John Brown

by Raymond Lamont-Brown

  Prince Albert now set about creating a new home for his family, to designs supervised by the famous builder Thomas Cubitt, whose fine town-houses in London’s Belgrave Square and Eaton Square were the prestigious homes of the well-todo. The foundation stone for the new house was laid on 23 June 1845. The family lived in the Italianate tower-dominated wing known as the Pavilion, of which they took possession on the evening of the 14 September 1846; the Household Wing was ready in 1847; and Old Osborne House was demolished to make way for a new Main Wing.

  The royal family established a routine of visiting Osborne around four times a year, in the spring, on Queen Victoria’s birthday (24 May), in July and just before Christmas. After Prince Albert’s death in 1861 his room at Osborne was preserved exactly as if he had just left it for a moment and would return. Queen Victoria now always spent her wedding anniversary (10 February) at ‘Dear Desolate Osborne’, which was to be the main setting for her slow recovery from her ‘morbid melancholy’.

  With John Brown at her pony’s head, Queen Victoria soon settled into a pattern of daily rides. The Queen’s favourite pony, ‘Lochnagar’, had been brought from Balmoral with John Brown. She wrote:

  I find this quiet riding, in these dear grounds, woods and fields by the sea, very pleasant, and the motion of the pony’s gentle walk, soothing. But it is a sad alternative for the delightful long walks with my beloved one.9

  A few months after his appointment John Brown accompanied his royal mistress and her suite on a visit to Princess Alice at Darmstadt, where she unveiled a statue to Prince Albert. This trip was followed by a visit to the 10th Earl of Dalhousie’s shooting lodge at Invermark. Here Queen Victoria realised that John Brown had a fine sense of direction and was able to assess his surroundings with great accuracy. Hating the unfamiliar, she began to rely on Brown to explain the layout of houses called on and places visited. After the Invermark visit, Queen Victoria spent a few days in September 1865 at Dunkeld to comfort the newly widowed Anne, Duchess of Atholl. Brown and Grant were in attendance, and for once Brown’s sense of direction failed him.

  The royal party was returning to Dunkeld from Loch Ordie Lodge in the sheeting rain when coachman Smith took a wrong turning and took them into the heart of a wooded area with rough tracks. They soon became lost. Grant jumped down to walk ahead with a lantern and John Brown led the horses. Queen Victoria became agitated but was ‘reassured’ by Brown’s presence. General Grey politely asked the Duchess where they were and Brown rudely interrupted: ‘The duchess don’t know at all where we are!’

  It was after this trip that the Queen wrote:

  Was much distressed at breakfast to find that poor Brown’s legs had been dreadfully cut by the edge of his wet kilt on Monday, just at the back of the knee . . . Today one became so inflamed and swelled so much, that he could hardly move.10

  Despite being in pain John Brown refused to abandon his duties and continued to accompany the Queen on her jaunts.

  Queen Victoria’s daily habits became enshrined in a formula. One courtier set it down:

  THE QUEEN’S DAILY ROUTINE

  FOR OSBORNE: As soon as the weather permits the Queen breakfasts outside in an open marquee. In Summer this is at 10am.

  Then Brown brings her private letters, which have been sorted by a lady-in-waiting.

  Brown reads the newspapers to her, and discusses current affairs.

  A morning ride around Osborne with Brown.

  11am. A footman arrives with dispatch boxes of State papers.

  The Queen works on them until 1pm.

  Afternoon rest.

  The afternoon estate ride, or beyond.

  The rest of the day occupied by State affairs, meals, receptions.

  FOR BALMORAL: The Queen rises early.

  Morning walk in the gardens before breakfast, which, if fine, is taken outside the garden cottage.

  Brown brings letters.

  Queen writes private letters; Brown folds them and seals them in envelopes. Prepares them for postal courier.

  Very little State work done at Balmoral. Matters dealt with ad hoc through the Minister in Attendance.

  Morning and afternoon rides if weather suits.

