Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 2
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Title: Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 2
Author: Sarah Tytler
Release date: December 1, 2004 [eBook #7086]
Most recently updated: December 30, 2020
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7086
Credits: This eBook was produced by Tricia Gilbert, Juliet Sutherland, Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK LIFE OF HER MOST GRACIOUS MAJESTY THE QUEEN — VOLUME 2 ***
This eBook was produced by Tricia Gilbert, Juliet Sutherland,
Charles Franks and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team
Life Of
Her Most Gracious Majesty
THE QUEEN
by
SARAH TYTLER
_Edited with an Introduction by_
LORD RONALD GOWER, FSA.
IN TWO VOLUMES
Vol II
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
VOL. II.
CHAP.
I. ROYAL PROGRESSES TO BURGHLEY, STOWE, AND STRATHFIELDSAYE
II. THE QUEEN'S POWDER BALL
III. THE QUEEN'S FIRST VISIT TO GERMANY
IV. RAILWAY SPECULATION--FAILURE OF THE POTATO CROP--SIR ROBERT PEEL'S
RESOLUTIONS--BIRTH OF PRINCESS HELENA--VISIT OF IBRAHIM PASHA
V. AUTUMN YACHTING EXCURSIONS--THE SPANISH MARRIAGES--WINTER VISITS
VI. INSTALLATION OF PRINCE ALBERT AS CHANCELLOR OF CAMBRIDGE
VII. THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND AND STAY AT
ARDVERIKIE
VIII. THE FRENCH FUGITIVES--THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER
IX. THE QUEEN'S FIRST STAY AT BALMORAL
X. PUBLIC AND DOMESTIC INTERESTS--FRESH ATTACK UPON THE QUEEN
XI. THE QUEEN'S FIRST VISIT TO IRELAND
XII. SCOTLAND AGAIN--GLASGOW AND DEE-SIDE
XIII. THE OPENING OF THE NEW COAL EXCHANGE--THE DEATH OF QUEEN
ADELAIDE
XIV. PREPARATION FOR THE EXHIBITION--BIRTH OF THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT
XV. THE DEATHS OF SIR ROBERT PEEL, THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE, AND LOUIS
PHILIPPE
XVI. THE QUEEN'S FIRST STAY AT HOLYROOD--THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN OF
THE BELGIANS
XVII. THE PAPAL BULL--THE GREAT EXHIBITION
XVII. THE QUEEN'S ACCOUNT OF THE OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION
XIX. THE QUEEN'S "RESTORATION BALL" AND THE "GUILDHALL BALL."
XX. ROYAL VISITS TO LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER--CLOSE OF THE EXHIBITION
XXI. DISASTERS--YACHTING TRIPS--THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON
XXII. THE IRON DUKE'S FUNERAL
XXIII. THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON III. AND THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE--FIRE AT
WINDSOR
XXIV. THE EASTERN QUESTION--APPROACHING WAR--GROSS INJUSTICE TO PRINCE
ALBERT
XXV. THE BATTLE OF INKERMANN--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE--THE DEATH OF THE
EMPEROR NICHOLAS
XXVI. INSPECTION OF THE HOSPITAL AT CHATHAM--DISTRIBUTION OF WAR
MEDALS
XXVII. DEATH OF LORD RAGLAN--VISIT OF THE QUEEN AND PRINCE ALBERT TO
THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH--FALL OF SEBASTOPOL
XXVIII. BETROTHAL OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL--QUEEN'S SPEECH TO THE
SOLDIERS RETURNED FROM THE CRIMEA--BALMORAL
XXIX. DEATH OF THE PRINCE OF LEININGEN--BIRTH OF PRINCESS BEATRICE--
BESTOWAL OF THE VICTORIA CROSS--INDIAN MUTINY
XXX. THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL
XXXI. DEATH OF THE DUCHESSE D'ORLEANS--THE PRINCE CONSORT'S VISIT TO
GERMANY--THE QUEEN AND PRINCE CONSORT'S VISIT TO PRINCE AND PRINCESS
FREDERICK WILLIAM AT BABELSBERG
XXXII. BIRTH OF PRINCE WILLIAM OF PRUSSIA--DEATH OP PRINCE HOHENLOHE
XXXIII. DEATH OF THE DUCHESS OF KENT
XXXIV. LAST VISIT TO IRELAND--MEETING OF THE PRINCE OF WALES AND THE
PRINCESS ALEXANDRA OF DENMARK--DEATH OF THE KING OF PORTUGAL AND HIS
BROTHERS.
XXXV. THE DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT
XXXVI. THE WITHDRAWAL TO OSBORNE--THE PRINCE CONSORT'S FUNERAL
XXXVII. THE FIRST MONTHS OF WIDOWHOOD--MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF
WALES, ETC., ETC.
XXXVIII. DEATHS OF LORD PALMERSTON AND THE KING OF THE BELGIANS
XXXIX. STAY AT HOLYROOD--DEATHS OF PRINCESS HOHENLOHE AND OF PRINCE
FREDERICK OF DARMSTADT--MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH
XL. BIRTH OF THE FIRST GREAT-GRANDCHILD--MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF
ALBANY--CONCLUSION
* * * * *
LIST OF STEEL PLATES.
H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES
OSBORNE HOUSE
THE PASTURE, OSBORNE
THE AMAZON (PORTRAIT OF H.R.H. THE PRINCESS HELENA)
THE ROYAL YACHT OFF MOUNT ST. MICHAEL
THE PRINCESS LOUISE
THE PRINCESS HELENA
PRINCESSES HELENA AND LOUISE
THE HUNTER (H.R.H. PRINCE ARTHUR)
HYDE PARK IN 1851
THE FISHER (H.R.H. PRINCE LEOPOLD)
H.R.H. THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE, K.G., ETC.
THE CRADLE (H.R.H. PRINCESS BEATRICE)
H.R.H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES (BUST)
H.R.H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES
THE ALBERT MEMORIAL
MONUMENT TO THE PRINCESS ALICE OF HESSE
* * * * *
QUEEN VICTORIA.
CHAPTER I.
ROYAL PROGRESSES TO BURGHLEY, STOWE, AND STRATHFIELDSAYE.
On the 29th of November the Queen went on one of her visits to her
nobility. We are told, and we can easily believe, these visits were
very popular and eagerly contested for. In her Majesty's choice of
localities it would seem as if she loved sometimes to retrace her
early footsteps by going again with her husband to the places where
she had been, as the young Princess, with the Duchess of Kent. The
Queen went at this time to Burghley, the seat of the Marquis of
Exeter. The tenantry of the different noblemen whose lands she passed
through lined the roads, the mayors of the various towns presented
addresses, the school children sang the National Anthem.
At Burghley, too, Queen Elizabeth had been before Queen Victoria. She
also had visited a Cecil. The Maiden Queen had travelled under
difficulties. The country roads of her day had been so nearly
impassable that her only means of transit had been to use a pillion
behind her Lord Steward. Her seat in the chapel was pointed out to the
Queen and Prince Albert when they went there for morning prayers.
Whether or not both queens whiled away a rainy day by going over the
whole manor-house, down to the kitchen, we cannot say; but it is not
likely that her Majesty's predecessor underwent the ordeal to her
gravity of passing through a gentleman's bedroom and finding his best
wig and whiskers displayed upon a block on a chest of drawers. And we
are not aware that Queen Elizabeth witnessed such an interesting
family rite as that which her Majesty graced by her presence. The
youngest daughter of the Marquis and Marchioness of Exeter was
christened in the chapel, at six o'clock in the evening, before the
Queen, and was named for her "Lady Victoria Cecil," while Prince
Albert stood as godfather to the child. After the baptism the Queen
kissed her little namesake, and Prince Albert presented her with a
gold cup bearing the inscription, "To Lady Victoria Cecil, from her
godfather Albert." At dinner the newly-named child was duly toasted by
the Queen's command.
The next day the royal party visited "Stamford town," from which the
Mayor afterwards sent Prince Albert the gift of a pair of Wellington
boots, as a sample of the trade of the place. The drive extended to
the ruins of another manor-house which, Lady Bloomfield heard, was
built by the Cecils for a temporary resort when their house of
Burghley was swept. The Queen and the Prince planted an oak and a
lime, not far from Queen Elizabeth's lime. The festivities ended with
a great dinner and ball, at which the Queen did not dance. Most of the
company passed before her chair of State on the dais, as they do at a
drawing-room.
On the 29th of December an aged English kinswoman of the Queen's died
at the Ranger's House, Blackheath, where she held the somewhat
anomalous office of Ranger of Greenwich Park. This was Princess Sophia
Matilda, daughter of the Duke of Gloucester, George III.'s brother,
and sister of the late Duke of Gloucester, the husband of his cousin,
Princess Mary.
Her mother's history was a romance. She was the beautiful niece of
Horace Walpole, the illegitimate daughter of his brother, the Earl of
Oxford. She married first the Earl of Waldegrave, and became the
mother of the three lovely sisters whom Sir Joshua Reynolds's brush
immortalised. The widowed countess caught the fancy of the royal Duke,
just as it was said, in contemporary letters, that another fair young
widow turned the head of another brother of the King's. George III.
refused at first to acknowledge the Duke of Gloucester's marriage, but
finally withdrew his opposition. If, as was reported, the Duke of York
married Lady Mary Coke, the marriage was never ratified. The risk of
such marriages caused the passing of the Royal Marriage Act, which
rendered the marriage of any member of the royal family without the
consent of the reigning sovereign illegal. The children of the Duke of
Gloucester and his Duchess were two--Prince William and Princess
Sophia Matilda. They held the somewhat doubtful position, perhaps more
marked in those days, of a family royal on one side of the house only.
The brother, if not a very brilliant, an inoffensive and not an
illiberal prince, though wicked wags called him "Silly Billy,"
improved the situation by his marriage with the amiable and popular
Princess Mary, to whom a private gentleman, enamoured by hearsay with
her virtues, left a considerable fortune. We get a passing glimpse of
the sister, Princess Sophia Matilda, in Fanny Burney's diary. She was
then a pretty, sprightly girl, having apparently inherited some of her
beautiful mother's and half-sisters' attractions. She was admitted to
terms of considerable familiarity and intimacy with her royal cousins;
and yet she was not of the circle of Queen Charlotte, neither could
she descend gracefully to a lower rank. No husband, royal or noble,
was found for her. One cannot think of her without attaching a sense
of loneliness to her princely estate. She survived her brother, the
Duke of Gloucester, ten years, and died at the age of seventy-two at
the Ranger's House, Blackheath, from which she had dispensed many
kindly charities. At her funeral the royal standard was hoisted half-
mast high on Greenwich Hospital, the Observatory, the churches of St.
Mary and St. Alphege, and on Blackheath. She was laid, with nearly all
her royal race for the last two generations, in the burial-place of
kings, St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Prince Albert occupied his stall
as a Knight of the Garter, with a mourning scarf across his field-
marshal's uniform.
In the middle of January, 1845, the Queen and Prince Albert went on a
visit to the Duke of Buckingham at Stowe, which was still unstripped
of its splendid possessions and interesting antiquarian relics. The
huge gathering of neighbours and tenants included waggons full of
labourers, admitted into the park to see the Queen's arrival and the
illumination of the great house at night.
The amusements of the next two days, the ordinary length of a royal
visit, began with _battues_ for the Prince, when the accumulation
of game was so enormous that, in place of the fact being remarkable
that "he hit almost everything he fired at," it would have been
singular if a good shot could have avoided doing so. Fifty beaters, so
near each other that their sticks almost touched, entered a thick
cover and drove the game past the place where the sportsmen were
stationed, into the open space of the park. Out the hares rushed from
every quarter, "so many of them, that it was often impossible to stop
more than one out of half-a-dozen. The ground immediately in front of
the shooters became strewn with dead and dying.... It was curious to
behold the evident reluctance with which the hares left their retreat,
and then their perplexity at finding themselves so beset without. Many
actually made for the canal, and swam like dogs across a piece of
water nearly a hundred yards wide, shaking themselves upon landing,
and making off without any apparent distress. The pheasants were
still more averse 'to come and be killed.' For some time not one
appeared above the trees. The cocks were heard crowing like domestic
fowls, as the numerous tribe retreated before the sticks of the
advancing army of beaters. Upon arriving, however, at the edge of the
wood, quite a cloud ascended, and the slaughter was proportionately
great."
"Slaughter," not sport, is the appropriate word. One cannot help
thinking that so it must have struck the Prince; nor are we surprised
that, on the next opportunity he had of exercising a sportsman's
legitimate vocation, with the good qualities of patience, endurance,
and skill, which it is calculated to call forth, emphatic mention is
made of his keen enjoyment.
Besides shooting there was walking for both ladies and gentlemen, to
the number of twenty guests, "in the mild, clear weather," in the
beautiful park. There was the usual county gathering, in order to
confer on the upper ten thousand, within a radius of many miles, the
much-prized honour of "meeting" the Queen at a dinner or a ball.
Lastly, her Majesty and the Prince planted the oak and the cedar which
were to rank like heirlooms, and be handed down as trophies of a royal
visit and princely favour, to future generations.
The Queen and Prince Albert returned to Windsor on the evening of
Saturday, the 18th of January, and on the afternoon of Monday, the
20th, they started again to pay a long-projected visit to her old
friend the Duke of Wellington at Strathfieldsaye. It was known that
the Duke had set his heart on entertaining his sovereign in his own
house, and she not only granted him the boon, but in consideration of
his age, his laurels, and the long and intimate connection between
them, she let the visit have more of a private and friendly character
than the visits of sovereigns to subjects were wont to have. However,
the country did not lose its gala. Arches of winter evergreens instead
of summer flowers, festive banners, loyal inscriptions, yeoman corps,
holiday faces, met her on all sides. At Swallowfield--a name which
Mary Russell Mitford has made pleasant to English ears--"no less a
person than the Speaker of the House of Commons," the representative
of an old Huguenot refugee, the Right Honourable John Shaw Lefevre,
commanded the troop of yeomanry.
The Iron Duke met his honoured guests in the hall and conducted them
to the library. Every day the same formula was gone through. "The Duke
takes the Queen in to dinner, sits by her Majesty, and after dinner
gets up and says, 'With your Majesty's permission I give the health of
her Majesty,' and then the same to the Prince. They then adjourn to
the library, and the Duke sits on the sofa by the Queen (almost as a
father would sit by a daughter) for the rest of the evening until
eleven o'clock, the Prince and the gentlemen being scattered about in
the library or the billiard-room, which opens into it. In a large
conservatory beyond, the band of the Duke's grenadier regiment plays
through the evening."
There was much that was unique and kindly in the relations between the
Queen and the greatest soldier of his day. He had stood by her
baptismal font; she had been his guest, when she was the girl-
Princess, at Walmer. He had sat in her first Council; he had witnessed
her marriage; she was to give his name to one of her sons; in fact, he
had taken part in every event of her life. The present arrangements
were a graceful, well-nigh filial, tribute of affectionate regard for
the old man who had served his country both on the battle-field and in
the senate, who had watched his Queen's career with the keenest
interest, and rejoiced in her success as something with which he had
to do.
The old soldier also gave the Prince shooting, but it was the "fine
wild sport" which might have been expected from the host, and which
seemed more to the taste of the guest. And in the party of gentlemen
who walked for miles over the ploughed land and through the brushwood,
none kept up the pace better than the veteran.
The weather was broken and partly wet during the Queen's stay at
Strathfieldsaye, and in lieu of out-of-door exercise, the tennis-court
came into request. Lord Charles Wellesley, the Duke's younger son,
played against professional players, and Prince Albert engaged Lord
Charles and one of the professional players, the Queen looking on.
When the visit was over, the Duke punctiliously performed his part of
riding on horseback by her Majesty's carriage for the first stage of
her journey.
Comical illustrations are given of the old nobleman and soldier's dry
rebuffs, administered to the members of the press and the public
generally, who haunted Strathfieldsaye on this occasion.
The first was in reply to a request for admission to the house on the
plea that the writer was one of the staff of a popular journal
commissioned to give the details of the visit. "Field-Marshal the Duke
of Wellington presents his compliments to Mr. ---, and begs to say
he does not see what his house at Strathfieldsaye has to do with the
public press." The other was in the form of a still more ironical
notice put up in the grounds, "desiring that people who wish to see
the house may drive up to the hall-door and ring the bell, but that
they are to abstain from walking on the flagstones and looking in at
the windows."
In February the Queen opened Parliament in person for what was
destined to be a stormy session, particularly in relation to Sir
Robert Peel's measure proposing an increased annual grant of money to
the Irish Roman Catholic priests' college of Maynooth. In the
Premier's speech, in introducing the Budget, he was able to pay a
well-merited compliment on the wise and judicious economy shown in
the management of her Majesty's income, so that it was equal to meet
the heavy calls made upon it by the visits of foreign sovereigns, who
were entertained in a manner becoming the dignity of the sovereign,
"without adding one tittle to the burdens of the country. And I am not
required, on the part of her Majesty," went on Sir Robert Peel, "to
press for the extra expenditure of one single shilling on account of
these unforeseen causes of increased expenditure. I think, to state
this is only due to the personal credit of her Majesty, who insists
upon it that there shall be every magnificence required by her
station, but without incurring a single debt." In order to show how
the additional cost of such royal hospitality taxed the resources even
of the Queen of England, it may be well to give an idea of the
ordinary scale of housekeeping at Windsor Castle. Lady Bloomfield
likens the kitchen-fire to Nebuchadnezzar's burning fiery furnace.
Even when there was no company, from fifteen to twenty joints hung
roasting there. In one year the number of people fed at dinner in the
Castle amounted to a hundred and thirteen thousand!
Shall we be accused of small moralities and petty lessons in thrift if
we say that this passage in Sir Robert Peel's speech recalls the
stories of the child-Princess's training, in a wholesome horror of
debt, and the exercise of such little acts of self-denial as can alone
come in a child's way; that it brings to mind the Tunbridge anecdote
of the tiny purchaser on her donkey, bidden to look at her empty purse
when a little box in the bazaar caught her eye, and prohibited from
going further in obtaining the treasure, till the next quarter's
allowance was due? Well might the nation that had read the report of
Sir Robert Peel's speech listen complacently when it heard in the
following month, of the Queen's acquisition of a private property
which should be all her own and her husband's, to do with, as they
chose. Another country bestowed, upon quite different grounds, on one
of its sovereigns the honourable title of King Honest Man. Here was
Queen Honest Woman, who would not buy what she could not afford, or
ask her people to pay for fancies in which she indulged, regardless of
her means. A different example had been presented by poor Louis XVI.
and Marie Antoinette, who, after a course of what their most faithful
servants admitted to be grievous misrule and misappropriation of
public dignities and funds--to satisfy the ambition and greed of
favourites or their friends--in the face of national bankruptcy,
private ruin, and widespread disaffection, in the very death-throes of
the Revolution, chose that time of all others to buy--under whatever
specious pretext of exchange and indemnification--for him who had
already so many hunting-seats, the fresh one of Rambouillet; for her,
who had Little Trianon in its perfection, the new suburban country
house of St. Cloud.
Osborne abounded in the advantages which the royal couple sought. It
was in the Isle of Wight, which her Majesty had loved in her girlhood,
with the girdle of sea that gave such assurance of the much-courted,
much-needed seclusion, as could hardly be procured elsewhere--
certainly not within a reasonable distance of London. It was a lovely
place by nature, with no end of capabilities for the practice of the
Prince's pleasant faculty of landscape-gardening, with which he had
already done wonders in the circumscribed grounds of Buckingham Palace
and the larger field of Windsor. There were not only woods and valleys
and charming points of view--among them a fine look at Spithead; the
woods went down to the sea, and the beach belonged to the estate. Such
a quiet country home for a country and home-loving Queen and Prince,
and for the little children, to whom tranquillity, freedom, the woods,
the fields, and the sea-sands were of such vital and lasting
consequence, was inestimable.
In addition to other outlets for an active, beneficent nature,
Osborne, with its works of building, planting, and improving going on
for years to come, had also its farms, like the Home Farm at Windsor.
And the Prince was fond of farming no less than of landscape-gardening
--proud of his practical success in making it pay, deeply interested
in all questions of agriculture and their treatment, so as to secure
permanent employment and ample provision for the labourers. Prince
Albert's love of animals, too, found scope in these farming
operations. When the Queen and the Prince visited the Home Farm the
tame pigeons would settle on his hat and her shoulders. The
accompanying engraving represents the pasture and part of the Home
Farm at Osborne. "The cow in the group was presented to her Majesty by
the Corporation of Guernsey, when the Queen visited the Channel
Islands; the animal is a beautiful specimen of the Alderney breed, and
is a great favourite ... on the forehead of the cow is a V
distinctly marked; a peculiarity, it may be presumed, which led to the
presentation; the other animals are her calves."
In the course of this session of Parliament, the Queen sought more
than once to mark her acknowledgment of the services of Sir Robert
Peel, round whose political career troubles were gathering. She acted
as sponsor to his grandchild--the heir of the Jersey family--and she
offered Sir Robert, through Lord Aberdeen, the Order of the Garter, an
offer which the Prime Minister respectfully declined in words that
deserve to be remembered. He sprang from the people, he said, and was
essentially of the people, and such an honour, in his case, would be
misapplied. His heart was not set upon titles of honour or social
distinction. His reward lay in her Majesty's confidence, of which, by
many indications, she had given him the fullest assurance; and when he
left her service the only distinction he courted was that she should
say to him, "You have been a faithful servant, and have done your duty
to your country and to myself."
