Supporting Documents

SD2771.  Queen Victoria to Princess Victoria

As published in The Brownings’ Correspondence, 31, 321 (in part).

Windsor Castle,

June 24, 1865

Dearest child, though life is devoid of pleasure and is only one of duty and very irksome duty, I am ready to submit meekly, to go on bearing my heavy cross, which is very, very heavy. “Heart-bare—heart hungry, very poor” (to quote that beautiful poem “De Profundis” of Mrs. Browning which perhaps you do not know—as it is one of her very last and is very, very touching.)

Text: Your Dear Letter: Private Correspondence of Queen Victoria and the Crown Princess of Prussia, 1865–1871, ed. Roger Fulford (New York, 1971), pp. 31–32.

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