Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Travel is all about choosing your own adventure. With your Chase Sapphire Reserve Card, sometimes that means a ski trip at a luxury lodge in the Swiss Alps.
with a few of your closest friends. And other times, it means a resort on a private beach with no one else in sight. Wherever you decide to go, find the detail that moves you with unique benefits at hand-selected hotels from Sapphire Reserve. Chase, make more of what's yours. Learn more at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval.
With Labor Day savings at the Home Depot, you can get up to $1,500 off select appliances from top brands like LG, America's most reliable line of appliances. Like the LG Smart Top Load Washer with easy unload angled front so you can reach every last sock.
Right now, get up to $1,500 off select appliances in-store and online with Labor Day savings at the Home Depot. How doers get more done. Pricing bell at August 22nd through September 11th. U.S. only. See store online for details. America's most reliable line of appliances per independent study. You may get a little excited when you shop at Burlington. They have my second whole new burlap. I can't wait to... I'm saving so much.
Burlington saves you up to 60% off other retailers' prices every... Will it be the low prices or the great brands? You'll love the deals. You'll love Burlington. I told you so. Styles and selections vary by store.
Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durinpour. And we're continuing our series on Queen Victoria today. And do you want to remind everybody previously on this podcast, William Durinpour, what have we been talking about? So in our last episode, we were dealing with the potato famine, the tragedy of the potato famine.
And this difficulty that we have now to judge Queen Victoria by her own lights in her own time, she thought she was being incredibly generous as the most high donating person in Britain to contribute to the potato famine.
From our point of view today, it's one of the most scandalous moments of British or English negligence to the Irish in history because the potato famine is the archetypal evil that the British did to Ireland that led to not only mass starvation and even cannibalism and unbelievable horrors.
but also massive emigration of the survivors to America. And all at the time when Ireland was producing large amounts of food, which were being exported for the profit of the Anglo-Irish landowners who owned the beef and the other items that were being exported. And it's an episode, I think, which brings us very hard times.
up to how different this era is to us. It's only 150 years ago, but it is a world so very hard to understand with attitudes to empire, attitudes to monarchy, attitudes to religion and God, and attitudes to catastrophes like the famine. It's incredibly different to
those of today. And it's one of those periods when one has to ask oneself, was the conduct of the various players at this time, including Queen Victoria, something that is evil in all periods of history and unforgivable? Or is this something that we should attempt to try and understand according to the lights of the time? But as we saw, there were much more generous donations to Ireland from America than there were from England. And I think this is a period and an episode where
that's very difficult to look at without feeling great horror at what happened. I mean, it sort of is part of a very turbulent 1840s period straight after marriage for Victoria and Albert. You know, the first 10 years of their life are fraught with him trying to prove himself, him trying to find a place in the home, them trying to find a place in the hearts of the British people. Remember, you know, she's been
produced for being the mean girl, the mean cheerleader. She then manages to win the hearts of the country again, then sort of slightly loses it again by marrying Albert, then gains it a little bit by having babies, which she's not particularly excited at. Also, the use of chloroform becomes really popular in her day. We sort of touched on this when she had her babies. She took chloroform for the pain because she really did hate having children and the pain that went with it. Just to clarify, was she out for the count?
when she was having her baby, chloroform knocks you out completely, doesn't it? I'll tell you what. I mean, we don't have exactly because, you know, the royal doctors, apart from Dr. Reid, who later on tells us a lot of things and leaves them in his papers. But it's a Dr. Simpson who looks after her deliveries. He's an enlist that is brought from Edinburgh to administer it. And we know what he did. I mean, he soaked handkerchief with chloroform and then inserted that into a funnel. And then the queen...
would breathe it in. He says she's not out. We do know from her diary, the effect was soothing, quieting and delightful beyond measure. So by the time, and we're jumping forward a little bit, but by the time she has her last child and by 1847 when Dr. Simpson is treating other mothers to be with this form of chloroform anesthesia, actually there's a very funny fact in this.
His first patient in 1847 was delighted to get the same treatment as the Queen. And you know, the baby was nicknamed Anesthesia. Is that good? What's your name? Anna. Anesthesia. Anyway, look, with all the turbulence of the 1840s behind them, it now is a point in the 1850s where...
But in a way, the British monarchy starts to fight back and they start to actively fight back. And it's Albert really who leads this charge because he very much takes it seriously that he is there to support the Queen, to make her reign work.
to make her as loved as he loves her. And so this idea of the great exhibition is born. Is that actually his idea or is it an idea he champions? No, no, no. It is his idea. I mean, largely credited to be his idea. You know how these things work with lots of people. Who knows? It's somebody called, I don't know, Joseph, who came up with the idea. No one remembers Paul Joseph in the corner of this meeting, in this planning meeting. As always, it goes to the chief executive, but it is largely credited to be his brainchild.
