The night Prince Albert died at Windsor (14 December 1861) Queen Victoria rushed wild and sobbing from the death bed to the nurseries, where four-year-old Princess Beatrice lay asleep. Grabbing the child, the queen brought her to her bedroom. According to one account, Victoria, stunned by grief, ghoulishly dressed the little girl in the nightclothes of the dead Albert and lay beside her. Afterwards, the queen insisted on having Beatrice, or ‘Baby’ as she was called, with her for hours each day.
Beatrice was the youngest by four years of Queen Victoria’s nine children, and this closeness to her grieving mother was, in Matthew Dennison’s account, the defining feature of her childhood. It meant that Beatrice was transformed from the fair-haired, happy little girl who said funny things and was everyone’s favourite into a solemn, prematurely sad child. Crushed by Victoria’s overwhelming and totally self-absorbed grief, Beatrice withdrew into herself and became suppressed and nervous.
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