At home the Queen and Prince were strenuously backing up the Government in their policy of increasing the naval defences of England and in protecting our southern coasts by extensive works of fortification. This policy was opposed by Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, from the ranks of the independent Members of Parliament, and by Mr. Gladstone from within the Cabinet. Palmerston wrote to the Queen that Mr. Gladstone had threatened to resign if the new fortifications could not be paid for out of income; and the Prime Minister added, in a characteristic passage, “Viscount Palmerston hopes to be able to overcome his objection; but if that should prove impossible, however great the loss to the Government by the retirement of Mr. Gladstone, it would be better to lose Mr. Gladstone than to run the risk of losing Portsmouth or Plymouth.” Throughout this year, amid the constant pressure of work of both a public and a private character, and the deluge of despatches that followed the Royal pair wheresoever they went, there are constant references to the failing health of the Prince Consort; his digestion was a perpetual trouble; the Queen kept back details of business from him if they were of an anxious nature, because she knew they irritated his delicate stomach. The death of the Duchess of Kent threw a good deal of extra work upon the Prince; he was left her sole executor, and masses of papers had to be dealt with without the aid of her secretary and controller of the household, who had predeceased his mistress by a few weeks. There was a visible failure of health and energy on the part of the Prince. “I have been far from well of late;” “my catarrh refuses to give way;” “yesterday I was too miserable to hold the pen,” are a few expressions taken at random from his private letters in the year preceding his death. He did not, however, relax his habit of diligent work. Summer and winter he rose at seven, and immediately attacked his correspondence, and the reading and writing of despatches for the Queen. They worked together, he writing, she correcting and amending. He would bring letters to the Queen and say, “Read carefully, and tell me if there be any faults in these” (he was never quite secure, it seems, about his English); or, “Here is a draft I have made for you. Read it; I should think it would do.” The last time he rose to work in the early morning in this way was on December 1, 1861, when he prepared a draft for the Queen on the Trent affair. Sir Theodore Martin gives it in facsimile in his fifth volume of the Life of the Prince. It stands in the Prince’s writing, with the Queen’s corrections. As he gave it to the Queen he said, “I am so weak I have scarcely been able to hold the pen.” It was a worthy piece of work to stand as a last memento of a noble life. It was the time of the outset of the American Civil War. Great irritation had been produced between the Governments of England and the United States by the forcible seizure by the latter on an English ship, the Trent, of two envoys from the Southern States who were proceeding to Europe. It was an entirely unjustifiable piece of high-handedness, condemned by every rule of International law. The feeling in England was one of intense indignation, and Lord Palmerston, then Prime Minister, was not the man to soothe or subdue it. A despatch for communication to the American Government was sent by the Prime Minister to the Queen. If it had been delivered, as originally drafted, the peaceful settlement of the difference between the two countries would have been rendered extremely difficult, if not impossible. The Prince Consort virtually remodelled it in such a way as to maintain all the just demands of this country, but to leave to the Government of the United States an honorable path of retreat from the false step which had been taken. This one piece of work alone should keep the Prince’s memory green in both countries for many a long year. The news of the pacific settlement of the difference between England and America reached London on 9th January, 1862, less than a month after the Prince Consort’s death. The Queen, in communicating with Lord Palmerston on the subject, could not forbear reminding him that the peaceful issue of the quarrel was “greatly owing to her beloved Prince.” Palmerston, in his reply, cordially acknowledged that it was so, and added: “But these alterations were only one of innumerable instances of the tact and judgment, and the power of nice discrimination which excited Lord Palmerston’s constant and unbounded admiration.”
At the very outset of the Prince Consort’s last illness, his spirits were greatly depressed by the death from typhoid fever of the King of Portugal, Don Pedro, at the early age of twenty-five, and also of his brother, Prince Ferdinand. They were the Prince’s cousins, and he was particularly attached to them, especially to the King, to whom he stood in almost a paternal relation. The King had married in 1857, with every apparent prospect of happiness, but his young wife had died of diphtheria in 1859, and now he and his brother were cut off by typhoid. The calamity produced an effect on the Prince Consort which he was unable to shake off. This and other anxieties of a private nature preyed upon his mind and deprived him of sleep. He noted in his diary of November 24th that for fourteen days his nights had been almost sleepless. It was the beginning of the end. Another sign of low vitality was that he had no strong love of life. He said to the Queen, not long before his fatal illness, “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;” and he added, “I am sure if I had a severe illness I should give up at once. I should not struggle for life. I have no tenacity of life.” The event proved that he was right. On Monday, November 25th, he paid a hurried visit to the Prince of Wales at Cambridge. He was then feeling far from well, and entered in his diary on his return, “Bin recht elend” (am very wretched). His last public appearance was on November 28th, at a review of the Eton College Volunteers. That it was a great effort to him to fulfil this engagement is proved by the short note in his diary, the last he ever made, “Unhappily I must be present.”
