Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen Volume II Part 15

The Queen dwells not only on the kindness but on the quietness of the Emperor as a particular "comfort" on such an occasion.

_Les Demoiselles de St. Cyr_ was acted in the evening. In the Salle de Mars all the company pa.s.sed before the Queen, the Empress presenting each in turn. The Emperor and Empress, preceded by their gentlemen, always took the Queen and the Prince to their rooms.

On, Tuesday Versailles was the visitors' destination. They went in many carriages. Troops and national guards, and especially gendarmes, were to be seen everywhere. The gardens and the fountains, with throngs of company, were much admired.

The Queen visited the two Trianons. At the larger the Emperor showed her the room and bed provided for her, in the expectation of her visiting Paris, by "poor Louis Philippe;" Madame Maintenon's sedan- chair, by which Louis XIV. was wont to walk; and the little chapel in which "poor Marie (Louis Philippe's daughter) was married to Alexander of Wurtemberg in 1838," two years before the Queen's marriage.

At Little Trianon the Empress (who had a pa.s.sion for every relic of Marie Antoinette) joined the party, and luncheon was eaten in one of the cottages where princes and n.o.bles were wont to play at being peasants.

In the evening the Emperor, with his guests, paid a State visit to the opera-house in the Rue Lepelletier. Part of the performance was a representation of Windsor Castle, with the Emperor's reception there, when "G.o.d save the Queen" was splendidly sung, and received with acclamation. The Emperor's happy animation, in contrast to his usual impa.s.siveness, was remarked by the audience.

Wednesday's visit, in the continuously fine August weather, was to the French Exhibition, which the Queen and the Prince were so well calculated to appreciate. They rejoiced in the excellent manner in which England was represented, particularly in pottery. The specially French productions of Sevres, Goblins, and Beauvais were carefully studied. The Queen also examined the French Crown jewels, the crown bearing the renowned Regent diamond, which, though less large than the Koh-i-noor, is more brilliant. The Emperor presented the Prince with a magnificent Sevres vase, a souvenir of the Exhibition of 1851. The Tuileries was visited, and luncheon taken there in rooms containing pictures and busts or Napoleon I., Josephine, &c., &c. The Queen received the Prefect and consented to attend the ball to be given in her honour.

After a visit to the British Emba.s.sy, the Queen and the Prince, with the Princess Royal and one of the ladies of the suite, took a drive incognito through Paris, which they enjoyed exceedingly. They went in an ordinary _remise_, the three ladies wearing common bonnets and mantillas, and her Majesty having a black veil over her face.

On Thursday morning the Queen rested, walking about the gardens with her young daughter, and sketching the Zouaves at the gate. The afternoon was spent at the Louvre, where the Queen mentions the heat as "tropical."

After dinner at the Tuileries, the party stood laughing together at an old-fashioned imperial cafetiere which would not let down the coffee, listening to the music, the carriages, and the people in the distance, and talking of past times; as how could people fail to talk at the Tuileries! The Emperor spoke of having known Madame Campan (to whose school his mother was sent for a time), and repeated some of the old court dresser's anecdotes of Marie Antoinette and the Great Revolution.

In her Majesty's full dress for the ball given to her by the City of Paris, she wore a diadem in which the Koh-i-noor was set. Through the illuminated, crammed streets, the Queen proceeded to the Hotel de Ville, and entered among flags, flowers, and statues, "like the Arabian Nights," the Emperor said.

The royal visitors occupied chairs on a dais. One quadrille and one valse were danced, the Emperor being the Queen's partner, while Prince Albert danced with Princess Mathilde (the Empress was in delicate health); Prince Napoleon and Madame Haussman (the wife of the Prefect of the Seine), and Prince Adalbert of Bavaria and Lady Cowley (wife of the English amba.s.sador) completing the set.

