The days were too short for all that was to be seen and done. The first day there was a visit to the fortress overhanging the town, which looks as far away as the sea of trees, the Thuringerwald. It has Luther's room, with his chair and part of his bed.

In the evening the Queen went to the perfect little German theatre, where Meyerbeer's _Huguenots_ was given, and the audience sang "G.o.d save the Queen" to German words.

The next day the visitors drove to Kalenberg, another of the Duke's seats. In the evening they held a reception at the palace, when not only those persons who had the magic prefix _von_ to their names were admitted, but deputations of citizens, merchants, and artisans were presented, the Queen praising their good manners afterwards.

The following day was the Feast of St. Gregorius, the children's festival, in which thirteen hundred children walked in procession through Coburg, some in fancy dresses, most of the girls in white and green. Three girls came up to the palace balcony and sang a song in honour of the Queen. Then great and small repaired to the meadow-- fortunately the fine weather had set in--where there were tents decorated with flowers, in which the royal party dined, while the band played and the children danced "so nicely and merrily, waltzes, polkas, and it was the prettiest thing I ever saw," declared the Queen. "Her Majesty 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 the ill.u.s.trious 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" is the report of another observer.

The day ended with a great ball at the palace.

The next day was spent more quietly in going over old favourite haunts, among them the cabinet or collection of curiosities, stuffed birds, fossils, autographs, &c., which had been formed partly by the Princes when boys. Prince Albert continued to take the greatest interest in it, and had made the Queen a contributor to its treasures.

At dinner the Queen tasted _braturste_ (roasted sausages), the national dish of Coburg, and p.r.o.nounced it excellent, with its accompaniment of native beer. A royal neighbour, Queen Adelaide's brother, the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen, joined the party at dinner, and the company witnessed the performance of Schiller's _Bride of Messina_ at the theatre.

On Sunday the August weather was so hot that the Queen and the Prince breakfasted for the second time out of doors. In the course of the morning they drove over with Duke Ernest and the d.u.c.h.ess to St. Moritz Kirche--equivalent to the cathedral of the town. The clergy received the party at the door of the church, and the Ober-Superintendent Genzler made a brief oration "expressive of his joy at receiving the great Christian Queen who was descended from their Saxon dukes, who were the first Reformers, and at the doors of the church where the Reformation was first preached." The Queen describes the service as like the Scotch Presbyterian form, only with more ceremony and more singing. The last impressed her deeply. The pastor preached a fine sermon. The afternoon's drive led through scenery which, especially in its pine woods, resembled the Scotch Highlands, and ended in the _Thiergarten_, where the Duke reared his wild boars.

"I cannot think," the Queen wrote longingly, "of going away from here.

I count the hours, for I have a feeling here which I cannot describe-- a feeling as if my childhood also had been spent here." No wonder; Coburg was home to her, like her native air or her mother tongue; she must have learnt to know it at her mother's knee. Her husband's experience was added to the earlier recollection of every salient point, every _Haus-Mahrchen_; and never were husband and wife more in sympathy than the two who now s.n.a.t.c.hed a short season of delight from a sojourn in the cradle of their race.

Another brilliant sunshiny day--which the brother Princes spent together reviving old a.s.sociations in the town, while the Queen sketched at Rosenau--closed with the last visit to the theatre, when the people again sang "G.o.d save the Queen," adding to it some pretty farewell verses.

The last day which the Queen pa.s.sed in Coburg was, by a happy circ.u.mstance, the Prince's birthday--the first he had spent at Rosenau since he was a lad of fifteen, and, in spite of all changes, the day dawned full of quiet gladness. "To celebrate this dear day in my beloved husband's country and birthplace is more than I ever hoped for," wrote her Majesty, "and I am so thankful for it; I wished him joy so warmly when the singers sang as they did the other morning."

