QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  ii

  She did see Princess Victoria again when she visited England in 1834. The parting after that visit was a most painful one: 'the separation was indeed dreadful,' Victoria wrote. 'I clasped her in my arms and kissed her and cried as if my heart would break, so did the dearest Sister ... I sobbed and cried most violently the whole morning ... I love no one better than her' (RA Princess Victoria's Journal, 25, 26 July 1834).

  iii

  Years later, recalling these quarrels between her mother and the old royal family, Queen Victoria wrote, 'Oh, it was dreadful ... always on pins and needles, with the whole family hardly on speaking terms. I (a mere child) between two fires - trying to be civil then scolded at home' (Roger Fulford, Dearest Child: Letters between Queen Victoria and the Princess Royal; 8 March 1858, 72-3).

  iv

  An enterprising man who sat on one of the horses' heads while the traces were being cut, Mr Peckham Mickelthwaite, was created a baronet when the Princess became Queen.

  v

  Harcourt died at the age of ninety, after having fallen off a bridge into a pond. 'Well, Dixon,' he resignedly observed to his chaplain, 'I think we have frightened the frogs.'

  vi

  When on holiday at Ramsgate the Princess and her mother usually stayed at Townley House near East Cliff Lodge which belonged to Moses Montefiore, the philanthropist, who gave her a key to the private gate to his grounds. Soon after her accession she knighted the London sheriffs at a ceremony in the Guildhall and noted in her diary: 'One of [them] was Mr Montefiore, a Jew, an excellent man [who lived to be over a hundred years old]; and I was very glad that I was the first to do what I think quite right, as it should be' (RA Queen's Journal, 9 November 1837).

  vii

  She had been officially proclaimed 'our only lawful and rightful liege Lady Alexandrina Victoria', but she never considered the possibility of being known as Queen Alexandrina. She had that name omitted from all the documents which she was required to sign.

  viii

  In Sir David Wilkie's painting of this Council meeting, the artist portrayed the Queen in white rather than in mourning to provide a contrast to the black clothes of those Councillors who were not in uniform and to emphasize Her Majesty's youthful innocence. Since the paintings she really liked were those that reproduced their subject with photographic accuracy, she did not approve of Wilkie's licence. Indeed, after examining this picture in later years she maintained that it was one of the worst she had ever seen (RA Journal, 12 November 1847). She far preferred the work of Landseer - although she described his Swan attacked by Eagles as 'not pleasing' - and, later, of Winterhalter and Angeli. As for George Richmond's portraits with their 'green flesh and blue lips', they were beyond the pale. The work of G. F. Watts was largely unintelligible, that of the Impressionists 'a joke in rather bad taste' (Frederick Ponsonby, Recollections of Three Reigns, 1951, 52).

  ix

  Her other uncle, the Duke of Cambridge, was in Hanover where he had been Viceroy, representing his brothers, George IV and William IV - who were also Kings of Hanover - for twenty-one years. On the death of William IV, the eldest of his surviving brothers, the Duke of Cumberland, became King Ernest of Hanover since the Salic law, prohibiting the throne passing to a woman, applied there and prevented Victoria from becoming Queen of Hanover as well as of Great Britain and Ireland.

  x

  There were those, of course, who were not captivated by the young Queen. The Revd Sydney Smith wrote to one of his radical friends: 'Victoria has had a very fine day for her visit to the City [on 9 November 1837]. It disgusts me to see a million of people busying themselves about the foolish ceremonies of a dumpy little girl of eighteen - America for ever' (Alan Bell, Sydney Smith: A Biography, 1980, 164).

  xi

  Dinner was served at eight o'clock, later than in most houses. Middle-class families generally dined at about six o'clock, as did the Carlyles. Lord and Lady Holland and Lord and Lady John Russell dined at seven (Early Victorian England, 1830-65, ed. G.M. Young, 1932, i, 98).

