Queen Victoria, though deeply shocked by the news, was more concerned about its effect on Prince Albert. ‘I never saw him so low,’ she told Vicky, explaining that his lack of sleep was caused by, ‘a great sorrow which upset us both greatly – but him especially and it broke him right down.’
Worried, worn out, wracked with neuralgia and unable to eat or sleep, Prince Albert took up his pen and, ‘with a heavy heart’, wrote to his eldest son. Though deeply disappointed, he assured Bertie that he only wished to help him but, in return, Bertie must explain every detail of what had taken place, if not to his father, then to his ‘Governor’, General Bruce.
A few days later, on 22nd November, despite his pain and exhaustion, Prince Albert travelled to Cambridge to speak to Bertie in person. In the pouring rain, father and son walked through the Madingley countryside where Prince Albert warned of the dangers of such folly, and a duly repentant Bertie admitted that he had ‘yielded to temptation’ but would be far more circumspect in future. So engrossed were they in their conversation that they soon found themselves completely lost and by the time they eventually found their way back to civilisation, the drenched and shivering Prince Consort was utterly exhausted to the point of near collapse.
Still shivering and aching, he returned to Windsor that evening, and over the next few days, he dragged himself through his engagements in an effort to conceal quite how ill he felt. If the Queen was reluctant to accept the seriousness of his condition, perceptive Alice was all too aware of his rapid decline and, in an effort to raise his spirits, barely left his side.
“Good Alice is a very great comfort,” the Queen wrote. “She is so devoted to dear Papa and reads to him and does everything she can to help and cheer me!”[100]
By the end of the month, an international crisis added to Prince Albert’s woes. For some time he had been anxiously watching the conflict in America, afraid that Britain could be dragged into the war. Towards the end of November his fears came close to being realised. A few weeks earlier, a captain of the Northern States’ navy forcibly boarded and searched a British mail ship, the Trent, and arrested two Confederate (Southern States) agents. When the Trent returned to England at the end of the month, news of what had happened led to an outcry in Parliament and outrage among the British public. The Foreign Minister, John Russell, immediately drew up a letter to be sent to Washington belligerently protesting at this breach of international law and violation of British neutrality. When Prince Albert was presented with a draft of the letter he was horrified, convinced that if it were delivered, war would be inevitably. At once, he set to work redrafting the letter in far more conciliatory terms, which eventually settled the matter without conflict.
By now, though, it was clear that Prince Albert was dangerously ill. Restless and irritable, he wandered from room to room, trying to find some relief from his insomnia, lumbago and neuralgia. He joined Alice and her mother for meals but was unable to eat anything, and, by December 2nd he was too weak to dress, and was reduced to lying on a sofa. Dr Jenner observed that he had developed ‘a low fever’ but Dr Clark – the same doctor who had misdiagnosed the infant Vicky, and had been involved in the Flora Hastings affair – disagreed, insisting that there was no cause for alarm as he was sure that the illness would pass after a few days’ rest. The Queen, seeing only what she wanted to see, gratefully accepted Clark’s prognosis and wrote several times to Vicky, telling her not to worry because, although her father’s progress might be slow and tedious, he would eventually recover.
Being constantly in his presence, Alice could see what the Queen refused to accept: her beloved father’s illness was far graver than his doctors dared to admit. His weakness and pallor were astounding for a man of his age. His mouth was dry, his skin, clammy and ashen, and at times he could barely breathe.
“While Alice was reading the Talisman in the bedroom, where he was lying on the bed,” the Queen wrote on 4th December, “he seemed in a very uncomfortable, panting state, which frightened us. We sent for Doctor Jenner, who gave him something, and then Mr Brown (of Windsor) came up and was most kind and reassuring and not alarmed. But Doctor Jenner said the Prince must eat and that he was going to tell him so – the illness was going to be tedious and that starving himself, as he had done, would not do.”[101]
That evening, while the Queen was out of the room, he asked Alice to write to Vicky, telling her that he would never recover.
