Friend more than Servant, loyal truthful, brave
Self less than duty, even to the Grave.
In her letter of thanks of 15 September the Queen added: ‘[Are the words] not perhaps by yourself?’
The statue was duly set in place. While the Countess of Errol likened the statue to the graven image that Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, had placed on the plain of Dura in Daniel III:1, the Queen’s immediate family preferred to avert their eyes when in its vicinity. After his mother’s death King Edward VII ordered that statue to be ‘hidden’ at a location on the hillside on the north-east side of Craig Gowan where it still rests.45
The folk of Deeside had generally liked and respected the gruff John Brown, but to most he remained a man of mystery. Apart from the innuendo about himself and Queen Victoria, after his death a new range of John Brown myths sprang to life, mostly about his supposed influence over the Queen and his purported wealth.
The gossips charged John Brown with using his position to obtain jobs for his family. It is true that John Brown’s brothers William, Hugh and Archie were in royal employment, but such an arrangement was hardly unusual. Queen Victoria liked to have around her people she knew, so it was not surprising that members of certain families, related by marriage or blood ties, succeeded one another to royal positions, or worked in parallel. For instance, Sir Frederick Ponsonby (1867–1935), 1st Lord Syonsby, had forty years of court service, in several positions including Equerry and Assistant Keeper of the Privy Purse; his father General Sir Henry Ponsonby was the Queen’s Private Secretary and Keeper of the Privy Purse. Louisa Jane, Countess of Antrim, the daughter of another of the Queen’s private secretaries, General Charles Grey, became a Lady-in-Waiting and, like Fred Ponsonby, served at the courts of successive monarchs. Again Harriet, the daughter of the court official Receiver-General to the Duchy of Cornwall, the Hon. Sir Charles Beaumont Phipps, became Woman of the Bedchamber and Queen Victoria’s personal amanuensis.
More seriously, people began to say that John Brown had made himself rich at royal expense and through various scams. The publication Truth averred that John Brown left a fortune of £20,000. The World noted that John Brown had a fortune in ‘plate and pieces of jewellery’. The facts told a different story. Brown died intestate but letters of administration show that his total estate was valued at a few pence over £7,198. This was made up of £6,816 19s 11d in cash deposits at banks in Windsor, Ballater and Braemar, and goods at his unlivedin house at Baile-na-Coile, valued for inventory at £379 19s 6d. Certainly it was a considerable amount of money at a time when the average labouring wage was 5s per week, but it was hardly a fortune. In contrast, John Brown’s namesake, the Glasgow iron, steel and shipping magnate, had access to several millions. Records show that John Brown had been a generous donor to various charities over the years, in many cases insisting on anonymity. His siblings also received financial assistance and from time to time Brown gave Queen Victoria gifts of puppies he had reared and the use of horses he had bought. For instance, he purchased the Highland pony ‘Jessie’ in 1874, which was painted for the Royal Collection by Anthony de Bree in 1891.46
The biographer Clare Jarrold repeated a more serious allegation against Brown. She averred that he had extracted bribes: ‘[Brown] was said to take large percentages from the tradesmen, and in return would, when possible, give them his help.’47 No such allegations have ever been substantiated. Both those outside and within royal circles attested to John Brown’s honesty, and the ordinary people who knew him best scorned the idea that he had in any way fiddled the royal books.48 Nevertheless for many decades John Brown’s probity has been assailed by common gossip.
