Dean Stanley is reported as telling of a touching
little circumstance which he received from the Princess
Hohenlohe (Feodore), from which it seems that Her
Majesty was for a long time in the habit of going every
morning to look at the cows on Prince Albert’s
model farm, because “he had been used
to do so,” feeling, perhaps, that the gentle
creatures might miss him—that somewhere
in their big dull brains, they might wonder where
their friend could be, and why he did not come.
The Princess also said that her poor sister found
her only comfort in the belief that her husband’s
spirit was close beside her—for he had
promised her that it should be so.
Arrival in England of the Princess Alexandra to wed
the Prince of Wales— Garibaldi’s
visit to London—The Queen’s first
public appearance after her widowhood—Marriage
of the Princess Louise—Illness of the Prince
of Wales—Disaffection in Ireland—The
Queen’s sympathy during the illness of President
Garfield.
On the 7th of March, 1863, all London and nearly all
England went mad over the coming of the Princess Alexandra,
from Denmark, to wed the Prince of Wales. Lord
Ronald Gower, a son of the beautiful Duchess of Sutherland,
gives in his “Reminiscences” a fine description
of her arrival in London, and of the wedding at Windsor
three days after. He says: “Probably
since the day in Paris when Marie Antoinette was acclaimed
in the gardens of the Tuileries, no Princess ever had
so enthusiastic a reception, or so quickly won the
hearts of thousands by the mere charm of her presence.”
This writer gives a very vivid description of the
crowd which waited patiently for hours, of a cold,
wretched day, for the sight of that sweet face whose
sweetness has never yet cloyed upon them. At
last, there came a small company of Life Guards, escorting
an open carriage-and-four, containing the young Danish
Princess and His Royal Highness Albert Edward, looking
very happy and very conscious. The smiling, blushing,
appealing face of the Princess warmed as well as won
all hearts. There were few flowers at that season
to scatter on her way, except flowers of poetry, of
which there was no jack. Tennyson’s pretty
ode has not been forgotten, but all as noble and sweet
was the greeting of her from whom I have before quoted;
Mrs. Crosland. The most touching, though not
the strongest verse in that poem, is this:
“She comes another child to be
To that Crowned Widow of the
land,
Whose sceptre weighs more heavily
Since One has ceased to hold
her hand.”
The Queen did not feel herself equal to taking any
part in the marriage ceremony, but looked down upon
the scene of grandeur and gayety from the Royal Gallery
of St George’s Chapel. The Duchess of Sutherland
attended her then for the last time. She had
been with her at her coronation and marriage; to-day
they were both widows, and must have been at the moment
living intensely and sorrowfully in the past.
With the exception of the Crown Princess of Germany
and the Duke of Edinburgh, all the Queen’s children,
down to little Beatrice, were present. The bride,
it is stated, “looked lovely; she did not raise
her eyes once in going into, and but little in going
out of, the Chapel on her husband’s arm.”
