“JOHN BROWN’S BODY”

“That terrible struggle for life in the lonely plantation near the Fisheries.”--_Daily Paper._

“The Prince, become King, had the statue removed before he even saw his castle; the ‘mansion’ he bought from the servant’s heirs, and dedicated it to his own use. So did all trace of the favourite disappear from Balmoral.”--_Contemporary Note._

I have no intention of dealing with Irish affairs--they were too engrossing, too complicated and too immense; but in 1880 began a cycle of distress, rebellion, agrarian crime and coercion. Fenianism was again rampant, and great anxiety was felt over the royal journey from Scotland to Windsor in the autumn of 1880. For three or four years the world seemed to suffer from madness--as it does suffer occasionally--and Ireland was mad, only with more cause than the rest of the globe. The assassinations, the incipient revolts which underlay them, and the insecurity which the Queen felt under the rule of Gladstone (believing as she did that under him revolution was encouraged), all combined to produce a condition of nervousness on Victoria’s mind which each new blow increased.

In March 1881 the Tsar of Russia was killed by a bomb, the lower part of his body being blown away; in the summer President Garfield was shot, and in March 1882, as Victoria was walking from the train at Windsor to her carriage, a crazy youth, named Robert McLean, fired a Colt’s revolver at her from a distance of a few yards, an Eton boy saving her by beating up McLean’s arm with an umbrella. Other Etonians who were near tried to lynch him. Fortunately no one was hit, though, for the first time in the history of the many bogus attempts at assassination of our Queen, there was proof that the revolver was loaded.

Victoria, with her usual courage under such events, drove on to the castle, and wired reassuringly to Marlborough House. McLean, a clerk out of employment, was tried at Reading, and, being found to be insane, was detained for life.

In May of the same year news of a dreadful Irish tragedy came at the end of a day on which the seal had been set on the accomplishment of a good deed. There had been revelations of abuses in the city, and the Government had talked of reforming the City Corporation; so, as a sop to Cerberus, Epping Forest was set in order and presented to the public by the City fathers, and on May 6 her Majesty went in semi-state to declare it duly open.

A noted journalist gives the following account of the occasion and of the news which followed hard upon it--

“It was a day of bright sunshine as Queen Victoria drove from Chingford to High Beach to declare Epping Forest open for the use of the people for all time.... We were quietly snatching a hasty lunch in a marquee beside the daïs.... Suddenly, a few minutes before the expected time, a blare of trumpets announced the Queen’s approach. Ministers and Pressmen alike were on the alert; Lord Granville, one of the most homely of Secretaries of State, not only filled his mouth with part of a sandwich he was eating, but carried the rest on to the platform. The happy chronicle of the royal rejoicings in Epping Forest, which closed with one of Messrs. Brock’s matchless firework displays, had scarcely been completed when there came ‘Terrible News from Ireland.’ The assassination under such savage circumstances of Lord Frederick Cavendish and his under-secretary, Mr. Burke, was clearly and correctly reported. This fact is emphasized on account of its having been so often stated that the London public heard nothing of the diabolical occurrence until Monday morning. Not only was the news given, but in some comments I said, ‘The crime shatters at a blow Mr. Gladstone’s hope of pursuing a gentle policy.’”[23]

Ireland was, indeed, badly served by her revolutionaries, and she knew it. When the words of Lady Frederick Cavendish--surely one of the noblest of women--to Mr. Gladstone, “You did right to send him to Ireland, Uncle William,” were told by a priest from the altar of a chapel in Connemara Road, Dublin, the whole congregation spontaneously fell down on their knees. Parnell offered to resign his seat immediately, but Gladstone would not allow it, rightly regarding the Irish leader as the last restraining influence upon the Fenians.

