King George and Queen Charlotte in shadowy form preside once and again, as well they may, seeing this was her house when it was named the Queen's House. Their family, too, still linger in their portraits. George IV. in very full-blown kingly state, the Duke of York and his Duchess, the Duke of Kent and his Duchess, the King of Hanover, King William and Queen Adelaide, the Duke of Sussex. But not one of their lives is so linked with the place as the life of Queen Victoria has been, especially the double life of the Queen and the Prince Consort in their "blooming time." Buckingham Palace was their London home, to which they came every season as regularly as Park Lane and Piccadilly, with the squares and streets of Belgravia, find their fitting occupants. From this Palace the girl-Queen drove to Westminster, to be crowned, and returned to watch in the soft dusk of the summer evening all London illuminated in her honour. Here she announced her intended marriage to her Lords in Council; here she met her princely bridegroom come across the seas to wed her. From that gateway she drove in her bridal white and orange blossoms, and it was up these steps she walked an hour-old wife, leaning on the arm of her husband. Most of their children were born here. The Princess Royal was baptized here, and she went from Buckingham Palace to St. James's, like her mother before her, to be married. In the immediate neighbourhood occurred some of the miserable attempts on the Queen's life, and it was round Buckingham Palace that nobility and people thronged to convince themselves of her Majesty's safety, and assure her of their hot indignation and deep sympathy. On that balcony she has shown herself, to the thousands craving for the sight, on the opening-day of the first Exhibition and on the morning when the Guards left for the Crimea. Through these corridors and drawing-rooms streamed the princely pageant of the Queen's Plantagenet Ball. Kingly and courtly company, the renowned men and the fair women of her reign, have often held festival here. Along these quiet garden walks the Queen was wont to stroll with her husband-lover; from that rustic bridge he would summon his feathered favourites around him; in yon sheet of water he swam for his life among the broken ice, the day before the christening of the Princess Royal. In the little chalet close to the house the Queen loved to carry on her correspondence on summer-days, rather than to write within palace walls, because she, whose life has been pure and candid as the day, has always loved dearly the open air of heaven. In the pavilion where the first English artists of the time strove to do their Prince's behest, working sometimes from eight in the morning to six or seven in the evening, her Majesty and the Prince delighted to watch Maclise put in Sabrina releasing the Lady from the enchanted chair, and Leslie make Comus offering the cup of witchery.
As in the case of King George and Queen Charlotte, it is well that portraits and marble statues of the Queen and the Prince, in the flower of their age, should remain here as unfailing links with the past which was spent within these walls.
In later years the widowed Queen has dwelt little at Buckingham Palace, coming rarely except for the Drawing-rooms, which inaugurate the season and lend the proper stamp to the gilded youth of the kingdom. What tales that Throne-room could tell of the beating hearts of debutantes and the ambitious dreams of care-laden chaperons! The last tale is of the kind consideration of the liege lady. From the room where the members of the royal family assemble apart, she walks, not to take her seat on the throne, but to stand in front of the steps which lead to it, that the ladies who advance towards her in single file may not have to climb the steps with stumbling feet, often caught in their trailing skirts, till the wearers were in danger of being precipitated against the royal knees as the ladies bent to kiss the Queen's hand. In the same manner, the slow and painful process of walking backwards with long trains, of which such stories were told in Queen Charlotte's day, is graciously dispensed with. A step or two, and the trains are thrown over their owners' arms by the pages in waiting, while the ladies are permitted to retire, like ordinary mortals, in a natural, easy, and what is really a more seemly fashion. A royal chapel has for a considerable time taken the place of a great conservatory, so that the Queen and the Prince could worship with their household, without the necessity of repairing to the neighbouring Chapel Royal of St. James's.
There are other suites of rooms besides the private apartments, notably the Belgian floor, full of memories of King Leopold and Queen Louise.
