1909] on The Letters of Queen Victoria. 508 



3 came Mr. Steward till 4. At 4 came Mad. Bourdiu till J past 4. 

 At 7 we dined. At 9 we went to the play to Drury Lane, with Jane, 

 Yictoire and Lehzen, as usual. \i was The Sleeping Beauty or La 

 Belle au Bois Dormant, for we came at the end of Don Juan. The 

 Sleeping Beauty is a very pretty ballet, in three acts, but it would 

 take me too much time to enumerate. The principal characters were, 

 Princess Iseult, Mdlle. Duvernay, wlio is a very nice person : she has 

 a very line figure and dances beautifully, so quietly and so gracefully, 

 somewhat in the style of Taglioni. She appeared in three different 

 dresses, but in my opinion she looked best when she danced in the 

 Dance of the NAIADES as the Spirit of the Princess. We came 

 home at 1. I was soon in bed and asleep." 



The writer was thirteen and a half years old. For five years this 

 daily record continues, and we have a simple and extraordinarily 

 graphic picture of a young girl, whose high destiny was but half 

 revealed to her, enjoying the theatre and fine music with passion, 

 galloping about on her pony, reading history with the Dean of Chester, 

 washing her pet dog, and making short abstracts of the sermon on 

 Sunday. 



Another Passage. 

 Here is another typical passage :— 



"Tuesday 14th July, 1835.— I awoke at 7 and got up at 8. At 

 9 we breakfasted. At h past 9 we walked out till a ^ past 10. At 

 11 came the Dean till 12. At 12 came Mr. Westall till 1. At 1 we 

 lunched. The Duchess of Northumberland was present at the first 

 lesson. At -i- past 2, I sat to Mr. Collen'till f past 3. At a ^ to 4 

 came the Dean till a \ past 4. At 5 we w^ent out with Lehzen and 

 came home at 6. At J to seven we dined. Lady Theresa dined here. 

 At 8 we went to the opera with Lady Theresa and Lehzen. It was 

 the dear Puritani. Grisi was in perfect voice and sang and acted 

 l}eautifully ; but I must say, that she shows her many fatigues in her 

 face, and she is certainly much thinner than when she arrived. It is 

 a great pity, too, that she now wears her front hair so mnch lower 

 than she did. It is no improvement to her appearance, though (do 

 what she may) spoil her face she never can, it is too lovely for that. 

 And besides, she forgot to change her dress when she came on to sing 

 the Polacca. In general she comes on to sing that as a bride, attired 

 in a white satin dress with a wreath of white roses round her head ; 

 instead of which, she remained in her first dress (likewise very pretty) 

 of blue satin with a little sort of handkerchief at the back of her 

 head. Lablache, Tamburini and Rubin i were also all 3 in high good 

 voice. The exquisite quartet ' A te o cara,' and the lovely Polacca 

 ' son vergin vezzosa,' were both enchored as was also the splendid duet 

 ' II rival.' After the opera was over, Grisi, Rubini, Lablache and 



YOL. XIX. (No. 103) 2 L 