CHAPTER II.
THE QUEEN'S POWDER BALL.
On the evening of the 6th of June, 1845, her Majesty, who was at
Buckingham Palace for the season, gave another great costume ball,
still remembered as her Powder Ball--a name bestowed on it because of
the universally-worn powder on hair and periwigs. It was not such a
novelty as the Plantagenet Ball had been, neither was it so splendidly
fantastic nor apparently so costly a performance; not that the
materials used in the dresses were less valuable, but several of them
--notably the old lace which was so marked a feature in the spectacle
that it might as well have been called "The Lace Ball"--existed in
many of the great houses in store, like the family diamonds, and had
only to be brought out with the other heirlooms, and properly disposed
of, to constitute the wearer _en grande tenue_. No doubt trade
was still to be encouraged, and Spitalfields, in its chronic
adversity, to be brought a little nearer to prosperity by the
manufacture of sumptuous stuffs, in imitation of gorgeous old
brocades, for a portion of the twelve hundred guests. But these
motives were neither so urgent nor so ostensible, and perhaps the ball
originated as much in a wish to keep up a good custom once begun, and
to show some cherished guests a choice example of princely
hospitality, as in an elaborate calculation of forced gain to an
exotic trade.
The period chosen for the representation was much nearer the present.
It was only a hundred years back, from 1740 to 1750. It may be that
this comparative nearness fettered rather than emancipated the players
in the game, and that, though civil wars and clan feuds had long died
out, and the memory of the Scotch rebellion was no more than a
picturesque tragic romance, a trifle of awkwardness survived in the
encounter, face to face once more, in the very guise of the past, of
the descendants of the men and women who had won at Prestonpans and
lost at Culloden. It was said that a grave and stately formality
distinguished this ball--a tone attributed to dignified, troublesome
fashions--stranger then, but which since these days have become more
familiar to us.
No two more attractive figures presented themselves that night than
the sisters-in-law, the Duchess of Kent and the Duchess of
Gloucester, the one in her sixtieth the other in her seventieth year.
The third royal duchess in the worthy trio, who represented long and
well the royal matronhood of England, the Duchess of Cambridge, was,
along with her Duke, prevented from being present at the Queen's ball
in consequence of a recent death in her family. The Duchess of Kent
wore a striped and "flowered" brocade, with quantities of black lace
relieving the white satin of her train. The Duchess of Gloucester,
sweet pretty Princess Mary of more than fifty years before, came in
the character of a much less happy woman, Marie Leczinska, the queen
of Louis XV. She must have looked charming in her rich black brocade,
and some of the hoards of superb lace--which she is said to have
inherited from her mother, Queen Charlotte--edged with strings of
diamonds and agraffes of diamonds, while over her powdered hair was
tied a fichu capuchin of Chantilly.
Among the multitude of guests assembled at Buckingham Palace, the
privileged few who danced in the Queen's minuets, as well as the
members of the royal family, arrived by the Garden Gate and were
received in the Yellow Drawing-room. Included in this select company
was a German princess who had lately married an English subject--
Princess Marie of Baden, wife of the Marquis of Douglas, not the first
princess who had wedded into the noble Scotch house of Hamilton,
though it was many a long century since Earl Walter received--
all Arran's isle
To dower his royal bride
The Queen had special guests with her on this occasion--her brother
the Prince of Leiningen, the much-loved uncle of the royal children;
and the favourite cousin of the circle, the young Duchesse de Nemours,
with her husband. The Queen and Prince Albert, accompanied by their
visitors, the various members of the English royal family present at
the ball, and the different suites, passed into the ball-room at half-
past ten. The first dance, the graceful march of the German
_polonaise_, was danced by all, young and old, the bands striking
up simultaneously, and the dance extending through the whole of the
State apartments, the Queen leading the way, preceded by the Vice-
Chamberlain, the Comptroller and Treasurer of the Household, and two
gentlemen ushers to clear a space for her. After the _polonaise_
the company passed slowly before the Queen. A comical incident
occurred in this part of the programme through the innocent mistake of
an old infantry officer, who in his progress lifted his peaked hat and
gave the Queen a military salute, as he walked by.
Then her Majesty left the ball-room and repaired to the throne-room,
where the first minuet was formed. It is only necessary to recall that
most courtly of slow and graceful dances to judge how well suited it
was for this ball. The Queen danced with her cousin, Prince George of
Cambridge. Her Majesty wore a wonderful dress of cloth of gold and
cloth of silver, with daisies and poppies worked in silks, and shaded
the natural colours; trimmings and ruffles of exquisite old lace,
stomacher covered with old lace and jewels, the sacque set off with
scarlet ribands, the fair hair powdered under a tiara and crown of
diamonds, dainty white satin shoes with scarlet rosettes--a diamond in
each rosette, the Order of the Garter on the arm, the Star and Riband
of the Order.
Prince George was less fortunate in the regimentals of a cavalry
officer a century back; for, as it happened, while the costume of
1740-50 was favourable to women and to civilians, it was trying to
military men.
Prince Albert danced with the Duchesse de Nemours. These two had been
early playmates who never, even in later and sadder days, got together
without growing merry over the stories and jokes of their childhood in
Coburg. The Prince must have been one of the most graceful figures
there, in a crimson velvet coat edged with gold and lined with white
satin, on the left breast the splendid Star of the Order of the
Garter, shoulder-strap and sword inlaid with diamonds, white satin
waistcoat brocaded with gold, breeches of crimson velvet with gold
buttons, shoes of black kid with red heels and diamond buckles, three-
cornered hat trimmed with gold lace, edged with white ostrich
feathers, a magnificent loop of diamonds, and the black cockade of the
Georges, not the white cockade of the Jameses.
His golden-haired partner was in a tastefully gay and fantastic as
well as splendid costume of rose-coloured Chinese damask, with gold
blonde and pearls, over a petticoat of point d'Alençon, with a deep
border of silver and silver rosettes. The stomacher of brilliants and
pearls, on the left shoulder a nosegay with diamond wheat-ears
interspersed, shoes of purple satin with fleurs-de-lys embroidered in
gold and diamonds, as became a daughter of France, and gloves
embroidered with similar fleurs-de-lys.
There were many gay and gallant figures and fair faces in that minuet
of minuets. Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar was meant to dance with the
young Marchioness of Douro, but she by some strange chance came too
late for the honour, and her place was supplied by another young
matron and beauty, Lady Jocelyn, formerly Lady Fanny Cowper. Prince
Leiningen, who wore a white suit faced with blue and a buff waistcoat
edged with silver lace, danced with Lady Mount-Edgcumbe. The Duke of
Beaufort once more disputed with the Earl of Wilton the distinction of
being the finest gentleman present.
The Queen danced in four minuets, standing up in the second with
Prince Albert. This minuet also included several of the most beautiful
women of the time and of the Court; notably Lady Seymour, one of the
Sheridan sisters, the Queen of Beauty at the Eglinton tournament; and
Lady Canning.
After the second minuet the Queen and all the company returned to the
ball-room, where two other minuets, those of Lady Jersey and Lady
Chesterfield, were danced, and between them was given Lady
Breadalbane's strathspey. There was such crowding to see these dances
that the Lord Chamberlain had difficulty in making room for them.
While Musard furnished special music for the minuets and quadrilles,
adapting it in one case from airs of the '45, the Queen's piper,
Mackay, gave forth, for the benefit of the strathspey and reel-
dancers, the stirring strains of "Miss Drummond of Perth,"
"Tullochgorum," and "The Marquis of Huntly's Highland Fling," which
must have rung with wild glee through the halls of kings.
Lady Chesterfield's minuet was the last dance before supper, served
with royal splendour in the dining-room, to which the Queen passed at
twelve o'clock. After supper the Queen danced in a quadrille and in
the two next minuets. Her first partner was the Duc de Nemours, who
wore an old French infantry general's uniform--a coat of white cloth,
the front covered with gold embroidery, sleeves turned up with crimson
velvet, waistcoat and breeches of crimson velvet, stockings of crimson
silk, and red-heeled shoes with diamond buckles. In the second minuet
her Majesty had her brother, the Prince of Leiningen, for her partner.
The ball was ended, according to a good old English fashion, by the
quaint changing measure of "Sir Roger de Coverley," known in Scotland
as "The Haymakers," in which the Queen had her husband for her
partner. This country-dance was danced in the picture gallery.
Let who would be the beauty at the Queen's ball, there was at least
one poetess there in piquant black and cerise, with cerise roses and
priceless point à l'aiguille, Lady John Scott, who had been the witty
heiress, Miss Spottiswoode of Spottiswoode. She wrote to an old
refrain one of the most pathetic of modern Scotch ballads--
Douglas, Douglas, tender and true
The beauty of the ball was the Marchioness of Douro, who not so long
ago had been the beauty of the season as Lady Elizabeth Hay, daughter
of the Marquis of Tweeddale, when she caught the fancy of the elder,
son and heir of the Duke of Wellington. In this case beauty was not
unadorned, for the lovely Marchioness, [Footnote: Her likeness is
familiar to many people in an engraving from a well-known picture of
the Duke of Wellington showing his daughter-in-law the field of
Waterloo] the Greek mould of whose head attracted the admiration of
all judges, was said to wear jewels to the value of sixty thousand
pounds, while the superb point-lace flounce to her white brocade must
have been a source of pious horror to good Roman Catholics, since it
was believed to have belonged to the sacred vestments of a pope.
We have said that lace and jewels gave the distinguishing stamp to the
ball--such lace!--point d'Alençon, point de Bayeux, point de Venise,
point a l'aiguille, Mechlin, Guipure, Valenciennes, Chantilly, enough
to have turned green with envy the soul of a cultured _petit-
maître_, an aesthetic fop of the present day.
Some of the jewels, no less than the lace, were historical. The
Marchioness of Westminster, besides displaying _sabots_ of point-
lace, which had belonged to Caroline, queen of George II., wore the
Nassuk and Arcot diamonds.
Miss Burdett-Coutts wore a lustrous diadem and necklace that had once
graced the brow and throat of poor Marie Antoinette, and had found
their way at last into jewel-cases no longer royal, owing their
glittering contents to the wealth of a great city banker.
A word about the antiquated finery of the Iron Duke, with which the
old soldier sought to please his young mistress. It provoked a smile
or two from the more frivolous as the grey, gaunt, spindle-shanked old
man stalked by, yet it was not without its pathetic side. The Duke
wore a scarlet coat, a tight fit, laced with gold, with splendid gold
buttons and frogs, the brilliant star of the Order of the Garter, and
the Order of the Golden Fleece, a waistcoat of scarlet cashmere
covered with gold lace, breeches of scarlet kerseymere trimmed with
gold lace; gold buckles, white silk stockings, cocked hat laced with
gold, sword studded with rose diamonds and emeralds.
It is nearly forty years since these resplendent masquers trod the
floors of Buckingham Palace, and if the changes which time has brought
about had been foreseen, if the veil which shrouds the future had been
lifted, what emotions would have been called forth!
Who could have borne to hear that the bright Queen and giver of the
fete would pass the years of her prime in the mournful shade of
disconsolate widowhood? That the pale crown of a premature death was
hovering over the head of him who was the life of her life, the active
promoter and sustainer of all that was good and joyous in that great
household, all that was great and happy in the kingdom over which she
ruled?
Who would have ventured to prophesy that of the royal kindred and
cherished guests, the Prince of Leiningen was to die a landless man,
the Duc de Nemours to spend long years in exile, the Duchesse to be
cut down in the flower of her womanhood? Who would have guessed that
this great nobleman, the head of an ancient house, was to perish by a
miserable accident in a foreign hotel; that his sister, the wife of an
unfortunate statesman, was to be dragged through the mire of a divorce
court; that the treasures of a princely home were to pass away from
the race that had accumulated them, under the strokes of an
auctioneer's hammer? Who could have dreamt that this fine intellect
and loving heart would follow the lord of their destiny to Hades, and
wander there for evermore distracted, in the land of shadows, where
there is no light of the sun to show the way, no firm ground to stay
the tottering feet and groping hands? As for these two fair sisters in
Watteau style of blue and pink, and green and pink taffetas, lace, and
pearls, and roses--surely the daintiest, most aristocratic
shepherdesses ever beheld--one of them would have lost her graceful
equanimity, reddened with affront, and tingled to the finger-tips
with angry unbelief if she had been warned beforehand that she would
be amongst the last of the high-born, high-bred brides who would
forfeit her birthright and her presence at a Queen's Court by agreeing
to be married at the hands of a blacksmith instead of a bishop, before
the rude hymeneal altar at Gretna.
But to-night there was no alarming interlude, like a herald of evil,
to shake the nerves of the company--nothing more unpropitious than the
_contretemps_ to an unlucky lady of being overcome by the heat
and seized with a fainting-fit, which caused her over-zealous
supporters to remove her luxuriant powdered wig in order to give her
greater air and coolness, so that she was fain, the moment she
recovered, to hide her diminished head by a rapid discomfited retreat
from what remained of the revelry.
On the 21st of June the Queen and the Prince, with the Lords of the
Admiralty, inspected the fleet off Spithead. The royal yacht was
attended by a crowd of yachts belonging to the various squadrons, a
throng of steamboats and countless small boats. The Queen visited and
went over the flagship--which was the _St. Vincent_--the
_Trafalgar_, and the _Albion_. On her return to the yacht
she held a levee of all the captains of the fleet. A few days
afterwards she reviewed her fleet in brilliant, breezy weather. The
royal yacht took up its position at Spithead, and successive signals
were given to the squadron to "Lower sail," "Make sail," "Shorten sail
and reef," and "Furl topgallant sails," all the manoeuvres--including
the getting under way and sailing in line to St. Helen's--being
performed with the very perfection of nautical accuracy. The review
ended with the order, "Furl sails, put the life-lines on, and man
yards," which was done as only English sailors can accomplish the
feat, while the royal yacht on its return passed through the squadron
amidst ringing cheers.
During the earlier part of the summer Sir John Franklin sailed with
his ships, the _Erebus_ and _Terror_, in search of that
North Pole which, since the days of Sir Hugh Montgomery, "a captain
tall," has been at once the goal and snare of many a gallant English
sailor. The good ships disappeared under the horizon, never to reach
their haven. By slow degrees oblivion, more or less profound, closed
over the fate of officers and men, while, for lack of knowledge of
their life or death, the light of many a hearth was darkened, and
faithful hearts sickened with hope deferred and broke under the
strain. As one instance, out of many, of the desolation which the
silent loss of the gallant expedition occasioned, sorrow descended
heavily on one of the happy Highland homes among which the Queen had
dwelt the previous summer. Captain, afterwards Lord James, Murray,
brother of Lord Glenlyon, was married to Miss Fairholme, sister of one
of the picked men of whom the explorers were composed. When no tidings
of him came, year after year, from the land of mist and darkness,
pining melancholy seized upon her and made her its prey.
In the month of July the King of the Netherlands, who, as Prince of
Orange, had served on the Duke of Wellington's staff at the close of
the Peninsular War, came to England and took up his quarters at
Mivart's Hotel, the Queen being in the Isle of Wight, where he joined
her. Prince Albert met the King at Gosport and escorted him to
Osborne. On his return to London the King, who was already a general
in the English army, received his appointment as field-marshal, and
reviewed the Household troops in Hyde Park. He paid a second visit to
the Queen at Osborne before he left Woolwich for Holland.
A curious accident happened when the Queen prorogued Parliament on the
9th of August. The Duke of Argyle, an elderly man, was carrying the
crown on a velvet cushion, when, in walking backwards before the
Queen, he appeared to forget the two steps, leading from the platform
on which the throne stands to the floor, and stumbled, the crown
slipping from the cushion and falling to the ground, with the loss of
some diamonds. The Queen expressed her concern for the Duke instead of
for the crown; but on her departure the keeper of the House of Lords
appeared in front of the throne, and prevented too near an approach to
it, with the chance of further damage to the dropped jewels. The
misadventure was naturally the subject of a good deal of private
conversation in the House.
CHAPTER III.
THE QUEEN'S FIRST VISIT TO GERMANY.
On the evening of the day that she prorogued Parliament, the Queen and
the Prince with the Earl of Aberdeen as the minister in attendance,
started from Buckingham Palace that she might pay her first visit to
Germany. Surely none of all the new places she had visited within the
last few years could have been of such surpassing interest to the
traveller. It was her mother's country as well as her husband's, the
home of her brother and sister, the place of which she must have
heard, with which she must have had the kindliest associations from
her earliest years.
The first stage of the journey--in stormy weather, unfortunately--was
to Antwerp, where the party did not land till the following day, when
they proceeded to Malines, where they were met by King Leopold and
Queen Louise, who parted from their royal niece at Verviers. On the
Prussian frontier Lord Westmoreland, the English ambassador, and Baron
Bunsen met her Majesty. "To hear the people speak German," she wrote
in her Journal, "to see the German soldiers, seemed to me so singular.
I overheard people saying that I looked very English."
At Aix-la-Chapelle the King and Prince of Prussia received the
visitors and accompanied them to Cologne. The ancient dirty town of
the Three Kings gave the strangers an enthusiastic reception. The
burghers even did their best to get rid of the unsavoury odours which
distinguish the town of sweet essences, by pouring eau-de-Cologne on
the roadways.
At Bruhl the Queen and the Prince were taken to the palace, where they
found the Queen of Prussia, whose hostility to English and devotion to
Russian interests when Lord Bloomfield represented the English
Government at Berlin, are recorded by Lady Bloomfield. With the Queen
was her sister-in-law, the Princess of Prussia, and the Court. The
party went into one of the _salons_ to hear the famous tatoo
played by four hundred musicians, in the middle of an illumination by
means of torches and coloured lamps. The Queen was reminded that she
was in a land of music by hearing at a concert, in which sixty
regimental bands assisted, "God save the Queen" better played than she
had ever heard it before. "We felt so strange to be in Germany at
last," repeats her Majesty, dwelling on the pleasant sensation, "at
Bruhl, which Albert said he used to go and visit from Bonn."
The next day the visitors went to Bonn, accompanied by the King and
Queen of Prussia. At the house of Prince Furstenberg many professors
who had known Prince Albert were presented to the Queen, "which
interested me very much," the happy wife says simply. "They were
greatly delighted to see Albert and pleased to see me.... I felt as
if I knew them all from Albert having told me so much about them." The
experience is known to many a bride whose husband takes her proudly to
his old _alma mater_.
The day was made yet more memorable by the unveiling of a statue to
Beethoven. But, by an unlucky _contretemps_, the royal party on
the balcony found the back of the statue presented to their gaze. The
_Freischutzen_ fired a _feu-de-joie_. A chorale was sung.
The people cheered and the band played a _Dusch_--such a flourish
of trumpets as is given in Germany when a health is drunk.
The travellers then went to the Prince's "former little house." The
Queen writes, "It was such a pleasure for me to be able to see this
house. We went all over it, and it is just as it was, in no way
altered.... We went into the little bower in the garden, from which
you have a beautiful view of the _Kreuzberg_--a convent situated
on the top of a hill. The _Siebengebirge_ (seven mountains) you
also see, but the view of them is a good deal built up."
This visiting together the ground once so familiar to the Prince
formed an era in two lives. It was the fulfilment of a beautiful,
brilliant expectation which had been half dim and vague when the
ardent lad was a quiet, diligent student, living simply, almost
frugally, like the other students at the university on the Rhine, and
his little cousin across the German Ocean, from whom he had parted in
the homely red-brick palace of Kensington, had been proclaimed Queen
of a great country. The prospect of their union was still very
uncertain in those days, and yet it must sometimes have crossed his
mind as he built air-castles in the middle of his reading; or strolled
with a comrade along those old-fashioned streets, among their
population of "wild-looking students," with long fair hair, pipes
between their lips, and the scars of many a sword-duel on forehead and
cheek; or penetrated into the country, where the brown peasant women,
"with curious caps and handkerchiefs," came bearing their burden of
sticks from the forest, like figures in old fairy tales. He must have
told himself that the time might come when something like the
transformation of a fairy-tale would be effected on his account; the
plain living and high-thinking and college discipline of Bonn be
exchanged for the dignity and influence of an English sovereign's
consort. Then, perhaps, he would bring his bride to the dear old
"fatherland," and show her where he had dreamt about her among his
books.
At the banquet in the afternoon the accomplished King gave the Queen's
health in a speech fit for a poet. He referred to a word sweet alike
to British and German hearts. Thirty years before it had echoed on the
heights of Waterloo from British and German tongues, after days of hot
and desperate fighting, to mark the glorious triumph of their
brotherhood in arms. "Now it resounds on the banks of our fair Rhine,
amidst the blessings of that peace which was the hallowed fruit of the
great conflict. That word is 'Victoria.' Gentlemen, drink to the
health of her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain
and Ireland, and to that of her august consort."
"The Queen," remarked Bunsen, "bowed at the first word, but much lower
at the second. Her eyes brightened through tears, and as the King was
taking his seat again, she rose and bent towards him and kissed his
cheek, then took her seat again with a beaming countenance."