But it is going to be the greatest show on earth. This massive display at a specially constructed edifice called the Crystal Palace in London's Hyde Park that is going to show the very best of the Industrial Revolution, cultural achievements Britain has made in the 19th century, but even more than all of that, everything that Britain owns.
All over the world. So, you know, there will be exhibits from the Far East. There will be from Africa. Polynesia. Polynesia. Everywhere. Everywhere. The very best. But also other countries will pay to have little areas in the Great Exhibition as well. I didn't know that. Yes. Which is really utterly fascinating to me as well. I sort of thought it was only stuff that Britain had made. But no. No.
In fact, shall I tell you who sort of rented out a stall? So the United Kingdom, of course, had the biggest show to make. But United States of America, which had freed itself from Britain, they also had displays. They had like agricultural machinery, firearms. Even back then, they were showcasing their guns at the Great Exhibition. By the 1850s, the most popular revolver in India is a Colt.
from America. Right. Okay. The big draw at the Great Exhibition was Cyrus McCormack's Mechanical Reaper. It was like a revolution in farming and caused an enormous amount of excitement. But you're quite right. Samuel Colt's revolvers were also a very large part of this
exhibition in 1851. France, not exactly part of the British Empire, they also had a little bit. They had paintings, works of art, sculptures, French furniture, luxury goods like chocolates and things and patisseries, you know, so they were showcasing that. And it's a kind of strange mixture of a sort of trade fair and the Herbarium at Kew, isn't it? It's got this, it looks like the Palm House. It's in
It's enormous. This thing is absolutely enormous. It's the Palm House, but 10 times the size. Oh, God, even more than that. I think even bigger. Germany had their exhibit based on precision engineering. It won't surprise you to know. And scientific instruments and clocks, lots of clocks from Germany and German optics like telescopes and microscopes. But then the rest was very much the empire. You know, it was all about empire. That needs emphasising. It's a massive display of
on the ground for the first time for people in this country of empire and what it looked like. And you're seeing visually under one enormous soaring glass roof,
everything from all over the British Empire, which at this point, genuinely, the sun does not set. No. And, you know, shall we remind people of our favourite bits of the Great Exhibition? I mean, the big draw of the Great Exhibition was the Koh-i-Noor diamond that Willie and I banged on about in written form and verbal form.
And had been banging on about for many years there. Well, yes. I mean, you know, to the point where we've been banging on about it even at the coronation when it didn't appear. But it was uncut at this point of the Great Exhibition. It was in its native state where it had been worn on the arm of Maharaja Dilip Singh. And I love your description of it. And how do you describe the uncut diamond, William?
So the Koh-i-Noor, this famous diamond, was not what a Victorian wanted to see a diamond looking like. Already by the 1840s and 50s, European diamond cutters had mastered what they called the brilliant cut, which is the thing we still have in high street jewellers today. It is the thing that makes your diamond look like a nice, shiny, multifaceted, glimmery thing.
But in the Middle Ages and in India until recent times, diamonds have been valued as much for their size as for their sparkliness. And there was a great resistance to cutting and faceting a diamond so that it lost weight to gain brilliance.
And the Koh-i-Noor arrived in Britain uncut, looking, as I wrote in the book, very like the shape of Arthur's seat in Edinburgh. That's the one. That's what I was thinking. Domed top, giving way to a tail, which is a weird-looking thing. And this was why the Koh-i-Noor that was already being described as the jewel in the crown and the greatest gift of empire as it was portrayed to the people of Britain, it's why it...
actually proved to be a bit of a disappointment because it didn't sparkle. And so they had to go to an incredible lengths to make it sparkle. Can I quickly tell what Prince Albert did to try and I love telling this story. So it's in a glass house. So it isn't going to sparkle because it's got flat light.
So Albert realises it has bright light. And bright light. I mean, sort of diffused, yeah. Yeah, and so he does his best. He sort of changes the velvet underneath it numerous times, different colours to see if it'll sparkle more. Because people come to see this diamond. It is the closest they're going to get to India in many ways. All of the mythology around its curse and the Maharajas that have worn it. You know, it represents the elephants and the palaces and everything that they've read about. And they just see it and they go, meh.
