THE DEATHS OF SIR ROBERT PEEL, THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE, AND LOUIS
PHILIPPE.
The Court had been at Osborne for the Whitsun holidays, and the Prince
had written to Germany, "In our island home we are wholly given up to
the enjoyment of the warm summer weather. The children catch
butterflies, Victoria sits under the trees, and I drink the Kissingen
water, Ragotzky. To-day mamma-aunt (the Duchess of Kent) and Charles
(Prince of Leiningen) are come to stay a fortnight with us; then we go
to town to compress the (so-called) pleasures of the season into four
weeks. God be merciful to us miserable sinners."
There was more to be encountered in town this year, than the hackneyed
round of gaieties--from which even royalty, with all the will in the
world, could not altogether free itself. The first shock was the
violent opposition, got up alike by the press and in Parliament, to
Hyde Park as the site of the building required for the Exhibition.
Following hard upon it came the melancholy news of the accident to
Sir Robert Peel, which occurred at the very door, so simply and yet so
fatally. Sir Robert, who, was riding out on Saturday, the 29th of
June, had just called at Buckingham Palace and written his name in her
Majesty's visiting-book. He was going up Constitution Hill, and had
reached the wicket-gate leading into the Green Park, when he met Miss
Ellis, Lady Dover's daughter, with whom he was acquainted, also
riding. Sir Robert exchanged greetings with the young lady, and his
horse became restive, "swerved towards the rails of the Green Park,"
and threw its rider, who had a bad seat in the saddle, sideways on his
left shoulder. It was supposed that Sir Robert held by the reins, so
as to drag the animal down with its knees on his shoulder.
He was taken home in a carriage, and laid on a sofa in his dining-
room, from which he was never moved. At his death he was in his sixty-
third year.
The vote of the House of Commons settled the question that Hyde Park
should be the site of the Exhibition, and _Punch_'s caricature,
which the Prince enjoyed, of Prince Albert as "The Industrious Boy,"
cap in hand, uttering the petition--
"Pity the troubles of a poor young Price,
Whose costly scheme has borne him to your door,"
lost all its sting, when such a fund was guaranteed as warranted the
raising of the structure according to Sir Joseph Paxton's beautiful
design.
The Queen and the Prince had many calls on their sympathy this summer.
On the 8th of July the Duke of Cambridge died, aged seventy-six. He
was the youngest of George III and Queen Charlotte's sons who attained
manhood. He was one of the most popular of the royal brothers,
notwithstanding the disadvantages of having been educated partly
abroad, taken foreign service, and held appointments in Hanover which
caused him to reside there for the most part till the death of William
IV. Neither was he possessed of much ability. He had not even the
scientific and literary acquirements of the Duke of Sussex, who had
possessed one of the best private libraries in England. But the Duke
of Cambridge's good-nature was equal to his love of asking questions--
a hereditary trait. He was buried, according to his own wish, at Kew.
The House of Commons voted twelve thousand a year to Prince George, on
his becoming Duke of Cambridge, in lieu of the twenty-seven thousand a
year enjoyed by the late Duke.
Osborne was a more welcome retreat than ever at the close of the
summer, but even Osborne could not shelter the Queen from political
worry and personal sorrow. There were indications of renewed trouble
from Lord Palmerston's "spirited foreign policy."
The Queen and the Prince believed they had reason to complain of Lord
Palmerston's carelessness and negligence, in not forwarding in time
copies of the documents passing through his department, which ought to
have been brought under the notice both of the sovereign and the Prime
Minister, and to have received their opinion, before the over-
energetic Secretary for Foreign Affairs acted upon them on his own
responsibility.
In these circumstances her Majesty wrote a memorandum of what she
regarded as the duty of the Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs
towards the Crown. The memorandum was written in a letter to Lord John
Russell, which he was requested to show to Lord Palmerston.
Except the misunderstanding with Sir Robert Peel about the dismissal
of the ladies of her suite, which occurred early in the reign, this is
the only difference on record between the Queen and any of her
ministers.
During this July at Osborne, Lady Lyttelton wrote her second vivid
description, quoted in the "Life of the Prince Consort," of Prince
Albert's organ-playing. "Last evening such a sunset! I was sitting,
gazing at it, and thinking of Lady Charlotte Proby's verses, when from
an open window below this floor began suddenly to sound the Prince's
organ, expressively played by his masterly hand. Such a modulation!
Minor and solemn, and ever changing and never ceasing. From a
_piano_ like Jenny Lind's holding note up to the fullest swell,
and still the same fine vein of melancholy. And it came on so exactly
as an accompaniment to the sunset. How strange he is! He must have
been playing just while the Queen was finishing her toilette, and then
he went to cut jokes and eat dinner, and nobody but the organ knows
what is in him, except, indeed, by the look of his eyes sometimes."
Lady Lyttelton refers to the Prince's cutting jokes, and the Queen has
written of his abiding cheerfulness. People are apt to forget in their
very admiration of his noble thoughtfulness, earnestness, and
tenderness of heart that he was also full of fun, keenly relishing a
good story, the life of the great royal household.
The Queen had been grieved this summer by hearing of the serious
illness of her greatest friend, the Queen of the Belgians, who was
suffering from the same dangerous disease of which her sister,
Princess Marie, had died. Probably it was with the hope of cheering
King Leopold, and of perhaps getting a glimpse of the much-loved
invalid, that the Queen, after proroguing Parliament in person, sailed
on the 21st of August with the Prince and their four elder children in
the royal yacht on a short trip to Ostend, where the party spent a
day. King Leopold met the visitors--the younger of whom were much
interested by their first experience of a foreign town. The Queen had
the satisfaction of finding her uncle well and pleased to see her, so
that she could call the meeting afterwards a "delightful, happy
dream;" but there was a sorrowful element in the happiness, occasioned
by the absence of Queen Louise, whose strength was not sufficient for
the journey to Ostend, and of whose case Sir James Clark, sent by the
Queen to Laeken, thought badly.
The poor Orleans family had another blow in store for them. On Prince
Albert's thirty-first birthday, the 26th of August, which he passed at
Osborne, news arrived of the death that morning, at Claremont, of
Louis Philippe, late King of the French, in his seventy-seventh year.
The Queen and the Prince had been prepared to start with their elder
children for Scotland the day after they heard of the death, and by
setting out at six o'clock in the morning they were enabled to pay a
passing visit to the house of mourning.
We may be permitted to remark here, by what quiet, unconscious touches
in letters and journals we have brought home to us the dual life, full
of duty and kindliness, led by the highest couple in the land. Whether
it is in going with a family of cousins to take the last look at a
departed kinsman, or in getting up at daybreak to express personal
sympathy with another family in sorrow, we cannot fail to see, while
it is all so simply said and done, that no painful ordeal is shirked,
no excuse is made of weighty tasks and engrossing occupations, to free
either Queen or Prince from the gentle courtesies and tender charities
of everyday humanity; we recognise that the noblest and busiest are
also the bravest, the most faithful, the most full of pity.