Queen Victoria Read online

  Censorship, both overt and covert, was common. Sometimes political writers such as Shelley found it difficult to find a publisher; 4 sometimes publishers were prosecuted for printing revolutionary texts. In October 1819 Richard Carlile was convicted of blasphemy and seditious libel, and sent to prison for publishing Tom Paine’s The Age of Reason, a book that challenged institutionalised religion and the legitimacy of the Bible. The book was a best-seller in the United States. Of course, not all art was political: in the same year John Keats wrote ‘La Belle Dame sans Merci’, a love ballad drawn from medieval tales, and Walter Scott’s historical novel The Bride of Lammermoor, probably now better known as Donizetti’s dramatic opera Lucia di Lammermoor, was published. Walter Scott was to become one of Queen Victoria’s favourite novelists, and the opera a much treasured piece of music. The art and music world was thriving too. On 23 April 1819, to co-incide with his birthday and the birthday of the Prince Regent, the best-loved British artist, J. M. W. Turner, exhibited his painting Richmond Hill. In the same year, Rossini had four of his operas performed in London. Britain seemed to be the cultural capital of the world. Certainly, at the time of Victoria’s birth, Britain was the world’s greatest power. It had the largest navy, the biggest share of the world’s trade, the most developed industry and London as the world’s financial capital. In 1837 Victoria would be queen of it all.

  Historiography

  Queen Victoria is one of the most studied women in history – over 500 books have been published on her life – so that biographies sometimes read like a historical tiered cake, each author stacking ever more obscure facts onto previous layers and often repeating the same old facts expressed slightly differently. New books about Queen Victoria appear regularly, often written by biographers rather than historians, often emphasising the monarch’s personal lifestyle at the expense of her political influence and often aimed primarily to entertain general readers. There are psychological biographies, literary biographies, chatty biographies, biographies that deal solely with Victoria’s family, her prime ministers, or her courtiers.5 There are books about young Victoria, married Victoria, widowed Victoria and even imperial Victoria. There are, commented the historian Fassiotto, ‘so many Victorias. Old Victorias, dignified Victorias, charming Victorias, angry Victorias, Victorias in white satin and Victorias in black silk’.6

  Lytton Strachey, often regarded as the father of modern biography, wrote the first scholarly biography, Queen Victoria.7 For a man with a fondness for taking a rude and irreverent approach to his subjects, Strachey’s book is strangely adulatory; it also focuses on the Queen’s early life and pays scant attention to her later reign. Other biographers have written exhaustive cradle-to-grave narratives. Elizabeth Longford’s long, authoritative, sympathetic, yet unsentimental biography Victoria8 remains the best. However, her avoidance of sexually contentious issues and her minimal treatment of the Queen’s constitutional role are drawbacks to an otherwise splendid book. Nonetheless, it remains, as Giles St Aubyn notes, ‘the envy and despair of those who venture to follow her’.9 Cecil Woodham-Smith’s superb, sympathetic Queen Victoria: Her Life and Times, Volume One 1819–186110 sets the life of Victoria within the history of the period exceptionally well but stops at the death of Albert. Stanley Weintraub’s best-selling scholarly, descriptive and readable Victoria: Biography of a Queen11 is less reverential, providing a life-like portrait which is both critical and sympathetic. Yet even so, the historical background to her reign remains slight and the book is of a length which is off-putting to many. Later interpretations such as Christopher Hibbert’s Queen Victoria 12 paint a different portrait of the monarch as a shy, diffident and vulnerable yet sensual person rather than the rather capricious, censorious and morally repressive one of popular imagination. A. N. Wilson’s Victoria13 creates a fresher, yet sympathetic, Victoria for the twenty-first century. Wilson draws on new evidence from German archives to enrich his portrait of the Queen as an unconventional, volatile yet kindly and unsnobbish woman. His witty biography is an enjoyable and captivating read, full of gossipy anecdotes about royal life, but as with other accounts the focus remains on the personal, rather than the political story.

