Chapter XIII: Part 13

Anon appeared the bearer of one of the proudest names in Hesse,
who was attached to the personal service of the Princess. The
official, stalwart bearing of the courier was left outside, and,
weeping hot, unhidden tears, he lingered long by the bier. To what
a lofty soul, to what goodness of heart, was he saying here a
bitter farewell! He was followed by two little girls, poorly but
cleanly dressed, and they, too, brought their tribute of
gratitude--two little bunches of violets. Shyly, almost frightened,
and yet with childish curiosity, they drew slowly nearer. They
thought of another winter day, some years ago. Hungry, chilled to
the heart, they were sitting in an empty attic; their parents were
dead, and they ate among strangers bread that was hard and
grudgingly given, when that great lady appeared who was now
sleeping here under the flowers. From her, whose heart was ever
yearning to the orphan’s cry, they heard again, for the first time,
gentle, loving words; by her provision was quickly made for their
more kindly treatment, and gratitude was rooted firmly and forever
in their young souls.

A deputation from the Court Theatre laid upon the coffin a wreath
intertwined with pale pink streamers. Art, too, had come to mourn
for her noblest patroness, who had been ever ready with her fine,
cultivated intelligence to advance whatever was great and good. A
servant brought a beautiful cross, of dark foliage with white
flowers. It was the gift of the Grand Duke’s mother, anxious to
testify by an outward sign her love for her dead daughter. In
ever-growing numbers came the mourners, all visibly oppressed by
the weight of the calamity which had fallen upon the country.
Countless were the gifts of love, of gratitude, of respect, which,
now beautiful and costly, now slight and simple, arched ever
higher and higher the hill of flowers above the coffin. The ladies
of the neighboring towns sent cushions of dark violets, with
chaplets of white flowers. Two ladies deeply veiled brought
branches of palm, from the dark green of which gleamed a white
scroll--a poetic farewell word of deep feeling:

A hurricane, charged with destruction,
O palm, swept o’er thee. The squall
Crashed through thy leaves, and tore from thee
The tenderest, sweetest of all.

The clouds clear’d away in the distance,
The tempest seem’d over and past,
When forth from the firmament darted
A lightning-bolt, fiery and fast.

It struck thee, O noble one, struck thee!
It crush’d thee, and now thou art gone!
Farewell! To our death-day thine image
Still, still in our hearts shall live on.

There was a second poem, enclosed in a heart-shaped framework of
leaves, which gave expression to the grief of a devoted soul for
the high-hearted lady.

But now the hour was come for another to take the post of honor by
the bier of the Princess. Silently and sadly the two men saluted.
He that left took away with him a deep and elevating impression of
the general love and respect paid by the people of Hesse to their
too-early departed Princess, and the remembrance of that silent
watch by the dead will remain in his memory forever. And he who now
entered on that honorable duty could chronicle proofs of genuine
grief, of true reverence and love, not fewer nor less touching.
Whosoever is thus bewept has secured the best and fairest memorial
in the hearts of her own people for all time--“The remembrance of
the just abideth in blessing.”

Nothing could show better than this touching narrative, how deep and how widespread was the grief for the death of the Princess throughout the country which had so recently hailed her as its Sovereign. Not less deep and universal was the sorrow with which the sad intelligence was received in her native land. She had long been dear to all hearts there; for the fame of her many admirable qualities as daughter, sister, wife, and mother had penetrated into every household. The news that her life was in peril had awakened the deepest sympathy; and when the anniversary of the death of the father she loved so well brought the tidings of her own death, there were few homes on which it did not cast a shadow as for the loss of one that was personally dear. The journals teemed with expressions of the national grief, each vying with the other in paying affectionate tribute to the worth of one whose name had long been familiar and cherished on the lips of her countrymen and countrywomen, and in assurances of sympathy to the Queen, and the loving hearts of her kindred, on whom this great calamity had fallen.

It may not be out of place to insert here, as an example of these, what was written out of a full heart on the day of the Princess’ death by the hand which had not yet concluded the task of tracing the “Life of the Prince Consort,” in which the Princess had all along taken the keenest interest. The letters printed in this volume afford the amplest proof of the justice of the estimate which the writer had formed of the gifted and devoted woman whose heart is there laid bare for our study and instruction.

