(From a Photograph by W. and D. Downey.)
The approaching marriage of the Princess Helena with Prince Christian of Sleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg, which had been announced in the Queen’s Speech, gave occasion to messages from the Crown to the two Houses of Parliament, asking them to make provision for the Princess, and also for Prince Alfred on his coming of age. Mr. Gladstone, in introducing the subject to the House of Commons, observed that with respect to the Princess Helena, “her position was a peculiar one, as she was the eldest unmarried Princess of the Royal Family when the most crushing calamity that could befall humanity descended upon her Majesty, and that during that trial all the prominent qualities of the Princess’s character, her strength, her wisdom, and her tenderness were put to the test.” Ignoring to some extent the devotion of the Princess Alice, Mr. Gladstone added that the Princess Helena “was then, and had been since, the stay and solace of her illustrious mother.” He therefore proposed to vote her an annuity of £6,000 a year, in addition to a dowry of £30,000. To Prince Alfred he proposed to grant an annuity of £15,000 a year. Mr. Disraeli said that the claim now made only elicited a fresh outflow of sympathy and affection from a devoted people, and the proposals were at once agreed to. The marriage of the Princess was solemnised in the chapel within Windsor Castle, on the 5th of July. A very lengthy procession entered the church as Handel’s March from Scipio was played. The Queen wore a rich black moiré-antique dress, interwoven with silver and trimmed with black crape, and a row of diamonds round the body. A coronet of diamonds, attached to a long white crape veil, a diamond necklace and cross, and a brooch composed of a large sapphire set in diamonds, the riband and star of the Order of the Garter, and the Victoria and Albert Order completed her adornment. The bride, who wore a rich dress of white satin, on arriving at the chapel took her place on the left side of the altar, while the Queen was conducted to the seat prepared for her near the bride. The Archbishop of Canterbury performed the service, the bride being given away by the Queen. The Prince and Princess left for Osborne after the ceremony.
The Queen appreciated the generous devotion of the House of Commons in so willingly voting a substantial provision for the Princess Helena, all the more that early in the year the financial embarrassments of the Princess Louis of Hesse had caused her sore anxiety. Although the Princess was an excellent house-manager, it was discovered that the handsome income and dowry which had been granted to her by the House of Commons, did not suffice for the wants of her husband’s establishment. Her gentle, uncomplaining nature, ever mindful of the feelings of others, had led her to conceal her difficulties from the Queen, who, however, made the painful discovery soon after suggesting some plans for her daughter’s benefit. These unfortunately could not be entertained. Pauperis est numerare pecus, and the Princess Louis had therefore to explain her circumstances to her mother. Writing from Darmstadt on the 18th of March she says, “Your idea of Friedrichroda for us was so good, but, alas! now even that will be impracticable, on account of money. Louis has had to take up money again at Coutts’s to pay for the house, and the house is surety. We must live so economically—not going anywhere, or seeing many people, so as to be able to spare as much a year as we can. England cost us a great deal, as the visit was short last time. We have sold four carriage horses, and have only six to drive with now, two of which the ladies constantly want for theatre, visits, etc., so we are rather badly off in some things. But I should not bore you with our troubles, which are easy to bear.”[246] The Queen’s nice tact and quick sympathy were shown in not directly noting these matters. But when the Princess’s birthday came round, her Majesty did not forget her daughter’s impecuniosity. Writing to the Queen on the 25th of April the Princess Louis says, “A thousand thanks for your dear lines, and the money, and charming bas-relief of you, which I think very good. I thought so much of former birthdays at home in Buckingham Palace. They were so happy.... The money will go to Louis’ man of business, towards paying off the furniture, and is indeed very acceptable, more so under present circumstances than anything else you could give us; and that part of the furniture,” adds the poor Princess, with the pride of one who seeks to reconcile herself to accept a birthday gift in the form of a cheque, “will then all be your present.”