ROYAL VISITS TO LIVERPOOL AND MANCHESTER--CLOSE OF THE EXHIBITION.
On the 27th of August the Court left for Balmoral, travelling for the
most part by the Great Northern Railway, but not, as now, making a
rapid night and day journey. On the contrary, the journey lasted three
days, with pauses for each night's rest between. Starting from Osborne
at nine, the Royal party reached Buckingham Palace at half-past
twelve. Halting for an hour and a half, they set off again at two.
They stopped at Peterborough, where old Dr. Fisher, the Bishop, was
able to greet in his Queen the little Princess who had repeated her
lessons to him in Kensington Palace. No longer a solitary figure but
for the good mother, she was herself a wife and mother, the happiest
of the happy in both relations. The train stopped again at Boston and
Lincoln for the less interesting purpose of the presentation and
reception of congratulatory addresses on the Exhibition. The same
ceremony was gone through at Doncaster where the party stayed for the
night at the Angel Inn.
Leaving before nine on the following morning, after changing the line
of railway at York, and stopping at Darlington and Newcastle,
Edinburgh was reached in the course of the afternoon. Her Majesty and
the Prince, with their children, proceeded to Holyrood, and before the
evening was ended drove for an hour through the beautiful town. Here,
too, the Exhibition bore its fruit in the honour of knighthood
conferred on the Lord Provost.
On the third morning the travellers left again at eight o'clock, and
journeyed as far as Stonehaven, where the royal carriages met them,
and conveyed them to Balmoral, which was reached by half-past six. The
Prince had now bought the castle and estate, seven miles in length,
and four in breadth, and plans were formed for a new house more
suitable for the accommodation of so large a household.
On the day after the Queen and Prince Albert's arrival in the
Highlands, he received the news of the death of his uncle, brother to
the late Duke of Coburg and to the Duchess of Kent, Duke Ferdinand of
Saxe-Coburg.
There is little to record of the happy sojourn in the North this year,
with its deer-stalking, riding and driving, except that Hallam, the
historian, and Baron Liebig, the famous chemist, visited Sir James
Clark, the Queen's physician, at Birkhall, which he occupied, and were
among the guests at Balmoral.
It had been arranged that the Queen and the Prince should visit
Liverpool and Manchester on their way south, in order to give the
great cities of Lancashire the opportunity of greeting and welcoming
their Sovereign. It was the 8th of October before the royal party set
out on their homeward journey, ending the first of the shortening days
at Holyrood.
On the following day the strangers went on to the ancient dull little
town of Lancaster, and drove to the castle, where the keys were
presented, and an address read under John O'Gaunt's gateway. The tower
stairs were mounted for the view over Morcambe Bay and the English
lake country on the one hand, and away across level lands to the sea
on the other. Every native of the town "wore a red rose or a red
rosette, as emblems of the House of Lancaster."
The Queen and the Prince then proceeded to Prescot, where they left
the railway, driving through Lord Derby's fine park at Knowsley, to be
the guests of the Earl of Sefton at Croxteth. Next morning, when
Liverpool was to be visited, a _contretemps_ occurred. The
weather was hopelessly wet; the whole party had to go as far as
possible in closed carriages; afterwards the downpour was so
irresistible that the Prince's large cloak had to be spread over the
Queen and her children to keep them dry. But her Majesty's
commiseration is almost entirely for the crowd on foot, "the poor
people so wet and dirty." They spoil her pleasure in her enthusiastic
reception and the fine buildings she passes.
The royal party drove along the docks, and in spite of the rain got
out at the appointed place of embarkation, went on board the
_Fairy_, accompanied by the Mayor and other officials, and sailed
along the quays round the mouth of the Mersey, surveying the grand
mass of shipping from the pavilion on deck as well as the dank mist
would permit. On landing, the Town Hall and St. George's Hall were
visited in succession. In the first the Queen received an address and
knighted the Mayor. She admired both buildings--particularly St.
George's, which she called "worthy of ancient Athens," and said it
delighted Prince Albert. At both halls she presented herself on
balconies in order to gratify the multitudes below.
The Queen left Liverpool by railway, going as far as Patricroft, where
she was received by Lady Ellesmere and a party from Worsley, including
the Duke of Wellington, Lord and Lady Westminster, and Lord and Lady
Wilton. Her Majesty was to try a mode of travelling new to her. She
had arrived at the Bridgewater Canal, one of the greatest feats of
engineering in the last century, constructed by the public-spirited,
eccentric Duke of Bridgewater, and Brindley the engineer. The Queen
went on board a covered barge drawn by four horses. She describes the
motion as gliding along "in a most noiseless and dream-like manner,
amidst the cheers of the people who lined the sides of the canal."
