In August she took possession of Windsor Castle, amid great rejoicing. The Duchess, her mother, came also; this time not to be reproached or insulted. They soon had company--a lot of Kings and Queens, among them "Uncle Leopold" and his second wife, a daughter of Louis Philippe of France.
The royal young house-keeper seems keenly to have enjoyed showing to her visitors her new home, her little country place up the Thames. She conducted them everywhere,
"Up-stairs, down-stairs, and in my lady's chamber,"
peeping into china and silver closets, spicy store-rooms, and huge linen chests smelling of lavender.
Soon after came a triumphal progress to Brighton, during which the royal carriage passed under an endless succession of triumphal arches, and between ranks on ranks of schoolchildren, strewing roses and singing pæans. At Brighton there was an immense sacrifice of the then fashionable and costly flower, the dahlia, no fewer than twenty thousand being used for decorative purposes. But a sadder because a vain sacrifice on this occasion, was of flowers of rhetoric. An address, the result of much classical research and throes of poetic labor, and marked by the most effusive loyalty, was to have been presented to Her Majesty at the gates of the Pavilion, but by some mistake she passed in without waiting for it.
About this time the Lunatic Asylums began to fill up. Within one week two mad men were arrested, proved insane, and shut up for threatening the life of the Queen and the Duchess of Kent. So Victoria's life was not all arched over with dahlia-garlands, and strewn with roses, nor were her subjects all Sunday-school scholars.
Banquet in Guildhall--Victoria's first Christmas at Windsor Castle as Queen--Mrs. Newton Crosland's reminiscences--Coolness of Actors and Quakers amid the general enthusiasm--Issue of the first gold Sovereigns bearing Victoria's head.
On Lord Mayor's Day, the Queen went in state to dine with her brother- monarch, the King of "Great London Town." It was a memorable, magnificent occasion. The Queen was attended by all the great ladies and gentlemen of her Court, and followed by an immense train of members of the royal family, ambassadors, cabinet ministers and nobility generally--in all, two hundred carriages of them. The day was a general holiday, and the streets all along the line of the splendid procession were lined with people half wild with loyal excitement, shouting and waving hats and handkerchiefs. It may have been on this day that Lord Albemarle got off his famous pun. On the Queen saying to him, "I wonder if my good people of London are as glad to see me as I am to see them?" he replied by pointing to the letters "V. R." "Your Majesty can see their loyal cockney answer-'_Ve are_.'"