Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II by Sarah Tytler

S >> Sarah Tytler >> Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II

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The day ended with a ball in the Waterloo Room, when the Queen danced
a quadrille with the Emperor, who, she wrote, "danced with great
dignity and spirit. How strange" she added "to think that I, the
grand-daughter of George III., should dance with the Emperor Napoleon,
nephew of England's great enemy, now my nearest and most intimate
ally, in the Waterloo Room, and this ally only sixteen years ago
living in this country in exile, poor and unthought of."

A Council of War was held the day after the Emperor's arrival, at
which the Queen was not present. It was attended by the Emperor, the
Prince, Lords Palmerston, Panmure, Hardinge, Cowley (English
ambassador in Paris), Count Walewski (French ambassador in London),
Marshal Vaillant, &c., &c. It met at eleven, and had not separated at
two, the hour of luncheon, after which a chapter of the Order of the
Garter--for which special toilettes were indispensable, was to be
held. The Empress went and told Lord Cowley how late it was, in vain.
She advised the Queen to go to them. "I dare not go in, but your
Majesty may; it is your affair." The Queen passed through the
Emperor's bedroom, which was next to the council-room, knocked, and
entered to ask what was to be done, perhaps a solitary instance of a
queen having to go in search of her guests. Both the Emperor and the
Prince rose and said they would come, but business was so enchaining
that still they delayed, and the ladies had to take luncheon alone.

The Emperor was invested with the Order of the Garter in the Throne-
room. The forms were the same as those followed in the investiture of
Louis Philippe, and no doubt the one scene recalled the other vividly
enough. Bishop Wilberforce was present and gives some particulars: "A
very full chapter. The Duke of Buckingham (whose conduct had not been
very knightly) came unsummoned, and was not asked to remain to dinner.
The Emperor looked exulting and exceedingly pleased." After the
chapter, the Emperor sent for the Bishop, that he might be presented.
His lordship's opinion was that Louis Napoleon was "rather mean-
looking, small, and a tendency to _embonpoint_; a remarkable way,
as it were, of swimming up a room, with an uncertain gait; a small
grey eye, looking cunning, but with an aspect of softness about it
too. The Empress, a peculiar face from the arched eye-brows, blonde
complexion; an air of sadness about her, but a person whose
countenance at once interests you. The banquet was magnificent. At
night," ends Bishop Wilberforce, "the Queen spoke to me. 'All went off
very well, I think; I was afraid of making some mistake; you would not
let me have in writing what I was to say to him. Then we put the
riband on wrong, but I think it all went off well on the whole.'"

The Emperor and Empress were invited to a banquet at Guildhall. They
went from Buckingham Palace, to which the Queen and Prince Albert had
accompanied them. The Queen wrote in her journal that their departure
from Windsor made her sad. The passing through the familiar rooms and
descending the staircase to the mournful strains of "Partant pour la
Syrie" (composed by the Emperor's mother, Queen Hortense, and heard by
her Majesty fourteen different times that April day), the sense that
the visit about which there had been so much excitement was nearly
over, the natural doubt how and when the group would meet again,
touched her as with a sense of foreboding.

The Emperor and Empress drove from Buckingham Palace to Guildhall in
six of the Queen's State carriages, the first drawn by the famous
cream-coloured horses. The whole route was packed with people, who
gave the visitors a thorough ovation. The City hall was decorated with
the flags of England, France, and Turkey; and the lion and the eagle
conjointly supported devices which bore the names "Alma, Balaclava,
and Inkermann." At the _dejeuner_ sherry was served which had
reached the venerable age of one hundred and nine years, was valued at
L600 the butt, and had belonged to the great Napoleon. The same
evening, the Queen and the Prince, with their guests, went in State to
the Italian Opera, where _Fidelio_ was performed. "We literally
drove through a sea of human beings, cheering and pressing near the
carriage." The illuminated streets bore many devices--of N.E. and
V.A., which the Emperor remarked made the word "Neva"--a coincidence
on which he appears to have dwelt with his share of the superstition
of the Buonapartes. The Opera-house and the royal box were richly
decorated for the occasion. On entering, her Majesty led the Emperor,
and Prince Albert the Empress, to the front of the box, amidst great
applause. The audience was immense, a dense mass of ladies and
gentlemen in full dress being allowed to occupy a place behind the
singers on the stage.

