Buckingham Palace, 17th January 1840.
... Yesterday just as I came home from the House of Lords,3 I received your dear letter of the 10th. I cannot understand at all why you have received no letters from me, seeing that I always wrote twice a week, regularly....
I observe with horror that I have not formally invited your father; though that is a matter of course. My last letter will have set that right. I ought not to have written to you on picture notepaper, seeing that we are in deep mourning for my poor Aunt, the Landgravine,4 but it was quite impossible for me to write to you on mourning paper....
But this will not interfere with our marriage in the least; the mourning will be taken off for that day, and for two or three days after, and then put on again.
Everything went off exceedingly well yesterday. There was an immense multitude of people, and perhaps never, certainly not for a long time, have I been received so well; and what is remarkable, I was not nervous, and read the speech really well. The Tories began immediately afterwards to conduct themselves very badly and to plague us. But everyone praised you very much. Melbourne made a very fine speech about you and your ancestors. To-day I receive the Address of the House of Lords, and, perhaps, also that of the House of Commons.
Footnote 3: The Queen had opened Parliament in person, and announced her intended marriage.
Footnote 4: The Princess Elizabeth (born 1770), third daughter of George III. and widow of the Landgrave Frederick Joseph Louis of Hesse-Homburg. See p. [195.]
Queen Victoria to the Prince Albert.
TORIES, WHIGS, AND RADICALS
Buckingham Palace, 21st January 1840.