  Other writers have written shorter and differently focused biographies. Frank Hardie’s The Political Influence of Queen Victoria, 1861–190114 was the first to challenge the myth that Queen Victoria took little interest in politics. On the contrary, he argues, the Queen had a pervasive influence particularly over foreign policy, the Church and legislation. Hardie provides a frank exposition of Victoria’s behind-the-scenes royal influence, revealing how the Queen promoted legislation, campaigned and intrigued against policies of which she disapproved and tried to influence the composition of governments. Throughout her life, he argued, she preferred to take an active role in government rather than take part in ceremonial occasions. Queen Victoria wanted to rule not just reign.

  Some have sought to interpret Victoria theoretically. Dorothy Thompson’s Queen Victoria15 analyses the role of the monarch through the prism of gender, arguing that the presence of a woman in the highest political spheres affected the lives of all her subjects. Thompson’s feminist leanings, however, make her a little too sympathetic towards the monarch and she has a tendency to overlook the Queen’s obvious failings. The gender theme is developed by Adrienne Munich’s Queen Victoria’s Secrets,16 which is a challenging and thought-provoking exploration of the influence of Victoria on cultural history. It is, however, more a compendium of how Victorians saw Victoria rather than a biography. Others have employed the analytical tools of cultural studies. John Plunkett’s scholarly Queen Victoria: First Media Monarch,17 examines the role of the media in Queen Victoria’s reign and analyses how the development of popular media helped re-invent the monarchy and make it more popular.

  There has been a recent shift in biographical writing, that which examines particular aspects of Victoria’s private life: Lynne Vallone’s Becoming Victoria18 and Kate Williams’s Becoming Queen,19 for example, both focus on the Queen’s emotional and psychological early life. Others have inspected Victoria’s relationships with significant others. Richard Hough’s Victoria and Albert20 and Helen Rappaport’s Magnificent Obsession: Victoria, Albert and the Death That Changed the Monarchy21 chronicle the marriage of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. John Van Der Kiste’s Sons, Servants and Statesmen22 looks at how the men in Victoria’s life influenced and affected her; Shrabani Basu’s Victoria and Abdul23 narrows this further by examining how a young Indian immigrant came to play a central role in the Queen’s life. Some historians have focused on certain themes. Barrie Charles’s Kill the Queen24 and Paul Thomas Murphy’s Shooting Victoria25 both examine the eight assassination attempts on Victoria by respectively a public house waiter, an unemployed carpenter, a news vendor, a navvy, an army officer, a clerk, an artist and some Irish nationalists. Tony Rennel’s The Death of Queen Victoria26 traces her dying days through to her funeral. However, the narrow focus of such books ignores or minimises Victoria’s greater and broader life. In addition the cult of royal personality which is sometimes promoted within these books tends to eulogise the Queen and/or abstract her from her historical context.

  Despite the plethora of books about Queen Victoria, she has received little attention by academic historians. Walter L. Arnstein’s Queen Victoria27 book is a succinct and engaging introduction to the period in that it provides a social, cultural, religious and political context for the Queen. The main drawback to this book is that Victoria remains a backdrop to a history of the period rather than a central figure – there is too much of a historical framework and not enough about what Victoria thought, felt and did. Certainly, Arnstein raises some interesting questions about the Queen but these are located in the last few pages rather than incorporated in his general narrative. More importantly, Queen Victoria’s journals were not available online when Arnstein researched his book and their absence weakens it.

