FOREIGN TRAVEL AND HOME VISITS.

In August, 1843, the Queen and Prince Albert made a yachting excursion round portions of the south coast and the Isle of Wight. Thence they steamed over to Treport, on the French coast, the nearest port to the Chateau d’Eu, a rural residence of Louis Philippe. On the arrival of the Queen and Prince from Windsor at Southampton, they were met at the end of the pier by the Duke of Wellington and other noble and official personages. It rained heavily, and as there was not sufficient covering for the stage intended to run on to the yacht Victoria and Albert, the members of the Corporation, like so many Raleighs, stripped off their red gowns in a moment, and the pathway was covered for Her Majesty’s use, so that Queen Victoria, like Queen Elizabeth, walked dry-footed to her vessel. The undergraduates at Cambridge acted precisely similarly on the occasion of a visit in wet weather by the Queen and Prince to that university in this year.

The subsequent visit to France was wholly unexpected in England; and it was even said, and with some show of truth, that the Ministers were unaware of the intention. Of course we cannot speak with any certainty, but it seems but too likely that Louis Philippe intrigued to secure the aid, or at least the condonation, of the Queen of England in those astute enterprises which his busy brain was even now concocting, with which the phrases “Pritchard and Tahiti,” and the “Spanish Marriages” will ever remain associated, and which ultimately, and retributively, cost him his throne. Mr. Raikes, who, be it remembered, was the intimate and bosom friend of the Duke of Wellington, then a Minister of England, has at this date the following entry in his Journal, which was published in 1857, and is an acknowledged, and if not absolutely an indisputable, yet a most weighty authority:—

This, it may be said, is mere club gossip. Not so what we are about to quote, and which was written under the Duke of Wellington’s roof:—

As for the reception at the ChÂteau d’Eu itself, it was of the most splendid character. One state ceremonial, however, is so very like another, that after those, the descriptions of which we have already furnished, a recital of the gay doings at Eu would hardly be palatable. The purport of the whole may be summed up very briefly. The French monarch endeavoured to allure the Queen into compliance with his wishes, by every seduction which nature and art, and the most refined and gallant courtesy, could supply. Everything that wealth, luxury, and taste could furnish was to be found amid scenes of more than royal magnificence, o’ershadowed by elms that dated back to the times of Henri Quatre.

But there was business to be done, and the Queen was fortunate in having with her such trusty counsellors as Lords Aberdeen and Liverpool. A compact about the Spanish marriages was then and there made between France and England; a compact for the terms of which we are dependent, not alone upon English state papers, but upon the unimpeachable testimony of MM. Guizot and Regnault. As the starting-point of the one court was that the Queen of Spain should marry a Prince of the House of Coburg, and of the other that she should marry a Prince of the reigning French house, of course no settlement could be come to except by an unequivocal compromise. Thus did Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot arrange it:—The King of France renounced all pretensions, on the part of any of his sons, to the hand of the Queen of Spain. It was stipulated that the Queen should choose her husband from the princely descendants of Philip V.; this stipulation excluding the dreaded competition of a Coburg. As to the projected marriage of the Duc de Montpensier, the son of Louis Philippe, with the Infanta Donna Maria, sister of the Queen of Spain, Louis Philippe agreed that it should not take place “till the Queen was married and had had children.” On these conditions, the Queen of England and her counsellors waived all objections to the marriage of the Duc de Montpensier. Louis Philippe kept his word by having his son married to the Infanta on the very same day, and at the same altar, as that on which her elder sister the Queen was married.

In the summer of this year, the Princess Augusta of Cambridge, the Queen’s first cousin, was married to the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. The following extract from the diary of Mr. Raikes will be admitted to be far from the least amusing and characteristic anecdote of the Queen which we present in these pages:—

In June, 1844, the Queen was visited by her handsome and colossal godfather, the Czar Nicholas of All the Russias. The Queen received him with great magnificence, and there was a splendid series of entertainments at Windsor. The Czar made himself immensely popular with the female sex, by his magnificent gifts of jewels to the ladies of the Court; with the sterner sex, by the gift of a cup of uncommon splendour, to be annually run for at Ascot. “Every one who approached him,” says Sir Archibald Alison, “was struck by the manly dignity of his figure, his noble and serene countenance, and the polished courtesy of his manner, which threw a lustre even over the stately halls of Windsor.”