“Oh, sir, the good die first,
And those whose hearts are dry as summer dust
Burn to the socket.”--_Wordsworth._

December 14th, 1878.

On the 14th of December, seventeen years ago, a great sorrow fell
upon England in the death of the Prince Consort, who, if he did not
die too soon for his own happiness and fame, died at least, as all
now feel, too soon for England. The memorable 14th of December has
again come round, and again a great sorrow has fallen upon the
country. The Princess has been taken to her rest, who watched and
soothed the Prince Consort in the last days of his fatal illness,
and who by her fortitude and noble devotion helped materially,
though then but a girl of seventeen, to sustain and comfort the
widowed Queen in her measureless affliction. For the first time a
breach--and such a breach--has been made in that family circle to
which all who had the priviledge to know it looked as the happiest
in England--happiest, because mutual love and esteem bound all its
members together by ties knit in childhood and never broken, and
because of the noble activity for good which had been set before
them in the example of their parents kept their hearts fresh and
their minds ever open. She who, while yet a girl, was called to
play a woman’s part by her father’s deathbed, has been the first to
follow him into the Silent Land.

No life could have opened more auspiciously than that of the
second daughter of our Royal house.[137] From the first she gave
great promise of beauty and of intelligence. The fine old English
names of Alice and Maud, selected for her by her happy parents,
seemed as names sometimes do, to be particularly fitted to the
winning, open character of her fair and finely-formed features, and
their sound was one pleasant in the mouths, not only of those to
whom she was known, but of the people, as she grew up and was seen
in public by the eager and kindly eyes to whom the sight of the
Royal children has always been welcome.

When the marriage of the Princess Royal took place in 1858, the
Princess Alice was still only a girl of fifteen; but she had
already developed qualities of mind and heart of no ordinary kind.
She came by degrees to fill up in some measure the vacancy which
had been created by the removal of her very gifted sister to
Berlin. Naturally she was drawn nearer to the Prince Consort; and
the influence of his character and the teachings of his
affectionate wisdom sank deeply into her pure and highly
intellectual nature. He looked forward to her future with the
assurance that she would prove all he could wish a daughter to be.
She, on the other hand, loved him with a devotion only tempered by
a profound reverence for the great qualities which she could then,
perhaps, but dimly appreciate, but the true extent and worth of
which her own subsequent experience and reflection taught her more
thoroughly to measure. When in later years she spoke of the Prince,
one saw that, as Ben Jonson said of Shakespeare, “she honored his
memory, on this side idolatry, as much as any.”

The teaching of that beloved father was put to the proof in those
sad days of patient watching which preceded his death. Things were
told at the time of the devotion and the marvellous self-control of
the young girl, called so sternly and so suddenly to face death in
the person of a father, on whose life that of the Queen herself
seemed to depend, and whose counsels she knew to be of inestimable
value to the nation. A few days after the Prince’s death, she was
spoken of by the _Times_ in these noticeable words: “Of the
devotion and strength of mind shown by the Princess Alice all
through these trying scenes it is impossible to speak too highly.
Her Royal Highness has, indeed, felt that it was her place to be a
comfort and a support to her mother in her affliction, and to her
dutiful care we may perhaps owe it that the Queen has borne her
loss with exemplary resignation, and a composure which, under so
sudden and terrible a bereavement, could not have been
anticipated.” The knowledge of this fact--and it was a fact--sank
deeply into people’s minds. It was never forgotten, and from that
day the name of the Princess Alice has been a cherished household
word to all her countrymen and women.

When, in 1862, she married the husband of her choice--a man whose
sterling worth and manliness had satisfied even the critical
judgment of parents jealous for the happiness of a daughter so
justly dear--the affectionate good wishes of the Queen’s subjects
of all grades went with her to her new home. In that home,
brightened and ennobled as it was by her presence, her love for the
home and country of her youth burned with a steady and
ever-deepening glow. It is only those who know how strong is the
mutual love by which the children of Queen Victoria are bound to
their parent and to each other, who can appreciate the passionate
yearning toward England of the Princesses whose homes have been
made elsewhere. England and all its interests held a foremost place
in the heart of the Princess Alice; and no one watched more closely
every phase of the changeful life of the busy land, which she loved
and reverenced as the home of liberty and the pioneer of
civilization.