Thus she passed under the "beautifully decorated bridges" belonging to
Lord Ellesmere's colliery villages.
Only at the hall-door of Worsley were Lord Ellesmere, lame with gout,
and Lord Brackley, his son, "terribly delicate" from an accident in
the hunting-field, the husband of one of the beautiful Cawdor
Campbells, able to meet their illustrious guests. Henry Greville says
her Majesty brought with her four children, two ladies-in-waiting, two
equerries, a physician, a tutor, and a governess. Men of mechanical
science seem to belong to Worsley, so that it sounds natural for the
Queen and the Prince to have met there, during the evening, Nasmyth,
the inventor of the steam-hammer, and to have examined his maps of his
investigations in the moon, and his landscape-drawings, worthy of his
father's son. The Queen and Prince Albert derived great pleasure from
their passing intercourse with a man of varied gifts, whose sterling
qualities they could well appreciate.
The next morning, the 10th of October, the weather was all that could
be wished, but another and even more unfortunate complication
threatened the success of the arrangements, on which the comfort of a
few and the gratification of many thousands of persons depended.
Prince Albert, never strong, was always liable to trying attacks of
sleeplessness and sickness. In the course of the night he had been
"very unwell, very sick and wretched for several hours." "I was
terrified for our Manchester visit" wrote the Queen in her journal.
"Thank God! by eight o'clock he felt much better, and was able to get
up" indefatigable as ever.
At ten the party started to drive the seven miles to Manchester,
escorted by Yeomanry and a regiment of Lancers, Lord Cathcart and his
staff riding near the Queen's carriage through an ever-increasing
crowd. The Queen was greatly interested in the rows of mill-workers
between whom she passed, "dressed in their best, ranged along the
streets, with white rosettes in their button-holes"--that patient,
easily pleased crowd, which has an aspect half comical, half pathetic.
Her Majesty admired the intelligent expression of both men and women,
but was painfully struck with their puniness and paleness. In the Peel
Park the visitors were greeted by a great demonstration, which her
Majesty calls "extraordinary and unprecedented," of no less than
eighty-two thousand school children, of every denomination, Jews as
well as Christians. The Queen received and replied to an address, from
her carriage, and the immense body of children sang "God save the
Queen."
The party then drove through the principal streets of Salford and
Manchester--the junction of the two being marked by a splendid
triumphal arch, under which the Mayor and Corporation (dressed for the
first time in robes of office--so democratic was Manchester), again
met the Queen and presented her with a bouquet. At the Exchange she
alighted to receive another address, to which she read an answer, and
knighted the Mayor. Her Majesty missed "fine buildings," of which,
with the exception of huge warehouses and factories, Manchester had
then none to boast; but she was particularly struck by the demeanour
of the inhabitants, in addition to what she was pleased to call their
"most gratifying cheering and enthusiasm." "The order and good
behaviour of the people, who were not placed behind any barriers, were
the most complete we have seen in our many progresses through capitals
and cities--London, Glasgow, Dublin, Edinburgh--for there never was a
running crowd, nobody moved and therefore everybody saw well, and
there was no squeezing...." The Queen heard afterwards that she had
seen a million of human beings that day. In the afternoon her Majesty
and the Prince, returned to Worsley.
Henry Greville tells an almost piteous incident of this visit, in
relation to the Duke of Wellington and his advanced age, with the
infirmities that could no longer be repelled. After saying that in
order to prevent the procession's becoming too large, no other guest
at Worsley was admitted into it, except the privileged old Duke, whom
the teller of the story describes as driving in the carriage with
Henry Greville's sister, Lady Enfield, one of the ladies in attendance
on the Queen, he goes on to mention "he (the Duke) was received with
extraordinary enthusiasm; notwithstanding Lady Enfield had to nudge
him constantly, to keep him awake, both going and coming, with very
little success." Lady Enfield adds a note to her brother's narrative.
"The whole scene was one of the most exciting I ever saw in my life.
Being carried away by the general enthusiasm, and feeling that the
people would be disappointed if no notice was taken of their cheering,
I at last exclaimed 'Duke, Duke, that's for _you_.' Thereupon he
opened his eyes, and obediently made his well-known salutation, two
fingers to the brim of his hat."
