The Queen, Her Lover and the Most Notorious Spy in History

by Roland Perry

  Albert had seen his wife’s warmth and attachment to Brown and had encouraged a close monarch–servant relationship. Brown had all the traits of the Scots that she loved: strength, compassion, obedience without subservience, courage without bravado, mental acuity without being over-educated, relaxed and in charge. He was a rough, handsome and intelligent individual. He was still in his thirties when their relationship was growing and had been in her life since he was nineteen. The blue-eyed Highlander was tall, with long, strong limbs. Victoria had always fallen for a certain type of good-looking male, especially one with chiselled features. He had a forceful chin and she adored this, mainly because she was lacking one herself, as were her sons. And what of Victoria’s attraction for him? She was plump and no beauty in her mid-forties, yet her power and position added to a certain sex appeal for those close enough to her to appreciate it. Allied to this were her character, personality and sense of humour, which increased her allure.

  Brown, seven years her junior, was never going to be the husband—although rumours circulated while she was out of public view—yet he was much more than a servant. On the surface, it was an odd coupling. On closer examination it was understandable.Victoria told her inquisitive courtiers that Brown combined the offices of groom, footman and page. He was also a sort of maid, handy in mending cloaks, shawls and other apparel. It was the way he did things that reassured her. He had no compunction about ordering her in his brusque manner to ‘keep still!’ while he pinned a cape on her or ‘kep yura chun up’, when he adjusted her bonnet. Brown was an alcoholic, keen on his whisky and so enchanted sometimes with it that he was not able to wait on her table at meal-time. His absence both amused and disappointed her. It was apparent to all by 1865 that Victoria was extra-fond of her Highlander, whom she referred to as ‘fascinating Johnny Brown’. It appalled the more stiff-upper-lip–type of sycophants at the Royal Court that such a servant, such a wild commoner from north of the border, could be liked and admired by the queen. But what they could not see was that combination of fearlessness and gentleness, of strength and softness, of dedication yet independence that so galvanised her appreciation of him. Brown also carried a cloak of Celtic melancholy and fatalism, which he expressed through a deep love of Highland poetry.Victoria never tired of his quotes and brogue, which gave the great Scottish poets, such as Robert Burns and Sir Walter Scott, a growl of sincerity and authenticity. Even the words of the English bards he liked, such as Tennyson and Browning, were given a mellifluous ring. Victoria lamented that the English peasant had little or no interest in poetry, while the Scots were imbued with a passion for it.

  Another attraction was Brown’s capacity of ‘second sight’ or premonition, which was in vogue in the 1860s in Europe. He had a ‘sixth sense’ that Victoria revelled in. She didn’t prompt it or demand any ‘visionary’ commentary but she listened whenever he uttered a remark of foreboding, which she noted in letters to her daughters. She had a spiritual side, although she could not be branded a ‘spiritualist’ as such. Victoria had even indulged in seances to ‘contact’ Albert. But again, rumours overplayed her interest in reaching those transported to the ‘hereafter’. Such ‘communication’ was becoming a popular pursuit for those grieving on both sides of the Atlantic. Many of the better-off who could afford mediums sought solace in any words, hopefully of comfort, about the experiences of the departed in heaven or wherever they were believed to have found themselves.

  Victoria often wrestled with the unexplained reason for Albert being ‘taken from her’ while so young. One explanation, which Brown had expressed, and her clergy confidants had expounded on, was that good people were often sent ‘above’ at their peak to carry on their grand work in that more enlightened environment. Victoria had so much wanted to believe this, yet every so often she expressed her doubts about there being anything beyond the grave at all, which was daring in its own way for the time.

