A Magnificent Obsession: The Death That Changed the Monarchy

by Helen Rappaport

  After lunch on the 8th the Queen thought the Prince looked ‘less ill than we expected’ and took the Prince of Leiningen in to see him. Albert was by now drifting in and out of an almost constant doze. The doctors and his valets continued to fuss round him, especially the admirable Löhlein, but Albert’s weakening state was occasionally broken by moments of irritability. At one point, much to Victoria’s dismay, he became so impatient ‘because I tried to help in explaining something to Dr Jenner and quite slapped my hand, poor dear darling’.37At other more lucid times his old affection resurfaced. ‘When I went to him after dinner,’ Victoria recalled, ‘he was so pleased to see me, stroked my face and smiled, and called me “dear little wife”’. She had spent the afternoon reading Scott’s Peveril of the Peak and the Memoirs of the Prussian diplomat Varnhagen von Ense to the Prince. His tenderness later that evening, ‘when he held my hand and stroked my face, touched me so much, and made me so grateful,’ she recorded in her journal.38But Albert’s occasional gentle and familiar commendations in German of Victoria as his gutes Weibchen and his liebes Frauchen were the only comfort now remaining to her.

  The following morning – Monday 9 December – the British public was informed in the Court Circular of The Times that the Prince Consort had been confined to his apartments for the last week, ‘suffering from a feverish cold, with pains in the limbs’. ‘Within the last two days the feverish symptoms have rather increased, and are likely to continue for some time longer.’ ‘But,’ the bulletin added by way of reassurance, ‘there are no unfavourable symptoms.’39Such was not the prevailing view inside Windsor Castle. In light of the Prince’s continuing poor condition, Phipps and the royal doctors were grappling with the problem of how to call in additional medical advice without undermining the Prince’s morale. The men they had in mind were the socialite doctor Sir Henry Holland, who had been one of the Prince’s Physicians-in-Ordinary since 1840 (and because of his status could not be ‘passed over’), and Dr Thomas Watson, Physician Extraordinary to the Queen since 1859. Victoria had immediately started fretting about how this might affect her dear Albert, ‘and fear I distressed both Sir James and Dr Jenner’.40But she was persuaded to agree, on the grounds that it was ‘necessary to satisfy the public to have another eminent doctor to come and see him’.41When Holland arrived he was confronted with a desperate Queen: ‘Oh, you will save him for me, Dr Holland? You will save him for me, will you not?’; while Watson’s visit was rather more subdued. It ‘went off quite well’, Victoria later reported. Albert had found him a ‘quiet, sensible man’, but had thought it ‘quite absurd’ that Clark had wanted to send for Holland too.42

  Watson, who was in the first rank of his profession after a long and distinguished medical career from 1825 and a period as chair of the Principles and Practice of Medicine at King’s College, University of London, took a much more serious line than Clark and Jenner. Phipps was soon writing to Palmerston to say that Dr Watson considered Prince Albert to be ‘very ill’. ‘The malady is very grave and serious in itself,’ he had told Phipps, without enlightening him as to what exactly it was. The doctors were clearly still in the dark and hedging their bets: ‘the symptoms exhibited were such as might precede the more distinct characterisation of gastric or bowel fever,’ Phipps went on. ‘The Prince’s present weakness is very great,’ Watson had told him, and ‘it is impossible not to be very anxious’.43One ominous difference had now been noted: Prince Albert had finally stopped wandering around in his dressing gown and had undressed and taken to his bed – although during the day he was transferred to a couch in the Red Room beyond.

  Albert passed a reasonable night and on the morning of the 10th his pulse was good. Victoria was therefore annoyed to hear that Lord Palmerston, having been alarmed by the news from Phipps, was nevertheless insisting that Dr Watson should remain on call at the castle and was pressurising Clark to call in more specialists. The Prime Minister did not mince his words: the Prince’s fate was a ‘matter of the most momentous national importance, and all considerations of personal feeling and susceptibilities must absolutely give way to the public interest’.44Other ministers were doing likewise, writing to Phipps in deepest anxiety. Sir George Lewis recommended they consult ‘Dr Tweedie, an old longbearded Scotchman’, who was founder and consulting physician to the London Fever Hospital in Islington; others, like the Duke of Newcastle, worried that the Queen might have become infected from her close contact with the Prince.45Many now realised with escalating alarm, as did Lord Granville, leader of the Liberal Party, ‘how invaluable’ the Prince’s life was.46

