Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria/Chapter 17

by Millicent Garrett Fawcett

Chapter XVII.

The Warp and Woof of Home and Politics.

Between 1858 and 1885 all the Queen's nine children married; and every one knows that she took just as much delight and interest in their prospect of forming happy homes of their own as any other mother in her wide dominions could have done. In other words, politics and political responsibilities of the weightiest kind have not unsexed her. In arranging the marriages of her three elder children, Her Majesty had had the advantage of the knowledge and judgment of the Prince Consort. It can hardly be by accident that the brides and bridegrooms of our Royal House have not been brought up in the full blast of the hothouse atmosphere of Court life. We know that the Queen and Prince Consort looked upon this atmosphere as dangerous and pernicious, and kept their own children as much apart fro it as was possible; their sons and daughters-in-law, with one exception, were selected from those who had not passed their earliest and most impressionable years as the children of reigning Sovereigns.

It has been already noted that the Queen did not allow her private inclinations, which would doubtless have been gratified by keeping the Princess Alice with her, to postpone the marriage which had been sanctioned by the Prince Consort. Prince Louis, indeed, thought that his betrothed wife would not have held to her engagement after her father's death, seeing how her mother depended on her for comfort in her great sorrow; but he was mistaken, and the marriage took place not long after the date originally fixed, July 1st, 1862. In the autumn of the same year the Queen, who visited her uncle, King Leopold, at Laeken, arranged to meet, for the first time, her future daughter-in-law, the Princess Alexandra of Denmark. Later, in 1862, the beautiful young Princess visited the widowed Queen at Windsor, and received a mother's welcome from that warm, tender heart. All references to the Princess of Wales throughout the Queen's journals and the Princess Alice's letters are most loving and tender. "Dear, sweet, gentle Alix," are among the many endearing epithets bestowed on her by her mother and sister-in-law. The marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales on March 10th, 1863, took place in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. It was a most magnificent ceremonial, and was the first Royal marriage celebrated in that Chapel since that of Henry I. in 1122. At the wedding Prince William of Prussia, aged four, was placed between his two little uncles, Arthur and Leopold, who were instructed to keep him quiet. Bishop Wilberforce says that he resented any interference, and bit his uncles on their "bare Highland legs" if they tried to control him.

The good feeling among the various members of the English Royal Family was soon after this put to a severe test. The Schleswig-Holstein quarrel between Denmark and Germany came to a head in 1864, and war was declared, with the inevitable result that the little kingdom of Denmark was completely beaten by her powerful opponents, the combined Powers of Austria and Prussia. The King of Prussia was father-in-law of our Princess Royal. She and Princess Alice, as wife of another German Prince, naturally espoused the German side in the quarrel; the Prince and Princess of Wales, as naturally, espoused that of Denmark, and felt that the little kingdom had been unfairly browbeaten and bullied by its powerful neighbors. There was a very strong feeling in England in support of Denmark. Lord John Russell had undoubtedly led her on to suppose that in the event of war, she would receive the armed assistance of England. A powerful section of the Tory party was also in favor of war. Votes of censure were moved against the Government in both Houses; the vote was carried in the Lords, and only averted in the Commons by a narrow majority. In this crisis, it was the nearest thing in the world that England was not precipitated into war with Germany. The Emperor of the French was urging it, and offering his alliance. He had already begun to talk about the Rhine frontier being "an absolute necessity" for France, and would have liked nothing better than an alliance with England against Germany. The Queen averted the catastrophe, and we learn from Lord Malmesbury's Memoirs that she "would not hear of going to war with Germany." "No doubt," he adds, "this country would like to fight for the Danes, and from what is said, I infer that the Government is inclined to support them also, but finds great difficulties in the opposition of the Queen." Her immense knowledge of foreign politics and grasp of a continuous and definite line of action saved England from the enormous blunder of involving this country in war about the succession to the German Duchies. Probably very few people in England really understood the question at issue at the time; and it was the Queen's knowledge and strong common-sense which saved us from a serious national disaster.

The family aspects of the quarrel called forth the good qualities of the woman, just as its national aspects had called forth those of the Queen. The war and the crushing of poor Denmark left a feeling of soreness and resentment which did not subside for many a year. The war took place in 1864; it was not till 1867 that there was a friendly meeting between the King of Prussia and the Prince and Princess of Wales. Princess Alice wrote from Darmstadt in October of that year:—

"Bertie and Alex [the Prince and Princess of Wales] have been here since Saturday afternoon. … The visit of the King [of Prussia] went off very well, and Alex was pleased with the kindness and civility of the King. I hear that the meeting was satisfactory to both parties, which I am heartily glad of. Bearing ill-will is always a mistake, besides its not being right."

