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Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II

S >> Sarah Tytler >> Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen, (Victoria) Vol II




Cabinet councils were summoned and a dispatch prepared. A draft of the
dispatch was forwarded to Windsor to be read by the Queen, when it
struck both her and, the Prince that it was less temperate and
conciliatory than it might have been, while still consistent with
perfect dignity. The Prince Consort's last public work for his Queen
and country was to amend this draft. He rose as usual at seven
o'clock, and faint and ill as he was, scarcely able to hold a pen,
drew out an improved version of the dispatch, which was highly
approved of by the Ministers and favourably received by the American
Government. As the world knows, the President, in the name of his
countrymen, declared that Captain Wilkes had acted without official
instructions, and ordered the release of the gentlemen who had been
taken prisoners.

In the meantime the shadows were darkening round the royal home which
had been so supremely blest. The Prince was worse. Still he walked out
on one of the terraces, and wrapped in a coat lined with fur he
witnessed a review of the Eton College volunteers, from which his
absence would have been remarked. The ill-omened chilly feeling
continued, but there were guests at the Castle and he appeared at
dinner. On Sunday, the 1st of December, the Prince walked out again on
the terrace and attended service in the chapel, insisting "on going
through all the kneeling," though very unwell.

Next morning something was said by the doctors of low fever. No wonder
the Queen was distressed after the recent calamity at Lisbon, but
concealing her feelings as such watchers must, she strove to soothe
and amuse her sick husband. The members of the household who had been
at Lisbon arrived with the particulars of the young King of Portugal's
death. After listening to them the Prince said "that it was well his
illness was not fever, as that, he felt sure, would be fatal to him."

One of the guests at the Castle was Lord Palmerston. In spite of his
natural buoyancy of temperament he became so much alarmed by what he
heard that he suggested another physician should be called in. Her
Majesty had not been prepared for this step, and when she appealed to
the two medical men in attendance, Sir James Clark and Dr. Jenner,
they comforted her by their opinion that there was nothing to alarm
her, and that the low fever which had been feared might pass off.

The next few days were spent in alternations of hope and fear. Which
of us is so happy as not to have known that desperate faith when to
doubt would be to despair? The Prince liked to be read to, but "no
book suited him." The readers were the Queen and Princess Alice, who
sought to cheat themselves by substituting Trollope for George Eliot,
and Lever for Trollop, and by speaking confidently of trying Sir
Walter Scott "to-morrow." To-morrow brought no improvement. Sir James
Clark, though still sanguine, began to drop words which were not
without their significance. He _hoped_ there would be no fever,
which all dreaded, with too sure a presentiment of what would follow.
The Prince _must_ eat, and he was to be told so; his illness was
likely to be tedious, and completely starving himself would not do.

As if the whole atmosphere was heavy with sorrow, and all the tidings
which came from the world without in these days only reflected the
ache of the hearts within, the news came from Calcutta of the death of
the wife of the Governor-General, beautiful, gifted Lady Canning, so
long the Queen's lady-in-waiting and close companion.

The doctors began to sit up with the patient, another stage of the
terrible illness. When her Majesty came to the Prince at eight in the
morning she found him sitting up in his dressing-room, and was struck
with "a strange wild look" which he had, while he talked in a baffled
way, unlike him, of what his illness could be, and how long it might
last. But that day there was a rally; he ate and slept a little,
rested, and liked to be read to by Princess Alice. He was quite
himself again when the Queen came in with his little pet child,
Princess Beatrice, in whom he had taken such delight. He kissed her,
held her hand, laughed at her new French verses, and "dozed off," as
if he only wanted sleep to restore him.

The doctor in attendance was anxious that the Prince should undress
and go to bed, but this he would not do. Throughout the attack, with
his old habit of not giving way and of mastering his bodily feelings
by sheer force of will, he had resisted yielding to his weakness and
submitting to the ordinary routine of a sick-room. After it was too
late the doctor's compliance with the Prince's wishes in this respect
was viewed by the public as rash and unwise. On this particular
occasion he walked to his dressing-room and lay down there, saying he
would have a good night--an expectation doomed to disappointment. His
restlessness not only kept him from sleeping, it caused him to change
his room more than once during the night.

