xxxiii
The well-known story that the Duke of Wellington, asked for his advice as to how to solve this problem which had foxed everyone else, suggested to the Queen with typical directness and brevity, 'Try sparrow hawks, Ma'am', is, sad to say, apocryphal. It owes its origin to a fictitious story printed in a provincial newspaper (Norman Gash, Wellington Anecdotes: A Critical Survey, 8-9).
xxxiv
The Queen's use of chloroform did not find universal approval. Protests followed; some were religious (the Bible taught women were to bring forth in pain) but most were medical, on grounds of safety. 'In no case,' boomed the Lancet, 'could it be justifiable to administer chloroform in perfectly ordinary labour' (Roy Porter, The Greatest Benefit to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity from Antiquity to the Present, 367-8).
xxxv
The gene which was transmitted to Prince Leopold must have come from his mother rather than Prince Albert, since haemophiliac fathers cannot have haemophiliac sons. And, as there are no known haemophiliacs among Queen Victoria's ancestors, the brothers D. M. and W. T. W. Potts, one an embryologist, the other a professor of biology, have argued that either the gene was a new mutation - 'the probability of a mutation for haemophilia is 1 in 25,000 to 1 in 100,000' -or Victoria was not the child of Edward, Duke of Kent. They contend that if the Duchess of Kent, 'keen to produce a child who might well be heir to the British throne, had suspected the fertility of her husband [who seems not to have had any children by Madame de St Laurent or from other liaisons] she might have tried to improve her chances with another man ... There is nothing in the character of the Duchess of Kent to suggest that she would have baulked at sleeping with another man if she had decided the Duke was unable to give her a child, and several aspects of her character would fit with a secret knowledge that Victoria was illegitimate.' There is no suggestion, in this rather improbable theory, as to who this other man might have been (D. M. Potts and W. T. W. Potts, Queen Victoria's Gene: Haemophilia and the Royal Family, 55-65).
xxxvi
A picture of him doing so was painted by James Sant, who portrayed Prince Albert standing next to the Queen. The Queen, however, is not in the finished picture. She is said to have had her likeness painted out after having heard some particularly unpleasant story about Cardigan's private life (Saul David, The Homicidal Earl: The Life of Lord Cardigan, 326).
xxxvii
She told her husband that she was 'counting on having a dear baby at my breast every 2years' or she would 'not be happy'. 'To have a baby at one's breast' was 'the greatest joy of womanhood'. This was 'something a man cannot understand but it is nonetheless true ... So please, my dearest man, lots more sweet little things - it is simply too lovely.' The Crown Prince obliged her: they were to have eight children in thirteen years. Yet when in 1870 she came across an English family with fifteen children she was ashamed because by then she had borne only six (John C. G. Rohl, Young Wilhelm: The Kaiser's Early Life, 1859-1888, Cambridge, 1998, 97-8).
xxxviii
The Queen had always had an almost obsessive predilection for the observance of mourning, far more so even than was commonly accepted as appropriate at the time. When her distant relation, the Tsar, had died during the Crimean War, she had caused 'IMMEDIATE search to be made for Precedents as to the Court going or not going into mourning for a sovereign with whom at the time of his decease England was at war'. And when her half-brother, Prince Charles of Leiningen, died, 'the Queen put on a black gown immediately,' recorded one of her maids-of-honour. 'We have no orders yet about it, but of course it will be silk and crape; and a six months' mourning' (Eleanor Stanley, Twenty Years at Court, London, 1916, 320). Even the Queen's youngest child, Princess Beatrice, was dressed in a black silk and crepe dress during a period of court mourning when she was barely three years old (Roger Fulford, ed., Dearest Child, 249).
