The first notable event of the new century was a sad one. In January 1901 it became known that the revered, beloved old Queen Victoria was failing in health, and on the twenty-second of that month she died. The nation was touched to the heart. People of mature age went about with tears in their eyes, saying, "Our poor old Queen! We shall never see her like on the throne of this country again!" On the gloomy January morning when the news of her death reached Heatherley many who had never before made any show of their loyalty mourned for the queen sincerely. Early in the day a poor working man, a fish hawker, came into the post office. "This is sad news about our queen," he said, and astonishingly, there were tears in his eyes. "What's Hecuba to him, or he to Hecuba, that he should weep for her?" asked Laura, as the door closed behind him, and then felt ashamed of her levity when she saw that Alma's big blue eyes were brimming over. For a day or two there were many such incidents, not always, not often tearful but always expressive of sincere personal sorrow. Faces were sad and voices grew tender as callers spoke of the nation's great loss and retold the many little stories current which illustrated the goodness of nature of her whom they spoke of as Victoria the Good, the Mother of her People.
Then the new king. When the war had begun there had been a queen on the throne; when it ended, as it must soon end, there would be a king. This perfectly natural circumstance, for at the outbreak of war the queen was of course a very old lady, had for many people an almost mystical significance. Kings had hitherto, to the vast majority of those then living in this country, been but names in history, part of the romance of past ages; and now to have a living king, and another Edward, on the throne was an exciting experience. And, all in good time, there would be a coronation. That was an event very few then living could remember, but upon which all could speculate.
But now, first of all, there was mourning for the queen to be contrived, for the whole nation went into mourning dress, probably for the last time in history. Women of means ordered new all-black outfits; those whose means did not permit this expense ransacked their wardrobes for something black to wear, a less vain quest than it would be now, since in those days mourning was worn for quite distant relatives and most women had by them relics of the last funeral they had attended. The very poor looked to their patrons for discarded black garments, or failing these, home-dyed their own clothes or sewed on to them bows of black crêpe. Only the gipsies, of whom there were many living on the heaths around Heatherley, were seen wearing bright colours. They were indeed more colourful than usual in their dress, for they reaped a rich harvest in cast-offs of the suddenly unfashionable red, blue and green shades which the original possessors decided it was no good keeping, as the styles would be hopelessly out of date before their new black was discarded.
For the first three months after the death of the queen only the attire of the gipsies provided a splash of colour in the gloom; then, as the days lengthened and brightened, black and white mixtures and soft tones of mauve and grey began to appear. Finally, women's dress that year went purple. Wine, plum, pansy, heather and lavender shades were in great demand. Traders sent their goods still in the piece and capable of taking such shades to the dye-vats, but a great stock of piece-goods, as well as made-up garments acquired before the general mourning, was left on their hands, and many of them went bankrupt. It was probably due to the representations of the traders, as well as to her own kind thoughtfulness, that when King Edward died, Queen Alexandra issued a communication asking the women of the nation not to go to the unnecessary expense of buying new mourning. A black tie or a black sleeveband for men and a black hat or scarf for women would, she said, be a sufficient outward sign of the sincere grief which she knew the loyal, affectionate hearts of his subjects felt for the loss of their beloved king.
The general public deferred to her wish; the more readily because, by the end of the first decade of the century, private and family mourning had become greatly modified. It was becoming rarer every year to see in the streets a man whose all-black suit, deep crêpe hatband and black kid gloves proclaimed a recent bereavement, or a woman enveloped in crêpe, from the deep band of that fabric on the bottom of her black skirt to the crêpe bows and crêpe flowers on her headgear. Black-bordered pocket-handkerchiefs were less in demand than they had been, and although black-bordered stationery was still in use the black border had narrowed considerably. Laura could remember the time when some mourning envelopes were so heavily bordered with black that only a square of white about the size of a visiting card was left in the middle for the address. Jet ornaments for mourning had also disappeared. Relatives of those whose death (with address) had been announced in the newspapers no longer received by post, from too-enterprising vendors, little boxes containing jet brooches and buckles and lockets and chains with the request that they would kindly choose what they required and remit the cost, plus postage. The only survival from the old-time deep mourning was the widow's bonnet, a close-fitting affair with a soft white ruche to frame the face and long crêpe streamers behind; and that, some unkind people said, only remained in favour because it was extra-ordinarily becoming to most women.
When Queen Victoria died the war was still in progress, and when in 1902 peace was declared, great regret was expressed that she had not lived to see that day. "It do seem hard she's not here to see the troops come home," said one of her humbler subjects, "'my troops' she used always to call 'em, always my troops, and she used to grieve over the casualty lists as if every one of the fallen had been her own child. Not that she was ever daunted, mind you; no, never not even when things were not going too well. 'I've got perfect confidence in my troops', she'd tell her ladies, and so she had bless her! If she'd been young and a man she'd have been out there herself at the head of 'em. Ah, she was a fine-spirited one, was our dear old queen!"
Stories were told of Queen Victoria and simple people continued to revere her memory right up to the outbreak of the world war in 1914. Then, after that great upheaval had subsided, her figure became obscured in the miasma of so-called Victorianism. Recently she has become to many of the younger generation the Queen Victoria of the film with that title. A few months ago Laura went into a small second-hand furniture shop to purchase a copy she had seen in the window of Nicholson's drawing of the Queen and found, in the course of conversation with the young girl who attended to her, that she had not recognised the subject of the picture. When told that it was Queen Victoria, she said, "Oh, is it?" then, after examining critically the aged figure which, with no outer trappings of royalty, was yet unmistakably royal, she said, "It's not a patch on what she was like in the film."