Not until the 13th was any bulletin issued which caused real anxiety and alarm. On the day following, the morning papers contained the ominous announcement that he had “passed a restless night, and the symptoms had assumed an unfavourable character during the day.” The Times, in a leading article, while hoping for the best, startled all by its statement that “the fever which has attacked him is a weakening and wearying malady.” On the morning of Saturday there was a favourable turn, but which was soon followed by a most serious relapse. About four p.m. the fever assumed a malignant typhoid type, and he began to sink with such rapidity that all stimulants failed to check the quick access of weakness. At nine o’clock a telegram was received in the City that the Prince was dying fast, and at a few minutes before eleven all was over. “On Saturday night last,” said one of the daily journals of the succeeding Monday, “at an hour when the shops in the metropolis had hardly closed, when the theatres were delighting thousands of pleasure-seekers, when the markets were thronged with humble buyers seeking to provide for their Sunday requirements, when the foot-passengers yet lingered in the half-emptied streets, allured by the soft air of a calm, clear evening, a family in which the whole interest of this great nation is centred were assembled, less than five-and-twenty miles away, in the Royal residence at Windsor, in the deepest affliction around the death-bed of a beloved husband and father. In the prime of life, without—so to speak—a longer warning than that of forty-eight hours, Prince Albert, the Consort of our Queen, the parent of our future Monarchs, has been stricken down by a short but malignant disorder.” Shortly after midnight, the great bell of St. Paul’s, which is never tolled except upon the death of a member of the Royal Family, boomed the fatal tidings over a district extending, in the quietude of the early Sabbath morn, for miles around the metropolis.
DEATH OF PRINCE ALBERT.
The Queen, the Princess Alice, and the Prince of Wales, who had been hastily summoned from Cambridge, sat with the dying good man until the last. After the closing scene the Queen supported herself nobly, and after a short burst of uncontrollable grief, she is said to have gathered her children around her, and addressed them in the most solemn and affectionate terms. “She declared to her family that, though she felt crushed by the loss of one who had been her companion through life, she knew how much was expected of her, and she accordingly called on her children to give her their assistance, in order that she might do her duty to them and the country.” The Duke of Cambridge and many gentlemen connected with the Court, with six of the Royal children, were present at the Prince’s death. In answer to some one of those present who tenderly offered condolence, the Queen is reported to have said: “I suppose I must not fret too much, for many poor women have to go through the same trial.”
The sad news became generally known in the metropolis and in the great cities of the empire early on Sunday. Unusually large congregations filled the churches and chapels at morning service. “There was a solemn eloquence in the subdued but distinctly perceptible sensation which crept over the congregations in the principal churches when, in the prayer for the Royal family, the Prince Consort’s name was omitted. It was well remarked, if ever the phrase was permissible, it might then be truly said that the name of the departed Prince was truly conspicuous by its absence, for never was the gap that this event has made in our national life, as well as in the domestic happiness of the Palace, more vividly realised than when the name that has mingled so familiarly in our prayers for the last twenty years was, for the first time, left out of our public devotions.” Many thousands of mute pious petitions were specially addressed to Heaven for the bereaved widow and orphans when the prayer of the Litany for “all who are desolate and oppressed” was uttered, and in the chapels of Nonconformists the extemporaneous prayers of the ministers gave articulate expression to the heartfelt orisons of the silent worshippers. Every one thought of and felt for the Queen, and during the week intervening between the death and the funeral, the question on every one’s lips in all places of resort, and where men and women congregated, was, “How will the Queen bear it?”
Prince Albert sleeps the long sleep at Frogmore, to which his mortal remains were borne reverently, and without ostentation, as he himself would have wished. The inscription on his coffin ran thus:—
depositum
Illustrissimi et Celsissimi Alberti,
principis consortis,
ducis saxoniæ,
de saxe-coburg et gotha principis,
nobilissimi ordinis periscelidis equitis,
augustissimæ et potentissimæ victoriæ reginæ,
conjugis percarissimi,
obiit die decimo quarto decembris, mdccclxi.
anno ætatis suæ xliii.
[Here lies the most illustrious and exalted Albert, Prince Consort, Duke of Saxony, Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Knight of the Most Noble Order of the Garter, the most beloved husband of the most august and potent Queen Victoria. He died on the fourteenth day of December, 1861, in the forty-third year of his age.]
Thus died and was buried a great and a good man, one of the most useful men of his age, one to whom England owes much.
“For that he loved our Queen,
And, for her sake, the people of her love,
Few and far distant names shall rank above
His own, where England’s cherish’d names are seen.”
THE QUEEN IN HER WIDOWHOOD.