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Dearest Child: Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the Crown Princess of Prussia, 1858-61
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December 16, 2016
In all the Victoria reading I've done this year, every author so far has mentioned that Victoria was the preeminent letter writer of her generation, and certainly the hundreds of volumes of letters she churned out are a testament to this--but I decided a nice project would be to read at least one volume so started with this one, letters between her and her daughter, shortly after Vicky's marriage to Fritz in 1858 (future Prussian Emperor Frederick III), and ending in 1861 with the death of Albert.
I am happy to see that there are 2 more volumes edited by Roger Fulford going all the way to 1885--I liked his footnotes, and while I wish some letters were done in their entirety (lot are just passages or excerpts) or many letters have Victoria saying that Albert's letters or one of her lady in waiting would answer the other half or go into more detail, we didn't really see those, but that's okay. He also says that it was a choice to not include her frequent underlining of words, because of cost of replicating and readability. Which I can see, but still something of a bummer--well, Victoria will always have exclamation points, because her letters are riddled with them. Consensus? I grew progressively fonder of Victoria as I made my way through this. She really did seem to write without a care, pouring herself out on paper, and a very different picture emerges of her, at least to me.
Take for example, the very last letter in the book, written while Albert was dying (probably of stomach cancer, which makes sense over typhus, since one theme I noticed was mentions of his "weak stomach," "despondent and weak and miserable," or "Papa keeps grumbling and making faces," etc. throughout the letters--which bears historians up that his condition was a chronic long lasting one):
"My time is entirely taken up with precious Papa--and so engrossed with him--that I can think of little else.
I am sorry that the [Prussian] elections have taken such a very liberal turn. That will alarm the King."
Which shows that even in the depth of her frantic concern over Albert, Victoria was still tapped into political concerns of the day, which practically every letter mentions to some degree. Though there were some themes:
1) The NUMBER ONE topic in letters: WARM ROOMS. One of the biographies--I think the AN Wilson one--mentions that the hardest thing for servants and courtiers to adapt to with Victoria's court was the frigid temperatures she demanded--and dear God, I can only imagine. Her love of "frosty" weather, not to be confused with "damp cold" is FREQUENT. Everything bad that happens to Vicky can pretty much be chalked up to her bedroom being over the kitchen, and therefore far too hot. In one letter, dated beginning of December, Victoria goes on about how hot the palace she was currently at was, but no worries--she had every window and door open to cool the place down.
Least the fashion kept them bundled.
2) Technology. I kept thinking throughout this how much Victoria would have loved modern days. She hated pregnancy, childbirth, and had something of an antipathy of children (she did not think they were cute--froglike grubs pretty much, acceptable for viewing at 6 months, but even then she did not hold back on her views of non-attractiveness of children in general--"I am no admirer of babies")--if anyone would have been pro-birth control, I feel ironically it would have been her. Leaving aside medicine, which she seemed rather dubious about the current practices, her excitement about telegrams was cute--and Vicky got scoldings for taking too long (2 hours) to answer one of her telegrams. In one letter, she bemoans that if she could just talk to her for an hour or so, how amazing that would be--which made me think how much she would have loved telephones. (Well, she got to try it out in 1878 with Alexander Graham Bell and her reaction to that was "most extraordinary" and she purchased two).
Photographs. If Victoria wasn't sending photos, she was demanding photos, and instructions to send her the bill for the plates, because she wanted the negatives too to make more.
She charted the progress of how fast ships were, trains, and seemed to keep in touch with what was going on in the world to the nth degree. Someone was definitely reading her daily boxes.
3) George Elliot fandom. The books they're currently reading is another main topic--since both Victoria and Vicky whiled away the evening hours it seemed by reading aloud to their husbands. Jane Eyre seems to have been a favorite, Wendell Wilkie, Tennyson of course, but George Elliot seems to have been Victoria's favorite, to where she sketched her favorite scenes of Adam Bede and talked about how she commissioned artists to paint parts from Mill of the Floss for her. (Actually, the sketches Victoria did were pretty good). Both women spoke a number of languages (French & German mostly--but even in old age, Victoria learnt Hindustani, while Vicky on her deathbed was brushing up on her Greek) and while their letters are primarily in English, there's a sprinkling of French and German in each one.