[247] In another letter she endeavours to reassure the Queen as to her embarrassments by speaking brightly and cheerily of them. “I have made all the summer walking-out dresses,” she writes—“seven in number, with paletôts for the girls—not embroidered, but entirely made from beginning to end: likewise the new necessary flannel shawls for the expected. I manage all the nursery accounts, and everything myself, which gives me plenty to do, as everything increases, and on account of the house, we must live very economically for these next years.” The Princess, as will be seen, was looking for an early addition to her family, and the Queen felt that her health was imperilled by the fresh anxiety and the increasing household drudgery which her straitened circumstances added to the burden of her social and public duties. Her Majesty, therefore, with characteristic generosity, herself made arrangements for her daughter’s accouchement, which relieved her of some of her worry. “It is so kind of you,” writes the Princess, gratefully, to the Queen, “to give Dr. Priestly his fee, otherwise I would have scruples in giving so large a sum for my own comfort.” How welcome her mother’s assistance was to the Princess may be gathered from another passage in one of her letters to the Queen, in which she says, “The man who built our house has nearly been made bankrupt, and wants money from us to save him from ruin, and we can scarcely manage it.”[248] Again the same sad subject crops up some nine months after the birth of her daughter, which took place during the Austro-Prussian War. The accumulated anxieties of that dreadful time had told on the health of the Princess. The Queen had taken charge of the little ones in the Darmstadt household, and thus freed the Princess from much care. Hence in autumn we find her rejoicing that the slight change to Nierstein, Gelbes Haus, has done her good, and adding, “If later, through your [the Queen’s] kindness, a little journey should be possible to us, it would be very beneficial to us.” But in a few days she soon fell ill again, and on the 29th of August she writes to the Queen saying, “Mountain air Weber wants me to have, and quite away from all bother; but I fear that is impossible now, on account of Louis not being able to leave—and, then, financially. I have some heimweh [home-sickness] after dear old England, Balmoral, and all at home, I own, though the joy of being near dear Louis again is so great. But life is meant for work and not for pleasure, and I learn more and more to be grateful and content with that which the Almighty sends me, and to find the sunshine in spite of the clouds.” Nor was the Queen’s generosity limited to her daughter. She treated the Prince Louis at this time with great tenderness and sympathy. In one letter from the Princess to the Queen we find her saying, “We are so pleased at your saying that you claim Louis as your son. He always considers himself in particular your child, and if anything helps to stimulate him in doing his duty well, it is the sincere wish of being worthy to claim and deserve that title.” And the Queen’s kindness was not confined to words. She gave him (Prince Louis) the charger that he rode during the war, and helped him in many ways. “That you sent Louis,” writes the Princess to her on the 16th of September, “besides the pretty souvenir, the money for something in the house, is really so kind. Our whole dining-room we consider your present, and it is furnished as like an English one as possible.” Lastly, when the war ended in the triumph of Prussia, and the Princess thought that she and her husband, to use her own phrase, would be made “beggars,” the Queen employed her potent influence at the Court of Berlin to procure favourable terms for Hesse-Darmstadt in the peace that followed. But for the Queen, the Grand Duchy would have been blotted out of the map of Germany as a sovereign State.[249] “We are so grateful,” says the Princess in one of her letters at this anxious moment in her husband’s life, “for your having written to good Fritz [the Crown Prince of Prussia]. What he can do I know he will.”
The eminent American merchant, Mr. Peabody, having added to his splendid gift of the preceding year for the improvements of the dwellings of the poor of London another munificent donation, her Majesty addressed to him the following autograph letter:—
“Windsor Castle, March 28, 1866.
“The Queen hears that Mr. Peabody intends shortly to return to America, and she would be sorry that he should leave England without being assured by herself how deeply she appreciates the noble act of more than princely munificence by which he has sought to relieve the wants of the poorer class of her subjects residing in London. It is an act, as the Queen believes, wholly without parallel, and which will carry its best reward in the consciousness of having contributed so largely to the assistance of those who can little help themselves.
“The Queen would not, however, have been satisfied without giving Mr. Peabody some public mark of her sense of his munificence, and she would gladly have conferred upon him either a baronetcy or the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, but that she understands Mr. Peabody to feel himself debarred from accepting such distinctions. It only remains, therefore, for the Queen to give Mr. Peabody the assurance of her personal feelings, which she would further wish to mark by asking him to accept a miniature portrait of herself, which she will desire to have painted for him, and which, when finished, can either be sent to him to America, or given to him on the return, which she rejoices to hear he meditates, to the country that owes him so much.”
