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Hello and welcome to Empire with me, Anita Arnon. And me, William Durham-Poole. And this is the final episode on Queen Victoria. Previously on this podcast, we left you with two seismic events, or three seismic events, in fact, in
in Queen Victoria's life. We had the Great Exhibition which secures Britain's place as the world's superpower in the eyes of Britain and the world. We had the mutiny, the First War of Independence in India in 1857 and how that changes, at least in India.
the image of British rule. And also how Queen Victoria is out of step. You know, that girl who would not be told by her privy council what to do and what to say and to make John Conroy her advisor is the same woman who sort of flies in the face of all of these demands of retribution and says, actually, you know what? No, stop. That's not what I want. I think one of the things that we see at this point as the Great Exhibition is reaching its climax is this is also
the moment when monarchies are at their absolute peak. It isn't just that empire is at its peak in 1851. This is the moment when so much of the world is ruled by monarchs, and many of them related by marriage or otherwise to Queen Victoria. At this point, if we were to do a survey, you
You have the Romanovs in Russia that we looked at last year in our Russian series. You've got Louis Napoleon in France, Franz Joseph in Austria-Hungary, followed not long after by the Wilhelmine imperial monarchy of Germany. To these continental empires were added overlords.
overseas annexes, the Portuguese in Brazil, the French in Mexico, albeit briefly, and the Dutch in Indonesia. Only the Spanish colonial empire is in retreat. So this is the heyday of viceregal rule. But what happens in 1857, a few months later, as we saw in the last episode, is this moment when this is all punctured by
by the largest act of anti-colonial resistance in history, the 1857-1858 Indian Mutiny or First War of Independence. And then finally, you know, we left the last episode with her grieving for Albert, the love of her life,
And willing to give up everything, you know, willing to give up all of her sense of duty and service and ideas of being Queen of England, something that she fought so hard to make mean something after he dies and being lost, really. And it's only when her son's life is threatened by the same illness that takes his father 10 years before. And he says,
survives and there is this great ceremony of thanks at St. Paul's Cathedral where people turn out in enormous numbers to cheer the Queen where she sort of wakes up and thinks actually my people are here and they love me and they need me and it is, you know, she's back. She's back. But it's a difficult time for her because she has to enter that public arena where he was always by her side and she does become apparent, you know, becomes very clear that she's somebody who needs someone to prop
her up. And she finds that she's lonely, not unusual for human beings. Yeah. They're on their own. No. And you know, she, she finds great comfort in your part of the world, William de Rimpel. Who is it that gives her that propping up? She most certainly does. This is of course, a reference to John Brown, uh, memorably played by Billy Connolly in, uh, uh, in yet another Queen Victoria movie, one we haven't mentioned yet. And, uh,
John Brown was originally Prince Albert's ghillie, which is a kind of Scottish outdoors manservant, but one who particularly specialises in fishing and in stalking. And they soon become very close friends. He was described as having a magnificent physique and was a loyal friend and confidant to the royal couple before Albert's death. But after his death,
Victoria and John Brown grow close. And she was well aware of the rumours that accompanied their relationship. Well, they used to call him Mrs. Brown, which is famously the name of the film. But it's not just his physique. You know, obviously he's good looking and she does like a pretty man around her. But she's always appreciated that. But she says, you know, about John Brown, he is so devoted to me, so simple, so intelligent, so unlike an ordinary servant and so cheerful and attentive.
You know, he was exactly the kind of person who just wouldn't have her moping and basically had the guts to sort of break out of his role as being merely the ghillie to actually say, you know, buck up, woman. Yet she has a title, which is the Queen's Highland Servant on £120 a year. And it's funny because it doesn't actually...
You'll see this time and time again when she makes a friend in a lower sort of circle than her own, a lower social circle, that those around her courtiers, they do not like it. They don't like it at all. They don't like it at all. There's no question that the other courtiers are jealous and so on.
But there's also some suggestion that there really might be some emotional attachment. Well, she's so much older than him. I don't think it can be a sexual thing. I mean, I was sort of looking back at it. But she does like a man who is devoted, as Albert was devoted, as Dilip Singh for a while was devoted. And then clearly that goes to hell. But John Brown is also devoted and she appreciates that. She needs that. She feeds off that. And, you know, one dare say, I suppose there is love. Love can be without passion.
sexual love, I suppose, because there is an age difference between these two. He is young, he is vital, he is life itself, and she's been sort of yanked out of grief and sadness. And that's what she needed. She needed life itself. She needed someone who's cheery and drag her out of her misery. So when he finally dies, she writes...
