Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/463

 government had a strong case. The emperor of the French, the emperor of Austria, the king of Prussia, and the emperor of Russia expressed themselves in full sympathy with England. But Palmerston and Russell willingly accepted the prince consort's correction. They substituted his moderation for their virulence, with the result that the government of Washington assented cheerfully to their demands. Both in England and America it was acknowledged that a grave disaster was averted by the prince's tact.

But he was never to learn of his victory. He already had a presentiment that he was going to die, and he did not cling to life. He had none of the queen's sanguineness or elasticity of temperament, and of late irremovable gloom had oppressed him. During the early days of December he gradually sank, and on the 14th he passed away unexpectedly in the queen's presence. Almost without warning the romance of the queen's life was changed into a tragedy.

At the time of the prince's death, her daughter Alice and her stepsister the Princess Hohenlohe were with her at Windsor, and all the comfort that kindred could offer they gave her in full measure. Four days after the tragic event she drove with Princess Alice to the gardens at Frogmore, and chose a site for a mausoleum, where she and her husband might both be buried together. Her uncle Leopold took control of her immediate action, and at his bidding she reluctantly removed to Osborne next day. In the course of the 20th she mechanically signed some papers of state. At midnight her brother-in-law, Duke Ernest, reached Osborne, and, dissolved in tears, she at once met him on the staircase. On 23 Dec., in all the panoply of state, the prince's remains were temporarily laid to rest in St. George's Chapel, Windsor. The prince of Wales represented her as chief mourner. Early in January her uncle Leopold came to Osborne to console and counsel her.

No heavier blow than the prince's removal could have fallen on the queen. Rarely was a wife more dependent on a husband. More than fifteen years before she had written to Stockmar (30 July 1840), in reference to a few days' separation from the prince : 'Without him everything loses its interest ... it will always be a terrible pang for me to separate from him even for two days, and I pray God never to let me survive him.' Now that the permanent separation had come, the future spelt for her desolation. As she wrote on a photograph of a family group, consisting of herself, her children, and a bust of the prince consort, ' day for her was turned into night' (, ii. 148).

Her tragic fate appealed strongly to the sympathies of her people, who mourned with her through every rank. ' They cannot tell what I have lost,' she said ; but she was not indifferent to the mighty outburst of compassion. Personal sympathy with her in her bereavement was not, however, all that she asked. She knew that the exalted estimate she had formed of her husband was not shared by her subjects, and as in his lifetime, so to a greater degree after his death, she yearned for signs that he had won her countrymen's and countrywomen's highest esteem. ' Will they do him justice now ? ' she cried, as, in company with her friend the Duchess of Sutherland, she looked for the last time on his dead face. Praise of him was her fullest consolation, and happily it was not denied her. The elegiac eulogy with which Tennyson prefaced his 'Idylls of the King,' within a month of the prince's death, was the manner of salve that best soothed 'her aching, bleeding heart.' The memorials and statues that sprang up in profusion over the land served to illumine the gloom that encircled her, and in course of years she found in the task of supervising the compilation of his biography a potent mitigation of grief. Public opinion proved tractable, and ultimately she enjoyed the satisfaction of an almost universal acknowledgment that the prince had worked zealously and honestly for the good of his adopted country.

But, despite the poignancy of her sorrow, and the sense of isolation which thenceforth abode with her, her nerve was never wholly shattered. Naturally and freely as she gave vent to her grief, her woe did not degenerate into morbid wailing. One of its most permanent results was to sharpen her sense of sympathy, which had always been keen, with the distresses of others, especially with distresses resembling her own ; no widow in the land, in whatever rank of life, had henceforth a more tender sympathiser than the queen. As early as 10 Jan. 1862 she sent a touching message of sympathy with a gift of 200l. to the relatives of the victims of a great colliery explosion in Northumberland. In the days following the prince's death, the Princess Alice and Sir Charles Phipps, keeper of her privy purse, acted as intermediaries between her and her ministers, but before the end of the first month her ministers reminded her that she was bound to communicate with them directly. Pal-