Record Data
"Chronicle," The Annual Register: A Review of Public Events at Home and Abroard for the Year 1866 (London: F. & J. Rivington, 1867), 18-19.
Transcription
The following text is presented here in complete form, as it originally appeared in print. Spelling and typographical errors have been preserved as in the original.
Windsor Castle, March 28, 1866.
The Queen hears that Mr. Peabody intends shortly to return to America, and she would be sorry that he should leave England without being assured by herself how deeply she appreciates the noble act of more than princely munificence by which he has sought to relieve the wants of the poorer class of her subjects residing in London.
It is an act, as the Queen believes, wholly without parallel, and which will carry its best reward in the consciousness of having contributed so largely to the assistance of those who can little help themselves.
The Queen would not, however, have been satisfied without giving Mr. Peabody some public mark of her sense of his munificence, and she would gladly have conferred upon him either a baronetcy or the Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath, but that she understands Mr. Peabody to feel himself debarred from accepting such distinctions.
It only remains, therefore, for the Queen to give Mr. Peabody this assurance of her personal feelings, which she would further wish to mark by asking him to accept a miniature portrait of herself, which she will desire to have painted for him, and which, when finished, can either be sent to him to America, or given to him on the return which, she rejoices to hear, he meditates, to the country that owes him so much.
