Censoring Queen Victoria: How Two Gentlemen Edited a Queen and Created an Icon

For more than 60 years biographers lacked access to Queen Victoria’s voluminous correspondence, relying “instead on the published selections of letters produced by ‘royal command.’ ” Reginald Brett, second Viscount Esher, conceived of editing these letters. A political operator and intimate of Edward VII, he was a secret pedophile who perpetrated an incestuous relationship with one of his sons. Esher enlisted Arthur Benson, a depressed, vacillating, homosexual Eton housemaster and acclaimed biographer of his ferocious father Edward, a former Archbishop of Canterbury. Although the project’s intention was to let the Queen “speak for herself,” the editors omitted most of Victoria’s correspondence with “female relations and friends,” and all references to the Flora Hastings scandal wherein Victoria sullied the reputation of her “bullying” mother’s ally. Similarly, “[t]here was little mention of [Victoria’s] children,” while her European correspondence was edited to downplay foreign influence. Victoria’s assertive approach to her ministers was softened, her devotion to Prime Minister Melbourne highlighted, and her views about the French tempered, resulting in an inaccurate portrait of an innocent girl-queen as a mere accessory to “the strong men who surrounded her.” However enlightening, Ward’s earnest, thorough detailing of editorial minutiae will appeal mainly to Victoria scholars and enthusiasts. (Apr.)