Re: Queen Victoria, Prince Albert and Family Discussion

[Curryong]

It depends what you mean by 'lost'. Victoria still saw her Prime Ministers (and other Ministers on occasion) on a regular basis after the intense agony of her first grief had passed. She never stopped attending to her red boxes. However, her grief was intense and long lasting and the mourning period lasted for the rest of her life, though of course she cheered up on many occasions in the decades afterwards.

'There is no-one left to call me Victoria now.' she said in the immediate aftermath of Albert's death. (That wasn't quite true as her lugubrious Uncle Leopold was still alive, until 1865. However she felt that she had lost her life's stay and the companion who had been with her since they were both twenty.) It has to be remembered that she was a woman of only 42 when the husband she had worshipped died.

Her friend and servant John Brown helped lighten the load after he was brought down from Scotland about 18 months after Albert's death. Also her favourite Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli (Lord Beaconsfield) was empathetic. He charmed her and encouraged her to go out and be seen, with a little success, but for the rest of Victoria's life, not just for a decade, she became quite reclusive and disinclined to do anything she didn't want to do, from opening Parliament to greeting foreign dignitaries.

Victoria's life changed irrevocably after December 1861. Inevitably, so did her court. The soirées, grand dinners and balls were no longer held at BP or at Windsor. She had loved dancing. She hardly ever danced again after Albert's death except occasionally at ghillies balls up at Balmoral. The centre of London social life moved from BP to Marlborough House where the Prince of Wales and his beautiful wife ruled Society.

[LouisFerdinand]

Did Queen Victoria ever dance with her son, Prince Albert Edward, The Prince of Wales?

[LouisFerdinand]

Victoria Adelaide detested the Prussian emphasis on the army, which was something that she was not used to.

[LouisFerdinand]

Footage of Queen Victoria and narration by Princess Alice of Albany   
Queen Victoria loved picnics.   
Victorian Ladies 2/2 Princess Alice & Queen Victoria's Funeral - YouTube

[LouisFerdinand]

Queen Victoria warned her daughter-in-law, Alexandra, Princess of Wales, that the Duchess of Manchester was not a fit companion for her.

[Curryong]

Victoria was always warning people about something or other! This particular Duchess was German-born, tall, fair haired, blue eyed and beautiful. While married to the Duke Louise carried on a very longterm affair (lasted for decades) with the heir to the Duke of Devonshire. He was Lord Hartington, a very lackadaisical character known in Society as Harty Tarty. Years later, after the Duke of Manchester's death, his widow married Harty Tarty, by then the Duke of Devonshire, and she was nicknamed the 'Double-Du(t)chess'! 

[LouisFerdinand]

Each week Princess Victoria sent a letter to her father, Prince Albert. There would be a mention of German political events.   
She tried to change the gardens at the Sanssouci Palace into something more English.

[LouisFerdinand]

When Prince Albert was deceased, Queen Victoria wrote lists of all the things Albert had been good at. Her lists mentioned his construction of the beautiful new dairy at Windsor, the laying out of the kitchen gardens, the building up of the royal art collection, and the Great Exhibition of 1851.   

:random44: :random44: :random44: :random44: :random44: :random44: :random44: :random44:

[LouisFerdinand]

On May 24, 1837 Princess Victoria came of age. In the evening, she attended a ball at St. James's Palace. For the first time in her life, Victoria travelled with her own attendant, but without her mother. The Duchess of Kent travelled in another carriage.

[LouisFerdinand]

In 1867 Queen Victoria made a private publication of Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands from 1848 to 1861. It was dedicated to the memory of Albert, The Prince Consort.

[LouisFerdinand]

In 1845 Victoria and Albert had visited Parkhurst Prison on the Island of Wight. Nineteen years later, Victoria decided to repeat the trip.

[LouisFerdinand]

At the Darmstadt wedding of her granddaughter, Princess Victoria of Hesse, to Prince Louis of Battenberg, Queen Victoria was very impressed with Prince Alexander of Battenberg. It was thought Alexander might marry Princess Victoria of Prussia.

