Victoria’s Secret, page 35
She was unable to write to her eldest daughter, Vicky, until 4 April. ‘This terrible blow,’ Victoria told her, ‘which has fallen so unexpectedly on me – and has almost crushed me – by tearing away from me not only the most devoted, faithful, intelligent and confidential servant and attendant who lived and, I may say … died for me – but my dearest best friend has so shaken me … The shock – the blow, the blank, the constant missing at every turn of the one strong, powerful reliable arm and head almost stunned me and I am truly overwhelmed … gentlemen and servants they knew I was safe when he was with me. God’s will be done but I shall never be the same again in many things.’14
It’s garbled, almost as if Victoria was trying so hard not to say too much, to keep John within the familiar boundaries she had set for him. But as the reality of her grief bubbles over, it was a loss she could not quantify. Vicky, well used to her mother’s dramatic fits of passion, summoned up enough sympathy to say ‘I grieve so much to think of you depressed and cast down and sore in heart.’15 At Victoria’s insistence, she dutifully read the newspapers reports of John’s death; ‘I have read all the articles you mention and can well imagine that they gave you pleasure, giving evidence as they did of kindly feeling.’16 Her relief, and those of her siblings, must have been great. Finally, the man they felt had stood between their wishes and Victoria’s agreement was no longer in the way.
John’s body lay in his rooms in Clarence Tower for nearly a week. Victoria, determined to see him one final time, made her way up the stairs for a service led by her Windsor chaplain, the Reverend T. Orr. It was a private goodbye and she allowed no-one but Beatrice to accompany her.17 Then came a second service at the visitors’ entrance to the castle as John’s body began its final journey home, where Archie and Francis Clark attended, along with the rest of the Royal Household, before loading the 7-foot coffin, made of polished oak, onto the train for the long progress back to Balmoral. Victoria, in desperate pain and anguish, hauled herself to the windows of Windsor Castle’s Oak Room to watch his body leave.18 At every stage of his final journey, wreaths and flowers were thrown as he passed, as Victoria’s public came out to mourn for their queen’s faithful companion.
Arriving at Ballater, John’s body was taken to Bal Na Choile where, in the house Victoria built for him, he lay in the dining room as his family and friends said their final goodbyes.19 A reporter snuck in, excitingly describing that ‘the house is elaborately furnished, the chairs and other articles bearing the Royal arms in relief. The walls are literally clad with pictures, principally engravings, one being a proof portrait of Her Majesty, bearing her signature, and the date 1877. This engraving is placed over the mantelpiece in the parlour, and it is surrounded with portraits of members of the Royal family, or representations of remarkable incidents in the history of the household, notably hunting scenes.’20 They even got close to John’s coffin, near enough to be able to describe the wreaths Victoria had sent in detail, which were sat on top. One was a magnificent creation of myrtle and white blossom. It was accompanied by her handwritten note: ‘A tribute of loving, grateful and everlasting friendship and affection, from his truest, best, and most faithful friend, Victoria, R. &I.’21 These intimate words appeared in the papers the following day.
John’s burial, at Crathie Kirk, took place on 5 April 1883. The morning was misty and raw, while the snow glittered in a pale sunlight that broke unhappily through around midday.22 Bal Na Choile’s gardens were packed with local residents, friends, family and staff from Balmoral, Abergeldie and beyond, while all of John’s brothers greeted the guests with traditional trays of whisky, cheese and biscuits.23 At quarter to one that afternoon, a richly decorated hearse, sent from Aberdeen, slowly moved down Balmoral’s drive. It was led by two of Victoria’s favourite horses, a pair of bays John would always use for her private drives around the hills. These would take him to his final resting place. His brothers, bearing the coffin aloft, brought it to the doorway, as the minister of Crathie, the Reverend Campbell, conducted a short service for all gathered around Bal Na Choile’s walls.
