Royal family with Prince Albert's bust

A carte-de-visite portrait showing members of the Royal family grouped around a bust of the late Prince Consort, taken the day before the wedding of the Prince of Wales to Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The bride-to-be is holding a portrait of the late Prince Consort on her lap. History does not record what she thought of this act of memorial.

Queen Victoria, having decided that she could not bring herself to take part in the procession nor to discard her mourning for the day, watched the wedding ceremony from a high oak closet on the north side of the altar. That night she wrote in her journal 'Oh! what I suffered in the Chapel....It was indescribable. At one moment, when I first heard the flourish of trumpets, which brought back to my mind my whole life of twenty years at his dear side, safe, proud, secure, and happy, and I felt as I should faint. Only by a violent effort could I succeed in mastering my emotions!'

Photographed by John Mayall of London and published by A. Marion and Co.