Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/228

 sary of the Prince Consort's death, December 14th, was the day on which the illness of his son took a favorable turn. On the first anniversary of the turning point in the Prince of Wales's illness, December 14th, 1872, Princess Alice wrote to the Queen that the day must always be one of mixed recollections and feelings, of thankfulness as well as of sorrow, and that in both respects it would always be "a day hallowed in our family." Six years later it was on this very day, December 14th, 1878, that the beloved and gifted Princess breathed her last.

All the contemporary records speak of the Queen as having borne her terrible grief with courage. She is said to have been more outwardly composed than she had been after the death of her mother. She began after a few days to transact necessary business. On the 20th December, one of the family wrote from Windsor that she had signed some papers, and had seen Lord Granville. One of her political letters to Lord Palmerston, written in January, 1862, has been already quoted. It is entirely characteristic of her that her first public utterance after the death of her husband was an expression of tenderest sympathy with the wives and children of 204 poor men who were killed in the Hartley Colliery explosion in January, 1862. Her own misery, the Queen said, made her feel the more for them. A little later she received visits of sympathy and condolence from her uncle, King Leopold, and from her half-sister, Princess Feodore of Hohenlohe. To a nature like hers, work and the sympathy of loving friends are the best of all balms; but she was intensely forlorn; she had lost the source of joy and happiness, and nothing could bring it back. The joyous young woman, radiant with light-hearted happiness, ceased to exist on December 14th, 1861. Henceforward our Queen has