The very month that this took place a tatterdemalion named Albert Young was sentenced to imprisonment for openly threatening the death of Queen Victoria and Prince Leopold. The Queen was a very brave woman, but this succession of horrible events made her soul quail. She believed in the strong arm--no talking, little thinking; if you are hit, no matter how or why, hit back as hard as you can. Gladstone’s appeal to justice and reason were to her but signs of weakness; she never owned herself wrong, and that he had owned England wrong in Africa and Afghanistan enraged her; that he had tried to meet Irish desperation by conceding reforms, by treatment rather than by force, woke her scorn, and she blamed him for the deep unrest which had produced these Irish murders by members of a secret society who did not even know whom they were killing, that they were English gentlemen being sufficient excuse.

Under Disraeli’s Government her Majesty had felt buoyant, hopeful, young again; now a black atmosphere of treachery and murder surrounded her. She refused each year through this Government to be present at the opening of Parliament. In 1883 she was at Windsor, and that she would not come even that short distance aroused indignation in some quarters: “To be at Windsor and yet to refuse to run up to town is as good as saying, ‘My faithful Lords and Commons, you can get on very well without me, and I don’t care to see you. Do your duty, but don’t bother me while I am looking after the youngest of the many grandchildren whom you will have to provide for some day.’” Such was one contemporary comment.

One of the causes of this recrudescence of public irritation was that, Gladstone having been very ill, the Liberals, jealous for the honour of the minister, noted that there was no hint of “kind inquiries” by the Queen, and they recalled the anxious assiduity with which Beaconsfield’s bedside had been attended: “At the time when the Court was required to go into mourning for an unknown German, it was a question whether Gladstone would be well enough ever to handle again the ribbons of State.”

There was, however, a difference of degree in the illnesses as well as in her Majesty’s solicitude. As a matter of fact, she was duly informed of her Prime Minister’s state, though she made no inquiries, and, seeing happy possibility before her, she seized upon it by causing Ponsonby to write and urge Gladstone to retire from the greater part of his active work and become a peer. But there were some reforms that the Prime Minister still wished to make, and he politely refused the distinguished offer of superannuation, a refusal which damped Victoria’s sympathies.

Victorian Court mourning was a wonderful and intricate invention, for it had been elevated--I cannot say to a fine art, for there was nothing artistic about it; but if I say an exact science--though there are those who will scoff--it best describes it. The death of a cousin of the last recognizable degree was supposed to cause the members of the Court anguish, modified according to the closeness of the relationship, which also decided the amount of black that was to be worn. Thus when in January of 1883 a brother of the Emperor William died, a gentleman whose mind was not very strong I believe, the Court mourning orders were: women to wear for one week black dresses, white gloves, black or white shoes, feathers and fans, pearls, diamonds or plain gold and silver ornaments. Men to wear black Court dress with black swords. For the second week the women were allowed coloured ribbons, flowers and ornaments; and then all were to go out of mourning.

Death was at this time horribly busy in the Queen’s circle of friends. To her grief, Dean Stanley was one of those taken; as Lord Ronald Gower commented: “He is a greater loss to the Queen than to the Church”; Archbishop Tait, who by his good sense, solid qualities and intellectual simplicity had won her friendship; and Dr. Wellesley, the Dean of Windsor, also slipped out of life. In February 1881 Thomas Carlyle died, and Queen Victoria sent to inquire about him, not knowing that he had already passed away. “As we sat in the parlour the streetdoor bell rang, and ‘a messenger from the Queen’ was said to be in the passage; I went out at Mary’s request, and found a Scotchman of middle age, who said he was ‘sent by the Queen to inquire after Mr. Carlyle.’ I told him of the death, asked him no questions. He may have been John Brown.”[24]

