Victoria

by Julia Baird

  “to have no head and all face”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, September 2, 1859, ibid., 208. Victoria continued in another letter, April 7, 1860: “He is not at all in good looks; his nose and mouth are too enormous and as he pastes his hair down to his head, and wears his clothes frightfully—he really is anything but good looking. That coiffure is really too hideous with his small head and enormous features.”

  “and not an engaging child though amusing”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, November 24, 1858, ibid., 146.

  “so very large and long that it spoils her looks”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, April 9, 1859, ibid., 175.

  “are all so amusing and communicative”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, December 4, 1858, ibid., 149.

  defending him was a vain exercise: When a mother is so honest about her dislike of her son, some will likely recoil. Vicky urged her mother to forgive Bertie and be patient, arguing that he was capable of being kind and nice, and anxious to please his mother. (“His heart is very capable of affection, of warmth of feeling, and I am sure that it will come out with time and by degrees. He loves his home and feels happy here and those feelings must be nurtured, cultivated for if once lost they will not come again easily.” Vicky to Queen Victoria, April 4, 1861, ibid., 318.) It would be awful, she wrote, if there were an estrangement. But Victoria would not budge. The onus was on Bertie, she insisted, to be “more tender and affectionate,” and to take an interest in what interested his parents. (Queen Victoria to Vicky, April 10, 1861, ibid., 320.) Vicky’s heart sank while reading it.

  “pride of sovereignty to the level of petty life”: Bagehot, The English Constitution, 38.

  one in four wives and two in three widows worked: This census simultaneously recognized women as dependents of men and as independent workers. “ ‘Women…in certain branches of business at home render important services; such as the wives of farmers, of small shopkeepers, innkeepers, shoemakers, butchers’ and were listed in those categories.” Hall, White, Male and Middle Class, 176. The census also for the first time listed as an occupation “Wife, mother and mistress of an English family.”

  ranks of working women swelled rapidly and became respectable: See Schama, A History of Britain, 144.

  what her daughters might go through: Queen Victoria to Vicky, April 20, 1859, Fulford, Dearest Child, 182.

  “That always sticks in my throat”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, May 16, 1860, ibid., 254.

  “men who…forget their first duties”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, August 10, 1859, ibid., 205.

  “you would find that the greatest help of all”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 331.

  “friendly terms with people you have just been scolding”: October 1, 1856, quoted in Rhodes James, Albert, Prince Consort, 244.

  especially with the strong-willed, self-certain Bertie: September 17, 1855, Strachey and Fulford, The Greville Memoirs, 7:157; Pearce, The Diaries of Charles Greville, 317.

  “a clever, honest & well intentioned boy”: QVJ, April 7, 1859.

  “so like his precious father”: Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:541; QVJ, July 21, 1859.

  “refreshing and cheering to one’s heart”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, May 2, 1859, Fulford, Dearest Child, 190.

  she called him a “hard-hearted and a great tyrant”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, July 21, 1858, ibid., 124.

  “It is too wretched”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, September 27 (then October 1), 1858, ibid., 134.

  tame wild horses almost instantly into submission: QVJ, January 13, 1858.

  declared his intention to marry Vicky: QVJ, September 20, 1858.

  wanted to escape to Australia with the children: Queen Victoria to Vicky, undated, c. April 18, 1859, Fulford, Dearest Child, 180.

  he would protect them as he had done before: QVJ, December 31, 1860.

  “fearful possibility of what I will not mention”: Queen Victoria to King Leopold, May 25, 1859, Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:334.

  the Duchess of Kent died: Victoire had also been struggling with erysipelas, an intense skin infection, for years.

  “My childhood, all seems to crowd in upon me”: QVJ, March 16, 1859.

  “She is gone!”: Queen Victoria to King Leopold, March 16, 1861, Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:555.

  “sweet innocent little voice & prattle”: QVJ, April 7, 1861.

  She could not bear loud conversation or crowds: Queen Victoria to King Leopold, Windsor Castle, March 26, 1861, Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:556.

  “I know what the consequences may be”: Bolitho, The Prince Consort, 213.

  “controlling her feelings”: Quoted in Longford, Victoria R.I., 292. The date she provides is October 22, 1861.

  “your great difficulty in life”: Richardson, Victoria and Albert, 214.

  “& never let me survive!”: QVJ, May 24, 1861.

