Pray forgive this confused and horrid scrawl.
Footnote 59: The Queen was enthusiastically received at Tréport. On the 2nd there was a great entertainment in the banqueting-room of the Château, and on the 4th a fête champêtre on the Mont d'Orléans in the forest. On the 5th there was a review, and on the 7th the Queen returned to England.
Footnote 60: The Princess of Joinville. See ante, p. [451-2]. Hadjy is the Prince of Joinville.
Footnote 61: Prince William of Löwenstein (1783-1847).
Viscount Melbourne to Queen Victoria.
THE FRENCH VISIT
Melbourne, 6th September 1843.
Lord Melbourne presents his humble duty to your Majesty, and thanks your Majesty much for your letter of the 27th ult., which he received here some days ago. We have been quite dismayed and overwhelmed with the melancholy intelligence of death after death which has followed us. I was much concerned for poor Charles Howard's loss, but we were quite struck down by the melancholy event of poor Mrs W. Cowper.62 She promised to suit us all well, my sister particularly, and to be a great source of happiness and comfort.
Your Majesty is quite right in supposing that Lord Melbourne would at once attribute your Majesty's visit to the Château d'Eu to its right cause—your Majesty's friendship and affection for the French Royal Family, and not to any political object. The principal motive now is to take care that it does not get mixed either in reality or in appearance with politics, and Lord Melbourne cannot conceal from your Majesty that he should lament it much if the result of the visit should turn out to be a treaty upon any European matter, unfavourable to England and favourable to France. Do not let them make any treaty or agreement there. It can be done elsewhere just as well, and without any of the suspicion which is sure to attach to any transaction which takes place there.