alms-dishes, quaint and curiously-wrought chalices and patens, were heaped in a glittering pile on the altar. The reredos, hung with rich crimson velvet curtains, with its fine panels of Christ and the Woman of Samaria, the Ascension, and the Institution of the Holy Communion, shone with the virgin purity of white alabaster. Time and space would fail to catalogue the dazzling array of Royal and Princely guests, of Ambassadors and Ministers of State, whose resplendent uniforms and sparkling decorations almost fatigued the spectator’s eye. The Princess Alexandra was clad in rich white satin robes, trimmed with Honiton lace and orange blossoms. Her necklace, earrings, and brooch of pearls and diamonds were a gift from the Prince of Wales; her rivière of diamonds was the gift of the Corporation of the City of London. On her wrists shone three bracelets—two being of opals and diamonds, one of which was given to her by the Queen, the other by the ladies of Manchester, whilst the third, of diamonds, was the gift of the ladies of Leeds. Her bouquet was a magnificent collection of orange blossoms, white rosebuds, lilies of the valley, and costly orchids, made up at Osborne in accordance with the Queen’s directions, and throughout, the mass of floral bloom was relieved by sprigs of the myrtle which had served for the bridal bouquet of the Princess Royal. The design of the four great flounces of Honiton lace on her robe was a sequence of cornucopiæ filled with roses, shamrocks, and thistles, arranged in festoons and interspersed with these national emblems.[155] As for the Prince of Wales, he wore a General’s uniform, with the mantle of the Garter, the gold collar and jewel of that Order, and the decorations of the Golden Fleece and the Star of India. His chief supporters were the Crown Prince of Prussia, and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg-and-Gotha. The Princess was led in by her father, Prince Christian of Denmark, and the Duke of Cambridge, and her bridesmaids were eight unmarried daughters of Dukes, Marquises, and Earls, namely, Lady Victoria Scott, Lady Diana Beauclerk, Lady Elina Bruce, Lady Victoria Howard, Lady Emily Villiers, Lady Agneta Yorke, Lady Feodore Wellesley, and Lady Eleanor Hare. As the procession reached the altar, the band and organ performed Handel’s march from Joseph. The choir next sang one of the late Prince Consort’s chorales—Jenny Lind’s sweet birdlike notes ringing high above all other voices. The Archbishop then read the service, and when the ring was placed on the finger of the Princess, distant guns thundered forth a salute, and the bells of Windsor rang out a peal of joy. After the benediction the Psalm was chanted with great solemnity, and the united processions of the bride and bridegroom left the Chapel, the choir singing Beethoven’s Hallelujah Chorus from the Mount of Olives. At the Grand Entrance to Windsor Castle the bride and bridegroom and their train were received by the Queen, whose features bore traces of deep emotion, and were by her conducted to the Green Drawing Room and White Room, where the marriage was attested in due form by the Royal guests, the ecclesiastical dignitaries, the Ministers of the Crown, and M. de Bille, the Danish Minister. Breakfast was served in the Dining Room to the Royal guests, and in St. George’s Hall to the company present at the ceremony, upwards of four hundred in number. The wedding cake on the table at St. George’s Hall is said to have weighed eighty pounds. At four in the afternoon the Prince and Princess of Wales left for Osborne, amidst hearty cheers from loyal crowds, who greeted them as they drove along to the station.
Dr. Norman Macleod, describing the ceremony, says in his Diary, “Two things struck me much. One was the whole of the Royal Princesses weeping, though concealing their tears with their bouquets, as they saw their brother, who was to them but their ‘Bertie’ and their dear father’s son, standing alone, waiting for the bride. The other was the Queen’s expression as she raised her eyes to heaven, while her husband’s chorale was sung. She seemed to be with him before the throne of God.” The Bishop of Oxford, in a letter to Sir Charles Anderson, gives a less pathetic description of the scene. He writes:—“The ceremony was certainly the most moving sight I ever saw. The Queen, above all, looking down, added a wonderful chord of deep feeling to all the lighter notes of joyfulness and show. Every one behaved quite at their best. The
MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES.
