LIVES OF THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. — CHARLOTTE SOPHIA.—Cont. — CHAPTER IV. BIRTHS, DEATHS, AND MARRIAGES.
Death of the Duke of Cumberland—His military career—The soubriquet
of the Butcher given him—Anecdotes of him—Marriage of Caroline
Matilda—Her married life unhappy—Dr. Struensee—Mésalliances of
the Dukes of Gloucester and Cumberland—The Duke of Cumberland
and Lady Grosvenor—The Royal Marriage Act—Olivia Serres—Lord
Clive’s present of diamonds to the Queen—Disgusting correspondence of
the Duchess of Orleans and Queen Caroline—The Prince of Wales’s
juvenile drawing-room—Simple life of the Royal Family at Kew—Prince
Frederick and his cottage beauty—Paton and his naval pictures—Royal
births—The custom of cake and caudle observed—Petty larcenists—Sarah
Wilson and her subsequent life—Death of Princess Mary;
and of Princess Augusta, the King’s mother—The Earl of Bute—Neglected
education of George III.—Petronilla, Countess Delitz—The
Countess of Chesterfield, her conversion by Whitfield—Efforts of Lady
Huntingdon to convert the gay Earl of Chesterfield—Mr. Fitzroy—George
III. at Portsmouth—Jacob Bryant’s ‘golden rule’—Witty
remark of Queen Charlotte—Attendant bards on Royalty; Mark
Smeaton, Thomas Abel, David Rizzio—The Princes under the guardianship
of Lady Charlotte Finch—The Queen’s benevolence—Satirists.
The favourite son of Caroline, and the favourite brother
of the Princess Amelia, died on the last day of October.
His health had long been precarious: he had, like his
mother, grown extremely corpulent, and his sight had
nearly perished. Indeed, he could only see, and that
very imperfectly, with one eye—and yet he was comparatively
but a young man; not more than forty-four
years of age. His course of life, both in its duties, and
its so-called pleasures, had made an old man of him
before his time. He had had a paralytic stroke, was
much afflicted with asthma, and suffered continually from
a wound in the leg, which he had received in his first
great battle, at Dettingen, and which had never healed.
He was born when his mother was yet Princess of
Wales. She loved him because he was daring and
original; qualities which he evinced by his replies to her
when she was lecturing him as a wayward child. For the
same reasons was he liked by his grandfather, at whose
awkward English the graceless grandson laughed loudly,
and mimicked it admirably.
It is not astonishing that his mother loved him, for as he
grew in years he (up to a certain time) grew in grace and
dignity. In outward bearing, as in mental endowments,
he was very superior to his brother, the Prince of Wales:
he was gentlemanlike without affectation; and accomplished
without being vain of his accomplishments. Never
was a prince so popular, so winning in his ways, as William
of Cumberland during his minority.
He was but twenty-two years of age when he accompanied
George II. to the field and shared in the bloody
honours of the day at Dettingen. The honours he
reaped here, however, were fatal to him. They led to
his being placed in chief command of an army before he
was fitted to do more than lead a brigade. In ’45, when
the French invested Tournay under Marshal Saxe, the
son of Aurora Königsmark, the Duke of Cumberland was
placed in command of the English and Dutch forces,
numerically very inferior to the foe, and charged with
leading them to force the enemy to raise the siege. The
attempt was made in the great battle of Fontenoy, where
we gained a victory, and yet were vanquished. We beat
the enemy, but, through want of caution, exposed ourselves
to a cross fire of batteries, against which valour
was impotent. It cost us ten thousand men and unmerited
loss of reputation.
The rose which had fallen from his chaplet the duke
replaced at Culloden, where he fought one of the battles
whereby the hopes of the Stuarts were crushed in half
an hour. The alleged severity of the young general,
after the battle, gave him the name of the ‘Butcher.’
The duke was not ashamed of the name. He wore it with
as much complacency as though it had been a decoration.
With regard to his severities, it may be said that, terrible
as they were, they had the effect of deterring men from
rushing into another rebellion, which would have cost
more blood than the duke ever caused to be shed by way
of prevention.
But not from his contemporaries. For himself and his
troops the popular heart beat high with admiration and
sympathy; and while the public hand scattered rewards in
profuse showers upon the army, parliament increased the
duke’s reward, and colleges offered him their presidential
chairs. He was familiarly called ‘the Duke,’ as Marlborough
had been before him, and as Wellington was
after him.
As he grew in manhood his heart became hardened;
he had no affection for his family, nor fondness for the
army, for which he had affected attachment. When his
brother died, pleasure, not pain, made his heart throb, as he
sarcastically exclaimed, ‘It is a great blow to the country,
but I hope it will recover in time.’ The death, if it did
not place him next to the throne, at least gave him hopes
of being regent should his sire die before the young heir
was of age.
It was, however, the bloody Mutiny Act, of which he
was really the author, which brought upon him the universal
execration. ‘The penalty of death,’ says Walpole,
‘came over as often as the curses of the commination on
Ash Wednesday.’ He who despised popularity was
philosophically content when deprived of it. He was
dissolute and a gambler. He hated marriage, and escaped
from being united with a Danish princess by the adroit
manœuvre of getting his friends to insist upon a large
settlement from the royal father, too avaricious to
grant it.
If he was lashed into fury by his name being omitted
from the Regency Bill, he was more sensitively wounded
still, by being made to feel that English uncles had, before
this, murdered the nephews who were heirs to the throne.
He was incapable of the crime, for it could have profited
him nothing. The knowledge, however, that popular
opinion stigmatised him as being capable of committing
an offence so sanguinary was a torture to him. One day,
Prince George, his nephew, entered his room. It was a
soldier’s apartment, hung with arms. He took down a
splendid sword to exhibit it to the boy. The future
husband of Charlotte turned pale, evidently suspecting
that his uncle was on sanguinary thoughts intent. The
duke was dreadfully shocked, and complained to the
Princess-dowager of Wales that scandalous prejudices
had been instilled into the child against him.
In 1757 he reluctantly assumed the command of the
army commissioned to rescue Hanover from the threatened
invasion of the French. His opponent was Marshal
D’Estrées, from before whom he fell back at the Rhine, and
to whom he disgracefully surrendered Hanover, by the
infamous convention of Klosterseven. When the King
saw him enter Kensington Palace, after his peremptory
recall, the monarch exclaimed, ‘Behold the son who has
ruined me and disgraced himself!’ That son, who
declared he had written orders for all he did, and
who certainly was invested with very full powers,
resigned all his posts; and the hero of Dettingen and
pacificator of North Britain became a private gentleman,
and took to dice, racing, and other occupations natural
then, or common at least, to gentlemen with more money
than sense or principle. There is a good trait remembered
of him at this period of his career. He had dropped
and lost his pocket-book at Newmarket; and declined to
make any more bets, saying that ‘he had lost money
enough for that day.’ In the evening the book was
brought to him by a half-pay officer who had picked it
up. ‘Pray keep it, sir,’ said the duke, ‘for if you had
not found it, the contents would, before this, have been in
the hands of the blacklegs.’ Another favourable trait
was his desire to give commissions to men who earned
them on the field. He felt that while any ‘fool’ might
purchase a commission, it was hard to keep it back from
the man who had fought for it. He once promoted a
sergeant to an ensigncy, and, finding him very coolly
treated by his brother officers, the duke refused to dine
with Lord Ligonier unless—pointing to the ensign—he
might bring his ‘friend’ with him. This recognition
settled the question.
The duke, cheated by his father’s will, and sneered at
by Marshal Saxe; with no reputation but for bravery,
and no merit as a country gentleman but that of treating
his labourers with some liberality, lived on as contentedly
as though he were quietly enjoying all possible honour.
His good-humoured gallantry was of a hearty nature.
When George III., in 1762, complimented Lady Albemarle,
in full drawing-room, on the victories achieved
by her husband, the Duke of Cumberland stepped across
the room to her and enthusiastically exclaimed, ‘If it
was not in the drawing-room I would kiss you.’ He was
a constant attendant at these ceremonies. On the morning
of the 31st of October he had been to court, and had
conversed cheerfully with Queen Charlotte. It was the
last time she ever beheld him. He subsequently dined in
Arlington Street with Lord Albemarle, and appeared in
good health, although the day before, when playing at
picquet with General Hodgson, he had been confused and
mistook his cards. Early in the evening he was at his
town-house, 54, Upper Grosvenor Street, when the Duke
of Newcastle and Lord Northington called upon him. As
they entered the room he was seized with a suffocation.
One of his valets, who was accustomed to bleed him, was
called, and prepared to tie up his arm; but the duke
exclaimed, ‘It is all over!’ and immediately expired in
Lord Albemarle’s arms.
Thus died the favourite son of Caroline of Anspach,
to place a crown on whose brow she would have sacrificed
her own life. He was an indifferent general, who
outlived the reputation he acquired at Culloden, where it
was impossible that he should be beaten. Where to be
vanquished was possible he never had the good luck of
being victor. But he cared as little for fame as he did
for money; and his neglect in the latter case is testified
by the fact that nearly eighteen hundred pounds, in bank
notes, were found in the pocket of one of his cast-off
suits, of which a present had been made, after the duke’s
death, to one of his hussars. The hussar had the honesty
to return the money.
The King behaved with appropriate delicacy on this
occasion. When Lord Albemarle, the duke’s executor,
presented to the King the key of his uncle’s cabinet,
George III. returned it, bidding Lord Albemarle use his
own discretion in examining all private papers, and in
destroying all such as the duke himself probably would
not have wished to be made public. On the 28th
of December the death of his Majesty’s youngest brother,
Prince Frederick, at the early age of sixteen years, threw
additional gloom on the circle of the royal family. At
least, so say the journalists of the period.
At this time the King and Queen resided chiefly at
Richmond, in very modest state, and with very few servants.
Their chief amusement, amid the turmoil of
politics and the crush of factions, consisted in ‘going
about to see places,’ as Walpole describes their visits to
such localities as Oatlands and Wanstead; and the ‘call’
of the Queen at Strawberry Hill, which the sovereign
lady could not see, for the sufficient reason that the
sovereign lord was in bed and unable to perform the
necessary honours.
The youngest daughter of Frederick, Prince of Wales,
was married by proxy on the 1st of October 1766, in
the Chapel Royal, St. James’s, to Christian VII., King of
Denmark. Queen Charlotte was not present, she having
given birth, only two days previously, to Charlotte
Augusta, Princess Royal, and subsequently Duchess of
Wurtemburg.
The King of Denmark was an exceedingly small, but
not an ill-made, a weakly, not an ill-favoured man. His
character was, however, in every respect detestable; and
when poor Caroline Matilda passed on in tears, amid the
congratulations of the court of Queen Charlotte, her
tears were better founded than their smiles. She was
speedily treated with cruelty, and abandoned at home
while her lord travelled in foreign countries and indulged
in profligacy. Queen Charlotte accorded him a more
hearty reception than he deserved when he came over
to England, two years subsequent to the marriage. At
that time his absurdly pompous airs were the ridicule of
the circle at the Queen’s and at Carlton House, the residence
of the Princess-dowager of Wales.
After spending some years in travel, he returned,
neither a wiser nor a better man, to Denmark. In his
suite was the German physician, Struensee. This man
enjoyed his master’s utmost confidence. He soon gained
that of the young Queen also, who sought by his means
to be reconciled to the King. He was, on the other hand,
hated by the Queen-mother and other branches of the
royal family; particularly in his character of reformer of
political abuses. They contrived to overthrow him, procured
a warrant for his execution from the King, and
involved the young Queen in his ruin, on the ground of
an improper familiarity between them. The triumphant
enemies of Struensee would have put Caroline Matilda
also to death but for the appearance in the Baltic of a
British fleet under Admiral Keith, by whom she was
carried off to Zell, where she died in 1775, neglected,
unhappy, and under the weight of accusation of a charge
of which she has never been proved guilty.
It may be stated here, that of all the children of
Frederick, Prince of Wales, George III. can be said to
have been the only one happily married. The second
son, William Henry, the amiable, assiduous, brave, but
not over-accomplished Duke of Gloucester (born in 1743),
scandalised Queen Charlotte and the court by a mésalliance
which he contracted, in 1766, with Maria, Countess-dowager
of Waldegrave. This marriage was not, indeed,
especially unhappy to the contractors of it, except inasmuch
as they were embarrassed by being obliged for
some time to keep it secret, and that when discovered,
the royal husband and his noble wife were for a long
period banished from court. They resided during a portion
of their time of exile in Italy; and at Rome, the
Pope himself had so much esteem for the Prince that his
Holiness, on one occasion, declined to take precedence of
him when their carriages encountered in the streets.
The Holy Father drew on one side, and courteously waited
while the Prince, in obedience to the bidding of the
Universal Bishop, passed on. The children of this union
were subsequently acknowledged as the legal heirs of
their parents. The duke died in 1805.
The third son of Frederick, Prince of Wales, Henry,
Duke of Cumberland (after the death of his uncle ‘the
Duke’), born in 1744, more grievously offended Queen
Charlotte by a mésalliance than his brother. He was
fierce of temper, frivolous of character, and foppish in his
dress. In the year 1770 the attentions of the duke to Lady
Grosvenor were so marked, and so ridiculous, that everybody
talked about them, except her husband. The lady,
when a Miss Vernon, had been first seen by Lord Grosvenor
as she and a companion were leaving Kensington
Gardens, flying under sudden and heavy rain. He looked
at and pitied the shower-bearing nymphs, as Aristophanes
styles maidens so molested, and he offered them an asylum
in his carriage. Soon after, Miss Vernon was the married
mistress of his house; and the union would have been
happy had not the foolish prince appeared to disturb it.
He speedily contrived to seduce Lady Grosvenor from her
duty. He followed her about in disguises, often betraying
himself by his fopperies and imbecility, slept whole nights
in woods like any Corydon not subject to the infirmities of
nature, and subsequently had 10,000l. to pay for the ruin
he brought to Lord Grosvenor’s hearth. But this guilt
did not so much flurry Queen Charlotte as the marriage of
the duke in the following year with Mrs. Horton, a widow,
daughter of Lord Carhampton, who was much older than
the senseless and coarse-minded prince, her husband.
This act of folly caused him to be permanently banished
from court. The Queen would never consent to a reconciliation;
and the King, to prevent such unions in future,
brought in the Royal Marriage Act. By this act no
prince or princess of the blood could marry without consent
of the Sovereign before the age of twenty-five. After
that age the royal sanction was still to be applied for; but
if withheld the prince or princess had a resource in the
privy council. To this body the name of the individual
to whom the English member of the royal family desired
to be married was to be given, and if parliament made no
objection within the year the enamoured parties were at
liberty to enter into the holy bond of matrimony. Queen
Charlotte, who was exceedingly ‘nice’ on such matters,
thought that she at least prevented all such alliances
among her own children. She little thought how one of
her sons would twice offend.
The duke died childless and a widower in 1790, but
a paternity derived from him was claimed by ‘Olivia
Serres,’ who professed to be the daughter of a second
marriage. Her claim was never heeded, but she used to
patronise the cheaper minor theatres, whose bills announced
her presence as that of ‘H.R.H. the Princess Olivia of
Cumberland.’ She was as much a princess as the counterfeits
upon the stage, but not more so.
There are two more children of Frederick yet to be
mentioned. These are Edward, Duke of York, the second
son, born in 1739, and the Princess Louisa Anne, born
ten years later. Neither of these was married. A report,
nevertheless, was long prevalent that the weak (he voted
against ministers on the American Stamp Act) but witty
duke was privately married to a lady at Monaco, where he
died in 1767. The Princess Louisa, his sister, was almost
from her birth the victim of slow consumption, which
finally ended her life when she was in the eighteenth year
of her age.
A circumstance occurred in 1767 which was not advantageous
to the memory or reputation of Queen Caroline,
and which did not raise her in the opinion of Queen Charlotte.
The latter, however, was too much occupied in
contemplating with delight the Indian presents brought
over to her by Lord Clive to trouble herself much about
the character of Caroline. These consisted of two diamond
drops worth twelve thousand pounds. In the year just
named the Duchess of Brunswick’s repositories were
examined by her executors, and among other things discovered
therein were not less than eight hundred letters
addressed by the Duchess of Orleans, second wife of the
brother of Louis XIV., to Caroline Wilhelmina Dorothea,
Princess of Wales, and to Ulric, Duke of Brunswick.
From this correspondence selections have been published,
which have disgusted most persons who have read them.
The portions suppressed must have been edifying indeed.
But even if no more had come under the eyes of the wife
of George Augustus than what publishers have ventured
to print, there would still be evidence enough to show
that, although Caroline conversed with philosophers, her
mind could descend to be dragged through the filthiest
pollution. There was not much refinement in the age, it
is true; but, impure as it may have been, the fact that
Caroline could submit to have such letters addressed
to her, or to read a second, is proof that it was more
radically rotten and profoundly unclean than has been
generally supposed.
The most interesting domestic event of the following
year was the juvenile drawing-room held by the Prince
of Wales and the Princess Royal. The boy heir-apparent
was, perhaps, too early initiated into the solemnities of
festivals and gorgeous ceremonies. On this occasion he
was attired in a crimson suit, his brother of York in one of
blue and gold, while the Princess Royal and the younger
branches of the family were grouped together on a sofa in
Roman togas. The happy mother looked upon them
with delight, and thought the scene worthy of a painter.
The public did not share the enthusiasm nor approve of
the royal taste for extensive displays; and when the
youthful Prince of Wales gave a ball and supper this year
at the Queen’s House the mob broke into the court-yard,
drove a hearse round it, and saluted the revellers, old and
young, with anything but shouts of compliment or congratulation.
But if the town life of the royal family was one of
considerable display, private life at Kew was of the very
simplest aspect. Their Majesties were early risers, an
example which, forcible as the fashion is which royalty
deigns to offer, was not followed very generally even by
their own household, except such persons whose services
were needed. A king and queen rising at six and spending
the first two hours of the day emphatically as their
own, undisturbed by business of state, afforded a singular
spectacle to those who could remember the indolent habits
of the late court, for it was only on rare occasions that
George II. was an early riser. Caroline was never so by
choice. At eight o’clock there was a joyous family breakfast,
at which the Sovereigns were surrounded by the Prince
of Wales, the Bishop of Osnaburgh, as the second son was
called before he was created Duke of York, the Princes
William and Edward, and the Princess Royal. At this
morning festival the children were not bound to the silence
which they always observed in presence of their parents
in public. After breakfast the younger children were
brought in, and with these the King and Queen spent an
hour of amusement, while the elder princes were away at
exercise of body or mind.
Queen Charlotte generally, and often in company with
the King, presided at the children’s early dinner. Such
attendance was the forerunner of the early dinners which
the King subsequently took himself. A weekly holiday
was passed by the whole family in Richmond Gardens.
This was, in some sort, a continuation of a custom commenced
by George II. His custom, however, had not so
pure a motive as that observed by George III. and Queen
Charlotte, who took innocent delight in witnessing innocent
enjoyment. In the cottage there, erected from her
own design, she would ply the needle (Queen Adelaide
was not a more indefatigable worker) while the King read
aloud to her, generally from Shakspeare. The Sovereign
loved the poet as deeply as the great Duke of Marlborough
did, who knew nothing of English history, save what he
had gathered from the not altogether indisputable authority
of the great poet. ‘Whatever charms,’ says an
‘observer,’ with more enthusiasm than elegance, ‘ambition
or folly may conceive to surround so exalted a station, it
is neither on the throne nor in the drawing-room, in the
splendour or the joys of sovereignty, that the King and
Queen place their felicity. It is in social and domestic
gratifications, in breathing the free air, admiring the works
of nature, tasting and encouraging the elegances of art,
and in living without dissipation. In the evening all the
children pay their duty at Kew House before retiring to
bed; after which the King reads to her Majesty; and
having closed the day with a joint act of devotion, they
retire to rest. This is the order of each revolving day,
with such exceptions as are unavoidable in their high
stations.
‘The Sovereign is the father of the family; not a
grievance reaches his knowledge that remains unredressed,
nor a character of merit or ingenuity disregarded; his
private conduct, therefore, is as exemplary as it is amiable.’
Alexander Young, referring to the period when the
Prince of Wales was not above twelve years old, furnishes
us with a picture that represents the Queen’s sons as so
many Cincinnati at the plough, or rather like Diocletian
cultivating cabbages; only that he did not take to the
healthy pursuit until he had lost a throne, whereas the
English heir-apparent had not yet gained one. The young
princes were, perhaps, more like the royalty of Cathay,
whose greatest glory was to cultivate the soil, and delude
itself into the idea that it was being useful to mankind.
Nevertheless the royal pursuits of the Prince of Wales and
his brother of York were harmless at least. ‘A spot of
ground in the garden at Kew was dug by his royal highness
the Prince of Wales and his brother the Duke of
York, who sowed it with wheat, attended the growth of
their little crop, weeded, reaped, and harvested it, solely
by themselves. They thrashed out the corn and separated
it from the chaff; and at this period of their labour were
brought to reflect from their own experience upon the
various labours and attention of the husbandman and
farmer. The princes not only raised their own crop, but
they also ground it; and, having parted the bran from the
meal, attended the whole process of making it into bread,
which it may well be imagined was eaten with no slight
relish. The King and Queen partook of the philosophical
repast, and beheld with pleasure the very amusements of
their children rendered the source of useful knowledge.’
The second son of Charlotte was not very far advanced
in his teens when he carried his love of rustic pursuits to
rustic persons. He so especially admired one cottage
beauty in the neighbourhood of Kew or Windsor that his
absences from home became rather too numerous and too
prolonged to escape notice. The royal truant was less
narrowly watched than strictly looked after upon being
missed. On one of these occasions something more powerful
than conjecture took the enquirers to a certain cottage
door, and on looking into the room upon which it opened
there sat the second son of Queen Charlotte, Duke of York
and Bishop of Osnaburgh, upon a wooden stool shelling
peas!
Reference has been made to the patronage which both
Queen Charlotte and King George extended to art. Their
patronage of painters was not, generally speaking, on a
liberal scale. They requested Paton to bring to the palace,
for their inspection, the naval pictures intended for Saint
Petersburgh. The artist obeyed, but at a cost of fifty
pounds for carriage. He was repaid in thanks, but he
received no pecuniary compensation. On another occasion
twenty-five pounds was given to an artist for a picture
worth four times the sum. The artist had a friend in Dr.
Wolcot, and the satires of Peter Pindar avenged the disappointed
painter.
It was the excuse of both King and Queen that their
increasing family prevented them from exercising all
the liberality they could wish. However the fact may or
may not have influenced the plea, it could not be denied
that the circle round the royal hearth was annually enlarging.
In 1767 was born Edward, afterwards Duke of
Kent; and in the following year the Princess Augusta
Sophia. At this period the old custom was still observed
of admitting the public to ‘cake and caudle.’ Among the
loyal young ladies who flocked to the palace to see the
infant princess were two who partook so plentifully of the
caudle as to lose their discretion, and to walk away with
the cup in their keeping. They were detected, and were
pardoned after kneeling to ask for forgiveness. The
inequality in the application of the law was as marked
then as it is now. Petty larcenists of high birth, as these
young ladies were, were permitted to escape; not so a
poor Sarah Wilson, who, yielding to a strong temptation
in the year 1771, filched one or two of the Queen’s jewels,
and was condemned to be executed. It was considered
almost a violation of justice that the thief should be saved
from the halter, and be transported instead of hanged.
She was sent to America, where she was allotted as slave
or servant to a Mr. Dwale, Bud Creek, Frederick County.
Queen Charlotte would have thought nothing more of her
had her Majesty not heard, with some surprise, that her
own sister, Susannah Caroline Matilda, was keeping her
court in the plantations. Never was surprise more genuine
than the Queen’s; it was exceeded only by her hilarity
when it was discovered that the Princess Susannah was
simply Sarah Wilson at large. That somewhat clever girl,
having stolen a queen’s jewels, thought nothing, after
escaping from the penal service to which she was condemned,
of passing herself off as a queen’s sister. The
Americans—so in love were some of them with the greatness
they affected to despise—paid royal honours to the
clever impostor. She passed the most joyous of seasons
before she was consigned again to increase of penalty for
daring to pretend relationship with the consort of King
George. The story of the presuming girl, whose escapades,
however, were not fully known in England at the
time, served, as far as knowledge of them had reached the
court, to amuse the ‘gossips’ who had assembled in 1770
about the cradle of the young Elizabeth, and still more
those who, in the following year, greeted the new Prince
Ernest, one of the three sons of Charlotte destined to wear
a crown.
The fourth daughter of Caroline and George II. died
on the 14th of June in this year, 1771. She was born on
the 22nd of February, 48 years before. Before she had
completed her eighteenth year she was married to Frederick,
Prince of Hesse, a man whose naturally brutal
temperament was rendered still more brutal after his
passing over from Protestantism to Romanism. This
aggravation of a naturally bad temper was not the immediate
result of the change of religion, but of the political
restrictions to which such change subjected him. Never
had wife a more vicious and unfeeling husband than poor
Mary; never had husband a more submissive and uncomplaining
wife than Frederick of Hesse. His death relieved
her of a most inhuman tyrant, and her last days were
spent in a happy tranquillity.
The person of Her Majesty at this period is described
as having been easy and graceful, rather than striking or
majestic. They who could not call her handsome, which
she never was, compromised the matter by describing the
contour of her face as delicate and pleasing. Her well-shaped
forehead and her beautiful teeth, no inconsiderable
items in a face, were her chief beauties. Her bright chestnut-coloured
hair would have been an additional beauty
to have been reckoned, but that it was generally hidden
under thick layers of powder—so long, at least, as powder
was in fashion. Of her hands and arms the royal lady
was proud to a very late period of her life; and amateurs,
in the early term of her reign, eulogised the beauties of a
neck, which soon very well bore the discreet veil with
which it was wisely and modestly covered. Her countenance
was naturally benignant, except when flushed, as
it could sometimes be, by an offended feeling; and it was
naturally pallid, ‘except,’ says an anonymous writer
‘(which happened not unfrequently), when a blush of
diffidence suffused her modest cheek.’
The succeeding year to that last named brought
mourning with it, for the death of the mother of George
III. On the death of her husband she was appointed
the chief guardian of her eldest son, in case of the demise,
before that son’s majority, of the king, his grandfather.
In the meantime she was really his guardian during that
king’s lifetime. This office, however, she shared with
Lord Bute, who, according to the scandal-mongers, was
less attached to the pupil than to the pupil’s mother. Of
this attachment the Prince of Wales himself is said to
have had full knowledge, and did not object to Lord Bute
taking solitary walks with the Princess, while he could do
the same with Lady Middlesex. However this may be,
the Princess and Lord Bute kept the Prince George in
very strict seclusion after his father’s death. The future
husband of Charlotte had, however, abundance of teachers,
but a paucity of instruction. One taught him ‘deportment,’
another imbued him with Jacobitism. Dr.
Thomas did honestly his little ineffective best. Lord Bute
superintended Dr. Thomas, and the Princess said the boy
was slow, and the masters indifferent.
The boy would probably have been an accomplished
scholar had his preceptors been more careful in their
training. There was the stuff and also the taste in him;
but he was neglected, and the lost ground was never recovered.
His affection for his mother was strong, and she
deserved it. She was not a favourite with the people,
and she did not deserve her unpopularity. George III.
and Queen Charlotte visited her regularly every evening
at eight o’clock. After one of these filial visits, in February
1772, when her health had been long declining, she
expressed a hope that she might pass a good night. The
hope was fulfilled, but death came in the morning. Never
was woman more praised or censured than she. Her
merit lay, perhaps, between both. Her son adored her,
Queen Charlotte respected her, and a commercial country
should reverence the memory of a woman who, out of
her own jointure, paid off all the debts which her husband
left at his decease. During the illness of the Dowager-Princess
of Wales, her daughter, the Princess of Brunswick,
arrived in England, on her mother’s invitation. The
Princess was coolly treated by her brother, George III.,
and by Queen Charlotte. She was ill lodged in a furnished
house in Pall Mall, while the Prince of Mecklenburg
had apartments in the royal palace. Charlotte was
jealous of Augusta, her sister-in-law, and could not help
showing it unbecomingly. At the Court held on the
Queen’s birthday Augusta was attended by Lady Gower,
an old friend, and one of her former ladies-in-waiting.
Lady Gower followed the Princess into the ball-room, and
sat next to her—Lady Gower’s friend, the Duchess of
Argyle, courteously making way for her. The Queen
was excessively angry. A few days later, all her ladies
being present, Her Majesty said, crossly, to the Duchess of
Argyle, ‘Duchess, I must reprimand you for letting Lady
Gower take place of you as lady to the Princess of
Brunswick. I had a mind to speak to you on the spot,
but would not, for fear of saying anything I should repent
of, though I should have thought it. The Princess of
Brunswick has nothing to do here, and I insist on your
recovering the precedence you gave up. One day or
other my son will be married, and then I shall have his
wife’s ladies pretending to take place in my palace, which
they shall not do.’ The Princess of Brunswick left England
in a naturally angry mood. The King, reluctantly
and tardily, paid both her journeys, and gave her 1,000l.
besides. Her mother left her nothing.
The death of a woman of less note caused some conversation
in Queen Charlotte’s circle, soon after the demise
of the Princess-dowager of Wales, and it may be fittingly
noticed here.
Petronilla Melusina was the illegitimate daughter of
George I. and Mdlle. von der Schulenburg (Duchess of
Kendal). It was the discovery of her birth (in 1693) that
stirred Sophia Dorothea to the resolution to leave Hanover.
Petronilla came to England, passed as her mother’s
niece, and was created Countess of Walsingham. She
became acquainted in this country with Lady Huntingdon,
and that good, active, eccentric, but earnest apostle of the
Gospel, Whitfield. With the latter Petronilla maintained
a long correspondence, and she is spoken of as being a
gem in the crown which metaphor placed upon the
preacher’s brow.
In 1733, this lady married the Earl of Chesterfield,
and in her name her husband is said to have compelled
George II. to pay him a very large sum, which also, according
to report, was bequeathed her by George I. in
the will which was destroyed. She led as gay and careless
a life as her lord, but not for so long a period as he.
She was in the very height of her enjoyment of the splendour
of the great world, when, attracted by curiosity to
the obscurely lighted drawing-room of Lady Huntingdon,
where Whitfield was preaching, she learned, for the first
time, to heed as well as hear the story of the brighter
splendour of a greater, and the night and anguish of a
more terrible, world than the one in which she was the
chief lady of the revels, and the fascinator, not to be resisted,
of every man in it except her husband. It was
here she first felt that all was not so well with her heart,
nor so safe for her soul, as should be. She was a woman
of strong mind, and she at once braved all the storm with
which fools and fine gentlemen pelted her, by boldly declaring
the difference which had come over her views,
and that which should in future mark her practice. She
would fain have retired altogether from the world, but in
obedience to her husband, who exacted from her a service
which he never repaid, she went occasionally to court.
At each visit it was remarked that her costume diminished
in finery, but increased in taste. At her last visit among
the gay and panting throng she appeared in a plain but
elegant dress of sober brown brocade, ‘powdered with
silver flowers.’ A smile may mock this humility of a
court lady, but the costly and continental simplicity was
encountered by her half-brother the King (for it was in
George II.’s time that this occurred) with a frown. He
had not yet learned to honour pious men or women of
any creed, and he had little respect for Lady Huntingdon
or Whitfield. He accordingly made two or three steps
in advance to the shrinking lady, and rather rudely remarked,
‘I know who selected that gown for you; it
must have been Mr. Whitfield. I hear you have been a
follower of his for this year and a half.’ Lady Chesterfield
mildly replied, ‘I have, and very well do I like
him,’ and withdrew; but she afterwards used to regret
that she had not said more when she had so excellent an
opportunity for uttering a word in season with effect.
Lady Huntingdon hoped, for some time, that a sense
of religion might soon touch the heart of the Earl, who
continued to be polite and impious to the last. He laughingly
called death a leap in the dark, and he obstinately
refused the light which would have saved him from leaping
to his destruction. The nearest approach he ever
made to being converted by Lady Huntingdon was when
he once sent her a subscription towards building a chapel,
and earnestly implored her not to expose him to ridicule
by revealing the fact!
His noble wife—for she was a wife—true woman,
rising above the shame of her birth, and resolute to save
even him who was resolute and resigned to perish, was
most assiduous at the death-bed of a husband who was as
anxious as Charles II. to be courteous and civil, even in
death. His last day on earth was the 24th of March,
1773; and his courtesy had well-nigh failed him when he
heard that his wife had sent for Mr. Rowland Hill to
attend him. ‘Dear Lady Chesterfield,’ says Lady Huntingdon,
in one of her letters detailing ‘the blackness of
darkness’ which had thickened round his dying moments,
‘Dear Lady Chesterfield could not be persuaded to leave
his room for an instant. What unmitigated anguish has
she endured! But her confidential communications I am
not at liberty to disclose. The curtain has fallen; his
immortal part has passed to another state of existence.
Oh, my soul, come not thou unto his end!’
This wife, the illegitimate daughter of George I., was
not even mentioned incidentally in a will which recognised
the services of menials, and rewarded them with
ostentation. But after Chesterfield’s death the mansion
in May Fair, and its great room, and its dark, mysterious
boudoirs, curtained with blue and silver tissue, and
slightly echoing the rustle of silks that were not worn by
the wife of the lord of the house—over all these there
came a change. The stage remained, but the actors and
audiences were different, and now we see that once little
girl who usurped in Hanover a love to which she was not
legitimately entitled, a sober woman grown, throwing
open her saloons to Rowland Hill and the eager multitude
who thronged to hear that hearty, honest, and uncompromising
man. In March 1777, Horace Walpole wrote:
‘Lady Chesterfield has had a stroke of palsy, but may
linger some time longer.’ In September of the following
year, the record is: ‘Lady Chesterfield is dead, at above
fourscore. She was not a girl when she came over with
George I.’ ‘She was very like him,’ Walpole writes, in
the following month to Cole, ‘as her brother, General
Schulenburg, is, in black, to the late King.’
Such was the end of that lady whose birth in 1693
had so severely wounded the pride and self-dignity of
Sophia Dorothea. ‘I was with her to the last,’ says
Lady Huntingdon, ‘and never saw a soul more humbled
in the dust before God, on account of her own vileness
and nothingness, but having a sure and steadfast hope of
the love and mercy of God in Christ, constantly affirming
that his blood cleanseth from all sin. The last audible
expressions which fell from her a few moments before her
final struggle were, “Oh, my friend, I have hope, a strong
hope—through grace.” Then, taking my hand, and
clasping it earnestly between hers, she exclaimed with
much energy, “God be merciful to me, a sinner!”’
Between the period of the birth of the last child of
Queen Charlotte and the date last named Her Majesty
had presented other claimants upon the love and liberality
of the people. These were Augustus (Sussex), born
in 1773; Adolphus (Cambridge), in 1774; Mary, in 1776;
and Sophia, in 1777. Walpole compares a Mrs. Fitzroy
with the Queen. ‘Mrs. Fitzroy,’ he writes, ‘has got a
seventh boy. Between her and the Queen, London will
be like the senate of old Rome, an assembly of princes.
In a few generations there will be no joke in saying,
“Their Highnesses the Mob.”’ Meanwhile a Queen, thus
constantly occupied, performed all household and matronly
duties in a way that won respect even from those
who detected in her faults of temper or errors in politics.
Of her method and success in training some of her
children we have this evidence. The King took frequent
excursions, while the Queen kept house at home.
Of one of these, a visit to the fleet at Portsmouth,
Walpole writes: ‘All England is gone to meet King
George at Portsmouth. The Duchess of Northumberland
gives forty guineas for a bed, and must take her chamber-maid
into it. I did not think she would pay so dear for
such company. His Majesty, because the post-chaises of
gods are as immortal as their persons, would not suffer a
second chaise to be sent for him; and therefore, if his
could and did break down, he would enter Portsmouth
in triumph in a hack.’
When the youngest of the daughters of Her Majesty
was about six years old, the well-known Jacob Bryant
heard the Queen make a remark to the child which he
(the author of the ‘Treatise on the Authenticity of the
Scriptures and Truth of the Christian Religion’) considered
and cited as high authority for a mode of reasoning
which he adopted when speaking of the obstacles
that encumber the way even of the seekers after truth.
He is alluding to those who are discouraged because the
truth they would fain seize is not yet obvious to them;
and he bids them wait with patience and not be discouraged.
‘I have high authority,’ he says, ‘for this
mode of reasoning, which I hope I may take the liberty
to produce. When a great personage some years ago
was visiting the royal nursery, a most amiable princess
(the Princess Mary, afterwards Duchess of Gloucester),
then about six years old, ran with a book in her hand,
and tears in her eyes, and said, “Madam, I cannot comprehend
it! I cannot comprehend it!” Her Majesty,
with true parental affection, looked upon the princess,
and bade her not to be alarmed. “What you cannot
comprehend to-day, you may comprehend to-morrow;
and what you cannot attain to this year, you may arrive
at the next. Do not therefore be frightened with little
difficulties, but attend to what you do know, and the
rest will come in time.”’ This was good common sense,
and Mr. Bryant calls it ‘a golden rule, well worthy our
observation.’ Charlotte, too, could say a witty as well as
a wise thing. The year 1775 was unmarked by the birth
of an heir or heiress in Brunswick’s line. The Queen’s
own birthday drawing-room was all the more brilliant.
‘The crowd,’ says Walpole, ‘was excessive, and had
squeezed, and shoved, and pressed upon the Queen in the
most hoyden manner. As she went out of the drawing-room,
somebody said, in flattery, that “the crowd was
very great.” “Yes,” said the Queen, “and wherever one
went, the Queen was in everybody’s way.”’
Her Majesty displayed even more readiness in
patronising such men as the author above named than
she did in the patronage of musicians, fond as she and
her royal consort were of the really tuneful art. In old
days the honour of British queens was said to be most
safe when it had a bard for its attendant protector. At
a comparatively early period the Queen furnished the
grateful Prince of Wales with a chaplain, whose chief
duty was comprised in daily reading prayers in the
young prince’s presence, and, if we may judge by the
result, not very much to the young prince’s profit.
Among those who were candidates for the office was the
too celebrated Dr. Dodd; but though the Queen was in
some degree interested in him, on account of his reported
ability, she united heartily with the King in refusing to
nominate him to the responsible duty. The elder princes
were, as early as 1773, located at Carlton House, under
the guardianship of Lady Charlotte Finch, almost daily
superintended by the Queen. The latter was, however,
always glad to escape from town to Kew, which had
come into the King’s possession on the death of his
mother, and for which the residence at Old Richmond
had been abandoned. It was at Kew that she received
Beattie, for whom she had procured a pension of 200l.
a-year, right royal reward, for his indifferent work on
the Immutability of Truth. The well-recompensed author
was in too good a humour with the royal lady to see any
fault in her. He even pronounced her English ‘fair,’
and herself as ‘most agreeable.’ The portraits of her,
he thought, hardly rendered her justice, and the expression
of her eye and of her smile was declared by him to
be most engaging.
She was not so favourably considered by some of her
own court. Thus, the wearers of the fashionable long
feathers denounced her bad taste when the Queen issued
her decree against their being worn at court. The decree,
however, was not issued without great provocation, a
dowager-duchess having appeared at a drawing-room
with a head-dress of feathers a yard and a quarter in
height. The sight was so ridiculous that Charlotte would,
for a long time, neither tolerate them in others nor wear
them herself. The maids of honour grumbled as heartily
at this as they did at the rule of the Queen’s household
which did not provide them with supper. The fair
ladies’ remonstrance on this latter subject almost amounted
to a mutiny. The affair was ended by compromise. Their
salary was raised, and each maid received on her marriage
a gift of 1,000l. from the Queen.
The latter frowned when the heavy bargain was concluded,
but she changed the frown for a smile on being
told that the Prince of Wales had corrected Lord Bruce
for making a false quantity. Next to his being a gentleman
she hoped he would be a scholar, and here was a
prospect of her hopes being realised!
As a sample of the Queen’s benevolence we may cite
the following record. In the action off Brest, in which
the adversaries fought with a valour which did honour
to both parties and enhanced the glory of the victors,
there was no ship more distinguished in the fray than the
gallant but luckless Quebec. This vessel blew up in the
action, and out of her numerous crew only seventeen
persons escaped. Among the latter was a master’s mate,
named William Moore, afterwards Captain Moore. He
was desperately wounded in the shoulder and leg, and he
conceived little hopes of ever being, like the old commodore
in the song, fit for sea again. Meanwhile, however,
he had a friend at court, in the person of a kinsman
named Ashburner, who was mercer to the Queen. The
kind-hearted tradesman was exhibiting his wares to Her
Majesty, when amid his commendations of them he contrived
to introduce his cousin’s name and condition, with
some commiserating comment upon his hard fate. The
Queen was extremely judicious in her acts of charity,
and she simply told the mercer to send the master’s mate
down to Windsor, if he were well enough to bear the
journey. The very command was sovereign spermaceti
to his wounds, and in a day or two the sadly battered
sailor was comfortably lodged at Windsor, the patient of
the Queen’s own surgeon and physician. He took some
time to cure, but the desired result was achieved at last,
and the master’s mate now stood in presence of the
Queen to thank her, which the pale sailor did with
faltering expression of gratitude, for the royal benevolence
which had again made a man of him. To a
query from the royal lady, he protested that he felt perfectly
equal for the performance of duty again. ‘So I
hear from the doctor,’ said Queen Charlotte. ‘And I
have spoken about you to the King, and there, Mr.
Moore, is His Majesty’s acknowledgments for your gallantry
and sufferings when afloat.’ Mr. Moore thought
the Queen and King an exceedingly civil couple to say
so much about the performance of a matter of duty, and
he was about to retire from the presence, when the Queen
said, smilingly, ‘Mr. Moore, will not you see what His
Majesty says?’ The master’s mate obeyed, and was
rewarded for his obedience by finding that he had been
promoted to a lieutenancy on board the Mercury. This
was a good deed gracefully enacted. Not less so was
another of which the Queen was the author, whereby
she procured for the widow and large family of Captain
Farmer, who fell in the Quebec, an annuity which made
really princely provision for the widow and children of
the slain commander.
The poets of 1779 were not addicted to satire, except
in jest. Thus one, in a rhymed dialogue, makes one of
his interlocutors say to the other—
I own your satire’s just and keen;
Proceed, and satirise the Queen.
To which the reply is—
With all my heart.—The Queen, they say,
Attends her nurs’ry every day;
And, like a common mother, shares
In all her infants’ little cares.
What vulgar, unamusing scene,
For George’s wife and Britain’s queen.
’Tis whispered also at the palace
(I hope ’tis but the voice of malice)
That (tell it not in foreign lands)
She works with her own royal hands;
And that our sovereign’s sometimes seen
In vest embroidered by his queen.
This might a courtly fashion be
In days of old Andromache;
But modern ladies, trust my words,
Seldom sew tunics for their lords.
What secret next must I unfold?
She hates, I’m confidently told—
She hates the manners of the times
And all our fashionable crimes,
And fondly wishes to restore
The golden age, and days of yore,
When silly, simple women thought
A breach of chastity a fault,
Esteem’d those modest things, divorces,
The very worst of human curses;
And deem’d assemblies, cards, and dice
The springs of every sort of vice.
Romantic notions! all the fair
At such absurdities must stare;
And, spite of all her pains, will still
Love routs, adultery, and quadrille.
Well, is that all you find to blame,
Sir Critic, in the royal dame?
All I could find to blame? no, truly!
The longest day in June and July
Would fail me ere I could express
The half of Charlotte’s blemishes.
Those foolish and old-fashioned ways
Of keeping holy Sabbath days,
That affectation to appear
At church, the Word of God to hear:
That poor-like plainness in her dress,
So void of noble tawdriness:
That affability and ease
That can her menial servants please,
But which incredibly demean
The state and grandeur of a queen:
These, and a thousand things beside,
I could discover and deride.
