Their relationship has long been heralded as a true love match, with Queen Victoria famously spending the rest of her life in mourning following the death of her Royal Consort, Prince Albert, in 1861. Yet it may come as a relief to many couples to learn that their marriage wasn’t without its hiccups, as revealed in some of Prince Albert’s personal letters to his wife.
The notes have come to light as part of a new online resource, Prince Albert: His Life and Legacy, now available on the Royal Collection Trust website. Compiling some 22,000 items from the Royal Collection, Royal Archives and Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851, the fascinating range of material offers an insight into Albert’s role in his own lifetime, and the impact he continues to have on society today.
According to the Royal Collection Trust, Albert kept meticulous records throughout his life. Yet a number of these letters, written primarily between 1841 and 186, were uncharacteristically scruffy and hard to discern, indicating his impassioned emotional state. The original letters were in fact destroyed by the couple’s youngest daughter, Princess Beatrice, but photographic copies had already been made for the Royal Archives (although it is not known by whom).
The Daily Mail quotes a number of letters penned by Albert to his wife in his native German, in which he gives the queen quite the dressing-down. In one, he chides her for her conduct during an argument, writing: ‘You have again lost your self-control quite unnecessarily. I did not say a word which could wound you and I did not begin the conversation, but you have followed me about and continued it from room to room.
‘There is no need for me to promise to trust you for it was not a question of trust, but of your fidgety nature, which makes you insist on entering, with feverish eagerness, into details about orders and wishes which, in the case of a Queen, are commands to whomever they may be given.’
He proceeds: ‘I do my duty towards you even though it means that life is embittered by “scenes” when it should be governed by love and harmony. I look upon this with patience as a test which has to be undergone, but you hurt me desperately and at the same time do not help yourself.’
On another occasion, Albert accuses his wife of selfishness, lamenting: ‘We cannot, unhappily, bear your bodily sufferings for you – you must struggle with them alone. The moral ones are probably caused by them, but if you were rather less occupied with yourself (if that is possible) and your feelings (if that is possible) and took more interest in the outside world you would find that the greatest help of all.’
He also critiques her mothering (the couple had nine children together), writing: ‘It is indeed a pity that you find no consolation in the company of your children… The root of the difficulty lies in the mistaken notion that the function of a mother is to be always correcting, scolding, ordering them about and organising their activities… It is not possible to be on happy, friendly terms with people you have just been scolding, for it upsets scolder and scolded alike.’
For all their occasional scraps, however, Victoria certainly missed her late husband after his death, and never remarried despite outliving him by almost 40 years.
Discover more about Prince Albert: His Life and Legacy at albert.rct.uk
