Books: Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1.

S >> Sarah Tytler >> Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen V.1.

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The long picture gallery contains valuable specimens of Dutch and Flemish
art, a remnant of George IV.'s collection, and a portion, of the Queen's
many fine examples of these schools. Here are Tenierses, full of riotous
life; exquisite Metzus, Terburgs, and Gerard Dows; cattle by Paul Potter;
ships by Van de Velde; skies by Cuyp; landscapes, with white horses, by
Wouvermanns; driving clouds and shadow-darkened plains by Ruysdael, who,
though he died in a workhouse, yet lives in his pictures in kings'
palaces.

Lady Bloomfield has given the world a delightful glimpse of what the life
at Windsor and Buckingham Palace was from 1842 to 1845; how much real
friendliness existed in it; what simplicity and naturalness lay behind its
pomp and magnificence. Dissipation and extravagance found no place there.
That palace home--whether in town or country, where all sacred obligations
and sweet domestic affections reigned supreme, where noble work had due
prominence and high-minded study paved the way for innocent pleasure--was,
indeed, a pattern to every home in the kingdom. The great household was
like a large family, with a queenly elder sister and a royal brother at
its head; for the Queen and the Prince were still in their first prime,
and very kindly, as well as very wise, were their relations with old and
young. It is good to read of the tenderly-united pair; of their
well-regulated engagements--punctually performed as clockwork, and rarely
jostling each other; of their generous consideration for others, their
faithful regard for old friends, so that to this day the ranks of the
Queen's household are replenished from the households of her youth. It has
been pointed out how rarely the Duchess of Kent allowed any change in the
little Princess's guardians and teachers. In like manner, as whoever will
examine Court calendars may learn for themselves, this middle-aged
Mistress of the Robes, or that elderly Lady in Waiting, was in former
times a young Maid of Honour, and the youngest page of to-day is very
likely the grandson of a veteran courtier, and has a hereditary interest
in his surroundings.

When her Majesty was still young, there was the frankest sympathy with the
young girls who were so proud to be in their Queen's service--a sympathy
showing itself in a thousand unmistakable ways; in concern for each noble
maiden's comfort and happiness; in interest in her friends pursuits, and
prospects; by the kindly informal manner in which each member of the
girlish suite was addressed by her familiar christian-name, sometimes with
its home abbreviation; by the kiss with which she was greeted on her
return from her six months' absence. We do not always connect such lovable
attributes with kings' and queens' courts, and it is an excellent thing
for us to know that the greatest, towards whom none may presume, can also
he the most ready to oblige, the least apt to exact, the most cordial and
trustful.

We hear from Lady Bloomfield that the sum total of a Maid of Honour's
obligations, when she is in residence, like a canon, is to give the Queen
her bouquet before dinner every other day. In reality, the young lady and
her companions, as well as the older and more experienced Ladies and Women
of the Bedchamber, are in waiting to drive, ride, or walk with the Queen
when she desires their society, to sit near her at dinner, to share her
occupations--such as reading, music, drawing, needlework--when she wishes
it, to help to make up any games, dances, &c. &c. These favoured damsels
enjoy a modest income of three hundred a year, and wear a badge--the
Queen's picture, surrounded with brilliants on a red bow--such as the
public may have seen in the portraits of several of the Maids of Honour
belonging to the Queen which were exhibited on the walls of the Academy
within recent years. The hours of "the Maids" never were so early as those
of their royal mistress, while their labours, like their responsibilities,
have been light as thistledown in comparison with hers.

The greatest restriction imposed on these youthful members of the
Household, when Lady Bloomfield as Miss Liddell figured among them, seems
to have been that they were expected to be at their posts, and they were
not at liberty to entertain all visitors in their private sitting-rooms,
but had to receive some of their friends in a drawing-room which belonged
to the ladies in common.

The routine of the Palace passes before us, unpretentious in its dignity
as the actual life was led: the waiting of the ladies in the corridor to
meet the Queen when she left her apartments and accompany her to dinner;
the talk at the dinner-table; the round game of cards--_vingt-et-un_,
or some other in the evening, for which the stakes were so low, that the
players were accustomed to provide themselves with a stock of new
shillings, sixpences, and fourpenny pieces, and the winnings were now
threepence, now eightpence; the workers and talkers in the background. In
spite of different times and different manners, there is a slight flavour
of Queen Charlotte's drawing-room, in Miss Burney's day, about the whole
scene.

The ordinary current was broken by varying eddies of royal visits and
visitors, with their accompanying whirl and bubble of excitement, and by
ceremonies, like the opening and proroguing of Parliament, State visits to
the City, royal baptisms. In addition there were the more tranquil and
homely diversions of the festivals of the seasons and family festivals.
There was Christmas, when everybody gave and received Christmas-boxes; and
this happy individual had a brooch, "of dark and light blue enamel, with
two rubies and a diamond in the shape of a bow;" and another had a
bracelet, with the Queen's portrait; while to all there were pins, rings,
studs, shawls, &c. &c. Or it was the Duchess of Kent's birthday, when the
Court went to dine and dance, and wish the kind Duchess many happy returns
of the day, at Frogmore. On one occasion the little ball ended in a
curious dance, called "Grand-pere," a sort of "Follow my Leader." "The
Prince and the Duchess of Kent led the way, and it was great fun, but
rather a romp." Solemn statesmen, hoary soldiers, reverent churchmen,
foreign diplomatists, were frequently consigned for companionship and
entertainment to the "ladies of the Household," and relaxed and grew
jocular in such company, under the spring sunshine of girlish smiles and
laughter.

More mature and distinguished figures stood out among the women, to match
the men--whose names will be household words so long as England keeps her
place among the nations. Sagacious Baroness Lehzen, the incomparable early
instructress and guide of the Queen, so good to all the young people who
came under her influence, before she retired to her quiet home at
Buckeburg; Lady Lyttelton, who had been with the Queen as one of the
ladies-in-waiting ever since her Majesty came to the throne, who, after
the most careful selection, was appointed governess to the Royal children,
and was well qualified to discharge an office of such consequence to the
Queen and the nation. It is impossible to read such portions of her
letters as have been published without being struck by their wise
womanliness and gentle motherliness. Beautiful Lady Canning, with her
artist soul, was another star in an exalted firmament.

Little feet pattered amongst the brilliant groups. The Princess Royal was
a remarkably bright, lively child; the Prince of Wales a beautiful
good-tempered baby, in such a nautilus-shell cradle as Mrs. Thorneycroft
copied in modelling the likeness of Princess Beatrice. We have the pretty
fancy before us: the exquisite curves of the shell, its fair round-limbed
occupant, one foot and one arm thrown out with the careless grace of
childhood, as if to balance and steer the fairy bark, the other soft hand
lightly resting on the breast, over which the head and face, full of
infant innocence and peace, are inclined.

Both children were fond of music, as the daughter and son of parents so
musical might well be. When the youthful pair were a little older they
would stand still and quiet in the music-room to hear the Prince-father
discourse sweet sounds on his organ, and the Queen-mother sing with one of
her ladies, "in perfect time and tune," with a fine feeling for her songs,
as Mendelssohn has described her. The small people furnished a
never-ending series of merry anecdotes and witticisms all their own, and
would have gone far to break down the highest dead wall of stiffness and
reserve, had such a barrier ever existed. Now it was the little Princess,
a quaint tiny figure "in dark-blue velvet and white shoes, and, yellow kid
gloves," keeping the nurseries alive with her sports, showing off the new
frocks she had got as a Christmas-box from her grandmamma, the Duchess of
Kent, and bidding Miss Liddell put on one. Now it was the Queen offending
the dignity of her little daughter by calling her "Missy," and being told
in indignant remonstrance, "I'm not Missy--I'm the Princess Royal." Or it
was Lady Lyttelton who was warned off with the dismissal in French, from
the morsel of royalty, not quite three, "_N'approchez pas moi, moi ne
veut pas vous_;" or it was the Duke of Wellington, with a dash of old
chivalry, kissing the baby-hand and bidding its owner remember, him. Or
the child was driving in Windsor Park with the Queen and three of her
ladies, when first the Princess imagined she saw a cat beneath the trees,
and announced, "Cat come to look at the Queen, I suppose." Then she longed
for the heather on the bank, and asked Lady Dunmore to get her some; when
Lady Dunmore said she could not do that, as they were driving so fast, the
little lady observed composedly, "No, _you_ can't, but _those_
girls," meaning the two Maids of Honour, in the full dignity of their
nineteen or twenty summers and their office, "might get me some."

Windsor Castle in the height of summer, Windsor in the park among the old
oaks and ferns, Windsor on the grand terrace with its glorious English
view, might well leave bright lingering memories in a susceptible young
mind. So we hear of a delightful ride, when the kind Queen mounted her
Maid of Honour on a horse which had once belonged to Miss Liddell's
sister, and in default of Miss Liddell's habit, which was not forthcoming,
lent her one of the Queen's, with hat, cellar and cuffs to suit, and the
two cantered and walked over the greensward and down many a leafy glade
for two hours and a half. Once, we are told, the Queen, the Prince, and
the whole company went out after dinner in the warm summer weather, and
promenaded in the brilliant moonlight, a sight to see, with the lit-up
castle in the background, the men in the Windsor uniform, the women in
full dress, like poor Marie Antoinette's night promenades at Versailles,
or a page from Boccaccio.

Running through all the young Maid of Honour's diary is the love which
makes all service light; the loyal innocent sense of hardship at being in
waiting and not seeing the Queen "at least once a day;" the affectionate
regret to lose any of her Majesty's company; the pride and pleasure at
being selected by the Queen for special duties.

CHAPTER XVI.
THE CONDEMNATION OF THE ENGLISH DUEL.--ANOTHER MARRIAGE.--THE QUEEN'S
VISIT TO CHATEAU D'EU.

On the 1st of July, 1843, duelling received its death-blow in England by a
fatal duel--so unnatural and so painful in its consequences that it
served the purpose of calling public attention to the offence--long
tolerated, even advocated in some quarters, and to the theory of military
honour on which this particular duel took place. Two officers, Colonel
Fawcett and Lieutenant Munro, who were also brothers-in-law, had a
quarrel. Colonel Fawcett was elderly, had been in India, was out of health
and exceedingly irritable in temper. It came out afterwards that he had
given his relation the greatest provocation. Still Lieutenant Munro hung
back from what up to that time had been regarded as the sole resource of a
gentleman, especially a military man, in the circumstances. He showed
great reluctance to challenge Colonel Fawcett, and it was only after the
impression--mistaken or otherwise--was given to the insulted man that his
regiment expected him to take the old course, and if he did not do so he
must be disgraced throughout the service, that he called out his
brother-in-law.

The challenge was accepted, the meeting took place, Colonel Fawcett was
shot dead, and the horrible anomaly presented itself of two sisters--the
one rendered a widow by the hand of her brother-in-law, and a family of
children clad in mourning for their uncle, whom their father had slain.
Apart from the bloodshed, Lieutenant Munro was ruined by the miserable
step on which he had been thrust. Public feeling was roused to protest
against the barbarous practice by which a bully had it in his power to
risk the life of a man immeasurably his superior, against whom he happened
to have conceived a dislike. Prince Albert interested himself deeply in
the question, especially as it concerned the army. Various expedients were
suggested; eventually an amendment was inserted into the Articles of War
which was founded on the more reasonable, humane, and Christian
conclusion, that to offer an apology, or even to make reparation where
wrong had been committed, was more becoming the character of an officer
and a gentleman, than to furnish the alternative of standing up to kill or
to be killed for a hasty word or a rash act.

On the 28th of July, Princess Augusta of Cambridge was married in the
chapel at Buckingham Palace to the hereditary Grand Duke of
Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Princess Augusta was the elder of the two daughters
of the Duke of Cambridge, was three years younger than the Queen, and at
the time of her marriage was twenty-one years of age. In the cousins'
childhood and early youth, during the reign of King William, the Duke of
Cambridge had acted as the King's representative in Hanover, so that his
family were much in Germany. At the date of the Queen's accession,
Princess Augusta, a girl of fifteen, was considered old enough to appear
with the rest of the royal family at the banquet at Guildhall, and in the
other festivities which commemorated the beginning of the new reign. She
figures in the various pictures of the Coronation, the Queen's marriage,
&c. &c., and won the enthusiastic admiration of Leslie when he went to
Cambridge House to take the portraits of the different members of the
family for one of his pictures. Only a year before she had, in the
character of Princess Claude of France, been one of the most graceful
masquers at the Queen's Plantagenet Ball, and among the bridesmaids on the
present occasion were two of the beauties at the ball, Lady Alexandrina
Vane and Lady Clementina Villiers. Princess Augusta was marrying a young
German prince, three years her senior, a kinsman of her father's through
his mother, Queen Charlotte. She was going to the small northern duchy
which had sent so brave a little queen to England.

Queen Victoria, Prince Albert, and all the royal family in the country,
including the King of Hanover, who had remained to grace the ceremony,
were present at the wedding, which, in old fashion, took place in the
evening. Among the foreign guests were the King and Queen of the Belgians,
the Prince and Princess of Oldenburg, the Crown Prince of Wurtemburg, &c.
&c. The ambassadors, Cabinet Ministers, and officers of State were in
attendance. The Archbishops of Canterbury and York, and the Bishops of
London and Norwich, officiated. The marriage was registered and attested
in the great dining room at Buckingham Palace. Then there passed away from
the scene the Princess who had been for some years the solitary
representative of the royal young ladyhood of England, as her sister,
Princess Mary, was eleven years Princess Augusta's junior, and still only
a little girl of ten. Princess Augusta had an annuity of three thousand a
year voted to her by Parliament on her marriage.

A month later, on the 28th of August, the Queen went by railway to
Southampton, in order to go on board the royal yacht for a trip to the
Isle of Wight and the Devonshire coast. At Southampton Pier, the rain was
falling heavily. Her Majesty had been received by the Mayor and
Corporation, the Duke of Wellington, and other official personages, when
it was discovered that there was not sufficient covering for the stage or
gangway, which was to be run out between the pier and the yacht. Then the
members of the Southampton Corporation were moved to follow the example of
Sir Walter Raleigh in the service which introduced him to the notice of
Queen Elizabeth. They pulled off their red gowns, spread them on the
gangway, and so procured a dry footing for her Majesty.

Lady Bloomfield, as Miss Liddell, in the capacity of Maid of Honour in
waiting, was with the Queen, and has furnished a few particulars of the
pleasant voyage. The Queen landed frequently, returning to the yacht at
night and sleeping on board. At the Isle of Wight she visited Norris
Castle, where she had stayed in her youth, asking to see some of the
rooms, and walking on the terrace. She told her companions that she would
willingly have bought the place but could not afford it. At one point all
the party except Lady Canning were overcome by sea sickness, which is no
respecter of persons. At Dartmouth the Queen entered her barge and was
rowed round the harbour, for the better inspection of the place, and the
gratification of the multitude on the quays and in every description of
sailing craft. At Plymouth the visitors landed and proceeded to Mount
Edgcumbe, the beautiful seat of the Edgcumbe family. Wherever her Majesty
went she made collections of flowers, which she had dried and kept as
mementoes of the scenes in which they had been gathered. In driving
through Plymouth, the crowd was so great, and pressed so much on the
escort, that the infantry bayonets crossed in the carriages.

At Falmouth, the Queen was again rowed in her barge round the harbour, but
the concourse of small boats became dangerous, as their occupants deserted
the helms and rushed to one side to see the Queen, and the royal barge
could only be extricated by the rowers exerting their utmost strength and
skill, and forcing a passage through the swarming flotilla. The Mayor of
Falmouth was a Quaker, and asked permission to keep on his hat while
reading his address to the Queen. The Mayor of Truro, who with the Mayor
of Penryn had accompanied their official brother when he put off in a
small boat to intercept her Majesty in her circuit round the harbour, was
doomed to play a more undignified part. He unluckily overleaped himself
and fell into the water, so that he and his address, being too wet for
presentation, were obliged to be put on shore again.

On board the Queen used to amuse herself with a favourite occupation of
the ladies of the day, plaiting paper so as to resemble straw plait for
bonnets. She was sufficiently skilled in the art to instruct her Maid of
Honour in it.

On one occasion the Queen chanced to have her camp-stool set where it shut
up the door of the place that held the sailors' grog-tubs. After much
hanging about and consulting with the authorities, she was made acquainted
with the fact, when she rose on condition that a glass of grog should be
brought to her. She tasted it and said, "I am afraid I can only make the
same remark I did once before, that I think it would be very good if it
were stronger," an observation that called forth the unqualified delight
of the men. Sometimes in the evening the sailors, at her Majesty's
request, danced hornpipes on deck.

But the Queen's cruises this year were not to end on English or even
Scotch ground. She was to make the first visit to France which had been
paid by an English sovereign since Henry VIII. met Francis I. on the field
of the Cloth of Gold. Earlier in the year two of Louis Philippe's sons,
the sailor Prince Joinville, "tall, dark, and good looking, with a large
beard, but, unfortunately for him, terribly deaf," and his brother, the
man of intellect and culture if not of genius, the Duc d'Aumale, "much
shorter and very fair," had been together at Windsor; and had doubtless
arranged the preliminaries of the informal visit which the Queen was to
pay to Louis Philippe. The King of France and his large family were in the
habit of spending some time in summer or autumn at Chateau d'Eu, near the
seaport of Treport, in Normandy; and to this point the Queen could easily
run across in her yacht and exchange friendly greetings, without the
elaborate preparations and manifold trouble which must be the
accompaniment of a State visit to the Tuileries.

Accordingly the Queen and Prince Albert, on the 1st of September, sailed
past the Eddystone Lighthouse, where they were joined by a little fleet of
war-ships, and struck off for the coast of France. Besides her suite, the
Queen was accompanied by two of her ministers, Lords Aberdeen and
Liverpool. With the first, a shrewd worthy Scot, distinguished as a
statesman by his experience, calm sagacity, and unblemished integrity, her
Majesty and Prince Albert were destined to have cordial relations in the
years to come.

In the meantime, French country people were pouring into Treport, where
the King's barge lay ready. It was provided with a crimson silk awning,
having white muslin curtains over a horseshoe-shaped seat covered with
crimson velvet, capable of containing eleven or twelve persons. The rowers
were clad in white, with red sashes and, red ribands round their hats.

The Queen was to land by crossing the deck of a vessel moored along the
quay and mounting a ladder, the steps of which were covered with crimson
velvet. At five o'clock in the afternoon the King and his whole family, a
great cortege, arrived on horseback and in open chars-a-bancs. Prince
Joinville had met the yacht at Cherbourg and gone on board. As soon as it
lay-to the King came alongside in his barge. The citizen King was stout,
florid, and bluff-looking, with thick grizzled hair brushed up into a
point. As the exiled Duke of Orleans, in the days of the great Revolution,
he had been a friend of the Queen's father, the Duke of Kent. The King did
not fail to remind his guest of this, after he had kissed her on each
check, kissed her hand, and told her again and again how delighted he was
to see her. When the two sovereigns entered the barge the standards of
England and France were hoisted together, and amidst royal salutes from
the vessels in the roads and from the batteries on shore, to the music of
regimental bands, in the sunset of a fine autumn evening the party landed.

At the end of the jetty the ladies of the royal family of France with
their suites stood in a curved line. Queen Amelie, with her snowy curls
and benevolent face, was two paces in advance of the others. Behind her
were her daughter and daughter-in-law, the Queen of the Belgians and the
widowed Duchesse d'Orleans, who appeared in public for the first time
since her husband's death a year before. A little farther back stood
Madame Adelaide, the King's sister, and the other princesses, the younger
daughter and the daughters-in-law of the house. Louis Philippe presented
Queen Victoria to his Queen, who "took her by both hands and saluted her
several times on both cheeks with evident warmth of manner." Queen Louise,
and at least one of the other ladies, were well known to the visitor, whom
they greeted gladly, while the air was filled with shouts of "Vive la
Reine Victoria!" "Vive la Reine d'Angleterre!"

The Queen, who was dressed simply, as usual, in a purple satin gown, a
black mantilla trimmed with lace, and a straw bonnet with straw-coloured
ribands and one ostrich feather, immediately entered the King's
char-a-bancs, which had a canopy and curtains that were left open. Lady
Bloomfield describes it as drawn by twelve large clumsy horses. There was
a coachman on the box, with three footmen behind, and there was "a motley
crowd of outriders on wretched horses and dressed in different liveries."
The other chars-a-bancs with six horses followed, and the whole took
their, way to the Chateau, a quaint and pleasant dwelling, some of it as
old as the time of the Great Mademoiselle.

A stately banquet was held in the evening in the banqueting-room, hung
round with royal portraits and historical pictures, the table heavy with
gold and silver plate, including the gold plateau and the great gold vases
filled with flowers. The King, in uniform, sat at the centre of the table.
He had on his right hand Queen Victoria, wearing a gown of crimson velvet,
the order of the garter and a _parure_ of diamonds and emeralds, but
having her hair simply braided. On her other side sat Prince Joinville. On
the King's left hand was Queen Louise. The Duchesse d'Orleans, in
accordance with French etiquette for widows in their weeds, did not come
to the dinner-table. Opposite the King sat his Queen, with Prince Albert
on her right hand and the Duc d'Aumale on her left. The royal host and
hostess carved like any other old-fashioned couple.

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