  xii

  This Whiggish talk was a development of the eighteenth-century Cavendish drawl as adopted by the Devonshire House circle, and, in particular, by Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire. In this strange - and, to outsiders, tiresome - language hope, for instance, was pronounced as 'whop', yellow as 'yaller', cucumber as 'cowcomber', spoil as 'spile'. Emphasis fell on unexpected syllables, as in the word balcony, the stress in which fell on the 'cony' rather than the 'bal' (Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire, 1998, 30, 45-6).

  xiii

  'For most of the first three years of her reign, Victoria's watercolour box and pencils lay idle. But when she did take up her pencil, very often her subject was Lord Melbourne. His handsome rumpled face appears again and again, on loose sheets of blotting paper, in the margins of unfinished letters, sometimes in the scarlet and blue Windsor uniform in which Victoria specially admired him, sometimes playing with one of her dogs' (Marina Warner, Queen Victoria's Sketchbook, 81).

  xiv

  'Ly F. by her letter to Mr Fitzgerald had done herself no good,' Lady Holland commented. 'It is a gross, indelicate disclosure which shocks people. The mischief is to her; but the rebound is bad for the Court. The young, innocent Queen should never have had her ears polluted by such filthy stories' (The Earl of Ilchester, ed. Elizabeth, Lady Holland to Her son, 1821-1845, 175).

  xv

  After her husband's death there, however, her earlier distaste for the Castle returned: in a letter to her eldest daughter in 1867 she referred to it as 'that dungeon', and in 1884 she described it as 'this dreary, gloomy old place' (Beloved Mama: Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the German Crown Princess, 1878-85, ed. Roger Fulford, 1971, 172).

  xvi

  The Prince was much attracted to the art of the early Renaissance which was not then fashionable. When he could afford to do so, and with the help and advice of Ludwig Gruner, the painter and engraver, who was with him in Italy, he began to collect early Italian, German and Flemish pictures. The Queen was later to give him, as birthday presents, Daddi's Marriage of the Virgin, the Coronation of the Virgin, attributed to the school of Jacopo di Cione, and Cima da Conegliano's Four Saints and the Annunciation.

  The Prince was to encourage Sir Charles Eastlake, Director of the National Gallery from 1855, to purchase early Italian pictures when the Trustees still preferred to buy works of the High Renaissance. The National Gallery was extended partly to accommodate the acquisitions which the Prince induced it to buy.

  xvii

  According to Lord Granville, the Queen's family also appreciated this kind of joke. Wit was wasted on them, Granville said, since nothing made them laugh as much as hearing 'one had trapped one's finger in the door'. The Queen was herself much amused by such mishaps as a man squashing his hat by sitting on it or by a misfortune such as experienced by the wife of the Secretary of the Office of Works who, 'when she rose from her curtsy, her dress gave a loud crack like a pistol shot, much to the Sovereign's amusement' (James Lees-Milne, The Enigmatic Edwardian: Life of Reginald Brett, Viscount Esher, 1986). With the Queen, however, it was not always easy to know whether or not she was being intentionally funny, as, for instance, when she gently instructed a 'decolletee' granddaughter before going into dinner: 'a little rose in front, dear child, because of the footmen'.

  xviii

  The same embarrassments were occasioned at Osborne where one evening in 1900 'just as dear old Lady Erroll had taken off her hair and picked out her teeth someone knocked at the door. She said "Come in!" ' Then she opened it and there stood A. J. Balfour, the future prime minister, in the passage. He could not find his room and was at his wit's end. He had tried Aline's [the Hon. Aline Majendie, a maid-of-honour] and was trembling with bashfulness (Victor Mallet, Life with Queen Victoria: Mane Mallet's Letters from Court 1887-1901, 1968, 199).

  xix

  Prince Albert is often said to have introduced the custom of the Christmas tree
from Germany to England. But the credit for this properly belongs to his wife's grandmother, Queen Charlotte. 'The Queen [Charlotte] entertained the children here, Christmas evening, with a German fashion,' recalled the Hon. Georgina Townshend, state housekeeper at Windsor Castle. 'A fir tree, about as high again as any of us, lighted all over with small tapers, several little wax dolls among the branches in different places, and strings of almonds and raisins alternately tied from one to the other, with skipping ropes for the boys, and each bigger girl had muslin for a frock, a muslin handkerchief, a fan, and a sash, all prettily done up in the handkerchief, and a pretty necklace and earrings besides. As soon as all the things were delivered out by the Queen and Princesses, the candles on the tree were put out, and the children set to work to help themselves' (Memoirs and Correspondence of Field-Marshal Viscount Combertnere, 2 vols., London, 1866, ii, 419).

