Prince of progress

The tragedy of Prince Albert was not that he died at the age of forty-two 150 years ago this month, but that his quick-tempered and lusty Hanoverian wife loved him too well. Queen Victoria’s orgiastic response to widowhood — her determination through four decades of sorrowful singledom never again to be amused — kicked over the traces of the real Albert and replaced him with that earnest-looking paragon who stares cheerlessly at pigeons and commuters alike from some 20 or so heavyweight sculptures and monuments scattered across the British Isles.

Victoria’s grief was elemental: ‘My life as a happy one is ended! The world is gone for me!’ So absolute was her absorption in her suffering that it became her raison d’être. It was a form of hysteria, a glorious mummery rooted partly in sadness, partly in selfishness. It sought to create a saint from a man whose lodestar was rationality.