Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/482

 the queen suffered severely from rheumatic gout and neuralgia, she entertained a large family party, including the crown prince and princess of Prussia and Princess Alice.

The increasing happiness in the royal circle was menaced at the end of the year by a grief almost as great as that which befell it just ten years before. At the end of November the prince of Wales fell ill of typhoid fever, at his house at Sandringham, and as the illness reached its most critical stage, the gravest fears were entertained. The queen went to Sandringham on 29 Nov., prince of and news of a relapse brought Wales. her thither again on 8 Dec. with her daughter Alice, who was still her guest. Both remained for eleven days, during which the prince's life hung in the balance. Happily, on the fateful 14 Dec., the tenth anniversary of the prince consort's death, the first indications of re- covery appeared, and on the 19th, when the queen returned to Windsor, the danger was passed. A week later the queen issued for the first time a letter to her people, thanking them for the touching sympathy they had displayed during 'those painful terrible days.' As soon as her son's health was fully restored the queen temporarily abandoned her privacy to accompany him in a semi-state procession from Buckingham Palace to St. Paul's Cathedral, giving. there to attend a special service of thanksgiving (27 Feb. 1872). She was dressed in black velvet, trimmed with white ermine. For the last time the sovereign was received by the lord mayor with the traditional ceremonies at Temple Bar, the gates of which were first shut against her and then opened (the Bar was removed in the winter of 1878-9). Next day (28 Feb.) the queen endured renewal of a disagreeable experience of earlier years. A lad, Arthur O'Connor, who pretended to be a Fenian emissary, pointed an unloaded pistol at the queen as she was entering Buckingham Palace. He was at once seized by her attendant, John Brown, to commemorate whose vigilance she instituted a gold medal as a reward for long and faithful domestic service. She conferred the first that was struck on Brown, together with an annuity of 25l. On the day following O'Connor's senseless act the queen addressed a second letter to the public, acknowledging the fervent demonstrations of loyalty which welcomed her and her son on the occasion of the public thanksgiving.

That celebration, combined with its anxious cause, strengthened immensely the bonds of sentiment that united the crown and the people. There was need of strengthening these bonds. Every year increased the feeling that the queen's reluctance to resume her old place in public life was diminishing the dignity of the crown. The formation of a republic in France at the same time encouraged the tendency to disparage monarchical institutions. Lord Selborne, the lord chancellor, when the queen's guest at Windsor, was bold enough to tell sure of the her that if the French republic held its ground it would influence English public opinion in a republican direction (, Memorials, vol. ii.) During the early seventies the cry against the throne threatened to become formidable. Mob-orators prophesied that Queen Victoria would at any rate be the last monarch of England. The main argument of the anti-royalists touched the expenses of the monarchy, which now included large provision for the queen's children. Criticism of her income and expenditure was developed with a pertinacity which deeply wounded her. Pamphlets, some of which were attributed to men of position, compared her income with the modest 10,000l allowed to the president of the United States. A malignant tract, published in 1871, which enjoyed a great vogue, and was entitled 'Tracts for the Times, No. I. : What does she do with it ? by Solomon Temple, builder,' professed to make a thoroughgoing examination of her private expenditure. The writer argued that while the queen was constantly asking parliament for money for her children, she was not spending the annuity originally secured to her by the civil list act on the purposes for which it was designed. A comparatively small proportion of it was applied, it was asserted, to the maintenance of the dignity of the crown, the sole object with which, it was granted ; the larger part of it went to form a gigantic private fortune which was in some quarters estimated to have already reached 5,000,000l. To these savings the writer protested she had no right ; any portion of the civil list income that at the end of the year remained unexpended ought to return to the public exchequer. Personally, it was said, the queen was well off, apart from her income from the civil list. Besides Neild's bequest she had derived more than half a million from the estate of the prince consort, and the receipts from the duchy of Lancaster were steadily increasing. The assertions in regard to matters of fact were for the most part false. The queen's savings in the civil list were rarely 20,000l. a year, and her opportunities of thrift were