CHAPTER XXXVI.
THE WITHDRAWAL TO OSBORNE—THE PRINCE CONSORT'S FUNERAL.
The tolling of the great bell of St. Paul's, borne on the wintry midnight air, thrilled many a heart with grief and dismay, as London was roused to the melancholy fact of the terrible bereavement which had befallen the Queen and the country.
To the Prince indeed death had come without terror, even without recoil. Some time before he had told the Queen that he had not her clinging to life, that if he knew it was well with those he cared for, he would be quite ready to die to-morrow. He was perfectly convinced of the future reunion of those who had loved each other on earth, though he did not know under what circumstances it would take place. During one of the happy Highland excursions in 1861, the Prince had remarked to one of the keepers when talking over with him the choice and planting of a deer-forest for the Prince of Wales, "You and I may be dead and gone before that." "He was ever cheerful, but ever ready and prepared," was the Queen's comment on this remark.
But for the Queen, "a widow at forty-two!" was the lamenting cry of the nation which had been so proud of its young Queen, of her love- match, of her happiness as a wife. Now a subtler touch than any which had gone before won all hearts to her, and bowed them before her feet in a very passion of love and loyalty. It was her share in the common birthright of sorrow, with the knowledge that she in whose joy so many had rejoiced was now qualified by piteous human experience to weep with those who wept—that thenceforth throughout her wide dominions every mourner might feel that their Queen mourned with them as only a fellow-sufferer can mourn. [Footnote: "The Queen wrote my mother, Lady Normanby, such a beautiful letter after Normanby's death, saying that having drunk the dregs of her cup of grief herself, she knew how to sympathise with others."—LADY BLOOMFIELD.] All hearts went out to her in the day of her bitter sorrow. Prayers innumerable were put up for her, and she believed they sustained her when she would otherwise have sunk under the heavy burden.
On the Sunday which dawned on the first day of her Majesty's widowhood, when the news of her bereavement—announced in a similar fashion in many a city cathedral and country church, was conveyed to the people in a great northern city by Dr. Norman MacLeod's praying for the Queen as a widow, a pang of awe and pity smote every hearer; the minister and the congregation wept together.
The disastrous tidings had to travel far and wide: to the Princess Royal, the daughter in whom her father had taken such pride, who had so grieved to part from him when she left England a happy young bride, who had been so glad to greet him in his own old home only a few months before; to the sailor son on the other side of the globe; to the delicate little boy so lately sent in search of health, whose natural cry on the sorrowful tale being told to him was, "Take me to mamma."
Deprived in one year of both mother and husband, alone where family relations were concerned, save for her children; with her eldest son, the Prince of Wales, a lad of not more than twenty years, the devoted servants of the Queen rallied round her and strove to support and comfort her.
In the absence of the Princess Royal and the Princess of Hohenlohe, the Duchess of Sutherland, one of the Queen's oldest friends, herself a widow, was sent for to be with her royal mistress. Lady Augusta Bruce watched day and night by the daughter as she had watched by the mother. The Queen's people did not know how sore was the struggle, how near they were to losing her. Princess Alice wrote years afterwards of that first dreadful night, of the next three terrible days, with a species of horror, and wondered again and again how she and her mother survived that time. The Queen's weakness was so great that her pulse could hardly be felt. "She spoke constantly about God's knowing best, but showed herself broken-hearted," Lady Bloomfield tells us. It was a sensible relief to the country when it was made public that the Queen had slept for some hours.
The doctors urgently advised that her Majesty should leave Windsor and go to Osborne, but she shrank unconquerably from thus quitting all that was mortal of the Prince till he had been laid to rest. The old King of the Belgians, her second father, afflicted in her affliction as he had gloried in her happiness, added his earnest entreaty to, the medical men's opinion, in vain, till the plea was brought forward that for her children's sake—that they might be removed from the fever- tainted atmosphere, the painful step ought to be taken. Even then it was mainly by the influence of the Princess Alice that the Queen, who had proved just and reasonable in all her acts, who had been confirmed by him who was gone in habits of self-control and self-denial, who was the best of mothers, gave up the last sad boon which the poorest might claim, and consented to go immediately with her daughters to Osborne.
But first her Majesty visited Frogmore, where the Duchess of Kent's mausoleum had been built, that she might choose the spot for another and larger mausoleum where the husband and wife would yet lie side by side. It was on the 18th of December that the Queen, accompanied by Princess Alice, drove from the Castle on her melancholy errand. They were received at Frogmore by the Prince of Wales, Prince Louis of Hesse, who had arrived in England, Sir Charles Phipps, and Sir James Clark. Her Majesty walked round the gardens leaning on her daughter's arm, and selected the place where the coffin of the Prince would be finally deposited. Shortly afterwards the sad party left for Osborne, where a veil must be drawn over the sorrow which, like the love that gave it birth, has had few parallels.
The funeral was at Windsor on the 23rd of December. Shortly before twelve o'clock the cortège assembled which was to conduct the remains of the late Prince Consort the short distance from the state entrance of Windsor Castle, through the Norman Tower Gate to St. George's Chapel. Nine mourning-coaches, each drawn by four horses, conveyed the valets, foresters, riders, librarian, and doctors; the equerries, ushers, grooms, gentlemen, and lords in waiting of his late Royal Highness; and the great officers of the Household. One of the Queen's carriages drawn by six horses contained the Prince's coronet borne by Earl Spencer, and his baton, sword, and hat by Lord George Lennox. The hearse, drawn by six horses, was escorted by a detachment of Life Guards.
The carriages of the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, and the Duchess of Cambridge followed. The company which had received commands to be present at the ceremony, including the foreign ambassadors, the Cabinet Ministers, the officers of the household, and many of the nobility and higher clergy, entered St. George's Chapel by the Wolsey door and were conducted to seats in the choir. The Knights of the Garter occupied their stalls. The royal family, with their guests, came privately from the Castle and assembled in the chapter-room. The members of the procession moved up the nave in the same order in which they had been driven to the South porch. Among them were the representatives of all the foreign states connected by blood or marriage with the late Prince, the choir, canons, and Dean of Windsor. After the baton, sword, and crown, carried on black velvet cushions, came the comptroller in the Chamberlain's department, Vice-Chamberlain, and Lord Chamberlain, then the crimson velvet coffin, the pall borne by the members of the late Prince's suite. Garter-King-at-Arms followed, walking before the chief mourner, the Prince of Wales, who was supported by Prince Arthur, a little lad of eleven, and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and attended by General Bruce. Behind came the son-in-law, the Crown Prince of Prussia, the cousins—the sons of the King of the Belgians—with the Duc de Nemours, Prince Louis of Hesse, Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the Queen's nephew, Count Gleichen, and the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh. The gentlemen in waiting on the foreign princes wound up the procession.