Another marriage in the Royal Family still further complicated the Schleswig-Holstein question from the domestic point of view, for in 1866 Princess Helena, the Queen's third daughter, married Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein, the second son of the German claimant of the Duchies. The Queen gave her daughter away. The Princess and her husband have made their home in England.

It was in this year that the war between North and South Germany, headed respectively by Prussia and Austria, about the disposal of the Schleswig-Holstein Duchies, had the effect of bringing the Queen's two sons-in-law, Prince Frederick William of Prussia and Prince Louis of Hesse, into the field of battle on opposite sides. This was a severe trial. The Princess Alice's letters showed that it caused her intense anguish. She, like her father, longed for the unity of Germany under the headship of Prussia, and was quite ready to submit to the sacrifices this would entail on the smaller German Princes; but this war of brother against brother, and friend against friend, was a thing which she felt to be too fearful to contemplate. In this hour of great trial, the love and confidence between the sisters and their respective husbands never wavered. Prince Louis went to Berlin, before the actual outbreak of hostilities, to see his brother-in-law, and he then made sure that though their respective allegiance brought them into conflict as soldiers, yet as men they would remain brothers and friends. North Germany under Prussia was, as every one knows, successful in the conflict, and the victorious Prussian army marched into Darmstadt just at the time of the birth of Princess Alice's third daughter (July 11th, 1866). The newly made mother lay in bed hearing the shouts of her husband's victors, at the very time knowing that he was still under fire, and that she was unable to get any news of his safety. The christening of the little Princess was put off till it could take place on the day on which the treaty of peace was ratified at Berlin; the baby then received the name of Irène, in commemoration of the event. The poor little Princess of peace had very warlike godfathers,—the whole of the cavalry brigade which had been commanded by her father in the late war. It is significant that just before this war Princess Alice had written to the Queen using the expression: "I long to … know that your warm heart is acting for Germany." That is the woman all over: to feel, is to translate feeling into action wherever power to do so is not lacking. The warp and woof of home and politics are ever conspicuous in the Princess Alice's letters. When the Schleswig-Holstein question first began to threaten war, she wrote to the Queen, filling the first part of the letter with her speculations on the political situation, and then passing to her baby's first tooth, "She makes such faces if one ventures to touch her little mouth;" and the Princess then goes on to mention some of her activities in trying to set the hospital at Darmstadt in good order, and to interest the burgomaster and town councillors in the work, and the provision she was making for the safety and wellbeing of poor women in childbirth. She was indeed a very political woman, and a very womanly politician.

In 1870, when the Franco-German War broke out, the Queen's sympathies, it is almost needless to say, went wholly with Germany; she had looked for the unification of Germany as steadily as old Stockmar and the Prince Consort, and the year 1871 saw this vision become an accomplished fact. King William of Prussia was proclaimed the German Emperor by the assembled German Princes in the banqueting hall of Versailles.

In 1868, when Prince Alfred was absent in Australia, he was shot at and wounded by a Fenian named O'Farrell. When telegraphic news of this was received in cipher at the Colonial Office, it was at first impossible to make out whether the Prince had been killed or only wounded. Another telegram on the following day set the worst anxieties at rest, and further despatches brought word that the ball had been extracted, and that the Prince was doing well; but it can easily be understood what a shock the event must have been to the Queen. Prince Alfred, who had been created a peer under the title of Duke of Edinburgh, married in 1874 the Grand-Duchess Marie, only daughter of Emperor Alexander II. of Russia. In 1893, on the death of the Prince Consort's brother, Duke Ernest of Coburg, the Duke of Edinburgh succeeded him, and is now the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. When Prince Alfred's engagement to the Grand-Duchess Marie was impending, but not yet settled, he joined his sister, Princess Alice, on a tour in Italy, the Empress of Russia and her daughter being at Sorrento. Visits were made to them by the English Prince and Princess; the latter of whom wrote to the Queen that the bride-elect had an attack of fever, and she added, "We remained at Rome a day longer on account of poor Alfred. He is very patient and hopeful." This was in April, 1873. The betrothal took place in July of the same year, and the marriage in January, 1874, at St. Petersburg. This was the only one of the marriages of the Queen's children at which she was unable to be present. All the others have married from their mother's house. Dean Stanley attended the Duke of Edinburgh's marriage, and performed the English part of the service, by the Queen's express command.

