The Passing of "Carmen Sylva": The Poet-Queen's Funeral
The funeral of the late Queen-Dowager of Roumania, Queen Elizabeth
(famous under her literary pseudonym as "Carmen Sylva") took place
at Bucharest, the capital. After a service in the Throne Room at the
Palace, the coffin was carried out by Roumanian Generals and placed
on a funeral-car drawn by six horses. At this moment a salute of 75
guns was fired, and the bells of all the churches in Roumania began
to toll. The cortege then went in procession to the station, the
King and his two sons—Prince Carol and Prince Nicholas—walking
behind the funeral-car, and the Premier, with the Presidents of the
Senate, the Chamber, and the Court of Cassation, who acted as
pall-bearers, walking beside it. The crowded streets were lined with
troops. Two trains conveyed the coffin and the mourners to Curtea de
Argesh, where the cortege was reformed in the same order and
proceeded to the monastery. There a service was held and the coffin
was lowered into the crypt of the cathedral, whereupon salutes were
fired, and the bells were tolled in all the churches. At the wish of
the late Queen, the remains of her only child, Princess Marie, who
died at the age of three and a half, in 1875, had been exhumed and
were placed in a tomb close to those of her mother and father. The
casquet containing the child's ashes is seen on the funeral-car in
Photograph 4. |