Happy Birthday Queen Victoria!

Today, May 24th is Queen Victoria's birthday. She was born in 1819 to HRH the Duke and Duchess of Kent...she is 2 in this drawing....

Victoria was born at Kensington Palace, where William and Catherine, Duke and Duchess of Cambridge are now living with their family, and a favorite place of ours to visit and have afternoon tea at the Orangery... this is my favorite view approaching the front gates...

 At the time of her birth, Victoria was 5th in line for the throne. She was christened Alexandrina Victoria, and chose to be called Victoria after she became queen, after the deaths of her intervening relatives in the accession in 1837 at the age 0f 18. She led a restricted and isolated life until her accsession, but apparently was able to withstand pressures to be very much a woman of her own...

 

This portrait is by Sir George Hayter, and was done in 1840 shortly after she became queen and ushered in the Victorian era...ultimately becoming Britain's oldest reigning monarch, surpassing her ancestor Queen Elizabeth I. That record stood until Queen Elizabeth 2 surpassed it in December of 2007, and then became the longest reigning British monarch in September 9, 2015. Long may she still reign!

 Victoria married Prince Albert of Saxe Coburg Gothe (there are various spellings), a 3rd cousin, in February of 1840. They had 9 surviving children and were a devoted couple until his untimely death with typhoid in 1861, plunging the queen into a deep mourning she never really recovered from.  Above is a rare early photo of the couple with all their children at Osborne House, Isle of Wight from the Royal Collection.

 This is a pair of 1861 brass mourning dishes from 1861 commemorating their dates together.

Victoria died in 1901, having had her 50 year Golden Jubilee in 1887...

And her Diamond Jubilee of 60 years on the throne in 1897...this is from my personal collection...given me by my grandmother who attended the jubilee festivities herself in 1897 in her native Leicester....

 So wishing Queen Victoria a Happy Birthday...a momentous reign of great progress...I wouldn't like to live among the sanitary conditions at that time, but there were some aspects of beauty, ornamentation, civility and family values that resonate with me still...