John Brown (24 page)
Some five hundred people turned out for John Brown’s funeral at Crathie cemetery on Thursday 5 April. His bier was flanked by a guard of honour made up of Colonel Farquharson’s men from Invercauld and the Earl of Fife’s retainers from Mar Lodge. Over the coffin, at the Queen’s instruction, was draped a worn plaid. It was a swathe in which she had been wrapped many times for the John Brown ‘walks’ at Balmoral. Another instruction, on deep mourning paper and in the Queen’s own hand, went direct by royal messenger to John Brown’s sister-in-law. It read: ‘To tell Mrs Hugh to place a wreath of flowers in dear Brown’s room [at Windsor Castle] on his bed on the day.’
34
The Queen had already poured out her grief to Brown’s sisters-in-law, Mrs William Brown and Mrs Hugh Brown, a few days earlier. Her letter reads:
Dear Lizzie and Jessie,
Weep with me for we all have lost the best, the truest heart that ever beat! As for me – my grief is unbounded – dreadful – & I know not how to bear it, – or how to believe it possible. We parted all so well and happy at dear Balmoral – and – dear, dear John! My dearest, best friend, to whom I could say everything and who watched over & protected me so kindly and who thought of everything – was well and strong & hearty, not 3 or 4 days before he was struck down. And my accident worried him. He never took proper care, would not go out the whole time (a week) I was shut up & would not go to bed when he was ill.
‘The Lord gave, – The Lord hath taken away! Blessed be the name of the Lord.’ – His Will be done. – He, dear, excellent, upright, warmhearted – strong! John – is happy, blessing us – while we weep. God bless you both! You have your husbands – your support – but I have no strong arm to lean on now. Dear Beatrice is my great comfort.
35
The floral tributes at Crathie graveyard on the day of Brown’s funeral were legion, spilling over other graves and lining the paths of the old ruined pre-Reformation church. A regular stream of mourners, curious and voyeuristic, crowded the graveside for days afterwards and read the sentiment the Queen had written on the main wreath: ‘A tribute of loving, grateful and everlasting friendship and affection from his truest, best and most faithful, friend, Victoria. R & I.’ Her words were long pored over: ‘loving’, ‘affectionate’ – what
could
they mean?
In the days following John Brown’s death Queen Victoria was what Brown would have called ‘aff the legs’. She found it difficult to stand on her swollen and painful legs, made worse by her state of grief. She refused to have any male members of the Royal Household at dinner for weeks after Brown’s interment because of her incapacity; she grumbled to Henry Ponsonby at not having Brown’s strong arm to lean on: ‘How can I see people at dinner in the evening? I can’t go walking about all night holding on to the back of a chair.’
36
For a while, too, after the official announcements of John Brown’s death in the
Court Circular
, Queen Victoria scoured the papers for mentions of him. Many of Britain’s national daily newspapers, from the
Daily Telegraph
to the
Manchester Examiner
, carried obituaries. Curiously, Scots newspapers, such as the
People’s Journal for Glasgow & Edinburgh
descended to doggerel verse to describe him, with such couplets as:
He’s gane at length, though lo’ed by a’
John Brown’s deid!
37
To the snippets that her maids pasted into the Queen’s scrapbooks a final encomium was added from the Braemar correspondent of the Press Association:
On Deeside [Brown] was universally esteemed for his manly straightforwardness. To many his manner may have appeared abrupt, if not brusque, but that only illustrated the simplicity of his character. He never affected an artificial polish, nor sought to soften the native harshness of the Highland dialect; and he never made any distinction of persons. Brown was implicitly trusted by the Queen, and it is evident that her confidence was not misplaced.
38
For a while, as she had done after the death of Prince Albert, Queen Victoria made herself as inconspicuous as possible when travelling to and from Osborne and Balmoral. As she embarked on her spring journey to Balmoral the Queen was transferred to her railway carriage by closed chair, and at Perth station she insisted that when her coach came to rest she was to be hidden from inquisitive eyes by a bower of evergreens. She explained to Sir Theodore Martin: ‘As if it were pleasant for any lady to be carried in and out of a carriage before crowds of people.’
39
On this particular occasion, too, the Queen was agitated because she was to visit John Brown’s grave for the first time.
