Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen Volume I Part 18

CHAPTER XVIII.

ALLIES FROM AFAR.--DEATH AND ABSENCE.--BIRTHDAY GREETINGS.

Lady Bloomfield describes a set of visitors at Windsor this year such as have not infrequently come a long way to pay their homage to the Queen, and to see for themselves the wonders of civilisation. The party consisted of five Indian chiefs, two squaws, a little girl, and a half-breed, accompanied by Mr. Catlin as interpreter. The Queen received the strangers in the Waterloo Gallery. The elder chief made a speech with all the dignity and self-confidence of his race. It was to the effect that he was much pleased the Great Spirit had permitted him to cross the large lake (the Atlantic) in safety. They had wished to see their great mother, the Queen. England was the light of the world; its rays illuminated all nations, and reached even to their country. They found it much larger than they expected, and the buildings were finer than theirs, and the wigwam (Windsor Castle) was very grand, and they were pleased to see it.

Nevertheless, they should return to their own country and be quite happy and contented. They thanked the Great Spirit they had enough to eat and drink. They thought the people in England must be very rich, and they looked pleased and happy. They (the Chippewas) had served under the English sovereigns and had fought their battles. He--the chief--had served under ----, the greatest chief that had ever existed or had ever been known. He had been on the field of battle when his general was killed and had helped to bury him. He had received kindness from the English nation, for which he thanked them; their wigwams at home had been made comfortable with English goods. He had nothing more to say. He had finished.

These Indians had their faces tattooed and were clad in skins, with large bunches of feathers on their heads. The men were armed with tomahawks, clubs, wooden swords, bows, and spears. The women were in the height of squaw-fashion, with long black hair, dresses reaching to their feet, and quant.i.ties of coloured beads. Two war-dances were danced before the Queen, one of the chiefs playing a sort of drum, the music being a.s.sisted by shrieks and cries and the shaking of a rattle. The dance began by the dancers quivering in every joint, then pa.s.sed into a slow movement, which ended in violent action.

Such an interlude was welcome in the necessary monotony of Court life to those who do not penetrate into its inmost circle. Lady Bloomfield writes, "Everything else changes; the life at Court never does; it is exactly the same from day to day and year to year." And she records, as an agreeable diversion from the set routine, the mistake of one of the pages, by which an equerry-in-waiting, in the absence of another official, received a wrong order about dinner. When the Queen dines in private there is a purely Household dinner in the room appointed for the purpose. In those days the Queen rarely dined two days consecutively in private, so that her suite were surprised by the announcement that there were to be two Household dinners--the one after the other. The ladies and gentlemen sat down together in the Oak Room at eight o'clock, and had finished their soup and fish, when a message came from the Queen to know who had given the order that they were to dine without her. The company stared blankly at each other, finished their dinner with what appet.i.te they might, and adjourned to the drawing-room, when they were told that her Majesty was coming. One can fancy the consternation of the courtiers, who were "only in plain evening coats," instead of Windsor uniform. Happily it occurred to the defaulters that it would be but right to antic.i.p.ate her Majesty, so that all rushed off to the corridor to meet the Queen and the Prince, who were much amused by the blunder.

There is a pleasant little picture of the young family at Windsor in one of the Prince's letters this winter: "The children, in whose welfare you take so kindly an interest, are making most favourable progress. The eldest, "p.u.s.s.y" (the Princess Royal at three years of age), is now quite a little personage. She speaks English and French with great fluency and choice of phrase.... The little gentleman (the Prince of Wales) is grown much stronger than he was.... The youngest (Princess Alice) is the beauty of the family, and is an extraordinarily good and merry child."

January, 1844, brought a severe trial to Prince Albert, and through him to the Queen, in the sudden though not quite unexpected death of his father at Gotha, at the comparatively early age of sixty years. Father and son were much attached to each other, they had been parted for nearly four years since the Prince's marriage, and the early meeting to which they had been looking forward was denied to them.

The Queen wrote to Baron Stockmar, in the beginning of February, "Oh, if you could be here now with us: My darling stands so alone, and his grief is so great and touching.... He says (forgive my bad writing, but my tears blind me) _I_ am now _all_ to him. Oh, if I can be, I shall be only too happy; but I am so disturbed and affected myself, I fear I can be but of little use."

