On February 9, 1861, Prince Albert wrote Baron Stockmar: "To-morrow our marriage will be twenty-one years old. How many storms have swept over it, and still it continues green and fresh." The anniversary occurring on Sunday was very quietly observed, chiefly by the performance in the evening of some fine sacred music, the appropriateness of which was scarcely realized at the time. In a very sweet letter to the Duchess of Kent, such a letter as few married men write to their mothers-in-law, the Prince says: … "To-day our marriage comes of age, according to law. We have faithfully kept our pledge for better and for worse,' and have only to thank God that He has vouchsafed so much happiness to us. May He have us in His keeping for the days to come! You have, I trust, found good and loving children in us, and we have experienced nothing but love and kindness from you."
This dear "Mama-aunt" had been in delicate health for some time, and once or twice seriously ill, but she seemed better, her physicians were encouraging and all were hopeful till the 12th of March, when the Queen and Prince were suddenly summoned from London to Frogmore by the news of a very alarming relapse. They went at once with all speed, yet the Queen says "the way seemed so long." When they readied the house, the Queen writes: "Albert went up first, and when he returned with tears in his eyes, I saw what awaited me. … With a trembling heart I went up the staircase and entered the bedroom, and here on a sofa, supported by cushions, sat leaning back my beloved Mama, breathing rather heavily, but in her silk dressing-gown, with her cap on, looking quite herself. … I knelt before her, kissed her dear hand and placed it next my cheek; but though she opened her eyes she did not, I think, know me. She brushed my hand off, and the dreadful reality was before me that for the first time, she did not know the child she had ever received with such tender smiles."
The further description given by the Queen of this first great sorrow of her life, is exceedingly pathetic and vivid. It is the very poetry of grief. I cannot reproduce it entire, nor give that later story of incalculable loss as related by her in that diary, through which her very heart beats. It is all too unutterably sad. There are passages in this account most exquisitely natural and touching. When all was over, the poor daughter tried to comfort herself with thoughts of the blessed rest of the good mother, of the gentle spirit released from the pain-racked body, but the heart would cry out: "But I—I, wretched child, who had lost the mother I so tenderly loved, from whom for these forty-one years I had never been parted, except for a few weeks, what was my case? My childhood, everything seemed to crowd upon me at once… What I had dreaded and fought—off the idea of, for years, had come, and must be borne… Oh, if I could nave been with her these last weeks! How I grudge every hour I did not spend with her! … What a blessing we went on Tuesday. The remembrance of her parting blessing, of her dear, sweet smile, will ever remain engraven on my memory."
During all this time, the Queen received the most tender sympathy and care from her children, and Prince Albert, was—Prince Albert;— weeping with her, yet striving to comfort her, full of loving kindness and consideration.
The Queen's grief was perhaps excessive, as her love had been beyond measure, but he was not impatient with it, though he writes from Osborne, some weeks after the funeral of the Duchess: "She (the Queen) is greatly upset, and feels her childhood rush back upon her memory with the most vivid force. Her grief is extreme… For the last two years her constant care and occupation have been to keep watch over her mother's comfort, and the influence of this upon her own character has been most salutary. In body she is well, though terribly nervous, and the children are a great disturbance to her. She remains almost entirely alone."
How true to nature! When the first love of a life is suddenly uprooted, all the later growths, however strong, seem to have been torn up with it. When the mother goes, only the child seems to remain. Victoria, tender mother as she herself was, and adoring wife, was now the little girl of Kensington and Claremont, whose little bed was at the side of her mother's, and who had waked to find that mother's bed empty, and forever empty! And yet she said in her first sense of the loss: "I seemed to have lived through a life; to have become old."
We may say that with the coming of that first sorrow went out the youth of the Queen; for it seems that while her mother lives, a woman is always young, that there is something of girlhood, of childhood even, lingering in her life while she can lay her tired head on her mother's knee, or hide her tearful face against her mother's breast, that most sweet and restful refuge from the trials and weariness of life.
Her Majesty's sister, Feodore, strove to comfort her; the dear daughter Victoria came to her almost immediately; her people's tears and prayers were for her, and amid the quiet and seclusion of Osborne she slowly regained her cheerfulness; but the old gladness and content never came back. The children, too, with all the natural gayety of their years, found that something of sweetness and comfort had dropped out of life— something of the charm and dearness of home was gone with "grandmama," from the Palace, the Castle, the seaside mansion, as well as from pleasant Frogmore, where they were always so welcome. Not till then, perhaps, had they known all she was to them—what a blessed element in their lives was her love, so tender and indulgent. Age is necessary to the family completeness. We do not even in our humbler condition, always realize, this—do not see how the quiet waning life in the old arm-chair gives dignity and serenity to the home, till the end comes—till the silver-haired presence is withdrawn.