But here’s enough; another day
I may, perhaps, renew my lay.
Are you content?
Not quite, unless
You put your satire to the press.
For sure a satire in this mode
Is equal to a birthday ode.
No doubt of it! and much better written and applied
than any of the birthday odes of the period. The fact
was, that if there were strong prejudices, there were also
simple virtues at court. The King would have no ode
sung to him, as his predecessors had, on New Year’s day;
and the Queen would not allow Twelfth Night to be celebrated
by the usually ruinous play at ‘hazard.’ No
wonder the poets praised her.
The King loved Kew, and hated Hampton Court
because George II. had once struck him there. Of the
royal domestic life at the former place a contemporary
observer has given a sketch, when the royal parents were
still young and their offspring still children:—
‘Their Majesties rise at 6 o’clock in the morning, and
enjoy the two succeeding hours in a manner which they
call their own. At 8 o’clock the Prince of Wales, the
Bishop of Osnaburg, the Princess Royal, and the Princes
William and Edward are brought from their respective
apartments to breakfast with their illustrious parents. At
9 o’clock the younger children attend to lisp or smile
their good-morrows; and while the five eldest are closely
applying to their tasks, the little ones and their nurses
pass the whole morning in Richmond Gardens. The King
and Queen frequently amuse themselves with sitting in
the room while the children dine, and once a week, attended
by the whole offspring in pairs, make the little
delightful tour of Richmond Gardens. In the afternoon,
while the Queen works, the King reads to her. In the
evening all the children again pay their duty at Kew
House before they retire to bed, and the same order is
observed through each returning day. Exercise, air, and
light diet are the grand fundamentals in the King’s idea
of health. His Majesty feeds chiefly on vegetables, and
drinks but little wine. The Queen is what many private
gentlewomen would call whimsically abstemious; for, at
a table covered with dishes, she prefers the plainest and
simplest dish, and seldom eats of more than two things
at a meal. Her wardrobe is changed every three months;
and while the nobility are eager to supply themselves with
foreign trifles, her care is that nothing but what is English
shall be provided for her wear.’
CHAPTER V. PERILS, PROGRESS, AND PASTIMES.
The American War—Dr. Dodd—The Duchess of Queensberry and the
‘Beggars’ Opera’—Royal Progress—Royal Visit to Bulstrode—Mrs.
Delany and Queen Charlotte—Birth of Prince Octavius—Strange, the
Engraver—The Riots of London—Lady Sarah Lennox—The Prince and
his Sire—The Prince’s Preceptors—Errors committed in the education
of the Princes—The Prince’s favourite, Perdita Robinson—Marie
Antoinette’s present to her—Separate establishment granted to the
Prince—Lord North’s facetious remark—Parliamentary provision for
the Prince—The Prince’s presence in the House of Commons not
acceptable—His pursuit of pleasure—The Duke of Clarence described
by Walpole—The Prince of Wales overwhelmed with debts—Dissension
in the Royal Family—Marriage proposed to him to extricate him from
his debts—The Prince’s connection with Mrs. Fitzherbert—The Prince’s
Marriage disclaimed by Mr. Fox—The Prince’s behaviour to Mrs. Fitzherbert—The
Prince acknowledges his Marriage to the Queen.
There had been, during the recent years of Charlotte’s
married life, no lack of either private or public trials and
misfortunes. The struggles of the government at home
against the press had signally failed; and that against the
American colonies, wherein France, Spain, and Holland
were arrayed against England, ended in the acknowledgment,
on our part, of the independence of the United
States. The unpopularity of the King, who applied for
and received 100,000l. per annum in addition to the
400,000l. granted to him at his accession, was extended
to the Queen. The King was insulted by a female, said
to be insane, as he was proceeding in his chair to the
Haymarket Theatre. This circumstance rendered the
Queen ill at ease for several days. Her sympathy could
at no time, however, induce the King to grant her a
favour, if he thought it was against his sense of right.
Thus, few persons more interested themselves to rescue
the Reverend Dr. Dodd, the forger, from the hands of
the executioner, than Queen Charlotte. Her respect for
the sacred office was so great that it seemed to be something
shocking that a clergyman should be hanged. But
George III. remarked that Dodd’s offence was rendered
the more grievous from the fact of his being a clergyman,
and that the law must take its course.
During the year 1778 many royal ‘progresses’ were
made to the fleet, to the fortified towns on the coast, to
the various camps, and to the mansions of the nobility.
A general air of festivity was exhibited about the Queen
and court, but there was nothing in the condition of the
affairs of the kingdom to warrant the apparent joy. By
sea and land our flag, though not dishonoured, was not
triumphant; and for the moment the most unpopular
man in the kingdom was the King himself—obstinate in
his determination to govern as well as reign, and daily
verging towards that disturbed state of mind which ended
at last in hopeless insanity.
Meanwhile, however, the home enjoyments of the
court were placid and unexciting. In her ‘progresses’
with the King, Charlotte was not reluctant to maintain
the state of a Queen. Her ideas on this subject seem
strange to us now. Thus, when she held a court in the
old royal city of Winchester, her costume consisted of a
scarlet riding-habit, faced with blue, and covered with
rich gold embroidery. In the same dress, with the addition
of a black hat and a large cockade, she accompanied
the King on his visits to the various camps
established in the south. Nothing, however, could be
more simple than the way of life of this royal pair when
really ‘at home.’ Its simplicity extracted from a foreigner
who witnessed it the remark that such citizen-like plainness
was injurious to royalty, and an encouragement to
republicanism.
Adopting as far as possible the descriptions of eye-witnesses
of scenes in which the sovereigns enacted the
principal part, we will now turn to the gossiping Mrs.
Delany’s letters for the report of a visit made in 1779
by the Queen and her royal consort and family to the
Duke of Portland’s, at Bulstrode. ‘The royal family,’
says the writer, ‘ten in all, came to Bulstrode at twelve
o’clock. The King drove the Queen in an open chaise,
with a pair of white horses. The Prince of Wales and
Prince Frederick rode on horseback; all with proper
attendants, but no guards. Princess Royal and Lady
Weymouth in a post-chaise. Princess Augusta, Princess
Elizabeth, Prince Adolphus (about seven years old), and
Lady Charlotte Finch, in a coach. Prince William,
Prince Edward, Duke of Montague, and the Bishop of
Lichfield, in a coach; another coach full of attendant gentlemen;
among others, Mr. Smelt, whose character sets him
above most men and does great honour to the King, who
calls him his friend, and has drawn him out of his solitude
(the life he had chosen), to enjoy his conversation every
leisure moment. These, with all their attendants in rank
and file, made a splendid figure as they drove through
the park and round the court, up to the house. The
day was as brilliant as could be wished, the 12th of
August, the Prince of Wales’s birthday. The Queen was
in a hat, and in an Italian night-gown of purple lustring,
trimmed with silver gauze. She is graceful and genteel.
The dignity and sweetness of her manner, the perfect
propriety of everything she says or does, satisfies everybody
she honours with her instructions so much that
beauty is by no means wanting to make her perfectly
agreeable; and though awe and long retirement from
court made me feel timid on my being called to make
my appearance, I soon found myself perfectly at ease;
for the King’s conversation and good humour took off all
awe but what one must have for so respectable a character,
severely tried by his enemies at home as well as abroad.
The three princesses were all in frocks. The King and
all the men were in uniform, blue and gold. They
walked through the great apartments, which are in a
line, and attentively observed everything, the pictures in
particular. I kept back in the drawing-room, and took
that opportunity of sitting down, when the Princess Royal
returned to me and said the Queen missed me in the
train. I immediately obeyed the summons with my best
alacrity. Her Majesty met me half-way, and seeing me
hasten my steps, called out to me, “Though I desired
you to come, I did not desire you to run and fatigue
yourself.” They all returned to the great drawing-room,
where there were only two arm-chairs, placed in the
middle of the room for the King and Queen. The King
placed the Duchess Dowager of Portland in his chair,
and walked about, admiring the beauties of the place.
Breakfast was offered, all prepared in a long gallery that
runs the length of the great apartments (a suite of eight
rooms and three closets). The King and all his royal
children and the rest of the train chose to go to the
gallery, where the well-furnished tables were set, one
with tea, coffee, and chocolate, another with their proper
accompaniments of eatables, rolls, cakes, &c. Another
table with fruits and ices in their utmost perfection, which
with a magical touch had succeeded a cold repast. The
Queen remained in the drawing-room. I stood at the
back of her chair, which, happening to be one of my
working, gave the Queen an opportunity to say many
obliging things. The Duchess Dowager of Portland
brought Her Majesty a dish of tea on a waiter, with
biscuits, which was what she chose. After she had drunk
her tea, she would not return her cup to the Duchess, but
got up and would carry it to the gallery herself; and
was much pleased to see with what elegance everything
was prepared. No servants but those out of livery made
their appearance. The gay and pleasant appearance
they all made, and the satisfaction all expressed, rewarded
the attention and politeness of the Duchess of Portland,
who is never so happy as when she gratifies those she
esteems worthy of her attentions and favours. The young
royals seemed quite happy, from the eldest to the youngest,
and to inherit the gracious manners of their parents. I
cannot enter upon their particular address to me, which
not only did me honour, but showed their humane and
benevolent respect for old age. The King desired me to
show the Queen one of my books of plants. She seated
herself in the gallery, a table and a book laid before her.
I kept my distance till she called me to ask some questions
about the mosaic paper work; and as I stood before
Her Majesty, the King set a chair behind me. I turned
with some confusion and hesitation on receiving so great
an honour, when the Queen said, “Mrs. Delany, sit
down, sit down; it is not every lady that has a chair
brought her by a King.” So I obeyed. Amongst many
gracious things, the Queen asked me why I was not with
the Duchess when she came, for I might be sure she
would ask for me. I was flattered, though I knew to
whom I was obliged for this distinction, and doubly
flattered by that. I acknowledged it in as few words as
possible, and said I was particularly happy at that moment
to pay my duty to Her Majesty, as it gave me an opportunity
to see so many of the royal family, which age and
obscurity had deprived me of. “Oh, but,” said Her
Majesty, “you have not seen all my children yet.”
Upon which the King came up and asked what we were
talking about, which was repeated, and the King replied
to the Queen, “You may put Mrs. Delany in the way of
doing that by naming a day for her to drink tea at
Windsor Castle.” The Duchess of Portland was consulted,
and the next day fixed upon, as the Duchess
had appointed the end of the week for going to Weymouth.’
In 1779 was born the short-lived Prince Octavius.
Before the death of this happy little Prince, Strange, the
engraver, consented to engrave his portrait. The Queen
did not like the politics of the artist, for he was the most
determined Jacobite in the kingdom—except his wife.
He was so successful, however, with his ‘plate’ of Octavius,
that George III. knighted him; and even his wife
thought the better of the ‘Elector and Electress of
Hanover’ for having made her what ‘the King over the
water’ had never thought of doing—Lady Strange.
The following year was that of the riots of London.
While that popular tumult was raging the King behaved
with courage and common sense; and the Queen, left
almost entirely alone at Buckingham House with her
children, with equal calmness and intrepidity. The
‘ladies’ who ought to have been in attendance had
hurried homeward with their jewels. The Queen did
not lose heart at this desertion, but was amply comforted
by the frequent yet brief visits of the King, who spent
two entire nights, holding council with the heads of the
army, in the Queen’s Riding House.
In the September of this year another prince, Alfred—who
shared with his brother Octavius the advantages
of dying early—was added to the family of George and
Charlotte. This increase, perhaps, inspired her with increase
of sympathy for others. In the fall of this year
she very warmly seconded the project of Mr. Raikes for
the foundation of Sunday Schools. The project was
sneered at, snubbed, and satirised by a public who, however,
were ultimately wise enough to be grateful.
In 1780, Walpole affords us a glimpse of the alleged
rival of Queen Charlotte in company with the Queen’s
son. ‘The Prince of Wales has lately made a visit to
Lady Cecilia Johnstone, where Lady Sarah Napier was.’
She was the Lady Sarah Lennox who had touched the
heart of the King some twenty years before. ‘She did
not appear, but he insisted on seeing her, and said, “She
was to have been there,” pointing to Windsor Castle.
When she came down he said he did not wonder at his
father’s admiring her, and was persuaded she had not
been more beautiful then.’
In 1781, at the age of nineteen, the Prince of Wales
became ‘lord of himself.’ His mother had been his first
governess; and at eight years of age he had been delivered
by his father to Dr. Markham and Cyril Jackson, with
the injunction to treat him as they would any private
gentleman’s son, and to flog him whenever he deserved
it. Markham acted up to his instructions. The Prince
never bore any ill-will to either preceptor or sub-preceptor
for their severity; but he took the earliest opportunity
of showing his antagonism against his father. In
1772, when the struggle was going on between Wilkes
and the crown—for such were the real adversaries—the
young Prince made his sire’s ears tingle indignantly
with the popular cry of ‘Wilkes and “forty-five” for
ever!’
The young Prince’s preceptors were changed in
1776. Lord Bruce became governor in place of Lord
Holdernesse; but he retired almost immediately, vexed,
it is said, at the Prince having detected him in the commission
of a false quantity. Bishop Hurd and the Rev.
Mr. Arnold, under the superintendence of the oatmeal-porridge-loving
Duke of Montague, were now entrusted to
impart what instruction they might to the Prince and his
next brother Frederick. They adopted the old plan of
severity; but on endeavouring to carry it into effect,
when the high-spirited boys were considerably advanced
in their teens, one or both of the royal pupils turned on
their preceptor, Arnold, who was about most grossly to
castigate them, tore the weapon from his hand, and
roughly administered to him the punishment with which
they themselves had been threatened.
Excess of restraint marred the education of the two
elder sons of Charlotte. Even when the Prince was considered
of age, and was allowed his own establishment at
Kew, the system of seclusion was still maintained. Such
a system had its natural consequences. The Prince, ill at
ease with his parents, sought sympathy elsewhere; and
he was not yet out of his teens when Charlotte was
horrified at hearing his name coupled with that of the
most bewitching actress of the day.
Had the father of Miss Darby, the maiden name of
Mrs. Robinson, been a man of less philanthropic principles,
his daughter, probably, would have been a more
virtuous and a more happy woman. She was born at
Bristol in 1758, and was looked upon as a little heiress,
till her father lost the whole of a not inconsiderable
fortune by speculating in an attempt to civilise the Esquimaux
Indians!
Miss Darby was, for some time, a pupil of Miss
Hannah More; but was herself compelled to turn instructress
as early as in her fourteenth year. She was,
however, a precocious beauty; and the year previous she
had received an offer of marriage, which she had declined.
The young teacher worked hard and cheerfully,
in order that she might be the better enabled to support
her mother. The proceeds of this labour also enabled
her to increase the number of her own accomplishments;
among others, dancing. Her master was a Covent Garden
ballet-master, who introduced her to Garrick, and Roscius
brought her out on the stage, in the character of Cordelia
with success.
Before she had terminated her sixteenth year she
married Mr. Robinson, an articled clerk in an attorney’s
office, with a good fortune, upon which the youthful
couple lived in splendour till it was gone, and the husband
was arrested. His wife then spent fifteen months
with him in prison, and then misery drove her again to
Garrick, who gave her some instruction, rehearsed Romeo
to her Juliet, and, bringing her out in the latter character,
gave to the stage one of the handsomest and
youngest and most captivating of actresses who had ever
charmed the town.
Her Juliet was admirable, but her Perdita, in the
‘Winter’s Tale,’ set the town mad. On the 3rd of
December 1779 she played the character in presence of
George III., Queen Charlotte, the Prince of Wales, and
other members of the royal family, and a numerous
audience. When she entered the green-room, dressed
for the part, she looked so bewitching that Smith exclaimed,
‘By Jove! you will make a conquest of the
Prince, for you look handsomer than ever.’ Smith’s prediction
was true; and letters from the Prince, signed
‘Florizel,’ were delivered to Perdita by no less noble a
go-between than the Earl of Essex.
The position of Perdita Robinson at this time was
peculiar: her husband was living in profligacy upon the
wages of her labour, and she had refused the most
brilliant offers made to her on condition of separating
from him. She refused them all; but lent too ready an
ear to the princely suitor, who now besieged her with
indifferently-written letters and promises of never-dying
affection. An interview was contrived, first in a boat
moored off Kew, and afterwards in Kew Gardens by
moonlight, at which the Bishop of Osnaburgh was present—by
way of playing propriety, perhaps—and at which
there appears to have been little said, but much feared,
lest the parties should be found out.
The prince and Perdita became so attached to each
other after a few more interviews that she declared she
should never forget the magic with which she was wooed,
and he presented her with a bond for 20,000l., to be paid
on his coming of age. When that period arrived—it
happened in a few months—‘Florizel’ would not pay the
money, and had grown weary of the lady. To modify
her despair, he granted a last interview, in which he declared
that his affection for her was as great as ever; and
the poor lady, who trusted in the declaration, was passed
by on the following day, in the park, without a sign of
recognition on the part of her princely betrayer. The
remark which she made on this conduct was worthy of
Talleyrand for its sting, smartness, and application—but
it is as well, perhaps, to leave it unquoted.
She had quitted the stage to please him, and now, in
her embarrassment, sought refuge abroad, living in straitened
circumstances in Paris, till, by the intervention of
Mr. Fox, an annuity was settled upon her of 500l. a-year.
With this she maintained some splendour, and she was
even noticed by Marie Antoinette as La belle Anglaise.
The gift of a purse netted by the royal hand of that unfortunate
Queen, and conferred by her on Perdita, showed
at once the sovereign lady’s admiration and lack of judgment
and propriety.
For some time she resided alternately in England and
France, but ultimately, she settled at Brighton, about the
time that Mrs. Fitzherbert was there in the brightest of
her beauty and the height of her splendour. The ex-actress
wrote pretty poetry, and was the authoress of a
dozen novels: poetry and romances are now forgotten;
but the former does not want for tenderness of sentiment
and expression, nor the latter for power and good sense.
Finally, in 1799, she undertook the poetical department
of the Morning Post, retained her office for a few months,
and died in the year 1800.
Perdita was not without her grievous faults; but she
had her virtues, too. She was the loving and helping
child of her mother, and she was the loving and helping
mother of her child. For her mother and her daughter
she worked at her literary occupations with unwearied
fervour, and even Hannah More may have refrained from
casting reproach on her erring and yet not worthless pupil.
In 1783 the Prince of Wales had allotted to him a
separate establishment. He could have none more appropriate
than that old Carlton House which had been the
residence of his grandfather, Frederick Prince of Wales—a
man whom he resembled in many respects. The old
house was originally built on a part of the royal garden
around St. James’s Palace, a lease whereof was granted
for that purpose by Queen Anne to Henry Boyle, Lord
Carlton. This was in 1709. Sixteen years subsequently,
on the death of Lord Carlton, the house was occupied by
his heir and nephew, Richard Boyle (Lord Burlington, the
architect), who seven years later (1732) gave it to his
mother, the Dowager Lady Burlington, by whom, in the
same year, it was made over to Frederick Prince of Wales,
father of George III. The gardens, laid out by Kent, like
Pope’s grounds at Twickenham, extended westward as far
as Marlborough House. The first change that Frederick
made was to construct a bowling-green, the healthy exercise
of bowls being then fashionable; and he inaugurated
his entry by a grand ball, given, as the Daily Post says,
‘to several persons of quality and distinction of both
sexes.’
George Prince of Wales found the old house rather
antiquated as to fashion and dilapidated as to condition,
and he employed Holland, the architect, to correct these
defects. The artist did that, and more. He added the
Ionic screen, some of the pillars of which are now in
Queen Charlotte’s favourite gardens at Kew, and the
Corinthian portico, the columns of which, when the house
was taken down in 1827, were transferred to the National
Gallery. On the two residences of the two eldest sons of
Queen Charlotte, Southey, in his ‘Espriella’s Letters,’
has a remark worth quoting. The Duke of York’s mansion
(Melbourne House, Whitehall), now known as Dover
House, was distinguished by a circular court, which served
as a sort of entrance-hall. It still remains, and may be
seen from the street. The distinguishing feature of Carlton
House was the row of pillars in front. ‘These two
buildings being described to the late Lord North, who was
blind in the latter part of his life, he facetiously remarked,
“Then the Duke of York, it should seem, has been sent
to the round-house, and the Prince of Wales is put in the
pillory.”’
Meanwhile, despite the Prince’s escapades, the least
innocent of which was his visiting a Quaker’s meeting
disguised as a female Friend—where he was betrayed by
the appearance of his leather breeches, seen through the
pocket-hole of the gown—despite these and other escapades,
the Queen’s affection for her son was in no wise
diminished. In 1782 she had brought tambouring into
fashion by embroidering for him, with her own hands, a
waistcoat, which he wore at the first ball at which his
sister, the princess royal, appeared in public. The Queen,
however, had more serious subjects for her consideration.
She had to mourn over the death of the infant Alfred, and
for the loss of a sister. We find also, this year, the first
direct proof of her having interfered in politics. It was
in 1782 that Charlotte commissioned Hutten, the Moravian,
to enter into correspondence with Franklin, with a
view of conciliating matters with the United States.
The eldest son of Queen Charlotte began life very
amply provided for; Parliament gave him 100,000l. as an
outfit, and 50,000l. annually by way of income. Three
months after the birth of his youngest sister, Amelia, in
November 1783, he took his seat in the House of Peers,
joined the opposition, gave himself up to the leading of
the opposition chiefs, whether in politics or vices, was
praised by the people for his spirit, and estranged from
the King, who did not like the principles of those who
called themselves his son’s friends, and who held in horror
the vices and follies for which they were distinguished.
He was as often present under the gallery of the Commons
as in his seat in the Lords. Such a presence is
never acceptable, in such a place, to the representatives
of the people. It perhaps influences the votes, and certainly
affects the liberty of debate. As much was hinted
to the Prince, when he used to watch the struggle in the
Commons between the Coalition and Pitt. He made the
hint his excuse for being disgusted with politics, and thereupon
devoted himself to but one pursuit—the love of
pleasure. But if he had only one pursuit, it had many
varieties and objects. He hunted after what was called
‘pleasure’ in every form, squandered fortunes in not
finding it, and made what he called ‘love’ and extraordinary
presents to two ladies at one and the same time.
Mrs. Crouch, the actress, and Mrs. Fitzherbert (whom he
married), were the Lucy and Polly to whom this light-of-heart
prince gaily sang his ‘How happy could I be with
either!’
Walpole speaks very highly (in 1783) of the Prince’s
brother, William Henry, whom he met at Gunnersbury,
the suburban seat of the old Princess Amelia. ‘He had
been with the Princess in the morning,’ writes Walpole,
‘and returned of his own accord to dinner. She presented
me to him, and I attempted, at the risk of tumbling
on my nose, to kiss his hand, but he would not let me.
You may trust me, madam, who am not apt to be intoxicated
with royalty, that he is charming. Lively, cheerful,
talkative, manly, well-bred, sensible, and exceedingly proper
in all his replies. You may judge how good-humoured
he is, when I tell you that he was in great spirits all day,
though with us old women; perhaps he thought it preferable
to Windsor.’
The Prince of Wales was already overwhelmed with debt.
The domestic comfort of the Queen was even more disturbed
than that of her consort by the solicitations made
by the so-called friends of the Prince of Wales to induce
the King to pay the debts of his eldest son. Her Majesty’s
confidence is said to have been fully placed at this time
upon Mr Pitt. A conversation is spoken of as having
passed between the Queen and the minister, in which he
is reported as having said, ‘I much fear, your Majesty,
that the Prince, in his wild moments, may allow expressions
to escape him that may be injurious to the crown.’
‘There is little fear of that,’ was the alleged reply of the
Queen; ‘he is too well aware of the consequences of such
a course of conduct to himself. As regards that point,
therefore, I can rely upon him.’ Mr. Pitt inquired if her
Majesty was aware of the intimacy which then existed
between Mrs. Fitzherbert and the heir-apparent, and that
reports of an intended marriage were current? ‘He is
now so much embarrassed,’ added the minister, ‘that at
the suggestion of his friend Sheridan he borrows large
amounts from a Jew who resides in town, and gives his
bonds for much larger amounts than he receives.’
In the family dissensions caused by this unhappy
subject neither sire nor son behaved with fairness and
candour. In 1784, the Prince had been required to
send in an exact account of his debts, with a view to
their liquidation. The King had, at least, intimated that
he would discharge the Prince’s liabilities if this account
was rendered. The account was rendered; but, after
having been kept for months, it was returned as not being
exact. The inexactness of this statement consisted of an
item of 25,000l. being entered without any explanation
as to whom it was owing. The Prince refused to make
such explanation, on the ground that it was a secret of
honour between him and his noble creditor, in whom
many persons affected to see the famous, or infamous,
Duke of Orleans. The King declared that, if the Prince
was ashamed to explain the nature of the debt, his
father ought not to be expected to pay it; and there the
matter rested.
By the following year his debts amounted to 160,000l.,
and he could see no chance of relief but by going abroad.
His first idea was of a residence in Holland, and he was
ready to proceed thither as a private individual, should
the King refuse to consent to his leaving England. All
that he wished for, according to his own declarations,
was to economise, to live in retirement, and remain
unknown, until he could appear in a style suitable to his
rank. He complained of the unreasonableness of the
King’s proposition, that he should lay by 10,000l. a-year
to pay his debts, at a time, he said, when his expenses
were twice as great as his income. Such complaint
could only come from a radically dishonest man; for it
is only such a man who, with an income on which he
could very well afford to live—and spare—could complacently
talk of even allowing his expenses to exceed
his revenue.
The Prince affected to think that he might, perhaps,
be able to live in retirement at some of the small German
courts, fancying that, under the title of the Earl of
Chester, his actions would not be judged of as those of a
Prince of Wales. At all events, he declared that to live
in England would be ruin and disgrace to him; for that
the King hated him, wished to set him at variance with
his brothers, and would not even let Parliament assist
him till he should marry. The King’s hatred for his
son, according to the latter, had existed from the time he
was seven years old. Reconciliation was deemed by the
Prince impossible; for his father, he said, had not only
deceived him, but made him deceive others. The son
could not trust the father, and the father had no belief
in the veracity of the son.
The ministry were not disinclined, at this time, to
increase the Prince’s allowance, provided only that he
would appropriate some portion of it to the payment of
his debts, renounce his project of going abroad, and
consent to a reconciliation with the King, by ceasing to
be a man of political party in opposition to the government.
The sum proposed was 100,000l. per annum,
the half of which was to be reserved for the payment of
his debts. The Prince describes the offer as useless,
inasmuch as that, though the ministry might sanction it,
the King would not hear of it, and Pitt could not carry
such a measure in Parliament. The Prince asserted his
belief that so rooted was his father’s hatred of him that
he would turn out Pitt if he ventured to propose such a
measure. Further, the Prince refused to abandon Fox
and his other political friends. Lord Malmesbury was
very anxious to bring the Prince to terms; but the
latter still dwelt upon the bitter paternal hatred. In
proof of this he exhibited to Lord Malmesbury copies of
the correspondence which had passed between himself
and his royal sire on the subject. Lord Malmesbury
thus describes the letters, and the spirit which animated
the writers:—
‘The Prince’s letters were full of respect and deference,
written with great plainness of style and simplicity.
Those of the King were also well written, but hard and
severe; constantly refusing every request the Prince
made, and reprobating in each of them his extravagance
and dissipated manner of living. They were void of
every expression of parental kindness or affection, and
after both hearing them read and perusing them myself,
I was compelled to subscribe to the Prince’s opinion,
and to confess there was very little appearance of making
any impression upon His Majesty in favour of His Royal
Highness.’
Lord Malmesbury suggested that, as the Queen must
have much at heart the bringing about a reconciliation
between her son and his father, such might surely be
effected through her and his sisters. The Prince thought
it impracticable, and only wished that the public knew
all the truth and could judge between him and his sire,
anticipating a favourable verdict for himself, which,
however, the public would not have given even when in
possession of all the facts.
Lord Malmesbury then suggested a means of escape
from all difficulties by a marriage which would at once
reconcile the King and gratify the nation. The Prince,
however, emphatically declared that he would never
marry; that he had settled that subject with his brother
Frederick; and that his resolution was irrevocable.
Lord Malmesbury combated such a resolution, but the
Prince remained unconvinced. He owed nothing, he
said, to the King. Frederick would marry, and his
children would inherit the crown. His adviser suggested
that a bachelor King, as he would be, would have less
hold on the affections of the people than a married heir
and father of children, as his brother would be. ‘The
Prince was greatly struck with this observation. He
walked about the room apparently angry;’ but, after a
few friendly words of explanation, the interlocutors
separated, and the scene was at an end.
At the time the Prince said he never would marry
he had in his mind that serious marriage which he
already had formed with Mrs. Fitzherbert. We may
add, with respect to this union and the character of the
Prince as a lover, a few words on the authority of Lord
Holland.
Never did swain make love so absurdly as the Prince
of Wales. For the ‘first gentleman in Europe,’ he was
the greatest simpleton, under the influence of ‘passion,’
that ever existed. When he was not silly, he was mean,
and he sometimes was both, and heartless to boot, even
when he most prattled of the heart-anguish he endured.
To Perdita Robinson he was little better than a mere
bilking knave. In presence of the majestic Mrs. Fitzherbert
he was an undignified coxcomb. He insulted
her virtue with proposals which even princes ought not
to dare to make without bringing personal chastisement
upon themselves. Finding his offers declined, and that
the lady was going abroad, he acted, and declared he
felt, the utmost despair. But his despair was farcical.
He went down to his friends the Foxes, at St. Anne’s,
where he ‘cried by the hour, testified the sincerity and
violence of his passion and despair by the most extravagant
expressions and actions, rolling on the floor, striking
his forehead, tearing his hair, falling into hysterics, and
swearing he would abandon the country, forego the
crown, sell his jewels and plate, and scrape together a
competency, to fly with the object of his affections to
America.’
The lady proceeded to the continent, but returned in
1785. She came more prepared to listen to the Prince’s
wooing than when she left. He now proposed a marriage,
but she knew that, she being a Romanist, such a marriage
could not be legal. Indeed, it was illegal for any prince
of the blood to marry without the King’s consent, before
he had attained the age of twenty-five. After that time
he was to notify his intention to Parliament, and if that
body did not move the King to withhold his consent
within a year, the marriage then might be entered upon.
Mrs. Fitzherbert, however, frankly enough said that the
ceremony would be all nonsense, and that she was ready
to trust to his honour. He insisted, however, and the
ceremony was duly performed by an English clergyman.
After the solemnisation, the certificate was signed by the
clergyman and attested by two witnesses, said to have
been Catholics. Mrs. Fitzherbert retained the certificate;
but out of a generous fear that harm might come to the
witnesses if they should become known she tore off their
names. The name of the clergyman (who died before
George IV. ascended the throne) remains affixed to the
document.
Mr. Fox was not present at this ceremony, but reports
were so current as to its being about to take place, or to
its having taken place, that he addressed to the Prince a
very long, a very strong, and a very sensible letter, of
which a rough copy (from Fox’s MS.) will be found in
Lord Holland’s ‘Memoirs of the Whig Party.’ In this
manly letter the writer points out the madness of such a
scheme, the terrible consequences that might ensue,
the illegality of the manner, and the possibility, should
the Prince enter subsequently into a legal matrimonial
union, and there being issue by both, of a disputed
succession. He advised, argued, did all that a bold man
and honest friend could do to warn the Prince against
this union, which, as we before mentioned, was currently
reported to have taken place. The Prince, in reply,
declared that his ‘dear Charles’ might ‘make himself
easy, as there not only is, but never was, any grounds
for such reports.’ Armed with this authority, Fox denied
in Parliament, on the warrant of the Prince, the assertion
of such a union having taken place. The wretched liar
who had driven him to assert unconsciously a falsehood
was now exposed to a double torment. Mrs. Fitzherbert
was angry at the public denial, supposing it to be unauthorised,
and urged the Prince to have it announced.
The latter prevaricated and promised; appealed to Grey,
confessing his marriage, and, when Grey would have
nothing to do with it, appealing to Sheridan; the latter
made a few remarks in the House wide of the real object,
and the marriage remained denied, to the great annoyance
of the lady, who continued to be respectfully treated
by the royal family. These, if they disbelieved the
existence of the connection, must have looked upon Mrs.
Fitzherbert as being less worthy of their respect than
before. The truth, however, is, that their respect was
chiefly manifested when Mrs. Fitzherbert separated herself
from her most worthless husband. Documents
proving the marriage (long in the possession of Mrs.
Fitzherbert’s family) have been, since June 1833, actually
deposited, by agreement between the executors of
George IV. (the Duke of Wellington and Sir William
Knighton) and the nominees of Mrs. Fitzherbert (Lord
Albemarle and Lord Stourton), at Coutts’s bank, in a
sealed box, bearing a superscription:—‘The property of
the Earl of Albemarle; but not to be opened by him
without apprising the Duke of Wellington,’ or words to
that purport.1
The author of the Diary illustrative of the court of
George IV., referring to the time when the eldest son of
Queen Charlotte was subdued by the fascinations of Mrs.
Fitzherbert, says that the lady in question ‘had a
stronger hold over the Regent than any of the other
objects of his admiration, and that he always paid her
the respect which her conduct commanded.’ She was
styled by those who knew her ‘the most faultless and
honourable mistress that ever a prince had the good
fortune to be attached to’—a judgment which abounds
in a confusion of terms, and exhibits mental perversion
in him who pronounced it. Of the Regent’s behaviour
to the lady, it may be said that it was as gallant and
considerate at first as it was mean and censurable at last.
In the early days of their intimacy, when they appeared
together at the same parties and were on the point of
leaving them, ‘the Prince never forgot to go through the
form of saying to Mrs. F., with a most respectful bow,
“Madam, may I be allowed the honour of seeing you
home in my carriage?”’ ‘It was impossible,’ says the
same authority, ‘to be in his Royal Highness’s society
and not be captivated by the extreme fascination of his
manners, which he inherits from his mother the Queen;
for his father has every virtue which can adorn a private
character as well as make a king respectable, but he
does not excel in courtly grace or refinement.’
It should be added, that the intelligence no sooner
reached the ears of the Queen than she commanded the
attendance of her son, and insisted on knowing the whole
truth. The Prince is declared not only to have acknowledged
the fact of the marriage, but to have asserted that
no power on earth should separate him from his wife.
He is reported to have added, in reference to the King’s
alleged marriage with Hannah Lightfoot, that his father
would have been a happier man had he remained firm in
standing by the legality of his own marriage. It would
be difficult to say who was at hand to take down the
Prince’s speech on this occasion; but, according to the
author last named, it was substantially as follows:—‘But
I beg farther that my wife be received at court,
and proportionately as your Majesty receives her, and
pays her attention from this time, so shall I render my
attentions to your Majesty. The lady I have married is
worthy of all homage, and my very confidential friends,
with some of my wife’s relations only, witnessed our
marriage. Have you not always taught me to consider
myself heir to the first sovereignty in the world? Where
then will exist any risk of obtaining a ready concurrence
from the House in my marriage? I hope, madam, a few
hours’ reflection will satisfy you that I have done my
duty in following the impulse of my inclinations, and,
therefore, I await your Majesty’s commands, feeling
assured you would not blast the happiness of your
favourite prince.’ The Queen is said to have been
softened by his rather illogical reasoning. It is certain
that her Majesty received Mrs. Fitzherbert at a drawing-room
in the following year with very marked courtesy.
Sixteen years later, and of course long after the marriage
of the Prince of Wales with Caroline of Brunswick,
Mrs. Fitzherbert was still so high in the Prince’s favour
that we find the following record in Lord Malmesbury’s
Diary, under the date of May 25, 1803:—‘Duke of York
came to me at five, uneasy lest the Duchess should be
forced to sup at the same table as Mrs. Fitzherbert, at the
ball to be given by the Knights of the Bath, on the 1st of
June. Talks it over with me—says the King and Queen
will not hear of it. On the other side, he wishes to keep
on terms with the Prince. I say, I will see Lord Henley,
who manages the fête, and try to manage it so that there
shall be two distinct tables, one for the Prince, to which
he is to invite, another for the Duke and Duchess, to
which she is to invite her company.’ The dislike of Mrs.
Fitzherbert for the Duchess of York was as determined
as that entertained by the same lady against Fox, whom
she never forgave for denying the fact of her marriage
with the Prince.
The Prince’s pecuniary embarrassments pressed more
heavily upon him than the troubles arising from his
amours. The Prince, in his difficulties, again had recourse
to the Queen. He revealed to her the amount of both
his difficulties and debts, and reports credited him with
having uttered a menace to the effect that, if the King
failed to provide some means for the payment of those
debts, there were State secrets which he would certainly
reveal, whatever the consequences might be, as, suffering
as he did from the treatment he met at his father’s hands,
he was an object of suspicion or contempt to half the
kingdom. The Queen would not engage herself by any
promise, but she sent for Mr. Pitt. After this last interview
the minister repaired to Carlton House, and the
message he bore showed the amount of influence possessed
by the Queen. The Prince was assured that means
would be found for the discharge of his liabilities. The
King promised an additional 10,000l. a year out of the
civil list, and Parliament subsequently voted the sum of
161,000l. to discharge the debts of the Prince, with an
additional sum of 20,000l. to finish the repairs of Carlton
Palace. That mansion had been dull and silent, but it
was soon again brilliant, and gaily echoing with the most
festive of sounds.
CHAPTER VI. COURT FORMS AND COURT FREEDOMS.
Loss of the American Colonies—Political Struggle—The King’s health
unsatisfactory—Life of the Royal Family at Windsor—Mrs. Delany—The
Queen and the Widow—Early service in the Chapel Royal at
Windsor—Rev. Tom Twining and Miss Burney—Miss Burney’s Reception
by the Queen—Promenade of the Royal Family on the terrace—The
Queen’s ‘dressing’—The Queen’s partiality for Snuff—Country life of
the Royal Family at Kew—Princess Amelia; the King’s great affection
for her—Scene on the birthday of the Princess—Margaret Nicholson’s
attempt to assassinate the King—The Queen’s dread—Her fondness for
Diamonds—Mrs. Warren Hastings—The present from the Nizam of the
Deccan—Unpopularity of the King and Queen—Their affection for each
other—The Queen’s tenderness to Mrs. Delany—Reconciliation of the
King and the Prince—A pleasant scene—Another Court Incident.
The loss of the American Colonies, and the triumph of
Lord North and Fox, two men whom the King hated,
and who forced an Administration upon him, had, in
various degrees, a serious effect upon his health. He became
dejected, but when Fox’s India Bill was thrown out
by the Lords he had the firmness—a firmness suggested
by the Queen—to turn the obnoxious Cabinet out. Pitt
succeeded as prime minister, and no one saw him in that
post with greater pleasure than Charlotte.
She continued to support both King and Minister
through the tremendous political struggle which followed,
and during which Pitt more than once expressed his
determination to resign. ‘In such case I must resign
too,’ said the King, adding that he would sooner retire
with the Queen to Hanover than submit to a ministry
whose political principles he detested. The public
admired his firmness, and for a season he was again
popular—popular, but not safe. His health was in an
unsatisfactory state; and it was at a season when he
required to be kept in a state of composure that an
attempt was made to stab him by an insane woman
named Nicholson, as he was leaving St. James’s Palace
by the garden entrance, on the 2nd of August, 1786. As
he received a paper which she presented, the woman
stabbed at him, but with no worse result than piercing
his waistcoat.
Before we show how the news of this attempt was
received at Windsor, where the Queen was then sojourning,
we may glance briefly at the nature of the life passed
there. It was generally of a pleasing aspect.
The benevolence of the Queen and her consort was
well illustrated in their conduct to Mrs. Delany. The
lady in question was a Granville by birth, and in the first
flush of her youth and beauty had been married, against
her inclination, to a middle-aged squire, named Pendarves,
who was much like what middle-aged squires were in
those not very refined days. Mr. and Mrs. Pendarves
passed much such a life as that described by the young
Widow Cheerly as having been that of herself and the
squire, her lord; and the lady, too, became a widow
almost as early. She was, however, of mature age when
she married her old and esteemed acquaintance, Dr.
Delany, the friend of Swift. After being a second time a
widow, she found a home with the Dowager-duchess of
Portland, and when death deprived her of this friend
also she found a new home and new friends in Queen
Charlotte and King George. They assigned to her a
house in Windsor Park, in the fitting-up of which both
Queen and King took great personal interest, and the
former settled upon her an annuity of 300l. When
the good old lady went down to take possession of
her new habitation the King was there ready to receive
her, like a son establishing a mother in a new home.
His courtesy was felt, and it was of the right sort, for
while it brought him there to welcome the new guest, it
would not allow him to stay there to embarrass her.
With similar delicacy, when the Queen came down to
visit her new neighbour, she put her at once at her ease
by her own affability; and when, before leaving, she
placed in Mrs. Delany’s hands the paper signed by the
King, and authorising her to draw her first half-year of
her little revenue, it was done with a grace which prevented
the object of it from feeling that she was reduced
to the condition of a pensioner.
These parties remained, as long as Mrs. Delany lived,
on terms of as much equality as could exist between
persons so different in rank. In Mrs. Delany’s little parlour
the Queen would frequently take tea. It was a social
banquet in which she delighted; and years afterwards, in
her old age, she was as fond of going down to Datchet to
take tea with Lord James Murray (afterwards Lord Glenlyon,
grandfather of the present Duke of Athol) as she
was at this early period of enjoying the same ‘dish’ with
the fine old ‘gentlewoman’ who was her most grateful
pensioner. Queen and widow corresponded with each
other, lived as ladies in the country who esteem each
other are accustomed to live; and when the doctor’s
relict had not what was to her, good old soul, the supreme
bliss of entertaining the Queen, she enjoyed the inexpressible
felicity of receiving at tea the young princes and
princesses. A riotous, romping, good-natured group these
made; and many a sore headache they must have inflicted
on the aged lady, who was too loyal to be anything
but proud of such an infliction incurred in such a cause.
The letters of Queen Charlotte to her ‘dear friend’
are on small subjects, expressed in a small way, and terminating
with a mixture of condescension and dignity,
with good wishes from ‘your affectionate Queen.’
Mrs. Delany speaks in her own letters with well-warranted
praise of one circumstance which marked the
routine of royal life at Windsor. Every morning throughout
the year, at eight o’clock, the Queen, leaning on the
King’s arm, led her family procession to the Chapel Royal,
for the purpose of attending early morning prayer. One
of the most pleasing features in the Queen’s routine of
daily life was to be found in this exemplary practice of
hers. The Queen never forced any one to follow her
example; she left it to the consciences of all. She was
independent, too, in her opinions, and though she joined
fervently with the King in the prayer, ‘Give peace in our
time, O Lord!’ and acknowledged (with more truth than
the stereotyped expression itself would seem to convey—so
illogical is it with its impertinent ‘because’) that none
other fought for us but God alone, yet would she not
remain silent, as the King invariably did, when the Athanasian
Creed was being repeated. That awful and overwhelming
judicatory denunciation at the close shocked
the mind of the monarch whose own penal laws, however,
were the most sanguinary in Europe. The Queen, as is
the case with most ladies in church matters, had less
mercy, and she heartily joined in the sentence which so
stringently winds up the creed which, after all, was not
written by Athanasius.
When the Rev. Tom Twining heard that the celebrated
Miss Burney was about to be dresser and reader
to the Queen, he exclaimed, ‘What a fine opportunity you
will have of studying the philosophy of human capacity
in the highest sphere of life!’ ‘Goodness me! madam!’
he exclaims, admiringly; ‘are you to take care of the
robes yourself?’ Miss Burney hardly knew what she
would have to do or what her opportunities might be,
but she was not long in acquiring the knowledge in
question.
