OSBORNE HOUSE.
(From a Photograph by J. Valentine and Sons, Dundee.)
OSBORNE HOUSE.
(From a Photograph by J. Valentine and Sons, Dundee.)
In May the Emperor of the French had sent the Queen an invitation to come and inspect the fortifications at Cherbourg. At this time the friction between France and England had been somewhat increased by a divergence of view between the two countries as to the settlement of the Danubian Principalities. England, by opposing their union, had irritated France. France, by refusing to admit that the engagements entered into by Napoleon III. at Osborne in 1857 bound her to support the English view, had annoyed England.[30] It was, however, thought that the Queen’s personal popularity in France, and her influence with the Emperor, might bring about friendlier relations between the Governments, and the Ministry pressed her to accept the Imperial invitation. Writing on the 5th of August, the day after the Queen’s arrival at Cherbourg, Lord Malmesbury, who was one of her party, says, “It blew hard in the night, but subsided towards morning. The Queen not ill. The approach to Cherbourg very fine. Arrived there at 7 p.m. At 8 the Emperor and Empress came on board the Royal yacht without any suite. Nobody was admitted. Marshal Pélissier, who went in without any invitation, was immediately turned out by the Emperor.” What passed at this interview, however, was an embarrassing inquiry about the feeling against France in England. “We smiled,” writes the Queen of herself and her husband, “and said the feeling was much better, but that this very place caused alarm, and that those unhappy addresses of the Colonels had done incalculable mischief.” The grand effect of the saluting cannon seems to have impressed the Queen, and, says Lord Malmesbury, “when the Emperor left the Queen’s yacht, the electric light was thrown on the Emperor’s barge, following it the whole way into the harbour; the light shining only on the barge, whilst all around remained in darkness.” The Emperor, adds Lord Malmesbury, “was very friendly in his manner; but both he and the Empress could not digest some of the articles in the Times which had been offensive, especially against her, and I tried to make them understand what freedom the Press had in England, and how independent it was of all private and most public men.” As for the Queen, she says in her Diary that, after this grave visit she “went below,” and “read and nearly finished that most interesting book ‘Jane Eyre.’” On the morrow thunderous salutes smote her ears as she was dressing, and when she went on deck the harbour was literally swarming with craft brave with gala array. “Next morning,” writes Lord Malmesbury of this day’s proceedings, “the Queen, Prince Albert, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of Cambridge, Sir John Pakington, and myself breakfasted at the Préfecture. After which the Royal Personages drove over the town.... Returned to the Royal yacht, and accompanied the Queen to dinner on board the Bretagne. Among the officers at dinner was General Macmahon.” Here the Queen was rendered very nervous because Prince Albert had to make a complimentary speech in reply to the toast of her health, for at that moment every eye in Europe was on Cherbourg, and every ear straining for echoes of Royal and Imperial conversations on which might hang the dread issues of war. “I shook so,” writes the Queen, “that I could not drink my cup of coffee.”[31] All went off well, however, and the kindliest words on both sides were spoken. The display of 25,000 francs’ worth of fireworks ended a brilliant but fatiguing day. August 6th was devoted to leave-taking, amidst a complimentary cannonade, and the Queen got home in time to greet Prince Alfred on his birthday at Osborne. “The evening,” she writes, “was very warm and calm. Dear Affie was on the pier, and we found all the other children, including Baby (Princess Beatrice), standing at the door.” A visit of inspection to Prince Alfred’s birthday presents, a little birthday fête and dance on the terrace, adds the Queen, formed “a delightful finale to our expedition.”[32] But the visit was a mistake, though, as the Ministry insisted on it, the blame was theirs alone. It produced an abundant crop of alarms and attacks in the press on the menacing preparations for war which had been seen at Cherbourg. It caused the Queen to have a controversy with Lord Derby, who would pay no heed to her appeal to provide a counterpoise to the threatening stronghold which she had inspected.
A visit—long promised and long looked for—to the Prince and Princess Frederick William of Prussia followed. Her Majesty’s suite arrived at Potsdam on the 14th of August, and on the same evening the Queen and Prince Albert arrived at Babelsberg, where they were received with a warmth of welcome by their Prussian relatives that made the Queen, as she herself says, feel as if she were at home. The meeting between her and her daughter brought a moment of supreme delight to both. Each day spent in the happy circle of the Prince and Princess of Prussia seems to have knit the heart of the Queen closer to the family of which her eldest daughter was so obviously a cherished member. Every day some fresh mark of attention was paid to the Queen and her husband by their hosts, who seemed to exhaust their ingenuity in devising expedients for making her visit pleasant to her. Though this visit was purely a private one, the people gave her as cordial a reception as the Court, until at last her Majesty began to feel sad at the approaching termination of such a charming holiday. But on the 28th of August the last day came, and, writes the Prince Consort, “the parting was very painful.” The Queen and the Princess Royal wept in each other’s arms, though her Majesty says, with a pathetic reference to the conflicting duties of sovereignty and womanhood, “all would be comparatively easy were it not for the one thought that I cannot be with her at that very critical moment when every mother goes to her child.”[33] Dover was reached on the 31st, from whence the Queen went on to Portsmouth, and thence to Osborne, where they found Prince Alfred, who had passed his examination—especially the mathematical part of it—with great distinction, eager to tell them he had been appointed to the Euryalus. He was waiting for his mother, writes the Queen, “in his middie’s jacket, cap, and dirk, half-blushing, and looking very happy. He is a little pulled down from these three days’ hard examination, which only terminated to-day.... We felt very proud, for it is a particularly hard examination.”[34]
POTSDAM.