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Life Of
Her Most Gracious Majesty
THE QUEEN
by
SARAH TYTLER
_Edited with an Introduction by_
LORD RONALD GOWER, FSA.
IN TWO VOLUMES
Vol II
* * * * *
CONTENTS.
VOL. II.
CHAP.
I. ROYAL PROGRESSES TO BURGHLEY, STOWE, AND STRATHFIELDSAYE
II. THE QUEEN'S POWDER BALL
III. THE QUEEN'S FIRST VISIT TO GERMANY
IV. RAILWAY SPECULATION--FAILURE OF THE POTATO CROP--SIR ROBERT PEEL'S
RESOLUTIONS--BIRTH OF PRINCESS HELENA--VISIT OF IBRAHIM PASHA
V. AUTUMN YACHTING EXCURSIONS--THE SPANISH MARRIAGES--WINTER VISITS
VI. INSTALLATION OF PRINCE ALBERT AS CHANCELLOR OF CAMBRIDGE
VII. THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO THE WESTERN ISLANDS OF SCOTLAND AND STAY AT
ARDVERIKIE
VIII. THE FRENCH FUGITIVES--THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER
IX. THE QUEEN'S FIRST STAY AT BALMORAL
X. PUBLIC AND DOMESTIC INTERESTS--FRESH ATTACK UPON THE QUEEN
XI. THE QUEEN'S FIRST VISIT TO IRELAND
XII. SCOTLAND AGAIN--GLASGOW AND DEE-SIDE
XIII. THE OPENING OF THE NEW COAL EXCHANGE--THE DEATH OF QUEEN
ADELAIDE
XIV. PREPARATION FOR THE EXHIBITION--BIRTH OF THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT
XV. THE DEATHS OF SIR ROBERT PEEL, THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE, AND LOUIS
PHILIPPE
XVI. THE QUEEN'S FIRST STAY AT HOLYROOD--THE DEATH OF THE QUEEN OF
THE BELGIANS
XVII. THE PAPAL BULL--THE GREAT EXHIBITION
XVII. THE QUEEN'S ACCOUNT OF THE OPENING OF THE EXHIBITION
XIX. THE QUEEN'S "RESTORATION BALL" AND THE "GUILDHALL BALL."
XX. ROYAL VISITS TO LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER--CLOSE OF THE EXHIBITION
XXI. DISASTERS--YACHTING TRIPS--THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON
XXII. THE IRON DUKE'S FUNERAL
XXIII. THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON III. AND THE EMPRESS EUGÉNIE--FIRE AT
WINDSOR
XXIV. THE EASTERN QUESTION--APPROACHING WAR--GROSS INJUSTICE TO PRINCE
ALBERT
XXV. THE BATTLE OF INKERMANN--FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE--THE DEATH OF THE
EMPEROR NICHOLAS
XXVI. INSPECTION OF THE HOSPITAL AT CHATHAM--DISTRIBUTION OF WAR
MEDALS
XXVII. DEATH OF LORD RAGLAN--VISIT OF THE QUEEN AND PRINCE ALBERT TO
THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH--FALL OF SEBASTOPOL
XXVIII. BETROTHAL OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL--QUEEN'S SPEECH TO THE
SOLDIERS RETURNED FROM THE CRIMEA--BALMORAL
XXIX. DEATH OF THE PRINCE OF LEININGEN--BIRTH OF PRINCESS BEATRICE--
BESTOWAL OF THE VICTORIA CROSS--INDIAN MUTINY
XXX. THE MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS ROYAL
XXXI. DEATH OF THE DUCHESSE D'ORLEANS--THE PRINCE CONSORT'S VISIT TO
GERMANY--THE QUEEN AND PRINCE CONSORT'S VISIT TO PRINCE AND PRINCESS
FREDERICK WILLIAM AT BABELSBERG
XXXII. BIRTH OF PRINCE WILLIAM OF PRUSSIA--DEATH OP PRINCE HOHENLOHE
XXXIII. DEATH OF THE DUCHESS OF KENT
XXXIV. LAST VISIT TO IRELAND--MEETING OF THE PRINCE OF WALES AND THE
PRINCESS ALEXANDRA OF DENMARK--DEATH OF THE KING OF PORTUGAL AND HIS
BROTHERS.
