At the outset of their married life King Edward and Queen Alexandra were called upon to perform the public duties of the Sovereign, which, since the Prince Consort’s death, had in some measure necessarily developed upon the Duke of Cambridge and his family. The late Duchess of Teck’s biographer records that Society did its utmost to give the beautiful young bride a right royal welcome. A memorable event of the London season was the Guards’ ball in honour of the Prince and Princess of Wales, held in the picture galleries of the International Exhibition. The decorations were unusually magnificent, and Queen Victoria graciously lent some splendid plate from Buckingham Palace. Many members of the aristocracy, too, placed at the disposal of the Duke of Cambridge, as head of the Committee, their collections of gold and silver plate, the contributions being valued at £2,000,000. The guests, limited in number to 1400, began to arrive at nine o’clock, and soon after ten the ball was opened by a royal quadrille, in which eight couples took part, the Duke of Cambridge dancing with the Princess of Wales, and the Prince of Wales with Princess Mary (afterwards Duchess of Teck). The Prince and Princess of Wales showed their appreciation of the entertainment which their soldier hosts had provided by remaining almost till dawn.

One of the first public appearances made by King Edward after his marriage was at the Royal Academy dinner, where he made an excellent short speech, greatly impressing those who were present by his modesty and good sense. Sir Charles Eastlake was then President of the Royal Academy, and Lady Eastlake gives this amusing account of the affair in her reminiscences:—

“All went perfectly well at the Royal Academy dinner. My husband was quite enchanted with the Prince of Wales, and with his natural manners and simplicity. The Prince hesitated in the middle of his speech, so that everybody thought it was all up with him; but he persisted in thinking till he recovered the thread, and then went on well. The very manner in which he did this was natural and graceful. He was so moved when mentioning his father that it was feared he would break down. After the speech the Prince turned to my husband and told him he was quite provoked with himself. ‘I knew it quite by heart in the morning’; but he evidently had no vanity, for he laughed at his own ‘stupidity,’ and immediately recovered his spirits. ‘Hesse’ was next the Prince, who chaffed him from time to time, and told him he would have to sing a song.”

William Makepeace Thackeray was among the other speakers at the Academy dinner, which was very shortly before the famous novelist’s lamented death. At the anniversary of the Royal Literary Fund some months later King Edward made some graceful and appropriate allusions to the great writer whom the Empire had lost. He spoke with evident feeling of the fact that Thackeray had been the life of the Fund, always ready to open his purse for the relief of literary men struggling with pecuniary difficulties.

This spring was a very busy time for both King Edward and Queen Alexandra. On 8th June they were sumptuously entertained by the Lord Mayor at the Guildhall, when the Prince took up the freedom of the City, to which he was entitled by patrimony. The entertainments included a great ball, which the Princess opened, dancing a quadrille with the Lord Mayor, while the Prince had the Lady Mayoress for his partner.

A week later the Royal couple attended “Commem.” at Oxford. They received a splendid welcome both from the University authorities and the undergraduates. The honorary degree of Doctor of Civil Law was conferred on King Edward in the Sheldonian Theatre, where the wildest uproar prevailed, till amid a sudden lull of perfect silence Queen Alexandra entered with Dr. Liddell, the then Dean of Christ Church. Scarcely had she traversed half the distance to her seat when a cheer loud and deep arose, and seemed to shake the theatre to its foundation, to the evident gratification of her Royal husband.

After the ceremony was over their Royal Highnesses escaped from all their friends and entertainers and took the opportunity of going over what had been the Prince’s rooms as an undergraduate. That same evening a ball was given in the Prince’s honour in the Corn Exchange by the Apollo Lodge of Freemasons.

Shortly after their visit to Oxford the Prince and Princess celebrated their house-warming at Marlborough House by an evening party and a ball. During the summer months they spent some time at Sandringham in the original house, which at that time stood in an isolated park, and which was afterwards pulled down and superseded by the present very much larger and more comfortable mansion. There can be no doubt that Queen Alexandra’s strong affection for her country home is based on the tender recollections of her early married life. It is a significant fact that when the new Sandringham House was built, she begged that her boudoir in the new mansion might be arranged so as to be an exact reproduction of her boudoir in the old house.

Among the very first visitors entertained at Sandringham by the Royal bride and bridegroom was Dr. Stanley, who spent Easter Sunday with them there.

