Queen Victoria’s Last Letter to India on Display in Kolkata

The Victoria Memorial in Kolkata. (Photo: Reuters)

The letter by Queen Victoria was unveiled on 16 December at the Prince Hall of Victoria Memorial. Dated 14 December 1900, it was written about a month before the death of the monarch on 22 January 1901. It was handed over to India as a gift by Lord Curzon in 1904, according to The Hindu.

This letter is an important piece of historical correspondence between British India and Britain. The letter was gifted by Lord Curzon in 1904.

Jayanta Sengupta, Curator of Victoria Memorial to <i>The Hindu</i>

The 116-year-old letter, which is three pages long and bears the Royal Seal, has been put on public display for the first time.

The letter was written in response to Lord Curzon, the then Viceroy to India expressing his sympathies for the death of one of her “soldier grandsons”, Prince Christian Victor. It opens with the following lines:

The Queen Empress has to thank the Viceroy for the very kind letter of the 9th November, full of sincerest sympathy of her beloved soldier grandson…

The Prince was the eldest son of the Queen’s third daughter. She writes about him in her letter:

He was as good as he was brave. All the Viceroy says of her own trials and anxieties the Queen feels very much, and she cannot deny that she feels a good deal shaken by them.

The handwritten letter is supplemented by a typed copy of the text at the memorial.

(With inputs from The Hindu.)