“I have to hope, my beloved mother, that I shall not be so unhappy as to incur your displeasure, or to have added to your agony, but if it be, on me be the blame, for no one suggested it to me. I proposed it to Hastings, and indeed it was due to the medical men who have been so very attentive, and that was an ‘examination.’ It took place at 6 o’clock yesterday evening, as late as it was possible. One was proposed, but Chambers would put it off to a later hour. I left her at once when he came, having wished her good-bye, and put round her neck the locket with your and Papa’s hair, and I said that I trusted to him that it remained there. He burst into tears, and promised me. John remained the whole time out of respect while the surgeons were there, and it was only a slight operation, no uncovering, nothing to wound the feelings, not so bad as Sir James Clark. She was merely uncovered over her stomach, as if it were a wound in her side. John put the locket on her the last thing with his own hands, and he, Charles, and Hastings are at the Palace every night and day, and Reichenbach and the nurse sit up. Every respect is shown. God bless you. I am late.”
There were five doctors present at the examination, Drs. Chambers, Holland, and Merriman, Sir A. Cooper and Sir B. Brodie. The last officiated, and it was found that Flora Hastings died from enlargement of the liver, which, pressing downwards, produced enlargement of the abdomen and inflammation.
It was curious that The Times, then devoted to Tory influence, should have struck a different note from the other Tory papers, and have asked, somewhat pertinently, though much to the anger of the Hastings family, “Did the Ladies of the Bedchamber cause the liver complaint of which Lady Flora Hastings died?”
The death of the maligned lady brought public indignation up to fever-heat, and the Queen wisely remained in her Palace, for to be hissed in the street is worse than to be forced to sit silently under a parson who has licence to outrage all one’s cherished ideas. At the Opera one night someone asked the box-keeper if Her Majesty would be present, and the man replied:
“Oh, no; she dare not come!”
As for the Ministry, it was deeply depressed at the whole occurrence, and Lady Cowper told someone that her brother, Lord Melbourne, felt that its tragic ending was the worst blow the Government had so far received.
Lady Flora was buried at Loudoun by her own wish, for she had said, “I do not think I shall ever look upon Loudoun again, and I wish to be taken there. Under other circumstances I should have said, ‘let the tree lie where it falls,’ but as it is I wish to lie there.”
At four o’clock in the morning of Wednesday, July 12th, the coffin was removed from Buckingham Palace. The Guards and Life Guards were under arms all Tuesday night and Wednesday morning to show respect to the dead woman, but there was also a tremendous body of police, who accompanied the sad procession as far as Temple Bar, where they gave place to the City police. This was done, Sophia Hastings was told, to prevent the Queen’s carriage from being pulled to pieces, of which she says, “which I never expected.” The fact that the Royal carriage was to follow was kept so secret that the rest of the Royal family did not know what to do. The whole matter had been so turned to party uses that they did not like to show this public mark of respect if the Queen did not set the example. The Duchess of Gloucester found out in time, and she vexed the Duke of Cambridge very much by not letting him know. Princess Sophia was the only one who followed her own wishes irrespective of the actions of her niece, saying contemptuously of the others that they were but timeservers to care what the Queen did.
Though the hour of the start had been given as six, there was a great and silent crowd collected to watch the carriages pass at four o’clock, hats being lifted all along the route. Many comments of a strong nature were uttered; thus one respectable-looking man pointed with his stick to Her Majesty’s carriage, saying, “What is the use of her gilded trumpery after she has killed her?” A policeman hearing this, went up and looked the man in the face, probably hoping to recognise or to remember him. Another man was heard to say, “Ah, there’s the victim, but where’s the murderer?” Sophia Hastings, who retailed these incidents with relish, said of the drive through London: “Not one thing pained me; the feeling was respect to her, and compassionate respect to myself, and total absence of bustle, noise, or any confusion. Even at the wharf you might have felt in a chapel, and I am told many were disappointed” (probably that there was no disturbance).
The following letter was sent by the Duchess of Kent, three weeks after the calamity, to Lady Selina Henry:—