John Brown (25 page)

This was to be Davidson’s first introduction to Queen Victoria’s curious notions about the dead. As he met with more experienced courtiers he heard and witnessed the strange rituals surrounding Prince Albert’s memory. He observed in disbelief the dead Prince Consort’s room at Windsor Castle which had been left to the last detail just as the prince had used it in life; he witnessed how hot water was set out in the Prince’s former dressing room for morning ablutions; how his clothes were laid out at certain times of the day . . . all as if the Prince was still alive; and how John Brown’s room in the Clarence Tower at Windsor had been locked after his death and preserved as a living museum. Yet the Dean was to encounter more trying difficulties during March 1884 as the Queen’s mourning for Brown showed no let-up. Davidson’s heart sank when he learned that the sovereign was writing a memoir of John Brown which she fully intended to publish.

Fresh from the publication of
More Leaves from the Journal of A Life in the Highlands
, which Smith, Elder & Co. issued in February 1884, with its boldly displayed 1868 steel engraving of John Brown, Queen Victoria approached Sir Theodore Martin, Prince Albert’s biographer, to assist with editing her John Brown memoir. Pleading his wife’s ill-health, Sir Theodore demurred, whereupon the Queen consulted Sir Henry Ponsonby. He suggested that she approach the newly appointed Bishop of Ripon, William Boyd Carpenter, or Dr Cameron Lees of St Giles High Kirk, Edinburgh, as editorial mentor. Their hasty refusal when John Brown was mentioned was dignified but absolute. In the event the Queen consulted Miss Murray MacGregor, who had helped her both with
Leaves
and with the
Highlanders
volumes.

A copy of the completed Brown manuscript was passed to Randall Davidson for comment, although not on the Queen’s instructions. He read it and decided that its publication should be thwarted. Racking his brains for a plausible excuse, he thanked the Queen for sending him a copy of
More Leaves
, and opined that further writings would be unwise because of the adverse comments about her widowed jottings which had appeared in certain broadsheets. Although the book had been received by the public to great acclaim, the prominence of John Brown’s name and details of his health and welfare had caused fervid gossip at all levels of society. The royal family had cringed at the dedication to: ‘My Loyal Highlanders and especially to the Memory of My Devoted Personal Attendant and Faithful Friend John Brown, these records of My Widowed Life in Scotland are Gratefully Dedicated.’

Queen Victoria was unimpressed by Davidson’s opinions; she cared not for the press outpourings and made it known that she still intended to publish. The Dean determined that he would do his utmost to persuade her otherwise. Through her lady-in-waiting, Jane Ely, Queen Victoria expressed her dismay at Davidson’s opposition, which had caused her ‘pain’.

Bracing himself, the Dean refused to apologise for ruffling the royal feathers and made it known that he maintained his opposition, and backing this up with threats to resign his position. Unmoved, the Queen sent the John Brown manuscript to Montague Corry, Baron Rowton, Benjamin Disraeli’s former secretary. Having read it, he suggested to Ponsonby that it should be set up in type and then shown to the Queen. Seeing it in print, averred Corry, the Queen would see the folly of linking her name so publicly and intimately with John Brown.
⁴

For a while Davidson was out of favour with the Queen, but his disagreement with the monarch was soon over. Summoned to the royal presence he found the Queen ‘more friendly than ever’; she had decided not to publish the tome on Brown and the whole matter with Davidson was dropped.
⁵

W
HAT WAS IN THE
M
EMOIR TO DISCONCERT
Q
UEEN
V
ICTORIA
’
S
H
OUSEHOLD
?

Assessing Queen Victoria’s other writings, it seems likely that the memoir would have contained a collection of anecdotes featuring John Brown’s wit, philosophy and activities, which probably included robust comments on her staff. Sir Henry Ponsonby left one clue to the tone of the memoir. In his letter to the Queen advising non-publication, he concluded: ‘Your Majesty’s innermost and most sacred feelings [contain] passages which will be misunderstood if read by strangers . . .’
⁶

Queen Victoria habitually expressed her feelings of devotion for friends in a fervent way that was easy to misconstrue. She dotted her writings with ‘dearest’, ‘darling’, ‘beloved’ and ‘darling one’. To the Victorians, ‘darling’ was expressive of ‘great kindness’ and ‘tenderness’. John Brown’s papers included many greetings cards from Queen Victoria which were expressed in ardent terms. One for instance, dated 1 January 1877, bore the picture of a parlour maid and the verses:

In the Queen’s own hand were added the words: ‘To my best friend J.B. From his best friend. V.R.I.’ This card is now in the Royal Archives at Windsor.
⁷
The Queen also sent Valentine cards, it should be remembered, to Benjamin Disraeli.

The extant John Brown papers show that Queen Victoria did address John Brown as ‘darling one’. In a rather formal letter to Brown, dated October 1874, the Queen suggested that he should send for his brother Hugh, then in New Zealand, as their mother’s health was deteriorating: ‘I hope darling one that you will do this,’ she wrote.
⁸

There were more deep-felt expressions of ‘love’. In an undated letter to Hugh Brown occurs this passage, with certain words underlined by the Queen:

Queen Victoria’s definition of love in the phrase ‘no one loved him more’ meant sincere friendship; her expression of it was naively innocent and open to misunderstanding by anyone who did not comprehend the Queen’s character. This is what Ponsonby was afraid of when he destroyed the Memoir, and what Dean Davidson was trying to protect when he put his career on the line in opposing its publication.
¹⁰

W
AS THERE ANYTHING IMMORAL IN
Q
UEEN
V
ICTORIA
’
S RELATIONSHIP WITH
J
OHN
B
ROWN
?

