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Queen Victoria's Deep Grief on Husband Revealed in New Notes

Sketches by Queen Victoria and writing is seen in one of her journals on display at a special exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria which marks this year's Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace in London. REUTERS/Toby Melville
Sketches by Queen Victoria and writing is seen in one of her journals on display at a special exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria which marks this year's Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace in London. REUTERS/Toby Melville
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Queen Victoria's Deep Grief on Husband Revealed in New Notes

Sketches by Queen Victoria and writing is seen in one of her journals on display at a special exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria which marks this year's Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace in London. REUTERS/Toby Melville
Sketches by Queen Victoria and writing is seen in one of her journals on display at a special exhibition celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Queen Victoria which marks this year's Summer Opening of Buckingham Palace in London. REUTERS/Toby Melville

British royal documents including Queen Victoria's heart-wrenching, handwritten account of her husband Prince Albert's death have been shared online, offering a firsthand account of her overwhelming grief.

Queen Victoria reigned from 1837 until her death in 1901. She and German-born Albert had nine children before he died of typhoid in 1861 at age 42.

She writes that, as he passed away, she "kissed his dear heavenly forehead and called out in a bitter and agonizing cry: 'Oh! My dear Darling!' then dropped on my knees in mute, distracted despair, unable to utter a word or shed a tear." For the rest of her reign, she wore black.

Images of Victoria's leather-bound notebook and its handwritten pages have been uploaded as part of thousands of documents and photos on the website www.albert.rct.uk that went online Friday to mark next week's 200th anniversary of Albert's birth.

Helen Trompeteler, project manager for the website, said Victoria's account of Albert's death, has been available to scholars before, but is being made public in full for the first time. "It reflects upon obviously the impact that Albert continues to have on her throughout her many extended years of mourning. And it's a testament to the remarkable partnership that they had," she added.

According to The Times, it was 10 years until Victoria could even bring herself to write about the day the love of her life died. "I have never had the courage to attempt to describe this dreadful day," Victoria wrote of Albert's death at Windsor Castle.

The profound love had always been mutual. In a letter written to Victoria on the day of their engagement, Oct. 15, 1839, Albert writes: "I can only believe that Heaven has sent down an angel to me, whose radiance is intended to brighten my life."

The three-year Prince Albert Digitization Project, which is uploading around 23,500 items from sources including Britain's Royal Collection and Royal Archives, should be finished by the end of next year.

The documents and photographs also highlight Albert's role in Victorian society, his patronage of the arts and sciences and his involvement in social causes including his outspoken opposition to slavery.

"He was certainly the most prominent member of the royal family to speak on the issue of the abolition of slavery," Trompeteler said.

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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
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In Beirut, a Photographer's Frozen Moments Slow Down Time and Allow the Contemplation of Destruction

A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)
A bomb dropped from an Israeli jet hits a building in Ghobeiri, Beirut, Lebanon, Tuesday, October 22, 2024. (AP Photo/ Bilal Hussein)

We watch video after video, consuming the world on our handheld devices in bites of two minutes, one minute, 30 seconds, 15. We turn to moving pictures — “film” — because it comes the closest to approximating the world that we see and experience. This is, after all, 2024, and video in our pocket — ours, others', everyone's — has become our birthright.
But sometimes — even in this era of live video always rolling, always recording, always capturing — sometimes the frozen moment can enter the eye like nothing else. And in the process, it can tell a larger story that echoes long after the moment was captured. That's what happened this past week in Beirut, through the camera lens of Associated Press photographer Bilal Hussein and the photographs he captured.
When Hussein set up his camera outside an evacuated Beirut apartment building Tuesday after Israel announced it would be targeted as part of military operations against Hezbollah, he had one goal in mind — only one. "All I thought of," he says, “was photographing the missile while it was coming down.”
He found a safe spot. He ensured a good angle. He wasn't stressed, he said; like many photographers who work in such environments, he had been in situations like this one before. He was ready.
When the attack came — a bomb, not a missile in the end — Hussein swung into action. And, unsurprisingly for a professional who has been doing this work for two decades, he did exactly what he set out to do.
Time slowed down
The sequence of images he made bursts with the explosive energy of its subject matter.
In one frame, the bomb hangs there, a weird and obtrusive interloper in the scene. It is not yet noticed by anyone around it, ready to bring its destruction to a building that, in moments, will no longer exist. The building's balconies, a split-second from nonexistence, are devoid of people as the bomb finds its mark.
These are the kind of moments that video, rolling at the speed of life or even in slow motion, cannot capture in the same way. A photo holds us in the scene, stops time, invites a viewer to take the most chaotic of events and break it down, looking around and noticing things in a strangely silent way that actual life could not.
In another frame, one that happened micro moments after the first, the building is in the process of exploding. Let's repeat that for effect, since even as recently as a couple generations ago photographs like this were rare: in the process of exploding.
Pieces of building are shooting out in all directions, in high velocity — in real life. But in the image they are frozen, outward bound, hanging in space awaiting the next seconds of their dissolution — just like the bomb that displaced them was doing milliseconds before. And in that, a contemplation of the destruction — and the people it was visited upon — becomes possible.
Tech gives us new prisms to see the world
The technology to grab so many images in the course of little more than one second — and do it in such clarity and high resolution — is barely a generation old.
So to see these “stills,” as journalists call them, come together to paint a picture of an event is a combination of artistry, intrepidity and technology — an exercise in freezing time, and in giving people the opportunity to contemplate for minutes, even hours, what took place in mere seconds. This holds true for positive things that the camera captures — and for visitations of violence like this one as well.
Photography is random access. We, the viewers of it, choose how to see it, process it, digest it. We go backward and forward in time, at will. We control the pace and the speed at which dizzying images hurtle at us. And in that process, something unusual for this era emerges: a bit of time to think.
That, among many other things, is the enduring power of the still image in a moving-picture world — and the power of what Bilal Hussein captured on that clear, sunny day in Beirut.