Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty Queen Victoria, vol 2 | Page 4

then adjourn to the library, and the Duke sits on the sofa by the Queen (almost as a father would sit by a daughter) for the rest of the evening until eleven o'clock, the Prince and the gentlemen being scattered about in the library or the billiard-room, which opens into it. In a large conservatory beyond, the band of the Duke's grenadier regiment plays through the evening."
There was much that was unique and kindly in the relations between the Queen and the greatest soldier of his day. He had stood by her baptismal font; she had been his guest, when she was the girl- Princess, at Walmer. He had sat in her first Council; he had witnessed her marriage; she was to give his name to one of her sons; in fact, he had taken part in every event of her life. The present arrangements were a graceful, well-nigh filial, tribute of affectionate regard for the old man who had served his country both on the battle-field and in the senate, who had watched his Queen's career with the keenest interest, and rejoiced in her success as something with which he had to do.
The old soldier also gave the Prince shooting, but it was the "fine wild sport" which might have been expected from the host, and which seemed more to the taste of the guest. And in the party of gentlemen who walked for miles over the ploughed land and through the brushwood, none kept up the pace better than the veteran.
The weather was broken and partly wet during the Queen's stay at Strathfieldsaye, and in lieu of out-of-door exercise, the tennis-court came into request. Lord Charles Wellesley, the Duke's younger son, played against professional players, and Prince Albert engaged Lord Charles and one of the professional players, the Queen looking on.
When the visit was over, the Duke punctiliously performed his part of riding on horseback by her Majesty's carriage for the first stage of her journey.
Comical illustrations are given of the old nobleman and soldier's dry rebuffs, administered to the members of the press and the public generally, who haunted Strathfieldsaye on this occasion.
The first was in reply to a request for admission to the house on the plea that the writer was one of the staff of a popular journal commissioned to give the details of the visit. "Field-Marshal the Duke of Wellington presents his compliments to Mr. ---, and begs to say he does not see what his house at Strathfieldsaye has to do with the public press." The other was in the form of a still more ironical notice put up in the grounds, "desiring that people who wish to see the house may drive up to the hall-door and ring the bell, but that they are to abstain from walking on the flagstones and looking in at the windows."
In February the Queen opened Parliament in person for what was destined to be a stormy session, particularly in relation to Sir Robert Peel's measure proposing an increased annual grant of money to the Irish Roman Catholic priests' college of Maynooth. In the Premier's speech, in introducing the Budget, he was able to pay a well-merited compliment on the wise and judicious economy shown in the management of her Majesty's income, so that it was equal to meet the heavy calls made upon it by the visits of foreign sovereigns, who were entertained in a manner becoming the dignity of the sovereign, "without adding one tittle to the burdens of the country. And I am not required, on the part of her Majesty," went on Sir Robert Peel, "to press for the extra expenditure of one single shilling on account of these unforeseen causes of increased expenditure. I think, to state this is only due to the personal credit of her Majesty, who insists upon it that there shall be every magnificence required by her station, but without incurring a single debt." In order to show how the additional cost of such royal hospitality taxed the resources even of the Queen of England, it may be well to give an idea of the ordinary scale of housekeeping at Windsor Castle. Lady Bloomfield likens the kitchen-fire to Nebuchadnezzar's burning fiery furnace. Even when there was no company, from fifteen to twenty joints hung roasting there. In one year the number of people fed at dinner in the Castle amounted to a hundred and thirteen thousand!
Shall we be accused of small moralities and petty lessons in thrift if we say that this passage in Sir Robert Peel's speech recalls the stories of the child-Princess's training, in a wholesome horror of debt, and the exercise of such little acts of self-denial as can alone come in a child's way; that it brings to mind the Tunbridge anecdote of the