  “tremble so now for all those dear to me!”: QVJ, December 7, 1857.

  “mucous membranes in a state of constant irritation”: Prince Albert to Baron Stockmar, May 28, 1859, Martin, The Prince Consort, 4:449–50.

  Victoria blamed it on overwork: Fulford, Dearest Child, 174.

  “he’s so completely overpowered by everything”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, February 16, 1861, ibid., 308.

  “born to suffer”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, February 21, 1861, ibid., 310. At least one close observer thought the queen too needy to nurse her husband. Stockmar, who was a doctor as well as a trusted adviser, grew anxious and attributed one bout of gastric attack to sudden changes in temperature—and “worries of both body and mind to which you are daily exposed.” He wrote pointedly: “All round you there is a want of thoughtful care for the repose, the tending and the nursing which are so necessary for the sick and convalescent.” Baron Stockmar to Prince Albert, November 8, 1859, Martin, The Prince Consort, 4:414.

  “If anything serious should ever happen to him, he will die”: From Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 402—the note she provides is Memoirs of Ernest II, 4:55.

  “he had been here for the last time in his life”: Memoirs of Ernest II, 4:55.

  Life…was an interminable treadmill: Bolitho, The Prince Consort, 217.

  “to understand the truth of this more and more”: Prince Albert to Ernest, November 14, 1856, ibid., 166.

  “I feel so lost without him”: Queen Victoria to King Leopold, September 15, 1859, Martin, The Prince Consort, 4:409.

  “& the Tattoo from the Barracks”: QVJ, June 22, 1860.

  Chapter Twenty: “There Is No One to Call Me Victoria Now”

  “I tremble for the Queen”: Strafford, Diary of Henry Greville, 3:417.

  mixing freely with unmarried men: For a fascinating discussion of this decade, see Mason, The Making of Victorian Sexuality, 119–25.

  “But so it is, in the year 1861”: Grey, Passages in the Life, 3:304.

  “Some were no doubt American”: QVJ, August 28, 1868.

  “Curragh—N.C. 3rd time”: Ridley, Bertie, 54.

  “a pistol packed at the bottom of a trunk”: From King, Twilight of Splendor, 135.

  “at the Curragh Camp near Dublin”: Costello, A Most Delightful Station, 98.

  the queen sighed, that was so much worse: Queen Victoria to Vicky, April 27, 1859, Fulford, Dearest Child, 187.

  “whispering sweet nothings”: New York Herald, September 19, 1860; Charlot, Victoria the Young Queen, 404.

  “liking they have for my unworthy self”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, Windsor Castle, November 10, 1860, Fulford, Dearest Child, 279.

  “sunk into vice and debauchery”: Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, 416.

  “capable of enthusiasm about anything in the world”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, October 1, 1861, Fulford, Dearest Child, 353.

  The union would not be a “triumph of Denmark”: Bolitho, The Prince Consort, 215.

  “in his hastiness & over-love of business”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, October 1, 1861, Fulford, Dearest Child, 35
4.

  “many a storm” had “swept over”: Albert wrote to Baron Stockmar on their twenty-first anniversary: “How many a storm has swept over it, and still it continues green and fresh, and throws out vigorous roots, from which I can, with gratitude to God, acknowledge that much good will yet be engendered for the world!” Martin, The Prince Consort, 5:292.

  the only one he could talk to unreservedly: QVJ, July 9, 1863.

  he was “never very robust”: QVJ, October 9, 1862.

  “he needed protection”: Memoirs of Ernest II, 18–19.

  work, write, and get warm: Prince Albert to Vicky, September 1, 1858, Martin, The Prince Consort, 4:253. He told Vicky that his bout of illness in December 1860 was cholera. Victoria was, as usual, sheltered from this information.

  “I should be quite ready to die tomorrow”: Ibid., 5:344. He continued: “I am sure, if I had a severe illness, I should give up at once, I should not struggle for life. I have no tenacity of life.”

  She had never seen him “so low”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, November 27, 1861, Fulford, Dearest Child, 369–70.

  as though cold water were being poured down his spine: Martin, The Prince Consort, 5:353. (This is a fuller version than the account given in Victoria’s diary for that day.)

  “They are such ruffians!”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, November 30, 1861, Fulford, Dearest Child, 370.

  Victoria agreed: Martin, The Prince Consort, 5:349.