After the four-o'clock dinner, the royal party returned to Cologne,
and from a steamer on the Rhine saw, through a drizzle of rain which
did not greatly mar the spectacle, a splendid display of fireworks and
illumination of the town, in which the great cathedral "seemed to glow
with fire."
We quote a picturesque description of the striking scene. "The Rhine
was made one vast _feu-de-joie_. As darkness closed in, the dim
city began to put forth buds of light. Lines of twinkling brightness
darted like liquid gold or silver from pile to pile, then by the
bridge of boats across the river, up the masts of the shipping, and
along the road on the opposite bank. Rockets now shot from all parts
of the horizon. The royal party embarked in a steamer at St. Tremond
and glided down by the river. As they passed the banks blazed with
fireworks and musketry. At their approach the bridge glowed with
redoubled light, and, opening, let the vessel pass to Cologne, whose
cathedral burst forth a building of light, every detail of the
architecture being made out in delicately-coloured lamps--pinkish,
with an underglow of orange. Traversing in carriages the illuminated
and vociferous city, the King and his companions returned by the
railroad to Bruhl."
Next morning there was a great concert at Bonn--part of the Beethoven
festival, in which much fine music was given, but, oddly enough, not
much of Beethoven's, to her Majesty's regret. The Queen drove to the
University--in the classrooms of which the Prince had sat as a
student--and saw more of the professors who had taught him, and of
students similar to those who had been his class-fellows. Then she
went once more to Cologne, and visited its glory, the cathedral, at
that time unfinished, returning to Bruhl to hail with delight the
arrival of the King and Queen of the Belgians. "It seems like a dream
to them and to me to see each other in Germany," the Queen wrote once
more. The passages from her Majesty's Journal read as if she were
pleased to congratulate herself on being at last with Prince Albert in
his native country.
The last day at Cologne ended in another great concert, conducted by
Meyerbeer, for which he had composed a cantata in honour of the Queen.
Jenny Lind sang in the concert. It was her Majesty's first opportunity
of hearing the great singer, who, of all her sister singers, has most
identified herself with England, and from her noble, womanly character
and domestic virtues, endeared herself to English hearts.
The tutelary genius of the river which is the Germans' watchword was
not able to procure the Queen her weather for her sail on its green
waters. Rain fell or threatened for both of the days. Not even the
presence of three queens--of England, Prussia, and Belgium--two kings,
a prince consort, an archduke, and a future emperor and empress, could
propitiate the adverse barometer, or change the sulky face of the sky.
Between showers the Queen had a glimpse of the romantic scenery, and
perhaps Ehrenbreitstein was most in character when the smoke from the
firing of twenty thousand troops "brought home to the imagination the
din and lurid splendours of a battle."
The halt was made at Schlossenfels, which included among its
distinguished guests Humboldt and Prince Metternich. Next day the King
and Queen of Prussia took leave of their visitors, still under heavy
rain. The weather cleared afterwards for a time, however, and
beautiful Bingen, with the rest of the Rhenish country, was seen in
sunshine. The only inconvenience remaining was the thunder of cannons
and rattle of muskets which every loyal village kept up.
At Mayence the Queen was received by the Governor, Prince William of
Prussia, and the Austrian commander, while the Prussian and Austrian
troops, with their bands, gave a torchlight serenade before the hotel
windows. On the rest-day which Sunday secured, the Queen saw the good
nurse who had brought the royal pair into the world. Her Majesty had
also her first introduction to one of her future sons-in-law--an
unforeseen kinsman then--Prince Louis of Hesse, whom she noticed as "a
very fine boy of eight, nice, and full of intelligence."
There were still long leagues to drive, posting, before Coburg could
be reached, and the party started from Mayence in two travelling
carriages as early as seven o'clock next morning. They went by
Frankfort to Aschaffenburg, where they were met by Bavarian troops and
a representative of the King on their entrance into Bavaria. Through
woodland scenery, and fields full of the stir of harvest, where a
queenly woman did not relish the spectacle of her sister-women
treated as beasts of burden, the travellers journeyed to Wurzburg.
There Prince Luitpold of Bavaria met and welcomed them to a
magnificent palace, where the luggage, which ought to have preceded
the wearied travellers, was not forthcoming. Another long day's
driving, beginning at a little after six in the morning, would bring
the party to Coburg. By one o'clock they were at the old prince-
bishop's stately town of Bamberg. In the course of the afternoon the
Queen had changed horses for the last time in Franconia. "I began,"
she wrote, "to feel greatly moved, agitated indeed, in coming near the
Coburg frontier. At length we saw flags and people drawn up in lines,
and in a few minutes more were welcomed by Ernest (the Duke of Coburg)
in full uniform.... We got into an open carriage of Ernest's with six
horses, Ernest sitting opposite to us."
The rest of the scene was very German, quaintly picturesque and warm-
hearted. "The good people were all dressed in their best, the women in
pointed caps, with many petticoats, and the men in leather breeches.
Many girls were there with wreaths of flowers." A triumphal arch, a
Vice-Land-Director, to whose words of greeting the Queen replied, his
fellow-officials on either side, the people welcoming their prince and
his queen in "a really hearty and friendly way."
The couple drove to what had been the pretty little country house of
their common grandmother, the late Dowager-Duchess of Coburg, and
found King Leopold and Queen Louise awaiting them there. He also was
an honoured son of Coburg, pleased to be present on such a proud day
for the little State. He and his queen took their places beside Queen
Victoria and Prince Albert--Ernest Duke of Coburg mounting on
horseback and riding beside the carriage as its chief escort. In this
order the procession, "which looked extremely pretty," was formed. At
the entrance to the town there was another triumphal arch, beneath
which the Burgomaster addressed the royal couple. "On the other side
stood a number of young girls dressed in white, with green wreaths and
scarfs, who presented us with bouquets and verses."
Oh! what anxious, exciting, girlish rehearsals must have been gone
through beforehand.
"I cannot say how much I felt moved on entering this dear old place,
and with difficulty I restrained my emotion. The beautifully-
ornamented town, all bright with wreaths and flowers, the numbers of
good affectionate people, the many recollections connected with the
place--all was so affecting. In the Platz, where the _Rathhaus_
and _Rigierungshaus_ are, which are fine and curious old houses,
the clergy were assembled, and Ober-Superintendent Genzler addressed
us very kindly--a very young-looking man for his age, for he married
mamma to my father, and christened and confirmed Albert and Ernest."
Neither was the motherly presence of her whose marriage vow the Ober-
Superintendent had blessed, who had done so much to contribute to the
triumph of this day, wanting to its complete realization of all that
such a day should have been. The Duchess of Kent was already on a
visit to her nephew, standing on the old threshold--once so well known
to her--ready to help to welcome her daughter, prepared to show her
the home and cherished haunts of her mother's youth. As the carriage
drew up, young girls threw wreaths into it. Beside the Duchess of Kent
were the Duchess and Dowager-Duchess of Coburg, Prince Albert's
sister-in-law and stepmother. The staircase was full of cousins. "It
was an affecting but exquisite moment, which I shall never forget,"
declared the Queen.
But in the middle of the gratification of the son of the house who
thus brought his true wife under its roof-tree, and of his
satisfaction of being with her there, the faithful hearts did not
forget the late sovereign and house-father who had hoped so eagerly to
welcome them to the ancestral home. They were there, but his place was
filled by another. At Coburg and at Rosenau, which had been one of the
old Duke's favourite resorts, his memory haunted his children. "Every
sound, every view, every step we take makes us think of him and feel
an indescribable hopeless longing for him."
By an affectionate, thoughtful provision for their perfect freedom and
enjoyment, Rosenau, Prince Albert's birthplace, was set apart for the
Queen and the Prince's occupation on this very happy occasion when
they visited Coburg, and still it is the widowed Queen's residence
when she is dwelling in the neighbourhood. Beautiful in itself among
its woods and hills, it was doubly beautiful to both from its
associations. The room in which the Queen slept was that in which the
Prince had been born. "How happy, how joyful we were," the Queen
wrote, "on awaking to find ourselves here, at the dear Rosenau, my
Albert's birthplace, the place he most loves.... He was so happy to be
here with me. It is like a beautiful dream."
Fine chorales were sung below the window by some of the singers in the
Coburg theatre. Before breakfast the Prince carried off the Queen to
see the upper part of the house, which he and his brother had occupied
when children. "It is quite in the roof, with a tiny little bedroom on
each side, in one of which they both used to sleep with Florschutz,
their tutor. [Footnote: The Prince was then such a mere child that the
tutor used to carry him in his arms up and down stairs. One is
reminded of the old custom of appointing noble governors for royal
children of the tenderest years, and of the gracious pathetic
relations which sometimes existed between bearded knights and infant
kings. Such was the case where Sir David Lindsay of the Mount and
little King James V. were concerned, when the pupil would entreat the
master for a song on the lute with childish peremptoriness, "P'ay,
Davie Lindsay, p'ay!"] The view is beautiful, and the paper is still
full of holes from their fencing; and the very same table is there on
which they were dressed when little."
The days were too short for all that was to be seen and done. The
first day there was a visit to the fortress overhanging the town,
which looks as far away as the sea of trees, the Thuringerwald. It has
Luther's room, with his chair and part of his bed.
In the evening the Queen went to the perfect little German theatre,
where Meyerbeer's _Huguenots_ was given, and the audience sang
"God save the Queen" to German words.
The next day the visitors drove to Kalenberg, another of the Duke's
seats. In the evening they held a reception at the palace, when not
only those persons who had the magic prefix _von_ to their names
were admitted, but deputations of citizens, merchants, and artisans
were presented, the Queen praising their good manners afterwards.
The following day was the Feast of St. Gregorius, the children's
festival, in which thirteen hundred children walked in procession
through Coburg, some in fancy dresses, most of the girls in white and
green. Three girls came up to the palace balcony and sang a song in
honour of the Queen. Then great and small repaired to the meadow--
fortunately the fine weather had set in--where there were tents
decorated with flowers, in which the royal party dined, while the band
played and the children danced "so nicely and merrily, waltzes,
polkas, and it was the prettiest thing I ever saw," declared the
Queen. "Her Majesty talked to the children, to their great
astonishment, in their own language. Tired of dancing and processions,
and freed from all awe by the ease of the illustrious visitors, the
children took to romps, 'thread my needle,' and other pastimes, and
finally were well pelted by the royal circle with bon-bons, flowers
and cakes" is the report of another observer.
The day ended with a great ball at the palace.
The next day was spent more quietly in going over old favourite
haunts, among them the cabinet or collection of curiosities, stuffed
birds, fossils, autographs, &c., which had been formed partly by the
Princes when boys. Prince Albert continued to take the greatest
interest in it, and had made the Queen a contributor to its treasures.
At dinner the Queen tasted _bratürste_ (roasted sausages), the
national dish of Coburg, and pronounced it excellent, with its
accompaniment of native beer. A royal neighbour, Queen Adelaide's
brother, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, joined the party at dinner, and
the company witnessed the performance of Schiller's _Bride of
Messina_ at the theatre.
On Sunday the August weather was so hot that the Queen and the Prince
breakfasted for the second time out of doors. In the course of the
morning they drove over with Duke Ernest and the Duchess to St. Moritz
Kirche--equivalent to the cathedral of the town. The clergy received
the party at the door of the church, and the Ober-Superintendent
Genzler made a brief oration "expressive of his joy at receiving the
great Christian Queen who was descended from their Saxon dukes, who
were the first Reformers, and at the doors of the church where the
Reformation was first preached." The Queen describes the service as
like the Scotch Presbyterian form, only with more ceremony and more
singing. The last impressed her deeply. The pastor preached a fine
sermon. The afternoon's drive led through scenery which, especially in
its pine woods, resembled the Scotch Highlands, and ended in the
_Thiergarten_, where the Duke reared his wild boars.
"I cannot think," the Queen wrote longingly, "of going away from here.
I count the hours, for I have a feeling here which I cannot describe--
a feeling as if my childhood also had been spent here." No wonder;
Coburg was home to her, like her native air or her mother tongue; she
must have learnt to know it at her mother's knee. Her husband's
experience was added to the earlier recollection of every salient
point, every _Haus-Mahrchen_; and never were husband and wife
more in sympathy than the two who now snatched a short season of
delight from a sojourn in the cradle of their race.
Another brilliant sunshiny day--which the brother Princes spent
together reviving old associations in the town, while the Queen
sketched at Rosenau--closed with the last visit to the theatre, when
the people again sang "God save the Queen," adding to it some pretty
farewell verses.
The last day which the Queen passed in Coburg was, by a happy
circumstance, the Prince's birthday--the first he had spent at Rosenau
since he was a lad of fifteen, and, in spite of all changes, the day
dawned full of quiet gladness. "To celebrate this dear day in my
beloved husband's country and birthplace is more than I ever hoped
for," wrote her Majesty, "and I am so thankful for it; I wished him
joy so warmly when the singers sang as they did the other morning."
The numberless gifts had been arranged by no other hands than those of
the Queen and the Prince's brother and sister-in-law on a table
"dressed with flowers."' Peasants came in gala dress, [Footnote: The
Queen admired greatly many of the peasant costumes, often as
serviceable and durable as they were becoming, which she saw in
Germany. She expressed the regret so often uttered by English
travellers that English labourers and workers at handicrafts, in place
of retaining a dress of their own, have long ago adopted a tawdry
version of the fashions of the upper classes. Unfortunately the
practice is fast becoming universal.] with flowers, music, and dancing
to offer their good wishes. In the afternoon all was quiet again, and
the Queen and the Prince took their last walk together, for many a
day, at Rosenau, down into the hayfields where the friendly people
exchanged greetings with them, drank the crystal clear water from the
stream, and looked at the fortifications which two princely boys had
dug and built, as partly lessons, partly play.
The next day at half-past eight the travellers left "with heavy
hearts," measuring the fateful years which were likely to elapse
before Coburg was seen again. The pain of parting was lessened by the
presence of the Duke and Duchess of Coburg, who accompanied their
guests to the Duke's other domain of Gotha. The way led through Queen
Adelaide's country of Meiningen, and at every halting-place clergymen
with addresses more or less discursive, and "white and green young
ladies," literally bombarded the travellers with speeches, flowers,
and poems. At last the Duke of Coburg's territory was again entered
after it was dark; and the party reached the lovely castellated
country-seat of Reinhardtsbrunn, amidst forest and mountain scenery,
with its lake in front of the house, set down in the centre of a
mining population that came up in quaint costumes, with flaming
torches, to walk in procession past the windows. The Queen was charmed
with Reinhardtsbrunn, and would fain have lingered there, but time
pressed, and she was expected in the course of the next afternoon at
Gotha, on a visit to the Prince's aged grandmother who had helped to
bring him up, and was so fondly attached to her former charge.
The old lady at seventy-four years of age anticipated the visit. She
travelled the distance of eight miles before breakfast, in order to
take her grandchildren by surprise. "I hastened to her," is the
Queen's account, "and found Albert and Ernest with her. She is a
charming old lady, and though very small, remarkably nice-looking,
erect and active, but unfortunately very deaf.... She was so happy to
see us, and kissed me over and over again. Albert, who is the dearest
being to her in the world, she was enraptured to see again, and kissed
so kindly. It did one's heart good to see her joy."
In the afternoon the travellers proceeded to Gotha, which was in a
state of festival and crowded with people. The Queen and the Prince
resided at the old Duchess's house of Friedrichsthal, where the
greatest preparations, including the hanging of all her pictures in
their rooms, had been made for them. The first visit they paid in
Gotha was a solemn one, to the chapel which formed the temporary
resting-place of the body of the late Duke, till it could be removed
to its vault in Coburg. Then the rooms in which the father had died
were visited. These were almost equally melancholy, left as they had
been, unchanged, with the wreaths that had decorated the room for his
last birthday still there; "and there is that sad clock which stopped
just before he died." Who that has seen in Germany these faded
wreaths, with their crushed, soiled streamers of white riband, can
forget the desolate aspect which they lend to any room in which they
are preserved!
There was a cabinet or museum here, too, to inspect, and the curious
old spectacle of the popinjay to be witnessed, in company with the
Grand Duke of Weimar and his son. This kind of shooting was harmless
enough, for the object aimed at was a wooden bird on a pole. The
riflemen, led by the rifle-king (_schutzen-konig_), the public
officials, and deputations of peasants marched past the platform where
the Queen stood, like a pageant of the Middle Ages. All the princes,
including King Leopold, fired, but none brought down the bird; that
feat was left for some humbler hero.
On the Queen's return from the popinjay she had the happiness to meet
Baroness Lehzen, her old governess, who had come from Buckeburg to see
her Majesty. During the next few days the old friends were often
together, and the Queen speaks with pleasure of the Baroness's
"unchanged devotion," only she was quieter than formerly. It must have
appeared like another dream to both, that "the little Princess" of
Kensington, travelling with her husband, should greet her old
governess, and tell her, under the shadow of the great Thuringerwald,
of the four children left behind in England.
The next day the forest itself was entered, when "the bright blue sky,
the heavenly air, the exquisite tints," gave a crowning charm to its
beauties. The road lay through green glades which occasionally
commanded views so remote as those of the Hartz Mountains, to
_Jagersruh_, a hunting-lodge on a height "among stately firs that
look like cedars." Here the late Duke had excited all his skill and
taste to make a hunter's paradise, which awoke again the regretful
thought, "How it would have pleased him to have shown all this himself
to those he loved so dearly!"
But _Jagersruh_ was not the goal of the excursion; it was a
"deer-drive" or battue, which in Germany at least can be classed as "a
relic of mediaeval barbarism." A considerable space in the forest was
cleared and enclosed with canvas. In the centre of this enclosure was
a pavilion open at the sides, made of branches of fir-trees, and
decorated with berries, heather, and forest flowers; in short, a
sylvan bower provided for the principal company, outside a table
furnished with powder and shot supplied a station for less privileged
persons, including the chasseurs or huntsmen of the Duke, in green and
gold uniforms.
Easy-chairs were placed in the pavilion for the Queen, the Queen of
the Belgians, and the Duchess Alexandrina, while Prince Albert, King
Leopold, the Prince of Leiningen, and Duke Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg,
the Prince's uncle, stood by the ladies. Stags to the number of
upwards of thirty, and other game, were driven into the enclosure, and
between the performances of a band which played at intervals, the
gentlemen loaded their rifles, and fired at the helpless prey in the
presence of the ladies.
Her Majesty records in her Journal, "As for the sport itself, none of
the gentlemen like this butchery." She turns quickly from the piteous
slaughter to the beautiful, peaceful scenery.
A quiet Sunday was spent at Gotha. Monday was the _Lieder fest_,
or festival of song, to which, on this occasion, not only the
townspeople and villagers from all the neighbouring towns and villages
came with their banners and bands, but every small royalty from far
and near flocked to meet the Queen of England. These innumerable
cousins repaired with the Queen to the park opposite the Schloss, and
shared in the festival. The orchestra, composed of many hundreds of
singers, was opposite the pavilion erected for the distinguished
visitors. Among the fine songs, rendered as only Germans could render
them, songs composed by Prince Albert and his brother, and songs
written for the day, were sung. Afterwards there was a State dinner
and a ball.
The last day had come, with its inevitable sadness. "I can't--won't
think of it," wrote the Queen, referring to her approaching departure.
She drove and walked, and, with her brother-in-law and his Duchess,
was ferried over to the "Island of Graves," the burial-place of the
old Dukes of Gotha when the duchy was distinct from that of Coburg. An
ancient gardener pointed out to the visitors that only one more
flower-covered grave was wanted to make the number complete. When the
Duchess of Gotha should be laid to rest with her late husband and his
fathers, then the House of Gotha, in its separate existence, would
have passed away.
One more drive through the hayfields and the noble fir-trees to the
vast Thuringerwald, and, "with many a longing, lingering look at the
pine-clad mountains," the Queen and the Prince turned back to attend a
ball given in their honour by the townspeople in the theatre.
On the following day the homeward journey was begun. After partings,
rendered still more sorrowful by the fact that the age of the
cherished grandmother of the delightful "dear" family party rendered
it not very probable that she, for one, would see all her children
round her again, the Duke and Duchess of Coburg went one stage with
the travellers, and then there was another reluctant if less painful
parting.
The Queen and the Prince stopped at the quaint little town of
Eisenach, which Helen of Orleans was yet to make her home. They were
received by the Grand Duke and Hereditary Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, with
whom the strangers drove through the autumn woods to the famous old
fortress of the Wartburg, which, in its time, dealt a deadly blow to
Roman Catholicism by sheltering, in the hour of need, the Protestant
champion, Luther. Like the good Protestants her Majesty and the Prince
were, they went to see the great reformer's room, and looked at the
ink-splash on the wall--the mark of his conflict with the devil--the
stove at which he warmed himself, the rude table at which he wrote and
ate, and above all, the glorious view over the myriads of tree-tops
with which he must have refreshed his steadfast soul. But if Luther is
the hero of the Wartburg, there is also a heroine--the central figure
of that "Saint's Tragedy" which Charles Kingsley was to give to the
world in the course of the next two or three years--St. Elizabeth of
Thuringia, the tenderest, bravest, most tortured soul that ever
received the doubtful gain of canonization. There is the well by which
she is said to have ministered to her sick poor, half-way up the
ascent to the Wartburg, and down in the little town nestling below,
may be seen the remains of an hospital bearing her name.
