A rare personal letter from Queen Elizabeth to her midwife after the birth of Prince Edward it to go under the hammer for more than GBP 5,300 at auction.
The one-page, double-sided letter was sent to Helen Rowe in August 1964, nearly five months after she’d helped deliver Edward at Buckingham Palace.
The envelope displays a stamp with the late queen’s royal ER cipher and a Buckingham Palace postmark.
In the note, the queen can barely contain her joy over Edward’s birth as she pours out her heart, addressing her midwife affectionately as “Dear Rowie”.
She wrote: “The baby is wonderful—good as gold, trying to sit up and weighing 15 lbs 12!
“He smiles and giggles at everyone, and makes everyone happy!”
Earlier, the queen apologised for a mix up with royal nanny Mabel Anderson over a stay at royal pal the Duke of Norfolk’s Arundel Castle estate in West Sussex.
She wrote: “I am terribly sorry we never got in touch with you before you left London.
“Mabel was ill in bed when you wrote, and I confess I misread your letter in a great hurry and remembered the wrong day you put down, and when I was away at Arundel last week, I suddenly was reminded of your letter and of course, it was too late by then!”
The one person who didn’t seem to be enoying Edward’s birth was his then 15-year-old big brother Charles, now King Charles III.
Elizabeth wrote: “Charles, I’m thankful to say, is better but very frail as yet. I hope we see you when we return in October.”
She signs off the letter, sent to the midwife’s home in Eastbourne, Sussex,: “Yours sincerely, Elizabeth R.”
Eppli Auction House, in Stuttgart, Germany, is selling the letter on behalf of an unnamed British national with a starting bid of EUR 6,200 (GBP 5,300).
The man reportedly approached the biggest auction house in Germany after another handwritten letter by the Queen was successfully auctioned last November.
The note was sent to German arisocrat Maria von Wurmbrand-Stuppach who shared Elizabeth’s passion for racehorses.
The letter was sold for EUR 8,300 (GBP 7,200) on 26th November, 2022.
Auction house spokesperson Alina Romann said in a statement obtained by Newsflash: “The Queen had ‘Rowie’ at her side in all four pregnancies and births.
“So, this midwife did not experience the monarch as head of state and head of the royals but as a person, a woman – and in moments of particular vulnerability, insecurity but also great pleasure and happiness.”
Auctioneer Rene Waldrab said: “We experience the monarch as very approachable, as a proud young mother in this document.
“It is a rare testament to the everyday family life of the Queen, apart from those documents of political content that are accessible from time to time.
“We get a tiny insight into the closed world of the British high nobility.”
Archaeologist Christiane Lorinser said: “I am glad that we can offer a letter by the Queen again in the context of our Best-of Auction in the Historica section in October of this year.
“This is a success that goes beyond national borders.”
The auction starts at around 3pm on 28th October.
A handwritten letter by King Charles II, in addition to autographs by Grace Kelly from her time as Princess Grace of Monaco and her husband Prince Rainier III, will also be offered at the auction.
The full text of Elizabeth’s letter reads:
“Dear Rowie,
“I am terribly sorry we never got in touch with you before you left London.
“Mabel [the nanny] was ill in bed when you wrote, and I confess I misread your letter in a great hurry and remembered the wrong day you put down, and when I was away at Arundel last week, I suddenly was reminded of your letter and of course, it was too late by then!
“The baby is wonderful—good as gold, trying to sit up and weighing 15 lbs 12!
“He smiles and giggles at everyone, and makes everyone happy!
“Charles, I’m thankful to say, is better but very frail as yet. I hope we see you when we return in October.
“Yours sincerely,
“Elizabeth R.”
