The Court in Mourning

The effect of the death of the Prince Consort on the life of the court was immediate and profound: the Queen, as is well known, was prostrated by grief to the extent that politicians and courtiers alike feared for her sanity, and her court was plunged into mourning. Social functions ceased entirely, and Victoria hid herself away in the two houses which Albert had created at Balmoral and on the Isle of Wight. This period of seclusion lasted unabated until 1871 when the recovery of the Prince of Wales from typhoid fever was the occasion of his mother's most significant public appearance since Albert's death. The following decade saw a relaxing, but not an ending, of the seclusion. For almost twenty years the court had little connection with the social world, and the leadership of aristocratic society passed into the hands of the Prince of Wales and his wife, Alexandra of Denmark. Victoria and Albert had taken the view that the royal family should set an example of probity and virtue to the aristocracy, which, as a class, they considered frivolous and immoral; their eldest son rapidly became the leader of one of the most frivolous sections of that society. The contrast between Victoria's court - sombre, black-clad. and avoiding the public gaze (even while carrying out the legitimate public, political work of the sovereign) -- and that of her heir and his beautiful wife -- lighthearted, spectacular, and constantly before the public (even in those affairs which they must have preferred to keep private, notably the involvement of the prince in a number of notorious scandals) -- was one of the most marked features of these years. The Prince and Princess of Wales deputized for the queen at the Levées and Drawing-Rooms at which aristocratic society was accustomed to pay its respects to the sovereign, and through which admittance into high society was gained; their balls, country-house parties, dinners and visits to the theatre substituted for those of the queen (and, in truth, were far more brilliant than any she had held even in her youth).

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