At eight o'clock in the evening Sir Robert Peel conducted the Queen, who wore pink silk and a profusion of emeralds and diamonds, to the dining-room, Prince Albert giving his arm to Lady Peel. Among the guests were the Duke of Wellington and the Duke and Duchess of Buccleugh. The Duchess on one occasion during the visit wore an old brocade which had belonged to a great grand-aunt of the Duke's, and was pronounced very beautiful. After dinner the party withdrew to the library. Either on this evening or the next the Queen played at the quaint old game of "Patience," with some of her ladies, while the gentlemen "stood about."
On the following day her Majesty walked in the grounds, while Prince Albert gratified an earnest wish by visiting Birmingham and inspecting its manufactures, undeterred, perhaps rather allured, by the fact that the great town of steel and iron was regarded as one of the centres of Chartism. This did not prevent its mighty population from displaying the most exultant loyalty as they pressed round the carriage in which the Prince and the Mayor, reported to be a rank Chartist, drove to glass and silver-plate manufactories and papier-mache works, the town hall, and the schools.
At the railway station the Prince was joined by the Queen-dowager and Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, who came from Whitley Court to accompany him back to Drayton. The next morning was devoted to shooting, when Prince Albert confirmed his good character as a sportsman by bringing down sixty pheasants, twenty-five hares, eight rabbits, one woodcock, and two wild ducks. In the afternoon the Queen visited Lichfield, to which she had gone as "the young Princess." Indeed, the next part of the tour was over old ground in Derbyshire, for from Drayton the royal couple proceeded to Chatsworth, and spent several days amidst the beauties of the Peak. Twenty thousand persons were assembled in the magnificent grounds at Chatsworth, and artillery had been brought from Woolwich to fire a salute. Many old friends, notably members of the great Whig houses—Lord Melbourne, Lord and Lady Palmerston, the Marquis and Marchioness of Normanby—met to grace the occasion. There was a grand ball, at which the aristocracy of invention and industry, trade and wealth, represented by the Arkwrights and the Strutts, mingled with the autocracy of ancient birth and landed property. Mrs. Arkwright was presented to the Queen. Her Majesty opened the ball with the Duke of Devonshire, dancing afterwards with Lord Morpeth and Lord Leveson—in the last instance, "a country dance, with much vigour"—and waltzing with Prince Albert. On the 2nd of December the party visited Haddon Hall, the ancient seat of the Vernons, where Dorothy Vernon lived and loved. On their return in the evening, the great conservatory was brilliantly illuminated, and there was a display of fireworks.
On the 3rd, Sunday, the Queen walked through the kitchen gardens and botanical gardens, and drove to Edensor. On the return of the party by the Home Farm, they went to see a prize-pig, weighing seventy pounds. The day ended with a concert of sacred music.
On Monday, the 4th, the Queen and the Prince parted from the Duke of Devonshire at Derby, and proceeded to Nottingham—not to visit what remained of the Castle so long associated with John and Lucy Hutchinson, or to penetrate to the cradle of hosiery, daring an encounter with the "Nottingham Lambs," the roughest of roughs, who at election times were wont to add to their natural beauties by painting their faces red, white, and blue, as savages tattoo themselves—but as a step on the way to Belvoir, the seat of the Duke of Rutland. There her Majesty entered that most aristocratic portion of England known as "The Dukeries." The Duke of Rutland, attended by two hundred of his tenantry on horseback, awaited his guests at Red Mile, and rode with them the three miles to Belvoir. Soon after the Queen's arrival, Dr. Stanton presented her Majesty with the key of Stanton Town, according to the tenure on which that estate is held.
Belvoir was a sight in itself, even after the stately lawns of Chatsworth. "I do not know whether you ever saw Belvoir," writes Fanny Kemble; "it is a beautiful place; the situation is noble, and the views, from the windows of the castle, and the terraces and gardens hanging over the steep hill crowned by it, is charming. The whole vale of Belvoir, and miles of meadow and woodland, lie stretched below it, like a map unrolled to the distant horizon, presenting extensive and varied prospects in every direction; while from the glen which surrounds the castle-hill, like a deep moat filled with a forest, the spring winds swell up as from a sea of woodland, and the snatches of birds' carolling, and cawing rooks' discourse, float up to one from the topmost branches of tall trees, far below one's feet, as one stands on the battlemented terraces."
December was not the best time for seeing some of the attractions of Belvoir; but Lady Bloomfield has written of her Majesty's proverbial good fortune in these excursions: "The Queen yachts during the equinox, and has the sea a dead calm; visits about in the dead of winter, and has summer weather." There were other respects in which Belvoir was in its glory in midwinter—it belonged to a hunting neighbourhood and a hunting society. Whereas at Drayton and Chatsworth the royal pair had been principally surrounded by Tory and Whig statesmen, at Belvoir, while the Queen-dowager and some of the most distinguished members of the company at Chatsworth were again of the party, the Queen and the Prince found themselves in the centre of the fox-hunters of Melton Mowbray.
Happily, the Prince could hunt with the best, and the Queen liked to look on at her husband's sport, so that the order of the day was the throwing off of the hounds at Croxton. In the evening the Queen played whist. The next day there was a second splendid meet royally attended, with cards again at night. The Prince wrote of one of these "runs," to Baron Stockmar, that he had distinguished himself by keeping up with the hounds all through. "Anson" and "Bouverie" had both fallen on his left and right, but he had come off "with a whole skin." We are also told that the Prince's horsemanship excited the amazed admiration of the spectators, to the Queen's half-impatient amusement. "One can scarcely credit the absurdity of the people," she wrote to her uncle, King Leopold; "but Albert's riding so boldly has made such a sensation that it has been written all over the country, and they make much more of it than if he had done some great act." Apparently the Melton Mowbray fox-hunters had, till now, hardly appreciated that fine combination of physical and mental qualities, which is best expressed in two lines of an old song:—
His step is foremost in the ha',
His sword in battle keen.
On the 7th of December the visitors left for Windsor, passing through endless triumphal arches on the road, greeted at Leicester by seven thousand school children.