CHAPTER XVI.
DOMESTIC LIFE AFTER 1861.

After the death of the Prince Consort the available materials for a life of Her Majesty are much less ample. It is true that in giving directions to Sir Theodore Martin for writing the Life of the Prince, Her Majesty’s desire was that only so much of her own life was to be revealed as was absolutely necessary for the continuity of the story; but the two lives were so completely one that it was impossible to write an account of one that was not almost equally an account of the other. They realized, as long as the Prince lived, the dream of Tennyson’s “Princess”:

“Everywhere
Two heads in council, two beside the hearth,
Two in the tangled business of the world,
Two in the liberal offices of life.”

Sources of information from political memoirs and biographies also became rarer, till they disappear altogether as we approach recent years. The burning political questions of the present day cannot be handled as those can that have been cooling for nearly half-a-century. Her Majesty’s published diaries and the Memoir of Princess Alice studiously exclude nearly all references to the multifarious and constant political duties and interests devolving on the Head of the State; it is only every now and then and, as it were, accidentally, that Her Majesty’s political activities, during the thirty-four years since her husband’s death, have been made known to the mass of her subjects; whereas, during the twenty-one years of her married life, they have been set forth in full detail. There is, however, every reason to know that Her Majesty is fully as active, and certainly has been as efficient, in the discharge of her political duties since she has stood alone as she was when her “permanent Minister” was by her side.

When the blow of her husband’s death fell upon her, the effect on the Queen was overwhelming. She was stunned by it. In after years she could hardly remember those dreadful days of the first realization of her loss; the effect of her anguish was like that of a physical blow, producing insensibility, or at least the inability to record in the tables of the memory the sharp pangs she then endured. Her principal comforter and supporter was her daughter, Princess Alice. In a few days the young girl of 18 developed into a thoughtful, helpful woman. She was for a time the medium of communication between the Queen and her Ministers. Fears were entertained, especially by Leopold, King of the Belgians, that residence at Windsor would involve risk to the Queen’s health and even to her life, and he induced her Ministers to bring great pressure to bear on her to leave the castle and go to Osborne even before the funeral of the Prince Consort. At first, very naturally, the Queen entirely declined to entertain the idea; but King Leopold insisted, and it was finally through the persuasion of the Princess Alice that the Queen was induced to yield. Broken-hearted as she was, she did not forget the duty she owed to her country and family. In after years Princess Alice wrote that it was cruel and wrong to force her mother to leave Windsor at such a moment; but the motive, whether misplaced or not, was anxiety for the Queen’s health, and this was paramount over other considerations. The responsibility thrown on Princess Alice in two directions, to support and console the Queen, and also as the medium of communication for a time with the Ministers, to understand and follow the political movements and events of the times, wonderfully developed the character of the young girl. To the end of her life she combined these two characteristics in a pre-eminent degree. She was one of those women who are born to seek that which was lost, to bind up that which was broken, and strengthen that which was sick; and she also took the keenest and most intelligent interest in politics, following the movements for the unity of Germany, the development of constitutional liberty in various countries, and the education and employment of women, not only with sympathy, but with practical knowledge and a constant wish to forward all these movements by personal exertions and sacrifices. She was very soon to leave her mother’s home for her husband’s. Her marriage with Prince Louis of Hesse took place on July 1st, 1862; but though her home was henceforth in Germany, the country of her birth remained the country of her heart: she loved England as the home of liberty and as the country which was leading the way of advancement both for men and women. It is a touching incident that, dying as she did at Darmstadt in 1878, her last request to her husband was that the Union Jack might be laid on her coffin.

Her devotion to the Queen in the hour of her desolation greatly endeared her to the English people; the memory of that sacred time of common sorrow made a special bond between the mother and daughter. It will not be forgotten that when, in 1871, the Prince of Wales had a desperate attack of the same illness (typhoid fever) that had been fatal to his father ten years earlier, the Princess Alice helped the Princess of Wales to nurse him safely through it; the anniversary of the Prince Consort’s death, December 14th, was the day on which the illness of his son took a favorable turn. On the first anniversary of the turning point in the Prince of Wales’s illness, December 14th, 1872, Princess Alice wrote to the Queen that the day must always be one of mixed recollections and feelings, of thankfulness as well as of sorrow, and that in both respects it would always be “a day hallowed in our family.” Six years later it was on this very day, December 14th, 1878, that the beloved and gifted Princess breathed her last.

