Published in Windlesora 19 (2002)
© WLHG
22 June: This eventful day, 1897, has opened, and I pray God to help and protect me as He has hitherto done during these long eventful years!
Queen Victoria’s Journal.
The Diamond Jubilee of Queen Victoria had a huge emotional impact on the people of Britain. By 1897, the year of her Jubilee, she had become a legend in her own lifetime and each of her subjects took an intense personal satisfaction in her survival and her long reign. This little old lady, habitually dressed in black with a white cap or bonnet, was adored by her subjects.
Joseph Chamberlain was the first person to think of turning the Diamond Jubilee into a festival of colonial premiers rather than crowned heads, and the Queen adopted the idea with alacrity. She did not want to cram Windsor Castle with kings, emperors, and their suites, as it was more than she could bear at her age. One emperor in particular would have been entirely unacceptable. Queen Victoria wrote to her private secretary on 30th January 1897 ‘…there is not the slightest fear of the Queen’s giving way about the Emperor William’s coming here, in June. It would never do….’
On 16th June she travelled from Balmoral to Windsor. The main festivities, however, were taking place in London.
Sunday 20th June was the actual anniversary of her accession. Prince Albert’s Te Deum was sung once again at a family thanksgiving in St George’s Chapel followed by a special Jubilee prayer. Bishop How’s Jubilee hymn had been set to music by Sir Arthur Sullivan. [A first attempt at a Jubilee hymn had been made by the Poet Laureate, Alfred Austin: Sullivan rejected it as unworthy of his music.]
Jubilee services were held in all churches and chapels throughout the land. After her official guests had departed for London the Queen went to the Mausoleum with her eldest daughter and offered some silent prayers at Albert’s tomb.
On 21st she travelled to Paddington on the Royal train, which had been magnificently refurbished for the occasion. From London she sent a telegraph round her Empire: ‘From my heart I thank my beloved people. May God bless them!’
On Thursday, 24th June, the Queen travelled by train to Slough and thence by coach to Windsor. Huge crowds lined the route, giving her a tumultuous welcome. So many country people who wished to see her had parked their horses and carts in the adjoining fields that there was traffic chaos. Her route took her under two spectacular decorative arches, the work of AY Nutt, one outside Eton College, the other spanning the bridge. Her statue was adorned with a temporary canopy in the style of the Italian renaissance and all the buildings were hung with flags and bunting.
On the Friday night a torchlight display followed the same lines as that of 1887 and was described by one onlooker as a ‘half religious, musical, military rite, one of the most wonderful hours of that celebrated week’. The Eton boys, escorted by the band of the Coldstream Guards and the Pipers of the Scots Guards, formed up behind. Volunteers who were carrying torches or Chinese lanterns were admitted to the Castle. There they waited until 10.00pm when there was a roll of drums and the whole school, led by the volunteers, performed complicated ‘evolutions’. There was a dramatic finale when the boys, drawn up in such close order that their torches looked like a sheet of flame, charged towards the watching Queen. Then all the boys, with their torches held aloft, marched back to the College. Spectators remarked on how the Round Tower seemed to be issuing volumes of illuminated smoke. The fire brigades assembled at the Home Park where they also formed into a torchlight procession and marched through the town towards Eton accompanied by a brass band.
Massed choirs sang, fireworks exploded and bonfires lit up the skyline! What a good show!
Sheila Rooney
Windsor Local History Group 