The Queen’s House

by Edna Healey

  In the last forty years of her reign Queen Victoria established the morals and manners of her Court in the pattern that Prince Albert – and Stockmar – had set down. In 1854 the Baron had written that he had watched the Court for twenty-eight years and had learned the value of the moral purity of the sovereign ‘as moral oil for the driving wheels of the constitutional machine’.95

  The ‘moral oil’ could often become a sickening syrup and there was undoubtedly much hypocrisy in Queen Victoria’s Court, but certainly in the stability of her last years the magic of monarchy shone as never before. That stability contributed to the fact that at the end of her reign Buckingham Palace was established as the seat of majesty and a unifying symbol for the nation.

  Her rules were strict, as Prince Albert had demanded. Gouty old ministers stood painfully in her presence; princes smoked their cigars up the chimney in the privacy of their bedrooms, or sucked lozenges to conceal their sinful tobacco. Courtiers still had to learn the difficult art of walking backwards, and froze in their chilly rooms. The first duty of a courtier was to the Queen: wives had to put up with much loneliness – indeed she did not like her courtiers getting married at all. When her physician, Sir James Reid, became engaged to one of her Maids of Honour without asking her permission, she did not speak to him for days. How could a physician devote himself to two ladies? But his polite reply that he would not do it again turned away her wrath in laughter.

  Rules of Court protocol and etiquette were strictly observed, and Court life was described ad nauseam by the authors of such guides as Court Etiquette, and Court circulars. Manners and Rules of Good Society, by a member of the aristocracy, was a much thumbed rule book at the end of the reign. In excruciating language the author reported that ‘guests were graciously invited to partake of a collation, and … the Queen was humbly wished “an auspicious return of her natal day”.’96

  It was a pity that Queen Victoria, who prided herself on being Queen of all her people, should have allowed herself to be so hemmed in by rigid rules. The honour of attending her Court was open only to the nobility and gentry, and to officers of the armed services, clergy, lawyers, doctors and professional men. Those who engaged in trade were excluded – unless they were merchant princes or bankers. As far as trade was concerned a ‘line is drawn and very strictly so’.

  The Lord Chamberlain, who was responsible for issuing ‘royal commands’, as invitations to state occasions were called, also expected ladies and gentlemen to conform to certain rules of dress. For ladies ‘the regulation respecting low bodices is absolute’, unless a doctor’s certificate could be produced. Unmarried ladies were expected to wear white and all should have trains not less than three and a half yards in length, and wear a head dress of three white plumes.

  Ladies had to learn the difficult art of managing a bouquet, a train and a curtsey with grace. At drawing rooms ladies held their trains out, and dropped them when they approached the Queen. Officers with white wands spread out the trains and scooped them up again after presentation. ‘Train teas’ after the drawing rooms were popular social occasions, when the Queen’s guests could show off their Court finery to friends.

  A gentleman was expected to wear either professional or military uniform, or Court dress – claret-coloured coat, knee breeches, buckled shoes, lace shirt-front, ruffles, long white stockings and sword. He was expected to go down on one knee and raise his right arm, on which the Queen would lay her hand. ‘If he wishes to be particularly absurd and vulgar, he will kiss the hand with a loud smack.’ A real gentleman would however, ‘barely touch the back of the Queen’s hand with his lips’.97

  The ladies were happy to conform, but American men felt the breeches rule an affront to their republican principles – if not their manhood. ‘Knickers’ they called them. The battle between Court officials and American ministers to the Court of St James caused much embarrassment when, in 1854, an American Secretary of State, William Marcy, issued a ruling that Americans should appear at foreign courts in ‘the simple dress of an American citizen’. The American Ambassador to Britain, James Buchanan, who later became American President, insisted on following the ruling – to the consternation of the Lord Chamberlain. If he had to choose between attending a Court function in full Court dress and staying at home, he stayed at home. The last straw came when he refused the invitation to the State Opening of Parliament, since the invitation stated that no one would be admitted except in full Court dress. His absence was noted and gave offence. The same rule was also enforced at the strict Russian court, until the Tsar asked a visiting senator what costume he was expected to wear to visit his President, and received him when the senator explained that he would wear ordinary dress on that occasion too. Finally James Buchanan invented a costume which he persuaded his government and the Court was that of a plain American citizen, a black coat and pantaloons, white waistcoat and cravat and a plain sword. The sword was a concession he made reluctantly.

