Queen Adelaide to Queen Victoria.
LETTER FROM QUEEN ADELAIDE
Canford House, 31st October 1842.
My dearest Niece,—A thousand thanks for your very kind dear letter of yesterday with its enclosures, which I have just received. Your opinion respecting George of Hanover's98 marriage is quite my own, and I regret that the King does not seem to be inclined to settle it and fix a day for the celebration of it. I do not know his reasons against it, for I have not heard from him for a long, long time. I am so sorry to find that the accounts of his health are so indifferent, and fear he is not careful enough.
I am happy to hear that you thought the Cambridge visit went off well, and that the affianced99 looked and seemed happy. I hope it will always be the same, and that the marriage will not be delayed too long. I always had imagined that the Duke of Cambridge was rich and would give a fortune to his daughters, but I have lately heard that it is not the case. I do not know what is the usual marriage portion of an English Princess given by the country. In Germany those portions are called die Prinzessin Teuer.
We received 25,000 Fl. each when we married, and 10,000 Fl. for our trousseaux each.
If the young couple are to live in future with the Grand Duke they will not want any Plate, but if they are to have a separate ménage, then they will want it. I shall find it out by and by. I wonder that the Duchess likes to part with her fine sapphires. I thought the turquoises had been intended for Augusta.
I wish you could see the Convent to which I went the other day. The nuns belong to the Order of the Cistercian Trappists. They are not allowed to speak amongst themselves—what a relief my visit must have been to them!—and they neither eat meat, nor butter, nor eggs—nothing but milk, vegetables and rice. They look healthy, and there were several young rather pretty ones amongst them. One, the best-looking of them all, Sister Marie Josepha, took me affectionately by the hand and said, "I hope the air agrees with you here and that you feel better?" and then she added, "Come again—will you, before you leave this country again?" She told me that she was born in Ireland and had a German grandfather. She seemed to be the favourite amongst them all, for when I bought of their works and asked them to make up my bill, they called Marie Josepha to summon it up, and she said to me, "Do not stay for that; we will send you your things with the bill." Two hours after my visit to them I received my things, with a wreath of flowers besides as their gift to me; on the paper attached to it was written, "To the Queen-Dowager, from the Reverend Mother and her Community."
This old Reverend Mother, the Abbess, was very infirm, and could not get up from her chair, but she spoke very politely and ladylike to me in French. She has been forty years in her present situation, and comes from Bretagne. The chaplain of the Convent is also an old Frenchman, and there are several other French nuns amongst them—one who had been condemned to be guillotined in the Revolution, and was set at liberty just at the moment the execution was to have taken place. I should like to know whether these good nuns resumed again at once their silence when I left them, or whether they were permitted to talk over the events of that day.... Your most affectionately devoted Aunt,
Adelaide.