Victoria is an interesting piece. It’s written by journalist Julia Baird (whose sibling, incidentally, is Mike Baird, former premier of NSW – which perhaps explains why she was able to get the governor-general of Australia to advocate on her behalf for archive access). While the majority of Baird’s career and writing is as a journalist, she has a PhD in history, and it shows – this is a substantial biography. Having said that, it’s not too heavy – Baird does an excellent job of making it readable, moving through an entire lifetime at a pace that both examines the key issues, but does so without getting bogged down in detail. It’s an impressive book.
Baird deliberately sets out to write a piece about Victoria the person – as part of that, she examines her relationships, her growth and change, her challenges (being both monarch and a woman in a deeply patriarchal society, among others), her relationships (with both John Brown and Abdul Karim, amongst others), and her impacts and legacy. But it’s less a piece about Victorian politics and power – which is understandable, and out of scope given what Baird is interested in.
As someone who wanted to read more about Victorian politics, this is an interesting and accessible entrypoint, and if you’re interested in the history (but don’t yet have your PhD in it), this is well worth a read.
Quotes
THE TEENAGE QUEEN
CHAPTER 7 The Coronation: “A Dream out of The Arabian Nights” > Page 124
Down below in Hyde Park, actors impersonating the queen and her entourage tried to enact the scene exactly the same way at the same time, as the beer- swilling audience shouted encouragement.
CHAPTER 8 Learning to Rule > Page 131
Lord Melbourne was an unlikely leader, made prime minister for the second time two years before Victoria became queen largely because he was the least offensive candidate. He was not passionate about politics and couldn’t muster sufficient energy to care about social ills, let alone combat them. At times, when reformers visited him to put the case for improvements such as narrowing the death penalty or introducing compulsory education, he would pull feathers out of a pillow, toss them up in the air, and blow them across the top of his desk as they spoke.
CHAPTER 8 Learning to Rule > Page 132
Just a few years into their marriage, William Lamb began receiving anonymous letters telling him of his wife’s adultery. Caroline’s best- known lover was the glamorous poet Lord Byron, who was being feted by London after the publication of his adventures began in 1812, in Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage. Caroline read it immediately and, after insisting they meet, declared him to be, in a phrase that has been immortalized since, “mad, bad and dangerous to know.”
CHAPTER 8 Learning to Rule > Page 132
They wrote reams of love letters— to one, lying in a folder in the archives of the British Library, Caroline attached a bloodied clipping of her own pubic hair— and attempted to elope (some still believe they were married in secret).
CHAPTER 8 Learning to Rule > Page 135
The irony was that Melbourne was a Whig. Previous Whig PMs, most notably Lord Grey between 1830 and 1834, had enacted welfare laws, ended slavery, and expanded the vote. But Melbourne even once told Archbishop Whately that he would have done “nothing at all” about slavery.
CHAPTER 9 A Scandal in the Palace > Page 145
The fact that it had been considered necessary to establish, crudely, that Lady Flora was still a virgin, in a virgin queen’s court, was a gross violation of her dignity and honor. When Lady Flora’s brother, the Marquess of Hastings, heard, he rushed to London to determine who was to blame, to insist on reparation, and to defend his family’s honor. He saw Lord Melbourne and baldly told Victoria she had received bad advice and needed to find out who the originator of the slander was so that they might be brought to punishment.
CHAPTER 9 A Scandal in the Palace > Page 146
Lady Flora’s mother decided to appeal to the queen. On March 7, the Dowager Marchioness of Hastings wrote a strong letter to Victoria— through the Duchess of Kent— seeking her help. She asked her to refute “the slanders” with an act designed to show her indignation, and ended: “To a female sovereign especially, women of all ranks in Britain look with confidence for protection and (notwithstanding the difference of their rank) for sympathy.” But Victoria had no sympathy; she decided the letter was foolish and, provocatively, sent it back to her mother without a word. This error of judgment would incite the beginning of a relentless, vitriolic, and public campaign by the Hastings family to expose the royal court and demand accountability. The dowager, who was unwell and mortified by what had happened to her daughter, then wrote to Lord Melbourne, asking for the removal of Dr. Clark. Melbourne responded that her demand was “so unprecedented and objectionable” that he would not reply to it, only deigning to confirm receipt of her letter. Next the Hastings family went to the press. On March 24, Lady Flora’s uncle sent the Examiner an account of the affair based on a letter his niece had sent him; it was published in full. Lady Flora blamed the Whig ladies- in- waiting, as well as “a certain foreign lady, whose hatred to the Duchess is no secret.”
CHAPTER 9 A Scandal in the Palace > Page 148
The problem was also political: the queen and her prime minister were Whigs and Lady Flora was a Tory. The paranoia of the Tories was fueled, and many Whigs believed this scandal was used as political leverage to cast aspersions on an unmarried queen and her ladies, as well as on the prime minister.
CHAPTER 9 A Scandal in the Palace > Page 148
Three days earlier, on May 6, Lord Melbourne’s political career had been dealt a fatal blow; his government won by only five votes a vote on a bill that would have enforced antislavery legislation in the Jamaican sugar trade. (The slenderness of the majority was enough to undermine his leadership.) Since then, it had been clear that Peel was the obvious choice for PM— and that he did not have the full support of his queen. No, she said to him, she would not remove any of the Whig ladies in her bedchamber simply because he was now prime minister.
CHAPTER 9 A Scandal in the Palace > Page 151
She refused Peel’s suggestion of changing only the senior ladies— the Mistress of the Robes had precedence over the other ladies— arguing that this had never been done before. Could it be right that her household attendants be plucked from her grasp simply because the government had changed? Her ladies were hardly politicians. (She repeatedly said that this had not happened to a queen before; Peel insisted it was different because she was queen regnant. He was right— there had been no woman as sovereign since 1714— but no queen has been asked to do the same since.)