The next day, a beautiful April day, the Queen discovered was the
forty-seventh birthday of the Emperor; and when she went to meet him
in the corridor, she wished him joy and gave him a pencil-case. He
smiled and kissed her hand, and accepted with empressment two violets--
the Buonapartes' flower--brought to him by Prince Arthur. All along
the thronged road to Sydenham, cries of "Vive l'Empereur!" and "Vive
l'Imperatrice!" alternated with cheers for the Queen. The public were
not admitted while the royal party were in the palace, but they
gathered twenty thousand strong on the terrace; and when her Majesty,
with her guests, came out on the balcony to enjoy the beautiful view,
such shouts of loyalty and welcome filled the spring air as struck
even ears well accustomed to public greetings. After luncheon the
Queen and her visitors returned to the Palace, having to pass through
an avenue of people lining the nave, to reach the balcony from which
the strangers were to see the fine spectacle of the fountains playing.
The Queen owned afterwards she was anxious; yet, she added, "I felt as
I leant on the emperor's arm, that I was possibly a protection for
him. All thoughts of nervousness for myself were lost. I thought only
of him; and so it is, Albert says, when one forgets oneself, one loses
this great and foolish nervousness." A sentence worthy of him and of
her.

Alas for fickle fortune and the changes which time brings! The present
writer was accidentally present on the occasion of the Emperor and
Empress's last visit to the Crystal Palace. They came from Chislehurst
without any announcement, when they were not expected, on an ordinary
shilling day in autumn, the company happening to be few. A slight stir
and one or two policemen coming to the front, suggested that some
theft had been committed, and that the offender was about to be taken
into custody and removed from the building. Then an official walked
bareheaded down the cleared nave, and behind him came a little yellow-
skinned shrunken man in plain clothes, on whose arm a lady in a simple
black silk walking-dress and country hat leant lightly, as if she were
giving instead of receiving support. He made a slight attempt to
acknowledge the faint greetings of the spectators, some of them
ignorant of the identity of the visitors, all of them taken by
surprise. She smiled and bowed from side to side, a little
mechanically, as if anxious to overlook no courtesy and to act for
both. It was not long after the battle of Sedan and the imprisonment
at Wilhelmshohe, and the hand of death was already upon him. The
couple hurried on, as if desirous of not being detained, and could not
have tarried many minutes in the building when a few straggling cheers
announced their departure.

In the afternoon of the 20th of April a second council relating to the
war in the Crimea was held, at which the Queen was present. With her
large interest in public affairs, her growing experience, and her
healthy appetite for the work of her life, she enjoyed it exceedingly.
"It was one of the most interesting scenes I was ever present at," she
wrote in her journal. "I would not have missed it for the world."

On Saturday, the 21st of April, the visitors left, after the Emperor
had written a graceful French sentence in the Queen's album, and an
admonitory verse in German, which had originally been written for
himself, in the Prince of Wales's autograph book. The Queen
accompanied her visitors to the door, and parted from them with kindly
regret. As they drove off she "ran up" to see the last of the
travellers from the saloon they had just quitted. "The Emperor and
Empress saw us at the window," she wrote, "turned round, got up, and
bowed.... We watched them, with the glittering escort, till they could
be seen no more...." The Prince escorted the Emperor and Empress to
Dover. The Queen wrote in a short memorandum her view of the Emperor's
character, and what she expected from the visit in a political light.
Through the good sense of the paper one can see how the confiding
friendly nature had survived the rough check given to it by Louis
Philippe's manoeuvres and dissimulation.

On the 1st of May the Academy opened with Millais's "Rescue of
children from a burning house," and with a remarkable picture by a
young painter who has long since vindicated the reception it met with.
It was Mr. F. Leighton's "Procession conveying Cimabue's Madonna
through the streets of Florence."

On the 18th of May her Majesty distributed medals to some of the
heroes of the war still raging. The scene was both picturesque and
pathetic, since many of the recipients of the honour were barely
recovered from their wounds. The presentation took place in the centre
of the parade of the Horse Guards, where a dais was erected for the
ceremony, while galleries had been fitted up in the neighbouring
public offices for the accommodation of members of the royal family
and nobility. Barriers shut off the actors in the scene, and a great
gathering of officers, from the crowd which filled every inch of open
space and flowed over into St. James's Park.

The Queen, the Prince, with many of the royal family, the Court, the
Commander-in-Chief, the Secretary for War, and "a host of generals
and admirals," arrived about eleven o'clock. The soldiers who kept the
ground formed four deep, making three sides of a square, and the men
to be decorated passed up the open space, until "the Queen stood face
to face with a mass of men who had suffered and bled in her cause."

