QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History

by Christopher Hibbert

  Ill as he was, however, he felt he must go up to Cambridge to talk to his son, to try to make him understand the disgrace he had brought upon himself and his family, and the urgent need to get married. He left on 25 November, feeling 'greatly out of sorts', having scarcely closed his eyes at night for the last fortnight. It was another cold, wet day; but he went out for a long walk with his son, who lost the way in his unhappiness and embarrassment so that when they arrived back at Madingley Hall, where the Prince was living, the Prince Consort was utterly exhausted. 'I am at a very low ebb,' he told the Crown Princess, a few days later. 'Much worry and great sorrow (about which I beg you not to ask questions) have robbed me of sleep during the past fortnight. In this shattered state I had a very heavy catarrh and for the past four days am suffering from headache and pains in my limbs which may develop into rheumatism.'24

  Chapter 36

  DEATH OF THE PRINCE

  'I must tell you, most confidentially, that it requires no little management to prevent her breaking down altogether.'

  'Dearest Papa... is not well, with a cold [and] neuralgia - a great depression,' the Queen confirmed to their daughter, 'The sad part is -that this loss of rest at night (worse than he has ever had before) was caused by a great sorrow and worry, which upset us both greatly - but him especially - and it broke him quite down. I never saw him so low. '1

  Soon after the Prince Consort's return from Madingley there arrived at Windsor the draft of despatches which caused him grave concern. A British mail steamer had been stopped by an American warship off the coast of the United States where the first shots of the Civil War had been fired at Charleston earlier that year, in April 1861. On this ship were two Confederate envoys representing the southern states which had seceded from the Union. These envoys, who were on their way to Europe, were seized and taken to New York, much to the indignation of the British people. The British Government proposed to seek reparation for this breach of international law in words so provocative that the Prince considered that they might well lead to war between Britain and the northern States. Ill as he was, the Prince got up at seven o'clock as usual after a restless night to write a memorandum for the Queen suggesting that a less truculent despatch be sent so that the Americans might be given an opportunity to release 'the unfortunate passengers' without loss of face. The Cabinet accepted the Queen's amendments as suggested by the Prince and war was averted. On her copy of the document the Queen later noted in the margin, 'This draft was the last the beloved Prince ever wrote. He was very unwell at the time & when he brought it to the Queen he said, "I could hardly hold my pen."'

  It was a Sunday. He forced himself to go to chapel; but he could eat nothing either before or after the service, and, having gone early to bed, spent another sleepless night. The next day in her diary the Queen described herself as being 'terribly nervous and depressed'. 'My dearest Albert did not dress,' she wrote, 'but lay on his sofa in his dressing-gown ... He kept saying ... he should not recover! which we all told him was too foolish & [he] must never speak of it.' 'I do not cling to life,' he had once told her. 'You do; but I set no store by it ... I am sure if I had a severe illness I should give up at once. I should not struggle for life. I have no tenacity of life.'

  Deeply distressed by the Prince's fatalism, the Queen was 'dreadfully annoyed' to receive a letter from Lord Palmerston in which he proposed calling upon the advice of Dr Robert Ferguson, a highly respected physician, who had attended Her Majesty at the birth of all her children. There was no need for further medical advice, she told Palmerston crossly: Sir James Clark was still in attendance; so was Dr William Jenner, 'a most skilful Physician', who had been appointed Physician Extraordinary to the Queen on the death in a railway accident of Dr William Baly, Sir James's colleague. The Prince had had 'a feverish cold the last few days, which disturbed his rest at night' but he had been 'similarly affected' before and there was every reason to hope that in a few days it would 'pass off'. 'Her Majesty would be very unwilling to cause unnecessary alarm, where no cause exists for it, by calling in a medical man who does not upon ordinary occasions attend at the Palace.'2

  'Good kind old Sir James', concerned as he so often was for the Queen's mental state, assured her that 'there was no cause whatever for alarm - either present or future'. Yet, despite her letter to Palmerston, she was herself 'in an agony of despair', 'crying much', she recorded in her journal, 'for I saw no improvement & my dearest Albert was so listless and took so little notice and hardly smiled'.3