It was in May, 1873, that the most terrible sorrow fell upon Princess Alice,—the sudden, violent death of her little boy, Prince Frederick William (Frittie), aged two and a half years. This dear child had been born during the Franco-German War; Prince Louis had parted from his wife to take the command of the Hessian troops in July, 1870. "Frittie" was born on 7th October, and the husband and wife did not meet again till the end of the war, March 31st, 1871. In the interval, Princess Alice had suffered great anxiety on account of the war, and the danger to which her husband was exposed; she also exerted herself far beyond her strength in nursing the sick and wounded. But this was not a time when a generous nature counts the cost of personal services. She was in the hospital every day, late and early, and besides this, nursed wounded soldiers in her own house. She faced typhus and small-pox, and on one occasion (mentioned by Lady Bloomfield) helped to life a wounded man who had small-pox full out upon him. The child born during these months of mental and physical strain was delicate from his birth; he had a tendency to hemorrhage which was very alarming, and during his short life he had many illnesses and ailments. He was, perhaps for this very reason, the special object of his mother's love. On the May 29th, 1873, Princess Alice having lately returned from her tour in Italy, her two little boys, Ernie and "Frittie," were brought to her room, before she was up, to bid her "Good-morning." By her wish they were left in the room to play about. The elder of the two little boys having run into the adjoining dressing-room, his mother followed him; during her momentary absence, the younger fell out of the open window of the bedroom on to the stone terrace below: he was alive when he was picked up, but was insensible, and only survived a few hours. No one ever knew exactly how the accident happened, but the horror and anguish of the poor mother can be imagined. It was a blow from which she never really recovered. The Queen's heart bled for her daughter. The poor Princess wrote to her mother in August, 1873, "Many thanks for your dear letter! I am feeling so low and weak to-day that kind words are doubly soothing. You feel so with me, when you understand how long and deep my grief must be. And does one not grow to love one's grief, as having become part of the being one loved,—as if through this one could still pay a tribute of love to him to make up for the terrible loss?" All through this cruel anguish she relied with perfect confidence on her mother's sympathy. In September, 1873, she wrote to the Queen, "You ask me if I can play yet? I feel as if I could not, and I have not yet done so. In my own house it seems to me as if I never could play again on that piano, where little hands were nearly always thrust when I wanted to play. … Mary Teck (Duchess of Teck) came to see me, and remained two nights, so warm-hearted and sympathizing. I like to talk of him to those who love children, and can understand how great the gap, how intense the pain, the ending of a bright little existence causes." The resemblance between the mother and daughter came out in their grief. After the Prince Consort's death, the Queen's chief comfort was to speak of him constantly to those who had known and loved him; and the Princess Alice's letters continually dwell on her darling child whom she had lost in such a terrible way.

Several of the Queen's daughters, notably the Empress Frederick and Princess Alice, have shown the greatest sympathy with what is known in England as the women's movement. They have promoted by every means in their power improved opportunities of education and employment for women, and greater social liberty for them. The Queen, it must be confessed, has never shown that she sympathizes with her daughters in their attitude on this question. Princess Alice's letters show that Her Majesty was rather anxious and nervous about the women's meetings and associations promoted by the Princess, and not really pleased at the ceaseless activity of her daughter's mind on these subjects. She inquired anxiously if Princess Alice took counsel with her mother-in-law, Princess Charles of Hesse, upon them; when the Princess was studying anatomy and physiology, she, as it were, apologized to her mother for her interest in them, and said it might even be useful to be not entirely ignorant on such things: she added that she knew her mother did not like such studies, but affirmed that for her own part, instead of finding them disgusting, they filled her with admiration to see how wonderfully the human body was made. Though, on the whole, the Queen has been very far from giving encouragement, except by the magnificent example of her own life and character, to the modern movement among women for sharing in political work and responsibility, she testified her interest in their higher education by opening in person, in 1887, the palatial buildings of Holloway College. It was rather a singular coincidence that the year in which the Queen did this (which was also the year of her Jubilee) a young lady, Miss Agneta Ramsay, occupied the then unprecedented position of Senior Classic in the University of Cambridge. This made 1887, in a very special degree, a woman's year.

Another of the modern women's movements which the Queen has promoted is their entrance into the medical profession. In 1881, a medical missionary from India, Miss Beilby, was the bearer of a message from the Maharanee of Punnah to the Queen, telling Her Majesty of the terrible sufferings of Indian women from the want of duly-qualified women doctors. The Queen was deeply moved by the tale of unnecessary suffering, and of valuable lives thrown away or blighted by the want of skilful and properly trained women to attend native women in sickness. Lord Dufferin was not long after appointed Governor-General of India, and before he left, the Queen especially charged Lady Dufferin with the task of instituting a fund to promote a regular supply of fully trained women doctors for India. This fund was inaugurated by the Marchioness of Dufferin, and is known by her name, and it has since been under the special protection of each successive Governor-General's wife.

During the later years of her reign, Her Majesty has suffered many bereavements of those near and dear to her. Her uncle, who had been a second father to her, King Leopold, died in 1865. He had remained very faithful to his love for England and English constitutionalism. Many small indications show how his heart clung to the memories of his first marriage. The eldest daughter of the second marriage was named Charlotte, after his first wife (she afterwards married the unfortunate Archduke Maximilian, who assumed the title of Emperor of Mexico, and was shot by Juarez in 1867). When King Leopold knew he was dying, he desired that he might be buried at Windsor, by the side of the wife of his youth; but his wishes were not carried out.

The outbreak of diphtheria at Darmstadt in 1878, in which the Queen lost her dearly loved second daughter and one of her grandchildren, has been already referred to. In June, 1879, the Prince Imperial, only son of the exiled Empress of the French, was killed by the Zulus in a skirmishing expedition in South Africa. The Queen's feelings of grief were all the harder to endure because the young Prince had been serving with her army. Her sensibility on the point of national honor was deeply wounded. She was ashamed that the lad had not been defended by the Englishmen who were with him; her heart bled for the mother who had lost her only child. The same autumn, with her usual thoughtful kindness, she induced the widowed Empress Eugénie to accept the loan of Abergeldie Castle, near Balmoral; and nothing was spared which it was possible to do to console and cheer her aching heart.

The next great sorrow was the death of Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, which took place, almost suddenly, at Cannes, in March, 1884. The Prince had been delicate from his youth, and more than once had hovered between life and death. The Princess Alice wrote after one of his illnesses in 1868:—

"For a second and even a third time that life has been given again, when all feared that it must leave us. … Indeed, from the depth of my heart, I thank God with you for having so mercifully spared dear Leo, and watched over him when death seemed so near."

The Prince had seemed to gain strength with years, and in 1882 he married Princess Helen of Waldeck, sister of the present Queen-Regent of Holland. A little girl was born to him and his wife in 1883, named Alice, after the sister whose words of love have just been quoted; but a little son, born in 1884, did not see the light for some four months after his father's death. The Queen's loving, motherly tenderness protected and sustained her young daughter-in-law in her sorrow and loneliness.

Almost as much as for the death of her children, the Queen mourned the loss of the gallant General Gordon at Khartoum early in 1885. She wrote from Osborne to Miss Gordon in February of that year:—

Dear Miss Gordon,—How shall I write to you, or how shall I attempt to express what I feel! To think of your dear, noble heroic brother, who served his country and his Queen so truly, so heroically, with a self-sacrifice so edifying to the world, not having been rescued. That the promises of support were not fulfilled—which I so frequently and constantly pressed on those who asked him to go—is to me grief inexpressible! indeed, it has made me ill! My heart bleeds for you, his sister. … Some day I hope to see you again, to tell you all I cannot express. … Would you express to your other sisters and your elder brother my true sympathy, and what I do so keenly feel, the stain left upon England for your dear brother's cruel, though heroic fate! Ever, dear Miss Gordon, yours sincerely and sympathizingly.

V. R. I.

A few weeks later, Miss Gordon presented her brother's Bible (which he had constantly carried with him) to the Queen, and again Her Majesty wrote a letter, vivid with her grief and shame and high appreciation of the hero whose life had been sacrificed. This second letter was left by Miss Gordon to the nation, and may now be seen, one of the most interesting of the collection of royal autographs, in the British Museum. The well-worn Bible now lies open in an enamel and crystal case, called the St. George's Casket, in the south corridor of the private apartments at Windsor.