  Similarly, when the radical John Bright became a minister in Gladstone’s government in 1868 he refused point-blank to wear gold lace and a sword, saying, ‘I have never put on livery and I think I never shall.’98

  Absurd though the rules often were, and though Queen Victoria herself preferred simplicity, they had been established by her beloved husband as part of his plan to raise the little Queen above the crowd and bring dignity to the throne. He remembered only too painfully how the small Coburg court had degenerated under the relaxed rule of his father and brother.

  On 20 June 1887, the day of her Golden Jubilee, Queen Victoria wrote at Buckingham Palace: ‘The day has come and I am alone though surrounded by so many dear children … Fifty years ago today I came to the throne. God has mercifully sustained me through many great trials and sorrows.’99

  The day began quietly with breakfast under the trees at Frogmore, where she could be in spirit with her beloved Prince Albert. In brilliant sunshine she travelled from Windsor through cheering crowds by train to Paddington and across the parks to Buckingham Palace and a great assembly of royal guests. That night fifty Royal and Serene Highnesses dined off gold plate in the State Dining Room. They were members of an extended royal family whose network crossed continents. On her right sat Christian IX, King of Denmark, father of her much-loved daughter-in-law, Alexandra, Princess of Wales; on her left George I of Greece (Alexandra’s brother); and opposite Leopold II, King of the Belgians, son of her late surrogate father.

  The next day she drove out of the Palace to Westminster Abbey in an open landau, escorted by Indian cavalry. She was Queen and Empress. Even so she obstinately refused to wear a crown; she and her ladies, she insisted, must wear bonnets and long, high dresses. Lunch at the Palace was followed by an appearance on the famous balcony, at which she was cheered by a vast throng, then a stately progress to her throne in the Ballroom, where she distributed Jubilee brooches to her family. That night, for once, she wore a splendid gown, embroidered with silver roses, thistles and shamrocks, and after the banquet she received a long procession of diplomats and bejewelled Indian princes. Afterwards she was wheeled in her chair to sit amid the exotic chinoiserie brought from her uncle’s Pavilion and to watch the fireworks in the garden. George IV would have enjoyed the festivities, perhaps surprised that his diminutive niece should have so woven his oriental fantasies with her imperial dream. Now she was an old lady, and half dead with fatigue, seeing it all through the mists of the past.

  With her taste for the exotic, so long subdued by cool Germanic influences and now awakened by Disraeli, Queen Victoria had developed a passion for India, and that June she had acquired a clever young Indian servant, learned some Hindustani and longed to go to India. Abdul Karim – known as the Munshi (Hindustani for ‘teacher’) – became a great favourite with the Queen, but was even more disliked than John Brown had been; in fact the Queen’s ladies threatened to resign en masse if she took him to the south of France with the Court. But with the Munshi behind her chair, Victoria was secure as
the great white Queen.

  In the last years of the Queen’s life Buckingham Palace awoke again. The Golden Jubilee and, ten years later, the Diamond Jubilee made the Queen realize that she was loved and that it was important that she should be seen. The years of unpopularity and isolation were over; Queen and Empress, she had become a figurehead of myth and majesty.

  There were drawing rooms (which had continued during the Queen’s seclusion although she herself did not attend them), diplomatic receptions and balls. Lady Monkswell, wife of a Liberal minister, went to a drawing room in February 1889. She started at 12.45 p.m. and had a

  miserable long wait in the Brougham in Buckingham Palace Road. It was an immense Drawing Room – to see the Queen and the poor Empress Frederick [Vicky], who, however were gone before I got into the Throne Room – there must have been 500 women there and all in these gorgeous clothes, jewels and such bouquets. The flowers were beyond everything, orchids, lilies of the valley, azaleas, roses, enough to make you scream. When I got up to the Throne Room at last I made three curtsies – to the Princess of Wales, Princess Christian and another for the young Princesses to divide between them. I then backed out…100

  On 29 June 1893 Lady Monkswell was again at the Palace for the Queen’s ball; and the next week she watched the royal procession on the occasion of the marriage of Princess Victoria Mary (known in the family as May), daughter of the Queen’s cousin, the Duchess of Teck, to George, Duke of York, son of the Prince of Wales.

