A simple description of the event was given by Prince Albert in a letter to his grandmother, the Dowager-Duchess of Gotha. "The christening went off very well; your little great-granddaughter behaved with great propriety and like a Christian. She was awake, but did not cry at all, and seemed to crow with immense satisfaction at the lights and brilliant uniforms, for she is very intelligent and observing. The ceremony took place at half-past six P.M. After it there was a dinner, and then we had some instrumental music. The health of the little one was drunk with great enthusiasm."
The lively noticing powers of the Princess Royal when she was between two and three months of age is in amusing contradiction to a report which we remember as current at the time. It was mentioned in order to be denied by Leslie, who was commissioned to paint the royal christening, and worked at the picture so diligently in the long days of the following summer that he was often occupied with the work from nine in the morning till seven or eight in the evening. He wrote in his "Recollections": "In 1841 I painted a second picture for the Queen, the christening of the Princess Royal. I was admitted to see the ceremony, and made a slight sketch of the royal personages as they stood round the font in the room. I made a study from the little Princess a few days afterwards. She was then three months old, and a finer child of that age I never saw. It is a curious proof of the readiness with which people believe whatever they hear to the disadvantage of those placed high in rank above them, that at the time at which I made the sketch it was said everywhere but in the palace and by those who belonged to the royal household, that the Princess was born blind, and by many it was even believed that she was born without feet. The sketch was shown at a party at Mr. Moon's, the evening after I made it, and the ladies all said, 'What a pity so fine a child should be entirely blind!' It was in vain I told them that her eyes were beautifully clear and bright, and that she took notice of everything about her. I was told that, though her eyes looked bright, and though she might appear to turn them to every object, it was certain she was blind."
What Leslie attributes to a species of envy, we think may be more justly regarded as having its foundation in the love of sensationalism to which human nature is prone—sensationalism which appears to become all the racier when it finds its food in high quarters. The particular direction the tendency took was influenced by the blindness of George III. and of his grandson, the Crown Prince of Hanover, which seemed to lend a plausibility to the absurd rumour.
Baron Stockmar states that the Princess Royal was a delicate child, causing considerable apprehension for her successful rearing during the first year of her life. It was only by judicious care that she developed a splendid constitution. Charles Leslie goes on to say: "The most agreeable part of my task in painting the christening of the Princess Royal was in studying the fine head of the wisest and best of living Kings, Leopold, a man whom the people he reigns over scarcely seem to deserve. Nothing could be more agreeable than his manner, and that of his amiable Queen, who was in the room all the time he sat. He speaks English very well, and she also spoke it. After I had painted for some time, she said, "May I look?" and suggesting some alterations, she said, "You must excuse me, I speak honest; but if I am wrong, don't mind me."
In those years the King and Queen of the Belgians were such frequent visitors of her Majesty, who may be said to have been his adopted child, that a whole floor of Buckingham Palace which was set apart for their use is still known as "the Belgian Floor." The portraits of both are in the Palace, and so is his likeness when he was many years younger, and one of the handsomest men in Europe. The last is hanging beside a full-length portrait of his first wife, Princess Charlotte, with her fair face and striking figure. In the summer of 1841 the Queen was farther and longer separated from her mother than she had ever been previously. The Duchess of Kent, secure in her daughter's prosperity and happiness, went to her native Germany, for the first time since she had come to England twenty-two years before. She was warmly received wherever she went. She visited, among other places, Amorbach, the seat of her son, the Prince of Leiningen, in Bavaria, where the Duchess had resided with the Duke of Kent in the first years of their married life. "It is like a dream that I am writing to you from this place," she addressed her daughter. "He (the Prince of Leiningen) has made many alterations in the house. Your father began them just before we left in March, 1819."
A threatened change of Ministry and a general election were pending; but amidst the political anxieties which already occupied much of the Queen and Prince Albert's thoughts, it was a bright summer, full of many interests and special sources of pleasure.
Mademoiselle Rachel, the great French actress, arrived in England. She had already established her empire in Paris by her marvellous revival of Racine's and Corneille's masterpieces. She was now to exercise the same fascination over an alien people, to whom her speech was a foreign tongue. She made her first appearance in the part of Hermione in Racine's Andromaque at the Italian Opera-house. Few who witnessed the spectacle ever forgot the slight figure, the pale, dark, Jewish face, the deep melody of the voice, the restrained passion, the concentrated rage, especially the pitiless irony, with which she gave the poet's meaning.
The Queen and the Prince shared the general enthusiasm. For that matter there was a little jealousy awakened lest there might be too much generous abandon in the royal approval of the great player. Perhaps this feeling arose in the minds of those who, dating from Puritan days, had a conscientious objection to all plays and players, and waxed hotter as time, alas! proved how, in contrast to the honourable reputation of the English Queen of Tragedy, Sarah Siddons, the character and life of the gifted French actress were miserably beneath her genius. There was a little vexed talk, which probably had small enough foundation, of the admission of Rachel into the highest society; of the Duchess of Kent's condescending to give her shawl to the shivering foreigner; of a bracelet with the simple inscription, "From Victoria to Rachel," as if there could be a common meeting-ground between the two, though the one was a queen in art and the other a queen in history. But if there was any imprudence, it might well have been excused as a fault of noble sympathy with art and cordial acknowledgement of it, which leant to virtue's side, a fault which had hitherto been not too common in England. The same year a Kemble, the last of the family who redeemed for a time the fallen fortunes of Covent Garden Theatre, Adelaide, the beautiful and accomplished younger daughter of Charles Kemble, brother to John Kemble and Sarah Siddons, came out as an operatic-singer in the part of "Norma." She was welcomed as her sweet voice, fine acting, and the traditions of her family deserved. She was invited to sing at the palace. From girlhood the Queen had been familiar with the Kembles in their connection with the English stage. The last time she visited the Academy as Princess Victoria, just before the death of King William, Leslie mentions, she asked that Charles Kemble might be presented to her, when the gentleman had the opportunity of making his "best genteel-comedy bow." Now it was on the younger generation of the Kembles that the Queen bestowed her gracious countenance. These were halcyon days for society as well as for the stage, when, in Mrs. Oliphant's words, "the Queen was in the foreground of the national life, affecting it always for good, and setting an example of purity and virtue. The theatres to which she went, and which both she and her husband enjoyed, were purified by her presence, evils which had been the growth of years disappearing before the face of the young Queen…."
On the 13th of June the Queen revisited Oxford in company with her husband, in time for Commemoration. Her Majesty and the Prince stayed at Nuneham, the seat of the Archbishop of York, and drove in to the University city. The Prince was present at a banquet in St. John's and attended divine service at New Inn Hall.
On the 21st of June the Queen and Prince Albert were at Woolwich, for the launch of the good ship Trafalgar. Nothing so gay had been seen at the mouth of the river since King William and Queen Adelaide came down to Greenwich to keep the anniversary of the battle of Trafalgar. The water was covered with vessels, including every sort of craft that had been seen "since the building of Noah's Ark." The shore was equally crowded with an immense multitude of human beings finding standing-ground in the most unlikely places. The Queen drove down to the Dockyard in a travelling-carriage and four. She was received with a royal salute and glad bursts of cheering.