“On the evening of Easter Eve,” he writes, “the Princess came to me in a corner of the drawing-room with her Prayer Book, and I went through the Communion Service with her, explaining the peculiarities and the likenesses and differences to and from the Danish Service. She was most simple and fascinating.… My visit to Sandringham gave me intense pleasure. I was there for three days. I read the whole Service, preached, then gave the first English Sacrament to this ‘angel in the Palace.’ I saw a great deal of her, and can truly say that she is as charming and beautiful a creature as ever passed through a fairy tale.”

Much satisfaction was felt by the nation when the interesting fact became known that Queen Victoria hoped to welcome the first of her British grandchildren in the month of March. One Friday evening, early in January, shortly after Queen Alexandra, who was staying, had been skating on Virginia Water, near Windsor, her eldest child appeared so unexpectedly that for a while the Royal baby had to be wrapped in cotton wool, for all the beautiful layette which was in course of preparation was at Marlborough House.

The rejoicings over the event, both in this country and in Denmark, were naturally very great, more especially when it became known that the Royal infant was none the worse for his early arrival. Among the two Royal families most immediately concerned the interest and excitement were intense. Princess Alice wrote to Queen Victoria on 9th January 1864, “I was aghast on receiving Bertie’s telegram this morning announcing the birth of their little son.” But this feeling of trepidation quickly gave place to one of relief when the bulletins announced the steady progress of both mother and babe, and soon the British public saw many charming photographs and portraits of Queen Alexandra in her new rÔle of mother. At the time of the birth of the Duke of Clarence Queen Alexandra was not yet twenty, but, like Queen Victoria, she seems to have been wholly absorbed in her maternal duties, and at any moment she would joyfully give up attending a State function or ball in order to spend an hour in her nursery.

It need hardly be said that the first portion of the Prince and Princess’s married life was overshadowed by the war between Denmark and Prussia. The young Princess was naturally strongly patriotic in her sympathies. At breakfast one morning a foolish equerry read out a telegram which announced a success of the Austro-Prussian forces, whereupon Her Royal Highness burst into tears, and the Prince, it is said, thoroughly lost his temper for once, and rated his equerry as soundly as his ancestor, King Henry VIII., might have done. An amusing story went the round of the clubs about this time. It was said that a Royal visitor at Windsor asked Princess Beatrice what she would like for a present. The child stood in doubt, and begged the Princess of Wales to advise her. The result of a whispered conversation between the two was that the little Princess declared aloud that she would like to have Bismarck’s head on a charger!

In July 1864 the Prince laid the foundation-stone of the new West Wing of the London Hospital. He was accompanied by the Princess. This was one of the first occasions on which King Edward showed his great interest in hospital management. The fact that there was a separate ward for the Jews aroused his keen interest. In the same month King Edward and his Consort went to the Fourth of June at Eton, and also stayed at Goodwood for the races. In the middle of August they went to the Highlands, visiting Stirling Castle on the way. They spent some weeks at Abergeldie, entertaining a great deal. Dr. Norman Macleod stayed with them there. It was during this stay in Scotland that the Prince and Princess first became intimate with the family of their future son-in-law, and the Countess of Fife, his mother, gave a great picnic in their honour.

That autumn they went from Dundee to Denmark, being accompanied by their baby, now nearly a year old. This was King Edward’s first visit to his wife’s home. They received a most enthusiastic welcome, and were splendidly entertained. At Bernsdorf, where the Royal party spent several days, a number of shooting parties were organised in honour of the Prince, who, certainly for the first time in his life, was invited to shoot foxes. He bagged two, and some of the teeth of the animals were set as breast-pins for him.

From Elsinore the Prince and Princess went in their yacht to Stockholm in order to pay a visit to the King and Queen of Sweden. In Sweden also the Prince was invited to take part in several hunting expeditions. One odd bag resulted in ten foxes, six hares, and seventeen stags.

After sending Prince Albert Victor home with Countess de Grey, the Royal couple travelled back via Germany and Belgium, visiting on the way Prince and Princess Louis of Hesse at Darmstadt, and making a short stay at Brussels. Then they came home for the rest of the autumn to Sandringham, where Queen Alexandra spent her twentieth birthday.

The year 1865 proved an eventful one to both King Edward and his wife. King Edward paid his first State visit to Ireland, opening the International Exhibition of Dublin on 9th May, and a little less than a month later Prince George of Wales was born at Marlborough House.

