Karen Dolby - My Dearest, Dearest Albert: Queen Victorias Life Through Her Letters and Journals

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by
Michael OMara Books Limited
9 Lion Yard
Tremadoc Road
London SW4 7NQ

Copyright Michael OMara Books Limited 2018

All rights reserved. You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN: 978-1-78243-967-7 in hardback print format
ISBN: 978-1-78243-971-4 in ebook format

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Contents

I must conclude, my dearest, beloved Albert. Be careful as to your valuable health, and be assured that no one loves you as much as your faithful Victoria.

30 December 1839

V ictoria put pen to paper every day, and kept a diary from the age of thirteen; she was also an enthusiastic letter writer throughout her life. Few have written as prolifically or as openly, particularly no monarch as iconic as Queen Victoria, whose reign would last more than sixty-three years.

Official correspondence offers a glimpse of Victorias opinions, but her true character springs from the pages of her journals and private letters. Those sent to her eldest daughter Vicky, whom she considered more as if it were my sister, and to her Uncle Leopold are especially intimate. Letters to Leopold I, her maternal uncle and the King of the Belgians, were originally written as a duty but the two would develop a close and loving bond. Her missives and diary entries span the decades of the Queens long life and create a revealing portrait of Victoria as monarch, wife and mother. They reference her interests, views and ideas on all manner of subjects, from the role of women in society to the books she enjoyed reading, as well as gossip and insights into her sometimes complex relationships with her children. Underpinning it all is her absolute adoration of her beloved husband, her dearest, dearest Albert.

The young princess opens her first diary with the words: This book, Mamma gave me, that I might write the journal of my journey to Wales in it. Her mother inspected the entries each evening until Victoria became Queen in June 1837, aged eighteen, and firmly asserted her independence.

She was to fill 122 volumes of journals during the course of her life, as well as writing daily letters. It has been estimated that Victoria wrote over two thousand words a day, which amounts to a staggering sixty million words over her lifetime. She stopped writing just ten days before her death. In line with the Queens instructions, her youngest daughter Beatrice later edited the journals, removing anything she considered too personal or that might offend the royal family. Beatrice transcribed the contents, cutting them to 111 volumes and subsequently destroyed the originals, much to the horror of Victorias grandson King George V and his wife Queen Mary. Unbeknown to Beatrice, Lord Esher had made a typescript of the earlier volumes for his book The Girlhood of Queen Victoria: A Selection From Her Majestys Diaries Between the Years 1832 and 1840. The surviving journals and letters, illustrated with Victorias own sketches and watercolours, are stored in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle and from 2012 were made available online.

Victoria writes openly and in great detail, showing herself to be emotional and honest about her own feelings and experiences, as well as her opinions of other people. She praises her husband Albert endlessly and pours out her love and desire for him as her adored lover, friend and companion. The entries chronicling her devastation at his early death are heartbreakingly sad.

Photographs of Queen Victoria most commonly show a plump figure, serious and regal, dressed in widows black. The posed portraits of the day were stiff, formal affairs, mainly because their subjects had to stay still so long for the image to develop. In reality, the personality of Alexandrina Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and later Empress of India, is rather different. In private, at least, Victoria had a reputation for being fun-loving and entertaining. Like her great-great-granddaughter Queen Elizabeth II, she became Queen at a young age and preferred to maintain a composed and dignified appearance in public, perhaps to add gravitas to her youth. In a similar way to Elizabeth II, she also fell in love with her husband during one of their first meetings.

Today, the idea of Victorian values suggests restraint and infers a rather old-fashioned and strict code of conduct. In fact, the Victorian era was one of development and innovation, introducing a speed of change never before seen that affected and transformed every aspect of society. And at the forefront was Victoria the first monarch to ride on a steam train, to have electricity installed at Buckingham Palace, and to witness the first-ever public demonstration of a telephone.

This book reveals the more human face of Victoria, from spirited young Queen to passionate bride and caring mother, and is told through her own words using selected passages from her journals and more personal letters.

Her writings are peppered with underlinings and capital letters, which add emphasis in her handwritten originals but look odd on the printed page. For ease of reading they are not included here and the words that she abbreviates are mostly written in full.

Victoria and Albert:a Passionate Partnership

I n 1839, just two years into her reign, the twenty-year-old Queen was somewhat resistant to the idea of marriage, for she was enjoying her newly found freedom and sense of authority far too much. She was also a romantic and wanted to marry for love, although she was very aware of her duty to choose the right partner as consort.

Throughout her adolescence, Victoria had been presented with a string of possible suitors, none of whom really found favour in her critical eyes. As the female heir to the British throne, the young Princess knew she was an attractive dynastic proposition for the sons of the aristocracy at home, as well as the royal families across Europe, but as Queen she was in no immediate hurry to choose a husband.

Royal Suitors

Her maternal uncle and adviser, Leopold I of Belgium, was keen on an alliance with his nephew Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. Leopold was brother to both Victorias mother, Victoria, the Duchess of Kent, and Alberts father, Ernest I Duke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, and Albert had been introduced to Victoria in May 1836 when she was almost seventeen. At that time, she was rather unimpressed with her cousin, Albert, and viewed him as too reserved. He was prone to fainting fits, preferred quiet evenings to the dances of which Victoria was so fond and seemed dull to the lively young Princess. He failed to cut a very romantic figure and, more importantly, marriage was not high on Victoria's list of priorities at that point.