At fifty-seven she had been, in her own words, ‘a woman, no longer young’ for five years, and was happy to lean on this prettiest of props. She was, one observer noted, ‘very large, ruddy and fat’,2 with a hearty appetite and robust constitution, but fretted continually about her health. Beatrice was taller than her mother, at this stage still slender, with a fine complexion and rich red-gold hair that tumbled over her shoulders. Estrangement from the company of her contemporaries had not lessened her natural girlish instincts: she enjoyed pretty clothes and lace, which she later collected. Over time she had grown up pliant and gentle, no longer the harum-scarum tomboy of her childhood: pliancy, gentleness and an overriding equability made her the Queen's ideal companion, and would earn her much praise in her mother's correspondence.Beatrice's curious childhood had effectively ended three weeks short of her fourteenth birthday. It ended with a marriage, not her own – for that she still had many years to wait – but that of her sister Louise to the Marquess of Lome, heir to the Duke of Argyll, on 21 March 1871.
