that never rendered her selfish. In her worst hours of anguish, her ear
was open, her heart touched, her hand ready to relieve her sisters in
affliction, and to remedy the distresses of all who really stood in
need of the royal succour. For nearly twelve years she may be said to
have been dying. The sunniest and most sheltered spots in this country
were visited by her, but without resulting in permanent relief. The
winter of 1837-8 was spent at St. Leonard's. An attack of bronchitis,
in the autumn of the latter year, drove her for refuge and remedy to
Malta, where the church raised by her at Valetta,--the cathedral church
of Gibraltar,--at an expense of L10,000, will long serve to perpetuate
her memory. On her return in May 1839, she became, for a time, the
guest of various noble hosts in England. In 1840, she visited the
lakes, and established her home, subsequently and for a brief period,
at Sudbury. Her next homes,--the frequent changes indicating increased
virulence of disease,--were at Canford Hall, Dorset; Witley Court,
Worcester; and Cashiobury, near Watford: thence she departed on one
short and last visit to her native home, from which she returned so ill
that, in 1847, she repaired, as a last resource, to Madeira, whither
she was conveyed in a royal frigate.
The progress of the sick Queen over the water, was not without its
stateliness and solemnity, mixed with a certain joyousness, acceptable
to, though not to be shared in by the royal invalid. Before the
squadron departed from Spithead, on Sunday, the 10th of October, full
divine service was celebrated on board the _Howe_, the ship's chaplain
reading the prayers, the Queen Dowager's preaching the sermon, on a
text altogether foreign to so rare and interesting an occasion:--"But
now the righteousness of God without the law is manifested, being
witnessed by the law and the prophets," (Rom. iii. 21.) After service,
the squadron stood forth to sea, no incident marking its way till the
following Tuesday. On that day, a bird winging from the Bay of Biscay,
fluttered on to the _Howe_, perched on the yards, and then flew from
one point to another, and back again, as if he had made of the gallant
steamer a home. A sailor, named Ward, attempted to capture the little
guest, in pursuing which into the chains, being more eager than
considerate, he fell headlong over into the waves, while the _Howe_
pursued her forward way. In an instant after alarm was given, however,
the life-buoy was floating on the waters, a boat was pulling lustily
towards the seaman, and the _Howe_ slipped her tow ropes, and made a
circuit astern to pick up rescued and rescuers. Ward, meanwhile, had by
skilful swimming, gained fast hold of the buoy, and was brought on
board little the worse for his plunge and his temporary peril. Queen
Adelaide was more moved by this accident than the man was himself. On
the following Sunday, the Queen was better able than she had previously
been, to turn the accident to some account, for Ward's own benefit. Her
Majesty had attended the usual service on board, and had listened to
another sermon from the ship's chaplain, this time on a subject as
unappropriate as that of the preceding Sunday:--"And almost all things
are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no
remission," (Heb. ix. 22),--the ship's company were repairing to their
respective quarters, when Ward was told that the Queen Dowager
requested to see him. If this message disconcerted him more than his
fall into the Bay of Biscay, he soon recovered that self-possession
which no man loses long, who has a proper feeling of self-respect.
Besides, the widowed Queen, in her intercourse with persons of humble
station, wore habitually that air--
"--which sets you at your ease,
Without implying your perplexities."
She spoke to the listening sailor kindly, on his late peril, and the
position in which it suddenly placed him near to impending death. A few
words like these, wisely and tenderly offered, were likely to be more
beneficial to a man like Ward, than a whole course of the chaplain's
sermons on doctrinal points in the Epistle to the Hebrews; and I cannot
but hope that the artists of the next generation, when Time shall have
poetized the costume of the incident, will not forget this picturesque
passage in the life of the Queen and the man-of-war's-man.
And now, as they glided by the coast of Portugal, on the evening of
Monday, the 18th of October, there was dancing on board, and again on
the Wednesday evening. Princesses waltzed with commanders, the
Grand-Duchess tripped it on the poop with a knight, and the midshipmen
went dashingly at it with the maids of honour, while the gun-room
officers stood by awaiting their turn. On the fore part of the
quarterdeck, as many of the ship's company as were so minded, got up a
dance among themselves; and the suffering Queen below heard the echoes
of the general gladness, and was content.
