My Albert’s love is bliss beyond belief. We did not sleep much!
How Queen Victoria’s real-life passion was MUCH racier than the TV show – as her own breathlessly sensual letters reveal
THE sizzling scenes between Queen Victoria and Prince Albert have managed to eclipse Poldark thanks to their bodice-ripping intensity.
But as the two series compete in the battle for Sunday night ratings, you might assume that the passion between the royal couple has been ‘sexed up’ a little, especially in an era famous for its emotional restraint.
The truth, however, is that the relationship between Victoria and Albert was every bit as lusty as it is portrayed on screen.
The Queen’s journals and letters — and the pair’s correspondence — show an intense attraction that remained undimmed throughout their 21-year marriage until Albert’s death from typhoid fever at the age of 42.
Here, painstakingly pieced together from letters and journals in biographies and royal archives, is Victoria and Albert’s love story in their own words.
The first cousins met as teenagers in London for a few brief, awkward, chaperoned days in 1836 when he travelled from Germany for her 17th birthday celebrations. He was just 16.
They were introduced by their mutual uncle, King Leopold I of Belgium. In a letter to him, written at Kensington Palace on June 7, 1836, it was clear Victoria was immediately very taken with the young Albert: Dear Dearest Uncle, I must thank you, my beloved Uncle, for the prospect of great happiness you have contributed to give me, in the person of dear Albert.
Allow me, then, my dearest Uncle, to tell you how delighted I am with him, and how much I
like him in every way. He possesses every quality that could be desired to render me perfectly happy. He is so sensible, so kind and so good, and so amiable, too. He has, besides, the most pleasing and delightful exterior and appearance you can possibly see. Victoria However, sparks really flew on their second meeting three years later. Since their first meeting, she had become Queen at the age of 18 — and he had written to congratulate her.
The moment she saw Albert, by now a strapping 20-year- old man, arrive at Windsor Castle, she was smitten.
Writing in her journal on the evening of the day he arrived at the castle on October 11, 1839, she was beside herself with lust:
‘It was with some emotion that I beheld Albert, who is beautiful. He really is quite charming, and so excessively handsome, such beautiful blue eyes, an exquisite nose, and such a pretty mouth with delicate mustachios and slight, but very slight whiskers; a beautiful figure, broad in the shoulders and a fine waist. My heart is quite going!’
Just four days later, on October 15, 1839, as dictated by royal protocol, Victoria, as a reigning monarch, proposed to Albert after summoning him to her rooms.
Afterwards, the young queen wrote in her journal: ‘I said to him that it would make me too happy if he would consent to what I wanted (that he should marry me). We embraced each other over and over again, and he was so kind and so affectionate.’
Oh, to feel I was, and am, loved by such an angel as Albert was too great a delight to describe. I told him I was quite unworthy of him and kissed his dear hand. Oh! How I adore and love him, I cannot say.’ From the start, Victoria was besotted by Albert and never tired of expressing her lust for him. ‘He is extremely handsome, his hair about the same colour as mine. His eyes are large and blue and he has a beautiful nose and very sweet mouth with fine teeth. But the charm of his countenance is his expression, which is most delightful.’
Any preconceptions of Victoria as a stuffy old prude are instantly dismissed when you read her recollections of inspecting a military parade in Hyde Park: ‘I just saw my dearest Albert in his white cashmere breeches, with nothing on underneath,’ she wrote in her journal.
Now they had decided to marry, Albert had to return to Saxe-Coburg to organise his affairs before moving back to England. They were apart for three months — and the couple’s letters show their intense longing for each other. After a rough sea crossing to France, Albert wrote this letter from Calais to Victoria, dated November 15, 1839: Dearest, deeply loved Victoria, I need not tell you that since we left, all my thoughts have been with you at Windsor, and that your image fills my whole soul.
Even in my dreams I never imagined that I should find so much love on earth. How that moment shines for me when I was close to you, with your hand in mine. Those days flew by so quickly, but our separation will fly equally so.
Heaven has sent me an angel whose brightness shall illumine my life. Body and soul ever your slave, Albert
Back at home, Victoria said she was inconsolable at being away from him. She wrote in her journal on November 14, 1839: ‘ Oh, how I love him, how intensely, how devotedly, how ardently. I cried and felt so sad. Walked. Cried.’
Albert returned on February 7, 1840 and the couple married three days later at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace. They were both 20.
That afternoon, they left for Windsor Castle for their wedding night — and it seems Albert more than exceeded Victoria’s expectations. Victoria wrote effusively in her journal: ‘It was a gratifying and bewilder- ing experience . . . I never, never spent such an evening. His excessive love and affection gave me feelings of heavenly love and happiness. He clasped me in his arms and we kissed each other again and again.
His beauty, his sweetness and gentleness — really how can I ever be thankful enough to have such a husband!