There's nothing here to see. What they do go and gallop towards is a big hunk of quartz, which is sort of stationed quite nearby, thinking that's the diamond. So Albert's kind of very depressed about this. And then they build a sort of little tent for it, don't they? Well, they build a shed there.
around it. So they put little gas lights and mirrors around it. But because it's in a shed, you put lots of gas lights in a shed, you create a sauna. And you're already in a greenhouse. You're in a greenhouse. You go into an even hotter place. So people are swooning. So they think definitely this diamond is cursed. Anyway, go back to the Koh-i-Noor episodes and you will know about this. But still...
This brainchild of Prince Albert, where he has hugely been helped by Robert Peel, who, by the way, has recently died and doesn't even get to see the opening of the Great Exhibition. It's an enormous success. May the 1st, 1851 is when the gates open. And we have Queen Victoria herself sort of rejoicing over it. She cannot believe how excited people are to walk through the doors. Can you remember, Anita, the statistic we have in the book about Queen
what proportion of Britain turned up. Around 6 million people go through those doors through the duration of the Great Exhibition to see everything inside. So you've got sort of crofters from the outer Hebrides, Cornish tin miners, eel welkers from the Thames estuary. You've got every sort of Victorian stereotype turning up and queuing for hours to see this. And I think one of the things that we got to imaginatively imagine
when we think about this is the fact that actually for all that we think of the Victorian period as the high point of empire, the empire figured actually it was off stage. No one ever saw the empire. No one knew where the cotton was coming from. No one saw the stave plantations when they were there. Very few people went to India.
And it was always said that the Indian debates in the House of Commons were always, right up until 1947, the least well-attended debates in Parliament. And the same was true around the country. But suddenly,
For the Great Exhibition in 1851, you can visualize all this stuff. It becomes real and tangible. You can see the diamonds. You can touch the quartz. You can go and look at the amazing products of the South African mines or the logging operations in Canada or whatever it is that's coming out of the Caribbean, maybe delicious rum. I don't know.
But all this is on show and people pour in. Yes. It is the great wonder of the age. Around six million people will file in through those doors to see the Great Exhibition, which is a third of the entire population of Great Britain. A third? A third of the population of Great Britain. Six million go through those doors. And you know, for Queen Victoria, it is nothing short of a religious experience to see this happen. She writes to her uncle, Leopold,
He of the Feather Boa again. My dearest uncle, I wish you could have witnessed the 1st of May 1851, the greatest day in our history, the most beautiful and imposing and touching spectacle ever seen. Truly, it was astonishing, a fairy scene. Many cried and all felt touched and impressed with devotional feelings. So, you know, for her, it's religious. For the newspapers, you know, the Times, which is normally a slightly staid and sober newspaper,
chronicler of world events. This is what they had to say. Never before was so vast a multitude gathered together within the memory of man. The struggles of great nations in battle, the levies of whole races never called forth such an army as thronged to the streets of London on the 1st of May. The blazing arch of lucid glass with the hot sun flaming on its polished ribs and sides shone like the Koh-i-Noor
Oh, brilliant. Yeah, so, I mean, you're right. You know, it is the empire which is front. Can I just tell you how big it was? Because we've sort of given not really a scale of it. The glass house, this structure that was erected for this enormous, extraordinary show, the vision of Albert, some 1,848 feet long, 408 feet long.
So that covers about 19 acres of land. So, so much bigger than any palm house you're ever going to see. When Jan Morris wrote her wonderful empire trilogy, Pax Britannica, in the 1970s, which in a sense was the sort of first time that anyone had attempted to put the whole history of the British Empire into a single multi-volume work, and Jan Morris wrote
who died last year and who was a great friend of mine, very much saw it as her greatest work and her legacy. She opens, if I remember correctly, the second volume, Pax Britannica, with the Great Exhibition. And for her, it was the...
climax of empire this was the moment that the British Empire reached its greatest moment of prestige and can I just also tell you what the I mean the legacy of the great exhibition was because you know after the great exhibition as William and I have written about before and talked about before you know Cohen or one of its exhibits that fails to please is sort of wheeled off to be recut and great hefts of it sort of lunked off by loses 50 percent of its weight yeah yeah
It's in fact actually raises so much money. It is such a popular thing. It launches Albert into the stratosphere as a rock star because this was his baby. But it raises a surplus of $200,000.
