My dearest and most beloved Child,—I begged your Mother, in the meantime, to offer you my best thanks for your very pretty drawing representing the Provost of Bruges and his daughter5; I admired also that for your Aunt. They do your spirit of invention honour, and it is a very good plan to draw subjects from books or plays which interest you. You will feel the loss of a pleasant society in the old Palace, the more so as your relations are good unsophisticated people, a thing which one does not so often meet with. I suppose that part of your London amusements will soon be over. You were going to Windsor, which you will probably have left by this time. I hope you were very prudent; I cannot disguise from you, that though the inhabitants are good-natured people, still that I think you want all your natural caution with them. Never permit yourself to be induced to tell them any opinion or sentiment of yours which is beyond the sphere of common conversation and its ordinary topics. Bad use would be made of it against yourself, and you cannot in that subject be too much guarded. I know well the people we have to deal with. I am extremely impartial, but I shall also always be equally watchful.... God bless you! Ever, my dear child, your very devoted Uncle and Friend,
Leopold R.
Footnote 5: Leading characters in The Heiress of Bruges, by Grattan.
The Princess Victoria to the King of the Belgians.
9th August 1836.
My beloved Uncle,— ... I was sure you would be very much pleased with Ernest and Albert as soon as you knew them more; there cannot be two more good and sensible young men than they are. Pray, dear Uncle, say everything most kind from me to them.
We go to Buxted6 to-morrow morning, and stay there till next Monday.
All the gaieties are now over. We took leave of the Opera on Saturday, and a most brilliant conclusion to the season it was. Yesterday I took my farewell lesson with Lablache,7 which I was very sorry to do. I have had twenty-six lessons with him, and I look forward with pleasure to resume them again next spring.
Footnote 6: Lord Liverpool's house. Charles Cecil Cope Jenkinson, third Earl of Liverpool, was fifty-three years old at the time of the Queen's accession. He was a moderate Tory, and had held office as Under-Secretary for the Home Department in 1807, and in 1809 as Under-Secretary for War and the Colonies. He succeeded to the Earldom in 1828. The title, since revived, became extinct on his death in 1851. He was a friend of the Duchess of Kent, who often stayed with him at Buxted Park in Sussex, and at Pitchford in Shropshire. At three successive visits at the latter house the Princess occupied the same small room without a fireplace.
Footnote 7: Luigi Lablache (1794-1858), a famous opera-singer, was the Princess's singing-master.