A scrapbook of mementoes of Queen Victoria’s childhood collected by her German governess, including lockets of her hair and fabric from her wedding dress, is to be auctioned in Berlin.
Baroness Louise Lehzen gathered the items during the 21 years she spent at Victoria’s side, first as her governess, later as an adviser and confidante, before being dismissed from the royal court by the queen’s husband, Prince Albert, who believed that her influence had become too great.
The intimate memorial album, a red leather-bound notebook with the dimensions of a hardback novel, offers an insight into the life of the young Victoria, and her close relationship with the German woman, whom she referred to in private as “mother” and “dearest daisy”.
Leafing through its blue pages clad in white gloves, Patrick Golenia, a specialist at Grisebach auctioneers, described the collection as a “fascinating testimony of the friendship between two women and of the strong British-German connection in the British royal family”. The album is on public display until Tuesday afternoon at the auction house in Berlin.
Engraved with the gold VR insignia of Queen Victoria, the book is a compilation of souvenirs from the women’s relationship, containing lockets of Victoria’s hair, photographs from the private family album, and miniature watercolours painted by the young princess.
The samples of hair, fastened with cotton threads or thin pieces of ribbon, have been annotated by Lehzen. Next to a mouse-brown lick of hair tied up with pink thread, she has written: “Hair of the queen as a young girl.” Gaining in thickness and colour depth the older she gets, there are samples from Victoria’s hair up to the age of 23. The last is fastened with hairpins and fixed to an envelope of Windsor Castle stationery sent from Victoria to Lehzen in 1842.
“We know that Queen Victoria sent a lot of hair samples and that this was very typical of the time,” Golenia said. “But this is the largest number of her hair samples to be found in one place – except perhaps for the pillow on which she died.
“What we have here is an important historical object because it is a testimony to the unbelievably close friendship, almost familial one between a teacher and her pupil, a queen and her employee.”
The album was in the possession of Lehzen’s descendants before being made public for the first time in 1999. It went under the hammer in Germany in 2001, sparking a bidding war between two buyers who wanted to acquire it primarily so they could ascertain their alleged blood connections to Victoria through DNA testing of the hair samples. It was eventually bought by an unknown Austrian bidder for €70,000 (then £49,000).
Fierce bidding is expected again on 30 November, when the book will go on sale. There is a heightened expectation that the memorabilia will be bought by a British buyer for the first time, according to Golenia.
“I would certainly be happy if it went back to England,” he said. “I believe it would be greatly appreciated there, not least because it underlines the gentler, more tender side of Victoria, her more private, and personal side.”
One condition of the sale is that the album remains intact, precisely to prevent it from being exploited for the genetic value of the hair.
It also includes a portrait of Queen Victoria and her Scottish aide John Brown, part of the lace used in the garter worn at her wedding to Prince Albert in 1840, and a piece of the fabric used to make her white silk wedding gown, which set the trend for white wedding dresses.
Intricate watercolours, painted by Victoria herself, depict her own coronation, Windsor Castle and romantic scenes from the middle ages, as well as a small pencil sketch of a woman’s pensive face drawn after a theatre visit. Snippets of paper depict examples of Victoria’s efforts while learning to write, displaying a delicate script.
Lehzen, who was born in Hanover, became governess to the young Victoria at Kensington Palace when she was five years old. From the start, there was tension between Lehzen and Victoria’s parents over the German teacher’s efforts to encourage the future queen’s independent personality, but Victoria held her in great affection, later crediting her with giving the warmth she had failed to receive from her own mother. As a 16-year-old she confided to her journal, which Lehzen had compelled her to keep: “[Louise is] the most affectionate, devoted, attached, and disinterested friend I have, and I love her most dearly”.
When Victoria became queen at the age of 18 in 1837, Lehzen’s role morphed into that of an adviser and companion. But Victoria’s marriage to Albert in 1840 marked the start of Lehzen’s downfall. The fellow Germans despised each other, with Albert said to have resented the intimacy between Lehzen and his wife, not least her access to Victoria’s bedroom. Lehzen was discreetly dismissed and retired on an annual pension of £800 paid to her by Victoria until her death in 1870. They also wrote several letters to each other a week, which are believed to have been picked up by a Buckingham Palace courier following Lehzen’s death, and are now considered to be lost.
The gravestone which Victoria had erected over Lehzen’s grave bears the inscription: “Dedicated in gratitude to the faithful mentor of her youth by Victoria, Queen of Great Britain”.
The women’s relationship has been dramatised on numerous occasions, most famously in the 2001 TV serial Victoria & Albert, when Lehzen was played by Diana Rigg, and most recently in the ITV series Victoria, where she is played by Daniela Holtz.
