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 const.i.tution, 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 pa.s.sed 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 n.o.ble 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 x.x.xVI.

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 circ.u.mstances 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 pa.s.sion 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 G.o.d'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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 cortege a.s.sembled 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 hea.r.s.e, 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 d.u.c.h.ess of Cambridge followed. The company which had received commands to be present at the ceremony, including the foreign amba.s.sadors, the Cabinet Ministers, the officers of the household, and many of the n.o.bility 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 a.s.sembled 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 t.i.tle of the deceased.

When he referred to her Majesty with the usual prayer, "Whom G.o.d 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" subst.i.tuted, 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 x.x.xVII.

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_.)

The opening of the second great Exhibition in the month of May must have been full of painful a.s.sociations. At the State ceremony on the first day the royal carriages with mourning liveries were empty, but for the Crown Prince of Prussia, Prince Oscar of Sweden, and the d.u.c.h.ess of Cambridge with her daughters. Tennyson's ode was sung. It contained the pathetic lines--

"O silent father of our kings to be, Mourned in this golden hour of jubilee, For this, for all we weep our thanks to thee."

It was decided that the Queen's birthday should be spent at Balmoral, a practice which became habitual. Dr. Norman Macleod was summoned north to give what consolation he could to his sorrowing Queen. He has left an account of one of their interviews. "May 14th. After dinner I was summoned unexpectedly to the Queen's room; she was alone. She met me, and, with an unutterable expression which filled my eyes with tears, at once began to speak about the Prince.... She spoke of his excellences, his love, his cheerfulness, how he was everything to her; how all now on earth seemed dead to her...."

On the 4th of June the Prince of Wales arrived in England from his eastern tour. A melancholy incident occurred on his return--General Bruce, who had been labouring under fever, died soon after reaching England on the 24th of June. Another sad death happened four days later--that of Lord Canning, Governor-General of India. He had also just come back to England. He survived his wife only six months.

Princess Alice's marriage, which had been delayed by her father's death, took place at Osborne at one o'clock on the afternoon of the 1st of July, in strict privacy. The ceremony was performed by the Archbishop of York in room of the sick Archbishop of Canterbury. The Queen in deep mourning appeared only for the service. Near her was the Crown Princess of Prussia--already the mother of three children--and her Majesty's four sons.

The father and mother, brothers and sister of the bridegroom, and other relatives, were present. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg in the Prince Consort's place led in the bride. Her unmarried sisters, Princesses Helena, Louise, and Beatrice, and the bridegroom's only sister, Princess Anna of Hesse, were the bridesmaids. Prince Louis was supported by his brother, Prince Henry.

The guests were all gone by four o'clock. No contrast could be greater than that of the brilliant and glad festivities at the Princess Royal's wedding and the hush of sorrow in which her sister was married. The young couple went for three days to St. Clare, near Ryde, and left England in another week. The English people never forgot what Princess Alice had proved in the hour of need, and her departure was followed by prayers and blessings.

In August the Queen was at Balmoral with all her children who were in this country. On the 21st she drove in a pony carriage, accompanied by the elder Princes and Princesses on foot and on ponies, to the top of Craig Lowrigan, and each laid a stone on the foundation of the Prince Consort's cairn. On the late Prince's birthday another sad tender pilgrimage was made to the top of Craig Gowan to the earlier cairn celebrating the taking of the Malakoff.

Her Majesty, whose health was still shaken and weakened, sailed on the 1st of September for Germany. She was accompanied by the Prince of Wales, Prince Arthur, and Prince Leopold, Princesses Helena, Louise, and Beatrice, and the Princess Hohenlohe. During the Queen's stay with her uncle, King Leopold, at Laeken, in pa.s.sing through Belgium, she had her first interview with her future daughter-in-law, Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The Princess with her father and mother drove from Brussels to pay a private visit to her Majesty.