Victoria’s big secret
QUESTION
Is it true that Queen Victoria spoke with a German accent? Are there any recordings of her speaking? QueeN VICTOrIa was from the House of Hanover on her father’s side and SaxeCoburg on her mother’s, a princess of mostly german descent, but born and raised in england. She spent most of her youth in Kensington Palace.
according to Victoria, her native language was english, though it’s reported that, in childhood, she had a german accent that was corrected by her tutors.
This seems likely because, as a princess, she had an isolated childhood and a german governess, Baroness Louise Lehzen, a native of Coburg, who taught her only german until she was three.
By the time she ascended the throne at 18 in 1837, she was said to have had a particularly attractive voice, fluent in german, French and Italian and speaking english in an english accent. It was perfectly clear of which country she was Queen.
The idea that she had a german accent probably comes from her strong ties with germany. after she became queen, her courtiers were almost entirely german and her husband and first cousin, albert of Saxe-Coburg-gotha, was also german.
Victoria insisted that she and albert ‘spoke english just as much as german’, but when alone the couple usually spoke german. Throughout their marriage, they had frequent arguments and she would scream at him in german during major quarrels.
There’s a BBC archive recording of Queen Victoria’s granddaughter, Princess alice of albany ( later athlone), describing Victoria’s voice as ‘ light, bright and beautiful’ and with no hint of a german accent.
It is also possible that the voice of Victoria exists on a wax cylinder once used with a graphophone, a device invented in the 1880s by commercial rivals of Thomas edison’s phonograph.
when the cylinder was donated to the London Science Museum in 1929, the donor had suggested it had been used in a graphophone that was demonstrated to the Queen. Some years later, with the help of the National Sound archive ( now the British Library Sound archive), three separate recordings were coaxed from the cylinder.
In one a man can be heard speaking and then whistling, although it’s impossible to make out any words. In the second recording a few snatches can be heard of a woman saying ‘greetings ... the answer must be ... I have never forgotten’. The reason this could be Victoria’s voice is because of a letter the Queen’s private secretary had written to his wife in 1888 describing a machine that could reproduce sounds. He wrote: ‘edwards whistled and I laughed’ and ‘H.M. [Her Majesty] spoke into it — but we told Mr Morse he must not go round the country reproducing the Queen’s words’.
The evidence is circumstantial, but if the recording is, indeed, Queen Victoria, then her voice is a well-spoken, english accent.
Emilie Lamplough, Trowbridge, wiltshire.
QUESTION
Kate Osamor MP, Shadow Secretary of State for International Development, claimed at the Labour Annual Conference in Liverpool that ‘two-thirds of the world’s women can’t read or write’. Is this true? THIS strange claim was later sent out as part of a press release with the addendum: ‘It was gordon Brown who made the education of girls and young women a priority.’
according to uNeSCO statistics, 17 per cent of the world’s adult population aren’t literate, and two- thirds of these are women. That equates to 774 million adults (15 years and older) who cannot read or write, 493 million of whom — two-thirds — are women. among youth, 123 million are illiterate of whom 76 million are female (equating to around 63 per cent).
Compare that with 90 per cent global illiteracy in the year 1800 and 80 per cent in 1900, and this demonstrates a huge global success.
Britain was characterised as being 99 per cent literate by 1978, although this absolute definition is not used today. More common is the notion of ‘functional literacy’.
around 5.2 million of adults in england — 16 per cent) can be described as ‘functionally illiterate’. That is literacy levels at or below those expected of an 11year- old. There is a gender gap in this country. according to the ONS, 20 per cent of boys and 12 per cent of girls start secondary school unable to read at the expected level. Bernard Jones, Cardiff.
QUESTION
What exactly is an inch of rain? TO Elaborate on the previous answer, an inch of rainfall is an estimate of the depth to which water would collect were the rain to fall on an unobstructed horizontal surface with no evaporation or percolation.
If an inch of rain falls on the 128sq ft of my garage roof, 10.67cu ft runs down into my water butt. an inch is about ten days’ average rainfall for Manchester.
If that inch of rain were to fall in five minutes, the gutter would overflow and the flowerbed would suffer short-term localised flooding.
For fun, I sometimes put a bucket beside the garage. This ‘rain gauge’ gives an estimate of how much rain falls on the garage roof, but it is not a very accurate one. although the ‘gauge’ is near to the catchment area, it is sheltered by the garage walls.
an inch of rain falling on the 900-or-so square miles of the Manchester catchment area would represent 7.27 cubic furlongs, weighing in at 58 million tons.
all this water would end up flowing out past runcorn into the Mersey estuary if it were not for evaporation, percolation into the ground and extraction by the water companies.
Of course, rain would not fall uniformly across the entire catchment area, which is why a network of rain gauges is spread across the countryside.
In a field near the Met Office in Bracknell, various experimental rain gauges are set up. each is surrounded by a ring of bricks, level with the rim, to provide a standard, even if not perfectly smooth, airflow across the gauges. The field site is reasonably open, but is affected from the shelter of a small wood a few hundred yards away.
a rain gauge, with its ring of bricks, can be found at the top end of dovestones reservoir on Saddleworth Moor. The site is far from ideal, being sheltered on three sides by hills. The site is a compromise between accessibility and veracity of representation, which might be better far up on the boggy hilltops.
From experience, the water board will be able to estimate the expected water capture from the readings given by their rain gauge.
when thunderstorms recently flooded parts of Manchester with torrential downpours, in 70 minutes of heavy, but not torrential, rain, my bucket collected almost exactly one inch of rain.
Brian M. Russell, Chadderton, Gtr Manchester.
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