  That night and the next he was 'utterly restless', wandering about from room to room, the Queen in tears in his wake. 'The Prince, when ill, is extremely depressed and low,' Sir Charles Phipps, his Privy Purse and Treasurer, reported to Palmerston, 'and the Queen becomes so nervous and so easily alarmed that the greatest caution is necessary ... I must tell you, most confidentially, that it requires no little management to prevent her from breaking down altogether ... The suggestion that it would be desirable to call in another Medical Man would I think frighten the Queen very much, and the Prince already is annoyed with the visits of the three who attend him. Sir J. Clark is here daily [alternating his visits with those to his wife who was dangerously ill at Bagshot Park, the house which had been lent to them by the Queen], Dr Jenner remains here permanently, and Mr Brown the Windsor Apothecary, who knows the Prince's constitution better than anybody also sees him ... The mere suggestion [of further advice] agitated the Queen dreadfully ... As cheerful a view as possible should be taken to her of the state of the Prince.'4

  By 6 December he seemed so much better that the Queen was almost cheerful herself. He asked for the latest news; he looked over the plans of the house which his second daughter, Princess Alice, and her future husband were to occupy; he smiled fondly at his wife. 'I found dearest Albert quite himself,' the Queen wrote, 'so dear and affectionate when I went in with little baby [Princess Beatrice] whom he kissed, and he quite laughed at some of her new French verses, which I made her repeat.'5

  The next day, however, her hopes of a recovery were dashed. A rash on his stomach developed, suggesting that he was suffering from typhoid fever, though his illness might well have been caused by cancer of the stomach. The Queen's journal entry for that day recorded:

  I went to my room & cried dreadfully and felt Oh! as if my heart must break - oh! such agony as exceeded all my grief this year. Oh God! help and protect him ... I seem to live in a dreadful dream. My angel lay on the bed in the bedroom & I sat by him watching him & the tears fell fast.6

  On Sunday, after a restless night during which he again wandered about in his dressing gown from one room to another with 'a strange wild look', his mood alternated between affection for the Queen, whose face he stroked, smiling and calling her by his pet names for her, Frauchen and Weibchen, and irritation and impatience, such impatience that when she tried to help in explaining something to Dr Jenner he 'quite slapped' her hand, 'poor dear darling'. When calmer he asked to be moved into the Blue Room, where the winter's sun was streaming through the windows, and for music to be played for him. A piano was brought up to the next room and there Princess Alice played Ein Feste Burg ist Unser Gott for him; and tears came into his eyes.7

  His tongue was 'dreadful' now, 'dry and with a thick furred coat'. The doctors told Palmerston that they would like to call in further advice, even though the Queen was 'disinclined' to it and the Prince might well be alarmed. 'He is extremely low himself,' Sir Charles Phipps wrote. 'There is no doubt that the death of the King of Portugal [Pedro V, a young favourite cousin who had recently died of typhoid fever] not only grieved him very deeply, but would make him exceedingly nervous if he had any idea that his illness bore any similarity to that of which the King died. Any alarm or further depression might have a very injurious effect upon the Prince in his present state, and it will therefore require some tact and judgement to announce the arrival of fresh medical advice.'

  It was decided, even so, that further opinions should be sought. So Dr W
atson, a respected Physician Extraordinary to the Queen, was called in as well as Sir Henry Holland, although Lord Clarendon would no more have trusted Holland than he would have trusted Sir James Clark: neither was capable of looking 'after a sick cat'.

  Soon after his arrival at the Castle, Dr Watson reported to the Prime Minister that the Prince was 'very ill': it was 'impossible not to be very anxious'.8 Nor had the Prince any doubt now as to just how ill he was. When Princess Alice told him that she had written to Vicky to say his illness had taken a serious turn, he said, 'You did wrong. You should have told her I am dying.'9

  The next day, however, he seemed slightly better. 'He wanders frequently,' the Queen wrote, '& they say it is of no consequence tho' very distressing, for it is so unlike my own Angel ... Oh! it is an anxious, anxious time.' But, although confused, he behaved affectionately now towards the Queen who, going to him on the morning of 11 December, found him sitting up. 'He laid his dear head (his beautiful face, more beautiful than ever, has grown so thin) on my shoulder and remained a little while, saying, "It is very comfortable so, dear child." '10 She was so relieved by his apparent improvement that on the afternoon of Friday 13th she decided that she could go out for a walk.