While fulfilling with exemplary devotion every duty as a wife and
mother, the process of self-culture was never relaxed. Every
refined taste was kept alive by fresh study, fresh practice, fresh
observation; neither was any effort spared to keep abreast with all
that the best intellects of the time were adding to the stores of
invention, of discovery, of observation, and of thought. Each
successive year taught her better to estimate the value of the
principles in religion, in morals, and in politics in which she had
been trained. As her knowledge of the world and of men grew, she
could see the wide range of fact upon which they were based, and
their fitness as guides amid the perplexing experiences of human
life, which, however seemingly varied in different epochs, are ever
essentially the same. Then the significance of the Prince Consort’s
habit of judging every thing by some governing principle, and
working always by strict method, became clear to her; and in a
letter written in January 1875, of which a copy is before us, the
Princess writes with her accustomed modesty: “Living with thinking
and cultivated Germans, much in Papa has explained itself to me,
which formerly I could less understand, or did not appreciate so
much as I ought to have done.”

She inherited much of her father’s practical good sense, and, like
him, was ever ready to take part in any well-directed effort for
raising the condition of the toilworn and the poor. How much of
their misery, nay, of their evil ways, was due to their wretched
habitations, she, like him, felt most keenly; and she gave her
sympathy and support to every effort for their improvement. With
this view she translated into German some of Miss Octavia Hill’s
essays “On the Homes of the London Poor,” and published them with a
little preface of her own (to which only her initial A. was
affixed), in the hope that the principles, which had been
successfully applied in London by Miss Hill and her coadjutors,
might be put into action in some of the German cities. No good work
appealed to her in vain. The great exemplar of her father was
always before her; and in the letter from which we have already
quoted she speaks of his life, “spent in the highest aims, and with
the noblest conception of duty,” as a “leading star” to her own.

That sense of duty carried her to the bedside of the Prince of
Wales when, at the end of 1871, he was struck down at Sandringham
by the fell disease under which his father had sunk. There she
fulfilled the same priceless offices which she had ten years before
discharged at Windsor Castle. It pleased Heaven to spare her a
renewal of the great affliction of 1861; and in the very days of
December in which we are now living, the life of the much-loved
brother, which had been wellnigh despaired of, came slowly back to
requite her affection, and in answer to her prayers.

The trials of that time came, before the exhaustion had passed away
both of body and mind which the Princess had undergone during the
Franco-German war. Separated--and for the second time--by war from
the Prince of Hesse, who was away in the thickest of the perils of
that campaign, she was not a woman to give herself up to morbid
brooding on the pangs and apprehensions under which, devoted wife
as she was, she yet could not fail to suffer most acutely, for her
feelings were warm, and her imagination active beyond that of most
women. In the hospital at Darmstadt, crowded with the soldiers,
French as well as German, who had come from the battlefields maimed
and racked with pain, she was foremost with her bright
intelligence, her helpful sympathy, and her tender hand, in
soothing pain, and inspiring that sense of manly gratitude which is
the best of panaceas to a soldier’s sick-bed. What she was and what
she did at that time have embalmed her image in many a heart, and
will make the tears flow thick and fast in many manly eyes at the
thought of the death of one so young, so good, so gifted, and so
fair. To her it was merely duty--duty to be done at every cost; but
how much it had cost to that finely touched spirit and to that
delicate womanly frame might be read, by all who could look below
the surface, in the deep earnestness of her eyes and the deeper
earnestness of her thoughts. The pain of that terrible period would
not let itself be forgotten even in the gratitude which she felt
for the providence which restored her beloved husband to her side,
and for the realization of her father’s cherished dream of an
United Germany, which had been purchased by the valor and the
sufferings of its sons.

