Page:Life of Her Majesty Queen Victoria (IA lifeofhermajesty01fawc).pdf/137

 and gratitude are very great," &c. The Prince is only responsible for the sentiment, not for the italics; but why should it be necessary to write in this way of the birth of a daughter even in the dark backward and abysm of time of 1848? Mr. George Meredith writes of one of his heroines that she had never gone through the various nursery exercises in dissimulation, and "had no appearance of praying forgiveness of men for the original sin of being a woman." But here we have an even more perverted sentiment than that presented by a woman apologizing for being a woman; it is black ingratitude for one of the best gifts God gives to man when either father or mother begrudges a welcome to a new baby on account of its sex. The Queen, we gather, did not give little girls a grudging welcome to this world; on the birth of her first granddaughter, the Princess Charlotte of Prussia, in 1860, she wrote of the news that "Vicky had a daughter." "What joy! Children jumping about—every one delighted." The Prince, too, on this occasion wrote to the Princess Royal of her little daughter as "a kindly gift from heaven," and even says, "Little maidens are much prettier than boys. I advise her to model herself on her Aunt Beatrice."

The birth of Prince Arthur, in 1850, has been already mentioned. He was a magnificent child, and the Queen took all a mother's pride in his beauty and his rapid growth. When Lady Canning was in waiting she tells us of many private visits by the Queen to her in her room to talk about politics and to show the beauty of the latest new baby; and of Prince Arthur in particular she wrote on September 1st, 1850: "The children … are grown very nice and pretty. Prince Arthur is a magnificent child, and the Queen is quite enchanted to find he is bigger than the keeper's child at Balmoral of the same age, whose