Sidmouth to escape the London winter. To a friend he wrote: 'My little
girl thrives under the influence of a Devonshire climate, and is, I am
delighted to say, strong and healthy; too healthy, I fear, in the opinion
of some members of my family, by whom she is regarded as an intruder.'
Next winter the Duke came in one day, after tramping through rain and
snow, and played with his little child while in his damp clothes; he thus
contracted a chill from which he never rallied, and died January 23, 1820.

This child was destined to be the Empress-Queen, on whose dominion the sun
never sets. Yet so remote did such a destiny then seem, owing to the
possibilities of the Regent's life, and of children being born to the Duke
of Clarence, that in some courtly biographies of George III. there is no
mention made of the birth of the little princess. Even in their accounts
of the death of her father the Duke of Kent, seven months afterwards, they
do not deem it necessary to state that he left a daughter behind him;
though he, poor man, had never had any doubts of her future importance,
and had been in the habit of saying to her attendants, 'Take care of her,
for she may be Queen of England.' The Duke of Kent was a capable and
energetic soldier, of pure tastes and simple pleasures. In presenting new
colours to the Royal Scots in 1876, the Queen said: 'I have been
associated with your regiment from my earliest infancy, as my dear father
was your colonel. He was proud of his profession, and I was always told to
consider myself a soldier's child.'

The position of the widowed Duchess of Kent, a stranger in a foreign
country, was rather sad and lonely. It was further complicated by
narrowness of means. The old king, her father-in-law, died soon after her
husband. The duchess was a woman of sense and spirit. Instead of yielding
to any natural impulse to retire to Germany, she resolved that her little
English princess should have an English rearing. She found a firm friend