Newman Studies Journal

The author of this book is to be congratulated for taking up the important project of exploring Queen Victoria's spiritual life. It is a worthy addition to the Oxford University Press series, Spiritual Lives. Covering the span of Victoria's long life, the work of dealing with the private life of such a public figure is no easy endeavor. Michael Ledger-Lomas's book begins the task of filling the gap in our understanding of the queen, and her deeply private experience of faith.

The introduction helpfully places this book in the context of previous scholarship, and considers why her religious grounding has received superficial treatment. Ledger-Lomas has clearly benefited from the digitization of the queen's journal, which she began in 1832 and kept daily until 1901 (7). Though a flawed source for a variety of reasons (above all because it is only known through the transcriptions of her daughter Beatrice), it nevertheless confirms the seriousness of her faith, which included meticulous recording of the Sunday preachers and summaries of their sermons.

The great love of her life, Albert, greatly influenced her perspective and inculcated a sense of connection with his Lutheran formation (ch. 2), though her Anglican convictions ran in the direction of liberals in the Church of England. In reaction to Tractarian tendencies to celebrate the celibate life, Victoria and Albert sought to sacralize their domestic life, and cultivated the public impression of the royals as a "holy family" (79). Even her "obdurate" opposition to Sabbatarianism and resistance to state fast days was motivated by a conviction that there should be no separation between the sacred and the secular (79).

Victoria first became aware of the Oxford Movement in 1838, when Prime Minister Melbourne told her of "a Dr Pusey and a Mr Newman . . . very violent people of the High Church character." (144) She expressed dismay later that year at a sermon preached by Walter Hook. In parliament, Hook had denied that the Church of England was a creature of the Crown and asserted the intrinsic independence of the church from the state, noting that it was older than the Reformation. Prime Ministers Peel and Russell allied with the queen, and were resolute in defense of the Royal Supremacy, denying Tractarians preferment in the universities and the church, and sought other opportunities to thwart the Oxford Movement (144–45). Though she had her own sense of sacramentalism, nurtured for a time by Samuel Wilberforce, she had no time for the Ritualists who emerged in the latter period of her reign (82). [End Page 89]

Ledger-Lomas charts in fascinating detail the morbid turn of Victoria's private religion after the untimely death of Albert, and the long withdrawal of the queen from public life. It is striking that she found kindred spirits in her long retreats among the Presbyterians while at Balmoral Castle. Her almost cult-like obsession with annual commemorations of the deaths of those she loved is noteworthy (ch. 7).

Because of the length of her reign, and the complications of her personal sense of tragedy, the latter decades of her life in this narrative proved less satisfying than the exploration of the early decades of her long life. Yet, this should not tarnish the value of this book or detract from its many fine attributes. This is an important accomplishment, and one that this author hopes will stimulate more detailed examinations of specific periods of her personal religious journey.