Indeed, she picked up much acquaintance with court
routine on the first day of her arrival at the Queen’s
lodge. She found a royal mistress who was extremely
anxious to calm the fluttering agitation of her new attendant,
and who received her, if not as a friend, yet in no
respect as a servant. Gracious as was the reception, the
young lady was not sorry to escape to the dinner-table of
the ladies and gentlemen in waiting. How graphically
does she describe the German officer there who was in
waiting on the Queen’s brother, Prince Charles of Mecklenburgh:
‘He could never finish a speech he had begun,
if a new dish made its appearance, without stopping to
feast his eyes upon it, exclaim something in German, and
suck the inside of his mouth; but all so openly, and with
such perfect good-humour, that it was diverting without
being distasteful.’ The old ceremonious forms had not
yet become quite extinct at court. Men did not kneel on
serving the Queen, but they never sat down in her presence.
How they contrived to dine comfortably at the
royal table defies conjecture, if the following paragraph
is to be taken literally: ‘I find it has always belonged to
Mrs. Swellenburgh and Mrs. Haggerdorn to receive at
tea whatever company the King or Queen invite to the
lodge, as it is only a very select few that can eat with
their Majesties, and those few are only ladies; no man, of
what rank soever, being permitted to sit in the Queen’s
presence.’ The royal table must then have been the
dullest in the palace; and no wonder it is that bishops,
peers, officers, and gentlemen enjoyed themselves so
thoroughly, in less dignity and more comfort, with the
maids of honour and ladies of less official greatness.
Nothing was, indeed, more homely and hearty than
the promenades made by the illustrious couple, their
children all about them, on the terrace, of an evening,
or when they assembled in the concert-room, where
‘nothing was played but Handel.’ The time was a
transition time; feudality was growing faint, and the
best of kings were losing their prestige of infallibility.
Still there was much of ceremony both at bed and board;
that of the latter has been already mentioned. That
at bed-time was not so cumbersome as the ceremony
observed at the coucher of Marie Antoinette, but it was
still of a high and ponderous, yet affectionate, formality.
The Queen was handed into her dressing-room by the
King, followed by the Princess Royal and the Princess
Augusta. The King, on leaving the room, kissed his
daughters, who in their turn ceremoniously kissed their
royal mother’s hand, and bade her ‘good-night.’ This
done, the Queen placed herself in the hands of her
‘women,’ who, in as brief a time as was consistent with
the dignity of her whom they tended, fitted the royal
lady for repose. The Queen paid, with a formal curtsey,
every sign of respect, by whomsoever offered her, as she
passed along.
It is said that Burnet introduced the fashion of high-partitioned
pews in the Chapel Royal to prevent the
flirting that was constantly going on between the officers
and maids of honour. Upon some plea for decorum,
rather than because of offence, Queen Charlotte had
appointed separate tables for the ladies and gentlemen
in waiting; but as she did not forbid them to invite each
other, or, as was very often the case with the gentlemen,
to invite themselves, the division of tables was only
nominally maintained.
The Queen’s ‘dressing,’ deprived as it was of some
of the ceremonies of an olden time, was nevertheless not
without its formality. Her new ‘dresser,’ Miss Burney,
was not always in time, disliked at first, but wisely got
over her dislike, being summoned by a bell, and was so
nervous as to mar her services. No maid was permitted
to remain in the apartment during the time the Queen
was ‘tiring.’ One lady dresser handed to the other the
portions of dress required. ‘’Tis fortunate for me,’ says
Miss Burney, ‘I have not the handing of them. I should
never know which to take first, embarrassed as I am, and
should run a prodigious risk of giving the gown before
the hoop, and the fan before the neck-kerchief.’
The actual ‘dressing for the day’ took place at one
o’clock, and included the then elaborate matter of powdering.
Till the hair-dresser was admitted for the completion
of this last matter, the Queen, while being dressed,
read the newspapers; but when the powderer came she
dismissed the attendants, who had previously covered her
up in a peignoir, and was then left alone with the artist,
who must have looked very ridiculous in casting, as the
Queen must have looked in receiving, the impenetrable
clouds of powder which he continued to fling at and
about the royal head. But there was another sort of
powder patronised by the Queen—the mother of George
IV. condescended to take snuff. In the admixture and
scent of this she was curiously learned; and Miss
Burney filled her boxes and damped the contents when
they had got too dry, to her great satisfaction.
There is a fashion in country-towns observed by
ladies who go out in chairs to parties, consisting in their
carrying with them some portion of their dress, to be
adjusted at the locality where they are about to spend
the evening. This fashion, too, is a relic of the days of
Queen Charlotte. ‘On court days,’ says Miss Burney,
‘the Queen dresses her head at Kew, and puts on her
drawing-room apparel at St. James’s. Her new attendant
dresses all at Kew, except tippet and long ruffles, which
she carries in paper to save from dusty roads.’ It was
the etiquette at St. James’s that the finishing of the
Queen’s dressing there should be the work of the bedchamber-woman.
It consisted of little more than tying
the necklace, handing the fan and gloves, and bearing the
Queen’s train as she left the room. This she did alone,
only as far as the anteroom; there the lady of the bedchamber
became the ‘first trainbearer,’ and the poor
Queen had two annoyances to put up with instead
of one.
From the cumbrous ceremonies of St. James’s the
Queen was glad enough to escape to Kew. At the latter
place, indeed, ceremony, as far as the royal family was
concerned, was left outside the gates. The sovereigns
were thoroughly ‘at home,’ and the Queen enjoyed a
‘country life,’ not as Marie Antoinette did, a dairymaid in
diamonds, at Trianon, but as a simple English country lady.
The foreigners who visited the court at this time were
disgusted by the republican look which it wore. It was
simple and plain enough, at Kew that is, to have pleased
even Franklin. The King was really there what he was
popularly called everywhere, ‘Farmer George;’ the
Queen was his true dame, the plainest of the plain things
around her. The children—that is, the younger portion
of them—were as unaffected as their parents, and the
little Princess Amelia was the fairy of the place, if one
may speak of a fairy in connection with farming. However
grave the King might look, through pressure of
public events, the little hand of the Princess Amelia,
placed by the Queen in his, always touched his heart,
and a look into the child’s eyes ever brought a smile
into his own. Never daughter more closely nestled in a
father’s heart than Amelia did in that of George III.
The Queen loved, but the King adored her. At Kew,
father and child appeared more unrestrained in the
hearty demonstrations of their love than elsewhere.
Indeed, everything at Kew was free and unrestrained;
and it was no offence there if any of the attendants did
pass a room the door of which was open and somebody
royal within. In France, they who desired to enter an
apartment in which the Queen was, scratched, but never
knocked, at the door. In England, at least in Queen
Charlotte’s time, the etiquette was also not to knock at,
but to shake the handle of, the door. Another ceremony
was observed in order to avoid ceremony. When royal
birthdays occurred during the Queen’s stay at Windsor
the family walked on the terrace, which was crowded
with people of distinction, who took that mode of showing
respect, to avoid the trouble and fatigue of attending at
the following drawing-room. Here is a scene on the
birthday of the Princess Amelia, drawn by one who was
present:—
‘It was really a mighty pretty procession. The little
Princess, just turned three years old, in a robe-coat
covered with fine muslin, a dressed closed cap, white
gloves, and a fan, walked on alone and first, highly
delighted in the parade, and turning from side to side to
see everybody as she passed; for all the terracers stand
up against the walls to make a clear passage for the royal
family the moment they come in sight. Then follow the
King and Queen, no less delighted themselves with the
joy of their little darling.’2
The Princess Royal, at this time, is said to have
shown more respect and humility to her parents than any
of the other children of the family. She passed on in
this birthday procession, accompanied by ladies, and her
sisters, similarly accompanied, followed her. Happy
were they to whom Queen or King addressed a few
words as they stopped on their way; and astounded
were the adorers of etiquette when they saw the little
Princess Amelia, on recognising Miss Burney, not only
go up to kiss her, but actually kissed by her. The Queen
herself was probably more surprised than pleased. But
it was a birthday! At other seasons etiquette was so
rigidly observed (always excepting at Kew) that the
children of the royal family never spoke in the presence
of the King and Queen, except to answer observations
made to them. The Queen, too, as well as she was able,
watched over the religious education of her daughters,
and always assembled them around her to listen to a
course of religious reading by herself. This she did with
gravity and good judgment, as became indeed a woman
of ordinary good sense.
We have already, incidentally, noticed the attempt
made upon the life of the King by Margaret Nicholson.
The attack was not known to the Queen till it was
announced to her by the King in person. As soon as
the poor mad woman had been arrested, the Spanish
ambassador posted down to Windsor, to be in readiness
to inform her Majesty of the truth, in case of any
exaggerated reports reaching her ear. When the King
entered the Queen’s apartment at Windsor, on his return
from London, he wore a rather joyous air, and exclaimed,
in a naturally joyous tone, ‘Well, here I am, safe and
well, though I have had a very narrow escape of being
stabbed.’ The consternation in the family circle was
great; several of the ladies burst into tears, for every
one was fond of George III., albeit he was accused of
Stuart fondness for the exercise of kingly prerogative.
The Queen alone did not at first weep, but pale and
agitated she turned round to those who did, and said
that she envied them. The relief of tears, however,
soon comparatively restored her, and she was enabled,
with some outward show of calmness, to listen to the
King’s details of the occurrence. Into these he entered
with the hilarity of a man whose feelings are naturally
not very finely strung, but who is strongly persuaded
that escape from assassination is rather a matter to be
jocund than solemn over. He did not want for a sense
of gratitude at his escape, but nothing could prevent his
being gay over it. He told the details, therefore, as
though they partook something of a joke. He noticed
that the knife had slightly cut or grazed his waistcoat;
and said he, ‘It was great good luck that it did not go
further. There was nothing beneath it but some thin
linen and a good deal of fat.’
The matter, however, pressed heavily upon the spirits
of the Queen. She dreaded lest this attempt should be
only a part of a great conspiracy, and feared that the
conspirators would not rest satisfied with the mere
attempt. The idea was natural at the time, for democracy
then was daily barking at, if not biting, kings; and so
universally spread was the feeling through one class
throughout Europe that the King of England had no
cause to deem himself specially exempt from such
attempts. George III. had the courageous spirit common
to most of the princes of his house, and would not stand
aloof from his people because the princes of other houses
were at issue with their people. The Queen felt greater
distrust, but she was partially reassured by the tone
taken by the English papers. The pulpit and the press
spoke out in tones which showed that, however the
country might be divided upon questions connected with
politics, it would not tolerate the idea of regicide. These
things were known to Queen Charlotte, and comforted
the poor lady, who, for a time, could not think of her
husband being in London without a spasmodic horror.
She pored over the English papers, in order to draw
from them comfort and consolation; and it was when
reading one of the warmly loyal articles therein, beginning
with the words of the coronation anthem, ‘Long
live the King! may the King live for ever!’ that she
shed the most copious tears that yet had fallen from her,
and drew comfort from what she read. Perhaps the
words brought back to her recollection the period, a
quarter of a century before, when she had listened to
that anthem for the first time, and, glancing back over the
long period that had since then elapsed, she perhaps
dared to hope that the protection which had been so far
vouchsafed would be continued. Another quarter of a
century indeed was vouchsafed before the splendour of
the reign began to wane in the mental gloom which
settled around the King; but already had begun those
domestic troubles which were inflicted upon her by the
unfilial conduct of her heartless eldest son.
At present, however, she could only think of, and be
grateful for, the escape of the King. Loyalty visited her
somewhat oppressively in its congratulations, and the
next drawing-room was so crowded, and its ceremonies so
long, that the Queen was half dead with fatigue before it
was over. She found rest and welcome sympathy at ever-pleasant
Kew. There the inhabitants welcomed their
royal patrons with a zeal, warmth, beer-drinking, and
fireworks such as had not been exceeded in any part of
the empire. But it was a sort of honour-festival in which
the Queen could partake without fatigue. She enjoyed
it heartily; and more emphatically than was her wont,
even when most pleased, she exclaimed, ‘I shall love little
Kew for this as long as I live!’
When Charlotte, on her first visit to the City, charmed
even the eyes of the fair Quakeresses who surrounded her
at the Barclays’ by the splendour of her diamonds, she
already had the reputation of possessing a desire for
acquiring precious stones. Such desire was at one time a
mere fashion, like the mania which squandered thousands
on a flower, or the madness which at a later period prevailed
to be possessed, at whatever cost, of porcelain.
The people were reminded of the Queen’s fondness for
diamonds at the period when the name of Warren
Hastings began to be unpleasantly canvassed in England.
The return of that remarkable personage from India
was preceded by that of his scarcely less remarkable
wife. Soon after her arrival Mrs. Hastings appeared at
court, and nothing could exceed the graciousness of the
reception she met with from Queen Charlotte. The
popular tongue soon wagged audaciously, if not veraciously,
on this royal welcome to a lady who was commonly said
to have come to England with a lapful of diamonds. For
such glittering presents it was said that Queen Charlotte
sold her favour and protection. There was, no doubt,
much exaggeration in the matter; but the supposed protection
of the court, and the alleged manner in which it
was said to have been purchased, were as injurious to
Hastings as any of the invectives thundered against him
by Burke. At the time that the monster impeachment
was going on, a present from the Nizam of the Deccan to
the King arrived in England. It was a splendid diamond,
and was consigned, for presentation, to Warren Hastings,
who handed it over to Lord Sydney, but who was present
himself at the time when that nobleman duly offered the
glittering gift to the King. Its ready acceptance, at a
time when Hastings was on his trial, was misconstrued;
and that popular voice which so often errs, notwithstanding
the assertion that when uttered it is divinely inspired,
immediately concluded that at least a bushelful of diamonds,
presented to the King and Queen, had bought impunity
for the alleged great offender. Ridicule, satire, caricature,
violent prose, and execrable rhyme were levelled at both
their Majesties in consequence. According to those who
were about the person of the Queen, she had better jewels
in her virtues than in caskets of precious gems. Miss
Burney, in her portrait of the Queen, may be said to contemplate
her through pink-coloured spectacles. But,
setting aside what predilection induces her to say, enough
remains to satisfy an unprejudiced person that there was
much amiability, penetration, and good sense in the
character of Charlotte. She was more dignified in her
visits at the houses of subjects than any of her predecessors
had been. She preferred reading the ‘Spectator’ to reading
novels, and indeed had very little regard for novel-writers,
and none at all for Madame de Genlis, with whom she
very wisely counselled Miss Burney not to correspond.
Of the affection which existed between the Queen and
her husband here is a pretty incident:—‘The Queen had
nobody but myself with her one morning, when the King
hastily entered the room with some letters in his hand,
and addressing her in German, which he spoke very fast,
and with much apparent interest in what he said, he
brought the letters up to her and put them into her hand.
She received them with much agitation, but evidently of
a much pleased sort, and endeavoured to kiss his hand as
he held them. He would not let her, but made an effort,
with a countenance of the highest satisfaction, to kiss her.
I saw instantly in her eyes a forgetfulness at the moment
that any one was present, while, drawing away her hand,
she presented him her cheek. He accepted her kindness
with the same frank affection that she offered it, and the
next moment they both spoke English, and talked upon
common and general subjects. What they said I am far
enough from knowing; but the whole was too rapid to
give me time to quit the room, and I could not but see
with pleasure that the Queen had received some favour
with which she was sensibly delighted, and that the King,
in her acknowledgments, was happily and amply paid.’3
This sort of incident, it may be said, is of commonplace
frequency in private life, short of the hand-kissing;
but it also serves to show that there was an affection
existing at this period which, happily, is not a rare one in
common life. And Charlotte could condescend to the
level of that so-called common life, and to them who
belonged to it exhibit her natural goodness. Witness
for her the directions which she sent on a cold November
morning to good old and parcel-blind Mrs. Delany.
‘Tell her,’ said she, ‘that this morning is so very cold and
wet that I think she will suffer by going to church. Tell
her, therefore, that Dr. Queen is of opinion she had better
stay and say her prayers at home.’ She showed her concern
still more when, after having lent to Miss Burney
that abominable and absurd tragedy of Horace Walpole’s,
‘The Mysterious Mother,’ she presented her with Ogden’s
Sermons, wherewith to sweeten her imagination. Perhaps
Hurd, Bishop of Worcester, on his visit to Windsor this
year, rather underrated the royal power to appreciate
sermons. Mrs. Delany asked him for a copy of one which
he had preached before their Majesties. The prelate
answered that the sermon would not do at all for her. It
was a mere plain Christian sermon, he said, made for the
King and Queen, but it wouldn’t do for a bel esprit.
The royal household was sometimes disturbed by
family dissensions; thus in 1787 the Prince of Wales
would not attend the birthday drawing-room of the
Queen, but he sent her written congratulations on the
return of the day. The coldness existing between mother
and son kept the latter from court. ‘I fear it was severely
felt by his royal mother,’ says Miss Burney, ‘though
she appeared composed and content.’ Of party-spirit
at this time, when party-spirit ran so high and was so
fierce and bitter in quality, the Diarist last named asserts
that the Queen had but little. She declares her Majesty
to have been liberal and nobly-minded, ‘beyond what I
had conceived her rank and limited connections could
have left her, even with the fairest advancements from
her early nature; and many things dropped from her, in
relation to parties and their consequences, that showed a
feeling so deep upon the subject, joined to a lenity so
noble towards the individuals composing it, that she drew
tears from my eyes in several instances.’
This year saw the reconciliation of the Prince with his
parents, and a public manifestation of this reconciliation
of the heir-apparent with his family took place on the
terrace at Windsor Castle. The Prince appeared there,
chiefly that by his presence he might do honour to a
particular incident—the presentation of the Duchesse de
Polignac and her daughter, the Duchesse de Guiche, to the
King and Queen. The noble visitors themselves, to do
honour to the occasion, repaired to the terrace, attired, as
they thought, in full English costume—‘plain undress
gowns, with close ordinary black silk bonnets.’ They
were startled at finding the Queen and the Princesses
dressed with elaborate splendour. For the spectators,
however, the most interesting sight was that of the heir-apparent
conversing cordially with his illustrious parents.
The lookers-on fancied that all, henceforth, would be
serene, and that ‘Lovely Peace’ would reign undisturbedly.
But a pleasanter scene even than this was witnessed
shortly after in the Queen’s dressing-room. Her Majesty
was under the hands of her hair-dresser, and in the room,
during the ceremony, were Mr. de Luc, Mr. Turbulent (a
pseudonym), and Miss Burney. The Queen conversed
with all three. But the sacrilegious and well-named
Turbulent, instead of fixing there his sole attention, contrived,
‘by standing behind her chair and facing me, to
address a language of signs to me the whole time, casting
up his eyes, clasping his hands, and placing himself in
various fine attitudes, and all with a humour so burlesque
that it was impossible to take it either ill or seriously....
How much should I have been discountenanced had her
Majesty turned about and perceived him, yet by no means
so much disconcerted as by a similar Cerberic situation;
since the Queen, who, when in spirits, is gay and sportive
herself, would be much farther removed from any hazard
of misconstruction.’4 Nor was this the only ‘pleasant’
incident of the year. It was not long after the above
that Lady Effingham, at Windsor, exclaimed to the Queen,
‘Oh, ma’am, I had the greatest fright this morning. I saw
a huge something on Sir George’s throat. “Why, Sir
George,” says I, “what’s that? a wen?” “Yes,” says he,
“countess, I’ve had it three-and-twenty years.” However,
I hear it’s now going about—so I hope your Majesty will
be careful!’
One more court incident of this year will afford us
a specimen of playfulness as understood by the Prince of
Wales. The latter was at Windsor with the Duke of
York, who had just returned from the Continent, after an
absence from England of seven years. His return caused
great joy both to the King and Queen; but it was not a
joy of long enduring.
‘At near one o’clock in the morning, while the
wardrobe-woman was pinning up the Queen’s hair, there
was a sudden rap-tap at the dressing-room door. Extremely
surprised, I looked at the Queen, to see what
should be done; she did not speak. I had never heard
such a sound before, for at the royal doors there is
always a particular kind of scratch used, instead of
tapping. I heard it, however, again, and the Queen
called out, “What is that?” I was really startled, not
conceiving who could take so strange a liberty as to
come to the Queen’s apartment without the announcing
of a page; and no page, I was very sure, would make
such a noise. Again the sound was repeated, and more
smartly. I grew quite alarmed, imagining some serious
evil at hand, either regarding the King or some of the
Princesses. The Queen, however, bid me open the door.
I did; and what was my surprise to see there a large man,
in an immense wrapping great-coat, buttoned up round
his chin, so that he was almost hid between cape and hat.
I stood quite motionless for a moment; but he, as if
also surprised, drew back. I felt quite sick with sudden
terror—I really thought some ruffian had broken into
the house, or a madman. “Who is it?” cried the
Queen. “I do not know, ma’am,” I answered. “Who
is it?” she called aloud; and then, taking off his hat,
entered the Prince of Wales. The Queen laughed very
much, and so did I too, happy in this unexpected explanation.
He told her eagerly that he only came to
inform her there were the most beautiful northern lights
to be seen that could possibly be imagined, and begged
her to come to the gallery windows.’5
CHAPTER VII. SHADOWS IN THE SUNSHINE.
The Princess Amelia—Her connection with the Duke of Grafton—Beau
Nash and the Princess—Her despotism as Ranger of Richmond Park—Checked
by Mr. Bird—A Scene at her Loo-table—Her fondness for
stables—Her eccentric Costume—Inordinate love of Snuff—Her Death—Conduct
of the Princes—The King’s Illness—Graphic picture of the state
of affairs—Lord Thurlow’s treachery—Heartlessness of the Prince—Deplorable
condition of the Queen—The King delirious—Particulars of
his Illness—Dr. Warren—Melancholy scene—The King wheedled away
to Kew—Placed under Dr. Willis—The Prince and Lord Lothian eavesdroppers—The
King’s Recovery—The King unexpectedly encounters
Miss Burney.
One event of this year brings us back to the persons and
memories of the age of Caroline. Three-quarters of a
century had passed away since the day when the then
little Princess Amelia Sophia, who was born in Hanover,
arrived in London, some three years old, at the period
when her parents ascended the throne of England. She
was an accomplished and a high-spirited girl, and grew
into an attractive and ‘lovable’ woman. No prince,
however, ever came to the feet of Amelia Sophia. She
did not, nevertheless, want for lovers of a lower
dignity. Walpole, in allusion to this, states of her that
she was ‘as disposed to meddle’ in State matters as her
elder sister Anne; and that ‘she was confined to receiving
court from the Duke of Newcastle, who affected to be in
love with her; and from the Duke of Grafton, in whose
connection with her there was more reality.’
The latter connection is said to have been more
romantic than platonic. The Princess and the Duke were
given to riding out in company, conversing together in
the recesses of windows, keeping together when out
hunting, and occasionally losing themselves together in
Windsor Forest and other places convenient for lovers to
lose themselves in. This last incident in the love passages
of the Princess’s life afforded great opportunity for good-natured
gossips to indulge in joking, and for ill-natured
gossips to indulge in affectedly indignant reproof. The
Princess troubled herself very little with the remarks of
others on her conduct. It was only when Queen Caroline
was worked upon by the ill-natured gossips to notice and to
censure the intimacy which existed between the Princess
and the Duke that Amelia took the matter somewhat to
heart, and wept as a young lady in such circumstances
was likely to do at finding a violent end put to her violent
delights. The Queen indeed threatened to lay the matter
before the King, and it is said that it was only through
the good and urgent offices of Sir Robert Walpole that so
extreme a course was not taken.
Like her sister Anne, Amelia was rather imperious in
disposition, and she never found but one man who openly
withstood her. That man was Beau Nash. The Beau
had fixed eleven o’clock at which dancing should cease in
the rooms at Bath, where he was despotic Master of the
Ceremonies. On one occasion, when the Princess was
present, the hour had struck, and Nash had raised his
jewelled finger, in token that the music was to stop, and
the ladies were to ‘sit down and cool,’ as the Beau delicately
expressed it. The imperious daughter of Caroline
was not disposed to end the evening so early, and intimated
to the Master her gracious pleasure that there
should be another country dance. Nash looked at her
with surprise. He laughed an agitated laugh, shook all
the powder out of his wig in signifying his decided refusal,
and, muttering something about the laws of the Medes
and Persians, set down the Princess as a rather ill-bred
person.
In her way she was as imperious as Nash; and as
Ranger of Richmond Park she was as despotic as the
Beau within his more artificial territory at Bath. She
kept the park closed, sacred to the pleasure and retirement
of royalty and the favoured few. There were,
however, some dreadfully democratic persons at Richmond,
who had a most obstinate conviction that the public had
a right of passage through the park, and they demanded
that the right should be allowed them. The royal
Ranger peremptorily refused. Democratic cobblers immediately
went to law with her, and proved that the
right was with them. The Princess yielded to the counsel
of her own legal advisers, and, allowing the right of
passage, made a very notable concession; she planted
rickety ladders against the walls, and bade the ladies and
gentlemen of the vicinity pass through the park as they
best could by such means. But the persevering people
maintained that if they had right of passage the right
must be construed in a common-sense way, and that
passage implied a pass or gate by which such passage
might be made. The royal lady thought the world
was coming to an end when the vulgar dared thus to
‘keep standing on their rights’ in presence of a princess.
She was in some measure correct; for the age of feudal
royalty was coming to a close, and that great shaking-up
of equality was beginning from which royalty has never
perfectly recovered. The troublesome people, accordingly,
kept most vexatiously to the point, and after a fierce
struggle they compelled their Ranger to set open a gate
whereby they might have free and constant access to their
own park. Had this daughter of Caroline been a wise
woman, she would have cheerfully gone through this
gate with the people, and so, sharing in their triumph,
would have won their love. But ‘Emily,’ as she was
often called, was of quite another metal, and was so disgusted
at the victory achieved by the vulgar that she
threw up her office in disgust, and declared that the
downfall of England commenced with the opening of
Richmond Park.
The Princess offended more persons than the mere
democracy by her arrogance as Ranger. The evidence of
Walpole is conclusive on this subject, and is worth citing,
often as I have had to quote from his lively pages. In
1752, he writes: ‘Princess Emily, who succeeded my
brother in the Rangership of Richmond Park, has imitated
her brother William’s unpopularity, and disobliged the
whole country, by refusal of tickets and liberties that had
always been allowed. They are at law with her, and
have printed in the ‘Evening Post’ a strong memorial,
which she had refused to receive. The high-sheriff of
Surrey, to whom she had denied a ticket, but on better
thought had sent one, refused it, and said he had taken
his part. Lord Brooke, who had applied for one, was
told he couldn’t have one; and, to add to the affront, it
was signified that the Princess had refused one to my
Lord Chancellor. Your old nobility don’t understand
such comparisons. But the most remarkable event happened
to her about three weeks ago. One Mr. Bird, a
rich gentleman near the palace, was applied to by the
late Queen for a piece of ground that lay convenient for a
walk she was making. He replied that it was not proper
for him to pretend to make a queen a present, but if she
would do what she pleased with the ground he would be
content with the acknowledgment of a key and two
bucks a year. This was religiously observed till the era of
her Royal Highness’s reign. The bucks were denied, and
he himself once shut out, on pretence it was fence month
(the breeding-time, when tickets used to be excluded,
keys never). The Princess was soon after going through
his grounds to town. She found a padlock on his gate.
She ordered it to be broken open. Mr. Shaw, her deputy,
begged a respite till he could go for the key. He found
Mr. Bird at home. “Lord, sir, here is a strange mistake!
The Princess is at the gate, and it is padlocked.” “Mistake!
no mistake at all. I made the road; the ground
is my own property. Her Royal Highness has thought fit
to break the agreement which her royal mother made
with me; nobody goes through my grounds but those I
choose should.” Translate this to your Florentines,’ adds
Walpole to our legate in Tuscany; ‘try if you can make
them conceive how pleasant it is to treat blood royal
thus.’
George II., who was more liberal, in many respects,
than any of his children, save when these affected liberality
for political purposes, finally anticipated the award
of law by ordering the park to be thrown open to the
public in the month of December 1752. But he could
not have kept it closed.
Walpole speaks of the Princess Amelia as if he had
never forgotten or forgiven this, or any other of her
faults. According to his description, she was for ever
prying impertinently into the affairs of other people;
silly, garrulous, and importantly communicative of trifles
not worth the telling. He paints her as arrogant and insolent;
inexcusable, it would seem, in these last respects,
simply because she no longer possessed either power or
beauty. But these were only eccentricities; there was
much of sterling goodness beneath them. She was nobly
generous and royally charitable. She was a steady friend
and an admirable mistress. In face of such virtues, mere
human failings may be forgiven.
Walpole graphically and dramatically describes a scene
at her loo-table. The year is 1762, the month December.
‘On Thursday,’ he says, ‘I was summoned to the Princess
Emily’s loo. Loo she called it; politics it was. The
second thing she said to me was: “How were you the two
long days?” “Madam, I was only there the first.”
“And how did you vote?” “Madam, I went away.”
“Upon my word, that was carving well!” Not a very
pleasant apostrophe to one who certainly never was a
time-server. Well, we sat down. She said: “I hear
Wilkinson is turned out, and that Sir Edward Winnington
is to have his place. Who is he?” addressing herself to
me, who sat over against her. “He is the late Mr.
Winnington’s heir, madam.” “Did you like that Winnington?”
“I can’t but say I did, madam.” She
shrugged up her shoulders, and continued: “Winnington
was originally a great Tory. What do you think he was
when he died?” “Madam, I believe what all people are
in place.” “Pray, Mr. Montague, do you perceive anything
rude or offensive in this?” Here then she flew
into the most outrageous passion, coloured like scarlet,
and said: “None of your wit. I don’t understand joking
on these subjects. What do you think your father would
have said if he had heard you say so? He would have
murdered you, and you would have deserved it.” I was
quite confounded and amazed. It was impossible to
explain myself across a loo-table, as she is so deaf.
There was no making a reply to a woman and a princess,
and particularly for me, who have made it a rule, when I
must converse with royalties, to treat them with the
greatest respect, since it is all the court they will ever
have from me. I said to those on each side of me:
“What can I do? I cannot explain myself now.” Well,
I held my peace; and so did she, for a quarter of an
hour. Then she began with me again, examined me upon
the whole debate, and at last asked me directly which I
thought the best speaker, my father or Mr. Pitt? If
possible, this was more distressing than her anger. I
replied, it was impossible to compare two men so different;
that I believed my father was more a man of business
than Mr. Pitt. “Well, but Mr. Pitt’s language?”
“Madam, I have always been remarkable for admiring
Mr. Pitt’s language.” At last the unpleasant scene ended;
but as we were going away I went close to her and said:
“Madam, I must beg leave to explain myself. Your
Royal Highness has seemed to be very angry with me, and
I am sure I did not mean to offend you; all that I intended
to say was, that I supposed Tories were Whigs when they
got places.” “Oh!” said she; “I am very much obliged
to you. Indeed, I was very angry.” Why she was angry,
or what she thought I meant, I do not know to this
moment, unless she supposed that I would have hinted
that the Duke of Newcastle and the Opposition were not
men of consummate virtue, and had not lost their places out
of principle. The very reverse was at that time in my head,
for I meant that the Tories would be just as loyal as the
Whigs when they got anything by it.’
The Princess was not ladylike in her habits. She had
a fondness for loitering about her stables, and would
spend hours there in attendance upon her sick horses.
She of course acquired the ways of those whose lives pass
in stables and stable matters. She was manly, too, in her
dress. Calamette would have liked to have painted her,
as that artist has painted the frock-coat portrait of Madame
Dudevant (George Sand). He would have picturesquely
portrayed her in the round hat and German riding-habit,
‘standing about’ at her breakfast, sipping her chocolate,
or taking spoonsful of snuff. Of this she was inordinately
fond, but she accounted her box sacred. A Noli me
tangere was engraven on it, but the injunction was not
always held sacred. Once, on one of the card-tables in
the Assembly Rooms at Bath, her box lay open, and an
old general officer standing near inconsiderately took a
pinch from it. The indignant Princess immediately called
an attendant, who, by her directions, flung the remainder
of the contents of the box into the fire.
In June 1786, Walpole, then nearly a septuagenarian,
borrowed a dress-coat and sword, in order to dine at
Gunnersbury with the Princess. The company comprised
the Prince of Wales, the Prince of Mecklenburgh, the
Duke of Portland, Lord Clanbrassil, Lord and Lady
Clermont, Lord and Lady Southampton, Lord Pelham,
and Mrs. Howe. Some of the party retired early. Others,
more dissipated, sat up playing commerce till ten. ‘I am
afraid I was tired,’ says Horace. The lively old Princess
asked him for some verses on Gunnersbury. ‘I pleaded
being superannuated. She would not excuse me. I promised
she should have an ode on her next birthday, which
diverted the Prince; but all would not do. So, as I came
home, I made some stanzas not worth quoting, and sent
them to her by breakfast next morning.’
In the October following, the daughter of Caroline
and George II. died at her house in Cavendish Square,
at the east corner of Harley Street. Card-playing and
charity were the beloved pursuits of her old age. Her
death took place on the last day of October 1786, in the
76th year of her age. Her remains lie in Henry VII.’s
chapel in Westminster Abbey.
But the decease of this aged princess appeared a minor
calamity compared with the illness which now threatened
the King. In presence of this the Queen forgot Mrs.
Trimmer and her Sunday Schools; Gainsborough, whom
she patronised; public theatricals, and private readings.
The illness had been long threatening.
In the ‘Memoirs of the Court and Cabinet of George
III.,’ by the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos, the elder
sons of Queen Charlotte are spoken of, and particularly
with reference to this period immediately previous to the
King’s illness, in a most unfavourable light. The Prince
of Wales, we are told, like his two predecessors in the
same title, was active in his opposition to the measures of
the cabinet and crown. The same spirit, with as little
prudence to moderate and more ill-feeling to embitter it,
was as lively in the man as in the boy. The Prince was,
however, at least consistent in his opposition. ‘The Duke
of York,’ says Lord Bulkeley, writing to the Marquis of
Buckingham, ‘talks both ways, and I think will end in
opposition. His conduct is as bad as possible. He plays
very deep and loses, and his company is thought mauvais
ton. I am told that the King and Queen begin now to
feel “how much sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to
have an ingrate child.” When the Duke of York is completely
done up in the public opinion, I should not be
surprised if the Prince of Wales assume a different style
of behaviour. Indeed, I am told, he already affects to
see that his brother’s style is too bad.’
Public business, as far as its transaction through
ministers was concerned, became greatly impeded through
the illness which had attacked the King. It had been
brought on by his imprudence in remaining a whole day
in wet stockings, and it exhibited itself not merely in
spasmodic attacks of the stomach, but in an agitation and
flurry of spirits which caused great uneasiness to the
Queen, and which, both for domestic and political reasons,
it was desirous should not be known.
The very attempt at concealment gave rise to various
alarming reports. The best answer that could be devised
for the latter was to allow the King to appear at the levée
at the end of October. The Queen suffered much when
this plan was resolved upon; and it had the result, which
she expected, of over-fatiguing the King and rendering
him worse. At the close of the levée, the King remarked
to the Duke of Leeds and Lord Thurlow, the latter of
whom had advised him to take care of himself and return
to Windsor: ‘You then, too, my Lord Thurlow, forsake
me, and suppose me ill beyond recovery; but whatever
you or Mr. Pitt may think or feel, I, that am born a
gentleman, shall never lay my head on my last pillow in
peace and quiet as long as I remember the loss of my
American Colonies.’ This loss appears to have weighed
heavily on his mind, and to have been one of the great
causes by which it was ultimately overthrown.
Early in November he became delirious, but the
medical men, Warren, Heberden, and Sir G. Baker, could
not tell whether the malady would turn, at a critical point,
for life or death; or whether, if for the former, the patient
would be afflicted or not with permanent loss of reason.
The disease was now settled in the brain, with high fever.
The Princes of the Blood were all assembled at Windsor,
in the room next to that occupied by the sufferer, and a
regency bestowing kingly power on the Prince of Wales
was already talked of.
When the fact of the King’s illness could no longer
be with propriety concealed, the alarm without the
royal residence was great, and the disorder scarcely less
within. The most graphic picture of the state of affairs
is drawn by Lord Bulkeley. ‘The Queen,’ he says, ‘sees
nobody but Lady Constance, Lady Charlotte Finch, Miss
Burney, and her two sons, who, I am afraid, do not
announce the state of the King’s health with that caution
and delicacy which should be observed to the wife and
the mother, and it is to them only that she looks up. I
understand her behaviour is very feeling, decent, and proper.
The Prince has taken the command at Windsor, in consequence
of which there is no command whatsoever; and
it was not till yesterday that orders were given to two
grooms of the bedchamber to wait for the future, and
receive the inquiries of the numbers who inquire; nor
would this have been done if Pitt and Lord Sydney had
not come down in person to beg that such orders might
be given. Unless it was done yesterday, no orders were
given for prayers in the churches, nor for the observance
of other forms, such as stopping the playhouses, &c.,
highly proper (?) at such a juncture. What the consequence
of this heavy misfortune will be to government,
you are more likely to know than I am; but I cannot
help thinking that the Prince will find a greater difficulty
in making a sweep of the present ministry in his character
of Fiduciary Regent than in that of King. The stocks
are already fallen two per cent., and the alarms of the
people of London are very little flattering to the Prince.
I am told that message after message has been sent to
Fox, who is touring with Mrs. Armistead on the continent;
but I have not heard that the Prince has sent for
him, or has given any orders to Fox’s friends to that
effect. The system of favouritism is much changed since
Lord Bute’s and the Princess Dowager’s time; for Jack
Payne, Master Leigh, an Eton schoolboy, and Master
Barry, brother to Lord Barrymore, and Mrs. Fitz, form
the cabinet at Carlton House.’
The afflicted King, for a time, grew worse, then
the Opposition affected to believe that his case was by no
means desperate. Their insincerity was proved as
symptoms of amelioration began to show themselves.
Then they not only denied the fact of the King’s improved
health, but they detailed all the incidents they could pick
up of his period of imbecility, short madness, or longer
delirium. But, in justice to the Opposition, it must be
remarked that the greatest traitor was not on that side,
but on the King’s. The Lord Chancellor Thurlow was
intriguing with the Opposition when he was affecting to
be a faithful servant of the crown. His treachery, however,
was well known to both parties; but Pitt kept it
from the knowledge of George III., lest it should too
deeply pain or too dangerously excite him. When
Thurlow had, subsequently, the effrontery to exclaim in
the House of Lords, ‘When I forget my King, may my
God forget me!’ a voice from one behind him is said to
have murmured, ‘Forget you! He will see you d—d
first.’
There was assuredly no decency in the conduct of the
heir-apparent or of his next brother. They were gaily
flying from club to club, party to party, and did not take
the trouble even to assume the sentiment which they
could not feel. ‘If we were together,’ says Lord Grenville,
in a letter inserted in the ‘Memoirs,’ ‘I would tell
you some particulars of the Prince of Wales’s behaviour
towards the King and Queen, within these few days, that
would make your blood run cold, but I dare not admit
them to paper because of my informant.’ It was said
that if the King could only recover sufficiently to learn
and comprehend what had been said and done during his
illness, he would hear enough to drive him again into
insanity. The conduct of his elder sons was marked, not
only by its savage inhumanity, but by an indifference to
public and private opinion which distinguishes those fools
who are not only without wits, but who are also without
hearts. When the Parliament was divided by fierce party
strife, as to whose hands should be confided the power
and responsibilities of the regency, the occasion should
have disposed those likely to be endowed with that
supreme power to seek a decent, if temporary, retirement
from the gaze of the world. Not so the Prince of
Wales and the Duke of York. They kept open houses,
and gaily welcomed every new ally. They were constant
guests at epicurean clubs and convivial meetings. They
both took to deep play, and both were as fully plucked
as they deserved. There was in them neither propriety
of feeling nor affectation of it.
The condition of the Queen was deplorable, and a
succession of fits almost prostrated her as low as her royal
husband. The Prince of Wales himself ‘seemed frightened,’
says Mr. Neville to the Marquis of Buckingham, ‘and was
blooded yesterday,’ November 6, the second day of the
King’s delirious condition; but as phlebotomy was a practice
of this princely person when in love, one cannot well
determine whether his pallor arose from filial or some
less respectable affection.
Up to this time the King had grown worse, chiefly
through total, or nearly total, loss of sleep. He bewailed
this with a hoarse, rapid, yet kindly tone of voice; maintaining
that he was well, or that to be so he needed but
the blessing of sleep. The Queen paced her apartment
with a painful demonstration of impatient despair in her
manner; and if, by way of solace, she attempted to read
aloud to her children or ladies, any passage that reminded
her of her condition and prospects made her burst into
tears.
Previous to the first night of the King’s delirium he
conducted, as he had always been accustomed to do, the
Queen to her dressing-room, and there, a hundred times
over, requested her not to disturb him if she should find
him asleep. The urgent repetition showed a mind nearly
overthrown, but the King calmly and affectionately remarked
that he needed not physicians, for the Queen was
the best physician he could have. ‘She is my best friend,’
said he; ‘where could I find a better?’
The alarm became greater when the fever left the
King, after he had three times taken James’s powders, but
without producing any relief to the brain. The Queen
secluded herself from all persons save her ladies and the
two eldest Princes. These, as Lord Bulkeley said, did
not announce to her the state of the King’s health with
the caution and delicacy due to the wife and mother who
now depended on them. This dependence was so complete
that the Prince of Wales, as before said, took the
command of everything at Windsor, one result of which
was a disappearance of everything like order. The
Queen’s dependence on such a son was rather compulsory
than voluntary. When he first came down to Windsor,
from Brighton, the meeting was the very coldest possible,
and when he had stated whence he came her first question
was when he meant to return. However, it is said
that when the King broke out, at dinner, into his first fit
of positive delirium, the Prince burst into tears.
The sufferer was occasionally better, but the relapses
were frequent. The Queen now slept in a bed-room
adjoining that occupied by the King. He once became
possessed with the idea that she had been forcibly removed
from the bed, and in the middle of the night he came
into the Queen’s room with a candle in his hand, to
satisfy himself that she was still near him. He remained
half-an-hour, talking incoherently, hoarsely, but good-naturedly,
and then went away. The Queen’s nights
were nights of sleeplessness and tears.
In the Queen’s room could be heard every expression
uttered by the King, and they were only such as could
give pain to the listener. His state was at length so bad
that the Queen was counselled to change her apartments,
both for her sake and the King’s. She obeyed, reluctantly
and despairingly, and confined herself to a single and
distant room. In the meanwhile, Dr. Warren was sent
for, but the King resolutely refused to see him. He
hated all physicians, declared that he himself was only
nervous, and that otherwise he was not ill. Dr. Warren,
however, contrived to be near enough to be able to give
an opinion, and the Queen waited impatiently in her
apartment to hear what that opinion might be. When
she was told, after long waiting, that Dr. Warren had
left the castle, after communicating his opinion to the
Prince of Wales, she felt the full force of her altered
position, and that she was nor longer first in the castle
next to the King.
