“It has pleased God to inflict a heavy, crushing blow upon us—that we can hardly realise the terrible loss we have sustained. We have had the good fortune of receiving you here in our country home on more than one occasion, and you know what a happy family party we have always been, so that the wrenching away of our first-born son under such peculiarly sad circumstances is a sorrow, the shadow of which can never leave us during the rest of our lives.
“He was just twenty-eight; on this day month he was to have married a charming and gifted young lady, so that the prospect of a life of happiness and usefulness lay before him. Alas! that is all over. His bride has become his widow without ever having been his wife.
“The ways of the Almighty are inscrutable, and it is not for us to murmur, as He does all for the best, and our beloved son is happier now than if he were exposed to the miseries and temptations of this world. We have also a consolation in the sympathy not only of our kind friends but of all classes.
“God’s will be done!
“Again thanking you, my dear and kind Archbishop, for your soothing letter, which has been such a solace to us in our grief, I remain, yours very sincerely,
Albert Edward.”
On the Sunday following the death of the Duke a private service was held in Sandringham Church, attended by King Edward and Queen Alexandra, their daughters, Princess Victoria Mary of Teck, and Prince George. By the King’s special wish his elder son was given the simplest of military funerals, and the coffin was removed from Sandringham to Windsor on a gun-carriage, escorted by a number of the Prince’s old comrades in arms. On the coffin lay the Prince’s busby and a silken Union Jack, and even at Windsor, where among the impressive mass of mourners every Royal House was represented, everything was severely simple, and the pall-bearers were officers of the 10th Hussars.
The career of the Prince, so suddenly cut off ere he had well reached his prime, in addition to its historical interest, throws an instructive light on the pains which King Edward has always expended on the education and training of his children. On none of his children did the King bestow more loving thought and care than on his eldest son, who was destined, as it then seemed, one day to bear all the anxieties and responsibilities of the British Crown.
Prince Albert Victor was popularly, but quite erroneously, supposed to be a weakly, delicate child. The two nurses who successively had the principal charge of him—Mrs. Clark and Mrs. Blackburn—agreed in repudiating this idea, and their testimony is certainly supported by the photographs which were taken of the Prince in babyhood. His early death is to be attributed, not to any original delicacy of constitution, but to the weakness following a severe attack of typhoid, which delayed by two months his joining the Britannia.