The African slave girl adopted by Queen Victoria
time. She was fascinated by other ures and very open-minded. Captain Forbes essentially saved ah’s life, rescuing her from years of ery and even death. Sarah, who the en called Sally, loved Victoria. She med her oldest daughter after her.” elatives told Arnold that Sarah yed her time in Buckingham Palace, records suggest she felt out of place. the ITV special, Sarah, played by s-angel Hator, is seen marvelling at snow and shyly hiding in corners. he queen is shown being impressed by how bright Sarah is. But, as in real life, Albert persuades her Sarah isn’t happy at the palace, and she goes to live with the Forbes family in Gillingham, Kent.
After a year Sarah was sent to Sierra Leone for her education, before returning to England in 1855.
While show creator Daisy Goodwin acknowledges Sarah’s discomfort in the palace, she agrees with Arnold that the relationship was thoroughly modern.
“Victoria didn’t have prejudices at all and I think she saw people as her subjects, and didn’t discriminate between them,” she says. “It’s quite unexpected, but it’s true. She was surprisingly broad-minded and modern, which made her more attractive to write about.”
Victoria remained an important figure throughout Sarah’s life. In 1862, Sarah agreed to marry wealthy Yoruba businessman Captain James Davies, but is believed to have been reluctant due to his being 13 years older.
After some pressure from the queen, the 18-year-old went ahead and wed him. Sarah continued to visit the queen and in 1867 introduced her to her daughter, Victoria. The queen agreed to become her godmother.
Sarah then returned to Lagos, Nigeria, where she had two more children, Arthur and Stella, though she still frequently took trips to visit Victoria.
But Sarah had been plagued by poor health. One reason she was sent to school in Sierra Leone was because the queen thought her chronic cough was caused by the British climate. Tragically, Sarah died of tuberculosis in 1880, aged 37. She was buried in Funchal, Madeira.
Arnold keeps a picture of her grave at his home in Chatham, Kent. He says: “On Sarah’s death, the queen wrote in her diary, ‘Saw poor Victoria Davies, my black godchild, who learnt this morning of the death of her dear mother’.
“She went on to pay for little Victoria’s education, so she continued to help the family and have influence on them.”
There was another motivation for the queen’s unusual adoption. As explored in the Christmas special, Comfort and Joy, Victoria was haunted by her own childhood. She wrote in her diaries how isolated and “melancholy” she had felt.
Jenna, who plays the queen in the show, says: “Sarah enters Victoria’s life as an orphan, abandoned and alone, and I think Victoria can see something of PRAISES QUEEN herself in Sarah. It becomes an almost cathartic experience. By trying to help Sarah rebuild herself, Victoria eases the wounds of her own childhood.”
Daisy agrees. “I was trying to show that she sees a little girl who’s a princess and has lost her family, and wants to show how a princess should be treated.
“Victoria is trying to mend the wounds of her past and Albert is wondering, ‘Are you really thinking about the child, or about yourself ?’”
Dismissing speculation that Victoria did not bond with her children, Daisy says: “There is no doubt she did in fact love her children, she just wasn’t gooey.”
She adds she depicts the queen as “a volcano, not an iceberg”. For Arnold, his ancestor’s incredible story is proof of this. He sees Victoria as a leading campaigner against the slave trade.
Arnold adds: “I look at Queen Victoria as someone who helped to rescue my relatives. As Victoria herself described in her diaries, she ‘saved her little Sally’.” ■ The Victoria special, Comfort and Joy, airs on Christmas Day at 9pm on ITV.
She was a pioneer, and it was a relationship really ahead of its time ARNOLD AWOONORGORDON