Prince Albert – The Intelligent Collector Magazine

A photo album celebrating Queen Victoria’s diamond jubilee went to auction in October 2014.

By Jim O’Neal

In an era known for great leaps in innovation and industrialization, Mark Twain opined, “She will witness more things invented than any other monarch that ever lived!”

There is no easy way to quantify this observation and no practical value in affirming or refuting its veracity. One only has the luxury of taking a pragmatic assessment of this historical epoch, compounded by the astonishing longevity of her reign as Queen of England (surpassed by Elizabeth II in October 2016).

Christened Alexandrina Victoria, Queen Victoria (1819-1901) was the first British monarch to be photographed, but what we remember is the figure of a monarch in profile: short and heavy. Accident and tragedy put her on the throne soon after her 18th birthday in 1837 and there she stayed for 63 years and seven months until her death following a series of strokes.

Married in February 1840 to first cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (Germany), the queen’s power began to erode slowly with an ultimate role reversal. Over the course of their 21-year marriage, Albert became ensconced in the world of governance, while Victoria receded to the domestic realm. Albert was loyal, but he was a diligent misogynist who believed that ruling was a male prerogative.

Queen Victoria was pregnant for a total of 80 months, giving birth to nine children, all attaining adulthood, over a 17-year period. After the ninth child, the royal physicians advised that – at almost 38 years old – this should be the last one. She quickly responded, “Can I have no more fun in bed?” She was a woman who shocked with her candid approach to pregnancy and did nothing to hide her obvious sexual appetite. This is clearly not the prudish queen of history books who lent her name to an entire era known for the repression of emotional and sexual feelings.

A pure iconoclast, she was emotional, demonstrative, sexual and driven. She loved to dance and was fervently opposed to animal cruelty. She gamely survived eight assassination attempts. She was wildly in love with Prince Albert and suffered a bottomless grief at his early death in 1861 – a full 40 years before her own passing. It is commonly believed that after his death, she withdrew from public life, essentially abdicating her responsibilities. Actually, she used the stereotype of her sex to advantage … claiming nervous weakness while ruthlessly micromanaging her political cabinet, often sending them hourly orders.

This apparent dichotomy was fostered, since her historical image was curated by those closest to her. Daughter Beatrice transcribed her mother’s journals. She edited out everything that reflected poorly on her, and then burned the originals in what has been described as “the greatest act of censorship in history.” Yet today, the keepers of the physical details of Victoria’s death prefer they not be published. That the queen lived with a painful prolapsed uterus for decades is a secret that was meticulously concealed.

In a similar manner, her family tried to erase all evidence that she cared deeply for any of the other men in her long life, except for her adored Prince Albert. Victoria’s sanitized, puritanical mythology was a creative act of fiction, intended to illuminate the woman those around her wanted her to be.

Girls just want to have fun.

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is president and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as chair and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

This Queen Victoria military commission document, signed “Victoria RI” and dated Jan. 20, 1860, references her beloved husband Prince Albert – a year before his death of typhoid fever.

By Jim O’Neal

A good friend of mine died recently and the family is naturally in a state of grief and making plans to include others in the mourning process. This is a custom that has undergone many changes over the centuries and is still evolving.

The “Masters of Mourning” surely must have been the Victorians. Rarely have groups of people become more fascinated by death or found so many creative and complicated ways to acknowledge it.

Society, in general, evolved strict mourning rules that were remarkably comprehensive. Every conceivable relationship had specific guidelines. One example was for an uncle by marriage. He was to be mourned for two months if his wife survived him, but only one month if he was a widower or unmarried.

This continued through the entire canon of relationships and, in a quirk, one needn’t have even met the people being mourned. If a woman’s husband had been married before and widowed, the second wife was expected to engage in “complementary mourning” – a type of proxy mourning on behalf of the deceased, earlier spouse.

Even mourning clothes were dependent upon the degree of one’s bereavement. Widows, already burdened by suffocating pounds of broadcloth, had to add black crepe, a type of crimped silk. Crepe was scratchy, noisy and maddeningly difficult to maintain. Even raindrops left whitish blotches and the crepe ran onto the skin underneath, where it was almost impossible to wash off. The amount of crepe was dictated by the passage of time. Just a glance could tell how long a woman had been widowed by the amount of crepe at each sleeve.

Then after two years, a widow moved into a phase of “half mourning” and the crepe could be gray or pale lavender.

Servants were required to mourn when their employers died and a period of national mourning was decreed when a monarch died.

Queen Victoria may have been the most prominent person to conjure up ingenious ways to mourn. Her beloved Prince Albert died in December 1861. Victoria decreed that the clocks in his bedroom be stopped at precisely the minute he died: 10:50 p.m. Then, in another odd ritual, the service to his room was continued as if he were merely on a trip.

A valet carefully laid out fresh clothing for him each day, in addition to hot water, soap and towels for his daily bath, and then removed at an appropriate time later in the day. Of course, his remains were actually interred in a mausoleum on the castle grounds.

Ironically, when Queen Victoria’s reign ended in 1901, after nearly 64 years, no one could agree on how much mourning was appropriate. It had been too long since the last one and there was no precedent for this length of time.

Since then, Queen Elizabeth II has eclipsed her as the longest-lived British monarch, and on Sept. 9, 2015, she became the longest-reigning monarch ever (as Prince Charles knows so well, as he yearns instead of mourns).

Intelligent Collector blogger JIM O’NEAL is an avid collector and history buff. He is President and CEO of Frito-Lay International [retired] and earlier served as Chairman and CEO of PepsiCo Restaurants International [KFC Pizza Hut and Taco Bell].

Tag: Prince Albert

Victoria Not Exactly the Prudish Queen of History Books

Queen Victoria Found Creative, Complicated Ways to Mourn