Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen Volume II Part 20

The long verandah was wont to contain vases of flowers and statues of the d.u.c.h.ess'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 compa.s.s, 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 d.u.c.h.ess 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 cl.u.s.tering 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 acc.u.mulate, 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 d.u.c.h.ess'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, f.a.n.n.y 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 c.u.mberland House, the furniture which had belonged to the d.u.c.h.ess 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 fas.h.i.+on of the d.u.c.h.ess'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.

CHAPTER x.x.xIV.

LAST VISIT TO IRELAND--HIGHLAND EXCURSIONS--MEETING OF THE PRINCE OF WALES AND THE PRINCESS ALEXANDRA OF DENMARK--DEATH OF THE KINO OF PORTUGAL AND HIS BROTHERS

In the retirement of Osborne the Queen mourned her mother with the tender fidelity which her people have learnt to know and reverence.

In April the Court returned to Buckingham Palace, when the Queen announced the marriage of the Princess Alice to the Privy Council It was communicated to Parliament, and was very favourably received. The Princess had a dowry of thirty thousand, and an annuity of six thousand pounds from the country.

The Queen's birthday was celebrated at Osborne without the usual festivities. During the Whitsun holidays Prince Louis, who was with the family, had the misfortune to be attacked by measles, which he communicated to Prince Leopold. The little boy had the disease severely, and it left bad results.

In June King Leopold and one of his sons paid the Queen a lengthened visit of five weeks. The Princess Royal, with her husband and children, arrived afterwards, and there was a happy family meeting, tinged with sorrow.

In July the most exalted Order of the Star of India was inst.i.tuted, and conferred first on the Maharajah Dhuleep Singh, Lord Clyde, Sir John Lawrence, &c., &c. That summer saw the death of two statesmen who had been men of mark in the Crimean war--Count Cavour, the Sardinian Prime Minister, and Lord Herbert of Lea. The royal visitors in London and at Osborne included the Archduke Maximilian and his young wife, and the King of Sweden and his son.

Towards the close of August the Queen went to Frogmore with the Prince and Princess Alice, in order to keep the birthday of the late d.u.c.h.ess of Kent, whose remains had been already removed from St. George's chapel to the mausoleum prepared for them in the grounds of her former home. The Queen wrote of the first evening at Frogmore as "terribly trying;" but it comforted her in the beautiful morning to visit the grand simple mausoleum, and to help to place on the granite sarcophagus the wreaths which had been brought for the purpose.

The day after the return of Prince Alfred from the West Indies, the Queen and the Prince, their second son and the Princesses Alice and Helena, sailed from Holyhead in the _Victoria and Albert_ for Kingstown. This visit to Ireland meant also the royal presence on a field-day in the Curragh camp, where the Prince of Wales was serving, and a run down to Killarney in very hot weather. At the lakes the Queen was the guest of Lord Castleross and Mr. Herbert. The wild luxuriant scenery, the size and beauty of the arbutus-trees, and the enthusiastic shriek of the blue-cloaked women, made their due impression. In a row on one of the lakes her Majesty christened a point. The Prince's birthday came round during the stay in Ireland, and was marked by the usual loving tokens, though the Queen noted sadly the difference between this and other anniversaries: the lack of festivities, the absence from home, the separation from the younger children, and the missing the old invariable gift from the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent.

Balmoral was reached in the beginning of September. Prince Louis came speedily, and another welcome guest, Princess Hohenlohe, who travelled north with Lady Augusta Bruce. Dr. Norman Macleod gives a glimpse of the circ.u.mstances and the circle. He preached to the Queen, and she thanked him for the comfort he gave her. Lady Augusta Bruce talked to him of "that n.o.ble, loving woman, the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent, and of the Queen's grief." He found the Queen's half-sister "an admirable woman"

and Prince Alfred "a fine gentlemanly sailor."

