From Queen Victoria to the Princess Royal – Buckingham Palace, 2 March 1859
Your dear little letter of the 26th – delighted me but still more the quite unexpected delight and surprise of the one of the 28th written quite like your own dear self! It seems does it not – darling – like a sort of resurrection? You poor dear child, have suffered and gone through so much more than I ever did, that you will I fear be some time before you can dispel the recollection of it. But believe my words it will never be so again.1
How I envy Lord Raglan and Captain De Ros2 I cannot say! I wish I could go as their servant. It is very nice of you, dear, to try and console me by saying perhaps if I was there I could not talk to you as much as we should like; but that’s nonsense, dearest, because if we came now – we could talk as much as we liked, and if I had been with you all through – we would have seen enough of each other and I known everything so well, that we should not have required to talk. And I should certainly have been most severe as to your talking as I know better than any one, having had 9 (think of that, dear) how very bad and fatiguing it is for the nerves and head to talk much.
Why did you not put on a dress sooner? I always put mine on, as you must remember, some 3 days before I got up from the sofa. I fear if Baby is so lively already he will give you plenty to do hereafter. If you remember what Leopold was! I hope, dear, he won’t be like the ugliest and least pleasing of the whole family. Leopold was not an ugly little baby, only as he grew older he grew plainer, and so excessively quizzical; that is so vexatious.
I have not read Barchester Towers all through, but I am told it is not meant to be so ill-natured. But I didn’t like reading it aloud to Papa as there was not enough romance in it. The people I could not interest myself in.3
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