  “and a suitable apology”: Queen Victoria to Earl Russell, December 1, 1861, Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 3:598.

  “terribly nervous and distressed”: QVJ, December 2, 1861.

  “not fit to attend a sick cat”: Fulford, The Prince Consort, 269.

  “Sometimes he has such a strange wild look”: Martin, The Prince Consort, 5:356. The word “wild” was cut out of Victoria’s journal account.

  “I’m so silly”: For an excellent account of the death of Albert, his funeral, and the mourning that followed, see Helen Rappaport’s Magnificent Obsession. This quote is from p. 61.

  how awful it was to be deprived of her husband: QVJ, December 7, 1861.

  His eyes brimmed with tears as Alice played for him: Beatrice cut some of the more intimate descriptions of Albert’s death out of her mother’s journal. We can see this by comparing Theodore Martin’s official Life of the Prince Consort—which relied on Victoria’s original diaries—to the version left in Victoria’s diaries. For example, Beatrice deleted the reference to Albert feeling like water was being poured down his back; descriptions of his panting, choking on tea, and crying as he listened to Alice playing chorales, and stroking Victoria’s face and calling her endearments, as well as Victoria kissing him. She also cut out Victoria’s remarks to Albert that he was sick through overwork: “It is too much: You must speak to the Ministers!” (Victoria said it was also his fault for taking on projects by his own volition, answering: “It is not that alone; it is your own concerns.” Longford, Victoria R.I., 296.) Beatrice also removed Albert’s saying to Victoria that as he lay in the Blue Room he heard the birds and thought of those he had heard in the Rosenau in his childhood: a troubling sign. (Martin, The Prince Consort, 5:357.) On December 7, for example, Victoria’s original diary read: “But I seem to live in a dreadful dream. Later in the day, my angel lay in bed, and I sat by him, watching. The tears fell fast, as I thought of the days of anxiety, even if not of alarm, which were in store for us, of the utter shipwreck of our plans.” Beatrice changed these sentences to: “But I seem to be living in a dreadful dream.—Albert lay late on the bed in the bedroom & I sat by him watching him often repressing my tears with difficulty.”

  On December 8, Victoria’s journal read: “He was so pleased to see me—stroked my face, and smiled, and called me ‘liebe Frauchen’ (dear little wife)….Precious love! His tenderness this evening, when he held my hands, and stroked my face, touched me so much—made me so grateful.” (Martin, The Prince Consort, 5:359.) Beatrice changed it to “Went in to see dearest Albert, who was so pleased to see me, stroking my face & smiling.” On December 9, Beatrice deleted the words “He was so kind, calling me ‘gutes Weibchen’ (good little wife) and liking me to hold his dear hand.” (Ibid., 359.)

  cupping them in his before bending to pray: Longford, Victoria R.I., 298.

  “Prepare to meet Thy God, O Israel!”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, October 7, 1861, Fulford, Dearest Child, 356.

  he told his daughter Alice he was dying: Alice was the one Albert confided in, not Victoria, when he realized he was facing death. When Alice said she had told Vicky he was “very ill,” he corrected her: “You should have told her I am dying, yes I am dying.” Rappaport, Magnificent Obsesssion, 69; Strafford, Henry Greville, 3:420.

  “as if I should go mad!”: Longford, Victoria R.I., 299.

  “there was no reason to anticipate anything worse”: Victoria could not bring herself to describe the events of Albert’s death until February 1872, when she wrote an account from notes she made at the time.

  “and not taking notice of me”: Martin, The Prince Consort, 5:363.

  Albert never recognized the face of his son by his bed: Maxwell, Life and Letters of Clarendon, 2:255. Sir G. C. Lewis to Lord Clarendon, December 19, 1861: “Granville told me that the prince never recognized the Prince of Wales, so that he must have passed the last day in a state of unconsciousness.”

  “But that was nothing to this”: Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, 81. See also the account of Lady Geraldine Somerset, whose diaries are held in the Royal Archives.

  “and to give one kiss to his little wife”: This was from a telling of the story by Lady Winchester, December 25, 1861, Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, 81.