The Prince of Wales, the Duke of York, some of the
medical men, and other gentlemen kept a sort of watch
in the room adjacent to that in which the King lay, and
listened attentively to all he uttered. He surprised them,
one night, by suddenly appearing among them, and
roughly demanding what they were there for. They
endeavoured to pacify him, but in vain. He treated them
all as enemies; but not happening to see his second son,
who had discreetly kept out of sight, but was present, he
said, touchingly, ‘Freddy is my friend; yes, he is my
friend!’ Sir George Baker timidly persuaded the poor
King to return to his bed-room; but the latter forced the
doctor into a corner, and told him that he was an old
woman, who could not distinguish between a mere nervous
malady and any other. The Prince, by sign and whispers,
endeavoured to induce the other gentlemen to lead his
father away. All were reluctant, and the King remained
a considerable time, till at last a ‘Mr. Fairly’ took him
boldly by the arm, addressed him respectfully but firmly,
declaring that his life was in peril if he did not go again
to bed, and at length subdued the King, who gave himself
up like a wearied child. These details were eagerly
made known to the Queen by the Prince with ‘energetic
violence.’ Her Majesty’s condition was indeed melancholy,
but at its worst she never forgot to perform little
acts of kindness to her daughters and others. The conduct
of the Princesses was such as became their situation.
They, with their mother, had fallen from their first greatness,
and the Prince of Wales was supreme master.
Nothing was done but by his orders. The Queen ceased
to have any authority beyond the reach of her own
ladies. ‘She spent the whole day,’ says Miss Burney,
‘in patient sorrow and retirement with her daughters!’
The King expressed a very natural desire to see these
daughters, but he was not indulged. Indeed, the practice
observed towards him appears, if the accounts may be
trusted, extremely injudicious. The public seem to have
thought so; for, on stopping Sir George Baker’s carriage,
and hearing from him that the King’s condition was very
bad, they exclaimed, ‘More shame for you!’
The Prince of Wales was extremely desirous to remove
the King from Windsor to Kew. The King was violently
averse from such removal, and the Queen opposed it until
she was informed that it had the sanction of the physicians.
Kew was said to be quieter and more adapted
for an invalid. The difficulty was, how he was to get
there. Of his own will he would never go. The Prince
and physicians contrived a plan. The Queen and Princesses
were to leave Windsor early, and, as soon as the
King should be told of their departure, his uneasiness
would be calmed by an assurance that he would find them
at Kew. The Queen yielded reluctantly, on being told
that it would be for her consort’s advantage; and she and
her daughters proceeded, without state and in profound
grief, to Kew. Small accommodation did they find there;
for half the apartments were locked up, by the Prince’s
orders, while on the doors of the few allotted to the
Queen and her slender retinue, some illustrious groom of
the chambers had scratched in chalk the names of those
by whom they were to be occupied! Night had set in
before the King arrived. He had been wheedled away
from Windsor, on promise of being allowed to see the
Queen and their daughters at Kew. He performed the
journey in silent content; and, when he arrived—the
promise was broken! The Queen and children were again
told that it was all for the best; but a night, passed by
the King in violence and raving, showed how deeply he
felt the cruel insult to which he had been subjected. In
the meantime, preparations to name the Prince regent
were going on, the King’s friends being extremely cautious
that due reserve should be made for their master’s
rights, in case of what they did not yet despair of—his
recovery. His physicians were divided in opinion upon
the point; but they all agreed that the malady, which
had begun with a natural discharge of humour from the
legs, had, by the King’s imprudence, been driven to the
bowels, and that thence it had been repelled upon the
brain. They endeavoured, without too sanguinely hoping,
to bring the malady again down to the legs.
Their efforts were fruitless. Addington and Sir Lucas
Pepys were more sanguine than their colleagues, of a
recovery; but the condition of the patient grew daily
more serious, yet with intervals of calm lucidity. It was
at this juncture that Dr. Willis, of Lincoln, was called in.
This measure gave great relief to the Queen; for she
knew that cases of lunacy formed Dr. Willis’s specialité,
and she entertained great hopes from the treatment he
should adopt. The doctor was accompanied by his two
sons. They were (and the father especially) fine men,
full of cheerfulness, firm in manner, entertaining respect
for the personal character of the King, but caring not a
jot for his rank. They at once took the royal patient
into their care, and with such good success—never unnecessarily
opposing him, but winning, rather than compelling,
him to follow the course best suited for his health—that,
on the 10th of December, the Queen had the gratification
to see him, from the window of her apartment,
walking in the garden alone, the Willises being in attendance
at a little distance from him.
There was a party who desired least of all things the
recovery of the monarch. The Prince of Wales, during
his father’s malady, took Lord Lothian into a darkened
room, adjacent to that of the King, in order that the
obsequious lord might hear the ravings of the sovereign,
and depose to the fact, if such deposition should be
necessary!
The year 1789 opened propitiously. On its very first
morning the poor King was heard praying, aloud and
fervently, for his own recovery. A report of how he had
passed the night was made to the Queen every morning,
and generally by Miss Burney. The state of the King
varied so much, and there was so much of painful detail
that it was desirable should be concealed, that the task
allotted to Miss Burney was sometimes one of great delicacy.
On the worst occasions she appears to have spared
her royal mistress’s feelings with much tact and judgment,
and her face was the index of her message whenever she
was the bearer of favourable intelligence. The highest
gratification experienced by the Queen at the period when
hopes revived of the King’s recovery, was when she heard
that her husband had remembered on the 18th of January
that it was her birthday, and had expressed a desire to
see her. This joy, however, was forbidden him for a
time, and apparently not without reason. A short period
only had elapsed after the birthday when the King suddenly
encountered Miss Burney in Kew Gardens, where
she had ventured to take exercise, under the impression
that the sick monarch had been taken to Richmond. As
it was the Queen’s desire, derived from the physicians,
that no one should attempt to come in the King’s way, or
address him if they did, Miss Burney no sooner became
aware of whom she had thus unexpectedly encountered,
than she turned round and fairly took to her heels. The
King, calling to her by name, and enraptured to see again
the face of one whom he knew and esteemed, pursued as
swiftly as she fled. The Willises followed hard upon the
King, not without some alarm. Miss Burney kept the
lead in breathless affright. In vain was she called upon
to stop: she ran on until a peremptory order from Dr.
Willis, and a brief assurance that the agitation would be
most injurious to the King, brought her at once to a
stand-still. She then turned and advanced to meet the
King, as if she had not before been aware of his presence.
He manifested his intense delight by opening wide his
arms, closing them around her, and kissing her warmly
on each cheek. Poor Miss Burney was overwhelmed, and
the Willises were delighted. They imagined that the
King was doing nothing unusual with him in the days of
his ordinary health, and were pleased to see him fulfilling,
as they thought, an old observance.
The King would not relax his hold of his young
friend. He entered eagerly into conversation, if that
may be deemed conversation in which he alone spoke, or
was only answered by words sparingly used and soothingly
intoned. He talked rapidly, hoarsely, but only
occasionally incoherently. His subjects of conversation
took a wide range. Family affairs, political business,
Miss Burney’s domestic interests, foreign matters, music,—these
and many other topics made up the staple of his
discourse. He was at least rational on the subject of
music, for then he commenced singing from his favourite
Handel, but with voice so hoarse and ill-attuned that he
frightened his audience. Dr. Willis suggested that the
interview should close; but this the King energetically
opposed, and his medical adviser thought it best to let
him have his way. He went on, then, wildly as before,
but manifesting much shrewdness; showed that he was
aware of his condition, and expressed more than suspicion
of assaults made upon his authority during his own
incapacity. He talked of whom he would promote when
he was fully restored to health, and whom he would
dismiss—made allusion to a thousand projects which he
intended to realise, and attained a climax of threatening,
with a serio-comic expression, that when he should again
be King he would rule with a rod of iron.
After various attempts at interruption, the Willises at
length succeeded in obtaining his consent to return to
the house, and Miss Burney hastened to the Queen’s
apartment to inform her of all that had passed. The
Queen listened to her tale with breathless interest; made
her repeat every incident; and augured so well from all
she heard, that she readily forgave Miss Burney her
involuntary infraction of a very peremptory law. That
the Queen’s augury was well founded may be seen in the
fact that, on the 12th of February following, King and
Queen together walked in Kew Gardens—he, happy and
nervous; she, in much the same condition; and both, as
grateful as mortals could be for inestimable blessings
vouchsafed to them.
During the progress of the King’s illness, while all
was sombre and silent at Kew, political intrigue was loud
and active elsewhere. The voice of the Queen herself
was not altogether mute in this intrigue. She had rights
to defend, she had spirit to assert them, and she had
friends to afford her aid in enabling her to establish
them.
CHAPTER VIII. THE ‘FIRST GENTLEMAN’ AND HIS PRINCIPLES.
Inconsistency of the Whigs—The Tories become radical reformers—Party
spirit—A restricted Regency scorned by the Prince—Compelled to
accept it—The King’s rapid recovery—Incredulity of the Princes in regard
to the King’s recovery—A family scene at Kew—Ball at White’s
Club on the King’s recovery, and unbecoming conduct of the Princes—Thanksgiving
at St. Paul’s—Indecent conduct of the Princes—Grief of
the King—Expectations of the Prince disappointed—Caricatures and
satires.
When the Queen first changed her apartments at Windsor,
her exclamation, as she entered her new abode, was
an assertion of her desolate helplessness, and a deploring
hesitation as to what course she was bound to take. She
was soon stirred to action. Her eldest son was active
in the field against her, and her spirit was speedily
aroused to protect and further her own interests. The
Parliament had been made acquainted with the condition
of the King, by a report from the privy council. With
this the legislature was not satisfied. Parliamentary committees
sat, before which bodies the King’s physicians
made detailed depositions, whereby the King’s existing
incapacity to transact public business was established
beyond doubt. Upon this the Whigs, with Fox at their
head (he had hurried home from Italy, deplorably ill, to
perform this service for the Prince of Wales), declared
that the royal incapacity caused the government of the
kingdom to fall, as a matter of right, upon the heir-apparent.
This assertion, which is a full and complete
embracing of the law of divine right, and a trampling
under foot of the authority of the parliament, was made
in 1788, just one hundred years after the grandfathers
of these very Whigs had established the authority of the
people in parliament above that of the crown, and made
the King who reigned and did not govern, merely the first
magistrate of a free people.
On the other hand the Tories, with Pitt for their
leader, declared that thus to annihilate the sovereignty of
the people in parliament was treason against the constitution,
which, in a juncture like the present, bestowed on
the people’s representatives the right of naming by whom
they would be governed. Thus the Tories were in truth
radical reformers; and, in truth, quite as serious, both
parties being equally insincere, fighting only for place,
and caring little for aught beyond.
The whole country, upon this, became Tory in spirit—as
Toryism had now developed itself. Fox in vain
explained that he meant that the administration of the
government belonged to the Prince of Wales, only if
Parliament sanctioned it. In vain the Prince of Wales,
through his brother the Duke of York, proclaimed in the
House of Lords that he made no claim whatever, but
was, in fact, the very humble and obedient servant of the
people.
It was precisely because he did assert this claim that
the Queen and her friends were alarmed. Should the
Prince be endowed with the powers of regent, without
restriction, the Queen would be reduced to a cypher, Pitt
would lose his place, the ministry would be overthrown
with him, and, should the King recover, difficulties might
arise in the way of the recovery also of his authority.
Party spirit ran high on this matter, but there was
little patriotism to give it dignity. Among the ministry,
even, waverers were to be found, who were on the
Prince’s side when the King’s case seemed desperate, and
who veered round to the Sovereign’s party as soon as
there appeared a hope of his recovery.
A restricted regency the Prince of Wales affected to
look upon with ineffable scorn. His royal brothers manifested
more fraternal sympathy than filial affection, by
pretending to think their brother’s scorn well-founded.
They all changed their minds as soon as they saw, by
Pitt’s parliamentary majorities, that they could not help
themselves. Ultimately, the Prince consented, with a
very ill grace, to the terms which Pitt and the Parliament
were disposed to force upon him. Never did man submit
to terms which he loathed with such bitterness of disappointed
spirit as the Prince did to the following conditions;
namely:—
That the King’s person was to be entrusted to the
Queen; her Majesty was to be also invested with the
control of the royal household, and with the consequent
patronage of the four hundred places connected therewith,
including the appointments of lord-steward, lord-chamberlain,
and master of the horse. The Prince, as regent,
was further to be debarred from granting any office,
reversion, or pension, except during the King’s pleasure;
and the privilege of conferring the peerage was not to be
allowed to him at all.
With a fiercely savage heart did he accept these
terms; and when the Irish Parliament, in its eagerness to
encourage dissension in England, invited him to take upon
himself the unrestricted administration of the Irish government
during the royal incapacity, the warmth and ardent
gratitude expressed by the Prince in his reply, showed
how willingly he would have accepted the invitation if he
had only dared.
And now the day was appointed for bringing the
Regency Bill regularly before Parliament—the 3rd of
February—and the clauses were already under discussion
when, a fortnight later, the lord chancellor (Thurlow)
announced to the house that the King was declared by
his medical attendants to be in a state of convalescence.
When Prince Henry was detected in taking the crown
from the head of his invalid and slumbering father, he
met the reproof which ensued with tender expressions of
sorrow and respect. There was little of similar depth of
feeling when the Prince of Wales, with the Duke of York,
saw his father for the first time after his recovery. Queen
Charlotte alone was present with her husband and sons.
The last entered the King’s room, and issued therefrom,
without a trace of emotion upon their faces or in their
bearing. The chagrin with which they saw the power
which they had coveted slip from them, might have taught
them wisdom, but it only drove them to wine, cards,
masquerades, and the profligacy which goes in company
therewith. They were not as men rejoicing that Heaven
had been merciful to their father and King, but as men
striving to forget, amid a hurricane of vicious pleasures,
that their sire had really been the object of such mercy.
The Prince had indeed some misgivings as to what
George III. might think of his conduct during the King’s
malady; but he affected to assert that it would meet
with approbation, while that of Mr. Pitt, he thought,
would receive from the monarch a strong reproof. The
Duke of York was far less careful as to the paternal, and
as little to the public, opinion. He ran up scores in open
tennis-courts with well-known black-legs, and promised
payment as soon as he had received from his father certain
arrears of revenue due to him as Bishop of Osnaburg.
These princely sons were among the last to acquiesce
in the opinion that their father was sane, and competent
again to exercise his constitutional authority. Lord
Grenville thus graphically describes a family scene at
Kew:—‘The two Princes were at Kew yesterday, and saw
the King in the Queen’s apartment. She was present the
whole time, a precaution for which, God knows, there
was but too much reason. They kept him waiting a
considerable time before they arrived, and after they left
him drove immediately to Mrs. Armistead’s in Park Street,
in hopes of finding Fox there, to give him an account of
what had passed. He not being in town, they amused
themselves yesterday evening with spreading about a
report that the King was still out of his mind, and with
quoting phrases of his to which they gave that turn. It
is certainly a decent and becoming thing, that when all
the King’s physicians, all his attendants, and his two
principal ministers agree in pronouncing him well, his
two sons should deny it! And the reflection that the
Prince of Wales was to have had the government, and
the Duke of York the command of the army, during his
illness, makes this representation of his actual state, when
coming from them, more peculiarly proper and edifying!
I bless God that it is some time before these matured and
ripened virtues will be visited upon us in the form of a
government.’6
In the meantime the monarch got so undeniably well
and competent to govern, that even his nearest and most
expectant heirs could no longer deny the, to them, most
unwelcome truth. A ball was given by White’s Club to
celebrate this event, and the Princes of course were present
to show how they were gratified by it! The ball
was announced to take place at the Pantheon, and the
Prince of Wales, who had engaged to attend, previously
did his wretched utmost to render the attendance of
others as thin as possible, by canvassing all his friends
and admirers to keep away. The club had transmitted
to the Prince and the Duke of York a large number of
tickets for the accommodation of themselves and the
acquaintances to whom, it was presumed, they might be
desirous to pay the compliment of presenting them with
admissions. The brothers sent the whole of these tickets
to Hookham’s in Bond Street for sale! The club, on
hearing of this insulting proceeding, and to prevent the
admission of improper persons at a fête which had a
private and exclusive character, intimated by advertisement
that no ticket would entitle its holder to admittance
which did not bear on it the signature of a subscriber to
the ball, or of the person to whom the committee had
sent such ticket. This did not teach the Duke decency.
He affixed his princely title to the tickets, to make them
saleable and valid; and he himself attended a ball given
expressly in his honour, at the Horse Guards.
The first, and graceful, feeling of the Monarch, that
he was bound to make a public expression of his thanks
to Heaven for his recovery, caused his ministers and
friends, and particularly the Queen, much embarrassment.
They were afraid of the excitement and its probable consequences.
But George III. was now in the condition
once noticed by Hunter, the surgeon, in himself. ‘My
mind,’ said the latter, ‘is still inclined to odd thoughts,
and I am tempted to talk foolishly; but I can govern
myself.’ The King was in better health than is here
indicated, and he bore himself throughout the day—the
25th of June, 1789—as became a grateful man, abounding
in piety, and not dispossessed of wisdom. The disgraceful
rivalry of his eldest son had almost marred the day. The
followers of the latter were posted along the first part of
the route between the palace and St. Paul’s, and their
cheers, associated with his name, put him in high good
humour, which was however converted into as high displeasure
when the running fire of cheers between Charing
Cross and the cathedral was raised only in honour of his
father. His conduct, and indeed that of his brothers
York and Cumberland, as also of their cousin the Duke
of Gloucester, in the cathedral, during service, disgusted
all who witnessed it. They talked aloud to one another
during the whole otherwise solemn proceeding; and it is
only to be regretted that no man was present, with courage
equal to his authority, to sternly reprove, or summarily
remove, them.
The scene at St. Paul’s, as regarded the King himself,
was at once magnificent and touching. The internal
arrangements were excellent, and the King was composed
and devout throughout the service; attentive to the latter,
and especially to the anthem, which he had himself
selected. His air of sincerity and gratitude was most
marked. The Queen was much affected at the solemnity
of their first entrance; and the King, who looked reduced,
scarcely less so. Lady Uxbridge, who was in attendance
on the Queen, nearly fainted away. ‘As the King went
out of the church,’ writes Mr. Bernard to the Marquis of
Rockingham, ‘he seemed to be in good spirits, and
talked much to the persons about him; but he stared and
laughed less than I ever knew him on a public occasion.’
Mr. Fox and most of the Opposition party were there;
and while the Queen returned thanks for the King’s
recovery, as she looked upon the sons near her, who
interrupted the solemnity of the scene by their talking,
she might have felt that she had other things to be thankful
for also. She must have known, by the conduct of
the Prince of Wales, that, had the King’s illness lasted
much longer, he would have accepted the invitation of
the Irish Parliament, and assumed a regency in Ireland,
with sovereign power. He would have accomplished
then what O’Connell, so long after, failed in achieving—a
government altogether independent of, and in antagonism
with, England.
After the return of the procession the Prince of Wales
and Duke of York entered Carlton House, where, having
put on regimentals, they proceeded to the ground in front
of Buckingham House, at the windows of which the royal
family had stationed themselves, the King and Queen
being most prominent; and there, heading the whole
brigade of guards, fired a feu-de-joie in honour of the
occasion. The grave Lord Bulkeley, a spectator of the
scene, thus describes the remainder of the proceedings:
‘The Prince, before the King got into his carriage—which
the whole line waited for before they filed off—went off
on a sudden with one hundred of the common people,
with Mr. Weltje in the middle of them, huzzaing him;
and this was done evidently to lead if possible a greater
number and to make it penetrate into Buckingham House.
The breach,’ adds Lord Bulkeley, ‘is so very wide between
the King and Prince, that it seems to me to be a great
weakness to allow him any communication with him whatever;
for, under the mask of attention to their father and
mother, the Prince and Duke of York commit every possible
outrage, and show every insult they can devise to them....
I believe the King’s mind is torn to pieces by his
sons,’ adds the noble lord. And then, in allusion to the
King’s expressed desire to visit Hanover, the writer remarks
thereon: ‘He expects to relieve himself by a new scene,
and by getting out of the way and hearing of the Prince
of Wales, with the hope of being able to detach the Duke
of York, whom he fondly and doatingly loves, and prevailing
on him to marry on the Continent; of which there
is no chance, for in my opinion he is just as bad as the
Prince, and gives no hopes of any change or amendment
whatever in thought, word, or deed.’
A very short time after the King’s recovery the first remark
made by the sufferer, on growing convalescent, to Lord
Thurlow, was—‘What has happened may happen again.
For God’s sake! make some permanent and immediate
provision for such a regency as may prevent the country
from being involved in disputes and difficulties similar to
those just over.’ Thurlow and Pitt agreed on the expediency
of the measure, but were at issue relative to the
details. When the measure did come before Parliament,
Queen Charlotte was equally indignant against the Prince
of Wales and against those who advocated his claims. It
may be added here that the conduct of her three eldest
sons continued to be of the most insulting nature to the
Queen. They could not forgive her for allegedly standing
between them and the power which they coveted. From
congratulatory balls, at which she had announced her
intention to be present, they kept away all persons over
whom they had any influence; and at a ball given by the
French ambassador on the 30th of May the Prince of Wales
and the Dukes of York and Clarence would neither dance
nor remain to supper, lest they should have the appearance
of paying the smallest attention to her Majesty, who
was present.
The assertion of the Prince of Wales that his royal
father would approve of what he had done, and censure
Pitt, proved to be totally unfounded. The King conveyed
to the Parliament, through the lord chancellor, his approval
of the measures taken by ministers, and expressed his
gratitude that so much zeal had been manifested by them
and Parliament for the public good and for the honour
and interest of the crown. Following this came a sweep
of all who held removeable offices under the crown, and
who had opposed the Queen’s interests and the King’s
cause by supporting the views of the Prince. Among the
ejected were the Duke of Queensberry, the Marquis of
Lothian, Lord Carteret, and Lord Malmesbury.
Mr. Wright, in his ‘History of England under the
House of Hanover, illustrated from the caricatures and
satires of the day,’ states that the popularity of the ministers
did not increase in the same proportion as that of the
King; for the reason that though the people approved of
the constitutional measures they had adopted at the late
crisis, the same people very well knew that they were as
little impelled by patriotism as their adversaries. Mr.
Wright notices ‘a rather celebrated caricature,’ by Gillray,
entitled ‘Minions of the Moon,’ published a little later.
It is dated the 23rd of December 1791, but is generally
understood to refer to this affair. It is a parody on
Fuseli’s picture of ‘The Weird Sisters,’ who are represented
with the features of Dundas, Pitt, and Thurlow.
They are contemplating the disk of the moon, which
represents, on the bright side, the face of the Queen, and
on the shrouded side that of the King, now overcast with
mental darkness. The three minions are evidently directing
their devotions to the brighter side.
CHAPTER IX. ROYALTY UNDER VARIOUS PHASES.
Bishop Watson a partisan of the Prince—The bishop’s reception by the
Queen—The Prince’s patronage of the bishop—Bishop Watson’s views
on the Regency—Laid on the shelf—The Prince and the bishop’s
‘Apology’—Ball given on the King’s recovery by Brookes’s Club; Mrs.
Siddons, as Britannia—The Queen’s Drawing-room on the occasion—Mrs.
Siddons’s readings at Buckingham House—Gay life of the Duke of
York—Popularity of the Duke of Clarence—His boundless hospitality
at the Admiralty—Duel between the Duke of York and Colonel Lennox—Littleness
of spirit of the Princes—Royal visit to Lulworth Castle—Assault
on the King—Caricatures of the day—Marriage of the Duke of
York—Ceremonious royal visit to the young couple—Caricatures of the
Duchess of York—Unhappy in her marriage—The Duchess and Monk
Lewis—Alleged avarice of the King and Queen—Dr. Johnson’s opinion
of the King—Etiquette at Court—The Sailor Prince ‘too far gone’ for
a minuet—The Royal family at Cheltenham—The mayor and the master
of the ceremonies—Questionable taste of the Queen in regard to the
drama—Moral degradation of England during the reign of the first two
Georges—Mrs. Hannah More’s ideas on morality; and Rev. Sydney
Smith’s witty remark on it—A delicate hint by the Queen to Lady
Charlotte Campbell—The Prince’s pecuniary difficulties—The Prince
and affairs of the heart—Mésalliance of the Duke of Sussex.
Among the few bishops who took the ‘unrestricted’ side
on the Regency Bill, Bishop Watson of Llandaff was the
most active. No doubt his activity was founded on conscientiousness,
for many able men of the period were to
be found who were by no means violent partisans, yet
who were ready to maintain that, according to the constitutional
law, the right of exercising the power of regent
in the case of incapacity on the part of the reigning
sovereign rested in the next heir, the Prince of Wales.
There is as little doubt as to the Queen’s having looked
with considerable disfavour on all who held such sentiments.
Among those who did was this Bishop of Llandaff.
If Queen Charlotte felt towards the prelate as Queen
Caroline used to do towards those who stood between her
and her wishes, the fault, if fault there were, was not
attributable to her, but to the minister. He, right or
wrong—and most persons who knew what the conduct of
the elder son of Charlotte was will agree that he was at
least morally right—he, the minister, represented to her
that all who supported the Prince and opposed the ministerial
measure which gave great power to the Queen were
enemies of the sovereign. Charlotte believed this, and
perhaps the Whig bishop is not wrong who says that the
Queen lost, in the opinion of many, the character she had
hitherto maintained in this country by falling in with the
designs of the minister. These many were, however, only
the Whigs. It is nevertheless unfortunately true that the
Queen distinguished by different degrees of courtesy on
the one hand, and by meditated affronts on the other,
those who had voted with and those who had voted
against the ministers, ‘inasmuch,’ says Bishop Watson,
‘that the Duke of Northumberland one day said to me,
“So, my lord, you and I also are become traitors.”’
At the drawing-room held on the King’s recovery the
Queen received Bishop Watson with a degree of coldness
which, he says, ‘would have appeared to herself ridiculous
and ill-placed could she have imagined how little a mind
such as mine regarded in its honourable proceedings the
displeasure of a woman, though that woman happened to
be a Queen.’ But it must not be forgotten that if the
Queen had, as it were, two faces for the two parties into
which society at Court was divided, her eldest son exhibited
the same characteristic, and he was accordingly
eminently cordial with the prelate of Llandaff. When, at
the drawing-room above-named, the Queen looked displeased
as the bishop stood before her, the Prince of
Wales, who was standing by her side, immediately asked
him to come and dine with him. A more unseemly proceeding
cannot well be imagined. ‘On my making some
objection,’ says the bishop, ‘to dining at Carlton House,
the Prince turned to Sir Thomas Dundas and asked him
to give us a dinner at his house on the following Saturday.’
The party was arranged, the guests met, and, while they
were waiting for dinner, the Prince took the bishop by
the button-hole, and, says the prelate, ‘he explained to me
the principle on which he had acted during the whole of
the King’s illness, and spoke to me with an afflicted feeling
of the manner in which the Queen had treated himself.
I must do him the justice to say that he spoke, in this conference,
in as sensible a manner as could possibly have
been expected from an heir-apparent to the throne and
from a son of the best principles towards both his parents.’
The especial words ‘in this conference’ would seem to
imply that the son of Charlotte did not always speak in so
sensible a manner as could have been expected from a
royal heir-apparent. It would have been as well, too, if
the bishop had told his readers what the principle was on
which the Prince had grounded his conduct throughout
the King’s illness. When he simply talks of the Prince
as a son imbued with the best principles towards both his
parents, he would have done well if he had added whether
he was considering that son politically or morally. It must
have been politically, for the right reverend prelate did
not impress upon his younger friend that a mother’s faults
should be invisible to the eyes of her children; but, on
the other hand, he rather emphatically charged her with
ill-humour by advising the Prince ‘to persevere in dutifully
bearing with his mother’s ill-humour till time and
her own good sense should disentangle her from the web
which ministerial cunning had thrown around her.’ Now
to persevere in a line of conduct is to continue in that
already entered upon, and the line followed by the Prince
was one of continual insult and provocation against the
Queen. The bishop confesses an inclination to think well
of her. ‘I was willing,’ he writes, ‘to attribute her conduct
during the agitation of the regency question to her
apprehensions of the King’s safety, to the misrepresentations
of the King’s minister, to anything rather than a fondness
for power.’ There is something inexpressibly ingenuous
in the paragraph which follows:—‘Before we rose from
table at Sir Thomas Dundas’s, where the Duke of York
and a large company were assembled, the conversation
turning on parties, I happened to say I was sick of parties,
and should retire from all public concerns. “No,” said the
Prince, “and mind who it is that tells you so, you shall
never retire—a man of your talents shall never be lost to
the public.”’ This testimony of himself was recorded by
the bishop in 1814, and was published by his son in the
Queen’s lifetime in 1817. Like the passage touching the
Queen, it gave offence to the principal person concerned
in it. The aged Queen was not pleased to have her ‘ill-humour’
registered before the world, nor was her son
flattered by the innuendo which was conveyed in the
paragraph which chronicled his promise of conferring
preferment on the Bishop of Llandaff. Dr. Watson died
prelate of that small diocese.
The clergy of the diocese of Llandaff presented congratulatory
addresses to both their Majesties upon the
King’s recovery. Those addresses were written by Bishop
Watson; and in that which he presented to Queen Charlotte
he inserted a paragraph which he avows, in his
memoirs, that he knew would be disagreeable to her.
The address in question, after expressing that the sympathy
of every family had been extended to the Queen
in her late distress, complimenting her on the sincerity of
her piety, the amiableness and purity of her manners as
Queen, wife, and mother, and referring, in laudatory
terms to the concern which she had exhibited for the
Monarch during his late unhappy situation, thus proceeds:—‘We
observed in the deliberations of Parliament
a great diversity of opinions as to the constitutional mode
of protecting the rights of the Sovereign during the continuance
of his indisposition; but we observed no diversity
whatever as to the necessity of protecting them in
the most effectual manner. This circumstance cannot
fail of giving solid satisfaction to your Majesty; for, next
to the consolation of believing that in his recovery he has
been the especial object of God’s mercy, must be that of
knowing that during his illness he was the peculiar object
of his people’s love; that he rules over a free, a great, and
an enlightened nation, not more by the laws of the land
than by the wishes of the people.’
Upon this text of his own constructing, the bishop
makes the following comment in his ‘Autobiography’:—‘The
first part of this last paragraph I knew would be
disagreeable to the Queen, as it contradicted the principle
she wished to be generally believed, and the truth of
which alone could justify her conduct—that the opposition
to the minister was an opposition to the King. Now, as
there was not a word of disaffection to the King in any of
the debates in either House of Parliament during the
transaction of the regency, and as I verily believe the
hearts of the Opposition were as warm with the King, and
warmer with the constitution, than those of their competitors,
I thought fit to say what was, in my judgment, the
plain truth.’ The bishop, however, loses sight of the
fact that Queen, ministers, and a great majority of
the people desired a restricted regency, in order that the
rights of the Sovereign should suffer nothing, in case of
recovery; and that Queen, ministers, and a great majority
of the people felt that the Prince of Wales had no divine
right to the regency, but had by his public and private
conduct shown that he was entirely unworthy of holding
any powers but under constitutional limitation.
Previous to the King’s recovery, the Bishop of Llandaff
had expressed himself as having been miserably neglected
by Mr. Pitt, and ‘I feel the indignity as I ought.’ The
bishop declares that he was overlooked, for want of political
pliancy. However, we have seen that, in the
allegedly offended Queen’s presence, the Prince of Wales
ostentatiously patronised the prelate, and subsequently
made a post-prandial promise touching preferment, which
he never fulfilled. The bishop strongly suspected that the
Queen stood in his way. In 1805, the Duke of Grafton
wrote to him, to give him early intimation that the
Archbishop of Canterbury was not expected to live; but
‘I had no expectation of an archbishopric,’ says Dr.
Watson, ‘for the Duke of Clarence had once said to me,
(speaking in conversation no doubt the language of the
court), ‘they will never make you an archbishop; they
are afraid of you.’ In the following year, the bishopric
of St. Asaph became vacant, and Dr. Watson applied for
it to Lord Grenville, stating that it ‘would be peculiarly
acceptable to himself.’ ‘It was given to the Bishop of
Bangor; and the bishopric of Bangor was given to the
Bishop of Oxford.’ Hereupon, the diocesan of Llandaff,
suspecting that the Queen’s influence was exercised against
him over the King, addressed a letter to the Duke of
Clarence, begging him to lay the same, which contained
a statement of the writer’s wishes, before the Prince of
Wales, whom the bishop ‘most earnestly entreated to
take some opportunity of doing him justice with the King.’
Years, however, passed on; and, in 1810, we find the
right reverend prelate expressing himself in doubt
‘whether it is by her or by his Majesty that I am laid
on the shelf.’ In fact, he was by far worse treated at
the hands of the Prince of Wales, whose cause he had
supported against Queen, ministers, and a great majority
of the people, than he ever was by the Queen herself.
The Prince had intimated that such a champion should
not go without his reward; and that the Prince would not
forget the prelate. His Highness did, however, completely
forget the right reverend father. We do him wrong:
he remembered him on one occasion. On the 3rd of May
1812 there was a dinner party at Carlton House. At
these parties it was no uncommon thing for the Regent to
tell stories which sent the Queen’s fan up to her face, with
a remonstrating ‘George! George!’ to induce him to
have some respect for decency. On the occasion in question,
however, the conversation turned on immorality and
irreligion. Mr. Tyrrwhitt thereupon told a story how he
had been in society with a Sussex baronet, who gave utterance
to such profligate and atheistic opinions that Mr.
Tyrrwhitt was obliged to leave the room, after recommending
the blasphemer and libertine to look into Bishop
Watson’s ‘Apology’ for that Bible which the baronet so
scoffed at. At the royal table ‘the baronet’s answer was
produced and read, expressive of the greatest thankfulness
for having had it put into his hands, as it not only had
decided and clearly proved the error and fallacy of every
opinion he had before entertained, but had afforded him
a degree of secret comfort and tranquillity that his mind
had previously been a stranger to.’ The Regent thereupon
bethought himself of his old friend of Llandaff,
and ordered Mr. Braddyll to communicate to him the
highly gratifying anecdote. Dr. Watson returned his
best thanks for ‘this instance of a Prince’s remembrance
of a retired bishop;’ and therewith ended the patronage
of the Regent, which was not more profitable to the
prelate than the alleged opposition or indifference of the
Queen.
The Prince’s party were somewhat ashamed, it would
seem, at what had taken place in connection with White’s
Club ball; and the Club at Brookes’s resolved to render
themselves blameless in the eyes of the Queen, who was
supposed to be more indignant than her consort at the
measures of their elder sons and their followers. The club
at Brookes’s hired the Opera-house, and gave a festival to
the ladies, consisting of a concert, recitations, a ball, and
a supper. At this festival Mrs. Siddons was engaged to
appear as Britannia, and recite some silly verses, by silly
Merry, in which laudation of the King was qualified by
political instructions to the people. ‘Long may he rule
a willing land!’ was declaimed by the actress with solemn
and melodious dignity; and this line was followed by the
hint to the people that ‘Oh, for ever may that land be
free!’ A long roll of ‘infinite deal of nothings’ followed,
in which scant courtesy was paid to the Queen;
and Mrs. Siddons, having got to the end of her ‘lines,’
astonished the spectators by an exhibition of the ‘pose
plastique,’ assuming the ‘exact attitude of Britannia, as
impressed upon our copper coin.’
Having noticed what took place at the King’s drawing-room,
omission must not be made of the Queen’s, held by
her in March, especially to receive congratulations upon
the happy recovery of her consort. More than usual
splendour did honour to the occasion. The Queen sat on
a chair of state, under a canopy, and surrounded by the
great officers of her household. Eye-witnesses declare
that the blaze of diamonds which covered her Majesty was
something more than the ordinary glory. Around the
Queen’s neck, too, was a double row of gold chain, supporting
a medallion. ‘Across her shoulders was another
chain of pearls, in three rows; but the portrait of the
King was suspended from five rows of diamonds, fastened
loose upon the dress behind, and streaming over the person
with the most gorgeous effect. The tippet was of fine
lace, fastened with the letter G, in brilliants of immense
value. In front of her Majesty’s hair, in letters formed of
diamonds, were easily legible the words, “God save the
King.” The Princesses were splendidly, but not equally,
adorned. The female nobility wore emblematical designs,
beautifully painted on the satin of their caps, and fancy
teemed with the inventions of loyalty and joy. At half-an-hour
after six o’clock, her Majesty quitted the drawing-room
for duties still more interesting.’
What these duties were, after the long drawing-room,
Mr. Boaden, from whose ‘Life of Kemble’ the details are
borrowed, does not inform us; but he adds, in a burst of
eloquence not unlike the tone of some of the dramas of
which he discourses so pleasantly, that he cannot forbear
from expressing the full conviction of his understanding
and his heart, that no more glorious being than the consort
of George III. ever existed. ‘I have lived,’ he says,
‘to see a miserable delusion withdraw some part of the
affection of the multitude for a time; but she was in truth
the idol of the people, and they paid to her that sort of
homage as if in her person they were reverencing the
form of Virtue itself.’
The same unreserved panegyrist, describing her Majesty’s
visit to Covent Garden Theatre on the 15th of
April 1789, states that she was accompanied by three of
the Princesses—the Princess Royal, most unassuming of
all Charlotte’s daughters; the Princess Augusta, so careless
as to what she was dressed in, provided only that she
were dressed; and the Princess Elizabeth, who was always
anxious to be doing little services for people about the
court, as if she wished to forget that she was burdened
by being great, and by the formalities which she must
observe, to give greatness dignity. Mr. Boaden strikingly
describes the scene. ‘The Queen entered the royal box
alone; the Princesses not being, for a few minutes, ready.
On the appearance of the Queen, a shout arose, of transport,
from the spectators; the curtain ran up, and displayed
a transparency which had the words, in striking
letters, Long live the King! and May the King live for
ever!’ For all this no preparation could be sufficient;
and tears fortunately came to her relief. In this state she
paid her compliments to her people. On the entrance of
the Princesses, the emotion somewhat subsided—
It seemed she was a Queen
Over her passion, which, most rebel-like,
Sought to be king o’er her.
The entertainments of the evening had no allusion
whatever to the event. They consisted of ‘He would
be a Soldier,’ and ‘Aladdin.’ The simple introduction, by
Edwin, of giving the King’s health, was the only allusion
made to passing events. But the house cheered, and
the Queen smiled and nodded her gratification.
Whilst on the subject of theatricals, it may be noticed
that the King and Queen not only patronised Mrs. Siddons,
but that the patronage which they showed to this lady
was not confined to witnessing and applauding her performances
on the stage. She was a frequent visitor at
Buckingham House and Windsor; and she was among
the first to discover that the King’s mind was affected.
On occasion of one of her visits, after her task was done of
reading a play, at a high desk, before which she stood,
the King went up to her, and presented her with a blank
paper—blank, with the exception that his signature was
at the bottom of it. Such a gift intimated that the giver
bound himself to make any amount of pecuniary provision
which the will of the actress might choose to name, above
the royal signature. The paper was doubtless received
with a graceful and grateful dignity, but with equal propriety
it was, on the earliest opportunity, presented blank,
as it was received, to the Queen. Her Majesty was very
pointed in the expression of her approbation at conduct
so delicate and dignified; but the virtue of Mrs. Siddons
was left to be its own reward.
While the Duke of York was leading a ‘gay’ life,
running in debt, and falling asleep over his cards (his
constant habit), to find himself a great loser when he
awoke, his next brother, Clarence, with some lively propensities,
too, contrived to maintain considerable popularity.
He was of a popular profession. At the age of
thirteen the King sent him as midshipman on board a
man-of-war, and told him to fight his way. He obeyed
the injunction by having a set-to with another ‘middy,’
soon after he was afloat, and secured, in this way, the
respect of his fellow-officers. He served under Keith,
Hood, and Nelson. His sole remark on first seeing the
last-named gallant ‘shadow,’ was, that his tail seemed
more than he had strength to carry. The little Duke was
present in several actions, and shared in several victories.
When the Spanish commander, Don Juan de Langera,
was brought prisoner on board the ‘Prince George,’ and
was told that the smart and active midshipman whom he
had observed on duty at the gangway was a prince of
the blood, and son of the reigning King, the brave but
unlucky captain exclaimed, ‘Well may England be queen
of the seas, when the son of her sovereign is engaged in
such a duty!’ The companions of the young Prince were
not the most suitable for a youth of his condition and
prospects, as far as refinement is concerned; they were
rude, but I question if their principles of conduct were
not as good as any by which modern middies and lieutenants
are influenced. In some respects they were better,
for I do not imagine that if any one of the lieutenants of
Keith, Hood, or Nelson, had fallen into such a scrape as
befel Lieutenant Royer of the ‘Tiger,’ he would have expressed
‘satisfaction’ at being permitted, at the theatre,
to use the identical glass through which a hostile commander
had watched the destruction of a British ship.
The rough and ready manner of old days is better than
the refinement which takes such form and expression as
this; and William Henry was little the worse for the
former, although Beau Brummell did say of him that he
was never good for anything but to walk about a quarterdeck
and cry ‘luff.’
Walpole writes of him, in 1789: ‘The Duke of
Clarence, no wonder, at his age, is already weary of a
house in the middle of a village, with nothing but a green
short apron to the river, a situation only fit for an old
gentlewoman, who has put out her knee-pans and loves
cards.’ The writer adds, that were the Duke a commoner
and a candidate, Richmond, if it were a borough, would
return him unanimously. ‘He pays his bills regularly
himself, locks up his doors that his servants may not stay
out late, and never drinks but a few glasses of wine.’
Miss Burney’s report would lead us to a different conclusion.
Walpole adds: ‘Though the value of crowns is
mightily fallen of late at market, it looks as if his Royal
Highness thought they were still worth waiting for. Nay,
it is said, he tells his brothers he shall be King before
either. This is fair, at least.’
William Henry was not always so blameless in his
economy as Queen Charlotte loved to see him. His
hospitality at the Admiralty was unbounded; but when it
is remembered that the exercise of it during fifteen
months ran him in debt to the amount of not less than
three-and-twenty thousand pounds, such hospitality is
rather to be censured than eulogised. He was as profuse
when King, until his treasurer, Sir F. Watson, confessed
his inability to go on.
The second son of Queen Charlotte delivered his
maiden speech in the House of Lords at the close of 1788.
A few months after he made another speech, in private
society, which might have had a very fatal issue. He
stated that Colonel Lennox (afterwards Duke of Richmond)
had been addressed at Daubigny’s club in language to
which no gentleman would have quietly listened as the
colonel had done. The latter, on parade, asked for an
explanation. The Duke refused, ordered him to his post,
and offered him ‘satisfaction’ if he felt himself aggrieved.
The colonel appealed to the club as to whether the
members adopted the Duke’s statement. They remained
silent; and the result was a duel on Wimbledon Common,
on the 26th of May 1789. Lord Rawdon accompanied
the Duke, and the Earl of Winchilsea attended on the
colonel. The duel ended with no bloodier finale than the
loss of a curl on the part of the Duke. The latter, it was
found, had not fired; he refused to fire, bade the colonel
fire again if he were not satisfied, and rejected every
inducement held out to him to make some explanation.
On this the parties separated.
Some littleness of spirit was exhibited in what followed.
The colonel was present at a court ball, at which
the Queen presided, and formed part in a country dance
of which the Prince of Wales and other members of the
royal family were also a portion. The Prince, who was
remarkable for his gallantry, did not exhibit that quality
on the present occasion. He passed over the colonel, and
the lady his partner, without ‘turning’ the latter, as the
laws of contre-danse required. The Prince’s conduct was
imitated by both his brothers and sisters, and the colonel’s
partner was thus subjected to most unwarrantable insult.
The Queen, who had marked her opinion of the colonel’s
conduct by graciously speaking to him, remarking the
chafed look of her son, and addressing some inquiry to
him, was answered that he was heated, because he disliked
the company. Upon this hint the Queen rose, and the
festive scene was brought to a disturbed and sudden conclusion.
The fall of the year was passed in the south of England,
with Weymouth for head-quarters. The King and Queen
were not without peculiar annoyances here, chiefly in the
threats of assassination conveyed in private letters. The
Queen indeed, like the King, disregarded them, but she
feared the evil effect they might have on his excitable
mind. Among the visits paid by them to private individuals
was one to the Roman Catholic proprietor of Lulworth
Castle, Mr. Weld, a relation, by her first marriage,
of Mrs. Fitzherbert. They were present in the chapel
attached to the castle during the celebration of divine
service, and remained while the anthem was sung,—without
any ill effects resulting to Protestantism.
In January 1790 the fears of the Queen were again
excited for her consort, at whom a stone was thrown by
a mad Lieutenant Frick, as his Majesty was on his way to
the House of Lords. The muse was hardly more sane or
loyal than the lieutenant, for Peter Pindar wrote of this
incident:
Folks say it was lucky the stone missed the head,
When lately at Cæsar ’twas thrown;
I think, very different from thousands indeed,
’Twas a lucky escape for the stone.
The Queen, at the time of the King’s illness, was
assailed with unmeasured vituperation by the Opposition
papers. Even her interviews with Pitt were made base
account of, in order to raise the public odium against
her. In the present year the ‘Hopes of the Party,’ a
caricature so named, by Gillray, served to show the supposed
wishes of the Opposition. The caricature represents
many revolutionary horrors. Among them is what is
termed ‘a pair of pendants,’ showing the Queen and
prime minister each hanging from a lamp iron. ‘It is
commonly believed,’ says Mr. Wright, in the History
from which a passage has been already quoted, ‘that Pitt
and Queen Charlotte were closely leagued together to
pillage and oppress the nation; and she was far less
popular than the King, whose infirmity produced general
sympathy, and who had many good qualities that endeared
him to those with whom he came in contact. In another
part of Gillray’s picture the King is brought to the block,
held down by Sheridan, while Fox, masked, acts as executioner.
Priestley, with pious exhortations, is encouraging
the fallen monarch to submit to his hard fate.’
Later in the year, in September, the Queen’s second son,
Frederick Duke of York, married Frederica, eldest
daughter of the King of Prussia. The marriage was
solemnised on Michaelmas Day, at Berlin. The bride
was then in her twenty-fourth year, her husband in his
twenty-eighth. She was fair, virtuous, accomplished, and
kindly-hearted,—by far too good a wife for the profligate
Prince to whom she was allied. The newly-married pair
travelled to England through France, where they met
with but rough treatment from the republican mob, some
of whom very unceremoniously scratched the royal arms
off their carriages. The ceremony of marriage was reperformed
in England on the 23rd of November by the
Archbishop of Canterbury, in presence of the entire royal
family. By an addition of 18,000l. to the Duke’s income,
his revenue amounted to 35,000l. a year; and an
annual 30,000l. was settled on the Duchess, in case of her
surviving him.
The Queen, accompanied by the King and the elder
branches of her family, paid a visit of welcome to the
young couple, which was the most formal and ceremonious
matter that can well be conceived. The visit took the
form of a tea-party; it ought, therefore, to have been
social and chatty, but it was as stiff and silent as much
ceremony and formal etiquette could make it. The King’s
tea was solemnly handed to him by the Prince of Wales,
while the Duchess of York, receiving a cup from the
Duke, presented it, with much reverence, to the Queen.
But in the cups which cheer and not inebriate, ceremony
was soon dissolved; and the King getting loquacious, the
family party, before the night was far gone, became as
mirthful and pleasant as if it had been made up of more
mirthful and pleasant materials.
Despite the great popularity of the excellent Duchess,
the caricaturists spared neither her nor her royal father
and mother-in-law. In one of the satirical prints by
Gillray, the King and Queen—the latter most outrageously
caricatured—are represented in ridiculous attitudes
of joy: the King is fairly ‘kicking up his heels’ in ecstasy,
offering eager welcome to the Duchess. The Queen is
holding out her apron to receive some of the wealth and
jewels which her daughter-in-law was popularly supposed
to have brought with her. The latter has her apron full
of money, and the Duke is introducing her to his
parents.
The poor Duchess was soon one of the unhappiest of
wives. The profligacy and shameless infidelity of her
husband, to whom she had been fondly attached, disgusted
her. His extravagance involved him in a ruin from which
he could never relieve himself, and which his creditors
never forgot. It made many a hearth cold, and it brought
misery to that of the Duchess. For six years she bore
with treatment from the ‘commander-in-chief’ such as no
trooper under him would have inflicted on a wife equally
deserving. At the end of that time the ill-matched pair
separated, and the Duchess withdrew from the world;
but in her retirement she forgot none of the duties which
it could fairly demand of her. She was beloved by all,
and was popularly and affectionately mentioned by the
popular voice as ‘the poor soldier’s friend.’
She was indeed the friend of all who needed her
service, and did not refuse even to give to poor ‘Monk’
Lewis the meed of admiration which his little vanity
required. He was once met coming in tears from the
Duchess’s drawing-room; and on intimating to his
questioner that they had their source in the very kind
and flattering things the Duchess had said to him, the
weeper was roughly consoled by his acquaintance, with
the soothing advice, to ‘Never mind, as perhaps she did
not mean it!’
Never was the alleged avarice of the King and Queen
more bitterly satirised than during this year (1791). The
King, however, was a cheerful giver, and the amount of
property which the Queen left at her death proves that
she was no hoarder. The caricaturists, nevertheless,
smote them mercilessly. Peter Pindar assailed them in
coarse and witless lines, that had in them a certain rough
humour, but as ill-natured as rough. Gillray exhibited
them as cheapening wares in the streets of Windsor. In
another print, the King, in the commonest of garbs, was
seen toasting his own muffins; and the Queen, with a
hideous twist given to her now plain features, and with
pockets bursting with the national money, was depicted
busily engaged in frying sprats for supper. In another,
the Queen is sourly commanding her highly-disgusted
daughters to take their tea without sugar, as a saving to
papa. There were many of a similar cast, and not a few
which exposed the vices to which the Princes of the family—young
men of great hopes and with much kindliness of
feeling, but with little principle—had unfortunately surrendered
themselves.
The King himself was ever depicted as slovenly both
in dress and gait—the Queen as mean in attire and sharply
sour of visage. The latter always wears a far more acute,
but a less inquiring, air than her husband. This was a
true reflection. After Dr. Johnson had his celebrated interview
with the monarch at Buckingham Palace, he is
said to have declared that ‘His Majesty seems to be possessed
of some good nature and much curiosity; as for
his nous, it is not contemptible. His Majesty, indeed, was
multifarious in his questions; but, thank God, he answered
them all himself.’
The public discontent and the general distress increased
greatly at this time, and had their effect in throwing a
gloom over the court circle. The old formality and not
a very diminished festivity were still, however, maintained
there, and the republican fashions of France were held in
abhorrence at Windsor.
The sons of Queen Charlotte were not so formal in
their behaviour towards her, before witnesses, as the
daughters were. The Duke of York was now the most
observant of ceremony, but he exhibited therewith a show,
perhaps a reality, of very tender feeling. Even on common
occasions the household of the Queen was encumbered
by much stiffness of observance of etiquette. It
was not an uncommon occurrence for the Duke of York
to attend at his mother’s toilette, conversing with her
during its closing progress. When this was the case, and
the dresser’s task was done, that lady could not leave the
room if the Duke happened to stand between her and
the door; to cross the Duke would have been a terrible
breach of good manners. Nor could the Queen help the
dresser; all that the illustrious lady could do was to
watch till the Duke changed his position, and then with a
smile, and a ‘Now, I will let you go,’ give freedom to
the dresser, longing for liberty.
The Prince William (Duke of Clarence) was the least
courteous of the sons of Charlotte. But it must be remembered
that he not only went early to sea, but it was
at a time when roughness of manner was considered as
more becoming to a naval officer than refinement; to
support the character, the young Prince probably assumed
more coarseness of style and speech than was really natural
to him. The Queen’s birthday drawing-room, in
1791, was followed by a ball, at which the pretty Princess
Mary was to dance her first minuet in public, and her
brother, the sailor Prince, had promised to be her partner.
But previous to the ball there was a dinner, and at a
birthday dinner more champagne was drunk by the
Prince than on ordinary days. Under its inspiration, the
Duke found his way to the table of some of the ladies and
gentlemen in waiting. There he ruled as king, insisted
upon more champagne, compelled the not-unwilling gentlemen
to drink with him glass after glass, laughed at its
effects upon them and himself, smacked the servants on
the shoulder, abused them good humouredly, praised his
sister Mary, had more champagne, kissed the hand of old
Madam Schwellenberg with infinite mock heroics, was
always going and never went, and ended all he said with
the common oath of gentlemen, a loudly-uttered ‘By
G—!’ With a morning so spent, he was not likely to
be steady enough for the minuet at night. In fact, he
was incapable of appearing at the ball at all; much to the
chagrin of the Queen; still more to that of the Princess
Mary, to whom, however, the offender made less apology
the next morning than confession, that on the Queen’s birthday
he had been ‘too far gone’ to think of dancing.
The Prince of Wales was not more temperate even on
ordinary occasions; and he was less heartily courteous to
ladies than his brothers, while perhaps he was more formally
polite. Miss Burney describes him as staring at her
when she was in attendance upon the Queen, not haughtily
or impertinently, she says, but in an ‘extremely curious
manner’—probably as Don Juan may have looked upon
Zerlina.
With all the Queen’s respect for the formality of court,
she enjoyed herself most when she was least observant of
it. Reading the letters of Johnson and Mrs. Thrale, she
liked to talk them over with Miss Burney, who could explain
so many circumstances connected with them which
would, otherwise, have been incomprehensible to the
Queen. She loved to hear her dresser’s graphic account
of Warren Hastings’ trial, whither she had sent her with
a reticule stuffed full of cakes from the Queen’s own table.
At Cheltenham, when she accompanied the King thither
previous to his late illness, the royal residence was of such
contracted dimensions, and so scant of accommodation,
that her Majesty dressed and undressed in the drawing-room.
Many of her ladies would not have submitted half
so cheerfully as she did to such an arrangement. In the
rural expeditions of the royal pair, there was indeed a
comic sort of mixture of formality and fun. At Weymouth,
for instance, when the King went to take his
‘dip,’ the royal machine was followed by another full
of fiddlers and other musical persons, who, as the monarch
plunged into the ocean, saluted him and the bold
deed with ‘God save the King,’ horribly out of tune!
It was when the royal pair were at Weymouth that,
on one occasion, the mayor of the borough, after presenting
an address, and receiving the stereotyped answer,
boldly walked up to the Queen to kiss her hand. ‘You
must kneel,’ whispered the master of the ceremonies.
Mr. Mayor, not heeding the court guide, continued standing,
and in that position kissed the royal hand. As he
retired, the highly offended master of the ceremonies remarked,
angrily, ‘Sir, you ought to have knelt.’ ‘Sir,’
said the Mayor, ‘I can’t; don’t you see I have got a
wooden leg?’
It is upon record that the Queen once attempted to
write some verses; and having got to the third line gave
the matter up in despair—leaving her ‘reader’ to finish and
perfect the rhymes. The occasion was on presenting a
pair of old-fashioned gloves to Lord Harcourt, who had an
affection for ancient gear, and cared more for old gloves
than new verses. Miss Burney acquitted herself, however,
very well with her impromptu; indeed, she may be said to
have been the Queen’s laureate during the five years she
served that Sovereign. Her royal mistress employed her
to compose some congratulatory verses on the King’s recovery
from his serious indisposition; and of these it may
be said that if Warton, over whom paralysis was then
pending, might have written better, Henry James Pye,
the succeeding laureate, could hardly have written worse.
The taste of the Queen was itself not unimpeachable.
With regard to the drama, she would rather have seen
little Quick in Tony Lumpkin, than Mrs. Siddons in Lady
Macbeth. So her ‘reader’ was not called upon to exert
her powers upon any great works. The first book she
was required to read aloud was Colman’s broad farce of
‘Polly Honeycomb.’ The young lady must have had a difficult
task with the novel-reading Polly, whose heart beat
for Mr. Scribble, and into whose head her sire could not
beat a favourable opinion for ‘the rich Jew’s wife’s
nephew,’ Mr. Ledger. The young Princesses were listeners,
and it could hardly have been edifying for them
to hear the rollicking Polly say of her father, ‘Lord,
lord! my stupid papa has no taste; he has no notion of
humour and character and the sensibility of delicate
feeling.’ ‘A novel,’ says Miss Honeycomb, ‘is the only
thing to teach a girl life;’ and she adds, ‘Every girl elopes
when her parents are obstinate and ill-natured about marrying
her.’ Her ridicule of the long-lived affection of
her parents is expressed in the coarsest manner; and she
thinks it a good joke that her father recommends her to
read the ‘Practice of Piety;’ she runs away with a scamp,
and her honest lover, rightly disenamoured, declares of
her that ‘he would not underwrite her for ninety per
cent.’ What Miss Pope made of Polly and King of
Scribble, when this farce was first produced, in 1760, it is
not worth inquiring. Miss Pope was considered great in
it; but it is worth noticing that when Miss Burney was
reading the piece to the Queen and her daughters, an
actress whose name can never be separated from that of
the Queen’s third son was then turning half the heads in
town with her Polly. Mrs. Jordan was well supported by
Palmer in Scribble, and the piece seems to have found its
way to court, as the ‘Dragon of Wantley’ did in the preceding
reign, on the strength of its popularity.
The reader to the royal audience performed her vocation
under great disadvantages. She read on in mortal
silence on the part of those who listened; neither comment,
applause, nor feeling of any sort was ever exhibited;
and when Miss Burney had to read other of the elder
Colman’s plays, and once ventured to relieve the voice, long
fatigued by reading, by making some remark on the construction
of the piece, the innovation was submitted to
without being commended.
This scene of a Queen whose high moral character and
purity of taste have been long matters of eulogy, seated
amid her daughters, listening to a farce which would
hardly now be tolerated, is not pleasant. But society had
not yet freed itself from the uncleanness with which it
had been overwhelmed during the two preceding reigns.
The unspeakable degradation into which the first two
Georges dragged the country must not be forgotten,
though it may not be detailed. While detesting the
restrictions with which monarchy had been loaded in the
great revolution, they indulged unrestrainedly in the
worst coarseness of vice. Kept back from pressing despotically
upon the people, they yielded unbridled sway to
their own passions, and their infamous example corrupted
three-fourths of society. Caroline herself would listen to
stories told her by Sir Robert Walpole, upon which the
eye of the student of history cannot rest without a blush
of indignation mantling in his cheek. If the Stuarts were
vicious, they were, in a certain degree, gentlemanlike in
their vices. The first two Georges were as vicious, but
they had none of the refinement of the Stuarts, and
would have been to the full as tyrannical had the men of
England left them the power. Their conduct was enough
to render monarchy detested, and the name of Brunswick
execrable. The domestic virtues of George III. and
Queen Charlotte insured respect for the first, and surrounded
the latter name with something like a halo of
love. If there be any yet among us who sing ‘Hail,
Star of Brunswick!’ with any mental reservation, the
reason may probably be traced to impressions received
from the records of the first Georges. The tone of society
had not yet recovered itself fully when Queen Charlotte
caused ‘Polly Honeycomb’ to be read aloud to herself
and daughters. It is true that her Majesty also listened
in like company to the teaching of Mrs. Hannah More;
but even that high moralist hardly as yet understood
how the work of morality might best be sped. Even ten
years later than the time when Colman’s farces were
deemed not unfitting to be read to an audience of mother
and children, Mrs. More, in ‘Cœlebs,’ was recommending
the observance of modesty on the part of ladies on very
selfish grounds. In allusion to the ‘naked style’ of dress
which was then the fashion with women, Mrs. More admonitorily
and significantly exclaims: ‘Oh, if women in
general knew what was their real interest; if they could
guess with what a charm even the appearance of modesty
invests its possessor, they would dress decorously from
mere self-love, if not from principle. The designing
would assume modesty as an artifice; the coquet would
adopt it as an allurement; the pure as her appropriate
attraction; and the voluptuous as the most infallible art
of seduction.’ When the Reverend Sydney Smith read
this passage, he remarked that if there were any truth in
it, ‘nudity becomes a virtue, and no decent woman for
the future can be seen in garments.’ This is, perhaps,
more smartly than truly said. Queen Charlotte certainly
abhorred the style of dress which is censured in
‘Cœlebs.’ When the Lady Charlotte Campbell, famous
for her beauty and for her subsequent connection with
Queen Caroline, first went to court, she was attired in the
scant costume of the period. She was, in fact, in the
very highest of the fashion, and as she was passing before
Queen Charlotte, the latter recommended her to ‘let out
a tuck in her petticoat!’
While on the subject of fashion, it may here be noticed
that when the marriage of the Princess Royal with the
head of the House of Wurtemburg had been determined
on, her Majesty made the bridal dress, and helped to deck
her daughter with it. As a King’s eldest daughter, she
had a right to be attired in a dress of white and silver.
The Princess, however, was about to marry a widower,
and it appears that custom, consequently, required the
bride to wear white and gold. And so the robe was
fashioned accordingly, and the preference of the Princess
was made to yield to etiquette. This marriage, however,
did not take place till 1797.
In 1792, the Prince’s pecuniary affairs were in a worse
condition than ever. Several executions had been in his
house, from one of which he had been saved by the benevolence
of Lord Rawdon. His debts now amounted to
400,000l. The Queen advised him to press the King,
through the lord chancellor, to apply for an increase of
income. What the Prince required was 100,000l. yearly,
and if that were granted he proposed to set aside 35,000l.
per annum for the liquidation of his debts. He had now
abandoned racing, a silly pursuit which had cost him
yearly not less than 30,000l.; and having done that, he
feigned to be shocked at his equally embarrassed brother,
York, remaining on the turf. He added, that if his request
were not acceded to, he should shut up Carlton
House, go abroad, and live upon 10,000l. a year. It was
very properly suggested to him that he would do much
better, if the Queen’s wishes and his own could not be
carried out, by staying in England and showing the people
that he could adapt his circumstances to his revenue.
This was a course, however, which he had never seriously
determined to follow. He was made up of contradictions;
and although he was at this period more than ever attached
to Mrs. Fitzherbert, it did not prevent him from
maintaining the well-known actress, Mrs. Crouch, in the
post of ‘favourite.’ Mrs. Fitzherbert met this course by
ridiculing it, and by coquetting on her side. This hurt
the Prince’s vanity, and brought him again under her influence.
What his homage was worth may be judged of by
the fact that it was paid to many deities, and while he was
maintaining Mrs. Crouch, forgetting poor Perdita Robinson,
making love to the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire
(who was separated from her husband, but did not on that
account in the slightest degree regard the Prince), he had
also opened an intercourse with Lady Jersey, who was not
half such a prude as the Duchess, and who was the most
shameless of those to whom the heartless Prince had pretended
to surrender his heart. With many loves, or what
were called such, Mrs. Fitzherbert continued the married
sultana. He built for her a residence at Brighton, where
she kept up the establishment of a queen—really looked
like one, for she was a superb woman—had as brilliant
diamonds as Queen Charlotte herself, and was greeted by
all the bathing women with the respectful appellation of
‘Mrs. Prince.’
But the Queen had soon to deplore another mésalliance.
Her son Prince Augustus (Sussex), when travelling in
Italy, had become attached to the Lady Augusta Murray,
daughter of the Earl of Dunmore; and, after a courtship
during which the Prince wrote love-letters to the lady
that, with respect to style were neither sublime nor beautiful,
and with regard to grammar were calculated to
make Lindley Murray die of despair, the parties were
married privately by an English clergyman, and were re-married,
at St. George’s, Hanover Square, on their return
to England. Of this union two children were born, of
whom the daughter (once known as Mademoiselle d’Este)
became the wife of Lord Truro, who, when Mr. Serjeant
Wilde, endeavoured to establish the validity of her father’s
marriage, and acquired the lady’s hand by way of honorarium.
The moment the marriage of the Duke with Lady
Augusta Murray was first declared invalid by the ecclesiastical
court, Lady Augusta separated from her husband.
The latter appears to have borne the separation very
philosophically, but he did not marry again during Lady
Augusta’s life. In his later days, when his brother, William
IV., was King, he married the lady who long survived
him under the title of Duchess of Inverness. But a
marriage of more importance remains to be noticed.
CHAPTER X. LENGTHENING SHADOWS.
The Prince of Wales’s marriage to the Princess Caroline of Brunswick—Her
character—The Prince’s behaviour at the marriage ceremony—Lord
Holland’s two accounts of the Princess irreconcileable—The Prince’s
hatred of the Princess—Propriety of the Queen’s Court—Unpopularity
of the King—Pelted by the mob—Birth of the Princess Charlotte—Strict
observance of Court etiquette—Marriage of the Princess Royal to
the Prince of Wurtemburg—First book stereotyped in England—The
volunteer mania—Attempted assassination of the King—Archbishop
Cornwallis’s drums, and Lady Huntingdon’s efforts to induce him to
discontinue—Her hot reception by Mrs. Cornwallis—Lady Huntingdon
induces the King to aid her—The King’s letter to the archbishop—Conduct
of the clergy—Incident of the Drawing-room—The Prince a
Radical—The King’s illness—His excitement—Feeling exhibited by the
Duke of York—The Prince of Wales incredulous of the recovery of the
King—Conversation between the King and Dr. Willis—The Queen’s
anxiety—Particulars of the King’s illness—Recovery of the King—Home
scene at Windsor Castle.
The subject of the marriage of the Prince of Wales will
come more fully under our notice in the Life of Caroline
of Brunswick. Here it may be mentioned that the period
at which the question of the marriage of the Prince was
first moved, is not known with certainty. It was soon,
however, publicly ascertained that whenever that much-desired
event should take place the Prince’s debts were to
be paid, on the condition that after such settlement and
the fixing of his establishment as a married man, he was
never to incur such liabilities again. The agreeing to this
condition debarred him from ever again applying to
Parliament for pecuniary relief.
There is little doubt as to the wish of Queen Charlotte
that her son should marry a Princess of Mecklenburg.
It was sufficient for the Prince that his mother had such
desire that he should oppose it. According to Lord
Liverpool, the intimation of the Prince’s wish to marry
was abruptly made to the King, who received the information
with a cheerful complacency, and simply required
that the lady chosen should be a Protestant and a Princess.
Mrs. Fitzherbert was neither.
The King offered to send a commissioner to the German
courts on the pleasant mission of reviewing the daughters
of the sovereign dukes there, and reporting on their
eligibility. The Prince’s choice, however, appears to
have been made, if that can be called choice which fixes
on an object utterly unknown. He named his cousin, the
daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Brunswick. Her
mother was Augusta, sister of the King, whose birth had
taken place at St. James’s Palace under circumstances
which gave such offence to Caroline and George II. The
King made no objection: and yet he must have known
that if the object selected was pretty, she was far less fair
than the lady of Mecklenburg whom Charlotte would
fain have had for a daughter-in-law; and that her reputation,
even in Germany, where the best people then construed
liberally of female conduct, was none of the best.
She was known as a bold, dashing, careless girl, whose
tongue was ever in advance of reflection; who called the
coarsest things by the coarsest names, and who only needed
temptation and opportunity to fall into any sin which had
a pleasant side to it. She was not worse than many of
her contemporaries with whose doings fame was less busy.
Her great defect was a want of self-control, if that be a
great defect compared with a want of cleanliness. But in
this latter respect Caroline’s neglect was not singular.
In her young days dirtiness had not yet quite gone out of
fashion.
It is credibly asserted that the Prince’s favourite, Lady
Jersey, led him to select the Princess of Brunswick for
his wife. It was Lady Jersey’s object that he should have
a legal consort who must draw him away from his (illegal)
wife, Mrs. Fitzherbert; but it was also Lady Jersey’s object
that the wife should not possess attractions that should
prove more powerful than her own.
It will suffice to record here that the marriage took
place on the 8th of April, 1795, under unseemly auspices.
The behaviour of the Prince at the ceremony undoubtedly
may be received as confirming the accounts of his aversion
to the bride. He confessed to the Duke of Bedford (one
of the two unmarried dukes who supported him at the
marriage) that he had taken several glasses of brandy
before proceeding to it. He must have taken many, for
he was so drunk that the two dukes could scarcely keep
him from falling. The conduct of the Prince was, of
course, the subject of much remark, and it was set down,
at the time, not to brandy but remorse—remorse at the
idea of that other marriage which he had contracted with
the woman whom he undoubtedly did love, if he ever
entertained for woman at all a sentiment worthy of that
name. Very few days passed after the solemnisation of
the ceremony before ‘many coarse and indelicate strictures
on the bride’s person and behaviour were currently
reported as coming directly from the Prince in every
society in London.’ So says Lord Holland; and that noble
writer, who pronounces to be a bad and worthless woman—mad,
at least, if not bad—a princess whom his party, if
not he himself, held up, in the days of her persecution, as
a martyr of virtue, goes on to say, that the ill-usage to
which the Princess of Wales was exposed at Brighton and
elsewhere from the Prince and his mistress, Lady Jersey,
was notorious, unpardonable, and so utterly disgraceful,
‘that persons of rank (afterwards indebted to him for advancement
in it) have plumed themselves upon refusing
to meet him at dinner at my house [Holland House,
Kensington], observing that he was not fit company for
gentlemen.’
The marriage began miserably, continued miserably,
and ended miserably. As Lord Holland observes, neither
the Prince’s reconciliation with Mrs. Fitzherbert nor his
subsequent intimacies with Lady Hertford and others
(although such returns and changes of love were usually
accompanied by similar changes and returns of a train of
favourites, friends, and dependents), ever softened his
hatred to the Princess. When, in 1820, on the death of
Napoleon, some officious courtier ran up to him to apprise
him of the news which he supposed would be welcome to
him, in these words, ‘Sir, your greatest enemy is dead!’—‘Is
she, by G—?’ was the royal husband’s dignified and
pious ejaculation.
‘Many seeds of discontent,’ says Lord Holland, ‘were
imperceptibly sown during the year 1795, among the supporters
of the ministry, which time brought to maturity.
Among these may be reckoned the influence of Carlton
House. The Prince of Wales thought himself duped by
Mr. Pitt about the payment of his debts at the time of
his marriage. He had been treated superciliously, more
than once, by Mr. Pitt, and he had never liked him,
though his own dread of revolutionary principles,
quickened by a recent quarrel with the Duke of Orleans,
had rendered him eager, and even vociferous, for the war.
The last injury, real or supposed, which he had received
from Mr. Pitt, by the latter’s acquiescing in devoting, on
his marriage, the whole increase of his revenue to the
payment of his debts, sank into his weak and fretful
mind deeper than usual, because he was continually reminded
of it by his connection with a woman whom he
loathed.’
Meanwhile, the Queen maintained the long-standing
reputation of her court with undiminished strictness.
‘The Queen’s public receptions,’ says Sir Jonah Barrington,
‘were the most gracious in the world. There could
not be a more engaging, kind, and condescending address
than that of the Queen of England. An illustration of her
strictness is afforded us by an anecdote told of her Majesty
and an English duchess, who was aunt to a niece of rather
blemished reputation, but to which it was hoped some
lustre might be restored if she could only be made to
pass through a court atmosphere. The duchess, on asking
the Queen to receive her niece at the drawing-room, of
course insisted that the young lady’s fame had been unfairly
attacked, and that she trusted to her Majesty’s clemency
and generosity to set it fair again with the world.
The Queen remained silent; whereupon the duchess,
previous to retiring, beseechingly inquired what she might
be permitted to say to her niece. ‘Tell her,’ said Queen
Charlotte, ‘that you did not dare to make such a request
to the Queen.’ The duchess, who held some post in the
royal household, felt that such a speech involved her own
dismissal.
Never was the court so unpopular as at this time. In
October 1795 the King, on proceeding to the House of
Lords, was not only assailed by seditious cries, but was
fired at by some assassin among the mob. On his return
from the House he was pelted with stones, and, later in
the day, when driving to the Queen’s House, in a private
carriage, without guards, the excited mob, with cries of
‘Bread—cheap bread!’ ‘No war!’ and ‘No king!’
made an attempt to force open the door of the vehicle in
which he was riding. The same spirit was shown in 1796.
On the 1st of February the King and Queen went to
Drury Lane to see ‘The Fugitive.’ On their return a
stone was thrown at the carriage, which passed through
one of the glass panels and struck the Queen in the face.
Soon after a female maniac was discovered in the palace,
making no secret of sanguinary designs against ‘Mrs.
Guelph,’ her alleged ‘mother.’ Added to these private
vexations, the negotiation entered into, at the King’s
express desire, to establish a peace with France, entirely
failed, and the difficulties of the situation were further
increased by Spain uniting with our other enemies against
us in war.
In the month previous to that last mentioned the birth
of the Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince and
Princess of Wales, was speedily followed by the separation
of the parents. We may cite here an incident of the
christening, as the Queen Charlotte is rather the heroine
thereof than the infant Princess.
Lady Townshend held the little Princess at the font.
Some time elapsed before the officiating prelate took her
from Lady Townshend, whose state of health at the time
was such as to make her incapable of standing long without
some peril to her own future hopes. The Princess of
Wales pitied her, and asked the Queen, in a low voice, if
she would not command poor Lady Townshend to be
seated. But Queen Charlotte liked nothing so little as
an interruption of established ceremony; and, blowing
the snuff from her fingers, she exclaimed, ‘No, no! she
may stand—she may stand!’ The Queen was nearly as
strict in public with her own children. They, on such
occasions, never sat down in her presence unless commanded;
never spoke, unless first spoken to; and once,
it is said, when the Queen was playing at whist, one of
the Princesses, standing behind her chair, fell fast asleep
from sheer fatigue.
The domestic troubles of the Queen were now in great
part connected with the affairs of her eldest son and her
daughter-in-law. They will be found alluded to in the
Life of the latter. Another marriage, scarcely more
promising, soon occupied her attention. The widowed
Prince of Wurtemburg proposed for the hand of the
Princess Royal. His first wife was the daughter of
Augusta, and sister of the Caroline of Brunswick for
whom the Queen, her mother-in-law, had such small
measure of affection. This first marriage had been an
unhappy one. The Prince had taken his wife to Russia,
where she is said to have become so thoroughly corrupted
as to have shocked the unclean Czarina, Catherine, herself.
From Russia she never returned; but how, when, or
where she died, no writer seems to be able to state with
certainty. That she died there in confinement cannot be
doubted; and yet her sister Caroline used to express her
belief that she had been seen in Italy long after the reported
period of her death. Queen Charlotte had an
especial dislike to the projected match of this Prince with
her daughter, nor would the King consent until he had
been satisfied that the Prince had not been a cruel husband
to his first wife, and that he had not become a widower
by unfair means. What the nature of this satisfaction was
no one knows. The marriage took place on the 18th of
May. After a thirty years’ residence in Wurtemburg,
during which time that locality was raised to the rank of
a kingdom, and the daughter of our own Charlotte was
visited more than once by the first Napoleon, of whom
her husband was a very active ally, Charlotte Augusta,
the ‘good Queen-dowager,’ and a childless widow, visited
England once more, in order to obtain medical relief for a
dropsical complaint. On her voyage back, in worse health
than when she came hither, the vessel had nearly perished
in a storm. To her terrified attendants she calmly remarked,
‘We are as surely under the protection of God
here as upon the dry land—be not afraid!’ She survived
her mother ten years, dying in October, 1828. Her letters
addressed to the lady who superintended the education of
the Princess Charlotte of Wales are creditable alike to her
head and her heart.
The Princess Royal was married in 1797. Soon after
she had set out from St. James’s, early on a morning in
June, in tears, and without a relation to bid her adieu, all
having gone through that ceremony the night before, in
order to be saved the trouble of early rising, the mutiny
in the navy broke out—a circumstance which hardly
annoyed the King more than the agitation for Parliamentary
reform; for it was more easily suppressed. There
was some compensation for these vexations in the visit to
Duncan’s victorious North Sea fleet, and in the triumphs
of our other naval squadrons. The year ended appropriately
with the royal procession to St. Paul’s to render
fervent thanksgiving for the success of the arms of
England.
It was early in 1798 that the first book was stereotyped
in England, and the Queen was the origin of this
innovation—not that she had any idea of innovation. The
facts are simply these:—The press had been teeming with
productions offensive alike to virtue and religion. To
protect both was an anxious object with the Queen.
According to contemporary report, she procured from a
German Lutheran divine (Freylighausen) his ‘Abstract
of the whole Doctrine of the Christian Religion,’ and this
she submitted to the judgment of Dr. Porteus, Bishop of
London. The prelate, well pleased to see the State thus
submissive or suggestive to the Church, read the pamphlet—not
only read it, but approved of, and (as it was said,
erroneously) translated it into English. He caused it to be
printed in stereotype, and this translated book was the first
volume that was ever so printed in England. With stereotyping,
the name of Queen Charlotte should always be
mentioned in honourable connection.
The year 1798 was marked by the Irish rebellion, the
national subscription for the exigencies of the state, and
for the uneasiness felt at court at the standing toast of the
Whigs—‘The sovereignty of the people!’ That and the
following year were the years of the Volunteer mania.
The King and Queen were too happy to encourage this
sort of enthusiasm; and, even in their retirement at Weymouth,
the Volunteer reviews were among the most
cherished of their amusements. They hoped they had
reconquered the love of a people on whom the burden of
war pressed heavily. They were at least not safe from
popular fanaticism. On the 15th of May, 1800, the royal
family attended Drury Lane Theatre, after a review in the
morning. As the King entered the box, and was in the
act of bowing to the audience, he was fired at from the
pit. The Queen and her daughters were entering as the
shot was fired; and the King kept them back with his
hand, lest, as he said, ‘there might be another.’ After
Hatfield, the assassin, had been secured and carried off,
the King and his family sat calmly down, and witnessed
the whole representation. This coolness was deservedly
admired. On the return to the palace the King replied
to a sympathising observation of the Queen, ‘I am going
to bed with a confidence that I shall sleep soundly; and
my prayer is that the poor unhappy prisoner who aimed
at my life may rest as quietly as I shall.’
The other domestic incidents in the life of the Queen
or King are not of sufficient interest to be worth the
detail. We may make exception of one, however, which
introduces us once more to the earnest and indefatigable
Lady Huntingdon.
Early in the present century we again meet with this
lady, busy at, with, and in defiance of courts. In her
zeal as a reformer of manners and morals, she was bold
without being indiscreet; and she was never more bold
than when she attacked, courteously and courageously, no
less a person than Dr. Cornwallis, Archbishop of Canterbury.
This right reverend lord primate had given several
grand routs at his palace. The archbishop was an old-fashioned
man; and what had been tolerated in his father
and mother must also be permitted to himself and wife,
the magnificent Mrs. Cornwallis—leader and slave of ton.
Let the world have justice done to it, the majority therein
were sorely scandalised at these irreverend proceedings.
But Lady Huntingdon was the only one bold enough to
give expression to what she felt. With the energy and
tact natural to such a woman she contrived to obtain
the grant of an audience with the primate and his lady,
and thither she went, accompanied by the Marquis of
Townshend.
The priests of the sacred cities of Anahuac were not
more horror-stricken when Cortez asked them to burn
their gods, than the primate of all England was when the
good lady pressed upon him sacrifices which would entail
the necessity of spending very dull evenings. As for Mrs.
Cornwallis, she tarred and feathered Lady Huntingdon,
metaphorically, by flinging missiles which soiled her who
flung them, and by scattering light ridicule which was
blown back upon the face and reputation of the scatterer.
Lady Huntingdon again and again assaulted the archi-episcopal
fortress, but she was driven back by repeated
discharges of ‘Methodist!’ and ‘Hypocrite!’
She could do nothing at Lambeth, and accordingly
she turned her face towards Kew. Nor had she long to
wait before Queen Charlotte and her royal consort admitted
her to an interview, to which she was conducted by Lord
Dartmouth and the Duchess of Ancaster.
The sovereigns listened to the simple yet earnest story.
The King was especially warm in expressing his indignation,
and the Queen took her full share in such expression.
‘I had heard something of this before,’ said George III.,
‘but I knew not if all was as bad as Lady Huntingdon
has detailed it. The archbishop has behaved very ill to
the lady. I will see if he dare refuse to listen to a King.’
The gay and orthodox courtiers present began to think
that the world was at an end. Here was the State placing
itself above the Church! Mentally, they no doubt denied
the royal supremacy.
In an after-conversation the honest King confessed
that Lady Huntingdon herself had been painted to him in
very odd colours, and, in admitting her to an interview,
he was partly influenced by his curiosity to see whether
she was so strange a creature as she had been described
by her enemies. To his expressions of admiration for
herself and her work the Queen added similar assurances;
and could the archbishop have seen two sovereigns thus
complimenting a ‘Methodist’ and a ‘Hypocrite,’ no doubt
the primate, zealous for nightly ‘drums,’ would have burst
into tears, and have declared that the sun of England was
set for ever!
‘His Majesty,’ said Queen Charlotte, ‘had complaints
made against yourself, in part, Lady Huntingdon, but
chiefly against your students and ministers, whose preaching
annoys one or two of our bishops who are careless.’
The King nodded assent, adding, it was a pity that these
students and ministers could not be made bishops of, as
then they would cease to annoy anyone by preaching. It
was objected that even the Lady Huntingdon could not
be made a bishop of, and so the evil would be as rife as
ever. ‘I wish we could make her one,’ said the Queen,
with a smile at the idea; ‘I am sure her ladyship would
shame more than one upon the bench!’
The King then conversed with Lady Huntingdon,
chiefly upon old times and persons of his father’s court, at
which she had for a while been a frequent visitor. ‘We
discussed a great many subjects,’ says the lady herself, in
her account of the interview, ‘for the conversation lasted
upwards of an hour, without intermission. The Queen,’
she adds, ‘spoke a good deal, asked many questions, and,
before I retired, insisted on my taking some refreshments.
On parting, I was permitted to kiss their Majesties’ hands;
and when I returned my humble and most grateful acknowledgments
for their very great condescension, their
Majesties immediately assured me they both felt gratified
and pleased with the interview, which they were so
obliging as to wish might be renewed.’
The Queen repeatedly expressed her admiration of
Lady Huntingdon’s conduct on this occasion, one result of
which was a stringent letter addressed by the King to the
primate. In this royal remonstrance and reproof, the
writer told the archbishop that he ‘held such levities
and vain dissipations as utterly inexpedient, if not unlawful,
to pass in a residence for many centuries devoted to
divine studies, religious retirement, and the extensive
exercise of charity and benevolence ... where so
many have led their lives in such sanctity as has thrown
lustre on the pure religion they professed and adorned.
From the dissatisfaction,’ adds the King, ‘with which
you must perceive I hold these improprieties, not to speak
in harsher terms, and on still more pious principles, I
trust that you will suppress them immediately, so that I
may not have occasion to show any further marks of my
displeasure, or to interpose in a different manner.’
When it was necessary to administer such a reproof
as this to an archbishop, we may readily believe that only
a sorry sort of reputation attached itself to the clergy generally.
This had been the case for many years. Speaking
of the Queen’s drawing-room, held in January, 1777,
Cumberland, who was present, says: ‘Sir George Warren
had his order snatched off his ribbon, encircled with
diamonds to the value of 700l. Foote was there and lays
it upon the parsons, having secured, as he says, his gold
snuff-box in his waistcoat pocket upon seeing so many
black gowns in the room.’
Foote’s remark was only in jest, but it shows the estimation
in which the clergy were held. They were for
the most part, and yet with some noble exceptions, but
wretched teachers both by precept and example. Where
clerical instruction was thus doubly defective, lay practice
was not of a very pure character. Only two or three
years before Lady Huntingdon waited on Queen Charlotte
and the King at Kew, an incident illustrative of my remark
occurred at one of her Majesty’s drawing-rooms. A
great crowd had assembled, and amid the throng—while
the Prince of Wales was conversing with the King—he
felt a sudden pull made at the hilt of his sword. He
looked down and perceived that the diamond guard of
the weapon was broken off, but it remained suspended by
a small piece of wire, the elasticity of which had prevented
it from breaking, and so preserved the diamond-studded
guard. No discovery was made as to the author of this
felonious attempt, and the Prince did wisely in refusing to
fix on the gentleman who stood nearest to his side as the
offender.
In 1801 the Prince of Wales was in full opposition
against the crown and Pitt. The opposition had a Jacobinical
character, and affected Jacobinical opinion without
any reserve. Lord Malmesbury remarks of the Prince that
even ‘his language in the streets is such as would better
become a member of Opposition than the heir to these
kingdoms.’ This conduct was followed at a time when
the state of the King’s health began again to cause some
anxiety. He had contracted a chill and severe cramps by
remaining too long in a cold church, on the 13th of
February. We find Lord Malmesbury recording on the 17th
of February: ‘King got a bad cold. Takes James’s powders.
God forbid he-should be ill!’ And the next day he writes:
‘King-better. Lord Radnor saw him yesterday morning,
and he clearly had only a bad cold.’ One day later, on
occasion of an audience of the King being sought by
Mr. Pelham, the same writer says: ‘Pelham came back
to me from court; he had seen and consulted the Duke of
Portland, who approved his seeing the King, but said it
would not be to-day, as the King was unwell, and on such
occasions it was not usual to disturb him but on great
public business.’ On the 21st matters appeared worse.
‘Bad accounts from Queen’s House; the answer at the
door is, the King is better: but it is not so. He took a
strong emetic on Thursday, and was requested to take
another to-day, which he resisted.’ It would seem that
the progressive seriousness of the symptoms produced no
corresponding effects in the heir-apparent. On Sunday,
the 22nd of February, the diarist writes: ‘His Majesty
still bilious; not getting better; apprehensions of getting
worse. Fatal consequence of Pitt’s hasty resignation.
Princess Amelia unwell. Queen not well. At Carlton
House they dance and sing.’ As the King grew worse, the
intrigues of the husband of Caroline became more active.
The regency was the object of these intrigues. In the
meantime the condition of the Sovereign grew daily more
unsatisfactory. On the 29th of February the King’s pulse
was at 130 during the night. ‘This makes,’ says Lord
Malmesbury, ‘in favour of the mental derangement, and
proves it to be only the effect of delirium in consequence
of fever, but it puts his life in very great danger.’
His mind had been extraordinarily excited at this
period by an agitation which was being carried on against
the Church, and in favour of the emancipation of the Romanists.
The King had strong views of what he was
bound to by the coronation oath, and the idea became
the rooted torment of his mind. ‘The King, on Monday,’
writes Lord Malmesbury, ‘after having remained many
hours without speaking, at last, towards the evening,
came to himself, and said, “I am better now, but will remain
true to the Church.” This leaves little doubt as to
the idea uppermost in his mind. And the physicians do
not scruple to say that, although his Majesty certainly had
a bad cold, and would under all circumstances have been
ill, yet that the hurry and vexation of all that has past
was the cause of his mental illness, which, if it had shown
itself at all, would certainly not have declared itself so
violently, or been of a nature to cause any alarm, had not
these events taken place.’ They were events which were
weighing on the mind of George III., just as the loss of
the American colonies had done in the preceding century.
The Duke of York at this juncture is said to have behaved
with great propriety towards Queen Charlotte and
the Princesses. How his elder brother behaved is thus
recorded: ‘The Prince of Wales, on Sunday, the 22nd
of February, the second day of the King’s illness, and
when he was at his worst, went in the evening to a concert
at Lady Hamilton’s, and there told Calonne, the rascally
French ex-minister, “Savez vous, M. de Calonne, que
mon père est aussi fou que jamais?”’ Later we have it
recorded, that ‘the King at Windsor, about 6th or 7th
instant (March), read his coronation oath to his family;—asked
them whether they understood it? and added, If I
violate it I am no longer legal sovereign of this country,
but it falls to the house of Savoy.’ Subsequently, Lord
Malmesbury writes: ‘Lady Salisbury said the King was
quite well enough to have the Queen and Princesses at
dinner. Qui prouve trop ne prouve rien. Any degree of
fever could render this improper in anybody, and if you
take away the fever, you have the intellectual derangement
without a cause or hopes of recovery. I fear there
is so much fever that his life is in imminent peril. The
Duke of York deeply affected, and worn out with his
assiduous attentions at the Queen’s House.’
Lord Vincent, the first lord of the admiralty, declared
on the 2nd of March that not only was his Majesty much
better, but that, throughout the present attack, he had
never been so ill as he was at the moment when, in his
previous illness, he had been pronounced by Warren to be
convalescent. The King’s fever increased alarmingly that
very night. On Tuesday, the 3rd of March, Lord Malmesbury
thus graphically describes the crisis: ‘King so
much worse last night that his life was despaired of.
About ten he fell into a profound sleep; and awoke in
about six hours quite refreshed and quite himself. His
Majesty said he was thirsty, and, on being asked what he
wished to drink, said, “if allowed, a glass of cold water.”
This was given him. It put him into a perspiration. He
fell asleep again, and awoke in the morning with the fever
abated, and better in every respect. The crisis of his
disorder. Crowds of people round Queen’s House, and
their expressions of joy very great.’
The cure, however, was not yet complete. Much care
was required. The King was disposed to talk on that
very subject which had temporarily threatened to overthrow
his intellect. And his anxiety for the Church,
joined to seeing and conversing with two of his daughters
before he was strong enough to argue the question connected
with one, or to bear the pleasant excitement of
intercourse with his family, produced a disagreeable, although
not an enduring, relapse.
The Prince of Wales was the most reluctant of his
family to believe in the recovery of his father, whom he
openly declared as being more deranged than ever, although
he might possibly be improving in bodily health.
He affected to complain of being kept in ignorance of what
was going on at the Queen’s House; but his ignorance
arose from the little care he gave himself to become
wiser.
The recovery, however, was considered genuine. The
illness itself had been marked by one circumstance which
distinguishes it from that under which the King suffered
so severely in 1788. In the earlier attack sleep never
relieved him. Not that he did not sleep well, but that it
did not compose his nervous system. He would sleep
indeed, soundly, but awake from it, like a giant refreshed
by wine, more turbulent than ever. In the illness from
which he had just recovered his sleep was healthy and
refreshing, and he invariably woke from it quiet and
composed.
The first persons whom he saw after his recovery were
the Queen and Princesses and the Dukes of Kent and
Cumberland. To the Duke of York, whom he saw alone
on the 7th of March, he said, after thanking him for his
kindness to his mother and sisters, ‘I saw them yesterday,
because I could send them away at any time; but I wish
to see you alone, and for a long time, and therefore I put
it off till to-day.’ In inquiring about the Queen’s health
of the Duke of York, the King expressed great solicitude
for them; and the Duke acknowledged that they had
suffered greatly, but added, that their chief anxiety was
lest now, in getting well, he should be less careful about
his health than prudence would warrant. The King confessed
to having presumed too much on the strength of
his constitution, but promised to be less neglectful for the
future. And the conversation turned to political affairs,
to the ministry, to what had been done during his malady,
and at last to that question of Romanist emancipation
which had so shaken his mind, as being connected with
that ruin of the Church of England which he thought
must follow, and which church he had sworn he would
protect. Some weeks before his illness he had said to the
Duke of Portland that, ‘were he to agree to it, he should
betray his trust and forfeit his crown, that it might bring
the framers of it the gibbet.’ He was beginning to use
language almost as strong to the Duke of York, at the
first introduction between father and son, after the recovery
of the former. The Duke of York, however, very judiciously
stopped him, with the assurance that Pitt had abandoned
all idea of pressing the Catholic question, that
therefore it were wise to let the discussion of it drop also;
and that all political parties, who had behaved with great
propriety during his illness, had now but one common
anxiety—that to see him well again. ‘I am now quite
well; QUITE recovered from my illness,’ remarked the
King to Mr. Willis, on the occasion of directing him to
write to Pitt, ‘but what has he not to answer for who
has been the cause of my having been ill at all?’ Pitt
was much affected by this reproach, and it is said to have
influenced him to surrender the question rather than press
it to the peril of the King’s health. Indeed, the King had
so determinedly expressed himself on the subject that
the Duke of Portland had declared that his Majesty had
rather suffer martyrdom than submit to this measure.
The interview between the King and the Duke of
York was followed by one between the Sovereign and
the Prince of Wales. Lord Malmesbury says of the
latter, that ‘his behaviour was right and proper. How
unfortunate that it is not sincere, or rather that he has
so effeminate a mind as to counteract all his own good
qualities by having no control over his weaknesses!’
The Queen continued in a great state of anxiety
touching the King’s health, notwithstanding his complete
recovery having been declared. He was at times very
nervous and depressed—at others, still more nervous and
excited. There was less a fear of mental derangement
than that his faculties might never recover their former
tone. He occasionally behaved strangely in public; was
too familiar with the members of the cabinet which succeeded
that of which Pitt had been at the head; and,
again, was too readily and profoundly affected—too soon
elated or cast down—by trifles. On Thursday, the 26th of
March, 1801, Lord Malmesbury writes: ‘Drawing-room to-day
very crowded. Queen looking pale. Princesses as if
they had been weeping. They insinuate that the King is
too ill for the Queen to appear in public, and to censure
her for it. Dukes of York and Cumberland there. The
Prince of Wales was at the drawing-room, but behaved
very rudely to the Queen.’ And yet just previously he
had made an ostentatious manifestation of his delicacy.
Lords Carlisle, Lansdowne, and Fitzwilliam, with Mr. Fox,
informed his royal highness that they had formed a coalition,
offered him their services, and proposed to hold a
conference at Carlton House. The Prince is said to have
pleaded, in excuse for declining all they offered, the state
of the King’s health; but out of respect to his sire, he said
that he should consider it his duty to inform Mr. Addington,
the minister, of the nature of their proposals. This
he did; and it was perhaps because he regretted the step
he had taken that he behaved rudely to his royal mother
in her own public drawing-room!
The King’s condition still required care and watchfulness.
Thus, on the 25th of May, Dr. Thomas Willis writes
to Lord Eldon:—‘The general impression yesterday, from
the King’s composure and quietness, was that he was very
well. There was an exception to this in the Duke of
Clarence, who dined here. “He pitied the family, for he
saw something in the King that convinced him he must
soon be confined again.”
‘This morning I walked with his Majesty, who was
in a perfectly composed and quiet state. He told me,
with great seeming satisfaction, that he had had a most
charming night, “he could sleep from eleven to half after
four,” when, alas! he had but three hours’ sleep in the
night, which upon the whole was passed in restlessness—in
getting out of bed, opening the shutters, in praying
violently, and in making such remarks as betray a consciousness
of his own situation, but which are evidently
made for the purpose of concealing it from the Queen.
He frequently called out, “I am now perfectly well, and
my Queen—my Queen has saved me!” While I write
these particulars to your lordship I must beg to remind
you how much afraid the Queen is lest she should be
committed to him; for the King has sworn he will never
forgive her if she relates anything that passes in the
night.’
The Princess Elizabeth subsequently addressed a letter
to Dr. Thomas Willis, in which she states that she has
the Queen’s commands to inform him that ‘the subject
of the Princess of Wales is still in the King’s mind, to a
degree that is distressing, from the unfortunate situation
of the family.’ The writer adds: ‘The Queen commands
me to say, that if you could see her heart, you would see
that she is guided by every principle of justice, and with
a most fervent wish that the dear King may do nothing
to form a breach between him and the Prince. For she
really lives in dread of it; for, from the moment my
brother comes into the room till the instant he quits it,
there is nothing that is not kind that the King does not
do by him. This is so different to his manner when well,
and his ideas concerning the child (the Princess Charlotte)
so extraordinary, that I am not astonished at mamma’s
uneasiness. She took courage, and told the King that
now my brother was quiet he had better leave him, as he
(the Prince) had never forbid the Princess seeing the child
when she pleased. To which he answered, “That doesn’t
signify. The Princess shall have her child; and I will
speak to Mr. Wyatt about the building of the wing to her
present house.” You know full well how speedily every
thing is now ordered and done.’
‘The Princess spoke to me on the conversation the
King had had with her—expressed her distress; and I
told her how right she was in not answering, as I feared
the King’s intentions, though most rightly meant, might
serve to hurt and injure her in the world.’ For a few
days the symptoms ameliorated; then, on the 12th of
June, Dr. Thomas Willis wrote to Lord Chancellor Eldon:
‘His Majesty still talks much of his prudence, but shows
none. His body, mind, and tongue are all upon the
stretch every minute; and the manner in which he is
now expending money in various ways, which is so unlike
him when well, all evince that he is not so right as he
should be.’ The Queen, to use her own words, built her
faith upon the Chancellor, and doubted not of his succeeding
in everything with his Majesty. ‘He failed in
some nevertheless. He urgently requested the King to
allow Dr. Robert Willis to remain in attendance on him.
The King hated all the Willises, and Dr. Robert not less
than any of them. He concludes a note to Lord Eldon
on the 21st of June by saying: ‘No person that has ever
had a nervous disease can bear to continue the physician
employed on the occasion. This holds much more so in
the calamitous one which has so long confined the King,
but of which he is now completely recovered.’
The health of the Sovereign prevented him from
attending the concerts and other entertainments which he
was accustomed to honour with his patronage. He was,
however, sufficiently recovered to enjoy a sojourn at
Weymouth, and, on his return to Kew, to ride over occasionally
to visit the Princess of Wales at Blackheath.
The daughter of the latter, the Princess Charlotte, was
now four years of age, and the question of her separation
from her mother was a frequent subject of discussion. In
the meantime, the little Princess was very often a visitor
at St. James’s or Windsor, by command of the Queen,
and, of course, unaccompanied by her mother.
On the 29th of October, the King opened Parliament
in person. The pleasant announcement was made in the
royal speech that the eight years’ war had come to a conclusion.
The gratification of the public was, however,
somewhat marred by finding that the cost of carrying it
on had doubled the national debt, and that the supplies
required for the year amounted to forty millions.
The royal family now repaired to Windsor; and for
the description of a home scene there we will again have
recourse to one who describes what he saw and of which
he was a part. Lord Malmesbury was a guest at the
castle during the 26th, 27th, and 28th of November. ‘I
went there,’ he says, ‘to present to the King and Queen
copies of the new edition of my father’s works. I saw
them both alone on the evening of the 26th, and was
with them that and the next evening at their card party
at the Lodge. Each evening the Queen named me of her
party, and played at cribbage with me. I was with the
King alone near two hours. I had not seen him since
the end of October, 1800—of course, not since his last
illness. He appeared rather more of an old man, but
not older than men of his age commonly appear. He
stoops rather more, and was apparently less firm on his
legs; but he did not look thinner, nor were there any
marks of sickness or decline in his countenance or manner.
These last were much as usual—somewhat less hurried
and more conversable: that is to say, allowing the person
to whom he addressed himself more time to answer and
talk than he used to do when discussing on common subjects,
on public and grave ones. I at all times, for thirty
years, have found him very attentive, and full as ready
to hear as to give an opinion, though perhaps not always
disposed to adopt it and forsake his own. He was
gracious even to kindness. He asked how I continued to
keep well; and on my saying, amongst other reasons,
that I endeavoured to keep my mind quiet, and dismiss
all unpleasant subjects from intruding themselves upon it,
the King said, “’Tis a very wise maxim, and one I am
determined to follow; but how, at this particular moment,
can you avoid it?” And without waiting he went
on, saying, “Do you know what I call the peace? An
experimental peace, for it is nothing else. I am sure you
think so, and perhaps do not give it so gentle a name;
but it was unavoidable. I was abandoned by everybody—allies
and all. I have done, I conscientiously believe,
for the best, because I could not do otherwise: but had I
found more opinions like mine, better might have been
done.”’
His Majesty continued, at greater length than it is
necessary to follow, to give his opinions upon the men
and questions of the day; and this he did with great
calmness, discrimination, and foresight. He was not one
that believed Jacobinism was dead merely because it was
quiet; and he spoke of the policy of Prussia of that day,
and of the King who adopted it, as men speak of both in
the present day—a mixture of atrocity, treachery, and
meanness. Lord Malmesbury says little of the Queen,
but enough to give an idea of her manner. ‘The Queen,’
he says, ‘kept me only a quarter of an hour. She said
she should see me again in the evening, as I must be tired
of standing so long with the King. Spoke kindly of my
father and my dear children. Princess Mary was all good-humour
and pleasantness: her manners are perfect, and
I never saw or conversed with any princess so exactly
what she ought to be.’
CHAPTER XI. THE END OF GREATNESS.
Queen as an author—Domestic life of the Royal Family—Return of the
King’s illness—His continual agitation—Dr. Symonds not the medical
officer for the King—Capricious changes made by the King in his household—His
humorous eccentricities—Contest between the King and the
Prince—The Queen’s conduct—Scant courtesy to the royal invalid—Errors
committed by the King—Wellesley and Nelson—Gradual decay
of the King—His eccentricity at the installation of Knights of the Garter—Picture
of the daily life of the Royal Family—Position of the Queen—The
King’s resignation on his blindness—Distress of his mind—Renewal
of the Regency question—Extraordinary assertion by Lord Eldon—The
King’s person confided to the Queen—The Queen’s letters to Lord Eldon—Her
merry letter to him—A touching incident—The Queen’s unpopularity—Marriage
of the Princess Charlotte—Decline of the Queen’s
health—Disgraceful reception of her by the City—Her death—Considered
as a parent—Her political influence—The debts of Prince of
Strelitz—The Court on George III.’s ceasing to exercise authority—Regal
retinue about the old King dismissed—The Queen’s funeral—Her
will—Her diamonds—Death of the Duke of Kent—Death of the
King—Visit of the Emperor of the French to the Duchess of Gloucester.
In the year 1804 Queen Charlotte became entitled to be
enrolled among royal and noble authors or translators.
It was now discovered that she, and not Bishop Porteus,
had translated Freylighausen’s ‘Abstract of the
whole Doctrine of the Christian Religion.’ The Queen
translated it, for the use of her daughters, from a
German manuscript in her library. This book was the
first that was stereotyped in England according to
the Stanhope process. It was familiarly known as ‘the
Queen’s book.’ ‘The Queen’s book has come out, with
an introduction by the Bishop of London;’ thus writes
the Rev. Thomas Belsham to Mr. Aspland, in September,
1804. The letter is printed in the ‘Memoirs of the Rev.
Thomas Aspland.’ The writer adds: ‘I have just dipped
into it. I presume it was the Catechism which she learned
when she was a child, and which she still faithfully adheres
to. I have just glanced over it as it lies in Johnson’s
shop. It is a mass of absurdity.’ This testimony, it must
be remembered, is given by a disciple of the eminent Dr.
Priestley and by an Unitarian minister—the most illustrious
of the church which claimed to be Christian as well
as Unitarian.
The utmost regularity marked the course of the royal
life during the short time which elapsed between the
King’s last illness and that of 1804. It was the period
when anecdotes were being constantly told, and perhaps
sometimes made, of his simplicity and gentle nature. The
Queen, with a great love for display, could readily adapt
herself to the circumstances required by the exigencies of
the time; and she as much enjoyed the quietness of their
domestic life as she had done the most brilliant days and
episodes of her reign. Her eldest son, who, in spite of his
conduct, loved his mother as well as he could love anybody,
caused her continual anxiety; but this was little
compared with the trials which awaited her from another
source.
The mental maladies of the King usually occurred
after taking cold; but this fact did not seem to render
him in any way cautious and prudent. Thus, early in the
present year he caught a violent cold, followed by gout,
in consequence of remaining in wet clothes after returning
from a walk in the rain. The malady speedily assumed
the appearance of something more formidable than a mere
attack on his bodily health. At the evening assembly at
the Queen’s House, held in celebration of her Majesty’s
birthday, the King was unusually incoherent in his style
of speaking. The Queen played at cards, as was her custom;
but her anxiety was very manifest, and she never
kept her eyes off the King during the entire time the
assembly lasted.
In the course of a few weeks the King grew worse;
and, in addition to his ordinary physicians, the attendance
was required of persons accustomed to these peculiar cases.
The royal dislike to the Willises (father and son) was the
cause of Dr. Symonds being called in. The august patient
was in extreme danger during the 12th and 13th of
January. He partially recovered; but the mania, in a
modified form, still continued. He remained in this condition
till May—fanciful, suspicious, and unsteady in his
manners and conversation, particularly with the Queen
and royal family and his usual society. ‘He was apparently
quite himself,’ says Lord Malmesbury, ‘when talking
on business and to his ministers. He then collected and
re-collected himself.’ Dr. Symonds was by no means so
efficient a man in these cases as the Willises, against whom
the monarch had taken a rooted antipathy. In the King’s
first illness, as Willis, the clergyman, once entered the
room to visit the patient, the latter asked him if he, a
clergyman, was not ashamed of himself for exercising such
a profession. Willis gently hinted that the Saviour himself
went about healing the sick. ‘Ay, ay!’ said the
King, ‘but he hadn’t 700l. a-year for it.’
The King’s illness proved temporary; but he had
troubles enough to keep his mind in a continual agitation.
On the 26th of May, 1804, Lord Malmesbury thus writes:—
‘The King calls the Grenvilles “the brotherhood;”
says “they must always either govern despotically or
oppose government violently.” Duke of Portland has
little doubts of the King’s doing well; quiet will set him
right and nothing else; he has been fatigued by being too
much talked to on the new arrangements.... Lady
Uxbridge, at half-past two, very uneasy about the King;
said his family were quite unhappy, that his temper was
altered. He had just dismissed his faithful and favourite
page (Brown), who had served him during his illness with
the greatest attention. Quiet and repose were the only
chance. She said the Chancellor was to go to Windsor
with him, which she was glad of. King has stipulated,
before he went to Windsor, that he would not go to
chapel, nor on the terrace, nor take long rides. Lady
Uxbridge thinks Dr. Symonds an unfit man; that the
Willises, and particularly the clergyman Willis, was a
more proper person to be about the King when he was
getting well; so thinks Mrs. Harcourt.’
The next day we find the following entry in the diary:—‘Sunday,
May 27. Mrs. Harcourt confirms all that
Lady Uxbridge had told me; that the King was apparently
quite well when speaking to his ministers or those
who kept him a little in awe, but that towards his family
and dependents his language was incoherent and harsh,
quite unlike his usual character. She said that Symonds
did not possess in any degree the talents required to lead
the mind from wandering to steadiness; that in the King’s
two former illnesses this had been most ably managed by
the Willises, who had this faculty in a wonderful degree,
and were men of the world who saw ministers and knew
what the King ought to do; that the not suffering them
to be called in was an unpardonable proof of folly (not to
say worse) in Addington, and that now it was impossible,
since the King’s aversion was rooted; that Pitt judged ill
in leaving the sole disposal of the household to the King;
that this sort of power in his present weak (and, of course,
suspicious) state of mind had been exercised by him most
improperly; he had dismissed and turned away and made
capricious changes everywhere, from the lord-chamberlain
to the groom and footman; he had turned away the
Queen’s favourite coachman, made footmen grooms, and
vice versâ, and what was still worse, because more notorious,
had removed lords of the bedchamber without a
shadow of reason; that all this afflicted the royal family
without measure; that the Queen was ill and cross; the
princesses low, depressed, and quite sinking under it; and
that unless means could be found to place some very
strong-minded and temperate persons about the King he
would either commit some extravagance or he would, by
violent carelessness and exercise, injure his health and
bring on a deadly illness. I asked where such a man did
exist or had existed. She said none she knew of; that
Smart, when alive, had some authority over him; that
John Willis, the clergyman, also had acquired it, but in a
very different way; the first obtained it from regard and
high opinion, the other from fear; that, as was always
the case, cunning and art kept pace in the King’s character
with his suspicions and misgivings, and that he was
become so very acute that nothing escaped him. Mrs.
Harcourt ended her recital by great recommendations of
secrecy, and submitting it to me whether I would or would
not state it to Mr. Pitt. I asked her if the Chancellor
knew it. She said all: he is the only person who can in
any degree control the King: he is the best man possible,
and when he is near, things go on well. I said in that
case Mr. Pitt must know it; and if he knew it, would, if
he could, apply a remedy; and that if he did not I must
suppose he was at a loss what to do, and that the hearing
what he already knew from me would be useless to him
and look like a pushing intrusion on my part. After her
Lord Pembroke came into my room, and asked me whether
I was aware of what was passing at the Queen’s House;
and he then repeated, but in a still stronger manner and
with additional circumstances, what I had before heard.
We then both dwelt on the very serious and dangerous
consequences to which it might lead, and in vain sought
about for a remedy.’
And again, on the 1st of June, we find Lord Malmesbury
recording as follows:—‘General Harcourt, who came to
me in the evening from the Queen’s House, gave me a
most comfortable account of the King. He had seen him
often and for a long time, and that he was, in looks,
manner, conduct, and conversation, quite different from
what he had been since his illness—very different indeed
from what he was at Windsor; and General Harcourt,
who is not a sanguine man, really seemed to think most
favourably of the King.’
Some of the King’s acts smacked rather of a humorous
eccentricity than anything worse. Thus, early in this
month, when Lord Pelham carried his seals of office to
the Queen’s House to deliver them up to the King, the
latter said, ‘Before I can allow you to empty your hands
you must empty mine;’ and therewith he thrust upon
him the stick of captain of the yeomen of the guard.
Lord Pelham looked as much horrified as if his Majesty
had offered to knight him, and the poor sovereign, remarking
this, observed to him encouragingly, ‘It will be less a
sinecure than formerly, as I intend living more with my
great officers.’ The noble lord was too awkwardly placed
and had too much respect for the King to return the
unwelcome stick. There was something additionally
comical in the circumstance in this: Pitt was hurt at his
Majesty thinking of conferring an office without previous
communication with him; and Pelham was hurt at Pitt’s
having entrapped him, as he supposed, into the not very
exalted office of captain of the yeomen.
The poor monarch had in reality enough provocation
at home, to say nothing of the anxieties caused him by the
aspect of foreign affairs, to render irritable, if not to throw
off its balance, a mind so unhinged and ill at ease as his
own. It was at this period that a contest was going on
between him and the Prince of Wales relative to the residence
and education of the Princess Charlotte. The
Monarch, with much reason, wished her to reside at
Windsor, there to be educated in the character of ‘a
queen that is to be.’ The Prince opposed the proposition
for the opposition’s sake, being also moved thereto by
advisers who belonged to the party in Parliament adverse
to the crown. It was very much feared that if his wishes
were really disregarded the consequences to his health
would be serious. The Prince himself hardly knew his
own mind, and perhaps had no well-grounded opinion upon
the matter at all.
‘The two factions,’ says Lord Malmesbury, ‘pulled
different ways. Ladies Moira, Hutchinson, and Mrs.
Fitzherbert were for his ceding the child to the King; the
Duke of Clarence and Devonshire House most violent
against it, and the Prince was inclined to the faction he
saw last. In the Devonshire House cabal Lady Melbourne
and Mrs. Fox act conspicuous parts, so that the
alternative for our future Queen seems to be whether Mrs.
Fox or Mrs. Fitzherbert shall have the ascendancy.’
Father and son had an interview. After a whole
year’s estrangement, for one day child and parent agreed
tolerably well; but they did not long continue to be of
one mind. The conduct of the Prince was insulting to
the authority of the King and to his office as father. To
some extremely sensible remarks on the educational plan
best calculated to promote the welfare and happiness of
the Princess, her father, the Prince of Wales, returned an
answer so improperly worded that the Chancellor declined
to present it to the King. The latter was made irritable
and ill at no answer having reached him from the Prince,
and he was only beguiled into patience by being misinformed
that the Prince had misconceived the King’s letter,
and that it was necessary to set him right on the misconceived
points before a reply could be expected.
The Queen was rendered more anxious than any other
member of the royal family, of whom Lord Malmesbury
simply records that ‘the sons behave tolerably, the
princesses most perfectly.’ At this time the Queen, with
all her natural anxiety, exhibited some strangeness of
conduct. ‘She will never receive the King,’ says the
noble diarist just quoted, ‘without one of the princesses
being present; piques herself on this discreet silence, and,
when in London, locks the door of her white room (her
boudoir) against him. The behaviour of the Queen alarms
me more than all the other of Mrs. Harcourt’s stories;
for if the Queen did not think the King likely to relapse
she would not alter in her manners towards him, and her
having altered her manners proves that she thinks he may
relapse.’
If the royal invalid thus met with scant courtesy at
the hands even of his consort, whose fears made her
unkind, he received still less at the hands of some of his
servants. For instance, when Addington, Lord Sidmouth,
broke with Pitt, and repaired to the King to surrender
the key of the council-box (he had been president of the
council), the King told him, somewhat angrily, ‘You must
not give it to me, but to Lord Hawkesbury.’ The retiring
statesman excused himself on the ground that he
and Lord Hawkesbury were not on speaking terms; to
which George wisely enough rejoined that that was no
affair of his. He would thereupon have ended the
audience, but Addington remained talking to and at him
for an hour, and so fatigued and displeased him, that when
the King returned to his family (the scene passed at
Windsor), he said, ‘That —— has been plaguing me to
death!’ It was soon after this occurrence that Pitt’s
administration was broken up by the death of the great
statesman, and Lord Grenville and Fox came in as chiefs
of the cabinet of ‘All the Talents.’ The Prince of Wales
is recorded as having gone most heartily and unbecomingly
with them; lowering his dignity by soliciting offices
and places for his dependents, and by degrading himself
to the ‘size of a common party-leader.’
The King himself occasionally committed errors that
must have considerably annoyed those of his family and
cabinet who entertained more correct views and opinions.
Thus, it is pretty well known that George III. was very
reluctant to admit Sir Arthur Wellesley to act as commander-in-chief.
It is mentioned by Lord Holland, in
his ‘Memoirs of the Whig Party,’ that Nelson himself
was looked coldly upon at court, even when he made his
first appearance there after the glorious victory of the
Nile. Incompetent and unsuccessful officers were there
conversed with, while scarcely a word of recognition was
vouchsafed to the diminutive conqueror. He had doubly
offended. His connection with Lady Hamilton was an
offence to both King and Queen. He had besides accepted
an ‘order’ from the King of Naples, without first asking
permission. He had been told not to wear it above the
order of the Bath, but his reply was that the latter order
was in its right place; and as the King of Naples had
affixed his own on the spot which it then occupied on the
admiral’s coat, he would let it remain where the Neapolitan
king had graciously condescended to put it. This
independent line of conduct was not likely to gain favour
either with the King or Queen; and though they submitted
to have victories gained for them by his head and
hand, they had very little esteem for him who won their
battles. The King is known to have been very averse to
the public funeral with which honour, poor enough, was
done to the remains of the hero. He was nevertheless
sensitive touching the honour of the country, and fierce
in his remarks against the public men who seemed to disregard
it.
The remaining years of the King’s life were years of
gradual decay on his part, and of watchfulness over him
on the part of the Queen. Apart from state occasions,
the royal couple lived in a retired manner, but with all
the elegancies of refinement around them. The most
marked incident of 1805 was the visit of the Princess of
Wales, with the Princess Charlotte, to Windsor Castle,
where the Queen paid her daughter-in-law less attention
than the King, who treated her with a distinction that
was offensive alike to Queen and Prince. With something
of like distaste the Queen acquiesced in the King’s wish
to make a permanent residence of Windsor, for which
purpose nearly the whole of the splendid library was removed
from the Queen’s House to the castle.
Queen Charlotte preserved her quiet dignity and self-possession
on all public occasions. Her bearing, according
to Sir Jonah Barrington, ‘was not that of a heroine
of romance, but she was the best bred and most graceful
lady of her age and figure I ever saw; so kind and conciliating
that one could scarcely believe her capable of
anything but benevolence. She appeared plain, old, and
of dark complexion; but she was unaffected, and commanded
that respect which private virtues ever will obtain
for public character.’
The King, too, still enjoyed all occasions on which he
could display any magnificence. The retirement was
rather a sanitary than a voluntarily adopted measure;
and exciting scenes injured himself and alarmed his consort.
Thus, at the gorgeous installation of the Knights of
the Order of the Garter, on St. George’s day, 1805, his
conduct was marked by the petulant vivacity of a boy
rather than by the gravity of a monarch who had occupied
the throne for nearly half a century. The Queen
witnessed it with amazement. He was ostentatiously
patronising with the Princess of Wales, joking with some
of the lords, solemnly trifling with others; and he spoke
of the spectacle with the sentiment of a stage-manager
who had ‘got up’ a showy piece with unqualified
success.
The following picture of the ‘economy of the royal
family at Windsor,’ at this time, is quoted as interesting
from its faithfulness, showing the position of the Queen in
her household, and being generally ‘germane to the
matter.’
‘Our Sovereign’s sight is so much improved since
last spring that he can now clearly distinguish objects at
the extent of twenty yards. The King, in consequence of
this favourable change, has discontinued the use of the
large flapped hat which he usually wore, and likewise the
silk shade.
‘His Majesty’s mode of living is now not quite so
abstemious. He now sleeps on the north side of the castle,
next the terrace, in a roomy apartment not carpeted, on
the ground floor. The room is neatly furnished, partly
in a modern style, under the tasteful direction of the
Princess Elizabeth. The King’s private dining-room, and
the apartments en suite appropriated to his Majesty’s use,
are all on the same side of the castle.
‘The Queen and the princesses occupy the eastern
wing. When the King rises, which is generally about
half-past seven o’clock, he proceeds immediately to the
Queen’s saloon, where his Majesty is met by one of the
princesses—generally either Augusta, Sophia, or Amelia;
for each in turn attend their revered parent. From thence,
the Sovereign and his daughter, attended by the lady in
waiting, proceed to the chapel in the castle, where divine
service is performed by the dean or sub-dean; the ceremony
occupies about an hour. Thus the time passes until
nine o’clock, when the King, instead of proceeding to his
own apartment and breakfasting alone, now takes that
meal with the Queen and the five princesses. The table
is always set out in the Queen’s noble breakfast-room,
which has been recently decorated with very elegant
modern hangings; and, since the late improvement by Mr.
Wyatt, commands a most delightful and extensive prospect
of the Little Park. The breakfast does not occupy
half-an-hour. The King and Queen sit at the head of the
table, and the princesses according to seniority. Etiquette
in every other respect is strictly adhered to. On entering
the room the usual forms are observed agreeably to rank.
‘After breakfast the King generally rides out, attended
by his equerries; three of the princesses, namely,
Augusta, Sophia, and Amelia, are usually of the party.
Instead of only walking his horse, his Majesty now generally
proceeds at a good round trot. When the weather
is unfavourable, the King retires to his favourite sitting-room,
and sends for Generals Fitzroy or Manners, to play
at chess with him. His Majesty, who knows the game
well, is highly pleased when he beats the former, that
gentleman being an excellent player. The King dines
regularly at two o’clock; the Queen and princesses at
four. His Majesty visits and takes a glass of wine and
water with them at five. After this period, public business
is frequently transacted by the King in his own study,
where he is attended by his private secretary, Colonel
Taylor. The evening is, as usual, passed at cards in the
King’s drawing-room, where three tables are set out. To
these parties many of the principal nobility residing in
the neighbourhood are invited. When the castle clock
strikes ten the visitors retire. The supper is set out, but
that is merely a matter of form, and of which none of the
family partake. These illustrious personages retire to rest
for the night at eleven o’clock. The journal of one day is
the history of a whole year.’ The history is not a lively
one, perhaps, but it shows agreeably the domestic simplicity
of the court. He who was at the head of the latter did
not want for a certain religious heroism under affliction.
On his growing blindness being compassionately alluded
to by some one in his hearing the King remarked: ‘I
am quite resigned, for what have we in this world to do
but to suffer and perform the will of the Almighty!’ He
was resigned, however, partly because he was not yet deprived
of hope. In 1809, the jubilee year of his reign,
he was unable to attend the grand fête given by Queen
Charlotte at Frogmore in honour of the event; and
though he rode out, his horse was now led by a servant.
On foot, he felt his way along the terrace by the help of
a stick. Stricken with such an infliction as rapidly advancing
blindness, his predilection for the ‘Total Eclipse’
of Handel was, at least, singular. It affected him to tears,
and the Queen could not listen to the performance of this
composition without being similarly affected. And yet
the King himself seemed mournfully attached to both the
music and the words. One morning, we are told, the
Queen, or the Prince of Wales—for each has been mentioned—but
probably the former, on entering the King’s
apartment, found him pathetically reciting the well-known
lines from Milton—
Oh dark! dark! dark! amid the blaze of noon
Irrevocably dark! Total eclipse
Without all hope of day!
Oh first created beam, and thou great word,
Let there be light, and light was over all;
Why am I thus deprived thy prime decree!
Indeed, although a royal, it was a troubled household.
Circumstances in the lives of two of the sons of the King—York
and Cumberland—caused him great anxiety; but
the death of his youngest, and perhaps best-loved daughter,
Amelia, in 1810, finished the ravage which care and
other causes had inflicted on his intellect. Walcheren
and Amelia were said to be ever in his thoughts, as long,
at least, as he had the power to think and the privilege
to weep. The idea of the loss of his royal authority, too,
pressed heavily upon him. The time came, in 1811,
when such deprivation was necessary, and that year commenced
the unbroken period of what may be termed his
gentle insanity.
When the unquestionable presence of this calamity
necessarily introduced into Parliament the Regency question,
‘Scott (Eldon) made one of the most extraordinary
assertions that Parliament was ever called upon to listen
to.’ He affirmed that, when the King was incapable, the
sovereignty, for the time being, resided in the Great Seal.
He added that Parliament had a right to elect the Regent,
the principle of hereditary right not being here applicable.
The right of the Queen was spoken of; but it was intimated,
as if from authority, that the Queen was not likely
to oppose the government of her son.
That government was established; but the care of the
King’s person remained with the Queen, who was assisted
by a council. This rendered an almost constant attendance
at Windsor necessary; but the restraint was compensated
for by an additional ten thousand a-year.
The Queen’s letters to Lord Chancellor Eldon are all
expressive of the utmost gratitude for services rendered,
and of suggestions touching offices expected. She is
anxious that at ‘her council’ the great officers of state
should be present, to receive the reports of his Majesty’s
health made by the physicians who are in daily attendance
upon him. When a gleam of improvement manifests
itself in the King’s gloomy condition, she is anxious
that too much should not be made of nor expected from
it. Of these promises of amelioration no one was more
readily sensible than the King himself; and his inclination
to believe that he was well, or on the point of becoming
perfectly so, was an inclination which she thought was by
no means to be encouraged. Her urgency on this point
is remarkable, and is singularly at variance with common
sense; for a quiet acquiescence in the King’s often-expressed
conviction that he was convalescent would seem
to have been less likely to agitate him than as often a
repeated assurance that he was entirely mistaken. The
Queen’s letters on this melancholy matter do not exhibit
much dignity, either of sentiment or expression; nor, indeed,
was she a woman to affect either. She cared as
little for sentiment as she did for grammar, and she is said
at this time to have exhibited a disregard for a consistent
use of pronouns. In ‘Lord Eldon’s Life,’ by Horace Twiss,
is a note of hers, addressed to the Lord Chancellor, which
commences with ‘The Queen feels,’ passes into an allusion
touching how severe ‘our’ trials have been, and
ends with an ‘I hope Providence will bring us through.’
But she could write merry little notes too, and to the
same august person. With the establishment of the Regency
it seemed as if a great burthen had been taken
from her, and her sprightliness at and about her son’s
festivals was quite remarkable in an aged and so naturally
‘staid’ a lady. On occasion of the Regent’s birthday,
in 1812, she despatched a letter to the Lord Chancellor,
in court. It commences merrily with a sort of written
laugh at the surprise the grand dignitary will doubtless
feel at seeing a lady’s letter penetrate into his solemn
court; and thus sportively it runs on with a gay invitation
to come down to Frogmore, to spend the Regent’s birthday.
‘You will not be learnedly occupied, perhaps,’ suggests
the mirthful old lady, ‘but you will be, at least,
legally engaged, in the lawful occupation of dining.’ In
1814, the old monarch’s first love, Lady Sarah Lennox,
afterwards Lady Sarah Bunbury, and, lastly, Lady Sarah
Napier, had become a charming old lady; but she had not
passed through life without affliction. In the above year,
the Dean of Canterbury preached at St. James’s Church, for
the benefit of the infirmary for the cure of diseases of the
eye. The Dean alluded to the miserable condition of the
monarch. George Tierney was present, and he wrote in a
letter now extant: ‘On the seat immediately before me
was an elderly lady, who appeared to be deeply affected
by the whole of this part of the discourse. She wept
much, and I observed that she herself was quite helpless
from the entire loss of sight, and was obliged to be led
out of church. The tears which I saw thus shed in commiseration
to the sufferings of the King fell from the
eyes of ——’, the once young and beautiful Lady Sarah
Lennox, the innocent rival of Queen Charlotte herself.
The office held by the Queen was not a pleasant one,
but she contrived to reconcile it with a considerable
amount of enjoyment. The events of her life, which
brought her in collision with her daughter-in-law, will be
found detailed in the story of the latter. Those of her
office as guardian of the King sometimes brought her in
connection with touching incidents. Thus, she one day
found him singing a hymn to the accompaniment of a
harpsichord, played by himself. On concluding it, he
knelt down, prayed for his family, the nation, and finally
that God would restore to him the reason which he felt
he had lost! At other times he might be heard invoking
death, and he even imagined himself dead, and asked for
a suit of black that he might go into mourning for the
old King! These incidents were great trials to the Queen,
who witnessed them, or had them reported to her. But
she had trials also from another source.
In 1816, the public distress was very great, and those
in high places were unpopular, often for no better reason
than that they were in high places, and were supposed to
be indifferent to the sufferings of the more lowly and
harder tried. The Queen came in for some share of the
popular ill-will, but she met the first expression of it with
uncommon spirit; a spirit indeed which gained for her
the silent respect of the mob, who had begun by insulting
her. As her Majesty was proceeding to hold her last drawing-room,
in the year 1815, she was sharply hissed, loudly
reviled, and insultingly asked what she had done with the
Princess Charlotte. She was so poorly protected that the
mob actually stopped her chair. Whereupon, it is reported,
she quietly let down the glass, and calmly said to
those nearest to her: ‘I am above seventy years of age;
I have been more than half a century Queen of England;
and I never was hissed by a mob before.’ The mob admired
the spirit of the undaunted old lady, and they
allowed her to pass on without further molestation.
Her son, the Prince Regent, sent several aides-de-camp
to escort his mother from St. James’s to Buckingham
House, but she declined their attendance. They told
her that, having had the orders of the Regent to escort
her safely to her residence, they felt bound to perform
the office entrusted to them by the Prince. ‘You have
left Carlton House by his Royal Highness’s orders,’ said
Queen Charlotte; ‘return there by mine, or I will leave
my chair and go home on foot.’ She was, of course,
carefully watched, in spite of her commands, but the cool
magnanimity she displayed was quite sufficient to procure
respect for her from the crowd.
Although the King had some lucid intervals, he never
again became perfectly conscious of the bearing of public
events, and if he was deprived of some enjoyment thereby,
he was also spared much pain. He was as little aware of
what passed in his own family; and although he could
make pertinent questions, and sometimes argue correctly
enough from wrong premises, he was unable to comprehend
the meaning of much that was told to him. Thus
the marriage of his grand-daughter, a circumstance to
which he used to allude playfully, was now to him a perfect
blank. This ceremony took place on the 2nd of
May 1816. It will be more fully alluded to hereafter.
In this place it may, however, be stated that the drawing-room
in honour of the marriage of the Princess Charlotte
to Prince Leopold was held at Buckingham House.
It was brilliant, the Queen was gracious, and only the
Regent exhibited a want of his usual urbanity, by turning
his back on a lady who was about to enter the service of
the Princess of Wales. The bride did not look her best
on this public occasion. She stood apart from the royal
circle, in a recess formed by a window, with her back to
the light, and was ‘deadly pale.’ There was an expression
of pleasure on her countenance, but it was thought
to be forced. ‘Prince Leopold,’ says a contemporary
writer, ‘was looking about him with a keen glance of
inquiry, as if he would like to know in what light people
regarded him.’ The Queen either was, or pretended to
be, in the highest possible spirits, and was very gracious
to everybody. All the time I was in this courtly scene,
and especially as I looked at the Princess Charlotte, I
could not help thinking of the Princess of Wales, and
feeling very sorry and very angry at her cruel fate....
I dare say the Princess Charlotte was thinking of the
Princess of Wales when she stood in the gay scene of to-day’s
drawing-room, and that the remembrance of her
mother, excluded from all her rights and privileges in a
foreign country, and left almost without any attendants,
made her feel very melancholy. I never can understand
how Queen Charlotte could dare refuse to receive the
Princess of Wales at the public drawing-room, any more
than she would any other lady of whom nothing has been
publicly proved against her character. Of one thing there
can be no doubt—the Queen is the slave of the Regent.’
Of this assertion, however, very grave doubt may be
entertained. The Regent, at this time, certainly loved
the ‘old Queen,’ as she was familiarly called, if a service
of tender respect, deference, courtesy, and apparent good-will
may be taken as proofs of such a love existing.
Her own health was now beginning to give way, and
she sought to restore it by trying the efficacy of the Bath
waters; but with only temporary relief. She was at Bath
when the news of the death of the Princess Charlotte
reached her, in November 1817, and her health grew
visibly worse under the shock. Her absence from the side
of the young Princess at this period, which was followed
by such fatal consequences, was at the request of the Princess
herself, who knew that the Queen’s good-will in this
case was stronger than her ability. The popular voice,
however, blamed her, and it was unmistakably expressed
on her return to London.
The last visit paid by the Queen to the City differed
in every respect from that which she had paid it when a
bride. Her first visit had been one of form and ceremony;
mingled, however, with a hearty lack of formality in some
of the occurrences of the day. She went amid the citizens
surrounded by guards; and this attendance was not as
doubting the loyalty of the Londoners, but that royalty
might look respectable in their eyes. On the occasion of
the last visit her Majesty intimated to the Lord Mayor,
Alderman Christopher Smith, that she wished to be received
without ceremony; and this wish the corporate
magnates construed as meaning without protection; there
was as little of that as of civil politeness. The High Constable
of Westminster attended near her Majesty’s carriage
as far as Temple Bar, the eastward limit of his jurisdiction.
On arriving there, however, he found no one in
authority to receive the Queen, and accordingly he continued
to ride by the side of the royal carriage until it
reached the Mansion House. The mob was a-foot, active,
numerous, and rudely-tongued that day. As the Queen
passed through she was assailed by the most hideous yells,
and many of the populace thrust their heads into the
carriage, and gave expression to the most diabolical
menaces. If it be true, as has been reported, that the
Queen minutely detailed in writing the memoirs of her
own life, the events of this day must have been penned
by a trembling but indignant hand. At the Mansion
House, so little protection was afforded her that the foremost
of the people were almost thrust upon her, their
violence of speech shocked her ears, and they attempted,
but unsuccessfully, to disarm one of her footmen of his
sword. In the evening of this melancholy last visit she
dined with the Duke of York, and it was there that she
first suffered from a violent spasmodic attack, from the
effects of which she never perfectly recovered. The Lord
Mayor stoutly maintained that the visit had very much
improved her Majesty’s health. He thought, perhaps,
that excitement was a tonic to age and infirmity. The
Queen’s health really suffered materially from the excitement;
and it was not with her wonted calmness that
she could even listen, on the following Sunday, to the
usual weekly sermon, always read aloud to her by one of
the princesses.
