In 1844, very soon after the birth of a fourth child, Prince Alfred, now Duke of Coburg, the Queen and Prince paid a visit to Scotland, taking the Princess Royal with them. After this the Royal visits to various parts of the kingdom were rendered doubly interesting to the Queen's subjects by the presence of one or more of the blooming group of the rapidly growing family of children. The Prince wrote to his stepmother of this visit to Scotland: "Pussy's cheeks are on the point of bursting, they have grown so red and plump; she is learning Gaelic, but makes wild work with the names of the mountains."
The Dowager Lady Lyttelton was appointed governess to the Royal children. One of her letters to her own daughter, dated 1844, begins, "Dearest mine daughter, as the Prince of Wales would say." On the third visit to Scotland, in 1847, the two elder children accompanied their parents. The Queen says, in "Leaves from a Journal in the Highlands," "the children enjoy everything extremely, and bear the novelty and excitement wonderfully well." On this occasion the Royal party visited the Duke and Duchess of Argyll at Inverary, and the Queen writes, describing their reception, "Outside stood the Marquis of Lorne, just two years old, a dear, white, fat, fair little fellow with reddish hair, but very delicate features, like both his father and mother; he is such a merry, independent child." This was the Queen's first sight of her future son-in-law.
On Her Majesty's first visit to Ireland,[1] in 1849, she took her four eldest children with her (many of us wish she had gone before and gone oftener). She received an intensely enthusiastic welcome. The
- ↑ The Queen visited Ireland again in 1853 to open the International Exhibition in Dublin; and a third time in 1861, when the Prince of Wales was going through a course of military training at the Curragh.