XXXV. THE DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT
XXXVI. THE WITHDRAWAL TO OSBORNE--THE PRINCE CONSORT'S FUNERAL
XXXVII. THE FIRST MONTHS OF WIDOWHOOD--MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF
WALES, ETC., ETC.
XXXVIII. DEATHS OF LORD PALMERSTON AND THE KING OF THE BELGIANS
XXXIX. STAY AT HOLYROOD--DEATHS OF PRINCESS HOHENLOHE AND OF PRINCE
FREDERICK OF DARMSTADT--MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH
XL. BIRTH OF THE FIRST GREAT-GRANDCHILD--MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF
ALBANY--CONCLUSION
* * * * *
LIST OF STEEL PLATES.
H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES
OSBORNE HOUSE
THE PASTURE, OSBORNE
THE AMAZON (PORTRAIT OF H.R.H. THE PRINCESS HELENA)
THE ROYAL YACHT OFF MOUNT ST. MICHAEL
THE PRINCESS LOUISE
THE PRINCESS HELENA
PRINCESSES HELENA AND LOUISE
THE HUNTER (H.R.H. PRINCE ARTHUR)
HYDE PARK IN 1851
THE FISHER (H.R.H. PRINCE LEOPOLD)
H.R.H. THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE, K.G., ETC.
THE CRADLE (H.R.H. PRINCESS BEATRICE)
H.R.H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES (BUST)
H.R.H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES
THE ALBERT MEMORIAL
MONUMENT TO THE PRINCESS ALICE OF HESSE
* * * * *
QUEEN VICTORIA.
CHAPTER I.
ROYAL PROGRESSES TO BURGHLEY, STOWE, AND STRATHFIELDSAYE.
On the 29th of November the Queen went on one of her visits to her
nobility. We are told, and we can easily believe, these visits were
very popular and eagerly contested for. In her Majesty's choice of
localities it would seem as if she loved sometimes to retrace her
early footsteps by going again with her husband to the places where
she had been, as the young Princess, with the Duchess of Kent. The
Queen went at this time to Burghley, the seat of the Marquis of
Exeter. The tenantry of the different noblemen whose lands she passed
through lined the roads, the mayors of the various towns presented
addresses, the school children sang the National Anthem.
At Burghley, too, Queen Elizabeth had been before Queen Victoria. She
also had visited a Cecil. The Maiden Queen had travelled under
difficulties. The country roads of her day had been so nearly
impassable that her only means of transit had been to use a pillion
behind her Lord Steward. Her seat in the chapel was pointed out to the
Queen and Prince Albert when they went there for morning prayers.
Whether or not both queens whiled away a rainy day by going over the
whole manor-house, down to the kitchen, we cannot say; but it is not
likely that her Majesty's predecessor underwent the ordeal to her
gravity of passing through a gentleman's bedroom and finding his best
wig and whiskers displayed upon a block on a chest of drawers. And we
are not aware that Queen Elizabeth witnessed such an interesting
family rite as that which her Majesty graced by her presence. The
youngest daughter of the Marquis and Marchioness of Exeter was
christened in the chapel, at six o'clock in the evening, before the
Queen, and was named for her "Lady Victoria Cecil," while Prince
Albert stood as godfather to the child. After the baptism the Queen
kissed her little namesake, and Prince Albert presented her with a
gold cup bearing the inscription, "To Lady Victoria Cecil, from her
godfather Albert." At dinner the newly-named child was duly toasted by
the Queen's command.
The next day the royal party visited "Stamford town," from which the
Mayor afterwards sent Prince Albert the gift of a pair of Wellington
boots, as a sample of the trade of the place. The drive extended to
the ruins of another manor-house which, Lady Bloomfield heard, was
built by the Cecils for a temporary resort when their house of
Burghley was swept. The Queen and the Prince planted an oak and a
lime, not far from Queen Elizabeth's lime. The festivities ended with
a great dinner and ball, at which the Queen did not dance. Most of the
company passed before her chair of State on the dais, as they do at a
drawing-room.
On the 29th of December an aged English kinswoman of the Queen's died
at the Ranger's House, Blackheath, where she held the somewhat
anomalous office of Ranger of Greenwich Park. This was Princess Sophia
Matilda, daughter of the Duke of Gloucester, George III.'s brother,
and sister of the late Duke of Gloucester, the husband of his cousin,
Princess Mary.