Missing her ‘faithful, kind friend and constant companion’ greatly, Queen Victoria arrived at Balmoral on 26 May. Minutes after she had arrived at the castle she went in her pony-chair to inspect John Brown’s as yet unmarked grave, the environs of which had been picked clean by souvenir hunters bearing off wreath clips, tie-ribbons, labels and flower holders. Writing to his wife, Henry Ponsonby described the Queen’s graveside visit, adding opinions of his own:
The Deeside looked very pretty with the bright green birches and the sun was bright if not warm . . . It was a day that we could easily understand would make the Queen low and she was low . . . Wreaths from Princesses, Empresses and Ladies in Waiting are lying on Brown’s grave. He was the only person who could fight and make the Queen do what she did not wish. He did not always succeed nor was his advice always the best. But I believe he was honest, and with all his want of education, his roughness, his prejudices and other faults he was undoubtedly a most excellent servant to her.
40
The headstone for John Brown, which the Queen had ordered in Aberdeen granite with its thistle motif pediment, was set in place, within railings to deter vandals, by the time she visited Balmoral in the autumn of 1883. It stood alongside the one John Brown had erected to his parents and siblings who had predeceased him. She viewed it with approval.
41
The wording of the headstone again came from her own hand, forming a rather indifferent sentiment above a quotation from
Matthew
XXV:21:
THIS STONE IS ERECTED
IN AFFECTIONATE
AND GRATEFUL MEMORY OF
JOHN BROWN
PERSONAL ATTENDANT
AND BELOVED FRIEND
OF QUEEN VICTORIA
IN WHOSE SERVICE HE HAD BEEN
FOR
34
YEARS
Born Crathienaird December 8th 1826
Died
WINDSOR CASTLE
27th March 1883
That friend on whose fidelity you count,
that friend given you by circumstances
over which you have no control, was
GOD
’s
own gift.
WELL DONE
,
GOOD AND FAITHFUL SERVANT
;
THOUHAST BEEN FAITHFUL OVER A FEW THINGS
,
I WILL MAKE THEE RULER OVER MANY THINGS
;
ENTER THOU INTO THE JOY OF THE LORD
The stone drew an increased number of visitors to Brown’s grave. In conversation with Lord in Waiting Viscount Bridport, Mrs Campbell, wife of the Minister of Crathie, observed that ‘a hundred pilgrims visited a day’; sardonically Lord Bridport replied: ‘You ought to charge them a shilling a head.’
42
Just as she had permitted a plethora of memorabilia after the death of Prince Albert, ranging from Worcester pottery busts to commemorative medals and from belt clasps to music covers, the Queen embarked on a set of ‘Brown memorials’.
43
These included statuettes and plaster of Paris busts, gold tiepins set with diamonds around John Brown’s head and funeral brooches designed by the royal jeweller Mr Collingwood. These were handed out by Queen Victoria with largesse. Funeral brooches were given to John Brown’s relatives and tie-pins to courtiers. Sir Frederick Ponsonby recalled that the recipient of one of the tie-pins, Dr Profeit, the leader of the anti-Brown camp, ‘realised that if he wore this everyone at Balmoral would laugh at him. He therefore hit upon the idea of keeping it in his coat pocket so that when he had to see the Queen he could take it out and put it in his tie, returning it to his pocket when he came away.’
44
The most contentious of the memorials, and certainly the largest, was the life-size bronze statue the Queen commissioned from Edgar Boehm. When completed it was erected near the garden cottage on Balmoral estate where Queen Victoria had sat al fresco to complete her state dispatch boxes while John Brown handed her the documents for consideration. The statue shows John Brown in Highland garb, with the medals Queen Victoria gave him on his left lapel, and his lucky threepenny piece and pipe on his fob; he is bareheaded, holding his bonnet in his right hand. Queen Victoria went to great lengths to get the inscription just right on the supporting plinth. As she had done for the gravestone epitaph, she consulted Alfred, Lord Tennyson.
Lord Tennyson replied, suggesting a few possible lines. The Queen chose this from what the Poet Laureate called an ‘anonymous hand’:
Friend more than Servant, loyal truthful, brave
Self less than duty, even to the Grave.
In her letter of thanks of 15 September the Queen added: ‘[Are the words] not perhaps by yourself?’
The statue was duly set in place. While the Countess of Errol likened the statue to the graven image that Nebuchadnezzar, King of Babylon, had placed on the plain of Dura in
Daniel
III:1, the Queen’s immediate family preferred to avert their eyes when in its vicinity. After his mother’s death King Edward VII ordered that statue to be ‘hidden’ at a location on the hillside on the north-east side of Craig Gowan where it still rests.
