‘Sexless old bag’? An invention by woman hating gay courtiers

‘They edited out her enthusiasm for gossip and jokes’

DOUR, sexless, perpetually unamused… Queen Victoria has had a notoriously bad press since her death in 1901.

Yet according to A.N. Wilson, the historical adviser to ITV drama Victoria, this reputation is not only wide of the mark, it was deliberate propaganda masterminded by a Royal Family desperate to suppress the truth about her passionate nature.

The court appointed two misogynistic homosexuals to get this message across – the suave courtier Viscount Esher and the academic and writer Arthur Benson, who wrote the lyrics to Land Of Hope And Glory. Together, they sanitised her letters for publication.

‘It is quite clear that towards the end she was a rather terrifying old lady and her children were frightened of her,’ says Wilson.

‘Also, they were embarrassed by parts of her nature, the physical side, the emotional side – the fact, for example, that she had a very unsuitable relationship with John Brown and then another with her Indian servant.

‘When she died, influential people in the court were determined to make her into a figurehead of the British Empire and put these two very stuffy, public-school-educated, woman-hating gays in charge of reinventing her.

‘A.C. Benson and Viscount Esher edited her letters for publication and deliberately left out her enthusiasm for gossip, her jokes, any of her obsession with the female body, with babies and health.

‘What you were left with was this figure who was tremendously stiff, boring and pompous.

‘Edward VII, her eldest son, was absolutely clear what he wanted – to suppress the fact that his mother had from an early age disliked him.

‘He went round smashing pictures and portraits of John Brown.’

Such was the determination of senior courtiers to control her image they tried – but failed – to obtain every single piece of Victoria’s correspondence to be locked away in Windsor Castle in the Royal Archive.

‘Arthur Benson’s collection of Victoria’s letters was published in 1908, and from then on she was presented to the world as a humourless, sexless old bag. It’s a travesty,’ says Wilson.

The historical evidence of the passion between the young Queen and her older political mentor, Lord Melbourne, was, in fact, overwhelming.

‘For a start they spent all their time together.

‘They went riding together, they played cards together, they told jokes together, they gossiped together, they were absolutely constant companions.

‘Obviously it raised eyebrows. It was like the kind of thing that happens when a young person goes up to university and falls in love with their tutor. But because of the nature of the relationship it never could be consummated, which in a funny way made it more passionate.

‘They were in love, but they couldn’t do anything about it.

‘She had no father while he had endured a disastrous marriage to Lady Caroline Lamb. He had a string of affairs. He was a loveless Regency rake but also a very inward, deep sort of person in many ways.

‘She responded to his need for love.

‘One of things that I really like about this depiction of Victoria is that it brings out all of her passion and humour and humanity.’