From Fulda, where the royal party slept, they journeyed to Goethe's
town of Frankfort, where Ludwig I., who turned Munich into a great
picture and sculpture gallery, and built the costly Valhalla to
commemorate the illustrious German dead, dined with her Majesty.
At Biberich the Rhine was again hailed, and a steamer, waiting for the
travellers, carried them to Bingen, where their own little vessel,
_The Fairy_, met and brought them on to Deutz, on the farther
side from Cologne. The Queen says naively that the Rhine had lost its
charm for them all--the excitement of novelty was gone, and the
Thuringerwald had spoilt them. Stolzenfels, Ehrenbreitstein, and the
Sieben-Gebirge had their words of praise, but sight-seeing had become
for the present a weariness, and after Bonn, with its memories, had
been left behind, it was a rest to the royal travellers--as to most
other travellers at times--to turn away their jaded eyes, relinquish
the duty of alert observation, forget what was passing around them,
and lose themselves in a book, as if they were in England. Perhaps the
home letters had awakened a little home-sickness in the couple who
had been absent for a month. At least, we are given to understand
that it was of home and children the Queen and the Prince were chiefly
thinking when they reached Antwerp, to which the King and Queen of the
Belgians had preceded them, and re-embarked in the royal yacht
_Victoria and Albert_, though it was not at once to sail for
English waters. In gracious compliance with an urgent entreaty of
Louis Philippe's, the yacht was to call, as it were in passing, at
Tréport.
On the morning of the 8th of September the Queen's yacht again lay at
anchor off the French seaport. The King's barge, with the King, his
son, and son-in-law, Prince Joinville, and Prince Augustus of Saxe-
Coburg, and M. Guizot, once more came alongside. After the friendliest
greetings, the Queen and Prince Albert landed with their host, though
not without difficulty. The tide would not admit of the ordinary
manner of landing, and Louis Philippe in the dilemma fell back on a
bathing-machine, which dragged the party successfully if somewhat
unceremoniously over the sands.
The Queen of the French was there as before, accompanied among others
by her brother, the Prince of Salerno and his Princess, sister to the
Emperor of Austria. The crowd cheered as loudly as ever; there seemed
no cloud on the horizon that bright, hot day; even the plague of too
much publicity and formality had been got rid of at Château d'Eu. The
Queen was delighted to renew her intercourse with the large, bright
family circle--two of them her relations and fast friends. "It put me
so much in mind of two years ago," she declared, "that it was really
as if we had never been away;" and the King had to show her his
_Galerie Victoria_, a room fitted up in her honour, hung with the
pictures illustrating her former visit and the King's return visit to
Windsor.
Although she had impressed on him that she wished as much as possible
to dispense with state and show on this occasion, the indefatigable
old man had been at the trouble and expense of erecting a theatre, and
bringing down from Paris the whole of the Opéra Comique to play before
her, and thus increase the gaiety of the single evening of her stay.
Only another day was granted to Château d'Eu. By the next sunset the
King was conducting his guests on board the royal yacht and seizing
the last opportunity, when Prince Albert was taking Prince Joinville
over the _Fairy_, glibly to assure the Queen and Lord Aberdeen
that he, Louis Philippe, would never consent to Montpensier's marriage
to the Infanta of Spain till her sister the Queen was married and had
children.
At parting the King embraced her Majesty again and again. The yacht
lay still, and there was the most beautiful moonlight reflected on the
water. The Queen and the Prince walked up and down the deck, while not
they alone, but the astute statesman Aberdeen, congratulated
themselves on how well this little visit had prospered, in addition to
the complete success of the German tour. With the sea like a lake, and
sky and sea of the deepest blue, in the early morning the yacht
weighed anchor for England. Under the hot haze of an autumn noonday
sun the royal travellers disembarked on the familiar beach at Osborne.
The dearest of welcomes greeted them as they "drove up straight to the
house, for there, looking like roses, so well and so fat, stood the
four children."
The Queen referred afterwards to that visit to Germany as to one of
the happiest times in her life. She said when she thought of it, it
made her inclined to cry, so pure and tender had been the pleasure.
CHAPTER IV.
RAILWAY SPECULATION--FAILURE OF THE POTATO CROP--SIR ROBERT PEEL'S
RESOLUTIONS--BIRTH OF PRINCESS HELENA--VISIT OF IBRAHIM PASHA.
One thousand eight hundred and forty-five had begun with what appeared
a fresh impetus to national prosperity--a new start full of life and
vigour, by which the whole resources of the country should be at once
stirred up and rendered ten times more available than they had ever
been before. This was known afterwards as "the Railway Mania," which,
like other manias, if they are not mere fever-fits of speculation, but
are founded on real and tangible gains, had its eager hopeful rise,
its inflated disproportioned exaggeration, its disastrous collapse,
its gradual recovery, and eventually its solid reasonable success. In
1845 the movement was hurrying on to the second stage of its history.
The great man of 1845 was Hudson the railway speculator, "the Railway
King." Fabulous wealth was attributed to him; immense power for the
hour was his. A seat in Parliament, entrance into aristocratic
circles, were trifles in comparison. We can remember hearing of a
great London dinner at which the lions were the gifted Prince, the
husband of the Queen, and the distorted shadow of George Stephenson,
the bourgeois creator of a network of railway lines, a Bourse of
railway shares; the winner, as it was then supposed, of a huge
fortune. It was said that Prince Albert himself had felt some
curiosity to see this man and hear him speak, and that their encounter
on this occasion was prearranged and not accidental.
The autumn of 1845 revealed another side to the country's history. The
rainy weather in the summer brought to sudden hideous maturity the
lurking potato disease. Any one who recalls the time and the aspect of
the fields must retain a vivid recollection of the sudden blight that
fell upon acres on acres of what had formerly been luxuriant
vegetation, under the sunshine which came late only to complete the
work of destruction; the withering and blackening of the leaves of the
plant, the sickening foetid odour of the decaying bulbs, which tainted
the heavy air for miles; the dismay that filled the minds of the
people, who, in the days of dear corn, had learnt more and more to
depend upon the cultivation of potatoes, to whom their failure meant
ruin and starvation.
This was especially the case in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland,
where the year closed in gloom and apprehension; famine stalked
abroad, and doles of Indian corn administered by Government in
addition to the alms of the charitable, alone kept body and soul
together in fever-stricken multitudes.
About this time also, like another feature of the spirit of adventure
which sent Franklin to the North Pole, and operated to a certain
extent in the flush of railway enterprise, England was talking half
chivalrously, half commercially, and alas! more than half sceptically,
of Brook and Borneo, and the new attempt to establish civilization and
herald Christianity under English influence in the far seas. All these
conflicting elements of new history were felt in the palace as in
other dwellings, and made part of Queen Victoria's life in those days.
A great statesman closed his eyes on this changing world. Earl Grey,
who had been in the front in advocating change in his time, died.
A brave soldier fell in the last of his battles. Sir Robert Sale, who
had been the guest of his Queen a year before, having returned to
India and rejoined the army of the Sutlej on fresh disturbances
breaking out in the Punjab, was killed at the battle of Moodkee.
Something of the wit and humour of the country was quenched or
undergoing a transformation and passing into other hands. Two famous
English humorists, Sydney Smith and Tom Hood the elder, went over to
the great majority.
By the close of 1845 it had become clear that a change in the Corn
Laws was impending. In the circumstances Sir Robert Peel, who, though
he had been for some time approaching the conclusion, was not prepared
to take immediate steps--who was, indeed, the representative of the
Conservative party--resigned office. Lord John Russell, the great Whig
leader, was called upon by the Queen to summon a new Ministry; but in
consequence of difficulties with those who were to have been his
colleagues, Lord John was compelled to announce himself unable to form
a Cabinet, and Sir Robert Peel, at the Queen's request, resumed
office, conscious that he had to face one of the hardest tasks ever
offered to a statesman. He had to encounter "the coolness of former
friends, the grudging support of unwilling adherents, the rancour of
disappointed political antagonists."
In February, 1846, the royal family spent a week at Osborne, glad to
escape from the strife of tongues and the violent political contention
which they could do nothing to quell. The Prince was happy, "out all
day," directing the building which was going on, and laying out the
grounds of his new house; and the Queen was happy in her husband and
Children's happiness. During this short absence Sir Robert Peel's
resolutions were carried, and his Corn Bill, which was virtually the
repeal of the Corn Laws, passed. He had only to await the
consequences.
In the middle of the political excitement a single human tragedy,
which Sir Robert Peel did something to prevent, reached its climax.
Benjamin Haydon, the painter, the ardent advocate, both by principle
and practice, of high art, took his life, driven to despair by his
failure in worldly success--especially by the ill-success of his
cartoons at the exhibition in Westminster Hall.
On the 25th of May a third princess was born, and on the 20th of June
Sir Robert Peel's old allies, the Tories, who had but bided their time
for revenge, while his new Whig associates looked coldly on him,
conspired to defeat him in a Government measure to check assassination
in Ireland, so that he had no choice save to resign. He had sacrificed
himself as well as his party for what he conceived to be the good of
the nation. His reign of power was at an end; but for the moment, at
least, he was thankful.
To Lord John Russell, who was more successful than on an earlier
occasion, the task of forming a new Ministry was intrusted. The
parting from her late ministers, on the 6th of July, was a trial to
the Queen, as the same experience had been previously. "Yesterday,"
her Majesty wrote to King Leopold, "was a very hard day for me. I had
to part from Sir Robert Peel and Lord Aberdeen, who are irreparable
losses to us and to the country. They were both so much overcome that
it quite upset me. We have in them two devoted friends. We felt so
safe with them. Never during the five years that they were with me did
they ever recommend a person or a thing that was not for my or the
country's best, and never for the party's advantage _only_.... I
cannot tell you how sad I am to lose Aberdeen; you cannot think what a
delightful companion he was. The breaking up of all this intercourse
during our journeys is deplorable."
In the separation the Queen turned naturally to a nearer and dearer
friend, whom only death could remove from her. "Albert's use to me,
and I may say to the country, by his firmness and sagacity in these
moments of trial, is beyond all belief." And beyond all gainsaying
must have been the deep satisfaction with which the uncle, who was
like a father, heard the repeated assurance of how successful had been
his work--what a blessing had rested upon it.
Here is a note of exultation on the political changes from the
opposite side of the House. Lord Campbell wrote: "The transfer of the
ministerial offices took place at Buckingham Palace on the 6th of
July. I ought to have been satisfied, for I received two seals, one
for the Duchy of Lancaster and one for the County Palatine of
Lancaster. My ignorance of the double honour which awaited me caused
an awkward accident, for, when the Queen put two velvet bags into my
hand, I grasped one only, and the other with its heavy weight fell
down on the floor, and might have bruised the royal toes, but Prince
Albert good-naturedly picked it up and restored it to me."
In July the Court again paid a short visit to Osborne, that the
Queen's health might be recruited before the baptism of the little
Princess. Her Majesty earnestly desired that the Queen of the Belgians
might be present, as the baby was to be the godchild of the young
widow of Queen Louise's much-loved brother, the late Duc d'Orleans.
Unfortunately the wish could not be fulfilled. The child was
christened at Buckingham Palace. She received the names of "Helena
Augusta Victoria." Her sponsors were the Duchesse d'Orleans,
represented by the Duchess of Kent; the Duchess of Cambridge; and the
Hereditary Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The illustration
represents the charming little Princess at rather a more advanced age.
At the end of July Prince Albert was away from home for a few days. He
visited Liverpool, which he had greatly wished to see, in order to lay
the foundation-stone of a Sailors' Home and open the Albert Dock. In
the middle of the bustle and enthusiasm of his reception he wrote to
the Queen: "I write hoping these lines, which go by the evening post,
may reach you by breakfast time to-morrow. As I write you will be
making your evening toilette, and not be ready in time for dinner.
[Footnote: The Queen dressed quickly, but sometimes she relied too
much on her powers in this respect, and failed in her wonted
punctuality.] I must set about the same task and not, let me hope,
with the same result. I cannot get it into my head that there are two
hundred and fifty miles between us.... I must conclude and enclose, by
way of close, two touching objects--a flower and a programme of the
procession."
The same day the Queen wrote to Baron Stockmar: "I feel very lonely
without my dear master; and though I know other people are often
separated for a few days, I feel habit could not make me get
accustomed to it. This I am sure you cannot blame. Without him
everything loses its interest.... It will always be a terrible pang
for me to separate from him even for two days." Then she added with a
ring of foreboding, "And I pray God never to let me survive him." She
concluded with the true woman's proud assertion, "I glory in his being
seen and heard."
CHAPTER V.
AUTUMN YACHTING EXCURSIONS--THE SPANISH MARRIAGES--WINTER VISITS.
In the beginning of August the Queen and the Prince, accompanied by
the King and Queen of the Belgians, went again to Osborne. This autumn
the Queen, the Prince and their two elder children, made pleasant
yachting excursions, of about a week's duration each, to old admired
scenes and new places. In one of these Baron Stockmar was with them,
since he had come to England for a year's visit. He expressed himself
as much gratified by the Prince's interest and judgment in politics,
and his opinion of the Queen was more favourable than ever. "The Queen
improves greatly," he noted down as the fruits of his keen
observation, "and she makes daily advances in discernment and
experience. The candour, the tone of truth, the fairness, the
considerateness with which she judges men and things, are truly
delightful; and the ingenuous self-knowledge with which she speaks of
herself is simply charming." The yachting excursions included
Babbicombe, with the red rocks and wooded hills, which gave the Queen
an idea of Italy, where she had never been, "or rather of a ballet or
play where nymphs are to appear;" and Torbay, where William of Orange
landed. It was perhaps in reference to that event that her Majesty
made her little daughter "read in her English history." It seems to
have been the Queen's habit, in these yachting excursions, to take
upon herself a part, at least, of the Princess Royal's education.
"Beautiful Dartmouth" recalled--it might be all the more, because of
the rain that fell there--the Rhine with its ruined castles and its
Lurlei. Plymouth Harbour and the shore where the pines grew down to
the sea, led again to Mount Edgcumbe, always lovely. But first the
Queen and the Prince steamed up the St. Germans and the Tamar rivers,
passing Trematon Castle, which belonged to the little Duke of
Cornwall, and penetrated by many windings of the stream into lake-like
regions surrounded by woods and abounding in mines, which made the
Prince think of some parts of the Danube. The visitors landed at
Cothele, and drove up to a fine old house unchanged since Henry VII.'s
time. When they returned in the _Fairy_ to the yacht proper, they
found it in the centre of a shoal of boats, as it had been the last
time it sailed in these waters.
Prince Albert made an excursion to Dartmoor, and could have believed
he was in Scotland, while her Majesty contented herself with another
visit to Mount Edgcumbe, the master of which, a great invalid, yet
contrived to meet her near the landing-place at which his wife and
sons, with other members of the family, had received the royal
visitor. The drowsy heat and the golden haze were in keeping with the
romantically luxuriant glories of the drive, which the Queen took with
her children and her hostess. The little people went in to luncheon
while the Queen sketched.
After Prince Albert's return in the afternoon, the visit was repeated.
"The finest and tallest chestnut-trees in existence," and the
particularly tall and straight birch-trees, were inspected, and Sir
Joshua Reynolds's portraits examined. Well might they flourish at
Mount Edgcumbe, since Plymouth was Sir Joshua's native town, and some
of the Edgcumbe family were among his first patrons, when English art
stood greatly in need of such patronage.
The next excursion was an impromptu run in lovely weather to Guernsey,
which had not been visited by an English sovereign since the days of
King John. The rocky bays, the neighbouring islands, the half-foreign
town of St. Pierre, with "very high, bright-coloured houses,"
illuminated at night, pleased her Majesty greatly. On the visitors
landing they were met by ladies dressed in white singing "God save the
Queen," and strewing the path with flowers. General Napier, a white-
haired soldier, received the Queen and presented her with the keys of
the fort. The narrow streets through which she drove were "decorated
with flowers and flags, and lined with the Guernsey militia." The
country beyond, of which she had a glimpse, was crowned with fine
vegetation.
Whether or not it was to prevent Jersey, with St. Helier's, from
feeling jealous, ten days later the Queen and the Prince, the Prince
of Wales, and the Princess Royal, the usual suite, Lord Spencer, and
Lord Palmerston, set out on a companion trip to the sister island. The
weather was colder and the sea not so calm. Indeed, the rolling of the
vessel in Alderney Race was more than the voyagers had bargained for.
After it became smoother the little Prince of Wales put on a sailor's
dress made by a tailor on board, and great was the jubilation of the
Jack Tars of every degree.
The whole picturesque coast of Jersey was circumnavigated in order to
reach St. Helier's, which was gained when the red rocks were gilded
with the setting sun. A little later the yacht was hauled up under the
glow of bonfires and an illumination. On a splendid September day,
which lent to the very colouring a resemblance to Naples, the Queen
passed between the twin towers of Noirmont Point and St. Aubin, and
approached Elizabeth Castle, with the town of St. Helier's behind it.
The Queen landed amidst the firing of guns, the playing of military
bands, and the roar of cheers, the ladies of the place, as before,
strewing her path with flowers, and marshalling her to a canopy, under
which her Majesty received the address of the States and the militia.
The demonstrations were on a larger and more finished scale than in
Guernsey, greater time having been given for preparation.
The French tongue around her arrested the Queen's attention. So did a
seat in one of the streets filled with French women from Granville,
"curiously dressed, with white handkerchiefs on their heads." The
Queen drove through the green island, admiring its orchards without
end, though the season of russet and rosy apples was past for Jersey.
The old tower of La Hogue Bie was seen, and the castle of Mont Orgueil
was still more closely inspected, the Queen walking up to it and
visiting one of its batteries, with a view across the bay to the
neighbouring coast of France. Mont Orgueil is said to have been
occupied by Robert of Normandy, the unfortunate son of William the
Conqueror. Her Majesty heard that it had not yet been taken, but found
this was an error, though it was true the island of Guernsey had never
been conquered.
The close of the pleasant day was a little spoilt by the heat and
glare, which sent the Queen ill to her cabin. The next day saw the
party bound for Falmouth, where they arrived under a beautiful moon,
with the sea smooth as glass--not an unacceptable change from the
rolling swell of the first part of the little voyage.
Something unexpected and unwelcome had happened before the close of
the excursion, while the French coast which the Queen had hailed with
so much pleasure was still full in sight. Whether the news which
arrived with the other dispatches had anything to do with the fit of
indisposition that rendered the heat and glare unbearable, it
certainly marred the enjoyment of the last part of her trip. Before
quitting Jersey the Queen was made acquainted with the fact that Louis
Philippe's voluntary protestations with regard to the marriage of his
son, the Duc de Montpensier, had been so many idle words. He had
stolen a march both upon England and Europe generally. The marriage of
the Due de Montpensier with the Infanta Luisa of Spain was announced
simultaneously with the marriage of her sister, the Queen of Spain, to
her cousin the Due de Cadiz.
Everybody knows at this date how futile were Louis Philippe's schemes
for the aggrandisement of his family, and how he learnt by bitter
experience, as Louis XIV. had done before him, that a coveted Spanish
alliance, in the very fact of its attainment, meant disaster and
humiliation for France.
Louis Philippe had the grace, as we sometimes say, to shrink from
writing to announce the double marriage against which he had so often
solemnly pledged himself to the Queen. He delegated the difficult task
to Queen Amélie, who discharged it with as much tact as might have
been expected from so devoted a wife and kind a woman.
The Queen of England's reply to this begging of the question is full
of spirit and dignity:--
"OSBORNE, September 10, 1846.
"MADAME,--I have just received your Majesty's letter of the 8th, and I
hasten to thank you for it. You will, perhaps remember what passed at
Eu between the King and myself. You are aware of the importance which
I have always attached to the maintenance of our cordial
understanding, and the zeal with which I have laboured towards this
end. You have no doubt been informed that we refused to arrange the
marriage between the Queen of Spain and our cousin Leopold (which the
two Queens [Footnote: The reference is to the young Queen of Spain and
her mother the Queen-dowager Christina.] had eagerly desired) solely
with the object of not departing from a course which would be more
agreeable to the King, although we could not regard the course as the
best. [Footnote: The confining of the Queen of Spain's selection of a
husband to a Bourbon prince, a descendant of Philip V.] You will
therefore easily understand that the sudden announcement of this
double marriage could not fail to cause us surprise and very keen
regret.
"I crave your pardon, Madame, for speaking to you of politics at a
time like this, but I am glad that I can say for myself that I have
always been _sincere_ with you. Begging you to present my
respectful regards to the King, I am, Madame, your Majesty's most
devoted friend,
"VICTORIA."
The last yachting excursion of the season was to Cornwall. The usual
party accompanied the Queen and the Prince, the elder children, and
the ladies and gentlemen in waiting, her Majesty managing, as before,
to hear her little daughter repeat her lessons. Lizard Point and
Land's End were reached. At Penzance Prince Albert landed to inspect
the copper and serpentine-stone works, while the Queen sketched from
the deck of the _Fairy_. As the Cornish boats clustered round the
yacht, and the Prince of Wales looked down with surprise on the half-
outlandish boatmen, a loyal shout arose, "Three cheers for the Duke of
Cornwall."