CHAPTER 9 A Scandal in the Palace > Page 152
Peel then bluntly told Victoria that if she did not agree to remove some of her ladies, who were married to some of his most vehement enemies, he could not form a government. Victoria, pleased by the prospect of Lord Melbourne returning, told Peel her mind was made up and she would write to him in a few hours or in the morning to give him her final decision.
CHAPTER 9 A Scandal in the Palace > Page 153
The campaign by the Hastings family had been successful; public sympathy was clearly with Lady Flora, who kept appearing in public so that people would not think she was pregnant. The distressed Duchess of Kent was convinced that Lady Flora was going to die, but even in June, Victoria was still dismissing Lady Flora’s condition as a “bilious attack.”
CHAPTER 9 A Scandal in the Palace > Page 155
Lady Flora made her last wish as her weeping family surrounded her: that a postmortem be conducted on her body that would finally, thoroughly prove her innocence. There were still rumblings in the court about a stillborn child. Even on the morning of her death, a protester wrote on a placard that Lady Flora died of a botched abortion. But the autopsy report, which Victoria waited anxiously for all day, showed Lady Flora had a grossly enlarged liver, which was pressing on her stomach. It also reported that “the uterus and its appendages presented the usual appearances of the healthy virgin state.” Even in death, her chastity was probed. Public fury was revived by the news; Victoria and Melbourne were hissed at in public, hats stayed on when the queen’s carriage wheeled past in a gesture of disrespect, and voices stayed quiet when the royal toast was given amid whispers of murder.
CHAPTER 9 A Scandal in the Palace > Page 155
The queen had not been thinking of her subjects. For the first time in her life, she had been part of a clique, and it was a powerful one; and the pull of scandal, revenge, and bitchy gossip had been too great.
ALBERT: THE MAN SOME CALLED KING
CHAPTER 10 Virago in Love > Page 178
After the pro- Catholic King James II was hurled off the throne in the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and replaced by the Protestant William III, an act was passed that prohibited any English monarch from being a Catholic, or marrying one. This is still the case today. Albert was a strict Lutheran with a strong personal faith, but Catholics dominated his family. Suspicions were raised when Victoria’s address to the Privy Council did not have the word “Protestant” in it. (Foolishly, given the intense anti- Catholicism in the country and Victoria’s crucial position as Defender of the Faith, Melbourne had advised taking it out.) After the Duke of Wellington raised the matter in Parliament, and the Tory papers made snide remarks, it was reinserted in the official version.
CHAPTER 10 Virago in Love > Page 183
She must not forget to tell Albert, she thought, as the seamstress pinned ivory folds to her now- slender torso, that he should not shave for the wedding. If there was one thing she would insist upon, it would be that he keep the thin mustache he had when she met him. She was so impressed by it that she told Lord Melbourne that all the cavalry should be made to grow one, which Melbourne “saw no objection to.” She wanted it to be part of an official uniform. It is a curious image: rows of uniformed men on horseback, all wearing identical narrow mustaches because of an infatuated young queen.
CHAPTER 11 The Bride: “I Never, Never Spent Such an Evening” > Page 189
Victoria had chosen to wear white mostly because it was the perfect color to highlight the delicate lace— it was not then a conventional color for brides. Before bleaching techniques were mastered, white was a rare and expensive color, more a symbol of wealth than purity. Victoria was not the first to wear it, but she made it popular by example.
CHAPTER 11 The Bride: “I Never, Never Spent Such an Evening” > Page 190
Victoria had a clutch of farcical, fixated stalkers, some of whom grew quite distressed by the upcoming nuptials. Several were committed. One devoted man stationed himself outside the gates of Kensington Palace and followed her carriage when it appeared each day. Another, Ned Hayward, sent a torrent of letters to the Home Office desperately seeking to propose to Victoria. He finally tried to stop her horse to hand a letter to her himself, but was arrested. Another gentleman, believing that he was the rightful king and that Victoria would be an excellent housekeeper, climbed over the Windsor Castle gate and declared, “I demand entrance into the castle as the king of England.”
CHAPTER 13 The Palace Intruders > Page 228
They found an archaic and extraordinarily inefficient structure, with responsibility split between the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Steward, with some input from the Master of the Horse and the Office of Woods and Works. Lamps in Buckingham Palace were provided by the Lord Chamberlain’s office, cleaned by the Lord Steward’s office, and, mostly, lit by the Master of the Horse. The windows were always dirty, as the inside and outside were never cleaned at the same time: while the Lord Chamberlain’s office was responsible for the interior of the palace, the Office of Woods and Works was in charge of the exterior. The Lord Steward’s staff prepared and laid the fires, while the Lord Chamberlain’s lit them. Broken windows and cupboards were unattended to for months because before fixing them, the chief cook had to prepare and sign a requisition, which then needed to be signed by the Master of the Household, authorized by the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, and given to the Clerk of the Works, under the Office of Woods and Forests.
CHAPTER 13 The Palace Intruders > Page 229
Albert identified a series of scams and perks that servants had abused for decades: people outside the palace often forged the signatures of the queen’s ladies when ordering carriages, charging the cost of their ride to the royal household; fresh candles were put out each day while the footmen pocketed the previous day’s, many unlit; and expensive staff dinners were offered to those with only tenuous connections to the royal court. Albert slashed salaries, sometimes by as much as two- thirds, to account for the fact that many servants worked in the palace for only half the year.
CHAPTER 13 The Palace Intruders > Page 232
In June, when Melbourne’s government lost a debate on foreign sugar duties, Peel forced a vote of no confidence and Parliament was dissolved.
