Final farewell to royal servant who saved the life of Queen Victoria
She was the most powerful woman in the world, but behind her back Queen Victoria was known as simply “Mrs Brown”.
And on March 27, 1883, she became widowed for what many believed was a second time after her faithful servant, friend and so-called “second husband” John Brown, died.
The rumours of a love affair and of a secret marriage between the Queen and the down-to-earth, canny Scottish servant she met at Balmoral spread like wildfire in royal court and rippled through government.
And, although their most intimate moments would be known only to themselves, what was plain for all to see was their devotion to one another, immortalised in the 1997 film Mrs Brown starring Dame Judi Dench as the Queen and Scotland’s king of comedy Billy Connolly in the role of Brown.
Born locally in 1826, Brown was the second of 11 children of tenant farmer John Brown and his wife, Margaret Leys. Brown Jr had a string of jobs, including farm labourer, before going into service to the Queen and was a stable boy on Sir Robert Gordon’s estate at nearby Balmoral in 1842.
Six years later the estate was leased by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert. They loved the place so much they bought it in 1852. The first mention of Brown appeared in the Queen’s journal in September 1949. Two years later, at Albert’s suggestion, Brown took on the role of leading the Queen’s pony, and by 1858 her became the Prince’s personal ghillie. But Prince Albert died three years later and Victoria fell into a deep depression and she was becoming a recluse. By 1864 her daughter was so worried she suggested Brown go to Windsor and Osborne house to cheer the Queen with the pony cart rides he had given at Balmoral. She agreed and in December that year wrote in her journal that Brown was “indefatigable in his attendance and care”.
The relationship between the monarch and her straight-talking servant deepened and, by 1866, the gossip machine was in overdrive. On June 30 that year he was featured in the satirical magazine Punch. The Queen was referred to in secret by some members of her household as Mrs Brown, while one newspaper suggested the two had married. Despite the rumours, his devotion never waivered and in 1872 Brown thwarted an assassination attempt on Victoria’s life.
Brown died on March 27 – exactly 140 years ago tomorrow – after falling ill but continuing to work, such was his devotion to his Queen. It’s said that, had he not, he may have lived. He was buried at nearby Crathie. In the years that have followed information has come to light that suggests they had probably married in secret. After Victoria’s death she asked for one of Prince Albert’s dressing gowns to be placed beside her in the coffin, and on the side a lock of John Brown’s hair, a picture of him, and a ring worn by Brown’s mother that he had given to the Queen.
The published diary of the 1st Viscount Harcourt in 1885 reports an unsubstantiated story that Queen Victoria’s chaplain, the Revd Dr Norman Macleod, on his deathbed in 1872 revealed he had married John Brown and Victoria in secret.
Later in 2006 a national newspaper reported a similar secondhand tale in which a now deceased member of the royal family claimed documents confirming their marriage had turned up years earlier in the royal archives in Windsor and were destroyed.