Virtue of a Small Life

Courtyard of the Victoria and Albert Art Museum, London

During my trip to London with Mom in June, I developed a (completely romanticized) fascination with Queen Victoria and Albert, her Prince Consort, after we spent several lovely hours meandering through a Queen's Gallery exhibit of their extensive art collection. Despite knowing that the exhibit was being displayed by an institution with a vested interest in making a grand story of their lives and love, I fell hard for the unconventional beauty of the adoring couple in Winterhalter's portraits.

So, as I do whenever I come across something intriguing, I sought out a book about them two days later in Brighton (it seemed important that I find one before I actually left the UK - buying a book about them in America would've seemed somewhat disingenuous). I've been slowly reading this 'personal history' of Queen Victoria, that's mostly pieced together from direct quotes out of her own letters, and of those around her, as well as other historical sources, ever since.

My overwhelming impression? Thank the Lord I live a small life and there will never be any reason whatsoever for someone to put together a 'personal history' of me.

As the book has progressed, I have gotten the distinct impression that the author is striving to make Queen Victoria real and human by clearly illustrating her, apparently voluminous, faults as detailed in the various sources he's using. He makes a great deal of the negative letters of her children (what teenager does not say/write disparaging comments about their parents at some point?) and those of her staff. Occasionally he'll throw in something positive stated by those same individuals but his focus, at least to me, is on the negatives.

I realize that I have lots of faults. And some of them will come through here naturally because I can't always quell them and others will come through because I don't (yet) see them as faults. (Someday future-Mandy will probably read certain of these words and think 'uuuuugggggghhhhhhh....') But I can pretty much know without a doubt that the majority of my downfalls will stay unpublished to general society unless I myself choose to lay it bare and they, for whatever reason, choose to find it interesting.

Queen Victoria, on the other hand, had no such self-censure luxury. Every word she wrote has been hunted down and retained and printed in some bound format. Thousands of letters still exist between herself and just her eldest daughter - and every one has been saved and put together in a book and published for the world. Every catty thing she ever said has been dissected, turned around and used to knock her off her Royal pedastal.

When you see her, hair undone and falling around her shoulders, in the Prince's favorite protrait of her, you can't help but think 'what a beautiful thing to be Queen...' But when I read this book... *shiver*

I would rather live, and love, in my small life than have to live, and die, knowing that I will be talked about forever.