In February 1883 a sergeant, William Maye, of the 1st Battalion Coldstreams, went to relieve the guard at Windsor Castle, and died suddenly at his post. This tragic event made a deep impression on Victoria, who insisted on attending the funeral, a military one, and followed the cortège to the cemetery. She drove with Princess Beatrice in an open carriage, General Sir Henry Ponsonby and Colonel Byng being in attendance on horseback. Victoria did not alight, but watched the interment from her carriage, having sent a handsome wreath for the coffin, and returning to the castle after the firing of three volleys over the grave. She probably had a definite reason for this, in addition to the sympathy which she always felt over bereavement by death. In October 1875 the old farmer, John Brown, father of her servant, had died in his eighty-seventh year. He had been known to her, as had other tenants and cottagers on the Balmoral estate, probably for thirty years; but it was her affection for her servant which induced her to go to the funeral, and to command the greater part of her household to be present. Princess Beatrice, the Marchioness of Ely, the Hon. M. West, three doctors and others, the upper and outdoor servants, all went up to the home of the widow, a poor blind old woman sitting in her kitchen and mourning the loss of her lifelong companion. On the other side of the house door, in a tiny room, lay the coffin. As the road was impassable for the hearse the coffin had to be carried by the Brown brothers from the house to where the conveyance stood. Though it was raining hopelessly, the Queen and Princess Beatrice followed to the hearse, and then, standing on a hillside, watched the procession and the crowd--which had come as much to see the Queen as to do respect to the dead man--wind along the road. “The sons were there, whom I distinguished easily from their being near good Brown, who wore his kilts, walking near the hearse. All walked except our gentlemen, who drove. It fortunately ceased raining just then. I went back to the house and tried to soothe dear old Mrs. Brown, and gave her a mourning brooch with a little bit of her husband’s hair which had been cut off yesterday.... We took some whisky-and-water and cheese, according to the universal Highland custom, and then left.... We drove quickly on, and I saw them go into the kirkyard, and through my glasses I could see them carry the coffin in. I was grieved I could not be in the kirkyard.”[25]

This incident, duly reported in the English newspapers, caused both comment and criticism. It was said that her Majesty could not do honour enough to her Highland servants and their relations, and that she had never been known to pay one tithe of such attention to any poor Windsor dependants. So when a soldier fell dead at her palace door she demonstrated her martial position, and showed her English subjects that it was possible for her to grieve even over a humble Englishman.

There is a curious little contrasting touch in the following, taken from Sir Algernon West’s _Reminiscences_. His friend Alfred Montgomery, who died in 1881, was one whose “sense of humour and wit lasted till the end; one day during his illness the Prince of Wales called on him, and shortly afterwards the Princess. On her departure, he said to the servant, ‘Should the Queen call, say that I am too tired to see her Majesty.’ Curiously enough, he once told me that though he had been in the Queen’s household since her Majesty’s accession, she had never once spoken to him.”

Other honours had been done John Brown. Balnachoil, a fine house, popularly described as a mansion, had been built for his occupation at Balmoral, and given to him and his heirs for ever; some of the finest fishing and shooting on the Balmoral estate were strictly reserved for him; circumstances were made so easy for him that he was amassing a fortune, and it was rumoured that royal visitors to the castle were always enjoined--or did it of their own free wills--to leave a trifle for the favourite servant. The sum of £20,000 was named as his savings after his death, but that was perhaps an exaggeration. He had also been honoured, as a result of his mistress’s praise of him to others, with a decoration from the King of Greece, while another distinguished person at Mentone had given him a gold medal.

On the few occasions on which the Queen appeared in public John Brown was even more eagerly looked for than her Majesty, and at the opening of the new Law Courts in December 1882 some one remarked, “Everything considered, he looks well. He shows no sign as yet of suffering from his duty.” We hear of him from Madame Waddington (_My First Years as a Frenchwoman_) in Paris with his mistress, and waiting at the door of the room in the British Embassy until the Queen came out that he might shake hands with Mr. Waddington and invite him to come to Scotland, “where he would receive a hearty welcome.”

