Sons, Servants and Statesmen (21 page)

After a short illness, he died on 19 May 1898, aged eighty-eight. ‘He was very clever and full of ideas for the bettering and advancement of the country, always most loyal to me personally, and ready to do anything for the Royal Family,’ the Queen wrote in her journal, ‘but alas! I am sure involuntarily, he did at times a good deal of harm.’
⁵⁵
Nine days later, on the day of his funeral, she telegraphed his widow a graceful tribute, saying in conclusion that she would always ‘gratefully remember his devotion and zeal in all that concerned my personal welfare, and that of my family.’
⁵⁶

‘I cannot say that I think he was ‘a great Englishman’, she wrote to the Empress Frederick. ‘He was a clever man, full of talent, but he never
tried
to keep up the
honour
and
prestige
of Great Britain. He gave away the Transvaal, he abandoned Gordon, he destroyed the Irish Church and tried to separate England from Ireland and to set class against class. The harm he did cannot easily be undone.’
⁵⁷

By the summer of 1900 Salisbury’s burdens of office were of increasing concern to his colleagues and sovereign alike, and he appeared unduly apathetic over the course of the Boer war. Out of a strong sense of duty to the throne and to the Queen personally, he was reluctant to relinquish the Foreign Office, though he was heard to comment that if she asked him to resign as foreign secretary, he would. For her part, the Queen said she would press him to stay, unless he and his doctors were sure the workload he was carrying must be reduced. His nephew, Arthur Balfour, said his health would not permit him to keep both offices. Faced with this stalemate, during the autumn the Queen proposed to send Aretas Akers-Douglas, a privy councillor and close friend of Salisbury’s, to consult him at Hatfield on the problem. ‘She shrinks from the task of telling him she thinks he ought to go,’ he wrote to Balfour.
⁵⁸

In the end, Salisbury retained both offices. He might have sensed that his sovereign would also be laying down her burdens soon enough and was reluctant to commit himself to any change, especially if doing so would cause problems for her successor.

On 12 November 1900 the Queen presided over what would be the last privy council of her reign at Windsor. Salisbury’s government had been returned in the elections of the previous month with another large majority, and the new ministers were to be sworn in. Almeric Fitzroy, the new clerk to the council, was astonished by the businesslike manner in which their elderly sovereign ‘guided us through the mazes of a somewhat intricate transaction whereon official records were dumb, and the recollections of ministers a blank’.
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It was all the more remarkable as her health had already started to fail by this time. Within a few weeks her decline was evident to all. Ten weeks later, on 22 January 1901, she was dead. It fell to Salisbury, in his address of condolence and congratulation to the new monarch, King Edward VII, in the House of Lords on 25 January, to announce that he had ‘to perform by far the saddest duty that has ever befallen me’. He went on to say that ‘We are echoing the accents of sorrow which reach us from every part of the Empire and every part of the globe and which express the deep and heartfelt feeling – a feeling, deeper than I ever remember – of the sorrow at the singular loss which, under the dispensation of Divine Providence, we have suffered, and of admiration for the glorious reign and the splendid character of the Sovereign whom we have lost.’ Hers had been an age during which the power of the Crown had diminished. Even so, he acknowledged, ‘she showed a wonderful power on the one hand, of maintaining a steady and persistent influence on the action of her Ministers in the course of legislation and government, which no one could mistake’.
⁶⁰

Rosebery, the only surviving former prime minister to serve under her, also paid his own graceful tribute. At a meeting of the Royal Scottish Corporation on 30 January, he said that ‘It is not hyperbole to say that in the whole history of mankind no death has touched so large a number of the inhabitants of the globe as the death of our late Sovereign.’
⁶¹

O
f all the men who made a significant impact on the life of Queen Victoria, none was to prove more controversial than her Highland servant or ghillie, John Brown, and since their deaths none has provoked more wild speculation or even innuendo as to the extent of their relationship. Only a year before her marriage, she had been spoken of disrespectfully as ‘Mrs Melbourne’. By the mid-1860s, within three or four years of her husband’s death, to some she was known behind her back as ‘Mrs Brown’ or even ‘the Empress Brown’.

John Brown was born in December 1826 into a relatively wealthy farming family at Crathie, near Balmoral, the second of eleven children. His father, also named John, had been a schoolmaster (and, it is thought, author of a
Deeside Guide
) until he married, when he took up farming. The younger John received a thorough education at the local parish school, though like the rest of the family he was a sturdy outdoor type, more at home with a gun or fishing rod in his hand than a book or newspaper. As a young man, and one of a large family, he needed to support himself as soon as he could go out and work. At first, he was an ostler’s helper at a coaching inn near Ballater, then worked as a pony herder on the Balmoral estate leased by Sir Robert Gordon, owner of the property until his death in 1847. Like the other ghillies employed in a similar capacity, he kept his job after Queen Victoria and Prince Albert leased the property.

The first mention of John Brown in the Queen’s journals appears in the entry for 11 September 1849. One day on their second holiday at Balmoral, she and Albert were setting out from Altnaguithsach to the hills behind Glen Muich. During their previous excursions they had been slightly unnerved by the passage of their carriage on narrow mountain roads, and Albert decided that they would be safer if an undergroom was to ride on the box and keep the vehicle steady. At twenty-two years of age, Brown, the youngest and sturdiest of the ghillies, was chosen for the task. Two years later, he was entrusted with leading the Queen’s pony on all the royal couple’s Highland expeditions.

