This is how the event was noticed in the “Memoirs” of Baron Stockmar: “A pretty little Princess, plump as a partridge, was born. The Duke of Kent was delighted with his child, and liked to show her constantly to his companions and intimate friends with the words: ‘Take care of her, for she will be Queen of England.’”
An interesting letter of the Duke of Kent’s, written a few weeks after to his chaplain, Dr. Thomas Prince, who had addressed a letter of congratulation to him while, at the same time, somewhat condoling with him that a daughter and not a son had been born to him, was published in the “Times” at the time of the Jubilee of 1897. In it the duke remarked: “As to the circumstance of that child not proving to be a son instead of a daughter, I feel it due to myself to declare that such sentiments are not in unison with my own; for I am decidedly of opinion that the decrees of Providence are at all times wisest and best.”
HE next reference we have found to the future Queen, is in a letter, written on 21st of July, 1820, when, consequently, Her Majesty was a little more than a year old, by Mr. Wilberforce, who mentions being received at Kensington Palace by the Duchess of Kent that morning. “She received me with her fine animated child on the floor, by her side, with its playthings, of which I soon became one.”
Most of the future Queen’s early years were passed at Kensington Palace in great privacy and retirement. She was often seen, however, in Kensington Gardens, her constant companion in her walks being Miss, afterwards Baroness Lehzen.
Leigh Hunt, referring to this period, mentions in his “Old Court Suburb,” having seen her “coming up a cross path from the Bayswater Gate, with a girl of her own age by her side”—probably the Princess Feodore, her beloved half-sister and constant companion of her girlhood—“whose hand she was holding, as if she loved her.... A magnificent footman in scarlet came behind her.”
The youthful Princess was sometimes driven in a goat or donkey carriage in the park and gardens, and, as she grew older, in a small phæton, drawn by two diminutive ponies. The following gives a little glimpse of our Queen at this early period of her life:
“A party consisting of several ladies, a young child, and two men servants, having in charge a donkey gaily caparisoned with blue ribbons, and accoutered for the use of the infant ... who skipped along between her mother and sister, the Princess Feodore, holding a hand of each.”