A Stuttgart auction house is auctioning off a letter from the late British Queen Elizabeth II to her midwife. The letter was double-sided and well-preserved and showed the queen as a mother, the auction house said before the auction on Saturday. Accordingly, the monarch (1926-2022) reports in the personal and handwritten letter from August 1964 from her youngest son Edward, now the Duke of Edinburgh.
“It is a rare testimony to the queen’s everyday family life,” explained René Waldrab, head of the Leinfelden-Echterdingen auction hall. Last year, the auction house auctioned off a handwritten letter from the British Queen. The contract was won by a woman from another European country and she bought it at auction for more than 8,000 euros. As a spokeswoman for the auction house explained, the letter to the midwife was of better quality. It will now be auctioned for at least 6,200 euros.
According to the spokeswoman, a private individual delivered the letter. Handwritten letters from Queen Elizabeth II are rare, even in museums. Especially after the death of the monarch last year, interest in things from the British royal family grew again.
The Queen wrote the letter around five months after the birth of Prince Edward, the Duke of Edinburgh, on March 10, 1964. The auction house writes: “Here Elizabeth II shows herself as a proud young mother who expresses her joy over her son and his developmental steps with a woman who was very important to her. The wording is deeply touching, as the reader gets an idea of a side of Elizabeth II that was not intended for the public – that of the loving mother.”