Even at this stage, he was taking on further responsibilities with regard to Her Majesty’s well-being. When the royal family went out for picnics, he usually brewed the Queen’s pot of tea. On one such outing during his earlier years, she commented that he had given her the best cup of tea she had ever tasted. He answered that it should have been, as he put ‘a grand nip o’ whisky in it’.
¹

As a local newspaper later remarked, Prince Albert was ‘struck by his magnificent physique, his transparent honesty, and straightforward, independent character’.
²
If Queen Victoria was impressed by the good looks of this young man, so were some of her contemporaries. Five years later a young lady-in-waiting, the Hon. Eleanor Stanley, was writing home with enthusiasm to her family about ‘the most fascinating and good-looking young Highlander, Johnny Brown’.
³

When the royal family left Balmoral in the autumn of 1861, Brown seemed strangely reluctant for the family to go south. He told them that he hoped they would have no illness during the winter and return safely the following year, and above all trusted that there would be no deaths in the family. Earlier that year Victoria had lost her mother, the Duchess of Kent. Within a few weeks, the Prince Consort would have passed away as well.

In the dark days immediately following her husband’s death, the Queen saw very little of Brown except at Balmoral. He distinguished himself with his level-headed behaviour one evening in October 1863 when they were returning to the castle from a carriage ride to Loch Muick. The driver had evidently fortified himself on that cold autumn day with something from his flask more interesting than the broth and boiled potatoes of which everybody else had partaken. As Queen Victoria noted afterwards, he was ‘quite confused’, lost his way in the darkness and drove so badly that he took the carriage onto very rough ground. It overturned with the passengers inside, and only the quick thinking of John Brown, who leapt clear as soon as he saw what was happening, saved the situation. He rescued the ladies, cut the traces to release the horses, produced some more alcoholic refreshment to soothe jangled nerves and sent the driver (possibly sobered up after seeing the gravity of what he had done) back on foot to procure some ponies. The bruised Queen had to have her head bandaged afterwards, while the negligent driver’s royal employment was terminated forthwith; John Brown was very much the man of the moment.

Towards the end of 1864 he began to assume a more significant role in Victoria’s life. That winter she was at Osborne, and her personal physician, Dr William Jenner, thought it would be good for her to take up riding again. It was agreed that a new groom would never do, and Brown, with his many years of invaluable service to the Queen and the Prince Consort in the Highlands, would probably be the most suitable aide. As someone who had been so well thought of by Prince Albert, he might be able to raise her spirits and ease her chronic mood of depression.

In December 1864 he arrived, ostensibly in order to lead her pony, Flora. Within two months he had proved his worth, and in her journal she noted that he ‘should remain permanently & make himself useful in other ways besides leading my pony as he is so very dependable’.
⁴
A memorandum dated 4 February 1865 conferred on Brown the official status of ‘The Queen’s Highland Servant’, to take orders from nobody but Her Majesty, and to attend her indoors and out. He was to continue cleaning her boots, skirts and cloaks, unless this proved too much. Some of these menial tasks which he was expected to perform, such as looking after her dogs and cleaning her boots, were dropped by the end of the year. Already she had promised him a cottage at Balmoral in the event of his marriage. Now, if he was to marry and wanted a cottage in the south, her promise would be strictly honoured.
⁵
He was engaged at a salary of £120 per annum, raised to £150 at the end of 1866, to £230 plus £70 for clothes in 1869, and £310 shortly afterwards.

At first he reported to her twice a day, after breakfast and after luncheon, for ‘his orders – & every thing is always right – he is so quiet, has such an excellent head & memory’, she wrote to her eldest daughter, Victoria, the Crown Princess of Prussia. ‘It is an excellent arrangement, & I feel I have here always in the house a good, devoted Soul . . . . whose only object & interest is my service, & God knows how much I want to be taken care of.’
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It was only a matter of time before these meetings took on a more personal atmosphere, as the Queen found herself taking more and more pleasure in Brown’s company. He was reliable, plainspoken and intelligent, if not exactly learned or intellectual, and ready to devote himself entirely to her. Within a year or two, he started learning German, so he could understand what her relations were saying. Any who thought they could get away with conversing in their second language and leaving him in the dark were in for a surprise. Lord Melbourne and Prince Albert had both willingly given her their undivided attention. For the first time since she had become a widow, another man was prepared to do the same.

It was ‘a
real
comfort,’ she wrote to King Leopold soon after his appointment, ‘for he is so devoted to me – so simple, so intelligent,
so unlike
an
ordinary
servant’.
⁷

Perhaps, she believed naively, he was not really an ordinary servant. If there was a way of dispelling his ordinariness, she would do so, or at least find somebody who could assist in the matter. Accordingly, she asked Dr Andrew Robertson, the Crathie physician who had originally delivered the illustrious second child of John and Margaret Brown in the family cottage at Crathienaird in 1826. Robertson knew as well as anybody else that Brown was of peasant stock, and that his forebears had been agricultural workers. Aware that this would not do for Her Majesty, he applied some artistic licence to a supposed link between his own, rather more exalted, family tree and John Brown’s grandmother Janet Shaw.
⁸
With a little imagination he produced a four-page copperplate account for the Queen, demonstrating that her Highland servant was indeed of rather better birth than had been previously supposed.

Within two years, the Queen’s friendship with Brown was laying her open to serious criticism. In June 1866 he was blamed for delaying her at Balmoral during a ministerial crisis and keeping her from returning to London. This in itself may have seemed trivial to some. But it was a different matter entirely when a Swiss newspaper, the
Gazette de Lausanne
, published a report that September. In it an anonymous correspondent wrote that the Queen had cancelled diary appointments because she was expecting a child by John Brown, to whom she had been morganatically married ‘for a long time’.
⁹
If she was not present for the Volunteers Review and at the inauguration of the monument to Prince Albert, the report continued, it was only in order to hide her pregnancy.