John Brown
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32. Story filed on Friday 8 September 1848, for the 11 September columns in the Illustrated London News.
33. ‘Hours of Idleness’, 1807. George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824) had been taken by his mother to Aberdeen in 1879 so that she would be near her relatives, the Gordons of Gight, and away from creditors. Byron was educated at the Aberdeen Grammar School and his childhood trips in the area gave him the imagery for his poem.
34. Queen Victoria, Journal, Saturday, 6 September 1848, on Lochnagar; 18 September for Ballochbuie. A royal: a stag with twelve ‘tines’ (points) to his antlers.
35. In honour of the occasion she created the Prince of Wales Earl of Dublin, 10 September 1849.
36. Queen Victoria, Journal, 30 August 1849.
CHAPTER TWO
1. Queen Victoria, Journal, 11 September 1849.
2. Ibid.
3. Herald and Weekly News Press, Aberdeen, 31 March 1883.
4. St Aubyn, Queen Victoria, p. 176.
5. Ibid, p. 287.
6. H. Bolitho (ed.), Further Letters of Queen Victoria: From the Archives of the House of Brandenburg-Prussia.
7. Sir Theodore Martin, The Life of the Prince Consort.
8. Queen Victoria, Journal, 13 September 1850.
9. Ibid, 16 September 1850.
10. Ibid. Footnote added in 1867.
11. Ibid, 10 September 1852.
12. Queen Victoria, Leaves from the Journal of my Life in the Highlands p. 132.
13. Benson & Esher, Letters, Vol. II, p. 394.
14. Queen Victoria, Journal, 16 September 1852.
15. Purves Papers.
16. Queen Victoria, Journal, 10 October 1852.
17. John Brown Papers.
18. Queen Victoria, Journal, 7 September 1855.
19. Benson & Esher, Letters, Vol. III, pp. 146–7.
20. Queen Victoria, Journal, 18 September 1858.
21. Roger Fulford (ed.), Dearest Child, October 1858.
22. M.H. McClintock, The Queen Thanks Sir Howard.
23. Cullen, Empress Brown, p. 61.
24. Sociable: a double-seated coach for four to six people which could be converted into an open carriage; also known as a ‘sociable landau’. John Brown usually recommended the Queen’s Cleveland bays for the better surfaced roads around Balmoral.
25. Praline: an almond or nut kernel with a brown coating of sugar.
26. Queen Victoria, Journal, 4 September 1860.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid, 5 September 1860.
29. Ibid.
30. Ibid.
31. St Aubyn, Queen Victoria, pp. 318–19.
32. Queen Victoria, Journal, 20 September 1861.
33. Ibid, 21 September 1861.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid, 9 October 1861.
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid, 16 October 1861.
38. Benson & Esher, Letters, Vol. III, pp. 461–2.
39. Cecil Woodham-Smith, Queen Victoria, pp. 504–5, quoting the Queen’s diary.
40. ‘Diary of Lord Broughton.’ Add.MS.43764. xxi, 1861–62, f106v.
41. S.M. Ellis (ed.), A mid-Victorian Pepys, p. 70.
CHAPTER THREE
1. Fulford, Dearest Child, sequence 1862.
2. Elizabeth Darby and Nicola Smith, The Cult of the Prince Consort, pp. 89–90.
3. Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s John Brown, p. 73.
4. Queen Victoria, More Leaves.
5. John W. Dodds, The Age of Paradox, p. 444.
6. Barry St-J. Nevill, Life at the Court of Queen Victoria, p. 42.
7. Ibid.
8. Duchess of York with Benita Stoney, Victoria and Albert: Life at Osborne House, pp. 25–6.
9. Ibid, p. 178.
10. Cullen, Empress Brown, p. 90.
11. Purves Papers.
12. Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s John Brown, p. 66.
13. Benson & Esher, Letters, Second Series, Vol. I, p. 255.
14. Kronberg Letters, 5 April 1865.
15. McClintock, The Queen Thanks Sir Howard.
16. Louisa, Countess of Antrim, Recollections.
17. Charlotte Zeepvat, Prince Leopold, p. 21.
18. Stirling went on to a colonelcy and a knighthood and is included in Lists of the Royal Household as ‘Extra Groom’.
19. Zeepvat, Prince Leopold, p. 60. Quoting Royal Archives, Add.3p/336.
20. Reid, Ask Sir James, pp. 161–2.
21. In a letter to her eldest daughter, dated 5 April 1865 from Windsor Castle, Queen Victoria confirmed John Brown’s title as her own device. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 22.
