304 pages, Dutton Adult, ISBN-13: 978-0525937302
Let’s face it: NOBODY could mourn like the Victorians. With their reams of rules, their exacting expectations and their seemingly morbid curiosity over just what happened to our earthly shells when we at last shuffled off this mortal coil set the standard for bereavement from their day to ours. And when it came to the woman who gave her name to this epoch, the British People pulled out all the stops to say their final farewells to this simultaneously remarkable and yet very average woman – of course, they had a mighty hard act to follow; after all, when Prince Albert, her husband of just over twenty years died in 1861, Victoria spent the rest of her life – all 40 years! – mourning her beloved Prince. Jerrold M. Packard sets all this out in Farewell in Splendor: The Passing of Queen Victoria and Her Age, a day-by-day chronology of the last week in the life of Queen Victoria and her funeral. Naturally, when a woman has nine children and forty grandchildren, it is easy to see that there is bound to be confusion and differences of opinion about her care and final wishes; however, when that woman is also related to almost every royal house in Europe…well then, just try and referee between these immense egos and see how far you get.
Farewell in Splendor begins on January 14th, 1901 (the first day in anyone’s memory that Victoria stayed in bed at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight) and concludes on February 4th, 1901 when she was laid to rest in the Royal Mausoleum within the Frogmore Estate at Windsor, where her beloved Albert’s remains awaited her. While the Queen’s life, death and burial are of course at the forefront of Packard’s book, he also manages to fill in the gaps of the narrative with brief segues into the history of the Royal Family: all of the distinct personalities, quirks, failings and agendas of this vast brood of international and intermarried royals are put on full display, for better or for worse. Especially telling is the behavior of her son and heir, Albert Edward (“Bertie” for short), who decided to buck his death mother’s fervent wish that he would become the first King Albert and instead became King Edward VII; and her grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II (“Willie” to the family), who took this opportunity to NOT be the bombastic showoff he normally was and, instead, behave like a grieving family member. It would appear that both of these very different men saw this moment as a chance to grow up at last (would that it had lasted).
Don’t be put off by the subject matter: I, for one, don’t dig reading about death and funerals and grieving and wailing, but Farewell in Splendor is so much more than all of that. It is a rare glimpse into a world unknown to most of us, of how a very different class of people during a very different age marked the passing of one of their own. For that, any future anthropologist worth his salt can use this slim volume as a telescope into the long-lost Victorian Era.
Farewell in Splendor begins on January 14th, 1901 (the first day in anyone’s memory that Victoria stayed in bed at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight) and concludes on February 4th, 1901 when she was laid to rest in the Royal Mausoleum within the Frogmore Estate at Windsor, where her beloved Albert’s remains awaited her. While the Queen’s life, death and burial are of course at the forefront of Packard’s book, he also manages to fill in the gaps of the narrative with brief segues into the history of the Royal Family: all of the distinct personalities, quirks, failings and agendas of this vast brood of international and intermarried royals are put on full display, for better or for worse. Especially telling is the behavior of her son and heir, Albert Edward (“Bertie” for short), who decided to buck his death mother’s fervent wish that he would become the first King Albert and instead became King Edward VII; and her grandson Kaiser Wilhelm II (“Willie” to the family), who took this opportunity to NOT be the bombastic showoff he normally was and, instead, behave like a grieving family member. It would appear that both of these very different men saw this moment as a chance to grow up at last (would that it had lasted).
Don’t be put off by the subject matter: I, for one, don’t dig reading about death and funerals and grieving and wailing, but Farewell in Splendor is so much more than all of that. It is a rare glimpse into a world unknown to most of us, of how a very different class of people during a very different age marked the passing of one of their own. For that, any future anthropologist worth his salt can use this slim volume as a telescope into the long-lost Victorian Era.
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