维多利亚女王与男仆的秘密恋情(图)

　Widowed queen’s devotion to manservant and grief at his death revealed by letter in which she tells of ’so warm and loving a friendship’. Ben Fenton reports

　　The extent of Queen Victoria’s love for John Brown, her Highland manservant, is revealed in a letter published today in which she likens her feelings at his death to becoming a widow for the second time.

　　Victoria’s relationship with the unconventional Scot was the subject of profound gossip in the Royal Family and court circles from the time that he began to console her after the death of her husband, Prince Albert, in 1861.

　　Her daughters referred to Mr Brown as "Mama’s lover" and he was also known in the royal household as her "stallion", while her popular nickname became Mrs Brown after a rumour that she had secretly married the man who had been her husband’s favourite ghillie.

　　Until now nothing substantiated the rumours. The Queen’s own journal described her reaction to Brown’s death in March 1883 merely as being "terribly upset by this loss".

　　But in the recently discovered letter, written to Viscount (later Earl of) Cranbrook, a close friend and former Secretary of State for India, she wrote of "her present unbounded grief for the loss of the best, most devoted of servants and truest and dearest of friends". Victoria, who usually wrote about herself in the third person,

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