But speaking of fans, Victoria quit going to the theater after Albert's death, but here it seemed via letters at least, she went several times a week. Everything from bloody murder plays to Shakespeare, with definite opinions about all. Her daughter, who comes off a little priggish, but that's somewhat normal being a 17 year old cast off in a VERY hostile court (god her mother in law was a piece of work--exulting when Victoria's second daughter died--since the English princesses were practically atheists, better for the kids to be raised without a mother--especially evil since Alice died due to that "fatal kiss" of her quarantined child). Anyways Vicky wrote to her mother that she was tempted to see French plays, but hated the French and the plays too risque. Also, wanted to see Faust badly, but that might also be controversial.
Victoria's response? The French aren't THAT bad, and their plays are excellent. Go! And see Faust too!
Both Vicky (child prodigy that she was) and Victoria's letters are insanely readable though--rarely dull (but perhaps that's because they've been edited), and Victoria definitely didn't hold back if Vicky misspelled a word or capitalized something she shouldn't have. Letter back would be pointing out all the flaws of her daughter's previous letter.
I guess if you think about it, a lot did happen between 58-61, especially in the Royal Family: Vicky got married; had Wilhelm (and the letters are full of discussions about what to do with his arm); had Charlotte (sad both her children turned against her so much); Alice got engaged to Louis of Hesse; Bertie met Alexandra (more on that); France and Germany seemed to slowly move towards war (what with Napoleon III and Savoy); and pre-war grumblings between Germany & Denmark with the Schleswig War looming; Victoria's mother died, and Albert died.
Things that surprised me--biographers make a big deal about the antipathy between Victoria and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, but I think these letters cleared that all up for me. Victoria mentions how Vicky at least has the support of her family and was raised to rule, whereas Victoria came totally unprepared and with her mother against her at the start, but all water under the bridge now. Since "Grandmamma" is mentioned frequently--at least a quarter of the letters I think at least mention what she's been up to or news from Kent, and her great grief at her mother's death--I think Victoria did get over her childhood issues to some degree and loved her mother.
Another book said that Victoria had no female friends, but hello, Countess Blucher or Duchess of Sutherland, are mentioned often. I thought it interesting, especially with Vicky's aversion towards the French, how many times Empress Eugenie appears pre-exile--at one point coming to England to shop, staying with Victoria for most of it. One thing I think good of Victoria, is she didn't seem to have much jealousy towards anyone (though I guess she had them all beat with power and money)--and she always wrote at length to compliment other women's looks or dresses (especially Eugenie), though equally scathing if someone's looks fell short in her estimation.
John Brown, years before Albert's death, also gets lots of mentions, sometimes paragraphs long recounting their conversations. Actually, the servants as a whole get a lot of ink, and I know Downton Abbey made the whole upstairs/downstairs thing fashionable again, but by how much they correspond about servants and nursemaids and hairdressers and their servants' families, neither woman seems clueless about the work that was put into making their lifestyle a reality.
Feminism. I know Victoria was anti-suffrage later in life, but it's one of those inexplicable things--like Edith Wharton also among the anti-suffrage bunch that confuses me. The two women though did vent in their letters about unequal society--"Poor woman is bodily and morally the husband's slave. That always sticks in my throat"; to wishing for daughters over sons; to wishing they were a man (Vicky). Victoria even says that she thinks Albert a little sexist, though he'd deny if it pressed.
The bio on King Edward casually mentioned that Vicky was in love with her brother's wife, Alix, and was possibly gay. Well, I scoffed a little when I got to the letters about Alexandra, since they are very much in the Romantic effusions of beauty, and hey people wrote like that back then. But then, started to wonder myself. Passages like "The more I see of her the more charming and attractive I think her. I am very careful in all I do and say--and feel rather nervous. I was all in a tremble and ready to cry when I first saw this sweet young creature!!", followed by 4 pages of descriptions of her face, and then when Bertie wandered off to whore it up in the Middle East, "I own it gives me a feeling of great sadness when I think of that sweet lovely flower--young and beautiful--that makes my heart beat when I look at her--not even producing an impression enough to last from Baden to England"--well yeah, I guess jury is out, since Vicky didn't write about anyone else it seemed in the same vein.
In a way total irony--Vicky determined to liberalize Germany and be a force for progression, winding up thanks to Bismark and her megalomaniac son having the exact opposite happen. Trying to marry off her family to German royalty to strengthen ties, but falling for a Danish princess, engineers her brother into the union (even with the Danish vs. German thing, Vicky seems to have been the one that instigated the engagement) which helped bring about an alliance between France & England.