which the money is then sort of used for all of Albert's great works that he wants to build to also, you know, sort of make Victoria seem even greater. He gets the profits. Well, no, no, he doesn't. He just builds museums. Victorian Albert Museum, the Albert Hall, the Museum of Natural History, Imperial College, the Royal College of Music. I didn't know all that is built with the profits. The profits go towards this. I mean, in his lifetime and beyond it, and we'll get to the beyond it,
because that's a seismic moment in Queen Victoria's life. I never knew that. So when one passes along that road, past all those great Victorian edifices, those are all built at the same time, but in the aftermath of this? Well, in the aftermath of this, and it continues, because look, the Great Exhibition closes October 1851, and then it moves from Hyde Park to Sydenham,
And actually, it stays open in Sydenham until 1936, until it was destroyed by fire. It's burnt down, isn't it? Burnt down, exactly that. But all in all, this surplus of £200,000 that is then, you know, Albert's vision is to invest it into institutions to house people.
you know the greatest exhibits of machinery and manufacture and you know he wants to do it at crystal palace but it's from that vision and from that money that this complex of museums and art galleries and all of that that happened after his death all grow up around you know the places where all tourists go in south ken so isn't that interesting isn't that interesting i never knew that
Tell me, Anita, about Henry Cole, who is the guy who is basically running it or is designing it. What's his role? So Henry Cole is really interesting. He's an aspirational middle class man. Good, stable job in the government. Fantastic ability, though, for knowing how to work the system. So, you know, he's one of those people you just know.
is going to get ahead. He is one of these, I suppose, Machiavellian PR guru types that you'll get today. He could be deferential if it worked for him. He could be arrogant and pushy if it worked for him. He knew how to cause a right scene. But he was a great reformer, very effective at making things happen.
And he became the chairman of the Society of Arts who drove this project, you know, this little consortium, including Albert and Peel before he died. So, yeah, Cole had the day-to-day job of organising the exhibition, but Albert was the figurehead. Albert was the one who was in front and centre. And Albert was the one who gets so much credit from this as well. There's a very nice quote I've seen where he talks
talks about it as a way of displaying the quality of the empire and therefore impressing Britain's neighbours, the world around it. And he said, we shall probably have enormous elephants' tusks from Africa and Asia, leather from Morocco and Russia,
Beavers from Baffin's Bay, the wolves of Australia, Yorkshire and Tibet, silk from Asia and Europe, furs from Eskimo. And the Court of Directors of the East India Company intends to exhibit the very best of everything that India can produce. Yeah. I mean, I love that Yorkshire's on that list. I love that Yorkshire gets in there. It's really good that Yorkshire's on the list.
But as I say, you know, when you have a show like this that is just the one thing that everyone is talking about and thinking about, it gives so much credibility and
to the Queen, to Prince Albert and the success of this day, the absolutely unprecedented success of this day really cements them for the first time in the hearts of Britain. And I don't know, would you say that it unifies Britain? What do you think? I imagine if it is true
If it really is true, and it still seems incredibly improbable, though I have read it in many reputable sources, that one third of the population of the country visits this show in London. That means a third of all the people in the Highlands visit.
third of people in Wales. Is that really possible? Anyway, if as many people as this do visit it, yes, it certainly creates a spectacle that everyone can talk about. But what I'd love to talk about now, Anita, if you're happy, is what happens only six years later. And if 1851 is the moment when everyone is feeling most smug, I suppose, in Britain about the empire,
and about the way in which, certainly it's spun as this way that the peoples of the world have consented
to allow the brilliant British to rule them for their own benefit. This idea of paternalism, that the empire is not, as we see it, something extremely dodgy, invasive, exploitative, involving a lot of killing and looting, but instead is something which the world is uniting to allow. And it's very difficult for us to imagine that. But
Only six years later, something happens that punctures that balloon. Of course, you're talking about what some people call the mutiny or the Great War. The Great Uprising, yeah. Uprising, the Great War of Rebellion. I mean, you know, all the names, depending where you come from. In Indian history textbooks, it's called the First War of Independence. The First War of Independence, which, yeah. Can I just say, you know, that description, though, of Britain at the Great Exhibition is so solidly, even today in some people's minds, that's what empire does mean to them. It's that. Yeah.
You say, of course, as we now think of as...
something that was exploitative and leached resources from the rest of the world. For some people, it still remains the thing that was under glass in 1851. The hole in that balloon, the puncture, which reminds us that so much of Britain's wealth came from elsewhere and was strongly resisted by the people whose wealth was flowing to Britain, is the Great Uprising of 1857. And on the 10th
of May 1857, a group of sepoys who have been court-martialed for refusing to bite the bullet, to tear the top of the cartridge off the new Enfield rifle at Parade in Meerut. That evening are broken out of prison by their fellows, freed from their shackles. They then go to the chapel in Meerut and murder many of their officers who are gathering in Evensong.