The naive innocence of Queen Victoria’s character is a key factor in assessing this question. Had there been anything of an immoral nature in the famous relationship, would common sense not have indicated that they take steps to mask it? Both were well aware of public gossip. Yet far from keeping it dark, in letters and cards here was Queen Victoria proclaiming her ‘love’ for John Brown quite openly for all to read. Further she was actively hoping to publish all these thoughts in a publicly printed memoir.
She
knew it was all innocent but it was only the persuasive coercion of her closest advisors that caused her to abandon her plans to go public.

Queen Victoria’s relationship with John Brown could not have been sexual for a number of reasons, both physical and social. When Dr James Reid examined her cadaver he found that she ‘had a ventral hernia and a prolapse of the uterus’.
¹¹
Reid is probably commenting on a complete procidentia which the Queen probably had for many years. This would have made sexual intercourse not only uncomfortable but distasteful, as the prolapsed uterus would have to be regularly pushed back into place. The Queen never had, nor would even have contemplated, any treatment for her condition. Moreover, she would never have seriously considered having sexual relations with a man not of her own class, however deeply she may have felt. Her powerful sense of morality and social propriety would have forbidden it.

W
HAT WAS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF
Q
UEEN
V
ICTORIA
’
S ATTRACTION TO
J
OHN
B
ROWN
?

Despite having several women around her who devoted their lives to her service, such as her Lady of the Bedchamber Jane, Marchioness of Ely, and Maids of Honour such as Lady Caroline Courtney, Queen Victoria never formed an intimate friendship with a woman. Brown supplied deep personal fellowship, and, as Dean Davidson put it, ‘friendly remonstrance and raillery’.
¹²
Queen Victoria suffered abnormal grief after the death of Prince Albert. She had lost someone who seemed irreplaceable. She weathered the bewilderment that comes in the first stage of grief, then the anger, but then became caught in the depressed stage. All this was manifest in her behaviour. She hardly spoke, and when she did she was irritable; she ate sparingly; she lost interest in affairs of state; and she could not be roused to go out and about on her estates. John Brown’s determined interference ‘brought the Queen back to normality at a time of acute and dangerous stress’.
¹³

Another key factor was that John Brown ‘dedicated his life to Queen Victoria’ and ‘was never indifferent’ to her neurotic troubles.
¹⁴
From his point of view Queen Victoria gave him something useful to do. And it should be remembered that both Queen Victoria and Prince Albert adored the work of Sir Walter Scott; John Brown was to be a
cavaliere servente
from Scott’s novels. John Brown was thus Queen Victoria’s ‘only real friend’.
¹⁵

In her
Journal
for 19 September 1838 Queen Victoria speaks of her feelings as ‘naturally very passionate’. Modern commentators have interpreted this in an erotic sense, pointing out her sexually degenerate Hanoverian uncles. This is totally misleading. Queen Victoria had a fiery temper and her emotions were robust – but her passions were not lustful. Yet it is hardly startling that Queen Victoria found John Brown an attractive man: As biographer E.E.P. Tisdall put it:

As to the well-attested ‘familiarity’ evident between John Brown and Queen Victoria, her biographer Giles Lytton Strachey made the significant observation that ‘it is no uncommon thing for an autocratic dowager to allow some trusted indispensable servant to adopt towards her an attitude of authority which is jealously forbidden to relatives and friends . . .’
¹⁷

Only one man was ever privy to all aspects of Queen Victoria’s relationship with John Brown and that was her discreet Private Secretary Henry Ponsonby. He realised that Brown’s perceived arrogance and general rude demeanour was rooted in the ‘Queen’s marked and sustained infatuation’ for him.
¹⁸
Yet he ‘knew there was no danger whatever in Brown’s relations with the Queen and neither publicly nor domestically was the Highland attendant of any real consequence’.
¹⁹
Yet the rumours persisted and formed themselves into four principal pieces of gossip about the Queen and John Brown that have survived in the public memory. The first speculation was:

1. The Queen has gone mad and John Brown is her keeper
.

The Queen and her courtiers, from the Ministers of the Crown to her physicians, believed that she had inherited from her Hanoverian ancestors the proclivity to madness.
²⁰
Her grandfather King George III, now known to have suffered from the metabolic disorder Variegate Porphyria, slipped in and out of mental derangement in the latter years of his life. Queen Victoria’s household scrutinised her discreetly for signs of emotional extremities which might lead to incipient insanity. Yet although her father the Duke of Kent had suffered from symptoms of Hemato Porphyria, Queen Victoria escaped the dreadful affliction.
²¹

Her real problem was what the 4th Earl of Clarendon dubbed her ‘morbid melancholy’, which assailed her during times of stress. When Cabinet Minister Clarendon called on her at Windsor in June 1862 to discuss ministerial changes, the Queen’s mood at the audience altered rapidly and she indicated her fear of change by tapping her head with the words ‘My reason! My reason!’
²²
Fearing for her mind, the Queen’s ministers and Household were easily blackmailed into doing what she wanted in order to avoid upset. John Brown came to understand what was wrong with the Queen and his determined interference in her life was a help to tackle this ‘morbid melancholy’. In this, and this alone, was he her ‘keeper’.