Royal Marriage Secrets

by John Ashdown-Hill

  It was in the late 1850s, while the Prince Consort was still living, that some have suggested that the queen became infatuated with John Brown. ‘My Heart’s in the Highlands’, she wrote, quoting a poem by Robert Burns. ‘Yes that is my feeling and I must fight and struggle against it’.4 These words have been interpreted to imply that Brown was the focus of her affections. Certainly she already felt very dependent upon him. When her son, Prince Arthur, requested that Brown attend him on an excursion, the queen, who spoke German, replied that this was unmöglich (impossible), asking ‘what should I do without him?’5

  However, the death of the Prince Consort, in December 1862, changed the queen’s life completely. Victoria did not attend her husband’s funeral publicly, but watched the service from Catherine of Aragon’s closet at St George’s Chapel, Windsor. Subsequently she bemoaned her sense of loneliness and desolation. She needed a man about her, and in the long run it was Brown who was to supply this need. There is no doubt that he came to occupy a place of very great importance in her life, and his influence was sometimes astounding. Yet as Victoria herself made clear, riding her favourite pony, Lochnagar, with John Brown to escort her was, to her mind, no substitute for the company of her dead husband. It was merely ‘a sad alternative for the delightful long walks with my beloved one’.6

  Examples of the very considerable power and influence John Brown exerted over the royal household, and even over the queen herself, are not hard to find. Queen Victoria even tolerated Brown’s drinking, and although she was normally utterly opposed to tobacco, Brown persuaded her to smoke on occasions, on the pretext of fending off the midges.

  Of course, Brown’s role in the queen’s life did not pass unnoticed. On 7 July 1866 Punch; or the London Charivari published a celebrated spoof Court Circular, focusing entirely on Brown’s activities:

  Court Circular

  Balmoral, Tuesday

  MR JOHN BROWN walked on the slopes. He subsequently partook of haggis.

  In the evening MR JOHN BROWN was pleased to listen to a bagpipe.

  MR JOHN BROWN retired early.7

  At the same time cartoons began to appear in the press, criticising Brown’s role in the queen’s life (see Plate 28). There was even speculation that the queen was married to him. Many have believed this story, both at the time and subsequently, while others have argued forcefully that the notion of such a marriage was impossible. In the final analysis it is hard to settle this question. On the one hand the idea of such a marriage seems preposterous. Yet what was the alternative? The queen’s own children – who hated Brown – nevertheless referred to him as ‘Mama’s Lover’, while the Earl of Derby recorded in his diary that Brown and Victoria slept in adjoining bedrooms, a practice which he abhorred as ‘contrary to etiquette and even decency’.8

  If Queen Victoria was married to John Brown, in what manner would they have married? Since Brown was Scottish, and the couple met, and partly lived, in Scotland, would theirs have been a marriage like that of ‘Charles III’ and his Clementina – a marriage ‘by cohabitation with habit and repute’? Clearly, it did not fully satisfy the requirements for such a marriage under the then-existing law of Scotland, because the couple did not use married names. The appellation ‘Mrs Brown’ was merely an invention of the press. Also they did not openly live together as a couple. At the same time, however, their relationship did not conform to the requirements of the eighteenth-century English Marriage Act, since apparently no documentary record of a marriage exists – despite the fact that the case of George [IV] and ‘Princess Fitz’ (and possibly also the case of George [III] and Hannah Lightfoot) had already demonstrated that a secret marriage could be documented in this way.

  Modern belief concerning a marriage between the queen and John Brown is based partly upon the supposed evidence of one of the queen’s chaplains. A diary written by Lewis Harcourt, and only quite recently discovered, reports that one of Queen Victoria’s chaplains, the Rev. Norman Macleod, confessed on his deathbed that he had personally officiated at the marriage of Brown and the queen. Macleod’s confession was ostensibly an act of repentance for the role he had played on this occasion – a role which he had subsequently come to regret.

