John Brown

by Raymond Lamont-Brown

  John Brown had noted from the newspaper reports that the slashes on Lady Florence’s outer clothing did not correspond with tears on her under garments. There was no mud on the back of her clothing, which one would have expected if she had been thrown to the ground. Despite a minute investigation of the scene of the supposed crime John Brown could come up with nothing original; he reported his failure to his royal mistress. ‘The whole case so puzzled Mr Brown that he spent considerable time in the open air making his enquiries, thus exposing him to the bitter cold,’ reported a journalist.18

  On 30 March 1883, in replying to a question in the House of Commons, the Liberal Home Secretary, Sir William Harcourt closed the case by stating that none of Lady Florence’s assertions had been corroborated. What did it all mean? The Queen remained puzzled and studied closely the usual distillation of the news on the subject prepared for her by Sir Henry Ponsonby.

  One paper commented that Lady Florence had been beset by ‘sturdy beggars’ and that fear of Fenian assassination had affected her ‘imagination’ and coloured ‘her narrative of events’.19 A medical paper used the case to talk about examples of ‘hallucination’ and the work done on the subject by Professor Legrand du Saulle of the Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris.20 Yet the whole business was summed up for the Court gossip network by Louisa, Countess of Antrim, who opined that Lady Florence had been under the influence of alcohol at the time of her supposed attack. After all, said the Countess, it was common knowledge that Lady Florence and her husband were referred to in Court circles as ‘Sir Sometimes and Lady Always Tipsy’.21

  The brouhaha engendered by Lady Florence soon died away, but the chilling he had received as a consequence of his open air investigation of her case caused John Brown to develop a severe chest cold. His devotion to royal duties kept John Brown out of a sick bed. The Queen needed him. Her twisted knee was followed by rheumatic twinges that kept her carriage and chair-bound, but she still insisted on daily ‘walks’. On Saturday 24 March the Queen declared herself well enough for a longer drive and Brown and footman Lockwood carried her down to the pony-chair which had been a favourite conveyance at Balmoral. Wrapped in ‘a huge assortment of wraps, known to her ladies as “the White Knight’s paraphernalia”,’ as the Countess of Antrim recalled, Queen Victoria and John Brown set out down the Long Walk at Windsor Castle. It was the last time.22

  That Saturday evening, press reports noted, John Brown was seen around the castle ‘apparently in fair health, although still suffering from a cold’.23 But his condition declined and Dr Sir William Jenner was called by Brown’s anxious brother Archie. By the morning of Easter Sunday, 25 March, erysipelas had extended over the right side of John Brown’s face and he developed a high fever. In those days of no antibiotics, his condition deteriorated fast and by the evening he had lapsed into delirium tremens.

  The Queen was enjoying her Easter, but wrote with a slightly petulant undertone: ‘Had a good night. Vexed that Brown could not attend me, not being at all well, with a swollen face, which is feared is erysipelas.’24 It is clear that Queen Victoria did not realise the gravity of John Brown’s illness. On Monday 26 March, leaning heavily on footman Lockwood, she went to the private chapel at Windsor Castle to attend the christening of Princess Alice Mary Victoria Augusta Pauline, born to the Prince and Princess Leopold on 25 February. This Princess Alice was to be the longest-surviving of Queen Victoria’s thirty-seven grandchildren; she died in 1981.

  During the morning of Tuesday 27 March, Dr James Reid, who had been constantly monitoring John Brown’s condition at the request of Queen Victoria, was handed a telegram from his father’s medical partner, Dr Andrew Fowler, informing him of his own father’s serious illness. Dr Reid senior died shortly afterwards. As John Brown was so ill, Queen Victoria deemed herself unable to allow Dr Reid to leave his bedside.

