Queen Victoria's Stay At Waddesdon Manor | Royal Upstairs Downstairs | Real Royalty

just what you have to do when a queen decides she's going to pop in to see you and not just any old queen victoria like a pair of obsessed victoria groupies we're pursuing her around the country to the posh pads she visited we'll be delving into her personal diaries to reveal what happened behind closed doors today we're in buckinghamshire welcome to modesto manor we're going to be finding out what happened one afternoon in may when a rather elderly queen came here for lunch and as someone who spent a lifetime exploring country houses i'll be upstairs finding out just what turned victoria on here she was apparently quite amused and as a chef who's passionate about great food i'll be whipping up a victorian souffle that thanks to an original menu we know the queen enjoyed during her stay i'm afraid i do use a mixer i'm sorry i've got my mixer here and testing tim's taste buds i hope it doesn't have the disastrous effect of the tipsy cake that you gave me the other day at the time of this visit in 1890 an aging queen victoria was approaching her 71st birthday she'd been on the throne for over half a century and was still in mourning for her beloved albert more than 30 years after his death the majority of our royal visits so far have involved victoria staying for a number of days but here at waderston she stayed for just a matter of hours this was a simple lunch engagement but it was big news in 1890 because by this time in her reign victoria was hardly seen in public plus it was a major coup for waterston's owner and builder baron ferdinand the rothschild he was one of those arch supremo late 19th century networkers and he would have relished the opportunity of showing the place off to his sovereign he spent a year planning her visit and even had the electricity installed i don't think it's remarkable i certainly do i mean i think it's remarkable by this stage of her life victoria lived a life seclusion spending most of her time at osborne house balmoral and windsor so for her host french-born baron ferdinand de rothschild this was a huge honour it was also a great chance to rub shoulders with the queen and show off the country pad he built in the style of a french chateau the bulk of this building was only 10 years old at the time of the queen's visit but there was an interesting report in the telegraph newspaper which reported that the north front here was in deplorable condition just a few days before the queen arrived well i bet they worked incredibly hard to get that one right well they had to work hard because baron ferdinand rothschild had decided that he needed to add on a whole new west wing to increase the space for entertaining and the like so waterston was bang up to date for the queen's arrival now i'm going to be heading downstairs to see how they coped in this fabulous house and i'm going to stay very firmly upstairs to check out how the queen got on with her host toodle-oo bye victoria made the day trip to waterston from windsor traveling on the royal train to nearby aylesbury she was accompanied by her daughter princess beatrice and her husband prince henry of battenberg victoria's fourth daughter princess louise was already there her host baron ferdinand kept a detailed account of the entire visit in it he recounts his relief that after days of heavy rain the clouds parted for the big day he wrote the glass meantime by which he meant his barometer had done its duty and a more perfect day for the visit or one better suited to the queen's peculiar taste could not be imagined a brilliant son sean from a perfectly blue sky a crisp cold wind tempered the atmosphere and by that i assume that he's referring to queen victoria's dislike of intense temperature so a bright blue crisp cool day would have suited her perfectly the whole town turned out to celebrate this rare public appearance from their queen this sketch from the illustrated london news report shows victoria receiving a bouquet in the market square from one of the crowd having arrived here she would have been greeted by alistair rothschild ferdinand's younger sister and arguably the true matriarch of this house anybody home where better place to start our exploration of the treasures at waterston than in this room the barons private study and drawing room now of all the rooms at waterston that most closely resembled things as they were when victoria visited then this is the space that does it best how do we know because the rothschilds kept photographs of their collections and the layouts of the rooms there is baron ferdinand seated in this chair at his feet is his favorite poodle called poopoo the fold screen behind the city is exactly the same as it is in the photograph and peeping up above the screen three of the collection of pictures in this room while victoria was hobnobbing with her hosts at the north entrance the staff she had brought with her entered at the east end of the manor leading to the servants quarters and this used to be the kitchen corridor there were about 50 staff on duty for the royal visit so it would have been a hive of activity down here you know you could just imagine the hustle and bustle of the servants coming back to forwards because it was their main access to the smart part of the house which for once is exactly where i'm going food historian ivan day is in one of the diamonds laying a place setting just as victoria would have found it for her lunch and it shows how posh dining etiquette had changed dramatically during her lifetime when she was younger she would have dined in a totally different way where all of the dishes of the first course were all on the table enormous array of different foods did they help themselves or was were they actually served by the butler in the old a la francaise this is ancient style of dining themselves it was very very sociable you helped your