The Victoria Letters by Helen Rappaport

Author:Helen Rappaport
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollinsPublishers
Published: 2016-09-12T16:00:00+00:00

VICTORIA’S STATEMENT ON HER MARRIAGE TO THE PRIVY COUNCIL, 23 NOVEMBER 1839.

* * *

ON 15 OCTOBER 1839, with confidence in her unique royal prerogative, which meant that she had to propose to him, Victoria asked Albert to come to her little Blue Closet Room.

At about half past 12, I sent for Albert. He came to the Closet where I was alone, and after a few minutes I said to him, that I thought he must be aware why I wished them to come here, and that it would make me too happy if he would consent to what I wished (to marry me).

We embraced each other over and over again, and he was so kind, so affectionate; oh! to feel I was, and am, loved by such an Angel as Albert, was too great delight to describe! he is perfection; perfection in every way, in beauty, in everything!

~ VICTORIA’S JOURNAL, 15 OCTOBER 1839

All thought of postponing her marriage for another three or four years vanished: ‘Seeing Albert has changed all this.’ Albert was overwhelmed and wrote to his stepmother in Coburg, telling her, ‘The joyous openness of manner in which she told me this quite enchanted me. And I was quite carried away by it.’ He was ‘puzzled to believe that I should be the object of so much affection’. For Victoria’s love, once the floodgates were opened, was, as he was beginning to discover, a never-ending torrent.

It is said that after Albert returned to Coburg the Queen missed him so dreadfully that she spent her time singing ‘only German songs’, many of which they had sung together during his visit. In sympathy, romantically minded young women up and down the land were soon warbling a popular German ditty translated as ‘I Caught Her Tear at Parting’. It was sold for two shillings as ‘Prince Albert’s Parting Song’ and became the Victorian equivalent of a chart topper.

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