For Gráinne and Aeneas, with all love
‘I could tell you my adventures – beginning from this morning,’ said Alice a little timidly: ‘but it’s no use going back to yesterday, because I was a different person then.’
Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865
‘Elizabeth [I] was a great Queen but a bad woman; and even in her royal capacity she erred sometimes; she had a very great idea of her prerogative and was more arbitrary even than her tyrannical father.’
Princess Victoria, c.1834
CONTENTS
QUEEN VICTORIA’S FAMILY TREE: A SIMPLIFIED VERSION
CHAPTER 2: ‘Fresh and innocent as the flowers in her own garden’
CHAPTER 3: ‘Constant amusements, flattery, excitements and mere politics’
CHAPTER 4: ‘Every quality that could be desired to render me perfectly happy’
CHAPTER 5: ‘The cares of Royalty pressed comparatively lightly’
CHAPTER 6: ‘The pain of parting’
CHAPTER 7: ‘Unavailing regrets’
CHAPTER 9: ‘Wisest counsellors’
CHAPTER 10: ‘Mother of many nations’
CHAPTER 11: ‘All that magnificence’
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
1. Victoria, Duchess of Kent with Princess Victoria by Sir William Beechey, 1821 (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library)
2. Victoria Regina by Henry Tanworth Wells, 1887 (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library)
3. Queen Victoria by Sir Francis Grant, 1843 (The Crown Estate / The Bridgeman Art Library)
4. Queen Victoria by Alfred Edward Chalon, 1838 (Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland / The Bridgeman Art Library)
5. Lord Melbourne with Queen Victoria’s dog, Islay, by Queen Victoria (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library)
6. Prince Albert by Emil Wolff, 1844 (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library)
7. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert at the Bal Costumé of 12 May 1842 by Sir Edwin Landseer, 1842–6 (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library)
8. To the Queen’s Private Apartments, English School, 19th century (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library)
9. Queen Victoria with her Four Eldest Children by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1845 (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library)
10. Badge of the Order of Victoria and Albert by Tommaso Saulini, c.1863 (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library)
11. Queen Victoria, Alice and Louise with portrait of Albert, 1863 (© Hulton Royals Collection / Getty Images)
12. Her Majesty at Osborne in 1866 by Sir Edwin Landseer, 1867 (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library)
13. Queen Victoria with a spinning wheel, 1875 (© Hulton Royals Collection / Getty Images)
14.The Family of Queen Victoria in 1887 by Laurits Regner Tuxen, 1887 (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library)
15. Queen Victoria by Jean Joseph Benjamin-Constant, 1899 (The Royal Collection © 2011 Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II / The Bridgeman Art Library)
Introduction
ON THE EVE of Queen Victoria’s coronation, in June 1838, Charles Greville committed to his diary a memorable description of the capital.