1853. Henry Tanworth Wells (age 24). Miniature portrait of Princess Mary Adelaide Hanover (age 19).

Queen Victoria commissioned this miniature of her cousin, Princess Mary Adelaide of Cambridge, in 1853. Her payment to the artist, Henry Tanworth Wells, is recorded in her private accounts in 1854: 'Mr Wells, miniature, Princess Mary £28.7.0.' (27 guineas). Princess Mary recorded the first sitting in her Journal on 7 December 1853: 'Breakfasted in my own room, and at eleven o'clock was pleasantly surprised by the arrival of the painter, Mr. Wells, who came to take a rough sketch of me; this lasted for over an hour'. She clearly found the experience of sitting tiresome, writing to the Honourable Mrs Dalrymple on 11 December: 'I am sitting for my picture for the collection of Miniatures at Windsor; and as this is no very pleasing task I thought you might perhaps kindly take pity on me and 'run away' to Kew some morning …' . Further sittings took place on 17 December 1853 and 4 January 1854, and the picture was pronounced finished on 13 January. The result is a miniature of which one critic commented: 'It is impossible to speak too highly' (Art Journal, 1854, new ser., V, p. 171).

The Diary of George Price Boyce 1854. 28 Jan 1854. To Wells (age 25); he had had an audience of the Queen, who was gracious and complimentary, liking his miniature of the Princess much. The latter [Princess Mary Adelaide Hanover (age 20)], Wells says, is a gleeful damsel, and retails to him with spirit and cleverness whole scenes from Box and Cox and other farces.

Adeline Horsey Recollections. In January 1859, I went to the House of Lords to hear the debate from the Peeresses Gallery. I was sitting near the [her mother] Duchess of Cambridge (age 61) and Princess Mary (age 25), when Maria, Marchioness of Ailesbury (age 46), made her appearance. I had not met her since my marriage, but I could see by her look that for some reasons of her own she meant to cut me, so I thought I would carry the war into the enemy's camp, and just as she was about to pass me, I said, "Oh, Lady Ailesbury, you may like to know that before Lady Cardigan died she told my Lord (age 61) all about you and your illegitimate children!".

Lady A. (age 46) looked nervously round and said in an agitated whisper, "Hush, hush, my dear, I'm coming to lunch with you to-morrow". She never asked me what Lady Cardigan had particularly said, but from that day we were outwardly the best of friends.

On my return to England as Countess of Cardigan, I need hardly say that every one was very anxious to be on good terms with me, and my own family were the first to make peaceful overtures. I had no wish to keep up the quarrel. As my marriage plainly showed how right I was in trusting Cardigan, and the motives of our much-discussed friendship were now openly vindicated, I let bygones be by-gones, and we were all good friends again.

Lifes Ebb And Flow Chapter IV. And so the tale unfolds. Our marriage took place in the Henry VII Chapel in Westminster Abbey, and the newspapers of the day made much of the "most brilliant wedding of a dozen seasons." I remember my surprise as I drove from our house in Carlton Gardens to the Abbey to find the way lined with interested crowds.

Among the guests were the Prince and Princess of Wales, Prince and Princess Christian, the Duke and Duchess of Connaught, Princess Louise (Marchioness of Lorne), Princess Mary Adelaide (Duchess of Teck) and the Duke of Teck (parents of Queen Mary), with Prince Leopold, Duke of Albany, as my husband’s best man. The crush filled the Abbey from the choir to the door.

My twelve bridesmaids were all girl friends and relatives. They were: Blanche Maynard, my sister (now Lady Algernon Gordon-Lennox), Lady Eva Greville, my husband’s only sister, my stepsisters, Millicent, Sybil, and Angela St. Clair Erskine (later Duchess of Sutherland, Countess of Westmorland, and Lady A. Forbes), Countess Feodore Gleichen (later a renowned sculptor), Lady Florence Bridgman (the present Countess of Harewood and mother of Viscount Lascelles), Miss Wombwell (Countess of Dartrey), Miss Mills, the first Lord Hillingdon’s daughter, Miss Violet Lindsay (now Violet, Duchess of Rutland), and Miss Ethel Milner (later Countess of Durham).