An ovation, such as has seldom been accorded to any monarch, awaited the prince both in New York and Boston; and, after his departure, the President wrote to Queen Victoria, expressing the gratification that he and the whole nation had derived from her son's visit. The letter was cordially answered by the queen herself, who expressed the warmest friendship for the United States.
The Duke of Newcastle, to whose care the prince had been confided, had performed his delicate task so well and with so much discretion and tact, that he was publicly invested with the Order of the Garter, as a mark of gratitude from her majesty.
In November Prince Louis of Hesse was betrothed to the Princess Alice, and this event gave much pleasure to the royal parents. The queen writes in her diary, November 30: "After dinner, while talking to the gentlemen, I perceived Alice and Louis talking before the fireplace more earnestly than usual, and when I passed to go to the other room, both came up to me, and Alice, in much agitation, said he had proposed to her, and he begged for my blessing. I could only squeeze his hand, and say 'certainly,' and that we would see him later in our room. Alice came to our room; Albert sent for Louis to his room,—went first to him, and then called Alice and me in. Louis has a warm, noble heart. We embraced our dear Alice, and praised her much to him. After talking a little, we parted; a most touching, and to me, most sacred moment."
A.D. 1861. Before leaving Windsor on the second of January for a visit to Osborne, news reached the queen of the death of the King of Prussia. His brother had long been regent, in consequence of the king's impaired mental powers, and he is the present Emperor of Germany. The queen's daughter "Vicky" then became, and still remains, crown princess.
Shortly after, Dr. Baly, the queen's physician, was killed by a railway accident, and Dr. Jenner succeeded him. This caused considerable sorrow, but it was followed by an event that plunged the queen and her family into deep grief. The Duchess of Kent had undergone a surgical operation in the beginning of March, from which she did not reap any benefit; but no alarm was felt as to her condition. On the morning of the fifteenth the queen and prince went to inspect the new gardens of the Royal Horticultural Society at South Kensington, from which the queen returned alone, leaving the prince to transact some business with the committee. While there, he was suddenly summoned to Buckingham Palace by Sir James Clarke, who had come up from Frogmore to announce some alarming symptoms that had attacked the Duchess of Kent. The prince at once informed the queen, who, without a moment's delay, set out with him and the Princess Alice for Windsor. Her majesty's diary tells the rest: "By eight o'clock we were at Frogmore. Here, Lord James Murray and the ladies received us, and, alas! said it was just the same; but, still, I did not then realize what it was. Albert went up, and when he returned with tears in his eyes, I saw what it was that awaited me.... With a trembling heart I went up the staircase and entered the bedroom, and there on a sofa, supported by cushions, the room much darkened, sat, leaning back, my beloved mamma, breathing rather heavily, in her silk dressing-gown, with her cap on, looking quite herself.
"Seeing that my presence did not disturb her, I knelt before her, kissed her dear hand, and pressed it to my cheek; but, though she opened her eyes, she did not, I think, know me. She brushed my hand off, and the dreadful reality was before me that for the first time she did not know the child she had ever received with such tender smiles. I went out to sob.... I asked the doctors if there was no hope. They said they feared none whatever, for consciousness had left her....
"I entered her room about eight o'clock, the window was wide open and both doors. I sat on a footstool, holding her dear hand. Meantime her face grew paler (though, in truth, her cheeks had that pretty, fresh color they always had, up to within half an hour of the last), the features longer and sharper. The breathing became easier. I fell on my knees holding the beloved hand, which was still warm, though heavier, in both of mine. I felt the end was fast approaching, as Clarke went out to call Albert and Alice, I only left gazing on that beloved face, and feeling as if my heart would break.... It was a solemn, sacred, never-to-be-forgotten scene.
"Fainter and fainter grew the breathing. At last it ceased. The clock struck half-past nine at the very moment. Convulsed with sobs, I fell upon the hand, and covered it with kisses. Albert lifted me up and took me into the next room, himself entirely melted into tears, which is unusual for him, deep as his feelings are, and clasped me in his arms. I asked if all was over; he said, 'Yes!'
"I went into the room again and gave one look. My darling mother was sitting as she had done before; but was already white! O God! How awful! How mysterious! But what a blessed end! Her gentle spirit at rest,—her sufferings over! But I—I, wretched child,—who had lost the mother I so tenderly loved, from whom for these forty-one years I had never been parted except for a few weeks,—what was my case? My childhood, everything, seemed to crowd upon me at once. I seemed to have lived through a life, to have become old! The