THE QUEEN AT WIMBLEDON.
They went through their evolutions with the greatest steadiness and precision, and at the final advance in line, when they halted within a short distance of the Queen, and the bands had ceased playing ‘God Save the Queen,’ they raised a cheer that might be heard for miles. This was taken up by the spectators, and the scene was so exciting that the Queen was quite overcome, and I saw many people the same.”[78] On the 7th of July her Majesty opened the first meeting of the National Rifle Association on Wimbledon Common, under the first sunny summer sky of a peculiarly bleak season. Mr. Whitworth[79] had adjusted one of his rifles so neatly that when her Majesty pulled the trigger and fired the first shot at 400 yards she scored a bull’s-eye.[80] Her own prize, conferring the Champion Marksmanship of England on the winner, was carried off by Mr. Edward Boss, of the 7th North York Rifles, with a score of twenty-four points—the greatest possible score being sixty. The public interest in the meeting, which was, in a sense, a great volunteer picnic, was indicated by the fact that the admission money (1s. a head) taken in six days from visitors amounted to £2,000.
Later in the season (7th of August) a grand review of the Scottish Volunteers was held in the Queen’s Park, Edinburgh, where the smooth plain on which Holyrood stands picturesquely surrounded by hills and crags, forms a natural amphitheatre admirably adapted for the popular enjoyment of a military pageant. All Scotland, so to speak, swarmed into Edinburgh, to be present at the scene, and contingents even from the Orkneys and Shetlands and the “storm-tossed Hebrides” were represented in the ranks of the great citizen army of the northern kingdom. It was said at the time that Scotland—always a military nation—must have a mania for volunteering, because she sent more troops to the review than passed the Queen at Hyde Park. The Queen herself remarked this fact, and her suite, who had seen the display in Hyde Park, were struck with the superior physique and drill of the men, though somewhat surprised that the Highland costume was worn by so few even of the Highland Regiments. The Queen was accompanied by her mother, the Duchess of Kent, then living at Cramond, near Edinburgh, the Prince Consort, the Princess Alice, and Prince Arthur. The Prince Consort rode on the right of her carriage, and the Duke of Buccleuch, as Captain of the Royal Body-Guard of Scottish Archers—a corps consisting entirely of nobles and gentlemen, who have the exclusive right of watching over the Royal person north of the Tweed—rode on the left hand. The programme was the same as at Hyde Park, but the surroundings and the enthusiasm of the troops and the myriads of spectators who covered the hillsides, made the spectacle more impressive. “It was magnificent,” wrote the Queen to King Leopold; “finer decidedly than in London.”
Many interesting family events rendered the year 1860 memorable to the Queen. Of these, one of the most important was the tour of the Prince of Wales in Canada—a visit which had been promised during the Crimean War, in answer to a deputation which had invited the Queen to go to the Colony,[81] and, without avail, begged her to appoint one of her sons Governor-General.[82] In spring it was decided that the Prince should proceed to the Far West under the care of the Duke of Newcastle, Secretary of State for the Colonies, and when the news reached America, Mr. Buchanan, President of the United States, invited the Prince to visit the Republic, promising him such a warm welcome as would be most pleasing to the Queen. The invitation was accepted, but it was intimated that on his tour the Prince would drop all Royal state and travel under one of his Scottish titles—Baron Renfrew. On the 2nd of August his Royal Highness received a hearty greeting from the people of St. John’s, Newfoundland, the rough fishermen and their wives being especially enthusiastic in their loyalty. On the 7th, at Halifax, he was pelted with flowers by cheering crowds till, the Duke of Newcastle said, their carriage was rapidly filled up with bouquets; in fact, all through Canada the welcome given to the Queen’s son for the Queen’s sake was cordial in the extreme. One of the most picturesque incidents of the tour was the visit to Niagara by night, the Falls being illuminated by Bengal lights. These were first of all placed between the Falls and the rock over which they tumble, and turned as if by magic the vast sheet of water into a mass of incandescent silver, the boiling river itself gleaming with phosphorescent tints, and the spray rising high in the air as a thick luminous cloud. Then when the white lights were changed to crimson, the Falls and rapids were transformed into a seething lurid river of blood, and the spectators were awed into silence by the terrific grandeur of the scene. When the Prince crossed to the United States the people there strove to outdo the Canadian welcome. It was laughingly said that he would be lucky if he got out of the country without being asked to “run for President” next year, and the accounts which the Queen received of the splendid reception at Chicago deeply moved her. At Cincinnati and St. Louis the crowds were still greater and more enthusiastic, though quieter and more staid in demeanour than those in Canada. On the 3rd of October the Prince visited President Buchanan at Washington, and in company with him stood uncovered before the tomb of Washington—who had wrested the independence of the continent from his great-grandfather. In New York no monarch of ancient or modern times could have received a warmer ovation from his own people, and the reception at Boston, if less effusive, was not less cordial. The Duke of Newcastle, in reporting on the results of the tour, attributed its success first, to the growing feeling of goodwill that was springing up between Americans and Englishmen—a feeling, alas! to be soon rudely disturbed by the ungenerous support which the aristocratic classes gave to the secession of the Southern Slave States, and secondly, added the Duke, to the “very remarkable love for your Majesty personally, which pervaded all classes in this country, and which has acted like a spell upon them when they found your Majesty’s son actually among them.” The Prince of Wales, in fact, embodied for the American people the romance of their ancestral past—and their hearts warmed to him from the moment he set foot on their territory. The President also wrote to the Queen, telling her how the Prince had passed through the ordeal of the
PRESIDENT BUCHANAN.
visit—always dignified, always frank, always affable, so that he “conciliated, wherever he has been, the kindness and respect of a sensitive and discriminating people.”[83] The Queen in her reply said that her son could not sufficiently extol the great cordiality with which he had been received, and she went on to say, “Whilst as a mother I am most grateful for the kindness shown him, I feel impelled to express, at the same time, how deeply I have been touched by the many demonstrations of affection towards myself personally which his presence has called forth.”[84] The Duke of Newcastle had taken grave responsibilities on him in connection with the visit, and, as Dr. Acland told Mr. Charles Sumner, it was therefore for him a personal triumph. The Queen was evidently of the same opinion, because, on his return, she testified her appreciation of the tact with which the Duke had managed the tour by conferring on him the Order of the Garter. A similar visit paid by Prince Alfred to Cape Town evoked similar expressions of goodwill from the colonists. Writing to Stockmar the Prince Consort speaks of the curious coincidence which, in almost the same week, caused one brother to open the great bridge across the St. Lawrence, and the other to lay the foundation stone of the breakwater in Cape Town harbour at the other end of the world. “What a cheering picture,” he writes, “is here of the progress and expansion of the British race, and of the useful co-operation of the Royal Family in the civilisation which England has developed and advanced.”[85]