Among the portraits of foreign sovereigns, the correctly beautiful face of the Emperor Alexander of Russia, and the likeness of his successor, Nicholas, occur repeatedly. The portraits of the Emperor and Empress of Germany, when as Prince and Princess of Prussia they won the cordial friendship of the Queen, are here. There is a pleasant picture of Queen Victoria's girl friend, Maria da Gloria, and a companion picture of her husband, the Queen and the Prince's cousin. The burly figure of Louis Philippe appears in the company of two of his sons. Another ruler of France, the Emperor Napoleon III., looks sallow and solemn beside his Empress at the height of her loveliness. Other royal portraits are those of the King of Saxony, the present King and Queen of the Belgians, as Duke and Duchess of Brabant; the late blind King of Hanover and his devoted Queen; the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, now blind also, and his Duchess, who was the handsome and winning Princess Augusta of Cambridge; her not less charming sister, Princess Mary, Duchess of Teck; the familiar face of their soldierlike brother, the Duke of Cambridge; the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, in his slender youth and eastern dress, &c. &c.
In the sister country of France, one has a feeling that there are blood stains on all the palaces. Let us be thankful that, as a rule, it is not so in England. But there are tragic faces and histories here too, mocking the glories of rank and State. There is a fine picture of Matilda of Denmark, to whom—but for the victim's fairer hair—her collateral descendant, Queen Victoria, is said to bear a great resemblance. The Queen's ancestress was herself a princess and a queen, yet she was fated to fall under an infamous, unproven charge, and to pine to an early death in a prison fortress.
Here, with a pathos all her own, in her pale dark girlish face and slight figure, is the Queen's Indian god-daughter, Princess Gouromma, the child of the Rajah of Coorg. She was educated in England, and married a Scotch gentleman named Campbell. But the grey northern skies and the bleak easterly winds were cruel to her, as they would have been to one of her native palm-trees, and she found an early grave.
A graceful remembrance of a peculiarly graceful tribute to the faithful service and devotion of a lifetime appears in a picture of the old Duke of Wellington—after whom the Queen named her third son—presenting his godfather's token of a costly casket to the infant Prince Arthur, seated on the royal mother's knee. Another laughing child, in the arms of another happy mother, is the Queen herself, held by the Duchess of Kent.
The long picture gallery contains valuable specimens of Dutch and Flemish art, a remnant of George IV.'s collection, and a portion, of the Queen's many fine examples of these schools. Here are Tenierses, full of riotous life; exquisite Metzus, Terburgs, and Gerard Dows; cattle by Paul Potter; ships by Van de Velde; skies by Cuyp; landscapes, with white horses, by Wouvermanns; driving clouds and shadow-darkened plains by Ruysdael, who, though he died in a workhouse, yet lives in his pictures in kings' palaces.
Lady Bloomfield has given the world a delightful glimpse of what the life at Windsor and Buckingham Palace was from 1842 to 1845; how much real friendliness existed in it; what simplicity and naturalness lay behind its pomp and magnificence. Dissipation and extravagance found no place there. That palace home—whether in town or country, where all sacred obligations and sweet domestic affections reigned supreme, where noble work had due prominence and high-minded study paved the way for innocent pleasure—was, indeed, a pattern to every home in the kingdom. The great household was like a large family, with a queenly elder sister and a royal brother at its head; for the Queen and the Prince were still in their first prime, and very kindly, as well as very wise, were their relations with old and young. It is good to read of the tenderly-united pair; of their well-regulated engagements—punctually performed as clockwork, and rarely jostling each other; of their generous consideration for others, their faithful regard for old friends, so that to this day the ranks of the Queen's household are replenished from the households of her youth. It has been pointed out how rarely the Duchess of Kent allowed any change in the little Princess's guardians and teachers. In like manner, as whoever will examine Court calendars may learn for themselves, this middle-aged Mistress of the Robes, or that elderly Lady in Waiting, was in former times a young Maid of Honour, and the youngest page of to-day is very likely the grandson of a veteran courtier, and has a hereditary interest in his surroundings.