"I have been with the Queen a good deal, altogether,"--Lady Lyttelton refers to this time; "she is very affecting in her grief, which is in truth all on the Prince's account; and every time she looks at him her eyes fill afresh. He has suffered dreadfully, being very fond of his father, and his separation from him and the suddenness of the event, and his having expected to see him soon, all contribute to make him worse."

The Prince himself wrote to his trusty friend, "G.o.d will give us all strength to bear the blow becomingly. That we were separated gives it a peculiar poignancy; not to see him, not to be present to close his eyes, not to help to comfort those he leaves behind, and to be comforted by them is very hard. Here we sit together, poor Mama (the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent, the late Duke of Coburg's sister), Victoria and myself, and weep, with a great cold public around us, insensible as stone."

The Prince had one source of consolation, that of a good son who had never caused his father pain. He had another strong solace in the reality and worth of the new ties which were replacing the old, both in his own case and in that of his brother. "The good Alexandrine," Prince Albert remarked, referring to his sister-in-law, "seems to me in the whole picture like the consoling angel." Then he goes on, "Just so is Victoria to me, who feels and shares my grief and is the treasure on which my whole existence rests. The relation in which we stand to each other leaves nothing to desire. It is a union of heart and soul, and is therefore n.o.ble; and in it the poor children shall find their cradle, so as to be able one day to ensure a like happiness for themselves."

Lady Lyttelton describes a sermon which Archdeacon Wilberforce preached at Windsor at this season, February, 1844. "Just before church time the Queen told me that Archdeacon Wilberforce was going to preach, so I had my treat most unexpectedly, mercifully I could call it, for the sermon, expressed in his usual golden sweetness of language, was peculiarly practical and useful to myself--I mean, ought to be. 'Hold thee still in the Lord and abide patiently upon him,' was the text, and the peace, trust and rest which breathed in every sentence, ought to do something to a.s.suage any and every _worret_, temporal and spiritual. There were some beautiful pa.s.sages on looking forward into 'the misty future,' and its misery to a worldly view, and the contrary. The whole was rather the more striking from its seeming to come down so gently upon the emblems of earthly sorrow (referring to the mourning for Prince Albert's father), we are in such 'a boundless contiguity of shade.' There was a beautiful pa.s.sage--I wish you could have heard it, because you could write it out--about growth in grace being greatest when mind and heart are at rest, and in stillness like the first shoot of spring which is not forwarded by the storm or hurricane, but by the silent dews of early dawn; another upon the melancholy of human life, 'most beautiful because most true.'"

It was judged desirable that the Prince should go to Germany for a fortnight at Easter. It was his first separation from the Queen since their marriage, and both felt it keenly. Lady Lyttelton wrote of her Majesty on the occasion: "The Queen has been behaving like a pattern wife as she is, about the Prince's tour; so feeling and so wretched and yet so unselfish; encouraging him to go, and putting the best face on it to the last moment.... We all feel sadly wicked and unnatural in his absence, and I am actually counting the days on my part as her Majesty is on hers,"

adds the kindly, sympathetic woman. The Queen of the Belgians,--and later, King Leopold, came over to console their niece by their company during part of her solitude. But her best refreshment must have been the letters with which couriers were constantly riding to and fro, full of a lover's tenderness and a brother's care, from the first to the last; these dispatches came unfailingly. They breathed "the tender green of hope,"

like the spring which was on the land at the time.

From Dover the husband wrote: "My own darling.... I have been here about an hour and regret the lost time which I might have spent with you. Poor child, you will, while I write, be getting ready for luncheon, and you will find a place vacant where I sat yesterday; in your heart, however, I hope my place will not be vacant. I, at least, have you on board with me in spirit. I reiterate my entreaty, 'Bear up,' and do not give way to low spirits, but try to occupy yourself as much as possible; you are even now half a day nearer to seeing me again; by the time you get this letter you will be a whole one--thirteen more and I am again within your arms."

From Ostend he wrote, "I occupy your old room." From Cologne, "Your picture has been hung up everywhere, and been very prettily wreathed with laurel, so that you will look down from the walls on my _tete-a-tete_ with Bouverie" (the Prince's equerry).... "Every step takes me farther from you--not a cheerful thought." From Gotha, in the centre of his kinsfolk, he told her what delight her gifts had given, and added, "Could you have witnessed the happiness my return gave my family, you would have been amply repaid for the sacrifice of our separation. We spoke much of you." From Reinhardtsbrunn and Rosenau he sent the flowers he had gathered for her. He wrote of the toys he had got for the children, the presents he was bringing for her. At Kalenberg--one of his late father's country seats--he broke out warmly, "Oh, how lovely and friendly is this dear old country; how glad I should be to have my little wife beside me, that I might share my pleasure with her."

