QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

i

Her first Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, was later to comment, 'She is far too open and candid in her nature to pretend to one atom more knowledge than she really possesses ... and yet, as the world goes, she would, as any girl, have been considered accomplished, for she speaks German well and writes it; understands Italian, speaks French fluently, and writes it with great elegance' (Benson and Esher, The Letters of Queen Victoria, ist Series, i, 256: memorandum of George Anson, 15 January 1841).

ii

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

iii

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

iv

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

v

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

vi

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

vii

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

viii

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

ix

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

x

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

xi

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

xii

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

xiii

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

xiv

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

xv

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

xvi

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

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

xvii

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

xviii

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

xix

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

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

xx

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

xxi

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

xxii

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

xxiii

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

xxiv

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

xxv

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

xxvi

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

xxvii

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

xxviii

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

xxix

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

xxx

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

xxxi

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

xxxii

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

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, Romania, 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).

lv

The Queen had been equally put out at a garden party some years before when the Duke of Cambridge had noticed 'the brute Gladstone' standing in the forefront of the circle before her tent while she had her tea, 'bang opposite her, hat in hand'. She said to the Duke, 'Do you see Gladstone? ... There he has been standing this half-hour, determined to force me to speak to him! But I am as determined not to speak to him' (Giles St Aubyn, The Royal George: The Life of Prince George, Duke of Cambridge, 1963, 234).

lvi

He had never made any secret of his dislike of the English. As a twenty-year-old lieutenant in the Guards, he had declared after a heavy nosebleed that it was 'good to be rid of this damned English blood'. The antagonism was, no doubt, exacerbated by his mother who, yearning for her 'own beloved England', thanking God that she was a 'regular John Bull' and hating her 'odious' life in Berlin, had urged him to remember that her own country was 'the most progressive, advanced, & liberal & the most developed race in the world, also the richest', as well as the greatest The Queen concluded that, like Gladstone, her grandson was 'cracked'. His behaviour towards his mother made her 'blood boil'. It was, she told Lord Cranbrook, Lord President of the Council, 'abominable'. Her grandson 'seemed to think of himself as in some supernatural position'.³⁰

naval power with the 'largest & most powerful Empire in the world in which the sun never sets', obviously more 'suited than any other to civilize other countries'. As General Count Alfred von Waldersee observed, this constant praise of England and belittling of Germany was counterproductive. 'If his parents intended to bring up a constitutional monarch who would obediently bow before the sovereignty of a parliamentary majority, they have been disappointed,' Count Waldersee said. 'It looks as if precisely the opposite has come about ... It is quite amazing that the Prince bears such a prejudice against England; to a great extent this is a very natural reaction to his mother's endeavours to make anglomaniacs out of the children.' The Crown Princess was eventually forced to recognize this herself and decided to 'keep silent on such issues'. 'Willy', she concluded, 'is chauvinistic and ultra Prussian to a degree & with a violence wh|ich] is often very painful to me ... Prussian princes have a certain "genre" & it runs in the blood' (John C. G. Rohl, Young Wilhelm: The Kaiser's Early Life, 1859-1888, Cambridge, 1998, 115, 267, 395, 409, 441).

lvii

She caused much consternation in the household in 1895 - after her marriage had broken down - by her relationship with Sir Arthur Bigge who succeeded Sir Henry Ponsonby as the Queen's Private Secretary in May that year. Princess Beatrice sent for Dr Reid in November 'to speak about Princess Louise's relations with Bigge and said that it was a scandal and something must be done. The Princess of Wales had written to her about it. Also Princess Christian, she said, was much exercised about it. Lady Bigge was in despair; she had ruined the happiness of others and would his. Prince Henry had seen Bigge drinking Princess Louise's health at the Queen's dinner. She had him in her toils. If the Queen knew all she would not keep Bigge.' It was over two years before the scandal finally subsided and relations between Princess Beatrice and Princess Louise improved at last (Michaela Reid, Ask Sir James: The Life of Sir James Reid, 102-4).

lviii

The Queen, in contrast, so Mary Ponsonby observed, was often more at ease with servants than with her guests, as the Prince Consort had also been. She would, she herself said, just as soon clasp 'the poorest widow in the land to her heart as she would any lady in high position'. Differences in rank must, of course, be supported; but one could never be 'sufficiently loving, kind and considerate to those beneath one'.

lix

She almost never forgot an anniversary herself. Her granddaughter, Princess Marie Louise, recalled how she invariably wore lockets containing mementoes of various members of her family on their birthdays: 'Her bracelets were gold chains from which hung various lockets containing the hair of her children and grandchildren ... On birthdays and other family anniversaries, any special brooches or other pieces of jewellery given to her in commemoration of these events were always worn on the day itself (Princess Marie Louise, My Memories of Six Reigns, 141).

