Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen Volume I Part 15

On the "rest day," which succeeded that of her Majesty's arrival at Dalkeith, she had three fresh experiences, chronicled in her Journal. She tasted oatmeal porridge, which she thought "very good," and "Finnan haddies," of which she gave no opinion, and she was stopped and turned back in her drive by "a Scotch mist." Indeed, not all the Queen's proverbial good luck in the matter could now or at any future time greatly modify the bane of open-air enjoyment amidst the beautiful scenery of Scotland--the exceedingly variable, even inclement, weather which may be met with at all seasons.

Sat.u.r.day, the 3rd of September, afforded abundant compensation for all that had been missed on the Queen's entrance into Edinburgh. She paid an announced and formal visit from Dalkeith Palace to the town, in order to accomplish the balked ceremony of the presentation of the keys and to see the Castle on its historic rock. By Holyrood Chapel and Holyrood Palace, which the Queen called "a royal-looking old place," but where she did not tarry now, because there was fever in the neighbourhood; up the old world Cannon-gate, and the High Street, where the Setouns and the Leslies had their brawl, and the Jacobites went with white c.o.c.kades in their c.o.c.ked hats and white roses at their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, braving the fire of the Castle, to pay homage to Prince Charlie; on to the barrier. Edinburgh was wide awake this time. The streets were densely crowded, every window, high and low, in the tall grey houses framed a galaxy of faces, stands had been erected, and platforms thrown out wherever stand and platform could find s.p.a.ce. The very "leads" of the public buildings bore their burden of sightseers. The Lord Provost and his bailies stood ready, and the Queen came wearing the royal Stewart tartan, "A' fine colours but nane o' them blue," to show that she was akin to the surroundings. She heard and replied to the speech made to her by the representative of the old burghers, and gave him back the token of his rule. She reached the Castle, after having pa.s.sed the houses of Knox and the Earl of Moray. She saw the Scotch regalia, and heard anew how it had once been saved by a minister's brave wife, who carried it hidden in a bundle of yarn in her lap, out of the northern castle, which was in the hands of the enemy; and how it had been concealed again--only too well, forgotten in the course of a generation or two, and actually lost sight of for a hundred years. She entered the room, "such a very, very small room," she wrote, in her wonder at the rude and scanty accommodation of those days, in which James VI. was born. No doubt "Mons Meg," the old Flemish cannon and grim darling of the fortress, was presented to her. But what seems to have moved her most was the magnificent view, which included the rich Lothians and the silver s.h.i.+eld of the Frith, and stretched, but only, when the weather was fine enough, in the direction of Stirlings.h.i.+re, to the round-backed Ochils and the blue giants, the Grampians, while at her feet lay the green gardens of Princes Street and the handsome street itself--once the Nor' Loch and the Burgh Muir--Allan Ramsay's house and Heriot's Hospital, or "Wark," the princely gift of the worthy jeweller to his native town.

A little incident, the motive of which was unknown to her Majesty, occurred on her drive back to Dalkeith. An enthusiastic active young fellow, who had seen the presentation of the keys, hurried out the length of a mile on the country road to Dalkeith, and choosing a solitary point, stationed himself on the summit of a wall, where he was the only watcher, and awaited the return of the carriages. The special phaeton drove up with the young couple, talking and laughing together in the freedom of their privacy. The single spectator took off his hat at the risk of losing his precarious footing, and in respectful silence, bowed, or "louted low"--another difficult proceeding under the circ.u.mstances. Prince Albert, who was sitting with his arms crossed on his breast, treated the demonstration as not meant for him. The smiling Queen inclined her head, and the eager lad had what he sought, a mark of her recognition given to him alone. To the day of his death no more loyal heart beat for his Queen throughout her wide dominions.

The Queen drove to Leith on another day, and she and the Prince were still more charmed with the view, which he called "fairylike." After the fas.h.i.+on of most strangers, the travellers had their attention attracted by the Newhaven fish-wives, who offered a curious contrast to the rest of the population. Their Flemish origin announced itself, for her Majesty p.r.o.nounced them "very clean and very _Dutch_-looking with their white caps and bright-coloured petticoats." It was about this time that a great author made them all his own, by "choosing a fit representative for his heroine, and describing a fisherman's marriage on the island of Inchcolm.

On Sunday, Dean Kamsay, whose memory is so linked with Scotch stories, read prayers.

