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