And they then ride to Delhi overnight and appear in Delhi on the morning of May the 11th, 1857, where they begin to massacre not just the entire British population, men, women, and children, but also all the Christians who've converted to Christianity in the city. And this is a moment of total horror. It is written up in the British papers as the entire subsequent nine months of rebellion are written up.
as a sign of utter barbarism. These barbarians killed our children. They hacked them to pieces. They raped our women. This was regarded as something so barbarous, so terrible, that any amount of reaction to it was permissible and justified. Mm.
And what you find in the months that follows, and we will take a break now, but go into it after the break, is an extraordinary moment of imperial revenge and retribution and massacres the length of the Ganges Plain and across northern India. Travel is all about choosing your own adventure. With your Chase Sapphire Reserve card, sometimes that means a ski trip at a luxury lodge in the Swiss Alps.
with a few of your closest friends. And other times, it means a resort on a private beach with no one else in sight. Wherever you decide to go, find the detail that moves you with unique benefits at hand-selected hotels from Sapphire Reserve. Chase, make more of what's yours. Learn more at chase.com slash sapphire reserve. Cards issued by JPMorgan Chase Bank and a member FDIC. Subject to credit approval.
Welcome back. So just before the break, William was taking us, you know, we went from the height of British might and everything that was sort of
glitzy, cool Britannia, if you like, in 1851 to what happens in 1857, which is whatever you choose to call it, the mutiny, the first war of independence, the uprising. I mean, you should know that Queen Victoria was really perturbed by this because for the first time, it looks as though part of her empire, which she had always assumed to be really happy to be reigned by her. I
is rising up against her. So she is very much in touch with what's going on. British troops being redeployed. They're on their route to Asia. They are meant to be taking part in the second opium war in China, but they are instead diverted to India, delaying the Chinese war by about a year.
And you suddenly have this mass mobilisation of what it is to be British against the savage. And that becomes the kind of mood music at the time in all the newspapers, that this is taming the savage. Can I read you a little bit of the reaction of some of the people involved in putting down this uprising? And again, it rings very familiar today. Here is...
Padre Rotten, who is an unfortunate name, who is the chaplain of the British force in Delhi that's about to reconquer the city. And he takes the view that the mass murder of the inhabitants of Delhi is actually God's own work.
I thought of God and what he had already done for us, and then I thought of man and the precious blood which he must shed in copious and living streams, ere God by him could avenge atrocity and wrong without parallel in the history of nations, both ancient and modern.
There's another character in My Last Mogul called Edward Campbell, who's this very pious but rather gentle figure. And he sees the assault on Delhi when tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians are massacred, as he simply calls it, my savior's battle. And he liked to think of himself as a good soldier of Christ.
A man called Charles Griffiths, who's also there, said, truly, these are fearful times when Christian men and gallant soldiers, maddened by the foul murder of those nearest and dearest to them, steeled their hearts to pity and swore vengeance against the mutineers. The same feelings, to some extent, pervaded the breasts of all those that were engaged in the suppression of the mutiny.
Every soldier in our ranks knew the day of reckoning had come for the atrocities which had been committed, and with the unrelenting spirit dedicated himself to the accomplishment of the purpose. It was a war of extermination, in which no prisoners were taken and no mercy shown. In short, one of the most cruel and vindictive wars the world has ever seen.
Dead bodies lay thick in the streets and open spaces and numbers were killed in their houses. Many non-combatants lost their lives, our men mad and excited, making no distinction. There is no more terrible spectacle than a city taken by storm.
I'll just read one last quote because, again, it just sounds so familiar from what's happening in the papers today. This is from the Bombay Telegraph, published at the time, decrying what he called General Wilson's hokum that women and children should be spared. This is attacked in this editorial, and they say, "'This was a mistake, for they were not human beings, but fiends, or at best, wild beasts deserving only the death of dogs.'"
All the people found within the walls when our troops entered were banneted on the spot. The number was considerable, as you may suppose when I tell you that some 40 or 50 persons were often found hiding in one place. They were not mutineers, but residents of the city who trusted to our well-known mild rule for pardon. I'm glad to say that they were to be disappointed.
So that's chilling. What does it do to Queen Victoria herself? Well, she is, like everybody else, caught up in the reports of the terrible slaughter that takes place of British men, women and children in Kanpur. And we know what she thought about that because...
We're told that she was unable to sleep. She felt sick. She was haunted. She writes herself that the reports made her blood run cold. She turns to her former lady-in-waiting, Lady Canning, who's now the wife of the governor of India. Do you remember I said that would be a really important relationship? This is so interesting. Carry on. This is great. Yeah. Yeah. So...
