When the doctor came back into the room, she smiled repeatedly when she heard his voice and assured him that she was ready to listen to his advice. 'I will do anything you like,' she said. 'She kept looking at me,' Reid wrote, 'and frequently gasped, "I'm very ill", and I each time replied "Your Majesty will soon be better."'
At some point Princess Louise heard her mother say, 'I don't want to die yet. There are several things I want to arrange.'
When the Kaiser arrived, to everyone's surprise, he behaved with unusual tact and delicacy. 'I had a good deal of talk with the Emperor who was full of touching loyalty to "Grandmama" as he always described her,' Randall Davidson wrote in a memorandum of the Queen's last days. ' "She has been a very great woman [the Kaiser said]. Just think of it: she remembers George HI, and now we are in the Twentieth Century. And all that time what a life she has led. I have never been with her without feeling that she was in every sense my Grandmama and made me love her as such. And yet the minute we began to talk about political things she made me feel we were equals and could speak as Sovereigns. Nobody had such power as she."'2
He said that he would not go into his grandmother's room if her children thought it better that he should not. When he was taken in by the Prince of Wales, he went to the dying woman's bed and placed his good arm around her shoulders; and thus supported, with Reid on her other side, she died at half past six that evening, 22 January, holding a crucifix in her hand.3
'When all was over most of the family shook hands with me and thanked me by the bedside,' Reid recorded, 'and the Kaiser also squeezed my hand in silence. I told the Prince of Wales to close her eyes. Later the Prince said, "You are an honest straightforward Scotchman", and "I shall never forget all you did for the Queen." The Princess [of Wales] cried very much, shook hands and thanked me ... I left the dinner table to help the maids and nurse to arrange the Queen's body.'
In doing so he noticed that she had had a ventral hernia and a prolapse of the uterus, conditions he had not observed until then as, although he had been attending her for twenty years, he had never examined her body and had treated her 'purely through verbal communication'.4
The Queen, however, had reposed her implicit trust in him; and, well aware of this, Mrs Tuck had no hesitation in reading to him the paper which the Queen had given to her years before, detailing the actions which were to be taken immediately after her death and before the funeral.
Chapter 66
FUNERAL AND BURIAL
'Our whole talk had been of coffins and winding sheets.'
The Queen had always had, as Henry Ponsonby had said and the other members of her Household well knew, a consuming interest in funerals. When the Duke of Clarence died, Dr Reid had advised her not to go to the funeral on the grounds that her health might be affected by such a depressing occasion. 'She replied that she was never depressed at a funeral (!!) In fact she rather lost her temper. '1
'It is very curious to see how the Queen takes the keenest interest in death and all its horrors,' Marie Mallet had written after a housemaid had died at Grasse. 'Our whole talk had been of coffins and winding sheets.' There was 'a sort of funeral service' for the housemaid in the dining room of the Grand Hotel, the coffin in the middle of the room 'not even screwed down, everyone in evening dress, the servants sobbing; it was too dreadful'. When the coffin was removed to the English church the Queen had required her Household to visit it, then to attend a full funeral service the next day.