CHAPTER 13 The Palace Intruders > Page 233
Victoria overtly displayed her bias by visiting influential Whig houses during the elections, but to little effect. The Conservatives returned with a large majority on August 19. For the first time, the queen did not go to the opening session.
CHAPTER 13 The Palace Intruders > Page 237
Baroness Lehzen and Albert clashed repeatedly as she tried to protect her territory and he tried to expand his. Stockmar told Lord Granville that Lehzen was “foolish” to contest Albert’s influence, and not to recognize that her position was different now that Victoria was married. Even Leopold, once a friend, described her as a “great future danger” for Albert.
CHAPTER 13 The Palace Intruders > Page 238
When she neglected to tell Albert that Captain Childers, one of the queen’s courtiers, had fallen in love with the queen, he accused her of incompetence. Lehzen insisted she had told the Lord Chamberlain instead of Albert only because Albert had been so rude to her that it was impossible to talk to him. When a woman like Lehzen threatened Albert’s authority, he became unusually nasty. She was generally viewed, as Albert’s biographer Roger Fulford put it, as a “spinster gremlin.” Albert referred to her as die Blaste— the hag— in letters to his brother. When she got jaundice that Christmas, he called her “the Yellow lady.” Albert blamed her for Victoria’s shortcomings: what he believed to be a substandard education— even though she was a better linguist, fluent in English, German, and French, with some Italian— and her anxiety about conversations with scholars and politicians much older than she. He was particularly critical of Victoria in the months before Lehzen left, but once she was gone, Albert described her to his brother as “the most perfect companion a man could wish for.”
CHAPTER 13 The Palace Intruders > Page 241
Albert was infuriated and appalled by such a public scene. Muttering “I must have patience,” he returned to his rooms and refused to talk to Victoria for days. Stockmar acted as an intermediary. Victoria wrote to him that same day, immediately contrite, saying the argument was like a bad dream.
CHAPTER 14 King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 250
It was approaching 4: 30 P.M. Police had lined the street since one o’clock, holding back the dense crowd, who noisily cheered any member of Parliament who opposed the Corn Laws. Inside Westminster, Peel walked into the House of Commons, bowed gracefully to the Speaker, and walked to the center of the Treasury Bench.
CHAPTER 14 King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 250
A hush descended when Prince Albert entered the Strangers’ Gallery. Lord George Bentinck, a Tory with a passion for horse racing, rolled his eyes: Did this German prince really think he could bring royal favor into the debate? First it was the queen with Melbourne; now, Albert with Peel? It seemed highly irregular, and wrong, to have this interference from the monarchy.
CHAPTER 14 King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 252
(Repeal was not, it should be noted, an individual achievement. The Anti– Corn Law League, which came largely from the middle class, was a polished, well- funded, and unified political group. The group’s leaders were clever orators and effective in placing aristocrats on the defensive by castigating them as wealthy landowners, inert politicians, and morally bankrupt leaders. Middle- class opinion was marshaled and aristocrats were criticized in a way they never had been before; it was a significant political shift.)
CHAPTER 14 King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 254
In the 1840s, political attention was turning, in general, to the way the working class lived and worked. In May 1842, the first parliamentary report on the employment of children was accompanied by shocking illustrations of six- year- olds chained to coal carts. According to the report, the youngest children employed were responsible for ventilating the mines, keeping the trapdoors shut until a coal car needed to pass through, then opening and shutting them correctly. These children, called trappers, were aged between four and ten. The Examiner reported that what they hated most was the dark in the dungeons: they used to beg colliers for candle stubs. Women and older children were put to use drawing the coal carts along passageways too narrow for grown men. They crawled along the ground like animals through puddles and piles of rocks. The girls sometimes worked stripped to the waist like the boys, men often went naked in the intense heat, and rape and sexual assault were common in the mines and pits. There were concerns that women who worked there would no longer be suitable for marriage.
CHAPTER 14 King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 257
While Albert labored over plans to lift people out of poverty and to improve the housing of the working class, Victoria needed more visual, immediate, individual prompting.
CHAPTER 14 King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 262
When the couple traveled on a train for the first time, a short trip from Slough to London in 1843, Albert suffered motion sickness and was unsettled by the speed of forty- four miles per hour. Victoria loved it: “I find the motion so very easy, far more so than a carriage and cannot understand how any one can suffer from it.”
CHAPTER 14 King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 263
It would be wrong to assume, as some have, that Albert’s efforts and opinions obliterated Victoria’s. When it came to matters such as religious tolerance, for example, Victoria had firm opinions from an early age. When Robert Peel wanted to improve tertiary education for Catholics and provide more funding for the Catholic Maynooth training college for priests, Victoria supported him despite the surge of protest in England. She was remarkably progressive about religion: “I blush for the form of religion we profess, that it should be so void of all right feeling, & so wanting in Charity. Are we to drive these 700,000 Roman Catholics, who are badly educated, to desperation & violence?” Victoria praised Peel for standing up against a “tide of bigotry, and blind fanaticism.”
CHAPTER 14 King to All Intents: “Like a Vulture into His Prey” > Page 264
Peel’s Corn Law triumph cost him his career. On June 25, the prime minister lost an important vote in the House of Commons, partly because the protectionists had combined to vote against him. He resigned and retired, and the Whigs came to power once more. The queen, who had grown fond of Peel, told him she and the prince considered him “a kind and true friend.”
CHAPTER 16 Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 285
The royal family retreated to the woods of Osborne, where they awaited news from London with some trepidation.
