Free Victoria & Abdul by Shrabani Basu

in power often are). Without Albert by her side, she relied for many years on Brown. The Scottish gillie shared with her many political views, including a dislike for Gladstone. He wanted the government turned out in 1872 and in 1878, when the Queen asked him whether he wanted a war, the gillie replied: ‘Damn it, no – I beg your pardon – but I think it would be awful; dreadful deal of fighting and at the end no one would be better and a’ would be worse for it.’
    However, John Brown died at Windsor in 1883, leaving the Queen devastated once again. After the death of her beloved Albert, this was the most painful to her. She wrote to Ponsonby in a letter after his death:

    The Queen is trying hard to occupy herself but she is utterly crushed and her life has again sustained one of those shocks like in 61 [the year of Albert’s death] when every link has been shaken and torn and at every moment the loss of the strong arm and wise advice, warm heart and cheery original way of saying things and the sympathy in any large and small circumstances – is most cruelly missed.

    The Queen was so distressed after Brown’s death that she became very weak and could not stand or walk. She laid a special memorial stone in his name at the mausoleum in Frogmore and inscribed it with the words:

    In loving and grateful remembrance of John Brown, her faithful and devoted personal attendant and friend of Queen Victoria, whom he constantly accompanied here.

    These words are inscribed by Her whom he served devotedly for
    34 years.
    Matthew 25th Chapter, Verse 21

    ‘His Lord said unto him well done good and faithful servant: thou has been faithful over a few things. I will make thee ruler over many things, enter thou into the joy of the Lord.’

    She also built a special granite fountain in his memory just outside the Tea House in Frogmore, where she enjoyed sitting on summer days, and a bench was put up in his honour in the grounds of Osborne where they had often walked together. In Balmoral she erected a statue of him.
    Even Ponsonby, who had no love lost for Brown and often clashed with him, was forced to admit: ‘He was the only person who could fight and make the Queen do what she did not wish. He did not always succeed nor was his advice always the best. But I believe he was honest, and with all his want of education, in roughness, his prejudices and other faults he was undoubtedly a most excellent servant to her.’ Four years after the death of John Brown, the Empress now had another servant she was beginning to rely on. Surely and steadily, and to the horror of the Royal Household, the young Karim was filling Brown’s shoes.
    Beneath the regal trappings, the Queen was very much a people’s person. She enjoyed nothing more than getting to know her subjects, especially the country folk and the under-privileged. At Balmoral, she regularly went to the village shops and chatted with the locals, often buying knick-knacks. She disapproved of the snobbery of the upper classes and reached out to the ordinary people whenever she could. Her mothering of her Indian servants and protecting them from the prejudices of the Household was natural to her.
    In the quiet setting of the Highlands, the Queen became closer to Karim. He described the hunting in India and the journeys he had made to Kabul and the North-West with his father. He informed her that his father had accompanied General Roberts on the famous march to Kandahar in 1880. The Queen was impressed by his candour and felt relaxed in his company, much to the discomfiture of the Household. They did not approve of the closeness that seemed to be developing between the Queen and the young Indian servant.
    In a sense, they were also reminded of the Queen’s closeness to her previous ward, Duleep Singh. When the Queen was thirty-five years old, she had taken this young Indian Prince into her custody. He had been only eleven when the British defeated the Sikhs in the second Anglo-Sikh