John Brown (11 page)
George William Frederick Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon and erstwhile Foreign Secretary, was among those courtiers exasperated by what he saw as the Queen’s self-indulgence in being ‘determined to cherish her grief’. He commented to Louise, Duchess of Manchester: ‘I hope this state of things won’t last, or [the Queen] may fall into the morbid melancholy to which her mind has often tended and which is a constant cause of anxiety to Prince Albert.’
31
Following the interment of the Duchess of Kent at the royal mausoleum at Frogmore, Prince Albert took the Queen, still in deep mourning, off to Balmoral to try to stimulate once more her will to survive and to encourage her to ‘take things as God intended them’.
On Friday 20 September 1861 the royal family set off for the ‘Second Great Expedition’ to Invermark and Fettercairn. With Grant and Brown in their usual positions on the ‘sociables’, and accompanied by Princess Alice and her new fiancé, Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt, the royal party set off for Bridge of Muick where they transferred to ponies. By peat-road and glen they rode to Corrie Vruach where they encountered the 11th Earl of Dalhousie, a two-term Secretary at War, who welcomed them to his Scottish ‘March’ and joined them for lunch at Invermark, Angus, where John Brown unpacked the Queen’s sketching materials.
Later, her easel folded away, the party rode on past ruined Invermark Castle and on to Lord Dalhousie’s shooting lodge for a rest and then on to the village of Fettercairn in south-east Kincardineshire. They stayed at the Ramsay Arms, with their courtiers lodging at the Temperance Hotel opposite. This time Grant and Brown controlled their drinking in order to wait at table sensibly, for fear of being banished to the Temperance establishment. The Queen remarked that they ‘were rather nervous, but General Grey and Lady Churchill carved, and they had only to change the plates, which Brown soon got into the way of doing’.
32
A moonlit walk took them to the Town Cross. This was the stump of the medieval cross of Kincardine which still bore ancient marks indicating the length of the old Scottish ‘ell’, a measurement of cloth. Prince Louis paused at this relic, which had once enjoyed pride of place in the now-vanished ancient county town, in the shadow of the royal residence of Kincardine Castle, and read out the weathered proclamation on charities.
Again the party was travelling incognito and Brown and Grant managed to keep other guests away from the rooms being used by the Queen. ‘What’s the matter here?’, one had asked, only to be informed that the royal group was ‘a wedding party from Aberdeen’. The enquirer was entertained to breakfast by Brown and Grant. Queen Victoria noted that Brown ‘acted as my servant, brushing my skirt and boots and taking any messages’.
33
The journey continued past Fasque, the home of Sir Thomas Gladstone, the estranged brother of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, W.E. Gladstone, and on to the magnificent views of Cairn o’Mounth. Dog-carts succeeded ponies and carriages in carrying the royal party on their way through the open country with its fine vistas towards Aberdeen. In order to rest the horses, wrote Queen Victoria, ‘Alice, Lady Churchill, and I, went into the house of a tailor, which was very tidy, and the woman in it most friendly, asking us to rest there; but not dreaming who we were’.
34
Through Glen Tanar the royal party made their way back to Balmoral. At Ballater the former Duchess of Kent’s carriage waited to take them on the last lap of their journey. The Queen admitted to feeling sad at the sight of her mother’s carriage but declared that the scenery had done her good.
The ‘Third Great Expedition’, this time to Glen Fishie, Dalwhinnie and Blair Atholl, began on Tuesday 8 October. By Braemar and the Linn of Dee to the Geldie Water they rode in carriages to be met by the royal ponies which had gone on ahead with General Grant, the main organiser of this jaunt. With the Queen safely mounted on ‘Inchrory’, and led by John Brown, they forded the river and went through beating rain and wind into Glen Fishie. Brown waded her horse through Etchart Water while the Queen watched in dismay as a gillie dropped their bundle of dry cloaks into the water.
After a hurried lunch they made their way over rough ground, through myriad burns, and past the ruins of crofters’ cottages, their inhabitants long gone as a consequence of the Highland Clearances. Meeting up with the carriages, which had come by the road route, they drove on to Kingussie where Brown and Grant kept a crowd away as they paused for refreshment. They drove on through Newtonmore to the inn at Dalwhinnie. Travelling incognito meant roughing it in these sparsely populated areas and the Queen recorded that they had a frugal supper of ‘two miserable, starved chickens, without any potatoes’ or pudding. The main task of the evening was taken up with drying clothes for the morning and John Brown and the rest of the servants picked at what remained of the scraggy chickens for their even more meagre supper.