22. Elizabeth Longford, Victoria R.I., p. 407.
23. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 29.
24. Duff, Victoria in the Highlands, p. 195.
25. Esquire: once a shield-bearer attendant on a knight; later a landed proprietor with the ‘title of dignity’ below a knight; by the nineteenth century the term went from being a general title of a ‘gentleman’ to a mark of respect.
26. Longford, Elizabeth R.I., p. 407. Quoting Royal Archives, Vic.Add. MSS. c3/16.
27. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 22.
28. Michael Tyler-Whittle, Victoria and Albert at Home, p. 9 and Note.
29. Tisdall averred that John Brown’s ‘private diaries’ were impounded by Queen Victoria’s ‘private secretary’ after Brown’s death and burned. Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s John Brown, p. 13.
30. Purves Papers.
31. Ibid.
32. Nevill, Life at the Court, p. 8.
33. Purves Papers.
34. Ibid.
35. Mary Waddington, My First Years as a Frenchwoman 1876–1879. Ref: John Brown.
36. Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s John Brown, p. 78.
37. C. Erickson, Her Little Majesty, p. 179.
38. Bolitho, Further Letters, pp. 153, 156.
39. Plaid: from the sixteenth century a term used to describe a rectangular length of twilled woollen cloth, usually in tartan design, formerly worn as an outer garment especially in Scots rural areas. By Queen Victoria’s time it was well established as a shawl for women in both town and country.
40. Morning Post, March 1866. It has been noted that this is the first recorded reference to John Brown in the popular press.
41. On the ‘Scottish run’, the royal train was drawn by two engines, with two carriages for the Queen, nine for her Household and two guards and luggage vans. The carriages were a source of public interest in their depot 12 miles away from Balmoral at Aboyne when the Queen was in residence.
42. B. and P. Russell (eds), John Viscount Amberley, The Amberley Papers.
43. Princess Marie Louise, My Memories of Six Reigns, pp. 26–7.
44. Picture Catalogue, Royal Archives, Windsor Castle. PP Vic.7437. 279. Apl, 1867. Provenance and description. Oliver Miller, The Victorian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, text Vol. p. 147.
45. Saturday Review, April 1867.
46. Illustrated London News, April 1867.
47. Picture Catalogue. PP.Vic.4281. 1869.
48. Miller, Victorian Pictures, pp. 13, 28 and 235.
49. Author in conversation with Florence Marian McNeill.
50. F.M. McNeill, Hallow’en: Its Origins, Rites and Ceremonies in the Scottish Tradition, pp. 26–7.
51. ‘Prologue’, note 17.
52. Theo Aronson, Heart of a Queen: Queen Victoria’s Romantic Attachments, p. 160.
53. Ibid, p. 161.
54. Groom-in-Waiting: the position of superior page bestowed on young men with Court possibilities; they were usually from genteel families. Bigge was the son of a Northumbrian vicar.
55. Jerrold Packard, Farewell in Splendour, p. 32.
56. Ponsonby, Recollections, pp. 95–6.
57. Benson & Esher, Letters, Second Series, pp. 432 and 449–50.
58. Queen Victoria, Journal, 15 October 1867.
59. Ibid, 1 October 1868.
CHAPTER FOUR
1. Lady Anne Hamilton was the
sister of the Duke of Hamilton and Brandon and of the Countess of Dunmore. Her Secret History of the Court of England was published in 1832 and covered the Court history of Queen Victoria’s grandfather King George III and her uncle King George IV.
2. Queen Victoria, Journal, 22 August 1867.
3. Daily Telegraph, 24 August 1867. Selkirk Bannock: a thick, round, flat cake of fruit loaf consistency.
4. John Guthrie Tait (ed.), The Journal of Sir Walter Scott, p. 545, ref 5/19/1828.
5. Duff, Victoria in the Highlands, p. 15.
6. Longford, Victoria R.I., p. 471.
7. Dean Baillie & Hector Bolitho, Later Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley, p. 72.
8. Inverness Advertiser and Ross-Shire Chronicle, 24 August 1867, report and editorial.
9. Miss Amelia Murray MacGregor (b. 1829) was a cousin of the 6th Duke of Atholl and a long-time companion of his wife Duchess Anne. Queen Victoria sought her assistance often when composing her prose, and presented her with the Diamond Jubilee Medal in 1897. This was the year Duchess Anne died, making Amelia MacGregor homeless; Queen Victoria made her an ‘Extra Sister of St Katherine’s Hospital’, a medical charity of which she was patron, thus assuring her one of the charity’s accommodations and a pension of £100 per annum.
