The New Orleans bulletin. [volume] (New Orleans [La.]) 1874-1876, 1874-12-09
QUEEN VICTORIA.
HOW SHE NEGLECTED HER GUEST, TIL EMPRESS OF
RUSSIA.
I From the New York World. ]


Queen Victoria's want OF attention to the En-
press OF Russia has provoked 8 considerable
amount of acerbity ON the part OF newspapers
usually little given to severe comment. The
cOurtly Morning Post, the acknowledged British
artiter eleJantidrum and organ OF high life
observes
''The Prince Of Wales returns from one form
Of the duties of hospitality to the other. There
is at present in England lady to whom it be.
hooves us to show the utmost respect. The
claims upon us even greater than those Of the
wife OF mighty sovereign. It is to BE- hoped
that the arrangements Of the Prince and Princess
OF Wales may enable them to fulfill that part
which the Queen is unfortunately prevented
from undertaking.. Circumstances are such
that little is required: but that is all the more
reason why that little should not be neglected"
The Manchester Guardian, published in
more democratic region, makes an almost in
credible statement to the effect that:
SIT is confidently asserted that though the
Empress of Russia is permitted to occupy apart
ments so as to be near her daughter during her
illness in buckingham Palace, yet her Imperial
Majesty defrays all expenses whatever incurred
there for herself and suite. Surely after the
splendid Inequalities profusely lavished on so
many of the English royal family and others Of
the nation at st. Petersburg ON the occasion Of
the marriage of the Duke Of Edinburgh. such an
arrangement is not a little unworthy OF such
country as Great Britain"
A Liverpool paper bluntly blurts OUT People
are grumbling loudly over the inhospitable treat
ment the Empress OF Russia is receiving in this
country and the Northern Wing, tho great
Protestant North of Ireland organ, a.ks:
"Can it be seriously intended that the Empress
of Russia should be allowed to leave the British
shores without the slightest attention on the part
OF the Queen, and that even the stay at Balmoral
will not be in any way shortened out Of courtesy
to the Empress, q delicate woman, who has como
all across Europe to attend her daughter in her
confinement? We cannot, Of course, answer this
question; but really our gracious sovereign ap-
pears now to do so many ungracious things that
nothing of family obligations, is not impossible,
nor even improbable. All that can be said il that
if Queen Victoria should not trouble herself to go
to London to meet the Empress Of Russia, she
would be acting as no other sovereign in the
world would act toward her, and that, indeed, if
such conduct in any other sovereign were proba-
BILE, it would be thought most unroyal, and even
insulting. 1t would be considered rude in
one private person to another under the circnm
stances; but it would be very much more in a
great Queen to great Empress, whose daughter
her second son had married. and who was here
simply to perform a maternal duty, like the
hunblest Of the subjects of Russia or Great
Britain. The character OF our court for want Of
hospitality is now so thoroughly established that
it cannot, perhaps, be increased by gross per-
sonal slight to the Empress of Russia. If the
Queen We're to leave the Highlands at once to re-
ceive the Empress, it still could not be said that
Cne III WINCH Sll6 nau O6naVeu was all
that could be desired, if all that might be ex-
pected. TO ordinary persons the Queen, on the
arrival of the Empress, ought to have been at
Buckingham Palace herself, or at least at Wind
sor. As it is. the Empress OF Russia has been
visited by the widowed Empress of the French,
but not by the British Queen.
Very possibly there may have been some In-
dcrstanding between these royal and imperial
ladies on this matter, which has not been COM
municated to the 'foulth estate" The Empress
o%to 1nyT h.,..
She is herself in delicate health and very prob
ably is anxious to dispense with everything ap-
prOximating to state visit, and it is likely
enough that Queen Victoria jumped at any op-
portunity which enabled her to avoid leaving her
beloved Balmocal.
Agentleman who had Of late years been brought
into close communication with the Queen, not
long ago observed about this matter, pertinenty
enough, that 81 the best Of us, when we have en-
tirely our own way. arc apt to be very selfish and
there is no reason why her Majesty should be an
exception" 1t happens, moreover. that the
Queen of Great Britain has survived almost every
person who could dare to give her hint.
Baroness Letzen, who did not scruple to in
bonnets were indeed 'dreadful' and her project
ed presents too 'dreadfully shabby has long
passed away. So has Lord Melbourne, who had
known her well in her girhood, and the free and
easy character of whose terms with her may be
surmised from the fact that he used to lapse
into an after dinner doZe while her Majesty was
talking to him; and grutf, plain-speaking old
Scotch Aberdeen, whom she looked up to as a
modern Solomon; and, above all, the "Iron
Duke" whom she could not coax into advocating
sn allowance Of $4,000 a year for Albert the
Good" The modern statesmen stand in awe Of
her. She is an historical parsonage to them, and
an old stateswoman, who knows as much Of
as the Oldest of them. For thirty
seven years the leading political minds of Europe
have been open books to her. She had European
politics at her fingers ends when most Of her ac-
tual cabinet were at school or college
Nor have any of her ladies the sort of com.
manding influence with her which a few once
had. Intimate as her relations are with several
of these ladies, they have not the sway over her
mind which was exerted by those to whom in
former days she felt inferior-n not, perhaps, in
intellect, but certainly in age and experience.
monarch is almost always rather a solitary
being, and the widowed Queen Victoria is pecu-
liary alone in the world. She is said to have eX
claimed at her mothers death that thare was
scarcely any one left who could call her by her
Christian name. A slight matter this may seem,
plain. The people who cannot call her by her
Christian name are not very likely to
Be to her faults little blind,
And to her virtues very kind.
1t is not such persons who will put, themselves
out OF the way to explain the shortcomings OF
the sovereign through their regard for the
woman. And though the popularity of Victoria
iests VI 81 Oioau u loundatlon o! lOnS ma-
tured general respect for her personal character
and aims in life that her mistakes still evoke re-
greet rather than indignation, it is by no
means certain that the continual nagging
Of the press at the obstinate isolation Of the
Queen may not eventually wear away the popular
regard for the wife, widow and mother, who has
SO long enthralled the loyalty of the average
British householder by the practice on her throne
of all the virtues which he esteems as the palla
dunn Of his own family and his own home.
A Chinese contractor, convicted of swim
ding by making false estimates in repairing
the imperial summer palace, has been SEN
fenced to decapitatioa. If similar offenses
were punished in that way in this country, it
would ruin the hatters.