Coburg had grown marvellously in beauty. In company with his stepmother, brother, and sister-in-law, he went to the town church and was deeply moved by the devotional singing, and "an admirable sermon" from the pastor, who had confirmed the two brothers. Afterwards they rode together to their father's last resting-place. The Prince's biographer closes the account of this tour with a few significant words from Prince Albert's diary, in which he noted down in the briefest form the events of each day: "Crossed on the 11th. I arrived at six o'clock in the evening at Windsor. Great joy."

As a surprise for the Queen's birthday this year, the Prince had privately ordered a little picture of angels from Sir C. Eastlake, who had received a similar commission from the Queen for a picture with which she intended to greet the Prince.

A still more welcome surprise to Her Majesty was a miniature of Prince Albert in armour, according to a fancy of the Queen's, by Thorburn, a likeness which proved the best of all the portraits taken of the Prince, the most successful in catching the outward look when it expressed most characteristically the man within. This picture, together with that of the angels holding a medallion bearing the inscription "_Heil und segen_"

(Health and Blessing), and all the other presents were placed in a room "turned into a bower by dint of enormous garlands."

The Queen and the Prince's relations with artists were naturally, from the royal couple's artistic tastes, intimate and happy. Accordingly, many pictures not only of great personages in State ceremonies, but of family groups in the simplicity of domestic life, survive as a proof of the connection. Vandyck did not paint Charles I. and Henrietta Maria more frequently than Landseer and some of his contemporaries painted her Majesty, with her husband and children, in the bright and unclouded summer of her life; and Vandyck, never painted his royal patrons in such easy unaffected guise and everyday circ.u.mstances. There is such a picture of Landseer's, well known from engravings, in which the Prince is represented in a Highland dress returned late from shooting, seated, surrounded by the trophies of his sport in deer, blackc.o.c.k, &c. &c., and by a whole colony of delighted dogs,--beautiful Eos conspicuous by her sobriety and reserve, while an enraptured terrier presses forward to lick his master's hand. The Queen, dressed for dinner and still girlish-looking in her white satin, stands talking to the Prince. The Princess Royal, a chubby child of two or three, is prowling childlike among the dead game, curiously making her investigations.

Of many stories told of royal visits to studios, there are two which refer to an _enfant terrible_, the baby son of one of the painters. This small man having undertaken to be cicerone to his father's work, sought specially to point out to her Majesty that two elves were likenesses of himself and a little brother, "only, you know, we don't go about without clothes at home," he volunteered the confidential explanation.

The same child horrified an attentive audience by declining to receive a gracious advance made to him by the Queen, a.s.serting with the utmost candour, "I don't like you."

"But why don't you like me, my boy?" inquired the loving mother of other little children, in some bewilderment.

"Because you are the Queen of England and you killed Queen Mary," the ardent champion of the slain Queen answered boldly.

The story goes on, that after a little laughter at the anachronism, Her Majesty took some trouble to explain to the malcontent that he was wrong, she did not kill Queen Mary, she had been very sorry for her fate. So far from killing her, she, Queen Victoria, was one of Queen Mary's descendants, and it was because she came of the old Stewart line that she reigned over both England and Scotland.

CHAPTER XIX.

ROYAL VISITORS.--THE BIRTH OP PRINCE ALFRED.--A NORTHERN RETREAT.

The year 1844 may be instanced as rich in royal visitors to England. On the 1st of June the King of Saxony arrived and shortly after him a greater lion, the Emperor of Russia. The King of Saxony came as an honest friend and sightseer, entering heartily into the obligations of the latter. There was more doubt as to the motives of the Czar of all the Russias, and considerable wariness was needed in dealing with the northern eagle, whose real object might be, if not to use his beak and claws on the English nation, to employ them on some other nation after he had got an a.s.surance that England would not interfere with his game. Indeed, jealousy of the French, and of the friendship between the Queen and Louis Philippe, was at the bottom of the Emperor's sudden appearance on the scene.

The Emperor had paid England a previous visit so far back as 1816, in the days of George, Prince Regent, when Prince Leopold and Princess Charlotte were the young couple at Claremont. He had then won much admiration and popularity by his strikingly handsome person, stately politeness, and gallant devotion to the English ladies who caught his fancy. He was still a handsome man--over six feet, with regular features, remarkable eyes, and bushy moustaches. He wore on his arrival a cloth cloak lined with costly fur, and a kind of cap which looked like a turban--rather a telling costume.