Over the next ten days, Alice barely left his side as doctors came and went, each offering the assurance that his life was not in danger until, at last, Jenner told the Queen that the Prince was suffering from typhoid. Knowing of Albert’s fear of ‘the fever’, particularly since the recent death of his Portuguese cousins, the Queen insisted that the diagnosis be kept from him, and at the same time reassured herself that the illness need not be fatal – after all she herself had survived a worse case of typhoid in Ramsgate many years earlier.
In fact, with hindsight, Jenner’s diagnosis is highly questionable. Having devoted a good deal of his professional life to studying the disease and having written several papers on the subject, it is possible that he simply noted a few similar to symptoms to those which were at the forefront of his mind. Since typhoid is usually transmitted through contaminated water, the drains at Windsor have been blamed as the most likely source of the infection but there is no record of anyone else in the household contracting the disease, which usually spreads in epidemics. Moreover, while Prince Albert had a high temperature and fever, there was no evidence of the purplish rash or delirium which usually accompanies typhoid. Considering the symptoms which had plagued him for several years prior to 1861, it is far more likely that he was suffering from some form of chronic malabsorption syndrome which, exacerbated by exhaustion and stress, eventually led to renal failure and a complete breakdown of his metabolism.
Throughout the dark days of December, the Queen continued to search for any sign of improvement. If Prince Albert smiled, sat up, or took so much as a little broth, it was evidence of his imminent recovery – for, indeed, in her view, he would recover, as the alternative was too horrific to contemplate. Nonetheless, the stress of watching over him while carrying out her constitutional duties was exhausting.
“The trial in every way is so very trying,” she wrote, “for I have lost my guide, my support, my all, for a time – as we can’t ask or tell him anything.”[102]
Alice continued to do all she could to entertain her father. She read aloud from the works of Sir Walter Scott, which he greatly enjoyed, and, when he asked to listen to quiet music, a piano was brought to an adjoining room so that she could play for him. One hymn in particular appealed to him A Strong Tower is our God, and as Alice played, his eyes often filled with tears. Other times, he joined his hands as though in prayer and on one occasion, Alice thinking him to be asleep, whispered:
“Were you asleep, dear Papa?”
To which he replied with a smile, “Oh no, only I have such sweet thoughts.”
Undoubtedly, during those dark days, Alice listened, too, to his instructions in the event of his death. Prince Albert knew that he had not long to live and often he specifically asked for Alice to come to him. Her quiet serenity soothed him and, aware of how the Queen would react to his passing, he surely commended her to Alice’s care. After all, it was Alice who had helped him to support the Queen after the death of the Duchess of Kent; and, of all his children, he knew that she was the one who had the capacity to bring comfort to the sick and bereaved, and the strength of mind to take control in a crisis.
It required incredible strength of will for Alice to spend day after day at his bedside without breaking down in tears. Her father was her idol as well as her ‘soul-mate’ – the only person in the world who completely understood and empathised with her sensitivity and the depths of her thoughts.
“The Princess Alice’s fortitude has amazed us all,” wrote a member of the household. “She saw from the first that her father’s and her
mother’s firmness depended on her firmness, and she set herself to that duty. He loved to speak openly of his condition and had many wishes to express. He loved to hear hymns and prayers. He could not speak to the Queen of himself, for she could not bear to listen and shut her eyes to the danger. His daughter saw that she must act differently, and she never let her voice falter or shed a tear in his presence. She sat by him, listened to all he said, repeated hymns, and then when she could bear it no longer, would walk calmly to the door, and rush away into her room, returning with the same calm and pale face, without any appearance of the agitation she had gone through. Of the devotion and strength of mind shown by Princess Alice all through these trying scenes, it is impossible to speak too highly.”[103]
On 8th December, the Court Circular announced that the Prince Consort had been suffering from a ‘feverish cold’ for the past week, but ‘there are no unfavourable symptoms’. Three days later an equally positive bulletin was published, but on 12th December, there was marked deterioration in his condition. His breathing was laboured and, although he was able to converse logically, his irritation with himself and his state of health increased. Realising that the situation seemed hopeless, Alice suggested that Bertie should be summoned from Cambridge but the Queen, still clinging to the hope of his recovery and convinced that Bertie’s misdemeanour was responsible for the illness, refused. The following day, when there was still no improvement, Alice took matters into her own hands and secretly dispatched a telegram telling her brother to come at once.
