Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/411

 princess afterwards made a cruise in the yacht Emerald to Eddystone lighthouse, to Torquay, whence she visited Exeter, and to Swanage.

While she was responding to the calls of public duty she was enjoying enlarged Her delight opportunities of recreation. She in music and frequently visited the theatre, the drama. In which she always delighted. But it was the Italian opera that roused her highest enthusiasm. She never forgot the deep impressions that Pasta, Malibran, and Grisi, Tamburini and Rubini made on her girlhood. Grisi was her ideal vocalist, by whom she judged all others. All forms of music, competently rendered, fascinated her. Her reverence for the violinist Paganini, after she had once heard him, never waned. In June 1834 she was a deeply interested auditor at the royal musical festival that was given at Westminster Abbey. During her autumn holiday in the same year, when she first stayed at Tunbridge Wells, and afterwards at St. Leonards-on-Sea, she spent much of her time in playing and singing, and her instrument was then the harp (cf. Memoirs of Georgiana Lady Chatterton, by E. H. Bering, 1901, p, 29). In 1836 Lablache became her singing master, and he gave her lessons for nearly twenty years, long after her accession to the throne.

During 1835, when she completed her sixteenth year, new experiences crowded on her. In June she went for the first time to Ascot, and joined in the royal procession. The American observer, N. P. Willis, watched her listening with unaffected delight to an itinerant ballad singer, and thought her 'quite unnecessarily pretty and inte- resting,' but he regretfully anticipated that it would be the fate of ' the heir to such a crown of England ' to be sold in marriage for political purposes without regard to her personal character or wishes (, Pencillings by the Way, 1835, lii. 115). On 30 July 1835 the princess was confirmed at Chapel Royal, St. James's. The archbishop of Canterbury's address on her future responsibilities affected her. She 'was drowned in tears and frightened to death.' Next Sunday, at 'the chapel of Kensington Palace, the princess received the holy sacrament for the first time. The grim archbishop (Howley) again officiated, together with her preceptor, Davys, the dean of Chester. After a second visit to Tunbridge Wells, where she stayed at Avoyne House, she made a triumphal northern progress. At York she remained a week with Archbishop Harcourt at Bishopsthorp, and visited Lord Fitzwilliam at Wentworth House, whence she went over to the The tour of races at Don ca8ter. She was the guest of the Duke of Rutland at Belvoir House, was enthusiastically received by the people of Stamford, and was next entertained by the Marquis of Exeter at Burghley. A great ball at Burghley was opened by a dance in which the marquis was the princess's partner. When she reached Lynn on her way to Holkham, the Earl of Leicester's seat, navvies yoked themselves to her carriage and drew it round the town. Her last sojourn on this tour was at Euston Hall, the residence of the Duke of Grafton. After returning to Kensington, she spent the month of September at Ramsgate, making excursions to Walmer Castle and to Dover.

In 1836, when the princess was seventeen, her uncle Leopold deemed that the time had arrived to apply a practical test to his scheme of uniting her in marriage with her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg. Accordingly, he arranged with his sister, the Duchess of Kent, that Albert and his elder brother Ernest, the heir-apparent to the duchy, should in the spring pay a visit of some weeks' duration to aunt and daughter at Kensington Palace. In May Princess Victoria met Prince Prince Albert for the first time. William IV and Queen Adelaide received him and his brother courteously, and they were frequently entertained at court. They saw the chief sights of London, and lunched with the lord mayor at the Mansion House. But the king looked with no favour on Prince Albert as a suitor for his niece's hand. At any rate, he was resolved to provide her with a wider field of choice, and he therefore invited the prince of Orange and his two sons and Duke William of Brunswick to be his guests at the same period that the Saxe-Coburg princes were in England, and he gave the princess every opportunity of meeting all the young men together. His own choice finally fell on Alexander, the younger son of the prince of Orange. On 30 May the Duchess, of Kent gave a brilliant ball at Kensington Palace, and found herself under the necessity of inviting Duke William of Brunswick and the prince of Orange with his two sons as well as her own protégés. Among the general guests was the Duke of Wellington. Some days later the Saxe-Coburg princes left England. Albert had constantly sketched and played the piano with his cousin ; but her ordinary language, like that of those about her, was English