Farewell, dearest Albert, and think often of thy faithful
Victoria R.
Footnote 5: The Princess Victoire of Saxe-Coburg, cousin of Queen Victoria.
The King of the Belgians to Queen Victoria.
THE PRINCE'S GRANT
Brussels, 31st January 1840.
My dearest Victoria,—I am most grateful for your long letter of the 27th and 28th inst. I send a messenger to be able to answer quite confidentially. I must confess that I never saw anything so disgraceful than the discussion and vote in the Commons.6 The whole mode and way in which those who opposed the grant treated the question was so extremely vulgar and disrespectful, that I cannot comprehend the Tories. The men who uphold the dignity of the Crown to treat their Sovereign in such a manner, on such an occasion! Even in private life the most sour and saturnine people relax and grow gay and mildly disposed on occasions like this. Clearly, as you are Queen Regnant, Albert's position is to all intents and purposes that of a male Queen Consort, and the same privileges and charges ought to be attached to it which were attached to Queen Adelaide's position. The giving up the income which the Queen-Dowager came into, and which I hope and trust Albert would never have, or have had, any chance of having had himself, was in reality giving up a thing which custom had sanctioned. That Prince George of Denmark7 was considered to be in the same position as a Queen Consort there can be, I think, no doubt about, and when one considers the immense difference in the value of money then and now, it renders matters still more striking. I must say such conduct in Parliament I did not expect, and the less when I consider that your Civil List was rather curtailed than otherwise, perhaps not quite fairly. I rejoice to think that I induced Lord Melbourne to propose to you not to accede to the giving up of the Duchy of Lancaster. Parliament did not deserve it, and by good management I think something may be made of it.
Another thing which made me think that Parliament would have acted with more decency, is that I return to the country now near £40,000 a year, not because I thought my income too large, as worthy Sir Robert Peel said, but from motives of political delicacy, which at least might be acknowledged on such occasions. I was placed by my marriage treaty in the position of a Princess of Wales, which in reality it was, though not yet by law, there existing a possibility of a Prince of Wales as long as George IV. lived. I can only conclude by crying shame, shame!...