CHAPTER XXVII.
Failing health of Prince Albert—His last visit to Balmoral—His influence upon the policy of England in the Trent difficulty with the United States—Strange revolution in English sentiment in respect to American slavery—The setting of the sun.
All this time while the Queen was absorbed by anxious care, or passionate grief for her mother, the health of the Prince-Consort was slowly but surely failing. The keen blade of his active mind was wearing out its sheath. His vital forces must have begun to give out long before actual illness, or he would not so easily have resigned himself to the thought of the long rest,—still young as he was, with so much to enjoy in life, and so much to do. It is said that he had premonitions of early death, and tried to prepare the Queen for his going first—but the realization of a loss so immense could not find lodgment in her mind. Yet though often feeling weak and languid, he did not relax his labors—spurring up his flagging powers. He never lost his interest in public affairs, or in his children's affairs of the heart. He was happy in contemplating the happiness of his daughter Alice, and followed with his heart the journey of his son, Albert Edward, in his visit to the country of the fierce old Vikings, to woo the daughter of a King of another sort—a Princess so fair and fresh that she could
—"with lilies boast, And with the half-blown rose."
That summer his daughter Victoria, with her husband (now Crown Prince) and their children, came again, for a long visit, and there were many other guests, and much was done to cheer the Queen; but her first birthday in orphanage was hopelessly sad, and when that of the Prince came round, his last—though she wrote to her uncle, "This is the dearest of days, and one which fills my heart with love and gratitude," she murmured, because her "beloved mama" was not there to wish him joy. Ah, what an acting, unreasoning thing is the human heart!
Yet the Queen seems to have had a brief return of happiness—to have been upborne on a sudden tide of youthful joyance, during their autumn stay at Balmoral. She wrote: "Being out a good deal here and seeing new and fine scenery does me good." Of their last great Highland excursion, she said: "Have enjoyed nothing so much, or felt so much cheered by anything since my great sorrow."
Because of this intense love of nature—not the holiday, dressed-up nature, of English parks, streams and lakes—but as she appears in all her wildness, ruggedness, raggedness and simple grandeur, in the glorious land of Scott and Burns, the Queen's journal, though a little clouded at the last, by that "great sorrow," is very pleasant, breezy reading. It gives one a breath of heather, and pine and peat-smoke.
After coming from Balmoral, and its bracing outdoor avocations and amusements, the Prince-Consort's health seemed to decline again. He suffered from rheumatic pains and sleeplessness, and he began to feel the chill shadows of the valley he was nearing, creeping around him. The last work of his beneficent life was one of peculiar interest to Americans. It was the amicable arrangement, in conjunction with the Queen, of the ugly affair of the Trent. That was a trying time for Americans in England, unless they were of the South, southerly. We of the North, in the beginning of our war for the Union, found to our sad surprise that the sympathies of perhaps the majority of the English were on the side of our opponents. These very people had been ever before, so decidedly and ardently anti-slavery in their sentiments—had counseled such stern and valiant measures for the removal of our "national disgrace," that their new attitude amazed us. We could not understand what sort of a moral whirlwind it was that had caught them up, turned them round, borne them off and set them down on the other side of Mason and Dixon's Line. It was strange, but with the exception of a few such clear-headed, steadfast "friends of humanity" as Cobden and Bright, and such heroes as those glorious operatives of Lancashire, all seemed changed. Even the sentiments of prominent. Exeter Hall, anti-slavery philanthropists had suffered a secession change, "into something new and strange," especially after the battle of Bull Run—that fortunate calamity for us, as it proved. Most people here were captivated by the splendid qualities of the Confederates—their gallantry, their enthusiasm, their bravery. Before these practical revolutionists, those "moral suasion" agitators, the Northern Abolitionists, made no great show. Garrison with his logic, Burritt with his languages, Douglas with his magnificent eloquence, were as naught to Jefferson Davis and Robert E. Lee, and that soldier of the fine old Cromwellian type—Stonewall Jackson. The "institution" was pronounced in Parliament "not so bad a thing, after all," and the pathetic "Am-I-not-a-Man-and-a-Brother" of Clarkson, became the Sambo of Christie and the "Quashee" of Carlyle. In the midst of this ill-feeling on one side, and sore-feeling on the other, the rash act of a U. S. Naval Officer, in boarding the British steamer Trent and seizing the Confederate Envoys, Mason and Slidell, gave England cause, had our Government endorsed that act, for open hostility. So ready, so eager did the English Government seem for a war with America, that it did not wait for an apology, before making extensive military preparations. With that brave but cool-headed Captain on our Ship of State, Abraham Lincoln, and that prudent helmsman, William H. Seward, we could not easily have been driven into a war with England at this time; but we might have been humiliated even more than we were, by the peremptory demands of Lord Palmerston—might have been obliged to eat a piece of "humble pie," so big, hot, and heavy, that it would have remained undigested to this day— had it not been for the prudence, the courtesy, good sense, and admirable tact of the Queen and Prince-Consort in modifying and softening the tone of that important State paper, the demand for an official apology, and the liberation of the Confederate Envoys. It is for this that Americans of the North, and I believe of the South, love Queen Victoria, and not alone for her sake, bless the memory of "Albert the Good."
I know of nothing in literature so exquisite in its pathos and childlike simplicity, as the Queen's own account, in the diary kept faithfully at the time, of the last illness of the Prince-Consort. In it we see the very beatings of her heart, in its hope and fear, love and agony—can mark all the stages of the sacred passion of her sorrow. It is a wonderful psychological study.
That illness in its serious phases, lasted about two weeks. It was a low, slow fever, which at first was not recognized as fever at all, but only a heavy cold. I have been told that the Prince himself had from the first, an impression that he should not recover, and that he talked of his probable death very calmly with his noble daughter Alice, saying: "Your mother cannot bear to hear me speak of it yet." The Queen, though very restless and distressed, and at times shaken with wild alarms, could not face the coming calamity; could not admit the possibility that the sands of that precious life—golden sands, were running out. The alternations of hope and fear, must have been terrible. One morning the Queen records that on going to the Prince she found him looking very wretched: "He did not smile, or take much notice of me. His manner all along was so unlike himself, and he had sometimes, such a strange, wild look." In the evening she writes: "I found my Albert most dear and affectionate and quite himself, when I went in with little Beatrice, whom he kissed. He laughed at some of her new French verses which I made her repeat, then he. held her little hand in his for some time, and she stood looking, at him."