“It would be impossible to say how deeply we were impressed by the grand simplicity of the service. It was all so truly earnest, and no description can do justice to the perfect devotion of the whole assemblage. It was most touching, and I longed much to join in it.”
Since 1873, this wish on the part of the Queen has been gratified, and she has joined in the communion at Crathie every autumn.
Although Princess Alice’s marriage in July, 1862, had deprived the Queen of the constant companionship of this dearly loved daughter, yet the Princess continued to spend part of almost every year with her mother. She returned to England in November, 1862, and stayed with the Queen till after the birth of her first baby, in April, 1863. The Queen was a most tender nurse, and always took a special interest in the granddaughter and god-daughter who had been born under her roof. It was Princess Alice who encouraged the Queen to emerge a little from the seclusion to which she had clung since her widowhood. She promoted little mountain excursions, in which the Queen was induced to take part, in the autumn of 1863. She, and also the Princess Royal, accompanied the Queen in the same year to the ceremony of the unveiling of the Prince’s statue at Aberdeen. It is easy to understand what a trying ordeal this must have been to the Queen. There were dense crowds, loyal and kindly, but silent and full of mournful sympathy; there was no music even,[32] the bands having been forbidden to play,—such a contrast, as the Queen wrote, to “former blessed times.” No wonder that she was “terribly nervous, and longed not to have to go through this fearful ordeal.” The Queen had been present before this at family ceremonies, the marriages of Princess Alice in 1862, and of the Prince of Wales on March 10th, 1863; but the first of these had been of quite a private character, and in the second the Queen had taken no part, merely watching the service from the Royal Closet in St. George’s Chapel, Windsor; but this was her first appearance since her husband’s death at a public ceremony. She “prayed for help.” But, however painful, she felt it was right that she should make the effort, and it helped her to overcome her extreme reluctance to take her part once more in the pageantry and glitter of royalty. Little by little she took up this burden also, helped and encouraged by her children, and from 1866 has from time to time opened Parliament in person, and taken her part as Sovereign in the public functions devolving on her position. There was at one time an undercurrent of rather mean resentment that she did not, after her widowhood, enter into social gayety and lead fashionable life as of old. The loss of her direct personal influence from the social world has been a very real one. But there are limits to human strength and endurance; and those who grumbled because the Queen absented herself from the world of fashion, were probably thinking more of the number and brilliancy of Court functions, and of the supposed benefit to trade accruing therefrom, than of the value of a pure-hearted woman’s influence at the head of society. Mr. John Bright in 1866 gave a trenchant rebuke from a public platform to one of these grumblers, who asserted at a meeting of working-men that the Queen was so absorbed in her own grief as to have lost all sympathy with her people. He said:—
“I am not accustomed to stand up in defence of those who are the possessors of crowns. But I could not sit here and hear that observation without a sensation of wonder and of pain. I think there has been, by many persons, a great injustice done to the Queen in reference to her desolate and widowed position. And I venture to say this, that a woman, be she queen of a great realm, or be she the wife of one of your laboring men, who can keep alive in her heart a great sorrow for the lost object of her life and affection, is not at all likely to be wanting in a great and generous sympathy with you.”
The whole meeting responded to the simple, generous words, touching as they did the chord of universal human feeling.
The Queen’s love for Scotland and the Scottish people has made it easier for her to take part in ordinary social life in the neighborhood of Balmoral than in the crowded whirl of London. She has taken part in the torch-carrying on Halloween, in gillies’ balls, in marriages and christenings in Scotland, and made herself one with her people there in all their joys and sorrows. Her faithful Scotch servant, John Brown, was for many years a familiar figure, in his Highland dress, behind the Queen’s carriage. He served her with tact and fidelity, which she rewarded with grateful and unstinted appreciation. He died in 1883. The last words in “More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands,” are a tribute to his memory; while the book itself is dedicated, “To my Loyal Highlanders, and especially to the memory of my devoted personal attendant and faithful friend, John Brown.” She attended the funeral service held in his mother’s house on the occasion of his father’s death, and stayed with the widow to soothe and comfort her when the funeral procession left the house. Only the heavy rain prevented her accompanying the other mourners to the grave. It is no doubt the freedom from formality, the genuine simplicity of the life around her at Balmoral, which makes it congenial to the Queen. There the gayeties are really gay; the mournings are really sad, dignified, and solemn, and not a mocking travesty of pretended woe. One of the luxuries the Queen allows herself in Scotland is the building of what may be called “pic-nic” houses in attractive situations in the neighborhood. These are little more than cottages, only just large enough for the Queen, and one or two of her children, and the necessary attendants and servants, generally built in wild and rather inaccessible spots among the hills. One of these, Altnagiathasach, was built before the Prince Consort’s death. After her widowhood, the Queen felt she could not go there alone, and she built another at Glassaltshiel, the house-warming of which she celebrated in 1868. When the little festivity, with its reel-dancing and whiskey-toddy drinking, was over, the Queen’s Journal records, “The sad thought struck me that it was the first widow’s house, not built by him” (the Prince), “nor hallowed by his memory. But I am sure his blessing does rest on it, and on those who live in it.” Another of these little houses, a much smaller one, with only two rooms and a kitchen, is Glengeldershiel; it is within a short drive from Balmoral. In the neighborhood of these retired cottages the Queen could walk, accompanied by her friends, her children, and her dogs, without the fear of the tourist or the much-dreaded reporter before her eyes.
It must not, however, be represented that it was only in Scotland that Her Majesty found any means of social enjoyment. The following letter from Thomas Carlyle (first published in The Athenæum, in January, 1895) shows that this was not the case. It is too picturesque to be cut up; the ill-natured and unjust references to Lady Augusta Stanley and Mrs. Grote must be tolerated for the sake of the rest of the letter. It would not be characteristic of Carlyle if it were bowdlerized so as to leave the impression that he was in charity with all mankind. The letter is addressed to his sister, Mrs. Aitken:—
Chelsea, March 11th, 1869.
Dear Jean,—Mary, I find, has inserted for you a small letter along with the one that belongs to the Doctor. I have nothing of my own in the form of news beyond what that “child of Nature” will have said.
All busy here,—March winds “snell” as possible (one’s new cape not useless), but not unwholesome: fine, dry, and cold, instead of the wet, tepid puddle we have long had, and, in consequence, sleep a little better than then.