  But no sooner had she gone than Dr Jenner appeared in the room of the Queen's Bedchamber Woman, Lady Augusta Bruce, sister of the Prince of Wales's Governor, with the alarming report that 'such sinking had come on that he had feared the Prince would die in his arms'.11

  When the Queen returned he decided it was necessary to break to her the distressing tidings of what had taken place in her short absence. So Lady Augusta went down to the Queen's room. 'I was alone with her and most touching it was,' Lady Augusta told her sister. 'The words "The country, oh the country. I could perhaps bear my own misery, but the poor country" were constantly recurring. '12

  After breaking down again in tears, the Queen - having struggled to compose herself as she usually contrived to do in his presence - returned to the Prince's room where she 'found him very quiet & comfortably warm, and so dear & kind'. He 'called her gates Frauchen' and kissed her 'so affectionately & so completely like himself. 'He folded his arms and began arranging his hair just as he used to do when well and he was dressing. These were said to be bad signs. Strange! As though he were preparing for another and greater journey. '13 She held his 'dear hands' between hers. He kissed her, then gave a piteous sigh, not of pain, 'but as if he felt he was leaving me, and laid his head upon my shoulder'.

  The following morning she went to his room at seven o'clock as she usually did, having been given rather more favourable reports during the night.

  It was a bright morning [she recalled when she could bring herself to think of it], the sun just rising and shining brightly ... Never can I forget how beautiful my darling looked lying there with his face lit up by the rising sun, his eyes unusually bright gazing as it were on unseen objects and not taking notice of me ... Sir James was very hopeful, so was Dr Jenner, & said it was a 'decided rally', - but that they were all 'very, very, anxious'. Sir H. Holland was very anxious. All constantly there or in the next room & so was I. I asked if I might go out for a breath of fresh air. The doctors answered 'Yes, just close by, for half an hour!' ... I went out on the Terrace with Alice. The military band was playing at a distance & I burst out crying and came home again ... Sir James was very hopeful, he had seen much worse cases. But the breathing was the alarming thing - so rapid ... I was crying in despair saying, how should and could I ever get on.14

  The Prince of Wales had been sent for and he and the other children came into the room. He smiled at them but did not speak. The Queen bent over him and said to him 'Es ist kleines Frauchen' ('It is your little wife'). He bowed his head. She asked him if he would give her 'ein Kuss' and he did so. He seemed 'half dozing, quite quiet'.

  'I left the room for a moment and sat on the floor in utter despair,' she continued. 'Attempts at consolation from others only made me worse.' Inside the room Princess Alice turned to Lady Augusta Bruce and whispered, 'This is the death rattle.' The Princess went to fetch her mother who, upon entering the room exclaimed, 'Oh, this is death. I know it. I have seen this before. '15

  I took his dear left hand which was already cold ... and knelt down by him ... All, all was over ... I stood up and kissed his dear heavenly forehead & called out in a bitter and agonizing cry, 'Oh! my dear darling!' and then dropped on my knees in mute distracted despair, unable to utter a word or shed a tear! ... Then I laid down on the sofa in the Red Room, & all the gentlemen came in and knelt down & kissed my hand, & I said a word to each.16

  One of the gentlemen, Sir Howard Elphinstone, Prince Arthur's Governor, described the scene - the Queen lying on the sofa, Princess Alice kneeling on the floor beside her, holding her in her arms, Princess Helena sobbing violently, the Prince of Wales standing in front of the sofa, 'deeply affected but quiet'. Elphinstone hesitated, unable to speak, until the Queen held out her hand to clutch his own and 'with a violent effort' brought out the words, 'You will not desert me? You will all help me.'

