2. For descriptions and illustrations of the interior, see Girouard, Windsor, pp. 65–74; Hibbert, The Court at Windsor, pp. 207–8.
3. For descriptions of the Grand Corridor, see Stoney & Weltzien, My Mistress the Queen, pp. 40–1; Paget, Embassies of Other Days, vol. I, pp. 74–5.
4. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 213; Hibbert, Court at Windsor, p. 107.
5. For the Queen’s preferences for beech logs and gas lighting, see Girouard, Windsor, p. 72.
6. Martin, Life of the Prince Consort [hereafter Martin], I: 127.
7. Jagow, Letters of the Prince Consort, p. 134.
8. Moncure, Daniel Conway, Memories and Experiences, vol. I, New York: Houghton, Mifflin & Co., p. 256.
9. RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1860: 23 December.
10. In the words of Colonel Francis Seymour, Groom of the Bedchamber to Prince Albert; RA VIC/ADDC10/44.
11. Dasent, Delane, p. 13.
12. Ibid., p. 14; Stoney & Weltzien, My Mistress the Queen, p. 42 re kitchens at Windsor.
13. RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1860: 24 December.
14. See entry for ‘Christmas’, in Rappaport, Queen Victoria, pp. 90–3; ‘How the Christmas Tree came to the English Court’, The Times, 22 December 1958; Hibbert, Court at Windsor, pp. 207–8. For descriptions of Christmas at Windsor in 1847 and 1851 by lady-in-waiting Eleanor Stanley, see Stanley, Twenty Years at Court, pp. 155–7 and 201–3.
15. Dasent, Delane, p. 15; RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1860: 24 December.
16. Dasent, Delane, p. 16.
17. Ibid.; RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1860: 24 December.
18. Ibid., 25 December.
19. Dennison, Last Princess, p. 22.
20. Dasent, Delane, p. 17.
21. RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1860: 27 December.
22. Dasent, Delane, p. 15.
23. Wake, Princess Louise, p. 23.
24. Stanley, Twenty Years at Court, p. 202.
25. Dasent, Delane, p. 15.
26. RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1860: 30 December. The anxieties expressed about Europe refer to the ongoing struggle for Italian unification.
27. Wyndham, Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, p. 401.
Part One: Albert the Good
Chapter 1: ‘The Treadmill of Never-Ending Business’
Title: Martin, V: 109–10.
1. Rhodes James, Prince Albert, p. 31.
2. In 1825 Duke Ernst succeeded his uncle, the Duke of Saxe-Gotha-Altenburg. The duchies shared with his estranged wife were reorganised and in 1826 Ernst assumed the new title of Duke of Saxe-Coburg & Gotha.
3. For a discussion of the unfounded rumours of illegitimacy, see James, Prince Albert, pp. 21–2; Hector Bolitho, who wrote extensively on Victoria and Albert, also scotched the rumours in a chapter, ‘The Prince Consort’s Mother’, in his A Biographer’s Notebook, pp. 102–22. For a recent argument in support of illegitimacy, see Richard Sotnick, The Coburg Conspiracy, London: Ephesus Publishing, 2008, esp. pp. 174–84.
4. Bolitho, Prince Consort and His Brother, p. 209.
5. Benson, Queen Victoria, p. 160; Ponsonby, Mary Ponsonby, p. 2.
6. Fulford, Prince Consort, p. 41.
7. Benson and Esher, Letters of Queen Victoria 1837–1861, II: 237 [hereafter Benson & Esher].
8. Jagow, Letters of the Prince Consort, p. 23.
9. Ibid., p. 24.
10. James, Prince Albert, p. 32.
11. Grey, Early Years, p. 200.
12. Duff, Albert & Victoria, p. 159.
13. Creston, Youthful Queen Victoria, p. 445.
14. Jerrold, Heart of Queen Victoria, p. 17.
15. Rosamund Brunel Gotch, Maria Lady Callcott, London: John Murray, 1937, p. 295. The remark was made by the Queen’s dresser, Marianne Skerrett.
16. Jagow, Letters of the Prince Consort, pp. 347–8.
17. John Jolliffe, ed., Neglected Genius: The Diaries of Benjamin Robert Haydon 1808–1846, London: Hutchinson, 1990, p. 203.
18. Hewett, ‘…and Mr Fortescue’, pp. 25–6.
19. Warwick, Afterthoughts, p. 4.
20. Martin, I: 160.
21. Fulford, Greville Memoirs, p. 223.
22. Emden, Behind the Throne, p. 68.
23. RAVIC/MAIN/R/1/193. This anonymous account of the last hours of the Prince Consort was written by one of the royal governesses, Madame Hocédé.
24. Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s Private Life, p. 22. Other nicknames were ‘The Pauper Prince’ and ‘Lovely Albert’. Lord Clarendon would privately refer to the Queen and Albert in correspondence as ‘Joseph and Eliza’ (ibid., p. 42); Victoria was also referred to as ‘Queen Albertine’.
25. Hewett, ‘…and Mr Fortescue’, p. 25.
26. Emden, Behind the Throne, p. 99.
27. Crawford, Victoria, Queen and Ruler, p. 52.
28. Pound, Albert, p. 182.
29. Martin, II: 248.
30. Benson & Esher, III: 317.
31. Martin, II: 60.
32. Benson & Esher, III: 240.
33. Clark, Sir Charles Lyell, p. 354.
34. Fulford, Prince Consort, p. 117.
35. Pound, Albert, p. 261.
36. Benson & Esher, II: 362.
37. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 215.
38. Hibbert, Queen Victoria in Her Letters and Journals [hereafter Letters and Journals], p. 151; Bolitho, Reign of Queen Victoria, p. 147. For useful summaries of the Prince’s health, see Duff, Albert & Victoria, pp. 24–5, and Bennett, King Without a Crown, pp. 239–44, 341–2, 352–4.
39. Jagow, Letters of the Prince Consort, p. 305.
40. James, Prince Albert, p. 211.
41. Stafford, Henry Greville, vol. 4, p. 227.
42. Bolitho, Albert Prince Consort, p. 166.
43. Magnus, King Edward the Seventh, p. 17; Strachey, Queen Victoria, p. 168.
44. Bennett, King Without a Crown, p. 360; Martin, V: 338–9; James, Prince Albert, p. 264.
Chapter 2: ‘The First Real Blow of Misfortune’
1. Hibbert, Letters and Journals, p. 112.
2. Fulford, Greville Memoirs, p. 247. Downer, Queen’s Knight, p. 104.
3. Corti, English Empress, p. 54.
4. Marie Louise, My Memories of Six Reigns, London: Evans Brothers, 1956, p. 113.
5. Fulford, Prince Consort, p. 25.
6. Phillipe Jullian, Edward and the Edwardians, London: Sidgwick & Jackson, 1967, p. 17.
7. Corti, English Empress, pp. 50–1; Pakula, Uncommon Woman, pp. 148–9.
8. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 174.
9. Ibid, pp. 173–4.
10. Bennett, King Without a Crown, p. 341; Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 206.
11. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 216.
12. Martin, IV: 500–1.
13. Ibid., 501–2.
14. Ibid., V: 109–10.
15. See Weintraub, Uncrowned King, pp. 393–4; Martin, V: 202–3; James, Prince Albert, p. 265; Jerrold, Married Life of Queen Victoria, p. 393.
16. Martin, V: 275; Bennett, Uncrowned King, p. 341.
17. Martin, V: 288.
18. See Robbins, ‘The Missing Doctor’, pp. 289–90.
19. Zalkiel’s Almanac for 1861, London: George Berger, p. 19.
20. In 1850 Jenner published On the Identity or Non-Identity of Typhoid and Typhus Fevers, the result of two years’ study of ‘continued fever’ at the London Fever Hospital. In it he defined the differences between the two fevers, typhoid being conveyed by contaminated food or water, typhus being carried by lice.
21. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 309.
22. Martin, V: 292–4.
23. Ibid., 295–6.
24. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 308.
25. Ibid., p. 310.
26. RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1861: 21 February.
27. Martin, V: 317–18. Martin’s account of the Duchess’s death is on pp. 316–19 and the quotations from the Queen’s journal given in it differ from later published versions, in that these were used by Martin before the text was expurgated after the Queen’s death.
2
8. Noel, Princess Alice, p. 70.
29. Wyndham, Correspondence of Sarah Spencer, pp. 338–9.
30. Martin, I: 202–3.
31. Benson & Esher, III: 6–7.
32. Fulford, Dearest Child, pp. 199–200, letter of 6 July 1859.
33. See K. D. Mathews and C. G. Reynolds, Queen Victoria, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 50–1.
34. See Albert, Queen Victoria’s Sister, chapter 9, and Fulford, Dearest Child, pp. 247, 249.
35. Strafford, Henry Greville, vol. 3, p. 33.
36. Fulford, Dearest Child, pp. 297–301.
37. Wallace, Journal of Benjamin Moran, p. 832.
38. For Victoria’s response to seeing death for the first time, see her letter to Leopold of 26 March, in Letters and Journals, pp. 118–19. For the Duchess’s funeral, see The Times, 26 March 1861.
39. Sarah Tytler, Life of Her Gracious Majesty, vol. 2, pp. 185–6.
40. For court mourning during these years, see Stanley, Twenty Years at Court, pp. 320–3, 376–7.
41. Kennedy, My Dear Duchess, p. 141; Wiebe, Letters of Benjamin Disraeli, vol. 8, p. 155, letter of Lord Henry Lennox, 18 December 1861.
