Queen Victoria on amusement
Possibly the most famous remark ever allegedly uttered by a British monarch was attributed to Her Majesty Queen Victoria when she primly stated, “We are not amused.” The problem is there are so many examples attesting to when she said it, where she said it, and under what circumstances she said it, all of them conflicting, that the likelihood she ever said it at all is remote. Of course, it is possible that there were many different instances in which Her Majesty found little for amusement and she said so, but she denied ever having made the famous comment.
One of the more famous circumstances cited as being the occasion for the remark was following her attending a performance of HMS Pinafore. If that were true it would qualify as one of the shortest and most devastating theatrical reviews of all time. Another version linked to the theatre has Her Majesty made the remark following the performance of a production by her groom-in-waiting, Alexander Grantham Yorke. In another version, the Queen hears a guest laughing loudly but having not heard the witticism that triggered it asked that it be repeated, with her comment following.
The editor and novelist James Payn included the quote in his novel The Talk of the Town in 1885, its first known appearance in print. He did not attribute the quote directly to Queen Victoria. In 1887 the quote was for the first time directly attributed to the Queen in the book Royal Girls and Royal Courts, written by Mary Sherwood. She describes her source for the quote as Sir Arthur Helps. Newspaper stories reported the quote beginning around 1887, following its publication in the fictional The Talk of the Town, so their sources seem dubious at best.
In recent years some scholars have suggested that the true source of the quote was actually Queen Elizabeth I. There has been speculation that the remark was addressed to Essex in response to a remark made about Sir Walter Raleigh, but nothing in the way of proof has been produced. As with the case of the novel by James Payn, the remark in the case of Elizabeth is traced to a fictional source, rather than historical documentation.
In the case of Queen Victoria, there is clear denial that she ever made the remark, though the source for the denial is hearsay. In 1977 the BBC ran a documentary entitled Royal Heritage: Victoria, Queen and Empress. For this program, they interviewed Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, in 1976. Princess Alice was Victoria’s granddaughter, and in the interview, she recounted that she had asked Victoria directly about the quote to be told by her grandmother that she had never said, “We are not amused.” The clip can be seen online. So while there were undoubtedly many times during her long reign that her Majesty Queen Victoria was not amused, she apparently did not so express herself.
Where do we find this stuff? Here are our sources:
“A Terrible Resolve”, by Lawrence H. Suid, Proceedings, December 1964
“More than a cigar”, by Evan J. Elkin, Cigar Aficionado, Winter, 1994-95
“Marie Antoinette: The Journey”, by Antonia Frasier, 2002
“Where the Money Was: The Memoirs of a Bank Robber”, by W. Sutton and E. Linn, 1976
“Life of Napoleon Bonaparte”, by John Abbott, 2005
“They Never Said It”, by John H. George and Paul Boller, 1989
“John Paul Jones: A Sailor’s Biography”, by Samuel Eliot Morrison, 1959
“Honest Mr. President, Abe Never Said It”, by John J. Pitney Jr, NPR, March 25, 2010
“35 Times the Queen was not Amused”, by Sally Holmes, Elle Magazine, April 21, 2010
“Don’t Give Up the Ship”, by Roy and Lesley Adkins, History Net.
“ON LANGUAGE; Here I Sit, No Warts at All”, by William Safire, NY Times Magazine, March 6, 1988
“Did Queen Victoria really say “We are not amused?”, by Huw Fullerton, Radio Times.