'
Alas! it was the death of that beloved mother which was to cast the first
of the many shadows which have since fallen upon the royal home. The
duchess died, after a slight illness, rather suddenly at last, the Queen
and the prince reaching her side too late for any recognition. It was a
terrible blow to the Queen: she wrote to her uncle Leopold that she felt
'truly orphaned.' Her sister, the Princess Hohenlohe, daughter of the
Duchess of Kent by her first marriage, could not come to England at the
time, but wrote letters full of sympathy and inspiration; yet Her Majesty
became very nervous, and was inclined to shrink into solitude, even from
her children, and to find comfort nowhere but with the beloved consort who
was himself so soon to be taken from her.
The great blow which made the royal lady a widow, and deprived the whole
country of the throne's wisest and most disinterested counsellor, came on
the 14th of December 1861.
In the year 1861, what with public and private anxieties, the prince felt
ill and feverish, and miserable. He passed his last birthday on a visit to
Ireland, where the Prince of Wales was serving in the camp at the Curragh
of Kildare. From Ireland, the Queen, the prince, Prince Alfred, and the
Princesses Alice and Helena went to Balmoral; and there the prince enjoyed
his favourite pastime of deer-stalking.
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