The unaffected tribute of respect paid by the whole country, led by the Houses of Parliament, to the virtues of the late Duchess, was very welcome to the mourners. The Duchess of Kent by her will bequeathed her property to the Queen, and appointed the Prince Consort her sole executor. "He was so tender and kind," wrote the Queen, "so pained to have to ask me distressing questions, but spared me so much. Everything done so quickly and feelingly."
The funeral took place on the 25th of March, in the vault beneath St. George's Chapel, Windsor. The Prince Consort acted as chief mourner, and was supported by two of the grandchildren of the late Duchess, the Prince of Wales and the Prince of Leiningen. The pallbearers were six ladies; among whom was Lady Augusta Bruce. Neither the Queen nor her daughters were present. They remained, in the Queen's words, "to pray at home together, and to dwell on the happiness and peace of her who was gone." On the evening of the funeral the Queen and the Prince dined alone; afterwards he read aloud to her letters written by her mother to a German friend, giving an account of the illness and death of the Duke of Kent more than forty years before. The Queen continued the allowances which the Duchess of Kent had made to her elder daughter, the Princess Hohenlohe, and to two of the duchess's grandsons, Prince Victor Hohenlohe and Prince Edward Leiningen. Her Majesty pensioned the Duchess's servants, and appointed Lady Augusta Bruce, who had been like a daughter to the dead Princess, resident bedchamber woman to the Queen.
Frogmore had been much frequented by Queen Charlotte and her daughters, and was the place where they held many of their family festivals. It had been the country house of Princess Augusta for more than twenty years. On her death it was given to the Duchess of Kent. It is an unpretending white country house, spacious enough, and with all the taste of the day when it was built expended on the grounds, which does not prevent them from lying very low, with the inevitable sheet of water almost beneath the windows. Yet it is a lovely, bowery, dwelling when spring buds are bursting and the birds are filling the air with music; such a sheltered, peaceful, home-like house as an ageing woman well might crave. On it still lingers, in spite of a period when it passed into younger hands, the stamp of the old Duchess, with her simple state, her unaffected dignity, her affectionate interest in her numerous kindred. The place is but a bowshot from the old grey castle of Windsor. It was a chosen resort of the royal children, to whom the noble, kind, grandame was all that gracious age can be. Here the Queen brought the most distinguished of her guests to present them to her mother, who had known so many of the great men of her time. Here the royal daughter herself came often, leaving behind her the toils of government and the ceremonies of rank, where she could always be at ease, was always more than welcome. Here she comes still, after twenty years, to view old scenes—the chair by which she sat when the Duchess of Kent occupied it, the piano she knew so well, the familiar portraits, the old-fashioned furniture, suiting the house admirably, the drooping trees on the lawn, under which the Queen would breakfast in fine weather, according to an old Kensington —an old German—custom.
The long verandah was wont to contain vases of flowers and statues of the Duchess's grandchildren, and formed a pleasant promenade for an old lady. Within the smaller, cosier rooms, with the softly tinted pink walls covered with portraits, was led the daily life which as it advanced in infirmity necessarily narrowed in compass, while the State rooms remained for family and Court gatherings. The last use made of the great drawing-room by its venerable mistress was after her death, when she lay in state there.
Half-length portraits of the Duke and Duchess of Kent are in the place usually occupied by the likenesses of the master and mistress of the house. Among the other pictures are full-length portraits of the Queen and Prince Albert in their youth, taken soon after their marriage— like the natural good end to the various pictures of her Majesty in her fair English childhood and maidenhood, with the blonde hair clustering about the open innocent forehead, the fearless blue eyes, the frank mouth. The child, long a widow in her turn, a mother, grandmother, great-grandmother, must look with strange mingled feelings on these shadows of her early, unconscious self.
There are innumerable likenesses of the Queen's children such as a loving grandmother would delight to accumulate, from the baby Princess Royal with the good dog Eos curled round by her side, the child's tiny foot on the hound's nose, to the same Princess a blooming girl-bride by the side of her bridegroom, Prince Frederick William of Prussia.
The Duchess's other children and grandchildren are here on canvas, with many portraits of her brothers and sisters and their children. A full-length likeness of the former owner of Frogmore, Princess Augusta, Fanny Burney's beloved princess, hangs above a chimneypiece; while on the walls of another room quaintly painted floral festoons, the joint work of the painter, Mary Moser, and the artistic Princess Elizabeth, are still preserved.
Frogmore was for some years the residence of Princess Christian of Schleswig-Holstein. When she removed to Cumberland House, the furniture which had belonged to the Duchess of Kent was brought back, and the place restored as much as possible to the condition in which she had left it, which implies the presence of many cherished relics— such as the timepiece which was the last gift of the Queen and the Prince, and a picture said to have been painted by both representing Italian peasants praying beside a roadside calvary. There are numerous tokens of womanly tastes in the gay, bright fashion of the Duchess's time, among them a gorgeously tinted inlaid table from the first Exhibition, and elaborate specimens of Berlin woolwork, offerings from friends of the mistress of the house and from the ladies of her suite. In one of the simply furnished bedrooms of quiet little Frogmore, as it chanced, the heir of the Prince of Wales first saw the light. For here was born unexpectedly, making a great stir in the little household, Prince Victor Albert of Wales.