Her mother's history was a romance. She was the beautiful niece of
Horace Walpole, the illegitimate daughter of his brother, the Earl of
Oxford. She married first the Earl of Waldegrave, and became the
mother of the three lovely sisters whom Sir Joshua Reynolds's brush
immortalised. The widowed countess caught the fancy of the royal Duke,
just as it was said, in contemporary letters, that another fair young
widow turned the head of another brother of the King's. George III.
refused at first to acknowledge the Duke of Gloucester's marriage, but
finally withdrew his opposition. If, as was reported, the Duke of York
married Lady Mary Coke, the marriage was never ratified. The risk of
such marriages caused the passing of the Royal Marriage Act, which
rendered the marriage of any member of the royal family without the
consent of the reigning sovereign illegal. The children of the Duke of
Gloucester and his Duchess were two--Prince William and Princess
Sophia Matilda. They held the somewhat doubtful position, perhaps more
marked in those days, of a family royal on one side of the house only.
The brother, if not a very brilliant, an inoffensive and not an
illiberal prince, though wicked wags called him "Silly Billy,"
improved the situation by his marriage with the amiable and popular
Princess Mary, to whom a private gentleman, enamoured by hearsay with
her virtues, left a considerable fortune. We get a passing glimpse of
the sister, Princess Sophia Matilda, in Fanny Burney's diary. She was
then a pretty, sprightly girl, having apparently inherited some of her
beautiful mother's and half-sisters' attractions. She was admitted to
terms of considerable familiarity and intimacy with her royal cousins;
and yet she was not of the circle of Queen Charlotte, neither could
she descend gracefully to a lower rank. No husband, royal or noble,
was found for her. One cannot think of her without attaching a sense
of loneliness to her princely estate. She survived her brother, the
Duke of Gloucester, ten years, and died at the age of seventy-two at
the Ranger's House, Blackheath, from which she had dispensed many
kindly charities. At her funeral the royal standard was hoisted half-
mast high on Greenwich Hospital, the Observatory, the churches of St.
Mary and St. Alphege, and on Blackheath. She was laid, with nearly all
her royal race for the last two generations, in the burial-place of
kings, St. George's Chapel, Windsor. Prince Albert occupied his stall
as a Knight of the Garter, with a mourning scarf across his field-
marshal's uniform.
In the middle of January, 1845, the Queen and Prince Albert went on a
visit to the Duke of Buckingham at Stowe, which was still unstripped
of its splendid possessions and interesting antiquarian relics. The
huge gathering of neighbours and tenants included waggons full of
labourers, admitted into the park to see the Queen's arrival and the
illumination of the great house at night.
The amusements of the next two days, the ordinary length of a royal
visit, began with _battues_ for the Prince, when the accumulation
of game was so enormous that, in place of the fact being remarkable
that "he hit almost everything he fired at," it would have been
singular if a good shot could have avoided doing so. Fifty beaters, so
near each other that their sticks almost touched, entered a thick
cover and drove the game past the place where the sportsmen were
stationed, into the open space of the park. Out the hares rushed from
every quarter, "so many of them, that it was often impossible to stop
more than one out of half-a-dozen. The ground immediately in front of
the shooters became strewn with dead and dying.... It was curious to
behold the evident reluctance with which the hares left their retreat,
and then their perplexity at finding themselves so beset without. Many
actually made for the canal, and swam like dogs across a piece of
water nearly a hundred yards wide, shaking themselves upon landing,
and making off without any apparent distress. The pheasants were
still more averse 'to come and be killed.' For some time not one
appeared above the trees. The cocks were heard crowing like domestic
fowls, as the numerous tribe retreated before the sticks of the
advancing army of beaters. Upon arriving, however, at the edge of the
wood, quite a cloud ascended, and the slaughter was proportionately
great."
"Slaughter," not sport, is the appropriate word. One cannot help
thinking that so it must have struck the Prince; nor are we surprised
that, on the next opportunity he had of exercising a sportsman's
legitimate vocation, with the good qualities of patience, endurance,
and skill, which it is calculated to call forth, emphatic mention is
made of his keen enjoyment.
Besides shooting there was walking for both ladies and gentlemen, to
the number of twenty guests, "in the mild, clear weather," in the
beautiful park. There was the usual county gathering, in order to
confer on the upper ten thousand, within a radius of many miles, the
much-prized honour of "meeting" the Queen at a dinner or a ball.
Lastly, her Majesty and the Prince planted the oak and the cedar which
were to rank like heirlooms, and be handed down as trophies of a royal
visit and princely favour, to future generations.