The numberless gifts had been arranged by no other hands than those of the Queen and the Prince's brother and sister-in-law on a table "dressed with flowers."' Peasants came in gala dress, [Footnote: The Queen admired greatly many of the peasant costumes, often as serviceable and durable as they were becoming, which she saw in Germany. She expressed the regret so often uttered by English travellers that English labourers and workers at handicrafts, in place of retaining a dress of their own, have long ago adopted a tawdry version of the fashions of the upper cla.s.ses. Unfortunately the practice is fast becoming universal.] with flowers, music, and dancing to offer their good wishes. In the afternoon all was quiet again, and the Queen and the Prince took their last walk together, for many a day, at Rosenau, down into the hayfields where the friendly people exchanged greetings with them, drank the crystal clear water from the stream, and looked at the fortifications which two princely boys had dug and built, as partly lessons, partly play.

The next day at half-past eight the travellers left "with heavy hearts," measuring the fateful years which were likely to elapse before Coburg was seen again. The pain of parting was lessened by the presence of the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Coburg, who accompanied their guests to the Duke's other domain of Gotha. The way led through Queen Adelaide's country of Meiningen, and at every halting-place clergymen with addresses more or less discursive, and "white and green young ladies," literally bombarded the travellers with speeches, flowers, and poems. At last the Duke of Coburg's territory was again entered after it was dark; and the party reached the lovely castellated country-seat of Reinhardtsbrunn, amidst forest and mountain scenery, with its lake in front of the house, set down in the centre of a mining population that came up in quaint costumes, with flaming torches, to walk in procession past the windows. The Queen was charmed with Reinhardtsbrunn, and would fain have lingered there, but time pressed, and she was expected in the course of the next afternoon at Gotha, on a visit to the Prince's aged grandmother who had helped to bring him up, and was so fondly attached to her former charge.

The old lady at seventy-four years of age antic.i.p.ated the visit. She travelled the distance of eight miles before breakfast, in order to take her grandchildren by surprise. "I hastened to her," is the Queen's account, "and found Albert and Ernest with her. She is a charming old lady, and though very small, remarkably nice-looking, erect and active, but unfortunately very deaf.... She was so happy to see us, and kissed me over and over again. Albert, who is the dearest being to her in the world, she was enraptured to see again, and kissed so kindly. It did one's heart good to see her joy."

In the afternoon the travellers proceeded to Gotha, which was in a state of festival and crowded with people. The Queen and the Prince resided at the old d.u.c.h.ess's house of Friedrichsthal, where the greatest preparations, including the hanging of all her pictures in their rooms, had been made for them. The first visit they paid in Gotha was a solemn one, to the chapel which formed the temporary resting-place of the body of the late Duke, till it could be removed to its vault in Coburg. Then the rooms in which the father had died were visited. These were almost equally melancholy, left as they had been, unchanged, with the wreaths that had decorated the room for his last birthday still there; "and there is that sad clock which stopped just before he died." Who that has seen in Germany these faded wreaths, with their crushed, soiled streamers of white riband, can forget the desolate aspect which they lend to any room in which they are preserved!

There was a cabinet or museum here, too, to inspect, and the curious old spectacle of the popinjay to be witnessed, in company with the Grand Duke of Weimar and his son. This kind of shooting was harmless enough, for the object aimed at was a wooden bird on a pole. The riflemen, led by the rifle-king (_schutzen-konig_), the public officials, and deputations of peasants marched past the platform where the Queen stood, like a pageant of the Middle Ages. All the princes, including King Leopold, fired, but none brought down the bird; that feat was left for some humbler hero.

On the Queen's return from the popinjay she had the happiness to meet Baroness Lehzen, her old governess, who had come from Buckeburg to see her Majesty. During the next few days the old friends were often together, and the Queen speaks with pleasure of the Baroness's "unchanged devotion," only she was quieter than formerly. It must have appeared like another dream to both, that "the little Princess" of Kensington, travelling with her husband, should greet her old governess, and tell her, under the shadow of the great Thuringerwald, of the four children left behind in England.

The next day the forest itself was entered, when "the bright blue sky, the heavenly air, the exquisite tints," gave a crowning charm to its beauties. The road lay through green glades which occasionally commanded views so remote as those of the Hartz Mountains, to _Jagersruh_, a hunting-lodge on a height "among stately firs that look like cedars." Here the late Duke had excited all his skill and taste to make a hunter's paradise, which awoke again the regretful thought, "How it would have pleased him to have shown all this himself to those he loved so dearly!"