The serious attention which the Queen gave to the obligations of mourning is reflected in a rather touching note addressed to her private secretary in 1892: 'Does Sir Henry Ponsonby think it possible for her to go privately to see Venice? [a spectacular production staged at Olympia]. She hears it is really admirably done. Pss Beatrice is delighted with it & it is a real success. In the day of course & it is not a theatre or a play & it will be 5 months & 1/2since her dear grandson's [Prince Albert Victor's] death & 3 1/2 after her dear son-in-law's [the Grand Duke of Hesse's] & she wd very much like to see it' (Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, 83).
xxxix
The equestrian bronze at Holborn Circus was unveiled by the Prince of Wales in January 1874. A stone statue by Thomas Earle, also unveiled by the Prince of Wales, which originally stood at the Licensed Victuallers' Association Asylum in Old Kent Road, was moved in 1958 to the Victuallers' retirement home in Denham Garden Village. In provincial towns all over the country, and in Edinburgh and Glasgow, memorials were erected, to the Queen's great satisfaction.
xl
Some time earlier the Queen had been left about £250,000 by an eccentric miser, John Camden Nield, who had lived in squalor in Cheyne Walk, Chelsea. He had not vouchsafed any reason for his generous bequest but the Queen, reassuring herself with the thought that he had known she would not waste it, increasing the sums he had left to his executors, and donating a sum to his parish church, gratefully accepted it. Part of the bequest was assigned to the cost of the mausoleum.
xli
Nearly two years after Prince Albert's death, the Queen was still lamenting her misery to Elphinstone: 'As time goes on and others feel less, her deep settled melancholy - her ever increasing helplessness and loneliness are more keenly and acutely felt. The struggle gets daily worse, the want hourly more felt' (Mary Howard McClintock, The Queen Thanks Sir Howard, 51).
xlii
She asked the same question about missionaries, shocking Lady Lytton by saying that she wished they would leave the Mohammedans alone (Mary Lutycns, ed., Lady Lylkm's Court Diary).
xliii
The marriage of middle-aged or elderly women was always severely frowned upon by the Queen. When the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts, with whom she had been on friendly terms, married William Ashmead Bartlett, a man of American descent, '40 years younger than herself, the Queen was appalled. 'The poor foolish old woman ... looked like his grandmother and was all decked out with jewels - not edifying' (RA, Queen Victoria's Journal, 3 May 1881). In an attempt to prevent what she called the 'mad marriage' she had written to Lord Harrowby, the bride's cousin, to say that she trusted 'that Lady Burdett-Coutts had given the fullest consideration to this step ... It would grieve her much if Lady Burdett-Coutts were to sacrifice her high reputation and her happiness by an unsuitable marriage' (RA A 15/544, 18 July 1880).
Lord Harrowby sent the letter to his cousin with a covering note: 'You may suppose that I have been much startled by the receipt of the enclosed letter - what answer am I to give?' 'I think you had better say (what is true),' the Baroness replied, 'in reply to the enclosed rather singular letter that you have no information on the subject alluded to' (Harrowby MSS. quoted in Edna Healey, Lady Unknown: The Life of Angela Burdett-Coutts, 1978, 198).
xliv
Princess Beatrice, then aged six, was almost as surprised as her mother to learn of 'Guska's' engagement and she dictated letters to both the intended bride and bridegroom to say so: 'I hope you are quite well, dear Guska. I find it very extraordinary that you are going to be married ... I suppose you are going to dress in a low white gown, or are you going to have a high white gown? ... I think you will look very funny as a Deanness.'
'I hope you are quite well, Canon. It is very funny that you are going to be Dean of Westminster ... It is very funny that you are going to be married. Goodbye.' (Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley, 316-7).
xlv
The compliment, if rather high-flown, was not an altogether idle one. Her knowledge of foreign courts was indeed, remarkable; and amongst her progeny were, or were to be, heirs to the thrones of Russia, Germany, Greece, Rom
ania, Spain and Norway.
