After Gordon’s death public interest in the “sad Soudan” slowly faded. The River Column under General Earle’s skilful guidance had won a brilliant little victory at Kirbekan, where, however, its gallant leader lost his life. He was succeeded by General Brackenbury, who ascended the river steadily to Abu Hamed. Suddenly, however, Lord Wolseley ordered both columns to retreat on Korti, and hold Dongola till his autumn campaign of vengeance against the Mahdi could be undertaken. Meanwhile, General Graham, with 9,000 men, and an Indian and Australian Contingent,[227] was to drive back Osman Digna at Suakin, and lay a railway from that port to Berber. Graham defeated the Arabs in several engagements, though in one of them the skill with which the Arabs surprised a zareba almost reproduced the disaster of Isandhlwana. But the dispute with Russia afforded a plausible excuse for freeing England from the incubus of the Soudan, and in April Lord Wolseley evacuated Dongola and fell back on the line of Wady Halfa. The Suakin railway was abandoned, and when Lord Salisbury’s Government took office they, too, adhered to the policy of evacuation. The Mahdi died. Osman Digna became entangled in hostilities with the Abyssinian Ras Alula, who attempted to raise the siege of Kassala, and for a time it seemed as if all fears of disturbances on the Egyptian frontier were dispelled. Towards the end of the year, however, the Arabs attacked an advanced post beyond Assouan, where they were skilfully repulsed by General Stephenson at the battle of Kosheh.
Turning to the social events of 1885, the most remarkable was the sudden announcement on New Year’s Day of the betrothal of the Princess Beatrice to Prince Henry of Battenberg, the younger brother of Prince Louis, the husband of the Princess’s niece—Victoria of Hesse. For fourteen years the Princess Beatrice had been the close companion of the Queen, and their lives had in time become so closely intertwined that a separation could hardly be contemplated by either with equanimity. It was therefore quite natural that Prince Henry of Battenberg, whose fortune was hardly adequate to the maintenance of a separate establishment, should permit intimation to be made that he was to live with the Princess in attendance on the Queen. The announcement of the marriage was as surprising to the Royal Family as it was to the people. In the country the old prejudice against the marriage of a Princess who claimed a dowry from the State, with a person outside the Royal caste speedily manifested itself. Indeed, the feeling against the arrangement was even stronger than that which prevailed when the Princess Louise married the Marquis of Lorne. After all, the latter was the son of a great noble on whose birth no stain of ambiguity rested. Prince Henry of Battenberg, on the other hand, was the offspring of a “morganatic” marriage between Prince Alexander of Hesse and the Countess Hauke, the granddaughter of a Polish Jew, who had entered the service of the Hessian Court in a very subordinate capacity. It was difficult to get the populace to understand that a morganatic marriage was in a certain sense a legal union—not void, though possibly under pressure of State exigencies voidable by the Royal husband—that in fact there was nothing disreputable in such an alliance, save in the sense in which it is considered a social offence for a great noble to marry his mother’s scullery-maid. The hostility of the German Crown Princess and the Court of Berlin to the connection did much to create an erroneous impression in England as to the status of Prince Henry. The Prince’s lack of fortune did not redeem his lack of social position—and it was most unfortunate that his nearest connection with Royalty was through his cousin the Grand Duke of Hesse. For the divorce suit raised by the Grand Duke against the Countess de Kalomine, a lady whom he had “morganatically” married in secret on the very night when his daughter, the Princess Victoria, was wedded to Prince Louis of Battenberg, had rendered his family extremely unpopular in England.
That some friction had been created in the Royal Family by the unexpected introduction of Prince Henry to its circle was soon made manifest. When Prince Albert Victor of Wales, the Heir-Presumptive to the Throne, came of age on the 8th of January, neither the Queen, nor the Princess Beatrice, nor Prince Henry of Battenberg—then at Osborne—graced with their presence the joyous celebrations at Sandringham, which were attended by all the other members of the Royal Family. It was also remarked that Prince Henry left England without receiving the congratulations of the Prince of Wales on his betrothal. At a Privy Council, which the Queen held at Osborne on the 26th of January, her Majesty’s formal consent to her daughter’s marriage was given.
