THE QUEEN'S FIRST STAY AT BALMORAL.
From France, in June, came the grievous news of the three days'
fighting in the streets of Paris, because no Government provision
could secure work and bread for the artisans. The insurrection was
only put down by martial law under the Dictator, General Cavaignac.
In Sardinia the King, Charles Albert, fighting gallantly against the
Austrian rule, was defeated once and again, and driven back.
In England, though the most swaggering of the Chartists still
blustered a little, attention could be given to more peaceful
concerns. In July Prince Albert went to York, though he could "ill be
spared" from the Queen's side in those days of startling events and
foreign turmoil, to be present at a meeting of the Royal Agricultural
Society, of which he had been governor for half-a-dozen years. The
acclamations with which the Prince was received, were only the echo of
the tempest of cheers which greeted and encouraged her Majesty every
time she appeared in public this year.
In August strong measures had again to be taken in Ireland. These
included the gathering together of a great military force in the
disturbed districts, and the assemblage of a fleet of war-steamers on
the coast. As in the previous instance, little or no resistance was
offered. In the course of a few days the former leaders, Meagher,
Smith O'Brien, and Mitchel, were arrested. They were brought to trial
in Dublin, convicted of high treason, and sentenced to death--a
sentence commuted into transportation for life.
The Queen had the pleasure of finding her brother, the Prince of
Leiningen, appointed head of the department of foreign affairs in the
short-lived Frankfort assembly of the German states. It showed at
least the respect in which he was held by his countrymen.
On the 5th of September the Queen went in person to prorogue
Parliament, which had sat for ten months. The ceremony took place in
the new House of Lords. There was an unusually large and brilliant
company present on this occasion, partly to admire the "lavish paint
and gilding," the stained-glass windows, with likenesses of kings and
queens, and Dyce's and Maclise's frescoes, partly to enjoy the
emphatically-delivered sentence in the royal speech, in which the
Queen acknowledged, "with grateful feelings, the many marks of loyalty
and attachment which she had received from all classes of her people."
The Queen and the Prince, with three of their children and the suite,
sailed from Woolwich for a new destination in Scotland--a country-
house or little castle, which they had so far made their own, since
the Prince, acting on the advice of Sir James Clark, the Queen's
physician, had acquired the lease from the Earl of Aberdeen.
The royal party were in Aberdeen Harbour at eight o'clock in the
morning of the 7th September. On the 8th Balmoral was reached. The
first impression was altogether agreeable. Her Majesty has described
the place, as it appeared to her, in her Journal. "We arrived at
Balmoral at a quarter to three. It is a pretty little castle in the
old Scottish style. There is a picturesque tower and garden in the
front, with a high wooded hill; at the back there is a wood down to
the _Dee_, and the hills rise all around."
During the first stay of the Court at Balmoral, the Queen has
chronicled the ascent of a mountain. On Saturday, the 16th of
September, as early as half-past nine in the morning, her Majesty and
Prince Albert drove in a postchaise four miles to the bridge in the
wood of Ballochbuie, where ponies and guides awaited them. Macdonald,
a keeper of Farquharson of Invercauld's and afterwards in the service
of the Prince, a tall, handsome man, whom the Queen describes as
"looking like a picture in his shooting-jacket and kilt," and Grant,
the head-keeper at Balmoral, on a pony, with provisions in two
baskets, were the chief attendants.
Through the wood and over moss, heather, and stones, sometimes riding,
sometimes walking; Prince Albert irresistibly attracted to stalk a
deer, in vain; across the stony little burn, where the faithful
Highlanders piloted her Majesty, walking and riding again, when
Macdonald led the bridle of the beast which bore so precious a burden;
the views "very beautiful," but alas! mist on the brow of Loch-na-gar.
Prince Albert making a detour after ptarmigan, leaving the Queen in
the safe keeping of her devoted guides, to whom she refers so kindly
as "taking the greatest care of her." Even "poor Batterbury," the
English groom, who seems to have cut rather a ridiculous figure in his
thin boots and gaiters and non-enjoyment of the expedition, "was very
anxious also" for the well-being of his royal lady, whose tastes must
have struck him as eccentric, to say the least.
The mist intensified the cold when the citadel mountain was reached,
so that it must have been a relief to try a spell of walking once
more, especially as the first part of the way was "soft and easy,"
while the party looked down on the two _lochans_, known as _Na
Nian_. Who that has any knowledge of the mountains cannot recall
the effect of these solitary tarns, like well-eyes in the wilderness,
gleaming in the sunshine, dark in the gloom? The Prince, good
mountaineer as he was, grew glad to remount his pony and let the
docile, sure-footed creature pick its steps through the gathering fog,
which was making the ascent an adventure not free from danger.
Everything not within a hundred yards was hidden. The last and
steepest part of the mountain (three thousand seven hundred and
seventy-seven feet from the sea-level) was accomplished on foot, and
at two o'clock, after four hours' riding and walking, a seat in a
little nook where luncheon could be taken was found; for,
unfortunately, there was no more to be done save to seek rest and
refreshment. There was literally nothing to be seen, in place of the
glorious panorama which a mountain-top in favourable circumstances
presents.