xlvi
The improbable notion that he was, indeed, her lover has since been given credence by such books as Queen Victoria's John Brown (1938) by E. E. P. Tisdall who claimed to have seen a letter, subsequently lost, which had been retrieved from a wastepaper basket by a footman and which suggested that the Queen's relationship with Brown was far from platonic. The suggestion has also been given credence by the release from its embargo in 1972 of the 'secret diary' of the traveller, politician and poet Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, who was told by the courtesan, Catherine Walters, known as 'Skittles', about conversations she had had with the sculptor, Edgar Boehm, who gave Princess Louise lessons in sculpture and was widely believed to be her lover. For three months Boehm had been at Balmoral working on a bust of Brown and accordingly had had ample opportunities to witness the relationship between the Queen and her servant who 'had unbounded influence' with her, treating her 'with little respect' and 'presuming in every way upon his position with her'. According to Boehm, so 'Skittles' told Blunt, it was 'to be with him, where she could do more as she liked, that the Queen spent so much of her time at Balmoral ... She used to go away with him to a little house in the hills where, on the pretence that it was for protection and to look after her dogs, he had a bedroom next to hers, the ladies-in-waiting being put at the other end of the building ... Boehm saw enough of his familiarity with her to leave no doubt of his being allowed "every conjugal privilege".' Boehm also told 'Skittles', who in turn told Blunt, that 'the Queen, who had been passionately in love with her husband, got it into her head that somehow the Prince's spirit had passed into Brown' and that this was why, 'four years after her widowhood', she had allowed him 'all privileges' (Wilfrid Scawen Blunt, 'Secret Diary' MS 9, Department of Manuscripts and Printed Books, Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, quoted in Theo Aronson, Heart of a Queen, 1991, 159-61).
More than twenty years after Brown's death it came to light that there was in existence a black tin box containing over three hundred letters written by the Queen about Brown to Dr Alexander Profeit, her factor at Balmoral. The Queen's former physician, James Reid, was asked by King Edward VII's Private Secretary, Lord Knollys, to retrieve these letters from Dr Profeit's son, George Profeit, who was threatening to blackmail the King about them. Reid managed to get hold of the letters, presumably after paying an agreed sum for them; and handed them over to the King who, as 'a great destroyer of papers', in all probability burned them. Before handing them over Reid read them and noted in his diary that 'many of them' were 'most compromising'. He confided the substance of them to a 'green memorandum book' which was burned on Reid's death by his son in 1923 (Michaele Reid, Ask Sir James: The Life of Sir James Reid, Personal Physician to Queen Victoria, 1987, 56, 227-8). Whatever these letters contained, it is most improbable that a sexual relationship was revealed in them. Frederick Ponsonby who, as the Queen's Assistant Private Secretary, came to know her intimately, wrote: 'The stories about John Brown were so numerous and so obviously made-up that it hardly seemed worthwhile to correct them ... Whether there was any quite unconscious sexual feeling in the Queen's regard for her faithful servant I am unable to say, but ... I am quite convinced that if such a feeling did exist, it was quite unconscious on both sides, and that their relations up to the last were simply those of employer and devoted retainer' (Frederick Ponsonby, Recollections of Three Reigns, 95).
In December 1998 it was reported in the press that photographs, papers and mementoes had been found in a trunk in the attic of a house at Ballater near Balmoral, 'the home of a descendant of Mr Brown'. The executive producer of the film Mrs Brown, Douglas Rae, who had been granted access to these papers, was quoted as saying that 'there is no doubt in my mind they were written by two people who were very, very close and shared an intimate friendship ... The family has decided that nothing will be made public while the present members of the Royal Family, particularly the Queen Mother, are still alive.' Mr Rae said that he had been unable to establish any truth in rumours that Queen Victoria had a child by Brown and that the couple married in secret' (Daily Telegraph, The Times, 28 December 1998).
xlvii
He was certainly not frightened of her - this was, for her, a large part of his appeal. The Prince of Wales once said to Margot Tennant that, when she met his mother, he hoped she would not be afraid of her, 'adding, with a charming smile, that with the exception of John Brown, everybody was' (The Autobiography of Margot Asquith, ed. Mark Bonham-Carter, 1962, 50).
xlviii
Having gone down to 'bask in the Osborne fog of royalty' soon after Bright's appointment as President of the Board of Trade, Lord Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, reported to the Duchess of Manchester, 'Bright seems to have made a very good impression ... "Eliza" spoke to me of his gentle, kind manner wh: is quite true when he is in the company of ladies. The Maids of Honour made him play Blind Hookey with them & Heaven knows what other traps they set for Quaker virtue ... "Eliza" so far from being afraid of Bright has quite a predilection for him as he has several times defended her in a manner for wh: she is grateful & can never forget' (A. L. Kennedy, ed. My Dear Duchess: Social and Political Letters to the Duchess of Manchester, 247-8).
