I have the honour to be, my Lord, your Lordship's ever grateful and faithful Servant,
Leigh Hunt.
Footnote 51: Hunt had founded The Examiner in 1808, and Albany Fonblanque (1793-1872) had succeeded him on it as leader writer.
Footnote 52: Leigh Hunt's play, A Legend of Florence, had had a great success at Covent Garden in 1840; in 1852 it was performed at Windsor by the Queen's command.
The Queen of the Belgians to Queen Victoria.
THE AFFLICTED FAMILY
Neuilly, 21st July 1842.
My beloved Victoria,—I was unable to thank you the other day for your kind and feeling letter of the 14th, although I was greatly touched by it, and I trust you will have excused me. I thank you to-day very sincerely for both your letters, and for the share and sympathy you and dear Albert take in our great misfortune. I know it is very heartfelt, and we are all very grateful for it. Victoire and my poor mother have already given you news from the unfortunate Hélène. She has sustained and outlived the first shock and shows wonderful courage. She is even well in health, and much better and stronger in all ways than I had expected. She takes very much upon herself on account of the poor children, to prevent that any melancholy or painful feeling should be connected for them with the remembrance of their beloved and unfortunate father. My parents show great fortitude and resignation, but their hearts are for ever broke. They are only sustained by their feeling of duty. My poor mother bears up for my father, and my father bears up to fulfil his duties of father and of king. Their health is, thank God! good, and my father retains all his strength of mind and quickness of judgment; but they are both grown old in looks, and their hairs are turned quite white.
The first days, my poor father could do nothing but sob, and it was really heartbreaking to see him. He begins now to have more command upon his grief, and the presence of your uncle, whom he dearly loves, seems to do him good. The poor children are well and merry and seem unconscious of their dreadful loss. From time to time only they jump round us as if looking for protection. The contrast of their gaiety with their horrid misfortune is very painful. Paris is looking remarkably well and strong. Robert53 is much grown, extremely quick and lively, and begins to speak. The remainder of the family is, as you may easily imagine, in the deepest affliction. Nemours especially is quite broken down with grief. Chartres was more than a brother to him, as he was more than a second father to us all. He was the head and the heart and soul of the whole family. We all looked up to him, and we found him on all occasions. A better, or even such a brother was never seen; our loss is as great as irreparable; but God's will be done! He had surely His motives in sending on my unfortunate parents the horrid affliction in their old days, and in removing from us the being who seemed the most necessary to the hope and happiness of all; we must submit to His decrees, hard as they are; but it is impossible not to regret that my poor brother has not at least found the death of a soldier, which he had always wished for, instead of such a useless, horrid, and miserable one! It seems, for no one saw him fall, that he did not jump, as we had thought at first, but that he was thrown from the barouche, while standing; and I like it in some measure better so, as God's will is still more manifest in this way. It is equally manifest in all the circumstances attending the catastrophe. My poor brother was not even to have come to Neuilly. He had taken leave of my parents the day before, and would not have gone again if my unfortunate mother had not asked him, and if my parents, who were to go to Paris, had not delayed their departure....
I thank you again and again, my beloved Victoria, for all your interest and sympathy. I was sure you would think of us and of me: you know how much I loved my brother. I little expected to outlive him, as I had done my beloved Mary;54 but once more, God's will be done. I remain now and ever, yours most devotedly,