He had become more assertive, more lofty; there was no appeal against his word; and such a person has more enemies than friends. One man only he dared not interfere with, and that was Löhlein, the German valet who had come to England with Prince Albert. He did not hesitate to offer advice or comment to the sons and daughters of his mistress, and there are various allusions in the Queen’s journals which show that Brown’s opinion on everything was of import. Thus at the unveiling of the statue to Prince Albert at Edinburgh in 1876, at the end of the description we are told that Brown “was delighted with the reception.” When the Duke of Connaught returned to Balmoral after the Egyptian war, and the Albanys came home from their honeymoon, in face of royalties and aristocrats Brown stepped forward and asked them all to join in a Highland cheer for the bride and bridegroom. On the anniversary of the Prince Consort’s birthday in 1876 the Queen notes: “I gave my faithful Brown an oxydized silver biscuit box and some onyx studs. He was greatly pleased with the former and the tears came into his eyes, and he said, ‘It is too much.’ ... I gave my maids some trifles from Dunbar; and to Janie Ely, the gentlemen and the servants a trifle each.”

When Brown died in 1883, at the age of fifty-seven, it must be realized that Victoria was already badly shaken by the many assassinations, her disappointments in foreign policy, her rooted distrust of a Liberal Government, and a succession of threatening letters sent to herself. It was probably in conjunction with these that Sir John Cowell, Master of the Household, issued some curious instructions to servants at Windsor in February 1883. Those who were on duty at the castle were forbidden to leave the palace, and those who went home to sleep were forbidden to visit musichalls, theatres or any place of public amusement; in addition, if any in their homes were suffering from illness, they were to report it and stay away from the castle altogether. This reminds one of the present Kaiser, who throughout his reign has occasionally issued such notices, and who, on hearing of any one suffering from a cold or sore throat even remotely connected with his household, would at once flee and seek shelter in another of his numerous castles or palaces.

On March 15, 1883, a Fenian attempt to blow up the Home Office failed; at Liverpool the police were busy with an organized band of dynamitards, and all public buildings were being watched by pickets and guards. When the Queen travelled at this time the whole length of the line was guarded by men stationed at distances which allowed of their being in sight of each other, and carrying flags and noisy fog-signals.

Two days after the attempt on the Home Office, Victoria, then at Windsor Castle, slipped on the stairs of the palace and caught her knee with such violence on the marble edge that it gave her much pain; and at this very moment happened the event which led to Brown’s death. A certain young woman, Lady Florence Dixie, well known at the time in society--one who, like Dryden’s Duke of Buckingham, had tried her hands at many things, and who lived at The Fisheries, a riverside house close to Windsor--had been writing letters to _The Times_ about the Irish Land League. On Saturday the 17th, at about half-past four she walked near her house, and a little later returned to it in a state of agitation, disarray and mud, and with a cut hand. Her story was that two very tall women had attacked her, one throwing her down, the other stabbing at her with a knife, the blow being deflected by the whalebone of her stays. At the second stab Lady Florence seized the knife with both hands and shouted, upon which a handful of mud was pushed into her mouth, nearly choking her. The arrival of her St. Bernard dog coincided with her own loss of consciousness, and when she recovered the two people, whom she was convinced were men in disguise, had disappeared.

This event naturally caused a great sensation, and the Queen received the news as quickly as it could fly. The Prince of Wales and every one round sent condolences and inquiries to The Fisheries, but no one was so affected as Victoria, for here was another attempted assassination at her very gate and in broad daylight. On the Sunday her Majesty refused to take her usual drive, and sent first the Marchioness of Ely, then Lord Methuen and Sir Henry Ponsonby, to The Fisheries. Not content with that, she asked Brown to examine the ground where the attack had been made. He drove there in an open cart, a present to him from the Queen, and closely examined everything, including the dog, feeling so puzzled with the whole case that he spent much time over it exposed to a bitter wind.

It may be mentioned that other people beside John Brown were very much puzzled, as the place at which the affair occurred was open to view from a well-frequented road, and the two women, or men, might have been wraiths from the way in which they entirely vanished. The only evidence of their presence was said to be the marks of hobnailed boots in the mud. Conviction generally spread, whether justly or unjustly, that love of notoriety was alone responsible for a theatrical episode.