The comfort of my daily life is gone. The void is terrible. The loss is irreparable. So there's another moment of mourning when John Brown dies in 1883. It's really interesting because grief has become a familiar friend now with her. Do you know one of the people who sent to counsel her out of her grief? So interesting is Tennyson, Alfred Lord Tennyson, who is the poet laureate at the time. And there are lovely accounts of him sort of being told that,
to go and visit her and say soothing words. He's like, I don't know what to bloody say. Like, he's quite a nervous, shy man. I don't know what to say to the woman. But he sort of sits there and in his silence, she finds solitude. He's another of those sort of fantastic looking Victorians. Yeah. So she doesn't mind his company. Yeah. You know, my lovely, my great aunt, Julie Margaret Cameron, the photographer, she photographed him endlessly and she'd always make him
dress up with sort of a crown on and shove him in a boat and make him, you know, kind of Lancelot. Then somebody else would give him a sword and he'd be the lady of the lake and King Arthur. And he had that fantastic sort of Leonine Victorian look, which I think was
very much appealed to Queen Victoria, who, as we know, was someone who appreciated a good-looking chap. Yeah. You know what? I just found a quote, actually, from her about him. She's recalling to John Brown's brother what he meant to her. His name's Hugh Brown. And after he dies, she says...
He had pledged to care for her until he died. He had said, and she quotes this, you haven't a more devoted servant than Brown. And Victoria said afterwards, so often I told him no one loved him more than I did or had a better friend than me. And he answered, nor you than me. No one loves you more. So that's, you know, that's from her hand, from her pen.
Which also enraged her staff. Like, what the hell? Who let him in? What Private Eye would call Sir Alan Fitz-Tightly gets upset by this.
There is somebody, though, who is able to cheer her, even though she's lost Brown. By the way, she has a life-size statue of him erected in the house in the grounds of Balmoral. Statues of him start popping up everywhere. It really pisses off her son, Edward, who, you know, quite understandably, he's a ghillie. He let a
pony around what are you doing mother this is so embarrassing but nevertheless she does but you know somebody else she's utterly charmed with is Disraeli who is her prime minister is everything that Gladstone is not so you know what does she say about Gladstone William remind us that talking to him is like being addressed at a public meeting
Yes. So whereas he's really formal, and by the way, he finds her just as insufferable. He writes very many rude things about her. What does he say? Oh God, there was something where he said just spending one day in her company is like a lifetime. And I'm sort of writing about the tortures of having to go and talk to him. You know, he knows she doesn't like him and he doesn't particularly like going to see her, but just really revels in it because he's a charming man. He's read books. He knows poetry. Writes books. Writes books. He's a flatterer and he's a lover and he's all of those things.
I mean, he's not sort of her usual type. He's not sort of statuesque and ghillie-esque and he's not sort of built like John Brown, but...
He is somebody who knows how to make her happy. And it's under Disraeli, is it not, that this idea is floated that she should become Empress of India. Tell us a bit more of that, because that's a massive deal, her becoming Empress of India. So it's a confusion at the beginning of it, because she's not sure whether she is officially Empress of India or not anyway.
Oh yes, she thinks she is already. That's right. Yes, tell us about that. It's a great story. So obviously, the British have, by the stage, conquered India by the sword and by the bayonet, reconquered it again in 1857, putting down the great uprising, the mutiny. And she is regarded as the successor to the Mughals in India. And
She has to write a letter, or rather her secretary writes a letter in January 1873 saying, I am an empress in common conversation, and I'm sometimes called Empress of India. Why then have I never officially assumed this title? Which is a reasonable question, as she obviously did have an empire, and it wasn't like the Victorians to play down such things. No, but she also says...
I feel I ought to do so and wish to have preliminary inquiries made. Thank you very much from Victoria. And this lands on Disraeli's desk. So Disraeli immediately latches onto this and knows how to charm his monarch in no uncertain way. And in 1876, he felt he could no longer block Victoria from this. She became the empress of the jewel in the empire's crown.
And she, grateful for being elevated by an Israeli, gave him a peerage in return. So it's rather like, again, today, everyone's doing each other favours. Yeah. Well, she likes him. I mean, she's so grateful. She describes an Israeli as one of the kindest, truest and best people.
friends and wisest counsellors she ever had. I mean, particularly because she gave her what she wanted, which was this grand title. We should perhaps give a pen portrait, Anita, of Disraeli for those who don't know who he is. Well, yes. I mean, the only Jewish prime minister that Britain has ever had. I
I think he was officially, during his prime ministership, an Anglican, but then was heard on his deathbed saying the last Jewish prayers. And so I think he was forced by the law to suppress his Jewish faith. Are you saying he's a pretend not Jewish? A pretend not Jewish, but was very, his name...