The Queen's greatest solace this year was in long days spent on the purple mountains and by the sides of the brown lochs, and in a second private expedition, like that of the previous year to Grantown, when she slept a night at the Ramsay Arms in the village of Fettercairn, and Prince Louis and General Grey were consigned to the Temperance Hotel opposite. The whole party walked out in the moonlight and were startled by a village band. The return was by Blair, where the Queen was welcomed by her former host and hostess, the Duke and d.u.c.h.ess of Athole. Her Majesty had a look at her earlier quarters, at the room in which the little Princess Royal had been put to bed in two chairs, and saw Sandy Macara, grown old and grey.

After an excursion to Cairn Glais.h.i.+e, her Majesty recorded in her journal, "Alas! I fear our last great one." Six years afterwards the sorrowful confirmation was given to words which had been written with a very different meaning, "It was our last one."

The Prince of Wales was on a visit to Germany, ostensibly to witness the manoeuvres of the Prussian army, but with a more delicate mission behind. He was bound, while not yet twenty, to make the acquaintance of the Princess Alexandra of Denmark, not quite seventeen, with the probability of their future marriage--a prospect which, to the great regret of the Prince Consort, got almost immediately into the newspapers. The first meetings of the young couple took place at Speyer and Heidelberg, and were altogether promising of the mutual attachment which was the desired result.

On the 18th of October the King of Prussia was crowned at Konisburg--a splendid ceremonial, in which the Princess Royal naturally, as the Crown Princess, bore a prominent part.

On the return of the Court to Windsor, Prince Leopold, then between eight and nine years of age, was sent, with a temporary household, to spend the winter in the south of France for the sake of his health.

Suddenly a great and painful shock was given to the Queen and the Prince by the news of the disastrous outbreak of typhoid fever in Portugal among their royal cousins and intimate friends, the sons of Maria de Gloria. When the tidings arrived King Pedro's brother, Prince Ferdinand, was already dead, and the King ill. Two more brothers, the Duke of Oporto and the Duke of Beja, were in England, on their way home from the King of Prussia's coronation. The following day still sadder news arrived--the recovery of the young king, not more than twenty-five, was despaired of. His two brothers started immediately for Lisbon, but were too late to see him in life. The younger, the Duke of Beja, was also seized with the fatal fever and died in the course of the following month. The Queen and the Prince lamented the King deeply, finding the only consolation in the fact that he had rejoined the gentle girl-wife for whose loss he had been inconsolable.

CHAPTER x.x.xV.

THE DEATH OF THE PRINCE CONSORT.

The news of the terrible mortality in the Portuguese royal family, especially the death of the King, to whom the Prince was warmly attached, had seriously affected his health, never strong, and for the last few years gradually declining, with gastric attacks becoming more frequent and fits of sleeplessness more confirmed. At the same time the Prince's spirit was so unbroken, his power of work and even of enjoyment so unshaken, while the patience and unselfishness which treated his own bodily discomfort as a matter of little moment had grown so much the habit of his mind, that naturally those nearest to him failed in their very love to see the extent of the physical mischief which was at work. Nevertheless there is abundant evidence that the Queen was never without anxiety on her husband's account, and Baron Stockmar expressed his apprehensions more than once.

Various causes of care troubled the Prince, among them the indisposition contracted by the Princess Royal at the coronation of her father-in-law, the King of Prussia, and the alarming illness at Cannes of Sir Edward Bowater, who had been sent to the south of France in charge of Prince Leopold. After a fortnight of sleeplessness, rheumatic pains, loss, of appet.i.te, and increasing weakness, the Prince drove in close wet weather to inspect the building of the new Military Academy at Sandhurst, and it is believed that he there contracted the germs of fever. But he shot with the guests at the Castle, walked with the Queen to Frogmore and inspected the mausoleum there, and visited the Prince of Wales at Cambridge afterwards.

Then the affair of the _Trent_ suddenly demanded the Prince's close attention and earnest efforts to prevent a threatened war between England and America. In the course of the civil war raging between the Northern and Southern states the English steamer _Trent_ sailed with the English mails from Savannah to England, having on board among the other pa.s.sengers several American gentlemen, notably Messrs. Mason and Slidell, who had run the blockade from Charlestown to Cuba, and were proceeding to Europe as envoys sent by the Confederates to the Courts of England and France. A federal vessel fired on the English steamer, compelling her to stop, when the American Captain Wilkes, at the head of a large body of marines, demanded the surrender of Mason and Slidell, with their companions. In the middle of the remonstrances of the English Government agent at the insult to his flag and to the neutral port from which the s.h.i.+p had sailed, the objects of the officer's search came forward and surrendered themselves, thus delivering the English commander from his difficulty.

