by his side.” He murmured something, but
she could not hear what it was; she thought he was
speaking in French. Then all at once he began
to arrange his hair, “just as he used to do when
well and he was dressing.” “Es kleines
Frauchen,” she whispered to him; and he seemed
to understand. For a moment, towards the evening,
she went into another room, but was immediately called
back; she saw at a glance that a ghastly change had
taken place. As she knelt by the bed, he breathed
deeply, breathed gently, breathed at last no more.
His features became perfectly rigid; she shrieked
one long wild shriek that rang through the terror-stricken
castle and understood that she had lost him for ever.
CHAPTER VII. WIDOWHOOD
I
The death of the Prince Consort was the central turning-point
in the history of Queen Victoria. She herself
felt that her true life had ceased with her husband’s,
and that the remainder of her days upon earth was
of a twilight nature—an epilogue to a drama
that was done. Nor is it possible that her biographer
should escape a similar impression. For him,
too, there is a darkness over the latter half of that
long career. The first forty—two years
of the Queen’s life are illuminated by a great
and varied quantity of authentic information.
With Albert’s death a veil descends. Only
occasionally, at fitful and disconnected intervals,
does it lift for a moment or two; a few main outlines,
a few remarkable details may be discerned; the rest
is all conjecture and ambiguity. Thus, though
the Queen survived her great bereavement for almost
as many years as she had lived before it, the chronicle
of those years can bear no proportion to the tale
of her earlier life. We must be content in our
ignorance with a brief and summary relation.
The sudden removal of the Prince was not merely a
matter of overwhelming personal concern to Victoria;
it was an event of national, of European importance.
He was only forty-two, and in the ordinary course of
nature he might have been expected to live at least
thirty years longer. Had he done so it can hardly
be doubted that the whole development of the English
polity would have been changed. Already at the
time of his death he filled a unique place in English
public life; already among the inner circle of politicians
he was accepted as a necessary and useful part of
the mechanism of the State. Lord Clarendon, for
instance, spoke of his death as “a national
calamity of far greater importance than the public
dream of,” and lamented the loss of his “sagacity
and foresight,” which, he declared, would have
been “more than ever valuable” in the event
of an American war. And, as time went on, the
Prince’s influence must have enormously increased.
For, in addition to his intellectual and moral qualities,
he enjoyed, by virtue of his position, one supreme
advantage which every other holder of high office
Copyrights
Queen Victoria from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.
