Queen Victoria (1819–1901)

Queen Victoria is the central style-setting figure of the Victorian mourning-jewellery system. Without her forty years of widow's mourning, the later mourning-jewellery culture of the nineteenth century would not have arisen in this form. Three factors made Queen Victoria a singular figure of mourning: the length of her mourning (forty years, without parallel in English royal history), the visibility of her mourning (until her death she wore nothing but black clothing), and the cultural effect of her mourning (she made mourning jewellery an obligatory social code).

Early life and accession

Alexandrina Victoria of Kent was born on 24 May 1819 at Kensington Palace in London. Her parents were the Duke of Kent (fourth son of King George III) and the Duchess of Kent (born Princess Victoria of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld). Her father died when she was eight months old; she was brought up by her mother and her uncle Leopold (later King of the Belgians).

On 20 June 1837 - she was eighteen years old - she came to the English throne on the death of her uncle William IV. Three years later, on 10 February 1840, she married her cousin Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha. The marriage was exceptionally happy, and Albert became one of the most influential figures in English politics and culture of the 1840s and 1850s. The family grew to nine children.

The death of Prince Albert (1861)

On 14 December 1861 Prince Albert died of typhoid at Windsor Castle. He was 42 years old. Queen Victoria - 42 years old, mother of nine children, queen of a growing world empire - was devastated.

Her immediate responses in mourning were extraordinary. Queen Victoria:

• left Albert's bedroom at Windsor unaltered, with clothing laid out fresh and the washbasin filled each day
• withdrew almost entirely from public life
• wore nothing but black clothing from that day onwards
• had several mourning pendants made containing locks of Albert's hair
• placed extensive commissions for mourning jewellery
• neglected central royal duties for several years

This practice of mourning was culturally formative. Queen Victoria became the visible figure of mourning - one of the last collectively mourning queens of her generation, whose conduct in mourning was imitated by the whole of English society and eventually by all of Europe.

Forty years of widow's mourning (1861–1901)

Over the following forty years - from 1861 until her death in 1901 - Queen Victoria's life ran its course in a continuous, visibly displayed practice of mourning. Three phases can be distinguished:

Deep mourning (1861–1866). Queen Victoria has all but vanished from public life. She leaves London and withdraws to Windsor Castle, Osborne House (Isle of Wight) and Balmoral Castle (Scotland). She does not open Parliament in person, meets no foreign dignitaries, gives no public audiences. Politically this is a critical phase - the monarchy briefly loses public presence, which gives rise to republican movements in England.

Reduced mourning with occasional public presence (1866–1875). Queen Victoria resumes public duties here and there - opening bridges, receiving envoys - but remains visibly in deep mourning. She continues to wear nothing but black, with extensive mourning jewellery.

Semi-public widow's mourning (1875–1901). Queen Victoria becomes the visible widow-figure of the English realm and of the wider British Empire. She takes up central royal functions again but remains, until her death, within the iconographic language of mourning - black widow's dress, black widow's veil, extensive pieces of mourning jewellery. Her wedding jubilees, her accession jubilees, her audiences all take place in the black habit of the widow.

This forty-year practice of mourning is without parallel in English royal history. Queen Victoria's contemporaries judged it in different ways - some aristocrats criticised it as excessive, many of the middle classes imitated it. The cultural effect, in any case, was enormous.

Mourning-jewellery practice in detail

Queen Victoria's personal collection of mourning jewellery ran to several hundred pieces, many of which survive today in the Royal Collection (Windsor Castle and Buckingham Palace). Important pieces:

Whitby jet parure (early 1860s). A complete four-part mourning parure in Whitby jet (see Whitby - Jet Workshops on the Yorkshire Coast) - brooch, necklace, bracelet, earrings. The brooch shows a central carved motif (weeping willow above an urn) with an engraved inscription; the necklace consists of several links with small mourning pendants. It was made in the workshops of the Whitby jet manufacturers Hamond and Greenbury (see Whitby - Jet Workshops on the Yorkshire Coast).