Every year, from 1861 onwards, the anniversary of the Prince Consort's death was for her a day of mourning.

'This sad day,' she was to write a few weeks before her own death, 'so full of terrible memories, returned again.' The anniversary of his birth was always remembered and commemorated, too. 'This ever dear day has returned again without my beloved Albert being with me, who on this day, eighty one years ago, came into the world as a blessing to so many, leaving an imperishable name behind him,' she was to record in her journal on the last anniversary she was to live to see. 'How I remember the happy day it used to be, and preparing presents for him, which he would like ... All, all is engraven on my mind and in my heart!' (Queen Victoria's Journal, 26 August 1900).

lx

Prince Arthur, who was created Duke of Connaught and Strathearn in 1874, was eventually promoted to field-marshal, but never achieved his ambition of becoming commander-in-chief, much to his mother's annoyance.

She cannot [she protested] and will not submit to the shameful principle that Princes are to suffer for their birth in a monarchical country. Have a Republic at once, if that is the principle. She must have an assurance that such is not the case. Arthur was recommended solely on account of his peculiar fitness. It is very abominable that the Government, and a so-called Conservative one too, should wish to pander to the Radicals! (Quoted in Kenneth Rose, Kings, Queens and Courtiers, 53)

lxi

In his book Albert and Victoria (London, 1972, 225) David Duff, citing 'private information', wrote, 'It has been passed down that he [Sir James Clark] revealed, to members of his own profession, the Queen's reply to his advice that she should have no more children. The reply was "Oh, Sir James, can I have no more fun in bed?"'

lxii

The silence of the Windsor corridors was often commented upon. 'It is quite remarkable, in fact almost uncanny, how quiet this enormous building is,' the Queen's German dresser, Frieda Arnold, wrote home in the 1850s, 'and sometimes one could imagine that the Castle was quite empty. For everyone goes about their business in the most calm and orderly fashion, and because of the carpets one hears nothing at all. People speak very quietly' (Benita Stoney and Heinrich C. Weltzien, My Mistress the Queen, 41).

lxiii

The Pension Wallis, a handsome building on three floors, was specially equipped for the Queen's visit with numerous items bought locally and entered in the Lord Chamberlain's 'Statement of Her Majesty's Expenses on Tour in Switzerland' - 'furniture, carpets, baths and sundries, glass, china, looking-glasses, a telegraphic apparatus and, to put Jenner's mind at rest, a prodigious amount of cleanser for the patent WC (Peter Arengo-Jones, Queen Victoria in Switzerland, 74).

lxiv

At Grasse she was a frequent guest at the estate of the immensely rich and awesomely imperious Alice Rothschild. One day while walking in the gardens she inadvertently strayed into a newly planted flower bed.' "Come off at once!" Baroness Rothschild thundered at the Queen of England and Empress of India.

'The Queen came off. After that she referred to Alice, perhaps only half in jest, as "The All-Powerful One". Their friendship endured. So did the epithet. "The Ail-Powerful One" became Alice's nickname to her kin' (Frederic Morton, The Rothschilds, 189).

lxv

The Queen had been far less impressed by Francesco Crispi, who had called upon her with the King and Queen of Italy when she had been staying at the Villa Palmieri in Florence in 1888. 'The King [Umberto I] is aged and grown grey [he was only forty-four], the Queen is as charming as ever. To my astonishment Signor Crispi, the present very Radical Prime Minister, came into the room, and remained there, which was very embarrassing ... They were most kind and amiable, making many excuses for Crispi's behaviour this morning — the King saying he was avery clever man, but had no manners' (Queen Victoria's Journal, 5 April 1888).

lxvi

Ten years before, she had written a letter of sympathy to the Duke of Cambridge on the death of his steward, which expressed her understanding of the grief that could be caused by the death of a trusted and devoted servant: 'Let me tell you how grieved I am at the great loss you have sustained in the loss of your faithful and excellent steward and I may add friend. No one perhaps can more truly appreciate your feelings than I do, who know what it is to have an attached, devoted and faithful confidential servant. Indeed such a loss is often more than those of one's nearest and dearest, for a faithful servant is so identified with all your feelings, wants, wishes and habits as really to be part of your existence and cannot be replaced' (FitzGeorge papers, 17 April 1873, quoted in Giles St Aubyn, The Royal George: A Life of George, Duke of Cambridge, 1963, 165).

