In the middle of October the Princess Louis of Hesse-Darmstadt and her husband came to England, awaiting at Windsor the arrival of the Queen, who was then at Osborne. The thoughtful affection of the Princess herself prompted this visit. It was feared that the anniversary of the Prince Consort’s death might bring on one of those attacks of nervous prostration from which the Queen suffered, during the first year of her bereavement, and at such a moment the presence of the Princess Alice afforded comfort, consolation, and confidence to the Royal family.
On the 18th of December the Queen emerged from her seclusion to superintend the removal of the Prince Consort’s remains from St. George’s Chapel to the Mausoleum at Frogmore Park. This sepulchral edifice had been built by her special directions as a monument of the affection and reverence which she and her children bore to the dead Prince. It is cruciform in plan, the arms of the cross radiating from a central cell, lit by three semi-circular windows in the clerestory, to the cardinal points of the compass. Polished shafts of cold grey granite decorate the outside of the building, and on an octagonal roof of copper a gilded cross gleams on a square-set tower. The transepts are also square, and lit by a clerestory corresponding with that in the central cell. Monoliths of Aberdeen and Guernsey granite flank the steps of the entrance porch, and the whole exterior is faced with polished granites and parti-coloured masonry. When the Prince’s remains were laid there, the interior--remarkable for its almost Oriental richness of subdued colour and for the splendour of its golden decorations--was unfinished, nor was Marochetti’s recumbent statue of the Prince, which was to be placed over his sarcophagus, completed.
[Illustration: REINHARDSBRUNN, NEAR GOTHA.]
Early on the morning of the 18th of December the remains of the Prince were taken from St. George’s Chapel, Windsor, to Frogmore, the ceremony being conducted in extreme privacy. The coffin was first placed in a hearse, which was followed by the Prince of Wales and Prince Louis of Hesse in a mourning coach. The Lord Chamberlain, the Dean of Windsor, Sir Charles Phipps, Colonel Grey, and other officials and domestics of the Royal Household formed the rest of the procession. The ceremony was very brief, simple, and solemn, and when the coffin was placed within the sarcophagus, the Princes laid upon it floral wreaths, which the Princesses had woven with their own hands for their father’s grave.