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!
(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, 1st 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.
I am going to thoroughly enjoy Your Daily Victoria. Thank you in advance! She had a big family and a huge extended family - lots and lots of people she communicated with. I have a really big family, too, but now days I type a par and shoot it off by email or FB and I'm done for the day!
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