A Magnificent Obsession: The Death That Changed the Monarchy
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If there was one other person in the country who perhaps understood the Prince’s national significance at that moment it was Florence Nightingale. Commenting on his illness in a letter that she wrote on the 13th to her friend Mary Clarke Mohl from her home on South Street in Mayfair, she recalled that the Prince had ‘neither liked nor was liked. But what he has done for our country no one knows.’ As for the Queen, Nightingale went on, she had ‘really behaved like a hero. Has buckled to business at once. After all, it is a great thing to be a Queen. She is the only woman in these realms, except perhaps myself, who has a must in her life – who must set aside private griefs and attend to the res publica.’79Events were soon, however, to prove Nightingale entirely wrong in this regard.
At 5 p.m. on the evening of the 13th a subtle but significant change had come in the wording of the bulletin issued by the royal doctors for publication the following morning. ‘His Royal Highness the Prince Consort passed a restless night’, the public were to be told; ‘the symptoms have assumed an unfavourable character during the day’.80It was only now that many members of the royal household, such as Prince Arthur’s governor, Howard Elphinstone, began to realise how desperate the situation had become. Elphinstone first heard the grave news from one of the Prince’s equerries, Charles Du Plat, and received further confirmation from Carl Ruland.81
It was at this point that Princess Alice made an important decision. All her gentle hints to her mother that she should prepare herself for the worst had gone unheeded. Nor had Victoria – in her total absorption in her own anxiety – given any thought to Bertie away at university in Cambridge, who had no inkling of how gravely ill his father was. The Prince of Wales should be recalled, the Queen was urged. But she refused; her husband’s anguish at Bertie’s recent bad behaviour was, she remained convinced, still at the root of his present illness. Without her mother’s knowledge, therefore, Princess Alice sent a brief telegram to Bertie that night informing him that Papa was ‘not so well. Better come at once’. The telegram arrived while the Prince of Wales was hosting a farewell dinner party for Cambridge dignitaries prior to leaving for the Christmas vacation. Two hours later he boarded a special train out of Cambridge. It was 3 a.m. when he finally arrived at a silent and watchful Windsor.82
Chapter Five
‘Day Turned into Night’
With Christmas only a fortnight away, George Augustus Sala, an ambitious young leader-writer on the Daily Telegraph who had already shown a talent for florid obituary-writing, was looking forward to the festive season at his lodgings at Upton Court in Slough, a few miles from Windsor. ‘A yule log had been ordered; there was to be snap-dragon in the Hall, the “mummers”…were to come over from Slough and sing carols on Christmas Eve; and the cook had made at least a dozen plum puddings and a whole army of mince pies,’ he remembered with relish. At the time Sala had been turning in two 1,500-word leaders a day for the Telegraph with Saturdays off, but this weekend, with friends visiting, he arranged not to go into his London office on Sunday and Monday, in order to enjoy it at home – ‘providing always,’ he added, ‘that something which the whole English nation was dreading, did not happen.’1For by the morning of 14 December 1861 the press knew that ‘the wise and good Prince Consort’ was lying desperately ill at Windsor Castle.
