers were better cared for, than in any other Army.” QVJ, July 24, 1855.
“ ‘gladly give up his life to prove his devotion to Yr Majesty’ ”: Ibid.
The bullets wounded or killed about 240 out of 660: Rappaport, No Place for Ladies, 86.
she lay awake for hours: QVJ, November 12, 1854.
her empathy and imagination made her wretched: QVJ, October 28, 1854, and November 9, 1854.
“war never before was so horrible”: Wyndham, Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, 414.
“welfare and success of her army”: Queen Victoria to the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary for War (commenting on a letter he had sent to Lord Raglan, the British Commander in the Crimea). Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:86.
“true orthodox English manner”: Stockmar, Memoirs of Baron Stockmar, 2:481.
refused to swear, gamble, or keep a mistress: Ibid., 485.
over a dispute about a reform bill: The queen wrote in 1856: “Albert and I agreed that of all the Prime Ministers we have had, Lord Palmerston is the one who gives the least trouble, and is most amenable to reason and most ready to adopt suggestions. The great danger was foreign affairs, but now that these are conducted by an able, sensible and impartial man [Lord Clarendon], and that he [Lord Palmerston] is responsible for the whole, everything is quite different.” QVJ, August 21, 1856.
“infamous and now almost ridiculous”: QVJ, January 9, 1854; QVJ, January 4, 1854; QVJ, January 10, 1854, Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:8.
“afraid to do what I should think to be right”: QVJ, January 23, 1854.
“the Eastern Question & their desire for war”: QVJ, January 5, 1854.
defended Albert’s role as a key adviser: Lords Aberdeen and Hardinge led it in the Upper House. Victoria wrote in her diary on February 1: “Ld John has stated our position very strongly & we think it is very important for the future. On looking into the newspapers, we found that Ld Aberdeen had concluded his speech by an admirable defence of my beloved one, & that Ld Derby had also spoken very strongly on the subject….I read all the speeches to Albert, & felt so happy & proud.” Albert’s position, though, remained undefined.
the jeering had stopped in the crowds: QVJ, February 20, 1854.
“various and profound knowledge”: Martin, The Prince Consort, 110.
“had to take a back seat”: Esher to Maurice Brett, August 9, 1905, Brett, Journals and Letters, 2:97; Ward, “Editing Queen Victoria,” 288.
the country house owned by Uncle Leopold: Weintraub, Victoria, 167
“The door immediately swings open”: Strachey, Queen Victoria, 161.
“a balance within themselves and with humanity in general”: Albert to Ernest, unpublished, from Yvonne Ward’s files.
Victoria was now calling Albert her “Lord & Master”: QVJ, May 13, 1854.
“Few women are so blessed with such a Husband”: QVJ, February 10, 1854.
the wife of the prime minister: QVJ, April 28, 1854: “Sir C. Wood gave me such an account of Lady John Russell’s behaviour & how she rules & plagues poor Ld John, putting her opinion & that of her family, before his!”
“an exemplary mother & an affectionate true friend”: QVJ, November 20, 1853.
more intellectually capable than she was: Queen Victoria to Vicky, December 18, 1860, quoted in Fulford, Dearest Child, 293.
“King, instead of me!”: QVJ, June 20, 1855.
“will try to put down in a few words, what I mean”: QVJ, October 24, 1854.
“no wife ever loved…as I do,” she wrote: QVJ, Albert’s birthday, August 26, 1854.
mustaches were “very popular” among the Guards: QVJ, July 30, 1854.
“my general usefulness to the Queen”: Martin, The Prince Consort, 2:256–57.
“This position is a most peculiar and delicate one”: Ibid., 260.
to Victoria’s great satisfaction: QVJ, June 25, 1857.
“acts in everything by his inspiration”: October 8, 1857, Pearce, The Diaries of Charles Greville, 329.
mopping the brows of her wounded troops: She also wrote in QVJ, December 8, 1854: “I envy her being able to do so much good & look after the noble brave heroes, whose behaviour is admirable. Dreadfully wounded as many are, there is never a murmur or a complaint!”
pleased to hear that many had cried that day: She was also happy to report a letter from her containing a message to Florence Nightingale had been stuck up in every ward. Queen Victoria to King Leopold, Buckingham Palace, May 22, 1855, Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:161.