When the coffin arrived within the choir, the crown, baton, sword, and hat were placed on it. That morning a messenger had come from Osborne with three wreaths and a bouquet. The wreaths were simple garlands of moss and violets woven by the three elder princesses; the bouquet of violets, with a white camellia in the centre, was from the Queen. These were laid between the heraldic insignia. The Prince of Wales with his brother and uncle stood at the head, the Lord Chamberlain at the foot, the other mourners and the pallbearers around. Minute-guns were fired at intervals by Horse Artillery in the Long Walk. A guard of honour of the Grenadier Guards, of which the Prince Consort had been colonel, presented arms on the coming of the body and when it was lowered into the grave. During the service the thirty-ninth Psalm, Luther's Hymn, and two chorales were sung.
The Prince of Wales bore up with a brave effort, now and then seeking to soothe his young brother, who, with swollen eyes and tear-stained face, when the long wail of the dirge smote upon his ear, sobbed as if his heart were breaking. At the words—
"To fall asleep in slumber deep,
Slumber that knows no waking,"
part of a favourite chant of the Prince Consort's, both his sons hid their faces and wept. The Duke of Coburg wept incessantly for the comrade of his youth, the friend of his mature years.
Garter-King-at-Arms proclaimed the style and title of the deceased. When he referred to her Majesty with the usual prayer, "Whom God bless and preserve with long life, health, and happiness," for the first time in her reign the word "happiness" was omitted and that of "honour" substituted, and the full significance of the change went to the hearts of the listeners with a woeful reminder of what had come and gone. The Prince of Wales advanced first to take his last look into the vault, stood for a moment with clasped hands and burst into tears. In the end Prince Arthur was the more composed of the two fatherless brothers.
As the company retired, the "Dead March in Saul" was pealed forth.
The whole ceremony was modelled on the precedent of other royal funerals, but surely rarely was mourning so keen or sorrow so deep.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
THE FIRST MONTHS OF WIDOWHOOD—MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES, ETC., ETC.
The Princess of Hohenlohe arrived in England on the 20th of December,
and immediately joined the Queen at Osborne before the funeral of the
Prince. The old King of the Belgians came to Osborne on the 29th of
December—one can imagine his meeting with the widowed Queen.
On the 10th of January, 1862, occurred the terrible Hartley Colliery accident, by which upwards of two hundred miners perished. The Queen's grief for the Prince was not a month old when she telegraphed from Osborne her "tenderest sympathy for the poor widows and mothers."
The Prince of Wales left Osborne on the 6th of February in strict privacy to accomplish the tour in the East projected for him by his father. The Prince was accompanied by Dean Stanley, General Bruce, &c.
In the Queen's solitude at Osborne Princess Alice continued to be the great medium of communication between her Majesty and her Ministers. (Times.)
The opening of the second great Exhibition in the month of May must have been full of painful associations. At the State ceremony on the first day the royal carriages with mourning liveries were empty, but for the Crown Prince of Prussia, Prince Oscar of Sweden, and the Duchess of Cambridge with her daughters. Tennyson's ode was sung. It contained the pathetic lines—
"O silent father of our kings to be,
Mourned in this golden hour of jubilee,
For this, for all we weep our thanks to thee."
It was decided that the Queen's birthday should be spent at Balmoral, a practice which became habitual. Dr. Norman Macleod was summoned north to give what consolation he could to his sorrowing Queen. He has left an account of one of their interviews. "May 14th. After dinner I was summoned unexpectedly to the Queen's room; she was alone. She met me, and, with an unutterable expression which filled my eyes with tears, at once began to speak about the Prince…. She spoke of his excellences, his love, his cheerfulness, how he was everything to her; how all now on earth seemed dead to her…."
On the 4th of June the Prince of Wales arrived in England from his eastern tour. A melancholy incident occurred on his return—General Bruce, who had been labouring under fever, died soon after reaching England on the 24th of June. Another sad death happened four days later—that of Lord Canning, Governor-General of India. He had also just come back to England. He survived his wife only six months.
Princess Alice's marriage, which had been delayed by her father's death, took place at Osborne at one o'clock on the afternoon of the 1st of July, in strict privacy. The ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of York in room of the sick Archbishop of Canterbury. The Queen in deep mourning appeared only for the service. Near her was the Crown Princess of Prussia—already the mother of three children—and her Majesty's four sons.
The father and mother, brothers and sister of the bridegroom, and other relatives, were present. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg in the Prince Consort's place led in the bride. Her unmarried sisters, Princesses Helena, Louise, and Beatrice, and the bridegroom's only sister, Princess Anna of Hesse, were the bridesmaids. Prince Louis was supported by his brother, Prince Henry.
The guests were all gone by four o'clock. No contrast could be greater than that of the brilliant and glad festivities at the Princess Royal's wedding and the hush of sorrow in which her sister was married. The young couple went for three days to St. Clare, near Ryde, and left England in another week. The English people never forgot what Princess Alice had proved in the hour of need, and her departure was followed by prayers and blessings.
In August the Queen was at Balmoral with all her children who were in this country. On the 21st she drove in a pony carriage, accompanied by the elder Princes and Princesses on foot and on ponies, to the top of Craig Lowrigan, and each laid a stone on the foundation of the Prince Consort's cairn. On the late Prince's birthday another sad tender pilgrimage was made to the top of Craig Gowan to the earlier cairn celebrating the taking of the Malakoff.
Her Majesty, whose health was still shaken and weakened, sailed on the 1st of September for Germany. She was accompanied by the Prince of Wales, Prince Arthur, and Prince Leopold, Princesses Helena, Louise, and Beatrice, and the Princess Hohenlohe. During the Queen's stay with her uncle, King Leopold, at Laeken, in passing through Belgium, she had her first interview with her future daughter-in-law, Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The Princess with her father and mother drove from Brussels to pay a private visit to her Majesty.
The Queen's destination in Germany was Reinhardtsbrunn, the lovely little hunting-seat among the Thuringian woods and mountains, which had so taken her fancy on her first happy visit to Germany. There she was joined by the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia and their children, Prince Louis and Princess Alice, and Prince Alfred.
Her Majesty could not quit Germany without revisiting Coburg, hard as the visit must have been to her. One of the chief inducements was to go to one who could no longer come to her, the aged Baron Stockmar, whose talk was still of "the dear good Prince," and of how soon the old man would rejoin the noble pupil cut off in the prime of his gifts and his usefulness.
Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse spent the winter with the Queen in England, and in the month of November Princess Alexandra of Denmark paid a short visit to her Majesty, when the Princess's youthful beauty and sweetness won all hearts.
Early in the morning on the 18th of December the Prince Consort's remains were removed from the entrance of the vault beneath St. George's Chapel to the mausoleum already prepared for them at Frogmore. The ceremony, which was attended by the Prince of Wales, Prince Arthur, Prince Leopold, and Prince Louis of Hesse, was quite private. Prince Alfred had a severe attack of fever in the Mediterranean.
