Victoria - 1876 - Empress of India
In 1876 a bill was introduced into parliament for conferring on the queen the title of "Empress of India." It met with much opposition, and Disraeli was accused of ministering simply to a whim of the sovereign, whereas, in fact, the title was intended to impress the idea of British suzerainty forcibly upon the minds of the native princes, and upon the population of Hindustan. The prince of Wales' voyage to India in the winter of 1875-76 had brought the heir to the throne into personal relationship with the great Indian vassals of the British crown, and it was felt that a further demonstration of the queen's interest in her magnificent dependency would confirm their loyally.
The queen's private life during the decade 1870-80 was one of quiet, broken only by one great sorrow when the Princess Alice died in 1878. In 1867 her majesty had started in authorship by publishing The Early Days of the Prince Consort, compiled by General Grey; in 1869 she gave to the world her interesting and simply written diary entitled Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands, and in 1874 appeared the first volume of The Life and Letters of the Prince Consort (2nd vol. in 1880), edited by Sir Theodore Martin. A second installment of the Highland journal appeared in 1885. These literary occupations solaced the hours of a life which was mostly spent in privacy. A few trips to the Continent, in which the queen was always accompanied by her youngest daughter, the Princess Beatrice, brought a little variety into the home-life, and aided much in keeping up the good health which the queen enjoyed almost uninterruptedly.
So far as public ceremonies were concerned, the prince and princess of Wales were now coming forward more and more to represent the royal family. People noticed meanwhile that the queen had taken a great affection for her Scottish man-servant, John Brown, who had been in her service since 1840; she made him her constant personal attendant, and looked on him more as a friend than as servant. When he died in 1883 the queen's grief was intense.
From 1880 onwards Ireland almost monopolized the field of domestic politics. The queen was privately opposed to Gladstone's Home Rule policy; but she observed in public a constitutional reticence on the subject. In the year, however, of the Crimes Act 1887, an event took place which was of more intimate personal concern to the queen, and of more attractive import to the country and the empire at large. June 20th was the fiftieth anniversary of her accession to the throne, and on the following day, for the second time in English history, a great Jubilee celebration was held to commemorate so happy an event. The country threw itself into the celebration with unchecked enthusiasm; large sums of money were everywhere subscribed; in every city, town and village something was done both in the way of rejoicing and in the way of establishing some permanent memorial of the event.
In London the day itself was kept by a solemn service in Westminster Abbey, to which the queen sat in state, surrounded by the most brilliant, royal, and princely escort that had ever accompanied a British sovereign, and cheered on her way by the applause of hundreds of thousands of[ her subjects. The queen bad already paid a memorable visit to the East End, when she opened the People's Palace on 14 May. On 02 July she reviewed at Buckingham Palace some 28,000 volunteers of London and the home counties. On 04 July she laid the foundation stone of the Imperial Institute, the building at Kensington to which, at the instance of the prince of Wales, it had been determined to devote the large sum of money collected as a Jubilee offering, and which was opened by the queen in 1893. On 09 July the queen reviewed 60,000 men at Aldershot; and, last and chief of all. on 23 July, one of the most brilliant days of a brilliant summer, she reviewed the fleet at Spithead.
The year 1888 witnessed two events which greatly affected European history; and in a minor, though still marked, degree the life of the English court. On 09 March the emperor William I died at Berlin. He was succeeded by his son, the emperor Frederick III., regarded with special affection in England as the husband of the princess royal. But at the time he was suffering from a malignant disease of the throat, and he died on 15 June, being succeeded by his eldest son, the emperor William II, the grandson of the queen. Meanwhile Queen Victoria spent some weeks at Florence at the Villa Palmieri, and returned home by Darmstadt and Berlin. In spite of the illness of the emperor Frederick, a certain number of court festivities were held in her honor, and she had long conversations with Prince Bismarck, who was deeply impressed by her majesty's personality.
Just before, the prince had taken a very strong line with regard to s regal marriage in which the queen was keenly interested — the proposal that Prince Alexander of Battenberg, lately ruler Bulgaria, and brother of the queen's son-in-law, Prince Henry, would marry Princess Victoria, the eldest daughter of the emperor Frederick. Prince Bismarck, who had been anti-Battenberg from the beginning, vehemently opposed this marriage on the ground that for reasons of state policy it would never do for a daughter of the German emperor to marry a prince who was personally disliked by the tsar. This affair raised no little agitation in royal circles, but in the end reasons of state were allowed to prevail and the chancellor had his way.
The queen had borne so well the fatigue of the Jubilee that during the succeeding years she was encouraged to make somewhat more frequent appearances among her subjects. In May 1888 she attended a performance of Sir Arthur Sullivan's Golden Legend at the Albert Hall, and in August she traveled Glasgow to open the magnificent new municipal buildings, remaining for a couple of nights at Blythswood, the seat of Archibald Campbell. Early in 1880 she received at Windsor a special embassy, which was the beginning of a memorable chapter of English history: two Matabele chiefs were sent by King Lobengula to present his respects to the "great White Queen," as to whose very existence, it was said, he had up till that time been skeptical.
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