On the following Friday, the _Howe_ was close to Belem Castle, and was
towed into the Tagus by the steam-frigate _Terrible_. The King-Consort
of Portugal came down in a state barge to receive the Queen, whom he
escorted to the palace of the Necessidades, landing amid a roar of
artillery and welcomed by loyal demonstrations as the illustrious
traveller passed on her way to the Queen regnant, Donna Maria.
By such progress did Queen Adelaide make her way towards Madeira, the
climate of which could not arrest the progress of her malady, and she
returned to England,--for a time to Bushey, finally, to Bentley Priory,
near Stanmore, where she occupied herself in preparation for the
inevitable end. There, on the 8th of May, 1849, the Queen Dowager may
be said to have "done a foolish thing," in altering her will without
legal assistance in the method of alteration. On that day, alone and
unadvised, Her Majesty took out her old and duly attested will, of the
14th August, 1837, and inscribed on the back thereof this remarkable
endorsement:--"This will is cancelled, 8th May, 1849. My heirs are my
brother and sister, and their heirs after them. My executors, Lord Howe
and the Hon. W. A. Cooper, are requested to pay off all what I directed
in my codicil, and then to divide my property equally between my
brother and sister. This is my last will and request."
It was the will of a Queen, but it stood for nothing in the eye of the
law. The endorsement was brought under notice of the Prerogative Court;
the Judge, Sir Herbert Jenner Furst, declared it to be of no effect. It
was a mere unattested memorandum; and he pronounced, as the legal
phrase is, for the original will. Of greater interest is the subjoined
document, which pleasantly contrasts with the wills of many of her lady
predecessors, whose minds were engaged on the disposal of their state
beds, their mantles, and their jewellery, to the exclusion of all other
subjects. Thus wrote the dying Queen Adelaide:--
"I die in all humility, knowing well that we are all alike before the
throne of God; and I request, therefore, that my mortal remains be
conveyed to the grave without any pomp or state. They are to be removed
to St. George's Chapel, Windsor, where I request to have as private and
quiet a funeral as possible. I particularly desire not to be laid out
in state, and the funeral to take place by daylight; no procession; the
coffin to be carried by sailors to the chapel. All those of my friends
and relations, to a limited number, who wish to attend, may do so. My
nephew, Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, Lords Howe and Denbigh, the Hon.
William Ashley, Mr. Wood, Sir Andrew Barnard, and Sir D. Davies, with
my dressers, and those of my ladies who may wish to attend. I die in
peace, and wish to be carried to the tomb in peace, and far from the
vanities and pomp of this world. I request not to be dissected nor
embalmed; and desire to give as little trouble as possible. "ADELAIDE
R."
The end soon come, and it was met with dignity. On the 22nd of
November, 1849, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited the Dowager
Queen, for the last time. On the last day of the month she calmly
passed away. The above document was then produced; and it rendered
kings-at-arms, heralds, gold sticks, and upholsterers powerless to
exercise their absurd dignity in connection with death,--when so
intelligible and sensible a protest as the above was in existence.
Accordingly, on a fine December morning of 1849, there issued from the
gates of Bentley Priory, an ordinary hearse with a pall emblazoned with
the Queen's arms, preceded by three mourning coaches. A scanty escort
of cavalry accompanied them, more for use than show, their office being
to see that no obstruction impeded the funeral march from Stanmore to
Windsor. On its way, the attitude of the spectators exhibited more of
sympathy than curiosity.
The Harrow boys turned out in testimony of respect, and the country
people at large looked like mourners, wearing more or less, but wearing
some outward manifestation of sorrow.
The Queen's body reached the Chapel at Windsor at one o'clock. In the
south aisle, close to the porch, there had been standing, grouped
together, silent and motionless, a group of seamen,--grave, bronzed,
athletic sailors. Their demeanour showed them worthy of the office
which the now dead Queen had asked at their hands. When all the royal,
and great, and noble personages were in their respective places,--while
some indispensable officials effected a little more of their foolish
calling, in the presence of death, than Queen Adelaide herself would
have sanctioned;--while princes, peers, and prelates,
ladies-in-waiting, clergy, and choristers, proceeded passively or
actively with their parts in the ceremony of the day,--then those ten
sailors advanced to accomplish the duty assigned them, and standing by
the platform on which the body was placed, gently propelled it to a
position over the subterranean passage into which it was lowered, after
one of the simplest services that was ever said or sung for departed
Queen, had been accomplished.--Most simple, save when Garter stepped
forward to announce what all men knew, that it "had pleased Almighty
God to take out of this life to His divine mercy" the departed Queen;
and to assert what that royal lady would assuredly have gainsaid, that
she was a "Most High, Most Mighty, and Most Excellent Princess." With
this, and one or two other formalities of that pomp and state from
which she had asked to be spared, Queen Adelaide passed to the tomb,--a
tomb capacious enough to contain whole generations of kings and queens,
princes and princesses yet unborn.