The Duchess of Sutherland presented the Queen with a Bible from "many widows of England," and to "all those kind sister widows" her Majesty expressed the deep and heartfelt gratitude of "their widowed Queen."
As a consequence of the failure of the cotton crop in America, caused by the civil war rending the country asunder, the Lancashire operatives were in a state of enforced idleness and famine, calling for the most strenuous efforts to relieve them.
When Parliament was opened by commission on the 5th of February, 1863, the Queen's speech announced the approaching marriage of the Prince of Wales. On the 7th of March Princess Alexandra, accompanied by her father and mother, brother and sister, arrived at Gravesend, where the Prince of Wales met her. Bride and bridegroom drove, on the chill spring day which ended in rain, through decorated and festive London, where great crowds congregated to do the couple honour.
In the afternoon at Windsor the Queen was seen seated with her two younger daughters at a window of the castle which commanded the entrance drive. The little party waited there in patient expectation till it grew dark.
On Tuesday, the 10th of March, the marriage took place in St. George's Chapel. The Queen in her widow's weeds occupied the royal closet, from which she could look down on the actors in the ceremony. She was attended by the widow of General Bruce. Among the English royal family were Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse, and the Crown Princess of Prussia leading her little son, Prince William.
The Prince of Wales, who wore a general's uniform with the star of the Garter, was supported by the Duke of Saxe-Coburg and the Crown Prince of Prussia.
Princess Alexandra came in the last carriage with her father, Prince Christian of Denmark, and the Duke of Cambridge. The bride's dress was of white satin, and Honiton lace, with a silver moiré train. She had a wreath of orange-blossoms and myrtle. She wore a necklace, earrings, and brooch of pearls and diamonds, the gift of the Prince of Wales, rivières of diamonds, the City of London's gift, an opal and diamond bracelet, presented by the Queen, &c., &c. The bride's train was borne by eight unmarried daughters of English dukes, marquises, and earls.
Princess Alexandra was in her nineteenth, the Prince of Wales in his twenty-second year.
On reaching the haut pas, the bride made a deep reverence to the Queen. During the service her Majesty was visibly affected. Indeed an interested spectator, Dr. Norman Macleod, remarked as a characteristic feature of the marriage that all the English princesses wept behind their bouquets to see—not the Prince of Wales, not the future king, but their brother, their father's son, standing alone before the altar waiting for his bride.
The bride and bridegroom on leaving the chapel occupied the second of the twelve carriages, and were preceded by the Lord Chamberlain, &c., &c. Her Majesty received her son and new daughter at the grand entrance. The wedding breakfast for the royal guests was in the dining-room, for the others in St. George's Hall. At four the Prince and Princess of Wales left in an open carriage drawn by four cream- coloured horses for the station, where the Crown Princess of Prussia had already gone to bid her brother and his bride good-bye, as they started for Osborne to spend their honeymoon.
That night there were great illuminations in London and in all the towns large and small in the kingdom. Thousands of hearts echoed the poet-laureate's eloquent words—
Sea kings daughter from over the sea,
Alexandra.
Saxon and Norman and Dane are we,
But all of us Danes in our welcome to thee,
Alexandra.
Among the Princess of Wales's wedding presents was a parure of splendid opals and brilliants from a design by the late Prince Consort, given in his name as well as in the Queen's.
The town and country houses selected for the Prince and Princess of
Wales were Marlborough House and Sandringham.
On the 4th of April Princess Alice's first child, a daughter, was born at Windsor.
On the 8th of May the Queen paid a visit to the military hospital at
Netley, in which the Prince Consort had been much interested.
Her Majesty left England on the 11th of August for Belgium and Germany. She was accompanied by the Princes Alfred and Leopold and the Princesses Helena and Beatrice. Their destination was Rosenau, near Coburg, where the Queen was again joined by the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia and Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse. In the house which was so dear and so sad, the late Prince's birthplace, his widow and children spent his birthday. During the Queen's stay in Coburg she went to see the widow of Baron Stockmar, and Mr. Florschütz, the late Prince's tutor. The venerable superintendent Meyer was still alive and able to preach to her. Her Majesty's health continued feeble, but she was able to receive visits at Rosenau from the King of Prussia and the Emperor of Austria. She quitted Coburg on the 7th of September, spending the 8th at Kranichstein, near Darmstadt, the country house of Princess Alice and her husband.
Later on in autumn the Queen with nearly the whole of her family was
at Balmoral and Abergeldie. The cairn on Craig Lowrigan was finished.
It formed a pyramid of granite thirty feet high, seen for many a mile.
The inscription was as follows:—
"TO THE BELOVED MEMORY
of
ALBERT, THE GREAT AND GOOD,
PRINCE CONSORT,
RAISED BY HIS BROKEN-HEARTED WIDOW,
VICTORIA B.,
AUGUST 21, 1862.
He being made perfect in a short time, fulfilled a
long time, for his soul pleased the Lord,
therefore hastened He to take him away
from among the wicked.
Wisdom of Solomon, iv. 13, 14.
The appropriate verse is said to have been suggested by the Princess
Royal.
Immediately after her Majesty's arrival at Balmoral she went to Blair to see the Duke of Athole, who was hopelessly ill with cancer in the throat. The poor Duke bore up bravely. He had to receive the Queen in his own room, "full of his rifles and other implements and attributes of sport now for ever useless to him." But he was able to present the white rose, the old tribute from the Lords of Athole to their sovereign, and he was gratified by the gracious and kindly mark of attention shown in her Majesty's visit. He insisted on accompanying her to the station, where she gave him her hand, saying, "Dear Duke, God bless you." He had asked permission that the same men who had gone with the Queen and the Prince Consort through the glen two years before might give her a cheer. "Oh! it was so dreadfully sad," was the Queen's comment in her journal.
About three weeks afterwards, on the 7th of October, the Queen had an alarming accident. She was returning from Altnagiuthasach with two of her daughters in the darkness of an autumn evening, when the carriage was upset in the middle of the moorland. Her Majesty was thrown with her face on the ground, but escaped with some bruises and a hurt to one of her thumbs. No one else was injured. The ladies sat down in the overturned carriage after the traces had been cut and the coachman despatched for assistance. There was no water to be had, nothing but claret to bathe the Queen's hand and face. In about half an hour voices and horses' hoofs were heard. It was the ponies which had been sent away before the accident, but the servant who accompanied them, alarmed by the non-appearance of the Queen and by the sight of lights moving about, rode back to reconnoitre. Her Majesty and the Princesses mounted the ponies, which were led home. At Balmoral no one knew what had happened; the Queen herself told the accident to her two sons-in- law who were at the door awaiting her.
Six days afterwards the Queen made her first appearance in public since the Prince's death a year and nine months before, at the unveiling of his statue in Aberdeen. She was accompanied by the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse, Princesses Helena and Louise, and Princes Arthur and Leopold. The day was one of pouring rain, and the long silent procession was sad and strange. The Queen was trembling; she had no one as on former occasions to direct and support her. She received the Provost's address, and returned a written reply. She conferred the honour of knighthood on the magistrate, the first time she had performed the ceremony "since all was ended."
