a description of their weddimg from " Alexandra Edward VII`s Unpredictable Queen"
on the choice of church
The Chapel Royal, St. James's, that almost traditional royal marriage place, was rejected by the Queen to everyone's astonishment it was too small, or was there in her rejection a kind of tragic jealousy because she and Al- bert had been married there? They offered the ample spaces of St. Paul's. Such a suggestion had never been heard of! That was where
they buried people like Nelson and Wellington. Westminster Abbey? It was not suitable. The password was Sorrow. This was a marriage in a mourning family. St. George's, Windsor, was the place! . . . where nobody had been married since Edward I. The Queen had her eye on the Royal Closet or balcony, where enclosed with her sorrow and generous curtains she might gloom dramatically over the nuptial glitter of the chancel. Dismay spread amongst the bidden guests at the thought of monstrous ceremonial crinolines crushed brutally into railway carriages, and as for the mob, doomed to see nothing, it would be found that their clamor to the railway company for cheap excursions to Windsor would bring grave embar-
rassments to that sleepy town.
THE WEDDING TOOK PLACE ON 10.03.1863
MARCH 10, 1863, was clear, with sunlight sparkling on the frost. The wedding guests had traveled down from London in full dress in a special train. Their arrival made a dazzling exhibi-
tion, since for the first time by the Queen's command colors might be worn by all but ladies of the Household, who must wear grays, mauves and lilacs. At the gate stood the Eton boys in loyal and orderly array. In the court waited the Guard of Honor, looking grim and funereal without a band: by Her Majesty's command no martial music must be heard in the Castle of Sorrow. It was, indeed, by her conception to be a strange medley of mourning and rejoicing.
Inside St. George's Chapel the empty Royal Closet, draped in purple velvet and gold, was the target for every eye. Here was the royal box for the command performance more important than the players on the stage. It was the first occasion for most people to see the Queen since the Terrible Event, Some believed her a mad- woman, or recovering from madness. It was she the black, desolate figure framed above them who would cause tough Lord Palmerston to weep, and many a man of lesser fiber, she who for pity would cause her daughters to break down, she who would invest the ceremony with a strange, uncanny atmosphere and make it the most dramatic royal wedding in British history.
From the moment when a lady in waiting was observed in the
Royal Closet a hush almost a horrified hush came in the whisper-
ing and fluttering below.
A figure, flowing with blackness from head to foot, was suddenly standing at the front of the cage for so the Closet has been described. The Queen sat, crossing her black-gloved hands. The blue of the Garter Ribbon across her corsage held a weird incongruity. The pale face, still young-looking and more beautiful perhaps in sor-
row, peered unhappily down upon the brilliant guests, who bowed deeply, with eyes averted. One guest, Mary Stanley, sister of the Dean of Windsor, watched the Queen intently. Her Majesty was "restless, moving her chair, pulling back her long streamers, asking questions of the Duchess of Sutherland. ... At the first blast of the trumpets she quivered all over and you could see the working of her face."
This sound of trumpets signaled the entry of the English Princesses, a dazzling white procession, led by Mary of Cambridge and terminated by "Baby Beatrice," with her golden gleaming hair, last of the Queen's five daughters. "The most beautiful procession," comments Miss Stanley, and looking upward she notes that "a smile did pass over the Queen's face."
A second silvery blast: a scarlet thickset figure, mantled in Garter Blue, walked purposefully forward and halted upon the blue- carpeted haut pas by the choir the Prince of Wales. Undistin- guished, slightly too plump, resorting presently to a beard with good results, there can be no doubt of the already tremendous popu- larity of this young man, who would soon be nicknamed "Prince Hal." For a bridegroom he earned an ecstatic Press next morning.
At this moment, says Miss Stanley, "the Princess Royal (Vicky) burst out crying and cried almost all the time." It was an example presently followed by the other royal sisters and lastly by "Baby Beatrice" in a somewhat bewildered manner. The trumpets pealed for the bride. She was late, but perhaps on this occasion she merely followed a feminine tradition. The scene which now met the eyes of the spectators was magical, yet how much more would it have enchanted but for their guilty conscious- ness of that macabre royal figure glooming above their heads.
The Princess seemed to float rather than walk up the Gothic nave. "There was no one present," reported Charles Dickens, "who did not feel the effect of that slowness o progress,which carried the bride so gradually and with such almost imperceptible movement past them."
Her face, says Dickens, "was very pale and full of a sort of awe and wonder. It was the face of no ordinary bride, not simply a timid, shrinking girl, but one with a distinctive character of her own, prepared to act a part gready."
And Thackeray, watching that breathless advance with that solemn train of bridesmaids following the Princess, wrote of the princesses of the fairy tale who turned into white swans.
"The sun burst forth and it fell on the Queen's cap," writes Mary Stanley. "As the organ pealed forth the first anthem to Prince Al- bert's own music, the Queen raised her eyes upward as if transfixed." Then the sweet piercing tones of Jenny Lind, the "Swedish nightingale," broke into the Chorale. It was too much. The Queen was seen to rise in floods of tears and vanish from the box. She had seen a coffin where the bridal pair were standing.
But when the spirit of the Consort had passed and the tremulous voice of the aged Archbishop broke through the stillness the Queen reappeared, and the wave of horrified emotion died away.
One slip only marred the occasion, which was said to have caused a fleeting smile on the bride's lips. The rambling, indistinct exhortation of the Archbishop was suddenly drowned, indeed terminated, by the premature tuning of the orchestra. One member of that con- gregation a nephew of the bride from that hour must be singled out for bad behavior, especially as he was later destined to be condemned as the most detestable person she ever met. He was a four- year-old Highlander with a tiny shriveled arm, Vicky's first-born,
Willy (the future Kaiser), who was much occupied in biting the outraged knees of his small kilted uncles, Princes Arthur and Leo-
pold.
When the ring was put on the bride "the guns fired," says Mary Stanley, "and the Queen was very much agitated as if each one went through her. My companions were all as much riveted as I."
It was ended, and a new life had begun both for Alix and Bertie, in their different ways. Let us linger in the Royal Chapel for one moment to experience the warring emotions of the Queen herself.
