Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/492

 couraged, and we may have to do all over again. The whole state of Egypt and its future are full of grave difficulties, and we must take great care that, short of annexation, our position is firmly established there, and that we shall not have to shed precious blood and expend much money for nothing.' Finally Egypt was pacified, and English predominance was secured, although disorder was suffered to spread in the subsidiary provinces of the Soudan with peril to the future. In the last months of the year the queen turned to the grateful task of meting out rewards to those who had engaged in the recent operations. In October she devised a new decoration of the royal red cross for nurses who rendered efficient service in war; the regulations were finally issued on 7 April 1883. On 18 Nov. she reviewed in St. James's Park eight thousand troops who had just returned from Egypt ; and at Windsor, three days later, when she distributed war medals, she delivered to the men a stirring address of thanks.

But it was not only abroad that anxieties confronted the queen and her government during 1882. For the fifth time the queen's life was threatened by assassination. A lunatic, one Roderick Maclean, fired a pistol at her happily without hitting her on 2 March at Windsor railway station, as she was returning from London. Soon afterwards disaffection in Ireland reached a climax in the murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the chief secretary, and of ; Thomas Henry Burke, the under-secretary (6 May). Resolution in the suppression of disorder always won the queen's admiration, and she had given every encouragement to W. E. Forster, while Irish secretary, in his strenuous efforts to uphold the law. The more conciliatory policy which ultimately prevailed with Forster's successors awoke no enthusiasm in her.

Happily the queen found some compensation for her varied troubles in private life. In the spring she spent a vacation abroad for the first time in the Riviera, staying for a month at Mentone. Once more, too, a marriage in her family gladdened her. Her youngest son, Leopold, duke of Albany, had become engaged to a German princess of the house of Waldeck-Pyrmont, whose sister was second wife of the king of the Netherlands. Parliament was invited on 23 March to increase the prince's income, as in the case of his two next elder brothers, from 15,000l. to 25,000l. Gladstone pressed the proposal on the House of Commons, but as many as forty-two members mainly from Ireland voted against the proposal, which was carried by a majority of 345. The customary corollary that in case of the prince's death 6,000l. a year was to be allowed his widow happily passed without dissent. Shortly after the queen's return from Mentone she attended the marriage at St. George's Chapel, Windsor. She purchased in perpetuity the crown property of Claremont, which had been granted her for life by parliament on the death in 1866 of its former holder, King Leopold, and generously presented it to the newly married pair for their residence. Twice during the year she took part in public ceremonies of interest. On 6 May she went to Epping Forest, which the corporation of London had recently secured for a public recreation ground, and she dedicated it formally to public use. At the end of the year, on 4 Dec., at the request of the lord chancellor, she inaugurated the new law courts in the Strand.

The prevailing note of the queen's life, owing alike to public and private causes, during the two years that followed was one of gloom. At the close of 1882 she had been deprived by death of another gloom, friend in whom she trusted Archbishop Tait. Fortunately she found Gladstone in agreement with herself as to the fitness of Edward White Benson, the first headmaster of her husband's foundation of Wellington College, and afterwards first bishop of Truro, to succeed to the primacy. Benson's acceptance of the office was, she said, ' a great support to herself,' and with him her relations were uninterruptedly cordial. At the moment that he took the appointment, the queen suffered a new sense of desolation from the death, on 27 March 1883, of her faithful attendant, John Brown. She placed a tombstone to his memory in Crathie churchyard, and invited suggestions from Tennyson for the inscription, which she prepared herself. At Balmoral she caused a statue of Brown to be erected, and at Osborne a granite seat was inscribed with pathetic words to his memory. Subsequently an accidental fall on the staircase at Windsor rendered her unable to walk for many months and increased her depression. Even in January 1884 it was formally announced that she could not stand for more than a few minutes (Court Circular, 21 Jan.)

In the summer of 1883 she consoled herself in her loneliness by preparing for publication another selection from her journal 'More Leaves from a Journal of Life in the Highlands, 1862-1882,' and she dedicated it