On the 14th of December the Queen and her family visited the mausoleum, [Footnote: Dr. Norman Macleod describes an earlier visit in March, 1863 "I walked with Lady Augusta to the mausoleum to meet the Queen. She was accompanied by Princess Alice. She had the key, and opened it herself, undoing the bolts, and alone we entered and stood in silence beside Marochetti's beautiful statue of the Prince. I was very much overcome. She was calm and quiet."] to which she went constantly on every return to Windsor. Princess Alice in her published letters calls the sarcophagus—with the exquisite decorations which were in progress, and cost more than two hundred thousand pounds paid from her Majesty's private purse—"that wonderfully beautiful tomb" by which her mother prayed. It became the practice to have a religious service celebrated there in the presence of the Queen and the royal family on the anniversary of the Prince's death.
In December Lady Augusta Bruce left the Queen's service on her marriage with Dean Stanley. On the night of the 23rd of December Thackeray died.
Prince Albert Victor of Wales was born unexpectedly at Frogmore, where the Prince and Princess of Wales then resided occasionally, on the 8th of January, 1864. The child was baptised in the chapel at Buckingham Palace on the first anniversary of his parents' marriage, as the Princess Royal had been baptised there on the first anniversary of the Queen and Prince Albert's marriage. The Queen and the old King of the Belgians were present among the sponsors.
When the Queen went north this year she was accompanied by the Duke and Duchess of Saxe-Coburg.
On the 14th of March, 1865, her Majesty visited the Hospital for Consumption at Brompton, walking over the different wards and speaking to the patients.
The news of the assassination of President Lincoln reached England in April, when the Queen became, as she has so often been, the mouthpiece of her subjects, writing an autograph letter expressing her horror, pity, and sympathy to Mrs. Lincoln.
Prince Alfred on the 6th of August, his twenty-first birthday, was formally acknowledged heir to his childless uncle, the Duke of Saxe- Coburg.
Two days later the Queen embarked with Prince Leopold, the three younger Princesses, the Duchess of Roxburgh, Lady Churchill, &c., &c., at Woolwich for Germany. She arrived at Coburg on the 11th and went to Rosenau. On the 26th, the birthday of the Prince Consort, perhaps the most interesting of all the inaugurations of monuments to his memory took place at Coburg. A gilt-bronze statue ten feet high was unveiled with solemn ceremony in the square of the little town which Prince Albert had so often traversed in his boyhood. After the unveiling, the Queen walked across the square at the head of her children and handed to the Duke of Saxe-Coburg flowers which he laid on the pedestal. Each of her sons and daughters followed her example, till "the fragrant mass" rose to the feet of the statue. Princess Alice writes of "the terrible sufferings" of the first three years of the Queen's widowhood, but adds that after the long storm came rest, so that the daughter could tenderly remind the mother, without reopening the wound, of the happy silver wedding which might have been this year when the royal parents would have been surrounded by so many grandchildren in fresh young households.
While the Queen was in the Highlands during the autumn, her journal, in its published portions, records a few days spent with the widowed Duchess of Athole at her cottage at Dunkeld. This visit was something very different from the old royal progresses. It was a private token of friendship from the Queen to an old friend bereaved like herself. There was neither show, nor gaiety, nor publicity. The life was even quieter than at Balmoral. Her Majesty breakfasted with the daughter who accompanied her, lunched and dined with the Princess, the Duchess, and one or more ladies. There were long drives, rides, and rows on the lochs—sometimes in mist and rain, among beautiful scenery, like that which had been a solace in the days of deepest sorrow, tea among the bracken or the heather or in some wayside house, friendly chats, peaceful readings.
This year Princess Helena was betrothed to Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg, a brother of the husband of her cousin, Princess Adelaide of Hohenlohe. The family connection and the personal character of the bridegroom were high recommendations, while the marriage would permit the Princess to remain in England near her mother.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
DEATHS OF LORD PALMERSTON AND THE KING OF THE BELGIANS—THE QUEEN
AGAIN OPENS PARLIAMENT IN PERSON, &C., &C.
The Prime Minister so long connected with the Queen, Lord Palmerston, energetic to the last, died at Brockett Hall on the 18th of October.
A still greater loss befell her Majesty in the month of December—a marked month in her history. King Leopold died on the 9th at Laeken, within a few days of attaining his seventy-sixth year, the last of a family of nine sons and daughters. He had been cured of a deadly disease by a painful and dangerous operation two years before. He had suffered afterwards from a slight shock of paralysis, which had not prevented him from coming to England to be present at the baptism of Prince Victor of Wales, the fifth generation, counting that of George III., which King Leopold had known in connection with the English throne. In addition to his fine mental qualities, he was singularly active in his habits to the end. He walked thirty miles, and shot for six hours in winter snow, after he had entered his seventy-fifth year. Though the Queen must have been prepared for the event, and his death was peaceful, it was a blow to her—much of her early past perished with her life-long friend and counsellor.
In 1866 the Queen opened Parliament in person for the first time since the death of the Prince Consort, and there was a great assemblage to hail her reappearance when she entered, not by the State, but by the Peers' entrance. There were none of the flourishes of trumpets which had formerly announced her arrival—solemn silence prevailed. She did not wear the robes of state, they were merely laid upon the throne. Her Majesty was accompanied by the Princesses Helena and Louise. When the Queen was seated on the throne the Prince of Wales took his seat on her right, while the Princesses stood on her left. Behind the Queen was the Duchess of Wellington, as mistress of the robes, and a lady in waiting. Her Majesty's dress was dark purple velvet bordered with ermine; she wore a tiara of diamonds with a white gauze veil falling down behind. The speech, which in one passage announced the coming marriage of Princess Helena and Prince Christian (who sat near the end of one of the ambassadors' benches) was read by the Lord Chancellor. The Parliament granted to Prince Alfred an annuity of fifteen thousand pounds—voted in turn to each of his younger brothers on their coming of age—and to Princess Helena a dowry of thirty thousand and an annuity of six thousand pounds, similar to what had been granted to Princess Alice and was to be voted to Princess Louise.
In March the Queen instituted the "Albert Medal," as a decoration for those who had saved life from shipwreck and from peril at sea, and for the first time during five-years revisited the camp at Aldershot and reviewed the troops. She was accompanied by Princess Helena and the Princess Hohenlohe, who was on a visit to England.
Queen Amélie died at Claremont on the 24th of March, aged eighty-three years.
On the 25th of May Prince Alfred was created Earl of Ulster, Earl of
Kent, and Duke of Edinburgh.
The Princess Mary of Cambridge was married to the Prince of Teck on the 12th of June, in the presence of the Queen, in the parish church of Kew, where the bride had been confirmed, "among her own people." Parliament granted her an annuity of five thousand pounds.
Another marriage, that of Princess Helena, was celebrated in St.