But _Jagersruh_ was not the goal of the excursion; it was a "deer-drive" or battue, which in Germany at least can be cla.s.sed as "a relic of mediaeval barbarism." A considerable s.p.a.ce in the forest was cleared and enclosed with canvas. In the centre of this enclosure was a pavilion open at the sides, made of branches of fir-trees, and decorated with berries, heather, and forest flowers; in short, a sylvan bower provided for the princ.i.p.al company, outside a table furnished with powder and shot supplied a station for less privileged persons, including the cha.s.seurs or huntsmen of the Duke, in green and gold uniforms.

Easy-chairs were placed in the pavilion for the Queen, the Queen of the Belgians, and the d.u.c.h.ess Alexandrina, while Prince Albert, King Leopold, the Prince of Leiningen, and Duke Ferdinand of Saxe-Coburg, the Prince's uncle, stood by the ladies. Stags to the number of upwards of thirty, and other game, were driven into the enclosure, and between the performances of a band which played at intervals, the gentlemen loaded their rifles, and fired at the helpless prey in the presence of the ladies.

Her Majesty records in her Journal, "As for the sport itself, none of the gentlemen like this butchery." She turns quickly from the piteous slaughter to the beautiful, peaceful scenery.

A quiet Sunday was spent at Gotha. Monday was the _Lieder fest_, or festival of song, to which, on this occasion, not only the townspeople and villagers from all the neighbouring towns and villages came with their banners and bands, but every small royalty from far and near flocked to meet the Queen of England. These innumerable cousins repaired with the Queen to the park opposite the Schloss, and shared in the festival. The orchestra, composed of many hundreds of singers, was opposite the pavilion erected for the distinguished visitors. Among the fine songs, rendered as only Germans could render them, songs composed by Prince Albert and his brother, and songs written for the day, were sung. Afterwards there was a State dinner and a ball.

The last day had come, with its inevitable sadness. "I can't--won't think of it," wrote the Queen, referring to her approaching departure.

She drove and walked, and, with her brother-in-law and his d.u.c.h.ess, was ferried over to the "Island of Graves," the burial-place of the old Dukes of Gotha when the duchy was distinct from that of Coburg. An ancient gardener pointed out to the visitors that only one more flower-covered grave was wanted to make the number complete. When the d.u.c.h.ess of Gotha should be laid to rest with her late husband and his fathers, then the House of Gotha, in its separate existence, would have pa.s.sed away.

One more drive through the hayfields and the n.o.ble fir-trees to the vast Thuringerwald, and, "with many a longing, lingering look at the pine-clad mountains," the Queen and the Prince turned back to attend a ball given in their honour by the townspeople in the theatre.

On the following day the homeward journey was begun. After partings, rendered still more sorrowful by the fact that the age of the cherished grandmother of the delightful "dear" family party rendered it not very probable that she, for one, would see all her children round her again, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Coburg went one stage with the travellers, and then there was another reluctant if less painful parting.

The Queen and the Prince stopped at the quaint little town of Eisenach, which Helen of Orleans was yet to make her home. They were received by the Grand Duke and Hereditary d.u.c.h.ess of Saxe-Weimar, with whom the strangers drove through the autumn woods to the famous old fortress of the Wartburg, which, in its time, dealt a deadly blow to Roman Catholicism by sheltering, in the hour of need, the Protestant champion, Luther. Like the good Protestants her Majesty and the Prince were, they went to see the great reformer's room, and looked at the ink-splash on the wall--the mark of his conflict with the devil--the stove at which he warmed himself, the rude table at which he wrote and ate, and above all, the glorious view over the myriads of tree-tops with which he must have refreshed his steadfast soul. But if Luther is the hero of the Wartburg, there is also a heroine--the central figure of that "Saint's Tragedy" which Charles Kingsley was to give to the world in the course of the next two or three years--St. Elizabeth of Thuringia, the tenderest, bravest, most tortured soul that ever received the doubtful gain of canonization. There is the well by which she is said to have ministered to her sick poor, half-way up the ascent to the Wartburg, and down in the little town nestling below, may be seen the remains of an hospital bearing her name.

From Fulda, where the royal party slept, they journeyed to Goethe's town of Frankfort, where Ludwig I., who turned Munich into a great picture and sculpture gallery, and built the costly Valhalla to commemorate the ill.u.s.trious German dead, dined with her Majesty.