At its end, Victoria’s plaid – which John had wrapped her in so many times – was draped over his coffin as it was loaded into the hearse, the closest that the Queen could get to him for the very last time.24 James followed immediately behind, heading the procession of John’s brothers and nephews, as they walked to the kirkyard, over the River Dee. Although not allowed to attend the service itself, the women of Crathie lined the roads of the funeral cortège, an honour shown to only a very few. As John passed, he was saluted by his family, his friends and all those he had cared for across Balmoral and the glens. ‘His eldest brother, James … was greatly grief-stricken,’ the newspapers salaciously reported, feeding off the mourners’ despair.25 There was no moment of sorrow the press did not intrude upon, trampling over the glens in search of any story from John’s past. Journalists packed the kirkyard, reporting back every look and every word. ‘They mourned the loss of one whom they knew intimately and esteemed,’ wrote the Aberdeen Press and Journal. ‘The event was one of the saddest that has transpired there since the Queen made Balmoral her home, and the sight was a specially touching one to those who, knowing the humble hill boy of 30 years ago, reflected upon the honour done to him by the Sovereign whom he had so faithfully served.’26 After John was buried, Victoria’s factor, Alexander Profeit, placed a metal wreath of violets on top of the grave, which Victoria had sent from Windsor.27 In the Victorian language of flowers, these petals, artificial and immortal, represented faithfulness and everlasting love.28 It was as if a lion of the glens had passed for, without John Brown, the lives of those around Balmoral would never be the same.
The Life and Biography of John Brown, Esq.: For 30 years Personal Attendant of Her Majesty the Queen hit the shelves within days of his death. Compiled by Henry Llewellyn Williams, priced at one penny and printed out of Hatton Garden by E. Smith & Co, it promised to be ‘illustrated by anecdotes and incidents from Royal and other sources’. It was a mish-mash of quotes from Leaves from the Highlands, rumour and uncredited gossip, but gave a brief overview of his life for all those who wanted it, from day labourers to housemaids, to bankers’ clerks and beyond. It also claimed that John had learned German, the ‘private tongue’ of the royal family, a few years before his death.29
Victoria was as overwhelmed by her grief as she had been in the aftermath of Albert’s death, two decades earlier. ‘I am crushed by the violence of this unexpected blow which was such a shock,’ she repeated to Vicky, ‘the reopening of old wounds and the infliction of a new very deep one. There is no rebound left to recover from it and the one who since ’64 had helped to cheer me, to smooth, ease and facilitate everything for my daily comfort and was my dearest best friend to whom I could speak quite openly is not here to help me out of it. I feel so stunned and bewildered and this anguish comes over me like a wave every now and then through the day or at night is terrible. He protected me so, was so powerful and strong – that I felt so safe! And now all, all is gone in this world and all seems unhinged again in thousands of ways!’30
With such raw words, we see into Victoria’s private world. John was everything to her but, most importantly, he protected her. The safety, the strength, the physicality of his presence was one that could never be replaced. It was a primal, desperate need. And now, Victoria was completely alone and defenceless. No-one, not even Albert, had given her such complete security. Wounded and abused children often spend their lives seeking such sanctuary, and John had provided it without question and without complaint. The blow to Victoria’s psyche became not only emotional, but physical. She lost the use of her legs, terrified, it seems, to take even a single step without John to protect her.
