The San Francisco Call. Newspaper, December 1, 1901, Page 3

AL HOW A LITTLE LADY WHO L\VES IN ALAMEDA CAME TO HAVE A CAST OF THE LATE QUEEN’ VICTORIA’S HAND PRESENTED TO HER HE royal hand of Queen Victoria— the hand that signed more history- making dispatches than that of any of the world's monarchs—the hand that swayed the scepter of Great Britagyn—that hand is preserved in cast and belovgs to a little Alameda girl. The' great Malherbi cast it. It was In the year 1847 that he received from H. R. 1. Prince Albert the speclal command to come to Windsor Castle for the purpose of casting the honored and beloved hand which had been given to Prince Albert on the happy day of the great marriage coeremony. It was his hand, by rights, he sald, and he wanted it modeled, So Signor Malherbl betook himself to the castle and went to work with such paing that the cast was almost spoiled. Signor Malherbl owned afterward that he was what we call “rattled.” In the end he rallied. It was so beautiful a hand! His Italian gurgled and bubbled and was Indeed the hand of a enthusfasm gushed, It queen, White and dainty, he said it was, as be- fits arigtocracy. Firm and forceful, be- sides, as befits the ruling power of a great nation. And the beauty of the hand ap- pealed to the artist eye. It was 8o snowy and the nalls were s) delleately rosy and the flesh was so firmly plump. The fin- gers tapered, too—not quite so much as the artist eye would have delighted in, but there had to be some executive abllity in the shape of the finger tips for the sake of the palmists. They could never Victoria to be a have permitted Queen dreamer, The cast was entirely successful and tire Prince Consort treasured it as long as he lived, Malherbl was wise e¢nough to make another for himself, and It is that cast of his own that {8 now in California, artists, he had a checkered career, his downs usually exceeded his uns. It was In the stress of one of these downs that he reached the point of parting with -the beloved hand cast. It woent hard with him—it was one of his works that he was especially proud of- but the landlady He was just in his late lLike many and pressed ithout wrecked uitinbl physically days and, to do new THE SUNDAY CALL. Ll work to support himse'f, he had to dis- pose of such of his old treasures as he could get any money for. Among them went the hand. A brothe™ sculptor bought both mo!d and cast of htin, After Malherbi's death, which took 1836, the man de- stroyed the mold and so the cast was the only representation. left, except the one which was made for Prince Albert, The cast has been preserved, although passed from hand to hand down the years, and at last it was presented to Charlette W, D'Evelyn of Alameda. She 1s a Queon's birthday girl, and she raised the Brivish flag half-mast high at the memorial services to Queen Victoria held in this city last Mareh, The cast of the hand was sent her as & birthday gift, and it is a gife that she will treasure as long as she lives, The work on ‘t displays the master craft of Malherbi, and the excellent state of preservation alter Its fifty-four years of indicates the superior quality of the matepial used. 1t Is found upon boring into the thicker portions of the model to have become cerystalline in den- nlace In adventure sity. The exdcet form of the finger nalls, the delicate curves of the back and palm, the Lhe lines, even the hint of all preserved, A palmist can 18 It 1s to-day and tell tales subtleties of dimples, are take the cast Hittle Mllly i of Queen Victoria's thought-world with almost as much he eould kave done from her living hand. Show it to him and tell him that it is the hand of Susan £mith, who was an unsuccessful seamstress, and he will tell you that he .Joesn't believe you, The owner of that hand could not have been unsuccessful, he will say, There is too much will power in the broad thumb joint —broad far beyond the average in wom- an, See it alone and it might be taken for that of a man. The joint of logic is long, too. It Is sup- plemented by u deep, clean-cut headline that keeps bravely away from the mount of imagination, whither other headlines of the sex are wont to tend, These are all qualities more pertaining to a man than a woman, Add to them the tremendous ambition and independ- ence in the forefinger. the determination in the back-turned thumb, the business ability in the little finger, and you might fancy that here was a “now woman’ with o vengeance preciston as But in spite of Il her mascu’ine wvirs tues she was essentlaliy. feminine, TI hand is small, The fingers taper toward a love for the flne arts, and there is a womuan's tact in thelr tips The mest striking and signiticant thing ntout the hand-reading is i the “cutting cdge' of the paim, There, says the palme- 3 ist, 1s a ‘lack, a total lack, of fight.” The owner of this hand would be of a maost peace-loving disposition. How is that for a reading? But, after all, what the palmist has to say matters very little now that the hand has written its own history and the time of prophecy is past. Victoria lived to show what the band could do. It fulfilled the duties of the Queen and of the wom- an. It pinned medals of honor upon the breast of the soldier. It was outstretched to the poor and the suffering. It signed papers that direlted national currents of affairs. Diplomats hung upon its ges- tures, Strong men were swayed by them. 1f the little Alameda girl who has its counterpart thinks of all these things when she looks at it perhaps it will iive to point muny a moral, even if it is only a “cast hand,” ———————————— \\'!'nn. Mark Twain lived In Bulfalo he made the acquaintance of some neigh- bors under peculinr clreumstances. Leavs irg his house one morning he saw somne- him run across “ho thing which made street and remark R the people who were gathered on the veranda: "My rame cemens, My wite and I huve Leenr | ndirg' to cal on you and mala vour acquaintance, We awe you an ap = ogy for not doing it before now. 1 Loy Ne ur pardon for intruding on you in this informal munver, and at this time of duv. but your house is on flre*