This event was followed by an unusual amount of execrable elegiac
verse, which was powerless, however, to throw ridicule on what it
affected to solemnize. I have had the pain of reading an inconceivable
amount of this trash,--a pain only relieved by the occurrence of lines
which, intended to be serious, were irresistibly comic. Out of the
reams written in professed honour of a most exemplary Queen, I have not
met with an appropriate line that is worth citing. One sample of the
solemnly absurd Pegasuses set restive on this occasion will assuredly
satisfy curiosity. The writer affects to see at the royal funeral the
ghosts of departed great ones, who assemble to do visionary homage to
their new sister in death. Among them is the incautious Bishop, who
died from the effects of a cold caught at the funeral of the Duke of
York:--
"Lo! see the shade of a prelate pass by
Who came to a night-burial to die;
Standing too long expos'd to the chill air,
Death aim'd his dart, and struck the mitre there."
Poor Queen Adelaide! A wish could save her from some of the empty pomps
and vanities that linger about the open grave; but nothing could save
her from the villainous poetasters. All the rhymers who rung metrical
knells at her death, deserved the fate, and for like reasons, invoked
in "Julius Caesar" on the so-called poet who made "bad verses."
The preachers, if honest chronicling is to be observed, did not on this
occasion very much excel the poets. Very "tolerable" indeed, and not at
all to be endured, were most of the funeral sermons which have come
under my notice. One clergyman, who had been the Queen's chaplain too,
and who had composed a funeral sermon on William the Fourth, reproduced
not merely the substance, but in many parts, identical passages from
the discourse on the dead King, and made them do duty in illustrating
the demise of that sovereign's royal widow. Others were illogical, or
were painfully simple, or amusingly trite. In one, I find an intimation
that "after deducting the more needful expenses of her household, she
gave away _all_ she had, and died _poor_;" which seems an inevitable
consequence of such liberality. None of these who took a dead Queen for
the subject of a lesson on vanity, or for an example to be followed,
wore the mantle of a Bossuet,--grand and instructive when consigning La
Valliere to the cloister, or Henrietta of Orleans to a tomb. They might
at least have found something suggestive in the sermon on the latter
occasion, by the "Eagle of Meaux," where he exclaims, after apt
reflection on birth, rank, and their responsibilities:--"No! after what
we have just seen, we must feel that health exists only in name, life
is a dream, glory a deception, favours and pleasures dangerous
amusements, everything about us vanity. She was as gentle towards death
as she had been to all the world.... She will sleep with the great ones
of the earth, with princes and kings, whose power is at an end, amongst
whom there is hardly room to be found, so closely do they lie together,
and so prompt is death to fill the vacant places. _Can we build our
hopes on ruins such as these_."
From beyond sea there did come echoes something like these; and fitting
homage to the virtues of the deceased lady was rendered from many a
church pulpit among a foreign people. Although it be not necessary to
travel into another hemisphere to find a witness offering voluntary
evidence to the good qualities of the Queen Dowager, yet I gladly do so
in one instance, and reproduce a testimony rendered at the Cape of Good
Hope. In a funeral sermon, preached in St. George's Cathedral, Cape
Town, on the 24th of February, 1850, by the Rev. W. A. Newman, at that
time Senior Colonial Chaplain and Rural Dean, that learned and eloquent
divine rendered a graceful tribute to the memory of the deceased Queen,
of which the following paragraph is a portion:--"Of this excellent
lady's large charities I can speak from evidence, and can, therefore,
speak with a full heart. I have lived near to the neighbourhood where
her less public bounty diffused itself. I know that the sick room of
the poor has been visited by her in person; I know that from her own
table a portion has been sent, to call forth the coy appetite of
disease; and I know that where ever she went many a heartfelt _God
bless her_ would follow."
Such was Queen Adelaide, some seven years Queen Consort of Great
Britain; a lady who will be remembered, if not as a great Queen, yet as
one of the truly good women who have shared with a King regnant the
throne of these islands.--One who lived down calumny, and, who, being
dead, is remembered with respect and affection.
THE END.
End of Project Gutenberg's Memoir of Queen Adelaide, by Dr. John Doran