The morning found him up and seated in his sitting-room as before. But
he was worse, and talked with a certain incoherence when he told the
Queen that he had been listening to the little birds, and they had
reminded him of those he had heard at the Rosenau in his childhood.
She felt a quick recoil, and when the doctors showed that their
favourable opinion of the day before had undergone a change, she went
to her room and it seemed to her as if her heart would break.

Fever had now declared itself unmistakably. The fact was gently broken
to the Queen, and she was warned that the illness must run its course,
while the knowledge of its nature was to be kept from the Prince. She
called to mind every thought that could give her courage; and Princess
Alice, her father's true daughter, capable of rising to heights of
duty and tenderness the moment she was put to the test, grew brave in
her loving demotion, and already afforded the support which the
husband and father was no longer fit to give.

Happily for her Majesty, the daily duties of her position as a
sovereign, which she could not lay aside though they were no longer
shared by the friend of more than twenty years, still occupied a
considerable portion of her time. But she wrote in her diary that in
fulfilling her task she seemed to live "in a dreadful dream." Do we
not also know, many of us, this cruel double life in which the
obligations which belong to our circumstances and to old habits
contend for mastery with new misery? When she was not thus engaged the
Queen sat by her husband, weeping when she could do so unseen.

On the 8th of December the Prince appeared to be going on well, though
the desire for change continued strong in him, and he was removed at
his earnest request to larger and brighter rooms, adjoining those he
had hitherto occupied. According to Lady Bloomfield one of the rooms--
certainly called "the Kings' rooms"--into which the Prince was
carried, was that in which both William IV. and George IV. had died;
and the fact was remembered and referred to by the new tenant, when he
was placed where he too was destined to die. The Queen had only once
slept there, when her own rooms were being painted, and as it
happened, that single occasion was on the night before the day when
the Duchess of Kent had her last fatal seizure.

The Prince was pleased with the greater space and light and with the
winter sunshine. For the first time since his illness he asked for
music, "a fine chorale." A piano was brought into the room, and his
daughter played two hymns--one of them "_Ein fester burg ist unser
Gott_" to which he listened with tears in his eyes.

It was Sunday, and Charles Kingsley preached at the Castle. The Queen
was present, but she noted sadly that she did not hear a word.

The serious illness of the Prince Consort had become known and excited
much alarm, especially among the Cabinet Ministers. They united in
urging that fresh medical aid should be procured. Dr. Watson and Sir
Henry Holland were called in. These gentlemen concurred with the other
doctors in their opinion of the case as grave, but not presenting any
very bad symptoms. The increased tendency of the Prince to wander in
his mind was only what was to be expected. The listlessness and
irritability characteristic of the disease gave way to pleasure at
seeing the Queen and having her with him, to tender caresses, such as
stroking her cheek, and simple loving words, fondly cherished,
"_Liebes frauchen, gutes weibchen_." [Footnote: "Dear little
wife, good little wife."] The changes rung on the relationship which
had been so perfect and so satisfying.

On the 10th and the 11th the Prince was considered better. He was
wheeled into the next room, when he called attention to a picture of
the Madonna of which he was fond; he said that the sight of it helped
him through half the day.

On the evening of the 11th a slight change in the Prince's breathing
was perceptible and occasioned uneasiness. On the 12th it was too
evident the fever and shortness of breathing had increased, and on the
13th Dr. Jenner had to tell the Queen the symptom was serious, and
that there was a probability of congestion of the lungs. When the sick
man was wheeled into the next room as before, he failed to notice his
favourite picture, and in place of asking to be placed with his back
to the light as he had hitherto done, sat with his hands clasped,
gazing abstractedly out of the window. That night the Prince of Wales
was summoned from Cambridge, it was said by his sister, Princess
Alice, who took upon her the responsibility of bringing him to
Windsor.

All through the night at hourly intervals reports were brought to the
Queen that the Prince was doing well. At six in the morning Mr. Brown,
the Windsor medical attendant of the family for upwards of twenty
years, who was believed to be well acquainted with the Prince's
constitution, came to the Queen with the glad tidings "that he had no
hesitation in saying he thought the Prince was much better, and that
there was ground to hope the crisis was over." There are few
experiences more piteous than that last flash of life in the socket
which throws a parting gleam of hope on the approaching darkness of
death.

When the Queen entered the sick-room at seven o'clock on a fine winter
morning, she was struck with the unearthly beauty--another not
unfamiliar sign--of the face on which the rising sun shone. The eyes
unusually bright, gazing as it were on an unseen object, took no
notice of her entrance.

