The Prince of Wales visited India, traveled and hunted
extensively, was feted after the most gorgeous Oriental
style, and brought home rich presents enough to set
up a grand Eastern bazaar in Marlborough House, and
animals enough to start a respectable menagerie.
Everywhere he went he inclined the hearts of the people
to peace and loyalty, by his frank and genial ways.
Does His Royal Highness ever propose such a tour in
Ireland? He would not probably receive as tribute
so much jewelry and gorgeous merchandise—so
many tigers, pythons and other little things; but
there is a fine chance for giving over there, and we
read: “It is more blessed to give, than
to receive.”
I come now to that period of our national history
with which the Queen of England so kindly, so “gently
and humanly” associated herself—I
mean the illness and death of President Garfield.
To this day, that association is a drop of sweetness
in the bitter cup of our sorrow and humiliation.
From the 2d of July, 1881, the date of her first telegram
of anxious inquiry addressed to our Minister, to the
27th of the following September, when she telegraphed
her tender solicitude as to the condition of “the
late President’s mother,” not a week went
by that she did not send to Mr. Lowell sympathetic
messages, asking for the latest news—congratulating
or condoling, as the state of “the world’s
patient” fluctuated between life and death—and
when all was over, she at once telegraphed directly
to Mrs. Garfield in these words of tenderest commiseration,
so worthy of her great heart:
“Words cannot express the deep sympathy I feel
with you at this terrible moment. May God support
and comfort you as He alone can.”
She afterwards sent an autograph letter to Mrs. Garfield,
and also asked for a photograph of the President.
No American who was in London at that time, especially
on the day of or President’s funeral, so universally
observed throughout Great Britain, can ever forget
the generous, whole-souled sympathy of the English
people, in part at least, inspired by the words ’and
acts of the English Queen. The intense interest
with which she had watched that melancholy struggle
between “the Two Angels,” over that distant
death-bed, and the grief with which she beheld the
issue were known and responded to, and so the noble
contagion spread. It was not needed, perhaps,
that signs of mourning should be shown in her Palace
windows, to have them appear as they did, all over
the vast city, but it was something strange and affecting
to see those blinds of a proud royal abode lowered
out of respect for the memory of a republican ruler,
and sympathy for an untitled “sister-widow.”
We respected all those signs of mourning about us
then—were grateful for them all, from the
flag at half-mast and the tolling bell, to the closing
of the shop of the small tradesman, and the bit of
crape on the whip of the cabman.
CHAPTER XXX.
Copyrights
Queen Victoria, her girlhood and womanhood from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
