The story of how she had caught the infection was told and the Queen said how typical it was of her. Alice had always sacrificed herself.
How comforting was Lord Beaconsfield who lost no time in hurrying to the Queen to offer his condolences. They wept together and she told him of the virtues of Alice, so very much her father’s daughter. They had shared that quality of saint-liness, so rare in human beings. And they had both died young.
‘Alas, it is often so,’ said Lord Beaconsfield.
‘But fortunately not always,’ she assured him, gazing up into his wrinkled old face.
The speech he made in the House of Lords was so touching that she had a copy of it sent to her that she might read it again and again.
‘My lords, there is something wonderfully piteous in the immediate cause of her death. The physicians who permitted her to watch over her suffering family enjoined her under no circumstances to be tempted into an embrace. Her admirable self-constraint guarded her through the crisis of this terrible complaint into safety … She remembered and observed the injunctions of her physicians. But it became her lot to break to her son, quite a youth, the death of his youngest sister, to whom he was devotedly attached. The boy was so overcome with misery that the agitated mother clasped him in her arms, and thus she received the kiss of death.’
‘How beautiful,’ said the Queen. ‘Only Lord Beaconsfield could write so movingly.’
She thanked him and they talked at great length about the strangeness of the date. Lord Beaconsfield felt that there was some hand of fate in it. The Prince Consort, he was sure, was watching over her.
‘I like to believe that,’ she told him.
‘You may be assured of it, Madam.’
‘As Mary Anne is watching over you.’
He nodded solemnly. ‘He left you the Prince of Wales,’ he went on. ‘He escaped the fateful day; but for some reason the Princess Alice was taken from you.’
‘She is so young to die,’ protested the Queen.
‘As that beloved saint her father was.’
‘And on the same day,’ said the Queen in an awed whisper.
‘The fourteenth of December,’ murmured Lord Beaconsfield.
The Queen held out her hand to him; he took it and kissed it.
‘You are a great comfort to me, Lord Beaconsfield,’ she told him.
‘Life will only be important to me,’ he said earnestly, ‘while I can be so.’
Dear Lord Beaconsfield! When the time came she would send a very special message with the primroses which always went to him from Osborne – the first of the season, picked by her own hands.
She would never forget that beautiful speech of his about the kiss of death.
Chapter XX
‘HIS FAVOURITE FLOWER’
The Queen tried not to brood on the death of Alice. She died as she would have wished, she said, serving her family. It was what one would have expected of Alice.
Lord Beaconsfield suggested that Lord Lorne would be a good Governor-General of Canada which would mean that he and Louise would leave the country. She was a little dubious. She had just lost one daughter to death and she did not like to think of another being so far away; but that was the fate of royal children. Daughters were always taken from their parents.
There was a great deal in the country’s affairs to cause her anxiety. A war had broken out with the Zulu rising; and the Prince Imperial, son of the widowed Empress Eugénie, was slain in a very distressing way – he was hacked to pieces by the knives of savages. She hated war but Lord Beaconsfield pointed out that it was impossible to maintain a position as the leading world power possessed of an Indian Empire and colonies without being continually engaged in minor wars of this nature.
She saw the point of that and Lord Beaconsfield had made her fully aware of the growing Empire. Victoria Regina et Imperatrix was not mistress of a small state, she must remember; she was the mighty Queen and Empress who ruled a large proportion of the world. Lord Beaconsfield would like to see those boundaries grow wider and of course he was right.
‘I plan to see you at the head of the European community,’ he told her. ‘It is absolutely necessary to the peace and well-being of the world that you should be.’
Unfortunately Mr Gladstone was of the opposite view. He went about the country preaching peace. ‘Peace at any price,’ said the Queen. ‘Really, men like Mr Gladstone are dangerous.’
What she did not realise was that Mr Gladstone’s policies were winning approval and that since Mr Disraeli had become Lord Beaconsfield, his ministry had been considerably weakened.
No one was more aware of this than Lord Beaconsfield. He was old and tired and far from well, and decided that he could only carry on with an increased majority. He decided therefore to go to the polls.
The Queen felt that she must visit Alice’s stricken family and left for Hesse Darmstadt. Two of her granddaughters, Victoria and Ella, miraculously recovered from diphtheria, were to be confirmed and she wished to attend the ceremony.
How very sad it was to be greeted by the children in their deep mourning and the sadness in their faces. Poor motherless children! They only had Louis now, and he had never been a strong man.
She wanted to hear in detail an account of Alice’s passing and the children took her to the room in which their mother had died.
‘It is exactly the same as when she occupied it, Grandmama,’ said Ella. ‘We are going to keep it thus.’
‘I am glad,’ said the Queen. ‘Your dear grandpapa’s room is just as it was when he died in it although that is a very long time ago – it will soon be twenty years since he left me desolate and you children without the guidance of the best man in the world. Why, your mama and papa were married after his death … very shortly after. It was the saddest wedding I ever attended.’
The children looked suitably solemn and many tears were shed talking of their mother.
She continued to indulge in memories of the past and talked constantly of the saintly grandfather the children had never known. They could understand now that they had personal experience of the loss of a dear one.
When the results of the election were telegraphed to her she received a great shock. It could not be. This was a mighty defeat. The government had been trounced at the polls and the Liberal and Home Rule party had a majority of 166 over the Tories.
‘It is absolutely incredible,’ cried the Queen. ‘Has the country gone mad!’
She realised what this would mean – the loss of her Prime Minister. Her dear friend and comforter would be taken from her, because the new Prime Minister would never allow her to be constantly in the company of the Leader of the Opposition.
‘My government defeated,’ she mourned, ‘and what will replace it?’ She set her lips obstinately together. ‘One thing I shall not accept. I would abdicate rather than accept Mr Gladstone as my Prime Minister.’
Her secretary, Sir Henry Ponsonby, tried to put the case as tactfully as he could. It seemed almost inevitable that Gladstone would be the next Prime Minister. It was unfortunate that the Queen should so dislike him; but she had learned before that the will of the people would have to be obeyed.
Abdication, said the Queen, seemed the only answer. How could she possibly work with that man?
There were other possibilities, Sir Henry suggested. There was Hartington; there was Lord Granville.
‘I don’t like either of them,’ she said. ‘Granville has worked against my wishes. As for Hartington, he has been far too friendly with the Prince of Wales – one of the Prince’s friends whom I would rather he did not see so frequently. The whole world knows of his liaison with the Duchess of Manchester and do you think that is a pleasant way for a Prime Minister to behave? There have been other rumours about him too. Wasn’t he at one time enamoured of a creature called Skittles?’