The doctors allowed they were "very, very anxious," but still they
would not give up hope. The Queen asked if she might go out for a
breath of air, and received an answer with a reservation--"Yes, just
close by, for a quarter of an hour." She walked on one of the terraces
with Princess Alice, but they heard a military band playing in the
distance, and at that sound, recalling such different scenes, the poor
Queen burst into tears, and returned to the Castle.

Sir James Clark said he had seen much worse cases from which there had
been recovery. But both the Queen and the doctors remarked the dusky
hue stealing over the hands and face, and there were acts which looked
like strange involuntary preparations for departure--folding of the
arms, arranging of the hair, &c.

The Queen was in great distress, and remained constantly either in the
sick-room or in the apartment next to it, where the doctors tried
still to speak words of hope to her, but could no longer conceal that
the life which was as her life was ebbing away. In the course of the
afternoon, when the Queen went up to the Prince, after he had been
wheeled into the middle of the room, he said the last loving words,
"_Gutes frauchen_," [Footnote: "Good little wife."] kissed her,
and with a little moaning sigh laid his head on her shoulder. He dozed
and wandered, speaking French sometimes. All his children who were in
the country came into the room, and one after the other took his hand,
Prince Arthur kissing it as he did so, but the Prince made no sign of
knowing them. He roused himself and asked for his private secretary,
but again slept. Three of the gentlemen of the household, who had been
much about the Prince's person, came up to him and kissed his hand
without attracting his attention. All of them were overcome; only she
who sat in her place by his side was quiet and still.

So long as enough air passed through the labouring lungs, the doctors
would not relinquish the last grain of hope. Even when the Queen found
the Prince bathed in the death-sweat, so near do life and death still
run, that the attendant medical men ventured to say it might be an
effort of nature to throw off the fever.

The Queen bent over the Prince and whispered "_Es ist kleins
Frauchen_." He recognised the voice and answered by bowing his head
and kissing her. He was quite calm, only drowsy, and not caring to be
disturbed, as he had been wont to be when weary and ill.

The Queen had gone into the next room to weep there when Sir James
Clark sent Princess Alice to bring her back. The end had come. With
his wife kneeling by his side and holding his hand, his children
kneeling around, the Queen's nephew, Prince Ernest Leiningen, the
gentlemen of the Prince's suite, General Bruce, General Grey, and Sir
Charles Phipps, the Dean of Windsor, and the Prince's favourite German
valet, Lohlein, reverently watching the scene, the true husband and
tender father, the wise prince and liberal-hearted statesman, the
noble Christian man, gently breathed his last. It was a quarter to
eleven o'clock on the 14th of December, 1861. He was aged forty-two
years.




CHAPTER XXXVI.


THE WITHDRAWAL TO OSBORNE--THE PRINCE CONSORT'S FUNERAL.

The tolling of the great bell of St. Paul's, borne on the wintry
midnight air, thrilled many a heart with grief and dismay, as London
was roused to the melancholy fact of the terrible bereavement which
had befallen the Queen and the country.

To the Prince indeed death had come without terror, even without
recoil. Some time before he had told the Queen that he had not her
clinging to life, that if he knew it was well with those he cared for,
he would be quite ready to die to-morrow. He was perfectly convinced
of the future reunion of those who had loved each other on earth,
though he did not know under what circumstances it would take place.
During one of the happy Highland excursions in 1861, the Prince had
remarked to one of the keepers when talking over with him the choice
and planting of a deer-forest for the Prince of Wales, "You and I may
be dead and gone before that." "He was ever cheerful, but ever ready
and prepared," was the Queen's comment on this remark.

But for the Queen, "a widow at forty-two!" was the lamenting cry of
the nation which had been so proud of its young Queen, of her love-
match, of her happiness as a wife. Now a subtler touch than any which
had gone before won all hearts to her, and bowed them before her feet
in a very passion of love and loyalty. It was her share in the common
birthright of sorrow, with the knowledge that she in whose joy so many
had rejoiced was now qualified by piteous human experience to weep
with those who wept--that thenceforth throughout her wide dominions
every mourner might feel that their Queen mourned with them as only a
fellow-sufferer can mourn. [Footnote: "The Queen wrote my mother, Lady
Normanby, such a beautiful letter after Normanby's death, saying that
having drunk the dregs of her cup of grief herself, she knew how to
sympathise with others."--LADY BLOOMFIELD.] All hearts went out to her
in the day of her bitter sorrow. Prayers innumerable were put up for
her, and she believed they sustained her when she would otherwise have
sunk under the heavy burden.

