"Many, many thanks, dearest Victoria, for your kind letter of the 7th from dear Claremont. Oh I understand how you like being there. Claremont is a dear quiet place; to me also the recollection of the few pleasant days I spent during my youth. I always left Claremont with tears for Kensington Palace. When I look back upon those years, which ought to have been the happiest in my life, from fourteen to twenty, I cannot help pitying myself. Not to have enjoyed the pleasures of youth is nothing, but to have been deprived of all intercourse, and not one cheerful thought in that dismal existence of ours, was very hard. My only happy time was going or driving out with you and Lehzen; then I could speak and look as I liked. I escaped some years of imprisonment, which you, my poor darling sister, had to endure after I was married. But God Almighty has changed both our destinies most mercifully, and has made us _so_ happy in our homes--which is the only real happiness in this life; and those years of trial were, I am sure, very useful to us both, though certainly not pleasant. Thank God they are over!... I was much amused in your last letter at your tracing the _quickness_ of our tempers in the female line up to Grandmamma,[6] but I must own that you are _quite right_!" [Footnote 6: Augusta Caroline Sophia, Dowager-Duchess of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, a Princess of Reuss Ebersdorf (1757-1831).] But if there was little amusement, there was, on the other hand, great devotion; the Princess, as a child, had that peculiar combination of self-will and warm-heartedness which is apt to win for a child a special love from its elders. The Princess Feodore wrote to the Queen, in 1843-- "... Späth[7] wished _me_ to thank you for the coronation print, as she could not write to you or Albert _now_, she says! why, I don't see. There certainly never was such devotedness as hers, to all our family, although it sometimes shows itself rather foolishly--with you it always was a sort of idolatry, when she used to go upon her knees before you, when you were a child. She and poor old Louis did all they could to spoil you, if Lehzen had not prevented and scolded them nicely sometimes; it was quite amusing." [Footnote 7: Baroness Späth, Lady-in-Waiting to the Duchess of Kent.] [Pageheading: WILLIAM IV.] The Princess was brought up with exemplary simplicity at Kensington Palace, where her mother had a set of apartments. She was often at Claremont, which belonged to her uncle Leopold, King of the Belgians; holidays were spent at Ramsgate, Tunbridge Wells, Broadstairs, and elsewhere.