CHAPTER 16 Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 285
The hero- worshipped, elderly Duke of Wellington was placed in charge of the army once again, for the last time. The government seized control of the telegraphic system to ensure that revolutionaries could not broadcast false information, and a Removal of Aliens Act was rushed through Parliament to give the home secretary powers to remove any foreign citizen against whom allegations had been made. The Chartists boasted of a petition bearing five million names, so enormous it was rolled up like a large bundle of hay and pulled by four horses. They hoped for revolution, but at the very least they planned to wring some compromises out of Parliament. On April 10, under a bright blue sky, the Chartists trekked to four meeting points around London, holding banners that read LIVE AND LET LIVE. A phalanx of four thousand Metropolitan Police surrounded Kennington Common— formerly used for public executions and cricket matches— and a further eight thousand regular troops were hidden at various points around London. Four batteries of artillery were installed along bridges, and armed ships were anchored at key points along the Thames. Armed men lined the Mall to prevent access to Buckingham Palace. Prime Minister Lord John Russell lined his windows with parliamentary papers, and his pregnant wife accompanied him to the safety of Downing Street for fear the sound of cannons firing would trigger early labor. In the empty government buildings, which were barricaded with boxes of papers, men with guns hid behind pillars and curtains, peering out every few minutes to see if the rioting had begun. The troops were told to fire if necessary.
CHAPTER 16 Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 286
He could have ordered the Chartists to attack, in the hope that troops and police would crumble and defect as they had in many European countries, but his instincts told him this was futile. On the day of the protest, his fears were confirmed: only twenty- three thousand turned up, just one- tenth the number hoped for.
CHAPTER 16 Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 289
The foreign secretary at this time was Lord Palmerston, a man who had an unshakable belief in his own diplomatic skills. Known as Lord Cupid because he had charmed women as a bachelor, in 1848 he was still a good- looking fifty- four- year- old, now married to Lord Melbourne’s clever sister Emily. The queen had found him pleasant when she was a teenager, but now she and Albert were suspicious of him. One winter’s night in 1839, he was found in the bedrooms of one of the ladies- in- waiting, allegedly forcing himself upon her before screams rang through the corridors and he fled the room. Palmerston insisted he was merely lost; in truth, he was simply letting himself into a room he thought was occupied by Lady Emily Lamb, to whom he was then engaged. Albert remained uncertain, though, and used the story to argue against Palmerston a decade later.
CHAPTER 16 Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 290
On August 20, 1848, Victoria wrote a reprimanding letter to Palmerston after discovering that a “private letter” addressed to her had been “cut open at the Foreign Office.” She reproached him again a few days later for failing to update her on the feud between Austria and Sardinia. A series of high- minded, dictatorial dispatches by Palmerston to Spain and then Portugal— which ignored the advice of the prime minister, the man who was his superior— also infuriated the queen. Palmerston was eager to help pry Italy away from Austria and make Venice a republic, which Victoria thought abominable: Why help these foreign rebels when they were wrestling with their own rebels in Ireland?
CHAPTER 16 Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 293
For Victoria, hierarchy was divine: men were the heads of their households, and the sovereign was the head of state. She believed that peace in both her marriage and her country required obedience— even though her own was rarely forthcoming. A strong strain of liberal sympathy had emerged in Europe, but for now, her country was safe, and little had changed.
CHAPTER 16 Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 293
In Ireland, the 1848 potato crop had again failed and people on the streets of Dublin were crying for food. The British Parliament was so nervous about the possibility of rebellion that they suspended habeas corpus so that people in Ireland could be arrested without a warrant. The subterranean anger in the impoverished country threatened only to get worse. In 1848, made nervous by events in Europe, Victoria was of the firm belief that any restive Irish should be “crushed” and taught a lesson. Even then, her views were considered strident.
CHAPTER 16 Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 295
He was known for his dislike of the aristocracy, and he was clear about the purpose of his work: “The unequal division of property, and the dangers of poverty and envy arising therefrom, is the principal evil. Means must necessarily be found, not for diminishing riches (as the communists wish), but to make facilities for the poor. But there is the rub.” Such remarks show that Albert was grappling with the questions raised by the European revolutions— and hoping to stem local unrest by addressing them.
CHAPTER 16 Annus Mirabilis: The Revolutionary Year > Page 297
Britain avoided revolution for several reasons: a loyal middle class who loved their queen, a government that applied force ruthlessly when needed, and canny politicians like Peel who introduced laws lowering the cost of food. Plus, by transporting the most radical dissenters to far- off colonies such as Australia, the government was able to siphon off some of the greatest political leaders of the Irish independence and Chartist movements.
CHAPTER 17 What Albert Did: The Great Exhibition of 1851 > Page 303
Henry Cole, an energetic civil servant famed for making the first Christmas card and helping to launch the penny post.
CHAPTER 18 The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 316
The Crimean War was, in many respects, an unnecessary one. “God forbid!” Victoria had cried, when she first mentioned the possibility of conflict. Few could fathom why Britain should rush to defend Turkey against Russia— they had little in common with either country and there had been peace in Europe for forty years, since the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815. But the Russian czar Nicholas I— a despot who ruled over a backward country populated by more than twenty- two million serfs— was now eyeing the weakening Ottoman Empire to his south. Over the past few decades, the Ottoman— or Turkish— Empire had stagnated economically, had been slow to modernize, and had endured a series of ineffective governments that too readily capitulated to the demands of European countries. Czar Nicholas called it the “sick man of Europe” and wanted to carve it up and distribute the spoils. It was a geographically crucial region: Constantinople linked Europe with Asia by land and sea; it was there that the Black Sea met the Mediterranean. If Russia were to edge south into Turkey, it could potentially block crucial chains of supply— especially Britain’s route to India— and expand its sea power through its naval base at Sevastopol.