  Perhaps the best way of discovering the
politics of Queen Victoria is through the biographies and writings of her ministers. For example, the essential first point of reference for readers who want to trace Victoria’s attitude towards the Crimean War is David Brown’s Palmerston: A Biography,28 which as well as a statesman-like life of the prime minister is an impressive study of mid-Victorian politics. It is a meticulously researched erudite chronicle which brings to life Palmerston’s disagreements with the Queen over foreign policy. Historians can also rely on Queen Victoria’s private secretaries and other key staff members who published their memoirs for an insight into Victoria’s attitudes and convictions. Charles Greville, for example, was clerk to the Privy Council, which brought him into contact with all the leading politicians as well as Queen Victoria. His Greville Memoirs, 1814–186129 provide an acerbically refreshing insight into the personal opinions of Queen Victoria. Similarly, the publication of a selection of Henry Ponsonby’s letters to the Queen and various officials offer a taste of what it was like to act as private secretary to Queen Victoria.30 Prince Albert is well known for his authority over the Queen and biographies such as Robert Rhodes James’s Albert, Prince Consort31 and Edgar Feuchtwanger’s Albert and Victoria, The Rise and Fall of the House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha32 help us understand quite how much Albert influenced the Queen and British politics.

  Victoria left an archival treasure trove of material for biographers and historians. By the time of her death she had written millions of words, often confiding her opinions and emotions as well as writing about the important events and people of the time. At the age of 13 she began keeping a diary – or journal as it is sometimes called – which she kept until a few days before she died. The journal filled 122 volumes. But the Queen, knowing that her diaries would be made public, appointed her youngest daughter Beatrice as literary executor. It is well known that Beatrice censored the journal, copied out the parts she felt appropriate and burnt the rest – a remarkable case of historical vandalism. Victoria also wrote a great many letters and telegrams to her officials, her family and her friends. A collection of Victoria’s letters, published between 1907 and 1930, consists of nine volumes of over 600 pages each. These letters were heavily edited as several hundred volumes would need to be printed if the entire range of the Queen’s letters were published. As with the journals, much was destroyed. Victoria’s eldest son, Bertie, destroyed letters from the Queen to Lord Granville, all the correspondence in the Flora Hastings affair, all the letters to Disraeli if they concerned the family and all the correspondence between the Munshi and his mother.

  Themes and discussions

  In this book, Queen Victoria’s thoughts, feelings and actions, as revealed in her journals and letters, will be used to shed light on the contemporary economic, social, religious, cultural and political history and to explore how Queen Victoria’s views did – or did not – reflect the period in which she lived. Queen Victoria will be a historical and political biography rather than a personal and literary one and as such will place Victoria in her own contemporary context more firmly than those biographies which have tended to isolate the Queen from her environment. This allows topics such as Victoria’s role in politics to be addressed, a subject often neglected or underplayed in many biographies. It will take a chronological approach, although themes are highlighted and examined analytically within that chronology.

  Queen Victoria was not like the other three queens regnant – Mary Tudor (1553–8), Elizabeth I (1558–1603) and Anne (1702–14) – even reigning longer than all the previous queens put together. Each queen faced her own political difficulties: Queen Victoria’s was her changing constitutional role. During Victoria’s reign, the distribution of political power gradually yet significantly shifted away from the monarch and the aristocracy to parliament and the people. This, and the vast and transforming social, economic and political changes that were already underway, would pose challenges to any monarch, even one with vast experience. Numerous biographies of Queen Victoria have helped cultivate a raft of taken-for-granted myths about her. This book will use both contemporary sources and published work to challenge the veracity of such myths. For example, it is often held that Victoria withdrew from political life when Albert died, a belief that is not borne out by the evidence.

  The first chapter will examine assess the extent to which Victoria was prepared for her future role as queen. Certainly, the traces of an older Victoria are apparent in her younger years. For example, when her mother and John Conroy tried to force the young Princess to sign away her rights, Victoria showed an obstinacy and resolve that became familiar throughout her reign. Her Germanic upbringing, and her love of her German relatives, would generally shape Victoria’s outlook: in future years political matters would usually turn out to be personal ones, especially in situations concerning Germany.

