Romance was not much in Mr. Greville's way, but Burghley, apart from the statesman Cecil and his weighty nod, had been the scene of such a romance as might well have captivated the imagination of a young princess, though its heroine was but a village maiden—she who married the landscape-painter, and was brought by him to Burghley, bidden look around at its splendour, and told
"All of this is thine and mine."
Tennyson has sung it—how she grew a noble lady, and yet died of the honour to which she was not born, and how the Lord of Burghley, deeply mourning, bid her attendants
"Bring the dress and put it on her
Which she wore when we were wed."
In one of those autumns which the Duchess of Kent and her daughter spent at Ramsgate—not so rural as it had been a dozen years before, but still a quiet enough retreat—they received a visit from the King and Queen of the Belgians. Prince Leopold was securely established on the throne which he filled so well and so long, keeping it when many other European sovereigns were unseated. He was accompanied by his second wife, Princess Louise of France, daughter of Louis Philippe. She was a good woman, like all the daughters of Queen Amelie, while Princess Marie, in addition to goodness, had the perilous gift of genius. The following is Baron Stockmar's opinion of the Queen of the Belgians. "From the moment that the (Queen Louise) entered that circle in which I for so many years have had a place, I have revered her as a pattern of her sex. We say and believe that men can be noble and good; of her we know with certainty that she was so. We saw in her daily a truthfulness, a faithful fulfilment of duty, which makes us believe in the possible though but seldom evident nobleness of the human heart. In characters such as the Queen's, I see a guarantee of the perfection of the Being who has created human nature." We ought to add that Stockmar had not only the highest opinion of the character of Queen Louise, but also of her insight and judgment, and he often expressed his opinion that if anything were to happen to King Leopold the Regency might be entrusted to the Queen with perfect confidence.
How much the Queen valued Queen Louise, how she became Queen Victoria's dearest friend, is fully shown at a later date by the extracts from the Queen's journal, and letters in the "Life of the Prince Consort"
About this time the Duchess of Kent and Princess Victoria paid a visit to the Duke of Wellington at Walmer Castle—the old tower with fruit-trees growing in the dry moat, and a slip from the weeping-willow which hung over the grave in St. Helena flourishing in its garden, where the Warden of the Cinque Ports could look across the roadstead of the Downs and count the ships' masts like trees in a forest, and watch the waves breaking twenty feet high on the Goodwin Sands. "The cut-throat town of Deal" which poor Lucy Hutchinson so abhorred, pranked its quaint red houses for so illustrious and dainty a visitor. The Duke had stood by her font, and if he had "no small talk," he was a courteous gentleman and gentle warrior when he fought his battles over again for the benefit of the young Princess.
A winter was spent by the Duchess and the Princess at St. Leonard's, not far from Battle Abbey, where the last Saxon king of England bit the dust, and William of Normandy fought and won the great battle which rendered his invasion a conquest.
1836 was an eventful year in the Queen's life. We read that the Duchess of Kent and her daughter remained at Kensington till the month of September. There was a good reason for staying at home in the early summer. The family entertained friends: not merely valued, kinsfolk, but visitors who might change the whole current of a life's history and deeply influence a destiny on which the hopes of many hearts were fixed, that concerned the well-being of millions of the human race. Princess Victoria had not grown up solitary in her high estate. It has been already pointed out that she was one in a group of cousins with whom she had cordial relations. But the time was drawing near when nature and policy alike pointed to the advisability of forming a closer tie, which would provide the Princess with companionship and support stretching beyond those of her mother, and, if it were well and wisely chosen, afford the people further assurance that the first household in the kingdom should be such as they could revere. The royal maiden who had been educated so wisely and grown up so simply and healthfully, was approaching her seventeenth birthday. Already there were suitors in store for her hand; as many as six had been seriously thought of—among them, Prince Alexander of the Netherlands, whose suit was greatly favoured by King William; Duke Ernest of Wurtemberg; Prince Adalbert of Prussia; and Prince George of Cambridge. Prince George of Cumberland was hors de combat, apart from the Duke of Cumberland's pretensions and the alienation caused by them. Prince George, when a baby, had lost the sight of one eye, a misfortune which his father shared. A few years later in the son's boyhood, as he was at play in the gardens of Windsor Castle, he began to amuse himself with flinging into the air and catching a long silk purse with heavy gold tassels, when the purse fell on the seeing eye, inflicting such an injury as to threaten him with total blindness. The last catastrophe was brought about by the blunder of a famous German oculist after Prince George had become Crown Prince of Hanover.
How much the Princess knew or guessed of those matrimonial prospects, how far they fluttered her innocent heart, we cannot tell; but as of all the candidates mentioned there was only one with whom she had any acquaintance to speak of, it may be supposed that the generality of the proposed wooers passed like vague shadows before her imagination.