42. See Lord Clarendon to the Duchess of Manchester, 3 April 1861, in Kennedy, My Dear Duchess, pp. 143–4.
43. See letters to King Leopold, 26 and 30 March, Benson & Esher, III: 436–7.
44. Windsor & Bolitho, Letters of Lady Augusta Stanley, p. 200. [Hereafter Windsor & Bolitho]
45. Albert, Queen Victoria’s Sister, p. 189; Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 319.
46. Martin, V: 335.
47. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 334.
48. RA LC/LCO/CER/MEMO, Drawing Room, St James’s Palace, 19 June 1861.
49. Weintraub, Uncrowned King, p. 402.
Chapter 3: ‘Fearfully in Want of a True Friend’
1. Martin, V: 374.
2. Ibid.: 369.
3. Cooke, Memoir of HRH Princess Mary Adelaide, vol. 1, p. 364.
4. Ibid.
5. Magnus, King Edward the Seventh, p. 47.
6. RA VIC/MAIN/QVJ/1861: 26 August.
7. Duff, Queen Victoria’s Highland Journals, pp. 96–100.
8. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 354.
9. Duff, Queen Victoria’s Highland Journals, p. 106.
10. Ibid., p. 110.
11. Ibid., p. 114. Victoria added the postscript when preparing her Highland journals for publication in 1867.
12. Benson & Esher, III: 461–2.
13. Martin, V: 407.
14. Letter to Queen Victoria, 22 October 1861, quoted in Fulford, Prince Consort, p. 249.
15. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 356. Victoria was in fact alluding to a favourite sermon by the Roman Catholic convert, Henry Edward Manning, ‘The Commemoration of the Faithful Departed’, in which he alluded to ‘the habitual consciousness of an unseen world’. She had this quotation copied into her ‘Album Consolativum’ after Albert’s death. See BL Add. 62089, fo. 95; Sermons of Henry Edward Manning, London: James Burns, 1846, p. 326.
16. Martin, V: 415; Fulford, Dearest Mama, p. 30.
17. Katharine M. Lyell, ed., Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, vol. 2, London: John Murray, 1881, p. 352.
18. See Strafford, Henry Greville, vol. 4, p. 226; Longford, Victoria, p. 313.
19. RA VIC/MAIN/R/1/193.
20. Branks, Heaven our Home, pp. 8, 6, 70, 52. Branks was a minister at Torphichen, West Lothian; his book tapped into the vogue for consolatory literature and homilies on death that proliferated after Albert died; it was in its eighth reprint by 1876. Meet for Heaven followed in 1862 and Life in Heaven in 1863 – all three books selling in hundreds of thousands of copies in the UK and USA.
21. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 9 November 1861. All comments by the Queen on Prince Albert’s illness from this date to his death on 14 December are taken from her ‘Account of My Beloved Albert’s Last Fatal Illness from Nov. 9 to Dec. 14 1861’. Entries up to the 11 December were written at the time; those after were added in 1862 and 1872.
22. Royal Pharmaceutical Society: Queen Victoria’s Account Book 1861–1869, which lists at the front the Queen’s regular standing order for medical supplies, followed by monthly lists of additional supplies and their cost.
23. Martin, V: 411.
24. Longford, Victoria RI, pp. 292–3.
25. Fulford, Dearest Child, pp. 365–6.
26. Ibid., p. 367.
27. Wake, Princess Louise, p. 42; Jerrold, Queen Victoria’s John Brown, p. 52.
28. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 356.
29. Corti, English Empress, p. 72.
30. Hibbert, Edward VII, p. 40; St Aubyn, Queen Victoria, p. 279.
31. Bennett, King Without a Crown, p. 367; Scheele, Prince Consort, pp. 125–6.
32. Fulford, Prince Consort, p. 266.
33. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/141/94: 16 November 1861.
34. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/141/95: 20 November 1861.
35. Martin, V: 414.
36. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 22 November.
37. Martin, V: 417; RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 23 and 25 November.
38. See Nightingale’s letter to Mary Clarke Mohl, December 1861: ‘Albert was really a Minister – this very few knew. Sir Robert Peel taught him’. Vicinus and Nergaard, Ever Yours, pp. 232–3
39. Martin, V: 412; James, Prince Albert, p. 270.
40. Martin, V: 417.
41. Benson & Esher, III: 468.
42. Martin, V: 417.
43. Wilson, Life and Times of Queen Victoria, vol. 2, p. 100. For an interesting medical article on the Windsor epidemic, see William Budd, ‘On Intestinal Fever, The Lancet, vol. 1, 1860, pp. 390–1.
