Pretension: Outward Show of Importance


I was so delighted to read this:

Charlotte Bronte once saw Queen Victoria when they happened both to be in Brussels. The author was already well known by then but the Queen passed her unknowing. CB wrote of HRH as "A little, stout, vivacious lady, very plainly dressed - not much dignity or pretension about her" (Queen Victoria, Lytton Strachey, 107).

I have long been dismayed by my own figure and demeanor and found this observation about a real queen most heartening!

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