Great Britain -- History -- Victoria, 1837-1901 -- Fiction
"You ought to sing one for him?" suggested the Prince.
"If you only will," pleaded Mendelssohn.
"I will try the 'Fruhling's Lied,'" she said, "if it is here, but I am
afraid that all my music is packed to go to Claremont." Prince Albert
went to look for it, but when he returned, he reported that it was
already packed.
"But could it perhaps be unpacked?" suggested Mendelssohn daringly.
"It shall be," said the Queen. "We must send to Lady Frances." The bell
was rung, and the servants were sent to find the music, but they were
unsuccessful.
"I will go," the Queen declared, and she left the room. While she was
gone, the Prince said: "She begs that you will accept this present as a
remembrance," and he gave the composer a beautiful ring marked "V. R.
1842."
When the Queen returned, she said, "It is really most annoying; all my
things are gone to Claremont."
"Please do not make me suffer for the accident," begged Mendelssohn,
and at last another song was chosen. "She really sang it charmingly,"
he wrote in a letter, but when he told her so, she exclaimed, "Oh! if I
only had not been so frightened."
The Prince sang, and Mendelssohn gave them one of his wonderful
improvisations; then the musician took his leave. "But do come to
England again soon and pay us a visit," said the Queen earnestly, as he
made his farewells.
Running about to see the world was not so common an amusement in the
first half of the nineteenth century as it is to-day, neither were
railroads as common, and the Queen of England was twenty-three years of
age before she ever made a journey by rail. This new way of traveling
produced quite a disturbance among some of her attendants. The Master
of Horse said that as it was his business to arrange for her journeys,
he must assure himself that the engine was in proper condition; and,
much to the amusement of the engineer, he appeared at the railway
station several hours before the train was to start, that he might
inspect the engine, as if it were a horse. There was even more
difficulty in satisfying the claims of the coachman. "When the Queen
travels, it is my business to drive for her," he declared; "therefore,
I must at least be on the engine." He was permitted to ride on the
pilot engine, but the dust and cinders made such havoc with his scarlet
livery and his white gloves that he concluded not to press his claims
quite so urgently in future.
This famous journey was only twenty-five minutes long, and in spite of
the gorgeousness of crimson carpets laid from the royal carriage to the
train, it could not have been especially comfortable, for airbrakes and
good roadbeds were inventions yet to come. Nevertheless, the royal lady
was not discouraged in her desire to travel, and in the autumn of 1842
she and the Prince made a journey to Scotland.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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