Dan Snow's History Hit - Lucy Worsley on Queen Victoria

Episode Date: January 23, 2021

BAFTA winning historian and Joint Chief Curator of Historic Royal Palaces Lucy Worsley takes Dan on a tour of Kensington Palace, one of the principle royal residences since 1689, and the childhood home of Queen Victoria. 

Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. We've got another legend on the podcast. We've had some absolute legends.

We have Eric Foner, we've had Michael Wood, Mary Beard. We've got another legend on the podcast, a much younger legend, Lucy Worsley. She's the joint chief curator at Historic Royal Palaces, but she's probably best known for being a sort of general national treasure, author, TV presenter, total hero. I've had the opportunity to work with her several times. She's even nicer and more brilliant in the flesh than she appears to be on screen. She's everybody's favourite. She took me around Kensington Palace because that's in her gift. She can just take people around Kensington Palace for open to the public. This is a podcast that was broadcast a few years ago. We're rerunning it because we were in the mood. The Crown got us in the mood to look at some glorious interior royal spaces. So she's

talking me through Kensington Palace and all the things therein. Then we reenacted the scene where Prince Albert meets Victoria for the first time. Their eyes meet, they fall in love. And that took place in Kensington Palace. So enjoy this podcast. If you want to watch my documentaries with Lucy Worsley, we went around Jane Austen's house, and you can also see an extended version of this episode at Kensington Palace. You just get a history hit TV. It's still January actually, folks, and you can also see an extended version of this episode at Kensington Palace. You just get a history hit TV. It's still January, actually, folks, so you can get the whole thing extremely cheap. Just use the code January. Then you get the Netflix of history, not my word, the Times newspaper, the Times of London called it that. Very exciting. It's almost like I've planted an earworm in anyone that's ever listened to this podcast. Anyway, so the Netflix

history available for a month for free and 80% off your first three months, just a handful of pennies. Loose change will get you through to the spring with access to the world's best history channel. So please go and check that out. Use the code January at historyhit.tv. But in the meantime, everyone, enjoy this episode of the podcast with the one and only Lucy Worsley. I'm here in the beautiful gardens of Kensington Palace in London. This has been one of the principal residences for the royal family since 1689 when William and Mary moved in. I'm here today to talk about one of its most famous residents queen victorian to tell me about her talking to one of my favorite historians lucy worsley lucy as always you show me a good time you've now brought me into a backstage what's the word for this this is not open to

public we're in kensington palace is not open to the public this room and yet it's the most important room here well it is it isn't it's used for um education groups and special sessions so only the special people get to come in here. And this is the room where Queen Victoria slept. Well, before she was Queen Victoria. And this is the room in which perhaps my favourite moment in her life happened, which was that she was asleep in her bed that morning in June 1837. And then she was woken up very early with news that visitors had come to the palace.

And there was the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Lord Chamberlain. And they were kneeling down and kissing her hand and telling her that she'd now become the Queen. And the cool thing is that she was only 18. Amazing. And what do we know about her childhood in this room? Because it was quite unusual, wasn't it? Amazing. And what do we know about her childhood in this room? Because it was quite unusual, wasn't it? Well, one of the reasons that it's so joyful when she sort of becomes the queen and emerges from her shell and the duckling becomes the swan, is that she's had a weird, semi-abusive childhood here at Kensington Palace.

She was brought up by her mum, who was a single parent, her father died, and her mum didn't have all that much confidence in herself. And she'd fallen rather into the clutches of this villainous character called John Conroy. And he set something up that was called the Kensington system that sounds quite sinister. And it was partly it was about protecting her and keeping her safe. So she wasn't seen in public very often. She was kept here. She wasn't allowed to play with other little girls. It was partly PR. And that was, in a way, a good idea. Because it meant that she wasn't associated in people's minds with her very unpopular uncles, who were Kings George IV and then King William IV. So that was kind of a good aspect of the system. But the third aspect is that it was about breaking her spirit. And she was kept under surveillance. And there was, you know, control of her food and that sort of thing. And she remembered her childhood later

as a desperately unhappy time. So when she becomes queen, it's like, right, away with all of that. I'm not having any of that nonsense. I'm in charge now. You've just written this brilliant biography of her. How much do you think that childhood trauma affected her personality, her outlook, the way she was as a mother in later life? Well, I think it was hugely important because it was in the way...

