VISIT OF THE QUEEN AND PRINCE ALBERT TO THE LINEN HALL, BELFAST.
A visit paid by the Queen to Carton appears to have made a strong impression on her. Carton is the seat of the Duke of Leinster, and his delicate attentions to her and her family, and his skill in planning a pleasant excursion for them, elicits from her pen the remark in her “Diary” that his Grace was “one of the kindest and best of men.” The Royal leave-taking at Kingstown was quite an affecting ceremony. The crowd at the pier was denser than it had ever been within living memory, and its shouts rent the air. When the Queen heard how her kind hosts were bidding her Godspeed, she immediately climbed up on the paddle-box and stood waving her handkerchief in token of her appreciation of their loyalty. She directed the ship’s engines to be slowed, so that the vessel might glide slowly past the pier. By a felicitous inspiration she ordered the Royal Standard to be dipped three times, in honour of the people on the shore, and as a mark of her grateful appreciation of their affection.
Loyal Ulster was next visited, and, as might have been expected, the reception of the Queen in this busy hive of industry was exceptionally effusive, even for Ireland. Belfast was en fête when the Royal visitors landed, and old folk still speak of the scene on the quay as marking a red letter day in their lives. Bunting was streaming everywhere in the air. Dense crowds cheering and shouting, and waving hats and handkerchiefs, occupied every coign of vantage, and though the Queen had only four hours to spend in the city, she contrived, under competent guidance, to see many of the more interesting places and institutions which illustrate the strong character of the mixed race whose energy, ability, pertinacity, and industry have made Ulster, with her unkindly soil and climate, the richest province in Ireland. Ulster commands the bulk of the linen trade of the world, and, naturally, the institutions and factories connected with that industry arrested the Queen’s attention during her flying visit to the commercial capital of Ireland. An alarming gale detained her the next day in Belfast Lough, but after it blew over the Royal party steamed away to the Scottish shore.
The Royal visit to Ireland had two good results. It brought home to the minds of the Irish people the fact that their country, and their interests, were of great personal concern to the Queen and her husband. It demonstrated to the rest of the United Kingdom the fact that the personal attachment of the Irish people to the Monarchy was as strong as could be desired, and that if they were rebels at heart it was not the Queen, but the Viceregal Bureaucracy in Dublin Castle, who had soured their blood. Everybody who had observed the effect of the Queen’s progress through Ireland was charmed with the success of the expedition. “I saw Lord Lansdowne last night,” writes Mr. Greville in his Journal (14th August), “just returned from Ireland, having had an escape on the railroad, for the train ran off the rails. He said nothing could surpass the success of the Queen’s visit in every respect; every circumstance favourable, no drawbacks or mistakes, all persons and parties pleased, much owing to the tact of Lord Clarendon, and the care he had bestowed on all the arrangements and details, which made it all go off so admirably. The Queen herself was delighted, and appears to have played her part uncommonly well. Clarendon, of course, was overjoyed at the complete success of what was his own plan,[5] and satisfied with the graciousness and attention of the Court to him. In the beginning, and while the details were in preparation, he was considerably disgusted at the petty difficulties that were made, but he is satisfied now. Lord Lansdowne says the departure was quite affecting, and he could not see it without being moved; and he thinks beyond doubt that this visit will produce permanent good effects in Ireland.”[6] Clarendon himself was evidently more than delighted with the effect of the Royal visit. He informed Sir George Grey that he believed “there was not an Irishman in Dublin who did not consider that the Queen had paid him a personal compliment by mounting the paddle-box of her steamer as she was leaving, and ordering the Royal Standard to be dipped in acknowledgment of the affectionate adieus which came from the crowds on the shore.”[7] But the odd thing was that the members of the seditious clubs who had threatened to create disturbances when the Queen’s visit was first mooted, caught the prevailing contagion of loyalty, and professed to be among the most affectionate of her subjects. Still, Clarendon was far too astute a statesman to imagine that a Royal visit would smooth away all the difficulties of his position and administration as Viceroy. It could not, as he acknowledges in another letter to Sir George Grey, “remove evils which are the growth of ages.” At the same time, it indirectly helped the country by bringing some money into it. Royalty can always beneficially direct the expenditure of Fashion, and after the Queen had by her example shown that there was no danger to be dreaded in visiting Ireland, rich English tourists began to go over there holiday-making, greatly to the advantage of the people. But when all this was apparent to the Queen’s advisers, it seems strange that they did not then deem it their duty to devise a plan for strengthening the golden link of the Crown between England and Ireland. If one brief Royal visit produced such an excellent effect, why did they not propose another? If it were impossible to provide for the residence for the Queen regularly during a portion of the year in Ireland, it might have been possible for the Royal Family to arrange that in their annual visit to Balmoral they should cruise northwards along the Irish coast, and gladden some of the Irish towns and provinces with their presence.
Ugly weather followed the Royal squadron from Belfast Lough to the Clyde, but a singularly brilliant reception at Glasgow compensated the Queen for any discomforts she may have endured on the voyage. The visit to “the second city of the Empire,” as its inhabitants love to call it, was all too brief, for the Festival of St. Grouse had been celebrated two days before, and Prince Albert was eagerly desirous of pressing on to the moors. On the evening of the 14th of August—the day of the reception at Glasgow—he wrote to Stockmar a hurried note, deploring the “vile passage” on the 12th from Belfast to Loch Ryan, and saying how much he had been impressed by their procession, through five to six hundred thousand human beings all cheering wildly in the streets of Glasgow.
CASTLETON OF BRAEMAR.