Victoria's Secret Love Letters

Queen Victoria adored him, obeyed him, and praised him to everyone in sight. For nearly twenty years he was always by her side. When he died, Victoria was devastated. She ordered that his room be left as it was during his lifetime. She erected a statue of him with an inscription by the great poet Tennyson. She even wrote a book about him. Who was this paragon, described by the queen as "my dearest best friend whom no one in this world can ever replace"?

No, I'm not talking about Victoria's husband, Prince Albert, although Victoria mourned him just as fervently. I'm talking about a servant named John Brown.

Brown was a gillie (fishing and hunting guide) at Balmoral, the royal family's estate in Scotland. The queen first mentioned him in her diary in 1849. But it was not until after her husband's death (the Prince Consort succumbed to typhoid fever in 1861) that Brown began to become an important figure in Victoria's life. After he twice saved the queen from carriage accidents, he was appointed to lead her pony when she went riding. Finding him capable and dependable, she promoted him to the role of her personal attendant. He carried messages for her, walked with or drove her when she went out, slept in a room near hers, and was the only person allowed to enter her room without knocking. He ordered her about and she meekly obeyed him.

Inevitably, people began to talk about the queen's peculiar relationship with her Highland Servant. Rumor had it that Victoria and Brown were lovers, or even married. Most of the queen's biographers have discounted such scandalous allegations, believing that Victoria and Brown were nothing more than close friends.

A movie about Victoria's relationship with Brown, "Mrs. Brown," was released in 1997. In late 1998 the Times newspaper of London reported that the film's executive producer, Douglas Rae, and writer Jeremy Brocks had based their story partly on previously unknown "love letters" exchanged by Queen Victoria and John Brown. The letters, hidden in an attic by relatives of Brown for the past hundred years, included a Valentine from Victoria inscribed, "To my best friend JB from his best friend VR."

The existence of such letters hardly proves that Victoria and Brown were romantically involved. Victoria never concealed her devotion to Brown, and historians are aware of other other fond cards and letters from Victoria to her "best friend." Rae does not reveal the exact content of the letters he saw, saying only, "They were written by two people who were very close and shared an intimate friendship."

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