It could have been the breaking of her, had she been a weaker, mushier kind of person. But in fact, it was the making of her because she learned to cope with pressure and the extraordinary what interests me about victoria and what i've written about quite a lot is how she had to work within the rules of being a victorian woman which were weird and complicated from our point of view and one of the first rules is as a girl in the early 19th century is that you are demure you're good you don't draw attention to yourself and yet she's going to live in this pressure

cooker of attention for the whole of her life she's going to be a global celebrity so growing up under surveillance was kind of a training for that okay well that's a positive spin on what sounded like a brutal experience now can i just ask about 19th century england and to today kensington palace that the public are allowed in here look at this beautiful lake out there it's a beautiful day in spring in the uk here sunshine through these windows how would she have looked out these windows and seen normal people or were people excluded from this area how how big was the sanitary area around victoria well kensington palace then as it is today had a sort of rural feel because although we're in the middle of London it has all these gardens all around it. The palace is here in the first place for the air, the healthy qualities of the air because William III for whom it was

built he suffered from asthma so he couldn't live at Whitehall down by the river it was too wet and smoggy for his lungs. So the gardens are very lovely and they were open to the public. Victoria's future subjects would stand up against the gate, looking in, peering in, seeing if they could get a glimpse of her. But there was a sort of healthy distance kept between her and them. And there is a sense being right here in the middle of the gardens that if you were living under the Kensington system, nobody could hear you scream. So that morning, she's just found out, she's been woken up, told her uncle's dad she's the queen.

What did she, what were her movements? Well, she went through this way in order to start the day's business, which had all been sort of laid out in advance for her so that she knew that she had to go and have her first meeting with her prime minister. Okay, who was? It was kinky Lord Melbourne. Oh yes, very kinky. Lord Melbourne, who we know to have been a spanker and quite a dodgy character in a lot of ways. Not the sort

of man that you would leave your 18-year-old daughter with, but what he did have was immense savoir-faire and knowledge of the world and he was a pretty gifted politician so she came through here okay you're getting all behind the scenes this is very exciting meeting room this was originally uh designed as an exercise and picture gallery and all of these really grand georgian state apartments at kensington palace they became the subject of sort of amusing but distressing territorial battles when Victoria was growing up because she and her mum were allowed to live downstairs in some pokey little rooms. And because this small unit, the unit at Kensington, was at odds with the main body of the royal family, they were supposed to stay downstairs

in the pokey little rooms. But gradually, they took over more and more of these big grand rooms upstairs, thinking, this is the future queen here. She deserves better accommodation. But when Victoria was growing up, she had quite a lot of other older cousins. And it was only as they began to die one by one that it became clear that she would be the one. Oh, I see.

Who would inherit the throne. I didn't actually know that. So when did it become really pretty clear? From what age do you think, right, it's going to be me? Possibly about 11. It's not entirely clear. There's this famous scene that's supposed to have unfolded in the schoolroom at Kensington Palace with Victoria's governess, who's this fantastic woman called Louise Leighton. She comes over as a dry old stick, but I think that Leighton had sort of fire in her belly. And she was definitely on Victoria's side against the system. And there's this famous scene that Leighton records in her memoirs,

which is that they're looking at the family tree together one day. And Victoria says, hang on, hang on, who's next? Is it me? And Leighton says, yes, it is you. And Victoria is supposed to have said, I will be good. Now, I've drilled down into this moment in some detail because it sounds too good to be true for me. And I do think that much as I love Leighton,

Leighton is the woman who taught Victoria that it's better to be wicked than to be weak. That's one of the legacies that she made to this princess who was supposed to be quiet and good and all of these other early 19th century sorts of things. But I think that the I will be good scene is Leighton's own

sort of post-factual dramatising of the situation. Would an 11-year-old girl really say that it's it fits in with victorian culture that's what the victorians would have liked to have believed that an 11 year old girl would have said that i don't think it's very true and there are other sources that sort of contradict it my daughter would say something like i will kick ass i will kick ass and steal everybody's money she would not be as sweet.

