by Julia Baird
should not be required of him in Britain: Ibid., 146.
“about this painful subject”: Ibid.
“they never pinch me”: King, Twilight of Splendor, 201.
“the likelihood of Liko…was very high”: Hawksley, The Mystery of Princess Louise, 269.
“greatly taken aback”: Reid, Ask Sir James, 153.
“beg you to burn it as well as my letter this morning”: Ibid., 152.
“the how and where of access”: Matthew (Gladstone: 1809–1898, 610) argues that this dream, in 1896, “may have had a sexual dimension, for he records having a ‘small perturbation as to the how and where of access.’ ‘Reserved for acccess’ was the phrase he had used in 1839 to describe his virginity on marriage (see 14 June 39).” (At the end of that year, 1896, he also made a private statement—called the Declaration—addressing “rumours which I believe were at one time afloat” for a time when he would not be present to defend himself. He declared before the sight and judgment seat of God “that at no period of my life have I been guilty of the act which is known as that of infidelity to the marriage bed.” The full declaration, dated December 7, 1896, read:
With reference to rumours which I believe were at one time afloat, although I know not with what degree of currency: and also with reference to the times when I shall not be here to answer for myself; I desire to record my solemn declaration and assurance, as in the sight of God and before His judgment seat, that at no period in my life have I been guilty of the act which is known as that of infidelity to the marriage bed. I limit myself to this negation, and I share it with my dear Son Stephen, both as the eldest surviving of our sons, and as my pastor. It will be for him to retain or use it, confidentially unless necessity should require more, which is unlikely: and in any case making it known to his brothers.
Chapter Twenty-Nine: The Diamond Empire
“they do not exist”: Cecil, Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury, 3:191.
should be celebrated with aplomb: On November 23, 1896, Victoria wrote in her journal: “Today is the day on which I have reigned longer, by a day, than any English sovereign.”
Wilde conducted as horns blasted and accordions swung: Moyle, Constance, 302.
any year before in British history: Morris, Heaven’s Command, 534.
“in the person of Queen Victoria”: Homans and Munich, Remaking Queen Victoria, 49.
“Go it, old girl!”: Longford, Victoria R.I., 548.
“Look! There’s Queen Victoria going to Heaven!”: Arnstein, “Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee,” 594.
“as if her very presence hypnotized them”: Gosse, “The Character of Queen Victoria,” 310. Note not all were hypnotized. Thomas Hardy escaped to Switzerland to avoid the crowds. (Tomalin, Thomas Hardy, 269.) There were even reports of a scandalous ribaldry. In Camden, a wag suggested at a parish meeting that as “Her Gracious Majesty has been very useful to this country for many years, so what we should want to be putting up to her memory is something that will go on being useful to us here. Now what we in Camden most wants, say, is a public urinal.” Shouts of laughter erupted until the rector asked for the next suggestion. (Housman, The Unexpected Years, 219.)
a VR in lights, with red calico: McDonald, Nightingale on Society and Politics, 5:427.
“a very young tranquil woman”: This is from an unpublished diary entry for May 24, 1899, quoted in Arnstein, “Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee,” 20. He credits this citation to Yvonne M. Ward of La Trobe University. Most, Arnstein thinks, detected no trace of a German accent—others differ.
“My own dear Mama’s face has a charm”: Fulford, Your Dear Letter, 315
appropriate for the queen to smile so broadly: Ward, “Editing Queen Victoria,” 266–7. Sir Edmund Gosse wrote of Queen Victoria in 1901: “Of her personal attributes, her smile was perhaps the most notable. It played a very large part in the economy of her power, and something of the skill of her dramatic instinct passed into its exercise. No smile was the least like it, and no shadow of it is preserved for posterity in any one of her published likenesses. In particular, under the evil spell of the photographic camera it disappeared altogether, and those who never saw it can have little idea of the marvelous way in which it brightened and exhilarated the lines of the Queen’s features in advancing years.” Gosse, “The Character of Queen Victoria,” 315.
crimes previously subject to capital punishment were removed from the statute books: Arnstein, “Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee,” 199.
while addressing the House of Commons: Illustrated London News, June 21, 1897.
hitting his only friend repeatedly over the head with a brick: Neville, Mussolini, 19.
blamed Gladstone for carelessly losing this lucrative land: Lee, Queen Victoria, 523. Victoria also met with the diamond magnate Cecil Rhodes without any apparent understanding of what his trade entailed. She listened, rapt, as he described the mines and the preparation of the stones, while he in turn was reportedly taken aback that she knew so much about South Africa.
though she does not say what about: QVJ, March 18, 1891.
a friend had cheated at cards: When Bertie was playing baccarat with friends at a country house in 1891, one of the group, Sir William Cumming, was found cheating. Bertie was called as a witness in the resulting trial. For the Prince of Wales to have been involved in such a dishonorable event was considered disgraceful, but Victoria remained loyal.