On 9 October the party awoke to find Highlander Cluny Macpherson, through whose lands they were passing, with a piper and Volunteers drawn up at the inn to salute them. He had been apprised of their coming. Then it was off through Drumochter Pass from Inverness-shire into Perthshire. Near Dalnacardoch they were met by George Augustus Frederick John Murray, 6th Duke of Atholl, who rode with them into the heart of his estates and his home at Blair Castle which the Queen had visited some seventeen years earlier.
The royal party were met at the door of Blair Castle by the Queen’s old friend Anne, Duchess of Atholl, along with Miss McGregor, who was to help the Queen in the future with her controversial writings about her life in Scotland, which included comments on John Brown. After coffee with the Duchess, the royal party climbed into carriages, with the Queen in a curiously shaped four-wheeled ‘boat carriage’, and drove off to Glen Tilt, a narrow glen extending from Blair Atholl, with its guardian summit of Ben-y-Gloe. The royal ponies had been taken to the Earl of Fife’s shooting lodge at Beynoch, where the Duchess of Atholl left the party as it went on its way, guided by the Duke and escorted by a dozen of his ‘private army’, the Atholl Highlanders, preceded by two pipers. On rough ground the duke offered to lead the Queen’s pony, but she demurred as John Brown took the reins. Laughingly she said to the Duke: ‘Oh no, only I like best being led by the person I am accustomed to.’
35
While Brown and the others unpacked lunch at Dalcronarchie the Queen sketched, then they were off again to ford the rain-swollen River Tarff. Again the Duke offered to lead the Queen’s pony across, but she insisted that John Brown – ‘whom I have far the most confidence in’ – should take her across. The soaked party followed the precipitous road with John Brown struggling to help the Queen’s pony keep its footing on the slippery terrain. At the border between Perthshire and Aberdeenshire the party stopped. The Duke called on all present to toast the Queen and Prince Albert with the Gaelic toast: ‘
Nis!-nis!-nis! Sit air a-nis! A-ris – a-ris – a-ris!
(Now, now, now! That to him, now! Again, again, again!’) On behalf of the Queen, Keeper Grant proposed three cheers for the Duke of Atholl, and the Queen’s pony became restless at ‘the vehemence of Brown’s cheering’.
The party was met at Beynoch shooting lodge by the Countess of Fife who gave them tea. Saying farewell to the Duke of Atholl the royal party returned to Balmoral, having covered 129 miles in two days. The Queen reflected in her
Journal
:
This was the pleasantest and most enjoyable expedition I
ever
made; and the recollection of it will always be most agreeable to me, and increase my wish to make more! Was so glad dear Louis [Prince Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt] (who is a charming companion) was with us. Have enjoyed nothing as much, or indeed felt so much cheered by anything, since my great sorrow [the death of the Duchess of Kent].
36
The ‘Fourth Great Expedition’ began on Wednesday 16 October 1861. Their route this time took them from Balmoral to Loch Callater and thence Ca-Ness, and home by Cairn Lochan and Shean Spittal Bridge. The Queen rode ‘Fyvie’ and the party included Princess Helena, then fifteen, who had never been on a ‘Great Expedition’ before. The Queen was delighted with the scenery which, she said, ‘gave me such a longing for further Highland expeditions!’
37
Sadly, there were to be no more with Prince Albert at her side.
At the end of their holiday, and just before she left for Windsor Castle, the Queen wrote to her uncle, King Leopold of the Belgians, expressing her first written appreciation of John Brown:
We have had a most beautiful week, which we have thoroughly enjoyed – I going out every day about twelve or half-past, taking luncheon with us, carried in a basket on the back of a Highlander, and served by an
invaluable
Highland servant I have, who is
my factotum here
, and takes the most wonderful care of me, combining the offices of groom, footman, page, and
maid
, I might almost say, as he is
so
handy about cloaks and shawls, etc. He always leads my pony, and always attends me out of doors, and
such
a good, handy,
faithful
, attached servant I have nowhere; it is quite a sorrow for me to leave him behind.
