A Brief History of Life in Victorian Britain (6 page)

Four years later, during the final weeks of his life, he also single-handedly prevented hostilities from breaking out between Britain and the United States, which at that time was involved its own civil war. In November 1861 a British mail packet, the SS
Trent
, was boarded in the Caribbean by US Marines, who apprehended two Confederate commissioners bound for the United Kingdom. Whitehall reacted with outrage, and Palmerston, the combative Prime Minister, drafted an aggressive ultimatum to Washington. Albert, who saw the document before it was sent, rewrote it on his sickbed, toning down its bellicosity and allowing the US government an honourable way out of the crisis by affecting to be convinced that the vessel’s captain had acted on his own initiative and not at the behest of his government.

Less than a month later he was dead. He died at Windsor on 14 December 1861 of, it was believed, typhoid, though more recent research has suggested that he suffered from cancer of the bowel or stomach. Whatever the immediate medical cause, there can be no doubt that other factors affected him. Abroad, his hopes that a united and liberal Germany would emerge to dominate Europe were being crushed by the rise of an increasingly aggressive Prussia, while at home his eldest son had been involved in a (minor and unimportant) sex scandal while serving in the army in Ireland. He had frankly lost the will to live.

Only a few months earlier, the Duchess of Kent had died. Mother and daughter had not been close since Victoria’s accession, and the loss was more symbolic than significant.
Nevertheless the Queen, who was dependent by nature, felt suddenly and entirely abandoned by this double bereavement. She had a nervous breakdown, and for a time it was believed she had gone insane. She withdrew into mourning, as was expected, but she never came out of it. There is some truth in the perception that she shut herself away for decades afterwards and lived as a sort of Miss Havisham, though this strict purdah lasted only a few years. She famously had Albert’s shaving water brought and his clothes laid out every day as if he were still alive. She also dressed in black for the rest of her life, though by the conventions of the time this was normal. She never changed the style of her dresses from that of the 1860s (only forty-one when Albert died, she immediately looked much older) and created the image of herself in black dress and white cap – ‘the Widow of Windsor’ – that has remained in the public mind ever since. Since her loss was also the nation’s, she expected the public to share, and sympathize with, her grief. She could not understand that by absenting herself from her people she was courting unpopularity.

She continued to participate in the business of government, though, for a time, when the Privy Council met she did not attend in person but sat in an adjoining room, receiving questions and conveying answers through a secretary. She effectively abandoned Buckingham Palace, living at Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral. She became deeply involved in the creation of monuments to her husband, having a mausoleum built for him at Frogmore and an ostentatious memorial unveiled in Hyde Park, as well as the huge concert hall next to it named in his honour. She did not appear on ceremonial occasions and she did not welcome foreign dignitaries (though
she did, in the sixties, establish the annual garden parties that have continued to be held). There were no ‘walkabouts’, and it was not expected that the Queen should open Parliament or attend the Trooping the Colour every year. As time passed, resentment grew at her continued absence from public life. In 1864 she resumed travelling in an open carriage, and she opened Parliament (as well as attending a dance at Windsor) two years later. In 1868 she went privately to Switzerland, the first of many European holidays that were to add considerable pleasure to her life, though her loyalties would transfer to the French Riviera. Her seclusion was not as great as is perhaps imagined.

These forays into the outside world were not enough to convince sections of her people that she was an effective head of state, and republicanism enjoyed a brief vogue. In 1871, after the overthrow of Napoleon III in France, there was growing criticism in Britain of the cost of a large Royal Family with an all-but-invisible head. A pamphlet by G. O. Trevelyan entitled ‘What Does She Do with It?’ estimated that the Queen accumulated £200,000 a year. A speech by Sir Charles Dilke, the MP for Chelsea, received wide applause – and publicity – for suggesting that the monarchy was a ‘cumbersome fiction’ and an unnecessary expense. Though she had no intention of changing her habits, Victoria was greatly upset.