  By Tuesday afternoon John Brown had sunk into a deep coma from which he never regained consciousness. According to the death certificate signed by Dr Reid, John Brown died at Windsor Castle at 10.40pm that night.25

  Who was to tell the Queen of Brown’s death? Her family shirked the task until Prince Leopold reluctantly agreed. The Queen wrote of the event:

  Leopold came to my dressing-room and broke the dreadful news to me that my good, faithful Brown had passed away early this morning. [sic] Am terribly upset by this loss, which removes one who was so devoted and attached to my service and who did so much for my personal comfort. It is the loss not only of a servant, but of a real friend.26

  Prince Leopold conveyed his feelings in a letter to his brother-in-law Prince Louis, Grand Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt: ‘I have deep sympathy with [the Queen]. We can feel for her, & her sorrow, without being sorry for the cause. At least I can’t be a hypocrit.’27

  As the Queen wept alone at Windsor Castle, Prime Minister Gladstone prepared a letter of condolence at Downing Street:

  Mr Gladstone presents his humble duty and presumes to lay before Your Majesty the expression of sincere concern with which he had learned that Your Majesty has been deprived, by a sudden and fatal illness, of the services of Mr J Brown. He is able in some degree to understand how the aid and attention of an attached, respected, and intelligent domestic prolonged through many years, and naturally productive of an ever-growing confidence, must, when withdrawn thus abruptly, leave a sense of serious loss, and this most of all in Your Majesty’s elevated sphere, and closely occupied life. Even in his own contracted circle of personal relations, he has had occasion to feel how much more of proximity may be the natural growth of such services than the outer world would readily suppose.

  Mr Gladstone trusts Your Majesty may be able to select a good and efficient successor, though it would be too much to hope that anyone, however capable, can at once fill the void.28

  This was typical of the pedantic twaddle that Queen Victoria expected of Gladstone. The Prime Minister’s hope that a ‘successor’ be selected to replace the ‘intelligent domestic’ grated with the Queen, whose low opinion of Gladstone descended a further notch or two. Benjamin Disraeli would never have made such a ‘pitiless’ blunder. Nevertheless in due course Queen Victoria appointed John Brown’s cousin Francie Clark to his former position. She had moulded John Brown into the servant she required and would endeavour to form Francie Clark in his image.

  Laid out by the royal undertakers, John Brown’s body rested in state in his ‘untidy room’ in a temporary ‘shell’ while a ‘handsome State coffin was constructed’.29 The Queen’s hand was undoubtedly behind the entry in the Court Circular reporting John Brown’s death. After detailing a short comment on Brown’s royal service it went on:

  This melancholy event has caused the deepest regret to the Queen, the Royal Family, and all members of the Royal Household. To Her Majesty the loss is irreparable, and the death of this truly faithful and devoted servant has been a grievous stroke to the Queen . . . An honest, faithful, and devoted follower, a trustworthy, discreet, and straightforward man, and possessed of strong sense, he filled a position of great and anxious responsibility, the duties of which he performed with such a constant and unceasing care as to secure for himself the real friendship of the Queen.30

  The Queen’s emotions as reported in the official announcement were not shared by the Prince of Wales and his siblings. Searching out ‘social items’ in the Court Circular, author E.E.P. Tisdall noted that the Prince and Princess of Wales and Prince and Princess Alfred, among others, embarked on a flurry of theatre trips and after-theatre parties to an unprecedented extent.31 Sadly, the Prince of Wales’s reaction to the Queen setting out in her pony carriage the day after John Brown’s death went unrecorded, but teeth must have been on edge when Francie Clark was seen walking in his cousin’s usual place.

  On Tuesday 3 April all the preparations were completed for John Brown’s funeral. His body, still in its inner lead ‘shell’, was lifted into a polished oak coffin, with layers of charcoal placed between the two containers. Unsealed, the coffin was l
aid upon the bed in which he had died and a short service was conducted by the Revd Thomas Orr, the Independent Minister at Windsor, attended by Queen Victoria and Princess Beatrice.32 Following this private service, the coffin was sealed and carried down to the visitors’ reception area in Clarence Tower, where the Revd Orr repeated the service in the presence of a gathering of the Royal Household.

  Queen Victoria placed her wreath of myrtle and arum lilies on the coffin, where it was joined by another floral tribute from the Empress Eugénie. The Queen then retired to the Oak Room, from the window of which she watched the hearse bear John Brown to Windsor station. The town’s streets were quiet, the shops closed in respect. The bells of the parish church of St John, Windsor, and the bell in the Curfew Tower, were tolled as Brown’s coffin made its last journey. For once, at the Queen’s command, the pipers did not play under the castle walls.33 John Brown’s body was conveyed by train from Windsor to Ballater and thence by hearse to Bailena-Coile, the house Queen Victoria had given him for his retirement and in which he had never lived.

