Victoria
Page 66
“That is what I call twaddle”: Bell, Randall Davidson, 1:83.
wanted to live for her family and friends: Queen Victoria to Lady Waterpark, Osborne, February 10, 1867, British Library Manuscripts, Add. 60750, Extract 60750, Lady Waterpark, 1:271.
Chapter Twenty-Three: The Queen’s Stallion
“though coarsely made”: Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’s diary, quoted in Lambert, Unquiet Souls, 41.
“God knows, how much I want to be taken care of”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, April 5, 1865, Fulford, Your Dear Letter, 21.
tracks too rocky, roads too wet: “My dear pony went beautifully, like a cat & the way Brown carried me over & along the stones admirable.” (QVJ, August 24, 1860.) She described him as “so thoughtful & full of initiative, making an admirable guide & servant.” (QVJ, August 28, 1860.) Then, “Brown with his strong, powerful arm, helped me along wonderfully.” (QVJ, September 20, 1859.) The next day, on a trip to Craig Gewish, on the ascent, “One had heather up to one’s knees, holes, slippery ground & stones 2 or 3 ft. high to get over. I tried my best, but could never have got on, without Brown’s help….The going down was a wonderful but very amusing affair, for the Children did nothing but slip & roll, laughing at every step. It is quite a perpendicular descent & so slippery, that Brown, in trying to keep me up, came down his whole length.” Then: “The descent was far easier, but the path was very rough in parts & I had recourse to Brown’s strong arm to steady me.” (QVJ, October 28, 1874.)
“so very good humored & willing”: QVJ, October 3, 1850.
who sang duets for her: QVJ, June 24, 1871.
her old loyal governess, Lehzen: QVJ, September 12, 1870.
loss of her sister Feodora was “irreparable”: QVJ, September 23, 1872. See also QVJ, December 31, 1872.
queenly duty up in Scotland: Kuhn, Henry and Mary Ponsonby, 97.
or manage a ministerial crisis: In 1866, when Lord Russell was due to resign, Victoria was in Scotland. Lady Frederick Cavendish wrote in her diaries that “the Queen is seriously to blame for staying at Balmoral,” as nothing could be settled without her being there. (June 22, 1866, Cavendish, The Diary of Lady Frederick Cavendish, 10.) Three days later she said Victoria’s “poor terrible fault” in staying in Scotland had “given rise to universal complaint, and much foul-mouthed gossip.” (June 25, 1866, ibid.)
“The Queen will talk as if she were Mrs. Jones”: Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, 71.
“so roughly as he does to the Queen”: Ibid., 126.
“canna ye hold yer head still!”: Cullen, The Empress Brown, 10. He cites as a reference Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s John Brown. This was printed in the United States as Queen Victoria’s Mr. Brown in 1938. Note that Victoria wrote to Leopold in 1861 that Brown “takes the most wonderful care of me, combining the offices of groom, footman, page, and maid, I might almost say, as he is so handy about cloaks and shawls.” Cullen, The Empress Brown, 49.
Brown treated Victoria “like a small child”: Cullen, The Empress Brown, 12.
“was the plainspoken reply”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, September 26, 1859, Fulford, Dearest Child, 211.
“poor man”: Cullen, The Empress Brown, 170, citing Bolitho, The Reign of Queen Victoria.
“The Queen says sartenly not”: Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, 126. “In conveying messages he never had recourse to any softening civilities. When the Mayor of Portsmouth came to ask the Queen to go to a Volunteer review, the Private Secretary sent in the request to her and hoped to get the reply privately that he might convey it civilly to the Mayor. As they both sat in the Equerry’s room waiting, Brown put his head in and only said, ‘The Queen says sartenly not.’ So there was an end of the matter and the Mayor went away much crestfallen.”
particularly grew to loathe Brown: On one instance, Brown hit and yelled at Leopold and punished him cruelly, isolating him and removing his dog. Ridley, Bertie, 135; Downer, Queen’s Knight, 178–84.
“following me about everywhere”: Cullen, The Empress Brown, 123.
“a sort of strange presentiment”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, November 13, 1861, Fulford, Dearest Child, 365–66.
“Rasputin in a kilt”: Cullen, Empress Brown, 12, 26.
visited her grandmother Victoria with her mother, Alice: Ibid., 12.
“how great an imprudence has been committed”: Ibid., 91.