Benjamin. He looked very Jewish, and he made no secret of his Jewishness. But I think for legal reasons, he had to pretend to be an Ancon while he was prime minister. Yeah. He really did know how to handle her, though. When he talked about talking to Queen Victoria, he says, everyone likes flattery, but when it comes to royalty, you should lay it on with a trowel. And he certainly did do that. He was very, very good. Is that actually a quote? Yeah, it's a quote.
It's a quote. I didn't know that phrase existed in the Victorian period. Apparently so. And she also liked him as well. You know, the Tories of which he was one, they had the Primrose League. And when he won the election, she sent him a bunch of primroses. From Windsor. From Windsor. Yes. So, you know, she was, you're not meant to have any kind of
political affiliation, but she certainly had a fondness for Disraeli anyway. So she's Empress of India. She's declared Empress of India and there's going to be a massive party that's thrown for this, which is going to be called the Durbar Celebration on the 1st of January 1877. And that is a major, I mean, can't stress enough
What a big show this is going to be. So this is held in Delhi, to the north of Old Delhi. And there is a vast reams of scholarship being written about it because this is a kind of formal assumption by the British monarchy of the tradition of the Mughals. They erect a pavilion that is built in the Mughal style. And remember, this is only 20 years after...
Every last Mughal prince was hunted down and hung after 1857, and the last emperor, Bahadur Shah Zafar, is exiled to die in Burma. And here, 20 years later, in Delhi, the city of the Mughals, the city which represented the years of Muslim imperium in India, in the Delhi Durbar of 1877, she is publicly proclaimed Empress of India.
And there are two successive Durbars that follow, 1903 and 1911. And these become even larger and more ostentatious occasions. So the massive Durbar is the Delhi Durbar of 1911, which is actually graced by King George V and Queen Mary. And that happens on the site now known as Coronation Park to the north of Delhi, which
in the time that I've lived in that city, has become sort of absorbed within the expanding outskirts of the city. But when I first went there in the 80s and 90s, Coronation Park was this strange echoing monument to the end of empire with these viceroys who'd been moved from prominent positions and roundabouts in the middle of Delhi, got moved after independence into a kind of semicircle
around the statue of the King Emperor. And what was quite amusing was that a lot of the viceroys' statues erected for these derbars and at other times...
were done by public subscription. And some were popular and got done in marble, but some never had enough money raised for them to be made of sort of plaster of Paris. And these are terribly decayed by the time that I got there in the 80s and looked rather like sort of lepers or people with terrible scruffiness diseases.
But it's at this moment, if you like, in 1877, in the city of the Mughal emperors, that the British monarchy assumes, absorbs, or appropriates, if you like, the...
forms of the moguls and the sense of gathering the moguls in an Indian derbar. So it's a strange act of claiming that we are the successors of this imperial power. We're something familiar to you, but this is how we run the place and you'll be familiar and we are in charge. You might be familiar with the way in which we are. Is this the one? I mean, do they start with the gun salute thing from this very first derbar? Because I know of it in the Curzon derbar.
bar. Is that right? I don't know. I'm not sure. I mean, certainly in Derbars that follow. You're right. I mean, certainly in the Curzon Derbar, every prince has to turn up with his retinue and has his own tent. They're all photographed by Samuel Bourne. And there's these famous albums that you occasionally see in museums and galleries of the different Derbars. And every prince has his own number from, is it 51, which I think the Nizam of Hyderabad has, or the
Maharaja of Kashmir down to one or two for the Gulf states. Remember the Gulf states, places like Dubai and what's now the UAE are still part of the Indian Princely Federation and they have to turn up all the way from the Gulf. And these gunsaloons, the more bangs you have, bangs for your buck, the more important you are, certainly during the Kyrzen one. So you're setting the
the template. No, this is a permanent thing during the Raj and there's a huge snobbery about are you a 51 gunner or a 21 gunner or just a one gunner or none. And I think the now very grand and much courted sheikhs of Dubai were no gun salutes as opposed to some...
now completely penniless Indian Maharajas who had multiple gun salutes. From there, you've sort of got this, again, a reinforcement of the connection of Queen Victoria to India because Empress of India is the title that means a lot to her. And you've heard the gratitude that she has to...
