The Life and Times of Queen Victoria (Illustrated Edition). Robert Thomas Wilson

sceptred line

       True to the King of Kings is found;

       Like that wise ancestor of thine

       Who threw the Saxon shield o’er Luther’s life,

       When first above the yells of bigot strife

       The trumpet of the Living Word

       Assumed a voice of deep portentous sound,

       From, gladdened Elbe to startled Tiber heard.”

      Brilliant sunshine gilded those joyful July days when the Queen and her husband set out with a gay and gladsome party for the ceremony of Installation. “The great Railway King, Mr. Hudson himself,” writes the Queen in her Diary, took charge of their train. But perhaps the freshest and brightest account of the journey, and of the proceedings all through, is that of the Baroness Bunsen, a gifted lady who accompanied the Royal party, and who was an eye-witness of what occurred. In a letter to her mother, under date the 8th of July, 1847, she says:—“On Monday morning we were at the station before nine, just before Prince Waldemar, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar, and Prince of Oldenburg arrived, for whom the Queen had added a special train, and one of those carriages called Royal, like a long omnibus, just holding the Princes, their gentlemen aides-de-camp, Bishop Stanley, and Sir George Grey, Prince Löwenstein, and ourselves. The station was a curious spectacle, as usual—all ranks and materials of human society hurrying and jostling or standing together. Our little Aaron Elphick, advanced from a college at Hurstmonceux to be knife-cleaner at Oak Hill, from thence brought to London last year, grown and dressed into a sort of embryo footman, and lent to Prince Löwenstein for the journey to Cambridge, stood guarding the Prince’s portmanteau, whilst close by, talking across Aaron, stood three Princes and a Bishop. As we shot along, every station and bridge and resting-place and spot of shade was peopled with eager faces watching for the Queen, and decorated with flowers; but the largest and the brightest, and the gayest and most excited assemblage, was at the Cambridge Station itself, and from thence along the streets to Trinity College the degree of ornament and crowd and excitement was always increasing. I think I never saw so many children before in one morning, and I felt so much moved at the spectacle of such a mass of life collected together and animated by one feeling, and that a joyous one, that I was at a loss to conceive ‘how any woman’s sides can bear the beating of so strong a throb’ as must attend the consciousness of being the object of all that excitement and the centre of attraction for all those eyes; but the Queen has Royal strength of nerve. We met the well-fed magistrates and yeomanry going to await the Queen, as they desired to fetch her from the station, and walk in procession before her into the town. We saw her entrance into Trinity College as we stood at the window of the Lodge, and the academic crowd, in picturesque dresses, were as loud and rejoicing as any mob could have been. Soon after I went with Mrs. Whewell, Lady Hardwicke, and Lady Monteagle, to take our places in the yet vacant Great Hall of Trinity, where the Queen came to receive the Chancellor’s address, and a few minutes after she had placed herself on the Throne (i.e., arm-chair under a canopy at the raised extremity of the Hall). Prince Albert, as Chancellor, entered from the opposite end, in a beautiful dress of black and gold, with a long train held up, made a graceful bow, and read an address, to which she read an answer with a peculiar emphasis, uttering approbation of the choice of a Chancellor made by Cambridge! Both kept their countenances admirably, and she only smiled upon the Prince at the close, when all was over, and she had let all the heads of houses kiss her hand, which they did with exquisite variety of awkwardness, all but one or two. Afterwards, the Queen dined with the Vice-Chancellor in the hall of a small college, where but comparatively few could be admitted. My husband was among the invited, but not myself, and I was very glad to dine with Mrs. Whewell, Lady Monteagle, and three of their suite—Colonel Phipps, Mr. Anson, and Meyer. Later in the evening I enjoyed a walk in the beautiful garden belonging to the Lodge, where flowers, planted and cared for

      DR. WHEWELL.

      in the best manner, combine with fine trees and picturesque architecture. The Queen went to a concert, contrived as an extra opportunity of showing her to the public. On Tuesday morning all were up early to breakfast at nine (but I had crept into the garden and admired the abundance of roses long before that), to be ready before ten at the distribution of prizes and performance of the Installation Ode in the Senate House. The English prize poem, by a Mr. Day, on Sir Thomas More, had really merit besides the merit of the subject. The Installation Ode I thought quite affecting, because the selection of striking points is founded on fact, and all exaggeration and humbug were avoided.... Then the Queen dined in the Great Hall of Trinity, and splendid did the Great Hall look—330 people at various tables.... In the afternoon we had all been at luncheon at Downing College, and enjoyed dancing in a refreshing shade, and the spectacle of cheerful crowds in brilliant sunshine. The Queen came thither and walked round to see the Horticultural Show, and to show herself and the Chancellor.

      THE QUEEN IN THE WOODWARDIAN MUSEUM. (See p. 315.)

      After this was the real dinner, the Queen and her immediate suite at a table across the raised end of the Hall, all the rest at tables lengthways. At the Queen’s table the names were put on places, and anxious was the moment before one could find one’s place. I was directed by Lord Spencer to take one between him and the Duke of Buccleuch, and found myself in very agreeable neighbourhood.

      “Yesterday morning I went with the Duchess of Sutherland and Lady Desart through the Library, King’s Chapel, Clare Hall, and the beautiful avenue and gardens—with combinations of trees, architecture, green turf, flowers, and water—which, under such a sun and sky as we had, could nowhere be finer. The Duchess was conducted by Dr. Whewell, Lady Desart by Lord Abercorn, and my honoured self by Dr. Meyer in uniform (as all had been attending the Chancellor’s levee in the morning), and we passed among the admiring crowd who followed us at a respectful distance, for the hero, Sir Harry Smith, as Lord Fortescue said, was taken for the Duke of Wellington. Till twelve we walked, and at one the Queen set out, through the Cloisters, and Hall and Library of Trinity College, to pass through the gardens and avenues, which had been connected for the occasion, by a temporary bridge over the river, with those of St. John’s, and we followed her, thus having the best opportunity of seeing everything, and in particular the joyous crowd that grouped among the noble trees. Then the Queen sat down to luncheon in a tent, and we were placed at her table. The only other piece of diplomacy was Van de Weyer; but Madame Van de W. did not come, being unable to undertake the fatigue. The Queen returned by Trinity Lodge, and left for good at three, and as soon as we could afterwards we drove away with Prince Waldemar. I could still tell much of Cambridge, of the charms of its trim gardens, and of how well the Queen looked, and how pleased, and how well she was dressed, and how perfect in grace and movements.”

      Another little vignette of the stately academic pageant, in which the Queen shone as a sweet and charming figure, is rapidly sketched by another eye-witness. Bishop Wilberforce, writing to Miss Noel, July 5th, 1847,83 says:—

      “The Cambridge scene was very interesting. There was such a burst of loyalty, and it so told on the Queen and the Prince. C. would not there have thought that he looked cold. It was quite clear that they both felt it was something new; that he had earned, and not she given, a true English honour; and so he looked so pleased and she so triumphant. There were also some pretty interludes—when he presented the address and she beamed upon him, and once half smiled, and then covered the smile with a gentle dignity, and then she said, in her clear, musical voice, ‘The choice which the University has made of its Chancellor has my most entire approbation.’”

      The Royal lady’s voice may have been clear and distinct, but, as a matter of fact, she was thrilled with nervous excitement, quite unusual to her, and evidently due to the fulness of her heart in sharing her husband’s first great personal triumph over English prejudices. “I cannot say,” the Queen records in her Diary, “how it agitated and embarrassed me to receive this address, and hear it read by my beloved Albert, who walked in at the head of the University, and who looked dear and beautiful in his robes, which were carried by Colonel Phipps and Colonel