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Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria

Summary

Victoria, Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and Empress of India, died on 22 January 1901 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, at the age of 81. At the time of her death, she was the longest-reigning monarch in British history. Her state funeral took place on 2 February 1901, being one of the largest gatherings of European royalty.

Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria
Queen Victoria's funeral procession
Date
  • 22 January 1901 (1901-01-22)
  • (death)
  • 2 February 1901 (1901-02-02)
  • (state funeral)
Location
ParticipantsBritish royal family and members of various other royal houses
Burial

Description

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Queen Victoria on her deathbed, 1901
Following a custom she maintained throughout her widowhood, Victoria spent the Christmas of 1900 at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight. Rheumatism in her legs had rendered her disabled, and her eyesight was clouded by cataracts.[1] Through early January, she felt "weak and unwell",[2] and by mid-January she was "drowsy [...] dazed, [and] confused".[3] Her favourite pet Pomeranian, Turi, was laid on her bed as a last request.[4] She died aged 81 on 22 January 1901, at half past six in the evening, in the presence of her eldest son, Albert Edward, and grandson Wilhelm II. Albert Edward immediately succeeded as Edward VII.[5]

On 25 January, her body was lifted into the coffin by her sons Edward VII and Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and her grandson the German Emperor Wilhelm II.[6] She was dressed in a white dress and her wedding veil.[7] An array of mementos commemorating her extended family, friends and servants were laid in the coffin with her, at her request, by her doctor and dressers. A dressing gown that had belonged to her husband Albert, who had died 40 years earlier, was placed by her side, along with a plaster cast of his hand, while a lock of John Brown's hair, along with a picture of him, was placed in her left hand concealed from the view of the family by a carefully positioned bunch of flowers.[8][9] Items of jewellery placed on Victoria included the wedding ring of John Brown's mother, given to her by Brown in 1883.[8]

State funeral

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Memorial services were held at churches across the country to coincide with the state funeral; this is the order paper for a "Special Service" at Westminster Abbey.

The state funeral of Queen Victoria took place on Saturday, 2 February 1901, in St George's Chapel, Windsor Castle; it had been 64 years since the last burial of a monarch.

In 1897, Victoria had written instructions for her funeral, which was to be military as befitting a soldier's daughter and the head of the army,[10] and feature white dress instead of black.[11] Victoria left strict instructions regarding the service and associated ceremonies and instituted a number of changes, several of which set a precedent for state (and indeed ceremonial) funerals that have taken place since. First, she disliked the preponderance of funereal black; henceforward, there would be no black cloaks, drapes or canopy, and Victoria requested a white pall for her coffin. Second, she expressed a desire to be buried as "a soldier's daughter".[12] The procession, therefore, became much more a military procession, with the peers, privy counsellors and judiciary no longer taking part en masse. Her pallbearers were equerries rather than dukes (as had previously been customary), and for the first time, a gun carriage was employed to convey the monarch's coffin. Third, Victoria requested that there should be no public lying in state. This meant that the only event in London on this occasion was a gun carriage procession from one railway station to another: Victoria having died at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, her body was conveyed by boat and train to Victoria Station, then by gun carriage to Paddington Station and then by train to Windsor for the funeral service itself.

 
The Passing of a Great Queen; painting by William Wyllie[13]
 
The funeral procession in London.

The rare sight of a state funeral cortège travelling by ship provided a striking spectacle: Victoria's body was carried on board HMY Alberta from Cowes to Gosport, with a suite of yachts following conveying the new king, Edward VII, and other mourners. Minute guns were fired by the assembled fleet as the yacht passed by. Victoria's body remained on board ship overnight before being conveyed by gun carriage to Gosport railway station the following day for the train journey to London. Victoria broke convention by having a white draped coffin.

At Windsor, when the royal coffin was loaded atop the gun carriage for the procession and the artillery horses took the weight, granddaughter of Queen Victoria Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone said the day was very cold and "nothing in the world would make them start". An attendant Royal Guard from HMS Excellent was shortly then ordered to haul the gun carriage with ropes instead,[14] a disruption which subsequently became state funeral tradition.[15] She further observed that the Royal Artillery, responsible for the horses and the gun carriage, "were furious... humiliated beyond words" by the incident.[16]

Victoria's children had married into the great royal families of Europe and a number of foreign monarchs were in attendance, including Wilhelm II of Germany as well as the heir-presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne Archduke Franz Ferdinand.[17]

Funeral service

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The service in the afternoon of Saturday 2 February at St George's Chapel followed the liturgy of the Burial Service in the Book of Common Prayer and was the first royal funeral for which a printed order of service had been produced. The organisation of the service lay with the Dean of Windsor and the Lord Chamberlain, with the active participation of the Archbishops of Canterbury and York.[18] The music started with the first of the funeral sentences by William Croft and Psalm 15 to a setting by William Felton. After the lesson came further funeral sentences sung as anthems; Man that is born by Samuel Sebastian Wesley and Thou knowest Lord by Henry Purcell. The Lord's Prayer in Latin by Charles Gounod, and the anthem How blest are they by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky followed. After the Garter Principal King of Arms had proclaimed the Queen's styles and titles, the anthem Blest are the departed by Louis Spohr was reportedly followed by the Dresden amen. The inclusion of so much music by foreign composers was unprecedented and was not repeated in later royal funerals where British music predominated. At the end of the service, a funeral march attributed to Ludwig van Beethoven but actually by Johann Heinrich Walch was played instead of the traditional "Dead March" from Saul because Victoria was known to dislike Handel's music and was reported to have forbidden its use at her funeral.[19]

