"_Holmhurst, Dec. 27._--It was on Monday, the 16th, that I was
sitting in my study in the twilight, when the mother came in
suddenly. She had been down to Hastings with Mrs. Colegrave and
Miss Chichester to see Florence Colegrave at the convent, and there
first heard the dreadful news of the event of Saturday. Seeing her
so much agitated terrified me to the last degree. I thought that it
was Arthur who was dead, and when I heard that it was the Prince
Consort, the shock was almost as great. It seems impossible to
realise that one will not be able to say 'the Queen and Prince
Albert' any more: it is a personal affliction to every one, and the
feeling of sympathy for the Queen is overpowering. The Prince sank
from the time he read the letter about the deaths of the King and
Princes of Portugal. Then they tried to persuade him not to see
the messengers who returned from taking the letters of condolence:
he insisted upon doing so, and never rallied.... From the first the
Prince thought that he should not live, and from the Wednesday Sir
Henry Holland thought so too, and wrote in the first bulletin,
'_Hitherto_ no unfavourable symptoms,' to prepare the public mind;
but the Queen came into the anteroom, saw the bulletin, and
scratched out the 'hitherto:' she would entertain no idea of danger
till the last[203].... When the Prince was dying, he repeated the
hymn 'Rock of Ages.' ... A letter from Windsor Castle to Mr. P.
describes the consternation and difficulty as to how the Queen was
to be told of the danger: no one would tell her. At last Princess
Alice relieved them all by saying, 'I will tell her,' and took her
out for a drive. During the drive she told the Queen that the
Prince could not recover. When he died, the Queen gave one
piercing, heart-rending scream, which echoed all over the castle,
and which those who stood by said they could never forget, and
threw herself upon the body. Then she rose and collected her
children and spoke to them, telling them that they must rally round
her, and that, next to God, she should henceforth look to them for
support.
"C. W. sends an odd story about the King of Portugal. After his
death, Princess Alice made a drawing of him lying dead, and, at the
top of the drawing, the gates of heaven, with Queen Stephanie
waiting to receive the spirit of her husband. A little while after,
M. Lavradio sent the Queen a long account of the King's illness, in
which it was said that when the King lay dying he fell into a deep
sleep, and woke up after some little time saying that he had
dreamt, and wished he could have gone on dreaming, that he lay
dead, and that his spirit was going up to heaven, and that at the
gates he saw 'Stephanie' waiting to welcome him in. Everything
fresh that one hears of Prince Albert makes one realise, 'Le prince
était grand, l'homme l'était davantage.'"[204]
In the course of the winter I was at Miss Leycester's house in Wilton
Crescent, and saw there Miss Marsh and Sir Culling Eardley, both of whom
told me much that was curious. I remember Sir Culling Eardley's saying,
"I feel sure that the destruction of the temporal power will be the end
of the Papacy, and I am also sure that there is one person who agrees
with me, and that is Pio Nono!" He also told me that--
"One morning Mrs. Pitcairn at Torquay told her husband that she had
been very much disturbed by a dream. She said she had seen her
little boy of four years old carried into the house dreadfully
crushed and hurt, and that all the principal doctors in the
town--Madden, Mackintosh, &c.--had come in one after the other to
see him.
"Her husband laughed at her fears, but said, 'Whatever you do,
don't tell this to the boy; it would only frighten him
unnecessarily.' However, Mrs. Pitcairn did not promise, and when
her husband was gone out, she called her little boy to her, and
taking him on her knee, spoke to him very seriously, saying, 'If
anything happened to you now, where would you be?' &c.
"That afternoon, the little boy went with his elder brother to see
some new houses his father was building. In crossing the highest
floor, the ill-fastened boards gave way, and he fell, passing
through all the floors, into the cellar. Half-an-hour afterwards
his mother saw him carried into the house, and all the doctors
come in to see him, one after another, in the exact order of her
dream.
"The little boy recovered; but four years after, his elder brother,
playing on the shore at Babbicombe, pulled down some rocks upon
himself, and was killed upon the spot."
In March 1862 an event occurred which caused a great blank in our
circle, and which perhaps made more change in my life than any other
death outside my own home could have done--that of my aunt Mrs. Stanley.