was very like her uncle Leopold, who wanted to have a finger in every pie; and it was true that long ago, in far-off days, before her accession even, she had written to him in a way which might well have encouraged him in such a notion.  She had told him then that Albert possessed “every quality that could be desired to render her perfectly happy,” and had begged her “dearest uncle to take care of the health of one, now so dear to me, and to take him under your special protection,” adding, “I hope and trust all will go on prosperously and well on this subject of so much importance to me.”  But that had been years ago, when she was a mere child; perhaps, indeed, to judge from the language, the letter had been dictated by Lehzen; at any rate, her feelings, and all the circumstances, had now entirely changed.  Albert hardly interested her at all.

In later life the Queen declared that she had never for a moment dreamt of marrying anyone but her cousin; her letters and diaries tell a very different story.  On August 26, 1837, she wrote in her journal:  “To-day is my dearest cousin Albert’s 18th birthday, and I pray Heaven to pour its choicest blessings on his beloved head!” In the subsequent years, however, the date passes unnoticed.  It had been arranged that Stockmar should accompany the Prince to Italy, and the faithful Baron left her side for that purpose.  He wrote to her more than once with sympathetic descriptions of his young companion; but her mind was by this time made up.  She liked and admired Albert very much, but she did not want to marry him.  “At present,” she told Lord Melbourne in April, 1839, “my feeling is quite against ever marrying.”  When her cousin’s Italian tour came to an end, she began to grow nervous; she knew that, according to a long-standing engagement, his next journey would be to England.  He would probably arrive in the autumn, and by July her uneasiness was intense.  She determined to write to her uncle, in order to make her position clear.  It must be understood she said, that “there is no no engagement between us.”  If she should like Albert, she could “make no final promise this year, for, at the very earliest, any such event could not take place till two or three years hence.”  She had, she said, “a great repugnance” to change her present position; and, if she should not like him, she was “very anxious that it should be understood that she would not be guilty of any breach of promise, for she never gave any.”  To Lord Melbourne she was more explicit.  She told him that she “had no great wish to see Albert, as the whole subject was an odious one;” she hated to have to decide about it; and she repeated once again that seeing Albert would be “a disagreeable thing.”  But there was no escaping the horrid business; the visit must be made, and she must see him.  The summer slipped by and was over; it was the autumn already; on the evening of October 10 Albert, accompanied by his brother Ernest, arrived at Windsor.