George's Chapel, Windsor, by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the
Bishop of London, on the 7th of July. The bridegroom was supported by
Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein and Prince Edward of Saxe-
Weimar. The bride entered between her Majesty and the Prince of Wales.
The usual eight noble bridesmaids followed. Prince Christian was in
his thirty-sixth, Princess Helena in her twenty-first year. Their home
has been first at Frogmore and afterwards at Cumberland Lodge.
While the German war which had Schleswig-Holstein for a bone of contention was still only threatening, the Crown Princess of Prussia lost a fine child, Prince Sigismund.
Afterwards the Queen had the pain of seeing her married children, with their unfailing family affection, inevitably ranged on different sides in the war. Princess Alice trembled before the fear of a widowhood like her mother's as the sound of the firing of the Prussian army, which lay between the wife at home and the husband in the field, was heard in Darmstadt. The quiet little town fell into the hands of the enemy, and was at once poverty and pestilence stricken, small-pox and cholera having broken out in the hospitals, where the Princess was labouring devotedly to succour the wounded. In such circumstances, while the standard of her husband's regiment lay hidden in her room, Princess Louis's third daughter was both. Happily peace was soon proclaimed. In honour of it the baby, Princess Irene, whose godfathers were the officers and men of her father's regiment, received her name.
This year Hanover ceased to be an independent state, and became annexed to Prussia.
Dr. Norman Macleod has a bright little picture of an evening at Balmoral in 1866. "The Queen sat down to spin at a nice Scotch wheel while I read Robert Burns to her, 'Tam o' Shanter,' and 'A man's a man for a' that'—her favourite."
Her Majesty sent her miniature with an autograph letter to the American citizen, Mr. Peabody, in acknowledgment of his magnificent gift of model lodging-houses to the Working people of London.
In 1867 the Queen again opened Parliament in person, her speech being read by the Lord Chancellor.
The grievous accident of the breaking of the ice in Regent's Park, when it was covered with skaters and spectators, took place on the 15th of January.
"The Early Tears of the Prince Consort," the first instalment of his "Life," brought out under the direction of General Grey, with much of the information supplied by the Queen, was published, and afforded a nobler memorial to the Prince than any work in stone or metal.
On the 20th of May her Majesty laid the foundation of the Albert Hall. She was accompanied by the Princesses Louise and Beatrice, Prince Leopold, and Prince Christian, and received by the Lord Steward, the Lord Chamberlain, and the Queen's elder sons. The latter presented her with a bouquet, which she took, kissing her sons. In reply to the Prince of Wales's speech her Majesty spoke in accents singularly inaudible for her. She mentioned the struggle she had undergone before she had brought herself to take part in that day's proceedings, but said she had been sustained by the thought that she was thus promoting her husband's designs.
In June and July the Queen of Prussia and the Sultan of Turkey came in turn to England. The latter was with her Majesty in her yacht at a great naval review held in most tempestuous weather off Spithead. In the end of July the Empress of the French paid a short private visit to her Majesty at Osborne.
On the 20th of August the Queen left for Balmoral. On her way north she spent a few days with the Duke and Duchess of Roxburgh at Fleurs, when her Majesty visited Melrose and Abbotsford. After inspecting with great interest the memorials of Sir Walter Scott, who had been presented to her when she was a little girl at Kensington Palace, she complied with a request that she should write her name in the great author's journal, adding the modest comment in her own journal that she felt it presumption in her to do so.
During the autumn the Queen paid an informal visit to the Duke of Richmond's shooting lodge in Glen Fiddich. On the first evening of her stay the break with the luggage failed to appear, and her Majesty had to suffer some of the half-comical inconveniences of ordinary travellers. She had to dine in her riding skirt, with a borrowed black lace veil arranged as a head-dress, and she had to go to bed without the necessary accompaniments to her toilette.
In 1867 the terrible news from Mexico that the Emperor Maximilian (Archduke of Austria and husband of the Queen's cousin, Princess Charlotte of Belgium) had been shot by his rebel subjects, while his wife was hopelessly insane, rendered it a mercy to all interested in the family that old King Leopold had not lived to see the wreck of so many hopes.
In 1868 the Queen gave to her people the first "Leaves" from her journal in the Highlands, which afforded most pleasant glimpses of the wonderfully happy family life, the chief holidays of which had been spent at Balmoral. Her Majesty sent a copy to Charles Dickens, with the graceful inscription that it was the gift of "one of the humblest of writers to one of the greatest."
On the 13th of May the Queen laid the foundation stone of St. Thomas's Hospital, and on the 20th she held a great review of twenty-seven thousand volunteers in Windsor Park. Instead of her mother or her little children, her daughter-in-law and grown-up daughters, the Princess of Wales, Princess Christian, and Princess Louise, were in the carriage with her, while in room of her husband and her brother or cousin, her two soldier sons rode one on each side of the carriage.
On the 5th of July her Majesty, whose health required change of air and scene, left for Switzerland, which must have possessed a great attraction to so ardent an admirer of mountain scenery. She went incognito as Countess of Kent. She was accompanied by Prince Leopold and the Princesses Louise and Beatrice. The Queen travelled in her yacht to Cherbourg, and thence by railway to Paris, where she stayed all day in seclusion in the house of the English Ambassador, receiving only a private visit from the Empress Eugénie—a different experience of Paris from the last. The Queen continued her journey in the evening to Basle, and from Basle to Lucerne, where for nearly two months she occupied the Pension Wallis, delightfully situated on the Hill Gibraltar above the lake. She made numerous enjoyable excursions on her pony "Sultan" to the top of the Rhigi, and in the little steamboat Winkelried on the lovely lake of the Four Cantons, under the shadow of Pilatus, to William Tell's country—she even ventured as far as the desolate, snow-crowned precipices of the Engelberg. Her Majesty returned by Paris, driving out to St. Cloud, and being much affected as she walked in the grounds, but not venturing to enter the house, where she had lived with the Prince during her happy fortnight's visit to her ally in the Crimean war.
Three days after her arrival in England the Queen proceeded as usual to Balmoral, where she took a lively interest in all the rural and domestic affairs which stood out prominently in the lives of her humbler neighbours. The passages from her journal in this and in subsequent years are full of graphic, appreciative descriptions of the stirring incidents of "sheep-juicing," "sheep-shearing," the torchlight procession on "Hallowe'en," a "house-warming;" of the grave solemnity of a Scotch communion, and the kindliness and pathos of more than one cottage "kirstenin," death-bed, and funeral, with the simple piteous tragedy of "a spate" in which two little brothers were drowned.
Considerable excitement was caused in the House of Commons during the debate on the disestablishment of the Irish Church, by the Premier, Mr. Disraeli, mentioning the Queen's name in connection with an interview he had with her on his resignation of office and on the dissolution of Parliament. The conduct of Mr. Disraeli was stigmatised as unconstitutional both in advising a dissolution of Parliament and in apparently attempting to shift the responsibility of the situation from the Government to the Crown.