Benjamin Disraeli for giving her finally the title that she's been using anyway, by the way, for quite some time. But this is also the time when she starts to entertain Indian servants. Again, a problem for her retinue. So really from June 1887 to
Two Indian Muslims come to work in her household in Britain. Because again, remember, you know, this closeness, this affinity she has to India. She will never go to India. She will never see it with her own eyes. So India has to come to her bit by bit by bit. And we've talked about Dilip Singh. She also was a godmother to an Indian princess called Garama of Kurg. We've talked about her previously. So Garama of Kurg, again, it's one of these dispossessed Indian women.
Maharajas who gives over his daughter saying look after her thinking it will curry favour and he might get his lands back. He doesn't get his lands back and she dies horribly after being sort of married. Well, she sort of runs off herself. She's flighty and is a little too liberated for anybody's taste in the royal court of Victoria and she ends up
running off with actually the guardian of Duleep Singh's brother, who is a right old sod, who basically leaves her pregnant and then runs off again. And so she sort of dies very young in pregnancy. It's all hideous for poor old Gurama, of course. But by 1887, she takes on Indian servants. So it's not sort of these deposed princes and princesses, but these people to work with her. So again, I think she quite enjoys having the
the deposed princes and princesses around. It is like a kind of minied bar of minor royalty. Yeah. And she has a lot of her tastes are inspired by them. When Duleep comes, you know, a lot of the photographs at Osborne and the sketches at Osborne are inspired by those visits by him to Osborne. You know, her taste for curry. She loved a curry. We've talked about this in our curry miniseries.
She liked the spices of India. It's on the menu, whether people eat it or not, every single lunchtime from this period. But we should talk about two of the servants in particular. One in particular, let's talk about Abdul Karim, the 24-year-old from Lalitpur, who's been working as a clerk in Agra jail of all places. And he sort of somehow comes to England and ends up working for the royal retinue. It's wonderfully random, that, exactly. But he's pretty.
Again, when he was 24 years old. And he catches the eye of Queen Victoria. And her children are pretty scandalised because they've just got over it. Bloody John Brown has gone and all the gossip and the nonsense surrounding John Brown. They can't bear that. As far as the Bobbitt Court is concerned, it can't get worse. Oh, yes, it can. Oh, yes, it can. Because here is Abdul Karim.
And he's sort of affectionately given the title. Is it by the retinue of Queen Victoria? I can't remember who exactly, but he's called the Munshi. That's his nickname, which means clerk. I mean, that's his title. Munshi means exactly, means clerk or teacher. And he teaches Urdu. I mean, he's given the title. Yes, it was his official title. And he does. She wants to take Urdu lessons. So she writes in her journal and you see his examples of her.
And she writes, "I am learning a few words of Hindustani to speak to my servants. It is a great interest to me for both the language and the people I've naturally never come into real contact with."
And he gives her lessons. He tells her about his childhood. He also very much overrides who he is and makes himself sound a lot grander. He allows it to be known that he's this very fancy sort of almost Maharaja or something. And it turns out, as you say, he's just been working at the jail.
Yeah, and her courtiers cannot wait to tell her that he's a liar. He's a liar and he has too much control over you by half. You need to really see him for what he is. He's a chancer. Let's get rid of him. But the more they talk him down, again, this is a woman who will not have it. Just as before, she will not have it. And the attacks on the Munshi, they basically just make her closer to him. Henry Ponsonby, who is the closest to his private secretary to the queen,
is utterly in despair. And he so hates the Munchie. You cannot believe how much he hates it. The advance of the Black Brigade, he writes, in brackets, Kareem, is a serious nuisance. I was afraid that opposition would intensify her desire to advance further. Progression by antagonism, she says. Kareem is given John Brown's old room.
His portrait was painted against a background of gold. In October 1889, Victoria has taken him up to the remote cottage Glashalt Shield in Balmoral, despite having sworn she would never spend another night there after Brown died. She frequently gave him trinkets of appreciation, which again drove her son in particular absolutely frantic. Completely mad.
Say, what are you doing, mother? Mother, what are you doing? And we should say at this point, we should give a quick call out for our wonderful friend Shrabani Basu. Oh, yes. Wonderful. And in one of the great works of detective work and literary tracking down, our friend Shrabani, who's from Calcutta, but now based in London.
went to Agra and found the tomb of the Munshi and then worked backwards, asked the people in the cemetery, does he have any relations? And they said, yes, just down the road, turn left. So she goes and knocks on their door, literally blind, having not known they existed more than an hour before. And she asks the family, have you got anything from the Munshi? And
And they say, of course, we've got a great chest full of stuff. All his letters and her replies. It's an extraordinary find, one that you salivate over the prospect. And she's such a nice woman. This could not happen. By the way, this Shrubney is such a brilliant woman. She's a wonderful woman. I would normally resent and hate her for this, but she's so nice.