At Biberich the Rhine was again hailed, and a steamer, waiting for the travellers, carried them to Bingen, where their own little vessel, _The Fairy_, met and brought them on to Deutz, on the farther side from Cologne. The Queen says naively that the Rhine had lost its charm for them all--the excitement of novelty was gone, and the Thuringerwald had spoilt them. Stolzenfels, Ehrenbreitstein, and the Sieben-Gebirge had their words of praise, but sight-seeing had become for the present a weariness, and after Bonn, with its memories, had been left behind, it was a rest to the royal travellers--as to most other travellers at times--to turn away their jaded eyes, relinquish the duty of alert observation, forget what was pa.s.sing around them, and lose themselves in a book, as if they were in England. Perhaps the home letters had awakened a little home-sickness in the couple who had been absent for a month. At least, we are given to understand that it was of home and children the Queen and the Prince were chiefly thinking when they reached Antwerp, to which the King and Queen of the Belgians had preceded them, and re-embarked in the royal yacht _Victoria and Albert_, though it was not at once to sail for English waters. In gracious compliance with an urgent entreaty of Louis Philippe's, the yacht was to call, as it were in pa.s.sing, at Treport.

On the morning of the 8th of September the Queen's yacht again lay at anchor off the French seaport. The King's barge, with the King, his son, and son-in-law, Prince Joinville, and Prince Augustus of Saxe- Coburg, and M. Guizot, once more came alongside. After the friendliest greetings, the Queen and Prince Albert landed with their host, though not without difficulty. The tide would not admit of the ordinary manner of landing, and Louis Philippe in the dilemma fell back on a bathing-machine, which dragged the party successfully if somewhat unceremoniously over the sands.

The Queen of the French was there as before, accompanied among others by her brother, the Prince of Salerno and his Princess, sister to the Emperor of Austria. The crowd cheered as loudly as ever; there seemed no cloud on the horizon that bright, hot day; even the plague of too much publicity and formality had been got rid of at Chateau d'Eu. The Queen was delighted to renew her intercourse with the large, bright family circle--two of them her relations and fast friends. "It put me so much in mind of two years ago," she declared, "that it was really as if we had never been away;" and the King had to show her his _Galerie Victoria_, a room fitted up in her honour, hung with the pictures ill.u.s.trating her former visit and the King's return visit to Windsor.

Although she had impressed on him that she wished as much as possible to dispense with state and show on this occasion, the indefatigable old man had been at the trouble and expense of erecting a theatre, and bringing down from Paris the whole of the Opera Comique to play before her, and thus increase the gaiety of the single evening of her stay.

Only another day was granted to Chateau d'Eu. By the next sunset the King was conducting his guests on board the royal yacht and seizing the last opportunity, when Prince Albert was taking Prince Joinville over the _Fairy_, glibly to a.s.sure the Queen and Lord Aberdeen that he, Louis Philippe, would never consent to Montpensier's marriage to the Infanta of Spain till her sister the Queen was married and had children.

At parting the King embraced her Majesty again and again. The yacht lay still, and there was the most beautiful moonlight reflected on the water. The Queen and the Prince walked up and down the deck, while not they alone, but the astute statesman Aberdeen, congratulated themselves on how well this little visit had prospered, in addition to the complete success of the German tour. With the sea like a lake, and sky and sea of the deepest blue, in the early morning the yacht weighed anchor for England. Under the hot haze of an autumn noonday sun the royal travellers disembarked on the familiar beach at Osborne.

The dearest of welcomes greeted them as they "drove up straight to the house, for there, looking like roses, so well and so fat, stood the four children."

The Queen referred afterwards to that visit to Germany as to one of the happiest times in her life. She said when she thought of it, it made her inclined to cry, so pure and tender had been the pleasure.

CHAPTER IV.

RAILWAY SPECULATION--FAILURE OF THE POTATO CROP--SIR ROBERT PEEL'S RESOLUTIONS--BIRTH OF PRINCESS HELENA--VISIT OF IBRAHIM PASHA.