  Unfortunately, while Harcourt probably genuinely believed what he wrote, the evidence of his diary is far from being ‘the horse’s mouth’. He was only 9 years old when the Rev. Macleod died, and he received the account from his father, Sir William Harcourt (sometime Home Secretary), who in his turn had the tale from Henry Ponsonby, Queen Victoria’s private secretary. Ponsonby derived his information from his wife, who had been Rev. Macleod’s sister. With four individuals intervening between Rev. McLeod and Lewis Harcourt, it is very difficult to know exactly how much faith to place in the latter’s account.

  However, another piece of recently discovered evidence does clearly show that Queen Victoria had very deep feelings for Brown. Indeed, there was never really any reason to doubt this. The new evidence is the more forceful in that it comes directly from the queen’s own pen. Following John Brown’s death, Victoria wrote to Viscount Cranbrook:

  Perhaps never in history was there so strong and true an attachment, so warm and loving a friendship between the sovereign and servant … Strength of character as well as power of frame – the most fearless uprightness, kindness, sense of justice, honesty, independence and unselfishness combined with a tender, warm heart … made him one of the most remarkable men. The Queen feels that life for the second time is become most trying and sad to bear deprived of all she so needs … the blow has fallen too heavily not to be very heavily felt.9

  The last sentence quoted here, with its reference to ‘the second time’, appears to equate the queen’s sense of loss at Brown’s death to the grievous loss she had previously felt at the death of her consort, Prince Albert. On this basis it has been argued that Victoria must have been married to John Brown – or that at the very least they were lovers.

  The final piece of evidence, which shows the strength of the queen’s feeling for her ‘Highland servant’, came at the very end of her life, when Brown himself was already dead and buried. On the queen’s own specific instructions, following her death in 1901, various mementoes and keepsakes were placed with her body in her coffin, prior to her burial at Windsor. Naturally these included souvenirs of Prince Albert, comprising one of his dressing gowns and a plaster cast of his hand, both placed in the queen’s coffin, at her side. But in the dead queen’s left hand was placed a lock of John Brown’s hair, together with some of the letters he had written to her and his photograph, wrapped in white tissue paper. All these souvenirs of John Brown were carefully concealed from view beneath a bunch of flowers. In addition, on the third (ring) finger of her right hand, the hand which in times past had traditionally received the wedding ring, Victoria wore – and still wears in her tomb – the wedding ring of John Brown’s mother, which Brown himself had given to the queen in 1883.10

  19

  MURDERS IN WHITECHAPEL

  AND MYSTERIES IN MALTA

  * * *

  Seek a cosy doorway in the middle of the night.

  ‘Jack the Ripper’ verse, 1888

  * * *

  I tell you at once that there is not the faintest vestige of truth in these statements.

  The Attorney General, 1 February 1911

  * * *

  Queen Victoria’s long reign had an impact on her heirs. Her son, Edward VII, had a lengthy wait before succeeding to the throne, and both he and Victoria herself outlived the next heir, Edward [VII]’s eldest son, the Duke of Clarence. As a result, when Edward VII died in 1910, he was succeeded by his second son, George V, who was born in 1865 and reigned from 1910 until 1936. As a child George had not been in the direct line of succession. Only in 1892 – when his elder brother, the Duke of Clarence, died – did he become second in line for the throne. When Clarence died, George [V] also inherited his elder brother’s prospective bride, Princess Mary of Teck.

  The futu
re George V is said to have had several sexual partners prior to his marriage with Mary of Teck, which took place in 1893. These relationships appear mostly to have been ephemeral. However, at the time of the prince’s marriage there were widespread rumours regarding one reported liaison, with a Miss Culme-Seymour, the daughter of an admiral. George [V] was reported to have had a relationship with Miss Culme-Seymour during the period from approximately 1889 to 1891. Not only was George said to have fathered children by this lady, but it was also rumoured that he had contracted a morganatic marriage with her. According to a later account, published in 1910, the relationship with Miss Culme-Seymour was alleged to have taken place while George was serving in Malta (see below). However, it is important to note that neither Malta nor any other location for the relationship seems to have been specified in 1893.

