Wiktoria - Victoria: A Life

VICTORIA

A LIFE

Also by A. N. Wilson

FICTION

The Sweets of Pimlico

Unguarded Hours

Kindly Light

The Healing Art

Who Was Oswald Fish?

Wise Virgin

Scandal: Or Priscillas Kindness

Gentlemen in England

Love Unknown

Stray

The Vicar of Sorrows

Dream Children

My Name Is Legion

A Jealous Ghost

Winnie and Wolf

The Potters Hand

THE LAMPITT CHRONICLES

Incline Our Hearts

A Bottle in the Smoke

Daughters of Albion

Hearing Voices

A Watch in the Night

NON-FICTION

A Life of Sir Walter Scott: The Laird of Abbotsford:

A Life of John Milton

Hilaire Belloc: A Biography

How Can We Know?

Landscape in France

Tolstoy

Penfriends from Porlock: Essays And Reviews, 19771986

Eminent Victorians

C. S. Lewis: A Biography

Paul: The Mind of the Apostle

Gods Funeral: A Biography of Faith And Doubt in Western Civilization

The Victorians

Iris Murdoch As I Knew Her

London: A Short History

After the Victorians: The World Our Parents Knew

Betjeman: A Life

Our Times: The Age of Elizabeth II

Dante in Love

The Elizabethans

Hitler: A Short Biography

First published in hardback in Great Britain in 2014 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd.

Copyright A. N. Wilson, 2014

The moral right of A. N. Wilson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Every effort has been made to trace or contact all copyright-holders. The publishers will be pleased to make good any omissions or rectify any mistakes brought to their attention at the earliest opportunity.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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

Hardback ISBN: 978 1 84887 956 0
E-book ISBN: 978 1 78239 344 3

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books
An imprint of Grove Atlantic Ltd
Ormond House
2627 Boswell Street
London WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

for

Gillon Aitken

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I GRATEFULLY ACKNOWLEDGE the permission of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II to quote from materials in the Royal Archives and for other items which are in royal copyright. Thanks are also due to David Ryan at the Royal Archives, to all the staff and volunteers in the Round Tower at Windsor, and especially to the Senior Archivist Miss Pam Clark, who not only suggested many useful lines of inquiry, but also read the entire book in typescript and made many corrections and recommendations. Jonathan Marsden, Director of the Royal Collections and Surveyor of the Queens Works of Art, has been consistently helpful, and I should like to thank Lisa Heighway for the care she devoted to helping with the choice of illustrations, and the openness and generosity with which she revealed the seemingly limitless riches of the royal photographic collection. Thanks are also due to Sir Christopher Geidt for encouragement and kindness.

Dr Simon Thurley of English Heritage took me on an unforgettable tour of Osborne House out of season. Dr Ruth Guilding, formerly of English Heritage (and curator at Osborne), has given me many insights into the life and tastes of Queen Victoria and of the Prince Consort. Michael Hunter, the present curator at Osborne, was helpful and welcoming.

The staff of the Bodleian Library, the British Library, the Lambeth Palace Library and the National Library of Scotland have also been unfailingly obliging. I read much of the secondary material for this book in the Humanities One Reading Room in the British Library, and the bulk of the manuscripts in the Manuscript Room, where the staff are learned and accommodating.

During much of the time that I was doing research, the Special Collections in the Bodleian Library were rehoused, at greatinconvenience, I should imagine, to the staff, but the papers of nineteenth-century courtiers and statesmen still mysteriously materialized in seemingly no time at all, even in the unfamiliar setting of the Science Library in Parks Road.

The staff in the London Library were, as always, kind friends.

I am deeply grateful to Dr Horst Gehringer who so generously welcomed me to the State Archives in Coburg, to Dr M. Eckstein who helped me to decipher some of the more illegible examples of the Queens Alte Schrifte, and to Dr Angelika Tasler who gave me useful insights into Duke Ernst IIs musical life, and who also introduced me to the library and archive in the Schloss Ehrenberg. I am very grateful to Dr Oliver Walton, who straddles a life in the Royal Collection in England with work for the Prince Albert Society in Coburg and who has given encouragement and good advice throughout.

Alexander and Michaela Reid not only provided me with lavish hospitality at Lanton Tower but were unstinting in their generosity in allowing me full access to Sir James Reids scrapbooks, diaries and albums. Michaela shared all her great knowledge of the Victorian court with me while I enjoyed their hospitality.

The Marquess of Salisbury has generously allowed me to quote from the archive at Hatfield. While I was there, my researches were helped by the archivist Vicki Perry, by the assistance of Sarah Whale and by the advice of the former archivist Robert Harcourt Williams.

Hugo Vickers gave very particular help.

I owe my knowledge of German largely to the patient teaching of Ute Ormerod. It would not have been possible to write this book without her.

Gillon Aitken and Anna Stein were wonderful agents, as always. My editor at Atlantic, Margaret Stead, is like the unseen deity in the Psalms thou understandest my thoughts long before. It is impossible to imagine a more inspirational publisher. Tamsin Shelton has been a punctilious and patient copy-editor.

A biography of Queen Victoria is not a task undertaken lightly. The process is a long time in the gestation, as well as in the writing.This book owes much to conversations which I had long ago, often with friends who, alas, are no longer with us. I was especially fortunate to have Elizabeth Longford as a friend. Her biography, Victoria R.I. (1964, revised 1987), is a gigantic achievement which will never be replaced. Often, in the course of writing my own book, I recalled conversations I had with her, either at Osborne House, during a memorable autumn of 1988, or on subsequent occasions in London. I have also been helped, not only by frequent reference to his biography of Disraeli, but also by memories of conversations with Robert Blake. The following have all in different ways helped, either with specific answers to queries or with their knowledge of Queen Victoria, her court or her ways, or with questions which it had not occurred to me to ask, but which set me off on trails of fruitful inquiry: Davina Jones, Anna Keay, Antonia Fraser, Rebecca Fraser, Flora Fraser, my brother Stephen Wilson, the late Gerard Irvine, Lawrence James, Roy Strong, the late Kenneth Rose, Mary Miers, Richard Ingrams, Michael Hall, Rachel Woollen, Allan Maclean of Dochgarroch, Katherine Duncan-Jones, Jane Ridley, Sarah Bradford, A. D. Harvey, John Martin Robinson, Claire Whalley and Susie Attwood.