Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/571

 and the Prince of Wales on a visit at the Tuileries to Napoleon III, England's ally in the Russian war. She was delighted with her reception and completely enchanted by the Empress Eugenie. Paris had throughout life the same fascination for her as for her brother King Edward VII. In later life, however, national animosities debarred her from visiting the French capital save under the strictest incognito.

At length in 1855 King Frederick William IV yielded to sentimental rather than to political argument and sanctioned his nephew's offer of marriage. On 14 Sept. of the same year the young prince arrived at Balmoral. A few days later Queen Victoria and Prince Albert accepted his proposal for the hand of the princess. She was fifteen and he was twenty-four, although young for his age. The parents at first desired that the child princess should know nothing of the plan until after her confirmation (Letters of Queen Victoria, iii. 186). But an excursion with the princess on 29 Sept. to Craig-na-Ben gave the prince his opportunity. 'He picked a white piece of heather (the emblem of good luck), which he gave to the princess, and this enabled him to make an allusion to his hopes and wishes' (Journal of our Life in the Highlands, p. 154). On 1 Oct. the prince left Balmoral; it was understood that the marriage should take place after the girl's seventeenth birthday. Henceforth her education was pursued with a special eye to her future position. The prince consort himself devoted an hour a day to her instruction. He discussed with her current social and political questions and fostered liberal and enlightened sympathies. At his suggestion she translated into English Johann Gustav Droysen's 'Karl August und die Deutsche Politik' (Weimar, 1857), a plea for a liberal national policy in Germany. The princess now first took part in social fimctions. On 8 May 1856 she made her début at a court ball at Buckingham Palace. On 20 March the same year she was confirmed by John Bird Sumner [q. v.], archbishop of Canterbury, in the private chapel of Windsor Castle.

The betrothal was not publicly announced until 29 April 1856, on the conclusion of the Crimean war by the treaty of Paris. But the secret had leaked out already, and the news was received coolly in both countries. 'The Times' (3 Oct. 1855) poured contempt on Prussia and its king. On 19 May 1857 Parliament voted a dowry of 40,000l, with an annuity of 4000l. In June Prince Frederick, accompanied by Count Moltke, came to England, and made his first public appearance with the princess at the Manchester Art Exhibition (29 June). The marriage negotiations were not concluded with the Prussian court without a hitch. Queen Victoria refused the Prussian proposal that the marriage should take place at Berlin. 'Whatever may be the practice of Prussian princes,' she wrote to Lord Clarendon [q. v.], secretary for foreign affairs, ' it is not every day that one marries the daughter of the Queen of England' (Letters of Queen Victoria, iii. 321). Accordingly the marriage was fixed to take place in London early in 1858. The bridegroom arrived in London on 23 Jan. and the marriage was celebrated in the chapel royal, St. James's Palace, on the 25th. The honeymoon was spent at Windsor. The public was at length moved to enthusiasm. Richard Cobden hailed the bride as 'England's daughter' (ib. iii. 334). On 2 Feb. she and her husband embarked at Gravesend for Germany.

In Germany the princess was well received. Her childish beauty and charm of manner won the sympathy of all classes on her formal entry into Berlin (8 Feb. 1858). After her reception by King Frederick William IV her husband telegraphed to Prince Albert 'The whole royal family is enchanted with my wife.' Princess Hohenlohe gave Queen Victoria an equally glowing account of the favourable impression which the princess created at Berlin (, Life of the Prince Consort, iv. 172). ' I feel very happy,' she told a guest at a court reception on 27 March, 'and am proud to belong to this country' (, Aus meinem Leben, iii. 17).

During the early years of her married life the princess made a tour of the smaller German courts, but she lived much in retirement in Berlin, at first in the gloomy old Schloss. Her first summer in Germany was spent at the castle of Babelsberg, where her father visited her in June 1858, and both he and her mother in August. On 20 Nov. following she and her husband moved into the Neue Palais on the Unter den Linden, which was henceforth her residence in Berlin. There on 27 Jan. 1859 she gave birth to her eldest son, William, afterwards German Emperor.

From the first, many of the conditions of the princess's new life proved irksome. The tone of the Prussian court in matters of religion and politics was narrower than that in England. The etiquette was more constrained and the standard of