In September of the same year the Queen renewed her acquaintance with Scotland and the Scots; this time again enjoying the ducal hospitality of Blair Athole. This visit was entirely dissociated from all State paraphernalia. The Queen was up before the sun. The mists were hardly cleared away ere she and the Prince were to be seen walking in the grounds. They were generally accompanied by the Princess Royal, mounted on a Shetland pony. The Queen’s piper played under her bed-room window at dawn, and every morning a bunch of heather, with some icy-cold water from the celebrated spring in Glen Tilt, was laid on her dressing-table. One morning a lady, plainly dressed, left the Castle; who, though observed by the Highland guard on duty, was allowed to pass unnoticed, until after she had proceeded a considerable distance. But somebody having discovered that it was the Queen, a party of Highlanders turned out as a royal body-guard. She, however, signified her wish to dispense with their services, and they all returned to their stations. The Queen, meanwhile, moved onward through the Castle grounds alone, until she reached the lodge, the temporary residence of Lord and Lady Glenlyon, where, upon calling, with the intention, it was understood, of making some arrangements as to a preconcerted excursion to the Falls of Bruar, she was informed that his lordship had not yet arisen. The surprise of the servant may be conceived when Her Majesty announced who was to be intimated as having called upon his lordship. On her return, having taken a different route, and finding herself bewildered by the various roads which intersect the grounds in every direction, she asked some reapers to direct her to the Castle by the nearest way. They, not being aware to whom they spoke, immediately did so, by directing her to go through one of the parks, and across a paling which lay before her, and which she at once passed, and reached the Castle, a good deal amused, doubtless, with her morning’s excursion. In 1847 the Queen visited, for the first time, the Western Isles and Hebrides. In 1848 she rented Balmoral, which she shortly afterwards purchased, and from the date of its acquisition it has been her place of regular resort for at least one period of every year.

On the 9th of August, 1845, the Queen and Prince Albert embarked at Woolwich to visit the land of her maternity and his natal spot. In the Belgian and Prussian territories, and in the Duchy of Coburg itself, they were rapturously welcomed. At Bonn, they were serenaded by a monster orchestra, consisting of no fewer than sixty military bands. At the same city they assisted at the inauguration of the statue of Beethoven. The same evening they witnessed at Cologne an illumination and pyrotechnic display which turned the Rhine into a feu-de-joie. As darkness closed in, the dim and fetid city began to put forth buds of light; lines of twinkling brightness darted, like liquid gold and silver, from pile to pile, then along the famous bridge of boats, across the river, up the masts of the shipping, and all abroad on the opposite bank. Rockets now shot from all parts of the horizon. The royal party embarked in a steamer at St. Tremond, and glided down the river; as they passed, the banks blazed with fireworks and musketry. At their approach they glared with redoubled light; and, being suspended, let the vessel pass to Cologne, whose cathedral burst forth a building of light, every detail of the architecture being made out in delicately coloured lamps—pinkish, with an underglow of orange. A few days afterwards the Queen steamed up the Rhine. At Stoltzenfelz there was another magnificent illumination and display of fireworks. The whole river, both its banks, its crags, ravines, and ruins, were simultaneously lighted up; showers of rockets and other fireworks besprinkled the firmament, while repeated salvoes of artillery called the grandeur of resonant sound to the aid of visible beauty.

At Coburg the Queen, as might be supposed, was still more cordially welcomed than at any of her previous stopping places. She and the Prince stopped at the Castle of Rosenau, and they occupied the room in which he had been born. A magnificent stag-hunt was got up for their entertainment; but what pleased the Queen most was being present at a festival entitled “The Feast of Gregorius.” This was a species of carnival, in which the burghers and rustics, their wives and children, disguised in masks, indulged in innocent and exuberant gaiety. The Queen and her relatives freely mixed with the revellers. She talked to the children, to their great astonishment, “in their own language.” Tired of dancing and processions, and freed from all awe by the ease of their illustrious visitors, the children took to romps, “thread-my-needle,” and other pastimes, and finally were well pelted by the royal circle with bon-bons, flowers, and cakes.