The next morning when the Prince had started by seven o'clock to
inspect a model factory near Bolton, while there was a long and busy
day before them, the Queen made a little entry in her journal which
will find a sorrowful echo in many a faithful heart, "This day is full
of sad recollections, being the anniversary of the loss of my beloved
Louise (Queen of the Belgians), that kind, precious friend, that
angelic being whose loss I shall ever feel."
The same pleasant passage was made by the canal back to Patricroft,
where the railway carriages were entered and the train steamed to
Stockport. Crewe, Stafford--there another old soldier, Lord Anglesey,
was waiting--Rugby, Weedon, Wolverton, and Watford, then at five
o'clock the railway journey ended. The royal carriages were in
attendance, and rest and home were near at hand. The day had been hot
and fatiguing, but the evening was soft and beautiful with moonlight;
a final change of horses at Uxbridge, the carriage shut when the
growing darkness prevented any farther necessity for seeing and being
seen; at half-past seven, Windsor, and the three little children still
up and at the door "well and pleased."
From Windsor the Court went for some days to London for the closing of
the Exhibition. The number of visitors had been six millions two
hundred thousand, and the total receipts five hundred thousand pounds.
There had not been a single accident, "We ought, indeed, to be
thankful to God for such a success," the Prince wrote reverently. On
the 14th of October the Queen paid a farewell visit to the place in
which she had been so much interested, with the regret natural on such
an occasion. "It looked so beautiful," she wrote in her journal, "that
I could not believe it was the last time I was to see it." But already
the dismantling had begun.
The Queen refers in the next breath to a heroine of the Exhibition, an
old Cornish woman named Mary Kerlynack, who had found the spirit to
walk several hundreds of miles to behold the wonder of her generation.
This day she was at one of the doors to see another sight, the Queen.
"A most hale old woman" her Majesty thought Mary, "who was near crying
at my looking at her."
On the 15th, a cheerlessly wet day, in keeping with a somewhat
melancholy scene, Prince Albert and his fellow commissioners closed
the Exhibition--a ceremony at which it was not judged desirable the
Queen should be present, though she grieved not to witness the end as
well as the beginning. "How sad and strange to think this great and
bright time has passed away like a dream," her Majesty wrote once more
in her diary. The day of the closing of the Exhibition happened to be
the twelfth anniversary of the Queen's betrothal to the Prince.
The tidings arrived in the course of November of the death, in his
eighty-first year, in the old palace of Herrenhausen, on the 18th of
the month, of the King of Hanover, the fifth, and last surviving son
of George III and Queen Charlotte. He had been more popular as a king
than as a prince.
The arrival of Kossuth in England in the autumn of 1851 had brought a
disturbing element into international politics. But it was left for
Louis Napoleon's _coup d'état_ in Paris on the 2nd of December,
when the blood shed so mercilessly on the Boulevards was still fresh
in men's minds, to get Lord Palmerston into a dilemma, from which
there was no disentanglement but the loss of office on his part.
An impetus, great though less lasting than it seemed, was given this
year to emigration to Australia, by the discovery in the colony of
gold in quartz beds, under much the same conditions that the precious
metal had been found in California. The diggings, with the chance of a
large nugget, became for a time the favourite dream of adventurers.
Nay, the dream grew to such an absorbing desire, that men heard of it
as a disease known as "the gold fever." And quiet people at home were
told that it was hardly safe for a ship to enter some of the
Australian harbours, on account of the certainty of the desertion of
the crew, under whatever penalties, that they might repair to the last
El Dorado.
The successful ambition of Louis Napoleon and his power over the
French army, began to excite the fears of Europe with regard to French
aggression, and a renewal of the desolating wars of the beginning of
the century; before the talk about the Exhibition and the triumphs of
peace had well died on men's lips. The Government was anxious to fall
back on the old resource of calling out the militia, with certain
modifications and changes--brought before Parliament in the form of a
Militia Bill. It did not meet with the approval of the members any
more than of the Duke of Wellington, whose experience gave his opinion
much weight. Lord Palmerston spoke with great ability against the
measure. The end was that the Government suffered a defeat, and the
Ministry resigned office in February, 1852. This time Lord Derby was
successful in forming a new Cabinet, in which Mr. Disraeli was
Chancellor of the Exchequer. A fresh Militia Bill was brought forward
and carried by the new Government, after it had received the warm
advocacy of the Duke of Wellington. The old man spoke in its favour
with an amount of vigour and clear-headedness which showed that
however his bodily strength might be failing, his mental power
remained untouched.