 Queen Victoria's funeral procession | |
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| Participants | British royal family and members of various other royal houses |
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Victoria,Queen of theUnited Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland andEmpress ofIndia, died on 22 January 1901 atOsborne House on theIsle of Wight, at the age of 81. At the time of her death, she was thelongest-reigning monarch in British history. Herstate funeral took place on 2 February 1901. It was one of the largest gatherings ofEuropean royalty.
On 25 January, her body was lifted into the coffin by her sonsEdward VII andPrince Arthur, Duke of Connaught, and her grandson theGerman EmperorWilhelm 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 husbandAlbert, who had died 40 years earlier, was placed by her side, along with a plaster cast of his hand, while a lock ofJohn 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]
The state funeral of Queen Victoria took place on Saturday, 2 February 1901, inSt 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 featurewhite 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 parten masse. Her pallbearers were equerries rather than dukes (as had previously been customary), and for the first time, agun 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 atOsborne House on theIsle of Wight, her body was conveyed by boat and train toVictoria Station, then by gun carriage toPaddington Station and then by train to Windsor for the funeral service itself.
The rare sight of a state funeral cortège travelling by ship provided a striking spectacle: Victoria's body was carried on boardHMYAlberta fromCowes toGosport, 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. Eight bay horses of theRoyal Horse Artillery were brought in fromAldershot to draw thefuneral gun carriage at Osborne and at Windsor; but for the procession through London eight cream horses from the Royal Mews were used (the same eight as had drawn the late Queen's carriage at herdiamond jubilee).[14]
At Windsor, when the royal coffin was loaded on the gun carriage for the procession and the artillery horses took the weight,Princess Alice, Countess of Athlone, Victoria's granddaughter, said the day was very cold and "nothing in the world would make them start". An attendant Royal Guard fromHMSExcellent was soon ordered to haul the gun carriage instead,[15] using the horses' harness and thecommunication cord from the train.[14] Using sailors to pull the gun carriage on the day of the funeral subsequently became state funeral tradition.[16] She further observed that theRoyal Artillery, responsible for the horses and the gun carriage, were "furious" and "humiliated" by the incident.[17]
Victoria's children had married into the great royal families of Europe, and a number of foreign monarchs were in attendance, includingWilhelm II of Germany as well as the heir-presumptive to theAustro-Hungarian throneArchduke Franz Ferdinand.[18]
The service, on the afternoon of Saturday 2 February at St George's Chapel, followed the liturgy of the Burial Service in theBook 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 theDean of Windsor and theLord Chamberlain, with the active participation of theArchbishops of Canterbury andYork.[19] The music started with the first of thefuneral sentences byWilliam Croft, andPsalm 15 to a setting byWilliam Felton. After thelesson came further funeral sentences sung asanthems;Man that is born bySamuel Sebastian Wesley andThou knowest Lord byHenry Purcell. TheLord's Prayer in Latin byCharles Gounod, and the anthemHow blest are they byPyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky followed. After theGarter Principal King of Arms had proclaimed the Queen'sstyles and titles, the anthemBlest are the departed byLouis Spohr was reportedly followed by theDresden 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, afuneral march attributed toLudwig van Beethoven but actually byJohann Heinrich Walch was played instead of the traditional"Dead March" fromSaul because Victoria was known to dislikeHandel's music and was reported to have forbidden its use at her funeral.[20]
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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 nearbyRoyal Mausoleum at Frogmore inWindsor Great Park.[21]
Theinterment 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 alament, theBlack Watch Dead March. Arriving at the mausoleum, the choir of St George's sangYea, though I walk from SirArthur 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 byThomas 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 SirJohn Stainer'sSevenfold Amen concluded the service.[22]
Atomb effigy of Victoria had been sculpted by BaronCarlo 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.[23]
The list below is from a report inThe London Gazette.[24]
Princess andPrince Charles of Denmark (later Haakon VII),the late Queen's granddaughter and grandson-in-law
TheDuchess of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Duchess of Edinburgh),the late Queen's daughter-in-law
TheCrown Prince of Romania (later Ferdinand I),the late Queen's grandson-in-law (representing theKing of the Romanians)Princess Beatrice of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,the late Queen's granddaughter TheDuke of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (Duke of Albany),the late Queen's grandson
TheGerman Emperor,the late Queen's grandson TheGerman Crown Prince,the late Queen's great-grandson
TheHereditary Prince of Saxe-Meiningen,the late Queen's grandson-in-law (representing theDuke of Saxe-Meiningen)
Prince Henry of Prussia,the late Queen's grandson
Princess andPrince Adolf of Schaumburg-Lippe,the late Queen's granddaughter and grandson-in-law (representing thePrince of Schaumburg-Lippe)
TheDuke of Sparta,the late Queen's grandson-in-law
TheGrand Duke of Hesse and by Rhine,the late Queen's grandsonOther descendants of the late Queen's paternal grandfather,King George III and their families:
Duke Adolphus Frederick of Mecklenburg-Strelitz,the late Queen's first cousin twice removed (representing theGrand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz)
TheKing of the Belgians,the late Queen's first cousinPrince Philipp of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,the late Queen's first cousin once removedPrince Leopold Clement of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha,the late Queen's double first cousin twice removed
TheKing of Portugal,the late Queen's first cousin twice removed
TheDuke of Saxony,the late Queen's first cousin twice removed (representing theKing of Saxony)
Duke Robert of Württemberg,the late Queen's first cousin twice removed (representing theKing of Württemberg) TheKing of the Hellenes TheCrown Prince of Denmark (representing theKing of Denmark)
TheCrown Prince of Sweden and Norway (representing theKing of Sweden and Norway)
Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria (representing theAustrian Emperor)
Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia (representing theRussian Emperor)
TheDuke of Aosta (representing theKing of Italy)
TheCrown Prince of Siam (representing theKing of Siam)
TheHereditary Grand Duke of Baden (representing theGrand Duke of Baden)
Prince Arnulf of Bavaria (representing thePrince Regent of Bavaria)
Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar (representing theGrand Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach)
ThePrince of Waldeck and Pyrmont
Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik (representing theKhedive of Egypt and Sudan)
Prince Ernst of Saxe-Altenburg (representing theDuke of Saxe-Altenburg)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.