All the contemporary records speak of the Queen as having borne her terrible grief with courage. She is said to have been more outwardly composed than she had been after the death of her mother. She began after a few days to transact necessary business. On the 20th December, one of the family wrote from Windsor that she had signed some papers, and had seen Lord Granville. One of her political letters to Lord Palmerston, written in January, 1862, has been already quoted. It is entirely characteristic of her that her first public utterance after the death of her husband was an expression of tenderest sympathy with the wives and children of 204 poor men who were killed in the Hartley Colliery explosion in January, 1862. Her own misery, the Queen said, made her feel the more for them. A little later she received visits of sympathy and condolence from her uncle, King Leopold, and from her half-sister, Princess Feodore of Hohenlohe. To a nature like hers, work and the sympathy of loving friends are the best of all balms; but she was intensely forlorn; she had lost the source of joy and happiness, and nothing could bring it back. The joyous young woman, radiant with light-hearted happiness, ceased to exist on December 14th, 1861. Henceforward our Queen has been a careworn woman, acquainted with grief. She has herself told how her sad and suffering heart was cheered by the solemn beauty of her beloved Highlands, and especially that she was taught many a lesson of resignation and faith by her faithful Scottish servants. One of these, John Grant, wheeling her chair, or leading her pony along the mountain paths, taught her that she must not look upon the days especially associated with her husband’s memory—his birthday, August 26th, or even the day of his death, December 14th—as days of mourning. “That’s not the light to look at,” he said, and helped her to feel that they were beloved and blessed days, because they were so full of the memories of the blessed past. In recording this the Queen writes, “There is so much true and strong faith in these good, simple people.” The lesson was not forgotten, and we find, by various notes in the diary, that the Queen keeps her husband’s birthday by trying to make it a happy day for those about her, celebrating it by giving presents to her children, ladies and gentlemen in attendance, and servants, so that all should feel they had been borne in mind, and had received some “remembrance of the dear day.” In the same spirit of gratitude for past happiness, Her Majesty’s note in her diary for October 15th, 1867, is, “Our blessed engagement day! A dear and sacred day—already twenty-eight years ago. How I ever bless it!” In contrast with this, we find the entry for her own birthday, May 24th, 1863, just three words, “My poor birthday!”

Chief among her Highland friends, the Queen had the good fortune to reckon Dr. Norman Macleod. His strong faith and his power of sympathy, combined with a wonderful gift of expression and indefatigable kindness, gave him a peculiar power in saying the right thing, and giving just the help and support that the Queen wanted when she felt most forlorn. He had also the strong sense of humor which so often makes the crooked straight, and the rough places plain. The Queen felt she could talk openly to him about her sorrow; he helped her to look, not down, but up. When showing him a drawing of the Prince’s mausoleum, his exclamation was, “Oh, he is not there.” He would lead her away from her own grief, to realize, and help to soothe, the sorrows of others. He told her of a beautiful expression of a poor Scottish woman who had lost her husband and several of her children. The poor woman had said, referring to her husband’s death, “When he was ta’en, it made sic a hole in my heart that a’ other sorrows gang lichtly through.”

It is interesting to note that on October 3d, 1869, the Queen asked Dr. Macleod his opinion of the Marquis of Lorne. The Doctor assured her that he knew Lord Lorne well, and had prepared him for confirmation, and thought very highly of him,—“good, excellent and superior in every way.” Exactly a year from that day, October 3d, 1870, the Princess Louise became engaged to the Marquis of Lorne, and they were married on March 21st, 1871.

The Queen was greatly attracted by the simplicity and dignity of the services of the Scottish Church. She was present at the Communion Service at Crathie in 1871. The Journal says:—