THE WIDOWED QUEEN.
Unbroken Happiness of the Queen's Life up to 1861--Death of the
Duchess of Kent--The Prince Consort slightly Ailing--Catches Cold at
Cambridge and Eton--The Malady becomes Serious--Public Alarm--Rapid
Sinking, and Death--Sorrow of the People--The Queen's
Fortitude--Avoidance of Court Display--Good Deeds--Sympathy with all
Benevolent Actions--Letter of Condolence to the Widow of President
Lincoln--The Albert Medal--Conclusion.
Until 1861 the Queen had never known bereavement in the circle of her own
immediate family. Nine children had been born to her, and, although it is
understood that certain of her younger offspring do not possess that
robustness of health which their elder brothers and sisters enjoy, yet not
one had been snatched from their loving parents by the hand of the Great
Destroyer. Early in 1861 came the first pang of bereavement. The Duchess
of Kent, ripe in years, one of the best of mothers and one of the best of
grandmothers, a lady to whose memory all Britons now and hereafter owe an
incalculable debt of gratitude, passed peacefully away with her
descendants gathered around her bedside.
[Sidenote: LAST DAYS OF PRINCE ALBERT.]
When the Royal Family returned from Balmoral in October, it was observed
that the Prince Consort was not in his usual health and vigour, but he had
no pronounced ailment, and nothing approaching to serious alarm was for
many weeks apprehended. In the course of the succeeding month he went to
Cambridge, to visit the Prince of Wales, who was a student at that
University, as he had previously been for a short time at Oxford. He went
out shooting while there, got wet, and, as the Duke of Kent had done, was
so imprudent as to sit down without removing his wet clothes.
Nevertheless, on his return to Windsor, he pursued his usual daily
avocations. About the beginning of December he appeared in public with the
Queen, and reviewed the volunteer corps raised among the Eton boys. The
rain fell fast, and the Prince was seized on the review ground with acute
pains in the back. Feverish symptoms supervened, and the doctors ordered
confinement to his room. Still no alarm was entertained, and it was
believed that he suffered only from a passing malady. The general public
knew nothing of the ailment until some solicitude was caused by a
bulletin, which appeared in the _Court Circular_ of the 8th December:--
His Royal Highness the Prince Consort has been confined to his
apartments for the past week, suffering from a feverish cold, with
pains in his limbs. Within the last few days the feverish symptoms
have rather increased, and are likely to continue for some time
longer, but there are no unfavourable symptoms. The party which had
been invited by Her Majesty's command to assemble at Windsor Castle on
Monday has been countermanded.
Not until the 13th was any bulletin issued which caused real anxiety and
alarm. On the day following, the morning papers contained the ominous
announcement that he had "passed a restless night, and the symptoms had
assumed an unfavourable character during the day." The _Times_, in a
leading article, while hoping for the best, startled all by its statement
that "the fever which has attacked him is a weakening and wearying
malady." On the morning of Saturday there was a favourable turn, but which
was soon followed by a most serious relapse. About four p.m. the fever
assumed a malignant typhoid type, and he began to sink with such rapidity
that all stimulants failed to check the quick access of weakness. At nine
o'clock a telegram was received in the City that the Prince was dying
fast, and at a few minutes before eleven all was over. "On Saturday night
last," said one of the daily journals of the succeeding Monday, "at an
hour when the shops in the metropolis had hardly closed, when the theatres
were delighting thousands of pleasure-seekers, when the markets were
thronged with humble buyers seeking to provide for their Sunday
requirements, when the foot-passengers yet lingered in the half-emptied
streets, allured by the soft air of a calm, clear evening, a family in
which the whole interest of this great nation is centred were assembled,
less than five-and-twenty miles away, in the Royal residence at Windsor,
in the deepest affliction around the death-bed of a beloved husband and
father. In the prime of life, without--so to speak--a longer warning than
that of forty-eight hours, Prince Albert, the Consort of our Queen, the
parent of our future Monarchs, has been stricken down by a short but
malignant disorder." Shortly after midnight, the great bell of St. Paul's,
which is never tolled except upon the death of a member of the Royal
Family, boomed the fatal tidings over a district extending, in the
quietude of the early Sabbath morn, for miles around the metropolis.
[Sidenote: DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT.]
The Queen, the Princess Alice, and the Prince of Wales, who had been
hastily summoned from Cambridge, sat with the dying good man until the
last. After the closing scene the Queen supported herself nobly, and
after a short burst of uncontrollable grief, she is said to have gathered
her children around her, and addressed them in the most solemn and
affectionate terms. "She declared to her family that, though she felt
crushed by the loss of one who had been her companion through life, she
knew how much was expected of her, and she accordingly called on her
children to give her their assistance, in order that she might do her duty
to them and the country." The Duke of Cambridge and many gentlemen
connected with the Court, with six of the Royal children, were present at
the Prince's death. In answer to some one of those present who tenderly
offered condolence, the Queen is reported to have said: "I suppose I must
not fret too much, for many poor women have to go through the same trial."
