Queen Victoria a Personal History

Christopher Hibbert has the marvelous ability to make historical subjects come alive. He succeeds again in this biography of Queen Victoria, This book is titled a Personal History, and that's really the focus. He turns the venerable monarch into a human being, with hopes, fears, heartaches, heartbreaks, a sense of humor, mood swings, petulance and even (gasp!) desires. Victoria's image (at least to Americans) is of the stuffy old monarch, unsmiling, and always dressed in black. Hibbert portrays quite a different picture - of a young woman who loved parties, dancing, and the affection of men. He also makes clear Victoria's physical passion for her husband, Albert. This is evident in the passage where, after giving birth to eight children, she is advised by her doctor not to have anymore. Her response was "You mean I can't have any more fun in bed?" Not what we expect from a Victorian! The portrait of a post-Albert Victoria is of a woman devasted by the death of her lover. Clearly the modern picture of Victoria comes from this stage of her life. However, this image is based on incorrect assumptions. Where we assume the stolid, frumpy queen arises from her belief in Victorian morals, in this book the picture is of a woman who lost her most precious soulmate, and whose last 40 years were a struggle against loneliness and depression, while bearing the heavy responsibility of being the most powerful monarch in the world. The book also vividly portrays the numerous characters in this remarkable woman's life, including Lord Liverpool, the Duke of Wellington, Disraeli, and Kaiser Wilhelm. Recommended to anyone with an interest in English history.

Queen Victoria was a complex character and Hibbert shows her in all her faults and good qualities, very fairly. A very nice balance between the private and the public Victoria, very well-written. If you are new to reading bios of Queen Victoria, I would read this first, then the older biography written by Elizabeth Longford (1965). Skip the Weintraub version; it stinks.

Christopher Hibbert's fascinating biography of Queen Victoria is aptly subtitled "A Personal History". This book focuses on Victoria's personal relationship with her family, her ministers and her staff. Given her extraordinary long life, there is a lot of material to cover. I was particularly interested in Victoria's contentious early relationship with her mother and the way the young queen was so successful in establishing her independence from the forces that hoped to use her as a tool for their personal ambitions. Equally fascinating was her relationship with Albert, the Prince Consort. Victoria's long widowhood and deification of her husband's memory is well-known. Her infamous grief has overshadowed Albert's real accomplishments and contributions to her reign. Hibbert also paints an in-depth portrait of Victoria's difficult relationships with her many children. After reading the book I impressed both with the queen's obvious charm and intelligence and equally appalled by her selfishness. In many ways Victoria's contradictory character shaped the world for nearly a decade. Hibbert has done an excellent job of portraying all facets of Victoria's life and written an entertaining and highly readable book.

It is quite true that Queen Victoria said, "We are not amused." She said this at one of her dinners, when a courtier had told a story that had made his end of the table laugh. She insisted that he repeat it, and he did so unwisely, for it was a risqué story, and it produced her unforgettable reprimand.But one of the lessons of _Queen Victoria: A Personal History_ (Basic Books) by Christopher Hibbert is that the Queen did have a sense of humor, even during her long widowhood. One of his chapters, indeed, is mostly devoted to the things that made her laugh. Letters of a maid-of-honor say, "the queen laughed very much," or "she was immensely amused and roared with laughter, her whole face changing and lighting up in a wonderful way," or "she was very funny at the evening concert... in excellent spirits and full of jokes." The comedian J. L. Toole was renowned for his imitation of the Queen, and was horrified after dinner when she insisted on seeing it. After the performance, she sat "for a while silent and serious, but then began to laugh, gently at first, and then more and more heartily." It is hard to believe that this risible monarch could have been doing anything but continuing the joke when she thereupon told him, "Mr Toole that was very clever, and very, very funny, and you must promise me you will never, never do it again."The compartmentalization into chapters is one of the attractive parts of this new biography. Hibbert himself lists "several excellent biographies" of the Queen, and it is clear that her larger-than-life persona will never exhaust the biographer's art. This book is of fair size (500 pages) but it is divided into 66 chapters, each one sticking, more or less, to its point. The chronology of the Queen's life sometimes suffers thereby, but each chapter has its light to give.Hibbert has had access to some letters and other papers not previously used in biographies, but there is not a great deal new to learn about this extraordinary woman. However, the organization of the book makes its episodes memorable and compelling. There are anecdotes on almost every page that bring the Queen into focus; especially good are descriptions of her traveling habits, her relations with her Prime Ministers, the dullness of her court life, and the difficulties with her children. She was a woman of many talents and weaknesses, and put herself forward in an amazingly intricate court and political system. This is a readable, full, and insightful biography.