Preparations had been made early in March for the Queen’s Easter visit to Darmstadt, but owing to the death of Princess Charles of Hesse, mother of the Grand Duke, her Majesty’s arrangements were altered, and it was decided that she should visit Aix-les-Bains first and take Darmstadt on the return journey. Her Majesty left Windsor on the last day of March for the Villa Mottet, a charming residence in the grounds of the Hôtel de l’Europe, Aix-les-Bains, while the Prince and Princess of Wales spent their Easter in paying a State visit to Ireland. The Queen’s holiday was sadly broken by the diplomatic controversy with Russia as to the Afghan frontier. Piles of despatch-boxes were given to her when she started, and as many as fifty telegraphic messages a day in cipher were sent to her and answered. Before proceeding to Darmstadt, her Majesty, who had been using her influence with the German Court in order to induce Russia to accept an honourable compromise, offered to return to Windsor if Ministers desired her presence. Mr. Gladstone was not of opinion that this sacrifice was necessary, and on the 23rd of April she accordingly proceeded to Darmstadt, where she again occupied the new Palace on the Platz which had been built for the Princess Alice. At this time her Majesty was much grieved at the reckless and bellicose tone of London Society. She was so anxious to counteract it that the Prince of Wales, knowing her feeling on the subject, was supposed to have dropped some hints at Marlborough House which suddenly imparted quite a pacific tone to the fire-eaters of Piccadilly. Couriers passed so frequently between the Queen and the German Emperor, who with the Crown Prince gave her Majesty much sympathetic aid and counsel throughout the crisis, that the German Press were alarmed lest the Emperor was about to intervene as a mediator between Russia and England. A war between the two nations would have been extremely inconvenient to the Royal Family—in fact, it had been arranged in anticipation of such a calamity that the Duke and Duchess of Edinburgh must break up their establishment in England, and retire to Coburg. Another circumstance forced a pacific policy on the Court. The Duke of Edinburgh had not concealed from the Sovereign the fact that the Fleet was effective solely on paper. Indeed, had Admiral Hoskins, who was ordered to hold himself in readiness to proceed with his squadron to the Baltic, attempted to carry out his instructions, he would have found himself paralysed, simply because he had neither efficient guns nor transport. On the 2nd of May the Queen, returned to Windsor, where she held an anxious consultation with Lord Granville next day. On the 12th of May her Majesty held a Drawing Room at Buckingham Palace, but as on previous occasions, she stayed only a short time, leaving the Princess of Wales as usual to complete the function.
On the 14th of May, Mr. Gladstone carried a resolution in the House of Commons that an annuity of £6,000 a year should be granted to the Princess Beatrice on her marriage; and, by way of conciliating the House, promised that in the next Parliament a Committee would be appointed to consider the plan on which what he called “secondary provisions” for the younger members of the Royal Family, should be made.[228] The proposed annuity was opposed on the old ground that the Queen was rich enough to support her own family, and Mr. Labouchere argued that as she never had a right to the hereditary revenues of the Crown, the plea that she had given up her income for a Civil List was invalid. But it is certain that in the Royal Speech, at the opening of Parliament in 1837 the Queen said, “I place unreservedly at your disposal those hereditary revenues which were transferred to the public by my immediate predecessor,” and in the Address the Queen was then not only thanked for her generosity, but promised an adequate Civil List in return. It was also forgotten that at least four impecunious princely families—those of the Duke of Albany, Prince Louis, Prince Henry of Battenberg, and Prince Christian—must be a charge on the private income of the Queen.[229]
On the 22nd of May the Court went to Balmoral. The Russian dispute was now compromised, so that the Queen was able to thoroughly enjoy her Highland visit. She spent much of her time in the cottages and homes of the peasantry, to whom she was unusually lavish this year with gifts commemorating her birthday. When she arrived she found that the celebrated cradle and rope bridge over the Dee at Abergeldie—which most of the Royal personages in Europe had used at different times—was removed, and replaced by a substantial footbridge which had been put up at her expense. But the fall of Mr. Gladstone’s Government shortened the Queen’s sojourn in Scotland, and she had to return to Windsor on the 17th of June. Complaints were made that she was absent in Aberdeenshire when the Ministerial crisis occurred. But the crisis was unexpected, and since the Prince Consort’s death the Queen has always preferred Balmoral to Windsor during Ascot Race week. The death of Prince Frederick Charles (the “Red Prince”) of Prussia, at the comparatively early age of fifty-seven, deprived Germany of one of her ablest military tacticians, and sent the English Court into mourning. He was the father of the Duchess of Connaught, to whom he bequeathed a large part of his vast wealth. By a strange blunder which gave infinite annoyance to the Queen, not only did the Prince of Wales appear at Ascot after the event, but her Majesty’s order that Court mourning should begin on the 16th was not officially proclaimed till the 18th. The Royal procession at Ascot on the afternoon of the “Red Prince’s” death, caused much irritation at the Court of Berlin.
MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCESS BEATRICE.