Several Arabs in long white burnouses were among the guests, and kissed the hands of the Queen and the Emperor. Her Majesty made the tour of the stately suite of rooms, lingering in the one in which "Robespierre was wounded, Louis Philippe proclaimed, and from the windows of which Lamartine spoke for so many hours in 1848."

On Friday there was a second visit to the Exhibition, and in the afternoon a grand review of troops in the Champ de Mars, which the Queen admired much, regretting that she had not been on horseback, though the day was not fine. From the Champ de Mars the visitors drove to the Hotel des Invalides, and there occurred the most striking scene in the memorable visit, of which the pa.s.sages from the Queen's journal in the "Life of the Prince Consort," give so many graphic, interesting details. Pa.s.sing between rows of French veterans, the Queen and the Prince went to look by torchlight at the great tomb, in which, however, all that was mortal of Napoleon I. had not yet been laid. The coffin still rested in a side chapel, to which her Majesty was taken by the Emperor. The coffin was covered with black velvet and gold, and the orders, hat, and sword of "le Pet.i.t Caporal" were placed at the foot. The Queen descended for a few minutes into the vault, the air of which struck cold on the living within its walls.

The Emperor took his guests in the evening to the Opera Comique. It was not a State visit, but "G.o.d save the Queen" was sung, and her Majesty had to show herself in front of the Emperor's private box. On Sat.u.r.day the royal party went to the forest of St. Germain's, and a halt was made at the hunting-lodge of La Muette. The _Grand Veneur_ and his officials in their hunting-dress of dark-green velvet, red waistcoats, high boots, and c.o.c.ked hats, received the company. The dogs were exhibited, and a _fanfare_ sounded on the huntsmen's horns.

The strangers repaired to the old palace of St. Germain's, where her Majesty saw the suite of rooms which had served as a home for her unhappy kinsman, James II. It is said she went also to his tomb, and stood by it in thoughtful silence for a few minutes. On the return drive to St. Cloud detours were made to Malmaison, where the Emperor remembered to have seen his grandmother, the Empress Josephine, and to the fortress of St. Valerien.

The same night there was a State ball at Versailles. At the top of the grand staircase stood the Empress--"like a fairy queen or nymph," her Majesty writes, "in a white dress trimmed with bunches of gra.s.s and diamonds, ..." wearing her Spanish and Portuguese orders. The enamoured Emperor exclaimed in the hearing of his guests, "Comme tu es belle!" (how beautiful you are!) The long Galerie de Glaces, full of people, was blazing with light, and had wreaths of flowers hanging from the ceiling. From the windows the illuminated trellis was seen reflected in the splashing water of the fountains. The balconies commanded a view of the magnificent fireworks, among which Windsor Castle was represented in lines of light.

The Queen danced two quadrilles, with the Emperor and Prince Napoleon, Prince Albert dancing with Princess Mathilde and the Princess of Augustenburg. Among the guests presented to her Majesty was Count Bismarck, Prussian Minister at Frankfort.

The Queen waltzed with the Emperor, and then repaired to the famous Oeil-de-Boeuf, hung with Beauvais tapestry. After the company had gone to supper, the Queen and the Emperor's procession was formed, and headed by guards, officers, &c. &c, they pa.s.sed to the theatre, where supper was served. The whole stage was covered in, and four hundred people sat in groups of ten, each presided over by a lady, at forty small tables. Innumerable chandeliers and garlands of flowers made the scene still gayer. The boxes were full of spectators, and an invisible band was playing. The Queen and Prince Albert, with their son and daughter, the Emperor and the Empress, Prince Napoleon, Princess Mathilde, and Prince Adalbert of Bavaria, sat at a small table in the central box. Her Majesty seems to have been much struck with this Versailles ball, which was designed and arranged by the Empress from a plate of the time of Louis XV. It was said there had been no ball at Versailles since the time of Louis XVI. The last must have been the ball in the Orangery, on the night that the Bastille fell.