  FOR WINDSOR: Royal Headquarters. Much State Work. Few allowed into private sitting room where the Queen works at a broad desk. Brown stands guard in corridor outside fending off even the highest in the land.11

  John Brown was always prompt in his appearance for the daily drives. As E.E.P. Tisdall remarked:

  He came to take her for daily drives, morning and afternoon. He pushed aside bowing lackeys in gaudy finery. He was brusque with the ladies who fluttered like frightened chickens in his way. The carriage was his preserve. It was his task to see that the Queen was settled among her cushions, his horny fingers which must ensure that her jacket was buttoned against the wind, his hands which must spread the shawl about her shoulders. Others had tended her as their Queen and mistress. John Brown protected her as she was, a poor, broken-hearted bairn who wanted looking after and taking out of herself.12

  John Brown quickly settled down to his new pattern of life, first at Osborne, then at the other royal residences. For the rest of his years in royal service he took his daily orders directly from the Queen. Wherever the Queen happened to be John Brown reported to her after breakfast and lunch for his instructions. She found him to be attentive and meticulous in carrying out her commands. She wrote to her uncle, King Leopold of the Belgians: ‘It is a real comfort for [Brown] is devoted to me – so simple, so intelligent, so unlike an ordinary servant.’13

  She was able to confirm her delight to Princess Victoria: ‘[Brown] is so quiet, has such an excellent head & memory . . . It is an excellent arrangement [having him at Osborne], & I feel I have here always in the House a good, devoted Soul (like your Grant) – whose only object & interest is my service, & God knows how much I want to be taken care of.’14 This last phrase spells out a vital clue to the developing relationship between Queen Victoria and John Brown, and its future interpretation. Queen Victoria longed to be over-indulged, and fussed over by a man, with the underlying desire to acquiesce to a strong masculinity.

  When at Balmoral, Brown also was to be the conduit of any instructions she had for the gillies as she was nervous that some members of her Household – particularly those with military backgrounds – would offend what she took to be Highland sensibilities; she once said to Prince Arthur’s governor, Major-General Sir Howard Elphinstone: ‘It will never do to speak harshly or dictatorially to Highlanders; their independence and self-respect and proper spirit . . . make them resent that far more than an ordinary . . . English servant.’15

  Alas, the Highlanders’ ‘sensibilities’ were not a two-way understanding; daily Queen Victoria used John Brown to convey messages to her Household, little realising – or, if she did, ignoring the fact – that John Brown’s manner grew gradually more tactless and acerbic. On one occasion Sir Charles Grey, erstwhile secretary to Prince Albert and now on the Queen’s own secretariat, was sent a message via John Brown which he delivered in a rude manner. Sir Charles’s daughter Louisa, Countess of Antrim, who was in the Queen’s service as a Lady-in-Waiting from 1891, recalled: ‘My father refused to accept the message in this [rude] form’. Thereafter, the Countess averred, the two men bore each other a grudge.16

  In relaying the Queen’s instructions John Brown would often act without diplomacy or grace. On one occasion he was sent to the billiard-room at Windsor to convey a dinner invitation to the Lords-in-Waiting. Brown pushed open the door, surveyed the company of aristocrats and bawled: ‘All what’s here dines with the Queen.’ The Mayor of Portsmouth once visited Osborne to convey an invitation to the Queen to inspect a force of Volunteers. She did not feel able to do so and sent Brown with her apologies to where the Mayor was waiting in the equerries’ room with Sir Henry Ponsonby. Brown, however, in his usual brusque way, informed the startled Mayor: ‘The Queen says saretenly not.’

  Quite often J
ohn Brown’s construing of Queen Victoria’s orders was idiosyncratic, with the Queen invariably accepting Brown’s interpretation when complaints arose among those whom the orders concerned. Her attitude also extended to Brown’s brothers on the royal staff, one of whom, Archie, was to cause a major furore.

  Prince Leopold George Duncan Albert, Duke of Albany, Queen Victoria’s eighth child and fourth son, was born at Buckingham Palace on 7 April 1853. He first met John Brown in 1860, when the gillie took the little Prince for a ride on ‘Topsy’, with Brown holding the pony’s head.17 In July 1865 John Brown’s brother Archie was appointed ‘Brusher’ – a junior valet – to Prince Leopold; he was chosen for the task by Victoria as Archie was strong enough to carry her haemophiliac son to safety should he get into scrapes.