The results were, however, serious for John Brown and the Queen. He took a bad cold, and for a week, while going about his duties, seemed unwell. On Monday the 26th he was too ill to get up, and erysipelas developed. Dr. Reid attended him, and Sir William Jenner was sent for on Tuesday morning. He died at 11.30 that night, killed, as some one said, by kindness, for a Highlander to die of a cold caught in a wind implied a too luxurious state of living.

The grief of the Queen was intense and noisy; her exasperated nerves entirely gave way; she blamed Ireland, criminal Ireland, which had stolen from her her servant and friend; she blamed Gladstone, who had hoped by legislation alone to tame the wild land. Her mind became obsessed with Brown, and she drew up a notice to be inserted in the Court Circular of March 29, which ran to the length of twenty-five lines; an unprecedented feature in the whole history of that public record of trivialities--

“We have to record the death of Mr. John Brown, the Queen’s personal attendant. This melancholy event has caused the deepest regret to the Queen, the Royal Family and all the members of the Royal Household. To her Majesty the loss is irreparable, and the death of this truly faithful and devoted servant has been a grievous shock to the Queen.... During the last eighteen and a half years he served her Majesty constantly, and never once absented himself from his duty for a single day. He has accompanied the Queen in her daily walks and drives, and all her journeys and expeditions, as well as personally waiting on her at banquets, etc. An honest, faithful and devoted follower, a trustworthy, discreet and straightforward man, and possessed of strong sense, he filled a position of great and anxious responsibility, the duties of which he performed with such constant and unceasing care as to secure for himself the real friendship of the Queen.”

In this the Queen practically asked for her people’s sympathy, and they gave it warmly, recognizing the true facts of the case; but most Englishmen felt that the death of this too prominent servant removed one who had long been damaging to royal prestige.

Brown’s body was sent to be buried at Craithie churchyard, near the river Dee, where, at Victoria’s order, a mausoleum of brick and encaustic tiles was built alongside the grave of his father; and the funeral was attended by all the servants at Balmoral. The Queen sent an extraordinary wreath for the coffin, one more suitable to a wedding, for it was composed of myrtle and white flowers. To it was attached the words: “A gracious expression of her Majesty’s personal sense of the loss she has sustained, and of her affection for her faithful servant.” (When will royalty allow a sense of humour to correct the bad taste of royal custom? When her Majesty graciously does something, the word is suitable from the pen of the reporter or the secretary, but there is a snobbish tinge about it when she deliberately uses it herself that makes it offensive.) At the hour at which John Brown was buried a service was held in his apartments at Windsor Castle, being attended by the Queen and Princess Beatrice.

After this the public announcements of the Queen’s ill-health were accompanied by vague and sinister rumours. Sir William Jenner was in constant attendance. It was stated that her fall and the shock of John Brown’s death had made her condition the cause of much solicitude; that rest, both mental and physical, was imperatively needed, for she could not stand long without anguish, and soon wearied of any intellectual effort; while the inflammation of the blood was one of the worst signs. But the rumours went further, and there were whispers of some coming momentous change if the doctors could not overcome the weakness of the Queen: “We should be glad that there is no immediate prospect of a change on the throne.” She had entirely given up driving, and never appeared outside the castle gates, and gossip had it that she feared assassination; the truth probably being that she was too ill to go out.

A curious order, made in the middle of April, that “in consequence of the mortality of sheep and lambs the Queen has commanded that no lamb shall be served in the Royal Household this season” raised something like consternation, showing as it did a lack of knowledge of the sheep-rearing industry. A fortnight later, upon the representations made to her, the Queen said, in effect, _revenons à nos moutons_--for the order was rescinded.

Victoria was to have gone on a visit to Sandringham, but it was put off, then arranged and again put off, and at last she went to Osborne on April 17. The journey was made in rigid privacy; from the castle she drove in a closed carriage, with equerries riding by the windows; the public and even the station officials were dispensed with at the stations, and all along the line no heads of railway departments were allowed to be on the platforms. In May the return was made in the same way, and on the 25th of that month she went to Balmoral under the same signs of secrecy, a great screen of evergreens being put up at Perth to hide her when passing to her breakfast-room. There followed many strange stories as to her mental condition, especially as the doctors were reported to be very anxious about her; suggestions were made that the injured knee was but an innocent fiction intended to disguise the true state of affairs, and further whispers among those who were around her Majesty at the time were spread abroad to the effect that possibly a Regency would be arranged.

