Chiswick Timeline of Writers & Books: a quick guide
The Royal Garden Party at Chiswick, after Louis William Desanges, 1865
1. Queen Victoria in Chiswick
Queen Victoria mentions Chiswick several times in her journals. She visited Chiswick House at various stages of her life, as well as Chiswick Mall and other locations. See Chiswick House: Gathering and celebrating
In 1836, the year before she came to the throne, she wrote about visiting the Royal Victoria Asylum in Chiswick Mall, or Children’s Friend Society in Chiswick. Its location has now been identified as Walpole House on Chiswick Mall. In 1841 she described her first visit to Chiswick House – and years later she was a regular visitor, when her eldest son the Prince of Wales was renting Chiswick House in the 1860s and 1870s.
The Queen’s Journals can be read online. Click Queen Victoria (1830-1901) and put ‘Chiswick’ in the Search box.
The Queen’s Chiswick connections were explored at the 2016 Chiswick Book Festival, when ITV’s drama series Victoria first hit the screens. The writer of Victoria, Daisy Goodwin, and its historical adviser AN Wilson (pictured right), spoke and took questions on ‘Victoria in Fact & Fiction’, at Chiswick House on Thursday September 15th. Extracts from Queen Victoria’s Journals were read by Anna Wilson-Jones (far right) who plays Lady Portman in the series.
2. The Royal Garden Party at Chiswick
There was also an exhibition at the Festival, charting the Queen’s various Chiswick connections. The centrepiece was a print of a large painting, ‘The Royal Garden Party at Chiswick’ by Louis William Desanges (above). It shows Queen Victoria with her family and 300 distinguished guests, each of whom is named in an accompanying key (below). It had not been displayed at Chiswick House for several years but it now features prominently on the Chiswick House & Gardens website, which gives it its full attribution.
The exhibition also included extracts from Victoria’s diaries, cuttings from The Times and the Illustrated London News and analysis by local historians. Former Chiswick House archivists, Gillian Clegg and Pamela Bater, unearthed fascinating facts, as did Carolyn Hammond, the former local studies archivist at Chiswick Library, who wrote about the Royal Victoria Asylum in Chiswick Mall, on the Brentford and Chiswick Local History Society website.
Historian Deborah Cadbury lives in Chiswick and has written a book about Victoria and her children, Queen Victoria’s Matchmaking. Analysing the figures in the picture for the exhibition she wrote: “The image of a Royal Garden Party at Chiswick House gives an evocative snapshot of the royal family at the peak of their power. The picture highlights Victoria’s remarkable position as Europe’s great matriarch. She had nine children and most of them made dynastic marriages into Europe’s royal houses.”
3. Prince Albert at Chiswick House
Prince Albert came to Chiswick House less frequently than Queen Victoria – but in June 1844 he attended a celebrated grand fete held by the 6th Duke of Devonshire to welcome the Russian tsar, Emperor Nicholas 1st. The following description is taken from Chiswick House and Gardens: A History by Gillian Clegg:
Read more stories via the Writers Tales page.