neighbor but by the end of the century a much more trimmed down style of dining had evolved so each dish was brought to the table in succession so there was room on the table for wonderful centerpieces and floral ornaments and this style became known as the russian style of dining alarus but my favorite thing here is is the napkin if i open it up for you you can see the laundry identity mark ferdinand so that is actually one of the barons original table napkins from the 1890s also on the table is a very precious piece of archive so this is the actual menu for the luncheon that victoria enjoyed here when she visited how wonderful is that so you got your patage which is your first course your soups and everything and poison and entrees one of the more robust dishes is affiliated when we know that ferdinand commented on the fact that she had two helpings in fact he said that she really spent a lot of time eating and was worried that she might be overeating actually the last and final course is a selection of vegetables and some sweet dishes right and we're going to make the very last one that was served petty souffle royale their little frozen iced souffle oh how exciting well i can't wait this menu just goes to show how much effort her hosts went to for the queen's lunch which is why it's so remarkable that victoria chose to eat in this room with their two daughters and prince henry while the rothschilds and 30 guests ate next door and so separated by a small lobby area where the royal artillery band were playing victoria sat and enjoyed her lunch in this the main dining room at waterston house rules today require me to take my shoes off before i toddle off on this divine obusam 18th century carpet the local rag at the time the box records that the queen's luncheon was served at 220 by mr barker the house steward security came in the form of two highlanders one footman and one of victoria's indian attendants because at this point in her reign of course she was also empress of india in the aftermath of the queen's visit polite society gossiped about the fact that the queen dined alone with no member of the rothschild family but with characteristic bravura ferdinand de rothschild retorts and records that she lunched alone with members of her family instead of lunching with us has been commented on in society but without reason the proposal that she should do so emanated from me as i was well aware not only of her disinclination to take her midday meal in the company of strangers but of the inevitable rule which she never breaks of so doing we can see from that that the queen just shy of her 71st birthday was a lady well set in her ways baron ferdinand may have been filthy rich but he believed in sharing that wealth with his neighbors every year he threw a garden party for staff villagers their families and even school children they were known as the baron's streets his generosity didn't stop there he gave the local village their first ever supply of purified water which he piped from his own household and in 1897 seven years after the queen's visit he built the watterson village hall waterston's original kitchens are gone so it's here that i'm catching up with ivan who set up our own confectioner's kitchen we're making ice souffles the actual dessert victoria was served here at lunch we're going to make first of all an italian meringue which we make by boiling up some sugar in a sugar boiler if you could start beating the eggs unlike conventional meringue which is baked in the oven this method involves cooking our egg whites by adding boiling sugar i'm going to make the syrup by putting some sugar into this boiling water and i'm going to just get it to start to dissolve but we mustn't stir that as you know because sugar crystals will start to form and it will ruin our meringue so instead of stirring it if you tap it you can encourage the sugar in there to dissolve without affecting the quality of the syrup later on i've never seen that before the secret to a good italian meringue is the consistency which means heating the sugar to the perfect temperature too hot and it won't set properly too cold and it won't set at all professional confectioners and cooks in the 19th century just used to dip their fingers into some cold water and it horrifies everyone this is so hot they would plunge their fingers in pull a piece of sugar out i'm happy to do that but it can be very dangerous unless you know what you're doing a safer way of doing it is just to get a little bit of the molten sugar onto a spoon it's warm but it's not hot enough to burn me and then if i just pull my fingers apart i get the formation of a thread can you see yes absolutely we call that the long thread which means that the temperature of that is absolutely perfect yeah now we've really got to pour it in now okay i always find this has got to be a two-person job to get a good one done i'm afraid i do use a mixer i'm sorry i've got my mixer here while we whip up our italian meringue back at the manor tim's finding out what victoria got up to after her private lunch ferdinand rothschild and his sister alice were very wary of towering out their distinguished but elderly guests but nevertheless they were keen to make sure victoria got a glimpse of the private rooms on the ground floor this is called the tower room this is the ultimate destination point for any favored guest because in it the owner would display the very best of his collection and this naturally is where victoria was brought now victoria's taste was for the glitzy she liked french style furniture she liked things covered in omalu this rich gold metal and she particularly was fond of furniture encrusted with porcelain queen victoria so liked the french furniture that ferdinand had here at waterston that she sent her superintendent of furniture from windsor castle down here to waterston to look at the collection it wasn't just the french furniture that