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CHAP.
XL. BIRTH OF THE FIRST GREAT-GRANDCHILD--MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF ALBANY--CONCLUSION
LIST OF STEEL PLATES.
H.R.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES OSBORNE HOUSE THE PASTURE, OSBORNE THE AMAZON THE ROYAL YACHT OFF MOUNT ST. MICHAEL THE PRINCESS LOUISE THE PRINCESS HELENA PRINCESSES HELENA AND LOUISE THE HUNTER HYDE PARK IN 1851 THE FISHER H.R.H. THE DUKE OF CAMBRIDGE, K.G., ETC. THE CRADLE H.R.H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES H.R.H. THE PRINCESS OF WALES THE ALBERT MEMORIAL MONUMENT TO THE PRINCESS ALICE OF HESSE
QUEEN VICTORIA.
ROYAL PROGRESSES TO BURGHLEY, STOWE, AND STRATHFIELDSAYE.
On the 29th of November the Queen went on one of her visits to her nobility. We are told, and we can easily believe, these visits were very popular and eagerly contested for. In her Majesty's choice of localities it would seem as if she loved sometimes to retrace her early footsteps by going again with her husband to the places where she had been, as the young Princess, with the Duchess of Kent. The Queen went at this time to Burghley, the seat of the Marquis of Exeter. The tenantry of the different noblemen whose lands she passed through lined the roads, the mayors of the various towns presented addresses, the school children sang the National Anthem.
At Burghley, too, Queen Elizabeth had been before Queen Victoria. She also had visited a Cecil. The Maiden Queen had travelled under difficulties. The country roads of her day had been so nearly impassable that her only means of transit had been to use a pillion behind her Lord Steward. Her seat in the chapel was pointed out to the Queen and Prince Albert when they went there for morning prayers. Whether or not both queens whiled away a rainy day by going over the whole manor-house, down to the kitchen, we cannot say; but it is not likely that her Majesty's predecessor underwent the ordeal to her gravity of passing through a gentleman's bedroom and finding his best wig and whiskers displayed upon a block on a chest of drawers. And we are not aware that Queen Elizabeth witnessed such an interesting family rite as that which her Majesty graced by her presence. The youngest daughter of the Marquis and Marchioness of Exeter was christened in the chapel, at six o'clock in the evening, before the Queen, and was named for her "Lady Victoria Cecil," while Prince Albert stood as godfather to the child. After the baptism the Queen kissed her little namesake, and Prince Albert presented her with a gold cup bearing the inscription, "To Lady Victoria Cecil, from her godfather Albert." At dinner the newly-named child was duly toasted by the Queen's command.
The next day the royal party visited "Stamford town," from which the Mayor afterwards sent Prince Albert the gift of a pair of Wellington boots, as a sample of the trade of the place. The drive extended to the ruins of another manor-house which, Lady Bloomfield heard, was built by the Cecils for a temporary resort when their house of Burghley was swept. The Queen and the Prince planted an oak and a lime, not far from Queen Elizabeth's lime. The festivities ended with a great dinner and ball, at which the Queen did not dance. Most of the company passed before her chair of State on the dais, as they do at a drawing-room.
In the middle of January, 1845, the Queen and Prince Albert went on a visit to the Duke of Buckingham at Stowe, which was still unstripped of its splendid possessions and interesting antiquarian relics. The huge gathering of neighbours and tenants included waggons full of labourers, admitted into the park to see the Queen's arrival and the illumination of the great house at night.
"Slaughter," not sport, is the appropriate word. One cannot help thinking that so it must have struck the Prince; nor are we surprised that, on the next opportunity he had of exercising a sportsman's legitimate vocation, with the good qualities of patience, endurance, and skill, which it is calculated to call forth, emphatic mention is made of his keen enjoyment.
Besides shooting there was walking for both ladies and gentlemen, to the number of twenty guests, "in the mild, clear weather," in the beautiful park. There was the usual county gathering, in order to confer on the upper ten thousand, within a radius of many miles, the much-prized honour of "meeting" the Queen at a dinner or a ball. Lastly, her Majesty and the Prince planted the oak and the cedar which were to rank like heirlooms, and be handed down as trophies of a royal visit and princely favour, to future generations.
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