  The pavement was choked with people … a dozen state carriages with footmen in gorgeous gold liveries hanging on like bees behind … Far away the most enthusiastic welcome was given to the old Queen. The Duchess of Teck was sitting backwards in the carriage with her … Before her came fourteen or sixteen of the [horse] soldiers from Australia, in pith helmets, then eight or ten of the Indian cavalry with their brown handsome faces, turbans, curious uniforms and swords.

  Lady Monkswell ‘felt quite proud of my country that we could do the thing so well’.101

  The country, with some help from Fate, had indeed ‘done well’. George, Duke of York, and Princess May, when they became King George V and Queen Mary, were to bring back stability and respect to the throne; and Queen Mary was to make a significant contribution to the improvement of Buckingham Palace. But it might not have been like that at all.

  The Duke and Duchess of York drove out of the Palace under a ‘shower of slippers and … round the quadrangle amid cheers’,102 through the great gates where the Prince of Wales and all the Princes pelted them with rice, and down the Mall to their honeymoon at Sandringham. They left behind them Queen Victoria, satisfied that at last the future of the monarchy was secure, and the bride’s mother, the Duchess of Teck, radiant with joy at the fulfilment of all her hopes. But for Alexandra, Princess of Wales, watching from the balcony, joy was mixed with sadness; the bridegroom should have been her first-born, and she was losing the son she adored.

  Events leading to this crucial marriage began in November 1891, when Queen Victoria had invited Princess May of Teck to stay at Balmoral, accompanied by her brother Adolphus. The Queen had firmly insisted they come without their mother, the ebullient Duchess of Teck: Princess May was to be assessed as the future consort for her grandson, and the shy girl must be drawn out of her mother’s shadow. At this time the Prince of Wales was next in line to the throne, and after him his eldest son, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, known to the family as ‘Eddy’. Like his father, Eddy was what was called ‘emotionally unstable’, but lacked his father’s charisma. He was lethargic but generally said to be kind, gentle and considerate. What he needed, the shrewd old Queen decided, was a firm, sensible wife; and after watching Princess May carefully for ten days at Balmoral, she decided that she had found the perfect candidate. Her long experience in arranging royal marriages was called on, and the occasion and setting fixed.

  In December 1891, Princess May and Eddy were both staying at a friend’s country house, Luton Hoo. On 3 December the county ball was held at Luton Hoo. There Eddy and Princess May danced together; then, in her own words, ‘To my great surprise Eddy proposed to me during the evening in Mdme de Falbe’s boudoir – of course I said yes – we are both very happy – kept it secret from everybody but Mama and Papa.’103

  May’s immediate acceptance of a surprise proposal needs some explanation. First, Eddy was her cousin: she had known him all her life, was fond of him and at ease with him. Also at twenty-six her chances of making a good marriage were slim: she was not a beauty; she had no fortune – her mother was forever in what she called ‘short street’; worse, as far as royal suitors were concerned, there was a blot on the family escutcheon which mattered in the protocol-bound German kingdoms, but for which the old Queen cared not a jot. Her mother, Mary Adelaide, the Duchess ofTeck, was the daughter of Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, son of George III. But her paternal grandfather, Duke Alexander of Württemberg, had made a morganatic marriage to a beautiful Hungarian, Countess Rhedey of Kis-Redé, who bore him three children.

  Complicated though these family histories are, they are relevant, since Princess May was to bring a deep historical sense to the arrangement of Buckingham Palace. She always felt an empathy with old Queen Charlotte, but also she kept a portrait of her beautiful Hungarian grandmother always in her room. She accepted Eddy’s proposal so readily because she needed to escape from the burden of responsibility of an increasingly neurotic father and a mother who had all the charm in the world but obviously no sense of the value of money.

