Notes Prologue 1 Charles Kean, a letter to Mary Anne Skerret, 3 July 1855, Royal Archives Add X/85. Further material from the Royal Archives will be abbreviated ‘RA’. 2 John Cam Hobhouse (Lord Broughton) diary entry, 14 November 1837, quoted in John Cam Hobhouse, Recollections of a Long Life, 5 vols. (London: W. Clowes & Sons, 1865–7), V, p. 101. 3 Royal Archives Queen Victoria’s Journal 6 February 1852. Subsequent references to Queen Victoria’s journal will be abbreviated ‘RA QVJ’. 4 RA QVJ, 18 June 1853. 5 RA QVJ, 30 March 1859. 6 RA QVJ, 28 April 1856. 7 Benita Stoney and Heinrich C. Weltzein, eds., My Mistress the Queen: The Letters of Frieda Arnold, Dresser to Queen Victoria 1854–9, trans. Sheila de Bellaigue (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1994), pp. 148–9. 8 RA QVJ, 20 February 1855. 9 RA QVJ, 18 February 1856. 10 Victoria’s extensive collection of playbills, programmes and playscripts is carefully preserved in the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. 11 James I and VI, Basilikon Doron, cited in Stephen Orgel, The Illusion of Power: Political Theater in the English Renaissance (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1975), p. 42. 12 King Leopold of the Belgians, a letter to Princess Victoria, 7 October 1836; cited in Lynne Vallone, Becoming Victoria (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), p. 199. 13 Walter Bagheot, The English Constitution (London, 1867; Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1963), pp. 64, 97. 14 Edmund Gosse and Mary Ponsonby, ‘The Character of Queen Victoria’, Quarterly Review 193 (January–June 1901) 311. 1 Paying a Visit to the Crown 1 RA QVJ, 2 June 1841. 2 RA QVJ, 4 June 1841. 3 RA QVJ, 2 June 1841. 4 RA QVJ, 9 June 1851. 203 204 Notes 5 RA QVJ, 9 June 1856. 6 Dutton Cook, Hours with the Players, 2 vols. (London: Chatto & Windus, 1881), II, p. 209. 7 Charles Greville, The Greville Memoirs, 1814–1860, 8 vols., eds. Lytton Strachey and Roger Fulford (London, 1938), IV, p. 383. 8 Cited in Rachel M. Brownstein, Tragic Muse: Rachel of the Comédie-Française (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 1995), p. 141. 9 Spectator, 24 February 1844. 10 Cited in Stanley Weintraub, Victoria: Biography of a Queen (London: Allen & Unwin, 1987), p. 179. 11 Raymund Fitzsimons, Barnum in London (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1969), p. 90. 12 Cited in Weintraub, Victoria, p. 179. 13 Cited in Fitzsimons, Barnum in London, p. 93. 14 P.T. Barnum, a letter to Edward Everett, 23 March 1844, cited in Selected Letters of P.T. Barnum ed. A.H. Saxon (New York: Columbia University Press, 1983), pp. 24–5. 15 RA QVJ, 23 March 1844. 16 RA QVJ, 1 April 1844. 17 RA QVJ, 1 April 1844. 18 Cited in Fitzsimons, Barnum in London, p. 103. 19 Marie, Queen of Rumania, The Story of My Life, 2 vols. (London, 1934), I, p. 255. 20 Cited in Weintraub, Victoria, p. 578. 21 RA QVJ, 22 April 1897. 22 Lady Lytton, diary entry for 22 April 1897, in Lady Lytton’s Court Diary, ed. Mary Lutyens (London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1961), p. 102. 23 Frederick Ponsonby, Recollections of Three Reigns (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1951), p. 38. 24 Ibid., p. 38. 25 Walter Goodman, The Keeleys on the Stage and at Home (London: Richard Bentley, 1895), p. 328. 26 Cited in ibid., p. 329. 27 Cited in ibid., p. 331. 28 Cited in ibid., p. 329. 29 Cited in ibid., p. 329. 30 RA QVJ, 15 February 1851. 31 RA QVJ, 14 January 1853. 32 Cited in Goodman, The Keeleys, p. 330. 33 RA QVJ, 21 February 1852. 34 RA QVJ, 6 March 1895. Victoria mistakenly refers to the play in question as School. 35 ‘The Queen and Mrs. Keeley’, The Theatre (1 April 1895), 198. 36 Era, 23 November 1895. 37 ‘The Queen and Mrs. Keeley’, The Theatre (1 April 1895), 198. 38 RA QVJ, 6 March 1895. 2 En Amateur 1 Queen Victoria, a letter to the Princess Frederick, 9 March 1870; cited in Elizabeth Longford, Victoria R.I. (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1964), p. 377. 2 RA QVJ, 26 August 1852. Notes 205 3 RA QVJ, 16 January 1854. 4 RA QVJ, 10 February 1852. 5 RA QVJ, 10 February 1852. 6 RA QVJ, 10 February 1852. 7 RA QVJ, 11 January 1853. 8 RA QVJ, 11 January 1853. 9 Theatrical Journal, 9 February 1853. 10 RA QVJ, 6 January 1852. 11 RA QVJ, 30 January 1855. 12 RA QVJ, 9 February 1856 and 10 February 1860. 13 RA QVJ, 2 May 1854. 14 RA QVJ, 28 April 1856. See also Delia Millar, The Victorian Watercolours and Drawings in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen, 2 vols. (London: Philip Wilson, 1995), I, p. 407. 