Auction Preview: COMMEMORATIVE JOHN BROWN PIN GIVEN BY QUEEN VICTORIA FOR SALE AT BONHAMS
A pin given by Queen Victoria containing a likeness of her servant John Brown will go under the hammer at Bonhams Scottish Sale on 18th August and is expected to fetch up to £700.
Known during his lifetime as the Queen’s ‘Watchdog,’ Brown was a constant presence at the side of the Queen in the years following Prince Albert’s death.
“He follows the Queen like a shadow from palace to palace, in public and in private, behind her chair at her meals, in the rumble of her carriage in her drives, possessing himself of her field-glass to inspect some distant maneuver at a review.”
Lytton Strachey's 1921 biography of Queen Victoria states that following Brown's death in 1883 an Aberdeen jeweler was commissioned for “A Brown memorial brooch - of gold, with the late gillie's head on one side and the royal monogram on the other - was designed by Her Majesty for presentation to her Highland servants and cottagers, to be worn by them on the anniversary of his death, with a mourning scarf and pins.”
Queen Victoria was said to be greatly distressed by the death of John Brown in 1883 at the age of 56. The Queen commemorated his death with a number of statues and portraits. She is also said to have had a lock of his hair and photograph inserted into her coffin.
In his New York Times obituary it was claimed that some thought Brown “overbearing and dictatorial.” The Queen herself, however, described him as holding “all the independence and elevated feelings peculiar to the highland race, and is singularly straightforward, simple minded, kind hearted, and disinterested, always ready to oblige, and of a discretion rarely to be met with.”
For a full listing of upcoming sales, plus details of Bonhams specialist departments, go to www.bonhams.com.
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