By the time that Bertie arrived at Windsor in the early hours of the 14th December, his father seemed a little calmer, leading one of his doctors to declare that he had passed through the worst of the crisis and was now on the road to recovery.
“There is a slight change for the better in the Prince this morning,” read the daily bulletin, but whether this pronouncement sprang from ignorance or optimism, the apparent improvement was merely the rallying which often precedes death. By noon it was clear that the Prince Consort was dying, and at four-thirty a further bulletin was issued:
“His Royal Highness the Prince Consort is in a most critical state.” Alice remained at his bedside until the early afternoon when she accompanied her mother onto the terrace for ‘a breath of air’. There, admitting the truth at last, the Queen broke down in tears; and Alice, her own heart breaking, had to put her feelings aside to comfort her mother.
Throughout the evening, as other members of the family gathered around the bed, Alice maintained her vigil, escaping sporadically to give vent to her grief and to strengthen herself for the inevitable outcome. Her mother, likewise, removed herself occasionally to an adjoining room where she was sitting when, shortly after ten o’clock, Alice entered to tell her that the end was near. By the time that Queen Victoria reached for Albert’s hand, it was already cold. At ten forty-five he drew three final breaths and was gone.
“I stood up, kissing his heavenly forehead,” the Queen recalled, “and called out in a bitter agonising cry, ‘Oh, my dear darling!’ and then dropped on my knees in mute distracted despair, unable to utter a single word or shed a tear.”
In a state of collapse, she was led to a sofa where she sat, pleading with her children and members of her household not to desert her. In the midst of her mother’s despair, her sisters’ sobs and her elder brother’s silent disbelief, Alice remained calm, gazing for a while at her late father before turning to offer assistance to the Queen. With the help of other members of the extended family, she took her mother to the adjoining room and asked the doctors to provide her with an opiate. Once this had been administered, she gave instructions for her own bed to be placed beside the Queen’s, and helped the maids to undress her.
Queen Victoria could not sleep. Under the influence of the opiate, she ran along the corridor to the nursery and, taking her sleeping child, four-year-old Beatrice, from her cot, wrapped her in Prince Albert’s nightshirt and carried her back to her own bed, where she lay in a daze, trying to comprehend the enormity of what had happened. For Alice, watching beside her, the sight of her mother in such a state was surely an ominous reminder of the fragility of her nerves and the care she would need in the coming months to cope with so great a loss.
In those hours following the death of the father she had loved so deeply, Alice had little time to express her own sorrow, and while she was occupied comforting her mother, there was no one on hand to comfort her. In that moment the world as Alice had known it, came to an end. In one sorrowful evening the carefree days of childhood had reached their tragic finale.
Chapter 12 –
Strength of Mind & Self-Sacrifice
Paralysed by shock and bewilderment, Queen Victoria withdrew from the world, refusing to see anyone but Alice and the Duchess of Kent’s former lady-in-waiting, Lady Augusta Bruce. Numb with grief, she was unable to weep, but then, when her tears burst forth, members of the household claimed they heard her desperate wailing echoing along the corridors of Windsor Castle. Alternatively deifying Prince Albert and lamenting the ‘lack of pluck’ which led to his demise, she insisted that his shaving water should be changed each morning, and his nightshirt laid out for him each night – it was a practice which would continue for the next forty years.