CHAPTER 18 The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 318
Victoria fretted about leaving London for Scotland at the end of the summer of 1853 while talk of war simmered, but she was assured by Lord Aberdeen— who had been made prime minister in 1852— that she would not be excluded from crucial decisions. She was outraged, then, to discover in October that Lord Palmerston had persuaded the prime minister to send troops to the Black Sea in a defensive position of war, without seeking her consent. Albert was also urgently concerned about a drift toward conflict. He wanted the four neutral powers— Britain, France, Prussia, and Austria— to act in concert to avoid it. He also worried about the precariousness of an exclusive alliance with France. The couple left Balmoral immediately and returned to Windsor to demand an explanation from Lord Aberdeen.
CHAPTER 18 The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 318
Victoria was increasingly concerned that England was assuming the risks of a European war, offering support to Turkey without having bound it to any conditions. She furiously lobbied her ministers, but she was unable to slow the momentum to fight.
CHAPTER 18 The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 319
With defter diplomacy, the involvement of Britain and France could easily have been avoided. But public opinion had been whipped into a frenzy.
CHAPTER 18 The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 324
Victoria’s wartime diary reveals how frequently those around her spun even the worst news into something positive, how eager the generals were to assure her that their men did not mind suffering for their country. Sir John McNeill, who had been sent to investigate the Crimean hospitals as a sanitary commissioner, gave Victoria “most interesting, gratifying, & comforting accounts of the state of the brave Army” and downplayed the newspaper reports. He described the army camp as a kind of Eden: “The Camp was one of the happiest imaginable; singing, dancing, playing games went on, & there was an incredible disregard of danger: ‘the soldiers no more minded shot & bullets, than apples & pears.’ . . . There is not ‘one man in that Army, who would not gladly give up his life to prove his devotion to Yr Majesty.’”
CHAPTER 18 The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 333
In 1857, Albert was at last made Prince Consort, to Victoria’s great satisfaction.
CHAPTER 18 The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 335
An inevitable part of being a queen at a time of national crisis is incongruity. As the violence and bloodshed continued in the Crimea, Victoria wrote about the moonlight on the sea, the snow, blooms, blue skies, and the “peculiar and soothing effect” of a sunny week at Osborne. As soldiers sailed for the East and shivered on hillsides without tents or warm clothes, Victoria was hunting for Easter eggs with the children, playing with stuffed mice, and hiding quietly in the heather as Albert hunted deer.
CHAPTER 18 The Crimea: “This Unsatisfactory War” > Page 336
Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, was now a doting grandmother and a crucial part of the family, their estrangement long forgotten. Both mother and daughter looked back on the conflict caused by Conroy with regret. The duchess wrote to Victoria that the death of Conroy in 1854 grieved her: “[ He] has been of great use to me, but unfortunately has also done great harm.” She went on to ask her daughter not to dwell on the past, when “passions of those who stood between us” had sparked mistrust. A wiser Victoria reassured her mother that those days were long gone.
CHAPTER 19 Royal Parents and the Dragon of Dissatisfaction > Page 339
So- called mud larks, usually children of seven or eight, collected rubbish from the river, roaming the banks and pipe ends with kettles and baskets dangling from their arms, hunting for pieces of coal or wood, copper nails, or any salable rubbish.
CHAPTER 19 Royal Parents and the Dragon of Dissatisfaction > Page 349
On January 27, 1859, Victoria became a grandmother. She ran along the castle corridors to tell Albert about the birth of Vicky’s first child, Frederick William Victor Albert, the future Kaiser Wilhelm II. Victoria then sent out a flurry of telegrams as bells rang in the town below Windsor Castle and illuminations flared. She had at first been horrified to discover her daughter had become pregnant so quickly; she called it “horrid news.” Vicky, sounding like her father’s daughter, responded that she was proud to create an immortal soul. Victoria rolled her eyes at the suggestion that birth was some kind of spiritual endeavor: “I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments; when our poor nature becomes so very animal and unecstatic.”
CHAPTER 19 Royal Parents and the Dragon of Dissatisfaction > Page 350
It was only when Vicky came to visit in May 1859 that Victoria learned that her grandson’s left arm had been injured at birth and hung weakly from its socket, paralyzed. When Victoria finally met little Willy in 1860 on a trip to Germany, she described him as a “fine fat child, with a beautiful white soft skin.” Victoria was an adoring grandmother, who believed her children’s offspring to be “the best children I ever saw.”
CHAPTER 19 Royal Parents and the Dragon of Dissatisfaction > Page 352
The abstract, philosophical nature of Prince Albert’s brain is illustrated in his letters to Vicky. When she said she was homesick, for example, her mother warmly assured her she was missed. But her father wrote an analysis of the condition of homesickness. Assuring her it was a natural state, he explained it was “a painful yearning, which might exist quite independently of, and simultaneously with, complete contentment and complete happiness.” It was a dualism, he said, in which “the new I” cannot disconnect from “the I which has been”: “Hence, the painful struggle, I might almost say, spasm of the soul.”
CHAPTER 19 Royal Parents and the Dragon of Dissatisfaction > Page 361
On Victoria’s forty- second birthday, in 1861, she asked that no music be played outside her window. She wanted only to relish Albert’s “tender love and affection,” in what had become an intimate birthday ritual.
THE WIDOW OF WINDSOR
CHAPTER 20 “There Is No One to Call Me Victoria Now” > Page 367
“Fast women” were increasingly common in the 1860s, a decade of a forgotten but determined progress toward emancipation. Single women began to rebel in greater numbers: smoking, flirting openly, mixing freely with unmarried men. Books of that era are peppered with complaints about the looseness of the younger generations. Some young women even embraced the term “fast,” which was astonishing to polite society. One novelist wrote: “Oh, that any British maiden should unblushingly, nay, and without the slightest feeling of shame, even glory in such a title! But so it is, in the year 1861.” Even in 1868, while traveling in Switzerland, Victoria noticed among a crowd who gathered to see her “independent young English ladies, specimens of the present most objectionable ‘fast young lady.’” She added: “Some were no doubt American.”