On Monday, the Queen held a Drawing-room at Dalkeith Palace. It was an antiquarian question whether there had been another Drawing-room since the Union. Well might the stay-at-home ladies of Scotland plume themselves.

Afterwards, her Majesty received addresses from the Magistrates of Edinburgh, the Scotch Church, and Universities.

The Queen's stay at Dalkeith was varied by drives about the beautiful grounds on the two Esks, and short visits to neighbouring country seats, characteristic and interesting, Dalmeny, Dalhousie, &c. &c. In the evening, it is said, Scotch music was frequently given for her Majesty's delectation, and that among the songs were some of the satires and parodies poured forth on the unfortunate Lord Provost and bailies, who had robbed the town of the full glory of the Queen's arrival. The cleverest of these was an adaptation of an old Jacobite ditty, itself a cutting satire which a hundred years before had taunted the Georgian general, Sir John Cope, with the excess of caution that led him to shun an engagement, withdraw his forces over night, and leave the country open to the Pretender to march southward. The mocking verses thus challenged the defaulter--

Hey! Johnnie Cope, are ye waukin' yet?

Or are your drums a-beatin' yet?

Now, with a slight variation on the words the measure ran--

Hey! Jamie Forrest, are ye waukin' yet?

Or are your bailies snorin' yet?

Then, after proceeding to run over the temptations which might he supposed to have overmastered the party, the writer dwelt with emphasis on a favourite breakfast dish in Scotland--

For kipper it is savoury food, Sae early in the mornin'.

Common rumour would have it that Lord John Scott, whose good qualities included a fine voice and a love for Scotch songs, to which his wife contributed at least one exquisite ballad, sang this squib to her Majesty.

An improvement on the story, which is at least strictly in keeping with the Prince's character, added, that when another song was suggested, and the "Flowers of the Forest" mentioned, Prince Albert, unacquainted with the song in question, and misled by a word in the t.i.tle, exclaimed kindly, "No, no; let the poor man alone, he has had enough of this sort of thing."

From Dalkeith the Queen and the Prince started for the Highlands, on a bright, clear, cold, frosty morning. They crossed the Forth and landed at Queen's Ferry, which bore its name from another queen when she was going on a very different errand; for there it is said the fugitive Margaret, the sister of the Atheling, after she had been wrecked in Scotland Water, landed and took her way on foot to Dunfermline to ask grace of Malcolm Cean Mohr, who made her his wife. Queen Victoria only saw Dunfermline and the abbey which holds the dust of King Robert the Bruce from a distance, as she journeyed by Kinross and Loch Leven, getting a nearer glimpse of Queen Mary's island prison, to Perths.h.i.+re.

At Dupplin the 42nd Highlanders, in their kilts, were stationed appropriately. Perth, with its fair "Inches" lying on the br.i.m.m.i.n.g Tay, in the shadow of the wooded hills of Kinnoul and Moncrieff, delighted the royal strangers, and reminded Prince Albert of Basle.

The old Palace of Scone, under the guardians.h.i.+p of Lord Mansfield, was the restingplace for the night. Next day the Queen saw the mound where the early kings of Scotland were crowned. A sort of ancient royal visitors'

book was brought out from Perth to her Majesty, and the Queen and the Prince were requested to write their names in it. The last names written were those of James VI. and Charles I. Her Majesty and Prince Albert gave their mottoes as well as their names. Beneath her signature she wrote, "_Dieu et mon Droit_;" beneath his he wrote, "_Treu und Fest._"

From Scone the party proceeded to Dunkeld, pa.s.sing through Birnam Pa.s.s, the first of the three "Gates," into the Highlands, where the prophecy against Macbeth was fulfilled, and entered what is emphatically "the Country" by the lowest spur of the mighty Grampians.

The romantic, richly-wooded beauty of Dunkeld was increased by a picturesque camp of Athole Highlanders, to the number of a thousand men, with their piper in attendance. They had been called out for her Majesty's benefit by the late Duke of Athole, then Lord Glenlyon, who was suffering from temporary blindness, so that he had to be led about by Lady Glenlyon, his wife. At Dunkeld the Queen lunched, and walked down the ranks of Highland soldiers. The piper played, and a reel and the ancient sword-dance, over crossed swords--the nimble dancer avoiding all contact with the naked blades--were danced. The whole scene--royal guests, n.o.ble men and women, stalwart clansmen in their waving dusky tartans--must have been very animated and striking in the lovely autumn setting of the mountains when the ling was red, the rowan berries hung like cl.u.s.ters of coral over the brown burns, and a field of oats here and there came out like a patch of gold among the heather. To put the finis.h.i.+ng-touch to the picture, the grey tower of Gawin Douglas's Cathedral, still and solemn, kept watch over the tomb of the Wolf of Badenoch.