The Crown was saved by suffering. That summer, the Queen became seriously ill at Balmoral, and before she was fully recovered the Prince of Wales caught typhoid. For a few anxious days, as the tenth anniversary of his father’s death from the same disease approached, he remained in danger. When these twin crises passed, the enthusiasm of her people began to revive. When Victoria and her son drove through London to a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s, she was overwhelmed by the adulation of the crowds. An attempt to
assassinate her a few days later added to the wave of public sympathy, and republicanism became a dead letter. Dilke was shouted down in the Commons, and subsequently abandoned his views. A fellow-traveller, Joseph Chamberlain, went on to promote the Queen’s near-apotheosis in the Diamond Jubilee celebrations.

Following her husband’s death, her greatest need had been for a strong male influence, and she had found it, from 1864, in a most unlikely place. John Brown had been one of Albert’s ghillies at Balmoral. A blunt-spoken and uncouth Highlander somewhat given to drink (the Queen’s toleration of this excess in others was further evidence that she was an atypical ‘Victorian’), he was the antithesis of a polished courtier. She had always cherished loyal servants, and Brown was solicitous and efficient. He spoke to her without a hint of deference, lecturing her on her dress and behaviour, and – surrounded as she usually was by flattery – she responded to this treatment. He induced her to take up riding again, and his rough sense of humour made her laugh. He quickly became her confidant, and she created for him the title ‘the Queen’s Highland Servant’. Not the least of his services would be saving the Queen from an attempted assassination. His privileges, and his manner, irritated Victoria’s family and officials, none of whom could criticize him in front of her. He also bemused the public, for he accompanied her everywhere, becoming so much a part of her life that she was nicknamed ‘Mrs Brown’. There were rumours that they were secretly married, though such a thing would have been unthinkable to the Queen.

The void in her life was filled by busying herself with her family. Her eldest daughter, Vicky, had married Prince Frederick of Prussia in 1858. The Queen had greatly regretted the loss of this personable and intelligent young woman, who was seen as the ablest of her children, and compensated for it with
an exhaustive correspondence that often involved writing to her three or four times a day. As her other children began to marry and the number of her grandchildren increased (there were to be thirty altogether) she found herself at the head of an extensive network of dynastic connections that ultimately embraced not only German states but Spain, Sweden, Greece, Russia and Romania. This brought no political power, merely a series of ties of blood and sentiment, but it greatly enhanced Victoria’s status as ‘Grandmother of Europe’.

She developed another valuable friendship. No Prime Minister since Melbourne had endeared himself to Victoria, and one of them – Palmerston – she had clearly hated. Benjamin Disraeli, who briefly became premier in 1868, was a florid and effusive personality, more theatrical than political. His excessive flattery towards the Queen, who described him as ‘full of poetry, romance and chivalry’, was in stark contrast to Brown’s manner, but she again responded with intense loyalty. During his second term in office (1874–80), he successfully coaxed her further into the light of day. Their remarkable rapport owed much to the manner in which he ostentatiously sought her advice and valued her opinions, and to the fact that he treated her as a woman and not as an institution. She admired his wit, his considerate courtesy and his political opinions, for her conservative outlook and that of the Tory party were now in harmony.

Disraeli was keen to promote the idea of Empire, a subject in which the Queen had previously shown comparatively little interest, but he successfully made her an imperial figurehead – a role that was to become increasingly important in the decades ahead – by persuading Parliament to grant her the
style Empress of India. This title, which she adopted as of 1 January 1877, had been considered absurdly pompous and foreign-sounding, both unsuited to and unnecessary for a British monarch. Victoria, however, was delighted, not least because her eldest daughter, married to the Prussian Crown Prince, was expected to become German Empress and would therefore have taken precedence over her. She in turn bestowed a title on Disraeli, creating him Earl of Beaconsfield, and paid him the unprecedented honour of calling upon him at his home. She was deeply grieved by his death in 1880. On his death-bed he was asked if he would welcome a visit from the Queen, but he declined. ‘She would only want me to convey some message to Albert,’ he said.