The sad news became generally known in the metropolis and in the great
cities of the empire early on Sunday. Unusually large congregations filled
the churches and chapels at morning service. "There was a solemn eloquence
in the subdued but distinctly perceptible sensation which crept over the
congregations in the principal churches when, in the prayer for the Royal
family, the Prince Consort's name was omitted. It was well remarked, if
ever the phrase was permissible, it might then be truly said that the name
of the departed Prince was truly conspicuous by its absence, for never was
the gap that this event has made in our national life, as well as in the
domestic happiness of the Palace, more vividly realised than when the name
that has mingled so familiarly in our prayers for the last twenty years
was, for the first time, left out of our public devotions." Many
thousands of mute pious petitions were specially addressed to Heaven for
the bereaved widow and orphans when the prayer of the Litany for "all who
are desolate and oppressed" was uttered, and in the chapels of
Nonconformists the extemporaneous prayers of the ministers gave articulate
expression to the heartfelt orisons of the silent worshippers. Every one
thought of and felt for the Queen, and during the week intervening between
the death and the funeral, the question on every one's lips in all places
of resort, and where men and women congregated, was, "How will the Queen
bear it?"
Prince Albert sleeps the long sleep at Frogmore, to which his mortal
remains were borne reverently, and without ostentation, as he himself
would have wished. The inscription on his coffin ran thus:--
DEPOSITUM
ILLUSTRISSIMI ET CELSISSIMI ALBERTI,
PRINCIPIS CONSORTIS,
DUCIS SAXONIAE,
DE SAXE-COBURG ET GOTHA PRINCIPIS,
NOBILISSIMI ORDINIS PERISCELIDIS EQUITIS,
AUGUSTISSIMAE ET POTENTISSIMAE VICTORIAE REGINAE,
CONJUGIS PERCARISSIMI,
OBIIT DIE DECIMO QUARTO DECEMBRIS, MDCCCLXI.
ANNO AETATIS SUAE XLIII.
[Here lies the most illustrious and exalted Albert, Prince Consort,
Duke of Saxony, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Knight of the Most
Noble Order of the Garter, the most beloved husband of the most august
and potent Queen Victoria. He died on the fourteenth day of December,
1861, in the forty-third year of his age.]
Thus died and was buried a great and a good man, one of the most useful
men of his age, one to whom England owes much.
"For that he loved our Queen,
And, for her sake, the people of her love,
Few and far distant names shall rank above
His own, where England's cherish'd names are seen."
[Sidenote: THE QUEEN IN HER WIDOWHOOD.]
The Queen has ever since her great bereavement most constantly and piously
revered the Prince's memory. Her reverence has taken the practical form of
the deepest sympathy with the woes and sorrows of the poorest and humblest
of her subjects. She has eschewed the pomp and ceremony of State, and
deliberately set herself to discover and soothe sorrow, and to recognise
all good deeds of the same character performed by others. When the noble
Peabody bestowed his princely act of munificence on the poor of London, no
recognition was made of his generosity more signal than that made by the
Queen. She has been among the first to help by loving words and by
practical aid the sufferers by any great national calamity--a Lancashire
famine, a shipwreck or railway accident, a colliery explosion, a
catastrophe caused by mad and futile sedition. Ready and sympathetic
condolence has especially flowed from her to those bereaved like herself,
and when President Lincoln perished at his post, the Queen sent to his
widow a long letter which her son described as "the outgushing of a
woman's heartfelt sympathy," and which, with rare and commendable good
taste, has never been exposed to the public eye. Most fitly has she
specially commemorated her husband's memory by the institution of a fit
companion and complement to the Victoria Cross, the "Albert Medal," which
is bestowed on brave men who save lives from the "Peril of the Sea or
Shipwreck."
Many consolations have been vouchsafed by Heaven to the widowed Queen.
Since she lost her great stay and support her realm has for the most part
been prosperous and contented. Though environed by many troubles, and
though the clang of battle has shaken the world, the dove of peace has
benignantly hovered o'er Britain. Much advance has been made in those
fields of social, moral, political, and educational improvement which were
so dear to Albert's heart, as they have always been to her own. And
shortly before the period when these pages are first given to the public,
the political progress of the nation has received a great stimulus, such
as is given in a people's history only at rare and long intervals. Her
children grow up from youth to maturity, and from maturity to maternity
and paternity, without a slur upon their fair names, and are, with those
to whom the elder of them have united themselves in wedlock, all that a
proud mother's heart could wish. God has stricken her; but He has proved
also an Infinite Healer and Solacer. Ours be it to add to the ordinary
motives of patriotism, those more tender and touching influences which
arise from the recollection that our Queen is now, as said that Queen of
England whose subjects were Shakespeare and Bacon, Spenser and
Sidney--"Married to her People."
THE END.
CASSELL, PETTER, AND GALPIN, BELLE SAUVAGE WORKS, LONDON, E.C.
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