The Princess’ fortitude had already been severely tried in the war
between Prussia and Austria in 1866. Hesse-Darmstadt was engaged
upon the side of Austria, and her husband, Prince Louis, took the
field with the troops of the Principality. At the very time that
his third daughter, the Princess Irène, was born, he was with the
army; and the Princess Alice knew he was under fire but was unable
to get any tidings from him. The victorious Prussians marched into
Darmstadt, while the Princess, newly made a mother, was still
confined to her room.

Of the sad aspects of life it had been her destiny to see much--as
daughter, as sister, and as mother. In June, 1873, a terrible
calamity fell upon her as a mother. A child--one especially
beloved--climbing to an open window in a room adjoining that in
which she was, lost its balance, and was killed almost before her
eyes, as she rushed in terror to call him back. This, too, had to
be borne. It was borne nobly, and with Christian resignation. But
such shocks tell upon the vital powers, and some trace of what had
been “undergone and overcome” seemed to be visible long afterward
in a perceptible bodily languor, and in a more spiritual beauty
which had passed into her expressive face.

The thought of this sent an anxious thrill through the hearts of
many, when it became known that the Princess was herself seized by
the terrible malady which had prostrated her husband and five of
her children, and taken from her the youngest of them all--the
youngest, the brightest, the idol of her other children.[138] She
had nursed them all through their time of danger, and now, spent
with watching and anxiety as she was, the malady had laid its fatal
clutch upon herself. She that had cared and thought for all was
soon past all human care to save. Thus she died as she had lived,
devoted, self-sacrificing, purified by great pain and great love--a
model daughter--wife--mother.

Of the loss of such a woman to the husband to whom she was the
all-in-all, to the children to whose love she will respond no more,
to the mother in whose thoughts she is interwoven with the
sweetest, the saddest, the most sacred memories, to the brothers
and sisters whom she loved and who loved her so truly, so tenderly,
who dare trust himself to speak? It must be long before the grief
can be assuaged, under which all these must now be
suffering--before the “Idea of her life can sweetly creep,” as
something hallowed, “into their study of imagination”; but the day
will come when they will bless God, that theirs was a wife, a
daughter, a sister, a mother, so good, so noble, and that, having
fought her fight on earth valiantly, yet meekly, she has gone where
there is no more sorrow, nor crying, and where the great mysteries
of life alone find their solution.

THEODORE MARTIN.

Of the many beautiful tributes in verse to the worth of the Princess, which appeared in England immediately after her death, none spoke the prevailing feeling more truly than the following:--

IN MEMORIAM.

PRINCESS ALICE: _died_ December 14th, 1878.

Death’s shadow falls across the Palace door,
His fingers trace our dear Princess’ doom;
“She will awake no more; ah! never more!”
And through the murky night the big bells boom.

But in the gray of morning hope appears,
And treading in death’s footprints entrance seeketh
Where lonely grief is weeping bitter tears,
And whispers low--“She being dead yet speaketh.”

And at the voice of hope the black clouds break,
And through the rift there shines God’s glorious light;
And we who mourn look up and solace take
As those to whom comes day--dawn after night.

“She being dead yet speaketh”--all may hear
The message left us by her lovely life
In deeds that live, in actions that endear,
As Princess, sister, daughter, mother, wife!

The fierce rude light that beats upon a throne
For which so many royal heads are hid,
Served but to make her worth more widely known,
To glorify the acts of grace she did.

A favorite sister! She the love had earn’d
Her brothers and her sisters for her felt,
By her devotion which had brightest burn’d
When with disease and threatening death she dealt.

A darling daughter! ’T is the Queen alone
Can know the secret of that awful time,
When at the father’s side by her were shown
A faith and constancy alike sublime.

A doting mother! What could she do more
Than for her little one her life lay down?
No heroine than this could higher soar--
No grander deed a noble life could crown!

A perfect wife! The heavy veil of grief
Back from the stricken hearth we will not draw,
Save but to say her life, alas! too brief,
Her husband found without one spot or flaw.