The Deputy-Adjutant-General read over the list of names, and each
person, answering to the call, presented to an officer a card on which
was inscribed his name, rank, wounds, and battles. As the soldiers
passed in single file before the Queen, Lord Panmure handed to her
Majesty the medal, which she gave in turn to the medal-holder. He
saluted and passed to the rear, where friends and strangers gathered
round him to inspect his trophy.

The first to receive the medal were the Queen's cousin and
contemporary, the Duke of Cambridge, Lords Lucan, Cardigan, Major-
General Scarlett, Sir John Burgoyne, Sir De Lacy Evans, and Major-
General Torrens. It is needless to say how keenly the public were
moved by the sight of their brave defenders, several of them scarred
and mutilated, many tottering from weakness, some wearing on their
sleeves bands of crape, tokens of mourning for kinsmen lying in
Russian earth.

To every wounded man, officer or private, her Majesty spoke, some of
those addressed blushing like girls under their bronze, and the tears
coming into their eyes. The idea of personally presenting the medals
to the soldiers was the Queen's own, and she must have been amply
rewarded by the gratification she bestowed.

Three officers unable to walk were wheeled past her Majesty in bath-
chairs. Among them was young Sir Thomas Troubridge, both of whose feet
had been carried off by a round shot, while he had continued
commanding his battery till the battle was over, refusing to be taken
away, only desiring his shattered limbs to be raised in order to check
the loss of blood. The Queen leant over Sir Thomas's chair and handed
him his medal, while she announced to him his appointment as one of
her aides-de-camp. He replied, "I am amply repaid for everything."

CHAPTER XXVII.

DEATH OP LORD RAGLAN--VISIT OF THE QUEEN AND PRINCE ALBERT TO THE
EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF THE FRENCH--FALL OF SEBASTOPOL.

A Sardinian contingent had now, by a stroke of policy on the part of
Count Cavour, the Sardinian Minister, joined the English and French in
arms in the Crimea; but an unsuccessful attack, made with heavy loss
by the combined forces of the English and French on Sebastopol, filled
the country with disappointment and sorrow. The attack was made on the
18th of June, a day which, as the anniversary of Waterloo, had been
hitherto associated with victory and triumph.

Lord Raglan had never approved of the assault, but he yielded to the
urgent representations of General Pelissier. The defeat was the last
blow to the old English soldier, worn by fatigue and chagrin. He was
seized with illness ending in cholera, and died in his quarters on the
29th of June, eleven days after the repulse. He was in his sixty-
seventh year. The Queen wrote to Lady Raglan the day after the tidings
of the death reached England.

During the summer the Queen received visits from King Leopold and his
younger children, and from her Portuguese cousins. During the stay of
the former in England scarlet fever broke out in the royal nurseries.
Princess Louise, Prince Arthur, Prince Leopold, and finally Princess
Alice, were attacked; but the disease was not virulent, and the
remaining members of the family escaped the infection.

In the early morning of the 16th of August, the Russians marched upon
the French lines, and were completely routed in the battle of the
Tchernaya, which revived the allies' hopes of a speedy termination of
the war.

In the meantime, the Queen and Prince Albert, accompanied by the
Prince of Wales and the Princess Royal, paid a visit to the Emperor
and Empress of the French, near Paris. The palace of St. Cloud was set
apart for the use of the Queen and the Prince.

Her Majesty landed at Boulogne during the forenoon of the 18th of
August. She was received by the Emperor, who met her on the gangway,
first kissed her hand, and then kissed her on both cheeks. He led her
on shore, and rode by the side of her carriage to the railway station.

Paris, where no English sovereign had been since the baby Henry VI.
was crowned King of France, was not reached till evening. The city had
been _en fete_ all day with banners, floral arches, and at last
an illumination. Amidst the clatter of soldiers, the music of brass
bands playing "God save the Queen," and endless cheering, her Majesty
drove through the gathering darkness by the Bois de Boulogne to St.
Cloud. To the roar of cannon, the beating of drums, and the echoing of
_vivats_, she was greeted and ushered up the grand staircase by
the Empress and the Princess Mathilde. Everybody was "most civil and
kind," and in the middle of the magnificence all was "very quiet and
royal."

The next day was Sunday, and after breakfast there was a drive with
the Emperor through the beautiful park, where host and guests were
very cheerful over good news from Sebastopol. The English Church
service was read by a chaplain from the Embassy in one of the palace
rooms. In the afternoon the Emperor and the Empress drove with their
guests to the Bois de Boulogne, and to Neuilly--so closely associated
with the Orleans family--lying in ruins. General Canrobert, just
returned from the Crimea, was an addition to the dinner party.

