PREPARATION FOR THE EXHIBITION--BIRTH OF THE DUKE OF CONNAUGHT--THE
BLOW DEALT BY FATE--FOREIGN TROUBLES--ENGLISH ART.
The first great public meeting in the interest of the Exhibition was
held in London in the February of this year, and on the 21st of March
a banquet was given at the Mansion House to promote the same cause.
Prince Albert was present, with the ministers and foreign ambassadors;
and the mayors and provosts of all the principal towns in the United
Kingdom were also among the guests. The Prince delivered an admirable
speech to explain his view of the Exhibition.
It was at this time that the Duke of Wellington made the gratifying
proposal that the Prince should succeed him as Commander-in-chief of
the army, urging the suggestion by every argument in his power, and
offering to supply the Prince with all the information and guidance
which the old soldier's experience could command. After some quiet
consideration the Prince declined the proposal, chiefly on the ground
that the many claims which the high office would necessarily make on
his time and attention, must interfere with his other and still more
binding duties to the Queen and the country.
On May-day, 1850, her Majesty's third son and seventh child was born.
The Prince, in announcing the event to the Dowager-Duchess of Coburg,
says: "The little boy was received by his sisters with _jubilates_. 'Now
we are just as many as the days of the week,' was the cry, and then a
bit of a struggle arose as to who was to be Sunday. Out of well-bred
courtesy the honour was conceded to the new-comer."
The circumstance that the 1st of May was the birthday of the Duke of
Wellington determined the child's name, and perhaps, in a measure, his
future profession. The Queen and the Prince were both so pleased to
show this crowning mark of friendship from a sovereign to a subject,
that they did not allow the day to pass without intimating their
intention to the Duke. "It is a singular thing," the Queen wrote to
Baron Stockmar, "that this so much wished-for boy should be born on
the old Duke's eighty-first birthday. May that, and his beloved
father's name, bring the poor little infant happiness and good
fortune!"
An amusing episode of the Queen's visit to Ireland had been the
passionate appeal of an old Irishwoman, "Och, Queen, dear! make one of
them Prince Patrick, and all Ireland will die for you!" Whether or not
her Majesty remembered the fervent request, Prince Arthur had Patrick
for one of his names, certainly in memory of Ireland, and William for
another, partly in honour of one of his godfathers--the present
Emperor of Germany--and partly because it would have pleased Queen
Adelaide, whose sister, Duchess Ida of Saxe-Weimar, was godmother.
Prince Albert's name wound up the others. The child was baptized on
the 22nd of June at Buckingham Palace. The two godfathers were
present; so were the Duchesses of Kent and Cambridge (the Duke of
Cambridge lay ill), Prince George and Princess Mary of Cambridge, the
Prince of Leiningen, and Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, the ministers
and foreign ambassadors. The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishops of
London and Oxford, &c. &c., officiated. Prince Albert's chorale, "In
life's gay morn," was performed again. After the christening there was
a State banquet in the picture gallery. Prince Arthur was the finest
of all the Queen's babies, and the royal nurseries still retain
memories of his childish graces.
Before the ceremony of the christening, and within a month of the
birth of her child, her Majesty was subjected to one of the most
wanton and cowardly of all the attacks which half-crazed brains
prompted their owners to make upon her person. She had driven out
about six o'clock in the evening, with her children and Lady Jocelyn,
to inquire for her uncle, the Duke of Cambridge, who was suffering
from his last illness. While she was within the gates of Cambridge
House, a tall, gentlemanlike man loitered at the entrance, as it
appeared with the by no means uncommon wish to see the Queen. But when
her carriage drove out, while it was leisurely turning the corner into
the road, the man started forward, and, with a small stick which he
held, struck the Queen a sharp blow on the face, crushing the bonnet
she wore, and inflicting a severe bruise and slight wound on the
forehead. The fellow was instantly seized and the stick wrested from
his grasp, while he was conveyed to the nearest police-station.
The Queen drove home, and was able to show herself the same evening at
the Opera, where she was received with the singing of the National
Anthem and great cheering.
The offender was neither a boy nor of humble rank. He proved to be a
man of thirty--a gentleman by birth and education.
The Prince wrote of the miserable occurrence to Baron Stockmar that
its perpetrator was a dandy "whom you must often have seen in the
Park, where he has made himself conspicuous. He maintains the closest
silence as to his motives, but is manifestly deranged. All this does
not help to make one cheerful."
The man was the son of a gentleman named Pate, of wealth and position,
who had acted as sheriff of Cambridgeshire. The son had had a
commission in the army, from which he had been requested to retire, on
account of an amount of eccentricity that had led at least to one
serious breach of discipline. He could give no reason for his conduct
beyond making the statement that he had acted on a sudden
uncontrollable impulse. He was tried in the following July. The jury
refused to accept the plea of insanity, and he was sentenced, like his
predecessor, to seven years' transportation.
At the date of the attack the minds of the Queen and the Prince, and
indeed of a large portion of the civilised world, were much occupied
with a serious foreign embroilment into which the Government had been
drawn by what many people considered the restless and interfering
policy of Lord Palmerston, the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.
He had gone so far as to send a fleet into Greek waters for the
protection of two British subjects claiming assistance, and in the act
he had offended France and Russia.
Much political excitement was aroused, and there were keen and
protracted debates in both Houses of Parliament. In the House of Lords
something like a vote of censure of the foreign policy of the
Government was moved and carried. In the House of Commons the debate
lasted five nights, and the fine speech in which Lord Palmerston, a
man in his sixty-sixth year, defended his policy, was continued "from
the dusk of one day to the dawn of the next."
Apart from these troubles abroad, the country, on the whole, was in a
prosperous and satisfactory condition. Trade was flourishing. Neither
had literature fallen behind. Perhaps it had rarely shown a more
brilliant galaxy of contemporary names, including those of John Stuart
Mill in logic, Herbert Spencer in philosophy, Charles Darwin in
natural science, Ruskin in art criticism, Helps as an essayist. And in
this year Tennyson brought out his "In Memoriam," and Kingsley his
"Alton Lock". It seemed but natural that the earlier lights should be
dying out before the later; that Lord Jeffrey, the old king of
critics, should pass beyond the sound of reviews; and Wordsworth,
after this spring, be seen no more among the Cumberland hills and
dales; and Jane Porter, whose innocent high-flown romances had been
the delight of the young reading world more than fifty years before,
should end her days, a cheerful old lady, in the prosaic town of
Bristol.
In the Academy's annual exhibition the same old names of Landseer
(with his popular picture of the Duke of Wellington showing his
daughter-in-law, Lady Douro, the field of Waterloo), Maclise,
Mulready, Stanfield, &c. &c., came still to the front. But a new
movement, having a foreign origin, though in this case an English
development, known as the pre-Raphaelite theory, with Millais, Holman
Hunt, and Rossetti as its leaders, was already at work. This year
there was a picture by Millais--still a lad of twenty-one--in support
of the protest against conventionality in the beautiful, which did not
fail to attract attention, though it excited as much condemnation as
praise. The picture was "Christ in the House of His Parents," better
known as "The Carpenter's Shop."