PRINCE LOUIS OF HESSE-DARMSTADT.
After her father’s death, the Princess Alice was so deeply affected by her mother’s grief and her own bereavement, that for a time Prince Louis of Hesse thought she would not hold to her engagement with him. However, this fear soon passed away, and it was duly announced that the Princess would be married on the 1st of July. The ceremony took place in private at Osborne, and was performed by the Archbishop of York, in the absence of the Archbishop of Canterbury, who was suffering from a severe illness. The Queen attended in deep mourning, but her agitation was so great that, when the service was ended, she had to be led away to her room. The Crown Prince of Prussia, all the bride’s brothers and sisters, the parents, brothers, and sisters of the bridegroom, and many other near and dear relatives, were present. The Duke of Saxe-Coburg-and-Gotha gave the Princess, his niece, away at the altar, and the married couple, after the ceremony was over, drove off quietly to St. Clare, near Ryde, which Colonel and Lady Catherine Harcourt had placed at their disposal. There they remained three days. On the 9th of July they left for Hesse-Darmstadt, accompanied by the kindliest wishes of all classes in the country, who had watched with sympathy and interest the affectionate solicitude with which the Princess had solaced the Queen under the first shock of her bereavement.
“Dear to us all by those calm earnest eyes,
And early thought upon that fair young brow.
Dearer for that where grief was heaviest, thou
Wert sunshine, till he passed where suns shall rise
And set no more: thou, in affection wise
And strong, wert strength to her, who even but now
In the soft accents of thy bridal vow
Heard music of her own heart’s memories.
“Too full of love to own a thought of pride
Is now thy gentle bosom; so ’tis best;
Yet noble is thy choice, O English bride!
And England hails the bridegroom and the guest
A friend—a friend well-loved by him who died.
He blessed you both; your wedlock shall be blessed.”
In these simple and pathetic lines Punch, dropping the jester’s cap and bells, gave graceful expression to the popular feeling with which the nation bade the Princess good-bye. The parting between mother and daughter was a mournful one, though both kept their feelings well under control. Writing from the Royal yacht to bid adieu to the Queen, the Princess said, “My heart was very full when I took leave of you and all the dear ones at home; I had not the courage to say a word—but your loving heart understands what I felt.”[143] And again after she reached Darmstadt, she recurs to this sad theme. “Away from home,” is the concluding sentence of one of her letters to the Queen, “I cannot believe that beloved papa is not there; all is so associated with him.”
Indeed, it may be doubted whether the loss of her daughter’s society for a time had not a salutary influence on the Queen. It stimulated her to take a fresh interest in her family life, for a correspondence, intimate and affectionate, was carried on between mother and daughter, in which the Queen had to transmit budgets of home news, the mere collecting of which diverted her thoughts from the heart wound that tortured her. From this correspondence we gather that in those days the Queen’s life was full of many gloomy hours. It is clear that the shadow of death at times fell very darkly on her spirit, and that she poured out her heart to her daughter without reserve. The Princess Louis of Hesse—as Englishmen had to learn to call the Princess Alice—on her side sympathised with every varying mood of her mother’s troubled mind, although her letters indicate how each reference to her father, whom she had idolised from her childhood, made her own wounds bleed afresh. She is sedulous in cheering her mother with accounts of her new home. She enters into all the Queen’s plans for perpetuating the Prince Consort’s memory. From her we gather that, outside of public business and family duties, these plans now filled the Queen’s life. Commissions were given to sculptors like Mr. Theed to carve busts of the Prince. Marochetti’s equestrian statue was projected, and the Princess Louis, soon after reaching Darmstadt, presses the Queen to tell her how it is progressing. The Queen also makes a collection of the Prince’s speeches, and this again stimulates the interest of her daughter, who expresses her pleasure at hearing that Mr. (afterwards Sir Arthur) Helps has been selected by her mother to write an introduction to them for publication. “What can it be,” she writes in one of her letters to the Queen, “but beautiful and elevating if he has rightly entered into the spirit of that pure and noble being?” But even these occupations failed entirely to divert the mind of the Queen from brooding over her bereavement, and now and again her letters, so full of despondency and hopelessness, alarmed her daughter. To one of these the Princess replies from Auerbach, in the month of August, as follows:—“Try and gather in the few bright things you have remaining, and cherish them, for though faint, yet they are types of that infinite joy still to come. I am sure, dear mamma, the more you try to appreciate and to find the good in that which God in His love has left you, the more worthy you will daily become of that which is in store. That earthly happiness you had is indeed gone for ever, but you must not think that every ray of it has left you. You have the privilege, which dear papa knew so well how to value, in your exalted position, of doing good and living for others, of carrying on his plans, his wishes, into fulfilment, and as you go on doing your duty, this will, this must, I feel sure, bring you peace and comfort.”[144]
In the meantime preparations for an interesting and important event in the Royal Family had to be made. It has been already mentioned that the Prince of Wales had been much attracted by the fascinating society of the Princess Alexandra of Sleswig-Holstein-Glücksburg, whom he met shortly before his father’s death whilst visiting Germany. The feeling had ripened into a warm attachment, and it soon came to be rumoured that the lady had listened favourably to his suit as a lover. In autumn it was decided that the Queen should proceed to the Continent and arrange the preliminaries of this alliance with the parents of the Princess. It was also her Majesty’s wish to visit Gotha—consecrated to her now by many tender memories—as soon as she was able to endure the fatigue of travel. Lord Russell was selected to accompany her Majesty as Minister in attendance.