I look forward to reading the next volumes. Far from being the curmudgeonly dragon of history, Victoria came off as fun, informed, able to laugh at herself and others, and actually sweet.
I am happy to see that there are 2 more volumes edited by Roger Fulford going all the way to 1885--I liked his footnotes, and while I wish some letters were done in their entirety (lot are just passages or excerpts) or many letters have Victoria saying that Albert's letters or one of her lady in waiting would answer the other half or go into more detail, we didn't really see those, but that's okay. He also says that it was a choice to not include her frequent underlining of words, because of cost of replicating and readability. Which I can see, but still something of a bummer--well, Victoria will always have exclamation points, because her letters are riddled with them. Consensus? I grew progressively fonder of Victoria as I made my way through this. She really did seem to write without a care, pouring herself out on paper, and a very different picture emerges of her, at least to me.
Take for example, the very last letter in the book, written while Albert was dying (probably of stomach cancer, which makes sense over typhus, since one theme I noticed was mentions of his "weak stomach," "despondent and weak and miserable," or "Papa keeps grumbling and making faces," etc. throughout the letters--which bears historians up that his condition was a chronic long lasting one):
"My time is entirely taken up with precious Papa--and so engrossed with him--that I can think of little else.
I am sorry that the [Prussian] elections have taken such a very liberal turn. That will alarm the King."
Which shows that even in the depth of her frantic concern over Albert, Victoria was still tapped into political concerns of the day, which practically every letter mentions to some degree. Though there were some themes:
1) The NUMBER ONE topic in letters: WARM ROOMS. One of the biographies--I think the AN Wilson one--mentions that the hardest thing for servants and courtiers to adapt to with Victoria's court was the frigid temperatures she demanded--and dear God, I can only imagine. Her love of "frosty" weather, not to be confused with "damp cold" is FREQUENT. Everything bad that happens to Vicky can pretty much be chalked up to her bedroom being over the kitchen, and therefore far too hot. In one letter, dated beginning of December, Victoria goes on about how hot the palace she was currently at was, but no worries--she had every window and door open to cool the place down.
Least the fashion kept them bundled.
2) Technology. I kept thinking throughout this how much Victoria would have loved modern days. She hated pregnancy, childbirth, and had something of an antipathy of children (she did not think they were cute--froglike grubs pretty much, acceptable for viewing at 6 months, but even then she did not hold back on her views of non-attractiveness of children in general--"I am no admirer of babies")--if anyone would have been pro-birth control, I feel ironically it would have been her. Leaving aside medicine, which she seemed rather dubious about the current practices, her excitement about telegrams was cute--and Vicky got scoldings for taking too long (2 hours) to answer one of her telegrams. In one letter, she bemoans that if she could just talk to her for an hour or so, how amazing that would be--which made me think how much she would have loved telephones. (Well, she got to try it out in 1878 with Alexander Graham Bell and her reaction to that was "most extraordinary" and she purchased two).
Photographs. If Victoria wasn't sending photos, she was demanding photos, and instructions to send her the bill for the plates, because she wanted the negatives too to make more.
She charted the progress of how fast ships were, trains, and seemed to keep in touch with what was going on in the world to the nth degree. Someone was definitely reading her daily boxes.
3) George Elliot fandom. The books they're currently reading is another main topic--since both Victoria and Vicky whiled away the evening hours it seemed by reading aloud to their husbands. Jane Eyre seems to have been a favorite, Wendell Wilkie, Tennyson of course, but George Elliot seems to have been Victoria's favorite, to where she sketched her favorite scenes of Adam Bede and talked about how she commissioned artists to paint parts from Mill of the Floss for her. (Actually, the sketches Victoria did were pretty good). Both women spoke a number of languages (French & German mostly--but even in old age, Victoria learnt Hindustani, while Vicky on her deathbed was brushing up on her Greek) and while their letters are primarily in English, there's a sprinkling of French and German in each one.
But speaking of fans, Victoria quit going to the theater after Albert's death, but here it seemed via letters at least, she went several times a week. Everything from bloody murder plays to Shakespeare, with definite opinions about all. Her daughter, who comes off a little priggish, but that's somewhat normal being a 17 year old cast off in a VERY hostile court (god her mother in law was a piece of work--exulting when Victoria's second daughter died--since the English princesses were practically atheists, better for the kids to be raised without a mother--especially evil since Alice died due to that "fatal kiss" of her quarantined child). Anyways Vicky wrote to her mother that she was tempted to see French plays, but hated the French and the plays too risque. Also, wanted to see Faust badly, but that might also be controversial.
