THE SECRET LIFE OF QUEEN VICTORIA

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert appeared to the world to be the image of marital bliss, but behind closed doors there were ample tears and tantrums.

On a cold, dark evening, Queen Victoria stood at the top of the main staircase at the heart of Windsor Castle. It was 7.30 pm on 10 October 1839, and she was expecting two visitors from Germany: Albert and his brother Ernest. The trio had met before but the queen had not been very impressed. At a dinner three years earlier, Albert in particular had proven to be a slovenly, shy and awkward guest, prone to yawning and sleeping in the afternoon. She was unimpressed by his weight and feared he had shown little time for court life. But as he walked into her view that evening, her opinion of him suddenly changed.

Albert – a German prince of Saxe-Coburg, a small German kingdom with a strong role in the dynastic and political history of Europe at the time – was her first cousin. He had been educated well throughout his childhood and he studied law, political economy, philosophy and art history at the University of Bonn. Albert had become a fit young man, a keen gymnast and rider. He also played music and he proved himself to be rather cultured. All of this pleased his family, not least Victoria and Albert’s grandmother, Duchess Augusta. She had been keen to arrange the pair’s previous meeting and she hoped they would marry.

“It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert – who is beautiful,” Victoria would write of the encounter in 1839, finding the prince “grown and changed and embellished.” She saw before her an “excessively handsome” man with “such beautiful blue eyes, an exquisite nose, and such a pretty mouth with delicate mustachios and slight – but very slight – whiskers.”

So infatuated was the sovereign that she invited Albert to Windsor Castle five days later. “We embraced each other over and over again and he was so kind and so affectionate,” she wrote. On 10 February 1840, the couple – both aged 20 – married at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace.

Albert was a hard worker and an intelligent man, educated throughout his childhood by a tutor called Christopher Florschutz, who effectively raised both him and his brother. Florschutz was a true constant in Albert’s life, given his father had divorced his mother on grounds of adultery and banished her to Switzerland when the prince was only seven years old. But Albert also had a strong sense of entitlement and a stern will. With Victoria’s love for him so intense, the prince was able to exert control over her.

The pair were constantly engaged in a power struggle and there were terrible rows between them. Albert effectively wanted to be Britain’s king in all but name, and he was single minded in his determination to make his presence in the country known. He quickly replaced the prime minister, Lord Melbourne, as the main influence on Victoria’s political views, wedging a distance within the close friendship that the queen and the Whig Party leader had long enjoyed. Crucially, he also made Victoria feel less capable than him. The tension bubbled close to the surface.

There were many differences of opinion. Respected historian Jane Ridley notes in her biography, Victoria: Queen, Matriarch, Empress, that the pair rowed over how their children should be cared for. Following one particular flare-up regarding their first child – also named Victoria, Vicky for short – Albert pushed a note under the queen’s door. “I shall have nothing more to do with it; take the child away and do as you like and if she dies you will have it on your conscience,” he wrote.

The disagreements over childcare led to the departure of Victoria’s governess Baroness Louise Lehzen, who had controlled the court and the queen’s private expenditure. Albert did not like Lehzen “who regards herself as a demi-god.” Reluctantly, Victoria agreed. “I am ready to submit to his wishes as I love him so dearly,” she wrote in a letter to Baron Stockmar, the Anglo-Belgian statesman sent by Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha to serve as her adviser.

The couple had nine children in total. Victoria had become pregnant within weeks of marrying Albert, and Vicky had been born on 21 November 1840. Her second, Albert Edward, was born the following year, Alice two years later and Alfred the year after that. Helena came into the world in 1846, Louise in 1848, Arthur in 1850, Leopold in 1853 and Beatrice in 1857. Nine children in 17 years meant that for much of her marriage Victoria was carrying a baby or nurturing her newborns. Yet she hated being pregnant. “I think much more of our being like a cow or a dog at such moments,” she would later write to an adult Vicky. She would also reveal: “I have no adoration for very little babies.” And she would clarify: “An ugly baby is a very nasty object – and the prettiest is frightful when undressed.”

The queen was a prolific letter writer. She would write an average of 2,500 words every day, and she did so for 70 years. They would be impulsive, revealing her feelings and thoughts as they came to her. From the age of 13, they allowed her to release her emotions and reveal her character. Yet her early life was lonely. Victoria’s father, the duke of Kent, died when she was eight months old, and she was brought up by a controlling yet indulgent mother and Baroness Lehzen.

Victoria was addressed as ‘your royal highness’ from a very young age, and she was a spoilt child. But she was also closely monitored and under constant scrutiny. In 1830, when Victoria was 11 years old, Lehzen introduced ‘behaviour books’, in which an assessment of the princess’s attitude was recorded. She was also educated in isolation under what was called the ‘Kensington System’, an elaborate and strict set of rules devised by her mother and attendant Sir John Conroy.

