Private Letter From Late Queen Elizabeth to Her Former Midwife Up for Auction, Detailing Her Life as a Mom to Charles and Anne
"The children's grandmother is spoiling her eldest quite openly and will do so with Anne if she got a chance!"
A decades-old letter penned by the late Queen Elizabeth to her former midwife is up for auction, and it details how the former monarch was adjusting to mom life.
The letter, dated Oct. 4, 1950, was penned less than two months after the then-Princess and her late husband, Prince Philip, became the proud parents of two after Princess Anne joined the fold, officially making now-King Charles an older brother.
She wrote the letter to her former midwife, Helen Rowe, who the queen lovingly addressed as "Rowie" in the letter.
"We are all getting on very well up here and I am feeling very much stronger already," the royal wrote at the time. "It was lovely to be on the hill again the second day I was here, but the third day, the Jeep which takes one everywhere over the ground missed picking me up and I had to walk down to the road, with the result that I strained my knee on something, which has been very effective in keeping me within bounds! However, the air is so good that I feel better every day, and though I still go to sleep in the afternoon, I don’t do it so often now."
Then-Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh with their two children, Prince Charles and Princess Anne in the grounds of Clarence House, London.
According to People, Queen Elizabeth wrote the letter while staying at the Balmoral Castle in Scotland, where the royal family often visits in the late summer and early fall.
The late Queen went on to say that her son Charles was "getting fatter" and "has an enormous appetite and takes a great deal of exercise."
"I find it extremely difficult to explain it away when he looks at something he can’t reach and then turns his back meaningly on me and says, 'Mummy, lift!'" she continued. "He enjoyed the train journey far more than Anne, who wasn’t too keen on the rattling to begin with, but she has steadily been putting on weight up here and has got lovely pink cheeks after she has been out. The sugar in her foods is gradually going up, and she doesn’t seem to be nearly so ravenous, often sleeping right up to bottle time.
"The children’s grandmother is spoiling her eldest quite openly and will do so with Anne if she got a chance!" she added, while detailing how she hoped she would see her midwife in person at her daughter, Princess Anne's, upcoming christening.
"Yours very sincerely, Elizabeth," the matriarch signed the four-page letter.
According to People, as of June 28 the highest bid for the handwritten and personally signed letter is $1,149.
"A wonderful letter from the princess, touching on the health of her two young children: Charles, a month shy of his second birthday, and Anne, who was only one month and 19 days old when this letter was written," Bobby Livingston, Executive VP at RR Auction, said in a statement given to the publication.