45
The folk of Deeside had generally liked and respected the gruff John Brown, but to most he remained a man of mystery. Apart from the innuendo about himself and Queen Victoria, after his death a new range of John Brown myths sprang to life, mostly about his supposed influence over the Queen and his purported wealth.
The gossips charged John Brown with using his position to obtain jobs for his family. It is true that John Brown’s brothers William, Hugh and Archie were in royal employment, but such an arrangement was hardly unusual. Queen Victoria liked to have around her people she knew, so it was not surprising that members of certain families, related by marriage or blood ties, succeeded one another to royal positions, or worked in parallel. For instance, Sir Frederick Ponsonby (1867–1935), 1st Lord Syonsby, had forty years of court service, in several positions including Equerry and Assistant Keeper of the Privy Purse; his father General Sir Henry Ponsonby was the Queen’s Private Secretary and Keeper of the Privy Purse. Louisa Jane, Countess of Antrim, the daughter of another of the Queen’s private secretaries, General Charles Grey, became a Lady-in-Waiting and, like Fred Ponsonby, served at the courts of successive monarchs. Again Harriet, the daughter of the court official Receiver-General to the Duchy of Cornwall, the Hon. Sir Charles Beaumont Phipps, became Woman of the Bedchamber and Queen Victoria’s personal amanuensis.
More seriously, people began to say that John Brown had made himself rich at royal expense and through various scams. The publication
Truth
averred that John Brown left a fortune of £20,000.
The World
noted that John Brown had a fortune in ‘plate and pieces of jewellery’. The facts told a different story. Brown died intestate but letters of administration show that his total estate was valued at a few pence over £7,198. This was made up of £6,816 19
s
11
d
in cash deposits at banks in Windsor, Ballater and Braemar, and goods at his unlivedin house at Baile-na-Coile, valued for inventory at £379 19
s
6
d
. Certainly it was a considerable amount of money at a time when the average labouring wage was 5
s
per week, but it was hardly a fortune. In contrast, John Brown’s namesake, the Glasgow iron, steel and shipping magnate, had access to several millions. Records show that John Brown had been a generous donor to various charities over the years, in many cases insisting on anonymity. His siblings also received financial assistance and from time to time Brown gave Queen Victoria gifts of puppies he had reared and the use of horses he had bought. For instance, he purchased the Highland pony ‘Jessie’ in 1874, which was painted for the Royal Collection by Anthony de Bree in 1891.
46
The biographer Clare Jarrold repeated a more serious allegation against Brown. She averred that he had extracted bribes: ‘[Brown] was said to take large percentages from the tradesmen, and in return would, when possible, give them his help.’
47
No such allegations have ever been substantiated. Both those outside and within royal circles attested to John Brown’s honesty, and the ordinary people who knew him best scorned the idea that he had in any way fiddled the royal books.
48
Nevertheless for many decades John Brown’s probity has been assailed by common gossip.
T
RIAL BY
G
OSSIP
In understanding Queen Victoria’s emotional reaction to John Brown’s death the recollections of one man are of particular interest. Randall Thomas Davidson, later ennobled as Baron Davidson of Lambeth, and future Archbishop of Canterbury (1903–28), became Dean of Windsor and Queen Victoria’s domestic chaplain in the year of John Brown’s death. From his first audience with the Queen on 9 December 1882, he struck a chord of sympathy with her. Of the 35-year-old Scottish cleric she wrote: ‘Was seldom more struck than I have been by his personality . . . I feel that Mr Davidson . . . may be of great use to me.’ She began immediately to consult him on ecclesiastical matters.
1
The tasks facing the new Dean were some of the most fraught he had ever undertaken. His interviews with the Queen were ‘most touching, solemn and interesting, but terribly difficult,’ he averred.
2
Nothing in his experience as chaplain-secretary to his father-in-law, Archbishop Campbell Tait, could prepare him for the eccentric caprices of his sovereign. On 14 December 1883, the twenty-second anniversary of Prince Albert’s death, Queen Victoria required Davidson to prepare a special memorial service at the royal mausoleum at Frogmore. The prayers, said the Queen, should couple the names of Prince Albert and John Brown, as well as Davidson’s newly deceased predecessor Dean Gerald Valerian Wellesley, not forgetting blessings for the current travels being undertaken in India by Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught. The whole was to be ‘a very difficult task’ wrote Davidson in his diary, ‘but . . . it must be done’.
3