“and John Brown was her medium”: Williams, The Contentious Crown, 34.
“the effect on her mind might be dangerous”: July 6, 1867, Vincent, Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party, 313.
consider this comfort a gift from God: Longford, Victoria R.I., 326.
ever given or witnessed birth: The first suggestions of a marriage and possible son were in the Lausanne Gazette in 1866, and in Tinsley’s Magazine and The Tomahawk in 1867.
“ ‘every conjugal privilege’ ”: Lambert, Unquiet Souls, 41. Lambert also mentions on p. 42 that Blunt also wrote about a Lord Rowton, who, as Montagu Corry, had for many years been Disraeli’s private secretary and a frequent visitor to royal establishments: “Of the Queen he has talked much and I was surprised to find him attaching a sexual import to her affection for John Brown. He mentioned in that connection the statue she had had made of Brown by Boehm, which is precisely what XX [Blunt’s usual code for Catherine Walters] told me as having been related to her by Boehm himself. So I fancy it must be true.” (Wilfrid Scawen Blunt diaries, January 28, 1902, cited in ibid., 42.) Lambert adds a footnote: “It is in the nature of these speculations that evidence is very hard to obtain. The only other independent corroboration I have been able to acquire is from a university professor who, working in the Windsor Castle archives, was by error brought a pile of letters between Queen Victoria and her ghillie. From them he deduced that the affair was far from platonic.”
diaries of the prominent and powerful: Lewis Harcourt wrote: “Lady Ponsonby told the H. S. [Home Secretary] a few days ago that Miss Macleod declares that her brother Norman Macleod confessed to her on his deathbed that he had married the Queen to John Brown and added that he had always bitterly repented it. Miss Macleod would have had no object in inventing such a story so that one is almost inclined to believe it, improbable and disgraceful as it sounds.” Lord Harcourt diaries, February 17, 1885, Bodleian Special Collections, MS Harcourt dep. 365.
“No, it is here”: Sir James Reid’s personal diary, Reid Family Archives, Lanton Tower, Lanton.
exactly what “it” might be: Lady Reid believes “it” was the bruise Victoria acquired during her fall. Correspondence with Michaela Reid, April 3, 2016.
“accidentally seen something”: Longford, Queen Victoria, 62.
“very compromising”: Sir James Reid, notebooks, vol. 25 (1904–5), Reid Family Archives, Lanton Tower, Lanton. A letter written by Lord Knolly to Sir James, on May 9, 1905, plain white paper with a red Buckingham Palace embossed up the top, was pasted in a scrapbook. It read:
My dear Reid.
I have submitted your letter of yesterday to the King.
He appreciates very much the tact, judgment and diplomatic skill which you have shown in regard to the recovery of the letters, & he would be glad to see you with them at 6:30 on Thursday next.
Sir James made a note in blue ink, pasted in alongside this:
May 11th—at 6:30 went to Buckingham Palace & had an audience of the King’s & delivered over to him the tin box with over 300 letters of the late Queen to Dr Profeit (about J.B.) which, after six months negotiations, I had got from George Profeit—many of them most compromising—Thanked by the King—Saw also Lord Knolly.
less defiant if they were full-blown lovers: Note that Henry Ponsonby did not believe that Brown was anything more than a servant.
rubies as well as diamonds: Cullen, The Empress Brown, 123.
convinced France to attack: Europe had rumbled with France’s dissatisfaction after the settling of spoils following the 1866 war with Prussia.
“absolute necessity”: July 16, 1870
, Buckle, The Letters of Queen Victoria, 1:37.
“preaching neutrality and prudence would be useless”: Fulford, Your Dear Letter, 322.
Her heart, though, was with Germany: Victoria agreed with Vicky that the Germans were superior not just physically, but “morally” too. QVJ, February 16, 1871.
captured along with 104,000 of his men: Howard, The Franco-Prussian War, 223.
staged a coup on September 4, 1870: Victoria protested that the French were “ungrateful” to not have even once raised their voice in favor of the “unfortunate Emperor.” QVJ, September 5, 1870.
“À la guillotine!”: QVJ, September 23, 1870.
“apparent want of sympathy with the landlords.”: Buckle, The Letters of Queen Victoria Between 1862 and 1878, 2:7.
“I pray earnestly it may”: QVJ, June 11, 1870.
“so innocently in a Scottish retreat”: Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, 124.
was the subject of much chatter: Vincent, Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party, 198.
