A month later, after proroguing parliament in person (24 Aug.), and making a
short yachting tour on the south coast, the
queen carried out an intention that had
long been present in her mind of paying a
Queen's visit to Louis Philippe. visit to the king of the French,
with whose family her own was
by marriage so closely connected.
This was an event of much historic interest. In the first place it was the
first occasion on which the queen had trodden
foreign soil. In the second place it was the
first occasion on which an English sovereign had visited a French sovereign since
Henry VIII appeared on the Field of the
Cloth of Gold at the invitation of Francis I
in 1520. In the third place it was the first
time for nearly a century that an English
monarch had left his dominions, and the
old procedure of nominating a regent
or lords-justices in his absence was now
first dropped. Although the expedition
was the outcome of domestic sentiment
rather than of political design, Peel and
Aberdeen encouraged it in the belief that
the maintenance of good personal relations
between the English sovereign and her
continental colleagues was a guarantee of
peace and goodwill among the nations a
view which Lord Brougham also held
trongly. Louis Philippe and his queen
were staying at the Chateau d'Eu, a private
domain near Treport. The queen, accom-
panied by Lord Aberdeen, arrived there on
2 Sept. in her new yacht Victoria and
Albert, which had been launched on 25 April,
and of which Lord Adolphus FitzClarence,
a natural son of William IV, had been ap-
pointed captain. Her host met the queen
in his barge off the coast, and a magnificent
reception was accorded her. The happy
domestic life of the French royal family
strongly impressed her. She greeted with
enthusiasm, among the French king's guests,
the French musician Auber, with whose
works she was very well acquainted, and
she was charmed by two fetes champêtres
and a military review. Lord Aberdeen and
M. Guizot, Louis Philippe's minister, discussed political questions with the utmost
cordiality, and although their conversations
led later to misunderstanding, everything
passed off at the moment most agreeably.
The visit lasted five days, from 2 to 7 Sept.,
and the queen's spirit fell when it was over.
On leaving Treport the queen spent another
iour days with her children at Brighton, and
paid her last visit to George IV's inconvenient
Pavilion. But her foreign tour was not yet
ended. From Brighton she sailed in her
yacht to Ostend, to pay a long promised
visit to her uncle, the king of the Belgians,
at the palace of Laeken, near Brussels. 'It
The queen in Belgium.
was such a joy for me,' she wrote after parting with him, 'to be
once again under the roof of one
who has ever been a father to me.' Charlotte Bronte, who was in Brussels, saw her
'laughing and talking very gaily' when
driving through the Rue Royale, and noticed
how plainly and unpretentiously she was
dressed (Gaskell, Life of Charlotte Bronte,
1900, p. 270). Her vivacity brought unwonted sunshine to King Leopold's habitually sombre court. She reached Woolwich, on her return from Antwerp, on 21 Sept.
The concluding months of the year (1843) were agreeably spent in visits at home. In October she went by road to pay a first visit to Cambridge. She stayed, according to At Cambridge. prescriptive right, at the lodge of Trinity College, where she held a levee. Prince Albert received a doctor's degree, and the undergraduates offered her a thoroughly enthusiastic reception. Next month she gave public proof of her regard for Peel by visiting him At Drayton Manor. at Drayton Manor (28 Nov. to 1 Dec.) Thence she passed to Chatsworth, where, to her gratification, Melbourne and the Duke of Wellington were fellow-guests. The presence of Lord and Lady Palmerston was less congenial. At a great ball one evening her partners included Lord Morpeth and Lord Leveson (better known later as Earl Granville), who was afterwards to be one of her most trusted ministers. Another night there were a vast series of illuminations in the grounds, of which all traces were cleared away before the morning by two hundred men, working under the direction of the duke's gardener, (Sir) Joseph Paxton. The royal progress was continued to Belvoir Castle, the home of the Duke of Rutland, where she again met Peel and Wellington, and it was not till 7 Dec. that she returned to Windsor.
On 29 Jan. 1844 Prince Albert's father died, and in the spring he paid a visit to his native land (28 March-11 April). It was the first time the queen had been separated from her husband, and in his absence the king and queen of the Belgians came over to console her. On 1 June two other continental sovereigns arrived in the country to pay her their respects, the king of Visit of Tsar Nicholas I, 1844. Saxony and the Tsar Nicholas I of Russia. To the tsar, who came uninvited at very short notice, it was needful to pay elaborate attentions. His father had been the queen's godfather,
