Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/491

 tional calamity. My grief is great and lasting.' She knew, she added, that he would wish to be buried beside his wife at Hugheiiden, but she directed that a public monument should be placed to his memory in Westminster Abbey (, ii. 565). At the funeral at Hughenden, on the 26th, she was represented by the prince of Wales and Prince Leopold. Of two wreaths which she sent, one, of primroses, bore the inscription, 'His favourite flower. ... A tribute of affection from Queen Victoria,' and thus inaugurated the permanent association of the primrose with Lord Beaconsfield's memory. But such marks of regard did not exhaust the queen's public acts of mourning. Four days after the burial (30 April) she and the Princess Beatrice visited Lord Beaconsfield's house at Hughenden, and the queen placed with her own hands a wreath of white camellias on the coffin, which lay in the still open vault in the churchyard. Next year, on a site chosen by herself in the church, she set up a memorial tablet a low-relief profile portrait of the minister with an inscription from her own pen : 'To the dear and honoured memory of Benjamin, Earl of Beaconsfield, this memorial is placed by his grateful and affectionate sovereign and friend Victoria R.I. ("Kings love him that speaketh right." Proverbs xvi. 13.) February 27th, 1882.' No sovereign in the course of English history had given equal proofs of attachment to a minister.

The queen's generous sympathies were never wholly absorbed by her own subjects or her friends at home. A few weeks before Lord Beaconsfield's death she was shocked by the assassination of the Tsar Alexander II, father of her daughter-in-law, the Duchess of Edinburgh (13 March), and a few months later the death by a like violence of President Garfield of the United States drew from her an autograph letter of condolence to the widow which the veteran politician Charles Pelham Villiers described as a 'masterpiece' of womanly consideration and political tact.

Before the end of 1881 the government was involved in grave difficulties in Egypt. Arabi Pasha, the khedive's war minister, fomented a rebellion against the khedive's authority in the autumn, and by the summer of 1882 he had gained complete control of the Egyptian government. Grave disorders in the administration of Egyptian finance had led England and France in 1878 to form what was known as the dual control of the Egyptian revenue, and this arrangement imposed on them the responsibility of preserving order in the country. France now, however, declined to join England in active defence of the khedive's authority, and the queen's government undertook to repress the insurrection of Arabi single-handed. The queen, quickly convinced of the need of armed intervention, evinced characteristic solicitude for prompt and effectual action. On 10 July, when hostilities were imminent, she inquired of Childers what forces were in readiness, and deprecated the selection of a commander-in-chief until she had had time to consider the government's suggestions. The condition of the transport and the supply of horses demanded, she pointed out, immediate consideration. On the 21st she approved the appointment of Sir Garnet Wolseley as commander-in-chief, with Sir John Adye as chief of the staff. On 28 July she asked for information respecting the press regulations. Her concern for the success of the expedition was increased by the appointment, with her full consent, of her son, the Duke of Connaught, to the command of the guards' brigade in the first division of the army, while the Duke of Teck filled a place on Wolseley's staff. Until the whole of the expeditionary force was embarked she never ceased to advise the war office respecting practical points of equipment, and was peremptory in her warnings in regard to food supplies and hospital equipment. The comfort as well as the health of the troops needed, in her view, attention. In a single day in August she forwarded no less than seventeen notes to the minister of war.

The opening of the campaign sharpened her zeal. On 12 Sept. she wrote from Balmoral, 'My thoughts are entirely fixed on Egypt and the coming battle.' When the news of the decisive victory at Tel-el-Kebir reached her (13 Sept.), she caused a bonfire to be lit on the top of Craig Gowan, thus celebrating the receipt of the news in the same way as that of the fall of Sebastopol in 1855. But her joy at the victory was dashed by the fear that the government would not follow it up with resolution. She was aware of differences of opinion in the cabinet, and she spared no exertion to stiffen the backs of her ministers. On 19 Sept. she protested alike against any present diminution of troops in Egypt, and against the lenient treatment of the rebellious Arabi. On 21 Sept. 1882 she wrote to Childers (Life, ii. 33): 'If Arabi and the other principal rebels who are the cause of the deaths of thousands are not severely punished, revolution and rebellion will be greatly en-