The queen bee: Victoria’s life as ‘told’ by the women who served her

Serving Victoria

“She did not belong to any conceivable category of monarchs or women”. The words of Arthur Ponsonby, son of Sir Henry Ponsonby, who was private secretary to Victoria, are a fair summation of the queen who ruled Britain from 1837 to 1901.

In reading of Henry’s working life, one wonders if his employer was sane. So, how can a book covering 40 years of obdurate melancholy be so entertaining? One instance is Ponsonby’s account of Victoria’s sudden visit to the bedside of her son, the ailing Prince of Wales, at Sandringham, in 1871. Sir Henry is left wandering about the garden, when he is “suddenly carried away by a stampede of Royalties, headed by the Duke of Cambridge and brought up by Prince Leopold, going as fast as they could. We thought it was a mad bull. But they cried out ‘The Queen, the Queen’ and we all dashed into the house again and waited behind the door till the road was clear.”