Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 1 — John Shaqi
Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 1Tytler, Sarah
History
Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen — Volume 1
Tytler, Sarah
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901
A dim recollection of the Duchess and the Princess is still preserved at
Malvern--how pleasant and kind they were to all, how good to the poor; how
the future Queen rode on a donkey like any other young girl at
Malvern--like poor Marie Antoinette in the forest glades of Compiegne and
Fontainebleau half a century earlier, when she was only four years older,
although already Dauphiness of France. The shadowy records do not tell us
much more; we are left to form our own conclusions whether the Queen
anticipated her later ascents of Scotch and Swiss mountains by juvenile
scrambles amongst the Worcester hills; whether she stood on the top of the
Worcester or Hereford Beacon; or whether these were considered too
dangerous and masculine exploits for a princess of tender years, growing up
to inherit a throne? She could hardly fail to enter the Wytche, the strange
natural gap between Worcestershire and Herefordshire, by which, at one
step, the wayfarer leaves wooded England behind, and stands face to face
with a pastoral corner of Wales; or to drive along the mile-long common of
Barnard's Green, with the geese, and the hay-stacks, and the little
cottages on either side, and always in front the steep ridge of hills with
the grey Priory where Piers Plowman saw his vision, nestling at their feet;
or to pull the heather and the wild strawberries in Cowleigh Park, from
which every vestige of its great house has departed. She might have been a
privileged visitor at Madresfield, where some say Charles II. slept the
night before the battle of Worcester, and where there is a relic that would
better become Kensington, in a quilt which Queen Anne and Duchess Sarah
embroidered together in silks in the days of their fast friendship.
As it was part of the Princess's good education to be enlightened, as far
as possible, with regard to the how and why of arts and manufactures, we
make no question she was carried to Worcester, not only to see the
cathedral, but to have the potteries exhibited to her. There was a great
deal for the ingenuous mind of a royal pupil to see, learn, and enjoy in
Worcester and Warwickshire--for she was also at Guy's Cliff and Kenilworth.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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