“so bright an example to our sex”: Queen Victoria to Florence Nightingale, [January] 1856, ibid., 170.
to lobby for a royal commission: McDonald, Nightingale on Society and Politics, 5:412. In 1861, Victoria also offered Florence an apartment in Kensington Palace, but Florence did not accept it.
“clear and comprehensive in her views of everything”: QVJ, September 21, 1856.
“and refusing all public demonstrations”: Albert wrote simply in his diary: “She put before us all the defects of our present military hospital system, and the reforms that are needed. We are much pleased with her; she is extremely modest.” Martin, The Prince Consort, 3:410.
“and appreciated my sympathy and interest”: QVJ, September 21, 1856.
care for the wounded in the American Civil War: The Atlantic Monthly wrote in December 1861 that the British nurse’s “practical hard work, personal reserve and singular administrative power” had heightened expectations for the treatment of injured soldiers. They wrote that it was “through her, mainly…that every nation has already studied with some success the all-important subject of Health in the Camp and in the Hospital. It now lies in the way of American women to take up the office, and, we may trust, to better the instruction.” Grant, “New Light on the Lady.”
“like a person who wanted to die”: McDonald, Nightingale on Society and Politics, 5:415. The original source cited is notes by Oxford tutor and theologian Benjamin Jowett of conversations with Nightingale in 1879. “[Queen Victoria was] full of interest in great subjects though stupid—the least self-reliant person she had ever known. If left alone ten minutes [she] would send for her husband to entame [begin] the conversation—so superior to all her surroundings. He [Prince Albert] seemed oppressed with his situation, full of intelligence, well up in every subject, yet…Had he gained his way there would have been no united Italy or united Germany. He thought that the world could be managed by prizes and exhibitions and good intentions….He was like a person who wanted to die. They used to play with the children in a clumsy sort of way, not knowing what to say to them.”
of a sunny week at Osborne: QVJ, March 17, 1854.
playing w
ith stuffed mice: Bloomfield, Court and Diplomatic Life, 1:126.
hiding quietly in the heather as Albert hunted deer: Ibid., 125.
“he is really delighted with Vicky”: Queen Victoria to the King of Belgium, September 22, 1855, Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:187.
“but unfortunately has also done great harm”: Longford, Victoria R.I., 146.
“I may be too happy”: QVJ, May 24, 1853.
after a 349-day siege, Sevastopol had fallen: Six months before then, Czar Nicholas had died, on March 2, 1855, of pulmonic apoplexy, after an attack of influenza.
“wild & exciting beyond everything”: QVJ, September 10, 1855.
Chapter Nineteen: Royal Parents and the
Dragon of Dissatisfaction
“the pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life”: Bagehot, The English Constitution, 38.
bolts, cutlery, metals, or buttons: In 1840, it was made illegal to enter the sewers, and a reward was given for reporting people doing so. This meant it was then usually done at night, by lantern light.
“sewer-hunters beset”: Mayhew, Mayhew’s London, 326.
The work was filthy, but surprisingly lucrative: Mayhew’s informants told him they earned about six shillings a day; equivalent to about fifty dollars a day today. Mayhew wrote: “At this rate, the property recovered from the sewers of London would have amounted to no less than £20,000 [today $3.3 million] per annum.” Ibid., 333.
to the river in large murky pipes: The growth in popularity occurred from 1810, and escalated after 1830. In 1848, the Metropolitan Sewers Commission ensured the connection of house drains and cesspools to sewers for the first time. In 1852, 11,200 out of the 16,200 houses in the city were linked to sewers.
turned to black in less than half a century: In the early 1800s, land under most London homes was honeycombed by cesspools filled with sewage, emptied by hand by night watchmen. Henry Mayhew reported that in poor houses, “many people simply used a convenient corner, or a hole in the floorboards, and excrement lay around in hallways and rooms and on stairways. The stench in these buildings was unbearable to those not used to it.” Quoted in Paterson, Voices from Dickens’ London, 23.