The Duchess took her husband's hand and said: "No, my dear William, you must not do it! I know what Mrs. Jordan has been to you in the past—that you have loved her—that she is the mother of your children, and I wish her portrait to remain where it is." And it did remain. This was very noble and generous, certainly; but I cannot help thinking that the Duchess was not very much in love.
CHAPTER XXI
The Great Exhibition—Birth of the Duke of Connaught—Death of Sir Robert Peel and Louis Philippe—Prince Albert's speech before the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
Early in this year of 1850, Prince Albert, though not in his usual health, began in deadly earnest on his colossal labors in behalf of the great "World's Exhibition." England owed that magnificent manifestation of her resources and her enterprise far more to him than to any other man. He met with much opposition from that conservative class who, from the start, denounce all new ideas and innovations, shrinking like owls from the advancing day; and that timid class who, while admitting the grandeur of the idea, feared it was premature. "The time has not come," they said; "wait a century or two." Some opposed it on the ground that it would bring to London a host of foreigners, with foreign ideas and perilous to English morals and religion.
In the garden of a certain grand English country-place there is a certain summer-house with a closed door, which, if a curious visitor opens, lets off some water-works, which give him a spray-douche. So the Prince received, at door after door, a dash of cold water for his "foreign enterprise." But he persevered, letting nothing dishearten him—toiling terribly, and inspiring others to toil, till at last the site he desired for the building was granted him, and the first Crystal Palace—the first palace for the people in England—went slowly up, amid the sun-dropped shades of Hyde Park. Temporary as was that marvelous structure, destined so soon to pass away, like "the baseless fabric of a vision," I can but think it the grandest of the monuments to the memory of the Prince- Consort, though little did he so regard it. To his poetic yet practical mind it was the universal temple of industry and art, the valhalla of the heroes of commerce, the fane of the gods of science—the caravansery of the world. That Exhibition brought together the ends of the earth,—long- estranged human brethren sat down together in pleasant communion. It was a modern Babel, finished and furnished, and where there was almost a fusion, instead of, a confusion, of tongues. The "barbarous Turk" was there, the warlike Russ, the mercenary Swiss, the passionate Italian, the voluptuous Spaniard, the gallant Frenchman,—and yet foreboding English citizens did not find themselves compelled to go armed, or to lock up their plate, or their wives and daughters. In fact, this beautiful realized dream, this accomplished fact, quickened the pulses of commerce, the genius of invention, the soul and the arm of industry, the popular zeal for knowledge, as nothing had ever done before.
To go back a little to family events:—On May 1st, 1850, Prince Albert, in writing to his step-mother at Coburg, told a bit of news very charmingly: "This morning, after rather a restless night (being Walpurgis night, that was very appropriate), and while the witches were careering on the Blocksberg, under Ernst Augustus' mild sceptre, a little boy glided into the light of day and has been received by the sisters with jubilates. 'Now we are just as many as the days of the week!' was the cry, and a bit of a struggle arose as to who was to be Sunday. of well-bred courtesy the honor was conceded to the new-comer. Victoria is well, and so is the child."
This Prince was called Arthur William Patrick Albert. The first name was in honor of the Duke of Wellington, on whose eighty-first birthday the boy was born; William was for the Prince of Prussia, now Emperor of Germany; Patrick was for Ireland in general, and the "stout old woman" of Dublin in particular.
This year both the Queen and the country lost a great and valued friend in Sir Robert Peel, who was killed by being thrown from his horse. There was much mourning in England among all sorts of people for this rarely noble, unennobled man. The title of Baronet he had. inherited; it is said he declined a grander title, and he certainly recorded in his will a wish that no one of his sons should accept a title on account of his services to the country—which was a great thing for a man to do in England; and after his death, his wife was so proud of bearing his name that she declined a peerage offered to her—which was a greater thing for a woman to do in England.
Not long after, occurred the death of the ex-King of France, at Claremont. McCarthy sums up his character very tersely, thus: "The clever, unwise, grand, mean old man." Louis Philippe's meanness was in his mercenary and plotting spirit, when a rich man and a king—his grand qualities were his courage and cheerfulness, when in poverty and exile.
The Royal Family again visited Edinburgh, and stopped for a while at Holyrood—that quaint old Palace of poor Mary Stuart, whose sad, sweet memory so pervades it, like a personal atmosphere, that it seems she has only gone but for a little walk, or ride, with her four Maries, and will soon come in, laughing and talking French, and looking passing beautiful. Queen Victoria had then a romantic interest in the hapless Queen of Scots. She said to Sir Archibald Alison, "I am glad I am descended from Mary; I have nothing to do with Elizabeth."