On leaving Balmoral the Court proceeded to Holyrood, and on the 23rd of October the Prince Consort laid the foundation stones of the new Post Office and the Industrial Museum in Edinburgh. The Queen and her family reached Windsor on the same evening, where her Majesty’s grief broke out afresh, as it was the first time she had lived at the Castle without finding her mother at Frogmore. As Sovereign of the Most Exalted Order of the Star of India, the Queen held her first investiture of Knights at Windsor Castle on the 1st of November. The difficulty which perplexed the Indian Government in establishing this Order had been to find for it a suitable name and an appropriate device. The suggestions of the Prince Consort had a few months before been in the main adopted, and many fantastic ideas had been extinguished by the cold douche of his common sense. It had been settled that the Order was to consist of the Indian Viceroy as Grand Master, and twenty-five Knights, together with such extraordinary Knights as the Queen might appoint. The badge was to be an oval onyx cameo suspended from an Imperial crown in the centre of the collar, and on the stone Her Majesty’s head was cut in high relief, the motto being “Heaven’s Light Our Guide.” The jewel was surmounted by a star, and set in diamonds. The ceremony of investiture was held in high state. The Queen having previously conferred the Order on the Prince Consort and the Prince of Wales, entered the Throne Room wearing the sumptuous Mantle of the Order. After the usual formalities, she invested with the Insignia, of the Order, Lord Harris, Lord Gough, Lord Clyde, His Highness the Maharajah Duleep Singh, Sir John Lawrence, and Sir George Pollock.
INDUSTRIAL MUSEUM, EDINBURGH.
At Windsor the Prince Consort now began to make arrangements for the approaching marriage of the Princess Alice, and the journey of Prince Leopold, then in delicate health, to Cannes. He busied himself also with the preparation of Marlborough House as a residence for the Prince of Wales. On the 4th of November he inspected the works at Wellington College. A brilliant company of guests, including the Grand Duke and Duchess Constantine, the Duke of Cambridge, Lord Granville, Earl and Countess Russell, Lord Sydney, and the Baron and Baroness Brunnow, were at the Castle when the birthday of the Prince of Wales was celebrated on the 9th. The death of Prince Ferdinand of Portugal, from typhoid fever, together with sad memories of the late Duchess of Kent, had somewhat darkened this family festival, and in a few days her Majesty and the Prince Consort were still further shocked to hear that the King of Portugal had also fallen a victim to the disease which had cut short his brother’s life. The attachment which existed between the Prince Consort and the Portuguese branch of the House of Coburg was close and tender, and it is certain that the sudden death of King Pedro and his brother weighed heavily on his heart. The Crown Princess of Prussia was suffering from illness, brought on by the fatigues and excitement of the coronation ceremony, and, as the last letter the Prince Consort ever wrote to Stockmar indicates, this also preyed on his mind. To these troubles were added certain private vexations, hinted at, but not specified by Sir Theodore Martin. The Prince began to look ill, and his irritability amazed his household, every member of which loved him for his serene temper, his imperturbable good humour, and his invincible patience. On the 12th of November the Queen
THE QUEEN HOLDING THE FIRST INVESTITURE OF THE ORDER OF THE STAR OF INDIA.
began to notice that her husband’s repeated journeys to London were making him “low and sad.” His sleeplessness returned, and her Majesty pressed Sir C. Phipps to lighten as much as possible the strain on his energies. On the 22nd of November he inspected the buildings of Sandhurst Military College amidst a downpour of rain, and it was at first thought he here caught the illness which sent him to his grave. On the 23rd, though complaining of malaise, he went out shooting with Prince Ernest of Leiningen. On the 24th he complained of rheumatic pains, but walked with the Queen and her family to Frogmore. Next day (Monday) he went to Cambridge to see the Prince of Wales, who found him “greatly out of sorts,” and when he came back to Windsor he was so ill that he could not walk out with the Queen in the afternoon. On the 26th he was worse; on the 28th he was still worse, and greatly grieved at the seizure by the Americans of the Confederate Commissioners, who were passengers in the English mail steamer Trent. During the next two days the Prince still complained of illness, and when, on the 1st of December, he drafted a memorandum—the last he ever wrote—for the Queen on the Trent affair, he could scarcely hold his pen. Yet he had struggled against his malady, and during the two previous days had appeared among his guests—including the Duc de Nemours, Lord Carlisle, and Mr. and Mrs. Gladstone—as best he could. But he ate nothing, and when he went to bed he complained of shivering with cold. On the 2nd of December Sir James Clark and Dr. Jenner pronounced him to be suffering from low fever. Curiously enough, when Lord Methuen called on him to report on the death of the King of Portugal he said he was glad his disease was not typhoid fever, because he knew he could not survive an attack. Lord Palmerston was a guest at the Castle on the 2nd, and when he found that the Prince was still unable to take food or leave his room he suggested that another physician should be called in. The Queen could not bring herself to believe that her husband was seriously ill, and on the 3rd her opinion was confirmed by that of Sir James Clark, for the Prince slept better that night and so Palmerston’s suggestion was overruled. Next day even Sir James Clark admitted there was no improvement, and that the symptoms were discouraging. On the 4th of December the Queen says she found the Prince “very woebegone and wretched.” He had not slept, and his appetite had gone. He seemed to care for nothing save that his daughter, the Princess Alice, should sit by him and read to him. His irritability extended even to the selection of books, and it was not till the Princess began to read Scott’s “Talisman” to him that he was satisfied. Sir James Clark still consoled the Queen with smooth prognostications; but Dr. Jenner told her that the Prince must eat because he was simply starving to death. On the 5th he began to marvel what kind of illness it could be that clung to him so persistently, and how long it would last. Clark, however, reported that he was somewhat better, and the Queen was again deceived by delusive signs of improvement. He still begged the Princess Alice to read to him, and nothing else seemed to soothe his irritability. On the 6th he rose early and talked to the Queen about his illness. She told him it sprang from overwork, to which he replied: “It is too much. You must speak to the Ministers.”[108] His mind, he remarked, had begun to brood over Rosenau and the scenes of his childhood, and when he said that the Queen felt as if her heart were breaking. For by this time the physicians could not conceal from themselves the gravity of the case. The Prince was obviously suffering from typhoid fever, and Dr. Jenner broke the news to her Majesty as softly and kindly as he could. Still, they told her the symptoms were not bad, and she tried to think of those who had been smitten with typhoid fever and had survived. On the 7th the Queen worked hard—harder than ever she had worked in her life; for her husband’s pen was no longer at her service. She herself has said that “the tears fell fast” as she sat by his bedside watching him and thinking of the shipwreck of their plans, “and of the painful loss this long illness would be, publicly as well as privately.”