Mourning pendants with a lock of Albert's hair. Several pendants, each containing a lock of Prince Albert's hair under rock crystal, set in gold mourning pendants. They were made in the weeks after Albert's death and worn directly at the Queen's neck.

Mourning ring with Albert's date of death. A gold ring engraved with the date Dec 14. 1861 and Albert's initials. Queen Victoria wore it daily until her death (see Mourning Ring (Memorial Ring)).

Black enamel and gold locket with a miniature portrait of Albert. A large black enamel and gold locket with a miniature painting of Albert inside, set in a gold border with small diamonds (see Black Enamel (Schwarzemail), Miniature Painting on Ivory).

Memorial pendants for children and grandchildren who had died. Several smaller pendants and lockets commemorating deceased family members - Princess Alice (died 1878), Prince Leopold (died 1884), Prince Albert Victor (died 1892) and others.

Mourning brooches for ladies-in-waiting. Queen Victoria regularly had sets of mourning brooches made for her ladies-in-waiting and for family members, often in Whitby jet, sometimes in black enamel and gold. These pieces are today held in various private collections.

Cultural effect

Queen Victoria's cultural effect on the Victorian mourning-jewellery system is comprehensive. Three dimensions of that effect:

Economic. The Whitby jet industry increased its workforce tenfold between 1860 and 1875 - a direct consequence of royal patronage and of the middle-class movement of imitation. The mourning warehouses in London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna and New York came into being in this period (see The Middle Classes and Mourning Jewellery in the Nineteenth Century). The jewellery workshops in Birmingham (vulcanite pressing works), in Paris (French jet workshops) and in Berlin (cast-iron manufactories) saw their heydays.

Cultural. Queen Victoria made mourning jewellery a social standard. Widows of every class were expected to follow the royal example - with widow's dress, with mourning jewellery, with the observance of the phases of mourning. The Victorian order of court mourning (see The Victorian Era (1837–1901)) was legitimated by Queen Victoria's personal practice and anchored culturally by it.

Political. Queen Victoria's mourning changed the English monarchy. An actively governing queen became a representative, symbolic one who, through the visibility of her mourning, defined a new form of royal presence. This shift from a politically active to a culturally representative monarchy is a central achievement of the Victorian age; it shapes the English crown to this day.

Death and legacy

Queen Victoria died on 22 January 1901 at Osborne House (Isle of Wight). She was 81 years old and had reigned for 63 years - the longest reign of an English monarch before Queen Elizabeth II. Her death set off the last great wave of mourning jewellery in the Victorian tradition. Millions of mourning pieces were commissioned in the first weeks of 1901; it was the last great national event of mourning in English history before the First World War.

Queen Victoria's will laid down a detailed order of burial. She wished to be buried with military honours as a soldier's daughter (the daughter of a duke who had been a general); she wished to be buried as a widow, with Albert at the centre; and she wished to be buried in a specially prepared coffin with numerous memorial objects, among them locks of her children's hair, photographs of Albert, a photograph of her last favourite horse and personal belongings.

She was buried in the Frogmore Mausoleum near Windsor, beside the mausoleum she had built for Albert after his death and which had become the true centrepiece of her forty-year practice of mourning.

Queen Victoria in modern memorial culture

In present-day English cultural awareness Queen Victoria remains present as the widow queen - a figure of cultural identification for the Victorian age and its aesthetic of mourning. She appears in countless novels, films, plays and academic studies.

In the field of mourning jewellery she is today a figure of collector identification. Pieces with documented Queen Victoria provenance fetch six-figure prices at auction. The Royal Collection continues to catalogue pieces from her mourning-jewellery collection and makes them accessible in regular exhibitions.

In modern memorial jewellery Queen Victoria plays a significant role as a historical reference. Anyone who commissions a mourning brooch, a mourning locket or a mourning ring in a Victorian historicising style in the twenty-first century is drawing - consciously or not - on the iconographic language shaped by Queen Victoria's personal mourning. In that sense the Victorian queen is not merely a historical figure but a continuous cultural reference in European and North American mourning-jewellery awareness.