lxvii

This portrait hung in Windsor Castle until, six days after his mother's death, King Edward VII had it removed and sent to Brown's surviving brother, William. It was kept at Crathic until 1944 when it was sold at auction for £4 12s. 6d. It was subsequently sold by Christie's in Edinburgh on 28 May 1998 to a private collector for £300,000 ('The Court Historian: Newsletter of the Society for Court Studies', vol. in, 2 July 1998, 65).

lxviii

There arc two portraits of Abdul Karim in the Durbar Corridor at Osborne which also contains a large collection of portraits of Indian dignitaries, soldiers, servants and of craftsmen who worked on the Durbar Room. All these were commissioned by the Queen who also commissioned the full-length portrait of the fifteen-year-old Maharajah Duleep Singh from F. X. Winterhalter. Impressed by the striking good looks of this boy who had been taken into British protection when his father was deposed, the Queen herself painted a portrait of him in watercolour, depicting him kneeling down to dress up Prince Arthur in Indian costume (Marina Warner, Queen Victoria's Sketchbook, 197-8). Thereafter Duleep Singh led a dissipated life for which he came to beg the Queen's forgiveness when she was staying at Grasse in 1891. 'The Queen said he was quite calm at first then wept bitterly imploring forgiveness and finally when she stroked his hand recovered his equanimity.' 'No wonder,' the Queen's maid-of-honour, Marie Adeane, commented, 'I believe he is a monster of the deepest dye and is treated far better than he deserves' (Victor Mallet, Life with Queen Victoria: Marie Mallet's Letters from Court, 48).

Duleep Singh's elder son, Prince Victor Albert, a godson of the Queen, married a daughter of the ninth Earl of Coventry. His father was told by the Governor-General of India at the time of his deposition in 1849 to present the famous Koh-i-Noor diamond to the Queen. When he died in 1893 the Queen sent a wreath with a message of sympathy from his 'affectionate friend & Godmother'.

lxix

After the Queen's death her Indian servants were sent back to India with pensions; and, in the presence of the Munshi himself, most of his papers were burned on a bonfire at Frogmore Cottage where he had lived when the Court was at Windsor. In 1905 while he was on a tour of India, the Prince of Wales, the later King George V, went to see him at Karim Lodge, Agra. 'He lias not grown more beautiful,' the Prince recorded, 'and is getting fat. I must say he was most civil and humble and really pleased to see us. He wore his C.V.O. which I had no idea he had got. I am told he lives quietly here and gives no trouble at all' (RA GV A A 27/10, quoted in Sheila Anand, Indian Sahib: Queen Victoria's Dear Abdul, 103-4).

lxx

The Queen greatly admired Sullivan's music. She asked him for a complete set of his works, a request made to no other composer, not even Mendelssohn; and she sent Prince Albert's compositions for him to correct, as high a token of her regard as she could possibly have bestowed. Having heard his oratorio, The Light of the World, she declared it was 'destined to uplift British music'. Although she thought the plot of The Mikado 'rather silly', she found the well-known airs irresistible and she commanded a performance of The Gondoliers at Windsor Castle. She took pride in having urged Sullivan to try his hand at grand opera. 'You would do it so well,' she told him. Accordingly he dedicated Ivanhoe to her; and after the first night of that opera she told him that its success was 'a particular satisfaction to her' as she believed it was 'partly owing to her own instigation' that he had 'undertaken this great work' (Hesketh Pearson, Gilbert and Sullivan 161, 171, 183).

lxxi

The Queen's handwriting was as much a source of complaint in her family as it was among the members of her staff. For instance Tsar Nicholas II, husband of her granddaughter, Alexandra, complained to his wife, 'Her letters are so awfully difficult to read, and she has got a way of shortening her sentences and words in such a manner that I could not make out for a long time' (Andrei Maylunas and Sergei Mironenko, A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra: Their Own Story, 67).