  “Papa is gone on a visit to Grandmama”: Ibid., 83.

  his stomach problems and his toothaches: Ibid., 249–60. Rappaport argues, as many others have, that the stress caused by the queen’s postnatal depression and cavernous grief for her mother “would have made matters worse.” There is doubtless some truth to this; the emotional strain of supporting an anxious, melancholic, and needy wife would have been substantial. It is astonishing, though, how many people implicitly, and occasionally directly, blame Victoria for the death of her husband because she had struggled with depression, motherhood, and grief.

  “the most important man in the country”: Daily Telegraph, December 16, 1861, ibid., 94.

  admired Albert’s “motives, sagacity and tact”: Maxwell, Life and Letters of Clarendon, 2:250.

  “far greater importance than the public dream of”: Lord Clarendon to Sir George Lewis, December 14, 1861, ibid., 251.

  “like parting with her heart and soul”: Villiers, A Vanished Victorian, 309.

  “as if it were their own private sorrow”: QVJ, January 21, 1862.

  “talk as if the Queen was one of themselves”: Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, 116, cites Wolffe, Great Deaths, 195. Letters poured in from other countries: even President Abraham Lincoln sent a letter offering sympathy for her “irreparable bereavement with an unaffected sorrow,” signing himself “Your Good Friend.” Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, 135.

  “Oh! I want my mother!”: Rappaport, Magnificent Obsession, 91.

  a life that might contain happiness now: The Times, December 24, 1861, 6; Jerrold, The Widowhood of Queen Victoria, 11.

  Lady Augusta Bruce: Lady Augusta Bruce was the sister of Bertie’s governor, General the Hon. Robert Bruce. Lady Augusta later married the Very Reverend Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster.

  “The whole house seems like Pompeii”: Baillie and Bolitho, Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley, 251.

  Chapter Twenty-One: “The Whole House Seems Like Pompeii”

  “I have, since he left me”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, April 29, 1863, Fulford, Dearest Mama, 205–6.

  “belief in the Life presence of the Dead”: Quoted in Dyson and Tennyson, Dear and Honoured Lady, 69. Victoria’s belief in future reunion was commonly held in the 1860s and 1870s. Wolff
e, Great Deaths, 205.

  “Where all things round me breathed of him”: Queen Victoria’s Album Consolativum 1862–1886, British Library Archives, Add. 62089–62090, 30.

  his eyes welling: QVJ, April 14, 1862.

  “The Queen is not stout”: May 9, 1863, Dyson and Tennyson, Dear and Honoured Lady, 78.

  “the Queen is a woman to live and die for”: Ibid., 76. The full quote reads: “The Queen’s face is beautiful. Not the least like her portraits but small and childlike, full of intelligence and ineffably sweet and of a sad sympathy. A. was delighted with the breadth and freedom and penetration of her mind. One felt that no false thing could stand before her. We talked of all things in heaven and earth it seemed to me. I never met a Lady with whom I could talk so easily and never felt too little shy with any stranger after the first few minutes. She laughed heartily at many things that were said but shades of pain and sadness passed over a face that seemed sometimes all one smile….One feels that the Queen is a woman to live and die for.”

  “a Father who strangled you”: QVJ, May 8, 1863.

  Tennyson be appointed poet laureate: The Prince Consort was taken with Tennyson’s retelling of the legends of the Arthurian Knights, Idylls of the King. The night before a letter arrived offering him the position, Tennyson dreamed that Albert had kissed him on the cheek. Six years later, Albert had dropped in unexpectedly on the Tennysons’ property on the Isle of Wight—to the horror of his wife, Emily, as the house was cluttered and in disarray; they were preparing for a sale of furniture and paintings. Albert chatted comfortably with the poet for some time as one of his gentlemen gathered cowslips outside, to be made into tea for the royal couple later.

  “hideous dream”: QVJ, February 1, 1862.

  had known all their names: QVJ, January 27, 1862.

  “nothing from my beloved one”: QVJ, May 24, 1863.

  cause a “national calamity”: Lord Clarendon to Sir George Lewis, December 14, 1861, Maxwell, Life and Letters of Clarendon, 2:251.

  initial stages of her grief: Charles Phipps wrote to Palmerston: “The Queen, though in an agony of grief, is perfectly collected, and shows a self control that is quite extraordinary. Alas! She has not realized her loss—and when the full consciousness comes upon her—I tremble—but only for the depth of her grief. What will happen—where can She look for that support and assistance upon which She has leaned in the greatest and the least questions of her life?” Quoted in Rhodes James, Albert, Prince Consort, 273.