CHAPTER SEVEN
TRIAL BY GOSSIP
In understanding Queen Victoria’s emotional reaction to John Brown’s death the recollections of one man are of particular interest. Randall Thomas Davidson, later ennobled as Baron Davidson of Lambeth, and future Archbishop of Canterbury (1903–28), became Dean of Windsor and Queen Victoria’s domestic chaplain in the year of John Brown’s death. From his first audience with the Queen on 9 December 1882, he struck a chord of sympathy with her. Of the 35-year-old Scottish cleric she wrote: ‘Was seldom more struck than I have been by his personality . . . I feel that Mr Davidson . . . may be of great use to me.’ She began immediately to consult him on ecclesiastical matters.1
The tasks facing the new Dean were some of the most fraught he had ever undertaken. His interviews with the Queen were ‘most touching, solemn and interesting, but terribly difficult,’ he averred.2 Nothing in his experience as chaplain-secretary to his father-in-law, Archbishop Campbell Tait, could prepare him for the eccentric caprices of his sovereign. On 14 December 1883, the twenty-second anniversary of Prince Albert’s death, Queen Victoria required Davidson to prepare a special memorial service at the royal mausoleum at Frogmore. The prayers, said the Queen, should couple the names of Prince Albert and John Brown, as well as Davidson’s newly deceased predecessor Dean Gerald Valerian Wellesley, not forgetting blessings for the current travels being undertaken in India by Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught. The whole was to be ‘a very difficult task’ wrote Davidson in his diary, ‘but . . . it must be done’.3
This was to be Davidson’s first introduction to Queen Victoria’s curious notions about the dead. As he met with more experienced courtiers he heard and witnessed the strange rituals surrounding Prince Albert’s memory. He observed in disbelief the dead Prince Consort’s room at Windsor Castle which had been left to the last detail just as the prince had used it in life; he witnessed how hot water was set out in the Prince’s former dressing room for morning ablutions; how his clothes were laid out at certain times of the day . . . all as if the Prince was still alive; and how John Brown’s room in the Clarence Tower at Windsor had been locked after his death and preserved as a living museum. Yet the Dean was to encounter more trying difficulties during March 1884 as the Queen’s mourning for Brown showed no let-up. Davidson’s heart sank when he learned that the sovereign was writing a memoir of John Brown which she fully intended to publish.
On the Queen’s Grief
After paying his first visit to Prince Albert’s tomb at the royal mausoleum at Frogmore in attendance with the royal family, John Brown had been much moved and had said to Queen Victoria:
I didn’t like to see ye at Frogmore this morning. I felt for ye – to see ye coming there with your daughters and your husband lying there – marriage on one side and death on the other. No, I didn’t like to see it. I felt sorry for ye. I know so well what your feeling must be – ye who had been so happy. There is no more pleasure for you, poor Queen, and I feel for ye but what can I do for ye? I could die for ye.
John Brown
Fresh from the publication of More Leaves from the Journal of A Life in the Highlands, which Smith, Elder & Co. issued in February 1884, with its boldly displayed 1868 steel engraving of John Brown, Queen Victoria approached Sir Theodore Martin, Prince Albert’s biographer, to assist with editing her John Brown memoir. Pleading his wife’s ill-health, Sir Theodore demurred, whereupon the Queen consulted Sir Henry Ponsonby. He suggested that she approach the newly appointed Bishop of Ripon, William Boyd Carpenter, or Dr Cameron Lees of St Giles High Kirk, Edinburgh, as editorial mentor. Their hasty refusal when John Brown was mentioned was dignified but absolute. In the event the Queen consulted Miss Murray MacGregor, who had helped her both with Leaves and with the Highlanders volumes.
A copy of the completed Brown manuscript was passed to Randall Davidson for comment, although not on the Queen’s instructions. He read it and decided that its publication should be thwarted. Racking his brains for a plausible excuse, he thanked the Queen for sending him a copy of More Leaves, and opined that further writings would be unwise because of the adverse comments about her widowed jottings which had appeared in certain broadsheets. Although the book had been received by the public to great acclaim, the prominence of John Brown’s name and details of his health and we
lfare had caused fervid gossip at all levels of society. The royal family had cringed at the dedication to: ‘My Loyal Highlanders and especially to the Memory of My Devoted Personal Attendant and Faithful Friend John Brown, these records of My Widowed Life in Scotland are Gratefully Dedicated.’
Queen Victoria was unimpressed by Davidson’s opinions; she cared not for the press outpourings and made it known that she still intended to publish. The Dean determined that he would do his utmost to persuade her otherwise. Through her lady-in-waiting, Jane Ely, Queen Victoria expressed her dismay at Davidson’s opposition, which had caused her ‘pain’.
On John Brown
‘[The Royal Household] gets on better since John Brown’s disappearance from the scene. He was all powerful – no servant had a chance of promotion except through him, and he favoured no man who didn’t like his glass [of whisky]. Some of the courtiers were full of attention to J.B., gave him presents, etc – and he despised them for it. He was however . . . devoted in his attentions to the Queen.’
