royal wedding celebration

It is very touching that as, 110 years ago tomorrow, Queen Victoria was nearing her passing she asked to see her little dog. According to the report of her physician, Sir James Reid, on 21st January 1901, as she lay in bed at Osborne,

“...the Queen suddenly asked for her favourite little dog ‘Turi’ (Italian Spitz) but unfortunately he was out for exercise and not to be found. However, when he returned he was taken and put on the Queen’s bed, who patted him and seemed pleased to have him beside her.”
This was the day before Queen Victoria died and it is rather beautiful that Turi is mentioned so close to such a momentous historical occasion. Throughout her life, Queen Victoria’s animals had meant so much to her – and to other members of her family – that her letters are speckled with references to them: to Noble’s puppies, to Vicky’s cats at Potsdam, to the ostrich at Windsor, to Beatrice’s poor little dog who was killed by a carriage on the Isle of Wight. Animals were so close to the Queen’s heart that she openly supported the anti-vivisection league and clearly saw her beloved animals as members of the family. It is lovely that, alongside the mythical and family figures who, carved in stone and marble, adorn the corridors and gardens of Osborne, there are are also carvings of Prince Albert’s beloved greyhound, Eos, (who is pictured in the image here) and various other horses and dogs so beloved by the family.

Among the many accounts of the death of Queen Victoria, little mention is made of Turi’s presence and the comfort he brought her. He is rather overshadowed by the presence of Kaisers, Kings, Princes and Princesses...but it was Turi whom the Queen specifically asked for and I would love to know what happened to him afterwards. I hope he wasn’t like Caesar, Edward VII’s dog, who wandered desperately around Buckingham Palace searching for his master after his passing (but was happily given a leading role at the King’s funeral).

People remember the names of horses who carried war leaders into battle – the Duke of Wellington’s ‘Copenhagen’, and Napoleon’s ‘Marengo’ etc. etc. – it’s rather lovely to think of the other animals whose presence graced the lives of great people. Tsarevich Alexei’s spaniel ‘Joy’ and Mary, Queen of Scots’ terrier ‘Gedden’ accompanied their human companions to the death. More faithful than any servant, more comforting than any words offered by friends or family, these half-forgotten angels in animal form remained unflinching to the end and, unmoved by politics or the bickering that goes on between humans, deserve their place in history.

Little Turi deserves his place in history, too, and I am glad his name is recorded.

“I have not spent a day without loving you; I have not spent a night without embracing you; I have not so much as drunk a single cup of tea without cursing the pride and ambition which force me to remain separated from the moving spirit of my life.”
What an interesting line from one of Napoleon’s letters to his wife. In other letters he writes of the distance between them and again blames his pride – it almost seems like he was driven beyond reason to be constantly conquering somewhere or other for fear of being conquered. When he discovered that during one of his terribly long absences Josephine had taken a lover, he was beside himself with grief but rather than treating her with physical cruelty, he returned home and when she swore it would not happen again, he accepted it....on condition that he could take what mistresses he chose – and he did. What a need to be in power...and such a tender heart. He must have lived in constant conflict between his head and his heart – his driving ambition that made him quite ruthless, and his natural tendency to love and the need to feel loved in return. Even as he invaded other countries, he tried to convince himself that he was doing so to liberate them but it was surely was merely a symptom of his need to liberate himself from the many unresolved issues from his childhood and beyond.

In spite of myself, I really do find something attractive and intriguing about him – something of the lost little boy who disguised his need to feel loved behind a display of machismo. In this he reminds me a lot of Kaiser Wilhelm II, but Napoleon had the added intellectual brilliance and personal drive to be able to achieve so many of his aims. Unlike the vile Robespierre, he didn’t insist on the slaughter of innocent bystanders- he fought only opposing armies - and he did seize a crown, but only when that crown was already there for the taking. His support for the French Revolution is something I dislike but he didn’t support all that unnecessary slaughter or the paranoia that was so characteristic of ‘The Terror.’

He divorced Josephine when he considered her too old to bear him a son to continue the dynasty but he was heart-broken by that decision and he saw that Josephine was well cared for. When he heard later of her death, he retired to his room, refusing to be seen for two days. There was a man who had the wherewithal and opportunity to achieve all that Nicholas II would have liked to have achieved – a quiet life with his wife and family – but who was so driven by ambition that he could not live that ideal. Nothing except Napoleon stopped him from living a happy life with his wife but he remained driven and unhappy. Doesn’t it show how everything is in the mind of the individual? None of us is a victim of circumstance. We are victims only of our own thoughts and beliefs and, since we have power over those, the world is our oyster!

I set out to learn more of Napoleon, believing I would dislike him but in fact, I find him fascinating. (Incidentally, as a light aside, my mother told me today that when she was a small child her grandmother, for some odd reason, had a very large portrait of Napoleon hanging on the wall. My mother – being a small child – assumed it was a picture of her late grandfather! Funny...my mother’s name is Josephine!)

Here is a fascinating site with some of Napoleon’s letters to Josephine....and then to his mistresses and to his second wife.

http://www.napoleonguide.com/lovelett.htm

(Another interlude from the Queen’s granddaughters...)

Napoleon is ‘before my time’ as it were but I’ve been learning more about his life and found it rather sad at the end to see him fall and die as he did in exile. Although he was, in my opinion, a desperate little boy still having to overcome the bullies and humiliations of his childhood - and so became so obsessed with power over others to make up for the lack in himself, consequently leading to the death of 13 million soldiers across Europe – there is something attractive and inspiring about him. He was absolutely driven by ambition to the extent that when everything went wrong for him, he never stopped and complained, he simply did what he did and came back again! Exiled to Elba, for instance, after having been so successful a general and Emperor of France, he simply turned himself into Emperor of Elba (small island that it was) and did what he had done in France – made the place beautiful with trees and roads etc. etc. and when he had done all he could do there, he returned to France and by the sheer power of his personality and charisma, won the hearts of those who were sent to prevent his return. Unlike many revolutionaries, I think he had a heart – he genuinely loved Josephine – but, as with everything else in his life, he would not allow that heart, which could sometimes be so tender and he was not a cruel man, to stand in the way of his ambition.