With Disraeli’s rival, William Gladstone, the Queen’s relations were somewhat chilly. She felt little empathy with the austere and intellectual Liberal leader, who spoke to her – she famously observed – as if he were addressing a public meeting. She was horrified by his proposals for Irish Home Rule, regarded his party as taking the country to the dogs, openly sided with his opponents and did whatever came within her power to obstruct its policies. The only thing they had in common was an extreme aversion to women’s emancipation, which Victoria referred to as ‘this mad folly’. When in 1885 General Gordon died at Khartoum because Gladstone’s government had dithered and delayed too long before sending a relief expedition, she was incandescent with anger and administered a blistering rebuke: ‘To think all this might have been prevented and many precious lives saved by earlier action is too frightful.’
¹⁹

This notwithstanding, the gulf between them – another of the clichés of Victoria’s reign – should not be exaggerated. The Queen was pleasanter in person than her letters to him suggest. Gladstone genuinely regretted that he could not befriend her
and, though he sympathized with critics of her reclusive lifestyle and the cost of the Civil List, he refused to attack her in the Commons. When republicanism briefly flourished in 1871, he could – like his successor Blair in 1997 – have destroyed the monarchy had he not chosen to defend it, gaining some unpopularity in his party as a result.

Though she met, in the course of her life, all sorts and conditions of people from emperors to the Highland tenants at Balmoral, Victoria was never able to rid herself of a painful shyness. She was not gifted at small talk and had difficulty initiating conversations. As a result, some who came in contact with her considered her aloof. As she grew older, she in any case became increasingly averse to new faces – indeed, to any change in her surroundings – and preferred the company of women, unless they were family members or old family friends. When with those who were familiar, she had a surprisingly adroit sense of humour, and loved to be entertained by good conversation. She was even known to laugh at risqué stories, though she preferred that these should not be told in the company of impressionable young court ladies. Her most famous utterance – ‘we are not amused’ – was, unlike many supposed sayings of famous people, entirely authentic, and was doubtless deployed on more than one occasion.

Yet its implication that she was a priggish and humourless matron is entirely inaccurate, and her journals bear witness that, on many occasions, she was ‘
Very Much Amused
’ or even ‘
Very Much Amused Indeed
’. It was known, as one courtier put it, that ‘H.M. don’t like being bored’, and that she expected wit and diversion from those around her. Just as she did not abandon her sense of humour when widowed, so she did not give up other pleasures. As time passed, there were once again dances and concerts and theatrical performances at Windsor and Balmoral. She enjoyed circuses, and saw Buffalo
Bill’s Wild West Show when it toured England. Victoria possessed a very fine singing voice (she could boast: ‘I was taught to sing by Mendelssohn’) and sometimes surprised those around her by rendering airs from Gilbert and Sullivan. During her annual visits to the south of France she attended the ‘Battle of Flowers’ in Grasse, and entered into the spirit of the event with noticeable enthusiasm. The image of this elderly sovereign pelting the revellers with blooms does not, of course, tally with any notion of a perpetually grieving widow. As one of her companions recalled: ‘The Queen demanded more and more flowers, until at last we had to resort to the trick of having them picked up and brought back from the street below to be flung down again.’
²⁰

The austere image of Victoria hid a lighter side, as well as an intellectual curiosity. She embraced the scientific developments of the age. She had earlier sat for photographs, allowed chloroform to be administered and made extensive use of the telegraph. Now she had electric lighting installed at Osborne, became a habitual user of the telephone, made a gramophone recording (it was sent to the Emperor of Ethiopia, who stood to attention while listening to her message) and took an interest in the early cinema as both subject and spectator. She viewed a film of the Lord Mayor’s Show in 1896, remarking that she found it ‘very tiring for the eyes, but worth it to have seen such a marvel’.
²¹

Gladstone’s successor, the patrician Tory Lord Salisbury, observed that if he knew what the Queen thought about an issue, he knew what the middle classes would think. This implies a narrowness of outlook of which she was certainly guilty, yet the painter Landseer was to describe her as having the finest intellect of any woman in Europe, and another observer, Charles Greville, went even further by saying that she had the most interesting mind and character in the world.
In spite of this, she was distinctly uncomfortable in the company of intellectuals for, having had a limited education, she felt overawed by the very people – scientists, thinkers, academics – whose company Albert had enjoyed. Her tastes and abilities were more practical. Studying, and advising on, national and international issues was something she did with unflagging determination to the end of her life.