Her freedom was curtailed, her life restrained, and she began to feel her mother had become hard of heart. Victoria had been diagnosed with typhoid in 1835, aged 16, and Victoire had failed to nurse her. Instead, she and Sir John tried to persuade Victoria to make him her private secretary upon her succession and agree that she was not fit to rule until she was 21. Victoria resisted. She hated Sir John, who bullied her and called her ugly and unintelligent. So when she became queen aged 18, following the death of her uncle, King William IV, Victoria dismissed Sir John from her own household and dropped her mother too. If she was to rule, she surmised, she would do so alone.

Her marriage to Albert changed her approach entirely, though. Her frequent pregnancies meant she wasn’t always able to carry out her full suite of duties alone, so Albert would step up and take on more of the work. He enjoyed this immensely, but it did put a strain on the relationship. Victoria wished to spend more time with him, but he would throw himself into his work, often becoming a prisoner of his own ideas (Ridley notes that he spent hours relentlessly transcribing and editing letters written by the queen, or in reality written by him, to suit a new topic-based filing system he had created). As time went on, Albert would become responsible for running the queen’s household, estates and office.

On many occasions, Victoria’s temper came to the fore. She would remind Albert that she was the queen and insisted that she got the upper hand. Yet she would usually relent, writing apologies and actually helping Albert boost his power further. Deep down, she wanted her husband – a man who the British public had found hard to accept – to be embraced. Her feelings of pride when he opened his personal project, the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851, were obvious. But at the same time, she felt her power being diminished, her temper becoming so heated at times that some feared she was losing her mind.

Ridley notes in her biography that as early as 1842 Albert began to attend ministerial meetings and the queen spoke not of “I” but “we.” Albert would write many of the queen’s important letters and sit beside her as she received ministers.

Decisions would most often be made by him and he would agonise over them, his political mind working overtime trying to come up with the perfect solution. He wanted to be everything to the queen: the sole confidential adviser in politics, the private secretary and the permanent minister among many. Deep down, what he really wanted was to be king.

But there is no doubt there was great love between the two. It may not have been domestic bliss, but neither was it an arranged marriage: Victoria had asked Albert to marry her precisely because she adored him. Yet on whether there was the same love for her children, historians are split.

Biographer Julia Baird says Victoria’s diary entries in the 1840s and 1850s “reveal a mother who delighted in her children with a marked tenderness.” But there are plenty of entries in her journals to suggest she was unhappy being a mother. Victoria made no secret of her dislike for breastfeeding, employing a wet nurse for such duties. She also preferred time spent being intimate with her husband than play with her children. As a result, many historians have labelled the queen a “domestic tyrant” who controlled her offspring in the same tight, demanding way that she herself had been brought up. She may have been handson, as was Albert, but she would also scold and beat them. Helen Rappaport, author of Magnificent Obsession, says Victoria and Albert were “pretty awful parents.”

Even so, the queen felt it was important for the children to spend as much time with their parents as possible. And with so much to deal with – her many children to manage, her affection for her husband and the strains of her duties – she could perhaps be forgiven for feeling exhausted, stroppy and temperamental at times. Whenever Albert was away, Victoria pined for him. When he was around and wasn’t giving her his full attention, she could fly off the handle at the drop of a hat. Albert would carefully steer her and tell her what to say and what to write. He believed Victoria to be intellectually inferior to him, and she was subservient. She expected her offspring to show the same level of obedience she showed to him.

Vicky, an intelligent and precocious child, was the queen’s favourite for a time, but it did not mean she would escape a rebuke – even in adulthood. Victoria was upset when Vicky had her first child, but her vitriol was tame in comparison to her words for Albert Edward, who was widely considered her thorn. Bertie, as he was also known, was noted to be a disappointment. “His intellect – alas! is weak which is not his fault but, what is his fault is his shocking laziness,” she wrote.

Bertie had a reputation as a playboy prince, which jarred against the straight-laced upbringing that was fostered by Albert. Although Bertie would become king and successfully tour North America and the Indian subcontinent as the prince of Wales, he struggled with his studies, was barred from seeing state papers and was also vetoed from serving in the military.

His series of affairs angered Victoria the most. During a ten-week spell at Curragh Camp in Ireland with the Grenadier Guards in 1861, Bertie’s fellow officers arranged for the Irish actress Nellie Clifden to sleep with him. It appalled his parents and Albert visited his son in Cambridge, where Bertie was studying, in order to discuss the matter. Father and son took a long walk in the pouring rain but Albert returned feeling very ill. He died three weeks later, aged 42, on 7 December 1861 at Windsor Castle. While doctors diagnosed the cause of death as having been typhoid, Victoria blamed their son.

The queen entered into a period of deep mourning that would last for the remainder of her reign. It was made harder by her mother – with whom she’d reconciled and become close to – passing away earlier in the year. Victoria felt very alone and she went into isolation, only this time out of her own free will. Nicknamed the ‘widow of Windsor’, she divided her time between Windsor Castle, Osborne House and Balmoral Castle, and was forever wearing black. The only time people saw her was during rare public appearances and for official government duties. There’s no doubt that the remaining 40 years of her life saw a very different Victoria.