Then let not grief persuade us she is dead;
She has but left us for a fairer shore;
And though her spirit heav’nwards may have fled,
Her influence remains for evermore.
--_Truth_

FOOTNOTES:

[1] “Life of Prince Consort,” by Sir Theodore Martin, vol. i., p. 166.

[2] The memoranda in this paragraph are communicated by the Crown Princess of Germany.

[3] In a little piece of that name by Madame Jonas.

[4] Bunsen’s “Life,” ii., 328.

[5] In 1857. See the “Life of the Prince Consort,” vol. iv.

[6] “Life of the Prince Consort,” vol. iv., p. 429.

[7] _Ibid._, p. 427.

[8] Prince Louis of Hesse was at this time serving in the Prussian Guards at Potsdam.

[9] “Life of the Prince Consort,” vol. v., p. 253.

[10] This is not quite correct. Prince Louis had left for Germany before the others arrived.

[11] See “Leaves from a Journal,” p. 204, _et seq._

[12] Memorandum by the Grand Duchess of Baden.

[13] Afterward Marquis of Hertford, who died on the 25th of January, 1884.

[14] St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, where the Prince Consort rested until removed to the Mausoleum at Frogmore.

[15] The recumbent statue of the Prince Consort, now in the Mausoleum at Frogmore.

[16] Grand Duke and Grand Duchess Michael of Russia. The Grand Duke Michael is uncle of the present Emperor of Russia.

[17] This was in the autumn of 1860.

[18] This refers to Mr., afterward Sir, Arthur Helps’ Introduction to the “Collected Addresses and Speeches of the Prince Consort,” which was then about to be published (Murray, 1862).

[19] During a musical and gymnastic festival.

[20] The Princess’ lady, Baroness Christa Schenk.

[21] Prince Louis was then at Balmoral.

[22] Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden.

[23] Duke of Connaught, then twelve years old.

[24] The Princess Alice’s private secretary.

[25] Princess Victoria of Hesse.

[26] Princess Frederick Charles, mother of the Duchess of Connaught.

[27] Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha.

[28] Count Lutzow was at this time the Austrian Minister and Plenipotentiary at the Court of Darmstadt.

[29] Tutor of the Prince Consort during his boyhood and early youth.

[30] A favorite greyhound of the Prince Consort’s, which he brought to England at the time of his marriage.

[31] Prince Henry of Hesse, brother of Prince Louis.

[32] Mrs. Hull, a former nurse of the Princess and her brothers and sisters.

[33] Prince Gustav Wasa, first cousin to Prince Charles of Hesse.

[34] The late Duke Frederic of Augustenburg.

[35] Prince and Princess of Leiningen.

[36] Prince Leiningen’s brother.

[37] Former tutor to Prince Leiningen’s father.

[38] Prince and Princess Hermann of Hohenlohe-Langenburg.

[39] King Maximilian II. of Bavaria had died on the 10th of the preceding month of March. The Queen is a sister of Prince Louis’ mother.

[40] Of the Princess Anna of Hesse with the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

[41] The unveiling of a statue of the Prince Consort.

[42] Grand Duke Serge.

[43] The History of England from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth.

[44] Wife of General the Hon. Arthur Hardinge, who was on a visit to the Princess.

[45] The Princess Elizabeth was born on the 1st of November, 1864.

[46] By Dr. Samuel Smiles.

[47] John Brown, the Queen’s personal attendant.

[48] One of the Princess’ ladies in waiting.

[49] Then the Crown Princess’ youngest child.

[50] The anniversary of the Queen’s marriage.

[51] Miss Hildyard, the Princess’ former English governess.

[52] This sport is practised in the evening twilight.

[53] Prince Louis’ sister, the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. She died on the 16th of April, 1865.

[54] Nurse of the Prince Louis and his brothers and sister.

[55] She was the only sister of Prince Charles of Hesse.

[56] Daughter of M. Van de Weyer, the Belgian Minister Plenipotentiary in England. She had been thrown out from her carriage, and died from the effect of the injuries received.

[57] See “Leaves from a Journal,” Grantown, 1860.

[58] The opening of Parliament by the Queen for the first time after the death of the Prince Consort.