I can only feel delighted for her. So this is the basis for the book Victoria and Abdul that became the brilliant Stephen Frears film. Yeah. But for those who have only seen the film and not read the book, we'd strongly recommend that you go and get it because it's going to be available on our club. And it's one of the great, I mean, it's exactly what Anita and I would kill to find. Yeah. A trunk literally overflowing with,
astonishing documents that everyone assumed had gone because after the Munchies kicked out and we'll come to that in a second everything of his is removed from the official archives. Well let's not jump ahead to that because while he's there you know there is a theft there is a theft that takes place and everybody's finger points at the Munchie and the person who most
stoically defends him as Victoria, who will not have it. To the point, she's so angry that anyone should impugn her loyal servant, that her royal physician, a guy called Dr. Reed, who's going to be very important at the end of her life, because he's a talker. He has blabbered in places where people should not. So we know a lot more about Victoria's death than perhaps we should. But he says that she's quite off her head. Really? The words he uses are
Off our head when it comes to the Munchie. I wonder what that meant in Victorian times. Well, I think much the same. Off our head today for you and I means that someone's been smoking some
Or nuts, isn't it? I mean, I would always think of it as just completely not in possession of your senses. But in 1897, Henry Ponsonby, again, who is very sort of straight-laced and loyal and deeply responsible, loyal servant to Queen Victoria, writes, we have been having a good deal of trouble lately about the Munchie here. And though we've tried our best, we cannot get the Queen to realise how very dangerous it is for her to allow this man to see every confidential paper relating to
India. The Queen insists on bringing the Munchie forward as much as she can and if it were not for our protest I don't know where she would stop. Fortunately he happens to be a thoroughly stupid and uneducated man and his one idea in life seems to do nothing and eat as much as he can. It's a reference to the curries at lunch.
Well, I mean, look, no matter what anybody said, she wanted to be with her Indian servants. And there's a really interesting reason for that. If you look at her diary entries, the reason, because she's by this time, you know, she's old and she's frail. She's been sort of dilapidated by grief, but also by constant childbirth. Having nine children has taken a terrible toll on her. And she's had a lot of pain. This is a woman who is in pain.
Later, we will learn that she's probably suffering from a prolapsed uterus apart from anything else. And these gynecological conditions, which are not well treated in those days, and which a queen might shy away from telling a male physician about, she has suffered. And she likes the Indian servants because they don't, in her words, pinch her when they pick her up. They are the most gentle when they move her from room to room. They know how to be kind, she says. Oh,
We should say, very importantly, and something that Shrabani found in this trunk in Agra, she learns Urdu from him. She feels that she should learn Urdu, and she's good at languages. She learned French and German when she was very young, and she's completely fluent in both.
And she makes, Shrubney tells me, very good progress in that there are Urdu writing books in this trunk by Queen Victoria, which are pretty fluent Urdu. Yeah, not bad. Not bad. No, Shrubney was quite impressed, actually, by the progress. So she will stick by him. And actually, she will stick by him even after Urdu.
I mean, you can tell that story now because we're going to come towards the end of Queen Victoria's life. But just before we dispense with the Munshi story, even after death, why, they try and throw him out the day after she dies, don't they, from his home. So one of the pieces of ammunition that the courtiers have against Abdul Karim is,
is that he has gonorrhea. He had gone to Dr. Reid with a worrying complaint and Reid diagnoses this as gonorrhea and immediately says that he must be removed from the Queen's presence. But even then, the Queen will not
But listen, it's unclear how far they actually made it explicit what she'd done. But they certainly say that he was dishonest and promiscuous, I think, was the charge that was made against him. Anyway, so look, it's time to take a break. After the break, let's find out. I mean, we're sort of coming to the end of a very great life. But not before we have not one, but two important Jubilee celebrations again, which remind us of Victoria's place in the world and her empire.