  In April 1865 a quarrel broke out between Archie and Lieutenant Walter George Stirling, a cavalry officer in the Royal Horse Artillery and Prince Leopold’s new governor. Exactly what the quarrel was about has long been forgotten, but Stirling’s military bearing was considered ‘harsh and arrogant’ and it is clear that he did not understand the special kid-glove deference that Queen Victoria expected for John Brown and his kin. Stung by Stirling’s attitude, the rather dim-witted Archie – who was no match for his elder brother’s percipience – complained to John Brown; somewhat disappointed by the tardiness of Archie’s promotion to valet, John Brown complained to the Queen.

  Stirling would have to go. Leopold’s former governor, Major-General Sir Howard Elphinstone, spoke up on Stirling’s behalf; could he perhaps be transferred to Prince Arthur’s Household? No, the Queen was adamant. Stirling was dismissed with a generous leaving present from the Queen, and a veiled warning that he should not tittle-tattle about the Browns nor comment publicly on the reason for his dismissal. Queen Victoria was already aware of the growing gossip about her and John Brown, and she wanted no fuel to be added to the fire of scandal. Prince Leopold was disappointed and angry at Stirling’s dismissal but kept in touch with the officer mostly by letter until the Prince’s death at Villa Nevada in 1884.18 From that day Prince Leopold formed a hatred for John Brown and his family. In a letter to Stirling of 3 September 1868 Leopold wrote of his growing distaste for the Browns:

  I am rather in the grumps just now about everything, the way in which I am treated is sometimes too bad (not Mr Duckworth, of course not, he is only too kind to me) but other people. Besides that ‘J.B.’ is fearfully insolent to me, so is his brother [Archie]; hitting me on the face with spoons for fun, etc – you may laugh at me for all this; but you know I am so sensitive, I know you will feel for me – their impudence increases daily towards everyone.19

  The Revd Robinson Duckworth, by the by, was tutor to Prince Leopold and was himself later to fall foul of Brown interference. The whole Stirling episode was to add momentum to the growing anti-Brown feeling below stairs. The Household interpreted the removal of Stirling as Queen Victoria supporting an insubordinate servant against a superior; it contributed to falling staff morale.

  There were also problems with another of John Brown’s brothers. The Queen became annoyed at Donald Brown’s truculent attitude and his negligence of his duties. Things were made worse as Donald Brown had regular altercations with his neighbours first at Windsor then Osborne. The Queen commented thus to her physician Dr James Reid:

  I am greatly disappointed and shocked to hear of Donald Brown’s most extraordinary and improper conduct. He wished to leave Osborne as he could not agree with anyone there when everything had been done to suit his wishes. He has been at the principal gate at Windsor Castle, where the duties are very slight, and where his predecessors have always lived, contented and satisfied. But he does nothing but complain, and to my astonishment and great displeasure I hear that he disobeys orders, interferes with the guard, and refuses to open the gates on the terrace, which all other porters at that gate, where he is, have done. He should feel that it was entirely out of regard to his excellent eldest [sic] brother John that he got the place of Extra Porter, and then, after some years, of Regular Porter. He has been more indulged, and more has been done for him than for any other person in his position, and yet he is never satisfied. This is extremely ungrateful, and besides sets a very bad example to the other servants in a similar position. He must be told plainly and decidedly that if he does not obey orders which are now conveyed by Lord Edward Clinton, Master of the Household, I shall be obliged to pension him which, for the sake of his brother, I should regret, but he must promise in writing to do what are his duties: if he refuses to do so he must be pensioned.20

  It seems that Donald Brown listened to the reasonable fellow-Scot Dr Reid and complied; the Queen chose Reid for this task as the unbending Lord Edward Pelham-Clinton did not understand the perceived royal ‘sensibilities’ towards Highlanders.

  In February 1865 Queen Victoria wrote again to her uncle, King Leopold of the Belgians, telling him that she had firmly decided to keep her ‘excellent’ Highland servant John Brown to hand ‘to attend me always’. Thus John Brown was given the title ‘The Queen’s Highland Servant’, with a salary from the Privy Purse of £120 per annum.21 A new employment pattern was set out for him in a memorandum dated 4 February 1865. In essence it confirmed that Brown would take his orders directly from the Queen, and none but her; he would be in attendance both outdoors and in. ‘He is to continue as before cleaning her boots, skirts and cloaks unless this proves too much.’22 Ten months later it seems to have proved ‘too much’ as we find John Brown with someone to clean his boots, and to dry the Queen’s dogs when they came in sodden.

