DISASTERS--YACHTING TRIPS--THE DEATH OF THE DUKE OF WELLINGTON.
The month of February, 1852, was unhappily distinguished by three
great English calamities, accompanied by extensive loss of life. The
first was the destruction of the West India mail steamer _Amazon_
by fire, as she was entering the Bay of Biscay, in which a hundred and
forty persons perished, among them Eliot Warburton, the accomplished
traveller and author.
The second was the wreck of her Majesty's troop-ship _Birkenhead_
near the Cape of Good Hope, with the loss of upwards of four hundred
lives, in circumstances when the discipline and devotion of the men
were of the noblest description. The third was the bursting of the
Bilberry Reservoir in midland England, with the sacrifice of nearly a
hundred lives and a large amount of property.
When the season commenced, and it was this year, as last, particularly
gay, a reflection of the general prosperity of the country, with the
high hopes inspired by the Australian gold-fields, the Queen wrote to
the King of the Belgians in order to re-assure him with regard to a
fear which seems to have arisen in the elderly man's mind, that she
whom he remembered at the beginning of her reign as fond of pleasure
and untiring in her amusements, might be swept away in the tide.
"Allow me just to say one word about the London season. The London
season for us consists of two State balls and two concerts. (The State
balls and concerts are given to this day, though her Majesty, since
her widowhood, has ceased to attend them. The Queen's place and that
of Prince Albert in these social gaieties, have been naturally taken
by the Prince and Princess of Wales.) We are hardly ever later than
twelve o'clock at night, and our only dissipation is going three or
four times a week to the play or opera, which is a great amusement and
relaxation to us both. As for going out as people do here every night,
to balls and parties, and to breakfasts and teas all day long besides,
I am sure no one would stand it worse than I should; so you see,
dearest uncle, that in fact the London season is nothing to us."
So much higher, and more solid and lasting, as they should have been,
were the pursuits and gratifications of the woman, the wife and
mother, than of the young girl.
The Queen added that the only one who was fagged was the Prince, and
that from business and not pleasure, a result which made her often
anxious and unhappy. Indeed, this suspicion of precarious health on
Prince Albert's part was the cloud the size of a man's hand that kept
hovering on the horizon in the summer sky.
Parliament was prorogued and dissolved at the same time at an
unusually early date, the first of July, so that the season itself
came to a speedy end.
Before the Queen left London, she was present at the baptism and stood
sponsor for the young Hindoo Princess Gouromma, the pale, dark,
slender girl whose picture looks down on the visitor at Buckingham
Palace. She had been brought to England by her father, the Rajah of
Coorg, a high-caste Hindoo, who desired that she should be brought up
a Christian. He was one of the princes of Northern India, whose
inheritance had become a British possession. He lived at Benares under
the control of the East India Company, and had an allowance from
Government as well as a large private fortune. The little princess was
the same age as the Princess Royal, eleven years. She was the daughter
of the Rajah's favourite wife, who had died immediately after the
infant's birth. The ceremony took place in the private chapel of
Buckingham Palace. The Archbishop of Canterbury officiated. Besides
the Queen, the sponsors were Lady Hardinge, Mr. Drummond, and Sir
James Weir Hogg, the chairman of the East India Company. The little
girl received the name "Victoria." The Rajah returned soon afterwards
to India.
The Court had longer time to enjoy the sea air and quiet of Osborne,
where, however, sorrow intruded in the shape of the news of the death
of Count Mensdorff, the uncle by marriage both of the Queen and Prince
Albert, to whom they were warmly attached. Though he had been no
prince, only a French emigrant officer in the Austrian service, when
he married the sister of the Duchess of Kent, he was held in high
esteem by his wife's family for the distinction with which he had
served as a soldier, and for his many good qualities.
