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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Her Majesty lunched at the castle, "the Highland gentlemen standing
with halberts in the room," and returned to the _Fairy_, sailing
down Loch Fyne when the afternoon was at its mellowest, and the long
shadows were falling across the hillsides. At five Lochgilphead was
reached, when Sir John Orde lent his carriage to convey the visitors
to the Crinan Canal. The next day's sail, in beautiful weather still,
was through the clusters of the nearest of the western islands, up the
Sound of Jura, amidst a flotilla of small boats crowned with flags.
Here were fresh islands and mountain peaks, until the strangers were
within hail of Staffa.

It is not always that an approach to this northern marvel of nature is
easy or even practicable; but fortune favours the brave. Her Majesty
has described the landing. "At three we anchored close before Staffa,
and immediately got into the barge, with Charles, the children, and
the rest of our people, and rowed towards the cave. As we rounded the
point the wonderful basaltic formation came into sight. The appearance
it presents is most extraordinary, and when we turned the corner to go
into the renowned Fingal's Cave the effect was splendid, like a great
entrance into a vaulted hall; it looked almost awful as we entered,
and the barge heaved up and down on the swell of the sea. It is very
high, but not longer than two hundred and twenty-seven feet, and
narrower than I expected, being only forty feet wide. The sea is
immensely deep in the cave. The rocks under water were all colours--
pink, blue, and green, which had a most beautiful and varied effect.
It was the first time the British standard, with a queen of Great
Britain and her husband and children, had ever entered Fingal's Cave,
and the men gave three cheers, which sounded very impressive there."

On the following day the Atlantic rains had found the party, though
for the present the affliction was temporary. It poured for three
hours, during which her Majesty drew and painted in her cabin. The
weather cleared in the afternoon; sitting on the deck was again
possible, and Loch Linnhe, Loch Eil, and the entrance to Loch Leven
were not lost.

At Fort William the Queen was to quit the yacht and repair to the
summer quarters of Ardverikie. Before doing so she recorded her regret
that "this delightful voyage and tour among the western lochs and
isles is at an end; they are so beautiful and so full of poetry and
romance, traditions and historical associations."

Rain again, more formidable than before, on Saturday, the 21st of
August. It was amidst a hopeless drenching drizzle, which blots out
the chief features of a landscape, that the Queen went ashore, to find
"a great gathering of Highlanders in their different tartans" met to
do her honour. Frasers, Forbeses, Mackenzies, Grants, replaced
Campbells, Macdonalds, Macdougals, and Macleans. By a wild and lonely
carriage-road, the latter part resembling Glen Tilt, her Majesty
reached her destination.

Ardverikie, which claimed to have been a hunting-seat of Fergus, king
of the Scots, was a shooting lodge belonging to Lord George Bentinck,
rented from him by the Marquis of Abercorn, and lent by the marquis to
the Queen. It has since been burnt down. It was rustic, as a shooting
lodge should be, very much of a large cottage in point of
architecture, the bare walls of the principal rooms characteristically
decorated with rough sketches by Landseer, among them a drawing of
"The Stag at Bay," and the whole house bristling with stags' horns of
great size and perfection. In front of the house lay Loch Laggan,
eight miles in length.

The Queen remained at Ardverikie for four weeks, and doubtless would
have enjoyed the wilds thoroughly, had it not been for the lowest deep
of persistently bad weather, when "it not only rained and blew, but
snowed by way of variety."

Lord Campbell heard and wrote down these particulars of the royal stay
at Ardverikie. "The Queen was greatly delighted with the Highlands in
spite of the bad weather, and was accustomed to sally for a walk in
the midst of a heavy rain, putting a great hood ever her bonnet, and
showing nothing of her features but her eyes. The Prince's invariable
return to luncheon about two o'clock, in spite of grouse-shooting and
deer-stalking, is explained by his voluntary desire to please the
Queen, and by the intense hunger which always assails him at this
hour, when he likes, in German fashion, to make his dinner."

In a continuance of the most dismally unpropitious weather, the Queen
and her children left Ardverikie on the 17th of September, the Prince
having preceded her for a night that he might visit Inverness and the
Caledonian Canal. The storm continued, almost without intermission,
during the whole of the voyage home.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE FRENCH FUGITIVES--THE PEOPLE'S CHARTER.

Long before the autumn of 1847, the mischievous consequences of the
railway mania, complicated by the failure of the potato crop, showed
itself in great bankruptcies in the large towns all over the country.

The new year came with trouble on its wings. The impending storm burst
all over Europe, first in France. Louis Philippe's dynasty was
overthrown.