  The Prince of Wales and Princess Victoria were very much against Brown’s appointment as Highland Servant and the memorandum horrified them. They feared that Brown would have too much influence over the Queen, as had her governess and Lady-in-Attendance to 1842, Baroness Louise Lehzen.

  The memorandum established a ‘status’ and ‘salary’ structure for John Brown that no other servant was to achieve. He was to have holidays if he wished; this meant that he could remain at Balmoral for a few days after the Queen left. In the event he took little time off throughout his royal service. Writing to Princess Victoria from Balmoral on 5 June 1865 Queen Victoria noted: ‘As for Brown I never saw such an unselfish servant; he won’t take any leave (which I have never seen before in any one male or female, high or low) and my comfort – my service are really his only objects.’23

  Brown was to have a cottage at Balmoral should he marry. Although he never did marry, Queen Victoria still gave him a cottage ‘for retirement’;24 it is called in Gaelic Bailena-Coile (‘Town-of-the-Woods’) and is situated near Craig Gowan. Although it was furnished with gifts that John Brown accumulated while in royal service he never lived there, yet after his death his coffin rested at the house the night before he was buried at old Crathie churchyard.

  By the end of 1866 John Brown’s salary was raised to £150, and to £230 in 1869, with an allowance of £70 for clothes; the basic salary was later raised to £310. In 1872, the year John Brown was officially designated ‘Esquire’, his salary was raised to equal the Household rank of Page of the Backstairs at £400.25 All this was in accordance with Queen Victoria’s growing affection for John Brown: ‘You will see’, she wrote to him in 1872, ‘in this the great anxiety to show more & more what you are to me & as time goes on this will be more & more seen & known. Every one hears me say you are my friend & most confidential attendant.’26

  While all this was solid advancement for John Brown, it must be remembered that he was always considered by Queen Victoria to be of lesser rank as a servant than Rudolph Löhlein.27 Because he closely resembled Prince Albert in figure and face, courtiers believed the gossip from Coburg that Löhlein was the Prince’s half-brother, the illegitimate offspring of Prince Albert’s father Ernest I, Duke of SaxeCoburg-Gotha. Löhlein had been brought up by a forester on the family estate of Fullbach, near Coburg, and came to Queen Victoria’s court in 1847 as Prince Albert’s Jäger, being prom
oted to valet in 1860.28 After Prince Albert’s death Queen Victoria made Löhlein her ‘Extra Personal Attendant’, a post he held until he retired in 1884; he died in 1886. Brown’s title, ‘The Queen’s Highland Servant’, did not entirely die with him; on his death it was assumed by his cousin Francis Clark and Brown’s brother Hugh became ‘Extra Highland Attendant’ to assist Clark; on the latter’s death the post passed to William Brown.

  Brown was a walking encyclopedia of Queen Victoria’s likes and dislikes, the latter greatly outweighing the former. What is more, he understood what made the Queen feel gemütlich, a word she often used. It has been long rumoured that John Brown kept a ‘secret diary’ of his life in royal circles.29 If he did, it has never been publicly identified. Certainly he very soon realised that Queen Victoria was a complex character, her personality shaped in her youth when she was subject to the manipulations of royal factions at her Court, particularly the machinations of her mother’s Comptroller Sir John Conroy.

  Brown came to understand the Queen’s many contradictions of character. She was a fundamentally courageous woman, but Brown found her nervous of a whole range of things, from meeting people she did not know when she was out driving, to simply being alone. In a single morning Brown might observe her being selfless and thoughtless, diplomatic and insensitive, understanding and unloving, forebearing and mean, serene and convulsive. Though clingy, she was every inch a Queen, and an English one at that, though she admitted feeling ‘Scotch’ at Balmoral. Yet Brown had been surprised, as many others were, that she spoke and wrote flawless German and her Court had many Teutonic aspects.30