On the 11th of August the Queen left London for Antwerp, from which she proceeded to Laeken with the King of the Belgians. From Belgium she went on to Gotha, where she stayed at the Castle of Rosenau till the 7th of September. On the 8th of the month her Majesty journeyed to Kranichstein, near Darmstadt, and spent the day with the Princess Louis of
[Illustration: THE QUEEN UNVEILING THE STATUE OF PRINCE ALBERT AT ABERDEEN.]
Hesse. Leaving at night, the Queen was in Antwerp early next morning (9th), and on the 10th at Greenhithe, whence the _Fairy_, steam tender to the royal yacht, conveyed her to Woolwich. Driving to Nine Elms, she took train to Windsor, greatly pleased by the hearty greetings she received from crowds of people at the chief stations on the way. The autumnal holiday was, as usual, spent at Balmoral, where a kindly and sympathetic family party gathered round the Queen. Prince Louis of Hesse and the Princess (Alice) stayed with her at the Castle. The Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia, with their family, were lodged hard by at Abergeldie. The Princess Louis of Hesse devoted herself to her mother, and with characteristic energy endeavoured to dispel the heaviness of heart which was again settling on her. For this purpose she urged the Queen to resume the old open-air life among the mountains, from which she had derived incalculable benefit in times past. The Princess therefore organised an expedition to Clova, which her mother was induced to join. The party consisted of the Queen, the Princess Louis of Hesse, the Princess Helena, the Queen’s coachman, Smith, and her gillie, John Brown, and “Willem,” a little black page-boy in the service of the Princess Louis. The excursion was marred by an alarming accident which befell the party on the way home. The coachman lost his way in the dark, and about two miles from Altnagiuthasach the carriage was upset--the Queen being flung violently on her face to the ground. “Alice,” writes the Queen in her “Journal,” was “soon helped up, by means of tearing all her clothes to disentangle her; but Lenchen (Princess Helena), who had also got caught in her dress, called out very piteously, which frightened me a good deal, but she was also got out with Brown’s assistance, and neither she nor Alice was at all hurt. I reassured them that I was not hurt, and urged that we should make the best of it, as it was an inevitable misfortune.... Meantime the horses were lying on the ground as if dead, and it was absolutely necessary to get them up again. Alice, whose coolness was admirable, held one of the lamps while Brown cut the traces, to the horror of Smith, and the horses were speedily released, and got up unhurt.” The Queen’s common-sense advice to “make the best of it” was taken, and the Royal party encamped in this desolate mountain solitude, while Smith was sent on to get another carriage. Then the Princesses discovered that their mother had been bruised severely on the face, and that her right thumb was sprained. “A little claret,” the Queen says, “was all we could get either to drink or wash my face and hands.” Luckily, the groom, who had gone on in front with the “shelties,” or rough little mountain ponies, which the Queen and her family use for hill climbing, got alarmed at their long absence, and he very sensibly rode back to see if any accident had happened. When he came up the Queen insisted on mounting at once and riding all the way home, which she reached after ten o’clock at night, to find the Crown Prince of Prussia and Prince Louis of Hesse at the door of the Castle anxiously looking out for her. A week after this accident (13th of October) the Queen was present at the inauguration of Marochetti’s statue to the Prince Consort at Aberdeen. “I could not reconcile it to myself,” she said, in replying to an address from the subscribers, “to remain at Balmoral while such a tribute was being paid to his (Prince Albert’s) memory, without making an exertion to assure you personally of the deep and heartfelt sense I entertain of your kindness and affection, and at the same time to proclaim in public the unbounded reverence and admiration, the devoted love, that fills my heart for him whose loss must throw a lasting gloom over my future life.” It was a mournful ceremony for the Queen, whose emotion was so great that she had to depute Sir George Grey, the Minister in attendance, to read her reply. Dense crowds of people filled the streets, but forbore to cheer, greeting the Royal widow merely with silent and respectful sympathy.