But the feeling in England was very strong against the outrage which had been committed, and it was only the most moderate of any political party who were willing to believe--either that the American Government might not be cognisant of the act done in its name, or that it might be willing to atone by honourable means for a violation of international law--enough to provoke the withdrawal of the English amba.s.sador from Was.h.i.+ngton, and a declaration of war between the two countries.

Cabinet councils were summoned and a dispatch prepared. A draft of the dispatch was forwarded to Windsor to be read by the Queen, when it struck both her and, the Prince that it was less temperate and conciliatory than it might have been, while still consistent with perfect dignity. The Prince Consort's last public work for his Queen and country was to amend this draft. He rose as usual at seven o'clock, and faint and ill as he was, scarcely able to hold a pen, drew out an improved version of the dispatch, which was highly approved of by the Ministers and favourably received by the American Government. As the world knows, the President, in the name of his countrymen, declared that Captain Wilkes had acted without official instructions, and ordered the release of the gentlemen who had been taken prisoners.

In the meantime the shadows were darkening round the royal home which had been so supremely blest. The Prince was worse. Still he walked out on one of the terraces, and wrapped in a coat lined with fur he witnessed a review of the Eton College volunteers, from which his absence would have been remarked. The ill-omened chilly feeling continued, but there were guests at the Castle and he appeared at dinner. On Sunday, the 1st of December, the Prince walked out again on the terrace and attended service in the chapel, insisting "on going through all the kneeling," though very unwell.

Next morning something was said by the doctors of low fever. No wonder the Queen was distressed after the recent calamity at Lisbon, but concealing her feelings as such watchers must, she strove to soothe and amuse her sick husband. The members of the household who had been at Lisbon arrived with the particulars of the young King of Portugal's death. After listening to them the Prince said "that it was well his illness was not fever, as that, he felt sure, would be fatal to him."

One of the guests at the Castle was Lord Palmerston. In spite of his natural buoyancy of temperament he became so much alarmed by what he heard that he suggested another physician should be called in. Her Majesty had not been prepared for this step, and when she appealed to the two medical men in attendance, Sir James Clark and Dr. Jenner, they comforted her by their opinion that there was nothing to alarm her, and that the low fever which had been feared might pa.s.s off.

The next few days were spent in alternations of hope and fear. Which of us is so happy as not to have known that desperate faith when to doubt would be to despair? The Prince liked to be read to, but "no book suited him." The readers were the Queen and Princess Alice, who sought to cheat themselves by subst.i.tuting Trollope for George Eliot, and Lever for Trollop, and by speaking confidently of trying Sir Walter Scott "to-morrow." To-morrow brought no improvement. Sir James Clark, though still sanguine, began to drop words which were not without their significance. He _hoped_ there would be no fever, which all dreaded, with too sure a presentiment of what would follow.

The Prince _must_ eat, and he was to be told so; his illness was likely to be tedious, and completely starving himself would not do.

As if the whole atmosphere was heavy with sorrow, and all the tidings which came from the world without in these days only reflected the ache of the hearts within, the news came from Calcutta of the death of the wife of the Governor-General, beautiful, gifted Lady Canning, so long the Queen's lady-in-waiting and close companion.

The doctors began to sit up with the patient, another stage of the terrible illness. When her Majesty came to the Prince at eight in the morning she found him sitting up in his dressing-room, and was struck with "a strange wild look" which he had, while he talked in a baffled way, unlike him, of what his illness could be, and how long it might last. But that day there was a rally; he ate and slept a little, rested, and liked to be read to by Princess Alice. He was quite himself again when the Queen came in with his little pet child, Princess Beatrice, in whom he had taken such delight. He kissed her, held her hand, laughed at her new French verses, and "dozed off," as if he only wanted sleep to restore him.