So this was all divided up. Okay. And so, and we should ask about Kingston Palace. As a, when she became queen, she banished her mum, sort of. Yes. What else did she, did she remain here or did she go to Buckingham Palace? Or what was her, where did she choose to take up residence? She was out of here.

This was to her a place of unhappy memories. So she went off as soon as she could to Buckingham Palace and she started throwing balls and parties and enjoying her new sort of power that she had. It wouldn't go on like that. She had all sorts of buffets and problems in her early reign, but the first year of it, she loved. Was she sort of quite naive? Did she know how to socialise people her own age and men and things like that? How did she navigate all that? You see, with Victoria, a lot of me thinks, what are the rules of the age and how did she cope with overcoming them? Because that's what

she had to do. She had to break free of this expectation that she was supposed to be a non-entity as Victorian girls, pre-Victorian girls were expected to be. And she did that with such conviction. She became such a determined, eccentric, monstrous person in some aspects of her personality. And I think that she just had enormous charisma and sort of reserves of something within her. I think of her reign as being successful in terms of

you know the monarchy i'm not saying that monarchy is the best form of government but she was in many ways by biological chance of her gender the perfect monarch because she was able to get through all of these 60 years of her reign without making any huge missteps and because she was female and was able to absorb the pressure of being monarchy because of being the monarch, because of this character that she had, in a way she was the perfect monarch for the 19th century. Because all over Europe, other monarchs were having revolutions carried out against them. Thrones were falling. But in Britain, because we had this woman,

less threatening, not going to bother overthrowing her. She's kind of a stealth monarch, if you like. She was the perfect woman for the age, as it turned out. This is Dan Snow's History. Listen to Lucy Worsley. We're in Kensington Palace. It's all happening. More after this.

Land a Viking longship on island shores. Scramble over the dunes of ancient Egypt and avoid the Poisoner's Cup in Renaissance Florence. Each week on Echoes of History, we uncover the epic stories that inspire Assassin's Creed. We're stepping into feudal Japan in our special series, Chasing Shadows, where samurai warlords and shinobi spies teach us the tactics and skills needed not only to survive, but to conquer. Whether you're preparing for Assassin's Creed Shadows

or fascinated by history and great stories, listen to Echoes of History, a Ubisoft podcast brought to you by History Hits. There are new episodes every week. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists,

entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold. She channeled that sort of Victorian spirit of philanthropy, didn't she? She's very active. She sort of, presumably she's trying to... This is debatable.

Okay, good. Tell me. Okay, go on. Was Queen Victoria a good philanthropist? Probably not. No. It was her son and his generation who began to come up with this idea that the monarchy should be a force for philanthropy.

Victoria amassed wealth during the course of her reign, particularly under the stewardship of Albert, who was very good at this sort of thing. One of the ways in which Albert got his hands on the levers of power was initially through reforming the wasteful royal household. And once he had done that, he thought, I'm going to move on. I'm going to start reforming the country now. So it wasn't part of the philanthropic model of monarchy just yet. And she was deeply socially socially conservative she really felt that people ought to stay in their proper places in life she said what's the point of educating people who are going to be servants that sort of thing which is most regrettable so victoria has come into this

room wearing a dressing gown or not oh that's the myth uh well the very first part of the morning she was in her dressing gown but she did get dressed into a very simple black dress because her uncle had just died of course very sad and then she went down this way okay to make her first public appearance really so in front of who well in front of um about i think there were even 200 ish of them grandees grandees they're called the privy counselors and they all started rushing to the palace just as soon as they got the news 200-ish of them. Grandees. Grandees. They're called the Privy Councillors. And they all started rushing to the palace just as soon as they got the news to hold the first meeting. It's called the Accession Council. And at it, everybody says, yes, you're the queen.