In pairs or singly, sometimes wandering aside in a little distraction,
so as to be lost sight of for days, the numerous brothers and sisters,
with the parent pair, reached Dreux and Eu, and thence, with the
exception of the Duchesse d'Orleans and her sons, straggled to
England.

One can guess the feelings of the Queen and Prince Albert when they
heard that their late hosts, doubly allied to them by kindred ties,
were fugitives, seeking refuge from the hospitality of a foreign
nation. And the first confused tidings of the French revolution which
reached the Queen and Prince Albert were rendered more trying, by the
almost simultaneous announcement of the death of the old Dowager-
Duchess of Gotha, to whom all her grandchildren were so much attached.

The ex-King and Queen arrived at Newhaven, Louis Philippe bearing the
name of Mr. Smith. Queen Victoria had already written to King Leopold
on the 1st of March: "About the King and Queen (Louis Philippe and
Queen Amelie) we still know nothing.... We do everything we can for
the poor family, who are, indeed, sorely to be pitied. But you will
naturally understand that we cannot make common cause with them, and
cannot take a hostile position to the new state of things in France.
We leave them alone; but if a Government which has the approbation of
the country be formed, we shall feel it necessary to recognise it in
order to pin them down to maintain peace and the existing treaties,
which is of the greatest importance. It will not be pleasant to do
this, but the public good and the peace of Europe go before one's
personal feelings."

As soon as it could be arranged under the circumstances, the Queen had
an interview with the exiles. What a meeting after the last parting,
and all that had come to pass in the interval! This interview took
place on the 6th of March, when Louis Philippe came privately to
Windsor.

The same intelligent chronicler, Lady Lyttelton, who gave such a
graphic account of the Citizen-King's first visit to Windsor, had also
to photograph the second. Once more she uses with reason the word
"historical." "To-day is historical, Louis Philippe having come from
Claremont to pay a private (_very_ private) visit to the Queen.
She is really enviable now, to have in her power and in her path of
duty, such a boundless piece of charity and beneficent hospitality.
The reception by the _people_ of England of all the fugitives has
been beautifully kind."

That day the Queen wrote sadly to Baron Stockmar: "I am quite well;
indeed, particularly so, though God knows we have had since the 25th
enough for a whole life--anxiety, sorrow, excitement; in short, I feel
as if we had jumped over thirty years' experience at once. The whole
face of Europe is changed, and I feel as if I lived in a dream." She
added, with the tenderness of a generous nature, referring to the very
different circumstances in which her regard for the Orleans house had
been established, and to the alienation which had arisen between her
and some of its members: "You know my love for the family; you know
how I longed to get of terms with them again ... and you said, 'Time
will alone, but will certainly, bring it about.' Little did I dream
that this would be the way we should meet again and see each other,
all in the most friendly way. That the Duchesse de Montpensier, about
whom we have been quarrelling for the last year, and a half, should be
here as a fugitive and dressed in the clothes I sent her, and should
come to thank _me for my kindness_, is a reverse of fortune which
no novelist would devise, and upon which one could moralise for ever."

It was a comfort to the Queen and Prince Albert that Belgium, which
had at first appeared in the greatest danger, ended by standing almost
alone on the side of its King and Government.

The tide of revolution, which swept over the greater states, did not
spare the small. The Duke of Coburg-Gotha's subjects, who had seemed
so happily situated and so contented at the time of the Queen's visit,
were in a ferment like the rest of their countrymen. Bellona's hot
breath was in danger of withering the flowers of that Arcadia. The
Princes of Leiningen and Hohenlohe, the Queen's brother and brother-
in-law, were practically dispossessed of seigneurial rights and lands,
and ruined. The Princess of Hohenlohe wrote to her sister: "We are
undone, and must begin a new existence of privations, which I don't
care for, but for poor Ernest" (her husband) "I feel it more than I
can say."

In the meantime, on the 18th of March a fourth English Princess was
born. There was more than usual congratulation on the safety and well-
being of mother and child, because of the great shocks which had tried
the Queen previously, and the anxiety which filled all thoughtful
minds for the result of the crisis in England. Her Majesty's courage
rose to the occasion. She wrote to King Leopold in little more than a
fortnight: "I heard all that passed, and my only thoughts and talk
were political. But I never was calmer or quieter, or less nervous.
Great events make one calm; it is only trifles that irritate my
nerves."

England had its own troubles and was in high excitement about an
increased grant of money for the support of the army and navy, and the
continuance of the income-tax. The Chartists threatened to make a
great demonstration on Kennington Common.