44. Martin, V: 417; Fulford, Dearest Child, pp. 369–70.
45. Ibid., 28 November.
46. Martin, V: 423.
47. Martin, V: 427.
48. Ball, Queen Victoria: Scenes and Incidents, p. 197.
49. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 370; Corti, English Empress, p. 72.
50. The Times, 28 November 1861.
51. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 370.
52. Bennett, King Without a Crown, p. 370.
53. Benson & Esher, III: 469.
54. Martin, V: 427.
55. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 1 December.
56. For a detailed discussion of the Trent affair, see Weintraub, Uncrowned King, pp. 408–21.
57. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 371.
Chapter 4: ‘Our Most Precious Invalid’
Title: Queen Victoria to the King of the Belgians, 12 December 1861, in Benson & Esher III: 472.
1. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 2 December 1861.
2. Ibid.
3. ‘Descriptions of the death of the Prince Consort, 1861’, Correspondence and Papers of Dean Stanley, Cheshire Archives, DSA 85.
4. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 3 December.
5. RA VIC/Add MS/C/10/47: 2 December 1861.
6. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 2 December 1861.
7. Connell, Regina v. Palmerston, p. 313.
8. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 3 December.
9. Whittle, Victoria and Albert, pp. 106, 113
10. Staatsarchiv Darmstadt: Briefe von Alice D24 Nr. 25/3–4 & 26/1: 3 December 1861; Windsor and Bolitho, p. 239.
11. Staatsarchiv Darmstadt: Briefe von Alice D24 Nr. 25/3–4 & 26/1: 3 December 1861.
12. See e.g. Daily News and Morning Chronicle, 4 December 1861.
13. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 4 December.
14. Ibid; Benson & Esher, III: 470.
15. BL Add. MS 44325, Gladstone Papers vol. CCXL, letters from the Duchess of Sutherland; 19 December 1861.
16. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 4 December.
17. Ibid.: 5 December.
18. Ibid.
19. Martin, V: 430. Excerpts from the Queen’s account of Prince Albert’s final days from 1 to 8 December as originally written by her can be found in Martin, V: 427–38. These original entries, published in 1880, differ slightly from their later edited transcription made after the Queen’s death.
20. R
A VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 6 December.
21. Ibid.
22. Benson & Esher, III: 470–1.
23. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 372.
24. Connell, Regina v. Palmerston, pp. 313–14.
25. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 7 December.
26. Martin, V: 431; Longford, Victoria RI, p. 296.
27. Ibid.
28. Ibid.
29. Connell, Regina v. Palmerston, p. 314.
30. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 7 December.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.; Windsor & Bolitho, p. 240.
33. RA VIC/MAIN/R/1/193. Written on 23 December by Madame Hocédé to her family this letter was later, in all innocence, published by them in France, going against the Queen’s demand for absolute discretion by members of the royal household. It appeared as a pamphlet, published by John Snow of Paternoster Row in 1864, and was syndicated in many journals as ‘The Last Hours of Prince Albert’ – see e.g. Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine, vol. 47, 1864, p. 906. Madame Hocédé had, by then, been quietly pensioned off for the additional indiscretion of encouraging the princesses to read ‘unsuitable’ books and went to Paris, where she set up a school for Protestant English girls. Kenyon, Scenes in the Life, p. 78.
34. Ibid.
35. Ibid.
36. Staatsarchiv Darmstadt: Briefe von Alice D24 Nr. 25/3–4 & 26/1: 9 December 1861.
37. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 8 December.
38. Ibid.
39. The Times, 9 December 1861.
40. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 9 December.
41. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 374.
42. Holland, Notebooks of a Spinster Lady, p. 177; Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 177.
43. Connell, Regina v. Palmerston, p. 315.
44. RA VIC/MAIN/R 1/12: 10 December.
45. RA VIC/MAIN/M/R/1/58/9 and 18.
46. Martin, V: 435.
47. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 10 December.
48. Fulford, Dearest Child, p. 373.
49. Ibid.
50. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 11 December; part of this entry was written by the Queen that day, the continuation on 24 December.
51. Martin, V: 435.
52. Benson & Esher, III: 472.
53. Fulford, Dearest Mama, p. 374; RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 11 December.
54. RA VIC/MAIN/Z/142: 11 December.
55. Ibid.
56. Strafford, Henry Greville, vol. 3, p. 420.
57. Malmesbury, Memoirs of an Ex-Minister, p. 550.
58. RA VIC/MAIN/R/1/19, 22: 11–12 December.
59. Walsh, Religious Life and Influence of Queen Victoria, p. 114.
60. See e.g. Morning Chronicle, Daily News, The Times for 12 December 1861.
A Magnificent Obsession: The Death That Changed the Monarchy Page 37
