Queen Alexandra in 1864
From the Painting by Lauchert, published by Henry Graves and Co.
Queen Alexandra with the Baby Prince Albert Victor
Photograph in 1864 by Vernon Heath, published by McQueen
After sending Prince Albert Victor home with Countess de Grey, the Royal couple travelled back via Germany and Belgium, visiting on the way Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse at Darmstadt, and making a short stay at Brussels. Then they came home for the rest of the autumn to Sandringham, where Queen Alexandra spent her twentieth birthday.
The year 1865 proved an eventful one to both King Edward and his wife. King Edward paid his first State visit to Ireland, opening the International Exhibition of Dublin on 9th May, and a little less than a month later Prince George of Wales was born at Marlborough House.
Although there have at various times been more or less serious fires in Royal residences, Sandringham, for instance, having been almost destroyed by a conflagration within the last few years, the King has only once been really in a fire, and this was just a month after his second son’s birth. The fire began in the floor then styled the nursery floor, and after Queen Alexandra had been moved to another part of the house with her two children, King Edward set to work with the utmost energy to check the flames. It need hardly be said that very soon the whole of London seemed to be congregated in Pall Mall and St. James’s Park. At first it could not be made out where the fire was coming from, and the King helped to rip up the whole of the nursery floor before the mischief could be traced, and while doing so he nearly had a bad accident, for he fell some distance through the rafters.