She
seemed 'awed, but not daunted.' Nor was the gentler womanly side of life
neglected. She wrote at once to the widowed Queen Adelaide, begging her,
in all her arrangements, to consult nothing but her own health and
convenience, and to remain at Windsor just as long as she pleased. And on
the superscription of that letter she refused to give her widowed aunt her
new style of 'Queen Dowager.' 'I am quite aware of Her Majesty's altered
position,' she said, 'but I will not be the first person to remind her of
it.' And on the evening of the king's funeral, a sick girl, daughter of an
old servant of the Duke of Kent, to whom the duchess and the princess had
been accustomed to show kindness, received from 'Queen Victoria,' a gift
of the Psalms of David, with a marker worked by the royal hands, and
placed in the forty-first psalm.
The first three weeks of her reign were spent at Kensington, and the Queen
took possession of Buckingham Palace on 13th July 1837. Mr Jeaffreson, in
describing her personal appearance, says: 'Studied at full face, she was
seen to have an ample brow, something higher, and receding less abruptly,
than the average brow of her princely kindred; a pair of noble blue eyes,
and a delicately curved upper lip, that was more attractive for being at
times slightly disdainful, and even petulant in its expression. No woman
was ever more fortunate than our young Queen in the purity and delicate
pinkiness of her glowing complexion.
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