Sunday was Prince Albert's birthday, which was not forgotten among these brilliant doings. Loving hands laid out the flower-decorated table with its gifts. At luncheon the Emperor presented the Prince with a picture by Meissonier. The Empress gave a _pokal_, or mounted cup, carved in ivory. During a quiet drive with the Emperor through the park in the morning, the Queen, with her characteristic sincerity, courageously approached a topic which was a burden on her mind, on which Baron Stockmar had long advised her to act as she was prepared to do. She spoke of her intercourse with the Orleans family, on which the French amba.s.sador in London had laid stress as likely to displease the Emperor. She said they were her friends and relations, and that she could not drop them in their adversity, but that politics were never touched upon between her and them. He professed himself perfectly satisfied, and sought in his turn to explain his conduct in the confiscation and forced sale of the Orleans property.

The English Church service was read in a room at St. Cloud as before.

In the afternoon the Emperor took his guests to the memorial Chapelle de St. Ferdinand, erected on the spot where the late Duc d'Orleans was killed.

On Monday, the 27th of August, the Queen wrote in her diary her deep grat.i.tude for "these eight happy days, for the delight of seeing such beautiful and interesting places and objects," and for the reception she had met with in Paris and France. The Emperor arrived to say the Empress was ready, but could not bring herself to face the parting, and that if the Queen would go to her room it would make her come.

"When we went in," writes her Majesty, "the Emperor called her: 'Eugenie, here is the Queen,' and she came," adds her Majesty, "and gave me a beautiful fan, and a rose and heliotrope from the garden, and Vicky a beautiful bracelet, set with rubies and diamonds, containing her hair...."

The morning was beautiful as the travellers, accompanied by the Emperor and Empress, drove for the last time through the town of St.

Cloud, with its Zouaves and wounded soldiers from the Crimea, under the Arc de Triomphe, where the ashes of the great Napoleon had pa.s.sed, to Paris and the Tuileries. There was talk of future meetings at Windsor and Fontainbleau. (And now of the places which the Queen admired so much, St. Cloud and the Tuileries are in ruins like Neuilly, while the Hotel de Ville has perished by the hands of its own children.) Leave was taken of the Empress not without emotion;

At the Strasbourg railway station the Ministers and munic.i.p.al authorities were in attendance, and the cordiality was equal to the respect shown by all.

Boulogne, to which the Emperor accompanied his guests, was reached between five and six in the afternoon. There was a review of thirty- six thousand infantry, besides cavalry, on the sands. The Queen describes the beautiful effect of the background of calm, blue sea, while "the glorious crimson light" of the setting sun was gilding the thousands of bayonets, lances, &c. It was the spot where Napoleon I.

inspected the army with which he was prepared to invade England; while Nelson's fleet, which held him in check, occupied the anchorage where the Queen's squadron lay. Before embarking, her Majesty and Prince Albert drove to the French camps in the neighbourhood.

At last, when it was only an hour from midnight, in splendid moonlight, through a town blazing with fireworks and illuminations, with bands playing, soldiers saluting, and a great crowd cheering as if it was noonday, the Queen and the Prince returned to their yacht, accompanied by the Emperor. As if loth to leave them, he proposed to go with them a little way. The parting moment came, the Queen and the Emperor embraced, and he shook hands warmly with the Prince, the Prince of Wales, and the Princess Royal. Again at the side of the vessel, her Majesty pressed her late host's hand, and embraced him with an, "Adieu, sire." As he saw her looking over the side of the ship and watching his barge, he called out, "Adieu, Madame, au revoir," to which the Queen answered, "Je l'espere bien."

On the 6th of September the Court went to Scotland, staying a night at Holyrood, as usual in those years. On the Queen's arrival she drove through the old castle of Balmoral, the new house being habitable, though much of the building was still unfinished. An old shoe was thrown after her Majesty, Scotch fashion, for luck, as she entered the northern home, where everything charmed her.

