Page:The Letters Of Queen Victoria, vol. 3 (1908).djvu/44

30 I close this letter which, in consequence of various interruptions, is almost a week old, on the 24th of May. This is your birthday, ever dearest, most gracious Queen. On this day I lay at your Majesty’s feet the expression of my wishes for every blessing. May God grant your Majesty a joyful day, and a richly blessed year of rule. May He strengthen, preserve, and invigorate your precious health, and may He give you, within the three hundred and sixty-five days of the year of your life which begins to-day, that one day of overabundant blessing, of unspeakable joy, for which I long, for which I pray to God—that blissful day on which you can utter the word

Now I beg your Majesty from the bottom of my heart not to be angry with me for my unconscionably long letter, nor to worry yourself about sending an answer, but, on the other hand, graciously to keep it secret, communicating it only to the dear Prince. It is a matter of course that the facts which it contains, and the resulting explanations, which may be of importance for your Majesty’s Government, must, from their nature, no longer be kept secret, so soon as you think it right to announce them. I embrace the dear Prince tenderly, and commend myself to the grace, goodwill, and friendship of my august Royal Sister, I being your Majesty’s most faithfully devoted, most attached Servant and Good Brother,

OSBORNE, 29th May 1854. The Queen acknowledges the receipt of the Duke of Newcastle’s letter, which she received quite early this morning.

The Duke of Cambridge’s letter does not give a flourishing account of the state of Turkey. What alarms the Queen most is the news given by the Duke of Newcastle of the pretensions of Marshal St Arnaud. She does not quite understand whether he has received the supreme command over the Turkish Army, but at any rate if the Porte should be willing to allow its Army to be placed under Foreign Command, a portion of it ought to be claimed by us for Lord Raglan, which, joined to his English forces, would produce an Army capable of taking the field independently.