That day, according to the North Wales Chronicle, there were but three principal topics of conversation in London: ‘the probability of war with America, the health of the Prince Consort, and the Smithfield Cattle Club Show’. An air of anxiety was clearly gathering with regard to how ‘even the temporary loss’ of the Prince Consort’s services was ‘a misfortune for the country’.2The Birmingham Daily Post spoke of ‘much uneasiness’ as to his health and the Glasgow Herald noted that his condition ‘has not improved, and the symptoms of fever are not diminished’. What is more, ‘owing to the number of inquiries at Buckingham Palace on Friday, including the French Ambassador, a bulletin will be issued there on Saturday, and a visitors’ book opened’.3In an attempt to defuse public alarm, The Times hoped that ‘it will be in our power shortly to announce an improvement in the state of the Royal patient’. It went on to observe that for more than twenty years now the Prince had ‘been the guide and protector of the Queen, to a degree that is rarely found even in ordinary life, when the husband is both in law and in reality the guardian of the wife’; it was clear from these words that editor John Delane was preparing for the worst. Nor could public alarm be tempered by the assurances that followed that the disease would no doubt yield to the skill of the Prince’s eminent physicians, or the erroneous assumption that he had on his side ‘youth and strength and an unimpaired constitution’.4There was no denying the shock the country would sustain when the news of the Prince Consort’s rapid decline became widely known. Having driven to Windsor that morning and spoken to several members of the royal household, Delane was back at his offices in Printing House Square, Blackfriars, already fine-tuning the obituary for Prince Albert that he had prepared when he had first heard of his illness.5
Much to the surprise of the royal doctors, the Prince had in fact been able to get a better night’s rest on the 13th; the Queen was brought encouraging bulletins on his progress at regular intervals during the night and, when she awoke at 5.30 a.m. that Saturday, she was greeted by Dr Brown with further good news: the Prince appeared to have rallied. ‘I think he is better than he has been yet; I think there is ground to hope the crisis is over,’ he told her.6Such was Albert’s all-too-brief rally that he even ‘got up & walked across the room for a purpose of nature’. Phipps dared to send word to Palmerston by telegraph: ‘We are allowed again a hope.’7
At 7 a.m. the Queen went in to see her husband. ‘It was a bright morning, the sun just rising and shining brightly,’ she recalled. But despite what Brown had told her, there was an ominous atmosphere about the room. It had ‘the sad look of night watching, the candles burnt down to their sockets – the doctors looking anxious’. That morning Albert had about him a strangely calm and beatific air: ‘Never can I forget how beautiful my Darling looked lying there with his face lit up by the rising sun, his eyes unusually bright, gazing as it were on unseen objects, and not taking notice of me.’8It was the calm of resignation to imminent death that lit up Albert’s face, but Victoria would not – could not – see it. For her, Albert’s tranquillity indicated hope of recovery and, much to the consternation of the royal household, she began talking as though the danger was over, hastening to telegraph the ‘good’ news to Vicky in Berlin. Others in the family, confused by the Queen’s false optimism, ‘began writing to everyone as if it were a trifling illness’.9
Bertie was now at his father’s bedside and lucky to be one of the few he briefly recognised. At around midday the Queen asked the doctors if she might go outside for a short while to take the air. ‘Yes, just close by, for half an hour,’ was their response. Accompanied by Alice, she took a turn on the East Terrace, but leaving her sick husband even for a short while was more than she could bear: ‘The military band was playing at a distance, and I burst out crying and came home again – my anxiety and distress were so great.’10Hurrying back to Albert’s bedside, Victoria asked if the Prince was any better. ‘We are very much frightened,’ Dr Watson said to her as gently as he could, ‘but don’t and won’t give up hope.’11
