{"id":6433,"date":"2017-03-06T07:00:44","date_gmt":"2017-03-06T12:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6433"},"modified":"2017-03-06T07:05:35","modified_gmt":"2017-03-06T12:05:35","slug":"victoria-the-queen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=6433","title":{"rendered":"****Victoria: The Queen"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Queen

detail of portrait by Franz Xaver Winterhalter, 1859<\/p><\/div>\n

By Julia Baird \u2013 This extensively researched biography landed in my \u201cto read\u201d pile at the same time the PBS series about Victoria was ready to begin. Naturally, differences in style and tone emerge, but the tv producers have hewn pretty close to the facts of Victoria’s early reign, as established by historian Baird.<\/p>\n

Victoria was not the prudish, sexually repressed old lady we think of when we think \u201cVictorian era.\u201d That was Albert, actually. Victoria enjoyed her sex life and was disappointed when, after her ninth child was born, her doctor told her to have no more. She said something like, \u201cWhat, no more fun in bed?\u201d She became queen at eighteen and married at twenty-one. A youthful portrait, with a dash of the sultry, appears on the cover of Baird\u2019s book. It\u2019s the image of herself Victoria chose to bury with her husband.<\/p>\n

When she became Queen, she initially relied heavily on the counsel of Her Prime Minister, Lord Melbourne, to whom she was greatly attached. He was a good mentor for Victoria, except in three areas, says Baird. He should have persuaded her to deal even-handedly with Britain\u2019s political parties, not favoring one over another; he could have encouraged more concern for the poor; and he should have helped her repair relations with her mother.<\/p>\n

By the time of her marriage, this headstrong young woman was accustomed to being queen. Yet she was deeply attached to Albert, who chafed under his limited role in British affairs of state, and they struggled to find a useful place for him. Ultimately, he worked tirelessly for the benefit of her country and its evolution into a modern society. Had he not died young, the 1800s would have been called \u201cthe Albertine era,\u201d Baird says. But Albert did die when he and the queen were in their early 40s, and she wore black for the rest of her life. Her template became, Baird says, \u201cweep with the women and dictate to the men, all while cushioning herself with a dramatic large grief.\u201d<\/p>\n

Victoria, too, worked hard. She wrote some 2,500 words a day\u2014about 60 million words in her lifetime\u2014letters, memoranda, diaries. Unfortunately, her voluminous papers were carefully \u201cedited\u201d by her family after her death. Daughter Beatrice<\/a>, Victoria\u2019s youngest child, who lived until 1944, took on the job of rewriting her mother\u2019s diaries, turning the Queen\u2019s interesting, quirky observations into dry prose, then burning the originals. Baird terms this \u201cone of the greatest acts of historical censorship of the century.\u201d<\/p>\n

Victoria is great-great-great-great-great grandmother to the children of England\u2019s Prince William and his wife Kate Middleton. It\u2019s hard to believe so many generations have passed when Victoria remains so vivid in our cultural memory, for reasons this book amply justifies.<\/p>\n

<\/a>\"\"<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Julia Baird \u2013 This extensively researched biography landed in my \u201cto read\u201d pile at the same time the PBS series about Victoria was ready to begin. Naturally, differences in style and tone emerge, but the tv producers have hewn … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":true,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"Victoria: The Queen - Did PBS get it right?","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[265,266,126],"tags":[519,879,881,880,878],"class_list":["post-6433","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biography","category-history","category-reading-2","tag-england","tag-julia-baird","tag-prince-albert","tag-queen-victoria","tag-royal-family"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1FL","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6433","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6433"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6433\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6436,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6433\/revisions\/6436"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6433"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6433"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6433"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}