She had made the season her own. The festive season at the end of the 19th century was very different from that in 1837, the year she had become monarch. Yet the final Christmas of Queen Victoria was filled with heartbreak.
The queen herself could not get away from it, noting in her diary for December 25th 1900 ”this has indeed been a terribly sad Christmas for us all!”. And it had, indeed, been a sombre time. Victoria had begun the festive period in mourning for a beloved son and grandson and ended it grieving the loss of a dear friend, too.
Queen Victoria spent her final Christmas at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. She had arrived there a week earlier and would never leave its walls again. On Christmas Eve, her diary notes a recurring theme for the ageing monarch. She had been struggling to sleep although was relieved to have rested a little better the night before. However, her tiredness is evident – having previously filled pages and pages with her stories of Christmas, the entry for 1900 is very brief.
The queen notes that she went out with her daughters, Helena and Beatrice, before setting into the Durbar Room for the exchange of presents. However, the malaise that followed her in the final part of her life was ever present. She had helped popularise the brightly lit Christmas tree at the heart of British festive celebrations, the centrepiece for the giving of gifts. But she wrote, that last Christmas Eve of her life, that ”I felt very melancholy as I see so very badly.”
She tried to be bright as she unwrapped her gifts but, again, there was an ever present sadness. On July 30th 1900, she had lost her second son, Alfred, who had died of cancer. On October 29th 1900, her grandson, Christian Victor, had died of enteric fever, contracted while serving in the Boer War. As she opened her presents, Victoria found a bracelet, given to her by her eldest son, Albert Edward, in memory of his lost brother. Another gift was an enamel, decked with sapphires, of her lost grandson who she called Christie.
Victoria’s insomnia returned as she settled into bed on Christmas Eve and her diary entry for Christmas Day 1900 notes that ”every remedy that was tried failed in making me sleep.” Beatrice and Helena again insisted on taking her out but it appears that, this time, they had a very serious motive. As they rode, they told their mother that one of her closest friends had been taken ill.
Jane Churchill was one of Victoria’s ladies in waiting and had been a confidante for years. She had come to Osborne to spend the festive season but had been taken ill on Christmas Eve. Victoria, according to her diary entry, was initially told that ”dear Jane Churchill had had one of her bad heart attacks in the night” but the journal tells a very sad story.
Through the afternoon, a string of people speak to the queen to tell her that her friend’s condition is poor. Victoria records that she had become so distressed that a doctor then arrives to tell her that Jane Churchill died overnight, in her sleep. The queen writes ”they had not dared tell me for fear of giving me a shock, so had prepared me gradually for the terrible news.”
She retired for the night after a short service, ending her entry with her reflection of how sad the season had been for all. Victoria died four weeks later, on January 22nd 1901, at Osborne.
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