There Queen Victoria (1819-1901), famous for her dedication to duty and the moral rigor that characterized not only her personality and her politics, but the entire period that took her name from her, the Victorian age, would have put her own feelings before official role only once in a lifetime. Overwhelmed by grief over the death of Prince Consort Albert and in contravention of the rules and principles of the Crown, the Queen would have sought comfort in a practice which was very popular at the time, although totally devoid of scientific basis and which immediately proved to be pure illusion: the spiritualism.
A successful marriage
For Queen Victoria the death of her husband, the prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha (1819-1861), represented a sort of existential watershed. From that 14 December 1861, when Albert died of typhoid fever and lung congestion at Windsor Castle (although recent studies have put forward the hypothesis of lung cancer), nothing was the same as before.
The sovereign gave in to the suffering: she decided to have her husband’s apartments closed forever, ordering that they remain unaltered, almost crystallized on his last day of life, as if she were really expecting Alberto’s return from one of his trips. He brought the mourning for the rest of her life (Vittoria outlived Albert by forty years) and chose to withdraw almost completely from public life, while continuing to carry out her official duties.
The Queen had first met the princehis first cousin (Victoria’s mother, Maria Louise Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld was the sister of Albert’s father, i.e. Ernest I of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) in 1836. Despite the distrust of the government and the people , given Alberto’s German origins, the two married on 10 February 1840.
They had nine children and Alberto proved to be a loyal and intelligent advisor, as well as a caring and apparently uninformed husband competition with his powerful wife (even if the debate is still open on this last point). Theirs was a successful union of love. There wasn’t the classic love at first sight, but rather a feeling that grew over time, proving to be more solid than a diamond, unassailable.
When Alberto died Vittoria suddenly felt alone, deprived of the only person who really knew her. In all likelihood she really had the feeling that the world was falling on her. It may seem exaggerated, since biographies give us one Queen inflexible and strong, yet she too went through a moment of profound emotional fragility, which she never fully overcame.
Precisely in this moment of acute suffering, according to the book “Whisperers. The Secret History of the Spirit World” by James Herbert Brennan (2013), Queen Victoria would have made an unexpected gesture, asking a medium to get in “contact” with the world of the dead to try to “communicate” with Prince Albert.
Seances
According to Brennan, Vittoria would have organized séances truly believing that she could still see and hear her beloved husband. At the time, spiritualism, born in France in the mid-nineteenth century, was a well-known and followed practice. The presumption of being able to speak with spirits through a “medium” fascinated people (it still happens today), convincing them (but it would be more correct to say deluding them) that it was possible to know the secrets of life after death and find, even if for a brief moment, , who had now left this world. It seems paradoxical, but he even dedicated himself to spiritualism Arthur Conan Doylethe famous creator of Sherlock Holmes.
Naturally, none of the alleged “mediums” and scholars of this particular field of occultism have ever managed to demonstrate the existence of spirits and, more generally, of paranormal entities. No one has ever brought evidence that could be analyzed from a scientific point of view (the famous science communicator and illusionist James Randi put a million dollars up for grabs in his “One Million Dollar Paranormal Challenge” for anyone who managed to reproduce a so-called paranormal phenomenon in a controlled context: the reward still “awaits” a winner).
On the contrary, unfortunately, many used (and continue to use) spiritualism and, in general, practices related tooccultismto cheat others, taking advantage of their weaknesses. The “medium” consulted by Queen Victoria would have said that it would have been possible to “contact” the deceased Alberto only through “the boy who usually carried (the prince’s) gun to Balmoral”or the Scottish valet John Brown (1826-1883) in the service of the sovereign from 1848.
Confidant or lover?
Brennan claims Queen Victoria “spoke” her late husband right through John Brown who, therefore, would have been a sort of intermediary, medium, during the alleged séances. Brown, however, was also at the center of another mystery. In the press of the time and in the most popular salons, rumors spread according to which after the death of Prince Albert, Victoria and John would have become lovers and would even have married in secret, giving birth to a child.
Stories never supported by facts that historians today consider nothing more than lies. At that moment, however, they had a great echo, further weakening the monarchical institution already tested by the rigid mourning of Queen Victoria. In reality it appears that John Brown was only a confidant of His Majestyenvied for the royal favor obtained and, for this reason, the victim of slander invented with the aim of making him fall from grace. Not to mention that the friendship between a ruler and a servant was, a priori, frowned upon, given the difference in social class.
