Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/431

 A month later, after proroguing parliament in person (24 Aug.), and making a short yachting tour on the south coast, the queen carried out an intention that had long been present in her mind of paying a visit to the king of the French, with whose family her own was by marriage so closely connected. This was an event of much historic interest. In the first place it was the first occasion on which the queen had trodden foreign soil. In the second place it was the first occasion on which an English sovereign had visited a French sovereign since Henry VIII appeared on the Field of the Cloth of Gold at the invitation of Francis I in 1520. In the third place it was the first time for nearly a century that an English monarch had left his dominions, and the old procedure of nominating a regent or lords-justices in his absence was now first dropped. Although the expedition was the outcome of domestic sentiment rather than of political design, Peel and Aberdeen encouraged it in the belief that the maintenance of good personal relations between the English sovereign and her continental colleagues was a guarantee of peace and goodwill among the nations a view which Lord Brougham also held trongly. Louis Philippe and his queen were staying at the Chateau d'Eu, a private domain near Treport. The queen, accom- panied by Lord Aberdeen, arrived there on 2 Sept. in her new yacht Victoria and Albert, which had been launched on 25 April, and of which Lord Adolphus FitzClarence, a natural son of William IV, had been ap- pointed captain. Her host met the queen in his barge off the coast, and a magnificent reception was accorded her. The happy domestic life of the French royal family strongly impressed her. She greeted with enthusiasm, among the French king's guests, the French musician Auber, with whose works she was very well acquainted, and she was charmed by two fetes champêtres and a military review. Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot, Louis Philippe's minister, discussed political questions with the utmost cordiality, and although their conversations led later to misunderstanding, everything passed off at the moment most agreeably. The visit lasted five days, from 2 to 7 Sept., and the queen's spirit fell when it was over. On leaving Treport the queen spent another iour days with her children at Brighton, and paid her last visit to George IV's inconvenient Pavilion. But her foreign tour was not yet ended. From Brighton she sailed in her yacht to Ostend, to pay a long promised visit to her uncle, the king of the Belgians, at the palace of Laeken, near Brussels. 'It

was such a joy for me,' she wrote after parting with him, 'to be once again under the roof of one who has ever been a father to me.' Charlotte Bronte, who was in Brussels, saw her 'laughing and talking very gaily' when driving through the Rue Royale, and noticed how plainly and unpretentiously she was dressed (, Life of Charlotte Bronte, 1900, p. 270). Her vivacity brought unwonted sunshine to King Leopold's habitually sombre court. She reached Woolwich, on her return from Antwerp, on 21 Sept.

The concluding months of the year (1843) were agreeably spent in visits at home. In October she went by road to pay a first visit to Cambridge. She stayed, according to prescriptive right, at the lodge of Trinity College, where she held a levee. Prince Albert received a doctor's degree, and the undergraduates offered her a thoroughly enthusiastic reception. Next month she gave public proof of her regard for Peel by visiting him at Drayton Manor (28 Nov. to 1 Dec.) Thence she passed to Chatsworth, where, to her gratification, Melbourne and the Duke of Wellington were fellow-guests. The presence of Lord and Lady Palmerston was less congenial. At a great ball one evening her partners included Lord Morpeth and Lord Leveson (better known later as Earl Granville), who was afterwards to be one of her most trusted ministers. Another night there were a vast series of illuminations in the grounds, of which all traces were cleared away before the morning by two hundred men, working under the direction of the duke's gardener, (Sir) Joseph Paxton. The royal progress was continued to Belvoir Castle, the home of the Duke of Rutland, where she again met Peel and Wellington, and it was not till 7 Dec. that she returned to Windsor.

On 29 Jan. 1844 Prince Albert's father died, and in the spring he paid a visit to his native land (28 March-11 April). It was the first time the queen had been separated from her husband, and in his absence the king and queen of the Belgians came over to console her. On 1 June two other continental sovereigns arrived in the country to pay her their respects, the king of Saxony and the Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. To the tsar, who came uninvited at very short notice, it was needful to pay elaborate attentions. His father had been the queen's godfather,