We may presume that the Queen’s domestic circle was, early in the year, alarmed by the strangely sudden illness of Prince Leopold, which prevented her from receiving in person the Address from the House of Commons in reply to the Speech from the Throne. No notice of this illness is, however, taken in the letters of the Princess Louis of Hesse; in fact, it seems to be the only illness of the Prince to which that illustrious lady does not allude in her correspondence with the Queen. The sole reference to Prince Leopold at this period is in a letter from the Princess to her mother, dated 30th January, in which she says, “Our thoughts and prayers are so much with you and dear Leopold on this day [his Confirmation]. May the Almighty bless and protect that precious boy, and give him health and strength to continue a life so well begun and so full of promise.” A month later the Queen had sad tidings of further domestic anxieties from her tender-hearted daughter. One of her servants had fallen ill, and the Darmstadt household was so seriously underhanded, that the Princess herself had to drudge in her nursery. “You will be amused,” she cheerily writes, with an obvious effort to spare her mother unnecessary anxiety, “when I tell you, that old Amelung is coming to sleep with baby, and take charge of him; but she is too old and out of practice to be able to wash and dress him morning and evening besides, so I do that, and it is, of course, a great assistance to all my being able to do it, and I don’t mind the trouble. Of a morning, as Louis is usually out riding or at his office, I take Victoria and Ella out, who are very good little girls, and very amusing.”[310] It was fortunate for the amiable Princess that her illustrious mother had brought her up to be a helpful housemother, competent at any moment to cope with the res augustæ domi.
In the beginning of the year the Queen had an interview with Mr. Carlyle, in whose sorrowful life Dean Stanley had interested her. Her Majesty expressed a desire to become personally acquainted with a man whose genius had shed so much lustre on her reign, and, according to Mr. Froude, Carlyle felt for the Queen “in her bereavement as she had remembered him in his own.” The meeting took place in the Westminster Deanery, and Carlyle’s account of it is as follows:—“The Queen was really very gracious and pretty in her demeanour throughout; rose greatly in my esteem by everything that happened; did not fall in any point. The interview was quietly very mournful to me.”[311]
On the 17th of April the Queen visited Aldershot, and reviewed the troops stationed there. The weather was so bad in the morning that it was supposed that the review would be abandoned, but eventually, about midday, the clouds cleared off and the “Assembly” sounded. The Queen, accompanied by the Princess Louise and Princess Beatrice, left Windsor a little before noon, and was escorted by a troop of Life Guards as far as Bagshot, where a troop of the 5th Dragoon Guards relieved them, and conducted the Royal party to the camp. Her Majesty drove to the Royal Pavilion, where she partook of luncheon, and as the weather at this time was exceedingly threatening—rain falling heavily—the signal was hoisted at headquarters for the troops to “wait further orders.” At three o’clock, the weather having somewhat cleared, the review took place, about 8,000 of all ranks being on parade.
But in spite of diversions of this sort the Queen felt at times the increasing loneliness of her life. In reply to some expression of this the Princess Louis writes to her on the 16th of April, “We shall, indeed, be so pleased, if later you wish to have any of the grand-daughters with you, to comply with any such wish, for I often think, so sadly for your dear sake, how lonely it must be when one child after another grows up and leaves home; and even if they remain, to have no children in the house is most dreary. Surely you can never lack to have some from among the many grandchildren; and there are none of us who would not gladly have our children live under the same roof where we passed such a happy childhood, with such a loving grandmamma to take care of them.” In May, however, the secluded life of the Queen was to some extent brightened and cheered. “How glad I am,” writes the Princess Louis, “that the dear Countess [Blücher] is with you again; she is the pleasantest companion possible, and so dear and loving, and she is devoted to you and dear papa’s memory as never any one was.”
On the 22nd of June Ismail Pasha, Viceroy of Egypt, paid a second visit to England (his first having taken place in 1867), and during his short stay of eight days his time was well occupied with fêtes, reviews, and banquets. He was met at Charing Cross by the Prince of Wales with a royal greeting in the name of the Queen, and drove to Buckingham Palace amid cheers from the crowd outside the station. On the 24th he left Buckingham Palace for Windsor Castle on a visit to her Majesty. The Prince and Princess of Wales and Prince Hassan, the Viceroy’s son, accompanied him, and with a select party dined with the Queen. On the 26th the Queen entertained the Viceroy with a review of 5,000 troops in Windsor Great Park. Next day he returned to town and dined with the Prince and Princess of Wales at Marlborough House. On July 1st, having taken leave of the Prince and Princess of Wales, Ismail Pasha started on his return journey. He was at this time endeavouring to strengthen his independent position in Egypt, and though he met with little encouragement, he considered it advisable to try and secure English support against the Sultan.
Her Majesty had taken a deep interest in the statue to Mr. Peabody, executed by Mr. Story, the American sculptor-poet, which was to be erected within the precincts of the Royal Exchange, in the City of London. Accordingly, the Prince of Wales unveiled the memorial on the 23rd of July, and his neat, natural, and polished oratory, especially his graceful allusions to his own reception in America, attracted some notice at the time.[312]
THE TAPESTRY ROOM, ST. JAMES’S PALACE (From a Photograph by H. N. King.)