Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/585

 prince's conversation. If the prince was careful to prevent Count von Beust, the Austrian ambassador, whose hostility to Denmark was admitted, from even approaching the princess, he succeeded in establishing the best social relations between himself and the count. A passion for direct personal intercourse with all who dominated great events tended to override personal sentiment and prejudice. In April 1864 he drew on himself a severe rebuke in the royal circle by visiting Garibaldi, who was staying with the prince's friend, the duke of Sutherland, at Stafford House. He sought out first-hand intelligence of all that was passing abroad. In July of the same year, when he dined with Lord Palmerston, Sir Horace Rum bold, who was then secretary of legation at Athens, was of the company. The prince at once sent for him to learn the exact position of affairs hi Greece, where his wife's brother, Prince William of Denmark, had just been elected king as George I.

It was, too, never his practice to depend for his knowledge of foreign complications on those whom he met at home. Scarcely a year passed without a foreign tour which combined amusement with political discussions. In September 1864 the prince paid a visit to his wife's family in Denmark, crossing from Dundee to Copenhagen, He extended his tour to Stockholm, where he was entertained by King Charles XV and had a first experience of elk-shooting. He freely discussed the political situation from various points of view. The expedition extended his intimacy among the royal families of Europe. Not only did he make a lasting acquaintance with the cultured Swedish ruler, King Charles XV, who as the grandson of General Bernadotte had a warm affection for France and a keen suspicion of Prussia, but he then inaugurated a long and cordial intimacy with the Russian dynasty. During his visit to Copenhagen the Princess of Wales's sister Dagmar was betrothed to the Grand Duke Nicholas of Russia, the heir of the Tsar Alexander II. The grand duke's death next year annulled the match, but the princess transferred her hand to the grand duke's next brother, Alexander, afterwards Tsar Alexander III, and a first link between the royal families of England and Russia was thereby forged.

From Denmark the prince proceeded to Hanover and thence visited his sister Alice in Darmstadt. On the return journey he was the guest at Brussels of his grand-uncle King Leopold, who was fertile in political counsel. The prince was home again on 6 Nov. The visit to Germany was repeated in 1865, when Queen Victoria unveiled a statue of the prince consort at Coburg. The prince there saw much of his German and Prussian relatives, with some of whom he stalked and shot bustards.

His foreign engagements in 1866 brought him for the first time to Russia. On the journey he stayed for a few days at Berlin, where his sister and her husband gave in his honour a banquet which the king of Prussia attended. On 9 Nov., his twenty-fifth birthday, he reached St. Petersburg to attend the wedding of his wife's sister Dagmar with the tsarevitch Alexander. The ceremony took place at the Winter palace. A visit to Moscow preceded his return to Berlin on the way home. On the Russian court he exerted all his habitual charm. Indeed throughout Europe his personal fascination was already acknowledged. Lord Augustus Loftus, the English ambassador in Berlin, noted on his leaving Berlin that the golden opinions he was winning in every country and every court of Europe had an 'intrinsic value' in England's international relations. On the affection of Parisians he had long since established a hold. France welcomed him with marked cordiality when, as the guest of Napoleon III, he visited the International Exhibition in Paris in June 1867. He served on the royal commission for the British section—a first taste of a common later experience. A fellow guest in Paris was Abdul Aziz, the sultan of Turkey, whose acquaintance he had made at Constantinople in 1862. The sultan reached England next month, and the prince was active in hospitalities on the queen's behalf.

The prince's family was growing. A second son, George, who ultimately succeeded him on the throne as George V, was born to him at Marlborough House on 3 June 1865. Their first daughter, Princess Louise (afterwards Princess Royal), was born at Marlborough House on 20 Feb. 1867. A second daughter, Princess Victoria, was born on 6 July 1868, and a third daughter, Princess Maud, on 26 Nov. 1869. Visitors at Sandringham or Marlborough House were invariably introduced to the children without ceremony and with parental pride. After the birth of Prince George in 1865, the princess accompanied the prince on a yachting cruise off Devonshire and Corn- wall, in the course of which they visited the Scilly Islands and descended the