Victoria's response? The French aren't THAT bad, and their plays are excellent. Go! And see Faust too!
Both Vicky (child prodigy that she was) and Victoria's letters are insanely readable though--rarely dull (but perhaps that's because they've been edited), and Victoria definitely didn't hold back if Vicky misspelled a word or capitalized something she shouldn't have. Letter back would be pointing out all the flaws of her daughter's previous letter.
I guess if you think about it, a lot did happen between 58-61, especially in the Royal Family: Vicky got married; had Wilhelm (and the letters are full of discussions about what to do with his arm); had Charlotte (sad both her children turned against her so much); Alice got engaged to Louis of Hesse; Bertie met Alexandra (more on that); France and Germany seemed to slowly move towards war (what with Napoleon III and Savoy); and pre-war grumblings between Germany & Denmark with the Schleswig War looming; Victoria's mother died, and Albert died.
Things that surprised me--biographers make a big deal about the antipathy between Victoria and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, but I think these letters cleared that all up for me. Victoria mentions how Vicky at least has the support of her family and was raised to rule, whereas Victoria came totally unprepared and with her mother against her at the start, but all water under the bridge now. Since "Grandmamma" is mentioned frequently--at least a quarter of the letters I think at least mention what she's been up to or news from Kent, and her great grief at her mother's death--I think Victoria did get over her childhood issues to some degree and loved her mother.
Another book said that Victoria had no female friends, but hello, Countess Blucher or Duchess of Sutherland, are mentioned often. I thought it interesting, especially with Vicky's aversion towards the French, how many times Empress Eugenie appears pre-exile--at one point coming to England to shop, staying with Victoria for most of it. One thing I think good of Victoria, is she didn't seem to have much jealousy towards anyone (though I guess she had them all beat with power and money)--and she always wrote at length to compliment other women's looks or dresses (especially Eugenie), though equally scathing if someone's looks fell short in her estimation.
John Brown, years before Albert's death, also gets lots of mentions, sometimes paragraphs long recounting their conversations. Actually, the servants as a whole get a lot of ink, and I know Downton Abbey made the whole upstairs/downstairs thing fashionable again, but by how much they correspond about servants and nursemaids and hairdressers and their servants' families, neither woman seems clueless about the work that was put into making their lifestyle a reality.
Feminism. I know Victoria was anti-suffrage later in life, but it's one of those inexplicable things--like Edith Wharton also among the anti-suffrage bunch that confuses me. The two women though did vent in their letters about unequal society--"Poor woman is bodily and morally the husband's slave. That always sticks in my throat"; to wishing for daughters over sons; to wishing they were a man (Vicky). Victoria even says that she thinks Albert a little sexist, though he'd deny if it pressed.
The bio on King Edward casually mentioned that Vicky was in love with her brother's wife, Alix, and was possibly gay. Well, I scoffed a little when I got to the letters about Alexandra, since they are very much in the Romantic effusions of beauty, and hey people wrote like that back then. But then, started to wonder myself. Passages like "The more I see of her the more charming and attractive I think her. I am very careful in all I do and say--and feel rather nervous. I was all in a tremble and ready to cry when I first saw this sweet young creature!!", followed by 4 pages of descriptions of her face, and then when Bertie wandered off to whore it up in the Middle East, "I own it gives me a feeling of great sadness when I think of that sweet lovely flower--young and beautiful--that makes my heart beat when I look at her--not even producing an impression enough to last from Baden to England"--well yeah, I guess jury is out, since Vicky didn't write about anyone else it seemed in the same vein.
In a way total irony--Vicky determined to liberalize Germany and be a force for progression, winding up thanks to Bismark and her megalomaniac son having the exact opposite happen. Trying to marry off her family to German royalty to strengthen ties, but falling for a Danish princess, engineers her brother into the union (even with the Danish vs. German thing, Vicky seems to have been the one that instigated the engagement) which helped bring about an alliance between France & England.
I look forward to reading the next volumes. Far from being the curmudgeonly dragon of history, Victoria came off as fun, informed, able to laugh at herself and others, and actually sweet.
May 8, 2021
A Wonderful book - the foundation of so much knowledge. I always return here when I need to find a new line of research or information.
April 5, 2017
So much fun to read.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews