Princess Louise of Prussia in Baden, and everyone spoke with affectionate pride of their grand duke and duchess in Constance, where the couple had a summer residence. Louise was a great friend of Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse, her sister-in-law's younger sister; i.e., Alice was the sister of Victoria, Louise's brother Frederick's wife, both sisters being daughters of Queen Victoria. The two often visited each other. In Queen Victoria's letters, she and Frederick were always referred to with pleasure or sympathy as "good Fritz and Louise of Baden". Though friends as young girls, Louise and her sister-in-law Victoria, Princess Royal ("Vicky") always had a
Princess Beatrice of the United Kingdom had been performed in succession by her sisters, Alice, Helena and Louise. However, to these the Queen soon added more personal tasks. During a serious illness in 1871, the Queen dictated her journal entries to Beatrice, and in 1876 she allowed Beatrice to sort the music she and the Prince Consort had played, unused since his death fifteen years earlier. The devotion that Beatrice showed to her mother was acknowledged in the Queen's letters and journals, but her constant need for Beatrice grew stronger. The Queen suffered another bereavement in 1883, when her highland servant, John Brown, died at Balmoral.