John brown queen victorias highland servant
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New diary extracts reveal Queen Victoria’s true relationship with loyal Scots ghillie John Brown
IT is the love affair across a social divide that has enthralled a nation for more than 100 years.
And now we can reveal what Queen Victoria really thought about her “heart’s best treasure” – the intense friendship she shared with Scottish ghillie John Brown.
It was a relationship that earned Her Majesty the nickname Mrs Brown – and was captured on-screen in the Oscar-nominated film of the same name, starring Dame Judi Dench and Billy Connolly.
Victoria’s candid and startling view of her manservant is drawn from her own diary and papers and forms the basis of a new book about her relationship with Brown.
In language straight out of a Mills & Boon romantic novel the swooning Empress of India tells how the towering kilted gamekeeper swept her off her feet and carried her across a Highland glen in his “strong and powerful arms”.
However, the author of Victoria – The Queen, expert Julia Baird, faced a huge fight to tell the story.
She was only granted access to the royal papers that form its basis after the intervention of a former governor-general, Quentin Bryce, and fought censorship to publish her account.
Brown, who was seven years younger than the Queen, went to work
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John Brown: Queen consort Victoria's Upland Servant
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John Brown
John Brown was born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland and worked on the Balmoral Estate before it was leased to Victoria and Albert. In 1851 John Brown, at Albert’s suggestion, took on the role of leading Queen Victoria’s pony, later became the personal ghillie (shooting guide and gun-loader) for Prince Albert.
After Albert’s death in the Queen went into deep mourning. Her daughter Alice recommended she took up pony-cart rides again as she had enjoyed them so much at Windsor and Osborne. John Brown was appointed as a full-time servant to the Queen who wrote he was “indefatigable in his attendance and care.”
The relationship became close enough to create gossip amongst the household and resentment from the other servants. Behind her she was referred to as ‘Mrs Brown.’ Victoria bestowed gifts on him and even had ‘The Devoted Service Medal’ struck for him. The Queen’s children disapproved of the relationship but Victoria dismissed the talk as “ gossip of the higher classes.”
John Brown came to Osborne House firstly in 1864, and several times in later years, each time accompanying the Queen.
Brown died at Windsor in 1883.A distraught Victoria wrote “Perhaps never in history was there so strong and true an attachment, so warm and lo