  Victoria ascended the throne with little preparation and relied upon her first prime minister, Lord Melbourne, to guide her through the intricacies of government. Chapter 2 will examine the constitutional constraints and freedoms of the young Queen and the ways in which she tried to resist the checks placed upon her. In these years, Victoria’s character and style of reigning become evident: she tended to respond instantaneously rather than carefully thinking through the possible outcomes of her decisions. Throughout her life she remained passionate rather than reserved, never able to camouflage her feelings: warm and demonstrative to those she loved; cool and distant to those she did not. In particular, possibly because Victoria was an only – and lonely – child, she placed a great significance on her wider family connections. These family relationships often swayed her views of European politics making it difficult for the Queen to remain politically dispassionate, an increasingly essential component of being a sovereign in a new democratic age. At the beginning of her reign, the young Victoria enjoyed huge popularity, a popularity which rapidly evaporated in the light of her all-too-obvious political inexperience and partisanship.

  Queen Victoria was also a young woman, a daughter, a wife and a mother in an age in which each of those roles conflicted with the idea of taking charge of one of the world’s leading countries. Recent histories have shown that Victoria was a sensual, stubborn, emotional and hot-tempered young woman who found it hard to compromise. Chapter 3 will discuss Victoria’s sexuality within nineteenth-century norms, chart her stormy relationship with Albert and suggest that far from being a subservient wife to her husband, Victoria was (initially at least) obstreperously single-minded. Victoria and Albert’s first child, Victoria Adelaide, was born on 21 November 1840. Eight other children followed. The book will examine how Victoria responded to pregnancy and childbirth in the light of general female reactions and practices of the time.

  By early 1841, Melbourne’s government was under threat, he was defeated on a vote of no confidence and Robert Peel became prime minister, followed by Russell, Derby and Aberdeen. Chapter 4 will discuss the turbulent years of the 1840s. For example, Chartism and the Irish potato famine and its consequences dominated the political debate. In April 1848, Queen Victoria and her family, fearful of Chartist and Irish nationalist uprisings, left London for the safety of Osborne House, Isle of Wight. Revolutions spread across mainland Europe. Victoria disapproved of the insurrections whatever their cause: in France against the corrupt government of Louise Philippe, in Italy for unification, in Austria against Metternich, in Hungary against the Austrian Empire, and in Germany for liberal nationalism.

  As the Queen grew in political and diplomatic confidence, Lord Palmerston, foreign secretary, began to exasperate Victoria: she thought him too impetuous, too rude and too undiplomatic. More importantly, the two disagreed over politics. Queen Victoria loathed revolutions and revolutionaries; in contrast, Palmerston despised autocratic sovereigns and sympathised with those who wanted an increase in democracy. Victoria regularly tried to dismiss him but at first failed to do so because Palmerston’s popularity was too great – the fact that she tried to do so was detrimental to the health of t
he constitution.

  Meanwhile, as Chapter 5 will show, Queen Victoria’s family grew in size. Her ninth and last child, Beatrice, was born in 1857: Victoria was 38 years old. The Queen, some historians claim, hated being pregnant, suffered from post-natal depression, viewed breastfeeding with disgust, thought new-born babies ugly, was a poor mother and left household affairs to Albert. These popular assumptions will be questioned: using Queen Victoria’s journals, it will be suggested that she was a better mother than has often been supposed. In 1858 her eldest daughter, Vicky, was married at the age of 17 to Prince Frederick William, heir to the throne of Prussia. It was a dynastic marriage encouraged by both parents who hoped to influence German politics through the medium of their daughter: Victoria often longed for governments to trust her extended family networks and to frame its foreign policy accordingly.

  By 1851 the Queen had come to loathe Palmerston’s style of politics and thought his foreign policy much too cavalier for comfort. She and Albert nicknamed him ‘Pilgerstein’. Victoria tried again and again to dismiss her foreign secretary, and she was eventually victorious in December 1851 when Palmerston was removed from office. Palmerston’s subsequent absence from overseeing foreign policy co-incided with what was to be one of the century’s biggest international flash-points: Russian expansion in the Ottoman-controlled Crimea. Chapter 6 will argue that Queen Victoria’s engineering of Palmerston’s dismissal helped the escalation of the crisis. Palmerston had wanted to check Russian aggression towards the Ottoman Empire; in contrast, the Queen was initially pro-Russian.