“next at Lord Penzance’s Court”: Ridley, Bertie, 129.
“touchy, vague and willful”: Hibbert, Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals, 210.
“excessively plain”: Letter to Vicki, December 1, 1872, Fulford, Darling Child, 70.
for looking older than her twenty-four years: Fulford, Darling Child, 44.
foolish to not take her advice, she thought: She told Vicky “gratitude to parents, respect for age and authority are not what they should be in these days!” Ibid., 47.
parted his hair down the middle: Ibid., 25.
“and I could not live without her”: April 16, 1873, ibid., 86.
“anxiety for my own children and of no great interest”: May 8, 1872, ibid., 40.
most attuned to her needs…were praised: See ibid., 39.
thought of losing another daughter: QVJ, October 16, 1870.
“especially a daughter’s marriage”: September 14, 1873, Fulford, Darling Child, 108. When Louise became engaged, Victoria was also occupied with the thought of some purity of blood in the family, writing: “When the Royal family is so large, and our children have (alas!) such swarms of children, to connect some few of them with the great families of the land—is an immense strength to the Monarchy and a great link between the Royal Family and the country….Besides which, a new infusion of blood is an absolute necessity—as the race will else degenerate bodily and physically.” Fulford, Your Dear Letter, 306.
“I am very tired”: July 3, 1873, Fulford, Darling Child, 99.
“utter degeneration of everything”: QVJ, March 4, 1869.
“to imagine a politer little woman”: Fawcett, Life of Queen Victoria, 225.
her seclusion was damaging the monarchy: Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, 71.
“sink to nothing at all”: Ibid., 21.
they could do very well without her: March 15, 1869, Vincent, Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party, 340.
the public grief was extraordinary: Even when he was thought to be dying, Reynolds Newspaper prematurely published an obituary that slammed Bertie’s life as “an incessant round of frivolous amusement.” Reynolds Newspaper, December 10, 1871, 4–5. Cited in Williams, The Contentious Crown, 74.
waiting for bulletins: The Times, December 9, 1871, 9.
“a foundation stone laid or a bazaar opened”: Graphic, December 9, 1871.
“enable him to lead a new life”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, December 20, 1871, Fulford, Darling Child, 20.
“cold, dreary and dingy”: QVJ, February 27, 1872.
“The Times declared gravely”: The Times, February 28, 1872, 5.
“They want the gilding for their money”: Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, 72.
“saw him spring round and suspected him”: Queen Victoria to Vicky, March 4, 1872, Fulford, Darling Child, 33.
the sole recipient of this medal: Cullen, The Empress Brown, 158.
his broad chest with satisfaction: Queen Victoria to Vicky, March 13, 1872, Fulford, Darling Child, 34.
rode for miles over the Highlands: “Hearing the Queen was going out and seeing John Brown with a basket, one of the Maids of Honour asked if it was tea he was taking out. ‘Well no,’ he replied, ‘she don’t much like tea. We tak oot biscuits and sperruts.’ ” Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, 126.
convinced that her nerves…would never recover: Queen Victoria to Vicky, November 3, 1874, Fulford, Darling Child, 160.
“require too much is quite fearful”: Ibid., 209.
Loch Muick in the Highlands: She hid away in the Glassalt Shiel, Loch Muick, e.g., November 21, 1877: “The absence of all interruptions makes it the only place in the world where I can have complete rest.” Ibid., 269.
“a strange & marvellous manner”: QVJ, December 19, 1876.
“as though I were again living with her”: September 3, 1873, Fulford, Darling Child, 106–7.
“Alone, alone, as it will ever be”: QVJ, May 24, 1871.
“No one loves you more”: Cullen, The Empress Brown, 216. After Brown’s death, Victoria copied out an extract from a diary or journal entry from 1866, and this was found among Hugh Brown’s things when he died. “Often my beloved John would say: ‘You haven’t a more devoted servant than Brown’—and oh! How I felt that! Often & often I told him no one loved him more than I did or had a better friend than me: & he answered ‘Nor you—than me. No one loves you more.’ ”
“fight and make the Queen do what she did not wish”: Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, 128.
“that would have killed her at once”: Cullen, The Empress Brown, 131.
“(especially in the Higher Classes)”: Longford, Victoria R.I., 354.
“From his best friend V.R.I.”: Cited in ibid., 456.
