Sex with the Queen (55 page)

not help but compare them with her weak, skinny, effeminate husband-to-be. Wallowing in tears, the little queen at first ab-solutely refused the marriage but was finally bullied into it by her ministers. Neither was Don Francisco pleased that he, who was disgusted at the thought of sex with a girl, would have to satisfy the seething passions of a fat giddy teenager.

For the wedding ceremony, the groom’s sunken chest and narrow shoulders had been carefully padded to lend his figure a bit more dignity. When the priest declared they were one flesh, both the bride and groom were sobbing loudly.

The queen later recalled, “What shall I say of a man who on his wedding night wore more lace than I?”43 Over the years Is-abella had several children whose paternity was attributed to var-ious Spanish officials, military men, and a strolling player. Her son the future Alfonso XII was reportedly fathered by an Ameri-can dental assistant. But at each baptism, Don Francisco proudly held the infant aloft on a silver salver, the traditional gesture of acknowledging a child as his own.

Though Don Francisco’s position was humiliating, he some-times managed to view it with humor. When the queen’s troops were sent to control a mob, Isabella bravely announced, “If I were a man, I would myself lead my soldiers to the fray.” To which her husband reportedly quipped, “And so would I if
I
were a man.”44

But if her husband accepted her infidelities, the Spanish peo-ple did not. In 1868 popular unrest forced her to find sanctuary in France. The outraged Spaniards, who had tolerated Queen Maria Luisa’s Manuel Godoy eighty years earlier, refused to tol-erate Isabella’s Carlos Marfori, the son of a cook whom the queen appointed governor of Madrid and chief of the royal household. Times had changed.

In their Paris exile, the ill-matched royal couple dropped all pretenses and separated. The slovenly Isabella took countless lovers, and the dapper Francisco raised countless poodles, all named after his wife’s lovers. He took up landscape painting and gave elegant dinner parties. The former king and queen saw each other only on their birthdays when, over a cup of coffee and a 2 5 2

s e x w i t h t h e q u e e n

cigarette, they would enjoy a good chat which inevitably degener-ated into a raging argument over past grievances. They would part in anger until the next birthday when they would do it all over again. On his deathbed at the age of eighty, Francisco in-sisted that Isabella stay far away from him so he could die in peace.

V i c t o r i a , Q u e e n o f B r i t a i n : M r s . B r o w n

In contrast to the scandals of Queen Isabella II of Spain, the marital devotion of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert of Great Britain created a sense of reverence and respect among their people. Sexual fidelity, domestic pleasures, an ever-increasing nursery, as well as tireless devotion to state affairs—these were qualities the British pointed to with pride in their sovereign.

The queen’s one affair of the heart was platonic, as all Victorian love affairs were supposed to be.

After the sudden death in 1861 of her beloved Albert at the age of forty-two, the queen, deeply depressed, withdrew from society. And society, after being deprived of the monarch’s pres-ence for several years, withdrew its approval of the queen. After three years of brooding in black, Victoria was roused from her torpor by a towering specimen of testosterone in a kilt.

John Brown, a farmer’s son, had worked as a groom for over a decade at Balmoral Castle in Scotland where the royal family va-cationed every August. In 1864, when Victoria’s doctor advised her to take up riding to lose weight, it was John Brown who took her out every afternoon. The queen developed quite a crush on the handsome Scot. His eyes were as blue as a clear Scottish sky, his face as chiseled as the rocky granite outcrops of the High-lands, his hair and beard a curly red-gold. Perhaps Brown’s best feature was his gorgeous muscular legs, perfectly formed, strong and sinewy, flashing beneath his kilt.

The dour widow, in her eternal black silk, her gray hair scraped up tightly in a knot on her head revealing pendulous jowls, inspired terror and trepidation among her own children.

t h e n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y

2 5 3

But when Brown spoke with all the bluntness of his race, the queen loved it. He told her she was getting fat, and she chuckled.

“Hoots, then, wumman,” he yelled, while fixing the strap of her bonnet, “can ye no hold yerr head up.”45

Once, when the queen met Brown for her daily ride, he cried, “What are ye daeing with that auld black dress on again?

It’s green-moulded.”46 Victoria, black silks rustling over her enormous crinoline, promptly went to her room to change her gown.