On the 10th of September the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent, who was staying at Abergeldie, dined with the Queen. At half-past ten despatches arrived for her Majesty and Lord Granville, the Cabinet Minister in attendance. The Queen began reading hers, which was from Lord Clarendon, with news of the destruction of Russian ships. Lord Granville said, "I have still better news," on which he read, "'From General Simpson. Sebastopol is in the hands of the allies.'" "G.o.d be praised for it," adds the Queen.

Great was the rejoicing. Prince Albert determined to go up Craig Gowan and light the bonfire which had been ready the year before, had been blown down on the day of the battle of Inkermann, and was at last only waiting to be lit. All the gentlemen, in every species of attire, all the servants, and gradually the whole population of the little village, keepers and gillies, were aroused and started, in the autumn night, for the summit of the hill. The happy Queen watched from below the blazing light above. Numerous figures surrounded it, "some dancing, all shouting; Ross (the Queen's piper) playing his pipes (surely the most exultant of pibrochs), and Grant and Macdonald firing off guns continually," the late Sir E. Gordon's old Alsatian servant striving to add his French contribution to the festivities by lighting squibs, half of which would not go off. When Prince Albert returned he described the health-drinking in whiskey as wild and exciting.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

BETROTHAL OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL--QUEEN'S SPEECH TO THE SOLDIERS RETURNED FROM THE CRIMEA--BALMORAL.

An event of great importance to the Queen and her family was now impending. A proposal of marriage for the Princess Royal--still only fifteen years of age--had been made by the Prince of Prussia, the heir of the childless king, in the name of the Prince's only son, Prince Frederick William, a young man of four-and-twenty, nearly ten years the Princess's senior. From the friendship which had long existed between the Queen and the Prince and the Princess of Prussia, their son was well-known and much liked in the English royal family, and the youthful Princess Royal was favourably inclined to him. The proposal was graciously received, on certain conditions. Of course the marriage of the young Princess could not take place for some time. She had not even been confirmed. She ought to be allowed to know her mind fully.

The couple must become better acquainted. It was agreed at first that nothing should be said to the Princess Royal on the subject till after her confirmation. But when the wooer arrived to pay a delightfully private visit to the family in their Highland retreat, the last interdict was judged too hard, and he was permitted to plead his cause under the happiest auspices.

We have pleasant little glimpses in her Majesty's journal, and Prince Albert's letters, of what was necessarily of the utmost moment to all concerned; nay, as the contracting parties were of such high estate, excited the lively sympathies of two great nations. The Prince writes in a half tender, half humorous fashion, of the young couple to Baron Stockmar, "The young man, 'really in love,' 'the little lady' doing her best to please him." The critical moment came during a riding party up the heathery hill of Craig-na-Ban and down Glen Girnock, when, with a sprig of white heather for "luck" in his hand, like any other trembling suitor, the lover ventured to say the decisive words, which were not repulsed. Will the couple ever forget that spot on the Scotch hillside, when they fill the imperial throne of Charlemagne?

They have celebrated their silver wedding-day with loud jubilees, may their golden wedding still bring welcome memories of Craig-na-Ban and its white heather.

The Court had travelled south to Windsor, and in the following month, in melancholy contrast to the family circ.u.mstances in which all had been rejoicing, her Majesty and the Prince had the sorrowful intelligence that her brother, the Prince of Leiningen, while still only in middle age, just over fifty, had suffered from a severe apoplectic attack.

In November the King of Sardinia visited England. His warm welcome was due not only to his patriotic character, which made Victor Emmanuel's name a household word in this country, but to the fact that the Sardinians were acting along with the French as our allies in the Crimea. He was royally entertained at Windsor, saw Woolwich and Portsmouth, received an address at Guildhall, and was invested with the Order of the Garter. He left before five the next morning, when, in spite of the early hour, the intense cold, and a snowstorm, the Queen took a personal farewell of her guest.

In the beginning of 1896 the Queen and the Prince were again wounded by newspaper attacks on him, in consequence of his having signed his name, as Colonel of the Grenadier Guards, among the other officers of the Guards, to a memorial to the Queen relating to the promotion and retirement of the officers.

