CHAPTER XI
1842
Queen Adelaide to Queen Victoria.
Sudbury Hall, 4th January 1842.
My dear Niece,—Most grateful for your very amiable kind letter full of good wishes for me, I hasten to answer it and to assure you that I deeply feel all your affectionate kindness to me in wishing my life to be prolonged. From ill-health I have become such a useless member of your family, that I must wonder you have not long been tired of me. I wish I was more able to be of any use to you which you might like to make of me. My services would be most faithful, I can assure you. Should my life be spared, there may perhaps yet be a time when I can prove to you, that what I say is not merely a façon de parler, but my sincere wish.
Your domestic happiness, dearest Victoria, gives me great satisfaction whenever I think of it, and that is very often. God continue it so, uninterrupted, is my daily prayer.
Your approbation of my little offering to my dear godchild gives me much pleasure. It occupied me several days during my illness to make the drawing, weak as I then was, and it was a pleasant occupation.
We have frost again, with a clear blue sky, which is much better for me than the damp close weather of last week, which oppressed me so much. I breathe again, and my spirits get their usual tone, which they had lost, but I still cough a great deal, which is very fatiguing.
Will you kiss your darlings in my name and bless them, and pray believe me ever, my dear Niece, your most affectionately devoted Aunt,