“Nothing but sadness & horrors”: QVJ, July 31, 1900.
“not let anyone but ourselves have anything”: March 27, 1898, Buckle, The Letters of Queen Victoria Between 1886 and 1901, 3:238–39.
“responsible for the murder of one British subject”: Sir Arthur Bigge to Queen Victoria, Buckle, The Letters of Queen Victoria Between 1886 and 1901, 3:362.
“it is certain that nothing will be done”: Balfour was running the Foreign Office during Lord Salisbury’s illness. His official title was First Lord of the Treasury.
she had not been told and her advice not sought: Pakenham, The Boer War, 245.
her “dear brave soldiers”: Jerrold, The Widowhood of Queen Victoria, 439.
“they do not exist”: Cecil, Life of Robert, Marquis of Salisbury, 3:191.
“and that cannot be just now”: Queen Victoria to Mr. Balfour, February 4, 1900; Parkhouse, Memorializing the Anglo-Boer War, 555.
“Surely this justifies our using Indians”: Queen Victoria to the Marquess of Salisbury, February 11, 1900, Buckle, The Letters of Queen Victoria Between 1886 and 1901, 3:485.
“expose themselves more than is absolutely necessary”: Queen Victoria to the Marquess of Lansdowne, January 30, 1900; Parkhouse, Memorializing the Anglo-Boer War, 555.
“We have, however, reoccupied the post”: QVJ, December 31, 1900.
she cried almost constantly and was “most depressed”: Reid, Ask Sir James, 197.
“The Queen has much extraordinary vitality and pluck”: Ibid., 198.
“a living grave”: Jenny de Reuck, “Social Suffering and the Politics of Pain: Observations on the Concentration Camps in the Anglo-Boer War 1899–1902,” in Sue Kossew and Dianne Schwerdt, editors, Re-Imagining Africa: New Critical Perspectives (Huntington, N.Y.: Nova Science Publishers, 2001), 87.
She would have been mortified: Victoria had taken pride in the decent way the British treated their captives. Yet when she heard hundreds of prisoners were being maltreated, she wrote: “Treatment of prisoners disgraceful and inhuman.” She instructed Lord Lansdowne on June 13, 1900, to complain to Lord Roberts and point out how well the British treated their prisoners. Buckle, The Letters of Queen Victoria Between 1886 and 1901, 3:562.
“hysterical…imperative reasons”: Mr. Chamberlain to Sir Alfred Milner, April 3, 1900, ibid., 3:520.
unless they had a wounded son or husband, to please the queen: Lord Roberts to Queen Victoria, April 15, 1900, ibid., 3:528.
“arguably laid down a template”: de Reuck, “Social Suffering and the Politics of Pain,” 86.
“the blood brotherhood of the Empire was sealed”: Doyle, The Great Boer War, 259–60. See gutenberg.org/files/3069/3069-h/3069-h.htm.
“so much self-searching, such self doubt, as now”: Van Wyk Smith, “The Boers and the Anglo-Boer War,” 429–46.
“full of morbid ideas”: Sir James Reid, December 2, 1900, Reid Family Archives, Lanton Tower, London.
“nervous, complaining, and childish”: Ibid., December 7, 1900.
“cerebral degeneration”: Sir James Reid, “Pencil notes of what occurred during the last days of Queen Victoria’s life and at her death,” January 15, 1901, Reid Family Archives, Lanton Tower, London.
“The loss to me”: St. Aubyn, Queen Victoria, 592.