Princess Alice, however, knew that despite the fleeting and hopeful indications to the contrary, the turning point had come. Bertie wrote a note to Louis on her behalf: their father was ‘fighting for his life. In 24 hours we will know for sure – almighty God hear our prayers.’12As the afternoon went on, hopes once more began to fade: the Prince’s pulse dropped and his breathing became raspy and rapid as the congestion overwhelmed his lungs. By five-thirty he was perspiring heavily. The only recourse the doctors had was dosing him yet again with spoonfuls of brandy at regular intervals. ‘The pulse keeps up,’ they told the Queen. The Prince was not getting worse; Sir James was ‘very hopeful, he had seen much wor
se cases’. But even Victoria could not ignore Albert’s laboured breathing: ‘the alarming thing – so rapid, I think 60 respirations in a minute, tho the brandy always made it slower when taken’. His hands felt cold and there was ‘what they call a dusky hue about his dear face and hands which I knew was not good’. It was the onset of cyanosis – a loss of oxygen levels in the blood – indicating that the Prince’s lungs were failing rapidly. Dr Jenner had noticed it too and could not explain it away to the Queen. Prince Albert was slipping in and out of delirium, his ramblings largely incoherent, except for the often-repeated name – of his son Bertie. He began fretfully folding his arms and then ‘arranging his hair just as he used to do when well and he was dressing’. ‘These were said to be bad signs,’ Victoria later recalled. Anxious and bewildered, she dared not admit to herself what all this meant, but with hindsight, it was as though her husband was ‘preparing for another and a greater journey’.13
Princess Alice was in unflagging attendance at her father’s sick-bed – despite the doctors wishing to spare her the distress of it – assisted by Marie of Leiningen and Augusta Bruce, who were constantly in and out of the room. Miss Hildyard also hovered solicitously, offering support to the Queen.14And Phipps was there too, promising to help in every way that he could though his hands shook, for he found it hard to control his own deep anxiety. Victoria would not give up, constantly soliciting Jenner for signs of improvement. Was there any hope, she kept asking him? ‘Humanly speaking, it is not impossible,’ he told her. There was nothing to prevent the Prince ‘getting over it’, and yet it seemed to Victoria now ‘as though that precious Life, the most precious there was, was ebbing away!’15
As Saturday 14 December unravelled, it was for many an agonising time – ‘a horrible day of suspense waiting for further intelligences which still never came’, with everyone in the royal entourage ‘now hoping for the best, now again despondently fearing the worst’.16That morning, writing one of his regular letters to his friend and confidante the Duchess of Manchester, the Earl of Clarendon had no doubt that ‘a national calamity may be close at hand’. It was not just a matter of the unique and extraordinary role that the Prince performed in ensuring the Queen’s fulfilment of her public duties; it was the untold impact that his absence would have on her. ‘The habit or rather necessity, together with her intense love for him, which has increased rather than become weaker with years, has so engrafted her on him that to lose him,’ Clarendon warned prophetically, ‘will be like parting with her heart and soul.’17
Phipps, meanwhile, was sending regular updates to Palmerston, lamenting that ‘Alas! The hopes of the morning are fading away.’ The third edition of that day’s Times had unfortunately come out announcing the news issued by the royal doctors at 9 a.m. that there had been ‘some mitigation’ of the severity of the symptoms overnight.18It was therefore deemed necessary to send a further bulletin, admitting that since morning the Prince had lapsed into a ‘very critical state’. Not surprisingly, with the time delay in updates on the Prince’s condition being published, there was a considerable degree of public confusion as to how serious things really were. The editor of the Medical Times and Gazette, for one, had decided that it was time for an end to prevarication. The nature of the Prince’s illness, he wrote that morning, was ‘pretty clear to the medical profession’. But euphemism still prevailed in the journal’s commendation of Dr Jenner’s integrity. It was an advantage, it said, that the Prince was in Jenner’s care:
for there is no living physician who has enjoyed a larger experience of fever in general, or to whom the profession are so much indebted for their present knowledge of its various forms, and especially of the characters which distinguish the precise form of fever under which the prince is now suffering from the dreaded typhus.19
But the fact was that Jenner had throughout seemed uncertain of his diagnosis and had been reluctant to admit to it.