The romantic: region of St. Michael's Mount, dear to the lovers of
Arthurian legends, was visited, the Queen climbing the circuitous path
up the hill to enter the castle, the Prince mounting to the tower
where "St Michael's chair," the rocky seat for betrothed couples,
still tests their courage and endurance. Each man and woman races up
the difficult path, and the winner of the race who first sits down in
the chair claims the right to rule the future home.
The illustration from a painting by Stanfield represents the imposing
pile of the "old religious house" crowning the noble rock, the royal
yacht lying off the shore commanding St. Michael's Mount, the numerous
spectators on shore and in boats haunting the royal footsteps--in
short, the whole scene in the freshness and stir which broke in upon
its sombre romance.
On Sunday service was held under the awning with its curtains of
flags, Lord Spencer--a captain in the navy--reading prayers "extremely
well." On Monday there was an excursion to the serpentine rocks, where
caves and creeks, cormorants and gulls, lent their attractions to the
spot. At Penryn the corporation came on board, "very anxious to see
the Duke of Cornwall." The Queen makes a picture in writing of the
quaint interview. "I stepped out of the pavilion on deck with Bertie.
Lord Palmerston told them that that was the Duke of Cornwall, and the
old mayor of Penryn said he hoped 'he would grow up a blessing to his
parents and his country.'"
The party were rowed up the beautiful rivers Truro and Tregony,
between banks covered with stunted oaks or woods of a more varied kind
down to the water's edge, past charming pools, creeks, and ferries,
with long strings of boats on the water and carts on the shore, and a
great gathering of people cheering the visitors, especially when the
little Duke of Cornwall was held up for them to see. The Queen took
delight in the rustic demonstration, so much in keeping with the
place, and the simple loyalty of the people.
Her Majesty went to Fowey, and had the opportunity of driving through
some of the narrowest, steepest streets in England, till she reached
the hilly ground of Cornwall, "covered with fields, and intersected
with hedges," and at last arrived at her little son's possession, the
ivy-covered ruin of the old castle of Restormel, an appanage of the
Duchy of Cornwall, in which the last Earl of Cornwall had resided five
hundred years before.
The Queen also visited the Restormel iron-mines. She was one of the
comparatively few ladies who have ventured into the nether darkness of
a pit. She saw her underground subjects as well as those above ground,
and to the former no less than to the latter she bore the kindly
testimony that she found them "intelligent good people." We can vouch
for this that these hewers and drawers of ore, in their dark-blue
woollen suits, the arms bare, and caps with the candles or lamps stuck
in the front, lighting up the pallid grimy faces, would be fully
conscious of the honour done them, and would yield to no ruddy,
fustian-clad ploughman or picturesque shepherd, with his maud and
crook in loyalty to their Queen.
The Queen and the Prince got into a truck and were drawn by the
miners, the mineral agent for Cornwall bringing up the rear, into the
narrow workings, where none could pass between the truck and the rock,
and "there was just room to hold up one's head, and not always that."
As it is with other strangers in Pluto's domains, her Majesty felt
there was something unearthly about this lit-up cavern-like place,
where many a man spent the greater part of his life. But she was not
deterred from getting out of the truck with me Prince, and scrambling
along to see the veins of ore, from which Prince Albert was able to
knock off some specimens. Daylight was dazzling to the couple when
they returned to its cheerful presence.
The last visit paid in Cornwall was by very narrow stony lanes to
"Place," a curious house restored from old plans and drawings to a
fac-simile of a Cornwall house of the past as it had been defended by
one of the ancestresses of the present family, the Treffrys, against
an attack made upon her, by the French during her husband's absence.
The hall was lined with Cornwall marble and porphyry.
On the 15th of September the new part of Osborne House was occupied
for the first time by its owners. Lady Lyttelton chronicled the
pleasant event and some ceremonies which accompanied it. "After dinner
we were to drink the Queen and Prince's health as a 'house-warming.'
And after it the Prince said very naturally and simply, but seriously,
'We have a hymn' (he called it a psalm) 'in Germany for such
occasions. It begins'--and then he repeated two lines in German,
which I could not quote right, meaning a prayer to 'bless our going
out and coming in.' It was long and quaint, being Luther's. We all
perceived that he was feeling it. And truly entering a new house, a
new palace, is a solemn thing to do, to those whose probable span of
life in it is long, and spite of rank, and health, and youth, down-
hill now."
Sir Theodore Martin, who quotes Lady Lyttelton's letters in the "Life
of the Prince Consort," gives such a hymn, which is a paraphrase of
the 121st Psalm, as it appears in the Coburg _Gesang-Buch_, and
supplies a translation of the verse in question.
Unsern ausgang segne Gott,
Unsern erngang gleicher massen,
Segne unser taglich brod,
Segne unser thun und lassen.
Segne uns mit sel'gem sterben,
Und mach uns zu Himmel's Erben
* * * * *
By Tre, Con and Pen,
You may know the Cornish men
God bless our going out, nor less
Our coming in, and make them sure,
God bless our daily bread, and bless
Whate'er we do, whate'er endure,
In death unto his peace awake us,
And heirs of his salvation make us
"I forgot," writes Lady Lyttelton again, "much the best part of our
breaking in, which was that Lucy Kerr (one of the maids of honour)
insisted on throwing an old shoe into the house after the Queen, as
she entered for the first night, being a Scotch superstition. It
looked too strange and amusing. She wanted some melted lead and sundry
other charms, but they were not forthcoming. I told her I would call
her _Luckie_, and not _Lucy_."
During the autumn the Princess of Prussia, who was on a visit to her
aunt, Queen Adelaide, went to Windsor Castle, where Madame Bunsen met
her. "I arrived here at six," writes Madame Bunsen "and at eight went
to dinner in the great hall, hung round with Waterloo pictures, the
band playing exquisitely, so placed as to be invisible, so that what
with the large proportions of the hall and the well-subdued lights,
and the splendours of plate and decorations, the scene was such as
fairy tales present; and Lady Canning, Miss Stanley, and Miss Dawson
were beautiful enough to represent an ideal queen's ideal attendants.
"The Queen looked well and _rayonnante_, with the expression of
countenance that she has when pleased with what surrounds her, and
which you know I like to see. The old Duke of Cambridge failed not to
ask after you.
"This morning at nine we were all assembled at prayers in the private
chapel, then went to breakfast, headed by Lady Canning, after which
Miss Stanley took the Countess Haach and me to see the collection of
gold plate. Three works of Benvenuto Cellini, and a trophy from the
Armada, an immense flagon or wine-fountain, like a gigantic old-
fashioned smelling-bottle, and a modern Indian work--a box given to
the Queen by an Indian potentate--were what interested me the most.
Then I looked at many interesting pictures in the long corridor.
"I am lodged in what is called the Devil's Tower, and have a view of
the Round Tower, of which I made a sketch as soon as I was out of bed
this morning."
In October the Queen and the Prince spent several days on a private
visit to the Queen-dowager at her country house of Cashiobury. From
Cashiobury the royal couple went on, in bad weather, to Hatfield
House, which had once been a palace, but had long been the seat of the
Cecils, Marquises of Salisbury. Here more than anywhere else Queen
Victoria was on the track of her great predecessor, Queen Elizabeth,
while the virgin queen was still the maiden princess, considerably
oppressed by her stern sister Queen Mary. Queen Victoria inspected all
the relics of the interesting old place, "the vineyard," the
banqueting-room fallen down into a stable, and the oak still linked
with the name of Queen Bess.
At Hatfield there was a laudable innovation on the usual round of
festivities. From four to five hundred labourers were regaled on the
lawn with a roasted ox and hogsheads of ale.
On the 1st of December, the Queen and Prince, who had been staying at
Osborne, paid the Duke of Norfolk a visit at Arundel. Not only was the
Duke the premier duke and Earl-Marshal of England, but he held at this
time the high office in the Household of Master of the Horse. The old
keep and tower at Arundel were brilliantly illuminated in honour of
the Queen's presence, and bonfires lit up the surrounding country. The
Duke of Wellington was here also, walking about with the Queen, while
the younger men shot with Prince Albert. On the second day of her stay
her Majesty received guests in the state drawing-room. The third day
included the usual commemorative planting of trees in the Little Park.
In the evening there was dancing, in which the Queen joined.
There were great changes, ominous of still further transitions, in the
theatrical and literary world. Liston, the famous comedian who had
delighted a former generation, was dead, and amateur actors, led by
authors in the persons of Charles Dickens, Douglas Jerrold, &c. &c.,
had come to the front, and were winning much applause, as well as
solid benefits for individuals and institutions connected with
literature requiring public patronage. A man and a woman unlike in
everything save their cordial admiration for each other, bore down all
opposition in the reading world: William Makepeace Thackeray, in 1846,
in spite of the discouragement of publishers, started his "Vanity
Fair," and Charlotte Brontë, from the primitive seclusion of an old-
fashioned Yorkshire parsonage, took England by storm with her
impassioned, unconventional "Jane Eyre." The fame of these two books,
while the authors were still in a great measure unknown, rang through
the country.
Art in England was still following the lines laid down for the last
twenty or thirty years, unless in the case of Turner, who had entered
some time before on the third period of his work, the period marked by
defiance and recklessness as well as by noble power.
CHAPTER VI.
INSTALLATION OF PRINCE ALBERT AS CHANCELLOR OF CAMBRIDGE.
One thousand eight hundred and forty-seven began with the climax of
the terrible famine in Ireland, and the Highlands, produced by the
potato disease, which, commencing in 1845, had reappeared even more
disastrously in 1846. In the Queen's speech in opening Parliament, she
alluded to the famine in the land with a perceptibly sad fall of her
voice.
In spite of bad trade and bad times everywhere, two millions were
advanced by the Government for the relief of the perishing people, fed
on doles of Indian meal; yet the mortality in the suffering districts
continued tremendous.
In February, 1847, Lord Campbell describes an amusing scene in the
Queen's closet. "I had an audience, that her Majesty might prick a
sheriff for the county of Lancaster, which she did in proper style,
with the bodkin I put into her hand. I then took her pleasure about
some Duchy livings and withdrew, forgetting to make her sign the
parchment roll. I obtained a second audience, and explained the
mistake. While she was signing, Prince Albert said to me, 'Pray, my
lord, when did this ceremony of pricking begin?' CAMPBELL. 'In ancient
times, sir, when sovereigns did not know now to write their names.'
QUEEN, as she returned me the roll with her signature, 'But we now
show we have been to school.'" In the course of the next month his
lordship gives a lively account of dining along with his wife and
daughter at Buckingham Palace. "On our arrival, a little before eight,
we were shown into the picture gallery, where the company assembled.
Bowles, who acted as master of the ceremonies, arranged what gentlemen
should take what lady. He said, 'Dinner is ordered to be on the table
at ten minutes past eight, but I bet you the Queen will not be here
till twenty or twenty-five minutes after. She always thinks she can
dress in ten minutes, but she takes about double the time.' True
enough, it was nearly twenty-five minutes past eight before she
appeared; she shook hands with the ladies, bowed to the gentlemen, and
proceeded to the _salle à manger_. I had to take in Lady Emily de
Burgh, and was third on her Majesty's right, Prince Edward of Saxe-
Weimar and my partner being between us. The greatest delicacy we had
was some very nice oat-cake. There was a Highland piper standing
behind her Majesty's chair, but he did not play as at State dinners.
We had likewise some Edinburgh ale. The Queen and the ladies
withdrawing, Prince Albert came over to her side of the table, and we
remained behind about a quarter of an hour, but we rose within the
hour from the time of our sitting down to dinner.... On returning to
the gallery we had tea and coffee. The Queen came up and talked to me.
She does the honours of the palace with infinite grace and sweetness,
and considering what she is both in public and domestic life, I do not
think she is sufficiently loved and respected. Prince Albert took me
to task for my impatience to get into the new House of Lords, but I
think I pacified him, complimenting his taste. A dance followed. The
Queen chiefly delighted in a romping sort of country-dance, called the
_Tempête_. She withdrew a little before twelve."
The beginning of the season in London was marked by two events in the
theatrical and operatic world. Fanny Kemble (Mrs. Pierce Butler)
reappeared on the stage, and was warmly welcomed back. Jenny Lind sang
for the first time in London at the Italian Opera House in the part of
"Alice" in _Roberto il Diavolo_, and enchanted the audience with
her unrivalled voice and fine acting.
In the month of May, in the middle of the Irish distress, the great
agitator of old, Daniel O'Connell, died in his seventy-second year, on
his way to Rome. The news of his death was received in Ireland as only
one drop more in the full cup of national misery. In the same month of
May another and a very different orator, Dr. Chalmers, the great
impassioned Scotch divine, philosopher, and philanthropist, one of the
leaders in the disruption from the Church of Scotland, died in
Edinburgh, in his sixty-eighth year.
Prince Albert had been elected Chancellor of Cambridge University--a
well-deserved compliment, which afforded much gratification both to
the Queen and the Prince. They went down to Cambridge in July for the
ceremony of the installation, which was celebrated with all scholarly
state and splendour.
"The Hall of Trinity was the scene of the ceremony for which the visit
was paid. Her Majesty occupied a chair of state on a dais. The
Chancellor, the Prince in his official robes, supported by the Duke of
Wellington, Chancellor of Oxford, the Bishop of Oxford, the Vice-
Chancellor of Cambridge, and the Heads of the Houses entered, and the
Chancellor read an address to her Majesty congratulatory on her
arrival. Her Majesty made a gracious reply and the Prince retired with
the usual profound obeisances, a proceeding which caused her Majesty
some amusement," so says the _Annual Register_. This part of the
day's proceedings seems to have made a lively impression on those who
witnessed it.
Bishop Wilberforce gives his testimony. "The Cambridge scene was very
interesting. There was such a burst of loyalty, and it told so on the
Queen and Prince. E--- would not then have thought that he looked
cold. It was quite clear that they both felt it as something new that
he had earned, and not she given, a true English honour; and so he
looked so pleased and she so triumphant. There was also some such
pretty interludes when he presented the address, and she beamed upon
him and once half smiled, and then covered the smile with a gentle
dignity, and then she said in her clear musical voice, 'The choice
which the University has made of its Chancellor _has my most entire
approbation_.'" The Queen records in her Diary, "I cannot say how
it agitated and embarrassed me to have to receive this address and
hear it read by my beloved Albert, who walked in at the head of the
University, and who looked dear and beautiful in his robes, which were
carried by Colonel Phipps and Colonel Seymour. Albert went through it
all admirably, almost absurd, however, as it was for us. He gave me
the address and I read the answer, and a few kissed hands, and then
Albert retired with the University."
After luncheon a Convocation was held in the Senate House, at which
the Queen was present as a visitor. The Prince, as Chancellor,
received her at the door, and led her to the seat prepared for her.
"He sat covered in his Chancellor's chair. There was a perfect roar of
applause," which we are told was only tamed down within the bounds of
sanity by the dulness of the Latin oration, delivered by the public
orator. Besides the princes already mentioned, and several noblemen
and gentlemen, Sir George Grey, Sir Harry Smith (of Indian fame), Sir
Roderick Murchison, and Professor Muller, received university honours.
Her Majesty and the new Chancellor dined with the Vice-Chancellor at
Catherine Hall--probably selected for the honour because it was a
small college, and could only accommodate a select party. After dinner
her Majesty attended a concert in the Senate House--an entertainment
got up in order to afford the Cambridge public another opportunity of
seeing their Queen. Later the Prince went to the Observatory, and her
Majesty walked in the cool of the evening in the little garden of
Trinity Lodge, with her two ladies.
The following day the royal party again went to the Senate House, the
Prince receiving the Queen, and conducting her as before to her seat.
With the accompaniment of a tremendous crowd, great heat, and thunders
of applause, the prize poems were read, and the medals distributed by
the Prince. Then came the time for the "Installation Ode," written at
the Prince's request by Wordsworth, the poet laureate, set to music,
and sung in Trinity Hall in the presence of the Queen and Prince
Albert with great effect. Poetry, of all created things, can least be
made to order; yet the ode had many fine passages and telling lines,
besides the recommendation claimed for it by Baroness Bunsen: "The
Installation Ode I thought quite affecting, because the selection of
striking points was founded on fact, and all exaggeration and humbug
were avoided."
The poem touched first on what was so prominent a feature in the
history of Europe in the poet's youth--the evil of unrighteous and the
good of righteous war, identifying the last with the successes of
England when Napoleon was overthrown.
Such is Albion's fame and glory,
Let rescued Europe tell the story
Then the measure changes to a plaintive strain.
But lo! what sudden cloud has darkened all
The land as with a funeral pall?
The rose of England suffers blight,
The flower has drooped, the isle's delight
Flower and bud together fall,
A nation's hopes he crushed in Claremont's desolate hall
Hope and cheer return to the song.
Time a chequered mantle wears,
Earth awakes from wintry sleep,
Again the tree a blossom bears
Cease, Britannia, cease to weep,
Hark to the peals on this bright May morn,
They tell that your future Queen is born
A little later is the fine passage--
Time in his mantle's sunniest fold
Uplifted on his arms the child,
And while the fearless infant smiled
Her happy destiny foretold
Infancy, by wisdom mild,
Trained to health and artless beauty,
Youth by pleasure unbeguiled
From the lore of lofty duty,
Womanhood, in pure renown
Seated on her lineal throne,
Leaves of myrtle in her crown
Fresh with lustre all their own,
Love, the treasure worth possessing
More than all the world beside,
This shall be her choicest blessing,
Oft to royal hearts denied.
After a brief period of rest, which meant a little quiet "reading,
writing, working, and drawing"--a far better sedative for excited
nerves than entire idleness--the Queen and the Prince attended a
flower-show in the grounds of Downing College, walking round the
gardens and entering into all the six tents, "a very formidable
undertaking, for the heat was beyond endurance and the crowd fearful."
In the evening there was a great dinner in Trinity Hall. "Splendid did
that great hall look," is Baroness Bunsen's admiring exclamation;
"three hundred and thirty people at various tables ... the Queen and
her immediate suite at a table at the raised end of the hall, all the
rest at tables lengthways. At the Queen's table the names were put on
the places, and anxious was the moment before one could find one's
place." Then the Queen gave a reception in Henry VIII.'s drawing-room,
when the masters, professors and doctors, with their wives, were
presented. When the reception was over, at ten o'clock, in the soft
dim dusk, a little party again stole out, to see with greater leisure
and privacy those noble trees and hoary buildings. Her Majesty tells
us the pedestrians were in curious costumes: "Albert in his dress-coat
with a mackintosh over it, I in my evening dress and diadem, and with
a veil over my head, and the two princes in their uniforms, and the
ladies in their dresses and shawls and veils. We walked through the
small garden, and could not at first find our way, after which we
discovered the right road, and walked along the beautiful avenues of
lime-trees in the grounds of St. John's College, along the water and
over the bridges. All was so pretty and picturesque, in particular the
one covered bridge of St. John's College, which is like the Bridge of
Sighs at Venice. We stopped to listen to the distant hum of the town;
and nothing seemed wanting but some singing, which everywhere but here
in this country we should have heard. A lattice opened, and we could
fancy a lady appearing and listening to a serenade."
Shade of quaint old Fuller! thou who hast described with such gusto
Queen Elizabeth's five days' stay at Cambridge, what wouldst thou not
have given, hadst thou lived in the reign of Victoria, to have been in
her train this night? Shades more formidable of good Queen Bess
herself, Bluff King Hal, Margaret Countess of Richmond, and that other
unhappy Margaret of Anjou, what would you have said of this simple
ramble? In truth it was a scene from the world of romance, even
without the music and the lady at the lattice. An ideal Queen and an
ideal Prince, a thin disguise over the tokens of their magnificence,
stealing out with their companions, like so many ghosts, to enjoy
common sights and experiences and the little thrill of adventure in
the undetected deed.
On the last morning there was a public breakfast in the grounds of
Trinity College, attended by thousands of the county gentry of Cambridge
and Lincolnshire. "At one the Queen set out through the cloisters and
hall and library of Trinity College, to pass through the gardens and
avenues, which had been connected for the occasion by a temporary bridge
over the river, with those of St. John's." Madame Bunsen and her
companions followed her Majesty, and had the best opportunity of seeing
everything, and in particular "the joyous crowd that grouped among the
noble trees." The Queen ate her _déjeuner_ in one of the tents, and on
her return to Trinity Lodge, she and Prince Albert left Cambridge at
three o'clock for London. Baroness Bunsen winds up her graphic
descriptions with the statement, "I could still tell much of Cambridge--
of the charm of its 'trim gardens,' of how the Queen looked and was
pleased, and how well she was dressed, and how perfect in grace and
movement."
CHAPTER VII.
THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OP SCOTLAND AND STAY AT
ARDVERIKIE.
On the 11th of August her Majesty and Prince Albert, with the Prince
of Wales, the Princess Royal, and the Prince of Leiningen, attended by
a numerous suite, left Osborne in the royal yacht for Scotland. They
followed a new route and succeeded, in spite of the fogs in the
Channel, in reaching the Scilly Isles. The voyage, to begin with, was
not a pleasant one. There had been a rough swell on the sea as well as
fogs off shore. The children, and especially the Queen, on this
occasion suffered from sea-sickness. However, her Majesty landed on
the tiny island of St. Mary's.