  As a child Queen Victoria regularly had a Christmas tree, and her aunt, Queen Adelaide, always set one up at her Christmas parties for children in the Dragon Room at Brighton Pavilion. (Olwen Hedley, 'How the Christmas tree came to the English Court', The Times, 22 December 1958).

  xx

  The billiard room, drawing room and dining room all open into each other round three sides of the staircase, with screens of scagliola columns to make the divisions. 'The advantage of this open plan was that all the necessary equerries and ladies-in-waiting could be in attendance without the rooms seeming too large, and that they could be conveniently on call round the corner without having to stand because they were in the royal presence' (Mark Girouard, The Victorian Country House, 80).

  xxi

  Unlike most of her ladies and many of her other contemporaries, the Queen was not in the least shocked by such paintings of naked women. The directors of an art school, where William Mulready's nude studies were on display in 1853, were warned against letting her see them. She not only clearly and openly admired them but expressed a wish to buy one {Early Victorian England, ed. G. M. Young, ii, 113).

  xxii

  Not all her family were so impressed, although her grandson's wife, Princess May of Teck, the future Queen Mary, who went there in 1892, was fond of the 'large, white airy house with its great sheet-glass windows looking out to sea, its dining-room decorated with Winterhalter portraits, its pungent and beautiful arboretum, and the newly completed Indian wing', the Durbar Corridor and the Durbar Room, the decoration of which was then nearing completion (James Pope -Hennessy, Queen Mary, 1959, 228). 'Even as a child I was struck by the ugliness of the house, which has been described as "a family necropolis",' wrote Queen Mary's son, King Edward VIII. 'The floors of the corridors and passages were inlaid with mosaic; let into the walls were numerous alcoves each displaying in life size a white marble statue of a dead or living member of "Gangan's" large family. It had long been Queen Victoria's ardent wish that her eldest son would make it his home. But by this time my grandfather's affections had been too long rooted in Sandringham. He had long since made up his mind to get rid of Osborne when it fell to him; and shortly, in spite of the mild protestations of some of his sisters, he handed the property over to the State as a convalescent home for disabled officers of the Boer War' (A King's Story. The Memoirs of HRH. The Duke of Windsor, 14).

  xxiii

  Before Prince Albert's death she was, however, interested in the clothes of others. In her journal she often gave detailed descriptions of them. 'We were received ... by Lady Bulkeley whose dress I shall describe,' a characteristic entry runs (RA Queen's journal, 9 August 1832). When her eldest daughter left home Victoria pressed her to tell her exactly what she was wearing in Germany: 'What bonnet did you wear on landing? And what bonnet the next two days... What also did you wear on the road ... No one has told me what your toilette was to be these next days!... I see by the papers you wore a green dress at the Cologne concert: was that the one with black lace? I am so anxious to know ... how all my toilettes succeeded ... I am particularly vexed at hearing nothing, about your dresses. Let your German ladies give me an account of them' (Roger Fulford, ed., Dearest Child: Letters between Queen Victoria and the Princess Royal, 1858-61,32, 34-5, 38).

  xxiv

  However, she later told Lady Salisbury that Walmer Castle was 'the most uncomfortable house she ever was in' (Kenneth Rose, The Later Cecils, 44).

