518 Rig Jit Hon. Viscount Esher [March 5, 



influence over her people mainly rested. At this point, owing to his 

 Majesty the King's gracious permission to quote from her Journals, 

 the Queen has spoken and can speak for herself. I have known of 

 no better way to bring home to jou the deep underlying truth about 

 Queen Victoria than to quote her own words, at different and charac- 

 teristic periods of her life. 



The passages I have quoted were not intended when they were 

 written for any eye but hers. It was only many many years later, when 

 confronted with fabulous statements about herself and her family, 

 which had obtained credence, that she began to contemplate using 

 material accumulated over a long period of time, for the purpose of 

 giving a picture, that was truthful, of persons and events so absurdly 

 travestied. This change of sentiment about publicity influenced her 

 to print extracts from her Journals, and subsequently determined his 

 Majesty the King to allow the publication of her correspondence. 



From Dolls to Politics. 



When I spoke of the importance of atmosphere in history, and 

 the difficulty of creating it, I had, as I have said, already determined 

 not to make the attempt. ^ly intention was to give you pictures of 

 the Queen in her own words. We have had a glimpse of the Child 

 Princess in that " Palace in a Garden " which appealed so strongly 

 to the author of " Sybil," the hours passed in the schoolroom with 

 the Dean of Chester, or at a music-lesson, or washing her terrier 

 " Dash," with an occasional ride on her pony, accompanied by her 

 mother, and on Sundays making extracts of the sermon. 



There was the weekly letter from her uncle. King Leopold, to be 

 read, and perhaps a lecture to be heard in the presence of her Mother, 

 from Baron Stockmar. She played with her dolls. There were 

 hundreds of them, small dolls, most of which she dressed herself, and 

 ticketed with well-known names of illustrious persons whom she had 

 seen dining at Kensington Palace, or whom she had watched from 

 the Duchess of Kent's box at the Opera. All these dolls were care- 

 fully preserved and are alive to this day numbered and catalogued 

 in the young Princess's child hand. 



Then suddenly she was Queen. After her accession her life com- 

 pletely changed. To comparative isolation and greyness succeeded 

 a period of high tension and keen enjoyment. Rose, not grey, be- 

 came the prevailing colour. Her mind expanded at the touch of 

 this wonderful spring-time. A secluded maiden, whose only draught 

 at the fountain of life had been an evening at the theatre, was 

 suddenly translated from the schoolroom to the most exciting spheres 

 of politics and of regal state. Her companions were thenceforth 

 Ministers of State, her Ministers. 



She no longer dressed dolls, but presided at Councils. She, who 

 had never Avalked down the staircase at Kensington Palace unless 

 held by the hand, like a little child, rode twenty miles of a morning, 