As the royal party approached Wales the sea became calmer and the
sailing enjoyable. The yacht and its companions lay in the great
harbour of Milford Haven, under the reddish-brown cliffs. Prince
Albert and the Prince of Leiningen went to Pembroke, while the Queen
sat on the deck and sketched.
On a beautiful Sunday the Queen sailed through the Menai Straits in
the _Fairy_, when the sight of "Snowdon rising splendidly in the
middle of the fields and woods was glorious." The "grand old Castle of
Caernarvon" attracted attention; so did Plas Newydd, where her Majesty
had spent six weeks, when she had visited Wales as Princess Victoria,
in one of her girlish excursions with the Duchess of Kent. The Isle of
Man, with the town of Douglas, surmounted by bold hills and cliffs, a
castle and a lighthouse, looked abundantly picturesque, but the
landing there was reserved for the return of the voyagers, though it
was on this occasion that a tripping Manxman described Prince Albert,
in a local newspaper, as leading the Prince Regent by the hand; a slip
which drew from the Prince the gay rejoinder that "usually one has a
regent for an infant, but in Man it seems to be precisely the
reverse."
The Mull of Galloway was the first Scotch land that was sighted, and
just before entering Loch Ryan the huge rock, Ailsa Craig, with its
moving clouds of sea-fowl, rose to view.
Arran and Goatfell, Bute and the Bay of Rothesay, were alike hailed
with delight. But the islands were left behind for the moment, till
more was seen of the Clyde, and Greenock, of sugar-refining and boat-
building fame, was reached. It was her Majesty's first visit to the
west coast of Scotland, and Glasgow poured "down the water" her
magistrates, her rich merchants, her stalwart craftsmen, her swarms
from the Gorbels and the Saut Market, the Candle-rigs and the Guse-
dibs. Multitudes lined the quays. No less than forty steamers over-
filled with passengers struggled zealously in the wake of royalty.
"Amidst boats and ships of every description moving in all
directions," the little _Fairy_ cut its way through, bound for
Dumbarton.
On the Queen's return to Greenock she sailed past Roseneath, and
followed the windings of Loch Long, getting a good view of the
Cobbler, the rugged mountain which bears a fantastic resemblance to a
man mending a shoe. At the top of the loch, Ben Lomond came in sight.
"There was no sun, and twice a little mist; but still it was
beautiful," wrote the Queen.
On "a bright fresh morning" in August, when the hills were just
"slightly tipped with clouds," the Queen sailed through the Kyles of
Bute, that loveliest channel between overtopping mountains, and
entered Loch Fyne, another fine arm of the sea, of herring celebrity.
A Highland welcome awaited the Queen at the little landing-place of
Inverary, made gay and fragrant with heather. Old friends, whom she
was honouring by her presence, waited to receive her, the Duke and
Duchess of Argyle--the latter the eldest daughter of the Duchess of
Sutherland, who was also present with her son, Lord Stafford, her
unmarred daughter, Lady Caroline Leveson-Gower, and her son-in-law and
second daughter, Lord and Lady Blantyre. An innocent warder stood in
front of the old feudal keep. In the course of the Queen's visit to
Germany she had made the acquaintance, without dreaming of what lay
concealed in the skirts of time, of one of her future sons-in-law in a
fine little boy of eight years. Now her Majesty was to be introduced,
without a suspicion of what would be the result of the introduction,
to the coming husband of another daughter still unborn. Here is the
Queen's description of the son and heir of the house of Argyle, who
was yet to win a princess for his bride. "Outside, stood the Marquis
of Lorne, just two years old--a dear, white, fat, fair little fellow,
with reddish hair but very delicate features, like both his mother and
father; he is such a merry, independent little child. He had a black
velvet dress and jacket, with a 'sporran,' scarf, and Highland
bonnet."
Her Majesty lunched at the castle, "the Highland gentlemen standing
with halberts in the room," and returned to the _Fairy_, sailing
down Loch Fyne when the afternoon was at its mellowest, and the long
shadows were falling across the hillsides. At five Lochgilphead was
reached, when Sir John Orde lent his carriage to convey the visitors
to the Crinan Canal. The next day's sail, in beautiful weather still,
was through the clusters of the nearest of the western islands, up the
Sound of Jura, amidst a flotilla of small boats crowned with flags.
Here were fresh islands and mountain peaks, until the strangers were
within hail of Staffa.
It is not always that an approach to this northern marvel of nature is
easy or even practicable; but fortune favours the brave. Her Majesty
has described the landing. "At three we anchored close before Staffa,
and immediately got into the barge, with Charles, the children, and
the rest of our people, and rowed towards the cave. As we rounded the
point the wonderful basaltic formation came into sight. The appearance
it presents is most extraordinary, and when we turned the corner to go
into the renowned Fingal's Cave the effect was splendid, like a great
entrance into a vaulted hall; it looked almost awful as we entered,
and the barge heaved up and down on the swell of the sea. It is very
high, but not longer than two hundred and twenty-seven feet, and
narrower than I expected, being only forty feet wide. The sea is
immensely deep in the cave. The rocks under water were all colours--
pink, blue, and green, which had a most beautiful and varied effect.
It was the first time the British standard, with a queen of Great
Britain and her husband and children, had ever entered Fingal's Cave,
and the men gave three cheers, which sounded very impressive there."
On the following day the Atlantic rains had found the party, though
for the present the affliction was temporary. It poured for three
hours, during which her Majesty drew and painted in her cabin. The
weather cleared in the afternoon; sitting on the deck was again
possible, and Loch Linnhe, Loch Eil, and the entrance to Loch Leven
were not lost.
At Fort William the Queen was to quit the yacht and repair to the
summer quarters of Ardverikie. Before doing so she recorded her regret
that "this delightful voyage and tour among the western lochs and
isles is at an end; they are so beautiful and so full of poetry and
romance, traditions and historical associations."
Rain again, more formidable than before, on Saturday, the 21st of
August. It was amidst a hopeless drenching drizzle, which blots out
the chief features of a landscape, that the Queen went ashore, to find
"a great gathering of Highlanders in their different tartans" met to
do her honour. Frasers, Forbeses, Mackenzies, Grants, replaced
Campbells, Macdonalds, Macdougals, and Macleans. By a wild and lonely
carriage-road, the latter part resembling Glen Tilt, her Majesty
reached her destination.
Ardverikie, which claimed to have been a hunting-seat of Fergus, king
of the Scots, was a shooting lodge belonging to Lord George Bentinck,
rented from him by the Marquis of Abercorn, and lent by the marquis to
the Queen. It has since been burnt down. It was rustic, as a shooting
lodge should be, very much of a large cottage in point of
architecture, the bare walls of the principal rooms characteristically
decorated with rough sketches by Landseer, among them a drawing of
"The Stag at Bay," and the whole house bristling with stags' horns of
great size and perfection. In front of the house lay Loch Laggan,
eight miles in length.
The Queen remained at Ardverikie for four weeks, and doubtless would
have enjoyed the wilds thoroughly, had it not been for the lowest deep
of persistently bad weather, when "it not only rained and blew, but
snowed by way of variety."
Lord Campbell heard and wrote down these particulars of the royal stay
at Ardverikie. "The Queen was greatly delighted with the Highlands in
spite of the bad weather, and was accustomed to sally for a walk in
the midst of a heavy rain, putting a great hood ever her bonnet, and
showing nothing of her features but her eyes. The Prince's invariable
return to luncheon about two o'clock, in spite of grouse-shooting and
deer-stalking, is explained by his voluntary desire to please the
Queen, and by the intense hunger which always assails him at this
hour, when he likes, in German fashion, to make his dinner."
In a continuance of the most dismally unpropitious weather, the Queen
and her children left Ardverikie on the 17th of September, the Prince
having preceded her for a night that he might visit Inverness and the
Caledonian Canal. The storm continued, almost without intermission,
during the whole of the voyage home.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FRENCH FUGITIVES--THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER.
Long before the autumn of 1847, the mischievous consequences of the
railway mania, complicated by the failure of the potato crop, showed
itself in great bankruptcies in the large towns all over the country.
The new year came with trouble on its wings. The impending storm burst
all over Europe, first in France. Louis Philippe's dynasty was
overthrown.
In pairs or singly, sometimes wandering aside in a little distraction,
so as to be lost sight of for days, the numerous brothers and sisters,
with the parent pair, reached Dreux and Eu, and thence, with the
exception of the Duchesse d'Orleans and her sons, straggled to
England.
One can guess the feelings of the Queen and Prince Albert when they
heard that their late hosts, doubly allied to them by kindred ties,
were fugitives, seeking refuge from the hospitality of a foreign
nation. And the first confused tidings of the French revolution which
reached the Queen and Prince Albert were rendered more trying, by the
almost simultaneous announcement of the death of the old Dowager-
Duchess of Gotha, to whom all her grandchildren were so much attached.
The ex-King and Queen arrived at Newhaven, Louis Philippe bearing the
name of Mr. Smith. Queen Victoria had already written to King Leopold
on the 1st of March: "About the King and Queen (Louis Philippe and
Queen Amélie) we still know nothing.... We do everything we can for
the poor family, who are, indeed, sorely to be pitied. But you will
naturally understand that we cannot make common cause with them, and
cannot take a hostile position to the new state of things in France.
We leave them alone; but if a Government which has the approbation of
the country be formed, we shall feel it necessary to recognise it in
order to pin them down to maintain peace and the existing treaties,
which is of the greatest importance. It will not be pleasant to do
this, but the public good and the peace of Europe go before one's
personal feelings."
As soon as it could be arranged under the circumstances, the Queen had
an interview with the exiles. What a meeting after the last parting,
and all that had come to pass in the interval! This interview took
place on the 6th of March, when Louis Philippe came privately to
Windsor.
The same intelligent chronicler, Lady Lyttelton, who gave such a
graphic account of the Citizen-King's first visit to Windsor, had also
to photograph the second. Once more she uses with reason the word
"historical." "To-day is historical, Louis Philippe having come from
Claremont to pay a private (_very_ private) visit to the Queen.
She is really enviable now, to have in her power and in her path of
duty, such a boundless piece of charity and beneficent hospitality.
The reception by the _people_ of England of all the fugitives has
been beautifully kind."
That day the Queen wrote sadly to Baron Stockmar: "I am quite well;
indeed, particularly so, though God knows we have had since the 25th
enough for a whole life--anxiety, sorrow, excitement; in short, I feel
as if we had jumped over thirty years' experience at once. The whole
face of Europe is changed, and I feel as if I lived in a dream." She
added, with the tenderness of a generous nature, referring to the very
different circumstances in which her regard for the Orleans house had
been established, and to the alienation which had arisen between her
and some of its members: "You know my love for the family; you know
how I longed to get of terms with them again ... and you said, 'Time
will alone, but will certainly, bring it about.' Little did I dream
that this would be the way we should meet again and see each other,
all in the most friendly way. That the Duchesse de Montpensier, about
whom we have been quarrelling for the last year, and a half, should be
here as a fugitive and dressed in the clothes I sent her, and should
come to thank _me for my kindness_, is a reverse of fortune which
no novelist would devise, and upon which one could moralise for ever."
It was a comfort to the Queen and Prince Albert that Belgium, which
had at first appeared in the greatest danger, ended by standing almost
alone on the side of its King and Government.
The tide of revolution, which swept over the greater states, did not
spare the small. The Duke of Coburg-Gotha's subjects, who had seemed
so happily situated and so contented at the time of the Queen's visit,
were in a ferment like the rest of their countrymen. Bellona's hot
breath was in danger of withering the flowers of that Arcadia. The
Princes of Leiningen and Hohenlohe, the Queen's brother and brother-
in-law, were practically dispossessed of seigneurial rights and lands,
and ruined. The Princess of Hohenlohe wrote to her sister: "We are
undone, and must begin a new existence of privations, which I don't
care for, but for poor Ernest" (her husband) "I feel it more than I
can say."
In the meantime, on the 18th of March a fourth English Princess was
born. There was more than usual congratulation on the safety and well-
being of mother and child, because of the great shocks which had tried
the Queen previously, and the anxiety which filled all thoughtful
minds for the result of the crisis in England. Her Majesty's courage
rose to the occasion. She wrote to King Leopold in little more than a
fortnight: "I heard all that passed, and my only thoughts and talk
were political. But I never was calmer or quieter, or less nervous.
Great events make one calm; it is only trifles that irritate my
nerves."
England had its own troubles and was in high excitement about an
increased grant of money for the support of the army and navy, and the
continuance of the income-tax. The Chartists threatened to make a
great demonstration on Kennington Common.
The first threat in London, for the 13th of March, a few days before
the birth of the little Princess, ended in utter failure. The happy
termination was assisted by the state of the weather, great falls of
rain anticipating the work of large bodies of police prepared to
scatter the crowd. But as another demonstration, with the avowed
intention of walking in procession to present to the House of Commons
a monster petition, miles long, for the granting of the People's
Charter, was announced to take place on the 10th of April, great
uncertainty, and agitation filled the public mind. It was judged
advisable that the Queen should go to the Isle of Wight for a short
stay at Osborne, though it was still not more than three weeks since
her confinement.
The second demonstration collapsed like the first. Only a fraction--
not more than twenty-three thousand of the vast multitude expected to
appear--assembled at the meeting-place, and the people dispersed
quietly. But it is only necessary to mention the precautions employed
to show how great had been the alarm. The Duke of Wellington devised
and conducted the steps which were taken beforehand. On the bridges
were massed bodies of foot and horse police, and special constables,
of whom nearly two hundred thousand--one of them Prince Louis
Napoleon, the future Emperor of the French--are said to have been
sworn in. In the immediate neighbourhood of each bridge strong forces
of military, while kept out of sight, were ready "for instant
movement." Two regiments of the line were at Millbank Penitentiary,
twelve hundred infantry at Deptford Dockyard, and thirty pieces of
heavy field ordnance at the Tower prepared for transport by hired
steamers to any spot where help might be required. Bodies of troops
were posted in unexpected quarters, as in the area of the untenanted
Rose Inn yard, but within call. The public offices at Somerset House
and in the City were liberally supplied with arms. Places like the
Bank of England were "packed" with troops and artillery, and furnished
with sand-bag parapets for their walls, and wooden barricades with
loopholes for firing through, for their windows.
"Thank God," her Majesty wrote to the King of the Belgians, "the
Chartist meeting and procession have turned out a complete failure.
The loyalty of the people at large, has been very striking, and their
indignation at their peace being interfered with by such wanton and
worthless men immense."
Never was cheerfulness more wanted to lighten a burden of work and
care. In this year of trouble "no less than twenty-eight thousand
dispatches were received or sent out from the Foreign Office." All
these dispatches came to the Queen and Prince Albert, as well as to
Lord Palmerston, the Minister for Foreign Affairs.
Across the Channel the inflammatory speeches and writings of Messrs.
Mitchel, Meagher, and Smith O'Brien became so treasonable in tone
that, after the passing of a Bill in Parliament for the better
repression of sedition, the three Irish leaders were arrested and
brought to trial, the jury refusing to commit in the case of Meagher
and Smith O'Brien, but in that of Mitchel, who was tried separately,
finding him guilty, and sentencing him to transportation for fourteen
years.
On the 2nd of May the Court returned to Buckingham Palace, and the
baptism of the infant princess took place on the 13th, in the private
chapel of Buckingham Palace, when the Archbishop of Canterbury
officiated. The sponsors were Duke Augustus of Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
represented by Prince Albert, and the Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen and
the Grand-Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, represented by the Queen-
dowager and the Duchess of Cambridge. The names given to the child
were, "Louise Caroline Alberta," the first and last for the child's
grandmother on the father's side and for the royal father himself. A
chorale was performed, which the Prince had adapted from an earlier
composition written to the hymn--
In life's gay morn, ere sprightly youth
By vice and folly is enslaved,
Oh! may thy Maker's glorious name
Be on thy infant mind engraved;
So shall no shades of sorrow cloud
The sunshine of thy early days,
But happiness, in endless round,
Shall still encompass all thy ways.
Bishop Wilberforce describes the scene. "The royal christening was a
very beautiful sight, in its highest sense of that word 'beauty.' The
Queen, with the five royal children around her, the Prince of Wales
and Princess Royal hand-in-hand, all kneeling down quietly and meekly
at every prayer, and the little Princess Helena alone, just standing,
and looking round with the blue eyes of gazing innocence."
When the statues of the royal children were executed by Mrs.
Thornycroft, Princess Helena was modelled as Peace. The engraving is a
representation of the graceful piece of sculpture, in which a slender
young girl, wearing a long loose robe and having sandalled feet, holds
the usual emblematic branch and cluster--one in each hand.
As one Princess was born, another of a former generation, whose birth
had been hailed with equal rejoicing, passed away, on the 27th of May,
immediately after the Birthday Drawing-room. Princess Sophia, the
youngest surviving daughter and twelfth child of George III. and Queen
Charlotte, died in her arm-chair in the drawing-room of her house at
Kensington, aged seventy-one. At her own request she was buried at
Kensal Green, where the Duke of Sussex was interred.
CHAPTER IX.
THE QUEEN'S FIRST STAY AT BALMORAL.
From France, in June, came the grievous news of the three days'
fighting in the streets of Paris, because no Government provision
could secure work and bread for the artisans. The insurrection was
only put down by martial law under the Dictator, General Cavaignac.
In Sardinia the King, Charles Albert, fighting gallantly against the
Austrian rule, was defeated once and again, and driven back.
In England, though the most swaggering of the Chartists still
blustered a little, attention could be given to more peaceful
concerns. In July Prince Albert went to York, though he could "ill be
spared" from the Queen's side in those days of startling events and
foreign turmoil, to be present at a meeting of the Royal Agricultural
Society, of which he had been governor for half-a-dozen years. The
acclamations with which the Prince was received, were only the echo of
the tempest of cheers which greeted and encouraged her Majesty every
time she appeared in public this year.
In August strong measures had again to be taken in Ireland. These
included the gathering together of a great military force in the
disturbed districts, and the assemblage of a fleet of war-steamers on
the coast. As in the previous instance, little or no resistance was
offered. In the course of a few days the former leaders, Meagher,
Smith O'Brien, and Mitchel, were arrested. They were brought to trial
in Dublin, convicted of high treason, and sentenced to death--a
sentence commuted into transportation for life.
The Queen had the pleasure of finding her brother, the Prince of
Leiningen, appointed head of the department of foreign affairs in the
short-lived Frankfort assembly of the German states. It showed at
least the respect in which he was held by his countrymen.
On the 5th of September the Queen went in person to prorogue
Parliament, which had sat for ten months. The ceremony took place in
the new House of Lords. There was an unusually large and brilliant
company present on this occasion, partly to admire the "lavish paint
and gilding," the stained-glass windows, with likenesses of kings and
queens, and Dyce's and Maclise's frescoes, partly to enjoy the
emphatically-delivered sentence in the royal speech, in which the
Queen acknowledged, "with grateful feelings, the many marks of loyalty
and attachment which she had received from all classes of her people."
The Queen and the Prince, with three of their children and the suite,
sailed from Woolwich for a new destination in Scotland--a country-
house or little castle, which they had so far made their own, since
the Prince, acting on the advice of Sir James Clark, the Queen's
physician, had acquired the lease from the Earl of Aberdeen.
The royal party were in Aberdeen Harbour at eight o'clock in the
morning of the 7th September. On the 8th Balmoral was reached. The
first impression was altogether agreeable. Her Majesty has described
the place, as it appeared to her, in her Journal. "We arrived at
Balmoral at a quarter to three. It is a pretty little castle in the
old Scottish style. There is a picturesque tower and garden in the
front, with a high wooded hill; at the back there is a wood down to
the _Dee_, and the hills rise all around."
During the first stay of the Court at Balmoral, the Queen has
chronicled the ascent of a mountain. On Saturday, the 16th of
September, as early as half-past nine in the morning, her Majesty and
Prince Albert drove in a postchaise four miles to the bridge in the
wood of Ballochbuie, where ponies and guides awaited them. Macdonald,
a keeper of Farquharson of Invercauld's and afterwards in the service
of the Prince, a tall, handsome man, whom the Queen describes as
"looking like a picture in his shooting-jacket and kilt," and Grant,
the head-keeper at Balmoral, on a pony, with provisions in two
baskets, were the chief attendants.
Through the wood and over moss, heather, and stones, sometimes riding,
sometimes walking; Prince Albert irresistibly attracted to stalk a
deer, in vain; across the stony little burn, where the faithful
Highlanders piloted her Majesty, walking and riding again, when
Macdonald led the bridle of the beast which bore so precious a burden;
the views "very beautiful," but alas! mist on the brow of Loch-na-gar.
Prince Albert making a detour after ptarmigan, leaving the Queen in
the safe keeping of her devoted guides, to whom she refers so kindly
as "taking the greatest care of her." Even "poor Batterbury," the
English groom, who seems to have cut rather a ridiculous figure in his
thin boots and gaiters and non-enjoyment of the expedition, "was very
anxious also" for the well-being of his royal lady, whose tastes must
have struck him as eccentric, to say the least.