From her invalid’s chair, Victoria’s only thought was of John. She was desperate to surround herself with his image. ‘Dear Sir,’ wrote Rudolph Löhlein to an unknown recipient. ‘The Queen wished you to print the whole figure of Brown alone without Dr Profeit … You have changed in the enlarged heads the position and made the figure of Brown lean over too much raising the head; the Queen wishes you to alter this.’31
Evidently Vicky’s sympathy soon ran out. ‘Because I say little on the subject,’ she wrote to Victoria in May, ‘it is not that I do not constantly think of you and feel the greatest distress at your being sad etc. “the heart knoweth its own bitterness”. Since knowing as I do that this is so and that I can say nothing to cheer or comfort you I almost think it is a better proof of sympathy and affection to be silent.’32 Visiting Balmoral, Victoria’s Lord of the Privy Seal, Lord Carlingford, was shocked at the Queen’s unshrouded grief being so openly displayed. ‘This infatuation is wonderful,’ he wrote, sarcastically. ‘It is painfully absurd to hear his name pronounced when one would expect another.’33 The implication was clear: for those around the Queen, this was to be understood as her second widowhood. John was ever present in her mind and Balmoral ached with each memory of him. ‘The Queen thanks Col Byng for his kind words,’ Victoria wrote to one of her equerries. ‘The loss of her dear faithful & devoted attendant & truest, best friend is irreparable. & she is terribly shaken by it. For 34 years he was associated with this place & for the last 18 he never left her, wherever she was, & was never away (except for a few hours) all that time. – He was a constant help & confident & she was his only object in life! Everything will be very different & hard & many things can never be done again! This place seems quite changed. All joy gone!34
While Leopold may have crowed at John’s death, his brother Arthur was more sympathetic. Writing to his sister, Louise, in May, he worried for their mother. ‘Poor Mama has been terribly upset by Brown’s death,’ he told her.35 It shouldn’t surprise us, perhaps, that Victoria’s most passionate daughter had become the one person to truly see her for who she was. Louise understood, at last, just what John had meant to Victoria. He wasn’t the usurper she had taken him for, but Victoria’s only happiness in a world that sought to control and claim a queen as a figurehead for the designs of men, and nothing more. John was her protection, her agency, against the court, the government, the press and her people. Victoria hadn’t simply lost a servant or a lover. She had lost herself.
The only way she knew to deal with such unbounded grief was to memorialise John in every moment. His rooms in all her residences were to be shut up, never to be opened again in her lifetime. In John’s bedroom at Balmoral, his kilt and sporran were spread out on the bed, his pipe and pouch were placed on a table, and the room was then photographed.36 Just as with Albert, Victoria was creating snapshots as if he still lived. In this moment of deepest grief, she turned ever more to his family. The only photograph of all the surviving brothers to exist shows them gathered around a large marble bust of John’s head. Archie stands to his left, Hugh on his right, with William, James and Donald seated at the front.37 This impressive, larger-than-life bust had been commissioned from Edgar Boehm sometime before 1875.38 Victoria also had a mourning locket created, which she presented to his family, holding John’s photograph and lock of his hair, with the enamelled words ‘Dear John’ and the date of his death around its frame.39 Servants in every royal residence were given gold mourning pins – some with John’s head in profile and his initials, others with his photograph – to be worn in his memory at every anniversary of his death.40 Then, to mark her most intimate feelings, Victoria began to wear John’s mother’s wedding ring – which he had given to her after Margaret’s death – openly on her own hand.41 What possible purpose could such a gift have had other than to confirm their own union? There was no reason for the wedding ring to come to John: he had no children and no public wife for it to be passed to, unlike all of his brothers. And yet, after Margaret’s death in 1875, it was with John that such a precious family heirloom resided. And on Victoria’s finger it remains to this day.
On 26 May 1883, Victoria made Hugh her Highland Servant, taking John’s place at her side.42 The following month, she gave Jessie a copy of Voices of Comfort, a set of Christian teachings on surviving grief, with the signed inscription, ‘To Mrs Hugh Brown, In the time of our great sorrow’.43 These were the same words she had previously used to describe the death of her first husband, Prince Albert.44 Now, within the safety and privacy of John’s family, she used them once more.
