Memoir of Queen Adelaide Part 2

The spectacle at the close was one most touching of all, for old King William, threescore and twelve, died at last in a gentle sleep, as he sat up on his couch, his head resting, where it had lain undisturbed for hours, on the shoulder of the Queen. Such had been her office at various times, daily, for the preceding fortnight; and when it shall have been a little more hallowed by time, it will be a fitting subject to be limned by some future artist, competent to treat it.

Since the death of Charles II., no King of England had died under the same roof with his wife; and then there was no such touching scene as the above, but only a few words of decent reconciliation before the royal pair parted for ever; and the wife, (leaving the husband to die at leisure and commend worthless women to his brother's protection) went to her chamber to receive the formal news of his death, and finally to receive the condolence of visitors, laying the while on a state bed of mourning, in a chamber lighted with tapers, the walls, floor, and ceiling covered with black cloth. Queen Adelaide stayed by her husband to the last, then laid his unconscious head upon the pillow, and quietly withdrawing to her chamber, looked for consolation to other sources than the visits of courtiers shaping their faces to the humour of the hour.

The respect of the royal widow for the deceased King did not cease here. On Sat.u.r.day night, the 8th of July, she attended the funeral ceremony, at Windsor, being present in the royal closet during the whole ceremony. She is the only Queen of England who saw a King, her Consort, deposited in the tomb.

In the following month, the Dowager Queen left Windsor Castle, to which the shouts of a joyous people welcomed her successor. From that time, she may be said to have commenced her own course of dying. Her story is really, henceforward, but the diary of an invalid. The nation, through the legislature, condoled with her upon her bereavement, and as she descended the steps of the throne to resume her old unostentatious privacy, there was not a man in the realm who failed, in some wise, to greet her, or who did not acknowledge that she had borne greatness with honour, and had won the hearts of a people who had been once forward to censure her.

From this period, her life was one of suffering, but it was a suffering that never rendered her selfish. In her worst hours of anguish, her ear was open, her heart touched, her hand ready to relieve her sisters in affliction, and to remedy the distresses of all who really stood in need of the royal succour. For nearly twelve years she may be said to have been dying. The sunniest and most sheltered spots in this country were visited by her, but without resulting in permanent relief. The winter of 1837-8 was spent at St. Leonard's. An attack of bronchitis, in the autumn of the latter year, drove her for refuge and remedy to Malta, where the church raised by her at Valetta,--the cathedral church of Gibraltar,--at an expense of 10,000, will long serve to perpetuate her memory. On her return in May 1839, she became, for a time, the guest of various n.o.ble hosts in England. In 1840, she visited the lakes, and established her home, subsequently and for a brief period, at Sudbury. Her next homes,--the frequent changes indicating increased virulence of disease,--were at Canford Hall, Dorset; Witley Court, Worcester; and Cashiobury, near Watford: thence she departed on one short and last visit to her native home, from which she returned so ill that, in 1847, she repaired, as a last resource, to Madeira, whither she was conveyed in a royal frigate.

The progress of the sick Queen over the water, was not without its stateliness and solemnity, mixed with a certain joyousness, acceptable to, though not to be shared in by the royal invalid. Before the squadron departed from Spithead, on Sunday, the 10th of October, full divine service was celebrated on board the _Howe_, the ship's chaplain reading the prayers, the Queen Dowager's preaching the sermon, on a text altogether foreign to so rare and interesting an occasion:--"But now the righteousness of G.o.d without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets," (Rom. iii. 21.) After service, the squadron stood forth to sea, no incident marking its way till the following Tuesday. On that day, a bird winging from the Bay of Biscay, fluttered on to the _Howe_, perched on the yards, and then flew from one point to another, and back again, as if he had made of the gallant steamer a home. A sailor, named Ward, attempted to capture the little guest, in pursuing which into the chains, being more eager than considerate, he fell headlong over into the waves, while the _Howe_ pursued her forward way. In an instant after alarm was given, however, the life-buoy was floating on the waters, a boat was pulling l.u.s.tily towards the seaman, and the _Howe_ slipped her tow ropes, and made a circuit astern to pick up rescued and rescuers. Ward, meanwhile, had by skilful swimming, gained fast hold of the buoy, and was brought on board little the worse for his plunge and his temporary peril. Queen Adelaide was more moved by this accident than the man was himself. On the following Sunday, the Queen was better able than she had previously been, to turn the accident to some account, for Ward's own benefit. Her Majesty had attended the usual service on board, and had listened to another sermon from the ship's chaplain, this time on a subject as unappropriate as that of the preceding Sunday:--"And almost all things are by the law purged with blood; and without shedding of blood is no remission," (Heb. ix. 22),--the ship's company were repairing to their respective quarters, when Ward was told that the Queen Dowager requested to see him. If this message disconcerted him more than his fall into the Bay of Biscay, he soon recovered that self-possession which no man loses long, who has a proper feeling of self-respect.

Besides, the widowed Queen, in her intercourse with persons of humble station, wore habitually that air--

"--which sets you at your ease, Without implying your perplexities."