But time and the man's life and character had stamped themselves on what had once been a goodly mould. There was something oppressive in his elaborate politeness. There was a glare, not far removed from ferocity, in the great grey eyes, so little shaded by their lids and light eyelashes that occasionally a portion of the white eyeball above the iris was revealed, and there was an intangible brooding melancholy about the autocrat whose will was still law to millions of his fellow-creatures.

The Queen received her distinguished guest in the great hall at Buckingham Palace Shortly afterwards there was a _dejeuner_, at which some of the Emperor's old acquaintances in the royal family and out of it, met him--the d.u.c.h.ess of Gloucester, the Princess Sophia, the Duke of Cambridge, the Duke of Wellington, &c. &c. In the evening there was a banquet.

The Emperor followed the Queen to Windsor, where, amidst the gaieties of the Ascot week, he was royally entertained. Two visits were paid to the racecourse, with which the new-comer a.s.sociated his name by founding the five hundred pounds prize. There was a grand review in Windsor Park, at which both the Emperor of Russia and the King of Saxony were present, as well as Her Majesty and Prince Albert and the royal children. The Emperor in a uniform of green and red, the King of Saxony in a uniform of blue and gold, and Prince Albert in a field-marshal's uniform--all the three wearing the insignia of the Garter--were the observed of all observers in the martial crowd. The only incidents of the day which struck Lady Lyttelton were "the very fine cheer on the old Duke of Wellington pa.s.sing the Queen's carriage, and the really beautiful salute of Prince Albert, who rode by at the head of his regiment, and of course lowered his sword in full military form to the Queen, with _such_ a look and smile as he did it! I never saw so many pretty feelings expressed in a minute."

On the return of the Court with its guests to Buckingham Palace, the Emperor went with Prince Albert to a fete at Chiswick, given by the Duke of Devonshire, and attended by seven or eight hundred n.o.ble guests. The Czar returned from it loud in the praise of the beauty of English women, while staunchly faithful to the belles he had admired twenty-eight years before. The same evening he accompanied the Queen to the opera, when she took his hand and made him stand with her in the front of the box, that the brilliant a.s.semblage might see and welcome him.

The Emperor was an adept at saying courteous things. He remarked to the Queen, of Windsor, which he greatly admired, "It is worthy of you, Madame." He wished Prince Albert were his son. When the hour of leave-taking came he found the Queen in the small drawing-room with her children. He declared with emotion that he might at all times be relied upon as her most devoted servant, and prayed G.o.d to bless her. He kissed her hand and she kissed him; he embraced and blessed the children. He besought her to go no farther with him. "I will throw myself at your knees; pray let me lead you to your room." "But," wrote the Queen, "of course I would not consent, and took his arm to go to the hall.... At the top of the few steps leading to the lower hall he again took most kindly leave, and his voice betrayed his emotion. He kissed my hand and we embraced. When I saw him at the door I went down the steps, and from the carriage he begged I would not stand there; but I did, and saw him drive off with Albert to Woolwich."

The Emperor was rather suspiciously fond of declaring, "I mean what I say, and what I promise I will perform." Some of his speeches were emphatic enough. "I esteem England highly, but as for what the French say of me I care not; I spit upon it." He felt awkward in evening dress; he was so accustomed to wear military uniform that without it he said he felt as if they had taken off his skin. To humour him, uniform was worn every evening at Windsor during his stay. Among his camp habits was one which he had formed in his youth and kept up to the last: it was that of sleeping every night on clean straw stuffed into a leathern case. The first thing his valets did on being shown their master's bedroom in Windsor Castle was to send out for a truss of straw for the Emperor's bed. The last thing got for him at Woolwich was the same simple stuffing for his rude mattress.

On the 15th of June, 1844, Thomas Campbell, author of the "Pleasures of Hope," "Ye Mariners of England," &c., died at Boulogne at the age of sixty-seven. Although he had not quite reached the threescore and ten, the span of man's life on earth, he had long survived the authors, Scott, Byron, &c., with whom his name is linked. He was one of many well-known men in very different spheres who pa.s.sed away in 1844. Sir Augustus Callcott, the painter; Crockford with his house of Turf celebrity; Beckford, the eccentric author of "Vathek," and the owner of the art-treasures of Fonthill; Lord Sidmouth, the well-known statesman of the "Addington Administration;" Sir Francis Burdett, who in recent times was lodged in the Tower under a charge of high treason.