The first threat in London, for the 13th of March, a few days before
the birth of the little Princess, ended in utter failure. The happy
termination was assisted by the state of the weather, great falls of
rain anticipating the work of large bodies of police prepared to
scatter the crowd. But as another demonstration, with the avowed
intention of walking in procession to present to the House of Commons
a monster petition, miles long, for the granting of the People's
Charter, was announced to take place on the 10th of April, great
uncertainty, and agitation filled the public mind. It was judged
advisable that the Queen should go to the Isle of Wight for a short
stay at Osborne, though it was still not more than three weeks since
her confinement.

The second demonstration collapsed like the first. Only a fraction--
not more than twenty-three thousand of the vast multitude expected to
appear--assembled at the meeting-place, and the people dispersed
quietly. But it is only necessary to mention the precautions employed
to show how great had been the alarm. The Duke of Wellington devised
and conducted the steps which were taken beforehand. On the bridges
were massed bodies of foot and horse police, and special constables,
of whom nearly two hundred thousand--one of them Prince Louis
Napoleon, the future Emperor of the French--are said to have been
sworn in. In the immediate neighbourhood of each bridge strong forces
of military, while kept out of sight, were ready "for instant
movement." Two regiments of the line were at Millbank Penitentiary,
twelve hundred infantry at Deptford Dockyard, and thirty pieces of
heavy field ordnance at the Tower prepared for transport by hired
steamers to any spot where help might be required. Bodies of troops
were posted in unexpected quarters, as in the area of the untenanted
Rose Inn yard, but within call. The public offices at Somerset House
and in the City were liberally supplied with arms. Places like the
Bank of England were "packed" with troops and artillery, and furnished
with sand-bag parapets for their walls, and wooden barricades with
loopholes for firing through, for their windows.

"Thank God," her Majesty wrote to the King of the Belgians, "the
Chartist meeting and procession have turned out a complete failure.
The loyalty of the people at large, has been very striking, and their
indignation at their peace being interfered with by such wanton and
worthless men immense."

Never was cheerfulness more wanted to lighten a burden of work and
care. In this year of trouble "no less than twenty-eight thousand
dispatches were received or sent out from the Foreign Office." All
these dispatches came to the Queen and Prince Albert, as well as to
Lord Palmerston, the Minister for Foreign Affairs.

Across the Channel the inflammatory speeches and writings of Messrs.
Mitchel, Meagher, and Smith O'Brien became so treasonable in tone
that, after the passing of a Bill in Parliament for the better
repression of sedition, the three Irish leaders were arrested and
brought to trial, the jury refusing to commit in the case of Meagher
and Smith O'Brien, but in that of Mitchel, who was tried separately,
finding him guilty, and sentencing him to transportation for fourteen
years.

On the 2nd of May the Court returned to Buckingham Palace, and the
baptism of the infant princess took place on the 13th, in the private
chapel of Buckingham Palace, when the Archbishop of Canterbury
officiated. The sponsors were Duke Augustus of Mecklenburg-Schwerin,
represented by Prince Albert, and the Duchess of Saxe-Meiningen and
the Grand-Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, represented by the Queen-
dowager and the Duchess of Cambridge. The names given to the child
were, "Louise Caroline Alberta," the first and last for the child's
grandmother on the father's side and for the royal father himself. A
chorale was performed, which the Prince had adapted from an earlier
composition written to the hymn--

In life's gay morn, ere sprightly youth
By vice and folly is enslaved,
Oh! may thy Maker's glorious name
Be on thy infant mind engraved;
So shall no shades of sorrow cloud
The sunshine of thy early days,
But happiness, in endless round,
Shall still encompass all thy ways.

Bishop Wilberforce describes the scene. "The royal christening was a
very beautiful sight, in its highest sense of that word 'beauty.' The
Queen, with the five royal children around her, the Prince of Wales
and Princess Royal hand-in-hand, all kneeling down quietly and meekly
at every prayer, and the little Princess Helena alone, just standing,
and looking round with the blue eyes of gazing innocence."

When the statues of the royal children were executed by Mrs.
Thornycroft, Princess Helena was modelled as Peace. The engraving is a
representation of the graceful piece of sculpture, in which a slender
young girl, wearing a long loose robe and having sandalled feet, holds
the usual emblematic branch and cluster--one in each hand.