“was struck by how small”: Reid, “Pencil notes of what occurred.”
she had told Reid she did not wish to see him: Reid, Ask Sir James, 203. Dr. Reid was so worried about it that at one point in Victoria’s final illness, he had decided not to tell her that Bertie was there. In another set of directions that Victoria gave to Reid, she instructed that she wanted only Reid—and other doctors she named, as well as Beatrice, or another one of her younger daughters, or Arthur—to attend her. She explicitly ordered that neither Bertie nor any of her ministers be allowed to override any of her instructions. Sir James Reid, notebooks, vol. 20 (1897–98), Reid Family Archives, Lanton Tower, Lanton.
asking her eldest son to “kiss her face”: Sir James Reid: “Pencil notes of what occurred during the last days of Queen Victoria’s life and at her death.” January 21, 1901, Reid Family Archives, Lanton Tower, Lanton.
She struggled to walk unsupported from 1883: Weintraub, Victoria, 632.
it must only be Dr. Reid and female attendants: She wrote in instructions to Bertie and Beatrice about her funeral that she wished
I with my Remains to be touched by no one but my own personal female attendants & no one but them—assisted by such persons (or personal attendants) as have been in constant & close personal attendance on me during my life since.
I desire that my remains should be watched over, by those my faithful attendants, & that they only should assist in placing me in my Coffin. I desire in having my Personal attendants to include in these my Indian Attendants so far as they are not precluded by their Religion from assisting in those last duties.—Their gentleness & care of me are beyond all praise now that I am so lame & require so much help.
October 25, 1897. RA, VIC/MAIN/F/23/1-9a.
“This is private. Reid”: Reid, Ask Sir James, 203.
The princesses—especially Helena: Ibid., 204.
loving her more than he did his own mother: Ibid., 196.
“as if she thought I could make her live”: Ibid., 206.
“ever so many razors driven into my back”: Packard, Victoria’s Daughters, 309.
“not to give up the struggle while she can”: Reid, Ask Sir James, 211.
“The Queen is slowly sinking.”: January 22, 1901, 4 P.M. Signed by James Reid, MD, Douglas Powell, MD, Norman Barlow, MD. RA VIC/MAIN/F/23/25.
closed his mother’s eyes, sealing the light out: Reid, who was clearly in charge, is the one who told Bertie to do this. By his account, all the family shook his hands by the bedside, and afterward Bertie thanked him for all he had done for the queen. Reid, Ask Sir James, 212.
Chapter Thirty: The End of the Victorian Age:
“The Streets Were Indeed a Strange Sight”
“ ‘The sun is no longer in the sky!’ ”: Corelli, The Passing of a Great Queen, 3.
“It is like a roof being off a house to think of an England Queenless”: January 19, 1901, Benson Diary, Magdalene College Library, Cambridge, vol. 5, 1900–1901, 130.
“One went about feeling as if one had cheated at cards”: Baring, The Puppet Show of Memory, 215–16.
silently raised their hats and sighed: Housman, The Unexpected Years, 221.
in rags of crêpe: A comment made by Beatrice Webb, cited in Wolffe, Great Deaths, 242.
“It is a real, personal grief”: “I am sure our hearts are all one today in thinking of our dear, dear Mother Queen, the mother of her people, dutiful faithful, courageous. One feels as if one had lost a dear friend. Everybody is crying, & people’s blinds are drawn down. It is a real, personal grief. They cannot understand, I am sure, on the Continent, the sorrow we feel, but how wonderful is this electric thrill of love & sorrow through her whole Empire.” Jordan, Josephine Butler, 285.
“We all felt, publicly, at first, quite motherless”: Edel, Henry James: Selected Letters, 328–29.
do something “to show that one cares”: Bostridge, Florence Nightingale, 518.
“Intense crowd, never saw anything like it, all silent”: Nicholson, A Victorian Household, 184.
a hush had quickly fallen over England: Corelli, The Passing of a Great Queen, 46–48.
“with respect—but simply”: January 26, 1897, Instructions for Burial, RA, VIC/MAIN/F/23/1-9a, 12–16, 18–37.
“not by undertakers”: January 26, 1897, Memorandum by Queen Victoria, RA, VIC/MAIN/F/23/1-9a, 12–16, 18–37.
and opened only upon her death: Sir James Reid, notebooks, vol. 2 (1881–83), Reid Family Archives, Lanton Tower, Lanton.
discreetly arranged over the gauze: These instructions were kept in her maid’s pocket, at all times, and now are in the archives of Sir James Reid, the doctor who was with Victoria when she died.
arranged the contents of the queen’s coffin with her ladies: Reid carefully recorded the details of her death. Lady Reid said Victoria’s last words to him were, “I will do anything you like.” Susan Reid to Mary, i.e., Mrs. John F. Reid, January 26, 1901, Reid Family Archives, Lanton Tower, Lanton.
