Queen Victoria of The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha were married on February 10, 1840. Victoria and Albert were devoted to each other from the start, and the queen deferred to her husband’s guidance, especially when she had to make state decisions. She routinely defended him to anyone who dared to criticize him, and agreed with Alfred Tennyson that the prince would have made an excellent king.
Prince Albert’s Death and Queen Victoria’s Mourning
Prince Albert died on December 14, 1861 of typhoid fever. His wife was beyond devastated by the loss of him. She claimed she had done none of the work as ruler of the nation, and he had done everything. It was a personal loss for her, and a political loss for the country.
She had many statues and busts built in honor of Prince Albert, and pictures of the queen show her staring up at a bust of her beloved. Christopher Hibbert notes in his book Queen Victoria: A Personal History that the queen mourned even more than was customary of her era.
She ordered everything to be left as Prince Albert had left things—his clothing was laid out every day, and hot water was prepared for his shaving routine. In her book The Victorian Woman, Suzanne Cooper comments that Queen Victoria slept with a photograph of Albert above her pillow. The queen would often talk to Albert as if he were beside her.
The Victorian Widow
Although there had been mourning rituals and standards for hundreds of years before the Victorian age, in the nineteenth century, mourning became an art form as well as a way of showing genuine grief. In her book Mourning Dress, Lou Taylor describes the various stages of mourning for widows.
The first stage of mourning lasted a year and a day. A widow wore all black, including a veil, and would likely be severely ostracized if she took part in any enjoyable activities. Second mourning generally lasted nine months, and rules were eased a little. A widow might wear silk or flowers at this time if she wished.
Ordinary mourning lasted three months, and a widow could wear jet, embroidery and lace if she wanted to. The final stage was half-mourning, which typically lasted six months. Widows were able to wear colors like mauve. If at the end of the full two and half years of mourning widows wished to marry again, they could do so. Queen Victoria disapproved of second marriages, and believed them to be akin to adultery.
In spite of the long cultural history of mourning, some people were dismayed that their queen went into hiding for decades after her husband’s death. The public grew tired of their queen’s refusal to be seen in public, and her deep mourning that kept her from them. There was a backlash against her, and it took some years before her subjects could dote on her fully once more.
Queen Victoria and Tennyson’s In Memoriam
Queen Victoria took some consolation in the words of Alfred Tennyson’s poem In Memoriam, which was an elegy dedicated to the memory of his dear friend Arthur Hallam. She told the poet that In Memoriam was a great comfort to her, and she changed a few of the words in the poem to better suit her circumstances. The queen and her Poet Laureate became good friends, and corresponded as well as meeting a few times.
Queen Victoria as an Eternal Widow
Queen Victoria was in some ways like the middle-class Victorian women who had to endure widowhood, yet she was expected to rule a nation. She followed mourning rituals and further popularized them, even making them fashionable. She ruled for over 63 years, yet may be primarily remembered for mourning for 40 of those years. Queen Victoria was powerful, admired and scorned, but all she wanted was the love that she had lost.
Sources:
- Cooper, Suzanne F. The Victorian Woman. London: V & A Publications, 2001.
- Hibbert, Christopher. Queen Victoria: A Personal History. London: HarperCollins Publishers, 2000.
- Martin, Robert Bernard. Tennyson: The Unquiet Heart. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1983.
- Taylor, Lou. Mourning Dress: A Costume and Social History. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1983.
- Tennyson, Alfred Lord. In Memoriam. Ed. Robert H. Ross, New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1977.
Jillian Bost - Jillian Bost is an experienced writer with interests ranging from Victorian literature to 1980s pop and professional wrestling.
