In 1870, when the Franco-German War broke out, the Queen’s sympathies, it is almost needless to say, went wholly with Germany; she had looked for the unification of Germany as steadily as old Stockmar and the Prince Consort, and the year 1871 saw this vision become an accomplished fact. King William of Prussia was proclaimed the German Emperor by the assembled German Princes in the banqueting hall of Versailles.
In 1868, when Prince Alfred was absent in Australia, he was shot at and wounded by a Fenian named O’Farrell. When telegraphic news of this was received in cipher at the Colonial Office, it was at first impossible to make out whether the Prince had been killed or only wounded. Another telegram on the following day set the worst anxieties at rest, and further despatches brought word that the ball had been extracted, and that the Prince was doing well; but it can easily be understood what a shock the event must have been to the Queen. Prince Alfred, who had been created a peer under the title of Duke of Edinburgh, married in 1874 the Grand-Duchess Marie, only daughter of Emperor Alexander II of Russia. In 1893, on the death of the Prince Consort’s brother, Duke Ernest of Coburg, the Duke of Edinburgh succeeded him, and is now the reigning Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. When Prince Alfred’s engagement to the Grand-Duchess Marie was impending, but not yet settled, he joined his sister, Princess Alice, on a tour in Italy, the Empress of Russia and her daughter being at Sorrento. Visits were made to them by the English Prince and Princess; the latter of whom wrote to the Queen that the bride-elect had an attack of fever, and she added, “We remained at Rome a day longer on account of poor Alfred. He is very patient and hopeful.” This was in April, 1873. The betrothal took place in July of the same year, and the marriage in January, 1874, at St. Petersburg. This was the only one of the marriages of the Queen’s children at which she was unable to be present. All the others have married from their mother’s house. Dean Stanley attended the Duke of Edinburgh’s marriage, and performed the English part of the service, by the Queen’s express command.
It was in May, 1873, that the most terrible sorrow fell upon Princess Alice,—the sudden, violent death of her little boy, Prince Frederick William (Frittie), aged two and a half years. This dear child had been born during the Franco-German War; Prince Louis had parted from his wife to take the command of the Hessian troops in July, 1870. “Frittie” was born on 7th October, and the husband and wife did not meet again till the end of the war, March 31st, 1871. In the interval, Princess Alice had suffered great anxiety on account of the war, and the danger to which her husband was exposed; she also exerted herself far beyond her strength in nursing the sick and wounded. But this was not a time when a generous nature counts the cost of personal services. She was in the hospital every day, late and early, and besides this, nursed wounded soldiers in her own house. She faced typhus and small-pox, and on one occasion (mentioned by Lady Bloomfield) helped to lift a wounded man who had small-pox full out upon him. The child born during these months of mental and physical strain was delicate from his birth; he had a tendency to hemorrhage which was very alarming, and during his short life he had many illnesses and ailments. He was, perhaps for this very reason, the special object of his mother’s love. On the May 29th, 1873, Princess Alice having lately returned from her tour in Italy, her two little boys, Ernie and “Frittie,” were brought to her room, before she was up, to bid her “Good-morning.” By her wish they were left in the room to play about. The elder of the two little boys having run into the adjoining dressing-room, his mother followed him; during her momentary absence, the younger fell out of the open window of the bedroom on to the stone terrace below: he was alive when he was picked up, but was insensible, and only survived a few hours. No one ever knew exactly how the accident happened, but the horror and anguish of the poor mother can be imagined. It was a blow from which she never really recovered. The Queen’s heart bled for her daughter. The poor Princess wrote to her mother in August, 1873, “Many thanks for your dear letter! I am feeling so low and weak to-day that kind words are doubly soothing. You feel so with me, when you understand how long and deep my grief must be. And does one not grow to love one’s grief, as having become part of the being one loved,—as if through this one could still pay a tribute of love to him to make up for the terrible loss?” All through this cruel anguish she relied with perfect confidence on her mother’s sympathy. In September, 1873, she wrote to the Queen, “You ask me if I can play yet? I feel as if I could not, and I have not yet done so. In my own house it seems to me as if I never could play again on that piano, where little hands were nearly always thrust when I wanted to play.... Mary Teck (Duchess of Teck) came to see me, and remained two nights, so warm-hearted and sympathizing. I like to talk of him to those who love children, and can understand how great the gap, how intense the pain, the ending of a bright little existence causes.” The resemblance between the mother and daughter came out in their grief. After the Prince Consort’s death, the Queen’s chief comfort was to speak of him constantly to those who had known and loved him; and the Princess Alice’s letters continually dwell on her darling child whom she had lost in such a terrible way.