On the Sunday which dawned on the first day of her Majesty's
widowhood, when the news of her bereavement--announced in a similar
fashion in many a city cathedral and country church, was conveyed to
the people in a great northern city by Dr. Norman MacLeod's praying
for the Queen as a widow, a pang of awe and pity smote every hearer;
the minister and the congregation wept together.

The disastrous tidings had to travel far and wide: to the Princess
Royal, the daughter in whom her father had taken such pride, who had
so grieved to part from him when she left England a happy young bride,
who had been so glad to greet him in his own old home only a few
months before; to the sailor son on the other side of the globe; to
the delicate little boy so lately sent in search of health, whose
natural cry on the sorrowful tale being told to him was, "Take me to
mamma."

Deprived in one year of both mother and husband, alone where family
relations were concerned, save for her children; with her eldest son,
the Prince of Wales, a lad of not more than twenty years, the devoted
servants of the Queen rallied round her and strove to support and
comfort her.

In the absence of the Princess Royal and the Princess of Hohenlohe,
the Duchess of Sutherland, one of the Queen's oldest friends, herself
a widow, was sent for to be with her royal mistress. Lady Augusta
Bruce watched day and night by the daughter as she had watched by the
mother. The Queen's people did not know how sore was the struggle, how
near they were to losing her. Princess Alice wrote years afterwards of
that first dreadful night, of the next three terrible days, with a
species of horror, and wondered again and again how she and her mother
survived that time. The Queen's weakness was so great that her pulse
could hardly be felt. "She spoke constantly about God's knowing best,
but showed herself broken-hearted," Lady Bloomfield tells us. It was a
sensible relief to the country when it was made public that the Queen
had slept for some hours.

The doctors urgently advised that her Majesty should leave Windsor and
go to Osborne, but she shrank unconquerably from thus quitting all
that was mortal of the Prince till he had been laid to rest. The old
King of the Belgians, her second father, afflicted in her affliction
as he had gloried in her happiness, added his earnest entreaty to, the
medical men's opinion, in vain, till the plea was brought forward that
for her children's sake--that they might be removed from the fever-
tainted atmosphere, the painful step ought to be taken. Even then it
was mainly by the influence of the Princess Alice that the Queen, who
had proved just and reasonable in all her acts, who had been confirmed
by him who was gone in habits of self-control and self-denial, who was
the best of mothers, gave up the last sad boon which the poorest might
claim, and consented to go immediately with her daughters to Osborne.

But first her Majesty visited Frogmore, where the Duchess of Kent's
mausoleum had been built, that she might choose the spot for another
and larger mausoleum where the husband and wife would yet lie side by
side. It was on the 18th of December that the Queen, accompanied by
Princess Alice, drove from the Castle on her melancholy errand. They
were received at Frogmore by the Prince of Wales, Prince Louis of
Hesse, who had arrived in England, Sir Charles Phipps, and Sir James
Clark. Her Majesty walked round the gardens leaning on her daughter's
arm, and selected the place where the coffin of the Prince would be
finally deposited. Shortly afterwards the sad party left for Osborne,
where a veil must be drawn over the sorrow which, like the love that
gave it birth, has had few parallels.

The funeral was at Windsor on the 23rd of December. Shortly before
twelve o'clock the cortège assembled which was to conduct the remains
of the late Prince Consort the short distance from the state entrance
of Windsor Castle, through the Norman Tower Gate to St. George's
Chapel. Nine mourning-coaches, each drawn by four horses, conveyed the
valets, foresters, riders, librarian, and doctors; the equerries,
ushers, grooms, gentlemen, and lords in waiting of his late Royal
Highness; and the great officers of the Household. One of the Queen's
carriages drawn by six horses contained the Prince's coronet borne by
Earl Spencer, and his baton, sword, and hat by Lord George Lennox. The
hearse, drawn by six horses, was escorted by a detachment of Life
Guards.