She writes to Lady Canning and she says, please get in touch with those who have lost dear ones in so dreadful a manner. Know of my sympathy. A woman and above all a wife and a mother can only too well enter into the agonies gone through of the massacres. But then you see what you were talking about, which was this reprisal. What some at the time called, you know, the devil's wind that was blowing these bloody reprisals that you say beautifully quoted from your eyewitness accounts there.
It leads to this enormous need for a bloodlet, as you have said. You know, hundreds of rebels hanged, some strapped to cannons and the cannons then fired. You've got Lord Canning, though, who is not of that ilk category.
And he is urging restraint. In fact, he upbraids some of his troops for their excesses and he calls some of the vengeful cries shameful. I've got a very nice quote, actually, from a letter that Lord Canning writes to Queen Victoria. Can I read it? Of course. On the 25th of September, 1857, he writes to Queen Victoria that the violent rancour of a very large proportion of the English community against every native Indian of every class
There is a rabid and indiscriminate vindictiveness abroad, even amongst many who ought to set a better example, which is impossible to contemplate without feeling a shame of one's own fellow countrymen. Not one man in ten seems to think that the hanging and shooting of 40 or 50,000 mutineers beside other rebels can be otherwise than practicable crime.
And right. And everybody turns against Canning. Yeah, he's called Clemency Canning. He is the enemy of the state because he has this kind of call for, would you all just calm down? Queen Victoria, though, offers her support to him. And it's really deeply unpopular to do so. This is one of the moments that makes me most pro-Victoria, is that she does lead in England. So she writes to Canning herself and she says, look, the cries against you are shameful.
while those responsible for the carnage these are her words should be punished to the nation at large the peaceable inhabitants to the many kind and friendly natives who have assisted us these should be shown the greatest kindness they should know there is no hatred to a brown skin none but the greatest wish on their queen's part to see them happy contented and flourishing well
1857, though, marks a real change in the mindset of empire, though, doesn't it? You know, sort of those words, you know, to see you contented and flourishing. There is a change. There's two things that then follow. She is getting all these letters from Lady Canning, Charlotte Canning, who she really trusts. She knows Lady Canning. She's been, was it a lady-in-waiting or was she just a friend? She had been a lady-in-waiting, yeah. Yeah, she'd been a lady-in-waiting.
And she knows that she can trust Charlotte Canning. So she begins to receive in Buckingham Palace and in Windsor a whole series of Indian delegations. And she comes to the conclusion, which is something that I would certainly, as a historian, entirely agree with, that she said that they are motivated by a fear of their religion being tampered at the bottom of everything is this. And so she realizes that there's a profound fear that
that the British are taking away the basis for both Hinduism and Islam and trying to impose Christianity. And in a sense, that idea that there is a religious motivation for this allows her to show some sympathy for it. And she does something extraordinary.
She issues a proclamation in 1858 with the promises of clemency, toleration, and equality. And this proclamation is immediately dubbed the Magna Carta of India and becomes a major document in India. And the name of the queen...
It underpins the law, the finance, the currency, the Indian service, the newly amalgamated army when the East India Company is abolished and the crown in the person of Queen Victoria, in a very real sense, the crown is put there to replace it. And there's been some very interesting things.
readings by Indian historians about why is it that Queen Victoria is regarded, in a sense, as a more legitimate finger than the actual civil servants who are administering India. One historian writes that it sanctions older forms of Indian indigenous patriotism as traditional as ideas about good counsel, virtuous rule, and dharma, which were turned against the officials. So Queen Victoria is
advocating clemency comes to be seen by Indians as a representation of justice. And they hold to her charter amid this vengefulness of the civil servants administering India and going around issuing bounties for anyone involved in the uprising. So it's a very crucial moment. It's a moment of terrible violence and terrible retribution. But it's also a moment when Victoria steps forward
and says, enough, there must be clemency, there must be amnesty. I think it's a very telling and important moment in her reign, and it makes me admire her in a way that nothing else she does. It's a great moment for me. Look, the years that follow, I mean, I know we're sort of hop, skipping and jumping, but it is a very, very long reign. And I know that we have the Crimean War, which we're not going to go into in depth. We've got the threat of war in Europe that is raging now.
where actually, you know, her family is married into the eye of the storm. You know, you've got, you know, her daughter in the Prussian palace, Italy divided into so many states, Austria chafing the push to unify, you know, it had three Italian wars of independence going on. It is all feels a little unstable. We're not going to talk about that because as I say, it's a
a long reign. I think one of the reasons we're not going to do more on Crimea is we've already covered it quite comprehensively when we did our Russian series. Yes, so go back and look there. But I want to jump ahead to another absolutely defining moment in her life. And that is actually the death of the man that she loves. So it's the 14th of December, 1861, and Albert...
dies of typhoid. He's been unwell for a while. She has been sitting by his side. She is heartbroken. I think part of her doesn't really believe that he's going to die at all because she can't believe that she'll be left alone if he does leave her. She doesn't know who she'll be and what she will be without him. All of her children have grown up, moved away and married off
She's not that fond of her eldest son, Bertie, who will be Edward VII, because he's a carousing playboy. And so she feels really very alone. And the day that he does die, she's said to shriek and the hallways echo with her grief. She clings onto his body in the moments after his death.