And she says, yes, I am the queen. And so to get to it, she had to go down this staircase, which is important in the mythology of Kensington Palace. which is important in the mythology of Kensington Palace, because part of the system's rules, one hears, that she wasn't allowed to go downstairs without holding somebody's hand. It sounds like a factoid, doesn't it? Yes. It sounds like it's not really true. So I went deep into this and eventually found a 19th century courtier called Lord Esher, and he recorded that one of Queen Victoria's daughters had told him

that Queen Victoria had told her that it was true about the handholding on the stairs. It's one of those such satisfying moments when you finally skewer something to be true or not true. But, you know, the ironic thing is that the stairs are really steep. Yeah, it's not a bad idea. You can see why the handholding might have been instituted. But on the day, the first day of her reign, once she was queen, no more hand-holding now. She came down all alone.

So she came down here. Now we're going to go through this no-entry sign. We're going to go through a no-entry sign. Oh, it's work in progress here. The builders are in. So these, this is our new toy. These rooms, these are the rooms downstairs where Queen Victoria was actually living, as opposed to the big grand state apartments upstairs.

Okay. And this little funny looking thing is Queen Victoria's travelling bed. Really? Yes, which we have, I know it doesn't, it looks like a table upside down. It all comes apart. It's all held together with these little hooks.

That's so clever. So it can be flat-packed. And eyes, yes. And the place it holds in our story is that during the later years of the Kensington system, she did begin to make these things that I call her publicity tours. And Conroy, although he's definitely the villain of the story,

was a man with a good grasp of the business of PR. And he did start to arrange these stage-managed tours through the kingdom. She'd stay in the houses of noblemen. She'd take her own bed with her. And this was to give glimpses of the coming queen and it started to build up this sense of anticipation and support for her coming reign so we always like a royal bed we like a grand state bed with plumes and a canopy and you know masses of uh curtains and decoration and what have a whatever but we also like um a simple that's quite simple bed like that yeah i would not fit on that bed that is a simple fact right so she's come through she's coming through here oh yes yes yes she's progressing through the palace we are now

going to go through into the red saloon these are the rooms that's on the 24th of may are going to be opened up to our visitors okay in their new victorian splendor how do you decide because this building is a georgian building it's a lake stewart building it's a victour. How do you decide? Because this building is a Georgian building, it's a Lake Stewart building, it's a Victorian building. Do you just insert exhibitions that suit you guys, the stories you want to tell? Research. And what we think is important at any given time changes, actually.

So the last time these rooms were done, more than 10 years ago, they actually told the story of Victoria and Albert and one of the things we're thinking now in 2018-2019 is hang on, Albert didn't live here she should be the heroine of her own story so we have made them Queen Victoria's own childhood rooms again

and this is where she made her first public appearance so on the first day of her reign, she came in here. Imagine it completely full of men in black. That was the patriarchy just crammed into this room, the establishment, and they had come to judge her. There's no getting away from that. And she's an 18-year-old. Tiny girl as well really short insignificant looking but

with poise and that's what impressed them all they said there was so much more here than was expected and the Duke of Wellington he said she not only filled her chair she filled the room it was just an epic beginning to her reign how great you've got the old iron duke here yes yes my goodness and lord melbourne he was there as well he coached her for this moment and he was so moved by it he was in tears and everybody was going down and doing the hand kissing and it all appeared to be the start of a glorious reign right we're out of the exhibition rooms and this area here is called the stone stairs the significance of the stone stairs is that when she was 16 she was standing exactly where we are and that door

from the courtyard opened and in came her young german cousin albert so they first met on this spot this is where they exchanged glances with each other. And you think, wow, there's the sizzle of the great love affair beginning. Actually, no, they didn't take to each other at all. So when did they, because it was a love match when it eventually happened, wasn't it? It was, but what is love in the 19th century? These are the kind of questions that really interest me. It was an arranged match. They were supposed to do it.