10. The Scottish Annual & The Braemar Gathering Book, 1989, pp. 85–6.
11. Patricia Lindsay, Recollections of a Royal Parish.
12. John Brown Collection.
13. Dr Robertson was confusing ‘Captain’ Shaw with his eldest son, Lieutenant Alexander Shaw, who was killed in a duel in 1808.
14. Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s John Brown, p. 141. Writing in 1938 Tisdall added: ‘Whether the story was true or not, it is believed on Deeside to this day, and the man who swore he witnessed the epic combat died only a year or two ago.’
15. Queen Victoria, Journal, 21 October 1868.
16. Dodds, Age of Paradox, p. 82.
17. Hampshire Telegraph Series 1868–9.
18. The Times, 22 February 1869.
19. From the unpublished memoirs of Mary Henderson, reported in ‘Queen Victoria as I remember Her’, Aberdeen Weekly Journal,1 February 1934.
20. Queen Victoria, Journal, 1–6 September 1869.
21. Cullen, Empress Brown, p. 170.
22. Queen Victoria had been incensed by the Roman Catholic Church’s declaration in 1870 of ‘Papal Infallibility’. Encouraged by Prince Otto von Bismarck’s fierce opposition to the Roman Catholic Church in Germany, Queen Victoria decided to show that she was Defender of the Faith in Britain; in a show of independence she decided to take the Crathie Sacrament. Longford, Victoria R.I., p. 505.
23. Ponsonby Papers.
CHAPTER FIVE
1. Purves Papers.
2. Longford, Victoria R.I., p. 478.
3. Ibid, p. 488.
4. The Fenians staged an unsuccessful rising in Ireland in 1867 and the Irish Republican Brotherhood was superceded in the twentieth century by the Irish Republican Army (IRA).
5. Buckle, Letters, Series II; Queen Victoria, Journal, 14 October 1867.
6. Ibid, 31 December 1867.
7. Raymond Lamont-Brown, Royal Murder Mysteries, p. 109.
8. Queen Victoria, Journal, 29 February 1872. Fenian prisoners: which of the rebels mentioned is unclear; in May 1871 the Fenians tried to blow up a statue of the Prince Consort at Leinster Lawn, Dublin, and there had been attempts to rescue Fenian prisoners in Manchester.
9. The Times, March 1872.
10. Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s John Brown, p. 171.
11. For a detailed sequence of the assassination attempts on Queen Victoria’s life see: Raymond Lamont-Brown, Royal Murder Mysteries, pp. 102–14.
12. Queen Victoria usually used the pseudonyms ‘Countess of Rosenau’ and ‘Countess of Balmoral’.
13. Queen Victoria, Journal, 6 September 1872.
14. Highland Clearances: the eviction of Highlanders from their traditional homelands during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries to make way for agricultural development, mainly sheep and deer grazing.
15. In his book The Empress Brown, Tom Cullen shows an illustration of Brown’s medals which he said were sold in 1965. He also displays a medal bearing the head of Ludwig III of Hesse which he says was presented to Brown. Queen Victoria’s daughter Princess Alice married Ludwig III’s nephew who became Ludwig IV. H.L. Williams also says John Brown received a medal from the King of Greece.
16. Longford, Victoria R.I., p. 411.
17. Queen Victoria, Journal, 19 June 1879.
18. Ibid, 9 September 1873.
19. Ibid.
20. Cullen, Empress Brown, p. 18, quoting a report in The World.
21. Queen Victoria, Journal, 13 September 1873.
22. Officers and Graduates of the University & King’s College, Aberdeen, MDCCCLV, p. 307.
23. Records of the Royal College of Surgeons, Edinburgh. Profeit became Licentiate just before the Medical Act of 1858 tightened regulations on medical qualifications.
24. Obituary in Aberdeen Journal, 28 January 1897.
25. Extract: Royal Archives, Windsor. It seems that Queen Victoria was influential in Profeit naming his fifth son Leopold on 7 April 1877; the boy became an actor. In 1883 the Queen acted as sponsor for Profeit’s only daughter Victoria.
26. Correspondence between Mrs Edith Paterson and the author.
27. Ibid.
28. Duff, Victoria in The Highlands, p. 303.
29. Ponsonby Papers.
30. St Aubyn, Queen Victoria, p. 480.
31. Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s John Brown, pp. 202ff.
