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The courts of the two Queens, in tone, in pomp, and in values, differed greatly from one another. Queen Elizabeth’s court, though considered a cultural backwater, was known for its dubious morals, at least in regard to the Queen’s interactions with her subjects. In addition, the Elizabethan court made a great show of conspicuous consumption. Queen Victoria’s court, on the other hand, was tempered in its excesses by the morality of her dear Albert. As a result, it is no coincidence that the phrase ‘Victorian morality’ still conjures up images of prudery and sexual repression.
Elizabeth I was as a monarch, was quick to reward her ‘pets’, though not always reliable in granting favors. As a result, many men vied for patronage, although not all were lucky enough to obtain it. The Queen often indulged in nepotism, and her maternal relatives from the great families of the Howards, Careys and Knollys all benefited from such. Until her reign, the Council, the sovereign’s advisors, and the Privy Chamber, or the positions available in the monarch’s household, had divided power fairly equally though not amiably. However, because of her sex, the Privy Chamber’s positions went to ladies from good families, instead of men with an eye towards their careers. As a result, the Privy Chamber’s importance dwindled rapidly, though it was considered politically advantageous to have one’s daughter in the royal household. Parliament wielded almost no power; in essence, it was the families and individuals she favored that had any hope of exerting political sway. Elizabethan politics was a time of unbridled patronage.
Elizabeth with Lute | | |
If the difficultly of getting one’s opportunity to curry favor with the Queen was disappointing to the young rakes of her reign, they could always burry themselves in the lively atmosphere of the court. Clothing was a central focus of the day, and to the dismay of many with limited resources, "the aspiring young courtier, eager to make an impression, could [and would need to] run up excessive bills with the tailor." Indeed, the court was often too expensive for it’s frugal mistress’ taste. Only the musical department was spared her money conscious eye. She was a talented amateur musician, but a true master of the art of dancing. She preferred the more risqué dances, such as those that showed the ankle of the woman involved, known at the Volta. The court was the center of English culture, and its tone of indulgence and nepotism was set by its dashing and charismatic Queen, who was perhaps fortunate to posses so much power, and was certainly the last of her kind to do so.
Queen Victoria’s court was the far more conservative and apolitical of the two. By her time, the monarchy of England was a decidedly constitutional one, and she could hardly move without Parliament’s careful watch. This Queen’s household was politically significant, though not for the same reasons that Henry VIII’s Privy Chamber had been. Instead of being a source of power, the royal household was supposed to reflect the political party scene in Parliament. The Queen, however, was less than enamored at the idea of changing her companions to suit the political moods of the country, especially if that meant giving up some her Whig friends for Tories. Her largest fights over this issue occurred early in her reign, at the fall of Prime Minister Melbourne’s government, and after much struggling the young Queen established her privilege to select her companions regardless of political temperament. However, this did not reverse the shift of power. Parliament was nipping at the heels of the sovereign. Already enacting major legislation such as the Reform Act of 1832, the Queen was no longer the sole source of power in the country. In its place, she had to be content to exercise the authority that did remain hers, while chafing under the regulations binding her, such as the rules dealing with the appointment and dismissal of ministers.
To call Victoria’s court Victorian would be a partial misnomer. Although this charismatic lady did dictate the tastes of England, it was her husband that shaped them to form the characteristics of the era. Albert had been traumatized as a little boy when his darling mother, after having been proven an adulteress, abruptly left her two sons and her philandering husband. As a result, Albert could not tolerate infidelity in any important person, believing his father’s indiscretions to be the cause of his mother’s unhappiness and eventual downfall. Under his guidance, the court became obsessed with the comforts of the loving family, and not the adult(erous) place it had been under Elizabeth.
However, Albert’s retiring tendencies were not the sole reason behind the move to a more private court. Since a woman headed the Victorian court, it naturally fell under the domestic sphere. Thus, while court life had fallen under the cruder public domain when headed by George IV or William IV, it now commenced in a gentler fashion under a female’s eye. Victoria, as a true woman of her age, was not allowed to venture far from the hearth, and indeed, felt that to do so would be to set a poor example. In keeping with the cult of Domesticity, the court was domesticated. During Elizabeth’s era, the court was not so tamed, partially because it was not yet culturally taboo for women to roam the public domain, and partially because the court was so politically important that to regulate it to family oriented drawing rooms would cripple the country’s political scene. Though the cult of Domesticity seems reactionary to twenty first century sensibilities, subscribing to its divisions of life was strikingly modern. Victoria and her culture were changing the role of the monarch to suit the role of the woman, synthesizing the two to create an oxymoronic ‘private court’; an action no less modernistic than that of Baron Haussman, re-writing Paris to suit the new transportation needs as well as the desire for security that the Emperor wished for.
Once the court’s lewd side had been tamed, a gentler, more family oriented focus became apparent. The royal couple had nine children, and would have perhaps had even more had Albert not died so young. Consequently, many of the activities of the Queen involved her children, usually her darling ‘baby’, or Princess Beatrice, the youngest of the brood, or ‘Lenchen’, also known as Princess Helena. After Albert’s death, most of the social action of the court became exclusively familial, as the Queen secluded herself from all unnecessary human contact. It was possible during this era to find people who had never laid eyes on their Queen, because of her strict isolation. Perhaps the Queen ought to have been grateful to Parliament–whom she detested as troublemakers–for this ability. Without the shift of political power and instability from the Crown to the ballot, the Queen would have become a ‘sitting duck’ politically, and no doubt have been replaced–forcefully–by a more vital contender. As it was, the only complaints calling for replacement were weak, and supportive of the Queen peacefully stepping down in favor for the Prince of Wales, who was by now well into his twenties and beyond.
Although both were Queens, Victoria and Elizabeth occupied very different roles in the political realm of the nation. Elizabeth reigned at a time in which the monarch was more than the head of the state, but rather the center of all political clout the kingdom could muster. Consequently, her court was a brilliant affair, but backed by intense rivalry and hatred. Also, since she was a ‘free woman’ she lent the court a free, sexual tone. The Virgin Queen had very few virgin companions. However, Victoria’s rule was steadily becoming less and less about the monarchy and increasingly dependent on Parliament for decisions, especially domestic ones. This allowed the Queen’s court to become a family oriented place, rather than the point of departure for all young men (and women) of nobility seeking a career. Her court was one of domesticity, the private home of a family made public. It was vastly unlike the reality of her predecessor.
Endnotes i] A.L. Rowse, The Tower of London in the History of Enlgand (New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1972), P. 42.
[ii] Peter Briamcombe. All the Queen’s Men: The World of Elizabeth I., (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 2000), p.25.
[iii] Ibid, p. 23.
[iv] Ibid, p. 20.
[v] Antonia Fraser, The Lives of the Kings and Queens of England (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995), P. 211.
[vi] Elizabeth Longford, Queen Victoria: Born to Succeed (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), P. 109.
[vii] Fraser, P. 296.
[viii] Queen Victoria, “Selections from the Journals of Queen Victoria” in Lord Edward Pelham-Clinton and Barry St-John Nevill, eds, Life at the Court of Queen Victoria (Salen: Salem House, 1984), p. 39. |