  Brown’s appeal in a more mundane, pragmatic and useful way was magnified by him being a good man around horses. At one stage he stopped a runaway coach, thus avoiding an accident. And when Victoria’s coachman drove her coach into a ditch at night, blackening a royal eye and injuring a regal thumb, it was Brown who rescued her. He was ever dutiful and Victoria needed him. She began to feel that John Brown was made for her after the recent trauma. She craved a sense of raw masculinity in her orbit but not the combat of emotions that accompanied her passions around a partner like Albert. Albert had been all about ‘form’, discipline and achievement. He had a grand sense of fun when with the children and her. Brown was about common sense, and sensibility, despite his gruff exterior. He had a subtle, dry, ever-present Scottish wit. It was crisp, irreverent and funny.Albert had had his tantrums but went to some lengths to avoid confrontation. He put his thoughts—angry, insulting and conciliatory—on paper.Victoria responded in kind. But sometimes she wanted to be taken and ‘had’ with passion—something that Albert would not countenance. Brown stood up to her in private and sometimes even in front of onlookers, addressed her without formality, calling her ‘wumun!’—as in ‘don’t be so silly, wumun!’ She was rarely affronted by him. It was what she wished to hear. Albert had put things on paper; Elphinstone had had more finesse, but Brown eyeballed her and told her what he was thinking. It was soothing: so refreshing, without being over bearing. Brown was everything to Victoria. At Balmoral, she and he had adjoining rooms a long way from the servants’ quarters. He was often in her room at any hour. It all added up to them being lovers and in a de facto marriage relationship.

  Victoria would never surmount the loss of Albert, but Brown was taking over as a consort of sorts while she avoided public life. He was everywhere with her in private, primarily in seclusion in Scotland and increasingly elsewhere. Brown seemed to provide comfort if not in words or deeds then simply with his presence, especially when she had to deal with ‘loss’. Victoria was not fond of Lord Palmerston, but his death on 18 October 1865 marked a break with a link from the past, for which she longed. She wrote to King Leopold, whom she confided in again, and he could comfort her a little from a distance. But Brown was there looking after her, if not cleaning her shawls and coats, then driving her out from Balmoral. If, as biographer Strachey observed, Albert had been the wife and Victoria the husband, then Brown was servant, a kind of wife, a protector and a constant companion.Where Albert had led his own life by day, Brown was on call day and night. Where Elphinstone had been forced away to Madras for five years, and then chosen to leave her court for another decade travelling India and governing Bombay, Brown’s circumstances made him less flexible and distracted. Even if he wished to leave, he would find it difficult. He was a drunk and would never find such pleasing employment elsewhere; nowhere else could he exert such influence over one so powerful. Victoria needed him even more emotionally when King Leopold himself died on 10 December 1865. (Vain to the end, he was buried wearing an elaborate black wig and with his skin rouged ‘brilliantly’.) This placed her as head of the family. These permanent departures seemed to jolt her regularly. Apart from Albert, they were older influences, who had dominated her past. Brown was young and robust; a vibrant companion even if taken with the ‘booze’.

  Since Albert’s death,Victoria had lamented her lack of conversation with people of her own ‘rank’. She devoured talk with the Battenbergs (rulers of the Grand Duchy of Hesse) when they were in England, and received some intellectual rewards in correspondence, especially with her favourite child, Vicky, but other than this she fell back on her servants, and Brown in particular, for her mental nourishment.

  36

  THE QUEEN REVIVES: DISRAELI DAZZLES

  After more than four years of widowhood and seclusion, Victoria summoned the courage to open parliament on 6 February 1866, but on her terms. She ignored the state coach and instead travelled to Westminster in a carriage with both windows down. Her subjects could see her snow-white, round face and drawn mouth, accentuating a dour look. Victoria did not want a fanfar
e. She banished the trumpets and refused to walk through the House of Lords, where she felt the stares of their lordships in the gallery were judgemental.Wearing a long, dark veil and dress, she donned a black cap like Mary, Queen of Scots, and discarded the crown. If she were going to go through the ordeal, she would do it her way.

  Victoria draped herself on the throne and sat, po-faced, staring, not at the lord chancellor as he read her speech but at a spot on the floor. She neither nodded her approval at her words nor showed any expression. She was for the first time the zombie queen. It was all for ‘show’. Inside she was ready to break down and cry. On the way home in the carriage she delivered a torrent of words to daughter Alice as adrenalin pumped through her veins and she reflected excitedly on the experience.Victoria’s confidence in public was shaken. Attending such a focused-on, important public event was not like climbing back on a horse. It had been hell. If she ever had thought of abdicating, it would have been at this moment, but she never seemed ready to countenance this move. Deep down, she still enjoyed being the monarch, even if the pomp had lost its appeal and the circumstances were not ideal.