To lie by his side, and in his arms, and on his dear bosom, and be called by names of tenderness, I have never yet heard used to me before — this was the happiest day of my life. It was bliss beyond belief!
When day dawned (for we did not sleep much) and I beheld that beautiful face by my side, it was more than I can express! Oh, was ever woman so blessed as I am.’
AFEW days later, Victoria couldn’t resist revealing more details of their intimacy in her journal. On February 13, 1840, she wrote: ‘My dearest Albert put on my stockings for me. I went in and saw him shave — a great delight for me.’ Victoria fell pregnant immediately. Four years into their marriage, and already with four children, the couple’s ardour showed no sign of cooling off. On a trip away from home in January 1844, Albert was clearly missing his young wife dreadfully. He wrote: ‘My Own Darling, you will, while I write, be getting ready for luncheon and will find the place vacant where I sat yesterday. In your heart, however, I hope my place will not be vacant. I, at least, have you on board with me in spirit. I reiterate my entreaty. Bear up and don’t give way to low spirits but try to occupy your self as much as possible. You are even now half a day nearer to seeing me again, by the time you get this letter it will be a whole day, 13 more and I am again within your arms.’ Often Victoria admitted that she was much more interested in her husband, and that her children actually irritated her. In 1857, by which time they had nine children, she wrote to her Uncle Leopold: ‘ Yo u cannot think . . . how completely deroulee I am and feel when he is away, or how I count the numerous children are as nothing to me when he is away.’ However, like every couple, the pair had rows, as they battled over who was in charge of ruling the country and their relationship. When Victoria became short-tempered, Albert would walk away, and would write to her
rather than row with her, instructing her to calm down. Victoria admitted in her journal that she needed to control her temper.
On January 20, 1842, she wrote to her adviser Baron Stockmar, talking about her temper problems: ‘There is often an irritability within me which makes me say cross and odious things which I don’t myself believe and which I fear hurt Albert.’
In 1858, Albert wrote to Victoria, who he had taken to calling ‘dear child’ or ‘dear good little one’: ‘I do my duty towards you even though 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.’
Albert would also find her passionate and jealous outbursts too much, as revealed in a letter to Baron Stockmar in January 1842: ‘Victoria is too hasty and passionate for me to be able to often speak of my difficulties. She will not hear me out but flies into a rage and overwhelms me with reproaches, suspicious wants of trust, ambition and envy.’
He also spoke of his frustration at playing second fiddle to his wife: ‘In my whole life I am very happy and contented but the difficulty in filling my place with proper dignity is that I am only a husband and not master of the house.’
There was frustration on Victoria’s side, too. She did not like the fact that being a woman meant she had to obey her husband.
She wrote to her daughter, Vicky, who was getting married, in 1860: ‘All marriage is such a lottery. The happiness is always in exchange though it may be happy. Still the poor woman is always bodily and morally husband’s slave. It sticks in my throat.’
However, despite the tensions in their relationship, Albert said they were still happy to the end. In February 1861, the year he died, he wrote to Stockmar: ‘How many a storm has swept over (our marriage). Still it continues green and fresh and throws out vigorous roots, from which I can, with gratitude to God, acknowledge that much good will yet be engendered for the world.’
In 1861, as Albert’s health failed due to stomach problems made worse by suspected typhoid, Victoria wrote in her journal how she feared she would not be able to live without him: ‘God bless and ever preserve my precious Albert, my adored Husband! So much is so different this year, nothing festive, we are on a journey and separated from many of our children, and my spirit’s bad. May God mercifully grant that we may long, very long be spared to live together and that I may never survive him.’ Albert’s final weeks were spent at Windsor Castle. He died in its Blue Room on December 14, 1861. Victoria was out of the room and had to be fetched by their daughter, the 18-year- old Princess Alice.
Victoria described the scene in her personal journal saying: ‘I took his dear left hand which was already cold . . . two or three long but perfectly gentle breaths were drawn, the hand clasping mine and all, all was over.
I stood up and kissed his dear heavenly forehead and called out in a bitter and agonising cry: ‘Oh! My dear darling!” and then dropped to my knees in mute distracted despair, unable to utter a word or shed a tear.’
In the three months after Albert’s death, Victoria, still only 42, contemplated suicide.
A year later, on December 18, 1862, she wrote a letter to her daughter Vicky which summed up their relationship — and which explains why she never came out of mourning for the rest of her life. My dearest child, Truly the Prince was my entire self, my very life and soul. I only lived through him. My heavenly angel.
Surely there can never have been such a union, such trust and understanding between two people.
I try to feel and think I am living on with him and that his pure and perfect spirit is leading and inspiring me. There is no one left to hold me in their arms and press me to their heart.
Oh! How I admired Papa! How in love I was with him! How everything about him was beautiful and precious in my eyes. Oh! How I miss all, all! Oh! Oh! The bitterness.