The Princess Victoria to the King of the Belgians.
Ramsgate, 14th November 1836.
... What you say to me relative to Church matters I quite comprehend, and always am very thankful for advice from you.
I am reading away famously. I like Mrs. Hutchinson's Life of her husband13 only comme cela; she is so dreadfully violent. She and Clarendon are so totally opposite, that it is quite absurd, and I only believe the juste milieu....
Your speech interested me very much; it is very fine indeed; you wrote it yourself, did you not?
Belgium is indeed the happiest country in the world, and it is all, all owing to your great care and kindness. "Nous étions des enfans perdus," General Goblet14 said to me at Claremont, "quand le Roi est venu nous sauver." And so it is....
Pray, dear Uncle, say everything most kind from me to Ernest and Albert, and believe me, always, your affectionate Niece,
Victoria.
Pray, dear Uncle, is the report of the King of Naples' marriage to the Archduchess Theresa true? I hear the king has behaved uncommonly well at Naples during the cholera panic. I enclose the measure of my finger.
Footnote 13: The regicide, Colonel Hutchinson's, fame rests more on his wife's commemoration of him than on his own exploits. She was the daughter of Sir Allen Apsley, Lieutenant of the Tower of London, and highly educated. Between 1664 and 1671 she wrote the biography of her husband, first published in 1806. "The figure of Colonel Hutchinson," says J. R. Green, "stands out from his wife's canvas with the grace and tenderness of a portrait by Van Dyck."