“like a marble statue”: Susan Reid to Mrs. Reid, January 25, 1901, Reid Family Archives, Lanton Tower, Lanton.
the stock market closed for a day: RA, VIC/MAIN/F/23/32: clipping from The Times, February 2, 1901: “Today the financial and commercial exchanges of New York will be closed as a mark of respect and sympathy…[a] pause in the busy life of New York.”
“the greatest number of The True Believers in the world”: Wolffe, Great Deaths, 229.
said the Indians thought of her almost as a saint: Ibid.
“who is worshipped as the Adya-Sakti of our [Hindu] mythology”: Ibid., 230.
“the good angel who saved us from destruction”: Ibid., 231.
“became curiously suggestive of the supreme widow”: Wells, Experiment in Autobiography, 27.
“some of their roughness & contempt of women”: Jordan, Josephine Butler, 285.
“ambition to become empress over self”: Quoted in Longford, Victoria R.I., 504.
“any American Woman to occupy the Presidential Chair at Washington”: Quoted in Rappaport, Queen Victoria, 426.
“ ‘strong-minded female out of her sphere’ ”: Greenwood, Queen Victoria, 390–91.
“women are unfitted for public duties”: Reynolds Newspaper, January 27, 1901. Cited in Rappaport, Queen Victoria, 430; Williams, The Contentious Crown, 145.
no black should be seen anywhere: October 25, 1897, RA, VIC/MAIN/F/23/1-9a.
“clothed with everything to make it worse?”: QVJ, March 6, 1873.
“Why don’t she put on clothes so that folks might know her?”: Craig, “The Crowned Republic?,” 173.
“lovely wild & haunting country”: QVJ, September 26, 1848.
“our life can be lived till death”: G. K. Chesterton, “Queen Victoria,” 234.
“for the sake of my country and dear ones”: May 24, 1897, Duff, Queen Victoria’s Highland Journals, 223.
“in peace with all fully aware of my many faults”: October 25, 1897, RA, VIC/MAIN/F/23/1-9a.
“to which she gave her name, she remained static”: Housman, The Unexpected Years, 370.
something Dr. Reid made a particular point of noting: Dr. Reid noted that as the queen faded, “the heart’s action was steadily and well sustained to the last,” des
pite physical weakness and “cerebral exhaustion.” Despite the odd lapse, her mind was not clouded, Dr. Reid said, citing as evidence the fact that she could still recognize several members of her family until minutes before her death. Sir James Reid, Medical Report, January 23, 1901, Reid Family Archives, Lanton Tower, Lanton.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
In the writing of this book, I have drawn upon material from manuscript collections, archives, and libraries in England, America, Germany, and Australia. In the Royal Archives, Windsor Castle, Berkshire, England, I read letters to and from Victoria and her husband, children, prime ministers, secretaries, ministers, friends, and members of the royal household. I walked repeatedly through the rooms she lived in at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, as well as at Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace, and Balmoral Castle in Scotland. Osborne House is virtually unchanged from the moment Victoria died, and is still crammed with mementoes, with sculptures of baby’s limbs, snippets of children’s hair, paintings commissioned by a young, wealthy husband and wife.
Victoria has left many millions of words behind. Happily for the researcher, her journals are now available online. A century ago, the Herculean task of editing her letters was carried out by Arthur Christopher Benson and Viscount Esher, followed by George Earle Buckle. Her letters to her eldest daughter are kept at Friedrichshof, near Frankfurt in Germany, and managed by the Kurhessische Hausstiftung, the family foundation of the House of Hesse. Roger Fulford spent the years between 1964 and 1981 editing them; Agatha Ramm produced the final volume in 1991.
Other material was drawn from collections including the following:
Aberdeen Papers, British Library Manuscripts Collection, St. Pancras, London
Althorp Papers, Correspondence with Sir Henry Ponsonby, Private Secretary to Queen Victoria, many on behalf of the Queen, British Library
Ayrton papers, British Library
Arthur Benson Diary, Magdalene College Library, Cambridge England.