ADELAIDE (of Saxe-Meiningen, 1792-1849, Queen of William IV, Adelaide, Australia is named after her)

Charming Autograph Letter Signed 'Adélaide', as the recently widowed Queen Dowager to "My dearest Mary" sending her best wishes for her birthday and hoping she has many more in better health than she has been having, hoping that her next year will be "a happy one after all the misery of the last ... I hope I shall hear a good account of yourself that you feel better and stronger and are able to go out again. I am also very anxious about our dear Emily Winchilsea and beg to tell me your opinion of her State. Adolphus has been paying me a visit & has just left us again to return to town. He looks much better than when I last saw him but has not recovered his spirits yet, which I cannot wonder at. It is difficult after such losses as we have sustained & such scenes as we have gone through to regain composure even, & much less one's usual spirits, yet it is not impossible, when one seeks for consolation & support from the only source where it can be obtained. There it never fails. I am going on pretty well, but I feel my aches very much & have been suffering much from Rheumatic pains ... I take as much exercise in the open Air as the weather will allow & feel always benefitted by the Air which agrees here better with me than that of Brighton ..." she ends with the hope that Augusta has recovered, 4 sides 8vo., on mourning paper, St Leonard's, 18th December

Adelaide married William in a double wedding with William's brother, Prince Edward Augustus, Duke of Kent and Strathearn, and his bride Victoria, Dowager Princess of Leiningen, on 11th July 1818, at Kew Palace in Surrey, England. They had only met for the first time about a week earlier, on 4th July at Grillon's Hotel in Bond Street. Neither William nor Adelaide had been married before, and William was twenty-seven years her senior. Their marriage, which lasted almost twenty years until his death, was a happy one. Adelaide took both William and his finances in hand. For their first year of marriage, the couple lived in economical fashion in Germany. William's debts were soon on the way to being paid, especially since Parliament had voted him an increased allowance, which he reluctantly accepted after his requests to have it increased further were refused. William is not known to have had mistresses after his marriage. The couple had two short-lived daughters and Adelaide suffered three miscarriages.
Grand Parade in St Leonard's on sea was originally called Adelaide Place because Queen Adelaide spent the winter of 1837 at number 23.

Item Date:  1837

Stock No:  40367      £325

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