The gradually growing anguish of the Queen during the next fortnight can be traced day by day in the pages of Sir Theodore Martin. At first she was “so thankful the illness was not fever;” then it became clear that it was fever,—typhoid fever,—with its accompanying exhaustion and wandering of mind. She was terribly alarmed, but still clung desperately to every favorable symptom. She tried to gather what the doctors really thought, less by what they said than by how they looked. When they looked grave and sad, “I went to my room and felt as if my heart must break.” When the doctors spoke frankly to her of the course which the fever must run before any improvement could be looked for, “My heart was ready to burst; but I cheered up, remembering how many people have fever.... Good Alice was very courageous, and tried to comfort me.” In the earlier days of the Prince’s illness he took pleasure in being read to, and in hearing music, and the little baby daughter, Beatrice, was brought in to say her new French verses, and he held her little hand in his. The Queen recalls with touching minuteness his tenderness and caressing affection, constantly manifested towards herself. “Liebes Fräuchen,” “gutes Weibchen” (dear little wife, good little wife), he would call her, stroking her face with his wasted hand. On December 11th the Queen’s diary records that she supported him while he took his beef-tea. “And he laid his dear head (his beautiful face, more beautiful than ever, is grown so thin) on my shoulder, and remained a little while, saying, ‘It is very comfortable so, dear child!’ which made me very happy.”
His mind often wandered back to the days of his boyhood at the Rocenau; but at times it would be as clear as ever, and he would speak to the Queen on public matters, or remind her of some important detail in connection with her despatches. On December 13th an alarming change for the worse was noticed, but again he rallied, and again the almost despairing Queen was tempted to listen to the delusive voice of hope. The Prince of Wales was summoned by telegraph from Cambridge, by the Princess Alice acting on her own responsibility, and he travelled through the night, reaching Windsor at three in the morning of December 14th. Prince Alfred was at Halifax, in Nova Scotia; Prince Leopold was at Cannes;[31] and the Prince’s darling eldest daughter, the Princess Royal, was in Prussia, and could not be summoned in time. Little Princess Beatrice was too young to know what she was losing. But the other children were gathered round their father’s deathbed. About half-past five in the afternoon the Prince spoke to the Queen for the last time. He called her again, “Good little wife,” and kissed her with a sigh, as if he felt he was leaving her. Then he sank into a sort of doze, from which he never fully awoke; and the life so inexpressibly dear to the Queen, and so valuable to his children and to the nation, gradually ebbed. The end came at a quarter to eleven on Saturday night, December 14th, 1861. The booming of the great bell of St. Paul’s at midnight warned London of the calamity that had befallen the Queen and nation. But the sad news did not reach the general public till later. Few who were present at morning service on the following day will forget the thrill of awe and sorrow which ran through the church when the name of Prince Consort was omitted from the liturgy, and a long pause was made after the word “widows and orphans.” To many this was the first intimation of the Prince’s death.
One of the Queen’s chief titles to the love of her people is that she sorrows with their sorrows:—
“Queen as true to womanhood as queenhood.
Glorying with the glories of her people,
Sorrowing with the sorrows of the lowest.”
The whole nation now mourned with the Queen, and with many the bitter cup was not unmingled with remorse. The lamentations for the dead are often sorest when the accusing conscience joins its forces to those of natural grief. Injustice, misrepresentation, ungenerosity during life, add an almost intolerable torture to the pain of the mourner. Fortunately, from this worst anguish the Queen was wholly free. She could look back over the whole of her twenty-two years’ union with her beloved Prince, and could find nothing but an unbroken chain of confidence and love; it may safely be said that she had missed no opportunity of actively contributing to her husband’s happiness by every device which ingenious watchful affection could contrive. She therefore belonged to those mourners of whom it may be truly said that they are blessed, and shall be comforted. On the last anniversary of her wedding-day before her husband’s death, the Queen had written to the King of the Belgians to give renewed expression to the feelings awakened by the day. She spoke again of “our blessed marriage,” and “the incalculable blessing” it had brought; and added, “Very few can say with me 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.” Death itself could not rob her of this enormous happiness. It was true he was gone, and she was left alone to bear the weight of the crown and sceptre unsupported except by his memory; but for nearly twenty-two years he had been to her in her own words, “Husband, father, lover, master, friend, adviser, and guide.” Many will be disposed to murmur, “Happy woman, happy wife,” even in face of the crushing grief which now overwhelmed her.
[30] The Queen gave expression to this sense of isolation, as a necessary part of the position of a Sovereign, in a private letter to the Emperor of the French, dated August, 1857. She wrote, after thanking the Emperor for his expressions of favorable opinion about the Prince Consort: “In a position so isolated as ours, we can find no greater consolation, no support more sure, than the sympathy and counsel of him or her who is called on to share our lot in life; and the dear Empress, with her generous impulses, is your guardian angel, as the Prince is my true friend.”
[31] By a sad coincidence, the governor chosen for Prince Leopold, Sir Edward Bowater, died on the same day as the Prince Consort. The poor little boy, on hearing of his father’s death, is said to have exclaimed in the midst of his tears, “I must go to my mother. I want my mother.”