The Queen lost by death this year her old Mistress of the Robes, one of the earliest and most attached of her friends, Harriet, Duchess of Sutherland.
In September, 1869, her Majesty, with the Princesses Louise and
Beatrice, paid a ten days' visit to Invertrosachs, occupying Lady
Emily Macnaghten's house, and learning to know by heart Loch Katrine,
Loch Lomond, &c., &c.
In November the Queen was in the City after a long absence, for the double purpose of opening Blackfriars Bridge and the Holborn Viaduct. Happily for the cheering multitudes congregated on the occasion the day was bright and fair though cold, so that she could drive in an open carriage accompanied by her younger daughters and Prince Leopold. The Queen still wore deep mourning after eight years of widowhood, and her servants continued to have a band of crape on one arm. Her Majesty was received by the Lord Mayor, &c., &c. After Blackfriars Bridge had been declared open for traffic her carriage passed across it, followed by his. The same ceremony was performed at the Holborn Viaduct.
This season the Prince of Wales revisited the East, accompanied by the
Princess.
In 1870 the Queen signed the order in council resigning the royal prerogative over the army.
On the 11th May her Majesty opened the University of London. She was received by Earl Granville and Mr. Grote. Baboo Keshub Shunder Sen was conspicuous among the company. The Queen received an address, said in a clear voice "I declare this building open," and the silver trumpets sounded.
Charles Dickens died on the 9th of June.
The Franco-German war, in which the Crown Prince of Prussia and Prince Louis of Hesse were both engaged with honour, happily this time on the same side, was filling the eyes of Europe; and before many months had passed since "Die Wacht am Rhein" had resounded through the length and breadth of Germany, the Empress of the French arrived in England as a fugitive, to be followed ere long by the Emperor.
In the autumn at Balmoral, Princess Louise, with the Queen's consent,
became engaged to the Marquis of Lorne, eldest son of the Duke of
Argyle. The proposal was made and accepted during a walk from the
Glassalt Shiel to the Dhu Loch.
In November the Queen visited the Empress at Chislehurst.
During the war, while the number of the French wounded alone in Darmstadt amounted to twelve hundred, and Princess Alice was visiting the four hospitals daily, her second son was born.
The death of Sir James Clark, at Bagshot, was the snapping to the Queen of another of the links which connected the present with the past.
In 1871 the Queen again opened Parliament in person, with her speech read by the Lord Chancellor. As described by an eye-witness, her Majesty sat "quite still, her eyes cast down, only a slight movement of the face." The approaching marriage of the Princess Louise was announced, and reference was made to the fact that the King of Prussia had become Emperor of Germany.
For the first time since the death of the Prince Consort, the Queen spent the anniversary of their marriage-day at Windsor.
On the 21st of March Princess Louise was married in St George's Chapel, Windsor, to the Marquis of Lorne. The bridegroom was supported by Earl Percy and Lord Ronald Leveson-Gower. The bride walked between the Queen and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg. Her Majesty by a gesture gave away her daughter. Princess Louise was twenty-three, Lord Lorne twenty-six years of age. The Princess has rooms in Kensington Palace for her London residence.
Eight days afterwards the Queen opened the Albert Hall.
On the 3rd of April her Majesty visited the Emperor of the French at
Chislehurst—a trying interview.
On the 21st of June the Queen opened St. Thomas's Hospital, knighting the treasurer.
This summer the Emperor and Empress of Brazil visited London, while the Tichborne trial was running its long course.
On the Queen's return from Balmoral in November, she was met by the alarming tidings that the Prince of Wales lay ill of typhoid fever at Sandringham. The Queen went to her son on the 29th and remained for a few days. The disease seemed progressing favourably, and she returned to Windsor in the beginning of December, leaving the invalid devotedly nursed by the Princess of Wales and Princess Alice—who had been staying with her brother when the fever showed itself, and by the Duke of Edinburgh. On the 8th there was a relapse, when the Queen and the whole of the royal family were sent for to Sandringham. During many days the Prince hovered between life and death. The sympathy was deep and universal. The reading of the bulletins at the Mansion House was a sight to be remembered. A prayer was appointed by the Archbishop of Canterbury for "Albert Edward Prince of Wales, lying upon the bed of sickness," and for "Victoria our Queen and the Princess of Wales in this day of their great trouble." Supplications were sent up alike in Catholic churches and Jewish synagogues. On the night of Wednesday the 14th, a date which had been dreaded as that of the Prince Consort's death ten years before, a slight improvement took place, sleep at last was won, and gradual recovery established. The Queen returned to Windsor on the 19th, and wrote on the 26th of December to thank her people for their sympathy.
On the 8th of February, 1872, the Governor-General of India, Lord
Mayo, was assassinated.
The 27th was the Thanksgiving Day for the Prince of Wales's recovery. No public sight throughout her Majesty's reign was more moving than her progress with the Prince and Princess of Wales and Princess Beatrice to and from St. Paul's. The departure from Buckingham Palace was witnessed by the Emperor and Empress of the French, who stood on a balcony. The decorated streets were packed with incredible masses of people, the cheering was continuous. The Queen wore white flowers in her bonnet and looked happy. The Prince insisted on lifting his hat in return for the people's cheers. The royal party were met at Temple Bar by the Lord Mayor and a deputation from the Common Council. The City sword was presented and received back again, when the chief magistrate of London remounted and rode before the Queen to St. Paul's. Thirteen thousand persons were in the City cathedral. The pew for the Queen and the Prince was enclosed by a brass railing. The Te Deum was sung by a picked choir. There was a special prayer, "We praise and magnify Thy glorious name for that Thou hast raised Thy servant Albert Edward Prince of Wales from the bed of sickness." The sermon was preached by the Archbishop of Canterbury. The return was led by the Lord Mayor and Aldermen to the bounds of the City. When Buckingham Palace was reached the Queen showed herself with the Prince for a moment on the central balcony. There was an illumination in the evening.
On the 29th of February, as the Queen was returning from a drive in the Park, having come down Constitution Hill and entered the courtyard, when about to alight, a lad with a paper in one hand and a pistol in the other rushed first to the left and then to the right side of the carriage, with arms extended to the Queen, who sat quite unmoved. Her Majesty's attendant, John Brown, seized the assailant. He was a half-witted Irish lad, named Arthur O'Connor, about seventeen years of age, who had been a clerk to an oil and colour merchant. He had climbed over the railings. There was no ball in the pistol, which was broken. The paper was a petition for the Fenians. The public indignation was great against the miserable culprit, who was dealt with as in former outrages of the kind, according to the nature of the offence and with reference to the mental condition of the offender. The Queen, who had been about to institute a medal as a reward for long and faithful service among her domestics, gave a gold medal and an annuity of twenty-five pounds to John Brown for his presence of mind and devotion on this occasion.
