In December the Empress of the French, who had recently lost her sister, the Duchess of Alba, in order to recover health and cheerfulness, paid a flying visit in private to England and Scotland. From Claridge's Hotel she went for a day to Windsor to see the Queen and the Prince. Towards the close of the year the Prince had a brief but painful attack of one of the gastric affections becoming so common with him.
In January, 1861, the Queen received the news of the death of the invalid King of Prussia at Sans Souci. His brother, the Crown Prince, who had been regent for years, succeeded to the throne, of which the husband of the Princess Royal was now the next heir.
In the beginning of the year the Prince of Wales matriculated at
Cambridge.
In February the Queen opened Parliament. The twenty-first anniversary of the royal wedding-day falling on a Sunday, it was celebrated quietly but with much happiness. The Queen wrote to her uncle, King Leopold, "Very few can say with me that their husband, at the end of twenty-one years, is not only full of the friendship, kindness, and affection which a truly happy marriage brings with it, but of the same tender love as in the very first days of our marriage."
CHAPTER XXXIII.
DEATH OF THE DUCHESS OF KENT.
The Duchess of Kent was now seventy-five years of age. For the last few years she had been in failing health, tenderly cared for by her children. When she had been last in town she had not gone to her own house, Clarence House, but had stayed with her daughter in the cheerful family circle at Buckingham Palace.
A loss in her household fell heavily on the aged Duchess. Sir George Cooper, her secretary, to whose services she had been used for many years, a man three years her junior, died in February, 1860.
In March the Duchess underwent a surgical operation for a complaint affecting her right arm and rendering it useless, so that the habits of many years had to be laid aside, and she could no longer without difficulty work, or write, or play on the piano, of which her musical talent and taste had made her particularly fond. The Queen and the Prince visited the Duchess at Frogmore on the 12th of March, and found her in a suffering but apparently not a dangerous condition.
On the 15th good news, including the medical men's report and a letter from Lady Augusta Bruce, the Duchess of Kent's attached lady-in- waiting, came from Frogmore to Buckingham Palace, and the Queen and the Prince went without any apprehension on a visit to the gardens of the Horticultural Society at Kensington. Her Majesty returned alone, leaving the Prince to transact some business. She was "resting quite happily" in her arm-chair, when the Prince arrived with a message from Sir James Clark that the Duchess had been seized with a shivering fit— a bad symptom, from which serious consequences were apprehended.