Queen Victoria: Story of Her Life and Reign, 1819-1901Anonymous
History
Queen Victoria: Story of Her Life and Reign, 1819-1901
Anonymous
Victoria, Queen of Great Britain, 1819-1901
When Fräulein Lehzen died in 1870, her old pupil wrote of her as 'my
dearest, kindest friend, old Lehzen; she knew me from six months old, and
from my fifth to my eighteenth year devoted all her care and energies to
me, with the most wonderful abnegation of self, never even taking one
day's holiday. I adored, although I was greatly in awe of her. She really
seemed to have no thought but for me.' And the future queen profited by it
all, for it has been truly said that, 'had she not been the Queen of
England, her acquirements and accomplishments would have given her a high
standing in society.'
Dr Davys, the future Bishop of Peterborough, was her instructor in Latin,
history, mathematics, and theology, and the Dowager Duchess of
Northumberland had also, after her own mother, a considerable share in her
training.
The Duchess of Kent took her daughter to visit many of the chief cities,
cathedrals, and other places of interest in the British Isles. Her first
public act was to present the colours to a regiment of foot at Plymouth.
An American writer has recorded that he saw the widowed lady and her
little girl in the churchyard of Brading, in the Isle of Wight. They were
seated near the grave of the heroine of a 'short and simple annal of the
poor'--the _Dairyman's Daughter_, whose story, as told by the Rev. Legh
Richmond, had a great popularity at the time. The duchess was reading from
a volume she carried (probably that one), and the little princess's soft
eyes were tearful.
The princess, it appears, was much devoted to dolls, and played with them
until she was nearly fourteen years old. Her favourites were small wooden
dolls which she would occupy herself in dressing; and she had a house in
which they could be placed. As she had no girl companions, many an hour
was solaced in this manner. She dressed these dolls from some costumes she
saw in the theatre or in private life. A list of her dolls was kept in a
copy-book, the name of each, and by whom it was dressed, and the character
it represented, being given. The dolls seem to have been packed away about
1833. Of the 132 dolls preserved, thirty-two were dressed by the princess.
They range from three to nine inches in height. The sewing and adornment
of the rich coloured silks and satins show great deftness of finger.
Her wise mother withheld her from the pomp and circumstance of the court.
She was not even allowed to be present at the coronation of her uncle, the
Duke of Clarence, when he ascended the throne as William IV. He could not
understand such reticence, was annoyed by it, and expressed his annoyance
angrily. But his consort, good Queen Adelaide, was always kind and
considerate: even when she lost all her own little ones, she could be
generous enough to say to the Duchess of Kent, 'My children are dead, but
yours lives, and she is mine too.'
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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