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Welcome back. So the date is now 1887. Victoria, age 68, and now the familiar figure we know in her widow's weeds with the veil, pretty old and quite plump, has to celebrate her golden jubilee, celebrating her being in power.
for no less than 50 years. Anita, tell us the story. Well, I mean, this is, again, something where she is doing it for the public face. And it sort of is a template that is followed even to this day. This great pageantry. For a while, she's been missing. But now, boy, is she back in a big way. She rides in an open-top carriage down the mall. She's escorted by troops of Indian cavalry. She insists on that. There are Union Jacks waiting
waving all over the place, huge fireworks display in the evening, which London oohs and ahhs about. There's a firework, but this feels so contemporary, a firework portrait of Victoria, 180 feet high and 200 feet wide. And she's presented, you know,
great ostentation, this commemorative necklace of pearls and diamonds donated by, and it says here, three million daughters of the empire. I find that really fascinating, like donated by whom and how and when and how and why. But this is what happens. And it's a public event.
she does it, she goes through it, but privately, she knows it's more of a duty than a pleasure. There are times when she enjoys this front facing stuff and as she gets older and she gets, things are more painful for her body, to be honest.
She says, I don't want or like flattery, she says to her journal. That sounds very sort of Judi Dench, doesn't it? I don't want or like flattery. But Lord Halifax has insisted to her in his words or in her words that the public needs gilding for their money, basically bang for their buck. They need to know what is the monarchy for. And these public displays are...
Her show, putting on a show. So these celebrations, they do show the popularity of the Queen and the royal family. It's interesting. I mean, I'd always sort of assumed without looking at it closely that the Victorian period was the high point of monarchy. But as we've seen in these four episodes, it goes up and down. Yeah, absolutely goes up and down. And they have to fight for it. They have to fight to get it back. They lose it and they have to fight to get it back. Not once, not twice, but numerous times during the Victorian era.
The spectator, anyway, during the Golden Jubilee says, you know, the public's attitude to the Queen has changed. It acknowledges the rollercoaster ride. A change indescribable, says the spectator, but unmistakable. An increase of kindliness and affection, but a decrease of awe, is how they put it. It was a friend of awe who was welcomed rather than a great sovereign. So she's kind of moved to, dare I say it, Queen of Hearts.
status, you know, princess of the people we may have had with Diana. But here we have, you know, sort of the queen rather than somebody that you genuflect in front of. It's somebody that you actually love. And if you think of it, it's very much the Victoria of this period that you see in the statues and in the photographs. When we think of Victoria, it is the Victoria of her jubilee. She is that old widow, large, sombre and curvaceous that
that's being depicted. It's not the young queen that we see. There are images of the young queen, but far more prominent, certainly in India, are these endless images of Victoria at this
period in old age as this old familiar monarch. Absolutely. And why don't we just actually jump forward? I mean, a lot happens in between, but I think we're onto something talking about jubilees. So the Diamond Jubilee, I think, is even more notable because on the 23rd of September, 1896, Victoria becomes the longest reigning English monarch. And she just notes it. This is how the difference between, you know, sort of your private life
and your public persona. She has become that person who does it. You know, in previous times, you've had kings of England who, when they are pissed off, they raise taxes or, you know, whatever, whatever the capricious nature or whatever they're experiencing the day is reflected in the way that they rule. But there is now a duality. What,
you feel and what you do. So in her journal, when she goes through this milestone, you know, she notes it and then she insists that any celebrations wait a year because it's just too costly. She doesn't want to spend that much money. Let's just do it with the Diamond Jubilee, which is coming a year later. But what's really, really interesting. So she is 77 at the time of the Diamond Jubilee. That's right, isn't it? 77 years of age. And she's thinking about her own mortality. You
in those days was only 47. Did you know that? I didn't know that. 47. 47. I looked it up. And most of her friends, most of the people that she's cared for are dead. The people that she's loved in her life or enjoyed their company are dead. So she is lonely. She's old. Her body is in pain, which is why she appreciates the kindnesses of her Indian servants.
But before we get to the Jubilee, what's going on in her internal mind? It's sort of, you know, what you show the world and what's going on inside. In December 1897, this is three years before she will die, she dictates a confidential private instruction for her burial, which she says should always be carried by the most senior person traveling with her, opened only upon her death.
And can I just say, this is the brilliant work, you know, talking about Shrabani Basu's brilliant work, this is the magnificent work of Julia Baird, who discovered all of this and had quite a tussle with the Royal Archives and the Palace because they did not want her to make it public. And they tried to stop her. They said, look, you know, if you're going to use stuff in the Royal Archive, we'd really rather you didn't use the Dr. Reid archive, which she goes and tracks down Dr. Reid as the physician. And she actually says, no, I'm doing it anyway, like a plunderer.
plucky a journalist should. It makes such a good read and I'm so glad that she did. So the instructions in the read archive are really very, very detailed. She has a long list of objects she wants placed in her coffin and this is three years before she dies, okay? This is when the world is sort of at its peak of celebrating Victoria, the Diamond Jubilee year. And what she says is on her hands she wants five rings from Albert as well as rings from Theodora, her friend, from her mother, from Victor,
Victoire, Louise and Beatrice, so children. She also wanted a plain golden wedding ring that had belonged to the mother of John Brown, whom she described in effusive terms. Brown had worn the ring for a short time, she said, but Victoria had worn it constantly since his death and wished to be buried with it on her hand. The finger was not specified. The Queen also requested that framed photographs of Albert and all her children and grandchildren be put in the coffin.
