Last Rites

Throughout the week an unpretentious oaken coffin lay in the small chancel of Sandringham Church, where the Dowager Queen Alexandra had so often worshiped before her death (TIME, Nov. 30). As the days passed, thousands of mourners arrived in motor cars and on foot, giving silent testimony to how completely the onetime Princess Alexandra of Denmark had won the hearts of her English subjects. Meanwhile a light and powdery snow sifted down upon the Sandringham estates, famed country retreat of Edward VII and Alexandra. At length the same gun carriage which had served King Edward on his last earthly journey rumbled ominously to Sandringham Church and awaited the termination of the preliminary service.

King George, the Crown Prince Olaf of Norway,* the Prince of Wales, the Duke of York and Prince Henry were present, together with Queen Mary, Queen Maud of Norway,/- the Princess Victoria,/- Princess Marie of Greece and a few other royal notables.

When the short service within the church was concluded, ten tall Coldstream Guardsmen bore the coffin on their shoulders to the gun carriage; and it was drawn at a walking pace to Wolferton Station, two miles away, where a funeral train waited to carry it to London.

Throughout the entire distance, a single artillery officer on horseback led the procession. King George, with his sons and Prince Olaf, followed the gun carriage on foot, clad in long black overcoats and tall silk hats; while the ladies of the royal party, heavily veiled, rode in three two-horse closed carriages. The rear guard of the procession was brought up by the 77-year-old Earl of Leicester, Lord Lieutenant of Norfolk, who walked at the head of practically the entire personnel of the Queen Mother's Sandringham estates.

A locomotive draped in black drew the funeral train to London and, as it was desired to avoid the assembly of large crowds until the state funeral next day, the very station at which the train would arrive was kept secret up to the last moment. Eventually the locomotive thundered into King's Cross, and although all haste was made in transferring the coffin to the Royal Chapel of St. James's Palace, where the body was to rest over night, a crowd of some 1,500 persons gathered before the auto-hearse before the royal motors could be got under way.

Next morning the state funeral procession brought the body to Westminster Abbey, amid the booming of minute guns and the strains of Handel's dead march from "Saul," which changed to Chopin's funeral march as the Abbey was reached. The coffin was again borne on the gun carriage, draped with the Queen Mother's royal standard. But this time detachments of the Royal Air Force, the Life Guards, the Horse Guards and the Royal Marines took the place of the lone cavalry officer of the. day before.

The King, in the uniform of a Field Marshal, followed the bier, accompanied by the Prince of Wales in the uniform of the Welsh Guards. Immediately behind them, in line abreast, walked the Kings of Denmark, Norway, Belgium.

Within the Abbey, the Queens of England, Norway and Spain were waiting together with an innumerable assembly of the nobility of Europe, and such English civil dignitaries as Premier Baldwin and his Cabinet. The U. S. Ambassador and Mrs. Houghton were present amid a brilliant assembly of the various diplomatic corps.

The Archbishop of Canterbury, assisted by the Dean of Westminster, read the Anglican funeral service, intoning majestically: "O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?"

High upon a magnificent catafalque, surrounded by six tall candles, the coffin was eventually left for another night. As it lay in public state, nearly 100,000 Britons are estimated to have filed sorrowingly through the Abbey.

In the early dawn, the body was conveyed as privately as possible to Windsor; and there, in the Albert Memorial Chapel, the last and strictly private rites were performed in the presence of only the British royal family and the Kings of Norway and Denmark, the Queen of Norway, Prince George of Greece and the Princess, and Prince Olaf of Norway.

At length the earthly remains of Alexandra were placed beside those of King Edward, in the crypt of the Chapel. There the imperial pair will await the completion of a great sarcophagus now being built for them.

*Alexandra's grandson, officially representing the Norwegian and Danish royal houses.

/-Daughter of Alexandra,