"I am ALSO DETERMINED," she wrote, "that NO ONE person--may HE be ever so good, ever so devoted among my servants--is to lead or guide or dictate TO ME.
I know HOW he would disapprove it...

Though miserably weak and utterly shattered, my spirit rises when I think ANY wish or plan of his is to be touched or changed, or I am to be MADE TO DO anything." She ended her letter in grief and affection.

She was, she said, his "ever wretched but devoted child, Victoria R." And then she looked at the date: it was the 24th of December.

An agonising pang assailed her, and she dashed down a postcript--"What a Xmas! I won't think of it." At first, in the tumult of her distresses, she declared that she could not see her Ministers, and the Princess Alice, assisted by Sir Charles Phipps, the keeper of the Privy Purse, performed, to the best of her ability, the functions of an intermediary.

After a few weeks, however, the Cabinet, through Lord John Russell, ventured to warn the Queen that this could not continue.