"Bertie" is the family name for the Prince of Wales. I believe that at heart he is still "good Bertie." "Vicky" was the Princess Royal. The Queen further on remarks: "I said to Albert I could hardly believe that our child was traveling with us; it put me so in mind of myself when I was the little Princess.'"
This year Louis Philippe came over to return the visit of the Queen and the Prince, and there were great festivities and investings at Windsor with all possible kindness and courtesy, and I hope the wily old King went home with gratitude in his heart, as well as the garter on his leg. This year too the Queen and Prince made their first visit to Germany together. The picture the Queen paints of the morning of leaving and the parting from the children is very domestic, sweet, and motherly: "Both Vicky and darling Alice were with me while I dressed. Poor dear Puss wished much to go with us and often said, 'Why am I not going to Germany?' Most willingly would I have taken her. I wished much to take one of dearest Albert's children with us to Coburg; but the journey is a serious undertaking and she is very young still." … "It was a painful moment to drive away with the three poor little things standing at the door. God bless them and protect them—which He will."
The English Queen and the Prince-Consort were received with all possible royal honors and popular respect at Aix-la-Chapelle and Cologne, and at the Royal Palace at Brühl. It was past midnight when they reached that welcome resting-place, and yet, as an account before me states, they were regaled by a military serenade "in which seven hundred performers were engaged!" A German friend of ours from that region supplements this story by stating that five hundred of those military performers were drummers; that they were accompanied by torch-bearers; that they came under the Queen's windows, wakened her out of her first sleep, and almost drove her wild with fright. With those tremendous trumpetings and drum-beatings, "making night hideous" with their storm of menacing, barbaric sound, and with the fierce glare of the torchlight, it might have seemed to her that Doomsday had burst on the world, and that the savage old Huns of Attila were up first, ready for war.
The next day they all went up the Rhine to the King's Palace of Stolzenfels. Never perhaps was even a Rhine steamer so heavily freighted with royalty—a cargo of Kings and Queens, Princes and Archdukes. It was all very fine, as were the royal feasts and festivals, but the Queen and Prince were happiest when they had left all this grandeur and parade behind them and were at Coburg amid their own kin—for there, impatiently awaiting them, were the mother of Victoria and the brother of Albert, and "a staircase full of cousins," as the Queen says. They stopped at lovely Rosenau, and the Queen, with one of her beautiful poetic impulses, chose for their chamber the room in which her husband was born. She wrote in her journal, "How happy, how joyful we were, on awaking, to find ourselves here, at the dear Rosenau, my Albert's birth-place, the place he most loves. … He was so happy to be here with me. It was like a beautiful dream."
The account of the rejoicings of the simple Coburg people, and especially of the children, over their beloved Prince, and over the visit of his august wife, is really very touching. Their offerings and tributes were mostly flowers, poems and music—wonderfully sweet chorales and gay réveils and inspiriting marches. There was a great fête of the peasants on Prince Albert's birthday, with much waltzing, and shouting, and beer-quaffing, and toast-giving. The whole visit was an Arcadian episode, simple and charming, in the grand royal progress of Victoria's life. But the royal progress had to be resumed—the State called back its bond-servants; and so, after a visit to the dear old grandmother at Gotha—the parting with whom seemed especially hard to Prince Albert, as though he had a presentiment it was to be the last— they set out for home. They took their yacht at Antwerp, and after a flying visit to the King and Queen of France at Eu, were soon at Osborne, where their family were awaiting them. The Queen wrote: "The dearest of welcomes greeted us as we drove up straight to the house, for there, looking like roses, so well and so fat, stood the four children, much pleased to see us!"
Ah, often the best part of going away is coming home.
During this year the Royal Family were very happy in taking possession of their new seaside palace on the Isle of Wight, and I believe paid no more visits to Brighton, which was so much crowded in the season as to make anything like the privacy they desired impossible. During her last stay at the Pavilion the Queen was so much displeased at the rudeness of the people who pressed about her and Prince Albert, when they were trying to have a quiet little walk on the breezy pier, that I read she appealed to the magistrates for protection. There was such a large and ever-growing crowd of excited, hurrying, murmuring, staring Brightonians and strangers about them that it seemed a rallying cry had gone through the town, from lip to lip: "The Queen and Prince are out! To the pier! To the pier!"
The Pavilion was never a desirable Marine Palace, as it commanded no good views of the sea; so Her Majesty's new home in the Isle of Wight had for her, the Prince and the children every advantage over the one in Brighton except in bracing sea-air. Osborne has a broad sea view, a charming beach, to which the woods run down—the lovely woods in which are found the first violets of the spring and to which the nightingales first come. The grounds were fine and extensive, to the great delight of the Prince Consort, who had not only a peculiar passion, but a peculiar talent for gardening. Indeed, when this many-sided German was born a Prince, a masterly landscape-gardener was lost to the world—that is, the world outside the grounds of Windsor, Osborne and Balmoral, which indeed "keep his memory green." The Queen writing from Osborne says: "Albert is so happy here—out all day planting, directing, etc., and it is so good for him. It is a relief to get away from the bitterness which people create for themselves in London."—But I am not writing the Life of Prince Albert;—I often forget that.
The year of 1846 was gloriously marked by the repeal of the Corn Laws; a measure of justice and mercy, the withholding of which from the people had for several years produced much distress and commotion. Some destructive work had been done by mobs on the houses of the supporters of the old laws; they had even stoned the town residence of the Duke of Wellington, Apsley House. The stern old fighter would have been glad at the moment to have swept the streets clear with cannon, but he contented himself with putting shutters over his broken windows, to hide the shame. I believe they were never opened again while he lived. The great leaders in this Corn Laws agitation were Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright. These great- hearted men could not rest for the cries which came up to them from the suffering people. There were sore privations and "short commons" in England, and in Ireland, starvation, real, honest, earnest starvation. The poverty of the land had struck down into the great Irish stand-by, the potato, a deadly blight. A year or two later the evil took gigantic proportions; the news came to us in America, and an alarm was sounded which roused the land. We sent a divine Armada against the grim enemy which was wasting the Green Isle; ships, which poured into him broadsides of big bread-balls, and grape-shot of corn, beans and potatoes. It is recorded that "in one Irish seaport town the bells were kept ringing all day in honor of the arrival of one of these grain-laden vessels." I am afraid these bells had a sweeter sound to the poor people than even those rung on royal birthdays.
Strangely enough, after the passage of measures which immortalized his ministerial term, Sir Robert Peel was ejected from power. The Queen parted from him with great regret, but quietly accepted his successor, Lord John Russell.