  The Queen was, of course, oblivious to the backstage political drama that was unfolding. Later that day she went in to see Albert and ‘found him wandering with the oddest fancies and suspicions’, but the doctors reassured her that this was ‘nothing’ and quite common in such cases. Doctors Watson and Jenner in fact announced that they were both impressed with the Prince’s progress over the last twenty-four hours, considering it to be ‘a positive gain’.47Comforting herself with these small signs of progress, the Queen wrote to Vicky:

  Thank God! Beloved Papa had another excellent night and is going on quite satisfactorily. There is a decided gain since yesterday and several most satisfactory symptoms. He is now in bed – and only moves on the sofa made like a bed, for some hours. He takes a great deal of nourishment – and is really very patient.48

  Sir James Clark, meanwhile, had been called away to his own sick wife at their home at Bagshot Park, but returned as often as possible, sleeping at Windsor every other night. But there was always Alice, as well as Löhlein – ‘most attentive and devoted and indefatigable’ – and Albert’s valet, Gustav Mayet, who ‘also does his best’.49

  Victoria was able to thank and bless God for ‘another reasonably good night’ when she awoke on the 11th. She found her husband sitting up in bed taking his beef tea, ‘which he always laments most bitterly over’. But ‘his beautiful face, more beautiful than ever’ had ‘grown so thin’. A brief moment of tenderness, during which Albert lay for a while with his head on her shoulder, made her very happy. ‘It is very comfortable so, dear Child,’ he whispered to her and her eyes filled with tears.50Later, when he was being wheeled along the passage to the King’s Room, he had turned to ‘the beautiful picture of the Madonna’ that he had given Victoria as a present three years previously, ‘and asked to stop and look at it, ever loving what is beautiful’. To look on such things, he told his wife, ‘helps me through half the day’.51

  A reassuring letter had arrived that morning from Uncle Leopold: Albert’s illness was just another of those regular and long-familiar indispositions that he often suffered at this time of the year. Victoria should not interrupt her ‘usual airings’ and must be sure to take a turn outside, for to be deprived of this ‘would do you harm’. In reply Victoria was happy to tell Leopold that Albert had had another good night with no worsening symptoms. It was as much as they dared hope for: ‘not losing ground is a gain, now of every day’.52The doctors, however, continued to be highly circumspect in what they told her, which was always hedged around with elaborately contrived positives. The symptoms were still not unfavourable, in their view, but Victoria was apprehensive. Albert now looked ‘so totally unlike himself’, she told Vicky; again that day he ‘was very wandering at times’.53She sat with him that afternoon and evening, reading to him and holding his hand, and, at his request, sharing a prayer together. Albert’s irritability had at last receded and he seemed anxious for Victoria to stay close by. She returned to her husband’s bedside after dinner and he sent for her again later, her hungry heart filling with joy: ‘I flew over, so happy that he wished to see me.’ Reluctantly she left him to rest, on Dr Brown’s advice, but it was hard: ‘God knows how happy I was to stay!’54

  That evening an ominous change in the Prince was noted by Sir James Clark, who ‘listened anxiously to his breathing, at his back’. But once again the Queen was fobbed off; when she asked Clark what this
signified he ‘said it was nothing, only a slight wheezing; of no consequence whatever’. So once more she went to her bed reassured that there was nothing to worry about, ‘tho’ sad to be so far’ from her beloved Albert.55Clark was right to be worried: the wheezing suggested the onset of that dreaded complication: congestion of the lungs, or pneumonia as it is more commonly known today. Albert himself, in a lucid moment earlier that day, had recognised the danger. Princess Alice had been sitting with him at the time, when he had asked if the Queen was in the room. When Alice said no, he had told her that he knew he was dying. He wanted her to write immediately and tell Vicky in Berlin. Alice did so and when she returned he asked her what she had said in her letter. ‘“I have told my sister,” she answered, “that you are very ill.” “You have done wrong,” he said to her; “You should have told her I am dying, yes I am dying.”’56

