QUEEN VICTORIA EXPOSED!!
THE SECRET DIARIES – REVEALED!!!
As we commemorate the present Queen’s jubilee, it’s always illuminating – don’t you think dear readers? – to cast one’s mind back to an earlier time, and another long-lived and much esteemed queen: in this case, Elizabeth’s great-great grandmother, Queen Victoria, Empress of India… And what better way to discover more about someone than to delve into their secret diaries, eh?...And there does appear to be something of a glut of Victorian diaries and memoirs appearing at present, as well as a cornucopia of popular novels themed around the great matriarch herself…
Re Victorian diaries:
We’ve Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace by Kate Summerscale “The private diary of a Victorian lady: a story of romance and fidelity, insanity, fantasy and the boundaries of privacy in a society clinging to rigid ideas about marriage and female sensuality”…
Cripes!
Then we’ve The impossible life of Mary Benson: the extraordinary story of a Victorian wife by Rodney Bolt…
Crikey!
Or there’s Queen Victoria's stalker: the strange story of the Boy Jones: it tells the story of a weird teenager, Edward, 'the Boy' Jones, “who had an uncanny ability to sneak into Buckingham Palace without being detected. Once, he broke into Victoria’s bedroom and stole her underwear, and at least twice he sat on the throne!”
Crumbs!
And there’s also Victoria and Abdul: the true story of the Queen’s closest confidant: “at its heart, it is a tender love story between an ordinary Indian & his elderly queen”.
Caramba!
I don’t know about you, dear reader, but I don’t think I can bear any more revealing royal revelations – and yet, there are plenty! (From the royal pen itself, apparently…)
“I will be good” the young queen wrote keenly, at the start of her reign…Yet by the end, she noted wearily “We are not amused”…
Queen Victoria, you see, kept a secret diary…a huge diary, an extraordinary diary, even at times an (ahem) intimate diary….40,000 pages of it, from 1832 until her death in 1901:- ”I am writing up my journal, which I am vain enough to think may perhaps some day be reduced to interesting memoirs”…I bet she never thought they’d go online, though – but they have now!
Click here and go WOW!
And it’s all there, dear readers, history, politics, travel, tittle-tattle, statecraft, high society…and great syrupy dollops of froth about her beloved husband…
“My dearest, dearest Albert sat on a footstool by my side, and his excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness, I never could have hoped to have felt before!”…
“He clasped me in his arms” she goes in “and we kissed each other again and again!...His beauty, his sweetness and gentleness – really how can I ever be thankful enough to have such a husband?...”
“To lie by his side, and in his arms, and on his dear bosom, and be called by names of tenderness I have never yet heard used to me before – was bliss beyond belief!”…”When day dawned (for we did not sleep much) and I beheld that beautiful face by my side, it was more than I can express! Oh! Was ever woman so blessed as I am?...”
Cripes twice!!
Racy stuff, eh? (Thank goodness that our best-issuing library books of the present time don’t get involved in that shade of unpleasantness…)
Hence, how much more poignant Victoria’s journal entries become after the sad demise of her poor, beloved Albert: her grief appears almost unbearable, yet she kept writing her diary – “My dreadful and overwhelming calamity gives me so much to do that I must henceforth merely keep notes of my sad and solitary life..”
She was definitely NOT amused.
We can only presume that she would not have been greatly amused either (but startled, certainly) had she known that her private journals would appear online. In public. For millions to see...
Goodness! Whatever next? Queen Victoria – the first media monarch?
But she definitely would NOT have been amused to see herself portrayed in a recent best-selling children’s book:
WARNING:
So – whatever you do: under no account whatsoever: do not click here if easily offended: final warning: those of you with delicate natures must not click here: OK? Ready?: brace yourselves, then: REVEAL!
Cripes thrice!!!
TTFN
