Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/513

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Victoria
499
Victoria

tion,' 'The Queen's Marriage,' 1840, and 'Christening of the Prince of Wales;' F. Winterhalter's 'The Reception of Louis Philippe,' 1844 ; E. M. Ward's ' The Queen investing Napoleon III with the Garter' and ' The Queen at the Tomb of Napoleon,' 1855 : G. H. Thomas's ' Review in Paris,' 1855 ; J. Phillip's ' Marriage of Princess Royal,' 1859; G. H. Thomas's 'The Queen at Aldershot,' 1859 ; W. P. Frith's ' Marriage of the Prince of Wales,' 1863 ; G. Magnussen's ' Marriage of Princess Helena,' 1866; Sydney P. Hall's 'Marriage of the Duke of Connaught,' 1879 ; Sir James Linton's ' Marriage of the Duke of Albany,' 1882 ; R. Caton W^oodville's ' Marriage of the Princess Beatrice,' 1885 ; Laurenz Tuxen's ' The Queen and Royal Family at Jubilee of 1887 ; ' Sydney P. Hall's ' Marriage of the Duchess of Fife,' 1889 ; Tuxen's ' Marriage of the Duke of York,' 1893. The sculptured presentations of the queen, one or more examples of which is to be found in almost every city of the empire, include a bust by Behnes, 1829 (in possession of Lord Ronald Gower) ; an equestrian statue by Marochetti at Glasgow ; a statue by Boehm at Windsor; a large plaster bust by Sir Edgar Boehm (in National Portrait Gallery, London) ; a statue at Winchester by Mr. Alfred Gilbert, R.A. ; a statue at Manchester by Mr. Onslow Ford, R.A., 1900. A national memorial in sculpture, to be designed by Mr. Thomas Brock, R.A., is to be placed in the Mall opposite the entrance to Buckingham Palace.

The portrait head of the queen on the coinage followed three successive types The coinage and medals. in the course of the reign. Soon after her accession William Wyon designed from life a head which appears in the silver and gold coinage with the hair simply knotted, excepting in the case of the florin, where the head bears a crown for the first time since the coinage of Charles II. In the copper coinage a laurel wreath was intertwined with the hair. In 1887 Sir Edgar Boehm designed a new bust portrait, showing the features in mature age with a small crown and veil most awkwardly placed on the head. This ineffective design was replaced in 1893 by a more artistic crowned presentment from the hand of Mr. Thomas Brock, R.A.

Of medals on which her head appears the majority commemorate military or naval achievements, and are not of great artistic note (cf. John H. Mayo's Medals and Decorations of the British Army and Navy, 1897). Many medals commemorating events in the queen's reign were also struck by order of the corporation of London (cf. Charles Welch's Numismata Londinensia, 1894, with plates). Of strictly official medals of the reign the chief are that struck in honour of the coronation from designs in 1838; the jubilee medal of 1897, with the reverse designed by Lord Leighton ; and the diamond jubilee medal of 1897, with Wyon's design of the queen's head in youth on the reverse, and Mr. Brock's design of the head in old age on the obverse with the noble inscription : 'Longitudo dierum in dextera eius et in sinistra gloria.'

The adhesive postage stamp was an invention of the queen's reign, and was adopted by the government in 1840. A crowned portrait head of the queen was designed for postage stamps in that year, and was not moditied in the United Kingdom during her lifetime. In most of the colonies recent issues of postage stamps bear a portrait of the queen in old age.

[No life of Queen Victoria of any importance has yet been published. The sketches by Mr. R. R. Holmes, librarian at Windsor (with elaborate portrait illustrations, 1887, and text alone, 1901), by Mrs. Oliphant, by Principal Tulloch, perfect. The outward facts of her life and reign are best studied in the Annual Register from 1837 to 1900, together with the Times newspaper, Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, and the collected edition of Punch. A vast library of memoirs of contemporaries supplies useful hints and information for the whole period. For the years before and immediately after the accession, see Mrs. Gerald Gurney's Childhood of Queen Victoria, 1901 ; Tuer's First Year of a Silken Reign ; Memoir of Gabriele von Billow (Eagl. transl.), 1897 ; Earl of Albemarle's Fifty Years of my Life; Strafford House Letters, 1891, pt. ri. ; and Sir Charles Murray's papers in Cornhill Mag. 1897. The only portion of the queen's career which has been dealt with fully is her married life, 1840-61, which is treated in General Grey's Early Years of the Prince Consort, 1808. and in Sir Theodore Martin's Life of the Prince Consort, 5 vols. 1874-80. The account then given of the queen's private and public experiences during the years in question is largely drawn from her and her husband's journals and letters. Both General Grey and Sir Theodore Marlin write from the queen's point of view, and pay little or no attention to the evidence writers with whom the queen was out of sympathy ; some memoirs published since the appearance of these volumes also usefully suppliment the information. The best authority for the general course of the queen's life and her relations with political history down to 1860 is