  All her life Princess May had felt more in tune with her mother’s sister, Augusta, who married the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, Queen Charlotte’s home state. The Princess visited the Grand Duchess in Germany and at her house in London. To her ‘mother aunt’ Princess May wrote with an ease which she could never achieve in conversation; and the shrewd, intelligent Grand Duchess stimulated a mind that was hungry for knowledge, encouraged her interest in the arts and, above all, developed her love of the history of the royal family. Her aunt had known George IV and she was at William IV’s Coronation, which she remembered clearly.

  The old lady followed with passionate interest the wedding preparations and the vast trousseau described with such enthusiasm in the press. ‘But who will pay?’ she wanted to know. She was devastated by the shocking news that came from Sandringham in the bitter January of 1892. On 7 January Eddy, who was there with May and his family to celebrate his twenty-eighth birthday, was seriously ill with influenza, which had turned to pneumonia. On the morning of 14 January the Princess of Wales, Princess May and his family watched his death agony for six interminable hours.

  Eddy had escaped the burden of the Crown: Princess May had not. Queen Victoria had chosen her as the wife of the heir apparent. Now, that Eddy was dead, the heir apparent was George Duke of York, twenty-six and unmarried. Princess May took a tour of France and Germany and recovered her spirits. Soon the Queen and the Duchess of Teck once again were ready to set the wedding bells ringing.

  The idea that Prince George should marry his dead brother’s fiancée was not strange to the Queen or his mother, Princess Alexandra. Princess Alexandra’s sister had similarly married Prince Alexander, the heir to the Russian throne, after the death of his older brother. But Alexandra did not want to share her beloved son with a wife. Princess Alexandra’s suffocating mother-love had cramped George’s emotional development. When he was twenty-five his mother still wrote to him, as though to a child, of ‘his dear tear-stained little face’. After Eddy’s death, she had written of the ‘bond of love between us – that of mother and child … and nothing and nobody can or ever shall come between me and my darling Georgie Boy’.104 So it was with some sadness that Princess Alexandra watched George and May drive off from Buckingham Palace to their honeymoon.

  In fact this arranged marriage proved to be deeply happy. Stiff and cold as Princess May often appeared, abrupt and unfeeling as Prince George often seemed, they unders
tood each other, writing with an emotion they found difficult to express in words. ‘I love you with all my heart,’ Princess May wrote to him on the morning of her marriage.105 And Prince George was to write to her soon after their marriage, ‘I love you darling child, with my whole heart and soul and thank God every day that I have such a wife as you, who is such a great help and support to me and I believe loves me too.’106

  It would be seventeen more years before they came back to the Buckingham Palace balcony as King and Queen. In those years they settled in modest quiet at York Cottage, Sandringham, where the Duchess of York bore six children.

  The Duke and Duchess of York now slipped quietly into the background, obscured by the dazzle of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and in the shadow of the Queen, imperial in the glow of her last years. But Queen Victoria watched with growing satisfaction the serious young woman she had chosen, preparing herself to be a worthy consort of a future King. She had chosen well.

  There was one more grand celebration at Buckingham Palace during Queen Victoria’s reign: the Diamond Jubilee of 1897. On 21 June the Queen travelled from Windsor by royal train to Paddington, having first paid a sacred visit to Prince Albert in the Mausoleum. Tumultuous crowds greeted her on her way to the Palace and the next day as she made her royal progress to St Paul’s.

  The Jubilee was the climax of her long career. In the journal which she had kept all her life, she recorded:

  No one ever, I believe, has met with such an ovation as was given to me, passing through those six miles of streets … the crowds were quite indescribable and their enthusiasm truly marvellous and deeply touching. The cheering was quite deafening and every face seemed to be filled with joy.107

  All round the country beacons were lit as towns and villages celebrated with extraordinary enthusiasm.

  On Jubilee Day she made history – by pressing an electric button – which sent her message by telegraph round the Empire. ‘From my heart I thank all my beloved people. May God bless them.’108