They knew from birth that their families had intended this at 16 she actually said no I just don't want to really I'm too young for this go go away Albert and then she became queen and then she was having loads of fun and then after a couple of years she began to to wobble she began to experience bad press for the first time and she began to lose confidence in herself and it's so sort of sad to see that happening but it was inevitable because she was under just so much pressure to get married so by the time she reached 20 so four years after the romantic moment on the staircase she did agree to marry him and from then you know she embraced it totally and she became the perfect 19th century wife,

submissive in every respect. But that's one of the reasons why she was such a good queen for that age, because she was able to perform that role to perfection in public. They had terrible rows in private. Yeah, but that is not how they presented themselves to the world. And that's not how people think of them to this day and was his death the great tragedy you know she spent the rest of her life in mourning all that sort of stuff i mean what effect did his death have on her well it was it's you know it's seen as the great hinge in her life really isn't it and that's one of the things

that we tried to overcome in our exhibition by showing that after he was out of the way, she still had half of her life without him. A whole another 40 years to go without him. And she did regain confidence during that period. And there are all sorts of advantages to being a widow in 19th century society because it's the one time in your life as a woman where you control your own wealth you're not under the control of your father your brother your husband anymore so in a way we see a return to form so victoria has this reputation as a queen empress who straddles this incredibly turbulent period in british and history. The monarchy survives. Her descendants still sit on the throne. How much of that is down to her and how much of it is luck or Britain's imperial position

or wealth at the time? If you've got a huge, rapacious, greedy organisation like the British Empire that's going around the world, snapping up other people's territory, it's kind of brilliant politics that the head of it is a little old grandmother dressed in black. She doesn't look like she's evil, does she? The Death Star isn't ruled over by a little old lady in a bonnet. It's ruled over by cruel-looking

Darth Vader. It's just ideal that she was a little old lady in terms of politics and in terms of politics is this a reign in which we see the last proper royal interventions in our politics does she craft this new monarchy that becomes above politics a sort of unifying symbolic figure um what her reign saw was the last remaining vestiges of absolutism falling away and a new sort of influential rather than powerful monarchy developing. And Albert had quite a different model. He wanted the monarchy to be more of a force for intervention in politics, for making the world a better place. But that didn't work. That wasn't quite appropriate in Britain. And there is an argument that if Albert had lived,

if he'd gone on longer, there would have been a revolution because the politicians wouldn't have stood for this. But what Victoria brought to the party was not Albert's intellectual intelligence. He clearly was a very clever man. What she brought was emotional intelligence. And she was a very clever man. What she bought was emotional intelligence and she was a very instinctive politician. I sort of feel that today she could be a columnist in the Daily Mail. She just had a way of reaching out very directly to ordinary middle England and making those people feel that the monarchy was on their side and that's why the monarchy survived into the 20th century when so many others didn't. Lucy, as ever, captivating, extraordinary tour around the palace.

Thank you very much indeed. Tell us a book and exhibition. My book about Queen Victoria is called Queen Victoria, Daughter, Wife, Mother, Widow. And our new exhibition that you've seen in progress today, that's not the finished thing.

That's a behind the scenes glimpse. It's all going to be ready for you on the 24th of May, which is Queen Victoria's 200th birthday. Hope you enjoyed the podcast. Just before you go, a bit of a favour to ask. I totally understand if you don't want to become a subscriber or pay me any cash money.

Makes sense. But if you could just do me a favour, it's for free. Go to iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you give it a five-star rating and give it an absolutely glowing review, purge yourself, give it a glowing review, I'd really appreciate that. It's tough weather, the law of the jungle out there.

And I need all the fire support I can get. So that will boost it up the charts. It's so tiresome. But if you could do it, I'd be very, very grateful. Thank you. Douglas Adams, the genius behind The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, was a master satirist

who cloaked a sharp political edge beneath his absurdist wit. Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth explores the ideas of the man who foresaw the dangers of the digital age and our failing politics with astounding clarity. Hear the recordings that inspired a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs, and politicians. a generation of futurists, entrepreneurs and politicians. Get Douglas Adams' The Ends of the Earth now at pushkin.fm slash audiobooks or wherever audiobooks are sold.