Sir John Clayton Powell,
Master of the Queen’s Household
Bracing himself, the Dean refused to apologise for ruffling the royal feathers and made it known that he maintained his opposition, and backing this up with threats to resign his position. Unmoved, the Queen sent the John Brown manuscript to Montague Corry, Baron Rowton, Benjamin Disraeli’s former secretary. Having read it, he suggested to Ponsonby that it should be set up in type and then shown to the Queen. Seeing it in print, averred Corry, the Queen would see the folly of linking her name so publicly and intimately with John Brown.4
For a while Davidson was out of favour with the Queen, but his disagreement with the monarch was soon over. Summoned to the royal presence he found the Queen ‘more friendly than ever’; she had decided not to publish the tome on Brown and the whole matter with Davidson was dropped.5
WHAT WAS IN THE MEMOIR TO DISCONCERT QUEEN VICTORIA’S HOUSEHOLD?
Assessing Queen Victoria’s other writings, it seems likely that the memoir would have contained a collection of anecdotes featuring John Brown’s wit, philosophy and activities, which probably included robust comments on her staff. Sir Henry Ponsonby left one clue to the tone of the memoir. In his letter to the Queen advising non-publication, he concluded: ‘Your Majesty’s innermost and most sacred feelings [contain] passages which will be misunderstood if read by strangers . . .’6
Queen Victoria habitually expressed her feelings of devotion for friends in a fervent way that was easy to misconstrue. She dotted her writings with ‘dearest’, ‘darling’, ‘beloved’ and ‘darling one’. To the Victorians, ‘darling’ was expressive of ‘great kindness’ and ‘tenderness’. John Brown’s papers included many greetings cards from Queen Victoria which were expressed in ardent terms. One for instance, dated 1 January 1877, bore the picture of a parlour maid and the verses:
I send my serving maiden
With New Year letter laden,
Its words will prove
My faith and love
To you my heart’s best treasure
Then smile on her and smile on me
And let your answer loving be,
And give me pleasure.
In the Queen’s own hand were added the words: ‘To my best friend J.B. From his best friend. V.R.I.’ This card is now in the Royal Archives at Windsor.7 The Queen also sent Valentine cards, it should be remembered, to Benjamin Disraeli.
The extant John Brown papers show that Queen Victoria did address John Brown as ‘darling one’. In a rather formal letter to Brown, dated October 1874, the Queen suggested that he should send for his brother Hugh, then in New Zealand, as their mother’s health was deteriorating: ‘I hope darling one that you will do this,’ she wrote.8
There were more deep-felt expressions of ‘love’. In an undated letter to Hugh Brown occurs this passage, with certain words underlined by the Queen:
I found these words in an old Diary or Journal of mine. I was in great trouble about the Princess Royal who had lost her child in ’66 [the Queen’s grandson Prince Sigismund] and dear John said to me: ‘I wish to take care of my dear good mistress till I die. You’ll never have an honester servant.’ I took and held his dear kind hand and I said I hoped he might long be spared to comfort me and he answered, ‘But we all must die.’
Afterwards my beloved John would say: ‘You haven’t a more devoted servant than Brown’ – and Oh! how I felt that!
Afterwards so often I told him no one loved him more than I did or had a better friend than me: and he answered ‘Nor you – than me . . . No one loves you more.’9
Queen Victoria’s definition of love in the phrase ‘no one loved him more’ meant sincere friendship; her expression of it was naively innocent and open to misunderstanding by anyone who did not comprehend the Queen’s character. This is what Ponsonby was afraid of when he destroyed the Memoir, and what Dean Davidson was trying to protect when he put his career on the line in opposing its publication.10
WAS THERE ANYTHING IMMORAL IN QUEEN VICTORIA’S RELATIONSHIP WITH JOHN BROWN?
The naive innocence of Queen Victoria’s character is a key factor in assessing this question. Had there been anything of an immoral nature in the famous relationship, would common sense not have indicated that they take steps to mask it? Both were well aware of public gossip. Yet far from keeping it dark, in letters and cards here was Queen Victoria proclaiming her ‘love’ for John Brown quite openly for all to read. Further she was actively hoping to publish all these thoughts in a publicly printed memoir. She knew it was all innocent but it was only the persuasive coercion of her closest advisors that caused her to abandon her plans to go public.