Writing in his Diary on the 1st of September, Count Vitzthum says, “The Queen, who returned two days ago to Windsor, held a Privy Council there, in order to make the necessary arrangements for the period of her absence. Lord Palmerston did not attend this sitting, but has come down to town to receive her Majesty’s last commands. The Queen embarks to-day at Woolwich, and goes first to Brussels to meet for the first time the Princess Alexandra, and her parents. A few days later the Prince of Wales will also come to Brussels, when the betrothal will be officially declared. The indiscretion of the newspapers, which speak of the betrothal as a settled affair before it has actually been announced, has given great annoyance at Windsor Castle.”[145] The impression which the youth and beauty of the Danish Princess made on the Queen was most favourable, and the preliminaries of the marriage were soon arranged. Her Majesty then proceeded to Germany, where she retired to the little shooting-box of Reinhardsbrunn, a residence so small that even Lord Russell had to stay at Gotha for lack of accommodation. In a letter to Count Vitzthum, he gives us a casual glimpse of the Queen’s retreat. “I went to Reinhardsbrunn yesterday (17th September),” says Lord Russell, “and took an opportunity of speaking to the Queen about the proposed visit of Prince George of Saxony. Her Majesty appreciated the kindness of the King of Saxony, whom she regarded, she said, in the light of a relation. The Queen has no room in the house she inhabits to lodge any one, but if the Prince George could come any day after to-morrow (Friday), about three o’clock to pay her a visit, she would be happy to see him. The Prince of Wales is in high spirits, and willingly accepts congratulations on his marriage.”[146]
In the middle of October the Princess Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt and her husband came to England, awaiting at Windsor the arrival of the Queen, who was then at Osborne. The thoughtful affection of the Princess herself prompted this visit. It was feared that the anniversary of the Prince Consort’s death might bring on one of those attacks of nervous prostration from which the Queen suffered, during the first year of her bereavement, and at such a moment the presence of the Princess Alice afforded comfort, consolation, and confidence to the Royal family.
On the 18th of December the Queen emerged from her seclusion to superintend the removal of the Prince Consort’s remains from St. George’s Chapel to the Mausoleum at Frogmore Park. This sepulchral edifice had been built by her special directions as a monument of the affection and reverence which she and her children bore to the dead Prince. It is cruciform in plan, the arms of the cross radiating from a central cell, lit by three semi-circular windows in the clerestory, to the cardinal points of the compass. Polished shafts of cold grey granite decorate the outside of the building, and on an octagonal roof of copper a gilded cross gleams on a square-set tower. The transepts are also square, and lit by a clerestory corresponding with that in the central cell. Monoliths of Aberdeen and Guernsey granite flank the steps of the entrance porch, and the whole exterior is faced with polished granites and parti-coloured masonry. When the Prince’s remains were laid there, the interior—remarkable for its almost Oriental richness of subdued colour and for the splendour of its golden decorations—was unfinished, nor was Marochetti’s recumbent statue of the Prince, which was to be placed over his sarcophagus, completed.