A third was less peaceable, for he got into the gardens of Buckingham Palace declaring he would kill the Queen, and was sent to prison. Two days after his release he went to Windsor and tried to enter the Castle by breaking some panes of glass. What became of him I do not know. Another man who tried to get into the Palace early in 1838 was rather mixed in his ideas, for he insisted on seeing the Queen, the Duchess of Kent, or O’Connell, “who is as good as any!”
CHAPTER X
QUEEN VICTORIA’S DISLOYAL SUBJECTS.
“We have lordlings in dozens, the Tories exclaim,
To fill every place from the throng,
Although the curs’d Whigs, be it told to our shame,
Kept us poor Lords in waiting too long.”
Contemporary Verse.
All through this period we get pleasant glimpses of the young Queen passing some at least of her time in a girlish way. She was a girl, surrounded by a bevy of girls, and was very fond of dancing, for which exercise she did not always wait for the presence of a band in the ballroom. Count von Bülow was once staying at Windsor, being given rooms which were directly under the Queen’s apartments, and one afternoon he could hear Victoria singing and playing the piano. On telling her at dinner what pleasure he had enjoyed, she looked very concerned, for, as she later confessed to Lord Melbourne, she had been dancing about her sitting-room with her Ladies in Waiting, and had “been quite extravagantly merry.” She would have small impromptu dances at Buckingham Palace, which were kept up sometimes till dawn. Georgiana Liddell, Lady Normanby’s sister, went to one of these, and when the dance was over the youthful Queen went out on to the roof of the portico to see the sun rise behind St. Paul’s. The Cathedral was distinctly visible, also Westminster Abbey, which, with the trees in the Green Park, stood out against a golden sky.
Most of the Liddell sisters played and sang well, and the Queen was anxious to hear the voice of the youngest of them all (and there were many, no fewer than seventeen brothers and sisters). Georgiana, in fear and trembling, sang one of Grisi’s favourite airs, omitting a shake at the end through pure nervousness. The Queen noticed this, and turning to Lady Normanby asked, “Does not your sister shake, Lady Normanby?” “Oh, yes, Ma’am,” was the reply; “she is shaking all over.”
Sometimes, perhaps, Her Majesty was thoughtless in satisfying her desire for pleasure; at least, Thalberg, a celebrated musician, thought so on one occasion. He was frequently commanded to play before the Queen, and one evening she gave him five subjects to perform. The next day someone congratulated him on his triumph. “Triumph!” he exclaimed; “a fine triumph to be nearly killed.”