Her Majesty had gone to Balmoral for her birthday, and was still there on the 16th of June when she heard of the death of her valued friend, Dr. Norman Macleod. He had preached to her and dined with her so recently as the 26th of May. What his loss was to her she has expressed simply and forcibly in a passage in her journal…. "When I thought of my dear friend Dr. Macleod and all he had been to me—how in 1862, '63, '64, he had cheered and comforted and encouraged me—how he had ever sympathised with me … and that this too like so many other comforts and helps was for ever gone, I burst out crying."
On the 1st of July the Queen, accompanied by the Duke of Edinburgh and
Prince Leopold and the two younger princesses, visited the Albert
Memorial, Hyde Park, which was complete save for the statue.
Three days afterwards, in very hot weather, her Majesty was present at a great review at Aldershot.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
STAY AT HOLYROOD—DEATHS OF PRINCESS HOHENLOHE AND OF PRINCE FREDERICK OF DARMSTADT—MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH.
The Queen arrived at Holyrood on the 14th of August, and made a stay of a few days in Edinburgh for the first time during eleven years. A suite of rooms called the "Argyle rooms" had been freshly arranged for her occupation. She went over Queen Mary's rooms again for the gratification of Princess Beatrice, and with the Princess and Prince Leopold took the old drives to Dalkeith and Leith which her Majesty had first taken thirty years before.
A favourite project in the past had been that her Majesty should go so far north as to visit Dunrobin, and rooms had been prepared for her reception. When the visit was paid the castle was in the hands of another generation, and the Queen laid the foundation stone of a cross erected to the memory of the late Duchess.
Soon after her Majesty's return to Balmoral, on the 23rd September, she had the grief to receive a telegram announcing the death of her sister, Princess Hohenlohe. Though not more than sixty-five years of age the Princess had been for some time very infirm. She had received a great shock in the previous spring from the unexpected death by fever, at the age of thirty-three, of her younger surviving daughter, Princess Feodore, the second wife of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen.
The Emperor Napoleon III, who had long been labouring under sore disease, laid down his wearied and vanquished life at Chislehurst on the 9th of January, 1873.
The coming marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh to the Grand Duchess
Marie of Russia was announced to Parliament.
On the 2nd of April the Queen was present at the opening of the
Victoria Park. Prince Arthur was created Duke of Connaught.
A fatal accident to the younger son of Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse happened at Darmstadt on the 29th of May. The nurse had brought the children to see the Princess while she was in bed, and had left the two little boys playing beside her. The windows of the bedroom and of a dressing-room beyond were open. Princess Louis, hearing Prince Ernest, the elder brother, go into the dressing-room, leapt out of bed and hurried after him. In her momentary absence Prince Frederick, between two and three years of age, leant out of one of the bedroom windows, lost his balance, and fell on the pavement below, receiving terrible injuries, from which he died in a few hours, to the great sorrow of his parents.
In September the Queen and Princess Beatrice, with Lady Churchill and General Ponsonby, spent a week at Inverlochy, occupying the house of Lord Abinger at the foot of Ben Nevis, among the beautiful scenery which borders the Caledonian Canal, and is specially associated with Prince Charlie—in pity for whom her Majesty loved to recall the drops of Stewart blood in her veins.
This year more than one figure, well-known in different ways to the
Queen in former years, passed out of mortal sight—Bishop Wilberforce,
Landseer, Macready.
In January, 1874, the Duke of Edinburgh was married at the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, to the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia. The Duke was in his thirtieth, the Grand Duchess in her twenty-first year. The royal couple arrived at Gravesend on March 7th, and entered London on March 12th in a heavy snowstorm. In spite of the weather the Queen and the Duchess, with the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Beatrice seated opposite, drove slowly through the crowded streets in an open carriage drawn by six horses. The Prince and Princess of Wales, Princess Louise, &c., were at the windows of Buckingham Palace. The Queen went out with the Duke and Duchess on the balcony. The Duke and Duchess's town and country houses are Clarence House and Eastwell Park.
In March her Majesty, accompanied by all her family in England,
reviewed the troops returned from the Ashantee War in Windsor Great
Park, and gave the orders of St. Michael and St. George to Sir Garnet
Wolseley and the Victoria Cross to Lord Gifford.
The first volume of the "Life of the Prince Consort," by Sir Theodore
Martin, came out and made a deep impression on the general public.
Her Majesty had for many years honoured with her friendship M. and Madame Van de Weyer, who were the Queen's near neighbours at Windsor, the family living at the New Lodge. In addition they had come for several seasons to Abergeldie, when the Court was at Balmoral. M. Van de Weyer was not only the trusted representative of the King of the Belgians, he was a man highly gifted morally and intellectually. This year the friendship was broken by his death.
On the 15th of October the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh's son—was born.
The news of Livingstone's death reached England.
Early in 1875 Prince Leopold, then twenty-two years of age, suffered from typhoid fever. So great were the fears entertained for his life that the Queen was prevented from opening Parliament in person. Already Princess Alice in her letters had referred to her youngest brother as having been three times given back to his family from the brink of the grave.
During the spring the Queen was deprived by death of her Clerk to the
Council and literary adviser in her first book, Sir Arthur Helps.
Charles Kingsley, whose work was much admired by the Prince Consort,
died also.
On the 18th of August, when the Queen was sitting on the deck of the royal yacht as it crossed from Osborne to Gosport, the yacht Mistletoe ran across its bows and a collision took place, the Mistletoe turning over and sinking. The sister-in-law of the owner of the yacht was drowned. The master, an old man, who was struck by a spar, died after he had been picked up. The rest of the crew were rescued. Her Majesty, who was greatly distressed, aided personally in the vain efforts to restore one of the sufferers to consciousness.
In September the Queen, in paying a week's visit to the Duke and Duchess of Argyle at Inverary, had the pleasure of seeing Princess Louise in her future home. It was twenty-eight years since her Majesty had been in the house of MacCallummore, and then her son-in-law of to- day had been a little fellow of two years, in black velvet and fair curls.
Towards the end of the year the Prince of Wales left for his lengthened progress through her Majesty's dominions in India, which was accomplished with much éclat and success.
In 1876 the Queen opened Parliament in person.
On the 25th of February her Majesty, accompanied by the Princess of Wales, Princess Beatrice, and Prince Leopold, and received by the Duke of Edinburgh, attended a state concert given in the morning at the Albert Hall. Since 1866 the Queen had been able gradually to hear and enjoy again the music in which she had formerly delighted, but she had taken the gratification in her domestic life. Her royal duties had been only intermitted for the briefest space. Every act of beneficence and gracious queenliness had been long ago resumed. But no place of public amusement had seen the face of the widowed Queen.
Lady Augusta Stanley died, after a lingering illness, on the 1st of March. It was the close—much lamented from the highest to the lowest— of a noble and beautiful life. The Queen afterwards erected a memorial cross to Lady Augusta Stanley's memory in the grounds at Frogmore.