CHAPTER 21 “The Whole House Seems Like Pompeii” > Page 389
Victoria hung his photo above his side of the bed. Each day, servants carefully laid out his ironed shirts and pants in the Blue Room and provided clean towels and hot water for shaving, which grew cold as his clock ticked and blotting paper sat unmarked.
CHAPTER 21 “The Whole House Seems Like Pompeii” > Page 396
Lord Palmerston once quipped that there were only three people who understood the Schleswig- Holstein conflict: the Prince Consort, who was now dead; a German professor who had gone mad; and himself, who had now forgotten it.
CHAPTER 22 Resuscitating the Widow of Windsor > Page 406
John Bright, the radical leader of the Reform League that sought an expansion of the suffrage, spoke at mass meetings across England. In 1867, the Second Reform Bill— which doubled the number of men who could vote in England and Wales from one to two million— was passed in Parliament. Victoria was wary of democratization, but she strongly supported the bill once it was evident that it had majority support in the House of Commons.
CHAPTER 22 Resuscitating the Widow of Windsor > Page 407
She frequently resisted hosting foreign dignitaries and asked the British government to pay if she did. In 1867, for example, the Earl of Derby, a Whig who had replaced Lord Palmerston as prime minister, begged the queen to postpone a trip to Osborne for three days so she could meet the sultan of Turkey for ten minutes at Buckingham Palace. Her response was scorching: “The word distasteful is hardly applicable to the subject; it would be rather nearer the mark to say extremely inconvenient and disadvantageous for the Queen’s health.” Still, she agreed to postpone her trip for two days, asked the sultan to come a day earlier, and dispatched her doctor to Lord Derby so he might relay the fragile state of her nerves, thus emphasizing again how great the burden was. She threatened again a “complete breakdown,” saying she refused to be bullied or dictated to.
CHAPTER 22 Resuscitating the Widow of Windsor > Page 411
Between 1871 and 1874, eighty- five Republican Clubs were founded in Britain, protesting, among other things, the “expensiveness and uselessness of the monarchy” and Bertie’s “immoral example.”
CHAPTER 22 Resuscitating the Widow of Windsor > Page 411
One of the greatest threats to public safety came from the Fenian Brotherhood, which was founded in America in 1858 with the aim of overthrowing British control of Ireland and establishing an Irish republic. In 1866, the Brotherhood unsuccessfully tried to invade Canada from America. In 1867, they began a campaign of terror in Britain, blowing up a prison wall and killing a policeman. Three members were executed in reprisal and became martyrs.
CHAPTER 23 The Queen’s Stallion > Page 419
She refused to defer trips to Balmoral, even when needed to open Parliament or manage a ministerial crisis. Sir Thomas Biddulph, the Keeper of the Privy Purse, said, “The Queen will talk as if she were Mrs. Jones and might live just where she liked.”
CHAPTER 24 The Faery Queen Awakes > Page 443
By Victoria’s rationale, the British Empire’s prestige would be upheld if Britain made it clear to Russia that they would protect Turkey’s interests if the Russians invaded Constantinople. Her Cabinet was divided on the subject, but Disraeli agreed; together they acted secretly to communicate this to the Russians in August 1877, an extraordinary act especially given that not even the foreign minister was aware of it.
REGINA IMPERATRIX
CHAPTER 25 Enough to Kill Any Man > Page 458
She had already given Ponsonby an extraordinary list of instructions for Gladstone— that he must not change the foreign policy, nor the British rule in India, cut projected spending, or bring in “democratic leaning.” Still, wrote Gladstone after his awkward meeting with the monarch, “All things considered, I was much pleased.”
CHAPTER 25 Enough to Kill Any Man > Page 459
Gladstone had also waged a staggering, unprecedented campaign strategy. In what became known as the Midlothian campaign, he pioneered American- style electioneering in Scotland, directly addressing crowds of thousands in a series of mass public meetings. He spoke in rousing, thunderous oratory, attacking Disraeli, focusing particularly on his “pestilent” foreign policy, which he saw as stamping on the rights of small countries to determine their fate. Ten thousand Zulus in Africa had been killed, Gladstone thundered, “for no other offence than their attempt to defend against your artillery with their naked bodies, their hearths and homes, their wives and families.” He also spoke of “the sanctity of life in the hill villages of Afghanistan.” Gladstone argued for virtue in foreign policy— meaning less intervention— and thereby tapped into the mood of fatigue among the electorate.
CHAPTER 25 Enough to Kill Any Man > Page 462
In January 1881, Victoria objected to words contained in her Speech from the Throne— text that had been given to her to read aloud, by Gladstone’s office— that declared British soldiers would leave Kandahar. She would not deliver the speech with those words contained in it; her ministers would not present it without them. After a heated Cabinet meeting at Osborne, several ministers threatened to resign. A furious Victoria said she had not been treated with “such want of respect” in all her years as queen. She glared stonily at her Cabinet, recording how they “nearly tumbled over each other going out.” The subject of the dispute was an important one— whom did the queen speak for when she opened Parliament?
CHAPTER 25 Enough to Kill Any Man > Page 466
By 1864, almost a third of all British troops were admitted to the hospital for syphilis or gonorrhea. Because it was not the soldiers who were blamed but the women they slept with, the solution decided upon was simple: the army and navy needed clean prostitutes. In 1864, the first of the Contagious Diseases Acts introduced official brothels for the military.
CHAPTER 25 Enough to Kill Any Man > Page 468
Yet, as one sex worker said after being imprisoned, “It did seem hard, ma’am, that the Magistrate on the bench who gave the casting vote for my imprisonment had paid me several shillings a day or two before, in the street, to go with him.”