The Queen and Prince Albert returned to Windsor on the evening of
Saturday, the 18th of January, and on the afternoon of Monday, the
20th, they started again to pay a long-projected visit to her old
friend the Duke of Wellington at Strathfieldsaye. It was known that
the Duke had set his heart on entertaining his sovereign in his own
house, and she not only granted him the boon, but in consideration of
his age, his laurels, and the long and intimate connection between
them, she let the visit have more of a private and friendly character
than the visits of sovereigns to subjects were wont to have. However,
the country did not lose its gala. Arches of winter evergreens instead
of summer flowers, festive banners, loyal inscriptions, yeoman corps,
holiday faces, met her on all sides. At Swallowfield--a name which
Mary Russell Mitford has made pleasant to English ears--"no less a
person than the Speaker of the House of Commons," the representative
of an old Huguenot refugee, the Right Honourable John Shaw Lefevre,
commanded the troop of yeomanry.
The Iron Duke met his honoured guests in the hall and conducted them
to the library. Every day the same formula was gone through. "The Duke
takes the Queen in to dinner, sits by her Majesty, and after dinner
gets up and says, 'With your Majesty's permission I give the health of
her Majesty,' and then the same to the Prince. They then adjourn to
the library, and the Duke sits on the sofa by the Queen (almost as a
father would sit by a daughter) for the rest of the evening until
eleven o'clock, the Prince and the gentlemen being scattered about in
the library or the billiard-room, which opens into it. In a large
conservatory beyond, the band of the Duke's grenadier regiment plays
through the evening."
There was much that was unique and kindly in the relations between the
Queen and the greatest soldier of his day. He had stood by her
baptismal font; she had been his guest, when she was the girl-
Princess, at Walmer. He had sat in her first Council; he had witnessed
her marriage; she was to give his name to one of her sons; in fact, he
had taken part in every event of her life. The present arrangements
were a graceful, well-nigh filial, tribute of affectionate regard for
the old man who had served his country both on the battle-field and in
the senate, who had watched his Queen's career with the keenest
interest, and rejoiced in her success as something with which he had
to do.
The old soldier also gave the Prince shooting, but it was the "fine
wild sport" which might have been expected from the host, and which
seemed more to the taste of the guest. And in the party of gentlemen
who walked for miles over the ploughed land and through the brushwood,
none kept up the pace better than the veteran.
The weather was broken and partly wet during the Queen's stay at
Strathfieldsaye, and in lieu of out-of-door exercise, the tennis-court
came into request. Lord Charles Wellesley, the Duke's younger son,
played against professional players, and Prince Albert engaged Lord
Charles and one of the professional players, the Queen looking on.
When the visit was over, the Duke punctiliously performed his part of
riding on horseback by her Majesty's carriage for the first stage of
her journey.
Comical illustrations are given of the old nobleman and soldier's dry
rebuffs, administered to the members of the press and the public
generally, who haunted Strathfieldsaye on this occasion.
The first was in reply to a request for admission to the house on the
plea that the writer was one of the staff of a popular journal
commissioned to give the details of the visit. "Field-Marshal the Duke
of Wellington presents his compliments to Mr. ---, and begs to say
he does not see what his house at Strathfieldsaye has to do with the
public press." The other was in the form of a still more ironical
notice put up in the grounds, "desiring that people who wish to see
the house may drive up to the hall-door and ring the bell, but that
they are to abstain from walking on the flagstones and looking in at
the windows."
In February the Queen opened Parliament in person for what was
destined to be a stormy session, particularly in relation to Sir
Robert Peel's measure proposing an increased annual grant of money to
the Irish Roman Catholic priests' college of Maynooth. In the
Premier's speech, in introducing the Budget, he was able to pay a
well-merited compliment on the wise and judicious economy shown in
the management of her Majesty's income, so that it was equal to meet
the heavy calls made upon it by the visits of foreign sovereigns, who
were entertained in a manner becoming the dignity of the sovereign,
"without adding one tittle to the burdens of the country. And I am not
required, on the part of her Majesty," went on Sir Robert Peel, "to
press for the extra expenditure of one single shilling on account of
these unforeseen causes of increased expenditure. I think, to state
this is only due to the personal credit of her Majesty, who insists
upon it that there shall be every magnificence required by her
station, but without incurring a single debt." In order to show how
the additional cost of such royal hospitality taxed the resources even
of the Queen of England, it may be well to give an idea of the
ordinary scale of housekeeping at Windsor Castle. Lady Bloomfield
likens the kitchen-fire to Nebuchadnezzar's burning fiery furnace.