She spoke to the listening sailor kindly, on his late peril, and the position in which it suddenly placed him near to impending death. A few words like these, wisely and tenderly offered, were likely to be more beneficial to a man like Ward, than a whole course of the chaplain's sermons on doctrinal points in the Epistle to the Hebrews; and I cannot but hope that the artists of the next generation, when Time shall have poetized the costume of the incident, will not forget this picturesque pa.s.sage in the life of the Queen and the man-of-war's-man.

And now, as they glided by the coast of Portugal, on the evening of Monday, the 18th of October, there was dancing on board, and again on the Wednesday evening. Princesses waltzed with commanders, the Grand-d.u.c.h.ess tripped it on the p.o.o.p with a knight, and the midshipmen went dashingly at it with the maids of honour, while the gun-room officers stood by awaiting their turn. On the fore part of the quarterdeck, as many of the ship's company as were so minded, got up a dance among themselves; and the suffering Queen below heard the echoes of the general gladness, and was content.

On the following Friday, the _Howe_ was close to Belem Castle, and was towed into the Tagus by the steam-frigate _Terrible_. The King-Consort of Portugal came down in a state barge to receive the Queen, whom he escorted to the palace of the Necessidades, landing amid a roar of artillery and welcomed by loyal demonstrations as the ill.u.s.trious traveller pa.s.sed on her way to the Queen regnant, Donna Maria.

By such progress did Queen Adelaide make her way towards Madeira, the climate of which could not arrest the progress of her malady, and she returned to England,--for a time to Bushey, finally, to Bentley Priory, near Stanmore, where she occupied herself in preparation for the inevitable end. There, on the 8th of May, 1849, the Queen Dowager may be said to have "done a foolish thing," in altering her will without legal a.s.sistance in the method of alteration. On that day, alone and unadvised, Her Majesty took out her old and duly attested will, of the 14th August, 1837, and inscribed on the back thereof this remarkable endors.e.m.e.nt:--"This will is cancelled, 8th May, 1849. My heirs are my brother and sister, and their heirs after them. My executors, Lord Howe and the Hon. W. A. Cooper, are requested to pay off all what I directed in my codicil, and then to divide my property equally between my brother and sister. This is my last will and request."

It was the will of a Queen, but it stood for nothing in the eye of the law. The endors.e.m.e.nt was brought under notice of the Prerogative Court; the Judge, Sir Herbert Jenner Furst, declared it to be of no effect. It was a mere unattested memorandum; and he p.r.o.nounced, as the legal phrase is, for the original will. Of greater interest is the subjoined doc.u.ment, which pleasantly contrasts with the wills of many of her lady predecessors, whose minds were engaged on the disposal of their state beds, their mantles, and their jewellery, to the exclusion of all other subjects. Thus wrote the dying Queen Adelaide:--

"I die in all humility, knowing well that we are all alike before the throne of G.o.d; and I request, therefore, that my mortal remains be conveyed to the grave without any pomp or state. They are to be removed to St. George's Chapel, Windsor, where I request to have as private and quiet a funeral as possible. I particularly desire not to be laid out in state, and the funeral to take place by daylight; no procession; the coffin to be carried by sailors to the chapel. All those of my friends and relations, to a limited number, who wish to attend, may do so. My nephew, Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar, Lords Howe and Denbigh, the Hon.

William Ashley, Mr. Wood, Sir Andrew Barnard, and Sir D. Davies, with my dressers, and those of my ladies who may wish to attend. I die in peace, and wish to be carried to the tomb in peace, and far from the vanities and pomp of this world. I request not to be dissected nor embalmed; and desire to give as little trouble as possible. "ADELAIDE R."

The end soon come, and it was met with dignity. On the 22nd of November, 1849, Queen Victoria and Prince Albert visited the Dowager Queen, for the last time. On the last day of the month she calmly pa.s.sed away. The above doc.u.ment was then produced; and it rendered kings-at-arms, heralds, gold sticks, and upholsterers powerless to exercise their absurd dignity in connection with death,--when so intelligible and sensible a protest as the above was in existence.

Accordingly, on a fine December morning of 1849, there issued from the gates of Bentley Priory, an ordinary hea.r.s.e with a pall emblazoned with the Queen's arms, preceded by three mourning coaches. A scanty escort of cavalry accompanied them, more for use than show, their office being to see that no obstruction impeded the funeral march from Stanmore to Windsor. On its way, the att.i.tude of the spectators exhibited more of sympathy than curiosity.

The Harrow boys turned out in testimony of respect, and the country people at large looked like mourners, wearing more or less, but wearing some outward manifestation of sorrow.