The carriages of the Queen, the Prince of Wales, the Duke of
Cambridge, and the Duchess of Cambridge followed. The company which
had received commands to be present at the ceremony, including the
foreign ambassadors, the Cabinet Ministers, the officers of the
household, and many of the nobility and higher clergy, entered St.
George's Chapel by the Wolsey door and were conducted to seats in the
choir. The Knights of the Garter occupied their stalls. The royal
family, with their guests, came privately from the Castle and
assembled in the chapter-room. The members of the procession moved up
the nave in the same order in which they had been driven to the South
porch. Among them were the representatives of all the foreign states
connected by blood or marriage with the late Prince, the choir,
canons, and Dean of Windsor. After the baton, sword, and crown,
carried on black velvet cushions, came the comptroller in the
Chamberlain's department, Vice-Chamberlain, and Lord Chamberlain, then
the crimson velvet coffin, the pall borne by the members of the late
Prince's suite. Garter-King-at-Arms followed, walking before the chief
mourner, the Prince of Wales, who was supported by Prince Arthur, a
little lad of eleven, and the Duke of Saxe-Coburg, and attended by
General Bruce. Behind came the son-in-law, the Crown Prince of
Prussia, the cousins--the sons of the King of the Belgians--with the
Duc de Nemours, Prince Louis of Hesse, Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar,
the Queen's nephew, Count Gleichen, and the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh.
The gentlemen in waiting on the foreign princes wound up the
procession.

When the coffin arrived within the choir, the crown, baton, sword, and
hat were placed on it. That morning a messenger had come from Osborne
with three wreaths and a bouquet. The wreaths were simple garlands of
moss and violets woven by the three elder princesses; the bouquet of
violets, with a white camellia in the centre, was from the Queen.
These were laid between the heraldic insignia. The Prince of Wales
with his brother and uncle stood at the head, the Lord Chamberlain at
the foot, the other mourners and the pallbearers around. Minute-guns
were fired at intervals by Horse Artillery in the Long Walk. A guard
of honour of the Grenadier Guards, of which the Prince Consort had
been colonel, presented arms on the coming of the body and when it was
lowered into the grave. During the service the thirty-ninth Psalm,
Luther's Hymn, and two chorales were sung.

The Prince of Wales bore up with a brave effort, now and then seeking
to soothe his young brother, who, with swollen eyes and tear-stained
face, when the long wail of the dirge smote upon his ear, sobbed as if
his heart were breaking. At the words--

"To fall asleep in slumber deep,
Slumber that knows no waking,"

part of a favourite chant of the Prince Consort's, both his sons hid
their faces and wept. The Duke of Coburg wept incessantly for the
comrade of his youth, the friend of his mature years.

Garter-King-at-Arms proclaimed the style and title of the deceased.
When he referred to her Majesty with the usual prayer, "Whom God bless
and preserve with long life, health, and happiness," for the first
time in her reign the word "happiness" was omitted and that of
"honour" substituted, and the full significance of the change went to
the hearts of the listeners with a woeful reminder of what had come
and gone. The Prince of Wales advanced first to take his last look
into the vault, stood for a moment with clasped hands and burst into
tears. In the end Prince Arthur was the more composed of the two
fatherless brothers.

As the company retired, the "Dead March in Saul" was pealed forth.

The whole ceremony was modelled on the precedent of other royal
funerals, but surely rarely was mourning so keen or sorrow so deep.




CHAPTER XXXVII.


THE FIRST MONTHS OF WIDOWHOOD--MARRIAGE OF THE PRINCE OF WALES, ETC.,
ETC.

The Princess of Hohenlohe arrived in England on the 20th of December,
and immediately joined the Queen at Osborne before the funeral of the
Prince. The old King of the Belgians came to Osborne on the 29th of
December--one can imagine his meeting with the widowed Queen.

On the 10th of January, 1862, occurred the terrible Hartley Colliery
accident, by which upwards of two hundred miners perished. The Queen's
grief for the Prince was not a month old when she telegraphed from
Osborne her "tenderest sympathy for the poor widows and mothers."

The Prince of Wales left Osborne on the 6th of February in strict
privacy to accomplish the tour in the East projected for him by his
father. The Prince was accompanied by Dean Stanley, General Bruce, &c.

In the Queen's solitude at Osborne Princess Alice continued to be the
great medium of communication between her Majesty and her Ministers.
(_Times_.)

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