It was quite impossible not to wish to return to such pleasures again and again; and in 1848 the Queen took a lease of Balmoral House, a small residence near Braemar in the wilds of Aberdeenshire.  Four years later she bought the place outright.  Now she could be really happy every summer; now she could be simple and at her ease; now she could be romantic every evening, and dote upon Albert, without a single distraction, all day long.  The diminutive scale of the house was in itself a charm.  Nothing was more amusing than to find oneself living in two or three little sitting—­rooms, with the children crammed away upstairs, and the minister in attendance with only a tiny bedroom to do all his work in.  And then to be able to run in and out of doors as one liked, and to sketch, and to walk, and to watch the red deer coming so surprisingly close, and to pay visits to the cottagers!  And occasionally one could be more adventurous still—­one could go and stay for a night or two at the Bothie at Alt-na-giuthasach—­a mere couple of huts with “a wooden addition”—­and only eleven people in the whole party!  And there were mountains to be climbed and cairns to be built in solemn pomp.  “At last, when the cairn, which is, I think, seven or eight feet high, was nearly completed, Albert climbed up to the top of it, and placed the last stone; after which three cheers were given.  It was a gay, pretty, and touching sight; and I felt almost inclined to cry.  The view was so beautiful over the dear hills; the day so fine; the whole so gemuthlich.”  And in the evening there were sword-dances and reels.

But Albert had determined to pull down the little old house, and to build in its place a castle of his own designing.  With great ceremony, in accordance with a memorandum drawn up by the Prince for the occasion, the foundation-stone of the new edifice was laid, and by 1855 it was habitable.  Spacious, built of granite in the Scotch baronial style, with a tower 100 feet high, and minor turrets and castellated gables, the castle was skilfully arranged to command the finest views of the surrounding mountains and of the neighbouring river Dee.  Upon the interior decorations Albert and Victoria lavished all their care.  The wall and the floors were of pitch-pine, and covered with specially manufactured tartars.  The Balmoral tartan, in red and grey, designed by the Prince, and the Victoria tartan, with a white stripe, designed by the Queen, were to be seen in every room:  there were tartan curtains, and tartan chair-covers, and even tartan linoleums.  Occasionally the Royal Stuart tartan appeared, for Her Majesty always maintained that she was an ardent Jacobite.  Water-colour sketches by Victoria hung upon the walls, together with innumerable stags’ antlers, and the head of a boar, which had been shot by Albert in Germany.  In an alcove in the hall, stood a life-sized statue of Albert in Highland dress.

Victoria declared that it was perfection.  “Every year,” she wrote, “my heart becomes more fixed in this dear paradise, and so much more so now, that all has become my dear Albert’s own creation, own work, own building, own lay-out... and his great taste, and the impress of his dear hand, have been stamped everywhere.”