  The year in which reports of this alleged relationship first became public was 1893 – just at the time when the future George V was on the point of marrying Mary of Teck. On 25 April of that year George [V] wrote to his father’s private secretary:

  The story of me being already married to an American is really very amusing. Cust has heard the same thing from England … and that my wife lived in Plymouth, why there I wonder?1

  George’s letter puts the story in a light-hearted way, suggesting that the tale existed in various versions, all of them ridiculous. But of course if the prince had been secretly married, there is no reason to suppose that he would have frankly revealed that fact to his father when he was on the point of contracting an official marriage. The mention of a naval base as the possible location for the relationship may possibly have been more significant than the prince’s tone suggests. Plymouth has a name which sounds very similar to Portsmouth, and we know that George was in Portsmouth in 1891 (see below).

  Just over a week after the prince’s letter, on 2 May 1893, a Guernsey newspaper, the Star, stated that ‘the rumour is persistently going round Naval circles that the Duke of York has lately married secretly the daughter of an English Naval Officer at Malta.2 We should note that the mention of Malta in the Star’s account refers only to the location in 1893 of the appointment of the Naval officer who was the bride’s father. It implies nothing about where George was alleged to have met, or married, that officer’s daughter. However, this and similar accounts may have later become the source of misunderstandings as to where the relationship took place. Of course, the Star’s report was published on the very eve of the prince’s engagement to Mary of Teck.

  The tale resurfaced seventeen years later in a much fuller and more serious form. This was towards the end of 1910, soon after George V’s accession. An account of the alleged relationship then appeared in a republican magazine called The Liberator, which was published in Paris, but which had a British editor – Edward F. Mylius – and which circulated in Britain. The article in The Liberator led to a court case, a full report of which was published on 2 February 1911 in the New York Times. This refers to ‘the report, oft repeated, that King George, while a cadet in the Royal Navy, made a morganatic alliance with a daughter of Admiral Sir Michael Culme-Seymour’.3

  The article in The Liberator had appeared under the title ‘Sanctified Bigamy’ and had claimed that:

  during the year 1890, in the Isle of Malta, the man who is now King of England was united in lawful and holy wedlock with the daughter of Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, an admiral of the British Navy. Of this marriage offspring were born.4

  Flirting with a high-ranking naval officer.

  Mylius clearly assumed (perhaps from a misreading of earlier accounts such as that published in the Star) that the liaison itself had taken place in Malta. This was probably an error on his part – and one for which he later paid dearly, since it could apparently be proved that Prince George had not been in Malta during the key period. The first name of the alleged wife was not supplied. The article continued:

  In order to obtain a woman of the royal blood for his pretended wife, George Frederick [later George V] foully abandoned his true wife, the daughter of Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, of the British Navy, and entered into a sham and shameful marriage with the daughter of the Duke of Teck in 1893. The said George Frederick not having been divorced, his first wife, by the common law of England, and by the law of the Christian Church, remains – and, if she still lives is – the true wife. He committed the crime of bigamy, and he committed it with the aid and complicity of the prelates of the Anglican Church.5

  Admiral Sir Michael Culme-Seymour was a baronet descended from a cadet line of the Seymour family. He was thus a relative of the Duke of Somerset, of Queen Jane Seymour (wife of Henry VIII), and of her son, King Edward VI. The admiral actually had two daughters in 1890. The elder daughter was Mary, and although she was not specifically named as George [V]’s morganatic wife in ‘Sanctified Bigamy’, for some reason it subsequently seems to have been generally assumed throughout the court case of 1911 that she was the daughter referred to in that article. In 1899 Mary had married the future Admiral Sir Trevelyan Napier. However, Sir Michael Culme-Seymour also had a younger and rather more mysterious daughter: Laura Grace Culme-Seymour. It was reported that Laura had died in 1895, and was therefore not available to be questioned in 1911. We shall have more to say about Laura presently.

