They played vingt-et-un for money, everyone being desired to have new coins with which to play, and Victoria loved some curious game called nainjaune. They spun counters and rings; Georgiana Liddell, when she became a Maid of Honour, wrote of this:—
“The Prince began spinning counters, so I took to spinning rings, and the Queen was delighted. It always entertains me to see the little things that amuse Her Majesty and the Prince, instead of their looking bored as people so often do in English society.”
It is wonderful that people never seemed to realise that there might be something more for grown-up people than a choice between spinning rings or round games and boredom. But there is something very attractive in the picture of this healthy young pair playing their childish games, wandering in the Home Park at Windsor, with pigeons alighting on their shoulders, feeding the animals and rare aquatic birds imported by the Prince, and showing kindness to all their great household; the married lovers sometimes having tête-à-tête dinners without watchful or obsequious eyes upon them, and just beginning to take politics seriously. For Melbourne, the beloved tutor and friend, was gone, and the Queen was beginning to think and decide for herself, with her husband’s help.
Once a riddle, purporting to be from the Bishop of Salisbury, who was said to offer a reward to anyone who solved it, was sent to the Queen. She and her husband spent four days over it, and then called in the assistance of Charles Murray, Comptroller of the Household, who found out for them that the Bishop knew nothing of the matter, had not sent the riddle, and believed the whole thing to be a hoax.
Queen Victoria seems to have been thoroughly liked by her Maids of Honour, of whom there were eight—two waiting at a time for a period of three months—and who were generally expected to be good pianists. Often they would be called upon to play duets with the Queen and Prince Consort, and one of them made the remark, after playing a difficult Beethoven piece, “It was quite a relief to find that we all played the last bar at the same time”; adding, “I enjoy nothing so much as seeing the Queen in this quiet way, and I often wish that those who don’t know Her Majesty could see how kind and gracious she is when she is perfectly at her ease, and able to throw off the restraint and form which must and ought to be observed when she is in public.”
QUEEN VICTORIA.
From a Drawing by Drummond, 1842.
Victoria would say politely to one of these girls, “If it is convenient, come down any evening and try some music,” “But I might come down at the wrong moment,” answered Miss Liddell on one occasion. “Then I will send for you, and if you are at home you can come,” replied the Queen. “I did laugh in my sleeve,” commented Georgiana, in recording this, “for except when I go to St. George’s, by no chance do I go anywhere.”
It was this young lady who said, on coming back to her duty, “Everything else changes, but the life here never does, and is always exactly the same from day to day, and year to year.” She also tells us that the Maid of Honour’s chief duty seemed to be to offer the Queen her bouquet before dinner each night. The Maids of Honour were each given a good sitting-room, with a piano in it, which they occupied when not on duty, and there was a special room downstairs in which they could receive guests, for such were not allowed in their private rooms.