The Queen's body reached the Chapel at Windsor at one o'clock. In the south aisle, close to the porch, there had been standing, grouped together, silent and motionless, a group of seamen,--grave, bronzed, athletic sailors. Their demeanour showed them worthy of the office which the now dead Queen had asked at their hands. When all the royal, and great, and n.o.ble personages were in their respective places,--while some indispensable officials effected a little more of their foolish calling, in the presence of death, than Queen Adelaide herself would have sanctioned;--while princes, peers, and prelates, ladies-in-waiting, clergy, and choristers, proceeded pa.s.sively or actively with their parts in the ceremony of the day,--then those ten sailors advanced to accomplish the duty a.s.signed them, and standing by the platform on which the body was placed, gently propelled it to a position over the subterranean pa.s.sage into which it was lowered, after one of the simplest services that was ever said or sung for departed Queen, had been accomplished.--Most simple, save when Garter stepped forward to announce what all men knew, that it "had pleased Almighty G.o.d to take out of this life to His divine mercy" the departed Queen; and to a.s.sert what that royal lady would a.s.suredly have gainsaid, that she was a "Most High, Most Mighty, and Most Excellent Princess." With this, and one or two other formalities of that pomp and state from which she had asked to be spared, Queen Adelaide pa.s.sed to the tomb,--a tomb capacious enough to contain whole generations of kings and queens, princes and princesses yet unborn.

This event was followed by an unusual amount of execrable elegiac verse, which was powerless, however, to throw ridicule on what it affected to solemnize. I have had the pain of reading an inconceivable amount of this trash,--a pain only relieved by the occurrence of lines which, intended to be serious, were irresistibly comic. Out of the reams written in professed honour of a most exemplary Queen, I have not met with an appropriate line that is worth citing. One sample of the solemnly absurd Pegasuses set restive on this occasion will a.s.suredly satisfy curiosity. The writer affects to see at the royal funeral the ghosts of departed great ones, who a.s.semble to do visionary homage to their new sister in death. Among them is the incautious Bishop, who died from the effects of a cold caught at the funeral of the Duke of York:--

"Lo! see the shade of a prelate pa.s.s by Who came to a night-burial to die; Standing too long expos'd to the chill air, Death aim'd his dart, and struck the mitre there."

Poor Queen Adelaide! A wish could save her from some of the empty pomps and vanities that linger about the open grave; but nothing could save her from the villainous poetasters. All the rhymers who rung metrical knells at her death, deserved the fate, and for like reasons, invoked in "Julius Caesar" on the so-called poet who made "bad verses."

The preachers, if honest chronicling is to be observed, did not on this occasion very much excel the poets. Very "tolerable" indeed, and not at all to be endured, were most of the funeral sermons which have come under my notice. One clergyman, who had been the Queen's chaplain too, and who had composed a funeral sermon on William the Fourth, reproduced not merely the substance, but in many parts, identical pa.s.sages from the discourse on the dead King, and made them do duty in ill.u.s.trating the demise of that sovereign's royal widow. Others were illogical, or were painfully simple, or amusingly trite. In one, I find an intimation that "after deducting the more needful expenses of her household, she gave away _all_ she had, and died _poor_;" which seems an inevitable consequence of such liberality. None of these who took a dead Queen for the subject of a lesson on vanity, or for an example to be followed, wore the mantle of a Bossuet,--grand and instructive when consigning La Valliere to the cloister, or Henrietta of Orleans to a tomb. They might at least have found something suggestive in the sermon on the latter occasion, by the "Eagle of Meaux," where he exclaims, after apt reflection on birth, rank, and their responsibilities:--"No! after what we have just seen, we must feel that health exists only in name, life is a dream, glory a deception, favours and pleasures dangerous amus.e.m.e.nts, everything about us vanity. She was as gentle towards death as she had been to all the world.... She will sleep with the great ones of the earth, with princes and kings, whose power is at an end, amongst whom there is hardly room to be found, so closely do they lie together, and so prompt is death to fill the vacant places. _Can we build our hopes on ruins such as these_."

From beyond sea there did come echoes something like these; and fitting homage to the virtues of the deceased lady was rendered from many a church pulpit among a foreign people. Although it be not necessary to travel into another hemisphere to find a witness offering voluntary evidence to the good qualities of the Queen Dowager, yet I gladly do so in one instance, and reproduce a testimony rendered at the Cape of Good Hope. In a funeral sermon, preached in St. George's Cathedral, Cape Town, on the 24th of February, 1850, by the Rev. W. A. Newman, at that time Senior Colonial Chaplain and Rural Dean, that learned and eloquent divine rendered a graceful tribute to the memory of the deceased Queen, of which the following paragraph is a portion:--"Of this excellent lady's large charities I can speak from evidence, and can, therefore, speak with a full heart. I have lived near to the neighbourhood where her less public bounty diffused itself. I know that the sick room of the poor has been visited by her in person; I know that from her own table a portion has been sent, to call forth the coy appet.i.te of disease; and I know that where ever she went many a heartfelt _G.o.d bless her_ would follow."

Such was Queen Adelaide, some seven years Queen Consort of Great Britain; a lady who will be remembered, if not as a great Queen, yet as one of the truly good women who have shared with a King regnant the throne of these islands.--One who lived down calumny, and, who, being dead, is remembered with respect and affection.

THE END.