15 RA QVJ, 26 August 1852. 16 RA QVJ, 10 February 1854. 17 RA QVJ, 2 January 1865. 18 Anon., The Private Life of the Queen by a Member of the Royal Household (New York: D. Appleton and Co., 1897), p. 100. 19 James Pope-Hennessy, Queen Mary, 1867–1953 (London: Unwin, 1959), p. 206. 20 Frederick Ponsonby, Recollections of Three Reigns (London: Eyre & Spottiswoode, 1951), p. 51. 21 Harry J. Greenwall, The Strange Life of Willy Clarkson (London: John Long, Ltd, 1936), p. 51. 22 Ibid., p. 50. 23 RA QVJ, 20 January 1890. 24 RA QVJ, 6 October 1888. 25 RA QVJ, 20 January 1890. 26 RA QVJ, 6 January 1888. 27 Marie Mallet, a letter to Lady Elizabeth Biddulph, 3 January 1888, cited in Life with Queen Victoria: Marie Mallet’s Letters from Court 1887–1901, ed. Victor Mallet (London: John Murray, 1968), pp. 15–16. 28 RA QVJ, 6 January 1888. 29 RA QVJ, 5 October 1888. 30 RA QVJ, 6 October 1888. 31 RA QVJ, 24 May 1893. 32 Marie Bancroft and Squire Bancroft, The Bancrofts: Recollections of Sixty Years (London: John Murray, 1909), p. 313. 33 Cited in Michael Jamieson, ‘An American Actress at Balmoral’, Theatre Research International 2.2 (1977) 119. The conversation is recorded in Elizabeth Robins’ man- uscript account of the company’s visit to Balmoral, now held among her papers in the Fales Library at New York University. 34 Arthur Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, Queen Victoria’s Private Secretary: His Life from his Letters (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd, 1942), pp. 83–4. 35 Era, 28 October 1893. 36 RA QVJ, 17 October 1893. 37 RA QVJ, 22 and 24 October 1893. 38 RA QVJ, 30 October 1893. 39 Anon., The Private Life of the Queen, p. 100. 40 Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, p. 83. 206 Notes 41 E.E.P. Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s Private Life (New York: The John Day Co., 1962), pp. 164–5. 42 James Reid, a letter to Beatrice Reid, 30 September 1889, cited in Michaela Reid, Ask Sir James (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1987), p. 117. 43 Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, p. 84. 44 Ibid. 45 Greenwall, Willy Clarkson, p. 44. 46 Ponsonby, Henry Ponsonby, p. 84. 47 Tisdall, Queen Victoria’s Private Life, p. 165. 48 Cited in James Pope-Hennessy, ed. Queen Victoria at Windsor and Balmoral (London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd, 1959), p. 73. 49 Princess Victoria of Prussia, a letter to the Empress Frederick, 17 June 1889, cited in Pope-Hennessy, Queen Victoria at Windsor and Balmoral, pp. 76–7. 50 Princess Victoria of Prussia, a letter to the Empress Frederick, 19 June 1889, cited ibid., p. 78. 51 Princess Victoria of Prussia, a letter to the Empress Frederick, 21 June 1889, cited ibid., p. 80. 52 Princess Victoria of Prussia, a letter to the Empress Frederick, 22 June 1889, cited ibid., p. 81. 53 RA QVJ, 21 June 1889. 54 Princess Victoria of Prussia, a letter to the Empress Frederick, 23 June 1889, cited ibid., pp. 82–3. 55 RA QVJ, 22 June 1889. 56 Greenwall, Willy Clarkson, p. 45. 57 Cited in Seymour Hicks, Me and my Missus: Fifty Years on the Stage (London: Cassell and Company Ltd, 1939), p. 104. 58 Greenwall, Willy Clarkson, p. 42. 59 Ibid., p. 43. 3 Our Little Theatre 1 Charles Kean, a letter to Mary Chambers Kean, 13 July 1848, Y.c. 393 (130), Folger Shakespeare Library, Washington, DC. 2 RA QVJ, 28 December 1848. 3 Queen Victoria, a letter to the King of Prussia, 6 January 1849; quoted in Hector Bolitho, ed., Letters of Queen Victoria from the Archives of the House of Brandenburg- Prussia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1938), p. 14. 4 C.B. Phipps, a letter to Charles Kean, 20 December 1848, RA VIC Add X/11. 5 C.B. Phipps, a letter to Charles Kean, 5 March 1852, RA Add X/35. 6 Cited in John Cam Hobhouse (Lord Broughton), diary entry, 6 February 1852; in Recollections of a Long Life (London: W. Clowes & Sons, 1865–7), VI, p. 296. 7 RA QVJ, 4 February 1853 and 2 February 1854. 8 RA QVJ, 11 January 1849. 9 Era, 31 December 1848. 10 RA QVJ, 28 December 1848. 11 RA QVJ, 11 January 1849. 12 Illustrated London News, 9 February 1850. 13 RA QVJ, 28 December 1848. 14 Illustrated London News, 16 February 1850. Notes 207 15 Theatrical Chronicle, 30 December 1848. 16 RA QVJ, 28 December 1848. 17 RA QVJ, 10 November 1853. 18 Frederick Belton, Random Recollections of an Old Actor (London, 1880), p. 159. 19 RA QVJ, 21 November 1855. 20 Illustrated London News, 13 January 1849. 21 Belton, Random Recollections, pp. 159–60. 22 Charles Kean, a letter to Patty Chapman, 9 January 1853, RA Add X/48.