  Victoria continued to shudder at the thought of Bertie taking over as monarch. Victoria thought he was drawn to a decadent life that was the opposite of what was required for a king. In June 1866, she wrote a letter to his comptroller, which she wanted shown to her son. Her reference to the London social set was a metaphor for Bertie. This ‘elite’ was ‘so lax and bad’ that he and his wife Alix had a duty to deny themselves amusement in order to keep up ‘that [a certain] tone in society, which used to be the pride of England’. Bertie was to show his disapproval by ‘not asking them to dinner, or going down to [his summer retreat] Sandringham and above all by not going to their houses’.

  Lord Stanley (son of Lord Derby and an ally of Tory politician Benjamin Disraeli) noted in his diary that Victoria meddled in the lives of Bertie and Alix ‘in every detail . . .They may not dine out, except in houses named by her; nor ask anyone to dine with them’ unless approved by her.Victoria had spied on them at their home, Marlborough House, where the so-called ‘fast set’ assembled with him before launching into nightly excesses and ‘deplorable’ activities of gambling, smoking, drinking and ‘associating with Americans and Jews’.

  A daily report of these goings-on was sent to Victoria. This was carrying on Albert’s distorted patronage. No matter what Bertie did he would never pass scrutiny in such a tyranny. Perhaps if he had been a replica of Albert—a model of propriety and piety—Victoria may have thought about giving up her monarchy for permanent privacy with John Brown. But Bertie was not in any way like her dear departed beloved. Her son was a born pleasure-seeker whom, she believed, preferred to wallow in his privilege rather than revere it.

  Victoria’s determination to deny Bertie the throne was the most fundamental reason for her staying on it, when otherwise her state of mind in the wake of Albert’s death may well have seen her ‘retire’. Instead of grooming Bertie to be king, Victoria was not giving him anything substantial to do. This was not assisting in diverting him from indolence and a hedonistic lifestyle, although at least he was following his father in one department—procreation. By September 1866, Alix was pregnant with her third child. But Bertie was not limiting his amorous pursuits to his lovely wife. He had never gotten over the erotic pleasures experienced with the lusty Nellie Clifden. Having been denied her, she had become his ideal fantasy. He was driven to find others like her, and this drew him into more promiscuous company. His never-ending push to make up for that unfulfilled relationship set tongues wagging at court.There were parodies in the press cartoons that displeased Victoria. But allusions to his nocturnal pursuits began to be replaced in London’s scandal press with real reports of his alleged conquests of the boudoir. On a trip to Moscow and St Petersburg, he realised he could bed any woman he fancied. If he did not flirt with them, he indulged in flings. The tabloids heard the whisper about his behaviour and reported it. Victoria’s ladies-in-waiting made sure that these reports were not seen by her.

  In 1867, Victoria turned to her love of writing, which had been demonstrated in her copious letters and diary entries, into a gentle, cathartic exercise in composing a book: Leaves From the Journal of our Lives in the Highlands. She illustrated it herself and designed the cover of moss-green adorned with golden antlers. It sold an excellent 20,000 copies in 1868 in an initial burst, and promised many editions. Big sales brought a wave of jealousy from the literati, who sneered at Victoria for making author-like utterances about ‘her book’. It was the unpretentious enunciation of a privileged life, which nevertheless brought its critics, not so much for its literary merit, but for its omissions and inclusions. Punch magazine thought it characterised a ‘tea tray’ sort of life, which ignored the whisky bottle that was equally prevalent. In other words, Victoria had written the tome wearing rose-coloured glasses. She was also criticised by some in her own entourage who objected to biographical footnotes about footmen as if they were gentlemen. Lady Augusta Stanley punned unintentionally when she observed that such descriptions gave the dangerous impression ‘that all were on the same footing’. Nevertheless enlightened courtiers could see the potential for tapping into Victoria’s vast support among the middle and working classes, who would appreciate her more egalitarian, at times progressive, perspective on life. The publisher’s offer for a quick, cheaper edition was taken up. It maintained Victoria’s other (far briefer) ‘career’ as a best-selling author.