Her stifling refusal to let her children live their own lives intensified after Albert’s death. Doctors and servants would be ordered to report back on their progress, according to Ridley. Meanwhile, being cheerful was frowned upon, in case it upset the memory of their father. Victoria would emotionally manipulate her children via letters that they would feel compelled to reply to. The queen wanted Alice and her husband Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt to live with her in Britain, and she wanted Helena and her husband to reside at Windsor. Louise’s marriage to a subject, Lord Lorne, displeased her, but Beatrice’s marriage to Prince Henry Battenberg satisfied the queen, as the pair stayed close by.

Victoria also fiercely protected Leopold, who was suffering with haemophilia, and who she saw as the most intelligent of her sons. She tried to keep him close and objected to him studying at Cambridge. At the same time, she allowed him to be looked after by Archie, the brother of her attendant from Scotland, John Brown. Archie bullied Leopold, but Victoria was said to have ignored it. It is speculated that she allowed this behaviour to continue because of her close relationship with John Brown.

Having lost confidence in her own abilities, Victoria became depressed, but during the 1860s she grew close to Brown, calling him “friend more than servant.” He became the queen’s Highland Servant in 1865 and his influence on her was so great that Victoria’s household began to call her Mrs
Brown behind her back.

Victoria had known Brown since 1849 and Albert had liked him. Following the prince’s death, it was Brown’s job to lead the queen in daily pony rides. She lavished him with gifts, commissioned a portrait of him and did little to wave away the gossip. She would almost certainly have known that the satirical magazine Punch was ridiculing him often and that the Swiss newspaper Gazette de Lausanne was claiming she had secretly married Brown and even bourne a child by him.

Biographer AN Wilson disputes a pregnancy, though. He believes Victoria and Brown slept in the same bed and hugged, but that was as far as the physical relationship went. He also claims they had a small marriage ceremony at Crathie Kirk in Scotland. Even so, artist Edhar Boehn, who sculpted a head of Brown at Balmoral, said the queen had allowed the man she referred to as “darling” in her letters “every conjugal privilege.” When Brown died, in 1883 aged 56, of the skin disease erysipelas, his death crushed her. Victoria wanted to write a biography of him, for he was her rock and confidant if nothing else.

Still, she carried on. Victoria came to have 42 grandchildren (37 of which were born during her life) and – thanks to having family members scattered across the continent – she also became nicknamed ‘the grandmother of Europe’. She had achieved plenty, becoming the proud Empress of India and Britain’s longest-reigning monarch. She celebrated her Diamond Jubilee in 1896 and, as she become older, the mists of depression began to lift to a small degree.

At the start of 1901, Victoria was ill. Her son Albert Edward and eldest grandson Emperor Wilhelm II of Germany were at her deathbed, and there were signs of love between mother and son. Victoria knew that, at the age of 59, Bertie – King Edward VII – would take to the throne, but she seemed at peace. On 22 January, Victoria died. Now it was time for her country to mourn.

VICTORIA'S SECRETS -

1. Victoria passed haemophilia to Leopold and to other European royals via her daughters.

2. Aged 15, Victoria is said to have had an affair with a Scottish nobleman, the 13th Lord Elphinstone.

3. During the wars of German Unification, Princess Vicky identified with Prussia’s cause.

4. In one of seven attempts on her life, Edward Oxford tried to kill a pregnant Victoria in 1840.

VICTORIAN COURTSHIP

The upper echelons of society abided by certain rules of etiquette when it was time to find a partner.

1. Go to a ball - Young Victorian women will make themselves officially available, typically by attending a dance or a ball. An older chaperone will maintain a watchful eye while potential suitors express interest in a dance. The woman will select the most suitable.

2. Talk and walk - Once a potential match is found, the courtship can begin. Suitors will have a (clean and proper) conversation under the watchful eye of the chaperone, but physical contact is forbidden. All being well, the couple may take a walk together.

3. Be flirtatious - It is perfectly acceptable for some flirtation, but not excessively so. It is also important for the man to be accepted by the woman’s parents – this is usually helped by a man being deemed financially ready for marriage.

4. Keep company - If the couple want to continue seeing each other, they ‘keep company’. Further chaperoned dates will take place, again without any physical contact. Love letters will be written and gifts, including locks of hair, can be exchanged. Women should keep a diary.

5. Get engaged - The man may propose. There is no backing out of engagements, but it allows for unchaperoned dates. Providing the suitors are of the same class and at least aged 12 for females or 14 for males, a marriage can go ahead.


Written by David Crookes in "All About History", issue 29, 2015, UK, excerpts pp.78-85. Adapted and illustrated to be posted by Leopoldo Costa.