The mist intensified the cold when the citadel mountain was reached,
so that it must have been a relief to try a spell of walking once
more, especially as the first part of the way was "soft and easy,"
while the party looked down on the two _lochans_, known as _Na
Nian_. Who that has any knowledge of the mountains cannot recall
the effect of these solitary tarns, like well-eyes in the wilderness,
gleaming in the sunshine, dark in the gloom? The Prince, good
mountaineer as he was, grew glad to remount his pony and let the
docile, sure-footed creature pick its steps through the gathering fog,
which was making the ascent an adventure not free from danger.
Everything not within a hundred yards was hidden. The last and
steepest part of the mountain (three thousand seven hundred and
seventy-seven feet from the sea-level) was accomplished on foot, and
at two o'clock, after four hours' riding and walking, a seat in a
little nook where luncheon could be taken was found; for,
unfortunately, there was no more to be done save to seek rest and
refreshment. There was literally nothing to be seen, in place of the
glorious panorama which a mountain-top in favourable circumstances
presents.
This was that "dark Loch-na-gar" whose "steep frowning glories" Lord
Byron rendered famous, for which he dismissed with scorn, "gay
landscapes and gardens of roses."
No doubt the snowflakes, in corries on the mountain-side, do look
deliciously cool on a hot summer day. But such a drizzling rain as
this was the other side of the picture, which her Majesty, with a
shiver, called "cold, wet, and cheerless." In addition to the rain the
wind began to blow a hurricane, which, after all, in the case of a fog
was about the kindest thing the wind could do, whether or not the
spirits of heroes were in the gale.
At twenty minutes after two the party set out on their descent of the
mountain. The two keepers, moving on as pioneers in the gloom, "looked
like ghosts." When walking became too exhausting, the Queen, "well
wrapped in plaids," was again mounted on her pony, which she declared
"went delightfully," though the mist caused the rider "to feel
cheerless."
In the course of the next couple of hours, after a thousand feet of
the descent had been achieved, by one of those abrupt transitions
which belong to such a landscape, the mist below vanished as if by
magic, and it was again, summer sunshine around.
But the world could not be altogether shut out at Balmoral, and the
echoes which came from afar, this year, were of a sufficiently
disturbing character. Among the most notable, Sir Theodore Martin
mentions the Frankfort riots, in which two members of the German
States Union were assassinated, and the startling death of the
Conservative leader, Lord George Bentinck, who had suddenly exchanged
the _rôle_ of the turf for that of Parliament, and come to the
front during the struggle over the abolition of the Corn Laws.
A third strangely significant omen was the election of Prince Louis
Napoleon, by five different French Departments, as a deputy to the new
French Chamber.
The Court left Balmoral on the 28th of September, stayed one night in
London, and then proceeded for ten days to Osborne. On the return of
the Queen and the Prince to Windsor, on the 9th of October, a sad
accident occurred in their sight. As the yacht was crossing on a misty
and stormy day to Portsmouth, she passed near the frigate
_Grampus_, which had just come back from her station in the
Pacific. In their eagerness to meet their relations among the crew on
board, five unfortunate women had gone out in an open boat rowed by
two watermen, though the foul-weather flag was flying. "A sudden
squall swamped the boat" without attracting the attention of anyone on
board the _Grampus_ or the yacht. But one of the watermen, who
was able to cling to the overturned boat, was seen by the men in a
Custom-house boat, who immediately aroused the indignation of Lord
Adolphus Fitzclarence and his brother-officers by steering, apparently
without any reason, right across the bows of the _Fairy_. Prince
Albert, who was on deck, was the first to discover the cause of the
inexplicable conduct of the men in the Custom-house boat. "He called
out that he saw a man in the water;" the Queen hurried out of her
pavilion, and distinguished a man on what turned out to be the keel of
a boat. "Oh dear! there are more!" cried Prince Albert in horror,
"which quite overcame me," the Queen wrote afterwards. "The royal
yacht was stopped and one of its boats lowered, which picked up three
of the women--one of them alive and clinging to a plank, the others
dead." The storm was violent, and the responsibility of keeping the
yacht exposed to its fury lay with Lord Adolphus. Since nothing
further could be attempted for the victims of their own rashness, he
did not think it right that the yacht should stay for the return of
the boat, as he held the delay unsafe, although both the Queen and the
Prince, with finer instincts, were anxious this should be done. "We
could not stop," wrote her Majesty again, full of pity. "It was a
dreadful moment, too horrid to describe. It is a consolation to think
we were of some use, and also that, even if the yacht had remained,
they could not have done more. Still, we all keep feeling we might,
though I think we could not.... It is a terrible thing, and haunts me
continually."
The Magyar War under Kossuth was raging in Hungary. In the far-away
Punjab the Sikh War, in which Lieutenant Edwardes had borne so gallant
a part in the beginning of the year, was still prolonged, with Mooltan
always the bone of contention.
In October all aristocratic England was excited by the sale of the Art
treasures of Stowe, which lasted for forty days. Mrs. Gaskell made a
fine contribution to literature in her novel of "Mary Barton," in
which genius threw its strong light on Manchester life.
The Queen had a private theatre fitted up this year in the Rubens
Room, Windsor Castle. The first of the _dramatis personae_ in the
best London theatres went down and acted before the Court, giving
revivals of Shakespeare--which it was hoped would improve the taste
for the higher drama--varied by lighter pieces.
On the 24th of November the Queen heard of the death of her former
Minister and counsellor William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne. "Truly and
sincerely," her Majesty wrote in her Journal, "do I deplore the loss
of one who was a most disinterested friend of mine, and most sincerely
attached to me. He was, indeed, for the first two years and a half of
my reign, almost the only friend I had, except Stockmar and Lehzen,
and I used to see him constantly, daily. I thought much and talked
much of him all day."
CHAPTER X.
PUBLIC AND DOMESTIC INTERESTS--FRESH ATTACK UPON THE QUEEN.
The Queen and the Prince were now pledged--alike by principle and
habit--to hard work. They were both early risers, but before her
Majesty joined Prince Albert in their sitting-room, where their
writing-tables stood side by side, we are told he had already, even in
winter, by the light of the green German lamp which he had introduced
into England, prepared many papers to be considered by her Majesty,
and done everything in his power to lighten her labours as a
sovereign.
Lord Campbell describes an audience which he had from the Queen in
February. "I was obliged to make an excursion to Windsor on Saturday,
and have an audience before Prince Albert's lunch. I was with the
Queen in her closet, _solus cum solâ_. But I should first tell
you my difficulty about getting from the station at Slough to the
Castle. When we go down for a council we have a special train and
carriages provided for us. I consulted Morpeth, who answered, 'I can
only tell you how I went last--on the top of an omnibus; but the Queen
was a little shocked.' I asked how she found it out. He said he had
told her himself to amuse her, but that I should be quite _en
règle_ by driving up in a fly or cab. So I drove up in my one horse
conveyance, and the lord-in-waiting announced my arrival to her
Majesty. I was shown into the royal closet, a very small room with one
window, and soon she entered by another door all alone. My business
was the appointment of a sheriff for the County Palatine, which was
soon despatched. We then talked of the state of the finances of the
Duchy, and I ventured to offer her my felicitations on the return of
this auspicious day--her wedding-day. I lunched with the maids of
honour, and got back in time to take a part in very important
deliberations in the Cabinet."
In February, 1849, the Queen opened Parliament in person. Perhaps the
greatest source of anxiety was now the Sikh War, in which the warlike
tribes were gaining advantages over the English troops, though Mooltan
had been reduced the previous month. A drawn battle was fought between
Lord Gough's force and that of Chuttar Singh at Chillianwallah. While
the English were not defeated, their losses in men, guns and standards
were sore and humiliating to the national pride. Sir Charles Napier
was ordered out, and, in spite of bad health, obeyed the order. But in
the meantime Lord Gough had retrieved his losses by winning at
Goojerat a great victory over the Sikhs and Afghans, which in the end
compelled the surrender of the enemy, with the restoration of the
captured guns and standards. On the 29th of March the kingdom of the
Punjaub was proclaimed as existing no longer, and the State was
annexed to British India; while the beneficial influence of Edwardes
and the Lawrences rendered the wild Sikhs more loyal subjects, in a
future time of need, than the trained and petted Sepoy mercenaries
proved themselves.
On the afternoon of the 19th of May, after the Queen had held one of
her most splendid Drawing-rooms, when she was driving in a carriage
with three of her children up Constitution Hill, she was again fired
at by a man standing within the railings of the Green Park. Prince
Albert was on horseback, so far in advance that he did not know what
had occurred, till told of it by the Queen when he assisted her to
alight. But her Majesty did not lose her perfect self-possession. She
stood up, motioned to the coachman, who had stopped the carriage for
an instant, to go on, and then diverted the children's attention by
talking to them. The man who had fired was immediately arrested.
Indeed, he would have been violently assaulted by the mob, had he not
been protected by the police. He proved to be an Irishman, named
Hamilton, from Limerick, who had come over from Ireland five years
before, and worked as a bricklayer's labourer and a navvy both in
England and France. Latterly he had been earning a scanty livelihood
by doing chance jobs. There was this to distinguish him from the other
dastardly assailants of the Queen: he was not a half-crazed, morbidly
conceited boy, though he also had no conceivable motive for what he
did. He appears to have taken his measures, in providing himself with
pistol and powder, from a mere impulse of stolid brutality. His pistol
contained no ball, so that he was tried under the Felon's Act, which
had been provided for such offences, and sentenced to seven years'
transportation.
The education of their children was a subject of much thought and care
to the Queen and Prince Albert. Her Majesty wrote various memoranda on
the question which was of such interest to her. Some of these are
preserved in the life of the Prince Consort. She started with the wise
maxim, "that the children should be brought up as simply and in as
domestic a way as possible; that (not interfering with their lessons)
they should be as much as possible with their parents, and learn to
place their greatest confidence in them in all things." She dwelt upon
a religious training, and held strongly the conviction that "it is
best given to a child, day by day, at its mother's knee." It was a
matter of tender regret to the Queen when "the pressure of public
duty" prevented her from holding this part of her children's education
entirely in her own keeping. "It is already a hard case for me," was
the pathetic reflection of the young mother in reference to the
childhood of the Princess Royal, "that my occupations prevent me being
with her when she says her prayers." At the same time the Queen and
the Prince had strong opinions on the religious training which ought
to be given to their children, and strove to have them carried out.
The Queen wrote, still of the Princess Royal, "I am quite clear that
she should be taught to have great reverence for God and for religion,
but that she should have the feelings of devotion and love which our
Heavenly Father encourages His earthly children to have for Him, and
not one of fear and trembling; and that the thoughts of death and an
after life should not be represented in an alarming and forbidding
view, and that she should be made to know _as yet_ no difference
of creeds, and not think that she can only pray on her knees, or that
those who do not kneel are less fervent and devout in their prayers."
Surely these truly reverent, just, and liberal sentiments on the
religion to be imparted to young children must recommend themselves to
all earnest, thoughtful parents.
In the accompanying engraving the girl-Princesses, Helena and Louise,
who are represented wearing lilies in the breasts of their frocks,
look like sister-lilies--as fresh, pure, and sweet.
In 1849 Mr. Birch, who had been head boy at Eton, taken high honours
at Cambridge, and acted as one of the under masters at Eton, was
appointed tutor to the Prince of Wales when the Prince was eight years
of age.
CHAPTER XI.
THE QUEEN'S FIRST VISIT TO IRELAND.
Parliament was prorogued by commission, and the Queen and the Prince,
with their four children, sailed on the 1st of August for Ireland.
Lady Lyttelton watching the departing squadron from the windows of
Osborne, wrote with something like dramatic emphasis, "It is done,
England's fate is afloat; we are left lamenting. They hope to reach
Cork to-morrow evening, the wind having gone down and the sky cleared,
the usual weather compliment to the Queen's departure."
The voyage was quick but not very pleasant, from the great swell in
the sea. At nine o'clock, on the morning of the 2nd, Land's End was
passed, and at eight o'clock in the evening the Cove of Cork was so
near that the bonfires on the hill and the showers of rockets from the
ships in the harbour to welcome the travellers, were distinctly
visible. Unfortunately the next day was gray and "muggy"--a quality
which the Queen had been told was characteristic of the Irish climate.
The saluting from the various ships sent a roar through the thick air.
The large harbour with its different islands--one of them containing a
convict prison, another a military depot--looked less cheerful than it
might have done. The captains of the war-steamers came on board to pay
their respects; so did the Lord-Lieutenant, Lord Bandon, and the
commanders of the forces at Cork. Prince Albert landed, but the Queen
wrote and sketched till after luncheon. The delay was lucky, for the
sun broke out with splendour in the afternoon. The _Fairy_, with
its royal freight, surrounded by rowing and sailing boats, went round
the harbour, all the ships saluting, and then entered Cove, and lay
alongside the gaily-decorated crowded pier. The members, for Cork, the
clergymen of all denominations, and the yacht club presented
addresses, "after which," wrote the Queen, "to give the people the
satisfaction of calling the place 'Queenstown,' in honour of its being
the first spot on which I set foot upon Irish ground, I stepped on
shore amid the roar of cannon (for the artillery was placed so close
as quite to shake the temporary room which we entered), and the
enthusiastic shouts of the people.".
The _Fairy_ lay alongside the pier of Cork proper, and the Queen
received more deputations and addresses, and conferred the honour of
knighthood on the Lord Mayor. The two judges, who were holding their
courts, came on board in their robes.
Then her Majesty landed and entered Lord Bandon's carriage,
accompanied by Prince Albert and her ladies, Lord Bandon and General
Turner riding one on each side. The Mayor went in front, and many
people in carriages and on horseback joined the royal cortege, which
took two hours in passing through the densely-crowded streets and
under the triumphal arches. Everything went well and the reception was
jubilant. To her Majesty Cork looked more like a foreign than an
English town. She was struck by the noisy but good-natured crowd, the
men very "poorly, often-raggedly, dressed," many wearing blue coats
and knee-breeches with blue stockings. The beauty of the women
impressed her, "such beautiful dark eyes and hair, and such fine
teeth; almost every third woman was pretty, and some remarkably so.
They wear no bonnets, and generally long blue cloaks."
Re-embarking at Cork, the visitors sailed to Waterford, arriving in
the course of the afternoon.
The travellers sailed again at half-past eight in the morning, having
at first a rough passage, with its usual unacceptable accompaniment of
sea-sickness, but near Wexford the sea became gradually smooth, and
there was a fine evening. At half-past six Dublin Bay came in sight.
The war-steamers, four in number, waiting for her Majesty, were at
their post. Escorted by this squadron, the yacht "steamed slowly and
majestically" into Kingstown Harbour, which was full of ships, while
the quays were lined with thousands of spectators cheering lustily.
The sun was setting as this stately "procession of boats" entered the
harbour, and her Majesty describes in her Journal "the glowing light"
which lit up the surrounding country and the fine buildings,
increasing the beauty of the scene.
Next morning, while the royal party were at breakfast, the yacht was
brought up to the wharf lined with troops. The Lord-Lieutenant, Lord
Clarendon, and Lady Clarendon, Prince George of Cambridge, Lords
Lansdowne and Clanricarde, the Archbishop of Dublin, &c. &c., came on
board, an address was presented from the county by the Earl of
Charlemont, to which a written reply was given. At ten Lord Clarendon,
bowing low, stepped before the Queen on the gangway, Prince Albert led
her Majesty on shore, the youthful princes and princesses and the rest
of the company following, the ships saluting so that the very ground
shook with the heavy 68-pounders, the bands playing, the guard of
honour presenting arms, the multitude huzzaing, the royal standard
floating out on the breeze.
Along a covered way, lined with ladies and gentlemen, and strewn with
flowers, the Queen proceeded to the railway station, and after a
quarter of an hour's journey reached Dublin, where she was met by her
own carriages, with the postillions in the Ascot liveries.
The Queen and Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales and the Princess
Royal, occupied one carriage, Prince Alfred and Princess Alice, with
the ladies-in-waiting, another. The Commander-in-chief of the soldiers
in Ireland, Sir Edward Blakeney, rode on one side of the Queen's
carriage, Prince George of Cambridge on the other, followed by a
brilliant staff and escort of soldiers. "At the entrance of the city a
triumphal arch of great size and beauty had been erected, under which
the civic authorities--Lord Mayor, town-clerk, swordbearer, &c. &c.--
waited on their sovereign." The Lord Mayor presented the keys and her
Majesty returned them. "It was a wonderful and stirring scene," she
described her progress in her Journal; "such masses of human beings,
so enthusiastic, so excited, yet such perfect order maintained. Then
the number of troops, the different bands stationed at certain
distances, the waving of hats and handkerchiefs, the bursts of welcome
that rent the air, all made it a never-to-be-forgotten scene when one
reflected how lately the country had been under martial law."
The Queen admired Dublin heartily, and gave to Sackville Street and
Merrion Square their due meed of praise. At the last triumphal arch a
pretty little allegory, like a bit of an ancient masque, was enacted.
Amidst the heat and dust a dove, "alive and very tame, with an olive-
branch round its neck," was let down into the Queen's lap.
The viceregal lodge was reached at noon, and the Queen was received by
Lord and Lady Clarendon and their household.
On the 7th of August, a showery day, the Queen drove into Dublin with
her ladies, followed by the gentlemen, but with no other escort. Her
Majesty was loudly cheered as she proceeded to the bank, the old
Parliament House before the Union, where Curran and Grattan and many a
"Monk of the Screw" had debated, "Bloody Toler" had aroused the rage
of the populace, and Castlereagh had looked down icy cold on the
burning commotion. The famous Dublin schools were next visited. Their
excellent system of education and liberal tolerant code delighted the
Prince. At Trinity College, with its memories of Dean Swift and
"Charley O'Malley," the Queen and the Prince wrote their names in St.
Columba's book, and inspected the harp said to have belonged to "King
O'Brian." After their return to the lodge, when luncheon had been
taken, and Prince Albert went into Dublin again, the Queen refreshed
herself with a bit of home life. She wrote and read, and heard her
children say some of their lessons.
At five the Queen drove to Kilmainham Hospital, Lord Clarendon
accompanying her and her ladies, while the Prince and the other
gentlemen rode. The Irish Commander-in-chief and Prince George
received her Majesty, who saw and no doubt cheered the hearts of the
old pensioners, going into their chapel, hall, and governor's room.
Afterwards she drove again into Dublin, through the older quarters,
College Green--where Mrs. Delany lived when she was yet Mrs. Pendarvis
and the belle of the town, and where there still stands the well-
known, often maltreated statue of William III., Stephen's Green, &c.
&c. The crowds were still tremendous.
On the 8th of August, before one o'clock, the Queen and her ladies in
evening dress, and Prince Albert and the gentlemen in uniform, drove
straight to the castle, where there was to be a levee the same as at
St. James's. Her Majesty, seated on the throne, received numerous
addresses--those of the Lord Mayor and corporation, the universities,
the Archbishop and bishops (Protestant and Catholic), the different
Presbyterians, and the Quakers. No fewer than two thousand
presentations took place, the levee lasting till six o'clock--some
five hours.
On the following day there was a review of upwards of six thousand
soldiers and police in the Phoenix Park.
The Queen and the Prince dined alone, but in the course of the evening
they drove again into Dublin, to the castle, that she might hold a
Drawing-room. Two or three thousand people were there; one thousand
six hundred ladies were presented. Then her Majesty walked through St.
Patrick's Hall and the other crowded rooms, returning through the
densely-filled, illuminated streets, and the Phoenix Park after
midnight.
On the 10th of August, the Queen had a little respite from public
duties in a private pleasure. She and Prince Albert, in company with
Lord and Lady Clarendon and the different members of the suite, went
on a short visit to Carton, the seat of "Ireland's only Duke," the
Duke of Leinster. The party passed through Woodlands, with its
"beautiful lime-trees," and encountered a number of Maynooth students
near their preparatory college. At Carton the Queen was received by
the Duke and Duchess and their eldest son, the Marquis of Kildare,
with his young wife, Lady Caroline Leveson-Gower, one of the daughters
of the Duchess of Sutherland. All the company walked, to the music of
two bands, in the pretty quaint garden with its rows of Irish yews.
Was it the same in 1798, when a son of the Leinster house, after
thinking to be a king, was hunted down in a poor Dublin lodging,
fought like a lion for his life, was taken a wounded prisoner to the
castle, and then to Newgate to die?
The Duke led the Queen round the garden, while Prince Albert conducted
the Duchess. Her Majesty wrote warmly of her host that "he was one of
the kindest and best of men." After luncheon the country people danced
jigs in the park, the men in their thick coats, the women in their
shawls; one man, "a regular Irishman, with his hat on, one ear," the
music furnished by three old and tattered pipers. Her Majesty
pronounced the steps of the dancers "very droll."
The Duke and Duchess took their guests a drive, the people riding,
running, and driving with the company, but continuing perfectly well-
behaved, and ready to obey any word of the Duke's. It must have been a
curious scene, in which all ranks took part. The Queen could not get
over the spectacle of the countrymen running the whole way, in their
thick woollen coats, in the heat.
On the Queen's departure from Kingstown she was followed by the same
enthusiasm that had greeted her on her arrival. "As the yacht approached
the extremity of the pier near the lighthouse, where the people were
most thickly congregated and were cheering enthusiastically, the Queen
suddenly left the two ladies-in-waiting with whom she was conversing,
ran with agility along the deck, and climbed the paddle-box to join
Prince Albert, who did not notice her till she was nearly at his side.