Princess of Wales calm, feeling, self-possessed. The Prince with more depth of manner than ever before. Princess Mary’s entrance was grand. The little Prince William of Prussia, between his two little uncles[156] to keep him quiet, both of whom—the Crown Princess told me—he bit on the bare Highland legs whenever they touched him to keep him quiet.”[157] There was, however, one jarring incident in the proceedings which irritated the Queen not a little, and to which reference is made by Lord Malmesbury and Count Vitzthum. Lord Malmesbury says in his Diary, “Nothing could exceed the splendour of the scene in St. George’s Chapel. The foreigners were all much struck with it; it was so grand as to be overpowering. Mr. Paget confirmed all I had heard of the confusion on the departure of the special train for London. The Duchess of Westminster, who had on half a million’s worth of diamonds, could only find place in a third class carriage, and Lady Palmerston was equally unfortunate. Count Livradio had his diamond star torn off and stolen by the roughs.” Count Vitzthum writes, “The confusion at the railway station when the special train was leaving was incomprehensible. We men were in full uniform, and the unfortunate ladies in full Court attire and covered with jewellery. It had never occurred to the police to close the entrances to the platform, and the returning guests were hemmed in by a noisy and disorderly crowd.”[158]
In every part of the kingdom the 10th of March was kept as a national holiday. London and all the great cities were brilliantly illuminated—in fact, it was only in Ireland that the event was not marked by universal manifestations of popular loyalty. There was some rioting in Dublin and Cork; indeed, in the latter city, troops had to be called out to restore order. The appearance of Edinburgh on the evening of the 10th was particularly memorable, the “grey metropolis of the North” naturally lending itself to effective illumination. After a brief honeymoon at Osborne, the Prince and Princess of Wales returned to London. But Lord Malmesbury, who describes their entry to St. James’s Palace, says, the scene struck him “as very melancholy, when one considered the cause of the Queen’s absence.” A few days afterwards, he was invited to Windsor Castle. “The Queen,” he writes, “was quite calm and even cheerful, and looks well, but she complains of not feeling strong, and being unable to stand much.”
So far as the Queen was able to take an active interest in the management of the Foreign policy of the country, the only questions to which she paid close attention were those relating to Poland and the Duchy of Sleswig-Holstein. For two years rebellious agitators had disturbed Poland, and at last the Russian Government, in a moment of irritation, resolved to seize the youth of the upper and middle classes, who represented the discontented sections of the people, and drive them into the Imperial Army as conscripts. The rigour with which this measure was enforced roused a great deal of popular sympathy in England on behalf of the Poles, and strong pressure was put on the Government by the Tories, by some Radicals like Mr. Stansfeld, who were friendly to Continental revolutionary movements, and even by a large section of the Evangelical party, led by Lord Shaftesbury, to interfere on behalf of the Polish insurgents. For in February, 1863, the Committee of the Polish National Insurrection had issued its first proclamation, after which, Mieroslavski raised the standard of revolt on the Posen frontier. A pamphlet, called “Napoleon III. et la Pologne,” had been published in Paris, under the auspices of the French Emperor, and it not only created a sensation on the Continent, but it roused the suspicions of the Queen. Palmerston’s personal sympathies were naturally with the Poles. But, on the other hand, the Queen could not forget that the restoration of Poland was one of the many devices which the Emperor of the French had in reserve for upsetting the Treaties of 1815, in order to give him a pretext for seizing the left bank of the Rhine. It was not, therefore, from any sympathy for the Czar’s autocratic policy of repression that the English Court was averse from encouraging the Polish insurrection, or that the King of Prussia and his Minister, Herr Von Bismarck, actively aided Russia in coercing the Poles by massing troops along the frontier of Posen, and delivering up Polish fugitives who fled to Prussian territory. The Courts of Berlin and St. James’s alike dreaded a general European war—and to that issue the Queen honestly believed a policy of intervention must tend. For a time Lord Palmerston’s Ministry tossed about aimlessly in a vortex of embarrassments. They were afraid to develop a policy of intervention, lest it might encourage an outbreak of anti-Russian opinion in England, and drive them into a war, with Napoleon III. as a self-interested ally. They were equally afraid that a policy of cold neutrality might be resented by the populace, whose sympathies were being roused daily on behalf of Poland. At last they sent a secret agent—Mr. Lawrence Oliphant—to Poland, to discover the real character of the revolutionary movement. His report was very discouraging to Lord Palmerston, but it strengthened the hands of the Queen. Mr. Oliphant found that the conscription enforced by Russia was really an act of precaution against an insurrection which had been carefully planned in secret, and was ordered and guided by a Central Committee of Social Democrats in London. The movement was not, therefore, a national one in its origin, though resistance to the conscription had drawn a large body of the nobles and the middle classes into the ranks of the insurgents. In order to free themselves from the dictation of the Socialists, they had made Langiewicz Dictator; but after a time he left them and fled to Austria. The Committee of Insurrection, which was then formed, had nothing to do with the Socialist Committee in London, and it was fighting, not for Constitutional reform under the Czar, but for the restoration of the Polish