The doctor in attendance was anxious that the Prince should undress and go to bed, but this he would not do. Throughout the attack, with his old habit of not giving way and of mastering his bodily feelings by sheer force of will, he had resisted yielding to his weakness and submitting to the ordinary routine of a sick-room. After it was too late the doctor's compliance with the Prince's wishes in this respect was viewed by the public as rash and unwise. On this particular occasion he walked to his dressing-room and lay down there, saying he would have a good night--an expectation doomed to disappointment. His restlessness not only kept him from sleeping, it caused him to change his room more than once during the night.

The morning found him up and seated in his sitting-room as before. But he was worse, and talked with a certain incoherence when he told the Queen that he had been listening to the little birds, and they had reminded him of those he had heard at the Rosenau in his childhood.

She felt a quick recoil, and when the doctors showed that their favourable opinion of the day before had undergone a change, she went to her room and it seemed to her as if her heart would break.

Fever had now declared itself unmistakably. The fact was gently broken to the Queen, and she was warned that the illness must run its course, while the knowledge of its nature was to be kept from the Prince. She called to mind every thought that could give her courage; and Princess Alice, her father's true daughter, capable of rising to heights of duty and tenderness the moment she was put to the test, grew brave in her loving demotion, and already afforded the support which the husband and father was no longer fit to give.

Happily for her Majesty, the daily duties of her position as a sovereign, which she could not lay aside though they were no longer shared by the friend of more than twenty years, still occupied a considerable portion of her time. But she wrote in her diary that in fulfilling her task she seemed to live "in a dreadful dream." Do we not also know, many of us, this cruel double life in which the obligations which belong to our circ.u.mstances and to old habits contend for mastery with new misery? When she was not thus engaged the Queen sat by her husband, weeping when she could do so unseen.

On the 8th of December the Prince appeared to be going on well, though the desire for change continued strong in him, and he was removed at his earnest request to larger and brighter rooms, adjoining those he had hitherto occupied. According to Lady Bloomfield one of the rooms-- certainly called "the Kings' rooms"--into which the Prince was carried, was that in which both William IV. and George IV. had died; and the fact was remembered and referred to by the new tenant, when he was placed where he too was destined to die. The Queen had only once slept there, when her own rooms were being painted, and as it happened, that single occasion was on the night before the day when the d.u.c.h.ess of Kent had her last fatal seizure.

The Prince was pleased with the greater s.p.a.ce and light and with the winter suns.h.i.+ne. For the first time since his illness he asked for music, "a fine chorale." A piano was brought into the room, and his daughter played two hymns--one of them "_Ein fester burg ist unser Gott_" to which he listened with tears in his eyes.

It was Sunday, and Charles Kingsley preached at the Castle. The Queen was present, but she noted sadly that she did not hear a word.

The serious illness of the Prince Consort had become known and excited much alarm, especially among the Cabinet Ministers. They united in urging that fresh medical aid should be procured. Dr. Watson and Sir Henry Holland were called in. These gentlemen concurred with the other doctors in their opinion of the case as grave, but not presenting any very bad symptoms. The increased tendency of the Prince to wander in his mind was only what was to be expected. The listlessness and irritability characteristic of the disease gave way to pleasure at seeing the Queen and having her with him, to tender caresses, such as stroking her cheek, and simple loving words, fondly cherished, "_Liebes frauchen, gutes weibchen_." [Footnote: "Dear little wife, good little wife."] The changes rung on the relations.h.i.+p which had been so perfect and so satisfying.

On the 10th and the 11th the Prince was considered better. He was wheeled into the next room, when he called attention to a picture of the Madonna of which he was fond; he said that the sight of it helped him through half the day.

On the evening of the 11th a slight change in the Prince's breathing was perceptible and occasioned uneasiness. On the 12th it was too evident the fever and shortness of breathing had increased, and on the 13th Dr. Jenner had to tell the Queen the symptom was serious, and that there was a probability of congestion of the lungs. When the sick man was wheeled into the next room as before, he failed to notice his favourite picture, and in place of asking to be placed with his back to the light as he had hitherto done, sat with his hands clasped, gazing abstractedly out of the window. That night the Prince of Wales was summoned from Cambridge, it was said by his sister, Princess Alice, who took upon her the responsibility of bringing him to Windsor.