Autograph Letter Signed (Sir . Dn . Probyn') to Sir Edward Poynter, conveying a message from Queen Alexandra regarding Belt's bust of Lord Kitchener.

4to, 2 pp. 36 lines of text. Clear and complete. Good, on aged paper, with slight wear at on the reverse. Written as Comptroller of the Royal Household to Poynter as President of the Royal Academy. He is returning Poynter's letter, which he has shown the Queen, and reassures him that he has 'nothing [...] to fear about the contents of it ever being divulged'. The Queen has told Probyn to tell Poynter 'how very sorry she is to see how the business has worried' him. It concerns a plaster bust of Kitchener which the Royal Academy Council accepted as an exhibit. As President of the 'Kitchener Memorial Fund' the Queen passed on the request of the Fund that 'the real bronze Bust might be substituted for the Plaster one'. The Queen had hoped that the circumstances ('this being war time, and our Ambassador having sent the Bust by special messenger from Paris to England') 'might be sufficient excuse for the Bust arriving two days late, being overlooked'. She 'knew nothing about Mr. Belt or his antecedents', and she considers that 'had his Plaster Bust only been rejected in the first instance as you and your Council seem to have thought it ought to have been, none of this difficulty would have occurred'.