  Some five hundred people turned out for John Brown’s funeral at Crathie cemetery on Thursday 5 April. His bier was flanked by a guard of honour made up of Colonel Farquharson’s men from Invercauld and the Earl of Fife’s retainers from Mar Lodge. Over the coffin, at the Queen’s instruction, was draped a worn plaid. It was a swathe in which she had been wrapped many times for the John Brown ‘walks’ at Balmoral. Another instruction, on deep mourning paper and in the Queen’s own hand, went direct by royal messenger to John Brown’s sister-in-law. It read: ‘To tell Mrs Hugh to place a wreath of flowers in dear Brown’s room [at Windsor Castle] on his bed on the day.’34 The Queen had already poured out her grief to Brown’s sisters-in-law, Mrs William Brown and Mrs Hugh Brown, a few days earlier. Her letter reads:

  Dear Lizzie and Jessie,

  Weep with me for we all have lost the best, the truest heart that ever beat! As for me – my grief is unbounded – dreadful – & I know not how to bear it, – or how to believe it possible. We parted all so well and happy at dear Balmoral – and – dear, dear John! My dearest, best friend, to whom I could say everything and who watched over & protected me so kindly and who thought of everything – was well and strong & hearty, not 3 or 4 days before he was struck down. And my accident worried him. He never took proper care, would not go out the whole time (a week) I was shut up & would not go to bed when he was ill.

  ‘The Lord gave, – The Lord hath taken away! Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ – His Will be done. – He, dear, excellent, upright, warmhearted – strong! John – is happy, blessing us – while we weep. God bless you both! You have your husbands – your support – but I have no strong arm to lean on now. Dear Beatrice is my great comfort.35

  The floral tributes at Crathie graveyard on the day of Brown’s funeral were legion, spilling over other graves and lining the paths of the old ruined pre-Reformation church. A regular stream of mourners, curious and voyeuristic, crowded the graveside for days afterwards and read the sentiment the Queen had written on the main wreath: ‘A tribute of loving, grateful and everlasting friendship and affection from his truest, best and most faithful, friend, Victoria. R & I.’ Her words were long pored over: ‘loving’, ‘affectionate’ – what could they mean?

  In the days following John Brown’s death Queen Victoria was what Brown would have called ‘aff the legs’. She found it difficult to stand on her swollen and painful legs, made worse by her state of grief. She refused to have any male members of the Royal Household at dinner for weeks after Brown’s interment because of her incapacity; she grumbled to Henry Ponsonby at not having Brown’s strong arm to lean on: ‘How can I see people at dinner in the evening? I can’t go walking about all night holding on to the back of a chair.’36

  For a while, too, after the official announcements of John Brown’s death in the Court Circular, Queen Victoria scoured the papers for mentions of him. Many of Britain’s national daily newspapers, from the Daily Telegraph to the Manchester Examiner, carried obituaries. Curiously, Scots newspapers, such as the People’s Journal for Glasgow & Edinburgh descended to doggerel verse to describe him, with such couplets as:

  He’s gane at length, though lo’ed by a’

  John Brown’s deid!37

  To the snippets that her maids pasted into the Queen’s scrapbooks a final encomium was added from the Braemar correspondent of the Press Association:

  On Deeside [Brown] was universally esteemed for his manly straightforwardness. To many his manner may have appeared abrupt, if not brusque, but that only illustrated the simplicity of his character. He never affected an artificial polish, nor sought to soften the native harshness of the Highland dialect; and he never made any distinction of persons. Brown was implicitly trusted by the Queen, and it is evident that her confidence was not misplaced.38

  For a while, as she had done after the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria made herself as inconspicuous as possible when travelling to and from Osborne and Balmoral. As she embarked on her spring journey to Balmoral the Queen was transferred to her railway carriage by closed chair, and at Perth station she insisted that when her coach came to rest she was to be hidden from inquisitive eyes by a bower of evergreens. She explained to Sir Theodore Martin: ‘As if it were pleasant for any lady to be carried in and out of a carriage before crowds of people.’39 On this particular occasion, too, the Queen was agitated because she was to visit John Brown’s grave for the first time.