32. The following Christmas Queen Victoria gave John Brown a pocket watch by C.J. Klaftenberger; it was meant to be a ‘recollection’ present in memory of Old John. It is now in the John Brown Collection of Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums and is inscribed: GIVEN TO/John Brown/THE DEVOTED PERSONAL ATTENDANT OF/QUEEN VICTORIA/by her/Christmas 1875/After 27th March 1883/IT BECAME THE PROPERTY OF HIS BROTHER/HUGH BROWN.
33. Soon after the funeral of Margaret Brown, Queen Victoria gave a Bible to Hugh Brown and his wife. It is now in the John Brown Collection of Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums and bears the Queen’s holograph inscription: ‘To/Hugh Brown & his Wife/In recollection/of their beloved Mother/from Queen Victoria Rg Balmoral Sept 17.1876’. Under the dedication are inscribed four lines of Scripture.
34. Queen Victoria, Journal, 17 August 1876.
35. Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby: Queen Victoria’s Private Secretary, p. 123.
36. Queen Victoria, Journal, 26 August 1878.
37. Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, p. 284.
38. Ibid, p. 286.
39. Tay Bridge was destroyed in a gale, 28 December 1879.
40. Queen Victoria, Journal, 6 October 1879.
CHAPTER SIX
1. Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, p. 184.
2. Sarah Bradford, Disraeli, p. 523.
3. The case is now in the John Brown Collection, Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums.
4. G.E. Buckle and W.F. Monypenny, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield.
5. Robert Blake, Disraeli.
6. Ponsonby Papers.
7. Lamont-Brown, Royal Murder Mysteries, p. 113.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid.
10. Following the Queen’s tirade the verdict was changed to ‘guilty but insane’, through the new law of 1883. That law remained on the Statute Books until 1964 when parliament restored the original statutory verdict, ‘not guilty on the ground of insanity’.
11. Ponsonby Papers.
12. Cullen, Empress Brown, p. 195.
13. Emily Crawford, Victoria, Queen and Ruler.
14. Duff, Victoria in the Highlands, p. 354.
15. Queen Victoria, Journal, 17 March 1883.
16. Lady Florence Caroline Dixie (1857–1905), was an author, traveller and big game hunter who won public notice as a correspondent with the Morning Post for her dispatches on the Zulu War of 1879.
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17. Press Association, March 1883.
18. Central News Agency, File of Report, March 1883.
19. Daily News, March 1883.
20. British Medical Journal, March 1883.
21. Louisa, Countess of Antrim, Recollections.
22. Elizabeth Longford (ed.), Louisa: Lady in Waiting p. 18.
23. Press Association, 24 March 1883.
24. Queen Victoria, Journal, 25 March 1883.
25. The death was registered by Archie Brown whose address is given as 19 Victoria Street, New Windsor. General Register Office, 28 March 1883. Ref: 154.
26. Queen Victoria, Journal, 29 March 1883.
27. Extract: Abt D24 No15, 28 March 1883. Hessisches Staatsarchiv Darmstadt, Großherzogliches Familienarchiv.
28. Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s John Brown, pp. 22–4.
29. Ibid, p. 224.
30. Official Court Circular, 28 March 1883.
31. Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s John Brown, p. 227.
32. The Revd Orr was a pastor of the Congregational Union of England and Wales; he officiated as there was no Presbyterian Minister at court.
33. Press Association, 3 April 1883.
34. John Brown Collection.
35. Letter, dated Windsor Castle, 3 April 1883. John Brown Papers, Aberdeen Art Gallery & Museums.
36. Ponsonby Papers.
37. People’s Journal for Glasgow & Edinburgh, Series 1882–6.
38. Press Association.
39. Sir Theodore Martin, Queen Victoria as I Knew Her.
40. Ponsonby Papers. Letter, 26 May 1883.
41. The railings were removed during the Second World War and were never replaced.
42. Longford, Queen Victoria, p. 577.
43. Elisabeth Darby and Nicola Smith, The Cult of the Prince Consort, pp. 96–8.
44. Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, p. 96.
45. The site of John Brown’s statue is not marked on the modern castle and estate guidebook to Balmoral, although memorials to deceased royal dogs are clearly indicated. To arrive at the statue go through the Gate Lodge castle entrance, and turn left off the main drive at the first crossroads. Follow the ‘Exit for vehicles’ signs towards Easter Balmoral and proceed to where the road forks past the East Lodge. Just past the fork on the right is Craig Gowan Lodge. Follow the dirt track right of the lodge into the forest. Up the track on the right look for a polished pink granite seat. The statue is beyond the seat in the trees and can be reached by following the path round.