As one Princess was born, another of a former generation, whose birth
had been hailed with equal rejoicing, passed away, on the 27th of May,
immediately after the Birthday Drawing-room. Princess Sophia, the
youngest surviving daughter and twelfth child of George III. and Queen
Charlotte, died in her arm-chair in the drawing-room of her house at
Kensington, aged seventy-one. At her own request she was buried at
Kensal Green, where the Duke of Sussex was interred.

CHAPTER IX.

THE QUEEN'S FIRST STAY AT BALMORAL.

From France, in June, came the grievous news of the three days'
fighting in the streets of Paris, because no Government provision
could secure work and bread for the artisans. The insurrection was
only put down by martial law under the Dictator, General Cavaignac.

In Sardinia the King, Charles Albert, fighting gallantly against the
Austrian rule, was defeated once and again, and driven back.

In England, though the most swaggering of the Chartists still
blustered a little, attention could be given to more peaceful
concerns. In July Prince Albert went to York, though he could "ill be
spared" from the Queen's side in those days of startling events and
foreign turmoil, to be present at a meeting of the Royal Agricultural
Society, of which he had been governor for half-a-dozen years. The
acclamations with which the Prince was received, were only the echo of
the tempest of cheers which greeted and encouraged her Majesty every
time she appeared in public this year.

In August strong measures had again to be taken in Ireland. These
included the gathering together of a great military force in the
disturbed districts, and the assemblage of a fleet of war-steamers on
the coast. As in the previous instance, little or no resistance was
offered. In the course of a few days the former leaders, Meagher,
Smith O'Brien, and Mitchel, were arrested. They were brought to trial
in Dublin, convicted of high treason, and sentenced to death--a
sentence commuted into transportation for life.

The Queen had the pleasure of finding her brother, the Prince of
Leiningen, appointed head of the department of foreign affairs in the
short-lived Frankfort assembly of the German states. It showed at
least the respect in which he was held by his countrymen.

On the 5th of September the Queen went in person to prorogue
Parliament, which had sat for ten months. The ceremony took place in
the new House of Lords. There was an unusually large and brilliant
company present on this occasion, partly to admire the "lavish paint
and gilding," the stained-glass windows, with likenesses of kings and
queens, and Dyce's and Maclise's frescoes, partly to enjoy the
emphatically-delivered sentence in the royal speech, in which the
Queen acknowledged, "with grateful feelings, the many marks of loyalty
and attachment which she had received from all classes of her people."

The Queen and the Prince, with three of their children and the suite,
sailed from Woolwich for a new destination in Scotland--a country-
house or little castle, which they had so far made their own, since
the Prince, acting on the advice of Sir James Clark, the Queen's
physician, had acquired the lease from the Earl of Aberdeen.

The royal party were in Aberdeen Harbour at eight o'clock in the
morning of the 7th September. On the 8th Balmoral was reached. The
first impression was altogether agreeable. Her Majesty has described
the place, as it appeared to her, in her Journal. "We arrived at
Balmoral at a quarter to three. It is a pretty little castle in the
old Scottish style. There is a picturesque tower and garden in the
front, with a high wooded hill; at the back there is a wood down to
the _Dee_, and the hills rise all around."

During the first stay of the Court at Balmoral, the Queen has
chronicled the ascent of a mountain. On Saturday, the 16th of
September, as early as half-past nine in the morning, her Majesty and
Prince Albert drove in a postchaise four miles to the bridge in the
wood of Ballochbuie, where ponies and guides awaited them. Macdonald,
a keeper of Farquharson of Invercauld's and afterwards in the service
of the Prince, a tall, handsome man, whom the Queen describes as
"looking like a picture in his shooting-jacket and kilt," and Grant,
the head-keeper at Balmoral, on a pony, with provisions in two
baskets, were the chief attendants.

Through the wood and over moss, heather, and stones, sometimes riding,
sometimes walking; Prince Albert irresistibly attracted to stalk a
deer, in vain; across the stony little burn, where the faithful
Highlanders piloted her Majesty, walking and riding again, when
Macdonald led the bridle of the beast which bore so precious a burden;
the views "very beautiful," but alas! mist on the brow of Loch-na-gar.
Prince Albert making a detour after ptarmigan, leaving the Queen in
the safe keeping of her devoted guides, to whom she refers so kindly
as "taking the greatest care of her." Even "poor Batterbury," the
English groom, who seems to have cut rather a ridiculous figure in his
thin boots and gaiters and non-enjoyment of the expedition, "was very
anxious also" for the well-being of his royal lady, whose tastes must
have struck him as eccentric, to say the least.

