But the end of the year brought a more bitter sorrow to the Queen than the death of George V. The Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, died in extremely touching circumstances. She had spent the summer months with her children at Eastbourne, where she had endeared herself to the people by her sweetness of disposition, and by the personal interest she manifested in the poor of the town. She was usually to be seen visiting the cottages of the sick in the fishing quarter. She had taken a keen interest in studying the management of certain charitable institutions, evidently with a view to making use of her knowledge when she returned to Darmstadt, and a charming visit to Osborne completed a holiday that was for her full of happiness. Her life was uneventful at Darmstadt till the 8th of November, when her daughter, the Princess Victoria, was smitten with diphtheria. The Grand Duchess was herself a skilled and scientifically-trained nurse, and she tended her child personally. She was the first to detect the appearance of the diphtheritic membrane in the little Princess’s throat, and she promptly attacked it with inhalations of chlorate of potash. In spite of careful isolation, the whole family, including the Grand Duke, with the exception of the Princess Elizabeth, caught the disease, and it need hardly be said that the strength of the Grand Duchess soon began to give way under the strain of mental anxiety and bodily fatigue. The Princess May died, but on the 25th of November the Grand Duke recovered. On the 7th of December the Grand Duchess went to the railway station to see the Duchess of Edinburgh, and next day she too was prostrate with diphtheria. Lord Beaconsfield, in his speech of condolence in the House of Lords on the 16th of December, described her, with ornate rhetoric, as receiving “the kiss of death” from one of her children, and he recommended the tragic incident as fit to be commemorated by the painter, the sculptor, or the artist in gems. There was no foundation for this histrionic flight. Nobody knew how the Princess caught the contagion, but her biographer states “it is supposed that she must have taken the infection when one day, in her grief and despair, she had laid her head on her sick husband’s pillow.”[137] Her sufferings were severe and protracted, and on the 13th of December it was seen that she must die. Still she lingered on. In the afternoon she welcomed her husband with great joy. She saw her lady-in-waiting, and even read two letters, the last one being from the Queen, her mother. Then she fell asleep and never woke again. At half-past eight on the morning of the 14th, the anniversary of her father’s death, she passed away, quietly murmuring to herself these words: “From Friday to Saturday, four weeks--May--dear papa!” All through her life she had worshipped her father’s memory with passionate devotion, and in death his name was the last on her lips.