victoria took a fancy to that was one mod con that really grabbed her attention and that revolved around a light switch not these light switches because these are later ones but she was so unused to electricity for lighting she stood playing with the light switch turning it on and off and on and off marveling at all this new technology she was apparently quite amused while ferdinand was entertaining the queen with his modern lighting downstairs at the kitchen they worked away by hand without the aid of any electrical appliances so far i've whipped up sugar and egg whites and our meringue mixture is ready for the next step look how beautifully it's set it's gorgeous isn't it do you know it reminds me of satin and you know what meringues were called at the time of james first satin biscuit oh really oh how interesting yeah we start with a few spoonfuls of our meringue to which we fold in finely sift raspberries and some cream i do an exact recipe today like this the only difference is i use a gelatine leaf to hold it that was done in the 19th century but it was considered to be a little bit too artificial especially for queen victoria so this one is much more challenging because the only thing that's holding it up is the fact that all the air bubbles are holding hands i must say the confectioners which of course is what they were pure artists well they were very skillful people they didn't have the age that we have now they didn't have digital thermometers nothing like that but they were able to produce food in the most extraordinary quality the last ingredient is an iconic flavor of the 19th century maraschino a cherry liqueur we just add one teaspoon and our souffle mixture is ready now why do ramekins have these funny little creases on them do you know why well i've always thought a little bit like decoration what it actually is it's a residual memory of when cases like that are actually made out of paper and to make them you have to have these little pleats so it's a fossil memory of this oh how interesting we place the homemade ramekins into a chilled pan and start spooning in the liquid these sort of dishes were made by servants who were very long hours they had plenty of time they were the beck and call of the chef often because they lived in the house to replicate this sort of food you really do need an enormous amount of patience yes well you know what i'm doing now i have to tell you it's rather like when i'm having my hair done i can't wait to get out right and actually i'm going to stop because i've done it and look mine is better than yours absolutely and i did not time to freeze the souffles the victorian method was to fill a bucket with ice and sprinkle salt over it this brings the temperature down to a chilly minus 13 degrees celsius if we leave that for a couple of hours our little souffle will be absolutely perfect in the heart of the house after the queen had finished drooling over the french furnishings she headed up these stairs for a well-deserved rest in the state apartments but at such a pace for a 70 year old that baron ferdinand recounted in his diary in spite of the rheumatic affliction of her knee from which she suffers her majesty ascended with comparative ease and what awaited her was worth the effort this delicious little drawing room was set aside as part of the suite of rooms that ferdinand gave to the queen on the day of her visit it's known as the green boudoir and it's a space that ferdinand would have been particularly proud of and there was one rather quirky feature that would have definitely caught her eye by setting up two mirrors on either side of this small space and aligning them perfectly instead of there being just one of me if i wave in the mirror there are actually hundreds of me and if i was a queen i'd be able to practice my wave hello hello and we can imagine it would be rather cozy in here queen victoria and her family all gathered about and it's here that the baron chose to make his presentation of his gift a jeweled fan and he records the moment where i have a shy disposition a more embarrassing situation could hardly have been provided for me the queen was standing in the small green boudoir flanked on either side by her two daughters who seemed rather curious to observe how i should equip myself of my task but i delivered a harangue worthy of an elizabethan courtier and having received the queen's acceptance of the present i knelt on one knee and presented it to her next up on this whirlwind tour the queen explored the wonderful waddeston grands and who knows maybe victoria used her new fan to cool her in the afternoon heat on the day before the lunch visit one of queen victoria's new forest ponies was sent especially to waterston along with her pony carriage now as baron ferdinand noted this was rather a comical contraption i saw a cross between a real carriage and a horse-drawn bath chair the advantage of it was that it allowed the slightly lame queen to get all around the gardens here at waterston enabling her to look at all the marvels which would have included this parterre have you ever seen anything quite so beautiful there are no less than 11 000 annuals and perennials planted out in these beds not once a year but twice a year to maintain this constant stream of brilliant color 11 000 plants you've got a window box you've got one of those hanging baskets with eight plants in it try 11 000 on for size it wasn't only the gardeners who had a tough job the housekeeping staff were under the control of baron ferdinand's formidable sister alice she created a strict set of rules designed to preserve watterson's valuable collections as house curator rachel boak explains so tell me a bit about missalas and her rules well a lot of the rules are common sense and were passed down through the country house tradition for centuries one of those is covering furniture and this is to protect it against light and handling she