She wanted, as she explained in detail, a coloured photograph of John Brown in profile to be placed in a leather case with some locks of his hair along with other photographs of him, which she had carefully carried in her pocket and placed in her hand. She asked for a cast, that cast of Albert's hand. Do you remember I told you that she slept with it by her bed so she could hold it at night and hold it in the morning?
She'd kept it near her all her life. She wanted that to be put in the coffin as well. She wanted one of Albert's handkerchiefs and cloaks, a shawl made by Alice. And she wrote a pocket handkerchief of my faithful Brown, that friend who was most devoted to me than anyone to be laid on me.
And look, we'll get to the funeral and see whether they did it or not in the moment. But this is the year of the diamond jubilee that she is thinking about her death. Anyway, cut to the diamond jubilee, okay? She's sitting in her carriage again outside St. Paul's.
She can't manage the steps now. She can't really walk. She's pretty much carried everywhere. There's a short Thanksgiving service. Thousands have packed the streets of London to celebrate. And this event is just linked to Empire. It's front and centre of the celebration. Do you want to pick up?
Yes. Empire is now, since the Great Exhibition, very much part of the Victoria package. She is seen not just as the Queen of England, but very much now as the Empress of India. And part of that window dressing, if you like, is Indian and other colonial soldiers lining the route of the procession.
And so this is very much a statement. Now, at this point in her reign, she's not just the Queen of England, but Empress of India and the centrepiece of the British Empire. There's a lovely bit in the Daily Mail. Have you seen it? It says, until we saw it passing through the streets of our city, we never quite realised what empire meant from
From the Daily Mail. And it adds breathlessly, only God surpassed the Queen in majesty. But they don't realise either how close she is to death. She's the only one, it seems, who sort of realises how close she is to death with all of these instructions. But anyway, she will sort of limp on for three more years where her family, you know, she sort of almost pulls away. And she crosses into the new 20th century. Yes, she does. She absolutely does. She's such a figure of the 19th century, but she makes it into the 20th century.
She does withdraw a little bit. She's very judgmental of her son and heir, the future King Edward, Bertie, as he's called by the household. She doesn't really want to see him. What's her problem with him? He's too frivolous, is he? Well, he's been frivolous in his life. She's not very fond of Alex's wife, Queen Alexandra, to be. She finds her sort of a pushy princess. And she just thinks he's a bit bossy. And he's been horribly rude about John Brown and horribly rude about the Munchie. And so they've got, you know, a terrible...
gulf between them and she just finds him just annoying she just wants him to be away the daughter that she likes is very ill Vicky is there a sense do you think that because she was educated alone and because she was never part of a class of schoolmates at a posh school that
It's interesting that her two big confidants at the end, both John Brown and the Munchie, are not from her class. They're not the posh aristos that you'd expect a queen to surround herself with. Maybe, but I think there's even more than that, which is why it's so important to look into the hinterland of a person. The person she most detested in her younger life was John Conroy, who told her what to do, and
and told her how to do it. And her mother who bossed her around, she cannot stand that. She can't stand anyone trying to sort of pull her strings, either by subterfuge or just completely openly telling her what to do, which is what Bertie, her son, does. So she does withdraw. We should talk about the end because we're coming to the end of her life. So she dies, Queen Victoria dies on the evening of the 22nd of January 1901.
some say her last words were oh albert age 81 but i've heard other things that said that she was too weak to talk why would she say that it's been improbable did she see his sort of ghost walk into the room or what's the idea well so when you just see those words on there and you sort of had the way i read there was oh albert i just i don't know some things are i
They just sound a little too good to be true. But what we do know is that she does want people to stay away from her. You know, she sort of keeps even Bertie away from her until the last minute and then he is allowed to come and see her. She just doesn't want to be hectored towards the end. She doesn't want her pushy Kaiser Wilhelm coming over and cluttering up the place with his sobbing and stuff because she just doesn't trust in that.