Although there have at various times been more or less serious fires in Royal residences, Sandringham, for instance, having been almost destroyed by a conflagration within the last few years, the King has only once been really in a fire, and this was just a month after his second son’s birth. The fire began in the floor then styled the nursery floor, and after Queen Alexandra had been moved to another part of the house with her two children, King Edward set to work with the utmost energy to check the flames. It need hardly be said that very soon the whole of London seemed to be congregated in Pall Mall and St. James’s Park. At first it could not be made out where the fire was coming from, and the King helped to rip up the whole of the nursery floor before the mischief could be traced, and while doing so he nearly had a bad accident, for he fell some distance through the rafters.

At last, however, the fire was got under, and it was found that comparatively little harm had been done. Then for the first time it occurred to some one to ask if Marlborough House was insured. Strangely enough this very important precaution had not been taken. Now, however, both Marlborough House and Sandringham are insured to their full value.

King Edward from childhood has always shown the keenest interest in firemen and fires. During many years of his life he used to be informed whenever a really big blaze was signalled, and he has attended incognito most of the great London fires during the last thirty years.

About this time the King visited the gigantic steamship Great Eastern, off Sheerness, in order to see the Atlantic telegraph cable, which had just been completed. He was received by a number of prominent engineers, and while he was present the last section of the cable was being wound into the tanks on board the Great Eastern from the vessel alongside which had brought it from the works at Greenwich. A message was sent through one of the coils, the length of which was equivalent to the distance from Sheerness to Valentia. The signals transmitted, “God Save the Queen,” were received at the other end of the coil in the course of a few seconds, a fact which, commonplace as it may now seem, struck the onlookers in the year 1865 with amazement. The King visited every portion of the huge ship, and accepted specimen pieces of portions of the cable in various stages of manufacture.

In that same year, that is two years after her marriage, Queen Alexandra performed her first public act by opening the Cambridge School of Art. It was in 1865 also that the King attended his first public dinner as President of the Royal Literary Fund, and on this occasion he toasted the ladies in the following graceful words:—“In the presence of a society accustomed to cultivating with such success the flowers of literature, it would be unpardonable to forget the flowers of society.”

During that summer the Prince and Princess visited Cornwall, and went down the Botallack tin mine, near St. Just, the depth of which is about 200 fathoms. The bottom level of the mine extends horizontally about half a mile beneath the sea. A part of this mine then belonged to the Prince as Duke of Cornwall. During the same tour he visited Land’s End. The day was exceptionally clear and fine, and the Prince lingered for some time among the grim rocks which form the western-most point of England.

All this time Queen Victoria was living in the strictest retirement, and the great shadow of the Prince Consort’s death had thrown scarcely less gloom over the life of his eldest son. King Edward mourned deeply for his father, and it is significant that he never lost an opportunity of testifying in his public speeches to the high purpose and noble aims which had distinguished Prince Albert’s life. To the cost of the mausoleum at Frogmore the King contributed from his private purse no less a sum than £10,000. At the end of 1865 he sustained another severe blow in the death of Lord Palmerston, whom he had honoured with his special friendship, and whom he had been accustomed to consult in his private affairs.

Not till February 1866 did Queen Victoria consent to open Parliament again in person. She was accompanied by the Prince of Wales and two of her daughters, the Princess of Wales being accommodated with a seat on the Woolsack facing the Throne.

It was in this year, when the Austro-German war was going on, that King Edward established special telegraphic communication between Marlborough House and the seat of war. Like his lamented mother, he is a shrewd observer of foreign politics, and now that he is called upon to reign, he will be, as she was, the greatest help to the Foreign Minister of the day. He has since kept up in every important war the practice of securing the earliest possible telegraphic information, notably in the Franco-Prussian, the Russo-Turkish, and the Greco-Turkish wars, but most of all in the Boer war.

In the summer of 1866 the King laid the foundation-stone of the new building of the British and Foreign Bible Society, when he was received by the venerable Earl of Shaftesbury, President of the Society, the Lord Mayor, the Archbishop of York, and the Bishop of Winchester.

In his speech the King recalled the fact that only sixty-three years previously Mr. Wilberforce had met with a few friends in a small room in a dingy counting-house and had established the Bible Society, while in the interval the Society had already spent six millions of money in the furtherance of its objects, and that it had contributed to the translation of the Bible into two hundred and eighty different languages and dialects. The King further said:—

“I have an hereditary claim to be here on this occasion. My grandfather, the Duke of Kent, warmly advocated the claims of the Society, and it is gratifying to me to reflect that the two modern versions of the Scriptures more widely circulated than any others—the German and English—were both in their origin connected with my family. The translation of Martin Luther was executed under the protection of the Elector of Saxony, the collateral ancestor of my lamented father; whilst that of William Tyndale—the foundation of the present Authorised English Version—was introduced with the sanction of the Royal predecessor of my mother, the Queen who first desired that ‘the Bible shall have free course through all Christendom, but especially in my own realm.’ It is my hope and trust that, under the Divine guidance, the wider diffusion and a deeper study of the Scriptures will, in this as in every age, be at once the surest guarantee of the progress and liberty of mind, and the means of multiplying in the present form the consolations of our holy religion.”