[59] Princess Elizabeth of Great Britain and Ireland, Princess Alice’s grand-aunt.

[60] Princess Hohenlohe.

[61] War between Prussia and Austria was now imminent.

[62] Widow of King Louis Philippe.

[63] Son of the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia. See _ante_, p. 93.

[64] The Princess Charles had a sister, who died when a child, who had borne that name.

[65] Formerly one of the Royal Band in England. Madame Nichel had been a dresser of the Duchess of Kent’s.

[66] “The Early Years of the Prince Consort,” by the late General Grey.

[67] Son of the Crown Prince and Princess of Prussia.

[68] The uncovering of the monument to the Prince Consort.

[69] General Grey’s “Early Years of the Prince Consort.”

[70] Princess Feodore Victoria Adelaide Paulina Amelia Maria, daughter of Queen Victoria’s sister, the Princess Hohenlohe-Langenburg, and wife of the Hereditary Prince, now the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. She died at the age of thirty-three, on the 10th of February, 1872.

[71] Major Elphinstone, Prince Arthur’s Governor from 1859, now Sir Howard Elphinstone, K.C.B.

[72] Princess Amalie of Hohenlohe-Schillingsfürst, niece of Queen Victoria’s late brother-in-law, Prince of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, married to an artist, Herr Lauchert.

[73] The Princess of Wales was suffering at the time from rheumatic fever and rheumatism.

[74] Their nurse, who is still (1884) with the youngest child, Princess Alix.

[75] Of their child, to whom Queen Victoria stood sponsor.

[76] This Catalogue was not completed and made public till 1876.

[77] Her Majesty’s private librarian.

[78] At Buckingham Palace.

[79] The Emperor of Russia.

[80] The Princess’ servant (see _ante_, p. 56). The boy was brought from Java by Baron Schenk-Schmittburg. His father was a negro, his mother a Javanese.

[81] We give this extract in a translation, instead of the original German.

[82] A kind of dwarf tree--half pine, half juniper--which grows in the highest regions of the Alps, and supplies most of the soft wood used by the Swiss wood-carvers.

[83] Riding-master to the Prince Consort and the Queen from 1840 to 1871.

[84] The Cesarewitch and Cesarewna.

[85] Archibald Brown, his valet, younger brother of the Queen’s personal attendant.

[86] Prince Waldemar of Prussia, fourth son of the Crown Prince and Princess. He died of diphtheria on the 27th of March, 1879.

[87] At the funeral of King Louis I., who had died at Nice on the 29th of February.

[88] A footman, much valued by the Prince and Princess.

[89] Mrs. McDonald, the Queen’s first wardrobe-maid.

[90] The Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore.

[91] Who died on the 8th of November, 1825.

[92] The only son and heir of the King of the Belgians.

[93] Princess George of Saxony, Infanta of Portugal, who died in February, 1884.

[94] This refers to the Queen’s stay at Invertrossachs, and the excursions to the neighborhood. These are described in “More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands,” pp. 116-147 (London, 1884).

[95] Madame Rollande, formerly the Princess’ French governess.

[96] Miss Grosvenor, Lady Ebury’s daughter.

[97] General Grey, Her Majesty’s private secretary had recently died.

[98] Miss Bauer the German governess of the Royal family.

[99] Prince Frederick William, the “Frittie” of these letters, born the 6th of the previous month of October, and who was killed by a fall from a window on the 29th of May, 1873.

[100] On the 10th, 11th, and 12th of January, 1871, before Le Mans.

[101] Prince Henry Charles Woldemar of Schleswig-Holstein, Governor of the Fortress of Mayence. He died on the 20th of January, 1871.

[102] Daughter of the Duke of Abercorn.

[103] The late Mr. John Mitchell, the librarian of Old Bond Street.

[104] Princess Alix, born on the 6th of June.

[105] Two children who were carried away by a “spate” while playing at Monaltrie Burn, near Balmoral (11th of June, 1872), and swept into the river Dee and drowned. See “More Leaves from a Journal of a Life in the Highlands,” p. 156 _et seq._

[106] For an account of this visit see “More Leaves from a Journal,” p. 164 _et seq._

[107] The Queen’s half-sister, Feodore, Princess of Hohenlohe-Langenburg, who died on the 23d of September, 1872, at Baden-Baden.