With Hugh’s new position requiring his family to leave Bal Na Choile, the grand house built for John could not be left empty. Giving up the tenancy of the Bush, William and his family took over John’s house, passing it from brother to brother to keep his memory alive, just as Victoria had wished. As Hugh, Jessie and Mary Ann packed up their life once more to follow Victoria to Windsor, she poured out her heart to the only people who truly knew what John had been to her. ‘I found these words in an old Diary or journal of mine,’ Victoria wrote to Hugh in August. ‘I was in great trouble about the Princess Royal who had lost her child – in 66 – & dear John said “I wish to take care of my dear good mistress till I die”… & I took and held his dear, kind hand & I said I hoped he might long be spared & comfort me – & he answered “But we all must die”. After my beloved John would say: “You have not a more devoted Servant than Brown” – and oh! How I felt that! After & so often I told him no one loved him more than I did or had a better friend than me: & he answered “nor you than me. No-one loves you more.”’45
Here, with his brother, the truth of their life together was clearly set out, hidden in between the language of mistress and servant. ‘Beloved John’ is not a term that can be underestimated. These were the same words Victoria used for Albert and her closest family; this love, this intimacy, is what John truly meant to her. And just as followed Albert’s death, she became stuck in a state of deepest mourning. ‘I have lost one,’ Victoria wrote to the poet Tennyson, ‘who humble though he was – was the truest and most devoted of all! He had no thought but for me, my welfare, my comfort, my safety, my happiness … He has been taken and I feel again very desolate and forlorn … The comfort of my daily life is gone – the void is terrible – the loss irreparable! … God will I trust give me the strength to the end when I trust to meet again those I have “loved and lost” but only for a while.’46
~
The death of the Queen’s Highland Servant, the man who for so long had provided the newspapers with tabloid fodder, gossip and rumour, was a windfall for the editors who wanted to entertain their readers. The Aberdeen Evening Express carried a long poetical epitaph to John, ‘The Brown Coronach’, written by the anonymous author ‘La Teste’ (the witness). One verse read:
Like a monarch himself he has stood in the presence
Of Kings and of Queens, unabashed and unnerved—
And humbly, but proudly, made courtly obeisance,
Servile to none, save the sovereign he served.
High-souled and large-hearted, with mind independent,
No wonder the Queen, whom the people adore,
Should grieve o’er the fate of her faithful attendant—
The crown of the household – John Brown – nevermore!47
Although stories, illustrations, obituaries and rehashing the rumours made for entertaining reading, there is also an undercurrent of true sadness to some of the coverage. John was an ordinary man who found himself at the heart of royalty, becoming a celebrity in his own right. For the men and women who were fascinated by him, he represented a romantic ideal, a folk hero – Victoria’s Lancelot, the faithful knight who guarded his queen – a man of the people, set apart by his character and fate.
Victoria, determined to continue her campaign of memorialisation, began to commission works in John’s honour. Edgar Boehm was engaged to sculpt a life-sized bronze statue to stand in the grounds of Balmoral. Countless portraits and photographs were created, over which Victoria cast a precise eye, handwriting ‘J.B, the Queen’s truest, best friend’ on her favourites to be sent out to anyone and everyone she chose. Deciding that the statue would need a fitting epitaph, she wrote again to Tennyson, the one man who had fulfilled her desire to memorialise Albert 20 years earlier.
‘Could you help me,’ she asked him, ‘in choosing one or two lines to be put on the pedestal of the bronze statue of my faithful attendant and friend which is to be placed in the grounds here in a pretty quiet spot? As well as a small granite drinking fountain which I am placing to his memory in Frogmore Gardens near the small cottage where I used so often to sit in summer?
‘Perhaps you may like to know what is on the stone where what is earthly of him rests and I enclose the transcription. The words (beside the Text) are by Robertson, taken from his Life not his Sermons. The characteristic to be remembered in any inscription like those I named above are: – Power, Strength, and moral as well as physical, truth, devotion, unselfishness.’48
What is so striking about Victoria’s words to Tennyson is her fixation on John’s physicality as much as on his character. That she was still a passionate, sexual person should not surprise us, but we do not normally allow the widow of Windsor such agency, or womanhood. Victoria always found John deeply attractive, from his youth as a strapping lad in his twenties, caring for the young mother as she waited for Albert’s return from hunting, to the grieving, heartbroken, newly widowed woman in the prime of her life. He had been her constant companion, her protector, her husband (in all but official name) for the last 20 years and she grieved him just as she did Albert’s loss. She longed for his body, his mind and his presence, wishing it would return to her once more.
