The wedding breakfast was at Buckingham Palace. The wedding-cake was no less than three hundred pounds in weight, fourteen inches in depth, and three yards in circumference. The young couple proceeded to Windsor, where they were received by an enthusiastic throng of Eton boys, in white gloves and white favours.
One of the ladies-in-waiting wrote to her family that 'the Queen's look and manner were very pleasing: her eyes much swollen with tears, but great happiness in her countenance: and her look of confidence and comfort at the prince when they walked away as man and wife, was very pleasing to see.' And this sympathetic observer adds: 'Such a new thing for her to dare to be unguarded with anybody; and with her frank and fearless nature, the restraints she has hitherto been under, from one reason or another, with everybody, must have been most painful.'
The day after the marriage the Queen wrote to Baron Stockmar: 'There cannot exist a purer, dearer, nobler being in the world than the prince;' and she never had cause to take these words back. The blessing of loving and being loved was certainly given to Queen Victoria.
The royal pair spent three days of honeymoon at Windsor, and then Her Majesty had to return to London, to hold court, and to receive addresses of congratulation on her marriage; indeed, she was nearly 'addressed to death.' The Queen and Prince Albert went everywhere together; to church, to reviews, to races, theatres, and drawing-rooms; and everywhere the people were charmed with their beauty and happiness.
One of the trials of royalty is that they are the observed of all observers, and from the first Prince Albert understood the extreme delicacy of his position. How well he met the difficulty is told by General Gray (Early Years):
'From the moment of his establishment in the English palace as the husband of the Queen, his first object was to maintain, and, if possible, even raise the character of the court. With this view he knew that it was not enough that his own conduct should be in truth free from reproach; no shadow of a shade of suspicion should by possibility attach to it. He knew that, in his position, every action would be scanned—not always, possibly, in a friendly spirit; that his goings out and his comings in would be watched; and that in every society, however little disposed to be censorious, there would always be found some prone, where an opening afforded, to exaggerate and even invent stories against him, and to put an uncharitable construction on the most innocent acts. He therefore, from the first, laid down strict, not to say severe rules for his guidance. He imposed a degree of restraint and self-denial upon his own movements which could not but have been irksome, had he not been sustained by a sense of the advantage which the throne would derive from it.
'He denied himself the pleasure—which, to one so fond as he was of personally watching and inspecting every improvement that was in progress, would have been very great—of walking at will about the town. Wherever he went, whether in a carriage or on horseback, he was accompanied by his equerry. He paid no visits in general society. His visits were to the studio of the artist, to museums of art or science, to institutions for good and benevolent purposes. Wherever a visit from him, or his presence, could tend to advance the real good of the people, there his horses might be seen waiting; never at the door of mere fashion. Scandal itself could take no liberty with his name. He loved to ride through all the districts of London where building and improvements were in progress, more especially when they were such as would conduce to the health or recreation of the working classes; and few, if any, took such interest as he did in all that was being done, at any distance east, west, north, or south of the great city—from Victoria Park to Battersea—from the Regent's Park to the Crystal Palace, and far beyond. "He would frequently return," the Queen says, "to luncheon at a great pace, and would always come through the Queen's dressing-room, telling where he had been—what new buildings he had seen—what studios he had visited." Riding, for riding's sake, he disliked. "It bores me so," he said. It was for real service that Prince Albert devoted his life; and for this end he gave himself to the very diligent study of the English Constitution. Never obtrusive, he yet did the work, kept the wheels moving; but in the background, sinking his individuality in that of the Queen, and leaving her all the honour.'
[Illustration: Marriage of Queen Victoria.]
A hard-working man himself, the prince and also the Queen were in sympathy with the working-classes, and erected improved dwellings upon the estates of Osborne and Balmoral. The prince was also in favour of working-men's clubs and coffee palaces. It was remarked that whether he spoke to a painter, sculptor, architect, man of science, or ordinary tradesman, each of them was apt to think that his speciality was their own calling, owing to his understanding and knowledge of it. He rose at seven A.M., summer and winter, dressed, and went to his sitting-room, where in winter a fire was burning, and a green lamp was lit. He read and answered letters here, and prepared for Her Majesty drafts of replies to ministers and other matters. After breakfast, he would read such articles in the papers or reviews as seemed to his thoughtful mind to be good or important. At ten he went out with the Queen.
So began the happy years of peaceful married life. The prince liked early hours and country pleasures, and the Queen, like a loyal wife, not merely consented to his tastes, but made them absolutely her own. Before she had been married a year, she made the naive pretty confession that 'formerly I was too happy to go to London and wretched to leave it, and now, since the blessed hour of my marriage, and still more since the summer, I dislike and am unhappy to leave the country, and would be content and happy never to go to town;' adding ingenuously, 'The solid pleasures of a peaceful, quiet, yet merry life in the country, with my inestimable husband and friend, my all in all, are far more durable than the amusements of London, though we don't despise or dislike them sometimes.'