Perspectives on Queen Victoria

A number of significant Television series programmes have or are coming to an end over the first part of October 2016 and it is difficult to decide on an order of importance so I will begin with Victoria, an ITV production of eight episodes aimed at the Downton Abbey Sunday night audience over the past eight weeks and where a second series and a Christmas special have been commissioned. The aim of the production was to compete with the BBC’s success of Poldark and its central male character, selecting Jenna Coleman who made her name in over150 episodes of the soap Emmerdale and since 2012 was the companion of Dr Who Matt Smith, with whom she worked previously and where it is said she can talk faster than him.  The series was therefore set up as mass entertainment and not a documentary on our knowledge of the Empress of India, head of the Empire, long reigning, great grandmother with many children, refusing to recognise her public role following the death of her husband and overseeing as head of state the most dramatic and significant period in the economic and social history of Britain.

Because of this I commenced to study social and economic as well as political history during the first year at Ruskin College 19611962 having previously obtained my only Advanced Level General certificate of education in the British Constitution and one of the ordinary level certificates in History and although I changed to public and social administration and child social work I have maintained an interest in the period over subsequent decades building up a mini library of non fiction.

The overview of the period centering on the role of Government are Edward Woodward’s Age of Reform 1815 to 1870 and The Ensor England 1870-1914 in the Oxford History  series, together with  Court’s Economic History, Arthur Bryant’s English Saga, and with a focus on Queen Victoria, Kings and Queens England edited by Antonia Fraser together with her editing of the  Dorothy Marshalls Victoria which includes contemporary visual records and the authoritative biography by Elizabeth Longford who was gained access to the Royal records and a wide range of other documentation including the diaries. The relationship between Queen Victoria and Lord Melbourne, a period in which she was referred to as Mrs Melbourne because of the amount of time spent with him, is covered in David Cecil’s biography called Melbourne. G.M Young’s Portrait of an Age together with the Victoria Age 1815-1914 by R J Evans provides also broad sweeps of the period. Cole and Postgate’s, The Common People and Cole’s History of the British working class movement cover the traumatic transition from an agricultural to industrial economy. Social concerns are covered in the biography of Shaftesbury by Georgina Battiscombe with the underclass covered in Peter Quennell’s London Underworld and Kellow Chesney’s The Victorian Underworld, together with Dickens of London by Wolf Mankowitz and contrasting with Young’s Victorian Essays and Lytton Strachey’s Eminent Victorians. The last word on the era of the British Empire is covered by Colin Cross in The Fall of the British Empire.

With this knowledge immediate available together with films and TV series about the era going back over several decades I commenced to view the new television series with some apprehension asking the question how will it measure up as dramatic and information entertainment as well as historical accuracy? The most recent films have been Emily Blunt’s Young Victoria and Judy Dench as the widow Queen, provocatively titled, Mrs Brown but I can go back to the Anna Neagle films made in 1937 and 1938 Victoria the Great and Sixty Glorious Years, the BBC TV series Happy and Glorious 1952, the 1964 Granada TV series Victoria Regina and their I997 series Victoria and Albert. Give my recent writing on the Kinks they created a song in 1969 called Victoria.

The mistake I believe ITV has made is to attempt a ratings and attention competition with the BBC over Poldark and the need to attract the Down Abbey and Upstairs and Downstairs audience and the younger generation to stay watching after the X Factor by some spicing up and creating events about without there is no historical basis or twisting past events to meet fashionable contemporary attitudes. The audience has fallen from eight and a half to just under seven and a half million before the last series one episode this past Sunday 9^th October 2016. The choice of the former Dr Who assistant as the Queen and the approach of the production led to a massive outburst of spleen in the Spectator by James Delingpole who called the work silly, facile and irresponsible and went on as a sub head to say “I blame the feminisation of culture.” His outburst provoked a massive response of outrage. The Guardian was more appreciative but also opened by suggesting that ITV “didn’t need to embellish” the life of the Queen, claiming it was wild enough already. Matthew Dennison went onto suggest that its silliness was due to exaggeration that grossly distorting of facts arguing that a good fist was made of the relationship between the young Queen and Lord Melbourne. She did loathe her mother’s “adviser” and thought her mother weak and over protective. She resisted the attempts at forced marriage and came to adore him. There was open hostility to Albert because he was German and resistance to his being given a formal role and by Victoria to his participation in helping out in her official role. She was the subject of what appeared at the time to be an assassination attempt but the idea that Albert took an immediate interest in the plight of the working classes or the Queen expressed views in support of the Chartist movement appear to have no foundation. It would be surprising if any young mother did not have great fears about her first child birth and the loss of some children was commonplace as well as breeding many children in part to compensate for their loss, but mainly because begetting children was regarded as a male right and confirmation of his masculinity and respective roles of men and women in their place. In this respect the notion of any woman, including a reigning head of state having opinions or taking decisions unguided by men was unthinkable. I also suspect that there is no evidence for the stories concerning the Royal Household.

My response after watching the first episode live has been to record and watch when I can later sometimes fast forwarding sequences lacking any interest. I have never watched Poldark. I looked forward to watching Downton Abbey which had characters of substance which I was able to believe in and where a commitment to portraying the period was scrupulously researched and implemented throughout. I came to care about most of the characters but this was lacking throughout the first series of Victoria. It will be interesting to see the width of the time period and the  international and nation event upon which the second series is to be based.