Later on the Queen indignantly protested that no woman who had to be lifted to and from her carriage in a chair would wish a crowd to stand watching the process, and that this was the cause of her journeys being so privately conducted.

It was hoped that the change of air and scene at Balmoral would have a good effect upon the Queen’s health, but, to the disappointment of every one, it but deepened the depression. This was somewhat natural, as the whole place was reminiscent of John Brown, and all her thought was for his memory. Arriving at Balmoral in the morning, she ordered everything to be in readiness to take her to Craithie churchyard, and after a short luncheon drove with Princess Beatrice and Dr. Profeit to the spot. A few days later she was there again, carrying with her a wreath to lay upon the grave. The servants at Balmoral were ordered to wear mourning bands round their arms for him, and the royal servants contributed unquestioningly to a memorial subscription fund. The royal birthday passed without rejoicings, and there were no servants’ or tenants’ parties.

The memoirs which John Brown left were never published, all his papers being, by the Queen’s command, taken possession of by Sir Henry Ponsonby. Boehm, the sculptor, was ordered to make a life-sized statue of the dead man, which in the following year was mounted on a pedestal and placed close to the castle at Balmoral; and at Osborne was placed another monument to his memory in the shape of a granite seat, upon which the Queen had some pathetic lines engraved.

When at Osborne in August Victoria summoned Tennyson for one of those interviews which gave so much pleasure to both, and asked him to write an epitaph to put on the tomb at Craithie. The poet, however, sent her a quotation, and Victoria had a stone put over John Brown’s grave which rivalled that to Beaconsfield, the inscription running--

THIS STONE

IS ERECTED IN AFFECTIONATE REMEMBRANCE OF

JOHN BROWN

THE DEVOTED AND FAITHFUL PERSONAL ATTENDANT AND BELOVED FRIEND OF QUEEN VICTORIA, ‘THAT FRIEND ON WHOSE FIDELITY YOU COUNT, THAT FRIEND GIVEN YOU BY CIRCUMSTANCES OVER WHICH YOU HAVE NO CONTROL, WAS GOD’S OWN GIFT.’

Of her last interview with the Laureate, which took place a little later in the year, the Queen wrote: “When I took leave of him, I thanked him for his kindness and said I needed it, for I had gone through much; and he said, ‘You’re so alone on that terrible height; it is terrible. I’ve only a year or two to live, but I shall be happy to do anything for you I can--send for me whenever you like.’ I thanked him warmly.”

Victoria had intended to go to the Continent in June, and her yacht, the _Osborne_, was docked at Portsmouth, thirty workmen busy at getting it ready; but at the last the journey was postponed, the royal party only returning from Balmoral on the 23rd of the month, when the Queen had to be carried to the train in an invalid chair, and for almost the first time in her life being half an hour late in starting. In July she went to Osborne, and in August returned to Balmoral; and now we get one of the first indications that she was beginning to feel that her presence was to some extent necessary to her ministers, for that journey was postponed some days, as Parliament had not been prorogued. However, once in Scotland she remained there three months, coming back at the end of November through heavy snow, and under threats that explosives would be placed on the lines. An extra pilot-engine preceded the train, and extra guards were stationed, one in sight of the other, for the whole six hundred miles; and nothing happened.

This autumn the Queen amused herself by preparing her second series of journals, _More Leaves from the Journal of a Life in the Highlands_; and when it was issued, in 1884, it bore the dedication--

“To my loyal Highlanders and especially to the memory of my devoted personal attendant and faithful friend, John Brown, these records of my widowed life in Scotland are gratefully dedicated.

“Victoria, R. I.”