Over in Berlin, Vicky, who was only just recovering from a bout of flu, had been extremely alarmed by the contradictory telegrams received from Windsor over the previous couple of days. Privately, Phipps had telegraphed her husband Fritz on the 13th advising him to prepare his wife for the worst, and then early the following morning they had received news of an improvement. Writing to her mother, Vicky expressed her bewilderment: ‘The news I had been receiving every day were so reassuring and cheerful that I thought all was now going on perfectly well.’ She wished she could be with her mother to ‘try to comfort you and be of use’, but because she was now in the early stages of her third pregnancy her doctors had refused to allow her to travel.20
In Windsor at least word was out: on Saturday afternoon a special service was held at St John’s parish church to offer prayers for the Prince’s recovery, and its congregation was large despite the short notice. The royal doctors could no longer prevaricate: at 4.30 p.m. a bulletin was issued informing the nation that the Prince was in a ‘most critical state’.21Lady Biddulph (wife of the Master of the Queen’s Household), who had been in attendance in Prince Albert’s sick-room, slipped out to send the ‘very, very bad news’ to Earl Spencer – senior Lord of the Bedchamber and titular head of the royal household. The Prince was sinking fast, and ‘the doctors say there is no hope not the slightest of His Royal Highness’s life being spared,’ she wrote, though ‘None may say how long it may go on.’22
With the inner sanctum of the royal household gathering anxiously, at around 5.30 p.m. Prince Albert’s bed was wheeled away from the window into the centre of the King’s Room, as though to accommodate the watchers for the royal deathbed to come. The Queen, who had been resting in another room, came in and took up her place by Albert’s bed:
Gutes Frauchen, he said, and kissed me, and then gave a sort of piteous moan, or rather sigh, not of pain, but as if he felt that he was leaving me, and laid his head on my shoulder and I put my arm under his. But the feeling passed away again, and he seemed to wander and to doze, and yet to know all.23
She could not catch what Albert said in his delirium; occasionally words came in French, but more often it was the words of Christian comfort that meant so much to him – ‘Rock of ages, cleft for me’.24And yet, extraordinarily, when at around half-past seven that evening the doctors found it necessary to move the Prince to the other, cleanly made-up bed, in a moment of uncanny clarity, Albert insisted on rising from his bed unassisted, though he had to be helped back into it again by Löhlein and one of the pages.25
Ever since the previous evening, when he had heard of the Prince of Wales’s recall to Windsor, Prince Arthur’s governor, Howard Elphinstone, had ‘felt some presentiment’ of what was to come, but had done his best all day to keep the ten-year-old boy away from the gloomy atmosphere in the castle. But at about 8 p.m. that evening word was sent to Elphinstone to bring Prince Arthur down to the King’s Room, where all the younger children were now gathering to say farewell to their father.26First Alice came, knelt and kissed her father, and he took her hand. The Queen asked if he wanted to see Bertie, who next approached the bedside, followed by the fifteen-year-old Helena, Louise aged thirteen, and then Arthur. ‘One after the other the children came and took their father’s hand but he did not really see or know them’ – nor did he realise that three of them were absent: Affie away on naval manoeuvres in Mexico, Leopold recuperating in Cannes, and his beloved firstborn, Vicky, trapped in her gloomy palace in Berlin. Four-year-old Beatrice had been kept from her father for many days for fear of infection; Arthur had not seen him for some time either and was visibly shaken by the terrible change that had come upon him. Sobbing inconsolably, he ‘lifted his father’s hand to his lips and kissed it’, but Albert did not seem to know him.27As Arthur was led away, Albert momentarily ‘opened his dear eyes and asked for Sir Ch[arles] Phipps, who came in and kissed his hand, but then again his dear eyes were closed’. And he did not recognise Grey and Biddulph when they followed, or see how overcome they were. This leave-taking was, the Queen later recalled, ‘a te
rrible moment, but, thank God! I was able to command myself and to be perfectly calm, and remained sitting by his side’. ‘So it went on, not really worse but not better’, she recalled of that terrible evening as she sat listening to her dying husband struggle for his breath, although she was not able to recall any of it in any coherent detail until more than ten years later. Dr Jenner now admitted to her that ‘with such breathing it was of no avail’.28
After seeing Prince Arthur back to his room and to bed, Howard Elphinstone joined the other members of the royal household who were gathering in disconsolate groups in the guttering candlelight of the Grand Corridor. It was a place that was usually the scene of animated conversation among them, either before or after dinner, but which now ‘presented a very dim aspect’. ‘A few gloomy faces, fearing the worst, were patiently sitting, and anxiously waiting each doctor’s face as they came from the Prince’s room,’ he recalled. But each report was different; ‘hope and despair were alternately dealt out, that no one could form an idea of the truth’.29