On Monday the weather continued lovely. The Emperor fetched his guests
to breakfast, which, like luncheon, was eaten at small round tables,
as in her Majesty's residences in England. She remarked on the cookery
that it was "very plain and very good." After breakfast the party
started in barouches for Paris, visiting the Exposition des Beaux Arts
and the Palais d'Industrie, passing through densely crowded streets,
amidst enthusiastic shouts of "Vive l'Empereur!" "Vive la Reine
d'Angleterre!" At the Elysee the _corps diplomatique_ were
presented to the Queen. In the meantime, the Emperor himself drove the
boy Prince of Wales in a curricle through Paris. Afterwards the Queen
and Prince Albert, in the company of the Emperor, visited the
beautiful Sainte Chapelle and the Palais de Justice. On the way the
Emperor pointed out the _conciergerie_ as the place where he had
been imprisoned.

Notre Dame, where the Archbishop of Paris and his clergy met the
visitors, and the Hotel de Ville, followed in the regular order of
sightseeing.

The Queen dwells not only on the kindness but on the quietness of the
Emperor as a particular "comfort" on such an occasion.

_Les Demoiselles de St. Cyr_ was acted in the evening. In the
Salle de Mars all the company passed before the Queen, the Empress
presenting each in turn. The Emperor and Empress, preceded by their
gentlemen, always took the Queen and the Prince to their rooms.

On, Tuesday Versailles was the visitors' destination. They went in
many carriages. Troops and national guards, and especially gendarmes,
were to be seen everywhere. The gardens and the fountains, with
throngs of company, were much admired.

The Queen visited the two Trianons. At the larger the Emperor showed
her the room and bed provided for her, in the expectation of her
visiting Paris, by "poor Louis Philippe;" Madame Maintenon's sedan-
chair, by which Louis XIV. was wont to walk; and the little chapel in
which "poor Marie (Louis Philippe's daughter) was married to Alexander
of Wurtemberg in 1838," two years before the Queen's marriage.

At Little Trianon the Empress (who had a passion for every relic of
Marie Antoinette) joined the party, and luncheon was eaten in one of
the cottages where princes and nobles were wont to play at being
peasants.

In the evening the Emperor, with his guests, paid a State visit to the
opera-house in the Rue Lepelletier. Part of the performance was a
representation of Windsor Castle, with the Emperor's reception there,
when "God save the Queen" was splendidly sung, and received with
acclamation. The Emperor's happy animation, in contrast to his usual
impassiveness, was remarked by the audience.

Wednesday's visit, in the continuously fine August weather, was to the
French Exhibition, which the Queen and the Prince were so well
calculated to appreciate. They rejoiced in the excellent manner in
which England was represented, particularly in pottery. The specially
French productions of Sevres, Goblins, and Beauvais were carefully
studied. The Queen also examined the French Crown jewels, the crown
bearing the renowned Regent diamond, which, though less large than the
Koh-i-noor, is more brilliant. The Emperor presented the Prince with a
magnificent Sevres vase, a souvenir of the Exhibition of 1851. The
Tuileries was visited, and luncheon taken there in rooms containing
pictures and busts or Napoleon I., Josephine, &c., &c. The Queen
received the Prefect and consented to attend the ball to be given in
her honour.

After a visit to the British Embassy, the Queen and the Prince, with
the Princess Royal and one of the ladies of the suite, took a drive
incognito through Paris, which they enjoyed exceedingly. They went in
an ordinary _remise_, the three ladies wearing common bonnets and
mantillas, and her Majesty having a black veil over her face.

On Thursday morning the Queen rested, walking about the gardens with
her young daughter, and sketching the Zouaves at the gate. The
afternoon was spent at the Louvre, where the Queen mentions the heat
as "tropical."

After dinner at the Tuileries, the party stood laughing together at an
old-fashioned imperial cafetiere which would not let down the coffee,
listening to the music, the carriages, and the people in the distance,
and talking of past times; as how could people fail to talk at the
Tuileries! The Emperor spoke of having known Madame Campan (to whose
school his mother was sent for a time), and repeated some of the old
court dresser's anecdotes of Marie Antoinette and the Great
Revolution.

In her Majesty's full dress for the ball given to her by the City of
Paris, she wore a diadem in which the Koh-i-noor was set. Through the
illuminated, crammed streets, the Queen proceeded to the Hotel de
Ville, and entered among flags, flowers, and statues, "like the
Arabian Nights," the Emperor said.

