In 2015 we will look at the world of the Victorians, not just in Britain and its colonies, but America and Europe. I will focus on three outstanding individuals who were major players in this drama: Queen Victoria, her favourite Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli and the writer Charles Dickens whose books woke the social conscience of his wide audience. Dickens was the celebrity writer of the period, touring widely and mobbed by adoring fans. His tours took him to America in one of the early steam powered liners. This was the age of steam when the Industrial Revolution and the British Empire were dominant forces!
Victoria & “Dizzy”
Why should the Queen of popular imagination-the dowdy, unsmiling, unapproachable, matter-of-fact Widow of Windsor be attracted to the flamboyant, honey-tongued and ageing exotic? With her dumpy shape and her dour expression the Queen looked like a grumpy German hausfrau; with his dyed ringlets, his parchment skin and his hunched shoulders, Disraeli had the air of a decaying roue.
Where he was said to be wily, Oriental and sphinx-like, she was known to be honest as the day was long. Victoria sat on the most important, most firmly-established throne in the world. Dizzy was looked upon as an adventurer, a man whom the Queen herself somewhat inaccurately described as having “risen from the people”. The adored Prince Albert had once said that Disraeli “had not one single element of the gentleman in his composition”. His very name was synonymous with Jewry. (Jews were not allowed to stand for parliament) and the Queen had refused a peerage for Lionel de Rothschild on the grounds of his being a Jew.
But by the 1870s the lessons Albert had instilled were being abandoned as “Dizzy” encouraged the Queen to dream of being a Queen Empress and from 1880 he steered her on a new course. For the last 25 years of her life she was no longer the Windsor widow, but a revered, awe-inspiring and almost mythical Queen Empress.
It had needed Disraeli the astute and imaginative statesman to open her eyes to the possibilities of her position, to recognize the underlying romanticism and emotionalism of her nature and to bring into full flower her latent sense of majesty. The old Queen who drove through the clamorous streets of imperial London on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee in 1897was very much Disraeli’s masterpiece!
(Source: Victoria & Disraeli by Theo Aronson).
Victoria & “Dizzy”
Why should the Queen of popular imagination-the dowdy, unsmiling, unapproachable, matter-of-fact Widow of Windsor be attracted to the flamboyant, honey-tongued and ageing exotic? With her dumpy shape and her dour expression the Queen looked like a grumpy German hausfrau; with his dyed ringlets, his parchment skin and his hunched shoulders, Disraeli had the air of a decaying roue.
Where he was said to be wily, Oriental and sphinx-like, she was known to be honest as the day was long. Victoria sat on the most important, most firmly-established throne in the world. Dizzy was looked upon as an adventurer, a man whom the Queen herself somewhat inaccurately described as having “risen from the people”. The adored Prince Albert had once said that Disraeli “had not one single element of the gentleman in his composition”. His very name was synonymous with Jewry. (Jews were not allowed to stand for parliament) and the Queen had refused a peerage for Lionel de Rothschild on the grounds of his being a Jew.
But by the 1870s the lessons Albert had instilled were being abandoned as “Dizzy” encouraged the Queen to dream of being a Queen Empress and from 1880 he steered her on a new course. For the last 25 years of her life she was no longer the Windsor widow, but a revered, awe-inspiring and almost mythical Queen Empress.
It had needed Disraeli the astute and imaginative statesman to open her eyes to the possibilities of her position, to recognize the underlying romanticism and emotionalism of her nature and to bring into full flower her latent sense of majesty. The old Queen who drove through the clamorous streets of imperial London on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee in 1897was very much Disraeli’s masterpiece!
(Source: Victoria & Disraeli by Theo Aronson).
