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New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4425, 3 August 1901, Page 1 (Supplement)

"The most wonderful woman in the world except my mother’’ is the description said to have been given by the King of the Baroness Burdett-Coutts, who was 86 on the 23rd of April. The Baroness surely deserves this description. In the year of Queen Victoria's accession,she became possessed of .£1,890,000, and since then it is estimated that at least a million of this fortune has been spent in charity. Two private secretaries are kept busy bv the Baroness, who works as hard as either of them. Still fresh in her mind are the adventures she and Charles Dickens had together in the East End of London. The Queen had no book learning and no cultivated taste in art or letters. Her flu vorite musician was Mendelssohn, and she delighted in Gilbert and Sullivan's operas. "Wagner and Brahms and the music of the future interested her not at all. "I’m bored with the future," she used to say, "and don't want to hear any more about it.” A piece of very modern music was once performed in her presence and manifestly not to her approval. "What is that?” she asked. "It’s a drinking song. Ma’am, by Rubinstein.’’ “Nonsense." said the Queen; "no such thing! Why, yon couldn’t drink a cup of tea to that I"