In the autumn following, King Edward and Queen Alexandra, accompanied by their two sons, visited the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland at Dunrobin. At that time the most northern point of railway communication was at Ardgay, and thence the King and Queen had to drive a distance of twenty-five miles before they could reach Dunrobin Castle. All along the route they received a most enthusiastic welcome. They arrived at night at the Castle, and were received in Royal Highland style. Among those asked to meet them were the Duke of Edinburgh, the Prince of Saxe-Weimar, and many members of the leading Scotch nobility. The King reviewed the Sutherland Volunteers in the grounds of the Castle, and later, on the same day, the Duke of Sutherland announced that it was the wish of the King that the whole of the corps should adopt the kilt as their uniform, His Majesty having a preference for the national costume.

Shortly after their return from Scotland the King and Queen had the pleasure of entertaining the Queen of Denmark and her two younger children, and they spent some time at Sandringham with Queen Alexandra, while the King went to Russia in order to be present at the marriage of his sister-in-law, Princess Dagmar, to the then Cesarewitch. It was quite late in the year, and it was considered that the cold in St. Petersburg would be too severe for Queen Alexandra to accompany her husband. The King, who attended the Imperial marriage in his official capacity, was accompanied by a considerable suite, including Lord Frederick Paulet, Viscount Hamilton, the Marquis of Blandford, and Major Teesdale. On his arrival at St. Petersburg he was met at the railway terminus by the Emperor of Russia, the Cesarewitch, and the Grand Dukes; and he was given splendid quarters at the Hermitage Palace.

King Edward has always been known to have a great liking for Russia and the Russian people, and he is himself very popular in St. Petersburg. After the Imperial marriage he visited Moscow, being accompanied by the Crown Prince of Denmark. The Princes went over the Kremlin, and the King paid a call on the Metropolitan Archbishop, the highest dignitary of the Russian Church. The aged ecclesiastic received him in a perfectly plain cell. They conversed for a quarter of an hour, and as the King took his leave, the Metropolitan gave him his blessing, and with the assistance of his monks accompanied his Royal visitor to the door.

The year 1867 was, if not very eventful, an anxious one, for both before and after the birth of Princess Louise, now the Duchess of Fife, on 20th February, Queen Alexandra suffered from acute rheumatism and inflammation of a knee-joint. Her illness caused so much anxiety at the Danish Court that her father and mother came over and spent some time in London. King Edward was most devoted in his attentions to the invalid, and actually had his bureau moved into her sick-room in order that he might not be separated from her in her convalescence even by the imperious demands of his enormous correspondence. Happily Queen Alexandra grew quite strong again, but the serious nature of her illness may be judged from the fact that she was not able to drive out until 9th July. Naturally for the rest of that year the King and Queen lived very quietly and went about as little as possible.

Five years after their marriage the King and Queen paid a visit to Ireland, and their reception was marked by a very genuine demonstration of cordiality and even of enthusiasm. On arriving in Kingstown Harbour Queen Alexandra was presented, as Queen Victoria had been in 1849, with a white dove, emblematic of the affection and goodwill which she was supposed to be bringing to the distressful country. King Edward, with his usual tact, declared it to be his wish that no troops should be present in the streets of Dublin. Entire reliance was accordingly placed on the loyalty and hospitable spirit of the people, and, in spite of many doleful prognostications to the contrary, the Royal visit was successful from every point of view.

It has often been asserted that King Edward is fonder of the Emerald Isle than is any other member of his family; he certainly numbers several Irishmen among his closest friends. Although he thoroughly enjoyed his visit, this one week in 1868 was one of the most tiring ever spent by the King. Like his younger son, twenty-nine years later, the King was installed with great pomp as a Knight of the Order of St. Patrick, on which occasion he used the sword worn by King George IV. The King also unveiled with much ceremony a statue of Edmund Burke. The Times described the exertions entailed by the Royal visit in the following vivid passage:—

King Edward at the Age of Twenty-Three

From a Painting by Weigall, published by Henry Graves and Co.