also insisted that the blinds were kept drawn even when they had guests considering the importance of the people who came here she was quite draconian with them as well for instance when edward vii paid a visit she told him not to touch the furniture and she wouldn't even raise the blinds so that he could look at the pictures what do you think happened when victoria came to visit i'm sure when queen victoria came that the rooms that she was going to go into would have been lit appropriately for her and covers would have been off everything would have been glittering even alice's brother ferdinand suffered from her strict rules when he wanted to indulge his passion for cigars while victoria was here he had to nip outside and light up i rather like the sound of misalis but i would not like to get on the wrong side of her alice was not only a stickler for the housekeeping outside she ruled over 60 gardeners to make sure not a blade of grass was out of place and we know that victoria was impressed by what she saw current head gardener paul farnell explains how the wonderful creations on show today stem from a radical type of gardening that alice helped pioneer this is what we call 3d bedding actually and it was discovered i guess around about that period of time this is certainly based on a photograph uh or a dyerscope which is an image that we found and we decided to recreate them in the garden and this is something that alice was particularly keen on washing well she'd wander around the garden with a trowel all day long and and i guess nitpick for one of a better word she was a perfectionist and this sort of thing appealed to her the intricacy of it yes and would be something that she'd want to show off to victoria oh indeed indeed it was the cutting edge of odd culture at that time alice's 3d bird sculptures were a clever tie-in to one of the barons finest garden installations the aviary but judging by ferdinand's diary entry the colorful display of birds were not fully appreciated by victoria the queen's attention was diverted from its gaily feathered inhabitants by the conduct of a pony which shied at the site of cockatoos and macaws which screamed and flapped their wings the poor birds however meant no harm and were merely asking me for their usual piece of sugar as the afternoon drew to a close ferdinand left her majesty in the oriental tent on the tennis lawn in front of the house where she took tea with her family and alice victoria's trip here may have been brief but it marked the start of a friendship with alistair rothschild that would last for the rest of her days it's perhaps no surprise that two such strong-minded women hit it off victoria once called alice the all-powerful one and a few years after her lunch here at waterston victoria was visiting alice in one of her properties in france they were out walking together and victoria inadvertently walked on a newly planted bed alice quick as you like turned on her and said get off there can you imagine that alice telling off queen victoria time now to eat our souffles are set and ready to serve but not before a little final flourish of chopped pistachio nuts i wonder what baron wannacott will make of these little royal treats this is an actual dish that queen victoria had at her lunch when she came here so if you would like to taste it well i've spied over here a very small bottle of something which says it's tokai now this is sweet wine it's a sweet it's a dessert wine and it comes from hungary they would have drunk this during the whole of the sweet course they would have brought some sort of dessert wine out so either a so-turn or some tokai or something like that so would you like to taste it yes please here we go it's incredibly fluffy isn't it and just full of zingy flavor not too hard like so many of these iced things are override if you know what i mean and that's the italian meringue that gives you that is it very special well i'm going to have a little snort of this to me too i hope it doesn't have the disastrous effect of the tips of cake that you gave me i haven't quite recovered from that i think victoria would have loved that well she's known to have hoovered up her lunch well she certainly would have hoovered this up yeah now we have been blessed by the very fact that ferdinand maintains such meticulous records and i have found for you rosemary a card there look that shows us alice and what an amazing photograph of them isn't it lovely she looks like a woman who knows her own mind yes but this is far more precious because this is an original and it's of course an image of ferdinand actually you know he did quite a lot for the local people and everything like that he was quite a man wasn't he oh yes he certainly was and of course he did love his royal connections and there's a passage in his diary that kind of sums it up around the queen of england their hangs an undefinable prestige the result of a long and gracious reign a supreme queenly dignity every word she utters bears witness to the fact that she's a lady in the true sense of the word and her every attitude is that of the first lady of the land he did like her he did he was very fond of her yes and with that queen victoria's visit to waddiston manor was concluded next time on the last royal upstairs downstairs we look back over victoria's life and explore how she changed from the young princess we first met through her marriage to albert and finally her long period as a morning widow it's an amazing story of our longest raiding monarch you

Channel: Real Royalty

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Keywords: real royalty, real royalty channel, british royalty, royalty around the world, royal history, royal kitchen, queen victoria kitchen, queen victoria, victorian souffle, royal cooking, secrets of the royal kitchen

Id: AQk-NnCKwYk

Length: 28min 50sec (1730 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 06 2020