Till Count Vitzthum’s “Reminiscences” appeared, little that was authentic had been published as to the personal history of the Queen during the first days of her widowhood. “Just as the Queen had failed,” writes Count Vitzthum, who obtained his information from the Duke of Cambridge, “to recognise the danger till the last moment, so also she appears not to have realised, for the first few days after all was over, the full extent of her loss. Her composure was almost unnatural, and it was not till her return to Osborne that she awoke to the full consciousness of this unexpected blow. ‘Her Majesty is unnaturally quiet,’ was the remark of an eye-witness two days after the event.” The Duchess of Cambridge was the first member of the Royal Family who ventured to write to the Queen. She described the answer of the Princess Alice as “heartrending.” Her Majesty sat all day in dumb despair, staring vacantly round her, and it was only with the utmost difficulty that the Royal sign manual could be obtained for the most urgent business. The wise, strong affection and the capable energy of the Princess Alice, however, spared her Majesty from many anxieties at the moment when her grief was keenest. Lord Granville was the first Minister she was able to see, and she transacted some business with him a few days after the Prince’s death. Sir Charles Phipps, too, strove hard to lighten the burden of sovereignty for his Royal mistress in the darkest hours of her life; but his efforts, though well meant, gave rise to misunderstandings. “I hear,” writes Lord Malmesbury in his Diary, on the 28th of December, “that Ministers have signed a memorial to the Queen refusing to transact business with her through Sir C. Phipps.” From a constitutional point of view Palmerston and his colleagues were right in taking this course. Whether it was generous, or even wise, to annoy the Queen at such a moment with their cruelly conscientious pedantry is not a question that admits of much argument.[113] Her Majesty was able to hold her first Privy Council, after the Prince’s death, on the 11th of January, the Duke of Newcastle, Lord Granville, and Sir George Grey being in attendance. The chief point under discussion was that of summoning Parliament.