Reaching him and taking his arm, she waved her right hand to the people
on the piers." As she stood with the Prince while the yacht steamed out
of the harbour, she waved her handkerchief in "a parting acknowledgment"
of her Irish subjects' loyalty. As another compliment to the
enthusiastic farewells of the people, the Queen gave orders "to slacken
speed." The paddlewheels became still, the yacht floated slowly along
close to the pier, and three times the royal standard was lowered by way
of "a stately obeisance" made in response to the last ringing cheers of
the Irish. Lord Clarendon wrote afterwards, that "there was not an
individual in Dublin who did not take as a personal compliment to
himself the Queen's having gone upon the paddle-box and ordered the
royal standard to be lowered three times." It was a happy thought of her
own.
The weather was thick and misty, and the storm which was feared came
on in a violent gale before the yacht entered Belfast Harbour, early
on the morning of the 11th of August. The Mayor and other officials
came on board to breakfast, and in the course of the forenoon the
Queen and the Prince, with the ladies and gentlemen in attendance,
entered the barge to row to the _Fairy_. Though the row was only
of two minutes' duration, the swell on the water was so great that the
embarkation in the _Fairy_ was a matter of difficulty; and when
the smaller yacht was gained the Queen had to take shelter in the
pavilion from the driving spray. In such unpropitious circumstances
her Majesty passed Carrickfergus, the landing-place of William III.,
and arrived at the capital of Ulster just as the sun came out and lent
its much-desired presence to the gala. Lord Londonderry and his wife
and daughters, Lord Donegal, the proprietor of the greater part of
Ulster, &c. &c., came on board with various deputations, especially of
Presbyterians and members of the linen trade. The Queen knighted the
mayor, as she had knighted his brother-magistrate at Cork.
By an odd blunder the gangway, which had been carefully constructed
for the Queen's use, was found too large. Some planks on board the
yacht had to form an impromptu landing-stage; but the situation was
not so awkward as when Louis Philippe had to press a bathing-machine
into the royal service at Tréport. The landing-place was covered in
and decorated, the Londonderry carriage in waiting, and her Majesty's
only regret was for Lord Londonderry, a big man, crowded on the rumble
along with specially tall and large sergeant-footmen.
The Scotch-descended people of Belfast had outdone themselves in
floral arches and decorations. The galleries for spectators were
thronged. There was no stint in the honest warmth of the reception.
But the Irish beauty, and doubtless also something of the Irish spirit
and glee, had vanished with the rags and the tumbledown cabins. The
douce, comfortable people of Ulster were less picturesque and less
demonstrative.
Linen Hall, the Botanic Gardens, and the new college were visited, and
different streets driven through in returning to the place of
embarkation at half-past six on an evening so stormy that the weather
prevented the yacht from setting sail. As it lay at anchor there was
an opportunity for seeing the bonfires, streaming in the blast, on the
neighbouring heights.
Before quitting Ireland the Queen determined to create her eldest son
"Earl of Dublin," one of the titles borne by the late Duke of Kent.
CHAPTER XII.
SCOTLAND AGAIN--GLASGOW AND DEE-SIDE.
In the course of the afternoon the yacht sailed for Loch Ryan. The
object of this second visit to the West of Scotland was not so much
for the purpose of seeing again the beautiful scenery which had so
delighted the Queen and the Prince, as with the view of making up for
the great disappointment experienced by the townspeople of Glasgow on
her Majesty's having failed to visit what was, after London, one of
the largest cities in her empire.
The weather was persistently bad this time, squally and disagreeable.
On August 15th the _Fairy_, with the Queen and Prince on board,
sailed for Glasgow, still in pouring rain and a high wind. The storm
did not prevent the people from so lining the banks that the swell
from the steamer often broke upon them. Happily the weather cleared at
last, and the day was fine when the landing-place was reached. As
usual, the Lord Provost came on board and received the honour of
knighthood, after he had presented one of the many addresses offered
by the town, the county, the clergy of all denominations, and the
House of Commerce. The Queen landed, with the Prince and all the
children that had accompanied her. Sheriff Alison rode on one side of
her carriage, the general commanding the forces in Scotland on the
other. The crowd was immense, numbering as many as five hundred
thousand men, women, and children. The Queen admired the streets, the
fine buildings, the quays, the churches. At the cathedral she was
received by a man who seemed as venerable as the building itself,
Principal MacFarlane. He called her Majesty's attention to what was
then the highest chimney in the world, that of the chemical works of
St. Rollax. The inspection of the fine cathedral, which the old
Protestants of the west protected instead of pulling down, included
the crypt. The travellers proceeded by railway to Stirling and Perth.
Early on the morning of the 15th the party started, the Queen having
three of the children in the carriage with herself and the Prince, on
the long drive through beautiful Highland scenery to Balmoral.
This year her Majesty made her first stay at Alt-na-guithasach, the
hut or bothie of "old John Gordon," the situation of which had taken
her fancy and that of the Prince. They had another hut built for
themselves in the immediate vicinity, so that they could at any time
spend a day or a couple of days in the wilds, with a single lady-in-
waiting and the most limited of suites. On the 30th of August the
Queen, the Prince, and the Honourable Caroline Dawson, maid of honour,
set out on their ponies, attended only by Macdonald, Grant, another
Highlander, and an English footman. The rough road had been improved,
and riding was so easy that Prince Albert could practise his Gaelic by
the way.
The Queen was much pleased with her new possession, which meant "a
charming little dining-room, sitting-room, bedroom, and dressing-room
all _en suite_; a little bedroom for Miss Dawson and one for her
maid, and a pantry." In the other hut were the kitchen where the
Gordon family sat, a room where the servants dined, a storeroom, and a
loft where the men slept. All the people in attendance on the small
party were the Queen's maid, Miss Dawson's maid, Prince Albert's
German valet, a footman, and Macdonald, together with the old couple,
John Gordon and his wife. After luncheon the visitors went to Loch
Muich--a name which has been interpreted "darkness" or "sorrow"--and
got into a large boat with four rowers, while a smaller boat followed,
having a net. The excursion was to the head of the loch, which joins
the _Dhu_ or Black Loch. "Real severe Highland scenery," her
Majesty calls it, and to those who know the stern sublimity of such
places, the words say a great deal. "The boat, the net, and the people
in their kilts in the water and on the shore," called for an artist's
pencil. Seventy trouts were caught, and several hawks were seen. The
sailing was diversified by scrambling on shore. The return in the
evening was still more beautiful. At dinner the German valet and
Macdonald, the Highland forester, helped the footman to wait on the
company. Whist, played with a dummy, and a walk round the little
garden, "where the silence and solitude, only interrupted by the
waving of the fir-trees, were very striking," ended the day.
The Queen and her family left Balmoral on the 27th. Travelling by
Edinburgh and Berwick, they visited Earl Grey at Howick. Derby was the
next halting-place. At Reading the travellers turned aside for
Gosport, and soon arrived at Osborne.
Already, on the 16th of September, a special prayer had been read in
every church in England, petitioning Almighty God to stay the plague
of cholera which had sprung up in the East, travelled across the seas,
and broken out among the people. But the dreaded epidemic had nothing
to do with the sad news which burst upon the Queen and Prince Albert
within, a few days of their return to the south. Both were much
distressed by receiving the unexpected intelligence of the sudden
death of Mr. Anson, who had been the Prince's private secretary, and
latterly the keeper of the Queen's privy purse.
The offices which Mr. Anson filled in succession were afterwards
worthily held by Colonel Phipps and General Grey.
CHAPTER XIII.
OPENING OF THE NEW COAL EXCHANGE--THE DEATH OF QUEEN ADELAIDE.
On the 30th of October the new Coal Exchange, opposite Billingsgate,
was to have been opened by the Queen in person. A slight illness--an
attack of chicken-pox--compelled her Majesty to give up her
intention, and forego the motherly pleasure of seeing her two elder
children, the Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal, make their first
appearance in public. Prince Albert, with his son and daughter,
accompanied by the Duke of Norfolk as Master of the Horse, drove from
Buckingham Palace at twelve o'clock, and embarked on the Thames in the
royal barge, "a gorgeous structure of antique design, built for
Frederic, Prince of Wales, the great-great-grandfather of the Prince
and Princess who now trod its deck." It was rowed by twenty-seven of
the ancient craft of watermen, restored for a day to the royal
service, clad in rich livery for the occasion, and commanded by Lord
Adolphus Fitzclarence. Commander Eden, superintendent of Woolwich
Dockyard, led the van in his barge. Then came Vice-Admiral Elliot,
Commander-in-chief at the Nore; next the Lord Mayor's bailiff in his
craft, preceding the Lord Mayor in the City barge, "rearing its quaint
gilded poop high in the air, and decked with richly emblazoned devices
and floating ensigns.... Two royal gigs and two royal barges escorted
the State barge, posted respectively on its port and starboard bow,
and its port and starboard quarter. The Queen's shallop followed; the
barges of the Admiralty and the Trinity Corporation barge brought up
the rear." [Footnote: Annual Register.] According to ancient custom
one barge bore a graceful freight of living swans to do honour to the
water procession. Such a grand and gay pageant on the river had not
been seen for a century back. It only wanted some of the "water
music," which Handel composed for George II., to render the gala
complete.
It would be difficult to devise a scene more captivating for children
of nine and ten, such as the pair who figured in it. Happily the day,
though it was nearly the last of October, was beautiful and bright,
and from the position which the royal party occupied in their barge
when it was in the middle of the river, "not only the other barges and
the platformed steamers and lighters with their living loads, but the
densely-crowded banks, must have formed a memorable spectacle. The
very streets running down from the Strand were so packed with
spectators as to present each one a moving mass. Half a million of
persons were gathered together to witness the unwonted sight; the
bridges were hung over with them like swarms of flies, and from the
throng at intervals shouts of welcome sounded long and loud." Between
Southwark and London Bridge the rowers lay on their oars for a moment,
in compliment to the ardent loyalty of the scholars of Queen
Elizabeth's Grammar School. The most picturesque point was "at the
moment the vessels emerged from London Bridge and caught sight of the
amphitheatre of shipping in the Upper Pool--a literal forest of masts,
with a foliage of flags more variously and brilliantly coloured than
the American woods after the first autumn frost. Here, too, the ear
was first saluted by the boom of guns, the Tower artillery firing as
the procession swept by."
The landing-place on the Custom House Quay was so arranged, by means
of coloured canvas, as to form a covered corridor the whole length of
the quay, to and across Thames Street, to the principal entrance to
the Coal Exchange.
Prince Albert and the young Prince and Princess passed down the
corridor, "bowing to the citizens on either side," a critical ordeal
for the simply reared children. When the Grand Hall of the Exchange
was reached, the City procession came up, headed by the Lord Mayor,
and the Recorder read aloud an address "with such emphatic solemnity,"
it was remarked, that the Prince of Wales seemed "struck and almost
awed by his manner." Lady Lyttelton takes notice of the same comical
effect produced on the little boy. Prince Albert replied.
At two o'clock the _déjeuner_ was served, when the Lord Mayor and
the Lady Mayoress, at Prince Albert's request, sat near him. The usual
toasts were given; the health of the Queen was drunk with "loudest
cheers," that of the Queen-Dowager with "evident feeling," called
forth by the fact that King William's good Queen, who had for long
years struggled vainly with mortal disease, was, as everybody knew,
drawing near her end. The toast of the Prince of Wales and the
Princess Royal was received with an enthusiasm that must have tended
at once to elate and abash the little hero and heroine of the day.
At three o'clock the royal party re-embarked in the _Fairy_. As
Prince Albert stepped on board, while expressing his gratification
with the whole proceedings, he said to his children, with the
gracious, kindly tact which was natural to him, "Remember that you are
indebted to the Lord Mayor for one of the happiest days of your
lives."
Before December wound up the year it was generally known that the
Queen-Dowager Adelaide, who had in her day occupied a prominent place
in the eyes of the nation, was to be released from the sufferings of
many years.
In November Queen Victoria paid her last visit to the Queen-Dowager.
"I shall never forget the visit we paid to the Priory last Thursday,",
the Queen wrote to King Leopold. "There was death written in that dear
face. It was such a picture of misery, of complete prostration, and
yet she talked of everything. I could hardly command my feelings when
I came in, and when I kissed twice that poor dear thin hand.... I love
her so dearly; she has ever been so maternal in her affection to me.
She will find peace and a reward for her many sufferings."
Queen Adelaide died quietly on the 2nd of December, at her country
seat of Bentley Priory, in the fifty-eighth year of her age. Her will,
which reflected her genuine modesty and humility, requested that she
should be conveyed to the grave "without any pomp or state;" that she
should have as private a funeral as was consistent with her rank;
that her coffin should be "carried by sailors to the chapel;" that,
finally, she should give as little trouble as possible.
The Queen-Dowager's wishes were strictly adhered to. There was no
embalming, lying in State, or torchlight procession. The funeral
started from the Priory at eight o'clock on a winter morning, and
reached Windsor an hour after noon. There was every token of respect
and affection, but an entire absence of show and ostentation. Nobody
was admitted to St. George's Chapel except the mourners and those
officially connected with the funeral. Few even of the Knights of the
Garter were present. Among the few was the old Duke of Wellington,
sitting silent and sad; Prince Albert and the Duke of Cambridge also
occupied their stalls. The Duchess of Kent and the Duchess of
Cambridge, with the Duchess of Saxe-Weimar and two Princesses of Saxe-
Weimar, the late Queen's sister and nieces, were in the Queen's
closet.
The Archbishop of Canterbury officiated. Ten sailors of the Royal Navy
"gently propelled" the platform on which the coffin was placed to the
mouth of the vault. Among the supporters of the pall were Lord
Adolphus and Lord Frederick Fitzclarence. The chief mourner was the
Duchess of Norfolk. Prince George of Cambridge and Prince Edward and
Prince Gustaf of Saxe-Weimar, nephews of the late Queen, followed.
Then came the gentlemen and ladies of her household. All the gentlemen
taking part in the funeral were in plain black with black scarfs; each
lady had a large black veil over her head.
After the usual psalms and lessons, Handel's anthem, "Her body is
buried in peace," was sung. The black velvet pall was removed and the
crown placed on the coffin, which, at the appropriate time in the
service, was lowered to the side of King William's coffin. Sir Charles
Young, King-at-Arms, proclaimed the rank and titles of the deceased.
The late Queen's chamberlain and vice-chamberlain broke their staves
of office amidst profound silence, and kneeling, deposited them upon
the coffin. The organ played the "Dead March in Saul," and the company
retired.
Long years after Queen Adelaide had lain in her grave, the publication
of an old diary revived some foul-mouthed slanders, which no one is
too pure to escape. But the coarse malice and gross falsehood of the
accusations were so evident, that their sole result was to rebound
with fatal effect on the memory of the man who retailed them.
CHAPTER XIV.
PREPARATION FOR THE EXHIBITION--BIRTH OF THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT--THE
BLOW DEALT BY FATE--FOREIGN TROUBLES--ENGLISH ART.
The first great public meeting in the interest of the Exhibition was
held in London in the February of this year, and on the 21st of March
a banquet was given at the Mansion House to promote the same cause.
Prince Albert was present, with the ministers and foreign ambassadors;
and the mayors and provosts of all the principal towns in the United
Kingdom were also among the guests. The Prince delivered an admirable
speech to explain his view of the Exhibition.
It was at this time that the Duke of Wellington made the gratifying
proposal that the Prince should succeed him as Commander-in-chief of
the army, urging the suggestion by every argument in his power, and
offering to supply the Prince with all the information and guidance
which the old soldier's experience could command. After some quiet
consideration the Prince declined the proposal, chiefly on the ground
that the many claims which the high office would necessarily make on
his time and attention, must interfere with his other and still more
binding duties to the Queen and the country.
On May-day, 1850, her Majesty's third son and seventh child was born.
The Prince, in announcing the event to the Dowager-Duchess of Coburg,
says: "The little boy was received by his sisters with _jubilates_. 'Now
we are just as many as the days of the week,' was the cry, and then a
bit of a struggle arose as to who was to be Sunday. Out of well-bred
courtesy the honour was conceded to the new-comer."
The circumstance that the 1st of May was the birthday of the Duke of
Wellington determined the child's name, and perhaps, in a measure, his
future profession. The Queen and the Prince were both so pleased to
show this crowning mark of friendship from a sovereign to a subject,
that they did not allow the day to pass without intimating their
intention to the Duke. "It is a singular thing," the Queen wrote to
Baron Stockmar, "that this so much wished-for boy should be born on
the old Duke's eighty-first birthday. May that, and his beloved
father's name, bring the poor little infant happiness and good
fortune!"
An amusing episode of the Queen's visit to Ireland had been the
passionate appeal of an old Irishwoman, "Och, Queen, dear! make one of
them Prince Patrick, and all Ireland will die for you!" Whether or not
her Majesty remembered the fervent request, Prince Arthur had Patrick
for one of his names, certainly in memory of Ireland, and William for
another, partly in honour of one of his godfathers--the present
Emperor of Germany--and partly because it would have pleased Queen
Adelaide, whose sister, Duchess Ida of Saxe-Weimar, was godmother.
Prince Albert's name wound up the others. The child was baptized on
the 22nd of June at Buckingham Palace. The two godfathers were
present; so were the Duchesses of Kent and Cambridge (the Duke of
Cambridge lay ill), Prince George and Princess Mary of Cambridge, the
Prince of Leiningen, and Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the ministers
and foreign ambassadors. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of
London and Oxford, &c. &c., officiated. Prince Albert's chorale, "In
life's gay morn," was performed again. After the christening there was
a State banquet in the picture gallery. Prince Arthur was the finest
of all the Queen's babies, and the royal nurseries still retain
memories of his childish graces.
Before the ceremony of the christening, and within a month of the
birth of her child, her Majesty was subjected to one of the most
wanton and cowardly of all the attacks which half-crazed brains
prompted their owners to make upon her person. She had driven out
about six o'clock in the evening, with her children and Lady Jocelyn,
to inquire for her uncle, the Duke of Cambridge, who was suffering
from his last illness. While she was within the gates of Cambridge
House, a tall, gentlemanlike man loitered at the entrance, as it
appeared with the by no means uncommon wish to see the Queen. But when
her carriage drove out, while it was leisurely turning the corner into
the road, the man started forward, and, with a small stick which he
held, struck the Queen a sharp blow on the face, crushing the bonnet
she wore, and inflicting a severe bruise and slight wound on the
forehead. The fellow was instantly seized and the stick wrested from
his grasp, while he was conveyed to the nearest police-station.
The Queen drove home, and was able to show herself the same evening at
the Opera, where she was received with the singing of the National
Anthem and great cheering.
The offender was neither a boy nor of humble rank. He proved to be a
man of thirty--a gentleman by birth and education.
The Prince wrote of the miserable occurrence to Baron Stockmar that
its perpetrator was a dandy "whom you must often have seen in the
Park, where he has made himself conspicuous. He maintains the closest
silence as to his motives, but is manifestly deranged. All this does
not help to make one cheerful."
The man was the son of a gentleman named Pate, of wealth and position,
who had acted as sheriff of Cambridgeshire. The son had had a
commission in the army, from which he had been requested to retire, on
account of an amount of eccentricity that had led at least to one
serious breach of discipline. He could give no reason for his conduct
beyond making the statement that he had acted on a sudden
uncontrollable impulse. He was tried in the following July. The jury
refused to accept the plea of insanity, and he was sentenced, like his
predecessor, to seven years' transportation.
At the date of the attack the minds of the Queen and the Prince, and
indeed of a large portion of the civilised world, were much occupied
with a serious foreign embroilment into which the Government had been
drawn by what many people considered the restless and interfering
policy of Lord Palmerston, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
He had gone so far as to send a fleet into Greek waters for the
protection of two British subjects claiming assistance, and in the act
he had offended France and Russia.
Much political excitement was aroused, and there were keen and
protracted debates in both Houses of Parliament. In the House of Lords
something like a vote of censure of the foreign policy of the
Government was moved and carried. In the House of Commons the debate
lasted five nights, and the fine speech in which Lord Palmerston, a
man in his sixty-sixth year, defended his policy, was continued "from
the dusk of one day to the dawn of the next."
Apart from these troubles abroad, the country, on the whole, was in a
prosperous and satisfactory condition. Trade was flourishing. Neither
had literature fallen behind. Perhaps it had rarely shown a more
brilliant galaxy of contemporary names, including those of John Stuart
Mill in logic, Herbert Spencer in philosophy, Charles Darwin in
natural science, Ruskin in art criticism, Helps as an essayist. And in
this year Tennyson brought out his "In Memoriam," and Kingsley his
"Alton Lock". It seemed but natural that the earlier lights should be
dying out before the later; that Lord Jeffrey, the old king of
critics, should pass beyond the sound of reviews; and Wordsworth,
after this spring, be seen no more among the Cumberland hills and
dales; and Jane Porter, whose innocent high-flown romances had been
the delight of the young reading world more than fifty years before,
should end her days, a cheerful old lady, in the prosaic town of
Bristol.
In the Academy's annual exhibition the same old names of Landseer
(with his popular picture of the Duke of Wellington showing his
daughter-in-law, Lady Douro, the field of Waterloo), Maclise,
Mulready, Stanfield, &c. &c., came still to the front. But
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