‘Only ten pounds for my little Queen’
William Nicholson’s Queen Victoria handcoloured woodcut.
William Nicholson in a letter to publisher William Heinemann: ‘I have often wept in the dawn to think I only got £10.10s. for my little queen with which you have papered the world. I remember so well how you hated the idea of her and predicted failure and often I have wondered that you haven’t send me £1,000 hush money by a black-masked messenger boy – even now I would pay the boy at this end’