Queen Victoria | Autograph letter signed, on the death of Prince Albert, to Lady Lyttelton, 1862

Queen Victoria

Autograph letter signed ("VR"), to Lady Sarah Lyttelton

written a month after the death of the Prince Consort, to Sarah, Lady Lyttelton, formerly the governess of her children, to whom she is sending a brooch containing a photograph of "my own dearly beloved darling", 15 pages, 4to, Osborne, 29 January 1862, mounted on black mourning card, autograph envelope addressed to Lady Lyttelton at 12 Stratton Street, Piccadilly

"...Dearest Lady Lyttelton! you knew—you saw what the world knew and saw—but you knew and saw far more than others could and did! And you will believe it, when I tell you that my heart is utterly and completely broken...I feel as if my real life and existence had ended with that dreadful day when He left me—and since I seem to be living on without object or pleasure—and as if the whole of that time had been wiped out...I do whatever I am told for my health,—but no Physician can avail where the heart is broken...".

She describes the Prince's illness ("...this dreadful fever was caught some where, we suspect in London"...), his last hours ("...till the day before, everything was going on most favourably, and it was only an hour and 1/2 before that blessed heavenly spirit fled..."), his readiness for death ("...he said that he was sure if he had a dangerous illness, he should make no struggle. I shuddered at the thought, for I prayed never to survive Him—my all and all—the Life of my Life—without whom really had and have no life—but so it proved...") and expresses her conviction that she will not long survive him ("...I feel I shall not be long here—tho' I will work unto the end to be fit to join him...").

PROVENANCE:

Sarah Lyttelton, Baroness Lyttelton (1787-1870); thence by descent; sale, Sotheby's London, The Lyttelton Papers: The Property of the Viscount Cobham, 12 December 1978, lot 180