[Curryong]

Well, Victoria of Prussia yearned for Alexander Battenburg. I'm not sure the feeling was mutual. Alexander, like his brothers, was attracted to beautiful women. Possibly if Sandro had got Bulgaria as he and his supporters had hoped he would have married the plain Victoria. He didn't however, (at least partly due to Wilhelm II, Victoria's brother) and so his fate and hers led in very different directions.

[amabel]

As I recall Alexander of Bulgaria wasn't that interested in Victoria, but I suppose if he had been able to be a  ruling sovereign he might have picked her as a suitlable royal bride.  however I don't think he cared much for her, and ended up marrying morganatically to someone "not quite quite".  I believe she carried a torch for him and was never happy in her marraiges...

[LouisFerdinand]

The oldest film of Queen Victoria on October 3, 1896   
The oldest footage of Queen Victoria I (and she is not amused) - YouTube

[LouisFerdinand]

^I knew that Victoria was originally Alexandrina Victoria. Even had she reigned as Queen Alexandrina, Alexandrina sounds musical.

[LouisFerdinand]

There was a vacancy for a lady-in-waiting on Queen Victoria's staff. Victoria found it comforting to surround herself with widows. One eligible lady was Lady Eliza Jane Waterpark. Lady Waterpark's husband, a former lord-in-waiting to Prince Albert, was deceased. Lady Waterpark was hired to be a lady-in-waiting.

[LouisFerdinand]

On June 26, 1857 was the first day of Queen Victoria awarding the Victoria Crosses. It was also the first time she had ever conducted a review on horseback.

[Kritter]

Queen Victoria?s Journals ? Royal Central

On 1 August 1832, the thirteen-year-old Princess Victoria made her first entry into her diary; it was a diary, as she described it on its title page, which had been given to her by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, at Kensington Palace the day before. Bound in red, the diary bears the stamp of her name in gilt letters: ?H.R.H The Princess Victoria?; it had been given to her so that she could keep an account of the 1832 progress which she would make to Wales, with her mother.

[LouisFerdinand]

The Lord Mayor of London asked Queen Victoria if she would come to open the new Blackfriars Bridge when it was completed. Victoria regreted that it was quite out of the question for her to do anything of the kind in the heat of the summer. In the event when November came, she opened the bridge November 6, 1869.

[Kritter]

A look at Queen Victoria?s Wedding ? Royal Central

?Oh! This was the happiest day of my life!? With these words, Queen Victoria described her wedding day in her diary ? 10 February 1840, writing up the event for the day?s entry from Windsor Castle. It marked the beginning of her marriage to her cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. The opposite date of this ecstatic exhortation of joy on behalf of the Queen was unquestionably 14 December 1861; the day of the death of the Prince Consort at Windsor Castle, after which there was a hiatus of two weeks, before the grief-stricken Queen could even bring herself to record the event of the previous fortnight in a journal entry. Twenty-one years had preceded this date, during which the Queen had given birth to nine children, five daughters and four sons.

[LouisFerdinand]

The Royal Pavilion in Brighton was used as a summer family home by Queen Victoria.

[Curryong]

The Royal Pavilion at Brighton was used as a summer home for Victoria for a limited period of time. I don't think Victoria liked the flamboyant Regency interior decoration. Plus then as now Brighton was a busy town, even though in those days it was a smart winter resort. Victoria got very tired of not being able to go for walks with her Ladies and Gentlemen, or even carriage rides, without people staring at her. On occasions people would even come up and stare under the large bonnet she wore.

After her marriage, in the early 1840s, came Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, which was by the sea, and then later Balmoral in Scotland. Both offered privacy to the RF in a way Brighton could not.

[LouisFerdinand]

Queen Victoria warned Albert Edward, The Prince of Wales in 1868, "If you ever become King, you will find all these friends most inconvenient, and you will have to break with them all."

[LouisFerdinand]

Queen Victoria's Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands was first published in January 1868. It sold 20,000 copies almost immediately.