Victoria, the master of PR
Goes to a new exhibition at Buckingham Palace to see how the Hanoverian queen transformed it
Next time Prince Harry visits his granny at Buckingham Palace, he must drop in on this highly entertaining exhibition about Queen Victoria. As he enters the exhibition, he’ll see a huge painting by Sir George Hayter of the christening of the Prince of Wales, Victoria’s eldest son, at St George’s Chapel, Windsor, in 1842.
All the godparents are there for the world to see – not something you can say about Archie MountbattenWindsor’s, whose identities were concealed earlier this month. But then Queen Victoria was a master of PR. This new exhibition (called Queen Victoria’s Palace) cleverly shows how she presented a new face of monarchy to the world – and how Buckingham Palace epitomised the change.
George III bought what was then Buckingham House in 1761. But Victoria was the first monarch to live there properly – and the first to make it the monarchy’s headquarters. She moved there from Kensington Palace in 1837, three weeks into her reign, and promptly turned what had been a charming Queen Anne house into a mammoth royal palace.
Albert, the Prince Consort – a highly artistic figure; his engraving tools are in the show – commissioned Edward Blore to remodel the palace’s huge façade. And – another PR coup – Albert cooked up the Buckingham Palace balcony, now such an integral feature of great royal occasions.
Victoria added on a thwacking great ballroom. The plans, on show here, by architect James Pennethorne, were often marked with the words “Approved Albert”, showing how crucial the Prince was to the palace look.
The royal couple brought an odd mixture of ancient and modern. Victoria introduced phones, electricity, voice recordings and telegrams to the building. But at the same time, she and Albert loved
recreating a fantasy medieval life. An 1842 Landseer painting shows them kitted out as the 14th-century Edward III and Queen Philippa.
How they adored dressing up. Her exquisite grey silk and gold lace costume – for the 1851 Stuart Ball at the palace – is staggeringly small. Not just in height but in girth; at 32, the 5ft-tall queen was still a slip of a thing, yet to enter her, ahem, expansive middle age. The puddings made by her chief cook, Charles Elmé Francatelli, had something to do with the transformation and modern models of his great, quivering, sugary concoctions are here in the palace dining room.
Victoria was a talented artist herself. In her charming 1838 sketch of her own coronation that year, she again looks like a medieval princess straight from the Knights of the Round Table, not the new Queen of the Modern Industrial Age.
You might also call her the Queen of the Hoarders. She kept everything. Here, rather spookily, is the gold casket neatly filled with blue velvet bags containing her children’s baby teeth, each sewn with their names in gold thread.
Victoria also kept everything in immaculate nick. That’s why snooty sophisticates turn their noses up at Buckingham Palace: it’s all too new.
The Children’s Fancy Ball at Buckingham Palace, Why not just rejoice in the extraordinary survival of a royal palace in pristine condition?
Of course, all the palace-building and fancy-dress balls came to an abrupt end in 1861, with the death of Albert, at only 42. The hoarding and the memorialising continued, but this time with a black edge – literally. She marked the page of the book (Walter Scott’s Peveril of the Peak) she was reading to Albert on his deathbed with a black-framed blank piece of paper. And her Balmoral writing paper – topped with a pretty picture of a stag and a hind – was henceforth also edged in black.
Victoria left the palace in 1862 to become the Widow of Windsor. For nearly 40 years, the building was frozen in time. And it remains largely unchanged: when it comes to fixtures and fittings, our Queen is no moderniser, thank God.
How astonishing to think that, only 25 years after Victoria’s death, our own Queen was born. Since 1837, when Victoria came to the throne, she and Elizabeth II have ruled the country for 131 of the last 182 years. This show illustrates beautifully how the modern British age is essentially the VictorianElizabethan age.