Even when there was no company, from fifteen to twenty joints hung
roasting there. In one year the number of people fed at dinner in the
Castle amounted to a hundred and thirteen thousand!
Shall we be accused of small moralities and petty lessons in thrift if
we say that this passage in Sir Robert Peel's speech recalls the
stories of the child-Princess's training, in a wholesome horror of
debt, and the exercise of such little acts of self-denial as can alone
come in a child's way; that it brings to mind the Tunbridge anecdote
of the tiny purchaser on her donkey, bidden to look at her empty purse
when a little box in the bazaar caught her eye, and prohibited from
going further in obtaining the treasure, till the next quarter's
allowance was due? Well might the nation that had read the report of
Sir Robert Peel's speech listen complacently when it heard in the
following month, of the Queen's acquisition of a private property
which should be all her own and her husband's, to do with, as they
chose. Another country bestowed, upon quite different grounds, on one
of its sovereigns the honourable title of King Honest Man. Here was
Queen Honest Woman, who would not buy what she could not afford, or
ask her people to pay for fancies in which she indulged, regardless of
her means. A different example had been presented by poor Louis XVI.
and Marie Antoinette, who, after a course of what their most faithful
servants admitted to be grievous misrule and misappropriation of
public dignities and funds--to satisfy the ambition and greed of
favourites or their friends--in the face of national bankruptcy,
private ruin, and widespread disaffection, in the very death-throes of
the Revolution, chose that time of all others to buy--under whatever
specious pretext of exchange and indemnification--for him who had
already so many hunting-seats, the fresh one of Rambouillet; for her,
who had Little Trianon in its perfection, the new suburban country
house of St. Cloud.
Osborne abounded in the advantages which the royal couple sought. It
was in the Isle of Wight, which her Majesty had loved in her girlhood,
with the girdle of sea that gave such assurance of the much-courted,
much-needed seclusion, as could hardly be procured elsewhere--
certainly not within a reasonable distance of London. It was a lovely
place by nature, with no end of capabilities for the practice of the
Prince's pleasant faculty of landscape-gardening, with which he had
already done wonders in the circumscribed grounds of Buckingham Palace
and the larger field of Windsor. There were not only woods and valleys
and charming points of view--among them a fine look at Spithead; the
woods went down to the sea, and the beach belonged to the estate. Such
a quiet country home for a country and home-loving Queen and Prince,
and for the little children, to whom tranquillity, freedom, the woods,
the fields, and the sea-sands were of such vital and lasting
consequence, was inestimable.
In addition to other outlets for an active, beneficent nature,
Osborne, with its works of building, planting, and improving going on
for years to come, had also its farms, like the Home Farm at Windsor.
And the Prince was fond of farming no less than of landscape-gardening
--proud of his practical success in making it pay, deeply interested
in all questions of agriculture and their treatment, so as to secure
permanent employment and ample provision for the labourers. Prince
Albert's love of animals, too, found scope in these farming
operations. When the Queen and the Prince visited the Home Farm the
tame pigeons would settle on his hat and her shoulders. The
accompanying engraving represents the pasture and part of the Home
Farm at Osborne. "The cow in the group was presented to her Majesty by
the Corporation of Guernsey, when the Queen visited the Channel
Islands; the animal is a beautiful specimen of the Alderney breed, and
is a great favourite ... on the forehead of the cow is a V
distinctly marked; a peculiarity, it may be presumed, which led to the
presentation; the other animals are her calves."
In the course of this session of Parliament, the Queen sought more
than once to mark her acknowledgment of the services of Sir Robert
Peel, round whose political career troubles were gathering. She acted
as sponsor to his grandchild--the heir of the Jersey family--and she
offered Sir Robert, through Lord Aberdeen, the Order of the Garter, an
offer which the Prime Minister respectfully declined in words that
deserve to be remembered. He sprang from the people, he said, and was
essentially of the people, and such an honour, in his case, would be
misapplied. His heart was not set upon titles of honour or social
distinction. His reward lay in her Majesty's confidence, of which, by
many indications, she had given him the fullest assurance; and when he
left her service the only distinction he courted was that she should
say to him, "You have been a faithful servant, and have done your duty
to your country and to myself."