On the 8th the Prince felt so well that he begged to be moved into a larger room, and as he lay in the sunshine he asked the Princess Alice to play for him some of his favourite German chorales. Tears came to his eyes as her fingers wandered over the keys. Suddenly he cried out, “Das reicht hin”—“that is enough”—and then the music was mute. Charles Kingsley preached that Sunday in the Chapel, but the Queen, who attended service, says in her Diary, “I heard nothing.” In the afternoon she sat by her husband and read “Peveril of the Peak,” he holding her hand, and occasionally murmuring words of love and tenderness. Lord Palmerston, himself disabled with gout, could no longer conceal his anxiety. He and his colleagues again pressed the Queen to call in some other physician, and Sir James Clark and Dr. Jenner accordingly sent for Sir H. Holland and Dr. (afterwards Sir Thomas) Watson. The Prince, after seeing the latter, spoke hopefully, and told the Queen that he was “quite the right man”—but still they noticed as a distressing sign that his mind had an increasing tendency to wander. On the 10th Lord Palmerston again urged that further medical advice should be obtained, and by this time the public were becoming alarmed at the condition of the patient. Still, ere the evening wore away even Dr. Watson admitted that the Prince had improved. But on the 11th the Queen, on visiting him in the morning to give him some beef-tea, noticed how his face, “more beautiful than ever, had grown so thin.” As she assisted him to his sofa, he stopped to look at a picture on china of the Madonna, saying, “It helps me through half the day.” The doctors, it seems, felt uneasy towards the evening, when they discovered that the Prince had begun to breathe with more difficulty. The Queen read to him during the greater part of the day, and he manifested great reluctance to let her leave him, even when her duty called her away for a few minutes. On the 12th the bad symptoms increased, and Palmerston wrote three letters, in quick succession, to Sir C. Phipps, each more distracted than the other. On the 13th Dr. Jenner had to warn the Queen that congestion of the lungs might set in, and she herself saw that her husband had become much weaker. But all through the night comforting reports were brought to her, and next morning, the 14th, Mr. Brown, the Royal apothecary, told her that Prince Albert was over the crisis. She went straight to his bedside. “I went in,” she writes, “and never can I forget how beautiful my darling looked, lying there with his face lit up by the rising sun, his eyes unusually bright, gazing as it were at unseen objects, and not taking notice of me.”[109] Hour after hour, as she watched by the sick bed, the Queen saw that her husband was slowly sinking. Still, in the afternoon he knew her—for as he laid his weary head on her shoulder, he kissed her and muttered, “Gutes frauchen.” Then his mind would wander, and then he would doze in brief and troubled snatches of sleep. He took his children by the hand when they came and kissed him, but it is doubtful if he now knew them. Late in the afternoon he asked for Sir Charles Phipps, who came and kissed his hand, whereupon he again closed his eyes. So he lingered on, the Queen keeping her mournful watch with breaking heart. At a late hour they changed his bed, and on the Queen pointing to a favourable sign, Dr. Jenner told her that the Prince’s breathing rendered all favourable signs of no avail. At last she went to her room, but returned when she heard the breathing grow worse. The Prince was partially conscious, for when she kissed him and whispered, “Es ist kleines Frauchen”—“’Tis your own little wife”—he kissed her also. But he seemed desirous of being left quite undisturbed, and so she retired to her room to weep. The end was coming fast. Clark soon saw that a serious change for the worse was setting in, and the Princess Alice went to summon the Queen. When she came she found the Prince still breathing, and she knelt at the bedside, taking his cold hand in hers. On the opposite side knelt the Princess Alice—at the foot of the bed the Prince of Wales and the Princess Helena. The doctors, Generals Bruce and Grey, Sir Charles Phipps, the Dean of Windsor, Prince Ernest of Leiningen, and the faithful valet, Löhlein, stood around hushed and grief-stricken, and the sobs of those to whom the Prince was dearest alone broke the stillness of the chamber of death. The dying man’s face grew serenely soft and reposeful, as his breathing became feebler and feebler. At last he strove hard to take a long, deep breath. In this effort he passed away to his last, long rest, as the great clock of the Castle struck the third quarter after the tenth hour of the night. Those who heard the doleful chime at the Prince’s deathbed will never forget it.