xlix
When he was a boy, Dilke had been presented to the Queen at the Great Exhibition with which his father, Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke, the first baronet, had been closely connected. Years later the Queen said that she remembered stroking his head and that 'she supposed she must have rubbed the hairs the wrong way' (Dilke Papers, quoted in Roy Jenkins, Sir Charles Dilke, 20).
l
This was by no means the only example of her family's fear of the Queen. In March 1900, the Duke of York spoke to Lord Esher about 'the impropriety of the Queen going to Italy at this moment. I thought he talked a good deal of sense. They none of them dare, however, to tackle H. M.!' (Journal and Letters of Reginald, Viscount Esher, 1934, i, 258-9).
li
The Queen was greatly offended when, after the death of her son-in-law, the Emperor Frederick III, in June 1888, Oscar Wilde arrived at Windsor to write a report for the Telegraph on the funeral service to be held in St George's Chapel. She did, however, allow him to look round the Chapel where, so Henry Ponsonby said, 'he was most affected'. Wilde entertained a high opinion of Queen Victoria. After his disgrace, when he was living in France, he gave a party to celebrate her Diamond Jubilee, inviting sixteen schoolboys who were regaled with an immense cake inscribed with the words Jubile de la Reine Victoria in pink sugar and who sang 'God Save the Queen' as well as the Marseillaise. Wilde, who had previously declared that the three great personalities of the nineteenth century were Napoleon, Victor Hugo and Queen Victoria, was asked if he had ever met her. He replied that he had. He spoke admiringly of her appearance - 'a ruby mounted in jet' - her walk and her regal demeanour (Richard Ellmann, Oscar Wilde, 509).
lii
The Queen had always had a horror of cruelty to animals. When the Crown Princess wrote to tell her of a 'stupid jager' who had shot her 'dear little cat', hung her on a tree and cut off her nose, her mother wrote to tell her how 'horrified' and 'distressed' she was: 'It is monstrous. The man ought to be hung on a tree. I could cry with you as I adore my pets ... We always put a collar with VR on our pet cats and that preserves them. Our keeper once shot a pet one of Beatrice's. Keepers arc very stupid but none would dream of mutilating an animal here! I think it right and only due to the affection of dumb animals ... to mourn for them truly and deeply' (Beloved Mama: Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the German Crown Princess, ed. Roger Fulford, 87). When the Windsor buck-hounds were about to be abolished in 1892 she was reported to be 'delighted': she had 'always disliked that form of sport' (Journals and Letters of Reginald Brett, i, 160). Lady Holland had been amused in December 1844 when the 'dear little Queen asked for the life of an ox to be spared' at the Cattle Show 'because it had licked the hand of Prince Albert!' (Elizabeth, Lady Holland to Her Son, 1821-1845, ed. the Earl of Ilchester,
1946, 221).
liii
Gladstone was one of the few Ministers who enjoyed life at Balmoral. 'I bade farewell reluctantly to Balmoral,' he told his wife on leaving the place as minister-in-attendance in 1871, 'for it is as homelike as any place away from home can be, and wonderfully safe from invasions' (Roy Jenkins, Gladstone, 347). To Lord Rosebery life at Balmoral seemed like 'one perpetual and astounding meal ... The luncheon ... has two distinguishing features on Sunday. The first is that it begins with mutton broth; and the second is the introduction of an odious drink called birch wine. On tasting it I remarked that I thought the bottle was corked' (Robert Rhodes James, Rosebery, 66).
liv
The Queen's opinion of Gladstone was not universally shared at Court. 'Mr Gladstone here,' wrote Lady Augusta Stanley, 'very agreeable, and oh! what a charming voice, and what beautiful English that is.' 'Mr Gladstone left today to our sorrow,' she wrote in another letter from Balmoral. 'He is most pleasant' {Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley, 206, 297).
QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History Page 62