Chapter Twenty-Four: The Faery Queen Awakes
“ ‘I don’t know what you mean by your way’ ”: Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 16.
“What nerve! What muscle! What energy!”: Monypenny and Buckle, Life of Benjamin Disraeli, 6:503.
an “immense number of little frogs”: QVJ, June 28, 1875.
found the sight of the frogs “quite dreadful”: QVJ, June 28, 1875, then July 2, 1875.
rolling around the feet of Turkish militia: Brown, “Henry James and Ivan Turgenev,” 112.
handwritten copies were passed around instead: Whitehead, “The Bulgarian Horrors,” 232. See also Tedford, “The Attitudes of Henry James and Ivan Turgenev.” Note that novelist Henry James translated it from a French version for The Nation in October 1876, even though he did not “share the Russian eagerness for war.” Goldsworthy, Inventing Ruritania, 29.
locked inside churches and burned alive: See, for example, Daily News, July 13, 1876.
“like balls from one Turk to another”: Ibid., July 1, 1876.
“coffee house babble”: Hansard, House of Commons, August 11, 1876, vol. 2341, col. 203.
press the politicians to properly investigate: Daily News, June 23, 1876.
fate of Christian subjects in Turkish lands: Matthew, Gladstone: 1809–1898, 266.
Gladstone…was enraged: QVJ, March 13, 1873.
“fuel to the flame”: QVJ, September 8, 1876.
“two old bagpipes”: Matthew, Gladstone: 1809–1898, 325.
Charles Darwin contributed fifty pounds to a relief fund: Patton, Science, Politics and Business, 127.
“only pierced with a bayonet”: Spectator, July 23, 1876, 10.
“Sonnet on the Massacre of the Christians in Bulgaria”: Varty, Collected Poems of Oscar Wilde, xvii.
“mischief maker and firebrand”: September 26, 1876, Leonard, The Great Rivalry, 169.
“an affront to British prestige”: Taylor, The Struggle for Mastery, 234.
“lead a Conservative party to victory”: Monypenny and Buckle, Life of Benjamin Disraeli, 5:169–70, 172.
“how unpopular he is!”: February 14, 1874, Fulford, Darling Child, 129.
“and so wonderfully unsympathetic”: Febr
uary 17, 1872, Fulford, Dearest Child, 29.
juicy tidbits of gossip: Mary Ponsonby liked Gladstone’s politics but preferred Disraeli’s company.
“I treat her like a woman”: Longford, Victoria R.I., 402.
“he will never understand a man, still less a woman”: Rhodes James, Rosebery, 112.
“I thought I was the cleverest woman”: Quoted in Leonard, The Great Rivalry, 203. See also Cornwallis-West, Lady Randolph Churchill, 97.
“and putting his head on one side”: Rhodes James, Rosebery, 64.
“glided about the room like a bird”: Longford, Victoria R.I., 400.
a genuine, deep affection for Victoria: QVJ, March 13, 1873.
“the only person in this world left to me that I do love”: St. Aubyn, Queen Victoria, 427.
“fond of backstairs intrigue”: Blake, Disraeli, 50.
intellectual equals, unlike Albert: Disraeli told Matthew Arnold, “Everyone likes flattery, and when it comes to royalty you should lay it on with a trowel.” St. Aubyn, Queen Victoria, 427.
“male society is not much to my taste”: October 1874 to Lady Bradford, Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, 5:348.
punishable by death as recently as 1861: Kuhn, “Sexual Ambiguity,” 16.
Disraeli might have been “what today we might call gay”: Kuhn, The Politics of Pleasure, 11.
“I rejoice…at every Russian defeat”: Fulford, Darling Child, 253.
prodding his Cabinet with the queen’s staunchness: Longford, Victoria R.I., 411.
he will “bite, now that he is roused”: February 20, 1878, Fulford, Darling Child, 283.
whip the Russians herself: In the middle of the melee was a new member of the royal family, Marie, who was, awkwardly, a Russian. The daughter of the Russian czar had married the raffish Affie on January 23, 1874. Victoria quickly grew very fond of Marie, praising her even temper and good humor, even though she was puzzled that anyone could genuinely love her reserved, sometimes rude son. Victoria loved people who made her laugh. She was sympathetic toward her daughter-in-law in those years, who was caught in Britain while the queen and prime minister railed against her country. But Marie was resilient and impressive, and her origins were ignored.