On the return to Windsor in
October, the Queen began to be anxious about her husband. One of the last
letters of the prince was to his daughter the Crown Princess of Prussia,
on her twenty-first birthday, and it shows the noble spirit which animated
his whole career. 'May your life, which has begun beautifully, expand
still further to the good of others and the contentment of your own mind!
True inward happiness is to be sought only in the internal consciousness
of effort systematically devoted to good and useful ends. Success, indeed,
depends upon the blessing which the Most High sees meet to vouchsafe to
our endeavours. May this success not fail you, and may your outward life
leave you unhurt by the storms to which the sad heart so often looks
forward with a shrinking dread.'
In conversation with the Queen, he seemed to have a presentiment that he
had not long to live. 'I do not cling to life; you do, but I set no store
by it. If I knew that those I love were well cared for, I should be quite
ready to die to-morrow.... I am sure, if I had a severe illness, I should
give up at once. I should not struggle for life.'
The fatigue and exposure which he underwent on a visit to Sandhurst to
inspect the buildings for the Staff College and Royal Military Hospital,
there is no doubt, injured his delicate health. Next Sunday he was full of
rheumatic pains; he had already suffered greatly from rheumatism during
the previous fortnight.
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