  xxv

  The train went along 'very easily though not quite as fast as the Great Western' (Queen Victoria's Journal, 28 November 1843). The Queen had made her first railway journey on the Great Western from Slough to Paddington the year before. The seventeen-mile journey had taken just twenty-three minutes, at an average of forty-four miles an hour. Prince Albert had thought this rather dangerous. 'Not so fast next time, Mr Conductor, if you please,' he is often said to have requested. The Queen's Private Secretary, when arranging a journey to Scotland with the Secretary of the Great Northern Railway in August 1854, gave the instruction: 'Her Majesty travels at the rate of forty miles an hour.' (Public Record Office, RAIL 236/6061, quoted in Jack Simmons, Railways, 253).

  xxvi

  At Cambridge, 'both in going and returning,' the Queen recorded in her journal, 'the scholars threw down their gowns for us to walk over, like Sir Walter Raleigh' (RA Queen Victoria's Journal, 25 October 1843).

  xxvii

  The Queen did not take part in the shooting herself. Indeed, she was opposed to ladies shooting at all. When she heard that her granddaughter, Princess Victoria of Hesse, had gone out shooting with her father, she wrote to her: 'I was, darling Child, rather shocked to hear of your shooting at a mark but far more so at your idea of going out shooting with dear Papa. To look on is harmless but it is not lady like to kill animals & go out shooting - and I hope you will never do that. It might do you gt harm if that was known as only fast ladies do such things' (Advice to a Grand-daughter. Letters from Queen Victoria to Princess Victoria of Hesse, ed. Richard Hough, 26).

  xxviii

  'Dear Grand-Mama's taste in wallpapers was rather sad and very doubtful!!!' her daughter-in-law, Queen Alexandra, had to concede in a letter to Queen Mary in 1910. 'That washed out pink moire paper in the sitting-room is sickly and the one in the bedroom appalling but I never liked to touch anything of hers so I left it exactly as she had it ... I wonder if you have made any alterations' (RA/CC/42/81, quoted in Georgina Battiscombe, Queen Alexandra, 1969, 220).

  xxix

  She was later persuaded to tolerate the installation of gas lighting at Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle. But candles remained the preferred lighting at Balmoral since she considered 'this old-fashioned style cosier'. Towards the end of the Queen's life, Sarah Tooley was told that 'she does not take to the electric light and will not have it introduced into the royal palaces' (The Personal Life of Queen Victoria, 1901, 266). In fact, it was introduced, even at Balmoral, in the 1890s. 'It brightens up one's bedroom very much,' wrote Lady Lytton, 'but the Queen does not like it and feels the glare very much for her eyes, and in the sitting room it is not very skilfully done' (Lady Lytton's Court Diary, 1961, 142).

  xxx

  The domestic staff at Balmoral had far more reason to complain of their accommodation than ministerial guests and members of the household. 'The under servants are so fearfully crowded at Balmoral in their rooms,' Lady Lytton wrote in her diary in the 1890s. 'Four laundry maids have to sleep in one bed in a tiny room' {Lady Lytton's Court Diary, 1895-99, 77).

  xxxi

  Cowell was once the recipient of one of the Queen's celebrated sharp retorts. He had written her a long letter to complain of a clergyman, the son of a peer, styling himself 'the Rev. and Hon.' This letter was returned to Cowell with the words scrawled across it: 'It is a matter of perfect indifference to the Queen what he is called' (quoted in Elizabeth Longford, Victoria R.I., 576).

  xxxii

  Throughout her reign, following the example of her grandfather, King George III, the Queen was generous in her contributions to charities as well as to needy members of her family and to retire
d servants. A patron of about 150 institutions, she gave money to many if not most of them; and in one representative year, 1882, she was to distribute £12,535 to 230 charities. 'There were also donations for the relief of victims of earthquakes and storms, fires and shipwrecks, famines and colliery disasters. Temperance interestingly hardly figured ... All told, her patronage books show that she gave away something in the order of £650,000 to charitable purposes during her reign, excluding cash handouts to the poor and pensions to retired servants' (Frank Prochaska, Royal Bounty: The Making of a Welfare Monarchy, 77).