VIEW IN CLAREMONT PARK.
The Duke of Albany once said, “I do not understand why people should always be so kind to me.” The reason was not far to seek. He was a young man with an interesting and amiable personality. He had a pensive turn that recalled his father, but with a dash of gaiety of heart which rendered him more acceptable to society than the Prince Consort ever managed to become. His long life of suffering and pain secured for him the sympathies of the people. Despite his ill-health he was even in childhood a bright and promising boy. Professor Tyndall has spoken highly of his capacity at this period, and Dean Stanley, one of his early mentors, so deeply influenced him that at one time the Prince indicated a desire to take Orders in the Anglican Church. At Oxford he was prohibited by the physicians from reading for honours, and after he became a member of the House of Lords, the Queen, noticing his eager interest in politics, had some trouble in dissuading him from plunging into the debates, as a free lance who loved to “drink delight of battle with his peers.”
When he was thwarted in this design, the Prince suggested that his services might be utilised in another direction. At the time Lord Normanby resigned the Governorship of Victoria Prince Leopold applied to Mr. Gladstone for the post, and the Tory newspapers and orators of the period heaped the most extravagant abuse on Mr. Gladstone for refusing the offer. Mr. Gladstone was even challenged in the House of Commons on the subject, but his lips being sealed by the Queen, he was unable to defend himself, or do more than make an evasive and ambiguous statement. The truth, however, was that Mr. Gladstone did not refuse the Prince’s offer. He referred it to Mr. Murray Smith, Agent-General for Victoria in London, with a request for his opinion. Mr. Smith replied that the appointment would give great satisfaction in Australia, but when the matter was laid before the Queen she peremptorily vetoed the project, assigning as a reason her fear that the Prince’s ill-health unfitted him for the duties of the position to which he aspired. Obvious reasons of State have, however, always made the Sovereigns of the Hanoverian dynasty reluctant to permit Princes of the Blood-Royal to serve as satraps in distant colonies where aspirations to independence are not always dormant.
Prince Leopold was a pleasing and polished orator, and being the only member of his family who spoke the English tongue without any trace of a German accent, his platform performances were always successful. His addresses reflected the thoughtful, cultivated mind of a young man who had lived much in the companionship of books, and who had read discursively without studying deeply. He was never commonplace, and his merely formal utterances were usually marked by a distinction of style, that well became a princely scholar. In the singularly beautiful preface which the Princess Christian wrote for the “Biographical Sketch and Letters” of her sister, the Grand Duchess of Hesse (Princess Alice), she says that as the Duke of Albany was the last to see her gifted sister in life, so he was the first of the Queen’s children “to follow her into the silent land.” It is a curious fact that, as with her, the shadow of early death seems to have cast itself in the form of presentiment over his young life. Mr. Frederick Myers, in his eulogistic reminiscences of the Duke of Albany, alludes to this circumstance in the following passage:—“The last time I saw him [the Duke of Albany] to speak to,” writes a friend from Cannes, March 30th, “being two days before he died, he would talk to me about death, and said he would like a military funeral, and, in fact, I had great difficulty in getting him off this melancholy subject. Finally, I asked, ‘Why, sir, do you talk in this morose manner?’ As he was about to answer he was called away, and said, ‘I’ll tell you later.’ I never saw him to speak to again, but he finished his answer to another lady, and said, ‘For two nights now the Princess Alice has appeared to me in my dreams, and says she is quite happy, and that she wants me to come and join her. That’s what makes me so thoughtful.’”[201]
The death of the Duke of Albany hushed the gaiety of a highly promising season, and West End tradesmen were full of lamentation when it was rumoured that the Court would shroud itself in gloom during the whole summer, though the official period of Court mourning was to end in May. But it was not alone in London that the Prince was mourned. His neighbours at Esher, rich and poor alike, felt his loss severely. They all spoke well of him and of his young wife, and recalled pleasant memories of his kindliness—how he joined the local chess club, sang at local concerts, and interested himself in the Duchess’s schemes for boarding out pauper children. After the death of the Duke the Queen announced her intention of maintaining Claremont as a residence for the widowed Duchess, a generous act, because Prince Leopold used to say that even with £20,000 a year to live on, Claremont kept him a poor man. But for the £20,000 which the Queen spent on the property during 1883 and 1884, this residence would in truth have seriously embarrassed him.[202] As a matter of fact, the favourite dwelling of the Duke of Albany was not Claremont but Boyton Manor, near Warminster in Wiltshire, of which place he was tenant when he died, and in the neighbourhood of which his memory is still lovingly cherished.[203]
Soon after the funeral of the Duke of Albany the Queen was recommended by Sir William Jenner to go to Germany, and she thus resolved to visit her son-in-law and grandchildren at Darmstadt, where the marriage of the Princess Victoria of Hesse with Prince Louis of Battenberg was to be celebrated at the end of the month (April). Sir William believed that the change of scene and surroundings would do the Queen more good than a mournful sojourn at Osborne, where everything must recall reminiscences of her dead son. Her Majesty accordingly left Windsor on the 15th of April for Port Victoria, whence she embarked on the Osborne and arrived at Flushing next morning. Therefrom she went by rail to Darmstadt, arriving early on the morning of the 17th. The voyage was unpleasant, and the weather between the Nore and the Scheldt so heavy that the Queen had to remain in her cabin during the greater part of her journey. Only the Grand Duke of Hesse and his daughters were on the platform to meet her Majesty, who had desired her reception to be as private as possible. Ere she left England she forwarded to the newspapers through the Home Secretary a letter expressing her gratitude to the people for their loving sympathy with her and the Duchess of Albany in their bereavement.
On the 30th of April the marriage of the Queen’s granddaughter, the Princess Victoria of Hesse, with Prince Louis of Battenberg, was solemnised in the small whitewashed Puritanical-looking chapel at Darmstadt, which was thronged with a brilliant crowd of specially invited guests, among whom the Queen, in her sombre mourning, was one of the most striking figures. With the Queen there were present, besides the family of the bride and bridegroom, the young Princess of Wales. The German Crown Prince led in the Princess of Wales, and the German Crown Princess was escorted by her brother, the Prince of Wales; Prince William of Prussia led in the Princess Beatrice, and the dark, Jewish-looking Prince of Bulgaria (brother of the bridegroom) escorted with obsequious gallantry the Princess Victoria of Prussia. The ceremony was short, simple, and touching; but the sermon on the duties of marriage which the Court preacher delivered was long and prosy. The Queen, after the ceremony was over, retired to the Palace, and did not attend the wedding banquet in the Schloss. The weather, which had been cold and bleak when the Queen arrived, suddenly became fine and mild, and she was, therefore, able to amuse herself in the public gardens. She had gone to Darmstadt rather reluctantly, but was now glad that she had taken Sir William Jenner’s advice. By her own wish she was lodged in the Neue Schloss, which she had built, at a cost of nearly £25,000, as a palace for the Princess Alice and her husband, and in the beautiful grounds of this place she drove about every morning in a pony-carriage with the Princess Beatrice. She took long drives every afternoon, and visited Auerbach (the chief country seat of the Grand Duke) and his shooting-lodge at Kranichstein. The ex-Empress Eugénie had offered to lend Arenenberg (a charming villa near Constance) to the Queen, but she did not desire to extend her tour beyond Darmstadt, and so the offer was not accepted. Accompanied by the Princess Beatrice, the Grand Duke, and the Princess Elizabeth of Hesse, her Majesty returned to Windsor on the 7th of May.