Serving Victoria
Life in the Royal Household
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3.9 • 35 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
“A vivid, entertaining and often comical portrait of life at court.” —Wall Street Journal
“Compelling. . . . The rhythm of court life at Windsor or Balmoral is the backdrop to a rich human drama, a story of people existing in uneasy intimacy with the royal family.” — Daily Telegraph (London)
Based on the letters and diaries of six members of Queen Victoria's household, Serving Victoria offers unique insight into the queen and her court. Seen through the eyes of her servants—including the governess to the royal children, her maid of honor, her chaplain, and her personal physician—Victoria emerges as more vulnerable, more emotional, more selfish, more comical than the austere figure depicted in her portraits.
We see a woman prone to fits of giggles, who wept easily and often, who shrank from confrontation yet insisted on controlling the lives of those around her. We witness her extraordinary and debilitating grief at the death of her husband, Albert, and her sympathy toward the tragedies that afflicted her household.
A perfect foil to the pomp and circumstance, prudery and conservatism that has become synonymous with Victoria's reign, Serving Victoria is an unforgettable glimpse of what it meant to serve the queen.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Drawing on letters and diaries, Hubbard (Queen Victoria) follows six courtiers who served Queen Victoria during her 63-year reign as they chafe under the constraints of court life, dine and travel with the Queen, and even indulge in the occasional joke at her expense. Kindly Sarah Lyttelton, supervisor of the nursery, witnessed a monarch who compulsively controlled those around her and even saw children as an impediment to her life with Prince Albert. Beautiful, intelligent Charlotte Canning, lady of the bedchamber and an accomplished watercolorist whose work Victoria appropriated for her souvenir albums, found court life a welcome respite from her humiliating marriage. Spirited feminist Mary Ponsonby, maid-of-honor, found the Victorian court to be "ludicrously bourgeois and exceedingly dull," while her modest husband Henry masterfully played the Queen's complex and contradictory character to his advantage. Later in life, Victoria was outraged when her easygoing, gregarious doctor, James Reid, decided to marry; and sympathetic chaplain Randall Davidson also angered her when he counseled against publication of her inappropriate memoir of her deceased servant, John Brown. Although hardly controversial, this is an engrossing and fresh view of Britain's longest-reigning monarch and day-to-day life at the Victorian court. 16 pages of illus. and photos.
Customer Reviews
Very Interesting
A good idea for structuring this book. With the help of different letters, diaries and memoirs a lot is learned about Victoria and how she lived. Much of the information is not exactly surprising, since Victoria lived a long time and a lot has already been written about her. Her lords and ladies in waiting, doctors, clerics and children were not exactly the "downstairs" types, but they definitely were "in service". They tended to be honorable and discrete, but all together they knew a lot a about how things were with the royals. The book is often very funny, sometimes pathetic and often shows the petty bickering and jealousies all too well.