The King answered in English, with much effusion and affability, shaking hands with the whole batch of magistrates, telling those who were too slow in removing their white gloves, "Oh! never mind your gloves, gentlemen," and recalling a former visit to Portsmouth when he was an exile. Prince Albert and the Duke of Wellington went on board the steamer, when the enthusiastic elderly gentleman saluted the Prince on both cheeks, to which he submitted, though he did not reply in kind, contenting himself with shaking his guest by the hand. It would seem as if the Prince had some perception of the wiliness which was one quality of the big, bluff citizen king, and of the discretion which must be practised in dealing with him, no less than with the Russian bear. For in writing from Blair to a kinswoman, in anticipation of the visit, the writer states, with a dash of humour, that after a preliminary training on the sea, the bold deerstalker and mountaineer would have to transform himself into a courtier to receive and entertain a King of the French, and play the part of a staid and astute diplomatist.
The king wore the French uniform of a Lieutenant-General—blue with red facings. The moment he ascended the stairs of the jetty, he turned with his hand on his heart and bowed to the multitude of spectators.
The Queen met her visitor in the grand vestibule fronting George the Fourth's Gate at Windsor Castle; the Duchess of Kent and the ladies of the Household, Sir Robert Peel and Lord Liverpool, and the officers of the Household, were with her Majesty. The moment the carriage drew up, the Queen advanced and extended her arms to her father's old friend. The two sovereigns embraced, and she led the way to the suite of rooms which had been previously occupied by the Emperor of Russia.
Lady Lyttelton has supplied her version of the arrival. "At two o'clock he arrived, this curious king, worth seeing if ever a body was. The Queen having graciously permitted me to be present, I joined the Court in the corridor, and we waited an hour, and then the Queen of England came out of her room to go and receive the King of France—the first time in history! Her Majesty had not long to wait (in the armoury, as she received him in the State apartments, his own private rooms; very civil); and from the armoury, amidst all the old trophies and knights' armour, and Nelson's bust, and Marlborough's flag, and Wellington's, we saw the first of the escort enter, the Quadrangle, and down flew the Queen, and we after her, to the outside of the door on the pavement of the Quadrangle, just in time to see the escort clattering up and the carriage close behind. The old man was much moved, I think, and his hand rather shook as he alighted, his hat quite off, and grey hair seen. His countenance is striking—much better than the portraits—and his embrace of the Queen was very parental, and nice. Montpensier is a handsome youth, and the courtiers and ministers very well-looking, grave, gentlemenlike people. It was a striking piece of real history—made one feel and think much."
"He is the first king of France who comes on a visit to the sovereign of this country," wrote the Queen in her Journal…. "The King said, as he went up the grand staircase to his apartments, 'Heavens! how beautiful!'…. I never saw anybody more pleased or more amused in looking at every picture, every bust. He knew every bust, and knew everything about everybody here in a most wonderful way. Such a memory! such activity! It is a pleasure to show him anything, as he is so pleased and interested. He is enchanted with the Castle, and repeated to me again and again (as did also his people) how delighted he was to be here; how he had feared that what he had so earnestly wished since I came to the throne would not take place, and 'Heavens! what a pleasure it is to me to give you my arm!'" The dinner was comparatively private, in the Queen's dining-room.
On the 8th of the month the whole royal party went on a little pilgrimage to Claremont and Twickenham, to the house in which Louis Philippe, as Duc d'Orleans, had resided, and wound up the day by a great banquet in St. George's Hall. The Queen records of this excursion, "We proceeded by Staines, where the King recognised the inn and everything, to Twickenham, where we drove up to the house where he used to live, and where Lord and Lady Mornington, who received us, are now living. It is a very pretty house, much embellished since the King lived there, but otherwise much the same, and he seemed greatly pleased to see it again. He walked round the garden, in spite of the heavy shower which had just fallen…. The King himself directed the postillion which way to go to pass by the house where he lived for five years with his poor brothers, before his marriage. From here we drove to Hampton Court, where we walked over Wolsey's Hall and all the rooms. The King remained a long time in them, looking at the pictures, and marking on the catalogue numbers of those which he intended to have copied for Versailles. We then drove to Claremont. Here we got out and lunched, and after luncheon took a hurried walk in the grounds…. We left Claremont after four, and reached Windsor at a little before six."
Of the conversation during the banquet her Majesty wrote, "He talked to me of the time when he was 'in a school in the Grisons, a teacher merely,' receiving twenty pence a day, having to brush his own boots, and under the name of Chabot. What an eventful life his has been!" On the 9th there was an installation of a Knight of the Garter. Sir Theodore Martin reminds his readers, 'with regard to the ceremony, that it "must have been pregnant with suggestions to all present who remembered that the Order had been instituted by Edward III. after the battle of Cressy, and that its earliest knights were the Black Prince and his companions, whose prowess had been so fatal to France. "In the Throne-room, in a State chair, sat Queen Victoria, in the (blue velvet) mantle of the Order, its motto inscribed on a bracelet that encircled her arm; a diamond tiara on her head. The chair of State by her side was vacant. Round the table before her sat the knights-companions of the highest rank; on the steps of the throne behind the Queen's chair were seated the high civil ministers of the two sovereigns, and some officers of the French suite. At the opposite end of the room were the royal ladies (members of the royal family) and the two young Princes (the Duc de Montpensier and Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar) visiting at the Castle…. The King, dressed in a uniform of dark blue and gold, was introduced by Prince Albert and the Duke of Cambridge, preceded by Garter King-at-Arms, the Queen and the knights all standing. The sovereign (Queen Victoria) in French announced the election. The declaration having been pronounced by the Chancellor of the Order, the new knight was invested by the Queen and Prince Albert with the Garter and the George, and received the accolade."
"Albert then placed the Garter round the King's leg," wrote the Queen. "I pulled it through while the admonition was being read, and the King said to me, 'I wish to kiss this hand,' which he did afterwards, and I embraced him."
"Taking the King's arm, her Majesty conducted him in state to his own apartments," the Annual Register ends its account of an interesting episode.
"At four o'clock we again went over to the King's room," wrote the Queen, "and I placed at his feet a large cup representing St. George and the dragon, with which he was very much pleased." That night there was a splendid banquet in St. George's Hall to commemorate the installment.