  The experience lifted her and was coincident with 64-year-old Benjamin Disraeli becoming prime minister in February 1868. She had not always been enamoured with him. Her earlier diary entries reflected a negative attitude to this Tory dandy, whose vitriol against ‘free trade’ had been ‘dreadfully bitter’. Victoria had thought him too reckless. He had seemed unprincipled in his attacks on her beloved Whigs, and she had regarded him as lacking respectability, yet she had been intrigued with his speeches in parliament, which had sometimes enchanted her, and occasionally caused revulsion. But it was his way with words directed at her that appealed most. Her natural instinct was to follow the near-universal prejudice against Jews, but a combination of her flexibility, fair-mindedness and lack of bigotry allowed her to keep her thoughts open when dealing with such an unusual figure. Decades earlier his looks had repulsed more than attracted. As she warmed to his manner over time, she gazed on his appearance with more benevolence than in previous assessments. The weak chin took on a character of its own. His outsize nose and dark eyes may well have had a certain sex appeal for her. His black ringlet hair curls became idiosyncratic rather than effete. His strength in her eyes was his verbal expression, which she had come to appreciate more as her reign stretched into a fourth decade. Victoria had been stunned by the graphic mind of her first prime minister, Melbourne. Disraeli’s intellect was more rounded; his humour sharper; his mind quicker. And Disraeli was just as tough, but less of a snob, and less of an elitist.Victoria had been under Melbourne’s spell when little more than a naive child of sixteen. More than three decades on she found it much harder to be entranced by anyone. She had seen much, perhaps too much to be less than judgemental from her lofty position in British life. This made the late advent of Disraeli all the more captivating.When she congratulated him on his success at ascending to the top political job, she observed that he had to be a most patient man (at his age).

  ‘Ah, but a person should beware of endeavouring to be great in a hurry,’ he replied.‘One attempt in ten thousand may succeed.These are fearful odds, ma’am.’

  He was different, deliciously so for a queen who had thought she would never be entertained again by a leader in so many ways, mostly intellectually. He wrote with a flourish that opened up a spectrum of parliamentary observation, especially with pen sketches of characters and descriptions of speeches that he continued to send her. A colleague, Ward Hunt, was ‘a giant . . .with the sagacity of an elephant, and the form.’

  Commenting on ano
ther politician, Disraeli once remarked: ‘He was distinguished for his ignorance; for he had only one idea, and that was wrong.’

  Quite often his characterising of a speech was a metaphor for the speaker.They might be ‘elaborate’, ‘exaggerated’, ‘lugubrious’, even ‘flat and flatulent’.Victoria loved puns, bon mots, a clever turn of phrase or a telling character summary, no matter how trite. When discussing his aim (later fulfilled) to create a precedent by removing Catholic rituals from the Anglican liturgy,Victoria said she fully supported the principle of short, simple services. Disraeli observed that ‘a precedent embalms a principle, ma’am’. When she praised his fiction, and asked him to talk about his favourite books, he replied: ‘An author who speaks about his own books is almost as bad as a mother who speaks about her own children.’

  Victoria laughed. It was a reflection of the conversations she had every day about her offspring.When Victoria mentioned his critics and how well he seemed to handle them, he observed: ‘How much easier it is to be critical, your majesty, than it is to be correct.’

  This had resonance for her, especially over her tentative effort in book writing, which had taken the odd pillorying. Victoria loved the fact that he often peppered his remarks with, ‘we authors, ma’am . . .’, even if she may have realised that he was overdoing the collegiate reference. Even with his long political career, Disraeli was prolific, producing eighteen fiction and eight non-fiction books.

  Once she apologised for reminiscing too much about Albert’s moral values and diligence.

  ‘Never apologise for showing feeling, ma’am,’ he told her gently, ‘when you do so, you apologise for the truth.’