QUEEN VICTORIA AND FRANCE.

Evening Star, Issue 11896, 26 May 1903, Page 8

QUEEN VICTORIA AND FRANCE.

The letters written by Madame Waddington to her friends while she resided in England at the French Embassy are appearing in ‘ Scribner.’ The last time she visited the late Queen was iu 1900, at Osborne, and this is what she wrote concerning that interview:—“ The Queen, dressed as usual in black, was seated in the middle of the room facing the door. I had barely time to make one curtsey—she put out her hand and made me sit down next to her. She spoke to me at first in French (just as she always did when I was at the Embassy—to mark, I suppose, that I was the French Ambassadress): ‘Je suis tres heureuse do vous revoir—l think we can speak English —bow much has happened since we met ’; and then we talked about all sorts of things. I thought she looked extremely well—of course, I couldn’t tell if her ’sight was gone, as she knew I was coming, and I sat close to her. Her eyes were blue and clear, and her memory and conversation quite the same. She thanked me for my letter; said the Duke of Edinburgh’s death was a great blow to her. It was so sudden—she had not thought him ill. She had lost three children, all very dear to her, and it was hard at her age to see her children go before her. She spoke at once (so moderately) of the caricatures and various little incidents that,had occurred in France. I said I was very glad to have an opportunity of telling her that everybody in France (except for a few hot-headed Radicals and anti-English) was most indignant at such gratuitous insults, nob only to the Queen, but to a woman. She said she quite understood that—that wherever she had been in France everybody had done what they could to make her stay happy and comfortable; that she never could forget it, and hoped the French nation felt that—also that she would never dream of bolding the country responsible forthe Radical Press, but ‘My children and my people feel it very deeply.’ ”