The mist intensified the cold when the citadel mountain was reached,
so that it must have been a relief to try a spell of walking once
more, especially as the first part of the way was "soft and easy,"
while the party looked down on the two _lochans_, known as _Na
Nian_. Who that has any knowledge of the mountains cannot recall
the effect of these solitary tarns, like well-eyes in the wilderness,
gleaming in the sunshine, dark in the gloom? The Prince, good
mountaineer as he was, grew glad to remount his pony and let the
docile, sure-footed creature pick its steps through the gathering fog,
which was making the ascent an adventure not free from danger.

Everything not within a hundred yards was hidden. The last and
steepest part of the mountain (three thousand seven hundred and
seventy-seven feet from the sea-level) was accomplished on foot, and
at two o'clock, after four hours' riding and walking, a seat in a
little nook where luncheon could be taken was found; for,
unfortunately, there was no more to be done save to seek rest and
refreshment. There was literally nothing to be seen, in place of the
glorious panorama which a mountain-top in favourable circumstances
presents.

This was that "dark Loch-na-gar" whose "steep frowning glories" Lord
Byron rendered famous, for which he dismissed with scorn, "gay
landscapes and gardens of roses."

No doubt the snowflakes, in corries on the mountain-side, do look
deliciously cool on a hot summer day. But such a drizzling rain as
this was the other side of the picture, which her Majesty, with a
shiver, called "cold, wet, and cheerless." In addition to the rain the
wind began to blow a hurricane, which, after all, in the case of a fog
was about the kindest thing the wind could do, whether or not the
spirits of heroes were in the gale.

At twenty minutes after two the party set out on their descent of the
mountain. The two keepers, moving on as pioneers in the gloom, "looked
like ghosts." When walking became too exhausting, the Queen, "well
wrapped in plaids," was again mounted on her pony, which she declared
"went delightfully," though the mist caused the rider "to feel
cheerless."

In the course of the next couple of hours, after a thousand feet of
the descent had been achieved, by one of those abrupt transitions
which belong to such a landscape, the mist below vanished as if by
magic, and it was again, summer sunshine around.

But the world could not be altogether shut out at Balmoral, and the
echoes which came from afar, this year, were of a sufficiently
disturbing character. Among the most notable, Sir Theodore Martin
mentions the Frankfort riots, in which two members of the German
States Union were assassinated, and the startling death of the
Conservative leader, Lord George Bentinck, who had suddenly exchanged
the _role_ of the turf for that of Parliament, and come to the
front during the struggle over the abolition of the Corn Laws.

A third strangely significant omen was the election of Prince Louis
Napoleon, by five different French Departments, as a deputy to the new
French Chamber.

The Court left Balmoral on the 28th of September, stayed one night in
London, and then proceeded for ten days to Osborne. On the return of
the Queen and the Prince to Windsor, on the 9th of October, a sad
accident occurred in their sight. As the yacht was crossing on a misty
and stormy day to Portsmouth, she passed near the frigate
_Grampus_, which had just come back from her station in the
Pacific. In their eagerness to meet their relations among the crew on
board, five unfortunate women had gone out in an open boat rowed by
two watermen, though the foul-weather flag was flying. "A sudden
squall swamped the boat" without attracting the attention of anyone on
board the _Grampus_ or the yacht. But one of the watermen, who
was able to cling to the overturned boat, was seen by the men in a
Custom-house boat, who immediately aroused the indignation of Lord
Adolphus Fitzclarence and his brother-officers by steering, apparently
without any reason, right across the bows of the _Fairy_. Prince
Albert, who was on deck, was the first to discover the cause of the
inexplicable conduct of the men in the Custom-house boat. "He called
out that he saw a man in the water;" the Queen hurried out of her
pavilion, and distinguished a man on what turned out to be the keel of
a boat. "Oh dear! there are more!" cried Prince Albert in horror,
"which quite overcame me," the Queen wrote afterwards. "The royal
yacht was stopped and one of its boats lowered, which picked up three
of the women--one of them alive and clinging to a plank, the others
dead." The storm was violent, and the responsibility of keeping the
yacht exposed to its fury lay with Lord Adolphus. Since nothing
further could be attempted for the victims of their own rashness, he
did not think it right that the yacht should stay for the return of
the boat, as he held the delay unsafe, although both the Queen and the
Prince, with finer instincts, were anxious this should be done. "We
could not stop," wrote her Majesty again, full of pity. "It was a
dreadful moment, too horrid to describe. It is a consolation to think
we were of some use, and also that, even if the yacht had remained,
they could not have done more. Still, we all keep feeling we might,
though I think we could not.... It is a terrible thing, and haunts me
continually."

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