"So,
Albert goes with the Queen to Windsor after the [wedding] ceremony?"
"He'll
go further before morning."
"How
so?"
"Why,
he'll go in at Bushy, pass Virginia Water, on through Maidenhead, and leave
Staines behind."
So
went one of the many jokes following the wedding of Queen Victoria to Franz
August Karl Albrecht Immanuel of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, or Prince Albert as he
became known to his English subjects. Victoria has initially been offered the
choice of Albert or his older brother Ernst as potential consorts in 1837 when as
an 18 year old she ascended the throne. But she was immediately smitten by the ‘extremely
handsome’ piano playing Albert. As she was Queen, protocol demanded that the
proposal of marriage came from her. Victorian values were a long way off
establishing themselves in 1840 and the Queen of England proposing to and then
marrying a penniless foreigner offered the wits of England a chance to excel
themselves in scoffing, sneering and ribaldry.
“I
say, I say, I say what are Prince Albert’s wages?”
“I
don’t know, what are Prince Albert’s wages?”
“A
quarter of a crown a day and a whole sovereign at night….”
“I
say, I say, I say why is the Queen England’s
most famous composer?”
“I
don’t know, why is the Queen England’s most famous composer?”
“Because
her overtures to Prince Albert are known all over the world.”
The
MP Dillon Browne was buttonholed at Ben Morgan’s in Maiden Lane about the
controversial Corn Laws which banned grain imports into Britain and kept the
price of bread artificially high. Someone
eventually asked “What is the use of all this botheration about the Corn Laws?
Has not the little Queen - the saints preserve her - settled the question by
opening her port for the reception of foreign seed?"
Albert
had the last laugh though; Victoria was devoted to him and despite her later
reputation the pair must have had a reasonably satisfactory sex life to produce
nine children. Even the wedding night was a success, Victoria wrote in her
diary “I NEVER, NEVER spent such an evening!!! MY DEAREST DEAREST DEAR Albert
... his excessive love & affection gave me feelings of heavenly love &
happiness I never could have hoped to have felt before! He clasped me in his
arms, & we kissed each other again & again!”
She
was, of course, bereft when Albert died at the age of 42. His most enduring
traits were immortalised in the phallic Albert Memorial, the most erotic
tribute a widow ever made to a lost husband.
The Memorial statue of Albert is by John Henry Foley and Thomas Brock.
 |
| The Albert Memorial: even the sculptural rendering of the four continents is erotically charged. |
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