The Typhoid Incident

Queen Victoria’s Journal

Sandringham, 1 January 1872

  

Never before have I spent New Year’s Day away from home, and never did I think to spend it here, with poor Bertie so ill in bed, though, thank, God! no longer in danger, at any rate not in any immediate danger.  May our Heavenly Father restore him and let this heavy trial be for his good in every way!  May sweet, darling Alix be preserved and blessed, and may the dear children grow up to be a blessing to their parents, to their county, and to me!

Gave my photographs framed to the excellent nurses, and Bertie’s valet, etc.  Writing telegrams in quantities.  Then went over to Bertie, who kissed me and gave me a nosegay, which he had specially ordered, and which touched me very much, as well as his being able to wish me a happy New Year.  What a blessed beginning after such a dreadful anxiety!

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(Queen Victoria and Bertie on their way to the thanksgiving service for Bertie's recovery from typhoid.  Photo credit: victoriancalendar.blogspot.com)

The new year of 1872 started off with enormous relief for Victoria, as Bertie was finally recovering from a particularly serious bout of typhoid fever.  Bertie had come down with the disease nearly six weeks earlier after a hunting trip to Scarborough in the company of William Denison, 1^st Lord Londesborough.  Victoria, at Balmoral at the time Bertie began showing signs of the illness, sent her trusted personal physician Sir William Jenner to care for Bertie at his home at Sandringham.  

Coincidentally, Victoria herself was recovering from a rather long bout of ill health following both a fall and an abscess removed from her arm earlier in the year.  Shortly before her health deteriorated, Victoria’s children had signed a letter written by Vicky that urged their mother to pay more attention to her royal duties in the face of growing republicanism within the country.  In short, 1871 had been a year in which Victoria’s extreme seclusion and depression had finally begun to catch up with her.  

Over the following weeks, Bertie’s medical team monitored his symptoms with growing concern.  In the meantime, two other members of Lord Londesborough’s hunting party, Lord Chesterfield and William Blegge (Chesterfield’s groom), died from typhoid, likely the same strain from which Bertie was suffering.  Victoria first traveled to Sandringham on November 29, alerting to the press to the severity of Bertie’s condition.  Friends and family were summoned to visit Bertie during what was feared to be the final days of his life.  Even Alice – already in Britain visiting Victoria  - went to Sandringham to volunteer moral support and her nursing expertise.

Bertie’s illness continued through the month of December.  He suffered from bouts of delirium, dangerously high fevers, and severe muscle pain and spasms.  That Bertie was faring quite badly on December 14, the same day and from possibly the same disease that had taken his father eleven years earlier was a coincidence that certainly did not escape Victoria.  Her journal entries from late November through the end of December recall Albert’s final illness multiple times. 

However, a note Victoria made on December 14 shows that she was beginning to exhibit the first signs of emerging from her decade-long obsession with grief over Albert’s death.  Victoria had bounced between Sandringham and Windsor Castle several times during Bertie’s illness.  On December 14 she happened to be at Sandringham with Bertie instead of marking the day by Albert’s deathbed at Windsor.  Victoria seems surprised that instead of mourning more death, the family was celebrating what seemed to be an improvement in Bertie’s health.

Victoria echoed this somewhat unusual concern for the well-being of another during her traditional time of extreme mourning is clear in the entry above.  She minimized the importance of her own grief at the loss of Albert in favor of expressing her thanks for Bertie’s survival.  In addition, Victoria, who usually felt no qualms about dressing down her children for any perceived slight, seemed to show concern only for Bertie.  For the first time in over a decade, Victoria was beginning to live in the present.

At the first signs of Bertie’s recovery, Victoria began talks with Gladstone, her prime minister, to plan some sort of celebration to mark her son’s recovery.  Victoria commissioned a service to be delivered on January 21 in all of the churches in England and Wales.  The program included prayers of Thanksgiving for Bertie’s continued recovery from what was really the brink of death. 

A larger celebration was planned at St. Paul’s for February 27 in which Victoria and the family attended a larger service celebrating Bertie’s restored health.    Ecstatic to finally see their Queen in public, Londoners gave a warm welcome to the family, erecting a triumphal arch near the cathedral and decorating every inch of the procession with flags and banners.  A relief exists below a statue in London showing the Queen and her son on the way to the service, memorializing Bertie’s recovery and the rebirth of his reputation. 

Bertie’s miraculous recovery even made its way into the history books in Canada.  On April 5, 1872, the first Canadian Thanksgiving was observed in the dominion acknowledging the return of Bertie’s good health.  Many Canadians still remembered Bertie’s successful tour of Canada more than a decade before, the Prince’s first solo royal tour of any length.

Although Victoria did remain in mourning for Albert until her own death, she gradually continued to give more of herself to her family and her official duties in the year’s following Bertie’s illness.  The republican movement that had been gaining popularity a few months before was now all but dead thanks to the wave of national celebration over Bertie’s survival. 

As for Bertie, after some initial interest on the part of Victoria and her administration to give him some sort of official role, soon returned to his partying ways after no role was created for him.  He did find some renewed happiness with his wife, Alexandra, following his illness after the two had been growing apart. Like Albert years before, a grave illness brought immense change to Victoria, her life, and her family.