38
While leading Queen Victoria’s pony John Brown would pass on any gossip he had heard around the court to the Queen, and tell her any new jokes he had gathered. One which amused the Queen – who had a keen sense of humour – concerned a coach service. In Victorian times horse-drawn public service vehicles linked the main towns of Scotland. The carriage which ran between the Perthshire towns of Blairgowrie and Dunkeld was called the ‘Duchess of Atholl’ and was based at the ‘Duke of Atholl’s Arms’ in Dunkeld. John Brown told the Queen that at the terminus was the notice: ‘The Duchess of Atholl leaves the Duke’s Arms every lawful morning at six o’clock.’
As they settled back into their usual routines at Balmoral, following the departure of the royal family, back at Windsor Castle Prince Albert descended into a state of gloom. For him 1861 was an
annus horribilis
. His hopes for a new democratic era developing from the ‘Coburg Plan’ for Prussia had faded. That country’s new monarch, William I, who would become Emperor of Germany in 1871, father-in-law of his beloved daughter Princess Vicky, had promoted a militaristic policy and had crowned himself with Teutonic splendour at Königsberg as the royal family had holidayed at Balmoral. Poor Vicky’s role in Prussia as Crown Princess was being sadly undermined as the British press attacked everything German. The Prince had suffered much private grief over the death of his mother-in-law and more was to come when his cousin Prince Ferdinand of Coburg’s son, King Peter V of Portugal, died of typhoid, along with two brothers. Albert’s aspirations for a Coburg-Braganza dynasty to democratise Portugal were thus dashed.
At home Prince Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, had returned in shame from the Curragh Camp, Dublin, where he had been serving with the 1st Battalion Grenadier Guards. The errant Prince of Wales had had a sexual fling with the loquacious Burlington Arcade tart-cum-‘actress’ Nellie Clifden. News of the affair could easily scuttle plans for the Prince’s engagement to Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Prince Albert’s interview with the Prince of Wales, who had returned to Cambridge, on 25 November, had been unpleasant for both despite the Prince of Wales’s contrite attitude. Added to this the outbreak of the American Civil War had caused the Union Navy to intercept the British vessel SS
Trent
and the arrest on board of two Confederate States envoys threatened to cause a diplomatic row. Prince Albert had worked hard through the night to water down the peremptory communiqué from the Liberal government of Lord Palmerston, which demanded reparation from President Abraham Lincoln’s administration. Prince Albert’s conciliatory phrases allowed Lincoln to save face and war with the Union States was averted.
Prince Albert was exhausted, depressed and ill. As Christmas approached he became weaker and weaker in body and spirit. Although he insisted that he was not ill, his physicians, the doddering Sir James Clark and the obsequiously compliant Dr William Jenner, realised that typhoid had him in its grip. Nevertheless they advised the Queen that there was no cause for alarm and Prince Albert remained untreated.
Lying in the Blue Room of Windsor Castle, Prince Albert began to drift in and out of consciousness; he was delirious, but in a moment of clarity he asked that Princess Alice play his favourite Lutheran hymn
Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott
. All who gathered in the anterooms to the Blue Room, which only Queen Victoria and Princess Alice were allowed to enter, could now hear the Prince’s tortured, laboured breathing. As the Prince sank into his final unconsciousness he lapsed into German.
Wer ist da?
he said to an unrecognised Queen Victoria.
Es ist das kleine Frauchen
, she whispered. He responded:
Gutes, kleines Frauchen
. His clutching hand, which Queen Victoria was holding, went limp, and Prince Albert died at around 10.45pm on Saturday 14 December 1861.
Only in later years was Queen Victoria able to write about the final scene:
Two or three long but perfectly gentle breaths were drawn, the hand clasping mine and . . .
all, all
was over . . . I stood up, kissed his dear heavenly forehead & called out in a bitter and agonising cry ‘Oh! my dear Darling!’ and then dropped on my knees in mute, distracted despair, unable to utter a word or shed a tear. Ernest Leiningen & Sir C. Phipps lifted me up, and Ernest led me out . . .
39
On 23 December, the day of Prince Albert’s funeral at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, London was described as being like ‘a city struck by the Plague’.
40
Sir William Hardman reflected: ‘all shops shut or partially so, and all private houses as much closed as if each owner had lost a near relative’.
41
Stunned as they were at Balmoral, the nation was doubly shocked since no official medical bulletins had been issued concerning Prince Albert until a few days before his death. Queen Victoria had retired to Osborne on 19 December and was unable to face attending the funeral service. Instead she buried herself in her grief amid the relics she had gathered of Prince Albert’s life. His memory was to be her future cult; her grief a prison for members of her Household.