Princess Hohenlohe, with a son and daughter, came to Osborne as a
stage to Scotland and Abergeldie, where she was to visit her mother,
the Duchess of Kent, and where she could also best enjoy the Queen's
society. The poor Princess, who made a stay of several months in this
country, had need of a mother's and a sister's sympathy. A heavy
sorrow had lately befallen her. The eldest daughter of the Hohenlohe
family, Princess Elise, a girl of great promise, had died at Venice of
consumption in her twenty-first year.
Yachting excursions were again made to Devonshire and Cornwall, to
Torquay and the often-visited beauties of Mount Edgcumbe and the banks
of the Tamar. There was a proposal of a visit to the King of the
Belgians, with the Channel Islands to be touched at on the way. One
part of the programme had to be given up, on account of the
tempestuous weather. The yacht, after waiting to allow Prince Albert
to pay a flying visit--the last--to the Duke of Wellington at
Walmer, ran up the Scheldt in one of the pauses in the storm, and the
travellers reached Antwerp at seven o'clock on the morning of the 11th
of August, "in a hurricane of wind and rain."
But the weather is of little consequence when friends meet. King
Leopold was waiting for his welcome guests, and immediately carried
them off to his country palace, for their visit this time was to him
and not to any of the old Flemish towns.
The Queen and Prince Albert, with their children, stayed at Laeken for
three days, returning to Antwerp in time for a visit to the cathedral
and the museum, before sailing in the same unpropitious weather for
Flushing. The intention was still to cross on the following morning to
the Channel Islands, but the wet, wild weather did not change, and the
yacht remained where it was, the Queen indemnifying herself for the
disappointment by landing and going over an old Dutch town and a
farmhouse, with which she was much pleased.
On the 30th of August the Court went to Balmoral by Edinburgh. Soon
after her arrival the Queen had the gratifying intelligence that a
large legacy, about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds, had been
left to her and her heirs by one of her subjects--Mr. Campden Nield--
a gentleman without near relatives, who had lived in the most
penurious way, denying himself the very necessaries of life.
The Queen's comment on the bequest to King Leopold was like her. "It
is astonishing, but it is satisfactory to see that people have so much
confidence that it will not be thrown away, and so it certainly will
not be." Baron Stockmar held with some justice that it was "a monument
reared to the Queen during her life, in recognition of her simple,
honourable, and constitutional career."
Her Majesty and Prince Albert went on the 16th of September for their
customary two days' stay by Loch Muich, though they had been startled
in the morning by a newspaper report of the death of the Duke of
Wellington at Walmer. But the rumour had arisen so often during these
many years that nobody believed it, now that it was true.
The little party started in the course of the forenoon on a showery
day. Arrived at the Loch, the Queen walked up the side to Alt-na-
Dearg, a "burn" and fall, then rode up the ravine hung with birch and
mountain-ash, and walked again along the top of the steep hills to
points which command a view of Lord Panmure's country, "Mount Keen and
the Ogilvie Hills."
A little farther on, while resting and looking down on the Glassalt
Shiel and the head of the loch, the Queen, by a curious coincidence,
missed the watch which the Duke of Wellington had given her. Her
Majesty sent back a keeper to inquire about her loss; in the meanwhile
she walked on and descended by the beautiful falls of the Glassalt,
one hundred and fifty feet in height, which she compares to those of
the Bruar. The cottage or shiel of the Glassalt had just been built
for the Queen, and offered accommodation in its dainty little dining-
room and drawing-room for her to rest and refresh herself. After she
had eaten luncheon, she set out again on a pony, passed another
waterfall, called the Burn of the Spullan, and reached the wild
solitary Dhu Loch.
The Queen had sat down to sketch when the keeper returned to tell her
that the watch was safe at home; but that was not all. He brought a
letter from Lord Derby with a melancholy confirmation of the report of
the morning. The Duke of Wellington was dead. The Queen calls the news
"fatal," and with something of the fond exaggeration of a daughter,
writes of the dead man as "England's--rather Britannia's--pride, her
glory, her hero, the greatest man she ever had produced."