 
Victoria lying in state, panel from the Victoria Memorial, Kolkata

Lying-in-state and interment service

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After the funeral service in St George's Chapel, Queen Victoria's body lay in state there for two days, under a military guard, before joining that of Prince Albert in the nearby Royal Mausoleum at Frogmore at Windsor Great Park.[20]

 
The tomb of Victoria and Albert in the Frogmore Mausoleum

The interment at the Frogmore Mausolem took place on 4 February. The procession from St George's Chapel was accompanied by massed military bands playing funeral marches, but in the final part of the journey, pipers played a lament, the Black Watch Dead March. Arriving at the mausoleum, the choir of St George's sang Yea, though I walk from Sir Arthur Sullivan's oratorio, The Light of the World. This was followed by the funeral sentences by Wesley and Purcell that had been sung at the funeral, Lord have mercy by Thomas Tallis and Gounoud's Lord's Prayer. A hymn, Sleep thy last sleep, preceded the concluding prayers read by the Dean of Windsor, after which Sullivan's anthem, The face of death and Sir John Stainer's Sevenfold Amen concluded the service.[21]

A tomb effigy of Victoria had been sculpted by Baron Carlo Marochetti in 1861 as a companion piece to his marble effigy of Prince Albert. Victoria's sculpture was finally installed next to Albert's in the mausoleum later in 1901.[22]

Funeral guests

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The list below is from a report in The London Gazette.[23]

Immediate family

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Extended family

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Other foreign royalty

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Nobility

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See also

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Bibliography

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  • Range, Matthias (2016). British Royal and State Funerals. Boydell Press.

References

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  1. ^ Hibbert, pp. 464–466, 488–489; Strachey, p. 308; Waller, p. 442
  2. ^ Victoria's journal, 1 January 1901, quoted in Hibbert, p. 492; Longford, p. 559 and St Aubyn, p. 592
  3. ^ Her personal physician Sir James Reid, 1st Baronet, quoted in Hibbert, p. 492
  4. ^ Rappaport, Helen (2003), "Animals", Queen Victoria: A Biographical Companion, Abc-Clio, pp. 34–39, ISBN 978-1-85109-355-7
  5. ^ Longford, pp. 561–562; St Aubyn, p. 598
  6. ^ St Aubyn, p. 598
  7. ^ Longford, p. 563
  8. ^ a b Matthew, H. C. G.; Reynolds, K. D. (2004). "Victoria (1819–1901), queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and empress of India". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36652. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 20 September 2022. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  9. ^ Hibbert, p. 498
  10. ^ Matthew, H. C. G.; Reynolds, K. D. (2004). "Victoria (1819–1901), queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and empress of India". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/36652. ISBN 978-0-19-861412-8. Retrieved 20 September 2022. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
  11. ^ Hibbert, p. 497; Longford, p. 563
  12. ^ Rappaport, Helen (2003). Queen Victoria: a biographical companion. Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO.
  13. ^ Wyllie depicts a scene during the funeral of Queen Victoria. The royal yacht, HMY Alberta, carrying the Queen's body, arrives in Gosport in the late afternoon of 1 February 1901, with the setting sun behind her. The royal standard flies at half-mast, and surrounding the small vessel are several escorting destroyers. In the background the anchored battleships fire salutes. Following behind the Alberta is the larger royal yacht HMY Victoria and Albert, flying the royal standard and carrying King Edward VII and other royal mourners.
  14. ^ "Our cable Dispatches: Miscellaneous". The Royal Gazette. City of Hamilton, Pembroke Parish, Bermuda. 19 March 1901. p. 1. Portsmouth, March 16.—Amidst the firing of a royal salute of the assembled fleet, and hearty cheers from the concourse of people gathered at all points of vantage, the steamer Ophir with the Duke and Duchess of Cornwall and York on board started at about four four o'clock this afternoon on the voyage which is not to terminate until their Royal Highnesses shall have made a tour of the world. King Edward and Queen Alexandra on board the royal yacht Victoria and Albert, accompanied by eight torpedo boat destroyers escorted the Ophir a few miles out. Before the departure of the royal party, King Edward conferred the Victoria medal on the Blue Jackets of H.M.S. Excellent who dragged the funeral gun-carriage of Queen Victoria after the horses became unmanageable at Windsor railway station.
  15. ^ "Memorials and Monuments in Portsmouth - Field Gun Carriage". www.memorialsinportsmouth.co.uk. Archived from the original on 19 September 2022. Retrieved 5 June 2021.
  16. ^ Victorian Ladies 2/2 Princess Alice & Queen Victoria's Funeral, archived from the original on 5 June 2021, retrieved 5 June 2021
  17. ^ "The Funeral at Windsor of Queen Victoria. The Royal Windsor Website.com by ThamesWeb". Thamesweb.co.uk. Archived from the original on 18 October 2016. Retrieved 22 January 2017.
  18. ^ Range, Matthias (2016). British Royal and State Funerals: Music and Ceremonial since Elizabeth I. Woodbridge, Suffolk: Boydell Press. p. 268. ISBN 978-1783270927. Archived from the original on 4 August 2023. Retrieved 19 March 2023.
  19. ^ Range 2016, pp. 270-273
  20. ^ Longford, p. 565; St Aubyn, p. 600
  21. ^ Range 2016, pp. 275-276
  22. ^ Marsden, Jonathan (7 May 2014). "The Queen Victoria and Prince Albert Sculptures at Frogmore Mausoleum". victorianweb.org. The Victorian Web. Retrieved 12 November 2023.
  23. ^ "No. 27316". The London Gazette (Supplement). 22 May 1901.

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