Beschreibung:

PRINCE ARTHUR, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (1850-1942)]. Album, inscribed 'To dearest Arthur from his most affectionate mama Victoria R & I Osborne Jan: 29 1877', containing approximately 600 autograph signatures, each with date and place, various places including Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle, Balmoral, Osborne House, Bagshot Park and the Royal Yacht Osborne , 1877-1882, printed in Leipzig by Giesecke & Dervient as a birthday book, with illustrations for each month, poetical quotations and famous births and deaths, 215 leaves, 4to (239 x 170mm) , crushed morocco binding, gilt in panels, spine gilt in compartments, gilt turn-ins, gilt edges, silk doublures (slightly scuffed). The album provides an informal picture of the royal circle in the middle of Victoria's reign; signatories are chiefly courtiers or friends and relatives of Prince Arthur, amongst them Queen Victoria, Edward VII (as Prince of Wales, 'Albert Edward P'), George V (at the age of 14), Leopold II of Belgium, German Emperors Frederick III (as Crown Prince), and Wilhelm II (signed in English 'William Prince of Prussia'), others of Queen Victoria's children, namely Crown Princess Victoria of Prussia, Prince Leopold and Princesses Beatrice and Helena, her grandchild Princess Louise Victoria, Benjamin Disraeli ('Beaconsfield') and Louis Battenberg. Queen Victoria 'adored' Arthur, her third son, 'from the day of his birth'; he devoted much of his life to a career in the army. The period of this album covers his service in Ireland with the Rifle Brigade, his visit to Berlin for two German royal weddings in February 1878, his marriage (on 13 March 1879) to Louise, daughter of Prince Frederick Charles of Prussia, their subsequent honeymoon, much of it spent in the Mediterranean on the Royal Yacht Osborne , and their taking up residence in Bagshot Park; there are no entries after his departure for the Egyptian war in 1882 in command of the 1st Guards Brigade.