He was so young. What does he die of? What's the cause of his death? Well, believe typhoid. Typhoid. Oh, how did he catch that? You see, typhoid's no respecter of rank. Water is water. You can have good plumbing or you can have an open gutter, but if the water that's flowing through both is the same, typhoid will spread. It's a waterborne disease. So, you know, a fragile constitution he has anyway, churning stomach cramps,
cramps as you know we've heard about his early afflictions when they first met but he catches this terrible thing and he can't fight it and it's awful and he's only 42 I'm not sure I realized he was that young 42 years old he's so very very very young and she is also so very very young and it is just too awful you know what she says when he dies there is no one to call me victoria now it's just awful
Isn't that just so very sad? And Disraeli says of him that if he governed England for 21 years with the wisdom and energy such as none of our kings have ever shown.
So he's a kind of much missed moment. She then goes into what we today would call a deep depression. Well, she goes into purdah. I mean, she just completely doesn't want to see anybody. She doesn't want to talk to anybody. Even at state occasions like the opening of Parliament, for five years she doesn't appear. No. She'd rather stay in bed with the curtains closed. She doesn't want to hear music. She doesn't want to hear from any of her friends anymore, any of her close circle. She wants them to keep away. Something she never, ever...
ever got over it, frankly. She writes to King William of Prussia in February 1862, which is what, three months later?
For me, life came to an end on December the 14th. It's just awful. Do you know one of the other things that I've just found utterly fascinating about when he died is that she leaves everything in his room the way it was. And not only that, she has her servants bring out his shaving things every morning and hot water as if he is going to get up and
and be shaved. And she does that for years. Even though he's long gone, that is a custom that carries on. And the only jewel she wears is the Koh-i-Noor. Yeah, she puts away all of her colours. She puts away all of her jewellery. But the only thing she'll be seen in is the Koh-i-Noor, which can be a brooch or it can be a crown. Is that because he had it recut, do you think, or what? We can only guess that it's because it was his recutting.
that it is a link with India, and she takes that still very, very seriously for all the reasons that we spoke about a little while ago. Is Albert another victim of the curse of the Koh-i-Noor? Because he's the guy that has it recut, and he dies only a few years later, age 42. It's a point that has been made many times in India, as you know.
people who'd like to talk about curses and what they will do. But look, it is a problem. It is a real problem for the rest of the government because if she's so grief-stricken that she's not going to talk to her Privy Council, she's not going to speak to anybody, she's going to disappear, she's not attending any state opening of Parliament...
What are they going to do? I mean, she refuses to come out and do any of the things that she's meant to be doing. Instead, she has a plaster cast of one of Albert's hands and she keeps it by her bed and she holds it every night before she goes to sleep and when she wakes up in the morning.
But, you know, this is no good to her government. They start getting really antsy. The country starts getting really antsy. The period of mourning gets longer and longer and longer. And she cuts herself off from the country. The Times calls her grief a sort of religion. And the fact that she doesn't come out of Windsor Castle or Osborne or Balmoral, she'll go in between those three. She won't go to Buckingham Palace because it's too near Westminster and the politicians can get their hands on her there.
But the monarchy starts to suffer as a result. There's a protester who ties a notice to the railings of Buckingham Palace in about 1864 because she's not coming out. She's not being seen. And it says, this notice, these commanding premises to be let or sold in consequence of the late occupants declining business. I mean, that feels such a contemporary thing to say. And she gets known from this point on as the widow of Windsor.
and not in a nice way. So I think people are understanding for a period, of course they are. But by 1864, people are kind of beginning to wonder, does she want to rule us or not? Is she still our ruler? The Saturday Review writes that seclusion is one of the few luxuries in which royal personages may not indulge. The power which is derived from affection or loyalty needs a life of uninterrupted publicity to sustain it.
