In reflecting over the past week; starting off with
the first birthday of my newest nephew; then midweek saying goodbye to great
guy’s uncle; and yesterday starting my Lenten ‘fast’ (better late than never to
cut out sugar and bread), life and death are running through my mind, as if in
a race. I am confident that life will win, even as death will pull a last
minute, daring stunt to pass. Life will ultimately cross the finish line. But
it sure is a strange race.
In the impressive Victoria Revealed exhibit currently on at Kensington Palace, I toured through the life of an equally impressive woman, who ruled the British Empire for 64 years from 1837 to 1901. Queen Victoria’s descendants made up significant parts of the royal houses in Sweden, Norway, Greece, Romania, Germany and Russia, during her reign.
Walking through the rooms where she was born, spent her childhood, heard that she had become queen, and met her husband; I caught a glimpse of the love story she shared with Albert through her journals, intimate portraits, his gifts of music and jewellery, and the letters she wrote.
I stood in Victoria’s former bedroom; I should say
Queen Victoria’s former bedroom, in the understated, yet grand Kensington
Palace. Situated in North London, next to sprawling lawns as far as the eye can
see, the palace feels royal, yet also like a large home.
Princess Margaret, Princess Diana, Will, Kate, George and Harry all have or do make their home here. Reading letters Victoria had written to Albert, I felt a bit like I was intruding on something intimate…which I was.
Just a few
months after she was born on the 24th of May, 1819 Victoria's father died of pneumonia
leaving the princess and her mother, the Duchess of Kent, penniless. Wanting to
prepare her for her future role as queen, her mother kept her isolated from
life at court with few friends her own age. Victoria had a vivid imagination and loved the arts. She sketched, sewed costumes for her wooden
peg dolls, loved riding her beloved horse Taglioni, and took singing lessons
from an Italian opera singer named Luigi Lablache.
And then one spring day, it all began…
From her
journal on the 18th of May, 1836 Victoria wrote, “we went down into
the hall, to receive my Uncle Ernest, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha and my cousins,
Ernest and Albert, his sons…Albert, who is just as tall as Ernest but stouter,
is extremely handsome; his hair is about the same colour as mine; his eyes are
large and blue, and he has a beautiful nose and a very sweet mouth.”
On June 20th,
1837 His Majesty King William IV died at Windsor and Victoria became Queen.
Can
you imagine the problems trying to find a guy ‘man’ enough to handle dating you
once you become queen? But Albert stepped up to the plate, responding like an
actor in a well-scripted rom com. He sent Victoria gifts and letters when they
were apart, and between 1838 and 1839 he composed pieces expressing all of his
love-lorn emotions; such as, Gruss aus
der Ferne (Greeting from Afar), Schmerz
der Liebe (The Pain of Love), and Einsamkeit
(Loneliness). Some of the pieces you can experience in the exhibit.
The coup d’état
upon their engagement in 1839, was called Der
Orangenzweig. Prince Albert composed a piece set to a poem by his brother
Ernest, joyful that Victoria:
‘Would
agree to the intimate bond
With
Saxony’s most upright princely son
A zephyr
with its whispering tones
Reached the
distant land of flowers.’
Albert was
one thoughtful fellow. He often tried to bridge the relationship between
Victoria and her mother, the Duchess of Kent. Victoria harboured quite a bit of
resentment against her mother due to her lonely childhood. So, Albert
commissioned a bookmark formed of four green, silk ribbons with a circle of
eight semi-precious stones, the initials of which spelled VICTORIA: Vermeil,
Jargoon (J was often used as an I); Chrysolite; Turquoise; Opal; Ruby; Jargoon;
Amethyst…I wouldn’t have thought of that.
They were
married on the 10th of February, 1840 and ended up having 9 children. Throughout
her pregnancies, beginning with the first one, Victoria, Princess Royal, who
was born on the 21st of November 1840, Albert helped fulfill her political
and practical responsibilities. Victoria even formalized Albert’s role by
asking Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, to give Albert his own set of keys to
her dispatch boxes. Victoria in turn supported and encouraged Albert in his
projects, such as the Great Exhibition of 1851.
After they
were married, Victoria and Albert often sang and played music together. They
also formed a warm friendship with Mendelssohn, who visited them several times
at Buckingham Palace. Between 1844 and 1847 he transcribed eight of his famous
Songs without Words for the royal couple to play together. Throughout the exhibit, you realize how very suited to each other they were; they thoroughly enjoyed being together in work
and play.
I moved through the exhibit slowly, taking it all in; her former rooms. Reading, listening, I was exploring someone's life. And then I turned a corner and the walls, the floor, the ceiling all went black.
People handle the loss of a beloved partner as
differently as the people themselves are. Some move on fairly quickly, needing
to grab life by the horns again and laugh and love; some fall apart completely
and join their partner soon after; and others wait.
Queen Victoria waited forty years for her time on
earth to be over, and to join Albert. He died of typhoid fever in 1861, and
Victoria was never the same again. “My life as a happy one is ended”, she
wrote.
Immediately upon his death, Victoria insisted that her
entire household and her children all wear black. For the rest of her life, she
wore a black dress, black stockings, black shoes and a black ‘sad cap’, as her
young daughter, Beatrice, called the widow’s cap Victoria wore. She even wrote
all of her letters on paper with black trim, sealing them with black wax. She
faced a lot of criticism in the time after Albert’s death for not attending
public events, nor dealing with her official duties as she should.
This is how she described her last moments with
Albert: “I bent over him and said to him “Es ist Kleines Frauchen” (it is your
little wife) and he bowed his head; I asked him if he would give me “ein Kuss”
(a kiss) and he did so. He seemed half dozing, quite quiet…two or three long
but perfectly gentle breaths were drawn, the hand clasping mine and…all, all
was over.” Queen Victoria, 14 Dec. 1861
This
afternoon, I had an unexpectedly moving conversation at the post office. The
lady behind the counter, who is the father’s neighbour, asked when they were
returning from their wintertime in Spain. I mentioned that the father had just
been here for the week because his brother had died on Wednesday. The
expression on her small, wrinkled face changed; her eyes grew dark. ‘Andreas
died?’ she asked in disbelief. She began to repeat what I had heard from
others, including Andreas himself. He was never the same after his Moni died 22
years ago. Even though he had children and grandchildren of his own, it was as
if the light that kept him going; the interest to wander through each day, was
gone.
No matter where you live, brothers are brothers and
sisters are sisters. The bonds that keep family close are the same no matter
where you are. [Takayuki Ikkaku;Arisa Hosaka]
Ultimately, time is all you have, and the idea isn’t
to save it but to savour it.[Ellen Goodman]
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