On the 7th of March her Majesty, accompanied by Princess Beatrice, opened a new wing of the London Hospital.
Two days afterwards the statue of the Prince Consort in the Albert Memorial was unveiled without any ceremony. The whole memorial thus completed stood, as it stands to-day, one of the most splendid tokens —apart from its artistic merit—of a nation's gratitude and a Queen's love. Opinions may differ on the use of gilding and colours, as they have been rarely employed in this Country, upon the towering facades and pinnacles, and on the choice of the central gilt figure of the Prince, colossal, in robes of state. But there can hardly be a doubt as to the striking effect of the magnificent monument taken altogether, especially when it has the advantage of a blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and of the charm of the four white marble groups which surround the pedestal, seen in glimpses through the lavish green of Kensington Gardens. An engraving of the statue of the Prince is given in Vol. I., p. 172.
In the end of the month the Queen, travelling incognito as Countess of Kent, having crossed to Cherbourg, arrived at Baden-Baden accompanied by Princess Beatrice. Her Majesty visited the Princess Hohenlohe's grave. She continued her journey to Coburg. In passing through Paris on her return to England towards the end of April, her Majesty had an interview with the President of the French Republic.
On the 1st of May the Queen was proclaimed Empress of India.
In the season the Empress of Germany and the ex-royal family of Hanover visited England. On the 17th of August the Queen, with the Princes Arthur and Leopold and Princess Beatrice, stayed two nights at Holyrood for the purpose of unveiling the equestrian statue to the late Prince in Charlotte Square. Her Majesty recalled the coincidence that the last public appearances of both her husband and mother were in Edinburgh—the Prince Consort in laying the foundation stone of the new post-office in October, 1861, only six weeks before his death, the Duchess of Kent at the summer volunteer review in 1860. The town was gay and bright and crowded with company. In Charlotte Square the Duke of Buccleuch, chairman of the committee, read the address, to which the Queen read a reply. On her return to the palace she knighted the sculptor, Sir John Steel, and Professor Oakeley, the composer of the chorale which was sung on the occasion. In the evening there was once more a great dinner at Holyrood—Scotts, Kerrs, Bruces, Primroses, Murrays, &c., &c, being gathered round their Queen.
A month afterwards at Ballater, amidst pouring rain, her Majesty presented new colours to the 79th regiment, "Royal Scots," of which her father was colonel when she was born. She spoke a few kind words to the soldiers, and accepted from them the gift of the old colours, which are in her keeping.
On the 15th December the Queen and the Princess Beatrice paid a visit to Lord Beaconsfield at Hughenden, lunched, and remained two hours, during which the royal visitors planted trees on the lawn.
In consequence of fever in the Isle of Wight her Majesty held her
Christmas at Windsor for the first time since the death of the Prince
Consort.
On New Year's day, 1877, the Queen was proclaimed Empress of India at
Delhi. Her Majesty opened Parliament on the 8th of February.
In September, when the war between Russia and Turkey was raging, her Majesty, Princess Beatrice, the Duchess of Roxburgh, &c., spent a week at Loch Maree Hotel, enjoying the fine Ross-shire scenery, making daily peaceful excursions, to which such a telegram as told of the bombardment of Plevna must have been a curious accompaniment.
In February, 1878, the Queen's grandchild, Princess Charlotte of
Prussia, was married at Berlin to the hereditary Prince of Saxe-
Meiningen, at the same time that her cousin, Princess Elizabeth of
Prussia, was married to the hereditary Grand Duke of Oldenburg.
On the 12th June the Queen's cousin, who had been the blind King of Hanover, died in exile at Paris. His body was brought to England and was buried in the royal vault below St. George's Chapel, Windsor.
The Queen saw a naval review off Spithead in August. In the end of the month the Queen, with Princess Beatrice and Prince Leopold, stopped at Dunbar on the way north in order to pay a visit to the Duke and Duchess of Roxburgh at Broxmouth. During her Majesty's stay she heard of the death of Madame Van de Weyer at the New Lodge, and wrote in her journal, "Another link with the past gone! with my beloved one, with dearest Uncle Leopold, and with Belgium."
In September a terrible accident occurred in the Thames off Woolwich, when the Princess Alice steamboat on a pleasure trip was run down by the Bywell Castle, and about six hundred passengers perished.
In the end of the month the Queen had the misfortune to lose her old and faithful servant Sir Thomas Biddulph, who died at Abergeldie Mains. When she went to see him in his last illness and took his hand, he said, "You are very kind to me," to which she answered, pressing his hand, "You have always been very kind to me."
The Marquis of Lorne had been appointed Governor-General of Canada, for which he and Princess Louise sailed, arriving at Ottawa on the 23rd of November.
Already the Queen, who was still at Balmoral, had heard of the disastrous outbreak of diphtheria in the Darmstadt royal family. It attacked every member in succession, the youngest, Princess Marie, a child of four years of age, dying on the 16th of November. It was supposed that the Duchess had caught the infection from having once, in an abandonment of sorrow for the death of her little daughter, forgotten the necessary precautions, and rested her head on the Duke's pillow. Her case was dangerous from the first, and she gave orders lest she should die, but did not seem to expect death. In her sleep she was heard to murmur, "Four weeks—Marie—my father." On the morning before she died she read a letter from her mother. Her last words when waking from sleep, she took the refreshment offered her, were, "Now I will again sleep quietly for a longer time." Then she fell back into the slumber from which she never awoke. She died on the 14th December, exactly four weeks from the death of her child, and seventeen years from the death of her father. She was thirty-five years of age. Princess Alice was a woman of rare qualities and remarkable benevolence.
The Prince of Wales and Prince Leopold went to Darmstadt and followed the funeral from the church to the Rosenhöhe, where all that was mortal of Princess Alice rests beside the dust of her children. A fine figure in white marble of the Princess, recumbent, clasping her little daughter to her breast, has been placed close to the spot as a token of the loving remembrance of her brothers and sisters. The engraving represents this beautiful piece of monumental sculpture.
In 1879 the Zulu war broke out. On the 11th of March Princess Louise of Prussia arrived in England, and on the 13th she was married in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in the presence of the Queen and all the members of the royal family and the bride's father and mother, Prince and Princess Frederick Charles of Prussia. The bridegroom was supported by his brothers, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh. The bride walked between her father and the Crown Prince of Germany, and was followed by eight noble bridesmaids. The Duke of Connaught was in his twenty-ninth and Princess Louise of Prussia in her nineteenth year. Their residence is Bagshot Park.
Twelve days later the Queen left with Princess Beatrice and, travelling by Cherbourg and Paris, reached Lake Maggiore on the 28th. Immediately after their arrival the news came of the death, from diphtheria of one of the Crown Princess of Germany's sons, Prince Waldemar of Prussia, a fine boy of eleven years of age.
Her Majesty left on the 23rd of April, and returned by Milan, Turin,
Paris, and Cherbourg, to England.