By February 1865 she decided Brown could never leave her side. She created a new post for him, “The Queen’s Highland Servant,” a position in which he would take orders only from the queen herself. His menial tasks—cleaning her boots and looking after her dogs—were given to other, lesser servants.

His sudden rise in the world had a corresponding effect on his arrogance; he routinely outraged the dukes and lords who served the queen. On one occasion Brown, poking his head into a palace billiard room, cast his icy blue gaze on the assembled courtiers and cried, “All what’s here dines with the Queen.”47

He was even impudent to the most powerful ministers, once cut-ting off Prime Minister William Gladstone with “Ye’ve said enough.”48

One day at Balmoral, Brown stomped into the room of the queen’s assistant private secretary, Arthur Bigge, and informed him, “You’ll no be going fishing. Her Majesty thinks it’s about time ye did some work.”49

The queen’s devotion to this ruffian completely confounded genteel courtiers. The moment they complained about him, Victoria would send them packing. They were forced to accept John Brown, but not without grumbling.

In 1866 Lord Edward Derby scolded, “Long solitary rides, in secluded parts of the park; constant attendance upon her in her room; private messages sent by him to persons of rank . . .

everything shows that she has selected this man for a kind of friendship which is absurd and unbecoming in her position.”50

Queen Victoria’s daughters, kept at arm’s length by the im-perious personage who was their mother, realized that Brown 2 5 4

s e x w i t h t h e q u e e n

enjoyed an intimacy with her that they never knew. Shrugging, they laughingly called Brown “Mama’s lover.”51

Brown became known as “the Queen’s stallion.”52 Rumors circulated that the queen was pregnant with his child but that this was no sin—the two had secretly married. Many referred to the queen—out of her hearing, of course—as “Mrs. Brown.”53

It is likely that Victoria flaunted her devotion to Brown be-cause their relationship was purely platonic, and as such, she had nothing to hide. She even told him that no one loved him more than she, and he gruffly replied he felt the same about her.

When riding out, Brown sat solidly on her carriage box, strong as Samson, eagle eyes searching the crowds for any threat to the queen. He steadied runaway horses, once grabbed a pistol from an assailant’s hand, and picked her up in his strong arms when the carriage overturned. He stood guard at her office door, barring the way for those who would disturb her.

In March 1883 John Brown woke up at Windsor Castle fever-ish and with a swelling on his face. When he died a few days later, the queen was inconsolable. It was almost like losing Albert all over again.

“I have lost my
dearest best
friend who no-one in this World can
ever
replace,” she wrote to her grandson. To Brown’s sister-in-law she wrote, “Weep with me for we all have lost the best, the truest heart that ever beat. My grief is unbounded, dreadful and I know not how to bear it, or how to believe it is possible. . . .

Dear, dear John—my dearest best friend to whom I could say everything & who always protected me so kindly. . . . I have no strong arm now.”54

Years before her death in 1901, the queen had arranged her funeral to the last detail and extracted a promise from her friend Sir James Reid that a photo of John Brown, and a lock of his hair, be placed in her left hand. Reid, not wishing to shock the family who were coming in for the final viewing, discreetly placed flowers over the hand so no one would see that Queen Victoria was being expedited to eternity with a photo of her ru-mored lover, the surly Scot.

t h e n i n e t e e n t h c e n t u r y

2 5 5

E I G H T

t h e t u r n o f t h e

t w e n t i e t h c e n t u r y :

s t r u g g l e f o r e q u a l i t y

For what is wedlock forced but a hell,

an age of discord and continual strife?

— w i l l i a m s h a k e s p e a r e

I

T h e E n d o f a n E r a

B y t h e t i m e o f Vi c t o r i a ’ s d e a t h i n 1901 wo m e n w e r e agitating for equality. Many were attending college and even pursuing careers. Suffragettes marched for voting rights. The life of average citizens had greatly improved over that of their ancestors. Indeed, citizens now lived better than any king or queen could have imagined only a century earlier. Even modest homes boasted plumbing, heating, and electricity. Trolleys and trains whisked passengers across town for pennies. Laws had be-come more humane and just, and most working people earned a wage that kept them comfortable.

But life in the palace had not essentially changed in centuries.

Though palaces, too, boasted electricity and plumbing, daily life had ossified over time and still revolved around age-encrusted 2 5 7