see. 26
Other foreign suitors came and went but by the next year Princess Victoria’s mind was occupied with more serious matters. On 20 June 1837 King William IV died and Princess Victoria succeeded to the throne. Styled ‘Victoria, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith,’ she was crowned at Westminster Abbey on Thursday 28 June 1838. She settled down to learn the profession of monarchy against a background of political intrigue. On 12 October 1839 Queen Victoria wrote again to her Uncle Leopold:
The dear cousins [Albert and Ernest] arrived at half past seven on Thursday, after a very bad and almost dangerous passage, but looking both very well, and much improved . . . Albert’s beauty is most striking, and he so amiable and unaffected – in short very fascinating. 27
The outcome was that Queen Victoria finally made up her mind and proposed marriage to Prince Albert. He accepted, and on 23 November she informed the Privy Council of her intention to marry. On 16 January 1840 she officially announced to the country her betrothal in a speech from the throne. She married Prince Albert on 10 February at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace. On 21 November 1840, nine months and eleven days after the wedding, Princess Victoria (‘Vicky’) Adelaide Mary Louisa, the Princess Royal, was born at Buckingham Palace.
By 1840, at the age of fourteen, John Brown had finished with formal education and had become a member of the workforce at Crathienaird. Like many of his Scots contemporaries, despite his poor circumstances, John Brown was a keen reader. Old John had encouraged his family to read at the very least the two books to be found in every Scots house, the Holy Bible and The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns, the first edition of whose poems had been published at Kilmarnock on 31 July 1786, when the Brown family were already firmly established at Crathie.
As tenant farmers of the Farquharsons, the Browns were better off than the average crofter of Crathie parish, with their Black-faced (Linton) sheep and small black-horned cattle, scratching a living from niggardly plots, but it is an exaggeration on the part of the Marquis of Huntly to suggest that the family were ‘well-to-do’. 28 To augment the family coffers in the early 1840s, John Brown took work as an ostler’s assistant and then as stable lad at the coaching inn at Pannanich Wells, which had been redeveloped by Francis Farquharson. Some time later he found work on the Balmoral estate, which at that time was leased on a 38-year agreement by the Hon. Sir Robert Gordon from the trustees of the estate of the late James, Earl of Fife. How John Brown secured the post is not known, but in these days, outside the special hiring fairs usually held quarterly, jobs were obtained by word of mouth. John Brown’s duties included the herding of ponies for 13 s a week. 29 His work being satisfactory, he took up the position of one of the Balmoral gillies and was in this employment when the royal family appeared on Deeside.
By now Balmoral had become the centre of social life in Deeside as guests came and went, hosted by Sir Robert Gordon and his sister Lady Alicia. John Brown and his fellow gillies had a lot of extra duties taking care of the house guests who came with their own liveries, mounds of luggage, guns, rods and dogs. Much to the dismay of John Brown and his fellows, some women took up deerstalking. The gillies stood by, cringing and ‘watching their language’, as Sir Robert’s female guests – ahead of their time – scaled the deer hills. Lady Randolph Churchill remembered the first female deerstalkers:
I cannot say I admire [deerstalking] as an accomplishment. The fact is, I love life so much that the unnecessary curtailing of any creature’s existence is more than distasteful to me. Not long ago [at Balmoral] I saw a young and charming woman, who was surely not of a blood-thirsty
Other foreign suitors came and went but by the next year Princess Victoria’s mind was occupied with more serious matters. On 20 June 1837 King William IV died and Princess Victoria succeeded to the throne. Styled ‘Victoria, By the Grace of God, of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, Queen, Defender of the Faith,’ she was crowned at Westminster Abbey on Thursday 28 June 1838. She settled down to learn the profession of monarchy against a background of political intrigue. On 12 October 1839 Queen Victoria wrote again to her Uncle Leopold:
The dear cousins [Albert and Ernest] arrived at half past seven on Thursday, after a very bad and almost dangerous passage, but looking both very well, and much improved . . . Albert’s beauty is most striking, and he so amiable and unaffected – in short very fascinating. 27
The outcome was that Queen Victoria finally made up her mind and proposed marriage to Prince Albert. He accepted, and on 23 November she informed the Privy Council of her intention to marry. On 16 January 1840 she officially announced to the country her betrothal in a speech from the throne. She married Prince Albert on 10 February at the Chapel Royal, St James’s Palace. On 21 November 1840, nine months and eleven days after the wedding, Princess Victoria (‘Vicky’) Adelaide Mary Louisa, the Princess Royal, was born at Buckingham Palace.
By 1840, at the age of fourteen, John Brown had finished with formal education and had become a member of the workforce at Crathienaird. Like many of his Scots contemporaries, despite his poor circumstances, John Brown was a keen reader. Old John had encouraged his family to read at the very least the two books to be found in every Scots house, the Holy Bible and The Complete Poetical Works of Robert Burns, the first edition of whose poems had been published at Kilmarnock on 31 July 1786, when the Brown family were already firmly established at Crathie.
As tenant farmers of the Farquharsons, the Browns were better off than the average crofter of Crathie parish, with their Black-faced (Linton) sheep and small black-horned cattle, scratching a living from niggardly plots, but it is an exaggeration on the part of the Marquis of Huntly to suggest that the family were ‘well-to-do’. 28 To augment the family coffers in the early 1840s, John Brown took work as an ostler’s assistant and then as stable lad at the coaching inn at Pannanich Wells, which had been redeveloped by Francis Farquharson. Some time later he found work on the Balmoral estate, which at that time was leased on a 38-year agreement by the Hon. Sir Robert Gordon from the trustees of the estate of the late James, Earl of Fife. How John Brown secured the post is not known, but in these days, outside the special hiring fairs usually held quarterly, jobs were obtained by word of mouth. John Brown’s duties included the herding of ponies for 13 s a week. 29 His work being satisfactory, he took up the position of one of the Balmoral gillies and was in this employment when the royal family appeared on Deeside.
By now Balmoral had become the centre of social life in Deeside as guests came and went, hosted by Sir Robert Gordon and his sister Lady Alicia. John Brown and his fellow gillies had a lot of extra duties taking care of the house guests who came with their own liveries, mounds of luggage, guns, rods and dogs. Much to the dismay of John Brown and his fellows, some women took up deerstalking. The gillies stood by, cringing and ‘watching their language’, as Sir Robert’s female guests – ahead of their time – scaled the deer hills. Lady Randolph Churchill remembered the first female deerstalkers:
I cannot say I admire [deerstalking] as an accomplishment. The fact is, I love life so much that the unnecessary curtailing of any creature’s existence is more than distasteful to me. Not long ago [at Balmoral] I saw a young and charming woman, who was surely not of a blood-thirsty
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