The death of her dearly loved eldest son-in-law in 1888 was a real heart-sorrow to the Queen. Those who saw the Jubilee procession in 1887 retain a vivid recollection that among all that splendid retinue there was no figure more noble and impressive than that of the Prince Imperial of Germany. His tall figure, martial bearing, and bronzed, manly face, set off by the white uniform he wore, made him conspicuous among the crowds of Princes and notabilities. But a cruel disease had already laid hold of him, and almost exactly a year after his apparently magnificent physique had attracted universal admiration in the crowds collected for the Jubilee, he was gathered to his fathers, and his son, our Queen's eldest grandson, William II., reigned in his stead. The Emperor Frederick reigned for three months only; his aged father, the Emperor William I., having died in March, 1888. Many noble hopes and ambitions died with the Emperor Frederick. He had been one of the chief authors of the unity of Germany, and was the constant representative in German politics of the principle of constitutional liberty. When he took his bride from England, on a bitter winter's day in 1858, the little Princess cried bitterly at parting from her parents and her native country. Her tears were misinterpreted by the crowd, from whom a shout proceeded, "If he does n't treat you well, come back to us." The implied distrust of the Prince was wholly uncalled for; he adored his wife, and those two shared the burdens and hopes and responsibilities of their position in a way that any husband and wife might envy. It had been from first to last a marriage of true minds.

The death of the Duke of Clarence, the eldest son of the Prince and Princess of Wales, and heir to the throne in the second generation, on January 14th, 1892, was another heavy blow to the Royal House. The Duke had only lately become engaged to the Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, when all the preparations for the wedding were ended by the death of the bridegroom-elect. Influenza, followed by acute pneumonia, was the cause. The whole nation mourned with and for the Queen. The tragic circumstances of the unexpected transition from wedding to funeral, from the throne to the bier, called forth a genuine expression of deep feeling from all classes. But just as a discord sometimes serves to prepare the ear for the full sweetness of a harmony, so in this case one of the most touching expressions of sympathy was called for by the refusal of some boorish members of the Miners' Federation at Stoke to pass a vote of condolence to the Queen on the death of her grandson and heir. There were women in the immediate neighborhood, widows of men who had perished in the Oaks Colliery explosion, twenty-six years earlier. They retained a lively recollection of the Queen's sympathy with them in their bitter grief, and the aid she had given to the fund for their relief; and to think that any men connected with coal mining should now refuse to express sympathy with the Queen, was enough, they felt, to make the very stones cry out. Little accustomed as these poor women were to address letters to great personages, they sent the following to Her Majesty:—

"To our beloved Queen, Victoria.

"Dear Lady,—We, the surviving widows and mothers of some of the men and boys who lost their lives by the explosion which occurred in the Oaks Colliery, near Barnsley, in December, 1866, desire to tell your Majesty how stunned we all feel by the cruel and unexpected blow which has taken Prince Eddie from his dear grandmother, his loving parents, his beloved intended, and an admiring nation. The sad news affected us deeply, we all believing that his youthful strength would carry him safely through the danger. Dear Lady, we feel more than we can express. To tell you that we sincerely condole with your Majesty and the Prince and Princess of Wales in your and their sad bereavement and great distress is not to tell you all we feel; but the widow of Albert the Good and the parents of Prince Eddie will understand what we feel when we say that we feel all that widows and mothers feel who have lost those who were as dear as life to them. Dear Lady, we remember with gratitude all that you did for us Oaks widows in the time of our great trouble, and we cannot forget you in yours. We have not forgotten that it was you, dear Queen, who set the example, so promptly followed by all feeling people, of forming a fund for the relief of our distress,—a fund which kept us out of the workhouse at the time, and has kept us out ever since. Dear Lady, we cannot make you understand who grieved we all are to learn that a miner, and that miner a Barnsley miner, though, happily, not a native of Barnsley, should have forgotten not only all that you have done for the widows and orphans of miners, but also for the suffering, the afflicted and desolate of every other class of workers in England, and that he should have shown himself so devoid of all human feeling as to refuse, and lead others to refuse, your Majesty and poor Eddie's parents one kind word of sympathy in your and their great sorrow. We feel ashamed of that man, for he has covered us all with disgrace, and filled our hearts with pain. We hope he may live to feel ashamed of himself, and to know what it is to be refused any sympathy in any great trouble he may have. We wish it were in our power, dear Lady, to dry up your tears and comfort you, but that we cannot do. But what we can do, and will do, is to pray God, in His mercy and goodness, to comfort and strengthen you in this your time of great trouble. Wishing your Majesty, the Prince and Princess of Wales, and the Princess May, so cruelly bereaved and utterly disconsolate, all the strength, consolation, and comfort which God alone can give, and which He never fails to give to all who seek Him in truth and sincerity, we remain, beloved Queen, your loving and grateful though sorrowing subjects, The Oaks Widows." (Signed on behalf of the widows by Sarah Bradley, one of them.)

"Poor Eddie! to die so young, and so much happiness in prospect. Oh! 'tis hard."

The secretary to the fund, Mr. G. W. Atkinson, of Barnsley, having been requested to forward the letter to Her Majesty, accompanied it with a note to Her Majesty's private secretary, in which he stated that "the poor people seemed greatly troubled at the misfortune which had befallen the Royal Family of England."

The following reply was sent by Her Majesty:—

"The Queen has been much touched by the genuine feeling of sympathy manifested by those connected with the Oaks Colliery which is so warmly expressed in the address you have enclosed, and Her Majesty commands me to ask you to convey her sincere thanks to the senders for their kind words of condolence with her in her sorrow."^[1]

To appreciate all that this touching letter from working-women to their Queen means, would be to understand the great national work which Her Majesty has accomplished by her life. The throne has become once more a living power for good in our national life mainly through the unceasing devotion to her duty, high character, and practical sagacity of its present occupant. Compare the warm human feeling of genuine affection and sorrow which breathes through every line of this letter with Greville's description of the funeral of George IV.: "A gayer company I never beheld. … They were all as mery as grigs," and so on. Two more such kings as Georve IV. would have run out the English monarchy. Mr. R. L. Stevenson said in one of his stories that the first service a patriot ought to render his country was to be a good man. Being a good woman underlies all our Queen's services to her country, and it is this which has established her throne in righteousness.

Her Majesty was deeply touched by the many expressions of affectionate sympathy which reached her from every class and from her subjects all over the world. She replied by a letter to her people setting forth in strong and simple words her mingled feelings of grief for her loss, gratitude for the sympathy expressed by the nation, and her sources of consolation:—

Osborne, January 26, 1892.

I must once again give expression to my deep sense of the loyalty and affectionate sympathy evinced by my subjects in every part of my Empire on an occasion more sad and tragical than any but one which has befallen me and mine, as well as the Nation. The overwhelming misfortune of my dearly loved Grandson having been thus suddenly cut off in the flower of his age, full of promise for the future, amiable and gentle, and endearing himself to all, renders it hard for his sorely stricken Parents, his dear young Bride, and his fond Grandmother to bow in submission to the inscrutable decrees of Providence.

The sympathy of millions, which has been so touchingly and visibly expressed, is deeply gratifying at such a time, and I wish, both in my own name and that of my children, to express, from my heart, my warm gratitude to all.

These testimonies of sympathy with us, and appreciation of my dear Grandson, whom I loved as a Son, and whose devotion to me was as great as that of a Son, will be a help and consolation to me and mine in our affliction.

My bereavements during the last thirty years of my reign have indeed been heavy. Though the labors, anxieties, and responsibilities inseparable from my position have been great, yet it is my earnest prayer that God may continue to give me health and strength to work for the good and happiness of my dear Country and Empire while life lasts.

Victoria, R. I.

The noble and touching words of the last sentence fitly recall the child of eleven years old who, on first learning that she was next in the succession, lifted her little hand and said, "I will be good."

The Duke of York, Prince George of Wales, occupies, by the death of his elder brother, the next place in the succession after his father. The union, in 1893, of the young Prince with Princess Victoria Mary of Teck (Princess May, as she was generally called) resulted in the birth of a son in May, 1894. This baby, who bears the fine historic title of Prince Edward of York, is now the third in the direct line of the succession. Pictures of the four generations, the Queen, her son, grandson, and great-grandson, have ornamented all the illustrated papers, and have been looked at with loyal interest by millions of English men and women all over the world who have mingled with their good wishes to the Royal House a heartfelt prayer that it may yet be many a long year before the Crown of England passes to another head.

1. Times, January 26th, 1892.