COMMONWEALTH: Alexandra

(British Commonwealth of Nations)

Last week the great, mournful bell of St. Paul's pealed for the first time since the death of Edward VII; tolled for the Dowager Queen Alexandra, his royal consort, who died of a lingering heart trouble at Sandringham, their onetime summer home.

Early in the week Queen Alexandra's physicians announced that "Her Majesty, who for some time past has been failing in health, has suffered a severe heart attack"; and at once King George and Queen Mary hastened to her bedside, at Sandringham, in Norfolk. Already there were George's three sisters, Louise, the Princess Royal; the Princess Victoria; and Queen Maud of Norway. At London a special train waited, with steam up, ready at an instant's notice to speed the Prince of Wales and the Duke of York toward Sandringham, should their grandmother be declared upon the point of death.

Seldom has Edward of Wales been placed in a more difficult position. Although indisputably Alexandra's favorite grandson, he was expected, while she lay dying, to dine as the Lord Mayor's guest at a great Guildhall banquet, to which over 800 of his father's most distinguished subjects had been invited for the sole purpose of hearing the Prince discourse officially upon his Empire Tour (TIME, Oct. 23 et ante).

As the minutes ticked on, viands and floral decorations to the value of several thousand pounds were got ready at Guildhall; and the streets were cleared for a state procession which was to escort the Prince thither like a conqueror.

Suddenly an urgent message flashed from Sandringham. A powerful limousine darted from the Prince's residence to the railway station. Out over a cleared track roared the special train—too late! Four minutes before it reached Wolferton, the local station adjacent to Sandringham, the Queen Mother breathed her last.*

Queen Alexandra, although usually described as "the eldest daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark," was not, curiously enough, born of the blood royal. At the time of her birth, in 1844, her father was only "Prince Christian of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Gluücksburg," a younger son of a somewhat minor German house. Not until the death of King Frederick VII of Denmark, when the reigning house of Denmark became extinct, was Christian elected king of Denmark by popular vote, in 1863. Thus it chanced that Alexandra and her sister Dagmar spent their youth as impecunious though radiantly beautiful princesses, who made most of their own clothes and lived quietly with their mother, the former Princess Louise of Hesse-Cassel.