Ultimately he fell...and that is the way of those who seize power, isn’t it? They all seem to spend their lives looking over their shoulders because they know that what they have done to others, others will do to them (Trotsky’s end...William the Conqueror, even, died alone and naked...Stalin left to die alone...). It surely comes from deriving power from others. It becomes like an insatiable hunger. Napoleon achieved greatness, but was never satisfied. He had to go on and on and on, even when he knew it was hopeless, trying to fill the need to feel secure, although such a need was insatiable since he sought that security from others and was never able to find it in himself.


At the opposite end of the spectrum, is Nicholas II. A man who never wanted power but had it thrust upon him and, while working just as hard as Napoleon did to maintain an Empire, dreamed always of a simple life with his wife and family. Napoleon was prepared to sacrifice Josephine, the love of his life, in order to continue his dynasty. Nicholas, a man who was secure in himself and did not need power from others, was prepared to sacrifice everything for the love of his wife and family.

Who was the greater leader and who was better off in the end? A man who achieved so much and is seen always as a hero...and who died alone and sad seeing his life’s work taken from him, or a man who is always seen as weak but who ended his life secure in his own faith, surrounded by his family and with a clear conscience? Napoleon ended his life writing his memoirs and reliving his former glories. Nicholas’ life was cut short by murderers before he had the chance to do that but I doubt he would have felt any need to justify himself anyway. I really believe that these lines from ‘King Lear’ (ah! the joy of two passions intertwined – Shakespeare and the Romanovs in one post!) could have been written for what Nicholas said to his wife when they were in captivity...

Come, let's away to prison:
We two alone will sing like birds i' the cage...
...so we'll live,
And pray, and sing, and tell old tales, and laugh
At gilded butterflies, and hear poor rogues
Talk of court news; and we'll talk with them too,
Who loses and who wins; who's in, who's out;
And take upon us the mystery of things,
As if we were God's spies: and we'll wear out,
In a walled prison, packs and sects of great ones,
That ebb and flow by the moon

It’s all so endlessly fascinating!!

(A brief interlude from “Queen Victoria’s Granddaughters”, which will continue shortly...)

I love history! I just love it with a passion! And I think its appeal isn’t so much the awful cloistered professors-in-towers passing judgement on individual people of the past or the way that old text books make statements such as ‘Germany invaded Poland’ (as if this bit of land could suddenly uproot itself and become that bit of land?? What is Germany? What is Poland? Pieces of land marked out by mankind) but rather it is a never-ending unfolding fascination with what it is to be human. Everyone seems to love a good story – be it in sermons, radio plays, snatches of films – as soon as the beginning of a story is heard, it captures your attention. History is filled with amazing stories and maybe we love stories of other people because basically we are all one and learning to understand ourselves.

Here’s a thing that dawned on me today: isn’t it interesting that virtually all revolutions are born of a self-righteousness which is a mask for hatred and jealousy? And which people are, for the most part, the leaders of revolutions? Little boys with unresolved issues from their childhood acting out their theme on the world stage.

When young, Napoleon Bonaparte, the ‘little Corsican upstart’ who was treated with disdain, ostensibly despised the French. (I think Napoleon was a brilliant general but a very unhappy man who came to an unhappy end - the painting of him was propaganda to continue his myth). He was so jealous of the power of France that his overwhelming desire was to rule that country no matter who stood in his way. He adpated himself to the revolution, spoke up for revolutionary values....and made himself a tyrannical Emperor of France. So much for his 'equality and freedom'.

I wonder if Austrian-born Hitler, knowing that during WW1 the Germans believed their alliance with Austria had them ‘shackled to a corpse’ felt the same inferiority complex about Germany. Interesting how both those men were driven by hatred to rise above their circumstances and ultimately to self-destruct. Lenin and Stalin hated the Tsarist regime but were so quick to move into the Tsar’s palaces (once they had murdered him and his family) and play at being Tsars – and acting out a far more violent and cruel tyranny than the Tsars ever exacted.

Napoleon and Hitler both were devoted to their mothers but disliked their fathers and saw them as weak (Oedipus?). They railed throughout their childhood against perceived slights, and rather than learning to regain the power over their own feelings and self esteem, found a need to dominate others in order to feel secure. No one cane really control anyone else...so obviously when they realised that, they both moved into self-destruction.

What is most fascinating of all is the idea that ‘ordinary’ people believed and continue to believe that their wellbeing lies in the hands of others. Napoleon, Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and every other leader who has ever seized power, was able to do so – and to go on to commit terrible atrocities - because a great number of people felt a need for someone else to take control of their lives and make decisions for them, and these ‘leaders’ (lost little boys) were glad of the adulation and enjoyed the power trip.

I think humanity has grown up a bit recently, but there are still people who view their leaders as the controllers of their lives. People create leaders whom they worship (did you see the election of President Obama?) or love to hate (did you see the applause at Tony Blair's election victory, or Mrs. Thatcher's...and did you watch them depart?). Bizarre how people believe that anyone else has any real control over their lives!

Today and yesterday, endless news articles report ad nauseam of the effects of the government cuts to public spending but I think we give too much attention to what is decided among politicians. It really doesn’t have so large an effect on our lives as people like to believe. It’s all just stories and we have far more power over which stories we choose to listen to, and how we choose to live our lives, than most of us realise.