On the 31st of January her Majesty opened Parliament amidst much enthusiasm, in a session which was to decide the grave question of peace or war. In March the welcome news arrived that the Empress of the French had given birth to a son.

On the 20th of March the ceremony of the confirmation of the Princess Royal took place in the private chapel, Windsor. The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Oxford, Lord High Almoner, officiated, in the presence of the Queen and the royal family, the Ministers, Officers of State, &c. Prince Albert led in the Princess; her G.o.dfather, King Leopold, followed with the Queen. Bishop Wilberforce made a note of the scene in a few words. "To Windsor Castle. The confirmation of Princess Royal. Interesting. She devout, composed, earnest. Younger sister much affected. The Queen and Prince also."

On the 30th of March peace was signed. London became aware of it by the firing of the Park and the Tower guns at ten o'clock at night. The next morning the Lord Mayor, on the balcony of the Mansion House, read a despatch from the Secretary of State, to a large crowd a.s.sembled in the street, who received the tidings with loud cheers. At noon his Lordship, preceded by the civic functionaries, went on foot to the Exchange and read the despatch there.

The Tower guns were again fired, the church-bells rang merry peals, flags were hung out from all the public buildings. A few days afterwards the Queen conferred on Lord Palmerston the Order of the Garter--a frank and cordial acknowledgment of his services, which the high-spirited statesman received with peculiar pleasure.

On the 18th of April her Majesty and Prince Albert went to Aldershot to commemorate the completion of the camp and review the troops, when the Queen spent her first night in camp, in the pavilion prepared for her use. On one of the two days she wore a Field-Marshal's uniform, with the Star and Order of the Garter, and a dark blue riding habit.

Within a week, in magnificent weather, Her Majesty and Prince Albert inspected a great fleet at Spithead.

After Easter Lord Ellesmere, in his last appearance in the House of Lords, moved the address to the Queen on the peace, and spoke the feelings of the nation when he expressed in the words of a poet the country's deep debt of grat.i.tude to Florence Nightingale. On the 8th of May the Lords and Commons went in procession to Buckingham Palace to present their addresses to the Queen. The same evening she gave a State ball--the first in the new ball-room--to celebrate the peace.

Lord Dalhousie returned in this month of May from India, where he had been Governor-General. He was a hopeless invalid, while still only in his forty-fifth year. The moment the Queen heard of his arrival, she wrote to him a letter of welcome, for which her faithful servant thanked her in simple and touching words, as for "the crowning honour of his life." He could not tell what the end of his illness might be, but he ventured to say that her Majesty's most gracious words would be a balm for it all.

On the 19th of May the Queen laid the foundation of the military hospital at Netley, which she had greatly at heart.

In June a serious accident, which might have been fatal, occurred to the Princess Royal while her promised bridegroom was on a visit to this country. Indeed he was much in England in those days, appearing frequently in public along with the royal family, to the gratification of romantic hearts that delighted to watch young royal lovers. She was sealing a letter at a table when the sleeve of her light muslin dress caught fire and blazed up in a moment. Happily she was not alone. The Princess's governess, Miss Hildyard, was at the same table, and Princess Alice was receiving a lesson from her music-mistress in the room. By their presence of mind in wrapping the hearthrug round the Princess Royal, who herself showed great self possession under the shock and pain of the accident, her life was probably saved. The arm was burnt from below the elbow to the shoulder, though not so as to be permanently disfigured. Lady Bloomfield has a pretty story about this accident. She has been describing the Princess as "quite charming. Her manners were so perfectly unaffected and unconstrained, and she was full of fun." The writer goes on to say, "When she, the Princess, burnt her arm, she never uttered a cry; she said 'Don't frighten mamma--send for papa first.'" She wrote afterwards to her music- mistress, dictating the letter and signing it with her left hand, to tell how she was, because she knew the lady, who had been present when the accident happened, would be anxious.