which it gave in France. Prince Albert was costumed as Edward III., the queen as Queen Philippa, and all the gentlemen of the court as knights of Poitiers. The French chose to view this as an unfriendly demonstration, and there was some talk of getting up a counter-ball in Paris, the duke of Orleans to figure as William the Conqueror. In June the queen took her first railway journey, travelling from Windsor to Paddington on the Great Western line. The master of the horse, The queen’s first railway journey whose business it was to provide for the queen’s ordinary journeys by road, was much put out by this innovation. He marched into the station several hours before the start to inspect the engine, as he would have examined a steed; but greater merriment was occasioned by the queen’s coachman, who insisted that, as a matter of form, he ought to make-believe to drive the engine. After some dispute, he was told that he might climb on to the pilot engine which was to precede the royal train; but his scarlet livery, white gloves and wig suffered so much from soot and sparks that he made no more fuss about his rights in after trips. The motion of the train was found to be so pleasant that the queen readily trusted herself to the railway for a longer journey a few weeks later, when she paid her first visit to Scotland. A report by Sir James Clark led to the queen’s visiting Balmoral in 1848, and to the purchase of the Balmoral estate in 1852, and the queen’s diary of her journeys in Scotland shows what constant enjoyment she derived from her Highland home. Seven years before this the estate of Osborne had been purchased in the Isle of Wight, in order that the queen might have a home of her own. Windsor she considered too stately, and the Pavilion at Brighton too uncomfortable. The first stone of Osborne House was laid in 1845, and the royal family entered into possession in September 1846.
In August 1843 the queen and Prince Albert paid a, visit to King Louis Philippe at the chateau d’Eu. They sailed from Southampton for Treport in a yacht, and, as it happened to be raining. hard when they embarked, the loyal members of the Southampton Corporation remembered Relations with foreign sovereigns. Raleigh, and spread their robes on the ground for the queen to walk over. In 1844 Louis Philippe returned the visit by coming to Windsor. It was the first visit ever paid by a king of France to a sovereign of England, and Louis Philippe was much pleased at receiving the Order of the Garter. He said that he did not feel that he belonged to the “Club” of European sovereigns until he received this decoration. As the father of King Leopold of Belgium’s consort, the queen was much interested in his visit, which went off with great success and goodwill. The tsar Nicholas had visited Windsor earlier that year, in which also Prince Alfred, who was to marry the tsar’s grand-daughter, was born.
In 1846 the affair of the “Spanish marriages” seriously troubled the relations between the United Kingdom and France. Louis Philippe and Guizot had planned the marriage of the duke of Montpensier with the infanta Louisa of Spain, younger sister of Queen Isabella, who, it was thought at the time, was not likely ever to have children. The intrigue, was therefore one for placing a son of the French king on the Spanish throne. (See Spain, History.) As to Queen Victoria’s intervention on this question and on others, these words, written by W. E . Gladstone in 1875, may be quoted:—
“Although the admirable arrangements of the Constitution have now shielded the sovereign from personal responsibility, they have left ample scope for the exercise of direct and personal influence in the whole work of government… The sovereign as compared with her ministers has, because she is the sovereign, the advantage of long experience, wide survey, elevated position and entire dis connexion from the bias of party. Further, personal and domestic relations with the ruling families abroad give openings in delicate cases for saying more, and saying it at once more gently and more efficaciously, than could be ventured in the formal correspondence and rude contacts of government. We know with how much truth, fulness and decision, and with how much tact and delicacy, the queen, aided by Prince Albert, took a principal part on behalf of the nation in the painful question of the Spanish marriages.”
The year 1848, which shook so many continental thrones, left that of the United Kingdom unhurt. Revolutions broke out in Paris, Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Rome, Naples, Venice, Munich, Dresden and Budapest. The queen and Prince Albert were affected in many private ways by the events abroad. Panic-stricken princes wrote to them for political assistance or pecuniary aid. Louis Philippe abdicated and fled to England almost destitute, being smuggled over the Channel by the cleverness of the British consul at Havre, and the queen employed Sir Robert Peel as her intermediary for providing him with money to meet his immediate wants. Subsequently Claremont was assigned to the exiled royal family of France as a residence. During a few weeks of 1848 Prince William of Prussia (afterwards German emperor) found an asylum in England.
In August 1849 the queen and Prince Albert, accompanied by the little princess royal and the prince of Wales, paid a visit to Ireland, landing at the Cove of Cork, which from that day was renamed Queenstown. The reception was enthusiastic, and so was that at Dublin. Irish trip, 1849. "Such a day of Jubilee," wrote The Times, “such a night of rejoicing, has never been beheld in the ancient capital of Ireland since first it arose on the banks of the Liffey.” The queen was greatly pleased and touched. The project of establishing a royal residence in Ireland was often mooted at this time, but the queen’s advisers never urged it with sufficient warmth. There was no repugnance to the idea on the queen’s part, but Sir Robert Peel thought unfavourably of it as an “empirical” plan, and the question of expense was always mooted as a serious consideration. There is no doubt that the absence of a royal residence in Ireland was felt as a slur upon the Irish people in certain circles.
During these years the queen’s family was rapidly becoming larger. Princess Alice (afterwards grand duchess of Hesse) was born on the 25th of April 1843; Prince Alfred (afterwards duke of Edinburgh and duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha) on the 6th of August 1844; Princess Helena (Princess. Christian) on the 25th of May 1846; Princess Louise (duchess of Argyll) on the 18th of March 1848; and Prince Arthur (duke of Connaught) on the 1st of May 1850.
At the end of 1851 an important event took place, which ended a long-standing grievance on the part of the queen, in Lord Palmerston’s dismissal from the office of foreign secretary on account of his expressing approval of Louis Napoleon’s coup d’etat in Paris. The circumstancesThe queen and Lord Palmerston. are of extreme interest for the light they throw on the queen’s estimate of her constitutional position and authority. Lord Palmerston had never been persona grata at court. His Anglo-Irish nature was not sympathetic with the somewhat formal character and German training of Prince Albert; and his views of ministerial independence were not at all in accord with those of the queen and her husband. The queen had more than once to remind her foreign secretary that his dispatches must be seen by her before they were sent out, and though Palmerston assented, the queen’s complaint had to be continually repeated. She also protested to the prime minister (Lord John Russell) In 1848, 1849 and 1850, against various instances in which Palmerston had expressed his own personal opinions in matters of foreign affairs, without his dispatches being properly approved either by herself or by the cabinet. Lord John Russell, who did not want to offend his popular and headstrong colleague, did his best to smooth things over; but the queen remained exceedingly sore, and tried hard to get Palmerston removed, without success. On the 12th of August 1850 the queen wrote to Lord John Russell the following important memorandum, which followed in its terms a private memorandum drawn up for her by Stockmar a few months earlier (Letters, ii. 282):—
“With reference to the conversation about Lord Palmerston which the queen had with Lord John Russell the other day, and Lord Palmerston’s disavowal that he ever intended any disrespect to her by the various neglects of which she has had so long and so often to complain, she thinks it right, in order to avoid any mistakes for the future, to explain what it is she expects from the foreign secretary.