[108] Daughter of the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin. Subsequently she did marry the Grand Duke Vladamir of Russia, as she was allowed not to change her religion. This was the first time such a thing was permitted in Russia.

[109] Who would have thought that only six years later the Princess herself was to rejoin her father on the same day?

[110] He said to the Princess: “La bénédiction d’un vieillard fait toujours du bien.”

[111] A private plate, engraved for the Queen by the late Mr. Francis Holl, from a picture by Winterhalter.

[112] Also engraved by the late Mr. Francis Holl for the Queen from a picture given by Her Majesty to the Prince Consort on the 26th of August, 1843.

[113] The King of Bavaria and his brother, first cousins of Prince Louis of Hesse.

[114] The opening of Victoria Park, in the East end of London, on the 2d of April.

[115] To the 79th Queen’s Own Cameron Highlanders, at Parkhurst, on the 16th of April.

[116] The allusion is to the death of the little Prince Frederick, who was killed on the 29th of the previous month by a fall from a window.

[117] Princess Charles’ brother, Prince Adalbert of Prussia.

[118] The Grand Duchess Marie, who was engaged on the 11th of July to the Duke of Edinburgh.

[119] How these words recall those of Constance (_King John_, act iii., scene 4):

Grief fills the room up of my absent child,
Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me,
Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words,
Remembers me of all his gracious parts,
Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form;
Then have I reason to be fond of grief.

[120] To the Prince Consort in Hyde Park.

[121] Baron Stockmar had such a dislike of leave-takings that he never let it be known when he was going away from the English Court. The first intimation of his intention was--that he was already gone.

[122] A former Dresser of the Queen’s.

[123]

Now unto you the Lord has done what we had wished to do;
We would have train’d you up, and now ’t is we are train’d by you.
With grief and tears, O children, do you your parents train,
And lure us on and up to you, to meet in heaven again.

[124] The first volume of whose “Life of the Prince Consort” had just been published.

[125] To “The Idyls of the King.”

[126] Only child of Sir George Grey, and Equerry to the Prince of Wales. He died at Sandringham of inflammation of the lungs.

[127] “Childe Harold,” canto iii., stanza 30.

[128] During the visit of the Prince of Wales to India.

[129] Her husband, the father of the Queen’s personal attendant, John Brown, had just died. See “More Leaves from a Journal,” p. 319.

[130]Secretary in the office of the Privy Purse.

[131] The Prince Consort’s head groom, who had come over with him to England.

[132] The Hon. Emily Caroline Hardinge, the Princess’ Lady-in-Waiting, died in London on the 4th of September, 1876.

[133] Written after the death of his daughter.

[134] The Grand Duke of Hesse was alarmingly ill.

[135] Of the Princess Charlotte of Prussia with the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Meiningen.

[136] This memorandum does not go far enough. The Princess returned to the faith in which she was reared, and died in it, a devout Christian.

[137] “She is a pretty and large baby, and we think will be _la Beauté_ of the family.”--_The Queen to King Leopold_, 9th May, 1843.

“Our little baby, whom I am really proud of, for she is so very forward for her age, is to be called _Alice_, an old English name; and the other names are to be _Maud_ (another old English name, and the same as Matilda), and _Mary_, as she was born on Aunt Gloucester’s birthday.”--_The same to the same_, 16th May, 1843.

“Our christening went off very brilliantly, and I wish you could have witnessed it. Nothing could be more _anständig_, and little Alice behaved extremely well.”--_The same to the same_, 6th June, 1843.

[138] The struggle to conceal from the other children that their favorite was dead cost the Princess, down to the time of her own fatal seizure, such a daily and almost hourly effort as, in her weak state, she was ill able to bear. Her sufferings during her short illness, which lasted less than a week, were borne with exemplary patience, and an unselfish and even cheerful spirit which were truly admirable. The day before she died, she expressed to Sir William Jenner her regret that she should cause her mother so much anxiety.