The Last Days of Glory by Tony Rennell

Author:Tony Rennell
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781466874817
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

8. Secret Last Wishes

She lay in her coffin wearing two wedding rings …

The new world that opened on 23 January 1901 was a black one. Thirteen-year-old Violet Asquith was holding tightly on to her nurse’s hand as they battled through the crowds in a draper’s shop in the centre of London to buy mourning clothes. ‘From the hushed house we were sent into hushed streets where everyone, even the poorest, seemed to be already dressed in black.’1 It was a Wednesday, but to another observer who walked those silent streets it seemed more like a Sunday. The traffic was lighter than usual, the throng on the pavements less pressing, many of the shops practically deserted. ‘Friends greeted each other with a sense of common sorrow. In every group people exclaimed “God bless her!”’2

The hundreds of horse-drawn, open-top omnibuses bringing workers into the city bore signs of mourning, as did the ranks of hansom cabs. Their drivers had tied crape bows to their whips and had black bands around their hats. Flower girls wore black in their bonnets, and street sellers did a good trade in black shirt studs. In post offices there was a rush to buy sets of stamps with the Queen’s head on them before they ran out. Only the shops selling black clothes were full. In one outfitters, mirrors had been ranged along the counter so the men who came in to buy a black tie could put it on there and then. People seemed in a hurry to look the part, ‘as if ashamed to be seen without the evidence of the sorrow which troubled every breast, young and old’.

In the City, the Stock Exchange opened and closed straight away. Business everywhere was reduced to ‘slow and fluctuating movements’, according to the financial press. ‘Drawn blinds, shaded shops and the sombre trappings of woe may be observed everywhere.’ Five thousand people took their places in St Paul’s for a hurriedly called memorial service, while thousands more waited on the steps outside as the organist Sir George Martin played the Dead March.

Crowds built up around the newspaper stands to read in detail accounts of the deathbed scene at Osborne. Some were more fanciful than others, and the suggestion in one paper that, in her dying moment, the Queen had mistaken the Kaiser for Prince Albert was dismissed with contempt by its rivals. Less easy to disprove were the stories that her last words were ‘Albert! Albert! Albert!’, for which there was no evidence except their obvious plausibility. Or had her dying thought been ‘Oh that peace may come!’, a sentiment which was picked up with relish by the anti-war lobby.

For the serious-minded, the entire reign was described and analysed in lengthy obituaries. Less erudite readers could thrill at the coincidences. A lion, the royal beast, had died at London Zoo a week ago, an omen surely, and ‘the superstitious had prophesied under their breath the loss which today we deplore’. Then there was Mrs Turner, who had

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