But Dunkeld was not the Queen's destination. She was going still farther into the Highlands. She left the mountains of Craig-y-barns and Craig-vinean behind her, and travelled on by Aberfeldy to Taymouth, the n.o.ble seat of the Marquis of Breadalbane. Lord Glenlyon's Highlanders gave place to Lord Breadalbane's, the Murrays, in their particular set of tartan with their juniper badge, to the Campbells and the Menzies, in their dark green and red and white kilts, with the tufts of bog myrtle and ash in their bonnets. The pipers were multiplied, and a company of the 92nd Highlanders replaced the 42nd, in kilts like their neighbours. "The firing of the guns," wrote the Queen, "the cheering of the great crowd, the picturesqueness of the dresses, the beauty of the surrounding country with its rich background of wooded hills, altogether formed one of the finest scenes imaginable. It seemed as if a great chieftain in olden feudal times was receiving his sovereign. It was princely and romantic."

Such a "sovereign" of such a "chief" is the crowned lady, every inch a queen, represented in Durham's bust reproduced in the ill.u.s.tration.

Lord Breadalbane was giving his Queen a royal welcome. Lady Breadalbane, a childless wife, had been one of the beautiful Haddington Baillies, descendants of Grizel Baillie; she was suffering from wasting sickness, and her beauty, still remarkable, was "as that of the dead." Some of the flower of the Scotch n.o.bility were a.s.sembled in the house to meet the Queen and the Prince--members of the families of Buccleugh, Sutherland, Abercorn, Roxburgh, Kinnoul, Lauderdale &c. &c. The Gothic dining-room was dined in for the first time; the Queen was the earliest occupant of her suite of rooms. After dinner, the gardens were illuminated, the hills were crowned with bonfires, and Highlanders danced reels to the sound of the pipes by torchlight in front of the house. "It had a wild and very gay effect."

The whole life, with its environment, was like a revelation of new possibilities to the young English Queen who had never been out of England before. It was at the most propitious moment that she made her first acquaintance with the Scotch Highlands which she has learned to love so well; she enjoyed everything with the keen sense of novelty and the buoyance of unquenched spirits. Looking back upon it all, long afterwards, she wrote with simple pathos, "Albert and I were then only twenty-three, young and happy."

At Taymouth there was shooting for the Prince; and there was much pleasant driving, walking, and sketching for the Queen--with the drives walks, and sketches unlike anything that she had been accustomed to previously. The weather was not always favourable; the sport was not always so fortunate as on the first day, when the Prince shot nineteen roe-deer, several hares and pheasants, three brace of grouse, and wounded a capereailzie, which was afterwards brought in; but the travellers made the best of everything and became "quite fond of the bagpipes," which were played in perfection at breakfast, at luncheon, whenever the royal pair went out and in, and before and during dinner. One evening there was a ball for the benefit of the county people, at which the Queen danced a quadrille with Lord Breadalbane; Prince Albert and the d.u.c.h.ess of Buccleugh being the _vis-a-vis_.

On September 10th, a fine morning, the Queen left Taymouth. She was rowed up Loch Tay, past Ben Lawers with Benmore in the distance. The pipers played at intervals, the boatmen sang Gaelic songs, and the representative of Macdougal of Lorn steered. At Auchmore, where the party lunched, they were rejoined by the Highland Guard. As her Majesty drove round by Glen Dochart and Glen Ogle, the latter reminded her of the fatal Kyber Pa.s.s with which her thoughts had been busy in the beginning of the year. By the time Loch Earn was reached, the fine weather had changed to rain. By Glenartney and Duneira, earthquake-haunted Comrie, Ochtertyre, where grows "the aik," and Crieff with the "Knock," on which the last Scotch witch was burnt, the travellers journeyed to Drummond Castle, belonging to Lady Willoughby d'Eresby, where her Majesty was to make her next stay. Lady Willoughby was a chieftainess in her own right, the heiress of the old Drummonds, Earls of Perth. Lord Willoughby was the representative of the lucky English Burrells and the Welsh Gwydyrs, one of whom had married a Maid of Honour to Catharine of Aragon, and come to grief, because, unlike her royal mistress, she and her husband adopted the Protestant religion, and fell into dire disgrace in the reign of b.l.o.o.d.y Mary. The Drummonds.

like the Murrays and unlike the Campbells, had been staunch Jacobites.