CHAPTER 26 “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 484
sometimes Victoria did intervene successfully. In 1884, for example, Parliament was in gridlock over the Third Reform Bill, which extended the vote to agricultural workers. Victoria generally favored electoral reform, but she disliked the disruption it caused. She was sanguine about this bill but horrified by the calls of some Liberals for the abolition of the House of Lords. She called on Gladstone to restrain “some of his wild colleagues and followers,” and argued that the position of monarch would be “utterly untenable” if there was no balance of power left. Victoria had insisted the Liberals meet with the Tories, who were adamant they would pass the Reform Bill only if a redistribution bill was introduced at the same time. The meeting resulted in the House of Lords agreeing to pass the Reform Bill as a freshly negotiated redistribution bill was introduced into the lower house. Lord Granville praised the queen’s “powerful influence,” and Henry Ponsonby credited her for “incessant hammering at both sides to be moderate and insisting on their meeting.”
CHAPTER 26 “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 488
The government was defeated on a minor matter— a proposal to increase beer duty— but it had struggled with legitimacy ever since the death of General Gordon. The government was also deeply divided on the boiling question of Irish independence. Parliament was dissolved, and the Tory Lord Salisbury became prime minister— a role he would fulfill three times.
CHAPTER 26 “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 488
Salisbury was also the first of Victoria’s prime ministers to be younger than she was, and the last of the aristocratic politicians to lead the British government from the House of Lords.
CHAPTER 26 “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 490
Victoria’s intervention was extraordinary: she did not disguise her antipathy to Gladstone, she tried to push— and keep— him out of power, she actively sought to form other coalitions and governments, and she expected to have a pivotal say in who was selected for the Cabinet.
CHAPTER 26 “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 491
By the 1880s, the Irish Question dominated the British Parliament. Ireland was suffering from a protracted agricultural depression, ruinous bouts of famine, and relentless bursts of violence. Support for the Irish republican Fenians was growing. Even as early as the 1840s, before the potato famine, Gladstone had viewed Ireland as a “coming storm.”
CHAPTER 26 “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 494
But the moment went. On June 8, the bill was defeated, 341 to 311. The Liberals split, with 93 voting against. The Liberal Unionists separated from the Liberal Party and aligned with Conservatives in their opposition to Home Rule until 1914. Gladstone’s foresight was greater than his political skill, and he struggled to corral a sufficient number of colleagues.
CHAPTER 26 “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 494
Gladstone did not give up, even after he had resigned. In 1887, he wrote in his diary: “One prayer absorbs all others: Ireland, Ireland, Ireland.” He went on to fight for Home Rule again in the 1892 election, and managed to push through a watered- down bill in 1893: a version that was quickly, soundly rejected by the House of Lords. Gladstone’s commitment to Irish self- government was fascinating: principled yet politically impossible. The House of Lords would never have supported him. Instead of bringing unity to the Isles, he had split his party, and he would be blamed for keeping Liberals out of office for the better part of two decades.
CHAPTER 26 “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 495
The extent of her interference in politics— and the audacity of her reach— did not become apparent until the 1920s and 1930s, when the letters of the final years of her reign were published.
CHAPTER 26 “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 498
It is clear Victoria also believed she had the power to dismiss a prime minister, and ministry, though this was never exercised. When the king of Greece sacked his entire Cabinet in 1892 for “leading the country to bankruptcy,” Victoria thought he was entitled to do so: “but whether it is wise to exercise this right must depend on circumstances.”
CHAPTER 26 “Two Ironclads Colliding”: The Queen and Mr. Gladstone > Page 500
It is quite possible Victoria was jealous of Gladstone, as his secretary, Edward Hamilton, concluded, especially of his extraordinary hold over her subjects. She frequently cautioned him from campaigning as he had done in the Midlothian campaign. She told him to mind his words, treating him much like a teenager requiring perpetual monitoring, even though he was a decade older than she. She sent him notes before he was due to give big speeches: in 1881 she told him to be “very cautious,” in 1883 to be “very guarded in his language.”
CHAPTER 27 The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 507
Wilhelm was a proud, often cruel, and talentless man who harbored a particular kind of hatred for his mother. The painful breech birth Vicky had suffered meant he had to be wrenched from her womb, causing partial paralysis of his left arm due to nerve damage (this is now known as Erb’s palsy). This made his left arm fifteen centimeters shorter than his right, something he tried to disguise for years by resting it on swords or other props. The medical establishment was ill equipped to deal with such a disability, which was considered shameful at the time. The treatments used to try to repair his arm were horrific. One such treatment, first applied when he was a few months old, was “animal baths.” Twice a week, a hare was killed and sliced open; Wilhelm’s limp arm was slid inside the still- warm body in the hope that some of its life force would magically transfer to the baby boy. Willy was also jolted with electric shocks and strapped into a metal contraption that forced his head upright. He blamed his mother for his shame, and for his years of unsuccessful, painful treatments: he would never forgive her.
CHAPTER 27 The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 508
Even Chancellor Bismarck recognized Willy was too immature to rule, that he was impetuous, “susceptible to flattery and could plunge Germany into war without foreseeing or wishing it.” It turned out to be a matter of character, though, not maturity, for this was precisely what happened years later, when Wilhelm’s eagerness for war would far outstrip his competence at waging it.
CHAPTER 27 The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 509
Fritz knew he was already dismissed as dead; the hurt only deepened when Wilhelm’s siblings, Charlotte and Henry, switched to support their brother. Vicky complained to Victoria: “People in general consider us a mere passing shadow soon to be replaced by reality in the shape of William!” It seemed painfully unfair to Vicky that her own husband was so ill when he stood ready to inherit the throne; the emperor was now ninety, and sure to die soon. She was certain her husband would be a great, humane leader of Prussia, and a forceful advocate for parliamentary democracy.
