THE QUEEN'S FIRST STAY AT HOLYROOD--LIFE IN THE HIGHLANDS--THE DEATH
OF THE QUEEN OF THE BELGIANS.
This year the Queen went north by Castle Howard, the fine seat of the
Earl of Carlisle, the Duchess of Sutherland's brother, where her
Majesty made her first halt. After stopping to open the railway
bridges, triumphs of engineering, over the Tyne and the Tweed, the
travellers reached Edinburgh, where, to the gratification of an
immense gathering of her Scotch subjects, her Majesty spent her first
night in Holyrood, the palace of her Stewart ancestors. The place was
full of interest and charm for her, and though it was late in the
afternoon before she arrived, she hardly waited to rest, before
setting out incognito, so far as the old housekeeper was concerned, to
inspect the historical relics of the building. She wandered out with
her "two girls and their governess" to the ruins of the chapel or old
abbey, and stood by the altar at which Mary Stewart, the fair young
French widow, wedded "the long lad Darnley," and read the inscriptions
on the tombs of various members of noble Scotch houses, coming to a
familiar name on the slab which marked the grave of the mother of one
of her own maids of honour, a daughter of Clanranald's.
The Queen then visited Queen Mary's rooms, being shown, like other
strangers, the closet where her ancestress had sat at supper on a
memorable night, and the stair from the chapel up which Ruthven, risen
from a sick-bed, led the conspirators who seized Davie Rizzio, dragged
him from his mistress's knees, to which he clung, and slew him
pitilessly on the boards which, according to old tradition, still bear
the stain of his blood. After that ghastly token, authentic or non-
authentic, which would thrill the hearts of the young princesses as it
has stirred many a youthful imagination, Darnley's armour and Mary's
work-table, with its embroidery worked by her own hand, must have
fallen comparatively flat.
The next morning the Queen and the Prince, with their children, took
their first drive round the beautiful road, then just completed, which
bears her name, and, encircling Arthur's Seat, is the goal of every
stranger visiting Edinburgh, affording as it does in miniature an
excellent idea of Scotch scenery. On this occasion the party alighted
and climbed to the top of the hill, rejoicing in the view. "You see
the beautiful town, with the Calton Hill, and the bay with the island
of Inchkeith stretching out before you, and the Bass Rock quite in the
distance, rising behind the coast.... The view when we gained the
carriage hear Dunsappie Loch, quite a small lake, overhung by a crag,
with the sea in the distance, is extremely pretty.... The air was
delicious."
In the course of the forenoon the Prince laid the foundation stone of
the Scotch National Gallery, and made his first speech (which was an
undoubted success) before one of those Edinburgh audiences, noted for
their fastidiousness and critical faculty. The afternoon drive was by
the beautiful Scott monument, the finest modern ornament of the city,
Donaldson's Hospital, the High Street, and the Canongate, and the
lower part of the Queen's Drive, which encloses the Queen's Park. "A
beautiful park indeed," she wrote, "with such a view, and such
mountain scenery in the midst of it."
In the evening there was assembled such a circle as had not been
gathered in royal old Holyrood since poor Prince Charlie kept brief
state there. Her Majesty wrote in her journal, "The Buccleuchs, the
Roxburghs, the Mortons, Lord Roseberry, Principal Lee, the Belhavens,
and the Lord Justice General, dined with us. Everybody so pleased at
our living at my old palace." The talk seems to have been, as was
fitting, on old times and the unfortunate Queen Mary, the heroine of
Holyrood. Sir Theodore Martin thinks it may have been in remembrance
of this evening that Lord Belhaven, on his death, left a bequest to
the Queen "of a cabinet which had been brought by Queen Mary from
France, and given by her to the Regent Mar, from whom it passed into
the family of Lord Belhaven." The cabinet contains a lock of Queen
Mary's golden hair, and a purse worked by her.
On the following day the royal party left Holyrood and travelled to
Balmoral. The Queen, with the Prince and her children, and the Duchess
of Kent, with her son and grandson, were at the great gala of the
district, the Braemar gathering, where the honour of her Majesty's
presence is always eagerly craved.
Another amusement was the _leistering_, or spearing, of salmon in
the Dee. Captain Forbes of Newe, and from forty to fifty of his clan,
on their return to Strathdon from the Braemar gathering, were
attracted by the fishing to the river's edge, when they were carried
over the water on the backs of the Queen's men, who volunteered the
service, "Macdonald, at their head, carrying Captain Forbes on his
back." The courteous act, which was quite spontaneous, charmed the
Queen and the Prince. The latter in writing to Germany gave further
details of the incident. "Our people in the Highlands are altogether
primitive, true-hearted and without guile.... Yesterday the Forbeses
of Strath Don passed through here. When they came to the Dee our
people (of Strath Dee) offered to carry them across the river, and did
so, whereupon they drank to the health of Victoria and the inmates of
Balmoral in whisky (_schnapps_), but as there was no cup to be
had, their chief, Captain Forbes, pulled off his shoe, and he and his
fifty men drank out of it."
The Forbeses got permission to march through the grounds of Balmoral,
"the pipers going, in front. They stopped and cheered three times
three, throwing up their bonnets." The Queen describes the
characteristic demonstration, and she then mentions listening with
pleasure "to the distant shouts and the sound of the pibroch."
There were two drawbacks to the peace and happiness of Balmoral this
year. The one was occasioned by an unforeseen vexatious occurrence,
and the complications which arose from it. General Haynau, the
Austrian officer whose brutalities to the conquered and to women
during the Hungarian war had aroused detestation in England, happened
to visit London, and was attacked by the men in Barclay's brewery.
Austria remonstrated, and Lord Palmerston made a rash reply, which had
to be recalled.
The other care which darkened the Balmoral horizon in 1850 was the
growing certainty of a fatal termination to the illness of the Queen
of the Belgians. Immediately after the Court returned to Osborne the
blow fell. Queen Louise died at Ostend on the 11th of October, 1850.
She was only in her thirty-ninth year, not more than eight years older
than Queen Victoria. She was the second daughter of Louis Philippe,
Princess Marie having been the elder sister.