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Through copious family correspondence, this moving archive underscores the societal expectations and rules surrounding grieving in the Victorian upper class. Outpourings of shock and sorrow, accompanied by discussion of arrangements for Pitt-Rivers's burial and a memorial, contrast with a large body of material, also included here, chronicling her courtship and her joyful preparations for married life. Pitt-Rivers (1841-1865, hereafter "APR") was born in Brighton to George, 4th Baron Rivers, and Susan Leveson-Gower. Following a courtship of several months, she married Captain, later Major-General, William Arbuthnot (1838-1893, hereafter "WA") on 26 April 1865. On 21 June, while honeymooning in Switzerland, they went out walking on the Schilthorn peak. As WA reported to Earl Granville, APR's uncle, a day after the event, "I saw Alice was tired so made her sit down, wrapped her up, and left her to rest comfortably … We had gone few minutes when storm suddenly burst on us. We hurried back. Alice was struck dead by lightning. Five minutes before she was so well." Covered in British newspapers, the tragedy shocked the family's social circle and is remembered today by a memorial near to the spot where she died. Central to this collection are many letters, written in the difficult succeeding months, from WA to his parents and Lord and Lady Rivers, for whom losing their daughter far away from home, when four of her siblings had already died young, was especially painful. WA likely felt unspoken pressure to show that he had not failed in his duty of protection. In one letter, dated four days after APR's passing, he sends Lord Rivers a handwritten account by the guide who accompanied them on the alp, the recipient no doubt desperate for details and WA keen to reinforce the tragedy's accidental nature. Once coverage appeared in newspapers, WA was again at pains to reassure Lord & Lady Rivers that their daughter's death could not have been avoided: "I feel it very trying to have this subject brought before the public again … I do not wish you to suppose that he [their guide during the walk] in any way [these three words underlined] advised us to return" (25 September 1865). The pressure was perhaps self-imposed, for the letters show, that during the summer of 1865, Lady Rivers formed a close bond with her new son, affectionately addressed as "my dear Willy", helping him through a period when he had to mourn privately, arrange APR's burial at the Montbijou cemetery in Berne and, once back in Britain, take care of other rituals of public mourning. Their letters discuss plans for the installation of a memorial cross and window in the church near Rushmore, the Pitt-Rivers estate in Wiltshire. Also included are receipts and expense reports from the Berne architect Henry Hirschgartner for the design and construction of a memorial, as well as photographs and a stencilled plan of the tablet that he eventually installed in 1866. In a cruel twist of fate, Lord & Lady Rivers did not live to see the memorial completed, both dying in April 1866. WA's last letter to Lord Rivers, reporting from the Continent on progress at the cemetery, is dated a day before the peer passed away. The second half of the archive, pre-dating 21 June 1865, sharpens the sense that APR's life was cruelly cut short. Her relationship with WA began to bloom in January 1865, one surviving letter from WA to Lord Rivers asking his permission to court his daughter and inviting him to make necessary character enquiries. Pleasingly, the collection includes the flurry of messages that passed between Rushmore and WA's military camp at Aldershot, APR becoming "my darling Alice" and WA "my old man." APR's last letter to her betrothed before their marriage speaks of her "great happiness" and her longing to see him, while he speaks of the "long and happy future" to which they can look forward. Later in life, it was WA's solemn wish that these last letters "be burnt unread." On their engagem.
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