Victoria: a life

Queen Victoria is one of the figures from British history about whom most people know something but few people know very much. She has come to personify what is popularly regarded as a golden age of imperial glory and economic supremacy. But in fact her reign was pock-marked with military catastrophes and scarred by British industry’s inability to expand at the rate of its German and American competitors. That supposed supremacy is represented in our collective mind by an elderly lady of unprepossessing appearance, battling, often successfully, with the most gifted politicians that her country has ever known.

One of the many strengths of A.N. Wilson’s monumental biography, Victoria: a life, is the way in which he preserves the portrait of the would-be autocratic monarch but also paints a picture of a vulnerable human being. Her infatuation with Prince Albert is chronicled with as much care as her loathing of W.E. Gladstone. Emotionally fastidious readers might be embarrassed to read Victoria’s own account of her wedding night. “He clasped me in his arms and we kissed each other over and over again.” The sentimentality of the bride is in sharp contrast to the insensitivity of the queen who, 40 years later, could not bring herself to thank the Grand Old Man when he retired after his fourth premiership.

Wilson treats Victoria’s personal foibles gently. His catalogue of the “crateful of mementoes” which she required to be buried with her includes “the wedding-ring which belonged to the mother of my dear and valued friend John Brown [which] I have worn constantly since his death – to be on my finger”. His conclusion – he says only that the relationship between queen and her Highland gillie was “much more than that felt by many old ladies for their servants” – seems to suffer from an excess of gallantry. But the gentility with which he treats her private life is in marked contrast to his frank description of her public failings.

It was, he writes, “generally agreed that the Queen was neither a wise or competent Head of State”. He supports that judgement with speculation that Lord Melbourne, “much as he loved her … must have cringed” when he received “such letters as” the one which confessed that “the Queen is ashamed to say it, but she has forgotten when she appointed the Judge Advocate”. Unfortunately, he does not try to explain the strange question with which the letter ends: “When will the Cabinet be over?” This is not the Young Victoria of the biopics.

Clearly Wilson, like Melbourne, feels an affection for Victoria which is not diminished by the recognition of her faults. His undisguised sympathy is one of the qualities that makes his biography as readable as it is informative. And that means very readable indeed. For this is one of those books which makes even those of us who follow the writers’ trade feel full of awe and wonder at the effort and industry which has gone into their creation. In a work of such detail, occasional errors are unavoidable. Still, Wilson ought to know that “Harty-Tarty”, one of the great figures of Victorian politics, was the Eighth not the Seventh Duke of Devonshire, and it was Sir Garnet Wolseley, not the Duke of Cambridge, who saw General Gordon off for the Sudan at Charing Cross Station.

Victoria did not dominate her ministers in the way the myth-makers pretend. She had early successes. Lord Melbourne, attempting to persuade her not to resist changes to her ladies in waiting demanded by the new government, was a model of aristocratic sycophancy, yet failed. “You must remember that [Peel] is not a man accustomed to talking to kings.” But it took almost 20 years of “waiting and cajoling” to make prime ministers of both parties agree to her husband being named Prince Consort. And after almost half a century on the throne – when her experience should have enhanced her influence – she was often confounded by Disraeli’s flattery and cunning and Gladstone’s courage and convictions. It was Disraeli who coaxed her out of protracted mourning with the proposal that she should become Empress of India. The related celebration went off so well that Victoria developed a taste for pageantry and gladly accepted the organised rejoicing that marked her Golden Jubilee. Wilson describes it in details that include the uniforms worn by the two Indians who came from Agra to act as out-riders but were used as waiters.

Gladstone she hounded to the point of attempting to persuade the Marquis of Hartington to usurp his leadership of the Liberal Party and become Prime Minister in his place. Victoria found his obsession with Irish Home Rule almost as offensive as the patronising manner in which he addressed her, and she missed no opportunity to kick him when he was down. When she heard that Gordon had died in Khartoum she rebuked him in a telegram sent en clair for all the world to see. It revealed a level of literacy which was no greater than her loyalty. It began, “These news from Khartoum are terrible.”

Victoria was not a paragon of virtue. She despised and humiliated her eldest son, was profoundly mean, obsessed with medals and decorations, and attracted by funerals to the point of necrophilia. The strength of Wilson’s biography lies in the fact that he records all her faults, but recognises that, despite them, she represents the last era in which Britain had the confidence of a world power.