CHAPTER 27 The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 510
Vicky was isolated and misunderstood; her British origins had made her deeply unpopular. Her private letters were leaked to the press and published in full. All three of her children also attacked her, accusing her of causing her father’s illness or of ensuring that his medical treatment was poor. Even when Vicky smiled, it was pointed to as evidence of callousness.
CHAPTER 27 The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 511
When Victoria walked into Fritz’s room, he handed her a nosegay; it would be the last time she would see him. She then saw Bismarck in her rooms at Charlottenburg Palace. (Lord Salisbury urged her to bring a minister with her, but she refused.) It is unclear exactly what happened during the forty- five minutes they spent alone together, but Bismarck wiped a handkerchief across his brow when he walked out. Shortly afterward, he declared, “Mein Gott! That was a woman! One could do business with her!” A man to whom the concept of female authority was anathema, Bismarck later amended his remarks to sound more patronizing: “Grandmama behaved quite sensibly at Charlottenburg.”
CHAPTER 27 The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 512
The nationalistic new kaiser was deeply ambivalent about Britain, which marked a significant shift in British- German relations. He dressed in British uniform when visiting his grandmother, whom he loved, and he enthusiastically raced yachts around the Isle of Wight. But he also felt a deep rivalry, focusing on building up Prussia’s navy to try to compete with Britain’s. He would end up warring with his mother’s family, leading them to change the royal family’s name from Saxe- Coburg- Gotha to Windsor in the First World War, when Britain was fighting Germany.
CHAPTER 27 The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 513
What would have happened if Fritz’s cancerous throat had not prematurely ended his life? Germany would have been under the rule of a liberal, compassionate emperor, a leader who wanted to improve the lives of the working class and who especially despised the anti- Semitic movement. “As a modern civilized man, as a Christian and a gentleman, he found it abhorrent,” wrote Vicky; he tried to counter it where he could. His son Wilhelm was the opposite, stirring up and championing anti- Semitism,
CHAPTER 27 The Monarch in a Bonnet > Page 513
Democracy made no sense, Victoria declared, when it only resulted in the reelection of a man like William Gladstone. He became prime minister again in 1892, the third time in a dozen years. It was, she wrote, “a defect in our much- famed Constitution to have to part with an admirable Govt like Ld Salisbury’s for no question of any importance, or any particular reason, merely on account of the number of votes.”
CHAPTER 28 The “Poor Munshi” > Page 532
Gladstone’s death was, very oddly, not noted in the Court Circular. Victoria later told the prime minister, Lord Salisbury, that this had been “entirely an oversight.”
CHAPTER 29 The Diamond Empire > Page 537
Since Victoria ascended to the throne in 1837, the lives of people in her country and around the world had been transformed by the invention of the railway, steamship, telegraph, telephone, sewing machine, electric light, typewriter, camera, and more.
CHAPTER 29 The Diamond Empire > Page 541
A life of sycophancy and lack of questioning meant that her every desire was indulged, and yet she still yearned for what she could not command: love and companionship.
CHAPTER 29 The Diamond Empire > Page 548
But her accounts of what she was told make it clear that Victoria was receiving spin and lies about the war effort, doubtless in part to lift her spirits, as well as to impress upon her the stoicism of her commanders. She was regularly told the men had done their best when they were lying dead in fields; she was told that they didn’t mind the bother of the war and were jolly well glad to be there and fight.
CHAPTER 29 The Diamond Empire > Page 552
fever. By 1902, twenty- eight thousand whites and fourteen thousand black Africans had died in these horrific grounds, almost double the number of British men who died fighting. The queen had no idea of the atrocities occurring at British hands in these camps; the details only emerged, to great controversy, after her death. She would have been mortified.
CHAPTER 30 The End of the Victorian Age: “The Streets Were Indeed a Strange Sight” > Page 562
The world shuddered at the news of the queen’s death. Thousands of telegrams flew to Osborne. In London, actors walked off stages halfway through plays. Traffic stopped. In New York, the stock market closed for a day. In New Guinea, tribes remembered the divine, holy Mother who had loomed over them. In South Africa, Australia, Canada, and India and the farthest reaches of the vast English Empire, people stopped and prayed.
CHAPTER 30 The End of the Victorian Age: “The Streets Were Indeed a Strange Sight” > Page 563
Emily Davison, who became the first martyr of the suffragette movement in 1913 when she was fatally injured under the hooves of the king’s horse at the Derby, wrote a letter to The Times arguing that Victoria demonstrated there should be no such thing as “women’s work”: Victoria had read every document, made her own decisions, and was in no way a “mere figurehead.” Without having ever read the queen’s diary or studied her correspondence, Davison was right.
CHAPTER 30 The End of the Victorian Age: “The Streets Were Indeed a Strange Sight” > Page 567
her faults: her capriciousness, her temper, her domineering way with her children, her sharp eye, her tendency to self- pity, her unchecked selfishness, her conviction that she was always right. But they also knew of her kindness, her loyalty, her humor, her devotion to her work, her faith, her lack of pretension or prejudice, and her resilience.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
CHAPTER 30 The End of the Victorian Age: “The Streets Were Indeed a Strange Sight” > Page 569
But it was not until mid- 2013, after the governor general of Australia, Quentin Bryce, and her secretary, Stephen Brady, lobbied the queen’s secretary on my behalf— vouching for my character— that I was allowed entry. I was thrilled, if discombobulated, by the fact that neither my project nor the nature of my qualifications had changed; it was only the status of my advocate that had pushed open the doors.
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