So she gives very strict instructions that things should be quiet and calm. And the doctor, Dr. Reed, is constantly feeding information out as she's sinking. The queen is slowly sinking, he writes, and that is sent out from Osborne House. And you've got a whole nation sort of like very quiet and waiting.
At the end, she's in Osborne, is she? She's in the Isle of Wight. She is, yeah. That explains why Tennyson is around at this point in her life, because Tennyson also, of course, lives. Well, he's sort of a latter-day friend of hers. She has her female attendants with her, but she's missing the people who really know her and love her. So there's no Munchie and there's no John Brown. She's sort of surrounded by these
sympathetic faces, but none who really know her, I think. So she's sort of lonely in childhood and lonely at the end. Recedes back to the courtiers she'd spent her life trying to avoid in many ways. And at five o'clock, you have all of these people who are keeping the watch who drop to their knees and the news goes out, the Queen is dead. The Queen is dead. Arthur Benson wrote of it at the time, it is like the roof being off a house to think of England, queenless.
And that actually becomes a huge, sweeping sadness that goes across Britain and indeed part of the Empire. I mean, have you seen some of the stuff that came out from India at the time? Like real outpourings. I mean, Miles Taylor's really good on this. These great sappy eulogies. Yeah, this is so counterintuitive because certainly the India which I live in now is
not only is not interested in Queen Victoria, it's actively hostile. And all the statues of Victoria, with I think the one exception of the Victoria Memorial in Calcutta. We've seen it. You're absolutely right. Yeah. And yet there's no question that there is this massive cult of her at the time, whether competitive, trying to show you're more loyal than the next in the aftermath of
the massacres of 1857, trying to get on in with the colonial regime, but that everyone is falling over themselves. Sugary, sugary prose written about her, you know, describing her as like a divine goddess in some cases. I mean, when you look at it now with these eyes, it's all a bit odd.
But some of the things really interesting about her funeral, I mean, she sort of gives instruction about, apart from all the things three years ago that she says, she wants buried with her family, do honour them, but they sort of conceal the picture of John Brown that's in her left hand with a posy of flowers. They don't want anyone to see it. Her wedding ring is placed on one finger and all the other bits of jewellery that were meaningful, they're all included in there. There's a lovely line of Miles Taylor where it says that towards the end,
So persistent were Indian memorialists to the government of India that they frequently had to change the rules of direct communication with the queen so as to limit the traffic.
At times, it seemed as though effusions of Indian loyalty did not require encouragement so much as containment. That's interesting, isn't it? But one of the really interesting things about her death is she didn't want black at her funeral. She wanted to be dressed in white and she wanted everything to be white. So just as she starts this trend of being married in white, she wants white simplicity. Her funeral was held on the 2nd of February. She's laid to rest beside Prince Albert in the Royal Mausoleum in Windsor Great Park.
And at the end of her life, she has reigned for 63 years, seven months and two days, the longest reigning British monarch. And during that reign, I mean, let's just think back upon it, William. You know, you've seen the ring fencing of the British monarchy as a constitutional one. You've seen Victoria still attempting to influence politics and foreign policy, especially when it comes to India and empire with all of the stuff that she says to Canning and others.
You also, though, have some of the greatest excesses of empire happening under her reign. You have all of those sort of clashing interests that she, you know, it's all very confusing. You know, on that hand, she's raising money for famine. On the other hand, you know, under her government, famine is happening. You've got Albert presiding over anti-slavery societies and yet a lot of people in her name
treating Africans in their own continent as lesser humans, although she says, no, be kind. And as we said at the beginning, many monarchies fall at this period to create this empire in which the sun will never set. It is built over the ruins of earlier monarchies and earlier local allegiances and national allegiances.
Her reign marks the end of Mughal rule after three and a half centuries. She sees in 1857 to 1858 the worst war crimes ever committed by the British Empire. Hundreds of thousands killed in acts of retribution across the Gangetic Plains. But as we've seen,
She stands for clemency and amnesty and is recognized as such. And she tames some of the more horrific impulses of her colonial officers.
So she's a complicated figure. I have to say, I've ended this series more sympathetic to it than I began. I've always imagined that the kind of Judi Denchisation of Victoria in all these historical dramas has romanticised her and built her into something far more benign than she actually was. But the more we've looked at her, the more, in fact, she really does stand out from her times for...
resisting the enormous racial prejudice and the enormous will to conquer and subjugate that is the mark of her time. So I think if we are judging people against their times, she comes out pretty well. That is all from us and this mini-series of Victoria. Till the next time we meet, it's goodbye from me, Anita Arnon. And goodbye from me, William Durimple.