One thousand eight hundred and forty-five had begun with what appeared a fresh impetus to national prosperity--a new start full of life and vigour, by which the whole resources of the country should be at once stirred up and rendered ten times more available than they had ever been before. This was known afterwards as "the Railway Mania," which, like other manias, if they are not mere fever-fits of speculation, but are founded on real and tangible gains, had its eager hopeful rise, its inflated disproportioned exaggeration, its disastrous collapse, its gradual recovery, and eventually its solid reasonable success. In 1845 the movement was hurrying on to the second stage of its history.

The great man of 1845 was Hudson the railway speculator, "the Railway King." Fabulous wealth was attributed to him; immense power for the hour was his. A seat in Parliament, entrance into aristocratic circles, were trifles in comparison. We can remember hearing of a great London dinner at which the lions were the gifted Prince, the husband of the Queen, and the distorted shadow of George Stephenson, the bourgeois creator of a network of railway lines, a Bourse of railway shares; the winner, as it was then supposed, of a huge fortune. It was said that Prince Albert himself had felt some curiosity to see this man and hear him speak, and that their encounter on this occasion was prearranged and not accidental.

The autumn of 1845 revealed another side to the country's history. The rainy weather in the summer brought to sudden hideous maturity the lurking potato disease. Any one who recalls the time and the aspect of the fields must retain a vivid recollection of the sudden blight that fell upon acres on acres of what had formerly been luxuriant vegetation, under the sunshine which came late only to complete the work of destruction; the withering and blackening of the leaves of the plant, the sickening foetid odour of the decaying bulbs, which tainted the heavy air for miles; the dismay that filled the minds of the people, who, in the days of dear corn, had learnt more and more to depend upon the cultivation of potatoes, to whom their failure meant ruin and starvation.

This was especially the case in Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland, where the year closed in gloom and apprehension; famine stalked abroad, and doles of Indian corn administered by Government in addition to the alms of the charitable, alone kept body and soul together in fever-stricken mult.i.tudes.

About this time also, like another feature of the spirit of adventure which sent Franklin to the North Pole, and operated to a certain extent in the flush of railway enterprise, England was talking half chivalrously, half commercially, and alas! more than half sceptically, of Brook and Borneo, and the new attempt to establish civilization and herald Christianity under English influence in the far seas. All these conflicting elements of new history were felt in the palace as in other dwellings, and made part of Queen Victoria's life in those days.

A great statesman closed his eyes on this changing world. Earl Grey, who had been in the front in advocating change in his time, died.

A brave soldier fell in the last of his battles. Sir Robert Sale, who had been the guest of his Queen a year before, having returned to India and rejoined the army of the Sutlej on fresh disturbances breaking out in the Punjab, was killed at the battle of Moodkee.

Something of the wit and humour of the country was quenched or undergoing a transformation and pa.s.sing into other hands. Two famous English humorists, Sydney Smith and Tom Hood the elder, went over to the great majority.

By the close of 1845 it had become clear that a change in the Corn Laws was impending. In the circ.u.mstances Sir Robert Peel, who, though he had been for some time approaching the conclusion, was not prepared to take immediate steps--who was, indeed, the representative of the Conservative party--resigned office. Lord John Russell, the great Whig leader, was called upon by the Queen to summon a new Ministry; but in consequence of difficulties with those who were to have been his colleagues, Lord John was compelled to announce himself unable to form a Cabinet, and Sir Robert Peel, at the Queen's request, resumed office, conscious that he had to face one of the hardest tasks ever offered to a statesman. He had to encounter "the coolness of former friends, the grudging support of unwilling adherents, the rancour of disappointed political antagonists."

In February, 1846, the royal family spent a week at Osborne, glad to escape from the strife of tongues and the violent political contention which they could do nothing to quell. The Prince was happy, "out all day," directing the building which was going on, and laying out the grounds of his new house; and the Queen was happy in her husband and Children's happiness. During this short absence Sir Robert Peel's resolutions were carried, and his Corn Bill, which was virtually the repeal of the Corn Laws, pa.s.sed. He had only to await the consequences.

In the middle of the political excitement a single human tragedy, which Sir Robert Peel did something to prevent, reached its climax.

Benjamin Haydon, the painter, the ardent advocate, both by principle and practice, of high art, took his life, driven to despair by his failure in worldly success--especially by the ill-success of his cartoons at the exhibition in Westminster Hall.