GREATER DIMENSIONS • BY JOHN CHAMBERS I
n an October 2006 “Tooth and Claw” ep- isode of BBC-TV’s hit science-fiction se- ries Doctor Who, Britain’s Queen Vic- toria pays a visit, in 1879, to Torchwood House, in Scotland. Torchwood, which con- tains an observatory, was the scene of many a lively discussion about the mysteries of the heavens be- tween Victoria’s open-minded hus- band, Prince Albert, who died in 1861, and the house’s ec- centric owner, Sir George MacLeish, who was fascinated by both the sciences and local folklore. In the Doctor
Who episode, a giant werewolf tries to wrest the throne from Victoria but is thwarted by the young and person- able Doctor Who. But only apparently! The Doctor (a “Time Lord” who regularly saves our planet from disaster) tells the Queen she’s actually been rescued by the spirit of her late hus- band, who has inter- vened from the be- yond. Victoria had already told the viewing audience that Prince Albert was intensely inter- ested in all aspects of paranormal phenomena.
1901), presided over an era of unprecedented growth and prosperity for Great Britain and its empire. The British Empire no longer ex- ists; since the end of World War II, the appa- ratus of imperialism has been largely swept into the dustbin of history. But Britons in the nineteenth century looked with pride on their empire, which spanned every conti- nent, and upon which, they were fond of saying, “the sun never sets.” The empire reached its greatest extent seventeen years after the death of Victoria, who had been pro-
rescence of literary genius in Great Britain which included writers like Charles Dickens, George Eliot, William Makepeace Thackeray, Emily and Charlotte Bronte, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Elizabeth Barrett and Robert Browning, Anthony Trollope, and many more.
The enlightened stability of Queen Vic- toria’s long reign (1837-1901), including, not infrequently, her advice to her ministers (the queen herself had no ultimate power), helped make all this possible.
It seemed un- Was Britain Ever Guided by Departed Spirits?
In devising this episode, the creators of Doctor Who are merely giving fresh expres- sion to a lingering belief among Britons that Queen Victoria was deeply intrigued by the occult and that, after Albert’s death, she made desperate efforts to contact his spirit in the afterworld—and succeeded. These per- sistent rumors include the untoward insinua- tion that, through the agency of medium- ship, Albert’s spirit was able to enter the soul of Victoria’s Scottish personal servant John Brown, thereby giving the Queen license to have an affair with Brown.
Is there any truth to this sinister scuttle- butt, which in the eyes of many casts an un- warranted occult shadow over the memory of a monarch who demonstrated, through-out her 64-year-long reign, many noble qualities and who passionately loved her foreign-born Prince Consort husband?
Princess Alexandrina Victoria of Kent, as she was christened in 1819 (she died in
24 ATLANTIS RISING • Number 85
claimed “Empress of India” in 1877, and whose long and stable reign played an indis- pensable role in holding it together. Victoria’s reign saw Britain’s industrial revolution make Britain a world leader in trade and commerce. This wasn’t accom- plished without a struggle. It took fierce bat- tles in parliament to abolish child labor abuses and to ensure minimally tolerable work standards for key sectors of the popula- tion. All this came about without actual rev- olution or major civic upheavals; Britain’s increasingly sophisticated system of parlia- mentary democracy, along with self-help or- ganizations created by the workers them- selves, managed to anticipate and ward off the more important of the crises. Britain’s Royal Navy—bigger than the next three biggest navies in the world put together— kept Britain safe from foreign invasion and gave it a logistical advantage in overseas con- flicts. The social and political stability engen- dered by these factors encouraged an efflo-
likely Victoria would succeed. She came to the throne when she was only 18 and, though she was clever and well- educated, it was a daunting task for her to suddenly have to contend on an equal footing not only with her own government but with all the leading powers of the day. Most historians agree that the young Queen would have succeeded only with the greatest of diffi- culty if it hadn’t been for her husband, Al- bert of Saxe-Coburg Gotha (a tiny princi- pality in Germany), a foreigner, imported from the continent, whom she married in 1840 when both were 21 (she was three months older). This was an ar- ranged, dynastic marriage; Albert himself was part of a ruling dynasty. But,
as the movie Young Victoria, released in 2009, glowingly (and more or less accu- rately) portrays, it was a loving marriage, particularly for Queen Victoria, who had a keen appreciation of male physical beauty (she also preferred whiskey to milk or cream in her tea and loved sleeping in). Victoria confided to her journal:
“Albert really is quite charming, and so excessively handsome, such beautiful blue eyes, an exquisite nose, and such a pretty mouth with delicate mustachios and light but very slight whiskers; a beautiful figure, broad in the shoulders and a fine waist; my heart is quite going.”
Lytton Strachey, writing in Eminent Vic-
torians in 1911, wasn’t sure that Albert re- ciprocated these feelings:
“Affection, gratitude, the natural reac- tions to the unqualified devotion of a lively young cousin who was also a queen—such feelings possessed him, but the ardours of
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