Part 3 (2/2)
That year, Victoria's first as a Queen, she celebrated Christmas at Windsor Castle, and it would have been a very unnatural thing indeed if the girl had not exulted with joy over the wonderful presents which poured in on her from every side, and yet she kept through this, as in all the honours paid to her, her simple-hearted manner and was entirely unspoiled by what might easily have turned the head of an older and wiser monarch.
And now comes the greatest of all the great events in which the young Queen is the central figure--her Coronation. It is true that she had already been Queen for a whole year, but such was royal etiquette that the time had just arrived for the wonderful ceremonies which would mark her official taking of the Crown.
June the twenty-eighth was the day, and the year 1838, and Victoria was nineteen years old. They came beforehand, the old courtiers, and explained to her the coming pageant, and how after kneeling to her they were all required to rise and kiss her on the left cheek. Gravely she listened and thought this over, thought not only of the salutes of the grave Archbishops, but of the kisses of those other younger peers, of whom there were six hundred, and then she issued a proclamation excusing them from this duty, so all but the Dukes of Cambridge and Suss.e.x, who could kiss her rosy cheek by special privilege of kins.h.i.+p, would have to be content with pressing a salute on her hand!
As for the Coronation, it was one of the most wonderful in history, for all England wished to look with proud eyes on the crowning of this young girl who even in one year had proved herself to be capable of understanding the intricate doings of statescraft, and days before the ceremonies were to begin, people poured in from all parts of the United Kingdom to see the glittering spectacle and to prove their loyalty to her who was their sovereign.
The great procession started from Buckingham Palace about ten o'clock in the morning, and the first state carriages held the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent and her attendants, then came the grand state coach, imposing in its gorgeous array of gilding and gla.s.s, drawn by eight cream-coloured horses from the royal stables, with white flowing manes and tails. In the coach of state sat Her Majesty, and there was tremendous applause all along the line as soon as the bright girlish face beaming its welcome to her people, was seen. On reaching Westminster Abbey, the gorgeous scene might have startled or confused her, if she had not rehea.r.s.ed beforehand as thoroughly as though it were a play in which she were to take part.
On each side of the nave were galleries erected for the spectators, which had been covered with crimson cloth fringed with gold, and under them were lines of very martial looking footguards. The stone floor was covered with crimson and purple cloth, while immediately under the central tower of the Abbey, inside the choir, five steps from the floor, was a platform covered with cloth of gold on which stood the golden ”Chair of Homage.” In the chancel, near the altar, stood the quaint old chair in which all the sovereigns since Edward the Confessor had been crowned. The tiers of galleries upholstered in crimson cloth and old tapestries, were occupied by Members of Parliament and foreign Amba.s.sadors, while in the organ loft sat a large choir dressed in white, and players on instruments dressed in scarlet, while high above them were a score of trumpeters; all of which produced a brilliant effect that was heightened by the music pealing through the vast Abbey over the heads of the throng.
Long before the arrival of the royal party the Abbey was crowded to its doors with foreign Amba.s.sadors and Princes in their gorgeous costumes, and most gorgeous of all were the Lord Mayor and Prince Esterhazy, who was costumed like a glittering shower of jewels from head to toe, while hundreds of pretty women were there in every kind of elaborate evening dress, although it was only eleven o'clock in the morning. It took both time and thought to place all the royal personages so that none would be offended, and every peer and peeress would be seated so as to have a good view of that part of the minster in which the Coronation was to take place.
The grand procession pa.s.sed slowly up the long aisle, with its dignitaries of Church and State, and all its pomp and glitter of jewels and gorgeous costumes. Then came the Queen. She wore a royal robe of crimson velvet, trimmed with ermine and gold lace, and on her head was a circlet of gold. Her tremendously long train was borne by eight young court ladies, and never did she look quite so girlish and slight and young as she did in that great procession of older dignitaries. As she entered the Abbey the choir began the National Anthem, which could scarcely be heard because of the mighty cheers which burst from the general a.s.sembly, echoing through the dome and arched recesses of the vast building. Slowly the Queen moved toward the altar, sweetly the choir boys chanted _Vivat Victoria Regina!_ while moving quietly to a chair placed between the ”chair of homage” and the altar, Victoria knelt in prayer for a moment, then rose, and the Primate announced in a loud voice, ”I here present unto you Queen Victoria, the undoubted Queen of this realm, wherefore all of you are come this day to do your homage.
Are you willing to do the same?”
Then the people all shouted, ”G.o.d save Queen Victoria!” which ”recognition,” as it was called, was repeated many times and answered each time by the beating of drums and the sounding of trumpets.
Throughout all this the Queen stood, turning towards the side from which the recognition came, and then followed a great number of curious old rites and ceremonies which always go with a Coronation, even though many of them have entirely lost their meaning through the lapse of time.
There were prayers and the Litany and a sermon, and then the administration of the oath of office, and after a long questioning by the Archbishop, Her Majesty was led to the altar, where, kneeling with her hand on the Gospels in the Great Bible, she said in clear, solemn tones which could be heard all through the Abbey:
”The things which I have herebefore promised I will perform and keep. So help me G.o.d.”
She then kissed the book and continued to kneel while the choir sang a hymn, then while she sat in St. Edward's chair, a rich cloth of gold was held over her head and the Archbishop anointed her with oil in the form of a cross, after which came still more forms and ceremonies, the presentation of swords and spurs, the investing her with the Imperial robe, the sceptre and the ring, the consecration and blessing of the new crown, which had been made especially for her, and at last the crowning.
The moment this was over all the peers and peeresses, who had held their coronets in their hands during the ceremonies, placed them on their heads, and shouted, ”G.o.d save the Queen!” The trumpets and drums sounded again, while outside in the sunlight, guns fired by signal boomed their salute to the new sovereign, who was led to the chair of homage to receive the salutation of Church and State. First in line came the dignitaries of the Church, who knelt and kissed her hand, then the Dukes of Cambridge and Suss.e.x, who, taking off their coronets and touching them to the crown (a pretty ceremony that!), solemnly pledged their loyalty, and kissed their niece on the left cheek. Then, according to her decree, the other dukes and peers, even the Duke of Wellington, who knelt before her, had only the honour of kissing the small white hand.
Last of all came an old and feeble peer who found such difficulty in mounting the steps that he stumbled at the top and fell to the bottom, rolling all the way back to the floor, where he lay, hopelessly entangled in his robes. Impulsively the Queen rose from her throne as if it were but a chair and stretched out her hands to help him, but the old peer had risen by that time, and was trying his best to raise his coronet to touch the crown, but failed because of the trembling of his hand, and the Queen with ready tact held out her hand for him to kiss without the form of touching her crown. It was a pretty incident, proving the entire unconsciousness of self which the young Queen showed all through the imposing ceremonies. And they were not yet over. There was yet the Sacrament to be administered to the Queen, who knelt, uncrowned, to receive it; then came a recrowning, a re-enthronement, more music and then the welcome release of the benediction. Pa.s.sing into King Edward's chapel, the queen changed the imperial for the royal robe of purple velvet and went out of the Abbey wearing the crown and carrying her sceptre in her right hand, and drove home through a surging ma.s.s of shouting, cheering subjects and sight-seers, who noticed that she looked exhausted, and that she frequently put her hand to her head, as if wearing a crown were not at all a comfortable thing.
The gates of the palace were reached at last, the long, vast, tiresome ceremonial was at an end. The home door swung open to receive her, and out dashed her pet spaniel, barking a joyous welcome as he always did when she had been away a long time. A girlish smile broke over Victoria's face, for so many hours moulded into a maturer expression of sovereignty, and crying, ”There, Das.h.!.+” she unceremoniously ran in, flung off her crown and royal robe and sceptre and ran upstairs to give the dog his daily bath!
At that time Carlyle said of her: ”Poor little Queen! She is at an age when a girl can scarcely be trusted to choose a bonnet for herself, yet a task is thrust upon her from which an archangel might shrink.”
True indeed, but her Majesty, Queen Victoria, even at the moment of doffing her crown to give her dog a bath, could with equal grace and capability have answered a summons to discuss grave national issues, and would have shown both good judgment and wisdom in the discussion. A wonderful little woman she was, young for her task, but old for her age, and as we see her standing in the famous portrait painted in her coronation robes we see all that is fairest and n.o.blest in both girl and Queen. She stands there as though mounting the steps to her throne, her head slightly turned, looking back over her shoulder, and we feel the buoyancy of her youth and the dignity of her purity, a far more royal robe than the one of velvet and ermine which is over her shoulders, and we know that she is already worthy of the homage so universally paid her, this girl Queen of England awaiting what the future may bring.
SALLY WISTER:
A Girl of the American Revolution
WINSOME SALLY WISTER! What a pretty picture she makes against the sombre background of the Revolutionary times in which she lived,--with her piquant face and merry eyes half hidden under her demure Quaker bonnet, and her snowy kerchief crossed so smoothly over her tempestuous young heart!
To one of the finest old families in Philadelphia Sally belonged. Her father, Daniel Wister, was the only son of John Wister, a prosperous wine merchant, and Sally was born at her grandfather's city home, which stands on what is now Market Street, Philadelphia, spending her summers at his country house in Germantown, which charming old homestead is still shown as a landmark of the place.
In winter Sally was a pupil in the girls' school kept by a famous Quaker, Anthony Benezet, where there were gathered the daughters of many ”first” families of the vicinity, and it was there that the intimacy began between Sally and her life-long friend Deborah Norris, who too was a Quaker girl. The group of girls with whom Sally and ”Debby” Norris were intimate were all between fourteen and sixteen years old, and formed a ”Social Circle” which was very exclusive indeed, but to which a few boys were occasionally admitted. The boys, however, seem to have made themselves disliked, perhaps by teasing, after the manner of boys of to-day, for in the summer of 1776 while the girls were all at their summer homes, one of them wrote to Sally, in the quaint old-fas.h.i.+oned way, making use of many capital letters, ”I shall be glad when we get together again; us Girls, I mean, for as to the Boys, I fancy we must Give them up. Willingly I shall, nor have I the most distant desire of being with them again. I think we pa.s.s our time more agreeably without than with them.” A clear declaration of independence, that--but it was modified later as letters to Sally show, and one feels glad that such a firm stand in an unworthy cause was open to amendment!
At noon on a hot sunny day in 1776, Monday the eighth of July, Sally and Debby Norris were sitting in the cool shade of the big maples in the garden of Debby's home, which adjoined the State House. For a while they sewed and chatted and teased one another as girls will, then Sally held up a silencing finger, ”Shhh!” she whispered. ”That is surely a drum and fife.”
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