Queen Victoria and Princess Beatrice

A carte-de-visite portrait of Queen Victoria with her youngest child, Princess Beatrice, the latter holding an umbrella or parasol.

In 1885, after initial opposition from her mother, Beatrice was eventually allowed to marry Prince Henry of Battenberg, on the condition that the couple lived with the Queen. After her husband’s early death in 1896 (from malaria, while returning from the Ashanti expedition), Princess Beatrice resumed her former duties as her mother’s secretary. After Queen Victoria’s death in 1901, Beatrice transcribed and edited her diaries, censoring all potentially embarrassing passages, and then destroyed the originals. Suffering from rheumatism, she lived on alone, first at Kensington Palace and then at Brantridge Park in Sussex. She died in 1944 at the age of 87, the last surviving child of Queen Victoria.

Photographed by Arthur J. Melhuish of 12, York Place, Portman Place, London.