And so when she doesn't open parliament, when she doesn't perform her basic duties, people begin to grumble. In the end, it's her favourite uncle, Leopold of the Featherbowers and the platform heels. I just can't think of him. The glam rocker, formerly known as King Leopold. Slade or the sweet of Belgium of the 1860s. He persuades her.
that she has to go and be seen in public. And he actually pays a visit to her and escorts her to the Royal Cultural Society in Kensington and drives through London in an open carriage. And that's her first appearance since the death of Albert three years earlier. I think it's safe to say, though, that this self-imposed exile that she goes through
It does give a boost to the Republican movement, who asks in even more numbers and with even greater volume, what is the point of having a monarchy? Her daughter Victoria writes to her mother from Berlin saying, look, this is dangerous. The dangers of republicanism, in her words, are spreading, daily spreading, she writes. And radicals are cheered up by this. You have a young MP called Sir Charles Wentworth Dilk in 1871. That's six years after this.
speaks to a crowd of working men in Newcastle and said, there is a widespread belief that a republic here is only a matter of education and time. And republicanism of a very revolutionary form is flooding in. I had no idea it had got that extreme. No, no, it really had. Do you know what's interesting though? If you look at sort of the Indian press at the time, there was much more sympathy for this self-imposed grief issue.
in India than there was arguably in Britain. - A widow is meant to be secluded in India, it's part of the culture. - Yeah, you know, they're used to it. And that, you know, there are much kinder things written in India, certainly, about the suffering queen and her deep loss.
than there were even in Britain at the time. I think they get sort of tired of it. And this, of course, is the period when you find all over India images of Queen Victoria coming up. And this is interpreted by some historians, and Miles Taylor makes this point, that these images of Queen Victoria are not, in a sense, necessarily a sort of just a mark of imperialism, but in a sense, she is seen as something separate from the oppressiveness of the bureaucracy.
And so when an Indian prince or a Maharaja or some rich banker pays for an image of Victoria, that in a sense is almost a kind of mild mark of resistance. Of course, today, all these images of Victoria have been taken down and now in Barrackpore or Coronation Park or corralled in sort of strange corners of museums.
And everyone's forgotten this. But there is this strange moment in the 1860s and 1870s when she is astonishingly popular in India. Yes, but with suffering, you know, it's sort of virtue through suffering that sort of works with certain audiences. That works in that culture, doesn't it? It does. I'll tell you what happens though. I mean, you know, typhoid almost loses her a country, but then it also comes to her rescue. It's a horrible thing to think, but in 1871...
Her son, Edward, the heir to the throne, also contracts typhoid. And the whole sort of royal family goes into contraction of fear. But the country goes into contraction of fear. It's almost sort of 10 years since the father has died of typhoid. And he seems to be following his dad into an early grave. But then he recovers. And the mother and the son, the queen and the heir, they come together for a service of thanksgiving at St. Paul's Cathedral.
This event is planned by the then Prime Minister Gladstone, who needs his queen back. You know, Britain, he realises Britain needs a queen. Famously, Gladstone was not the preferred Prime Minister of Queen Victoria. She said it was like being that she was a public meeting being addressed or something. I'm saying that wrong, but she didn't enjoy talking to him, not as much as she did enjoy talking to the Prime Minister Disraeli.
She hadn't been keen on having this public service. She wasn't keen on anything Gladstone suggested, frankly. She hated him. She didn't like Gladstone at all. She turns up and crowds pack the streets and they are all shouting for her because they've missed her. And she says, you know, it's a day that can never be forgotten. And she waves at the crowds from the balcony of Buckingham Palace. And actually, you know, I think it's fair to say Edward falling that ill on that anniversary, completely.
of cements her back into the hearts of the nation and it certainly dampens down the Republican cause that had been coming from the likes of Dilk and others. Anyway, look, with Albert gone, we're going to leave that episode there but join us in the next episode as we discuss Queen Victoria and her relationship with
the Empire and how she gets the title of Empress of India. However, if you're a member of the Empire Club, you'll be able to hear that episode and the whole of our series on Victoria right now. All you need to do is go to empirepoduk.com and sign up there. And while we're on the club, I have to say I did not realise quite what a wonderful newsletter you gave.
kit for joining the club. I have yet to work out how to download a copy, but my children read it and they send it to me. And I have to say, I've learned almost as much from the newsletter after certain episodes as I have from my research before. And it's the work of a wonderful woman called Sarah Torr, and it is full of all sorts of nuggets. I've even learned stuff that was relevant to my book, which Sarah researched.
after the episodes on the Buddha, which I should have known, but to be honest, I didn't. So I would warmly recommend our newsletter as part of the package, which comes with the Empire pod. We've never talked about it before, but I think we receive many emails from people that say it's one of their favorite aspects of joining the club. Until then, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. Goodbye from me, William Durhampool. ♪