The mother of the first and last Duke of Perth caused the old castle to be blown up after her two sons had joined the rebellion in the '45, lest the keep should fall into the hands of King George's soldiers. [Footnote: She is said to have been the heroine of the popular Jacobite song, "When the King comes over the water."] The Queen alludes in her Journal to the steep ascent to the castle. The long narrow avenue leads up by the side of the fine castle rock, tufted with wild strawberries, ferns, and heather, to the courtyard. Her Majesty also mentions the old terraced garden; "like an old French garden," or like such an Italian garden as was a favourite model for the gardens of its day.

The Willoughby Highlanders, wearing the Drummond tartan and the holly badge, were now the Queen's guard. The lady of the castle and her daughters wore the Drummond tartan and the holly when they met the Queen.

It was at Drummond Castle that Prince Albert made his first attempt at deer-stalking, under the able guidance of Campbell of Moonzie. The Prince's description of the sport was that it was "one of the most interesting of pursuits," in which the sportsman, clad in grey, in order to remain unseen, had to keep under the hill, beyond the possibility of scent, and crawl on hands and knees to approach his prey.

There was a story told at the time of the Prince and Campbell of Moonzie.

Prince Albert had arranged to return at a particular hour to drive with the Queen. Moonzie, who was the most ardent and agile deer-stalker in the neighbourhood, had got into the swing of the sport, till then unsuccessful, when, as the men lay crouching among the heather, waiting intently for the herd expected to come that way, the Prince said it was, time to return.

"But the deer, your Royal Highness," faltered the Highlander, looking aghast, and speaking in the whisper which the exigencies of the case required.

The Prince explained that the Queen expected him.

It is to be feared the Highlander, in the excitement of the moment, and the marvel that any man--not to say any prince--could give up the sport at such a crisis, suggested that the Queen might wait, while the deer certainly would not.

"The Queen commands," said her true knight, with a quiet smile and a gentle rebuke.

In the evening there was company, as at Taymouth, some in kilts. Campbell of Moonzie showed himself as great in reels as in deer-stalking. (Ah! the wild glee and nimble grace of a Highland reel well danced.) The Queen danced one country dance with Lord Willoughby, while Prince Albert had the eldest daughter of the house, Lady Carington, for his partner.

The next day the royal party, starting as early as nine on a hazy morning, reached Stirling and visited the castle, which figures so largely in the lives of the old Stewart kings. The Queen saw the room in which James II.

slew Douglas, John Knox's pulpit, the field of Bannockburn, which saved Scotland from a conquest, and the Knoll or "Knowe" where the Scotch Queens and the Court ladies sat to look down on their knights "Riding the Ring"

or playing at the boisterously boyish game of "Hurleyhacket." But the autumn mists shut out the "Highland hills," already receding in the background, and the Links of Forth, where the river winds like the meshes of a chain through the fertile lowlands to the sea. Soon Drummond Castle and Taymouth, with their lochs and mountains and "plaided array," would be like a wonderful dream, to be often recalled and recounted at Windsor and Buckingham Palace.

From Stirling the Queen travelled back to Dalkeith, where she arrived the same night. During her Majesty's last day in Scotland, which she expressed herself as "very sorry to leave," she drove to Roslin Chapel, where twenty "barons bold" of the house of St. Clair wear s.h.i.+rts of mail for shrouds, then went on to storied Hawthornden--a wooded nest hung high over the water, where the poet Drummond entertained his English brother-of-the-pen, Ben Jonson.

On Thursday, the 15th of September, the Queen embarked in the _Trident_, a large steamboat, likely to be swifter than the _Royal George_, and surrounded by the flotilla, which, with the exception of one, fell behind, and out of sight in the course of the voyage, sailed for England, past Berwick Law, Tantallon, the ruined keep of the Douglases, and the Ba.s.s, where a gloomy state prison once frowned on a rock, now given up to seagulls and Solan geese. The weather was favourable and the moonlight fine. The voyage became enjoyable as the young couple ate a "pleasant little dinner on deck in a tent, made of flags," or paced the deck in the moonlight, or read the "Lay of the Last Minstrel," and played on the piano in the cabin. Notwithstanding the good time, winds and waves are not to be trusted, and the roar of the guns which announced that the vessel was at the Nore was a welcome awakening at three o'clock on the morning of Sat.u.r.day, the 17th. The sun smiled through a slight haze on the sail up the river, among the familiar English sights and sounds. The tour, which had delighted the pair, was over; but home, where a loving mother and little children awaited them, was sweet.