This was that "dark Loch-na-gar" whose "steep frowning glories" Lord
Byron rendered famous, for which he dismissed with scorn, "gay
landscapes and gardens of roses."
No doubt the snowflakes, in corries on the mountain-side, do look
deliciously cool on a hot summer day. But such a drizzling rain as
this was the other side of the picture, which her Majesty, with a
shiver, called "cold, wet, and cheerless." In addition to the rain the
wind began to blow a hurricane, which, after all, in the case of a fog
was about the kindest thing the wind could do, whether or not the
spirits of heroes were in the gale.
At twenty minutes after two the party set out on their descent of the
mountain. The two keepers, moving on as pioneers in the gloom, "looked
like ghosts." When walking became too exhausting, the Queen, "well
wrapped in plaids," was again mounted on her pony, which she declared
"went delightfully," though the mist caused the rider "to feel
cheerless."
In the course of the next couple of hours, after a thousand feet of
the descent had been achieved, by one of those abrupt transitions
which belong to such a landscape, the mist below vanished as if by
magic, and it was again, summer sunshine around.
But the world could not be altogether shut out at Balmoral, and the
echoes which came from afar, this year, were of a sufficiently
disturbing character. Among the most notable, Sir Theodore Martin
mentions the Frankfort riots, in which two members of the German
States Union were assassinated, and the startling death of the
Conservative leader, Lord George Bentinck, who had suddenly exchanged
the _rôle_ of the turf for that of Parliament, and come to the
front during the struggle over the abolition of the Corn Laws.
A third strangely significant omen was the election of Prince Louis
Napoleon, by five different French Departments, as a deputy to the new
French Chamber.
The Court left Balmoral on the 28th of September, stayed one night in
London, and then proceeded for ten days to Osborne. On the return of
the Queen and the Prince to Windsor, on the 9th of October, a sad
accident occurred in their sight. As the yacht was crossing on a misty
and stormy day to Portsmouth, she passed near the frigate
_Grampus_, which had just come back from her station in the
Pacific. In their eagerness to meet their relations among the crew on
board, five unfortunate women had gone out in an open boat rowed by
two watermen, though the foul-weather flag was flying. "A sudden
squall swamped the boat" without attracting the attention of anyone on
board the _Grampus_ or the yacht. But one of the watermen, who
was able to cling to the overturned boat, was seen by the men in a
Custom-house boat, who immediately aroused the indignation of Lord
Adolphus Fitzclarence and his brother-officers by steering, apparently
without any reason, right across the bows of the _Fairy_. Prince
Albert, who was on deck, was the first to discover the cause of the
inexplicable conduct of the men in the Custom-house boat. "He called
out that he saw a man in the water;" the Queen hurried out of her
pavilion, and distinguished a man on what turned out to be the keel of
a boat. "Oh dear! there are more!" cried Prince Albert in horror,
"which quite overcame me," the Queen wrote afterwards. "The royal
yacht was stopped and one of its boats lowered, which picked up three
of the women--one of them alive and clinging to a plank, the others
dead." The storm was violent, and the responsibility of keeping the
yacht exposed to its fury lay with Lord Adolphus. Since nothing
further could be attempted for the victims of their own rashness, he
did not think it right that the yacht should stay for the return of
the boat, as he held the delay unsafe, although both the Queen and the
Prince, with finer instincts, were anxious this should be done. "We
could not stop," wrote her Majesty again, full of pity. "It was a
dreadful moment, too horrid to describe. It is a consolation to think
we were of some use, and also that, even if the yacht had remained,
they could not have done more. Still, we all keep feeling we might,
though I think we could not.... It is a terrible thing, and haunts me
continually."
The Magyar War under Kossuth was raging in Hungary. In the far-away
Punjab the Sikh War, in which Lieutenant Edwardes had borne so gallant
a part in the beginning of the year, was still prolonged, with Mooltan
always the bone of contention.
In October all aristocratic England was excited by the sale of the Art
treasures of Stowe, which lasted for forty days. Mrs. Gaskell made a
fine contribution to literature in her novel of "Mary Barton," in
which genius threw its strong light on Manchester life.
The Queen had a private theatre fitted up this year in the Rubens
Room, Windsor Castle. The first of the _dramatis personae_ in the
best London theatres went down and acted before the Court, giving
revivals of Shakespeare--which it was hoped would improve the taste
for the higher drama--varied by lighter pieces.
On the 24th of November the Queen heard of the death of her former
Minister and counsellor William Lamb, Viscount Melbourne. "Truly and
sincerely," her Majesty wrote in her Journal, "do I deplore the loss
of one who was a most disinterested friend of mine, and most sincerely
attached to me. He was, indeed, for the first two years and a half of
my reign, almost the only friend I had, except Stockmar and Lehzen,
and I used to see him constantly, daily. I thought much and talked
much of him all day."