6/15/98: Ruth went off with Melita this morning for tea downtown. I was glad she finally got to spend some time with someone other than me! 24 hours a day, seven days a week with me can be pretty hard to tolerate…
NOTE: The photo above shows Queen Victoria astride her horse at Balmoral, with her Master of Estate, John Brown holding the bridle. From the Wikipedia page on John Brown.
6/15/23: While Ruth got a break from me, Doug and I met and mapped out a plan for the photography I’ll be doing here in Harare over the next 8 days.
Then Ruth and I went to a movie. We saw Mrs. Brown, starring Judi Dench as Queen Victoria and Billy Connolly as John Brown, the Master of the Estate at Balmoral. The contextual intersection of watching a film about Queen Victoria in Zimbabwe was an irony not lost on me. Especially so, after having just had a taste of post-colonial opulence in Bulawayo. Victoria’s 63 year reign, which was only recently surpassed by her great-great-granddaughter Elizabeth II, saw a vast expansion of British colonialism. Her reign included this part of southern Africa, then called Rhodesia.
Nevertheless, it was a warmly humanizing story that was a fictionalized account of real historical events. Queen Victoria had made herself a recluse for over two years while she mourned the death of her husband, Prince Albert. In 1864 she retired to her estate at Balmoral, where she is confronted and comforted by her subject, John Brown, a shock to her and a scandal to the nation, such that she was referred to by courtiers as “Mrs. Brown” behind her back. But the scandal was mere jealousy and confusion. As Roger Ebert put in his 1997 review:
“Mrs. Brown” is a love story about two strong-willed people who find exhilaration in testing each other. It is not about sexual love, or even romantic love, really, but about that kind of love based on challenge and fascination.”
I enjoyed the movie because Judi Dench and Billy Connolly, along with the rest of the cast, turned in amazing performances, but also because it gave a realistic and personal depth to a historical figure that is so often painted rather flatly in history text books.
Interestingly, Judi Dench played Queen Victoria a second time in Victoria & Abdul, a 2017 film about Victoria’s relationship with one of her servants from India. I have not seen that film yet, but hope to do so someday soon.