Two days later the Queen had taken several members of her Household to Cannes cemetery to visit the tombs of various friends. 'We started soon after 3.30,' Mrs Mallet had written, 'and were not home till ten to seven! The gentlemen went in a separate carriage full to overflowing with wreaths for the favoured tombs.'2
A week after this, various members of an unwilling Household had been required to attend the funeral of an officer of the Chasseurs des Alpes. 'As the Queen really enjoys these melancholy entertainments she determined to see the procession and poor Major Bigge, much to his disgust, was ordered to put on full uniform and attend the ceremony which lasted nearly three hours.' 'It is certainly strange that the Queen should take such deep interest in the merest details of these functions,' Mrs Mallet had added after yet another funeral. 'A cheerful ceremony is always treated with the utmost indifference.' After Prince Henry of Battenberg's death, when there was 'a gloomy little service in honour of the burial day', Mrs Mallet had commented, 'these reiterated memorial services are very trying but I really think the Queen enjoys them.' She had been much concerned with what went into the coffin in addition to the corpse: Prince Henry, who had to be 'dressed in Ashanti uniform', had been required to have 'his rings left on, also a locket round his neck with Princess Beatrice's hair - the crucifix to be put in his hand with a piece of ivy, white heather, and myrtle from the Princess's wedding bouquet, and a small photo of the Princess attached to it'. There were to be 'three coffins, shell, lead, and oak'.3
Not only had the Queen taken great interest in the funerals of members of her family, of friends and acquaintances and even of strangers, she had also concerned herself with the details of the burials of her dogs. When her favourite Scottish sheepdog, Noble, which used to stand guard over her gloves, died at Balmoral, she 'was much upset', said Dr Reid, 'and cried a great deal. She said ... she believes dogs have souls and a future life: and she could not bear to see [Noble's] body, though she would have liked to kiss his head. Kingsley and many people, she says, believe dogs have souls. I had to increase the strength of her sleeping draught.' She sent Reid a note of instructions detailing the manner in which 'the Prince's beloved old dog' had been buried forty-three years before, and requiring that the body of Noble should be treated in a similar manner:
I wish the grave to be bricked. The dear dog to be wrapped up in the box lined with lead and charcoal, placed in it ... I feel as if I could not bring myself to go and choose the spot. Dr Profeit [the factor at Balmoral] would perhaps suggest it. I will then tell Mr Profeit to write to Boehm to get a repetition of his statue of the dear Dog in bronze to be placed over the grave.4
Paying such attention to the burial of her beloved dogs, it was only to be expected that the Queen had carefully planned her own funeral as well as the actions to be taken immediately after her death, giving 'very minute directions' as to what she wanted done. These 'Instructions' had been entrusted to her dressers 'to be always taken about and kept by' whichever one of them might be travelling with her. They included details of what was to be put in her coffin 'some of which none of her family were to see'.
They included rings, chains, bracelets, lockets, shawls, the Prince Consort's dressing gown, a cloak of his which had been embroidered by Princess Alice and a plaster cast of his hand, numerous photographs, her lace wedding veil, and - to be placed in the Queen's left hand - a photograph of John Brown together with a lock of his hair.[lxxxvi]5
The funeral, so the Queen instructed, was to be a 'Military Funeral' as befitted the 'Head of the Army', with her coffin on a gun carriage drawn by eight horses. Her detailed instructions also provided for places in the procession being found for the Munshi and her German secretaries. It was to be a white rather than a black funeral: the horses, she insisted, were not to be black.
This stated preference for a white funeral seems to have been either prompted or reinforced by a remark made by Lord Tennyson whom she had taken to see the Mausoleum at Frogmore. She had commented on the bright light which streamed into the interior from the windows. Tennyson replied that this was 'a great point & went on to say that he wished funerals cd be in white'. When he was buried twenty years after this conversation his coffin was covered with a white pall: the Queen wished to follow his example.6
Having satisfied himself that the Queen's 'Instructions' about the contents of her coffin had been carried out, and before letting the family know that they could now return to the room, Reid - after helping to cut off the Queen's hair to be put into lockets - placed a bunch of flowers
over Queen Victoria's hand to conceal John Brown's photograph.
The mourners then returned to the room; and the Prince of Wales, now King Edward VII, kindly sent for the Munshi so that he too could pay his last respects before the coffin lid was closed. The coffin, covered by a white satin pall, was then carried by a party of sailors down to the dining room, for the time being a mortuary chapel in which the air was heavy with the strong scent of tuberoses and gardenias. By the light of eight immense candles, four soldiers of the Queen's Company, Grenadier Guards, stood with reversed arms at the corners of the coffin which was covered with crimson velvet and ermine and the Queen's diamond-studded crown on a cushion. Above their heads hung a Union Jack which the Kaiser asked if he might keep, afterwards maintaining that it was his most valued possession.