Several of the Queen’s daughters, notably the Empress Frederick and Princess Alice, have shown the greatest sympathy with what is known in England as the women’s movement. They have promoted by every means in their power improved opportunities of education and employment for women, and greater social liberty for them. The Queen, it must be confessed, has never shown that she sympathizes with her daughters in their attitude on this question. Princess Alice’s letters show that Her Majesty was rather anxious and nervous about the women’s meetings and associations promoted by the Princess, and not really pleased at the ceaseless activity of her daughter’s mind on these subjects. She inquired anxiously if Princess Alice took counsel with her mother-in-law, Princess Charles of Hesse, upon them; when the Princess was studying anatomy and physiology, she, as it were, apologized to her mother for her interest in them, and said it might even be useful to be not entirely ignorant on such things: she added that she knew her mother did not like such studies, but affirmed that for her own part, instead of finding them disgusting, they filled her with admiration to see how wonderfully the human body was made. Though, on the whole, the Queen has been very far from giving encouragement, except by the magnificent example of her own life and character, to the modern movement among women for sharing in political work and responsibility, she testified her interest in their higher education by opening in person, in 1887, the palatial buildings of Holloway College. It was rather a singular coincidence that the year in which the Queen did this (which was also the year of her Jubilee) a young lady, Miss Agneta Ramsay, occupied the then unprecedented position of Senior Classic in the University of Cambridge. This made 1887, in a very special degree, a woman’s year.
Another of the modern women’s movements which the Queen has promoted is their entrance into the medical profession. In 1881, a medical missionary from India, Miss Beilby, was the bearer of a message from the Maharanee of Punnah to the Queen, telling Her Majesty of the terrible sufferings of Indian women from the want of duly-qualified women doctors. The Queen was deeply moved by the tale of unnecessary suffering, and of valuable lives thrown away or blighted by the want of skilful and properly trained women to attend native women in sickness. Lord Dufferin was not long after appointed Governor-General of India, and before he left, the Queen especially charged Lady Dufferin with the task of instituting a fund to promote a regular supply of fully trained women doctors for India. This fund was inaugurated by the Marchioness of Dufferin, and is known by her name, and it has since been under the special protection of each successive Governor-General’s wife.
During the later years of her reign, Her Majesty has suffered many bereavements of those near and dear to her. Her uncle, who had been a second father to her, King Leopold, died in 1865. He had remained very faithful to his love for England and English constitutionalism. Many small indications show how his heart clung to the memories of his first marriage. The eldest daughter of the second marriage was named Charlotte, after his first wife (she afterwards married the unfortunate Archduke Maximilian, who assumed the title of Emperor of Mexico, and was shot by Juarez in 1867). When King Leopold knew he was dying, he desired that he might be buried at Windsor, by the side of the wife of his youth; but his wishes were not carried out.
The outbreak of diphtheria at Darmstadt in 1878, in which the Queen lost her dearly loved second daughter and one of her grandchildren, has been already referred to. In June, 1879, the Prince Imperial, only son of the exiled Empress of the French, was killed by the Zulus in a skirmishing expedition in South Africa. The Queen’s feelings of grief were all the harder to endure because the young Prince had been serving with her army. Her sensibility on the point of national honor was deeply wounded. She was ashamed that the lad had not been defended by the Englishmen who were with him; her heart bled for the mother who had lost her only child. The same autumn, with her usual thoughtful kindness, she induced the widowed Empress Eugénie to accept the loan of Abergeldie Castle, near Balmoral; and nothing was spared which it was possible to do to console and cheer her aching heart.
The next great sorrow was the death of Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, which took place, almost suddenly, at Cannes, in March, 1884. The Prince had been delicate from his youth, and more than once had hovered between life and death. The Princess Alice wrote after one of his illnesses in 1868:—
“For a second and even a third time that life has been given again, when all feared that it must leave us.... Indeed, from the depth of my heart, I thank God with you for having so mercifully spared dear Leo, and watched over him when death seemed so near.”
The Prince had seemed to gain strength with years, and in 1882 he married Princess Helen of Waldeck, sister of the present Queen-Regent of Holland. A little girl was born to him and his wife in 1883, named Alice, after the sister whose words of love have just been quoted; but a little son, born in 1884, did not see the light for some four months after his father’s death. The Queen’s loving, motherly tenderness protected and sustained her young daughter-in-law in her sorrow and loneliness.