  Although Princess Alice and Albert had no illusions about his condition, the other members of the royal household were still clearly caught between a compulsion to deny what their eyes told them and confusion about the official diagnosis. Lady Ely, for example, that day told the Earl of Malmesbury that the Prince’s illness was ‘gastric fever and inflammation, of the mucous membrane of the stomach’.57Lord Palmerston, however, was now insisting to Phipps that the nation should be prepared for worse news to come – otherwise it would be ‘thunderstruck and indignant’ at having been kept in the dark.58The royal doctors were obliged to agree; the Prince’s illness now presaged a national crisis. But how to convince the Queen of the danger? It was Princess Alice who took it upon herself to try and make her mother face up to reality: ‘I will tell her,’ she had said, and during a carriage ride that morning she had done her best, as gently as she could, to convince her mother that Albert could not recover.59That evening, a carefully worded bulletin was prepared: ‘His Royal Highness is suffering from fever, hitherto unattended by unfavourable symptoms, but likely from its nature to continue for some time.’60It was signed by the four physicians: Clark, Holland, Watson and Jenner. But when the Queen asked to see it prior to it being sent out, she struck out the crucial word ‘hitherto’, refusing to accept even the remotest possibility of danger.61

  Prince Albert’s quickness of breath alarmed Dr Jenner the following morning, but like Clark he told the Queen there was no consequence to it, provided it did not increase. When the Prince took some broth and wine, the Queen noticed his hands were shaking; again Jenner told her not to worry; it was ‘merely fever’. The Prince remained compliant and did what the doctors told him, though from time to time he seemed confused: this was yet another symptom of the fever, the doctors told her. It would work its way through Albert’s system over the usual four-week course predicted in such cases. Taking them literally, Victoria recorded her false hopes in her journal: ‘We rejoiced so to think tomorrow would be the 22nd day, and that in another week please God! he would be getting over it.’ In anticipation of this, she ‘talked with Dr Jenner of the happy convalescence, tho’ always with trembling’.62Then she sat down and wrote a reassuring letter to Uncle Leopold stating that her husband ‘maintains his ground well…takes plenty of nourishment, and shows surprising strength’. She was fulsome in her praise of the ‘skill, attention, and devotion of Dr Jenner’. He was, after all, ‘the first fever Doctor in Europe’ and must know what he was doing.63

  Lord Palmerston, however, remained far from impressed with the royal doctors and their persistent underrepresentation of the true seriousness of Prince Albert’s condition and sent three letters to Windsor that day asking for news. Palmerston had no illusions that the Prince’s illness was of a ‘formidable character’. Aware that it was ‘liable to take a sudden and unfavourable turn from day to day’, he hoped therefore that Dr Watson, a man whose reputation he clearly respected, would stay in constant attendance at Windsor to monitor the Prince’s condition, and that he ‘would be allowed to have his own way as to treatment’.64He had no faith in Dr Clark, who in his view ‘had already incurred a heavy responsibility by delaying so long to call in additional advice’. Clark had a great deal to answer for, in Palmerston’s book, for not at once informing him of the graveness of the Prince’s condition, ‘instead of leaving me to find out by my own conclusions that it was of a much more serious nature than was represented to me by him’ at Windsor the previous week. When later that day Phipps revealed the now worrying development of the Prince’s impaired breathing and increasing listlessness, Palmerston was shocked. ‘Your telegram and letter have come upon me like a thunderbolt,’ he responded. The implications were ‘too awful to contemplate’. ‘One can only hope that Providence may yet spare us so overwhelming a calamity.’65

  Refusing to contemplate the worst, the Queen was still clutching at straws that evening. The doctors were doing all they could to control Albert’s rapid rate of breathing; ‘another 24 or still more 48 hours without further increase of it would make one feel quite safe’.66But things were no better the following morning, Friday 13th. The Queen went in to see Albert in her dressing gown at 8 a.m. and noted that even the stoical Jenner ‘was anxious and tired’. After a carriage drive with Augusta Bruce, she returned at midday and ‘found the breathing very quick which made me dreadfully anxious and nervous’.67The Prince was lying listlessly on his couch in the sitting room, only this time he had not even looked at his favourite painting of the Madonna and child as he passed it. He seemed now able only to recognise Carl Ruland, his German librarian, who came and read to him. For the most part he lay there with his hands clasped and with blank eyes gazing towards the open window, taking no notice of his surroundings and slipping in and out of consciousness, though Victoria was gratified that he did at one point take hold of her hand, calling her his gutes Frauchen and kissing her with affection.