In the same year an attempt was made to honour the memory of a greater poet than Thomas Campbell, one whose worldly reward had not been great, whose history ended in a grievous tragedy. The Scotchmen of the day seized the opportunity of the return of two of Robert Burns's sons from military service in India to give them a welcome home which should do something to atone for any neglect and injustice that had befallen their father. The festival was not altogether successful, as such festivals rarely are, but it excited considerable enthusiasm in the poet's native country, especially in his county of Ayrshire. And when the lord of the Castle of Montgomery presided over the tribute to the sons of the ploughman who had "shorn the harvest" with his Highland Mary on the Eglinton "lea-riggs,"

and Christopher North made the speech of the day, the demonstration could not be considered an entire failure.

Scotch hearts warmed to the belief that the Queen understood and admired Burns's poetry, and proud reference was made to the circ.u.mstance that during one of her Highland excursions she applied the famous descriptive pa.s.sage in the "Birks of Aberfeldy" to the scene before her:

The braes ascend like lofty wa'e, The foamy stream deep roaring fa's, O'erhung with fragrant spreading shaws, The birks of Aberfeldy.

The h.o.a.ry cliffs are crown'd wi' flowers, White o'er the linn the burnie pours, And rising, weets wi' misty showers The birks of Aberfeldy.

This summer, brown Queen Pomare, and the affairs of far-off Tahiti, had a strange, inordinate amount of attention from the English public. French interference in the island, the imprisonment of an English consul and Protestant missionary, roused the British lion. The dusky island-queen claimed the help of her English allies, and till Louis Philippe and M.

Guizot disowned the policy which had been practised by their representatives in the South Seas, there was actually fear of war between England and France, in spite of the friendly visit to Chateau d'Eu.

Happily the King and his minister made, or appeared to make, reparation as well as explanation, and the danger blew over.

On the 31st of July, down at Windsor a humble but affectionately loved friend died. Prince Albert's greyhound Eos--his companion from his fourteenth to his twenty-fifth year, his _avant courier_ when he came as a bridegroom to claim his bride--was found dead, without previous symptom of illness. She lies buried on the top of the bank above the Slopes, and a bronze model of her marks the spot.

On the 6th of August the Queen's second son was born at Windsor Castle.

The Prince of Prussia (the present Emperor of Germany), the third royal visitor this year, came over in time for the christening, when the little prince received the name of the great Saxon King of England, Alfred, together with the names of his uncle, Ernest, and his father, Albert. The G.o.dfathers were Prince George of Cambridge, the Queen's cousin, represented by his father; and the Prince of Leiningen, the Queen's brother, represented by the Duke of Wellington; while the G.o.dmother was the Queen and Prince Albert's sister-in-law, the d.u.c.h.ess of Coburg-Gotha, represented by the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent. "To see these two children there too,"

the Queen wrote of the Princess Royal and the Prince of Wales, "seems such a dream to me ... May G.o.d bless them all, poor little things." The engraving represents the sailor-Prince in his childhood.

A tour in Ireland had been projected for the Queen's holiday, but the excitement in the country consequent on the liberation of O'Connell and his companions rendered the time and place unpropitious for a royal visit, so it was decided that Her Majesty should go again to Scotland. On this occasion the Queen and the Prince took their little four-year-old daughter with them. The route was not quite the same as formerly. The party went by a shorter way to the Highlands, the yacht sailing to Dundee, the great manufacturing city so fortunate in its situation, where the rushing Tay calms and broadens into a wide Frith, with a background of green hills and a foreground of the pleasantly broken sh.o.r.es of Forfar and Fife. The trades held high holiday, and gave the Queen a jubilant welcome, the air ringing with shouts of gladness as she landed from the yacht, leaning on Prince Albert's arm, while he led by the hand the small daughter who reminded the Queen so vividly of herself--as the little Princess of past years.

The Queen, escorted by the Scots Greys, proceeded by Cupar Angus to Dunkeld, stopping at one of the hotels to get "some broth for the child,"

who proved an excellent traveller, sleeping in her carriage at her usual hours, not put out or frightened at noise or crowds--an excellent thing in a future empress--standing bowing to the people from the windows like a great lady.