评论
打印
Queen Victoria was not, in fact, blind to the miseries which so appalled the young women social workers of the 1880s and 1890s.
在十九世纪八、九十年代，震惊了从事社会工作女性的人间悲剧，维多利亚女王对此并未视而不见。
Shaken by some of the revelations in "The Bitter Cry of Outcast London", she actually pressed Gladstone's government to spend more of its time on the problem of housing, and her insistence produced a Royal Commission.
《伦敦郊外的凄泣》书中揭露的真相令她大为震惊，她开始向格莱斯顿政府施压，要求他们多花时间解决住房问题，她的坚持使皇家调查委员会得以成立。
But, whether she wanted to see it or could have seen it, there were, in the warm Jubilee summer of 1887, two Britains.
不论她想不想看到，她本应看到，在1887年女王登基五十年的温暖夏日中，英国同时存在着两个截然不同的世界。
Nearly a third of able-bodied men were unemployed.
身强力壮的人中有近三分之一失业。
Now, thousands of the jobless were also homeless, sleeping rough in parks or squares, some of them even in open coffins -- the undead of underclass Albion.
现在，成千上万的失业人口无家可归，只能在公园或广场随便找个地方睡下，有人甚至睡进了空棺材，他们就是不列颠社会底层的行尸走肉。
But, of course, the queen was kept well away from all that.
当然，这些事女王都被隐瞒得全然不知。
What she saw were 30,000 poor schoolchildren in Hyde Park, who each got a meat pie, a piece of cake and an orange to celebrate the great day of her Jubilee.
她看见的只是海德公园里三万名贫民小学生，每人分到一块肉饼、一块蛋糕以及一个橘子，庆祝女王的五十年登基大典。
The children sang "God Save the Queen". Somewhat out of tune.
孩子们齐唱《天佑女王》。还有点走音。
It was the kind of thing which brought a smile -- yes, a smile -- on the face of the old queen.
就是这类事使年老的女王展露了笑颜，是的，展露笑颜。
It would be like this for the rest of her life -- the country bathed in summer evening light, the faces well-scrubbed and dutiful.
她的余生对她来说也是如此，全国人民沐浴在夏日的晚霞中，他们打扮得体，尽忠职守。
The old lady, at last, something like the contented matriarch, the grandmother of the Empire, the thrones of Europe filled with her offspring.
最终，年老的女王像位心满意足的女管家，大英帝国的祖母，她的子孙掌管着欧洲王室。
There was, of course, someone missing from this national family photo.
当然，有人没能出现在这幅王室全家福中。
In the Abbey, amidst all the splendour, Victoria suddenly felt a pang.
在威斯敏斯特教堂的熠熠显赫当中，维多利亚突然感到极度痛苦。
I sat alone, oh, without my beloved husband, for whom this would have been such a proud day.
我独坐于此，挚爱的丈夫不在身边，对他来说这该是多么令人骄傲的一天。
Victoria would have to wait another 14 years, until 1901, before she would be reunited with him: To whom the nation and I owe so much.
维多利亚要再等十四年，也就是1901年，才能与丈夫团聚：国家和我都很感激他。
Her long-suffering secretary, Frederick Ponsonby, said there was nothing Victoria enjoyed so much as arranging funerals, and her own was no exception.
常年默默忍受的秘书弗雷德里克·庞森比说过，没有什么比安排葬礼更让维多利亚高兴不已了，她自己的也不例外。
So she ordered a white lying-in-state and funeral for herself.
所以她为自己安排了白色的告别仪式和葬礼。
In her hands was a silver crucifix, her white dress decorated with cheerful sprays of spring flowers.
她手握银制十字架，身穿白裙，裙边铺满了带着水珠的鲜花。
There was a touch of Miss Havisham about this, the 80-year-old flower-bedecked virgin bride. But not jilted by her beloved, going to join him.
用花朵装扮着自己，看似好像80岁的处女新娘郝薇香小姐。但女王从未被挚爱的丈夫所抛弃，还马上就能与他相聚了。
When Albert's memorial effigy had been ordered from the sculptor Marochetti in 1862, Victoria insisted on hers being made at the same time, and with her appearance as it was when he had been taken from her,
1862年，雕塑师马洛切蒂奉命雕刻阿尔伯特的纪念雕像，维多利亚坚持要求把她的雕像也一并雕刻，石像上雕刻着当夫君被带走时她的容颜，
so that they would be reunited, at least in marble, at the same age, in the glowing prime of their union.
这样他们就能重新团聚，至少两座大理石雕像会在同样的年纪，在他们的黄金时期重逢。
The trouble was, no one could remember where they'd put the statue made 40 years before.
问题是，没人记得提前40年制好的雕像放在了哪里。
It had, in fact, been walled up in one of the cavities of a renovated room in Windsor Castle.
实际上，雕像被放在了温莎城堡新装修过的一间房间的凹室里。
Eventually, it was found and laid next to Albert as per the queen's orders.
最终，女王与阿尔伯特的雕像并肩躺在了一起，依据的也是女王的旨意。
And there she is, as if the clocks had stopped along with the heart of the Prince Consort.
当阿尔伯特亲王的心脏停止了跳动，仿佛女王的时间也不再流逝。
But they hadn't, of course. Victoria might lie by her beloved dressed as a medieval princess, but he, of all people, had known it had been progress which had been the mainspring of her reign.
当然事情并非如此。打扮成中世纪公主的维多利亚，睡在爱人身边，但所有人之中唯有他知道，进步是女王治下的主要推动力。
Albert had done his best to see that it had been a force for goodness as well as greatness, that the surging movement of the machine age would be held in check by the moral anchorage of the Victorian home.
阿尔伯特尽力看到了那动力是为善的力量，也是伟大的力量，维多利亚时代的道德标杆抑制住了机器时代风起云涌的运动。
The women of Britain, Victoria's sisters and daughters, were supposed to be grateful for this, to bask in the warmth of the hearth they tended.
不列颠的女性，维多利亚的姐妹和女儿，都该为此心存感激，她们能够沐浴在火炉的宜人温暖之中。
But those cosy fires kindled yearnings that couldn't be contained by a placid domesticity.
但这些舒适的火苗却激起了新的渴望，平静的家庭生活再也抑制不住。
Those little liberators -- the cheque book, the latchkey and the bicycle -- beckoned over the doorstep and into the street.
这些小小的解放者，有了支票、门锁钥匙和自行车，她们聚在门阶前，走向大街。
And you couldn't tell any longer just how the girls would turn out.
谁也无法预料这群女孩会变成怎样的人。
Riding with the body of the queen from London to Windsor was the widow of one of her Viceroys of India -- Lady Lytton.
陪伴女王遗体从伦敦走到温莎的是印度总督的遗孀，利顿夫人。
Just eight years later, her daughter, Constance, in prison as a suffragette, would make her statement about the future of women in Britain by carving, with a piece of broken enamel from a hairpin... the letter V into the flesh of her breast.
仅仅八年之后，她的女儿康斯坦丝因支持妇女参政入狱，将昭示她对不列颠女性未来的宣言，她取了束发夹上一片破碎的瓷釉，把字母V刻在了胸上。
But it wasn't V for Victoria. It was V for Votes.
这V并不代表维多利亚。而是代表选举权。
