In the retirement of Osborne the Queen mourned her mother with the tender fidelity which her people have learnt to know and reverence.
In April the Court returned to Buckingham Palace, when the Queen announced the marriage of the Princess Alice to the Privy Council It was communicated to Parliament, and was very favourably received. The Princess had a dowry of thirty thousand, and an annuity of six thousand pounds from the country.
The Queen's birthday was celebrated at Osborne without the usual festivities. During the Whitsun holidays Prince Louis, who was with the family, had the misfortune to be attacked by measles, which he communicated to Prince Leopold. The little boy had the disease severely, and it left bad results.
In June King Leopold and one of his sons paid the Queen a lengthened visit of five weeks. The Princess Royal, with her husband and children, arrived afterwards, and there was a happy family meeting, tinged with sorrow.
In July the most exalted Order of the Star of India was instituted, and conferred first on the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, Lord Clyde, Sir John Lawrence, &c., &c. That summer saw the death of two statesmen who had been men of mark in the Crimean war—Count Cavour, the Sardinian Prime Minister, and Lord Herbert of Lea. The royal visitors in London and at Osborne included the Archduke Maximilian and his young wife, and the King of Sweden and his son.
Towards the close of August the Queen went to Frogmore with the Prince and Princess Alice, in order to keep the birthday of the late Duchess of Kent, whose remains had been already removed from St. George's chapel to the mausoleum prepared for them in the grounds of her former home. The Queen wrote of the first evening at Frogmore as "terribly trying;" but it comforted her in the beautiful morning to visit the grand simple mausoleum, and to help to place on the granite sarcophagus the wreaths which had been brought for the purpose.
The day after the return of Prince Alfred from the West Indies, the Queen and the Prince, their second son and the Princesses Alice and Helena, sailed from Holyhead in the Victoria and Albert for Kingstown. This visit to Ireland meant also the royal presence on a field-day in the Curragh camp, where the Prince of Wales was serving, and a run down to Killarney in very hot weather. At the lakes the Queen was the guest of Lord Castleross and Mr. Herbert. The wild luxuriant scenery, the size and beauty of the arbutus-trees, and the enthusiastic shriek of the blue-cloaked women, made their due impression. In a row on one of the lakes her Majesty christened a point. The Prince's birthday came round during the stay in Ireland, and was marked by the usual loving tokens, though the Queen noted sadly the difference between this and other anniversaries: the lack of festivities, the absence from home, the separation from the younger children, and the missing the old invariable gift from the Duchess of Kent.
Balmoral was reached in the beginning of September. Prince Louis came speedily, and another welcome guest, Princess Hohenlohe, who travelled north with Lady Augusta Bruce. Dr. Norman Macleod gives a glimpse of the circumstances and the circle. He preached to the Queen, and she thanked him for the comfort he gave her. Lady Augusta Bruce talked to him of "that noble, loving woman, the Duchess of Kent, and of the Queen's grief." He found the Queen's half-sister "an admirable woman" and Prince Alfred "a fine gentlemanly sailor."
The Queen's greatest solace this year was in long days spent on the purple mountains and by the sides of the brown lochs, and in a second private expedition, like that of the previous year to Grantown, when she slept a night at the Ramsay Arms in the village of Fettercairn, and Prince Louis and General Grey were consigned to the Temperance Hotel opposite. The whole party walked out in the moonlight and were startled by a village band. The return was by Blair, where the Queen was welcomed by her former host and hostess, the Duke and Duchess of Athole. Her Majesty had a look at her earlier quarters, at the room in which the little Princess Royal had been put to bed in two chairs, and saw Sandy Macara, grown old and grey.
After an excursion to Cairn Glaishie, her Majesty recorded in her journal, "Alas! I fear our last great one." Six years afterwards the sorrowful confirmation was given to words which had been written with a very different meaning, "It was our last one."