She has
given us her views on religious training:
'I am quite clear that children should be taught to have great reverence
for God and for religion, but that they should have the feeling of
devotion and love which our Heavenly Father encourages His earthly
children to have for Him, and not one of fear and trembling; and that the
thoughts of death and an after-life should not be presented in an alarming
and forbidding view; and that they should be made to know, _as yet_, no
difference of creeds.'
Court gossips considered the Queen 'to be very fond of her children, but
severe in her manner, and a strict disciplinarian in her family.' A nurse
in the royal household informed Baron Bunsen that 'the children were kept
very plain indeed: it was quite poor living--only a bit of roast meat, and
perhaps a plain pudding.' Other servants have reported that the Queen
would have made 'an admirable poor man's wife.' We used to hear how the
young princesses had to smooth out and roll up their bonnet strings. By
these trifling side-lights we discern a vigorous, wholesome discipline,
striving to counteract the enervating influences of rank and power, and
their attendant flattery and self-indulgence. 'One of the main principles
observed in the education of the royal children was this--that though they
received the best training of body and mind to fit them for the high
position they would eventually have to fill, they should in no wise come
in contact with the actual court life.
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