Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen Volume II Part 8

The Archbishop of Canterbury officiated. Ten sailors of the Royal Navy "gently propelled" the platform on which the coffin was placed to the mouth of the vault. Among the supporters of the pall were Lord Adolphus and Lord Frederick Fitzclarence. The chief mourner was the d.u.c.h.ess of Norfolk. Prince George of Cambridge and Prince Edward and Prince Gustaf of Saxe-Weimar, nephews of the late Queen, followed.

Then came the gentlemen and ladies of her household. All the gentlemen taking part in the funeral were in plain black with black scarfs; each lady had a large black veil over her head.

After the usual psalms and lessons, Handel's anthem, "Her body is buried in peace," was sung. The black velvet pall was removed and the crown placed on the coffin, which, at the appropriate time in the service, was lowered to the side of King William's coffin. Sir Charles Young, King-at-Arms, proclaimed the rank and t.i.tles of the deceased.

The late Queen's chamberlain and vice-chamberlain broke their staves of office amidst profound silence, and kneeling, deposited them upon the coffin. The organ played the "Dead March in Saul," and the company retired.

Long years after Queen Adelaide had lain in her grave, the publication of an old diary revived some foul-mouthed slanders, which no one is too pure to escape. But the coa.r.s.e malice and gross falsehood of the accusations were so evident, that their sole result was to rebound with fatal effect on the memory of the man who retailed them.

CHAPTER XIV.

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 amba.s.sadors; and the mayors and provosts of all the princ.i.p.al 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-d.u.c.h.ess 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 circ.u.mstance 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 friends.h.i.+p from a sovereign to a subject, that they did not allow the day to pa.s.s 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 pa.s.sionate 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 G.o.dfathers--the present Emperor of Germany--and partly because it would have pleased Queen Adelaide, whose sister, d.u.c.h.ess Ida of Saxe-Weimar, was G.o.dmother.

Prince Albert's name wound up the others. The child was baptized on the 22nd of June at Buckingham Palace. The two G.o.dfathers were present; so were the d.u.c.h.esses 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 amba.s.sadors. 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, crus.h.i.+ng 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 Cambridges.h.i.+re. 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 a.s.sistance, 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 flouris.h.i.+ng. 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 pa.s.s beyond the sound of reviews; and Wordsworth, after this spring, be seen no more among the c.u.mberland 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."

CHAPTER XV.

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 b.u.t.terflies, Victoria sits under the trees, and I drink the Kissingen water, Ragotzky. To-day mamma-aunt (the d.u.c.h.ess 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. G.o.d 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 Sat.u.r.day, the 29th of June, had just called at Buckingham Palace and written his name in her Majesty's visiting-book. He was going up Const.i.tution 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 pet.i.tion--

"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 Suss.e.x, 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 doc.u.ments pa.s.sing 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 circ.u.mstances 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 finis.h.i.+ng her toilette, and then he went to cut jokes and eat dinner, and n.o.body 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 n.o.ble thoughtfulness, earnestness, and tenderness of heart that he was also full of fun, keenly relis.h.i.+ng 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 pa.s.sed 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 pa.s.sing 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 s.h.i.+rked, 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 n.o.blest and busiest are also the bravest, the most faithful, the most full of pity.