The chatter, however, had no effect on Vittoria. After Brown’s death in March 1883, the sovereign he defined it “the most devoted of servants and the most sincere and dearest of friends…Perhaps never in history has there been such a strong and true bond, such a cordial and affectionate friendship between a sovereign and a servant…”.
Victory and spiritualism
It is impossible to say whether the Queen actually participated in seances. Likewise, not all scholars agree on his alleged interest in the occult. According to Brennan, Vittoria left handwritten pages about her friendship with Brown, but they were hidden or destroyed by the royal family. Correspondence between the valet and the Queen would also have been definitively eliminated. So, unfortunately, we will never know whether in those lines His Majesty also spoke about séances to “contact” the late Alberto, or whether it was simple gossip.
Elizabeth Longford, scholar and biographer of Queen Victoria, maintained that there was no evidence of the sovereign’s interest in spiritualism, but the historian Helen Rappaport recalls that upon the monarch’s death in 1901, her daughter, Princess Beatricewould have applied strict censorship on his mother’s letters and diaries. The reasons for this invasive and very questionable revision are understandable and, at least in some ways, understandable: Victoria’s descendants wanted to leave to posterity and history the image of an impeccable, conservative, traditionalist, dutiful sovereign. Therefore unassailable from every point of view.
As regards the séances, of which we have no evidence in any case, there is also a further problem of no small importance: Queen Victoria, as British monarch, was also the Supreme Head of the Anglican Church. She could not afford to compromise with superstition and practices which, in another historical moment, would have even cost her a conviction for witchcraft. His Majesty’s task was to uphold the principles of Christianity and the Church of England.
What would have happened if the people had known about the seances? How much damage would theAnglicanism? In the book “Queen Victoria. A Biographical Companion”, quoted by Vanity Fair UK, Rappaport wrote that the royal family wanted “ensure that Victoria’s reputation both as a person and as Head of the Church of England was not tarnished by the survival, in her writings, of any reference to unorthodox religious practices”.
Rappaport also reported a very interesting anecdote in this regard: the prime minister appears to be on the verge of death Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881) refused to receive Vittoria because, he said, “he just wants to ask me to bring a message to Alberto”.
The role of John Brown
From a human point of view, Vittoria’s fragility following the death of her husband is a completely normal fact, but as Queen, guide for the people, it was necessary for her to show a semblance of composure, the regal impassivity that contributes to strengthening the image of the Crown.
In any case, a doubt remains: whether His Majesty really organized any séanceswhat would John Brown’s role really have been? Why would the consulted medium have identified the valet as the “go-between” to reach Prince Albert? It may be that it was a coincidence, but given the uncertainty surrounding the entire matter, an agreement between Brown and the medium cannot be ruled out.
We are in the field of conjecture, but the options are not that many: perhaps the servant he truly believed in spiritualism. Or maybe he would have performed the ritual just to please the Queen. But he may also have acted to mock her, or to gain wider favor by becoming indispensable at court. From what little we know about the relationship between John and Vittoria, these last two hypotheses would seem the least likely, but not impossible.
The exorcism of Queen Elizabeth
The case of Queen Victoria and the alleged séances seems to have some points in common with a sort of exorcism that Elizabeth II allegedly had performed in 2001, at Sandringham. The monarch, convinced that the Palace was haunted by the ghost of Lady Dianawould have asked for the execution of a “rite” For “bring back tranquility”as the journalist Kenneth Rose recounted in his diaries: “The Queen’s lady-in-waiting told me that she had been invited by the Queen to Sandringham to attend a service conducted by the local parish priest in one of the rooms of the royal residence, the one in which King George VI died in 1952,” Why “infested by a spirit that made work impossible”.
The parish priest would have explained the strange thing phenomenon, arguing that “the atmosphere could have been due to Princess Diana: similar things could happen when someone died a violent death”. This ritual, although not confirmed, would also be found in the balance between what is right and appropriate for a sovereign and what is not.
There Queen Elizabeth she turned to a man of the Church, remaining within the Anglican religion from a formal point of view, but a monarch who would seem to admit the existence of ghosts and who seeks
to chase them away (or to evoke them, as in the case of Queen Victoria) remains a controversial situation, a shadow that must remain confined within the walls of the Palace, so that it does not obscure the splendor of the Crown.