Queen Victoria’s relationship with John Brown could not have been sexual for a number of reasons, both physical and social. When Dr James Reid examined her cadaver he found that she ‘had a ventral hernia and a prolapse of the uterus’.11 Reid is probably commenting on a complete procidentia which the Queen probably had for many years. This would have made sexual intercourse not only uncomfortable but distasteful, as the prolapsed uterus would have to be regularly pushed back into place. The Queen never had, nor would even have contemplated, any treatment for her condition. Moreover, she would never have seriously considered having sexual relations with a man not of her own class, however deeply she may have felt. Her powerful sense of morality and social propriety would have forbidden it.
WHAT WAS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF QUEEN VICTORIA’S ATTRACTION TO JOHN BROWN?
Despite having several women around her who devoted their lives to her service, such as her Lady of the Bedchamber Jane, Marchioness of Ely, and Maids of Honour such as Lady Caroline Courtney, Queen Victoria never formed an intimate friendship with a woman. Brown supplied deep personal fellowship, and, as Dean Davidson put it, ‘friendly remonstrance and raillery’.12 Queen Victoria suffered abnormal grief after the death of Prince Albert. She had lost someone who seemed irreplaceable. She weathered the bewilderment that comes in the first stage of grief, then the anger, but then became caught in the depressed stage. All this was manifest in her behaviour. She hardly spoke, and when she did she was irritable; she ate sparingly; she lost interest in affairs of state; and she could not be roused to go out and about on her estates. John Brown’s determined interference ‘brought the Queen back to normality at a time of acute and dangerous stress’.13
Another key factor was that John Brown ‘dedicated his life to Queen Victoria’ and ‘was never indifferent’ to her neurotic troubles.14 From his point of view Queen Victoria gave him something useful to do. And it should be remembered that both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert adored the work of Sir Walter Scott; John Brown was to be a cavaliere servente from Scott’s novels. John Brown was thus Queen Victoria’s ‘only real friend’.15
In her Journal for 19 September 1838 Queen Victoria speaks of her feelings as ‘naturally very passionate’. Modern commentators have interpreted this in an erotic sense, pointing out her sexually degenera
te Hanoverian uncles. This is totally misleading. Queen Victoria had a fiery temper and her emotions were robust – but her passions were not lustful. Yet it is hardly startling that Queen Victoria found John Brown an attractive man: As biographer E.E.P. Tisdall put it:
Brown was a splendid specimen of manhood and eight women out of ten with the true instincts of femininity in them, who had the privilege to be served by Brown as intimately as he served Queen Victoria, would not be blind to the fact that he was a man.16
As to the well-attested ‘familiarity’ evident between John Brown and Queen Victoria, her biographer Giles Lytton Strachey made the significant observation that ‘it is no uncommon thing for an autocratic dowager to allow some trusted indispensable servant to adopt towards her an attitude of authority which is jealously forbidden to relatives and friends . . .’17
Only one man was ever privy to all aspects of Queen Victoria’s relationship with John Brown and that was her discreet Private Secretary Henry Ponsonby. He realised that Brown’s perceived arrogance and general rude demeanour was rooted in the ‘Queen’s marked and sustained infatuation’ for him.18 Yet he ‘knew there was no danger whatever in Brown’s relations with the Queen and neither publicly nor domestically was the Highland attendant of any real consequence’.19 Yet the rumours persisted and formed themselves into four principal pieces of gossip about the Queen and John Brown that have survived in the public memory. The first speculation was:
1. The Queen has gone mad and John Brown is her keeper.
The Queen and her courtiers, from the Ministers of the Crown to her physicians, believed that she had inherited from her Hanoverian ancestors the proclivity to madness.20 Her grandfather King George III, now known to have suffered from the metabolic disorder Variegate Porphyria, slipped in and out of mental derangement in the latter years of his life. Queen Victoria’s household scrutinised her discreetly for signs of emotional extremities which might lead to incipient insanity. Yet although her father the Duke of Kent had suffered from symptoms of Hemato Porphyria, Queen Victoria escaped the dreadful affliction.21
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