Queen Victoria died leaving the monarchy more firmly established than ever before and her family richer by millions of pounds. During her long reign the remarkable daughter of an unambitious Duke of Kent and an improvident German princess amassed a fortune of about £5,000,000 or, at the exchange rates of the day, about $25,000,000. The financial dealings of the royal house are secret. But both Albert, Victoria's Prince Consort, and his son Edward VII benefited from the advice of financiers. Reputedly the family owns large blocks of American railroad stock. The financial structure is complex, however. It is hard to say just how much Elizabeth owns as Queen and how much as an individual. As one of the greatest landowners, the Queen derives an income of about £94,600 or $265,000 a year from the Duchy of Lancaster. The royal family also receives the revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, which amount to about £90,000 or approximately $250,000 a year. This duchy, comprising about 133,000 acres spread throughout the west of England, includes farms, hotels, tin mines, even pubs. Seven palaces and eight royal houses also are the property of Elizabeth as Queen. One, Sandringham in Norfolk, an estate of 17,000 acres including fifteen well-kept farms, is a family holding. The Balmoral estate in Scotland comprises 80,000 acres. The family holds more than seventy-five choice bits of London real estate. Both fortune and property are carefully managed. Nothing is wasted. The game birds that fall to the guns of shooting parties at Sandringham and Balmoral are sold on the commercial market after the household's requirements have been met. The Crown is not only a prosperous and wealthy establishment. It is also the center of a unique complex of commercial interests. The manufacture of souvenirs connected with the royal family is big business. These souvenirs range from hideous, cheap glass ash trays and "silver" spoons stamped with a picture of Buckingham Palace or of the Queen and the Duke to "coronation" wineglasses and dinner services sold to wealthy tourists. A whole section of British publishing is devoted to postcards, picture books, and other records of royal lives and royal occasions. The Queen's world tour in 1953-4 produced a bumper crop of pictorial and prose reports to fit every purse and the prevailing taste for flowery adulation. These books were bought and read, or at least looked at, after the British public already had been exposed to newspaper accounts, magazine reports, radio bulletins, and television newsreels. Once at a dinner party the wife of a famous writer remarked: "I'm sick of this damned tour." The other guests broke into a flurry of conversation that had nothing to do with the royal voyage. Yet I learned that three of them felt "exactly as dear Betty does, but, my dear, you don't say it."