  Sir Michael was called as a witness in the 1911 court case, and he testified that he had assumed command of the British Fleet in the Mediterranean in 1893, and that his wife and daughters had then joined him in Malta. He further stated that prior to 1893 none of these three women had ever set foot on that island. This undermined a key point in Mylius’ published account – but we have already noted that Mylius’ reference to Malta as the location for the relationship may simply have been based upon a misunderstanding of his sources in this respect. Sir Michael also claimed that Laura had never in her life so much as spoken to George [V]. Mary, on the other hand had met the future king in 1879, when she was a mere child of 8. Thereafter, her father stated, she had not encountered him again until 1898. Mary Culme-Seymour (Napier) and her three brothers, Michael, John and George, also gave testimony, which corroborated that of their father. However, their mother, Lady Seymour, was reported to be suffering from indifferent health. Consequently she neither gave evidence nor attended the trial.6

  Evidence was also presented in court to show that between 1888 and 1901 George [V] had not visited Malta. In spite of this evidence, however, George certainly seems to have had a connection with the island at some point, for he served under the command of his uncle, Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, who was stationed in Malta. Moreover, he was known to have fallen in love with his uncle’s elder daughter, Princess Marie of Edinburgh, and he had at one time sought to marry her. His own father, together with Marie’s father and their joint grandmother, Queen Victoria, had all favoured this alliance. However, it had been opposed by the Princess of Wales (Alexandra of Denmark) and by the Duchess of Edinburgh (Grand Duchess Marie of Russia). Influenced by her mother, Princess Marie had therefore refused George’s proposal, and she subsequently married the King of Romania in 1893. Perhaps it had been this earlier connection of George’s love-life with a Maltese location, coupled with mentions like that in the Star, which misled Edward Mylius in his published account.

  During the trial in 1911, all the marriage registers for the island of Malta – Catholic, Protestant, Greek Orthodox and civil – covering the period 1886 to 6 July 1893 (the date of George’s marriage to Mary of Teck) were produced in court. Apparently not one of them showed any record of a marriage which could possibly have referred to George [V] and a Miss Culme-Seymour.

  However, there is one further aspect of the evidence of the Culme-Seymour family which must be highlighted, because it could be very significant. ‘Admiral Sir Michael Culme-Seymour, giving evidence, said he had five children – three boys and two girls … The younger [daughter], Laura Grace, died in 1895, unmarried’.7 Subsequently this point was reinforced by the admiral’s elder (and surviving) daught
er, Mary Culme-Seymour (Napier). Mary’s interrogation by the Attorney General produced the following exchange:

  Would you know if your sister had contracted any marriage?

  Yes, certainly.

  Did she ever marry?

  No.8

  Again, we shall return to this point presently.

  Edward Mylius was found guilty of libel, and was sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. Subsequently, however, he returned to the offensive, publishing a pamphlet on The Morganatic Marriage of George V in New York in 1916. Interestingly, in this second publication Mylius produced some new evidence, aimed at showing that the Culme-Seymours had committed perjury. He demonstrated that when Mary Culme-Seymour (Napier) had sworn under oath in 1911 that she did not meet George [V] between 1879 and 1898 she had, at the very least, been guilty of a terminological inexactitude. The archives of the Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle proved that on 21 August 1891 Mary had opened the ball at Portmouth Town Hall by dancing with Prince George. While Mary’s error seems, in itself, insufficient to overturn the verdict of 1911, or to prove the allegation of royal bigamy:

  it is difficult to believe that it was a mere mistake. Opening the dancing at a ball with the Prince of Wales (sic) is not the kind of thing a young lady of her background would ordinarily forget. For the purposes of her testimony in the criminal libel trial it may have been an inconvenient truth best forgotten.9

  Mylius did not apparently have access to any further evidence to discredit the testimony of the Culme-Seymours. Nevertheless, had he but known it, other indications exist to show that the family may have lied. We have seen that both the Admiral and his surviving daughter, Mary, insisted that Laura Culme-Seymour had never been married. Yet the present author has found some evidence to the contrary – evidence which seems previously to have been overlooked. A website entitled Maltagenealogy, and subtitled Libro d’Oro di Melita, explores the descendants of a Maltese nobleman, Salvatore Mallia Tabone, first Marchese di Fiddien, whose title was created in 1785. The list of Salvatore’s descendants includes: