"Will you not play something for me?" begged Mendelssohn of the Prince, and added, "so I can boast about it in Germany?" The Prince played, while the Queen sat by him listening and looking perfectly happy. Then Mendelssohn played his chorus, "How Lovely Are the Messengers," but before he was at the end of the first verse, his royal hosts were singing with him.
"It is beautiful," said the Queen. "Have you written any new songs? I am very fond of your old ones."
"You ought to sing one for him?" suggested the Prince.
"I will try the 'Frühling's Lied,'" she said, "if it is here, but I am afraid that all my music is packed to go to Claremont." Prince Albert went to look for it, but when he returned, he reported that it was already packed.
"But could it perhaps be unpacked?" suggested Mendelssohn daringly.
"It shall be," said the Queen. "We must send to Lady Frances." The bell was rung, and the servants were sent to find the music, but they were unsuccessful.
"I will go," the Queen declared, and she left the room. While she was gone, the Prince said: "She begs that you will accept this present as a remembrance," and he gave the composer a beautiful ring marked "V. R. 1842."
When the Queen returned, she said, "It is really most annoying; all my things are gone to Claremont."
"Please do not make me suffer for the accident," begged Mendelssohn, and at last another song was chosen. "She really sang it charmingly," he wrote in a letter, but when he told her so, she exclaimed, "Oh! if I only had not been so frightened."
The Prince sang, and Mendelssohn gave them one of his wonderful improvisations; then the musician took his leave. "But do come to England again soon and pay us a visit," said the Queen earnestly, as he made his farewells.
Running about to see the world was not so common an amusement in the first half of the nineteenth century as it is to-day, neither were railroads as common, and the Queen of England was twenty-three years of age before she ever made a journey by rail. This new way of traveling produced quite a disturbance among some of her attendants. The Master of Horse said that as it was his business to arrange for her journeys, he must assure himself that the engine was in proper condition; and, much to the amusement of the engineer, he appeared at the railway station several hours before the train was to start, that he might inspect the engine, as if it were a horse. There was even more difficulty in satisfying the claims of the coachman. "When the Queen travels, it is my business to drive for her," he declared; "therefore, I must at least be on the engine." He was permitted to ride on the pilot engine, but the dust and cinders made such havoc with his scarlet livery and his white gloves that he concluded not to press his claims quite so urgently in future.