The Garden of Eaden: WHO WAS QUEEN VICTORIA?

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Queen Victoria ( 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was the monarch of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death. Not only was she Queen, from 1 May 1876, she used the additional title of Empress of India. Victoria was the daughter of Prince Edward, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, the fourth son of King George III. Here reign lasted 63 years and 7 months, which is longer than that of any other British monarch and the longest of any female monarch in history.

What was Queen Victoria like?

Queen Victoria’s personality has been cemented into the British mind as being dour and humourless. In fact, ‘…we are not amused...’ is most likely the only utterance most of us associate with her – although later in life, she confided to a relative that she had never actually said this! However, Queen Victoria’s reputation has been gradually unravelled in recent years.

We now have a much more rounded picture of our longest reigning monarch, and a startling one at that which changes our perception of her, and her era.

New material that became available in the 1970’s and 80’s showed a vastly different portrait of the Queen to the one proffered by tradition. While she studiously maintained an appropriate decorum in public, the evidence shows a starkly different character behind the scenes.

Contrary to the received image of prudery, she was a highly sexed individual. She did after all have nine children in 17 years, her first coming only 10 months after her marriage, and the second following just 11 months later. The couple adorned their bedroom with nude statues and – according to one biographer, had a device that enabled them to lock the door without getting out of bed!

In Prince Albert’s bathroom she had hung, in the words of one recent biographer, a ‘startlingly sexual’ painting of the mythical Queen of Lydia who kept Hercules as her personal slave. The symbolism would have been all to clear.

Far from setting the prudery agenda, she was enthralled by erotic art. She and Albert exchanged what has been described as ‘awesome’ amounts of nude sculpture as presents to each other. When a collection of similarly risqué statues were placed in the Crystal palace for her ceremonial opening of the Great Exhibition in1851, it was not her who objected but the country’s bishops, who threatened to boycott the biggest national showcase of the century. Fig leaves were eventually rustled up to spare their blushes.

Victoria and Albert were also in the habit of sending nude paintings to each other. The story is told of the writer Compton Mackenzie who spotted an alluring nude portrait of the mythical figure Artemis in a Buckingham Palace corridor when he was there to be knighted in 1952. Wondering to himself what Victoria would have said to having such a painting hanging in the palace, he approached it to read an inscription that revealed it to be one of her wedding presents to Albert!

Victoria had a passion for popular and more lowbrow entertainments. She loved freak shows, and the American showman P.T.Barnum would be summoned to perform when in the country. He arguably made his fortune from the royal patronage he could rely on. She made frequent visits to circuses and extravaganza shows when they arrived in London. Queen Victoria clearly had a passion for the exotic. She once replied to her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, when he asked her about her wishes for a pet, that she would like a monkey.

She was by no means a conformist. Despite the religious strictures of Victorian life, she and Albert never got into the habit of going to church on Sundays. It was a habit that lasted throughout her life.

She is recorded as relishing whiskey ‘…and not too weak…’ and the occasional betting spree on the horses. One photograph is described by a biographer as showing her, when she smiled, looking more like a jolly old barmaid than a Queen.

She was a strong believer in the spirit world and held séances after Albert’s death in order to establish contact with him. A 14 year old medium, Robert Lees, became her favourite when he claimed to have made contact with Albert – the first to do so – two years after Albert’s death in 1861. The dead Prince Consort apparently passed a personal message, a pet name known only to Victoria, to Lees in front of two royal emissaries. Victoria later had him perform another séance at Windsor, and expressed herself convinced that contact had been made. He is said to have conducted six more séances over the years, each successful in reaching Albert.