On 1 February the Queen's coffin was taken down to Trinity Pier and across the Solent to Portsmouth in the royal yacht, the Alberta, while minute guns in the attendant warships boomed across the calm waters. The Alberta was followed by the King in the Victoria and Albert, and after that the Kaiser in his yacht. Next morning the coffin, in the care of Lady Lytton, was taken by train to Victoria Station past groups of people, dressed in black, kneeling by the lines as it steamed slowly by, the blinds of its windows drawn.7
In London the crowds, which had gathered in the streets to watch the gun carriage bearing the coffin roll by, were also clothed in black. Even the crossing-sweepers had tied bits of black cloth to their brooms. On the coffin stood the Imperial Crown, the orb and sceptre and the collar of the Order of the Garter.
Lady Monkswell was watching the procession from the upper window of a shop near Victoria Station:
The streets were, indeed, a strange sight, thronged with chiefly decent, respectable & middle-aged people, every one in mourning [she wrote]. Even by 9 o'clock there did not seem room for another person on the pavement; they were all quiet & orderly ... We saw all the Kings & Princes riding horses, & the 4 or 5 shut carriages for Queen Alexandra & the Princesses, pass up to the station. A little later came Lord Roberts riding; he was the only person the people thought they might cheer ... I did not concern myself much with whom the horsemen were, as my eyes were fixed so entirely upon the one great object, that, except for the Prince of Wales, now King, & the Kaiser, who rode a magnificent white horse, I saw nothing else & that I could hardly see because my eyes were filled with tears & I felt very shaky ... Then I silently bid her farewell. The people stood uncovered & silent.8
Through streets lined with soldiers, to the sound of muffled drums, minute guns in Hyde Park and the clatter of the horses' hooves, the gun carriage passed slowly by to Paddington, the crowds watching in silence. Four monarchs followed the coffin on horseback, King Edward VII, Kaiser Wilhelm II, King George I of the Hellenes, and King Carlos of Portugal. A fifth King, Leopold II of the Belgians, drove in a carriage. Also in the procession were the German Crown Prince, and the Crown Princes of Rumania, Greece, Denmark, Norway and Sweden and Siam. The Emperor of Austria was represented by the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the Tsar by the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovitch and the King of Italy by the Duke of Aosta.
As in London, so also in Windsor, crowds of people stood quietly in the icy cold waiting to see the gun carriage drawn by men of the Royal Horse Artillery up the hill from the station to the Castle. They were kept waiting for longer than they had expected because of a mishap which the General Officer Commanding, Royal Artillery was afterwards required to explain to Lord Roberts:
The RHA team had been so long standing at the station in the bitter cold that when the time came to move off, the horses got restless and out of hand and the splinter bar broke and there was almost a serious accident. The King was displeased and several of his suite got excited and did not improve matters.9
Prince Louis of Battenberg, a captain in the Navy and a Personal Aide to Queen Victoria, who was standing next to the coffin, went up to Frederick Ponsonby, who had been placed in charge of the arrangements at Windsor, and said to him, 'If it is impossible to mend the traces you can always get the naval guard of honour to drag the gun-carriage.'
Ponsonby proposed this to the King who agreed; but there were several Royal Artillery officers amongst the Queen's aides-de-camp who were furious that the men of the Royal Horse Artillery should be so ignominiously replaced. Sir Arthur Bigge, an Artillery officer himself, was 'particularly angry', so Ponsonby said; and he 'went off to expostulate with the King, who merely said, "Right or wrong, let [Ponsonby] manage everything; we shall never get on if there are two people giving contradictory orders."'10
So, using drag ropes, the sailors pulled the gun carriage through the Windsor streets, and up to the Castle's Long Walk towards St George's Chapel where the short funeral service was to take place while cannon fired a salute of eighty-one guns, one for each year of the Queen's life.
So well did the sailors carry out their task that King Edward suggested they should be given the duty of dragging the coffin to its final resting place in the Mausoleum at Frogmore. But Ponsonby demurred: 'the Artillery had been deeply mortified at their failures ... and would be much hurt if sailors took their place again ... The King quite realized they were not to blame ... but he really thought the sailors had been most effective ... I, however, pressed my point and finally he said, "Very well, the gun-carriage will be drawn by the Artillery, but if anything goes wrong I will never speak to you again." '11
Nothing did go wrong. On 4 February the Queen's coffin was carried out of the Albert Memorial Chapel in St George's and, accompanied by her family, it was taken to the Mausoleum, up the steps and through the door above which had been inscribed the words: 'His mourning widow, Victoria the Queen, directed that all that is mortal of Prince Albert be placed in this sepulchre. A.D. 1862. Vale desideratissime! [Farewell most beloved] Hic demum Conquiescam tecum, tecum in Christo consurgeam [Here at length I shall rest with thee, with thee in Christ I shall rise again].'