  At about four-thirty that afternoon, while the Queen was taking a short walk on the terrace, Dr Jenner hurried in to Augusta Bruce, telling her that ‘such sinking had come on that he had feared the Prince would die in his arms’.68She must hurry to find the Queen and prepare her for the worst. In accordance with standard Victorian medical practice, Albert was now being dosed with brandy every half-hour in an attempt to raise his pulse.69By the time Victoria returned she found her husband very still and quiet. When Dr Clark arrived from attending his wife, he too was ‘much perturbed’ by what he saw. There could be no more prevarication: the Queen must be prepared, otherwise the shock would be too terrible.70Augusta Bruce and one of the children’s governesses, Miss Hildyard, did their best to offer comfort to an increasingly distraught Victoria, who was now weeping in fear and dread of the worst. ‘The country; oh, the country,’ she kept repeating. ‘I could perhaps bear my own misery, but the poor country.’71‘I prayed and cried as if I should go mad,’ Victoria later wrote of that day. ‘Oh! That I was not then and there crazed!’ Desperation was now setting in: ‘My Husband won’t die.’ No, he could not die, he must not die, she would not accept it: ‘for that would kill me’.72

  That evening the Prince’s pulse improved and he appeared to have rallied; Victoria sat in a chair at the foot of his bed with Alice at her side, sitting on the floor; Augusta Bruce and Marie of Leiningen were close at hand in the next room. Albert ‘was nice and warm and the skin soft’, the Queen recalled. Dr Watson was gently reassuring: he had seen many infinitely worse cases recover. ‘I never despair with fever,’ he added – after all, as Augusta Bruce observed, hundreds of people had survived ‘under far more aggravated forms’.73But clearly the crisis had come: it was ‘a struggle of strength’, the doctors told the Queen. Clark was again superficially hopeful, but the time had come, in the most roundabout way possible, to persuade the Queen that ‘they must give a rather unfavourable Bulletin, which could be improved of course if our Treasure went on well’.74Phipps too was preparing Lord Palmerston: ‘the Prince’s disease has taken a very unfavourable turn,’ he informed him, ‘the Doctors are in the greatest anxiety – they have even fears for the night.’ Shortly afterwards an urg
ent telegram followed: ‘I grieve to say the Prince is much worse.’75

  Over at his home at Ascot, where he was dining alone that evening, John Delane, editor of The Times, received a note from Lady Palmerston requesting him to come immediately to see the Prime Minister at his London home, Cambridge House on Piccadilly. ‘I was both tired and sleepy but thought it right to go,’ he recalled, ‘and it was well I did.’ Palmerston was in deep distress at the latest news from Windsor; the royal doctors were warning that Prince Albert was not expected to survive the night. Soon afterwards the Duke of Cambridge arrived with a ‘despairing letter from the Queen’. ‘I never saw such a party of ghosts as the few who had remained looked at the news,’ Delane later told John Walter, the newspaper’s proprietor. The truth, as Palmerston saw it with brutal honesty, was that at this present moment of political crisis over the Trent affair, ‘the Queen would be a less national loss’ than the Prince.76

  Only the previous night, Thursday 12 December, 3,000 people had attended a Great Prayer Meeting of all Christian denominations at Exeter Hall in London, called by the Evangelical Alliance. But the prayers they had so fervently recited had not been for the Prince Consort, but for ‘Almighty God to avert from us the calamity of war with the United States’.77With the political crisis still unresolved, and a wait of at least a fortnight expected before a response to Lord John Russell’s dispatch would arrive from America, two great iron-clad steamships, the Persia and the Australasia were preparing to sail from Liverpool loaded with field batteries and more than 2,000 troops for Canada. In the face of the very real and present danger of war, there seemed little, in comparison, to worry about with regard to the Prince Consort. The papers had made little of his illness so far. Although the Prince’s name had been omitted from the Court Circular for several days, his pack of harriers had gone out hunting as usual on the Friday, with no one at the meet suspecting the worst, though his absence had been lamented at the Smithfield Club Cattle Show (where as usual his steers were picking up prizes). A few papers had, however, noted the cancellation of a shooting party planned for Windsor, and that ‘in consequence of the prince’s indisposition’ the removal of the court to Osborne for Christmas planned for the following Friday, the 20th, had been ‘deferred for the present’.78