lxxii

Shortly after the introduction of an improved version of the typewriter into England, a machine was purchased for use at Windsor. But the Queen evidently did not like it (Emden, Behind the Throne, 127). She was equally opposed at first to the introduction of the telephone. She commanded a private demonstration of this invention at Osborne House in 1878. Alexander Graham Bell's public relations officer, Kate Field, arrived on the island and from the nearby Osborne Cottage sang 'Kathleen Mavourneen' down the line to the Queen who was 'not much impressed' (Victoria Glendinning, Trollope, 1992, 448). In 1896, however, telephones were installed at Windsor Castle. The Queen was equally dismissive of that other invention, the motor car. 'I'm told,' she commented, 'that they smell exceedingly nasty and are very shaky and disagreeable conveyances altogether' (quoted in Nevill, 13). The Prince of Wales did not agree with her. Provided he was not accompanied by his wife, 'whose one idea was not to run over a dog', he delighted in being driven very fast in a large car equipped with a raucous horn in the shape of a four-key bugle (C. W. Stamper, What I Know, 191).

lxxiii

The sculptor, Alfred Gilbert, who was summoned to Osborne in 1896 to execute a memorial to Prince Henry of Battenberg for Whippingham Church, arrived with evening clothes but without the regulation court dress. Fortunately his moulder, who had come to the Isle of Wight with him, had been a tailor in his youth and was able to convert Gilbert's evening trousers into knee-breeches for his appearance at dinner. A pair of lady's black silk stockings were borrowed and, after considerable difficulty, as it was a Sunday, shoes and buckles were procured from a local shoemaker. When Gilbert was thus equipped a message came from the Queen excusing him from wearing court dress; but by then he had no ordinary evening trousers to put on. When the Queen was informed what had happened, she commented complacently, 'How clever!' (Isabel McAlister, Alfred Gilbert, London, 1929, 279).

lxxiv

This was in 1872. The older the Queen grew, the more frequently drunk some of her servants became. Mary Adeane, who joined the Household as a maid-of-honour in 1887, said, 'the footmen smell of whisky and are never prompt to answer the bell [and] stare in such a supercilious way' (Victor Mallet, Life with Queen Victoria, 215).

lxxv

The Hon. Alexander Yorke, fifth son of the fourth Earl of Hardwicke, who had joined the household in 1884, was, however, much indulged by the Queen who was fond of him as a kind of court jester. To others, Yorke's precious manner, his heavy scent and outlandish buttonholes were the cause of some disapproval and concern. On his appeareance one day with 'an enormous Malmaison Carnation' in his buttonhole, Lady Lytton asked her husband's Private Secretary, Austin Lee, rather apprehensively, 'Are button-holes worn now?' 'Well,' Lee answered, 'not the peony size of Alick's' (Lady Lytton's Court Diary, 97).

lxxvi

A fortnight after Lady Ely's death the Queen drove in a closed carriage from Paddington to Kensal Green Cemetery to place a wreath on Lady Ely's grave. 'There were crowds out,' she recorded in her journal. 'We could not understand why, and thought something must be going [on], but it turned out it was only to see me ... There were such crowds that the privacy of my visit was quite spoilt; still, I felt glad so many bore witness to this act of regard and love paid to my beloved friend' (Queen Victoria's Journal, 27 June 1890).

lxxvii

The Queen still retained the clarity of her expressive speech. In October 1898 the recently appointed Clerk of the Council, Sir Almeric Fitzroy, having attended his first Council meeting at Balmoral, recorded in his memoirs: 'It was an impressive spectacle, on entering this small and rather meanly appointed room, to find the solitary occupant in this lonely woman ... How little sensible was that shrivelled octogenarian figure to the emotions she excited, as, with the habitual dignity that belongs to her ... she motioned with her left hand to the position I was to occupy ... and with a clearness of articulation that is startling in its melodious resonance, she applied herself to the routine of a ceremonial at which she must have presided more than six hundred times' (Sir Almeric Fitzroy, Memoirs, i, 2).

lxxviii

Except for the days of her inconsolable grief, she had always been prone to outbursts of uncontrollable laughter. When the sculptor, John Gibson, was working on his statue of her, he asked if he might measure her mouth. 'The proposal was so unexpected and droll that it was some time before the Queen could compose herself; directly she closed her mouth she burst out laughing again' (Sarah A. Tooley, The Personal Life of Queen Victoria, 142).

lxxix

The Queen was equally pleased with an earlier portrait by Heinrich von Angeli painted in 1875 which she thought 'absurdly like'. It was as though she 'looked at [herself J in the glass'. The artist had, in her opinion, painted her with 'honesty, total want of flattery, and appreciation of character'. In 1887 she was shown 'that grinning "Jubilee" photograph' of herself. 'Her daughters were indignant at its sale in the streets, and wished to have it stopped. All they could get her to say was "well really I think it is very like. I have no illusions about my personal appearance' (Journal and Letters of Reginald, Viscount Esher, 1934, i, 160). Indeed, she once told Vicky that she well knew that she had 'an ugly old face'.

