The Library is used for a waiting room for deputations, which as soon as the Queen is ready to receive them pass across the Sculpture Gallery into the hall, and thence ascend by the Grand Stairway, through the Ante-Room and the Green Drawing-room to the Throne room. The Library and adjoining rooms are fitted up in a most gaudy fashion, there being a sad want of taste displayed, either by her Majesty or her upholsterer, but by which I am not able to say.
The Sculpture Gallery contains the busts of leading statesmen of all countries, and chief among them I noticed one of Prince Albert, the late husband of the Queen, mounted on a fine pedestal. Busts of all the members of the royal family, male and female, are also here. That of the Princess Louisa is a charming, innocent looking English face; she is said to be deeply in love with a rich Catholic nobleman of the Duke of Norfolk's family.
The Picture Gallery has fine skylights so as to throw a shaded light on the works of art below, and here are to be found the master pieces of the Dutch and Flemish schools, gems of Reynolds, Watteau, Titian, Albert Durer, Rembrandt, Teniers, Ostade, Cuyps, Wouvermans, and others, formerly the collection in great part of George IV.
The Yellow Drawing room, a superb apartment, has a series of paintings in panels of the royal family, there being full length pictures of Queen Victoria, looking very fat, with the crown upon her head, and Prince Albert in his costume of Knight of the Garter, a dress which is supremely ridiculous in these days when none but priests and academicians wear such drapery.
The Throne Room is a gaudy looking apartment, very large and spacious, and like all the rooms in Buckingham palace having a very low ceiling, the prevailing decoration being curtains of striped satin, and the alcoves are hung in rich crimson velvet relieved or rather bedizened with an nearly obscured gilding. William IV, the sailor king, hated this palace for its ugliness and discomfort, and this all the more that he was used to sleeping in a hammock aboard his own frigate.
The Marble Arch, an immense pile of stone now at the corner of Piccadilly and Hyde Park, formerly occupied the central position in this building, and was erected in its present position at a cost of thirty-one thousand pounds.
When the present Queen had her first child the palace was found so uncomfortable that she had to have the nursery removed to the attic, and there, while the royal child was getting its teeth cut, the Lord Chamberlain of England, who had charge of the improvements, was boiling glue and making French polish in the basement, so that altogether the queen of the greatest nation of the earth, subsequent to her honeymoon, was no better housed than a poor family in New York, dwelling in a respectable tenement house.
Parliament, however, was kind enough to grant the sum of one hundred and fifty thousand pounds to alter and repair the building, and accordingly the palace was made habitable for her Majesty.
The Ball Room is one hundred and thirty-nine feet in length. The Supper Room is seventy-six by sixty feet—with a promenade gallery one hundred and nine feet in length, and twenty-one feet wide. There is a riding school attached, with a mews or stable for horses; here the state carriages and coaches are kept at an expense, for flunkies, grooms, masters of the horse, stable boys, feed for horses and labor, of thirty-six thousand pounds, or over two hundred thousand dollars annually.
I was allowed as a great favor to inspect the Queen's library, which is very handsomely fitted up, and wherever the eye rested for a moment it was sure to find a picture or bust of Prince Albert. There were a number of small tables of inlaid ivory, mother of pearl, and gold, covered with handsomely bound volumes of Shakespeare and other English poets. I also saw a finely bound copy of the Memoirs of the Queen, which it is supposed was written by her Majesty. This is a mistake, however, as the entire book was written by a secretary of hers from some scanty notes provided by her, and from personal recollections. The Queen was nine months dictating the work before its publication. The Queen was in the habit of sitting four hours a day giving these reminiscences of her husband, and during this time she always had a glass of sherry and a biscuit by her side.