Queen Victoria recorded in her Journal on 22 July 1837: ‘Gave my good and dear sister-in-law Mary, whom I am so fond of, a bracelet of my hair, the clasp of which contains the portraits of her dear children [see 420725]. She gave me last Friday, her own picture in a bracelet of her hair, beautifully painted by Chalon and so like’ (RA QVJ). Three days later she wrote to her sister-in-law: ‘how really and truly sorry I was to see you go. When I looked at your dear picture, which is always on my arm, yes – today, the tears came into my eyes’. Prior to the arrival of Prince Charles of Leiningen and his wife at court on 12 May, his sister Princess Feodora had written to Princess Victoria: ‘I like her very much and her behaviour since she is married to Charles is so very clever and so à sa place that she is liked by every body. You will find her sadly changed though, if you remember her still; she looks ten years older than Charles at least, but when she is well dressed, she is pretty still, and always has something very ladylike. Her spirits are, by different things, not very good now, so that you must not be struck if you find her looking sad’. Marie, daughter of Maximilian, Count of Klebelsberg, married in 1829 Charles, Prince of Leiningen. Her acid temper contributed to the breakdown of their ‘desperate love match’ and they separated in 1843, after the birth of two sons. The Princess of Leiningen died in an asylum in Bonn in 1880. Signed and dated on the reverse in ink: Painted by / Alf  d. Edw d. Chalon / R.A. / London 1837