It is certain that from the early part of the year 1818
the aged Queen may be said to have been in a rapidly
declining state. Her condition, however, was not highly
dangerous till the autumn, when her spasmodic attacks
became more frequent and the progress of dropsical
symptoms more alarming. Her sufferings were very great,
and if she experienced temporary ease the slightest variation
of position renewed her pain. She continued in this
condition until the 14th of November, when, by a slight
rupture in the skin of both ankles, from which there took
place a considerable effusion of water, the venerable lady
experienced some relief. Her condition, however, was
not bettered thereby, for mortification soon set in, and
that portion of her family which was in attendance upon
her soon learned that all hope was abandoned; after an
interval of more than eighty years England was again
about to lose a Queen-consort; but no Queen-consort
had for so long a period shared the throne of the empire
as Charlotte. For fifty-seven years she had occupied the
high place from which she was now about to descend.
On Tuesday, the 16th of November 1818, at one o’clock
P.M., the Queen calmly departed, at her suburban palace
at Kew. Her last breath was drawn in a low arm-chair,
that cannot be called an easy chair, and which is still preserved
at Kew. The Regent, the Duke of York, the
Princess Augusta, and the Duchess of Gloucester were
present. The Princess Elizabeth of Hesse Homburg was
said to have been absent, on account of some difference
between herself and her royal mother, but it was afterwards
ascertained that a reconciliation had taken place
between mother and child before the Princess left the
kingdom for her own home. How far the Queen had
acquitted herself as a parent towards her children was
made a ‘vexed question’ at the time of her death; and
an endeavour was made to connect the fact of the dispersion
of several of the princes and princesses in foreign
countries with the mother as an irritating cause thereof.
The ‘Times,’ at the period of which we are treating, entered
largely upon this subject; and that organ was evidently
inclined to conclude that her Majesty had not succeeded
in attaching to her the hearts of her children. ‘The
Duke of Cumberland,’ said the ‘Times,’ ‘is out of the question.
The inflexible, but well-meant determination of the
Queen to stigmatise her niece, by shutting the doors of
the royal palace against her, may excuse strong feelings
of estrangement or resentment on the part of
the Duchess and her kindred. But that the Dukes of
Clarence, Kent, and Cambridge at the same time should
have quitted, as if by signal, their parent’s death-bed,
is a circumstance which, in lower life, would have at
least astonished the community.’ The ‘Times’ adds,
that ‘the departure of the Princess Elizabeth, the
Queen’s favourite daughter, who married and took
leave of her in the midst of that illness which was pronounced
must shortly bring her to the grave, may, perhaps,
have been owing to the express injunctions of her
Majesty. The Duke of Gloucester stands in a more
remote degree of relationship; Prince Leopold more
distant still; but they all quitted the scene of suffering at
a period when its fatal termination could not be doubted;
and, as these have departed, it is no less apparent to common
observers that the Queen of Wurtemburg might have approached
the bed of a dying mother, from whom, by the
usual lot of princes, she has been so long separated, as
that her royal parent has not accepted from her the performance
of that painful duty.’ The same authority,
however, confesses that the leading members of the royal
family who remained in England were unwearied in their
attendance on their dying parent, and so far set an example
to the people of England, over whom they had been placed
by Providence.
The influence of Queen Charlotte in political affairs,
even had she been as much inclined to exercise it as her
enemies charged her with, was but small. It could not
be otherwise in a country with such a constitution as
ours—a limited monarchy, the ministers of which are
sure to be made responsible for grave consequences
arising from the surrender of their authority to a power
unrecognised by the constitution. That the influence,
however, was not quite dormant was seen in the fact of
the government paying the debts of her Majesty’s brother,
the Prince of Strelitz, with 30,000l. of the public money;
and the same influence was suspected when the Queen’s
friend, the Earl of Suffolk, who had undertaken to
arrange the embarrassed affairs of the Prince of Strelitz,
was appointed to the office of Secretary of State.
If the Queen was not always a liberal recompenser,
she, at least, was a punctual payer. In this respect she
excelled the King himself. On the other hand, when
the latter was at issue with his brothers or children,
because of objectionable marriages entered into by them,
the Queen did not aggravate the quarrel, although she
felt keenly on the subject. She was in many respects a
‘homely’ woman, but in matters of homeliness the King
set the example. He watched incessantly over the mental
and physical education of his children; ‘and the daily
discipline of the nursery itself did not escape his paternal
solicitudes.’ But, says the ‘Times,’ ‘that her Majesty’s
voluntary tastes were not exactly those which had been
inferred from the habits of her matrimonial life, may be
conjectured from the revolution which they seemed to
undergo soon after the period when her royal husband
ceased to exercise the supreme authority in this realm.
At that period a transition was observed “from grave to
gay.” The sober dignity, the chastened grandeur, the
national character of the English court seemed to vanish
with the afflicted sovereign. A new species of grandeur
now succeeded, in which there was more of the exterior
of royalty and less of its becoming spirit. A long series
of what was meant to be festivities—crowded balls and
elaborate suppers, glittering pomp, gaudy and gorgeous,
yet fluttering decoration—reckless, capricious, yet never-ending
profusion—all the apparatus of commonplace
magnificence were introduced with the Regency and
countenanced, or apparently not discountenanced, by the
Queen.’ It must be remembered, however, that in these
matters she had no control over the Regent; indeed we
have, in a former page, seen her called his ‘slave.’
During her life she, at all events, had influence enough
to maintain a regal retinue about the person of her
afflicted husband. She had no sooner expired, however,
when her son dismissed immediately nearly the whole of
this retinue, on the ground of its uselessness to the unconscious
King, and the very great expense it was to the
country. The country was not unwilling to see a few
thousands a-year economised by stripping the fine old
monarch of some of the superfluous grandeur by which
he was surrounded. The country, nevertheless, was
sorely perplexed and bitterly indignant when it saw that
the thousands which had been paid to numerous officers
in daily service on the King were now to be paid to the
Duke of York, who, for ten thousand a-year, constrained
his filial affection to the severe labour of inquiring after
his sick sire once a week.
The Queen’s funeral took place on the 2nd of December,
at Windsor. It was a public funeral, in the accepted
sense of that term, but the arrangements were inappropriate.
The procession mainly consisted of military, horse
and foot, as if they had been escorting a warrior, and
not a woman, to the tomb. The members of the peerage
did scant honour to the Queen whom they had professed
to reverence when alive. Few, and those not of note,
were present. The absence of peeresses was especially
noted. Indeed the public funeral of Charlotte was
more private than the private funeral of her predecessor
Caroline.
The will of Queen Charlotte was that of a woman of
foresight and good memory rather than of feeling and
affection. The document was proved by Lord Arden
and General Taylor, the executors. It was in the General’s
handwriting, and was witnessed by Sir Francis Millman
and Sir Henry Halford. The personal property was
sworn to as being under 140,000l.
The substance of the will was as follows:—The royal
testatrix directed that her debts and the legacies and
annuities noticed in her will should be paid out of the
personalty, or sale of personals, if there should not be
wherewith in her Majesty’s treasury to provide for those
payments. The personal property was of various descriptions;
part of it comprised the real estate in New
Windsor, which she had purchased of the Duke of St.
Albans, and which was known as the Lower Lodge (left
to the Princess Sophia); but the personalty of the
greatest value may be said to have been those splendid
jewels which she cherished so dearly, and for which she
affected to have such little care. These the systematic
Sovereign divided into three parts—those presented to
her by the King on her marriage, worth 50,000l.; those
presented to her by the Nabob of Arcot, for the acquisition
of which she paid by a temporary forfeiture of what
she very little regarded—popular favour; and those purchased
by herself, or which she had received as presents
on birthday occasions. Such souvenirs were to her the
most welcome gifts that could be made to her on that
or any other anniversary. Of these jewels she made the
following disposal: She directed that the diamonds given
to her by the King on her marriage should revert to
him only on condition that with survivorship there
should be recovery of his mental faculties. If he were
not restored to reason, she then directed—what he never
would have consented to had his reason been restored to
him—that they should be made over to the Crown of
Hanover, as an heir-loom. Such a disposal of property
which should have remained in England transferred the
diamonds to Hanover whenever that kingdom should be
divided from England by the accession, in the latter
country, of a Queen—who, according to the law of
Hanover, could not reign in that continental kingdom.
The splendid tribute which the Nabob of Arcot had
deposited at her feet she divided among four of her
daughters. The excepted daughter was the Queen of
Wurtemburg, whom she looked upon as exceedingly well
provided for. To the remaining four the careful mother
did not bequeath the glittering gems, but the value of
them after they were sold, and after certain debts were
discharged from the produce of the sale. The four
princesses divided between them what remained. The
jewels which she had bought, or had received as birthday
presents, were also to be divided among the same four
daughters, according to a valuation to be made of them.
The diamonds were valued at nearly a million. In ready
money the Queen left behind her only 4,000l.
Frogmore was bequeathed to the Princess Augusta;
and the plate, linen, pictures, china, books, furniture,
&c., were left to the four princesses already named. Of
her sons the testatrix made no mention, nor to them left
any legacy. There were other persons mentioned, but
who came off as badly as though they had never been
named. Her Majesty directed that certain bequests as
set down in certain lists annexed to her will, and to
which due reference was made, should be paid to them;
but not only were no such lists so annexed, but it was
ascertained that her Majesty had never drawn any out
herself nor directed any to be drawn by others.
There was, however, another list, touching which the
aged Queen had been by no means so forgetful. This
list contained a detail of property which the testatrix
declared she had brought with her, more than half a
century before, from Mecklenburgh Strelitz. Thither
she ordered it to be sent back—to the senior branch of
her illustrious house. After millions received from this
country during her residence in it, she would not testify
her gratitude for such munificence by permitting it or
her family in England to profit by the handful of small
valuables she had brought with her from Strelitz. To
the head of the house of Mecklenburgh Strelitz reverted
the few old-fashioned things brought over here in the
trunks of the bride; and, if they have been worth preserving,
the old-world finery of Sophia Charlotte of
Strelitz and England is now possessed by the Grand
Duchess of Mecklenburgh, the daughter of Charlotte’s
son, Adolphus of Cambridge.
The will was dated only the day previous to her Majesty’s
demise. It had been put together at various periods
since the 2nd of the previous May, by an officer of
her Majesty’s establishment—General Taylor. About a
fortnight previous to her Majesty’s decease she was for
the first time made acquainted with her dangerous condition
by a communication delicately conveyed to her by
order of the Prince Regent, and to the effect, ‘that if her
Majesty had any affairs to settle it would be advisable to
do so while she had health and spirits to bear the fatigue.’
The royal sufferer well comprehended what was meant by
such a message, and was very seriously affected by it.
She had entertained strong hopes, amounting almost to
confidence, that by the skill of her medical attendants
she would be again restored to health. This recommendation
to set her ‘house in order’ was an announcement
that her case was hopeless. Affected as she was, she did
not lose her dignity or self-possession, but resigned herself
to death, even while regretting she was about to depart
from life. This was natural; and as there had never been
any false sentiment about Queen Charlotte, so was she
above exhibiting any in her last moments. Her patience
was extreme, and in the acutest of her agony she never
once suffered a murmur of complaint to escape her.
It has been said that the Queen left no diamonds to
her daughter, the Dowager Queen of Wurtemburg. She
left her, however, a superb set of garnets. The reason
assigned was, that garnets were the only precious stones
that could be worn with mourning, which the Dowager
Queen had announced her intention of wearing for life.
Queen Charlotte had, as ladies averred who spoke with
connaissance du fait, the finest wardrobe in Europe, the
highly-consoled legatee of which was Madame Beckendorff,
the Queen’s chief-dresser. It may be noticed here
that the Queen’s debts—chiefly contracted, it was said, by
allowing her contributions to charitable objects to exceed
her available income, which is no excuse whatever for
any one incurring debt—amounted to 9,000l. The debt
was acquitted out of the produce of the sale of the diamonds.
While on the subject of the will and the jewels, it may
not be amiss to mention that the Queen, after wearing her
diamonds and other gems on public occasions invariably
consigned them to the care of Messrs. Rundell, Bridge &
Co., the well-known goldsmiths of Ludgate Hill. The
Queen herself put her diamonds into the hands of one of
the partners of that house, by whom they were conveyed
to the Bank. The only exception to this rule was after
the last drawing-room was held by her, when her Majesty
was too ill to make her usual consignment, and retired
rather hurriedly to Kew. A few days subsequently, the
diamonds were placed in the ordinary London guardianship
by the Princess Augusta, who carried them up expressly
from Kew. The Queen, however, held in her own
keeping the ‘George’ and the diamond-hilted sword
worn on public occasions by her consort. These were
kept in a cabinet at Windsor Castle. Immediately after
the Queen’s death this cabinet was examined by the
Prince Regent, but neither ‘George’ nor diamond-hilted
sword was to be found therein; and the heir was not
more astonished than perplexed, for the Queen had left
no intimation as to where the valuables were deposited.
The inquiry set on foot was not at first encouraging.
Suggestions could only be made that the coveted property
might have been deposited by the late Queen in some of
the cabinets, which would remain locked until after the
royal funeral. Some surmised that George III. himself
had stowed them away, and that his heirs might be extremely
puzzled to discover the place of deposit. This
was considered the more likely, as her Majesty had, on
one occasion, missed from her room a gold ewer and basin
of exquisite workmanship, enriched with gems. They were
missed previous to the last mental indisposition of the
King, who professed that he knew nothing whatever about
them, but greatly feared that they had been stolen by a
confidential servant. His Majesty was strongly suspected
of having been himself the thief. Many months after his
malady had set in, the ewer and basin were discovered
behind some books in his study, to which he alone had
access. It is supposed that, having concealed them by
excess of caution, he totally forgot the circumstance,
through growing infirmity of intellect.
In a few days it was announced that all that was ‘now
missing of the late King’s jewels were his star and garter,’
valued at about seven thousand pounds. How the
diamond-hilted sword was discovered is not stated in the
current news of the day; but while that was recovered
the garter appears to have been lost, for no mention of
such loss had been previously made.
The consort of Queen Charlotte survived until January
1820. Her son, Edward Duke of Kent, died a week
previously. During the last years of the old King—who
seemed to grow in majesty as his end approached—he
lived in a world of his own, conversed with imaginary
individuals, ran his fingers ramblingly over his harpsichord,
and was in every other respect dead to all around
him. He passed out of the world calmly and unconsciously
after a long reign—and perhaps a more troubled
reign than that of any other King of England. Of the
children of Charlotte four ascended thrones. George and
William became successive Kings of England, Ernest
King of Hanover, and Charlotte Augusta Queen of
Wurtemburg. The married daughters, Charlotte, Elizabeth,
and Mary, died childless. Of her married sons only
the King of Hanover and the Dukes of Kent and Cambridge
left heirs behind them—the first a son, the second
a daughter, our present Queen, the last a son and two
daughters.
With the old royal family Kew is inseparably connected.
Mr. Jesse, in his ‘Memoirs of the Life and Reign
of George III.,’ says that when, many years since, ‘he
wandered through the forsaken apartments at the old
palace at Kew, he found it apparently in precisely the
same condition as when George III. had made it his
summer residence, and when Queen Charlotte had expired
within its walls. There were still to be seen,
distinguished by their simple furniture and bed-curtains
of white dimity, the different sleeping-rooms of the unmarried
princesses, with their several names inscribed on
the doors of each. There were still pointed out to him
the easy chair in which Queen Charlotte had breathed
her last; the old harpsichord which had once belonged
to Handel, and on which George III. occasionally amused
himself with playing; his walking-stick, his accustomed
chair, the backgammon board on which he used to play
with his equerries; and, lastly, the small apartment in
which the pious monarch used to offer up his prayers
and thanksgivings. In that apartment was formerly to
be seen a relic of no small interest, the private prayer-book
of George III. In the prayer which is used during
the session of Parliament the King, with his own hand,
had obliterated the words “our most religious and
gracious King,” and had substituted for them “a most
miserable sinner.”’ The old ‘palace’ still retains many
interesting memorials of King George, Queen Charlotte,
and the princes and princesses during their happy days at
Kew.
CAROLINE OF BRUNSWICK , WIFE OF GEORGE IV. — CHAPTER I. MOTHER AND DAUGHTER.
Marriage of Princess Augusta to the Prince of Brunswick—His reception at
Harwich—Wedding performed with maimed rites—The Prince at the
opera—A scene—Odd mode of travelling of the bride and bridegroom—Issue
of this marriage—Dashing replies of Princess Caroline—Her mother
the Duchess a weak and coarse-minded woman—Education of German
princesses—Infamous conduct of the Duke of York—Lord Malmesbury
sent to demand Princess Caroline in marriage for the Prince of Wales—His
account of the Princess—Eloquence of the Duchess on the virtues of
the Princess—The Duke’s mistress, and picture of the Court of Brunswick—The
Duchess’s stories of bygone times—The marriage by proxy—Celebration
of the wedding-day—The marriage treaty—Eccentricity of
the Duke—Education of the Princess neglected—The courtesan champion
of morality—The Duke’s fears for the Princess—Lady Jersey and
the Queen—Lord Malmesbury’s advice to the Princess—Madame do
Hertzfeldt’s portraits of the Princess—The Princess’s exuberant spirits
at a court masquerade—More admonitions by Lord Malmesbury—Madame
de Waggenheim’s taunt, and Lord Malmesbury’s thrust en
carte.
On the 12th of January 1764, Charles William Frederick,
the hereditary Prince of Brunswick, landed at
Harwich (then the portal by which royal brides and
bridegrooms had ingress to and egress from England), to
take the hand which had been already asked and not
over-graciously granted of the Princess Augusta, the sister
of George III. This half-reluctance was on the part of the
King and Queen, but especially of the latter. There was
none on the part of the bride.
The young Prince was a knightly man, lacking a
knightly aspect. His manner was better than his looks.
His reputation as a hero was, however, so great that the
people of Harwich, expecting to see an Adonis, nearly
pulled down the house in which he temporarily sojourned,
in order to obtain a better view of the illustrious stranger.
When the Prince did show himself they were rather
disappointed. His renown for courage, however, made
amends for all shortcomings, and even the Quakers of
Harwich warmed into enthusiasm. One, more eager
than the rest, not only forced his way into the Prince’s
apartment, but took off his hat to him, called him ‘Noble
friend!’ kissed his hand, and protested that, though not
a fighting man himself, he loved those who could fight
well. ‘Thou art a valiant Prince,’ said he, ‘and art to
be married to a lovely Princess. Love her, make her a
good husband, and the Lord bless you both!’
The bridegroom got no such warm greeting from any
other quarter as he did from the Quaker, and it is to be
regretted that he did not follow the counsel which was
offered him by his humble and hearty friend. He loved
his wife and made her such a husband as heroes are too
wont to do—who are accustomed to love their neighbours’
wives better than their own.
The marriage took place on the 16th with something,
if not of maimed rites, at least of diminished ceremony.
The ‘Lady Augusta’ was wedded with as little formality
as was observed—under the same roof too—at her birth.
The latter vexed Queen Caroline because so little etiquette
was followed at it. The wedding troubled Queen
Charlotte lest there should be too much and of too costly
a sort. Not a gun was fired by way of congratulatory
salute, as had been done when Anne, the daughter of
Caroline, married the Prince of Orange. More trifling
testimonies of respect were denied on this occasion, even
when the bride had petitioned for them, on the ground
that there was no precedent for them in the ‘Orange
marriage.’ The bride, fairly enough, complained at
quotation of precedent in one case which had been followed
in no other.
The servants of the King and Queen were not even
permitted to put on their new attire, either for the wedding
ceremony or the drawing-room next day. They
were ordered to keep their new suits for the Queen’s
birthday. The ceremony performed, the bridal pair betook
themselves to Leicester House, where they presided
at a right royal supper; and this was the last time that
Kings, Queens, Princes, Princesses, and half the peerage
met together in Leicester Square to hold high festival.
Political party spirit ran very high in the early years
of King George’s reign; and such especial care was taken
to keep the Prince from encountering any of the Opposition
that, as Walpole remarks, he did nothing but take
notice of them. He wrote to fidgety Newcastle, and
called on fiery Pitt, and dined twice with ‘the Duke’—of
Cumberland. On the evening of the second dinner he
was engaged to attend a concert given in honour of himself
and wife by the Queen. As he did not appear inclined
to leave the table when the hour was growing late,
Fironce, his secretary, pulled out his watch. The ducal
host took the hint, and expressed a fear, which sounded
like a hope, that the hour had come when his guest must
leave him. ‘N’importe!’ said the Prince; and he sat
on, sipped his coffee, and did not get to the Queen’s concert
until after eight o’clock, at which hour, in those days,
concerts were half concluded.
Fironce, the Duke’s secretary, who sought to influence
his master thus early, long continued to aim at exercising
the same power. In 1794 Fironce was the Duke of
Brunswick’s prime minister, when the command of the
Austrian army against France was offered to the Duke.
The latter was inclined to accept, and Fironce had nothing
to say against it; but Fironce’s wife (who was a democrat)
had, and she forbade her husband furthering the object of
Austria.
During the short sojourn between the bridal and the
departure, the whole of the royal family went to Covent
Garden Theatre to see Murphy’s decidedly dull and deservedly
damned comedy, ‘No One’s Enemy but his
Own’—a comedy which even Woodward could not make
endurable. The feature of the night, however, was the
difference which the public made between their reception
of the King and Queen and that given to the newly-married
pair. For the latter there was an ebullition of enthusiasm;
for the former, who were suspected of being
more cold to the bridegroom than his deserts warranted,
little fervour was shown; and the then young Queen
Charlotte was not a woman to love either bride or bridegroom
the better for that.
On the following night the same august party appeared
at the Opera House. The multitude which endeavoured
to gain access to the interior would have filled three
such houses as that in the Haymarket. Ladies, hopeless
of reaching the doors in their carriages, left them in Piccadilly,
and, gathering up their hoops, attempted to make
their way on foot or in sedans. So great were the concourse
and confusion in the Haymarket that the gentlemen,
to force a passage for these adventurous ladies and
themselves, drew their swords and threatened direful things
to all who stood between them and their boxes!
In the meantime the house was overflowing; and
Horace Walpole, who has faithfully painted the scene—except,
perhaps, where he presumes to construe the politeness
of the Prince into contempt for his royal brother
and sister-in-law—tells us: ‘The crowd could not be described.
The Duchess of Leeds, Lady Denbigh, Lady
Scarborough, and others, sat in chairs between the scenes;
the doors of the front boxes were thrown open, and the
passages were all filled to the back of the stoves. Nay,
women of fashion stood in the very stairs till eight at
night. In the middle of the second act, the hereditary
Prince, who sat with his wife and her brothers in their
box, got up, turned his back to King and Queen, pretending
to offer his place to Lady Tankerville, and then to
Lady Susan. You know enough of Germans and their
stiffness to etiquette to be sure this could not be done
inadvertently, especially as he repeated this, only without
standing up, with one of his own gentlemen in the third act.’
After a brief sojourn, the slender young Prince, who
looked older than his years (twenty-nine), left town with
his bride for Harwich. Bride and bridegroom travelled
in different coaches, with three or four silent and solemn
attendants in each. Never did newly-married couple
travel so sillily unsociable. The farewell speech, too, of
the bridegroom, before he went on board, rang more of
war than of love. He had already, he said, bled in the
cause of England, and would again. In this he kept
his word, for he was the Duke of Brunswick who fell
gloriously at Jena, at the age of threescore years and
eleven, subsidised by Great Britain, and unthanked by
ever-ungrateful Prussia, so deservedly punished for her
habitual double-dealing on that terrible day.
As bride and bridegroom travelled from the court to the
coast in two coaches, so now did they traverse the seas in
two separate yachts. No wonder they were storm-tost.
Their passage from Holland, where they landed, to their
home in Brunswick was quite an ovation. The little courts
in their route did them ample honour; there were splendid
receptions, and showy reviews, and monster battues at
which ten thousand hares, and winged game in proportion,
were slaughtered in one morning; after which, in the
evening, the slayers all appeared at the opera in their
hunting-dresses! Finally, the ‘happy couple’ arrived
at Brunswick, where the various members of the ducal
family greeted their arrival, and—no less a person than
the Countess of Yarmouth, the Walmoden of George II.,
the mistress of the bride’s grandfather, bade them
welcome!
Of this marriage were born two most unhappy women;
Charlotte, in December 1764, and Caroline, in May
1768. There were also four sons: Charles, born in 1767;
George in 1769; William in 1771; and Leopold in the
following year. Of these, two died gloriously; the first
fell in battle at the head of the Black Brunswickers, on
the bloody field of Quatre Bras; the last perished not less
gloriously in an attempt to save the lives of several persons,
when the river Oder burst its banks, in 1785. Of
this family we have only especially to do with the second
daughter, Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, ultimately Queen-consort
of our George IV.
‘In what country is the lion to be found?’ asked her
governess, after a lesson in natural history. ‘Well,’
answered the little Princess Caroline, ‘I should say, you
may find him in the heart of a Brunswicker!’ In these
sort of dashing replies the girl delighted. She was as
much charmed with dashing games. In the sport of the
‘ring,’ in which the aimers at that small object are
mounted on wooden horses fixed on a circular frame, she
was remarkably expert. On one occasion, when she was
flying round with something more than common rapidity,
one of her attendants expressed fear of the possible consequences.
‘A Brunswicker dares do anything,’ exclaimed
the undaunted Caroline; adding, ‘A Brunswicker
does not know that thing fear.’
Accustomed to enjoy a place, even when very young,
at her father’s table, she early acquired a habit of self-possession,
became as pert as young Cyrus, and as forward
as the juvenile Wharton. ‘How would you define time
and space?’ said her father once to Mirabeau. The
Princess Caroline, then twelve years old, anticipated the
witty Frenchman’s answer, by replying, ‘Space is in the
mouth of Madame von L——, and time is in her face.’
When told that it was not fitting for so young a lady to
have an opinion of her own, she observed, correctly
enough, ‘People without opinions of their own are like
barren tracts which will not bear grass.’ As her mother
seldom asked any other question than ‘What is the
news?’ and loved the small gossip which arises out of
such a query, the Princess was more frequently engaged
in serious discussions with her instructress than with the
Duchess. The Countess von Bade having remarked that
she herself was wicked because an evil spirit impelled her,
and that she was by nature too feeble to resist, ‘If that
be the case,’ observed the young lady, ‘you are simply a
piece of clay moulded by another’s will.’ The orthodox
Lutheran lady was about to explain, but the daughter of
a mother who had brought ‘her girls’ up to membership
with no church in particular cut short the controversy
with an infallible air which would have done credit to
Pope Joan, ‘My dear, we are all bad—very bad; but we
were all created so, and it’s no fault of ours.’ The utterer
of this speech was doubly unfortunate: her intellect was
fine, but it was ill-trained; she was the daughter of a
kind-hearted woman, incapable of fulfilling with propriety
the duty of a mother; and she became the wife of a prince
who was, as Sheridan remarked, ‘too much a lady’s man
ever to become the man of one lady.’
The Princess, at a very early period, discovered how
to be mistress of her weak mother. Therewith, however,
she had a heart that readily felt for the poor. She
was terribly self-willed, and played the harpsichord like
St. Cecilia.
Her thoughtlessness was on a par with her sensibility;
and it is said that a very early seclusion from court, to
which she was condemned by parental command, was
caused by a double want of discretion. She was too
fond, it was reported, of relieving young peasants in distress,
and of listening to young aides-de-camp who affected
to be miserable. She was taught that princesses were
never their own almoners, and that it did not become
them to converse with officers of low degree. On her
return to court, an aged lady, whose years were warrant
for her boldness, recommended an exercise, in future, of
more judgment than had marked the past. ‘Gone is
gone and will never return,’ was the remark of the pretty,
sententious, young lady; ‘and what is to come will come
of itself.’ It was the remark of a girl brought up like
that very Polly Honeycomb whose story Colman wrote
and Miss Burney read to Queen Charlotte. Like that
heroine, the Princess Caroline had not the wisest of parents.
Like her, she was addicted to romance, and was too ready
to put in practice all that romances teach, and to enter
into correspondence at once pleasant and dangerous.
Again and again was forced seclusion adopted as the
parental remedy to cure a wayward daughter of too
much warmth of heart and too little gravity of head.
Her heart, however, would not beat warmly at the
bidding of every new suitor. An offer was made to her,
when very young, by a scion of the house of Mecklenburgh,
whose offer was supported by both the parents of
Caroline. That Princess ridiculed her lover, and flatly
refused the honour presented for her acceptance. She
similarly declined the offers of the Prince of Orange and
the Prince George of Darmstadt. Her father was now
reigning Duke of Brunswick, burning with desire to
destroy the French Republic, and eager to obtain a consort
for his daughter. He cannot be said to have succeeded
much more happily in the latter than in the former. As
for this daughter, she would herself have been happier,
in those days when her education—or no education—was
scrambled through, had she possessed any religious principles.
But she was like other German princesses, who,
as it was not known into what royal families they might
have the good-luck to marry—Russo-Greek, Roman
Catholic, or Protestant—were taught morality (and that
but indifferently) in place of faith and a reason for holding
it. One consequence was, that they deferred believing
anything convincedly until they were espoused—and
then they joined their husband’s church, and remained
precisely what they were before.
The Princess was in something like this state of suspense,
and her sire was in a state not very dissimilar
with regard to the part he should take in the war of
Germany against France, when the Duke of York, commander
of the English force in Holland, destined to act
bravely inefficient against the French, visited the ducal
court of Brunswick. He is said to have been very
favourably impressed with the person and attainments of
the Princess Caroline; and it has been supposed that his
favourable report of her first led the King, his father, to
think of the daughter of ‘the Lady Augusta’ as a wife
for his son George.
If, however, Mrs. M. A. Clarke may be believed, the
Princess had been thought of as a wife for the Duke of
York, who, on seeing her, did not like her. In one respect
he behaved infamously to her. The King had
entrusted to the Duke a splendid set of diamonds, intended
as a present for the Princess. The Duke, meanwhile,
lent them to his favourite, Mrs. Clarke, who appeared
in them at the opera, and enjoyed the splendid infamy.
The King was more than ordinarily anxious for the
marriage of his son, and the latter was made to perceive
that, however his affections may have been engaged, it
was his interest to marry in obedience to the King’s
wishes. He was overwhelmed with debts, and the payment
of these was promised as the price of his consent.
The wildest stories have been told with regard to the
share which the Prince took in furthering his own marriage.
Some say that he especially selected the Princess
Caroline of Brunswick as the lady he had resolved to marry;
others affirm that, while coldly consenting to espouse her,
he wrote her a letter expressive of his real feelings, and
not at all flattering to those of his proposed wife. The
latter is said to have replied to this apocryphal letter with
spirit, and to have declared her readiness to incur all
risks, and her resolution to win the heart which now
affected to be careless of her. Due notice was given to
Parliament of the coming event, and a dutiful and congratulatory
reply was made by that august assembly.
The King knew nothing of his niece but by report;
but he was resolved that the union, upon which he had
now determined, and to which he was engaged by his
message to Parliament, should take place, be the Princess
of what quality she might. He had himself married
under similar circumstances, and nothing had come of it
but considerable felicity and a very numerous family.
The able and renowned diplomatist, Lord Malmesbury,
having received the instructions of the King to
demand the hand of the Princess Caroline of Brunswick
for the Prince of Wales, proceeded to the duchy—a lover
by proxy—to perform his mission. He had no discretionary
powers allowed him. That is, although little was
known of the Princess at the English court, he was not
commissioned to give any information to that court which
might have ultimately saved two persons from being
supremely miserable. He was commissioned to fetch the
Princess. The fitness of the Princess was the last thing
thought of. The bride herself used often to say, in after
life, to the attendants—who, while they served, sneered
at her—that, had she only been allowed to have paid a
visit to England, to have first made the acquaintance of
the Prince, what a world of misery they might both have
been spared! The fact was, no time was to be lost. All
the marriageable princesses in Germany were learning
English, for the express purpose of bettering their chances
of becoming Princess of Wales. They all waited for an
offer; and that offer, after all, was made to a Princess
who had not made the English language her particular
study.
The hymeneal envoy reached Brunswick on the 28th
of November 1794. Nine years before, namely, on the
21st of December 1785, the Prince whom he represented
was married to Mrs. Fitzherbert (a Roman Catholic, and
twice a widow) in her own drawing-room, by a Protestant
clergyman, and in presence of two of her relatives. The
court of Brunswick thought nothing of this matter.
Lord Malmesbury was received with as hilarious a
welcome as that which was given to the Earl of Macclesfield
at Hanover, when he appeared there with the Act of
Settlement which opened the throne of England to the
Electoral Family. There was the same hospitality, the same
offer of service; and the business was opened, as so much
earthly business is, with a grand banquet at court, on the
same night, at which Lord Malmesbury saw the future
Queen of England for the first time. She was embarrassed
on being presented to him, but the experienced
diplomatist was not so. He looked at and studied the
appearance of the Princess, and saw ‘a pretty face—not
expressive of softness; her figure not graceful; fine
eyes; good hair; tolerable teeth, but going; fair hair,
and light eyebrows; good bust; short; with what the
French call “des épaules impertinentes.” Vastly happy with
her future expectations.’ She had got over an omission on
the part of the Prince which had for a moment pained
her. With the offer or demand in marriage there came
no greeting from the suitor. The Princess naturally felt
disappointed, and she said in a plaintive little voice: ‘le
Prince n’a donc rien écrit!’ She was at the time
a pretty woman; she had delicately-formed features, and
her complexion was good. Those who can only remember
her as she appeared when on her last visit to
England, in the House of Peers, at Alderman Wood’s
window, or at the balcony of Brandenburgh House, with
features swollen and disfigured by sorrow and an irregular
life, can have no idea of how she looked in her youth.
Her eyes were described then as being quick, penetrating,
and glancing; they were shaped en amande; and they
were, moreover, not merely beautiful, but expressive. Her
mouth was delicately formed; she could be noble and
dignified when she chose, or occasion required it. It
might be said that her only defect, personally, consisted
in her head being rather too large and her neck too
short. But, setting this aside, there was a greater defect
still, though it was one not uncommon to the ladies of
the time. There was, in fact, to use a Turkish phrase,
‘garlic amid the flowers.’ The pretty creature was not
superfluously clean. To say that she was so superficially
would, perhaps, be even more than truth would warrant.
As for her mother, that Princess Augusta at whose birth,
at St. James’s Palace, such confusion occurred, and
who had been in her time so ‘parlous’ a child, Lord
Malmesbury found her full of nothing but her daughter’s
marriage, and talking incessantly. Her talk was not of
the wisest, particularly if she indulged in it in presence
of her daughter, for part of it consisted in abuse of Queen
Charlotte, the future mother-in-law of Augusta’s child.
The Duchess spoke of Queen Charlotte as an envious and
intriguing spirit; alleged that she had exhibited that
spirit as soon as she arrived in England, and that she was
an enemy of her mother, the Princess of Wales, as well
as of herself, Augusta. She added that the Queen had
so little feeling that while the Princess of Wales was
dying her Majesty took advantage of the moment to
alter the rank of her Highness’s ladies of the bedchamber.
The Duchess’s judgment of King George, her brother,
was, that he was more kind-hearted than wise-headed,
which was not far from the truth.
But the Duchess was most eloquent upon the projected
marriage, the virtues of her daughter, and the care which
had been taken, by precept and example, to establish such
virtues in Caroline. The Duchess had very excellent ideas
as to the duties of a mother-in-law, as appears from her
expressed resolution never to interfere in the household of
the newly-married royal couple. Indeed the idea of visiting
England at all was odious to her. If she were to
repair thither, she was sure, she said, that her visit would
result in discomfort to herself, and a jealousy and vexation
excited against her in the hearts of others. Poor lady,
she did not foresee that a dozen years later she would be
a fugitive from Brunswick, seeking an asylum in England,
after forty years’ absence.
The Duchess affected to treat the marriage of her
daughter with the Prince of Wales as perfectly unexpected
by her, but as she added that ‘she never could give the
idea to Caroline’ we may fairly suppose that the thought
of such a thing being possible had really entered for a
moment into her own mind. George III., however, had
been accustomed to speak disapprovingly of the marriage
of cousins-german, and with good reason. It is only to
be regretted that he did not act in accordance with his
own expressed opinions on this point. It may be noted
as a strange fact that the prelate who performed the
marriage ceremony which made of the two cousins, so
closely akin by blood, man and wife, would have been
very much shocked had he been asked to do the same
office for a man about to marry the sister of his deceased
wife, and with whom he had not the slightest blood
relationship.
The Duchess, as has already been remarked, spoke of
her brother, George III., as having more amiability than
intellect. If amiability mean the power of loving others,
she very much qualified the remark by observing that
‘he loved her very much, as well as he could love anybody;’
an equivocal phrase, which is made clear enough by the
context; for the Duchess added, that her long absence,
and his thirty years of intercourse with Queen Charlotte,
had caused him to forget the sister whom he loved as
much as he could love anybody.
The court of this Duchess, who had been so anxious
to make of virtue a fixed possession for her daughter, was
not a court where virtue itself was a fixed resident. The
mistress of the Duke was quite as important a lady there
as the Duchess; and yet the lady herself, or one of those
who held the post which was shared by many, had the
sense to be a trifle ashamed of her position. Her name
was Hertzfeldt. She had ennobled the name by putting
a de before it, but she had not dared upon the prefix of
the Teutonic von. Lord Malmesbury thus notices her.
‘In the evening with Mademoiselle de Hertzfeldt—old
Berlin acquaintance, Duke’s mistress—much altered, but
still clear and agreeable; full of lamentations and fears;
her apartments elegantly furnished, and she herself with
all the appareil of her situation; she was at first rather
ashamed to see me, but she soon got over it.’
Mademoiselle de Hertzfeldt, too, was among those
who were anxious that the Princess Caroline should be
worthy of the position now open to her. This was a strange
entourage for the bride; and there were both strange
people and strange things at this ducal court. Some of
the names of the officials and residents call up memories
of the past. There was a Count von Schulemberg among
the former. We hear also of a Herr von Walmoden, the
son of that ‘Master Louis’ whose mother was the ‘Walmoden’
of whom George II. made a Countess of Yarmouth,
and whose father was that royal sovereign himself.
There was also an exemplary couple in the court circle,
Herr and Frau von Waggenheim, of whom indeed little is
said, save that the gentleman drank, and that the lady
thought the example worth following. This was but an
indifferent place from which to select a future Queen of
England; but, depraved as the court was, there were
others more so, from which, nevertheless, princesses had
gone to be honoured wives and virtuous matrons in other
circles.
The ducal family were never so well pleased as when
they could get the envoy from the bridegroom in one of
their own little coteries, and there it was the delight of
the Duchess to make much of him, and inundate him with
stories of bygone times. She was particularly pleased to
tell anything disparaging of Queen Charlotte. That her
brother, King George, had, on her marriage, presented
her with a handsome diamond ring as a wedding gift.
This generosity rendered the Queen peevish and jealous,
and her Majesty is said to have actually wished that the
gift should be recalled and conferred upon herself. In
such tales the Duchess delighted, and she had an attentive
listener.
To him she further told that the King had proposed to
many one of his daughters to her favourite son, Charles;
requiring only that he should first pay a visit to England,
a course to which she strongly objected, and apparently
for very efficient reasons—‘she was quite sure, if he was
to show himself, none of the Princesses would have him.’
On the 3rd of December these very small matters
were varied by the arrival of Major Hislop, who brought
with him the portrait of the royal bridegroom, and a private
letter to Lord Malmesbury, urging him ‘most vehemently
to set out with the Princess Caroline immediately’.
And thereupon, on the 8th of December 1794, followed
the marriage, whereat the vehement lover appeared only
by proxy. All parties behaved with due decorum. The
paternal and warrior Duke, a man infirm of purpose, was
rather embarrassed, but performed his office with dignity.
The Duchess was of course overcome, and shed tears. The
bride herself was affected, as maiden well might be, at a
rite which took her from a home where she had, latterly,
enjoyed the highest freedom, and which flung her on the
bosom of a husband whose arms were scarcely opened to
receive than they were raised to reject her.
The wedding-day was spent in a remarkably comfortable
style of celebration. First, after the ceremony, there
was an early and an ‘immense’ dinner. Then a grand
court was held, at which felicitations were made to the
new Princess of Wales. This was followed by grave
whist for the older aristocrats, and gayer games for the
younger people, addicted to more liveliness. Last of all
came a great supper, but how the terrible meal was got
through the court historians do not say. We only learn
that during the progress of the banquet Lord Malmesbury
informed the Duke of Brunswick of the nature of the
contents of the Prince’s letter, and the wish therein
expressed so vehemently for his instant departure with
the impatiently-expected bride. He of course supposed
that the Duke would at once appoint a day for the solemn
departure. But the sovereign of Brunswick was not a
man who liked to compromise himself. He accordingly
answered oracularly: ‘We depend entirely on you, my
lord; you cannot possibly decide in a wrong way.’ It
was leaving Lord Malmesbury ample powers, of which
he was anxious to avail himself; but he had much to do
with and for the bride before he led her safely to the
asylum of her husband’s cold hearth.
The bride was, meantime, herself anxious to depart
to her new home; her mother, fussy, fond, and agitated,
was desirous to accompany her a part of the way; and
Lord Malmesbury, who had been honoured with the gift
of a ‘snuff-box’ from the Duke and a diamond watch
from the Princess, was quite as willing to get to the end
of his mission. There was the impatient Prince, too, in
London; but the diplomatist held his powers from the
King, and rather obeyed the precise and deliberate order
of the monarch than the urgently gallant appeals of his
princely son.
In due form, therefore, the marriage treaty, drawn up
in English and Latin—French was prohibited, by royal
order—was signed by all the high contracting parties on
the 4th of December. After the pleasant labour a
sumptuous banquet followed, and the envoy and Duchess
announced to the bridegroom at home that his bride
would set out on the 11th, provided by that time intelligence
was received of the sailing from England of the
fleet which was to serve for a wedding escort across
the sea.
The Duke of Brunswick was a man who, whenever he
asserted that he was going to speak to you with perfect
frankness, was really about to treat you with anything
but candour. Even in his breast, however, the feelings
of the father were not always dormant; and occasionally
he manifested considerable perception with regard to the
true nature of his daughter’s position. ‘He was perfectly
aware,’ says Lord Malmesbury, ‘of the character of the
Prince, and of the inconveniences that would result with
almost equal ill effect either from his liking the Princess
too much or too little.’ The Duke was as thoroughly
cognisant of the peculiar disposition of Queen Charlotte,
and, curiously enough, ‘he never mentioned the King.’
The paternal comment on his own daughter was
thoroughly impartial: ‘She is not a fool,’ said he, ‘but
she has no judgment; and she has been severely brought
up, as was very necessary with her.’ He knew well
where peril lay, and, to do him justice, he did his little
best to save his daughter from the danger.
The severity of the education of the Princess was only
imaginary, or, if it had existed, it had been entirely ineffective.
We may judge of this by remarking what the
Duke begged of the envoy—to recommend to the Princess
discretion; to pray of her not to be curious, nor free in
giving her opinions aloud upon individuals and things—a
fault which this severely-trained young lady inherited
from her mother, who, throughout her life, had been
given to ‘appeler un chat, un chat!’ and who was excessively
free, easy, and loud-tongued in her dissertations
upon both men and manners. The poor Duke probably
thought of the mother, too, when he asked Lord Malmesbury
to advise his daughter never to be jealous of her
husband, and ‘if he had any gouts, not to notice them.’
The Duke added that he had written all this down in
German for his daughter’s benefit, but he thought it
would be none the worse for being repeated orally by
Lord Malmesbury. These audiences and consultations
of the morning were succeeded by dinners and operas in
the evening, and the Princess Caroline was of course the
heroine of every festival.
A cynic might have laughed, a more religious philosopher
would have sighed, at the further illustration of
the severity of manners at the ducal court, and the
‘serene’ anxiety for the proper conduct of the newly-married
Princess. The Duke actually sent his mistress
to engage Lord Malmesbury to set the bride in a right
path. Mademoiselle de Hertzfeldt represented to the
envoy the necessity of being very strict with the Princess.
