THE GREVILLE MEMOIRS.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20292, 28 December 1927, Page 7

THE GREVILLE MEMOIRS.

AN UNPARDONABLE BLUNDER.

QUEEN VICTORIA VINDICATED

NEW EDITION TO BE PUBLISHED

(From Our Own Correspondent.) LONDON, November 11.

The extraordinary passage in the re-cently-published Greville Memoirs alleging that Queen Victoria wag afraid of being poisoned by the Prince Consort is the result of a mistake on the part of the editor, Mr Philip Whltwcll Wilson. Messrs William Heinemann, who published the book in Great Britain, received a cable from Mr Wilson, who is in New York. Mr Wilson explains how the mistake occurrred, and Messrs Heineniann have announced “ that in the new edition of the book, which will be ready in about 10 days, we have taken steps to ensure that there can be no false impressions created bv the paragraph referred to in the cable.”

“The passage alleging that the Queen feared being poisoned by her husband, of course, refers to the Queen of Naples, and not to the Queen of England. I deeply regret that, confused as I was by a copyist's error in dropping a paragraph, I failed fully to detect the mistake, although I did ridicule the allegation as a palpable absurdity.’’ The passage which came into such prominence owing to Mr Wilson’s unfortunate carelessness is dated September 17, 1855, and reads: “The Queen, he said, was going on better than formerly; not a bad-hearted woman, and kept in order by fear of her husband, who, she thought, would poison her, of which he is very capable.”

“ He ” is Lord Clarendon, and the paragraph dropped by the copyist made it clear that Lord Clarendon had returned from Italy and was discussing the Queen of Naples and her husband, King “ Bomba,” otherwise Ferdinand 11, who gained his nickname from his enthusiastic bombardment of his rebellious subjects, AN UNPARDONABLE ACT.

“ That a monstrous imputation against Queen Victoria and the Prince Consort should have been allowed to appear in a book brought out by a well-known firm of British publishers is discreditable to the whole profession of letters,” says the Daily Express, “It is a very small consolation either for the King or for any of his subjects that the book is to be withdrawn and the grotesque insinuation corrected in a new edition. The usual excuses of ‘ copyist’s error,’ and s'o on, are being made, but the plain fact, is that the admission of the offending passage was an unpardonable act.”