Of all the ceremonials [Lord Esher thought], that in the Mausoleum was the simplest and most impressive. The procession from the sovereign's entrance, the Princess of Wales leading Prince Edward [the future Duke of Windsor] the other children walking, was very touching and beautiful. At the Mausoleum, the arrangements were left to me. Everyone got into the Chapel and the iron gates were closed ... the guardsmen brought in the coffin. The King and the Princes and Princesses standing on the right. The choir on the left ... Of all the mourners the Princess of Wales and the young [sixteen-year-old son of the Duke of Albany] Duke of Coburg displayed the most emotion.12
The service [Randall Davidson thought] was touching beyond words. After the Blessing it had been arranged that the Royal Family should all pass in single file across the platform looking upon the grave in which the two coffins then lay side by side. The King came first alone, but, instead of simply walking by, he knelt down by the grave. Then the Queen followed, leading the little Prince Edward by the hand. She knelt down, but the little boy was frightened, and the King took him gently and made him kneel beside him, and the three, in perfect silence, were there together - a sight not soon to be forgotten. Then they passed on, and the Emperor came and knelt likewise, and so in turn all the rest of the Royal Family in a continuous string. Then the Household or at least the few who had been invited to be present. As we left the building the rain or sleet began to fall.13
Lord Esher was left with the problem of the white stone figure of the Queen which had been made by Baron Marochetti at the same time as that of Prince Albert, the sculptor's last completed works. The Queen had told him about this figure the year before, but 'no one had heard of it ... After a minute enquiry, an old workman remembered that about 1865 the figure had been walled up in the stores at Windsor. The brickwork was taken down, and the figure found. '14
It was placed, as she had intended, on the tomb chest next to the effigy of the Prince. He is portrayed as facing upwards to the mosaics in the dome. Her young face inclines towards the husband whom she so deeply loved.
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On the evening of the Queen's death, the novelist, Henry James, had come out of the Reform Club into Pall Mall. The streets around it seemed to him 'strange and indescribable'; passers-by spoke in hushed tones as though they were frightened. It was, for him, 'a very curious and unforgettable impression'. He had not expected to be so moved, since it was, after all, 'a simple running down of the old used up watch', the death of an old widow who had thrown 'her good fat weight into the scales of general decency'.15
Yet while writing letters later on the club's black-bordered stationery he 'continued to experience unexpected emotions'. He recognized that the death of the 'brave old woman' with her 'holding-together virtue' marked the end of an era. She had been a 'sustaining symbol'. He wrote to a friend: 'I mourn the safe and motherly old middle-class Queen, who held the nation warm under the fold of her big, hideous Scotch-plaid shawl and whose duration has been so extraordinarily convenient and beneficent'. It had 'prevented all sorts of accidents'.
As with the people walking the streets outside, James viewed the future with apprehension. He was assured that the new King was already making a good impression but the Victorian world with its faults and its virtues was already passing away; and, as for the future - in his own word, 'Speriamo', one could only hope.
REFERENCES
The Queen's letters to her daughter, the Crown Princess of Prussia, later Empress, are kept, bound in some sixty blue volumes, at Friedrichshof, the house near Frankfurt which the Empress built and named in honour of her husband. They are the property of the Kurhessische Hausstiftung. The copyright, as all Queen Victoria's letters, belongs to Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. Selections from these letters, about a third of them, were skilfully edited by Sir Roger Fulford and published in five volumes by Evans Brothers (later Bell & Hyman) between 1964 and 1981. A sixth volume, edited by Agatha Ramm, was published in 1990 by Alan Sutton.
QUEEN VICTORIA A Personal History Page 55