Strong, vigorous, enthusiastic, bringing, so it seemed,
good fortune with her—the Highlanders declared
she had “a lucky foot”—she relished
everything—the scrambles and the views and
the contretemps and the rough inns with their coarse
fare and Brown and Grant waiting at table. She
could have gone on for ever and ever, absolutely happy
with Albert beside her and Brown at her pony’s
head. But the time came for turning homewards,
alas! the time came for going back to England.
She could hardly bear it; she sat disconsolate in
her room and watched the snow falling. The last
day! Oh! If only she could be snowed up!
The Crimean War brought new experiences, and most
of them were pleasant ones. It was pleasant to
be patriotic and pugnacious, to look out appropriate
prayers to be read in the churches, to have news of
glorious victories, and to know oneself, more proudly
than ever, the representative of England. With
that spontaneity of feeling which was so peculiarly
her own, Victoria poured out her emotion, her admiration,
her pity, her love, upon her “dear soldiers.”
When she gave them their medals her exultation knew
no bounds. “Noble fellows!” she wrote
to the King of the Belgians, “I own I feel as
if these were my own children; my heart
beats for them as for my nearest and dearest.
They were so touched, so pleased; many, I hear, cried—and
they won’t hear of giving up their medals to
have their names engraved upon them for fear they
should not receive the identical one put
into their hands by me, which
is quite touching. Several came by in a sadly
mutilated state.” She and they were at
one. They felt that she had done them a splendid
honour, and she, with perfect genuineness, shared
their feeling. Albert’s attitude towards
such things was different; there was an austerity
in him which quite prohibited the expansions of emotion.
When General Williams returned from the heroic defence
of Kars and was presented at Court, the quick, stiff,
distant bow with which the Prince received him struck
like ice upon the beholders. He was a stranger
still.
But he had other things to occupy him, more important,
surely, than the personal impressions of military
officers and people who went to Court. He was
at work—ceaselessly at work—on
the tremendous task of carrying through the war to
a successful conclusion. State papers, despatches,
memoranda, poured from him in an overwhelming stream.
Between 1853 and 1857 fifty folio volumes were filled
with the comments of his pen upon the Eastern question.
Nothing would induce him to stop. Weary ministers
staggered under the load of his advice; but his advice
continued, piling itself up over their writing-tables,
and flowing out upon them from red box after red box.
Nor was it advice to be ignored. The talent for
administration which had reorganised the royal palaces
