Black-clad, dour-faced and decidedly not amused, Queen Victoria’s grief came to define her.
When most people think of Queen Victoria, they picture a joyless widow dressed in black, a woman who closed down her emotions on the day she lost her soulmate and devoted herself for the rest of her days to the self-indulgent business of mourning her late husband. Earlier paintings and photographs that captured a hopeful princess and composed queen who had no time for such misery have been shunted aside in the public consciousness in favour of a woman who, infamously, was supposedly “not amused”.
Queen Victoria – once a lively and vivacious woman who loved her husband, Prince Albert, to the point of distraction – experienced her own annus horriblis in 1861. In March that year, her mother, Victoria, Duchess of Kent, died. The two women had enjoyed a strained relationship for much of their lives but had grown much closer once the queen had had her own children, and the brittle duchess became a loving grandmother. But if that significant loss hadn’t been challenging enough, in December that same year Queen Victoria experienced the most shattering death she had ever known – that of her husband of 21 years. Albert passed away on 14 December 1861 at the age of 42. From that day forward, Victoria’s life was changed forever.
The Victorian cult of mourning was one to which the queen wholeheartedly subscribed. Indeed, it might be argued that her own dedication to grief went some way to creating it. But to understand the depths of her unhappiness, we must first understand the depths of the passion she and Albert had shared. Their marriage was loving and supportive, and Victoria relied heavily on Albert to keep the home fires burning. He managed the family home and provided a rock for her to lean on, a sounding board for political decisions and a friend for a woman with the responsibility for a kingdom on her shoulders.
Victoria was just 42 when she was widowed, and that sudden severing of the most important relationship in her life hit her with the strength of a physical blow. So deeply entwined were the couple that it was almost as though she had lost a part of herself. The woman who was a queen in public rejoiced in her private identity as a wife and lover, but with the loss of Albert she had lost a precious anchor for that identity. That other Victoria, the loving wife and passionate lover, no longer existed. With no other avenue left for her to express her passion for her husband, it instead found its outlet in extravagant mourning.
To Victoria, moving on was unthinkable; instead she focused her efforts on preserving the past. In the Windsor Castle’s Blue Room, where Albert had died, the queen had clean clothes laid out for him every day as though he might return. Each morning hot water was brought into the room and his shaving kit prepared, and each day the water went cold and the kit was put away unused, ready for tomorrow’s ritual. In the years following his death, the Blue Room became a shrine to Albert and a sanctuary for his wife in which she passed hours alone in silent prayer, communing with the husband she had lost.
When her marriage of 21 years ended in tragedy, Queen Victoria entered the second phase of her life and she devoted herself singularly to the business of widowhood. She famously wore black for the rest of her days and when one considers that she outlived her late husband by some 40 years, one begins to see the magnitude of her dedication. Despite multiple attempts on her life, Victoria had never feared to be seen by her subjects and regularly took carriage rides in public, but now she retreated into lonely seclusion.
Rarely seen by the public, the queen also withdrew from participating in any ceremonies or events that might require her to make an appearance. She avoided the State Opening of Parliament for five years and the hosting of important overseas visitors for even longer, experiencing severe anxiety whenever she did agree to do so. The very thought of the planned 1873 visit of the Shah of Persia left her sick with nerves, but the experience proved to be anything but unpleasant. Nonetheless, it was a rare glimmer of light in the self-imposed darkness.
Of course, Victoria’s mourning didn’t go unremarked and as it continued, her subjects began to feel uneasy. Once so visible and vibrant at the side of her husband, her isolation led to a serious case of out of sight, out of mind. With her absence growing ever more noticeable as the years went by, the cries of republicans grew. Even then Victoria wouldn’t be swayed. She did precisely as much as she needed to and no more, preferring to spend her time dreaming of Albert.
Yet Victoria wasn’t alone in her widowhood and she famously developed an intimate friendship with John Brown, an attendant at Balmoral. The down-to-earth Scot couldn’t have been more different from the refined and disciplined Albert, and she took solace in his easy company. Though this relationship undoubtedly did much to help Victoria’s spirits, it did little to improve the public perception of her and gossip swirled about the queen, who had even been nicknamed Mrs Brown by some. This was a gift to the republican movement and for the first time in many years, politicians dared to broach the subject of the queen’s removal.
Ironically, it was a near tragedy that turned the tide. The Prince of Wales fell ill with typhoid fever, the very illness that had killed Albert, and for a time his life seemed to hang in the balance. Now the public could once again identify with the unhappy monarch, for she wasn’t the woman who had self-indulgently mourned for years, but a mother worried for the life of her eldest son. Happily he recovered and in 1872, a celebration of thanksgiving was held for his restored health.
Finally, after years of hiding away, Victoria emerged once more into the public eye and her subjects, starved of contact with their sovereign, were delighted to see her again. But even though she emerged from her self-imposed seclusion to celebrate her son’s recovery, Victoria would never again return to the same level of public visibility that she had once had. It was enough though, and the remaining shreds of republican feeling were further reduced when John Brown deftly tackled a would-be assassin of Victoria, adding not only to her popularity, but also his own.
The queen took much solace from the presence of John Brown and other close members of her household, but despite her solitary demeanour she still needed companionship. She became so dependent on Princess Beatrice, her secretary and confidante, that she refused her youngest daughter permission to marry until she and her would-be husband, Prince Henry of Battenberg, agreed to live in England. Even then Victoria was bereft when the married couple departed for their honeymoon, despite the fact they were spending it just a few miles from her on the Isle of Wight.
For the remaining decades of Victoria’s life, she made her mourning a public affair. Though still maintaining her unhappy demeanour and black wardrobe, she was no longer an invisible monarch. Things were never the same after Albert died but thanks to her slow, tentative emergence back into the public eye, the monarchy had been saved. Strange to think that it took typhoid fever to do it, the very illness that had stolen the Prince Consort away in the first place.
THE COURT OF PUBLIC OPINION
When Queen Victoria retreated into isolation and her rather self-serving period of mourning, she little suspected the damage that her decision would do to her standing, let alone the danger she was placing the monarchy in. Victoria and Albert had initially been met with coolness by the public, who regarded them as somewhat stuffy, but the country warmed to the couple over the years as their family grew.
Now the queen’s decision to turn her back on public duties was all her republican enemies needed. She was no longer interested in her realms, they argued, and the time had come to end the monarchy and replace it with a republic. In the end Victoria re-entered public life, but not before her reputation had sustained a severe dent.
“After years of hiding away, Victoria emerged into the public eye and her subjects, starved of contact with their sovereign, were delighted to see her”
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