  'I was deeply moved,' Elphinstone wrote in his diary, 'and answered a few words and retired, not forgetting to return the gentle pressure of the Prince of Wales's "Handdruck". The Prince was lying in the next room; his face calm, peaceful. He had gone without a struggle, but likewise without saying a word ... He died in the same room as King William IV ... About a week before he told Princess Alice that he would die ... He never even tried to rally from the moment the illness commenced ... And then in that feeble state recurred to him the scenes of childhood, which he wished to see again, to hear the birds twittering about the woods at Coburg, and be again in his warm-hearted home, away from the frigidity of England. '17

  PART TWO

  1861-1901

  Chapter 37

  THE GRIEVING WIDOW

  'There is no one left to hold me in their arms and press me to their heart.'

  The Prince Consort had once said of the Queen that she 'lived much in the past and in the future, perhaps more than in the present'. After his death she certainly abandoned herself to the past and to her memories of him with a passionate intensity. She could never forget him; no one else should. Even her youngest son, then only eight years old and staying in Cannes for the sake of his precarious health, was told: 'You will therefore sorrow when you know & think that poor Mama is more wretched, more miserable than any being in this World can be! I pine and long for your dearly precious Papa so dreadfully ... You will, my poor little Darling, find Mama old - & thin - & grown weak - & you must try & be a comfort (tho that none can be - for none can replace the All in All I have lost). '1 She sent the boy two photographs of his father which he was to have framed, 'but not in black', and 'a Locket with beloved Papa's hair' which he was to wear 'attached to a string or chain round [his] neck & a dear pocket handkerchief of beloved Papa's' which he must keep 'constantly with him'.2

  Everyone at court had to wear mourning on all social occasions until the end of 1862; and, after 1864, although her maids-of-honour were allowed to wear grey, white, purple and mauve - the last of these colours later being forbidden in its 'fashionable pink tints' - the lady-in-waiting who was in personal attendance upon the Queen was required to wear mourning as deep as Her Majesty's own. All the ladies were, of course, in the words of one of them, 'plunged back into the deepest mourning with jet ornaments' whenever one of the frequent court mournings occurred.3 Even the royal servants were obliged to wear a black crepe band on their left arm until the end of 1869; while the Queen's daughter, Princess Alice, wore a black trousseau at her marriage in July 1862 to Prince Frederick William Louis of Hesse, which was, the Queen herself said, more like a funeral than a wedding. Her mourning writing paper was discarded for a fresh supply with even wider black edges into which the ends of words would disappear, to the exasperation of her secretaries and correspondents, for the rest of her life.[xxxviii]

  On the first morning of her widowhood she went into the Blue Room to ga
ze upon her beloved husband's features. Warned by her doctors not to kiss them, she kissed his clothes instead. She had every part of the room photographed so that it could be preserved exactly as it had been at that moment of the night, ten minutes to eleven on 14 December 1861, when her own life had been shattered. At her command a memorandum was issued by the Lord Chamberlain decreeing that the room 'should remain in its present state and not be made use of in the future'.4

  She gave orders for Albert's dressing gown and fresh clothes to be laid each evening on his bed and for a jug of steaming hot water to be placed on his washstand. Between the two beds in the room a marble bust of him was placed; above it she had his portrait hung, wreathed with evergreens; and almost every day fresh flowers were strewn beneath it on the pillows. The glass from which he had taken his last dose of medicine was kept on the table beside it where it remained for more than forty years. On his writing table his blotting book lay open with his pen upon it as though it were waiting for him to pick up. Guests at Windsor were required to write their names in his visitors' book as well as in the Queen's, 'as before', Disraeli commented, 'calling on a dead man'.5

  A notice was fixed to the Blue Room door informing those who passed it that everything within was just as the Prince had left it, although, in fact, the ceiling had been redecorated and much of the china and several of the pictures, as well as the Prince's marble bust, had not been there before. Similar notices were placed outside all the other rooms at Windsor and in the other royal residences to the effect that their contents had been arranged by him.6 She had herself photographed gazing up at his bust; and she went to bed each night clasping one of his nightshirts and with a cast of his hand close enough for her to touch it with her fingers. Each morning the four-year-old Princess Beatrice was brought into her room and encouraged to chatter about her father. 'What a pity,' the child once said, 'that I was too little to be at your marriage.'7