Black crepe draped every corridor and every item of furniture at Windsor; preparations for Christmas were abandoned, and the Queen discarded the bright colours of the past to don the widow’s weeds that she would wear to the end of her life. In the country at large there was a sense of shock and sorrow, too, as people mourned not so much for the death of a foreign prince but for the sorrow of his forty-two-year-old widow and her fatherless children.
It has often been implied that during the early days of her bereavement the Queen was on the verge of insanity. From a modern viewpoint her excessive grief might suggest that that was indeed the case but a glance at the evidence shows that this was far from the truth. In the 19th century, death was treated very differently from how it is dealt with today. Black plumed horses bearing coffins draped in black palls were a common sight, and outlandish statues and headstones cluttered the churchyards. Victorian literature was filled with dramatic death scenes, which the people of the time relished but which now appear overly sentimental – one need only think of the public outpouring of grief at the death of Little Nell in the serialisation of Dickens’ The Old Curiosity Shop, or the death of Beth in Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women. In the average middle-class home, gloomy paintings and embroidered inscriptions about the briefness of life hung on the walls; and even the most popular songs of the time wallowed in mawkish morbidity: ‘Father’s a Drunkard and Mother is Dead’, and ‘The Vacant Chair’ to name but two. Rather than being viewed as macabre, dramatic demonstrations of grief were seen as signs of respect for the departed and as evidence of the depths of love they had inspired in the bereaved.
In all aspects of life, Queen Victoria was a passionate woman, and one, incidentally, who was very fond of popular novels, so it is unsurprising that her reaction to the death of Prince Albert appears melodramatic. There is also the possibility that the witnesses who wrote of her ‘wailing’ at Windsor, were simply following the tradition of writers of the day to demonstrate the extent of her grief. The fact that she snatched the sleeping Beatrice from her cot is often cited as an example of her mental instability but, in that moment, she was under the influence of an opiate, and, in the days that followed, she was sufficiently sane to write coherently to her uncle in Belgium, to think about her children’s future, to choose the site of Albert’s mausoleum, and to attend his funeral in a dignified manner.
As early as 24th December, the Queen wrote to King Leopold:
“I am also anxious to repeat one thing, and that one is my firm resolve, my irrevocable decision, viz. that his wishes – his plans – about everything, his views about everything are to be my law! And no human power will make me swerve from what he decided and wished…I apply this particularly as regards our childr
en – Bertie etc. – for whose future he had traced everything so carefully. I am also determined that no one person, may he be ever so good, ever so devoted among my servants – is to lead or guide or dictate to me. I know how he would disapprove it. And I live on with him, for him; in fact I am only outwardly separated from him, and only for a time.”[104]
Clearly, only ten days after Prince Albert’s death she had the wherewithal to prepare for a life without him.
It might well be the case, too, that, because she withdrew from public gaze for so long, imaginations, fired by the popular Gothic novels of the era, formed an image of the ‘Widow of Windsor’ as a demented creature, shrieking in her ancient tower, like Charlotte Bronte’s Bertha Mason, Wilkie Collins’ ‘Woman in White’ or even Dickens’ Miss Havisham.
The extent of her influence and the length of her reign have often created the impression that Queen Victoria was a formidable woman with boundless self-confidence, but, in reality, she was desperately shy and acutely aware of the distinction between the role she played as sovereign and who she was as a person. As a Queen, she expected her orders to be obeyed and was capable of commanding respect and awe, but behind the role she saw herself as a helpless woman, who needed the support of a strong man. Throughout her married life, Prince Albert had given her the self-assurance necessary to carry out her public duties but, suddenly deprived of his presence, her nerves overcame her as much as did her grief. She spoke frequently of her inability to appear in public ‘alone’, and even the thought of meeting with ministers filled her with dread.
Alice, The Enigma - A Biography of Queen Victoria's Daughter Page 12