The royal visitors occupied chairs on a dais. One quadrille and one
valse were danced, the Emperor being the Queen's partner, while Prince
Albert danced with Princess Mathilde (the Empress was in delicate
health); Prince Napoleon and Madame Haussman (the wife of the Prefect
of the Seine), and Prince Adalbert of Bavaria and Lady Cowley (wife of
the English ambassador) completing the set.

Several Arabs in long white burnouses were among the guests, and
kissed the hands of the Queen and the Emperor. Her Majesty made the
tour of the stately suite of rooms, lingering in the one in which
"Robespierre was wounded, Louis Philippe proclaimed, and from the
windows of which Lamartine spoke for so many hours in 1848."

On Friday there was a second visit to the Exhibition, and in the
afternoon a grand review of troops in the Champ de Mars, which the
Queen admired much, regretting that she had not been on horseback,
though the day was not fine. From the Champ de Mars the visitors drove
to the Hotel des Invalides, and there occurred the most striking scene
in the memorable visit, of which the passages from the Queen's journal
in the "Life of the Prince Consort," give so many graphic, interesting
details. Passing between rows of French veterans, the Queen and the
Prince went to look by torchlight at the great tomb, in which,
however, all that was mortal of Napoleon I. had not yet been laid. The
coffin still rested in a side chapel, to which her Majesty was taken
by the Emperor. The coffin was covered with black velvet and gold, and
the orders, hat, and sword of "le Petit Caporal" were placed at the
foot. The Queen descended for a few minutes into the vault, the air of
which struck cold on the living within its walls.

The Emperor took his guests in the evening to the Opera Comique. It
was not a State visit, but "God save the Queen" was sung, and her
Majesty had to show herself in front of the Emperor's private box. On
Saturday the royal party went to the forest of St. Germain's, and a
halt was made at the hunting-lodge of La Muette. The _Grand
Veneur_ and his officials in their hunting-dress of dark-green
velvet, red waistcoats, high boots, and cocked hats, received the
company. The dogs were exhibited, and a _fanfare_ sounded on the
huntsmen's horns.

The strangers repaired to the old palace of St. Germain's, where her
Majesty saw the suite of rooms which had served as a home for her
unhappy kinsman, James II. It is said she went also to his tomb, and
stood by it in thoughtful silence for a few minutes. On the return
drive to St. Cloud detours were made to Malmaison, where the Emperor
remembered to have seen his grandmother, the Empress Josephine, and to
the fortress of St. Valerien.

The same night there was a State ball at Versailles. At the top of the
grand staircase stood the Empress--"like a fairy queen or nymph," her
Majesty writes, "in a white dress trimmed with bunches of grass and
diamonds, ..." wearing her Spanish and Portuguese orders. The
enamoured Emperor exclaimed in the hearing of his guests, "Comme tu es
belle!" (how beautiful you are!) The long Galerie de Glaces, full of
people, was blazing with light, and had wreaths of flowers hanging
from the ceiling. From the windows the illuminated trellis was seen
reflected in the splashing water of the fountains. The balconies
commanded a view of the magnificent fireworks, among which Windsor
Castle was represented in lines of light.

The Queen danced two quadrilles, with the Emperor and Prince Napoleon,
Prince Albert dancing with Princess Mathilde and the Princess of
Augustenburg. Among the guests presented to her Majesty was Count
Bismarck, Prussian Minister at Frankfort.

The Queen waltzed with the Emperor, and then repaired to the famous
Oeil-de-Boeuf, hung with Beauvais tapestry. After the company had gone
to supper, the Queen and the Emperor's procession was formed, and
headed by guards, officers, &c. &c, they passed to the theatre, where
supper was served. The whole stage was covered in, and four hundred
people sat in groups of ten, each presided over by a lady, at forty
small tables. Innumerable chandeliers and garlands of flowers made the
scene still gayer. The boxes were full of spectators, and an invisible
band was playing. The Queen and Prince Albert, with their son and
daughter, the Emperor and the Empress, Prince Napoleon, Princess
Mathilde, and Prince Adalbert of Bavaria, sat at a small table in the
central box. Her Majesty seems to have been much struck with this
Versailles ball, which was designed and arranged by the Empress from a
plate of the time of Louis XV. It was said there had been no ball at
Versailles since the time of Louis XVI. The last must have been the
ball in the Orangery, on the night that the Bastille fell.

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