On the 24th May 1819, their daughter was born, and she was named
Alexandrina Victoria, after the reigning Emperor of Russia and her mother.
The Prince Regent had wished the name of Georgiana; her own father wished
to call her Elizabeth. The little one was the first of the British royal
house to receive the benefits of Jenner's discovery of vaccination. The
Duke of Kent was so careful of his little girl that he took a cottage at
Sidmouth to escape the London winter. To a friend he wrote: 'My little
girl thrives under the influence of a Devonshire climate, and is, I am
delighted to say, strong and healthy; too healthy, I fear, in the opinion
of some members of my family, by whom she is regarded as an intruder.'
Next winter the Duke came in one day, after tramping through rain and
snow, and played with his little child while in his damp clothes; he thus
contracted a chill from which he never rallied, and died January 23, 1820.
This child was destined to be the Empress-Queen, on whose dominion the sun
never sets. Yet so remote did such a destiny then seem, owing to the
possibilities of the Regent's life, and of children being born to the Duke
of Clarence, that in some courtly biographies of George III. there is no
mention made of the birth of the little princess. Even in their accounts
of the death of her father the Duke of Kent, seven months afterwards, they
do not deem it necessary to state that he left a daughter behind him;
though he, poor man, had never had any doubts of her future importance,
and had been in the habit of saying to her attendants, 'Take care of her,
for she may be Queen of England.
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