The outgrowth of this true impulse of the Queen's was the establishment of the 'Victoria Stift' at Coburg, whereby sums of money are applied in apprenticing worthy young men or in purchasing tools for them, and in giving dowries to deserving young women or otherwise settling them in life.
In the course of the same year the Queen's second daughter, Princess Alice, afterwards the friend and companion of her mother's first days of widowhood, was betrothed to Prince Louis of Hesse. In February 1861, the Queen and the Prince-Consort kept the twenty-first anniversary of their wedding-day—'a day which has brought us,' says the Queen, 'and I may say, to the world at large, such incalculable blessings. Very few can say with me,' she adds, 'that their husband at the end of twenty-one years is not only full of the friendship, kindness, and affection which a truly happy marriage brings with it, but of the same tender love as in the very first days of our marriage.' The Prince-Consort wrote to the aged Duchess of Kent, 'You have, I trust, found good and loving children in us, and we have experienced nothing but love and kindness from you.'
Alas! it was the death of that beloved mother which was to cast the first of the many shadows which have since fallen upon the royal home. The duchess died, after a slight illness, rather suddenly at last, the Queen and the prince reaching her side too late for any recognition. It was a terrible blow to the Queen: she wrote to her uncle Leopold that she felt 'truly orphaned.' Her sister, the Princess Hohenlohe, daughter of the Duchess of Kent by her first marriage, could not come to England at the time, but wrote letters full of sympathy and inspiration; yet Her Majesty became very nervous, and was inclined to shrink into solitude, even from her children, and to find comfort nowhere but with the beloved consort who was himself so soon to be taken from her.
The great blow which made the royal lady a widow, and deprived the whole country of the throne's wisest and most disinterested counsellor, came on the 14th of December 1861.
In the year 1861, what with public and private anxieties, the prince felt ill and feverish, and miserable. He passed his last birthday on a visit to Ireland, where the Prince of Wales was serving in the camp at the Curragh of Kildare. From Ireland, the Queen, the prince, Prince Alfred, and the Princesses Alice and Helena went to Balmoral; and there the prince enjoyed his favourite pastime of deer-stalking. On the return to Windsor in October, the Queen began to be anxious about her husband. One of the last letters of the prince was to his daughter the Crown Princess of Prussia, on her twenty-first birthday, and it shows the noble spirit which animated his whole career. 'May your life, which has begun beautifully, expand still further to the good of others and the contentment of your own mind! True inward happiness is to be sought only in the internal consciousness of effort systematically devoted to good and useful ends. Success, indeed, depends upon the blessing which the Most High sees meet to vouchsafe to our endeavours. May this success not fail you, and may your outward life leave you unhurt by the storms to which the sad heart so often looks forward with a shrinking dread.'
In conversation with the Queen, he seemed to have a presentiment that he had not long to live. 'I do not cling to life; you do, but I set no store by it. If I knew that those I love were well cared for, I should be quite ready to die to-morrow…. I am sure, if I had a severe illness, I should give up at once. I should not struggle for life.'
The fatigue and exposure which he underwent on a visit to Sandhurst to inspect the buildings for the Staff College and Royal Military Hospital, there is no doubt, injured his delicate health. Next Sunday he was full of rheumatic pains; he had already suffered greatly from rheumatism during the previous fortnight. One of his last services to his country was to write a memorandum in connection with the Trent complications; which suggestions were adopted by British ministers and forwarded to the United States. He attended church on Sunday, 1st December, but looked very ill. Dr Jenner was sent for, and for the next few days he grew worse, with symptoms of gastric or low fever.
Another account says: 'The anxious Queen, still bowed down by the remembrance of the recent death of her mother, the Duchess of Kent, went through her state duties as one "in a dreadful dream." Sunday, the 8th, saw the prince in a more dangerous condition. Of this day one of the Queen's household, in a letter written shortly afterwards, says: "The last Sunday Prince Albert passed on earth was a very blessed one for Princess Alice to look back upon. He was very weak and very ill, and she spent the afternoon alone with him while the others were at church. He begged to have the sofa drawn to the window that he might see the sky and the clouds sailing past. He then asked her to play to him, and she went through several of his favourite hymns and chorales. After she had played some time she looked round and saw him lying back, his hands folded as if in prayer, and his eyes shut. He lay so long without moving that she thought he had fallen asleep. Presently he looked up and smiled. She said, 'Were you asleep, dear papa?' 'Oh no!' he answered; 'only I have such sweet thoughts.' During his illness his hands were often folded in prayer; and when he did not speak, his serene face showed that the 'sweet thoughts' were with him to the end."
'On the afternoon of Saturday, the 14th of December, it was evident that the end was near. "Gutes Frauchen" ("Good little wife") were his last loving words to the Queen as he kissed her and then rested his head upon her shoulder. A little while afterwards the Queen bent over him and said, "Es ist kleins Frauchen" ("It is little wife"); the prince evidently knew her, although he could not speak, and bowed his head in response. Without apparent suffering he quietly sank to rest, and towards eleven o'clock it was seen that the soul had left its earthly tabernacle. The well-known hymn beginning—
Rock of Ages, cleft for me,
Let me hide myself in Thee,