lxxx

Evidently she did not read Disraeli's penultimate novel, Lothair, with great care. Having 'with happy promptitude', answered a question from the Duchess of Edinburgh as to whether or not she had read the book, by claiming that she had been the first person to do so, she was then asked if she did not think that Theodora, the enthusiastic supporter of Italian liberty, was 'a divine character'. 'The Queen looked a little perplexed and grave. It wd. have been embarrassing had the Dss. not gone on rattling away' (quoted in Stanley Weintraub, Victoria, 412).

lxxxi

Dickens did not care to follow the example of Thomas Carlyle who, the year before, without being invited to do so, had taken a chair with the observation that he was a feeble old man. Carlyle described the Queen as a 'comely little lady, with a pair of kind, clear, and intelligent grey eyes ... still looks almost young ... still plump; has a fine, low voice, soft ... It is impossible to imagine a politer little woman; nothing the least imperious; all gentle, all sincere, looking unembarrassing - rather attractive even; makes you feel, too (if you have any sense in you) that she is Queen.' She 'sailed out towards [him] as if moving on skates and bending her head towards |him] with a smile'.

She described Carlyle as 'a strange looking, eccentric old Scotchman, who holds forth, in a drawling, melancholy voice, with a broad Scotch accent, upon Scotland and the utter degeneration of everything' (Queen Victoria's Journal, 4 March 1869).

lxxxii

On the day of the death of Princess Alice - whose dying words were 'dear Papa' - the Queen recorded in her journal: 'This terrible day come round again. Slept tolerably, but awoke very often, constantly seeing darling Alice before me. When I woke in the morning, was not for a moment aware of all our terrible anxiety. And then it all burst upon me. I asked for news, but nothing had come. Then got up and went, as I always do on this day, to the Blue Room |where the Prince Consort had died], and prayed there. When dressed, I went into my sitting room for breakfast. Directly after, came another [telegram] with the dreadful tidings that darling Alice sank gradually and passed away at half past 7 this morning! It was too awful! That this dear, talented, distinguished, tender-hearted, noble-minded, sweet child, who behaved so admirably during her father's illness, and afterwards, in supporting me in every possible way, should be called back to her father on this very anniversary, seems almost incredible, and most mysterious! To me (here seems something touching in the union which this brings, their names being forever united on this day of their birth into another better world!' (Queen Victoria's Journal, 14 December 1878).

lxxxiii

'We could have spared any of the Princes better than him,' Lady Monkswell commented, 'for he and Princess Beatrice and their four children always lived quietly with the Queen and made it pleasant and homely for her' (E. C. F. Collier, ed., A Victorian Diarist Later Extracts, 6).

lxxxiv

Prince George was created Duke of York in 1892. His father had wanted this title bestowed upon Prince Eddy. But the Queen had strongly objected since it was associated with her Hanoverian uncle who, however successful an administrator as Commander-in-Chief of the British Army, had led a far from blameless private life. She also objected to the title being conferred upon Prince Eddy's brother, Prince George, giving way with an ill grace. 'I am glad you like the title of Duke of York,' she told her grandson. 'I am afraid, I do not and wish you had remained as you are. A Prince no one else can be, whereas a Duke any nobleman can be, and many are! I am not very fond of that of York which has not very agreeable associations' (RA GV A A 10/39).

lxxxv

In earlier years, so she had told the Princess Royal, 'I always have standing on my night table near my bed wherever I go ... a bottle of camphor lozenges ... I am sure if I went anywhere without them I should fancy I could not get to sleep.' (Roger Fulford, ed., Dearest Child, 152).

lxxxvi

Like so many of her contemporaries, the Queen treasured a collection of strands of hair cut from the heads of 'the dear departed'. Some she was given: for example his executor gave her some of Dean Stanley's, part of which she sent on to her eldest daughter with the comment that 'it had to be disinfected' (Dearest Mama: Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the German Crown Princess, ed. Roger Fulford, 105). Some she asked for, as she did for a lock from the head of King Victor Emmanuel who, she discovered on its arrival, had dyed his once red hair black; and she sent for a tuft from the head of the Duke of Wellington whose manservant had to apologize for the small amount he was able to send, the demands from the family and friends being 'so great' (Spicer MSS, 4 October 1852 quoted in Elizabeth Longford, Wellington: Pillar of State, 400). The Duke's daughter-in-law, the former Lady Douro, acquired the Duke's walrus ivory false teeth.