  Missing her ‘faithful, kind friend and constant companion’ greatly, Queen Victoria arrived at Balmoral on 26 May. Minutes after she had arrived at the castle she went in her pony-chair to inspect John Brown’s as yet unmarked grave, the environs of which had been picked clean by souvenir hunters bearing off wreath clips, tie-ribbons, labels and flower holders. Writing to his wife, Henry Ponsonby described the Queen’s graveside visit, adding opinions of his own:

  The Deeside looked very pretty with the bright green birches and the sun was bright if not warm . . . It was a day that we could easily understand would make the Queen low and she was low . . . Wreaths from Princesses, Empresses and Ladies in Waiting are lying on Brown’s grave. He was the only person who could fight and make the Queen do what she did not wish. He did not always succeed nor was his advice always the best. But I believe he was honest, and with all his want of education, his roughness, his prejudices and other faults he was undoubtedly a most excellent servant to her.40

  The headstone for John Brown, which the Queen had ordered in Aberdeen granite with its thistle motif pediment, was set in place, within railings to deter vandals, by the time she visited Balmoral in the autumn of 1883. It stood alongside the one John Brown had erected to his parents and siblings who had predeceased him. She viewed it with approval.41 The wording of the headstone again came from her own hand, forming a rather indifferent sentiment above a quotation from Matthew XXV:21:

  THIS STONE IS ERECTED

  IN AFFECTIONATE

  AND GRATEFUL MEMORY OF

  JOHN BROWN

  PERSONAL ATTENDANT

  AND BELOVED FRIEND

  OF QUEEN VICTORIA

  IN WHOSE SERVICE HE HAD BEEN

  FOR 34 YEARS

  Born Crathienaird December 8th 1826

  Died WINDSOR CASTLE 27th March 1883

  That friend on whose fidelity you count,

  that friend given you by circumstances

  over which you have no control, was GOD’s

  own gift.

  WELL DONE, GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT; THOUHAST BEEN FAITHFUL OVER A FEW THINGS, I WILL MAKE THEE RULER OVER MANY THINGS; ENTER THOU INTO THE JOY OF THE LORD

  The stone drew an increased number of visitors to Brown’s grave. In conversation with Lord in Waiting Viscount Bridport, Mrs Campbell, wife of the Minister of Crathie, observed that ‘a hundred pilgrims visited a day’; sardonically Lord Bridport replied: ‘You ought to charge them a shilling a head.’42

  Just as she had permitted a
plethora of memorabilia after the death of Prince Albert, ranging from Worcester pottery busts to commemorative medals and from belt clasps to music covers, the Queen embarked on a set of ‘Brown memorials’.43 These included statuettes and plaster of Paris busts, gold tiepins set with diamonds around John Brown’s head and funeral brooches designed by the royal jeweller Mr Collingwood. These were handed out by Queen Victoria with largesse. Funeral brooches were given to John Brown’s relatives and tie-pins to courtiers. Sir Frederick Ponsonby recalled that the recipient of one of the tie-pins, Dr Profeit, the leader of the anti-Brown camp, ‘realised that if he wore this everyone at Balmoral would laugh at him. He therefore hit upon the idea of keeping it in his coat pocket so that when he had to see the Queen he could take it out and put it in his tie, returning it to his pocket when he came away.’44

  The most contentious of the memorials, and certainly the largest, was the life-size bronze statue the Queen commissioned from Edgar Boehm. When completed it was erected near the garden cottage on Balmoral estate where Queen Victoria had sat al fresco to complete her state dispatch boxes while John Brown handed her the documents for consideration. The statue shows John Brown in Highland garb, with the medals Queen Victoria gave him on his left lapel, and his lucky threepenny piece and pipe on his fob; he is bareheaded, holding his bonnet in his right hand. Queen Victoria went to great lengths to get the inscription just right on the supporting plinth. As she had done for the gravestone epitaph, she consulted Alfred, Lord Tennyson.

  Lord Tennyson replied, suggesting a few possible lines. The Queen chose this from what the Poet Laureate called an ‘anonymous hand’: