STAY AT HOLYROOD—DEATHS OF PRINCESS HOHENLOHE AND OF PRINCE FREDERICK OF DARMSTADT—MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF EDINBURGH.
The Queen arrived at Holyrood on the 14th of August, and made a stay of a few days in Edinburgh for the first time during eleven years. A suite of rooms called the "Argyle rooms" had been freshly arranged for her occupation. She went over Queen Mary's rooms again for the gratification of Princess Beatrice, and with the Princess and Prince Leopold took the old drives to Dalkeith and Leith which her Majesty had first taken thirty years before.
A favourite project in the past had been that her Majesty should go so far north as to visit Dunrobin, and rooms had been prepared for her reception. When the visit was paid the castle was in the hands of another generation, and the Queen laid the foundation stone of a cross erected to the memory of the late Duchess.
Soon after her Majesty's return to Balmoral, on the 23rd September, she had the grief to receive a telegram announcing the death of her sister, Princess Hohenlohe. Though not more than sixty-five years of age the Princess had been for some time very infirm. She had received a great shock in the previous spring from the unexpected death by fever, at the age of thirty-three, of her younger surviving daughter, Princess Feodore, the second wife of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen.
The Emperor Napoleon III, who had long been labouring under sore disease, laid down his wearied and vanquished life at Chislehurst on the 9th of January, 1873.
The coming marriage of the Duke of Edinburgh to the Grand Duchess
Marie of Russia was announced to Parliament.
On the 2nd of April the Queen was present at the opening of the
Victoria Park. Prince Arthur was created Duke of Connaught.
A fatal accident to the younger son of Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse happened at Darmstadt on the 29th of May. The nurse had brought the children to see the Princess while she was in bed, and had left the two little boys playing beside her. The windows of the bedroom and of a dressing-room beyond were open. Princess Louis, hearing Prince Ernest, the elder brother, go into the dressing-room, leapt out of bed and hurried after him. In her momentary absence Prince Frederick, between two and three years of age, leant out of one of the bedroom windows, lost his balance, and fell on the pavement below, receiving terrible injuries, from which he died in a few hours, to the great sorrow of his parents.
In September the Queen and Princess Beatrice, with Lady Churchill and General Ponsonby, spent a week at Inverlochy, occupying the house of Lord Abinger at the foot of Ben Nevis, among the beautiful scenery which borders the Caledonian Canal, and is specially associated with Prince Charlie—in pity for whom her Majesty loved to recall the drops of Stewart blood in her veins.
This year more than one figure, well-known in different ways to the
Queen in former years, passed out of mortal sight—Bishop Wilberforce,
Landseer, Macready.
In January, 1874, the Duke of Edinburgh was married at the Winter Palace, St. Petersburg, to the Grand Duchess Marie of Russia. The Duke was in his thirtieth, the Grand Duchess in her twenty-first year. The royal couple arrived at Gravesend on March 7th, and entered London on March 12th in a heavy snowstorm. In spite of the weather the Queen and the Duchess, with the Duke of Edinburgh and Princess Beatrice seated opposite, drove slowly through the crowded streets in an open carriage drawn by six horses. The Prince and Princess of Wales, Princess Louise, &c., were at the windows of Buckingham Palace. The Queen went out with the Duke and Duchess on the balcony. The Duke and Duchess's town and country houses are Clarence House and Eastwell Park.
In March her Majesty, accompanied by all her family in England,
reviewed the troops returned from the Ashantee War in Windsor Great
Park, and gave the orders of St. Michael and St. George to Sir Garnet
Wolseley and the Victoria Cross to Lord Gifford.
The first volume of the "Life of the Prince Consort," by Sir Theodore
Martin, came out and made a deep impression on the general public.
Her Majesty had for many years honoured with her friendship M. and Madame Van de Weyer, who were the Queen's near neighbours at Windsor, the family living at the New Lodge. In addition they had come for several seasons to Abergeldie, when the Court was at Balmoral. M. Van de Weyer was not only the trusted representative of the King of the Belgians, he was a man highly gifted morally and intellectually. This year the friendship was broken by his death.
On the 15th of October the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh's son—was born.
The news of Livingstone's death reached England.
Early in 1875 Prince Leopold, then twenty-two years of age, suffered from typhoid fever. So great were the fears entertained for his life that the Queen was prevented from opening Parliament in person. Already Princess Alice in her letters had referred to her youngest brother as having been three times given back to his family from the brink of the grave.
During the spring the Queen was deprived by death of her Clerk to the
Council and literary adviser in her first book, Sir Arthur Helps.
Charles Kingsley, whose work was much admired by the Prince Consort,
died also.
On the 18th of August, when the Queen was sitting on the deck of the royal yacht as it crossed from Osborne to Gosport, the yacht Mistletoe ran across its bows and a collision took place, the Mistletoe turning over and sinking. The sister-in-law of the owner of the yacht was drowned. The master, an old man, who was struck by a spar, died after he had been picked up. The rest of the crew were rescued. Her Majesty, who was greatly distressed, aided personally in the vain efforts to restore one of the sufferers to consciousness.
In September the Queen, in paying a week's visit to the Duke and Duchess of Argyle at Inverary, had the pleasure of seeing Princess Louise in her future home. It was twenty-eight years since her Majesty had been in the house of MacCallummore, and then her son-in-law of to- day had been a little fellow of two years, in black velvet and fair curls.
Towards the end of the year the Prince of Wales left for his lengthened progress through her Majesty's dominions in India, which was accomplished with much éclat and success.
In 1876 the Queen opened Parliament in person.
On the 25th of February her Majesty, accompanied by the Princess of Wales, Princess Beatrice, and Prince Leopold, and received by the Duke of Edinburgh, attended a state concert given in the morning at the Albert Hall. Since 1866 the Queen had been able gradually to hear and enjoy again the music in which she had formerly delighted, but she had taken the gratification in her domestic life. Her royal duties had been only intermitted for the briefest space. Every act of beneficence and gracious queenliness had been long ago resumed. But no place of public amusement had seen the face of the widowed Queen.
Lady Augusta Stanley died, after a lingering illness, on the 1st of March. It was the close—much lamented from the highest to the lowest— of a noble and beautiful life. The Queen afterwards erected a memorial cross to Lady Augusta Stanley's memory in the grounds at Frogmore.
On the 7th of March her Majesty, accompanied by Princess Beatrice, opened a new wing of the London Hospital.
Two days afterwards the statue of the Prince Consort in the Albert Memorial was unveiled without any ceremony. The whole memorial thus completed stood, as it stands to-day, one of the most splendid tokens —apart from its artistic merit—of a nation's gratitude and a Queen's love. Opinions may differ on the use of gilding and colours, as they have been rarely employed in this Country, upon the towering facades and pinnacles, and on the choice of the central gilt figure of the Prince, colossal, in robes of state. But there can hardly be a doubt as to the striking effect of the magnificent monument taken altogether, especially when it has the advantage of a blue sky and brilliant sunshine, and of the charm of the four white marble groups which surround the pedestal, seen in glimpses through the lavish green of Kensington Gardens. An engraving of the statue of the Prince is given in Vol. I., p. 172.
In the end of the month the Queen, travelling incognito as Countess of Kent, having crossed to Cherbourg, arrived at Baden-Baden accompanied by Princess Beatrice. Her Majesty visited the Princess Hohenlohe's grave. She continued her journey to Coburg. In passing through Paris on her return to England towards the end of April, her Majesty had an interview with the President of the French Republic.
On the 1st of May the Queen was proclaimed Empress of India.
In the season the Empress of Germany and the ex-royal family of Hanover visited England. On the 17th of August the Queen, with the Princes Arthur and Leopold and Princess Beatrice, stayed two nights at Holyrood for the purpose of unveiling the equestrian statue to the late Prince in Charlotte Square. Her Majesty recalled the coincidence that the last public appearances of both her husband and mother were in Edinburgh—the Prince Consort in laying the foundation stone of the new post-office in October, 1861, only six weeks before his death, the Duchess of Kent at the summer volunteer review in 1860. The town was gay and bright and crowded with company. In Charlotte Square the Duke of Buccleuch, chairman of the committee, read the address, to which the Queen read a reply. On her return to the palace she knighted the sculptor, Sir John Steel, and Professor Oakeley, the composer of the chorale which was sung on the occasion. In the evening there was once more a great dinner at Holyrood—Scotts, Kerrs, Bruces, Primroses, Murrays, &c., &c, being gathered round their Queen.
A month afterwards at Ballater, amidst pouring rain, her Majesty presented new colours to the 79th regiment, "Royal Scots," of which her father was colonel when she was born. She spoke a few kind words to the soldiers, and accepted from them the gift of the old colours, which are in her keeping.
On the 15th December the Queen and the Princess Beatrice paid a visit to Lord Beaconsfield at Hughenden, lunched, and remained two hours, during which the royal visitors planted trees on the lawn.
In consequence of fever in the Isle of Wight her Majesty held her
Christmas at Windsor for the first time since the death of the Prince
Consort.
On New Year's day, 1877, the Queen was proclaimed Empress of India at
Delhi. Her Majesty opened Parliament on the 8th of February.
In September, when the war between Russia and Turkey was raging, her Majesty, Princess Beatrice, the Duchess of Roxburgh, &c., spent a week at Loch Maree Hotel, enjoying the fine Ross-shire scenery, making daily peaceful excursions, to which such a telegram as told of the bombardment of Plevna must have been a curious accompaniment.
In February, 1878, the Queen's grandchild, Princess Charlotte of
Prussia, was married at Berlin to the hereditary Prince of Saxe-
Meiningen, at the same time that her cousin, Princess Elizabeth of
Prussia, was married to the hereditary Grand Duke of Oldenburg.
On the 12th June the Queen's cousin, who had been the blind King of Hanover, died in exile at Paris. His body was brought to England and was buried in the royal vault below St. George's Chapel, Windsor.
The Queen saw a naval review off Spithead in August. In the end of the month the Queen, with Princess Beatrice and Prince Leopold, stopped at Dunbar on the way north in order to pay a visit to the Duke and Duchess of Roxburgh at Broxmouth. During her Majesty's stay she heard of the death of Madame Van de Weyer at the New Lodge, and wrote in her journal, "Another link with the past gone! with my beloved one, with dearest Uncle Leopold, and with Belgium."
In September a terrible accident occurred in the Thames off Woolwich, when the Princess Alice steamboat on a pleasure trip was run down by the Bywell Castle, and about six hundred passengers perished.
In the end of the month the Queen had the misfortune to lose her old and faithful servant Sir Thomas Biddulph, who died at Abergeldie Mains. When she went to see him in his last illness and took his hand, he said, "You are very kind to me," to which she answered, pressing his hand, "You have always been very kind to me."
The Marquis of Lorne had been appointed Governor-General of Canada, for which he and Princess Louise sailed, arriving at Ottawa on the 23rd of November.
Already the Queen, who was still at Balmoral, had heard of the disastrous outbreak of diphtheria in the Darmstadt royal family. It attacked every member in succession, the youngest, Princess Marie, a child of four years of age, dying on the 16th of November. It was supposed that the Duchess had caught the infection from having once, in an abandonment of sorrow for the death of her little daughter, forgotten the necessary precautions, and rested her head on the Duke's pillow. Her case was dangerous from the first, and she gave orders lest she should die, but did not seem to expect death. In her sleep she was heard to murmur, "Four weeks—Marie—my father." On the morning before she died she read a letter from her mother. Her last words when waking from sleep, she took the refreshment offered her, were, "Now I will again sleep quietly for a longer time." Then she fell back into the slumber from which she never awoke. She died on the 14th December, exactly four weeks from the death of her child, and seventeen years from the death of her father. She was thirty-five years of age. Princess Alice was a woman of rare qualities and remarkable benevolence.
The Prince of Wales and Prince Leopold went to Darmstadt and followed the funeral from the church to the Rosenhöhe, where all that was mortal of Princess Alice rests beside the dust of her children. A fine figure in white marble of the Princess, recumbent, clasping her little daughter to her breast, has been placed close to the spot as a token of the loving remembrance of her brothers and sisters. The engraving represents this beautiful piece of monumental sculpture.
In 1879 the Zulu war broke out. On the 11th of March Princess Louise of Prussia arrived in England, and on the 13th she was married in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in the presence of the Queen and all the members of the royal family and the bride's father and mother, Prince and Princess Frederick Charles of Prussia. The bridegroom was supported by his brothers, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh. The bride walked between her father and the Crown Prince of Germany, and was followed by eight noble bridesmaids. The Duke of Connaught was in his twenty-ninth and Princess Louise of Prussia in her nineteenth year. Their residence is Bagshot Park.
Twelve days later the Queen left with Princess Beatrice and, travelling by Cherbourg and Paris, reached Lake Maggiore on the 28th. Immediately after their arrival the news came of the death, from diphtheria of one of the Crown Princess of Germany's sons, Prince Waldemar of Prussia, a fine boy of eleven years of age.
Her Majesty left on the 23rd of April, and returned by Milan, Turin,
Paris, and Cherbourg, to England.