We can understand it, when we remember how closely connected he was
with all her previous career, from her cradle till now. He had taken
pride in her, advised her, obeyed her, with half a father's, half a
servant's devotion. The King of the Belgians was hardly more her
second father than the Duke of Wellington had been.
Besides, the Duke was not only a soldier; he had been a statesman, tried
and true as far as his vision extended; brave here no less than in the
stricken field, honest with an upright man's straightforwardness, wise
with a practical man's sense of what could and could not be done, what
must be yielded when the time came.
The Queen might well mourn for her grey-bearded captain, her faithful
old councillor. There was one comfort, that the Duke had reached a
good old age, and died after a few hours illness, without suffering.
He simply fell asleep, and awoke no more in this world. His old
antagonist, Marshal Soult, had pre-deceased him only by a few months.
The Queen sums up the position: "One cannot think of this country
without 'the Duke,' our immortal hero."
Her Majesty hastened down on foot to the head of Loch Muich, and rode
back in the rain to Alt-na-Giuthasach to write to Lord Derby and Lord
Charles Wellesley, who had been with his father in his last hours. She
wrote mournfully in her journal: "We shall soon stand sadly alone.
Aberdeen is almost the only personal friend of that kind left to us.
Melbourne, Peel, Liverpool, now the Duke, all gone!...."
Invitations were countermanded, and the Court went into mourning. The
Queen was right that the sorrow was universal. The ships in the Thames
and in all the English ports had their flags half-mast high, the
church bells were tolled, business was done "with the great exchanges
half-shuttered," garrison music was forbidden.
The Duke had left no directions with regard to his funeral, and it was
fitting that it should receive the highest honour Sovereign and people
could pay. But the Queen refrained from issuing an order, preferring
that the country should take the initiative. It was necessary to wait
till the 11th of November, when Parliament must meet. In the meantime
the body of the Duke was placed under a Guard of Honour at Walmer.
Viscount Hardinge was appointed Commander-in-Chief.
The Court left Balmoral on the 12th of October, about a month after
the Duke of Wellington's death, and on the 11th--a day which the Queen
calls in her journal "a very happy, lucky, and memorable one"--her
Majesty and Prince Albert, with their family, household, tenants,
servants, and poorer neighbours, ascended Craig Gowan, a hill near
Balmoral, for the purpose of building a cairn, which was to
commemorate the Queen and the Prince's having taken possession of
their home in the north. At the "Moss House," half-way up, the Queen's
piper met her, and preceded her, playing as he went. Not the least
welcome among the company already collected were the children of the
keepers and other retainers, with whom her Majesty was familiar in
their own homes. She calls them her "little friends," and enumerates
them in a motherly way, "Mary Symons, and Lizzie Stewart, the four
Grants, and several others."
The Queen laid the first stone of the cairn, Prince Albert the next.
Their example was followed by the Princes and Princesses, according to
their ages, and by the members of the household. Finally every one
present "came forward at once, each person carrying a stone and
placing it on the cairn." The piper played, whiskey was handed round.
The work of building went on for an hour, during which "some merry
reels were danced on a flat stone opposite." All the old people
danced, apparently to her Majesty's mingled gratification and
diversion. Again the happy mother of seven fine children notices
particularly the children and their performance. "Many of the
children--Mary Symons and Lizzie Stewart especially--danced so nicely,
the latter with her hair all hanging down."
There is another little paragraph which is very characteristic of the
love of animals, and the faithful remembrance of old landmarks, well-
known features in the Queen's character. "Poor dear old Monk, Sir
Robert Gordon's (the former owner of Balmoral) faithful old dog, was
sitting there among us all."
When the cairn ("seven or eight feet high") was all but finished,
Prince Albert climbed to the top and deposited the last stone, when
three cheers were given. The Queen calls it "a gay, pretty, and
touching sight," that almost made her cry. "The view was so beautiful
over the dear hills; the day so fine, the whole so _gemüthlich_."
She ends reverently, "May God bless this place, and allow us to see it
and enjoy it many a long year."