To the Bishop she gave a seal which had belonged to Queen Victoria, and which had been in the room when the Queen died. It commemorated a picnic in Scotland, in which the Queen, the Prince Consort, and Princess Alice had shared. The seal, mounted in silver and set in Aberdeen granite, was a cairngorm found by Prince Albert and Princess Alice on that day.
The Bishop remained with her a moment at the very last, and she said to him, “When I am gone I want you to read the English Burial Service over me.” And then she characteristically explained to him exactly what would have to be done to make this possible. When the end came three months later, thanks to the prompt acquiescence of the Emperor, his mother’s wishes were carried out.
The Empress became much worse at the beginning of August, and, by the wish of her son, Canon Teignmouth-Shore was telegraphed for. He arrived at Friedrichshof on August 5, and in the presence of the Emperor and the Empress’s daughters the Canon knelt down and offered some prayers from the Office for the Visitation of the Sick. The whole sad scene, he says, was quite over-powering and far too sacred for him to describe. “The dying Empress was at first slightly conscious, and I could see a gentle movement of her lips as we said the Lord’s Prayer.”
Towards six o’clock in the evening the Canon was again summoned to the sick-room. “The sweet noble soul was just passing away. I said a few prayers at the bedside, concluding with the first two verses of that exquisite poem, ‘Now the labourer’s task is o’er.’”
A butterfly flew into the room and hovered for awhile over the dying Empress, and when she had breathed her last it spread its wings and flew out into the free air again.
The Emperor desired Canon Teignmouth-Shore to arrange with Dr. Boyd Carpenter for a private funeral service to be held at Friedrichshof.
On the following Sunday the Canon preached a funeral sermon in the English church at Homburg. In it he made a statement with regard to her Majesty’s religious views which deserves quotation:
“The religious conceptions which inspired and guided this life, alike in its humblest and in its loftiest spheres of action, were, as I believe, neither crude nor complex nor dogmatic; they were clear and simple and broad—an absolute faith in the Fatherhood of God, and in the Brotherhood and redeeming love of Him who died that we might live.”
The Lutheran funeral service, which was held in the parish church of Cronberg, was most impressive in its simplicity. At one point of the service the Crown Prince and three of his young brothers rose from their seats, and, having put on their helmets, drew their swords and took their places at each corner of the coffin of their grandmother, where they remained until the end of the service.
This old church, which, as we know, the Empress had herself restored, dates back to the middle of the fifteenth century. On the organ, which is of exquisite tone, Mendelssohn often played when he visited the Taunus.