The volume concluded with a short appreciation of John Brown, one paragraph in which ran: “His loss to me (ill and helpless as I was at the time from an accident) is irreparable, for he deservedly possessed my entire confidence; and to say that he is daily, nay hourly, missed by me, whose lifelong gratitude he won by his constant care, attention and devotion, is but a feeble expression of the truth.”

This whole John Brown incident is typical of Victoria’s character. From the very first she had been unable to stand alone; she needed a stronger personality to support her. Melbourne, Prince Albert, John Brown, these had, each in his turn, afforded that support: Melbourne entirely during her youthful exercise of power; her husband had wielded the power for her and left her happy with the appearance of it; John Brown slid insensibly into the position of confidential helper and stay, and she discussed everything with him, being delighted with his shrewd answers. At a time when she was lonely, overworked by her own indiscriminating will, the subject of her people’s bitter disappointment and discontent, bearing many sorrows caused by death, this man, strong, devoted and capable, stood always by her side. The mere personal proximity during so many years, combined with some natural sympathy between their natures, drew him slowly into his position of close friend as well as of attentive servant. Her simplicity and frankness, as well as her invincible faith in her high position, blinded her to the impropriety of her constant public recognition of him, to the possibility that vulgar gossip--born of anger--could arise; to the natural contrast which the public must draw between her attitude to a simple Scotch peasant and her own eldest son, heir to her throne.

Every one knew that the Prince of Wales was never consulted on matters of State policy, that his ambitions were forcibly bounded by the laying of foundation-stones and the opening of charitable institutions. It was also known, as time went on, that when he saw younger men than himself holding positions of great power and influence he openly regretted that he had been delegated at the beginning of his career to the duties of a social figurehead, and it was said that he aspired to higher things. His many journeys abroad, laughed at by some, were regarded by others as a deliberate self-training in the knowledge of people, statesmen and feeling in different countries, and as providing the means of studying the effects of our foreign policy both at home and abroad. Quite unconsciously to himself the exaltation of John Brown turned the people’s attention to the Prince, and they centred their hopes in him.

However, the Queen, engrossed in her feelings, knew nothing of this, and to the day of her death shut out of her counsels the man who should have been her chief support. She continued to hold herself aloof from great and small, while the Prince and Princess of Wales broke through the cold and rigid German Court etiquette by mingling with those who were virtually their subjects, and accepting invitations in London and the country. It had never been done before with anything like the same freedom, and foreign Court pedants as well as her Majesty looked on aghast. But it brought them close to the nation, and though Albert Edward spoke English with a strong German accent, he was regarded as more English than his mother.

The long series of deaths which had so distressed the Queen came temporarily to an end in 1884 when Prince Leopold died suddenly at Cannes. He had married in 1882, and was given as a wedding present Claremont and all it contained by her Majesty, who bought it outright from the State. He inherited his father’s tastes, and on the rare occasions on which he chaired a meeting his speeches much resembled those of Prince Albert. In the general irritation against royalty, it was said that it was impossible that one of the Queen’s sons could make a decent speech, and that they were written for him; but there was no reason to believe that this was anything more than idle spite. He alone of the four brothers spoke English with a pure accent. His little daughter was born in 1883; his son’s birth did not take place until after his death.

Leopold craved for some active position, but his health and his mother’s solicitude enforced great restrictions upon him. He particularly hoped to be made Governor-General of Canada, and Gladstone would have been quite willing to give him the post, but the Queen forbade, and the Prince felt much hurt at the Prime Minister’s refusal. Early in March 1884 he went to Cannes to avoid the bitter east winds, and there, at the Cercle Nautique, he, too, slipped on the stairs and again hurt his knee. He was taken to the Villa Nevada, where he was residing, and seemed little the worse, but in the night he died in an epileptic fit. He was buried at Windsor, and, having been totally unable to lead a physically active life, the Queen ordered a full military funeral, his body being borne by the Seaforth Highlanders, for in this regiment she had given him one of those much-discussed honorary colonelcies.