CHAPTER XV.

A MARRIAGE, A DEATH, AND A BIRTH IN THE ROYAL FAMILY.--A PALACE HOME.

The rest of the autumn and early winter pa.s.sed in busy quiet and domestic happiness. In November, the Queen honoured the Duke of Wellington by a second visit to Walmer. She was no longer the girl-princess--a solitary figure, but for her devoted mother, she was the Queen-wife, taking with her not only her good and n.o.ble husband, but her two fine children, to show her old servant, the great soldier of a former generation, who had known her from her childhood, how rich she had become in all womanly blessings. During her stay her Majesty went to Dover, and included the guardian castle of England, on the chalk cliffs which overlook the coast of France, among the venerable fortresses she had inspected this year.

In the meantime, the agitation for Free Trade was exciting the country in one direction, and O'Connell was thundering for a repeal of the union between England and Ireland in another. On the 20th of January, 1843, a public crime was committed which shocked the whole nation and aroused the utmost sympathy of the Queen and Prince Albert. A half-crazy man named Macnaughten, who conceived he had received a political injury from Sir Robert Peel, planned to waylay and shoot the Premier in Downing Street.

The man mistook his victim, and fatally wounded Sir Robert's private secretary, Mr. Drummond, who perished in the room of his chief. The plea of insanity accepted by the jury on the trial was so far set aside by the judges.

The descendants of the numerous family of George III. and Queen Charlotte, in the third generation, only numbered five princes and princesses. Apart from her German kindred, the Queen had only four cousins--her nearest English relations after her uncles and aunts. Of these the Crown Prince of Hanover, German born but English bred as Prince George of c.u.mberland, and long regarded as, in default of Princess Victoria, the heir to the crown, married at Hanover, on the 18th of February, Princess Mary of Saxe-Altenburg. The Crown Prince was then twenty-four years of age.

Though he had no longer any prospect of succeeding to the throne of England, he was the heir to a considerable German kingdom. But the terrible misfortune which had cost him his eyesight did not terminate his hard struggle with fate. His father, whose ambition had been built upon his son from his birth, appeared to have more difficulty in submitting to the sore conditions of the Prince's loss than the Prince himself showed.

By a curious self-deception, the King of Hanover never acknowledged his son's blindness, but persisted in treating him, and causing others to treat him, as if he saw. The Queen of Hanover, once a bone of contention at the English Court, and Queen Charlotte's _bete noire_, as the divorced wife of one of her two husbands prior to her third marriage with the Duke of c.u.mberland, had died two years before. It was desirable in every light that she should find a successor--a princess--to preside over the widowed Court, and be the mother to the future kings of Hanover, supposing Hanover had remained on the roll of the nations. A fitting choice was made, and the old King took care that the marriage should be celebrated with a splendour worthy of the grandson of a King of England.

Twenty-four sovereigns and princes, among them the King of Prussia, graced the ceremony. The bride wore cloth of silver and a profusion of jewels, and whatever further troubles were in store for the blind bridegroom, whose manly fort.i.tude and uprightness of character--albeit these qualities were not without their alloy of pride and obstinacy--won him the respect of his contemporaries, Providence blessed him on that February day with a good, bright, devoted wife.

On the 25th of March, the Thames Tunnel, which at the time was fondly regarded as the very triumph of modern engineering, and a source of the greatest convenience to London, was opened for foot-pa.s.sengers by a procession of dignitaries and eminent men, including in their ranks the Lord Mayor, Sir Robert Inglis, Lord Lincoln, Joseph Hume, Messrs. Babbage and Faraday, &c. &c. The party descended by one staircase, shaft, and archway which carried them to Wapping, and, ascending again, returned by the other archway to Rotherhithe. Some of the Thames watermen hoisted black flags as a sign that they considered their craft doomed.

For the first time since her accession, the Queen had been unable, from the state of her health, to open Parliament or to hold the usual spring levees. Prince Albert relieved her of this, as of so many of her burdens, and Baron Stockmar paid a visit to England, at the Prince's urgent request, that the Baron's sagacity and experience might be brought to bear on what remained of the arduous task of getting a Queen's household into order and directing a royal nursery. The care of the Queen's Privy Purse had been transferred to the Prince on the departure of Baroness Lehzen.