Lord Granville has communicated to Viscount Palmerston your Majesty's wish that Mr Dilke66 should be made a Baronet, and that Mr Bowring67 should be made a Companion of the Bath, and both of these things will be done accordingly. But there are three other persons whose names Viscount Palmerston has for some time wished to submit to your Majesty for the dignity of Baronet, and if your Majesty should be graciously pleased to approve of them, the list would stand as follows:
Mr Dilke.
Mr William Brown,68 of Liverpool, a very wealthy and distinguished merchant, who lately made a magnificent present of a public library to his fellow-citizens.
Mr Thomas Davies Lloyd, a rich and highly respectable gentleman of the county of Carnarvon.
Mr Rich, to whom the Government is under great obligation, for having of his own accord and without any condition vacated last year his seat for Richmond in Yorkshire, and having thus enabled the Government to obtain the valuable services of Mr Roundell Palmer as your Majesty's Solicitor-General.
Viscount Palmerston has put into this box some private letters which Lord Russell thinks your Majesty might perhaps like to look at.
Footnote 66: Sir Charles Wentworth Dilke was on the Executive Committee of the Exhibition of 1851, and on the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1862. He died in 1869.
Footnote 67: Mr Edgar Bowring's Companionship was conferred on him for services in connection with the earlier Exhibition. He was afterwards M.P. for Exeter, 1868-1874.
Footnote 68: Mr Brown became a baronet in 1863.
Queen Victoria to Earl Canning.
COMFORT AND HOPE
Osborne, 10th January 1862.
Lord Canning little thought when he wrote his kind and touching letter of the 22nd November, that it would only reach the Queen when she was smitten and bowed down to the earth by an event similar to the one which he describes—and, strange to say, by a disease greatly analogous to the one which took from him all that he loved best. In the case of her adored, precious, perfect, and great husband, her dear lord and master, to whom this Nation owed more than it ever can truly know, however, the fever went on most favourably till the day previous to the awful calamity, and then it was congestion of the lungs and want of strength of circulation (the beloved Prince had always a weak and feeble pulse), which at the critical moment, indeed only two hours before God took him, caused this awful result. To lose one's partner in life is, as Lord Canning knows, like losing half of one's body and soul, torn forcibly away—and dear Lady Canning was such a dear, worthy, devoted wife! But to the Queen—to a poor helpless woman—it is not that only—it is the stay, support and comfort which is lost! To the Queen it is like death in life! Great and small—nothing was done without his loving advice and help—and she feels alone in the wide world, with many helpless children (except the Princess Royal) to look to her—and the whole nation to look to her—now when she can barely struggle with her wretched existence! Her misery—her utter despair—she cannot describe! Her only support—the only ray of comfort she gets for a moment, is in the firm conviction and certainty of his nearness, his undying love, and of their eternal reunion! Only she prays always, and pines for the latter with an anxiety she cannot describe. Like dear Lady Canning, the Queen's darling is to rest in a garden—at Frogmore, in a Mausoleum the Queen is going to build for him and herself.