Overlooked Britain
Surrounded by silken walls of royal blue moire – handsomely bulging with braiding and buttons – as well as with ceilings of shining, diamond-patterned, beige silk, you have discovered, to your delighted disbelief, Queen Victoria’s, as well as, just a few feet away, John Brown’s lavatories. Later, John Brown’s was used by Abdul Karim, aka ‘the Munshie’, the Queen’s Indian attendant.
On display at York’s National Railway Museum, both were part of a private coach, designed by William Bore, commissioned in 1869 from the London and North Western Railway. It cost £1,800, with the Queen herself contributing £800. Both lavatories are as richly appointed as they are rare. They are so astonishingly opulent, it is as if all Victorian decorative schemes have been jam-packed into their modest confines.
Amid an array of damasks, silk and satins, set off by fittings of bird’s-eye maple, mahogany, satinwood and 23-carat gold leaf, there are steadying straps, hanging heavy with great rope tassels and embroidered with shamrocks, roses and thistles. The curtains, blinds and pelmets drip with a multitude of
tassels, and there are lampshades of festooned lace, as fancy as you can imagine. Wooden pelmets support delicately carved coats of arms, and gothic woodwork curvaceously gleams forth throughout.
The Times was in rhapsodies, writing that ‘the fittings are upon the most elegant and magnificent scale, tastefully improved by bouquets of rare flowers’. In fact, with such a wealth of decoration, there is barely room for a lone daisy.
Most delightful of all are the rare-for-19th-century-railways ‘valve closet’ lavatories, decorated to the nines, despite their tiny rooms spanning the mere width of the seats. The Queen’s is resplendent with a delicately painted key pattern in turquoise and gold around the bowl. John Brown’s, its walls smothered with sleek gothicary, sports a bright steel bowl. Both conveniences, along with the bedrooms and saloons, are cut off from the rest of the train; proof, if proof were needed, that the Queen had an unusually close relationship with her personal attendants.
The Queen’s first journey by train was on 13th June 1842, from Slough – the route from Windsor – with Isambard Kingdom Brunel himself on the footplate honouring the auspicious occasion. She said of the experience that she was ‘quite charmed by it all… free from the dust and heat’. Nevertheless, she had criticisms aplenty for the railways; such as refusing to eat on the move and having to stop to look at the view whenever she saw fit. Both caused havoc with any timetable. She also hated the speed of the new ‘iron horse’, determining that it should not exceed 40mph by day and 30mph by night.
Hourly stops for matters lavatorial did not help, with such delays as were recorded at Ilkley Moor in Yorkshire – with an account of the ladies of the court having to hitch up their voluminous skirts to squat down on the tracks on one side of the train, while the gents relieved themselves the other. Ponder please on the height of the gap, allowing for the great wheels on 19th-century trains, giving you a close, clear and full view of proceedings!
There’s a gripping footnote apropos the Queen and her Scots gillie John Brown. Years ago, I met the distinguished historian Steven Runciman, who told me that he came upon their marriage certificate when working in Windsor’s archives. Excited, he took it to the Queen Mother who was having tea by the fire.
With the words ‘How interesting’, she took it, screwed it up and threw it straight into the flames!