An incident worth recording occurred in January 1881, during a visit of the King and Queen to Normanton Park. Queen Alexandra drove with Lady Aveland to Oakham, and paid a visit to the ancient castle, on the inner walls of which are nailed numerous horse-shoes, the gift, or rather the toll, of various Royal and noble personages. A large horse-shoe of steel, perfect in shape and of elegant workmanship, had been made for the Queen to offer. Her Majesty examined the other horse-shoes in the Castle hall, and chose the position in which she desired her toll to be affixed, namely, over a large one supposed to have been the gift of Queen Elizabeth. The Queen greatly enjoyed following this ancient custom, a mark of territorial power possessed for many centuries by the Ferrers family, a shoe from the horse of every princely traveller who passed that way being a tax due to the Ferrers or Farriers. Among the horse-shoes specially noticed by Queen Alexandra were one contributed by Queen Victoria before her accession, on 2nd September 1833; another by the Duchess of Kent on the same date; also one offered by the Prince Regent, afterwards George IV., on 7th January 1814.
It was in this year that the King had an opportunity of exhibiting in a public manner his strong interest in the British Colonies, the welfare of which was not then so much a matter of concern in the eyes of our statesmen as it is now. The occasion was a dinner given to the members of the Colonial Institute by the then Lord Mayor, Sir George MacArthur, himself an old colonist. An extraordinary number of distinguished men connected in various ways, official and other, with our colonies were present. In his speech the King pointed out that no function of the kind had ever taken place before—a statement which seems hardly credible nowadays, thanks in a great measure to His Majesty’s own unwearied exertions in the interests of our colonial empire. The King also alluded to his Canadian tour, and took the opportunity of paying a graceful compliment to his friend Sir John Macdonald, the Canadian statesman, who was present.
The King in 1882
From the Painting by H. J. Brooks, published by Henry Graves and Co.
Very shortly after this dinner the King attended as patron the first meeting ever held in this country of the International Medical Congress.
King Edward was deeply grieved at the death of Dean Stanley, with whom, as we have seen, he had been on terms of close intimacy. At a meeting held in the Chapter-House of Westminster Abbey, His Majesty paid a touching and eloquent tribute to his dead friend’s rare qualities, both of heart and intellect.
Generally speaking, this period of the King’s life was not very eventful. His children were still quite young, and his public appearances, though tolerably frequent, did not usually possess more than a local importance. There were, however, some conspicuous exceptions, which broke the even current of his life. For example, it would be difficult to overestimate the value of the work which His Majesty did in promoting the International Fisheries Exhibition in 1883, which was visited by nearly three million people, and may be said to have been the first introduction into London of open-air entertainment on a large scale. Moreover, it resulted in a clear profit of £15,000, of which two-thirds was devoted to the relief of the orphan families of fishermen.
The success of the Fisheries suggested to the King the idea of another exhibition concerned with health and hygiene, which was held in 1884, and was nicknamed the “Healtheries.” Not long before it was opened the King and Queen Alexandra suffered a great bereavement in the death of the Duke of Albany, to whom their Majesties had always been very much attached. He died quite suddenly in the south of France on 28th March, and the King instantly started for the Riviera and brought his brother’s remains back to Windsor. In the following July His Majesty, presiding at the festival of the Railway Guards’ Friendly Society, took the opportunity of his first appearance at a public dinner to express in the name of Queen Victoria and the Royal Family their thanks for the public sympathy shown on the death of the Duke of Albany.