Located as it was in Scotland, Balmoral added a new Scottish
dimension to Victorian monarchy. No monarch since the Stuarts
had visited Scotland with the sole exception of George IV who,
encouraged by Sir Walter Scott, travelled to Edinburgh in 1822.
Victoria and Albert loved both the scenery and the people whom
they found "simple and straightforward". After her
second visit to Scotland in 1844 before she had seen Balmoral
the Queen wrote on her return to Windsor that she could not reconcile
herself to being "here again and [I] pine for my dear
Highlands, the hills, the pure air, the quiet and retirement,
the liberty -- all -- more than is right". Later
in 1868 she was to publish Leaves from the Journal of Our Life
in the Highlands, a supremely happy book and in 1884 More
Leaves dealing with her life in Balmoral after Albert. The
theme of the latter was described by her as "how her sad
and suffering heart was soothed and cheered by the excursions
and incidents it recounts". It was dedicated to her "devoted
personal attendant and personal friend" John Brown, the tough
but faithful ex-ghillie who helped (controversially) in the soothing
process while at the same time ruffling many of her courtiers
and ministers.
Brown figured too until his death in 1883 on the Osborne scene.
A house there had been acquired by Victoria and Albert in 1845
which the Queen told Leopold was "a place of one's own".
Again Albert built a new creation of his own, on this occasion
in "the Italian style" since the Solent reminded him
of the Bay of Naples. He was advised by the London builder and
contractor Thomas Cubitt and incorporated cast-iron beams into
the construction. The costs of the furnishing were partially
met by the sale of George IV's pavilion in Brighton to the Brighton
Town Commissioners, a symbolic (as well as aesthetic) change in
itself, for the Pavilion was closely associated with the Regency,
and the Regency was associated with all that had been wrong with
the pre-Victorian monarchy.
The architecture of the pavilion had looked outside Europe, and
so did key features of Osborne after Albert's death. In 1877
the Queen had been made Empress of India, a title she had long
coveted and which Disraeli now secured for her, and it was after
this that a new Indian wing was built at Osborne.