The courtesan champion of morality represented the
Duke’s daughter as not clever, neither was she ill-disposed,
‘but of a temper easily wrought on, and had no tact.’
The good lady thought that the envoy’s advice would
have more effect than the paternal counsel, as, ‘although
the Princess respected him, she also feared him as a
severe rather than an affectionate father; that she had no
respect for her mother, and was inattentive to her when
she dared.’ No more terrible testimony could be rendered
against a daughter than this. For if a girl love not her
mother, whom shall she ever love? and if she hide not
her disregard from the mother whom she cannot in her
heart honour, whom will she ever truly regard? The
Princess was as anxious in imploring guidance and direction
from Lord Malmesbury as any of her relatives, and
she was probably quite as sincere in asking for counsel.
At dinner and supper, concert and opera, there was
the same diet and the same song. For hours of a morning
the paternal admonitions were poured into the bride’s
ear, and for hours of an evening Lord Malmesbury had
to listen to what the Princess had been told. The advice
was good of its sort, but its constant repetition shows
that the Duke had great fears touching his daughter’s
character. The Duke wished to make her feel ‘that the
high situation in which she was going to be placed was
not simply one of amusement and enjoyment; that it had
its duties, and those perhaps hard and difficult to fulfil.’
Lord Malmesbury was especially invoked not to desert
the Princess in England. The Duke was quite right in
foreseeing that future peril, and what future peril for his
daughter, lay in that direction. ‘He dreaded the Prince’s
habits.’ Well he might. They were not dissimilar from
his own. On the very evening that the Duke told the
envoy that he dreaded the Prince’s habits, Lady Eden,
who had just arrived at Brunswick from London, told
Lord Malmesbury that ‘Lady ——,’ meaning, doubtless,
Lady Jersey, ‘was very well with the Queen; that she
went frequently to Windsor, and appeared as a sort of
favourite.’ ‘This, if true,’ says Lord Malmesbury, ‘is
most strange, and bodes no good.’ The intelligence
seems to have strongly impressed the envoy; and when,
in the evening, he sat next the Princess Caroline at
supper, he counselled her ‘to avoid familiarity, to have
no confidants, to avoid giving any opinion, to approve but
not to admire excessively, to be perfectly silent on politics
and party, to be very attentive and respectful to the
Queen—to endeavour, at all events, to be well with her.’
He was evidently thinking of the rival that was already
well with the Queen, and still better with the Prince.
This condition of things boded no good. The Princess,
whose eyes were red with tears—the consequence of
taking leave of some of the dear young friends of her
heart—had good cause to weep on. Never was bridal
attended by prospect more forlorn. The bride, however,
was as variable as an April day. On the evening following
that just noticed, Lord Malmesbury records that he
sat ‘next to Princess Caroline at table; she improves
very much on closer acquaintance—cheerful, and loves
laughing.’
The penalty of her new position came before her, too,
in another shape. She was beset with applications for
her patronage, and she was induced to seek for Lord
Malmesbury’s aid to realise the expectations of the petitioners.
He at once counselled her to have nothing to do
with such matters, and to check or stop solicitation at
once, by intimating that she could not interfere in any
way in England by asking political or personal favours
for others. Lord Malmesbury added that, if she were
sincerely desirous to further the fortunes of a really deserving
person, he would find means to enable her to
accomplish what she wished. But even then it were far
better, he said, not to engage herself by any promise.
He added much more of excellent admonitory advice, in
all of which the Princess readily acquiesced. He especially
counselled her to be discreet in all her questions. She
promised solemnly that she would, and forthwith she began
to put some queries to him touching the Prince’s ‘favourite.’
Not that she knew Lady Jersey to be the occupier
of so bad an eminence. Still the question was indiscreet.
‘She appeared to suppose her an intriguante, but not to
know of any partiality or connection between her and the
Prince. I said that, with regard to Lady ——, she and all
her other ladies would frame their conduct towards her by
hers towards them; that I humbly advised her this should
not be too familiar or too easy; and that it might be
affable without forgetting she was Princess of Wales;
that she should never listen to them when they attempted
anything like a commerage, and never allow them to appear
to influence her opinion by theirs. She said she
wished to be popular, and was afraid I recommended her
too much reserve; that probably I thought her too proné
à se livrer. I said I did; that it was an amiable quality,
but one that in her situation could not be given way to
without great risk; that, as to popularity, it never was
retained by familiarity; that it could only belong to respect,
and was only to be acquired by a just mixture of
dignity and affability. I quoted the Queen as a model in
this respect.’7
Lord Malmesbury thoroughly understood the characters
both of the Princess Caroline and the Queen Charlotte.
Of the latter the Princess expressed great fear, and
added a conviction that the Queen would be jealous of
her and do her harm. On that very account she was
advised to be scrupulously attentive in rendering to this
terrible mother-in-law, as she seemed, every mark of respect
due to her; and the Princess was further counselled
to set a guard upon her too prompt tongue in the Queen’s
presence, and to be especially careful not to drop any
light remarks. The bride promised all she was asked,
and then observed, by way of illustration of her watchfulness,
that she was quite aware that the Prince was leger;
that she had been prepared on that point, and was determined
never to appear jealous, however much she might
be provoked. Her monitor commended the wisdom of a
resolution which he said he believed (but it must have
been in a diplomatic sense) she would never be called upon
to put in force. Still more diplomatically, he added that
if she ever did ‘see any symptoms of a gout in the Prince,
or if any of the women about her should, under the love
of fishing in troubled waters, endeavour to excite a jealousy
in her mind,’ he entreated her, ‘on no account to
allow it to manifest itself.’ Sourness and reproaches on
the part of even a young neglected wife, it was suggested,
not only would not reclaim a husband whose ‘tottering
affections’ might be won back by patient endurance and
softness, but reproof and vexation would only survive to
give additional value to her rival and that rival’s charms.
In short, my Lord as good as intimated that, if she would
only re-enact the part of Griselda, she would please her
husband; whereas, if she ran counter to his wishes, ‘it
would probably make him disagreeable and peevish, and
certainly force him to be false and dissembling.’
But if the English envoy enlightened the bride upon
the character of the Prince, her father’s mistress, Mdlle.
de Hertzfeldt, was not less liberal in affording to Lord
Malmesbury portraits of the Princess, drawn in all lights
and with no lack of shadow. One lecture from the
‘favourite,’ which the envoy set down in French, deserves
to be quoted, in spite of its length. ‘I conjure you’—thus
began the anxious lady—‘I conjure you to induce
the Prince, from the very commencement, to make the
Princess lead a retired life. She has always been kept
in much constraint and narrowly watched, and not without
cause. If she suddenly finds herself in the world, unchecked
by any restraint, she will not walk steadily. She
has not a depraved heart—has never done anything wrong—but
her words are ever preceding her thoughts. She
gives herself up unreservedly to whomsoever she happens
to be speaking with; and thence it follows, even in this
little court, that a meaning and an intention are given to
her words which never belonged to them. How then
will it be in England, where she will be surrounded, so it
is said, by cunning and intriguing women, to whom she
will deliver herself body and soul, if the Prince allows her
to lead a dissipated life in London, and who will make her
say just what they please, and that the more easily as she
will speak of her own accord, without being conscious of
what she has uttered? Besides, she has much vanity, and,
though not void of wit, she has but little principle. Her
very head will be turned if she be too much flattered or
caressed, or if the Prince spoil her; and it is quite as
essential that she should fear as that she should love him.
It is of the utmost importance that he should keep her
closely curbed; that he should also compel her respect
for him. Without this, she will assuredly go astray! I
know,’ added she to the noble envoy, who wrote down
her speech in his Diary as soon as it was delivered, ‘I
know that you will not compromise me, for I speak as to
an old friend. I am attached heart and soul to the Duke.
I have devoted myself to and lost myself for him. I have
the welfare of his family at heart. He will be the most
wretched of men if his daughter does not succeed better
than her elder sister. I repeat, she has never done anything
that is bad; but she is without judgment, and she
has been judged of accordingly. I fear the Queen. The
Duchess here, who passes her entire life in thinking aloud
or in never thinking at all, does not like the Queen;
and she has talked too much about her to her daughter.
Nevertheless, the happiness of the Princess depends upon
being well with the Queen; and for God’s sake,’ exclaimed
the Duke’s devoted mistress, who so airily satirised the
Duke’s lawful wife, ‘say as much to her as indeed you
have done already. She heeds you; she finds that you
speak reason cheerfully; and you will make more impression
on her than her father, of whom she is too much
afraid, or than her mother, of whom she is not afraid
at all.’
That night there was a masquerade at the court opera-house.
Amid the gay and festive throng the envoy never
left the side of the bride, over whom it was his mission to
watch. He talked with her in a strain which became so
gay a scene, but on every jest hung counsel. She was
for giving way to the temper of the entertainment; but as
the Princess grew more hilarious and ‘more mixing,’ he
checked the rising spirit of fun, and prevented its becoming
‘fast and furious,’ by treating her with a vast outlay
of increased seriousness and respect.
If there was something strange in this scene, what followed
was stranger still. Mentor and maiden retired to
a box on the Balcon, and there they discussed anew the
chances of domestic happiness, and the rules by which it
might be accomplished. As minuets were being statelily
walked below, the envoy categorically laid down the regulations
observation of which might purchase connubial
felicity. He gave expression to an urgent wish that she
would never miss going to church on Sundays, as the King
and Queen never failed being present—although it must
be added that, severe as Queen Charlotte was in strictly
and formally attending divine worship on the Sabbath, the
service itself was no sooner over than (at that period of
her life) she proceeded to hold a drawing-room. It was
one generally more brilliantly attended than that held on
the Thursdays.
The prospect of being compelled to attend church
every Sunday was but a gloomy view, it would seem, thus
presented at the very gayest portion of the masquerade.
The Princess probably thought she saw a way of escape,
for she inquired if the Prince was thus strict in his weekly
attendance. Lord Malmesbury dexterously replied that
if he were not she would bring him to it; and if he would
not go with her, she would do well to set a good example
and go without him. ‘You must, in such case,’ added
the bride-trainer, ‘tell him that the fulfilling regularly
and exactly this duty can alone enable you to perform
exactly and regularly those you owe him. This cannot
but please him, and will in the end induce him also to go
to church.’
The Princess evidently liked this part of her prospect
less and less. We may fairly judge so by her observation,
that my Lord had ‘made a very serious remark for a
masquerade.’
The envoy defended himself from the attack made
under cover of this insinuation, and he defended himself
with gaiety and success. The Princess herself acknowledged
as much, and Lord Malmesbury rather naïvely
observes that, after descanting to the bride upon the necessity
of regular church-going when she got to England,
he was glad he had set her thinking on the drawbacks
as well as of the agrémens of her situation. The attendance
at church was, in his eyes, a rather severe discipline;
but, as he so forcibly impressed on the mind of his charge,
‘in the order of society, those of a very high rank have
a price to pay for it. The life of a Princess of Wales is
not to be one of pleasure, dissipation, and enjoyment.
The great and conspicuous advantages belonging to it
must necessarily be purchased by considerable sacrifices,
and can only be preserved and kept up by a continual
repetition of those sacrifices.’ The Princess probably
sighed as she weighed the pomp of her position against
the piety by which she was to formally illustrate it.
Lord Malmesbury could not play the mentor without
the godless wits of the court treating him to a little raillery.
On the evening when he had been expatiating on the
uses of attendance at church, during the noise and revelry
of a masquerade, he encountered Madame de Waggenheim
She was the lady who ‘drank,’ and whom the noble diarist
sets down upon his tablets as ‘absurd, ridiculous, ill-mannered,
and méchante.’ ‘How did you find the little one?’
said she, alluding thereby to the Princess. ‘Rather old
as she is, her education is not yet finished.’ Lord Malmesbury
felt the taunt, but parried it with the remark that
‘at an age far beyond that of her Royal Highness persons
might be found in whom the education of which she spoke
had not even begun.’
CHAPTER II. THE NEW HOME.
The Princess desires to have Lord Malmesbury for her lord chamberlain—The
Duchess a coarse-minded woman—The Duke of Clarence her bitter
enemy—The Duke and Duchess’s caution to Lord Malmesbury, and his
dignified reply—The Abbess of Gandersheim’s opinion of mankind—Difficult
question proposed by the Princess, and Lord Malmesbury’s
gallant reply—The Abbess without human sympathy—A state dinner,
and a mischievous anonymous letter—The Princess’s departure for England—Her
indifference to money—Instances—Ignorance of the Duchess—Difficulties
of the journey—The Princess’s design to reform the Prince
of Wales—Indefatigable care of Lord Malmesbury—Story of the Princess
at Hanover—Care as to her toilette recommended—Presents given
by the Princess—Her arrival in England—Ridiculed by Lady Jersey—Reproof
administered to her ladyship by Lord Malmesbury—The first
interview of the Prince and Princess—Cold reception of the bride—Flippant
conduct of the Princess—Lord Malmesbury reproached by the
Prince of Wales.
It is to the credit of the Princess Caroline that she
took in such good part all that Lord Malmesbury told her,
and that she was desirous of having him appointed her
lord chamberlain; a prematurely expressed desire which
did her honour, gratified the object of it, and was never
realised. She, no doubt, respected him, for the advice he
gave her was not only parental, but much of it might
have come from a tender and affectionate mother. But
her mother was a coarse-minded, weak-hearted woman,
who had little regard for propriety, was not affected by
the disregard of it in her husband, and who told stories
at table, in her daughter’s presence, that would have called
up a blush of shame, if not of indignation, on the cheek
of a dragoon.
It was after such stories that Lord Malmesbury particularly
enjoined the Princess, if she cared to please, to
commune much with herself, and to think deeply before she
spoke. Her family was a strange one, but not stranger, in
many respects, than that into which she was going. Her
admission there, indeed, at all, was perhaps a consequence
of hate rather than love. Prince William, Duke of Clarence,
had been among the first to speak of the Princess
Caroline of Brunswick as a wife for the Prince of Wales.
He had been led to do this because he hated the Duchess
of York, knew that the Princess and Duchess hated each
other, and felt sure that the marriage of the former with
the heir to the throne would be wormwood to the Duchess.
The Duke of Clarence was, ultimately, one of the bitterest
and the most unreasonable of the enemies of this very
Princess whom he had helped to drag up to greatness.
With regard to the feelings of the Princess against
the excellent Duchess of York, the envoy endeavoured
to turn them into a sentiment of respect for one who
was worthy of such homage. Indeed, he was so indefatigable
with his counsel that the ducal parents became
fearful lest there might be even too much of it for his
own profit, if not for their daughter’s good. It was
suggested to him that the Princess, in a moment of fondness,
might communicate to the Prince all he had said to
her, and so he ‘would run the risk of getting into a
scrape’ with his Royal Highness on his return. Lord
Malmesbury, who was the envoy of the King and not of
the Prince, replied with readiness, dignity, and effect. ‘I
replied,’ he said, ‘that luckily I was in a situation not to
want the Prince’s favour; that it was of infinitely more
consequence to the public, and even to me (in the rank I
filled in its service), that the Princess of Wales should
honour and become her high situation, recover the dignity
and respect due to our princes and royal family, which
had, of late, been so much and so dangerously let down
by their mixing so indiscriminately with their inferiors,
than that I should have the emoluments and advantages
of a favourite at Carlton House; and that idea was so
impressed on my mind that I should certainly say to the
Prince everything I had said to the Princess Caroline.’
He had a difficult pupil in the latter lady. After a whole
page of record touching how important it was that she
should practise reserve and dignity, we remark the
condemnatory entry: ‘Concert in the evening; the
Princess Caroline talks very much—quite at her ease—too
much so.’
In another chapter of the family romance we find
the aunt of the Princess—the Abbess of Gandersheim—exhorting
her niece to put no trust in men at all; assuring
her that her husband would deceive her, that she would
not be happy, ‘and all the nonsense of an envious and a
desiring old maid.’ The gaiety of the Princess was
eclipsed, for a moment, by the chill cloud thrown across
it by the remarks of her aunt. The envoy, however,
restored the ordinary sunshine by requesting the Princess,
the next time the Abbess held similar discourse, to ask
her whether, if she proposed to give up the Prince to her
aunt, and take the Abbey of Gandersheim in place thereof,
she would then ‘think men to be such monsters, and
whether she would not expose herself to all the dangers
and misfortunes of such a marriage?’ This sally, with
good counsel to garnish it, not only restored the good-humour
of the Princess, but made her more desirous than
ever to attach the envoy personally to her service as soon
as her household as Princess of Wales should be established.
Lord Malmesbury avoided an explicit answer,
but entreated her not to solicit anything in his behalf.
‘I had,’ he says, ‘the Duke of Suffolk and Queen Margaret
in my thoughts.’ He, further, was more anxious
than ever with reference to the results of this marriage.
With a steady man, he thought, the impulsive bride
might have a chance of bliss; but with one that was not so
he saw that her risks were many and great indeed. In
the meanwhile he poured counsel into her mind—as Mr.
Gradgrind used to pour facts into the juvenile intellect
at Coketown—by the imperial gallon. The Princess
continued to take it all well, but the giver of it was shrewd
enough to see that ‘in the long run it must displease.’
He was right in his conclusion, for the night after he
expressed the conviction the Princess remarked, on some
grave monition of his, that she should never learn it all,
and that she was too light-minded ever to do so.
Ward and guardian had been running a parallel
between the former and her sister-in-law, younger than
herself, the hereditary Princess of Brunswick. The Princess
Caroline had asked Lord Malmesbury which he
thought would make the better Princess of Wales, herself
or her sister-in-law? To this difficult question the
envoy replied gallantly that he knew which would be
the Prince’s choice; that she possessed by nature what
the hereditary Princess neither had or could ever acquire—beauty
and grace. He added, in his character of
mentor, ‘that all the essential qualities the hereditary
Princess has she might attain—prudence, discretion, attention,
and tact.’ ‘Do I want them?’ ‘You cannot
have too much of them.’ ‘How comes my sister-in-law,
who is younger than myself, to have them more than I?’
‘Because, at a very early period of her life, her family
was in danger; she was brought up to exertion of the
mind, and now she derives the benefit d’avoir mangé son
pain bis le premier!’ ‘I shall never learn this,’ was the
remark of the Princess, with some confession of her
defects. Lord Malmesbury encouraged her by saying
that when she found herself in a different situation she
would be prepared for its exigencies if she questioned
and communed deeply with herself now. In short, he
gave excellent advice, and if counsel could have cured
the radical defects of a vicious education, Caroline
would have crossed the seas to her new home peerless
among brides.
At length the hour approached for the departure of
the bride, but before it struck there had well-nigh been
an angry scene. Lord Malmesbury had faithfully narrated
to the Prince all that his commission allowed him to
narrate touching his doings. His opinion of the bride
he of course kept to himself. The Prince wrote back a
complete approval of all he had done, but added a prohibition
of the Princess being accompanied to England
by a Mademoiselle Rosenzweit, who, as his Royal Highness
understood, had been named as ‘a sort of reader.’ The
Prince, for what reason is not known, would not have
her in that or in any other character. The Duke and
Duchess of Brunswick were exceedingly annoyed by this
exercise of authority on the part of the royal husband, but
they were, of course, compelled to submit. The motive for
the nomination of this lady deserves to be noticed, particularly
as the Duke, who kept a ‘favourite’ at the table
where his wife presided, and the Duchess, who told coarse
and indelicate stories there which disgusted the ‘favourite,’
had been particularly boastful concerning the very severe
education of the Princess.
When it was agreed that Mademoiselle Rosenzweit
should not accompany the Princess as ‘a sort of reader,’
the Duke of Brunswick took Lord Malmesbury aside, and
stated that the reason why he wished her to be with the
Princess was, that his daughter wrote very ill and spelt
ill, and he was desirous that this should not appear.
The noble diarist adds, ‘that his Serene Highness was not
at all so serenely indifferent on the matter as he pretended
to be. He affected to be so, ‘“but at the bottom
was hurt and angry.”’
The last day the unhappy bride ever spent in a home
which, considering all things, had been a happy home to
her, was one of mingled sighs, tears, dignity, and meanness.
The Duke rose into something like dignity also,
and exhibited a momentary touch of paternal feeling as
the hour of departure drew near, and his glory, as well
as his paternal affection, was concerned in the conduct
and bearing of his daughter.
There was a dinner, which would have been cordial
enough but for the arrival of an anonymous letter, warning
the Duchess and the Princess of the dangers the latter
would run from a profligate ‘Lady ——,’ the blank of
which may be filled up with the name of Jersey. The
letter had been addressed to the Duchess, but that extremely
prudent lady had informed her poor daughter of
its contents, and discussed the letter openly with all those
who cared to take part in the discussion. Lord Malmesbury
suspected the epistle to come from the party of the
disappointed Mademoiselle de Rosenzweit. It was a
vulgar epistle, the chief point in which was the assertion
that the ‘Lady ——’ would certainly do her utmost to
lead the Princess into some act of injury to her own
husband’s honour. The Princess was not herself much
terrified on this point, and for that reason Lord Malmesbury
told her very gravely that it was death for a man to
approach the Princess of Wales with any idea of winning
her affections from her husband, and that no man would
be daring enough to think of it. The poor bride, something
startled, inquired if that were really the law. Lord
Malmesbury answered, ‘that such was the law; that
anybody who presumed to love her would be guilty of
high treason, and punished with death, if she were weak
enough to listen to him; so also would she.’ This startled
her. Naturally so; between advice, evil prophecy, menace,
dark innuendoes, the necessity of going to church, and the
possibility of ending on a scaffold, the bride might well be
startled.
Nor was the letter above alluded to the only one which
was a source of uneasiness to the Princess. George III.
had written to the Duchess, expressing his ‘hope that his
niece would not indulge in too much vivacity, but would
lead a sedentary and retired life.’ This letter also was
exhibited by the injudicious mother to her daughter; and
while the latter was wondering what the conclusion of
all this turmoil might be, Mademoiselle de Hertzfeldt
reiterated that the only way for the Prince to manage
her would be by fear. ‘Ay,’ said the virtuous lady, ‘even
by terror; she will emancipate herself if care be not
taken of her. Watched narrowly and severely, she may
conduct herself well!’
Amid such a confusion of scenes, incidents, things,
and persons, the Princess Caroline was variously affected.
Her last banquet in her father’s halls was an epitome of
the sorrows, cares, mock-splendour, and much misery of
the time to come.
On Monday, December the 29th, 1795, the bride left
Brunswick ‘for good.’ It was two o’clock in the afternoon
when the envoy departed from the palace with his
fair companion in his charge. To render her safety less
exposed to risk, Major Hislop had gone forward ‘to give
notice in case of danger from the enemy.’ The cannon
from the ramparts of the city thundered out to her their
last farewell, and the citizens assembled in crowds to see
the Princess pass forth on her path—of roses, as they
good-naturedly hoped; but, in fact, on her way strewn
with thorns.
For three days the travellers pressed forward in something
of long file, making, however, short journeys, and
not getting very rapidly over them. On the third day
the Princess, weary of being alone with two ladies, invited
Lord Malmesbury to ride in the same coach with her.
He ‘resisted it as impossible, from its being improper;’
and he continued to discountenance the matter, and she
to laugh at him for his inviolable punctilio.
What with the impediments thrown in their way by
the war then raging in front of them, between the French
on one side and the Dutch and English on the other—and
the alternating features of which now enabled them
to hurry on, now checked their course—what with the
incidents of these stirring times, and the hard frost
during which they occurred, cavaliers and ladies made
but tardy way, were half-frozen, and not inconsiderably
dispirited. For a time they tarried at Osnaburg, where
Lord Malmesbury narrates an anecdote for the purpose of
showing the character of the Princess, and which is to
this effect.
Many distressed French émigrés were to be found at
Osnaburg, some of them ‘dying of hunger, and through
want.’ The rest, the gallant leader of our escort shall
tell in his own words: ‘I persuaded the Princess Caroline
to be munificent towards them—she disposed to be, but
not knowing how to set about it, I tell her liberality and
generosity is an enjoyment, not a sworn virtue. She gives
a louis for some lottery tickets. I give ten, and say the
Princess ordered me—she surprised. I said I was sure
she did not mean to give for the ticket its prime value,
and that I forestalled her intention. Next day a French
émigré with a pretty child draws near the table. The
Princess Caroline immediately, of her own accord, puts
the louis in a paper and gives them to the child. The
Duchess of Brunswick observes it, and inquires of me (I
was dining between them) what it was. I tell her a
demand on her purse. She embarrassed: “Je n’ai que
mes beaux doubles louis de Brunswick.” I answer:
“Qu’ils deviendront plus beaux dans les mains de cet
enfant que dans sa poche.” She ashamed, and gives three
of them. In the evening the Princess Caroline, to whom
this sort of virtue was never preached, on my praising
the coin of the money at Brunswick, offers me very
seriously eight or ten double louis, saying: “Cela ne me
fait rien—je ne m’en soucie pas—je vous prie de les
prendre.” I mention these facts to show her character:
it could not distinguish between giving as a benevolence
and flinging away the money like a child. She thought
that the art of getting rid of the money, and not seeming
to care about it, constituted the merit. I took an opportunity
at supper of defining to her what real benevolence
was, and I recommended it to her as a quality that
would, if rightly employed, make her more admirers and
give her more true satisfaction than any that human
nature could possess. The idea was, I am sorry to see,
new to her, but she felt the truth of it; and she certainly
is not fond of money, which both her parents are.’
This indifference to money was amply manifested
throughout the course of her after life. At a period of
that life when she was most distressed she might have
earned a right royal revenue, had she cared to sacrifice to
it—her reputation. With all her faults, she had none of
the avarice of her mother especially. She had more of
the ignorance of the latter, but even she would not have
been led into betraying it as her mother did when looking
at the Dusseldorff collection of pictures, which at this
time had been removed to Osnaburg, to save it from the
calamities of war. Her Serene Highness was shown a
Gerard Dow. ‘And who is Gerard Dow?’ said she;
‘was he of Dusseldorff?’ The severity of this lady’s
education must have been something like that given to
the Princess. The mother had never heard of Dow!
The daughter wrote ill and spelt worse. She, some years
subsequent to the journey upon which we are now
accompanying her, described the Princess Charlotte in a
letter as her ‘deer angle.’ She was indeed ever profuse
with epithets of endearment. The ladies whom she saw
for the first time during this her bridal progress to her
husband’s house were addressed by her as ‘Mon cœur,
ma chère, ma petite.’ Lord Malmesbury again played
the monitor when these freedoms were indulged in, and
his pupil began to care less for both advice and adviser.
The bride’s mother, too, got weary of her journey—afraid
of being taken prisoner by the enemy, and was
anxious to leave her daughter and return home. The
envoy resisted this as improper, until the moment she
had placed the Princess in the hands of her proper attendants.
Lord Malmesbury not only made ‘her lady
mother’ continue at her post, but, on leaving Osnaburg,
he induced her to give fifty louis to the servants—very
much indeed against her will. She neither loved to give
money away herself, nor to have the virtue of liberality
impressed upon her daughter as one worth observing.
In most respects, however, the daughter was superior to
the mother. Thus, when at Benthem, they were waited
on and complimented by President Fonk and Count
Benthem de Steinfort—two odd figures, and still more
oddly dressed—the Duchess burst into a fit of laughter at
beholding them. The Princess had the inclination to do
as much, but she contrived to enjoy her hilarity without
hurting the feelings of the two accomplished and oddly-dressed
gentlemen who had come to do her honour.
The Princess was less delicate with regard to odd
women. Thus, she met Madame la Présidente Walmoden
at Osnaburg, whom she asked to play at cards at her
table, and made giggling remarks about her, in half-whispers,
to the younger ladies of the party. The Princess
disliked the Présidente; the Duchess, on the other hand,
had pleasure in her society. Présidente and Duchess vied
with each other in telling stories, and the latter was
comically indelicate to her heart’s content.
Great difficulties had still to be encountered in the
way of their progress towards the sea-coast, and more
than one wide wave from far-off battles drove them back,
again and again, to cities of which they had before taken,
as they believed, a final farewell. In the midst of it all
there was much ‘fun,’ some frowning, a little bickering,
advice without end, and amendment always beginning.
Still, as the party proceeded, half-frozen to death on their
way by the rigour of a winter such as Lord Malmesbury
had not felt since he was in Russia, the Princess especially
loved to talk of her future prospects and intentions.
Perhaps the most singular dream in which she indulged
was that of undertaking and accomplishing—for she had
no doubt as to the result—the reformation of the Prince.
She felt, she said, that she was to fill the vide in the
situation in which he stood, caused by his isolation
from the King and Queen. She would domesticate him,
she said, and give him a taste for all the private and
home virtues. His happiness would then be of a higher
quality than it ever had been before, and he would owe
it all to her. This was the pleasant dream of a young
bride full of good intentions, and who was strangely
called upon to project the reformation of her husband,
even before she had seen him, or could have taken that
interest in him which could only arise from esteem founded
on personal intercourse. This result, she declared, the
nation expected at her hands; and she would realise it,
for she felt herself capable of effecting it.
To all this agreeable devising Lord Malmesbury replied
in encouraging speeches, mingled with gravest counsel
and solemn admonition as to her bearing. This the
Princess generally took in excellent part, while the Duchess,
her mother, was grumbling at the intense cold or slumbering
uneasily under it; and the servants outside the
carriages were as nearly frozen as people could be, but
were kept from that absolute catastrophe by generous
liquor and the warmth of their indignation.
The bride ought to have been perfect in her character,
for her mentor lost no opportunity in endeavouring to so
prepare her that she might make a favourable impression
upon the King and Queen. It must, too, be said for her,
that her amiability under this reiterated didactic process
was really very great. She felt nothing but respect for
her teacher, and that says much for the instruction given,
as also for the way in which it was conveyed. On one
occasion, we are told, she ended, on retiring for the night,
by saying that she hoped the Prince would let her see
Lord Malmesbury, since she never could expect that any
one would ‘give her such good and such free advice as
myself;’ and she added, ‘I confess I could not bear it
from any one but you.’
On Saturday, the 24th of January 1795, the travellers
entered Hanover blue with cold, of which the benumbed
Duchess complained in no very elegant terms. Lord Malmesbury
was exceedingly anxious that the Princess should be
popular here, as according to the impression of her
reported hence to England would probably be that of
the King and Queen on her arrival. Lord Malmesbury
told her that she was Zémire and Hanover Azor; and
that, if she behaved rightly, the monster would be metamorphosed
into a beauty; that Beulwitz (at the head of
the regency, the most ugly and most disagreeable man
possible) would change into the Prince of Wales; that
the habit of proper princely behaviour was natural to her—an
assertion which was not true, as even the diplomatist
showed, by adding ‘that it would come of itself;
that acquired by this (in that respect) fortunate delay in
our journey, it would belong to her, and become familiar
to her on her coming to England, where it would be of
infinite advantage.’
And yet Hanover was not a very particular place;
that is, it was not inhabited—the court end of it, at least—by
very particular, strict, or strait-laced people. The
Princess was particularly careful of her conduct before
persons, some of whom appear to have generally got
intoxicated before dinner was over. Nevertheless, Lord
Malmesbury did effect a very notable change for the
better in the Princess’s habits. He had been before
addressing himself to the improvement of principle; he
now came to a personal matter, and, if one might be
pardoned for laughing at any incident in the life of a
poor woman whose life was anything rather than a
matter to be laughed at, this is the time when one might
do so with least reproach.
The party had been three weeks at Hanover, and,
during that time, Lord Malmesbury had held frequent
discussions with the Princess upon the very delicate matter
of the toilette. She prided, or to use the noble lord’s
own term, ‘she piqued herself on dressing quick.’ He
disapproved of this; for a quick dresser is a slovenly and
unclean dresser. On this point, however, she would not
be convinced: probably she was the less inclined to be
so as the weather continued intensely cold, and the next
luxury to lying in bed was being quickly dressed when
she got out of it. He could not come to details with a
young bride who despised perfect ablutions; but he found
a court lady, Madame Busche, through whom he poured
the necessary amount of information that should induce
the Princess to be more liberal towards her skin in the
dispensation of water. He desired Madame Busche to
explain to her that the Prince was very delicate, and that
he expected a long and very careful toilette de propreté,
of which she had no idea. ‘On the contrary,’ he says,
‘she neglects it sadly, and is offensive from this neglect.
Madame Busche executes her commission well, and the
Princess came out, the next day, well washed all over!’
But still the envoy’s trouble in connection with his
charge in no way diminished. Now, he was gently
reproving her for calling strange ladies by very familiar
terms; anon, he had to censure her for unasked-for confidences
touching past loves; and then, more seriously
than all, to reprimand her even, and with strong license
of phrase, for her undutiful and sneering conduct towards
her mother, who, although silly and undignified, yet
deserved the respect of her own child. On all these
occasions there was some pouting, followed by acquiescence
in the reproof, and ardent promises of improvement,
that were still long a-coming. In the meantime,
that delicate article of personal cleanliness remained,
upon which the Princess became as indifferent as ever.
We must again have recourse to the envoy’s own description
of what passed between him and the pretty, wayward
girl he was endeavouring to persuade out of dirtiness. On
the 6th of March he says: ‘I had two conversations with
the Princess Caroline. One on the toilette, on cleanliness,
and on delicacy of speaking. On these points I endeavoured,
as far as it was possible for a man, to inculcate
the necessity of great and nice attention to every part of
dress, as well as to what was hid as what was seen. I
knew she wore coarse petticoats, coarse shifts, and thread
stockings, and these never well washed or changed often
enough. I observed that a long toilette was necessary,
and gave her no credit for boasting that hers was a short
one. What I could not say myself on this point I got
said through women: through Madame Busche, and afterwards
through Mrs. Harcourt. It is remarkable how
amazingly on this point her education has been neglected,
and how much her mother, although an Englishwoman,
was inattentive to it. My other conversation was on the
Princess’s speaking slightingly of the Duchess, being
peevish to her, and often laughing at her or about her.
On that point I talked very seriously indeed; said that
nothing was so extremely improper, so radically wrong;
that it was impossible, if she reflected for a moment, that
she should not be sorry for everything of the kind which
escaped; and I assured her it was the more improper
from the tender affection the Duchess had for her. The
Princess felt all this, and it made a temporary impression.
But on this, as on all other subjects, I have had too
many opportunities to observe that her heart is very, very
light, unsusceptible of strong or lasting feelings. In some
respects this may make her happier, but certainly not
better. I must, however, say that on the idea being
suggested to her by her father that I should remain on
business in Germany, and not be allowed to attend her to
England, she was most extremely affected, even to tears,
and spoke to me with a kindness and feeling I was highly
gratified to find in her.’
On the 24th of March the travelling bridal party
quitted Hanover. The bride made presents to the amount
of 800 golden Fredericks—a generosity which cost
her little, for the money was supplied by Lord Malmesbury,
who took a receipt for it, like a man of business.
It was now that the mother and daughter parted—not
again to meet till the former was without a duchy and
the latter without a spouse. The Duchess was considerably
affected. The Princess kept up her spirits, and behaved
with grace and propriety. After passing through
Rottenberg and Klosterseven, where they ‘slept at the
curate’s,’ the wayfarers reached Stade on Friday, the 27th of
March. Early on the following morning they embarked in
Hanoverian boats upon the Schwinde; by nine they
reached the ‘Fly’ cutter, and in that, when the wind served,
or in boats when it slackened, they proceeded down the
river, and at seven o’clock were taken on board the
‘Jupiter,’ fifty-gun ship, amid all the dreadful noise, confusion,
and smoke which go towards doing welcome to an
illustrious traveller. As she was stepping on board a
young midshipman, named Doyle, handed her a rope, in
order to assist her. He was the first to help her, as it
were, into England. Something more than a quarter of
a century later he who thus aided the bride was charged
with the mission of taking back her body. The fleet re-echoed
the thundering salute which burst from the sides
of the ‘Jupiter,’ yards were manned, streamers flung out
their silky lengths to the wind, and as the Princess passed
on to Cuxhaven all went as merrily as became a marriage
party.
The next day they cleared the Elbe, and on the following
were off the Texel. The Princess was cheerful,
affable, good-humoured, not alarmed by the terrors of the
sea or the sight of French privateers, and a favourite with
both officers and seamen. She only made one ‘slip’ on
the passage, from a repetition of which the jealous Lord
Malmesbury guarded her by giving her a lesson in English,
and counselling her not to use a nasty word to
express a nasty thing. While the royal bride was conning
her lesson her guardian was conferring with ‘Jack Payne,’
from whom he learned that the bridegroom at home was
not behaving in the most prudish way possible, and that
his favourite was comporting herself with the impudence
natural to favourites before they fall.
On Good Friday morning, the 3rd of April, the ‘Jupiter’
passed Harwich, and in the evening anchored at the Nore.
On the following day the bride ascended the Thames to
Gravesend, whence, in a barge, on Easter Sunday, and
amidst thousands of welcoming spectators, she proceeded
to Greenwich, where she arrived at twelve, and found—not
a soul from St. James’s to receive her. She waited
a full hour before the royal carriages arrived, and the
delay was attributed to the contrivance of the Prince’s
favourite. In the meantime the officers at the Hospital
did their honest best to welcome the poor stranger. At
length the carriages arrived, but with them no eager
bridegroom. To represent him came his mistress, with a
bevy of lords and ladies. Lady Jersey no sooner beheld
the embarrassed Princess than she began to ridicule her
dress; and having done that till she was sharply reproved
for her effrontery by Lord Malmesbury, she made a sort
of claim to be placed by the side of the Princess in the
carriage, on the ground that riding backwards always
made her sick. But Lord Malmesbury would listen to no
such claim, told her that she was unfit to be a lady of
the bedchamber if she were unable to ride with her back
to the horses, and although the favourite would have
been glad now to ride even in that fashion in the same
carriage with the bride, the envoy would not permit it.
He placed there two ladies who were not addicted to
qualms in such a situation; and with the Princess occupying
a seat alone, and sitting forward, so as to be more
easily seen, the cortège set out for the metropolis. The
bride was but coldly received by the few spectators on
the road, and when she alighted at the Duke of Cumberland’s
apartments, in Cleveland Row, St. James’s, at half-past
two, she must have half wished herself back again
in Brunswick.
On due notice of the arrival being made to the royal
family the Prince of Wales went immediately to visit his
cousin and bride. What occurred at the interview, of
which Lord Malmesbury was the sole witness, he has the
best right to tell. ‘I, according to the established
etiquette, introduced (no one else being in the room) the
Princess Caroline to him. She very properly, in consequence
of my saying to her it was the right mode of proceeding,
attempted to kneel to him. He raised her
(gracefully enough) and embraced her, said barely one
word, turned round, retired to a distant part of the apartment,
and, calling me to him, said: “Harris, I am not
well; pray get me a glass of brandy.” I said: “Sir, had
you not better have a glass of water?” Upon which he,
much out of humour, said with an oath: “No; I will go
directly to the Queen.” And away he went. The Princess,
left during this short moment alone, was in a state of
astonishment, and on my joining her said: “Mon Dieu,
est-ce que le Prince est toujours comme cela? Je le
trouve très gros et nullement aussi beau que son portrait.”’
What could the bringer of the bride say to comfort
her? He stammered out that his Royal Highness was
naturally much affected and fluttered—poor bashful man
and susceptible creature—at the interview; but he would
be better by dinner time!
The Princess, however, was not herself blameless.
She had already entirely forgotten, or entirely disregarded,
the good advice given to her by Lord Malmesbury, and,
short as the time had been which she had spent at Greenwich
with Lady Jersey, she had been foolish enough to
communicate to that person the alleged fact of her heart
having been already preoccupied by a young German.
The interesting intelligence was speedily communicated
to the Prince, and the knowledge so acquired—although
the fact itself may have been at first doubted—certainly
had great influence on the conduct observed by the bridegroom
to the bride.
Lord Malmesbury was exceedingly perplexed. He
had been so careful of his charge that when the chances
of war had obstructed the progress of their journey,
sooner than take her back to a court, the ladies of which,
never expecting to see her raised to a more exalted station
than that in which she was born, had treated her with
great familiarity, he had conducted her to dull and decorous
Hanover. So tender had he been of her that he
would not allow her to remain at Osnaburg, for the simple
reason that Count d’Artois was in the vicinity; and
although Lord Malmesbury was, as he says, very far from
attributing, either to him or to those who attended him,
all those vices and dangerous follies which it was said belonged
to them in the days of prosperity, yet he felt it
highly improper that the Princess of Wales and a fugitive
French prince should remain in the same place. His
charge could not have had a colder welcome had such a
meeting taken place, and all the inconveniences resulted
from it which the noble lord foresaw and dreaded. The
poor deserted lady was now upon the point of indulging
in some sharp criticism upon her welcome, when her
troubled conductor, feigning necessity to attend upon the
King, left the room, and her alone in it, or with no better
company than her meditations.
The usual Sunday drawing-room had just come to a
close, and Lord Malmesbury found his Majesty at leisure
to converse. The last thing, however, thought about by
the King was the subject of the Princess. His whole conversation
turned upon home and foreign politics. That
ended, he inquired if the Princess were good-humoured.
Lord Malmesbury reported favourably of her in this
respect, and the King expressed his gratification in such a
tone as to induce his lordship to believe that his Majesty
had seen the Queen since she had seen the Prince, and
heard from him an unfavourable report of the Princess.
The after-conduct of the latter was not calculated to
create a favourable impression. At the dinner which took
place that day the Princess was ‘flippant, rattling, affecting
raillery and wit,’ and throwing out coarse, vulgar hints
about Lady Jersey, who was present, silent, and biding
her time. The disgust of the bridegroom was now permanently
fixed; and the disgust raised by lightness of
bearing and language passed into hatred when the
Princess began to indulge in coarse sarcasm.
The Prince, heartily weary of his bargain, asked Lord
Malmesbury, after one of these dinners, what he thought
of the manners exhibited at them by the Princess. The
envoy could not defend them; on the contrary, he expressed
his unqualified censure, and informed the Prince
of the paternal injunctions of the Duke of Brunswick,
whereby he recommended that a strict curb should be
kept upon the Princess, or she would certainly emancipate
herself. The Prince declared that he saw it too
plainly, and half reproachfully asked ‘Harris’ why he
had not told him as much before. The envoy, thus
appealed to, pleaded the strictness of his commission,
which was not discretionary, but which directed him to
ask for the hand of the Princess Caroline in marriage,
and nothing more; and that, had he presumed to give
any opinion of his own upon the lady, he would have
been guilty of an impertinent disregard of his instructions,
which were at once limited and imperative. Lord
Malmesbury endeavoured to put the gentlest construction
upon the sentiments expressed by the Duke of
Brunswick concerning his daughter, and added that, for
his own part, he had seen nothing but slight defects of
character, which he hoped might be amended; and that,
had he observed anything more serious, he should have
considered it his duty to communicate it, but only confidentially,
to the King himself. The Prince sighed,
appeared to acquiesce, but was neither consoled nor convinced.
The ceremonial of the unhappy marriage was celebrated
on Wednesday, the 8th of April, in the Chapel
Royal, St. James’s. The whole of the royal family previously
dined together at the Queen’s Palace, Buckingham
House, after which they proceeded to their several apartments
at St. James’s to dress. As the Princess passed
through the hall of Buckingham House the King saluted
her in the heartiest fashion, and then shook as heartily,
by both hands, the Prince of Wales who had in vain
sought to raise his spirits by the adventitious aid of wine.
The bridal party assembled in the Queen’s apartment,
and walked from thence to the state drawing-rooms,
which were not rendered less gloomy than usual by any
addition of festive light. They were ‘very dark,’ says
Lord Malmesbury, who walked in the procession, by
command of his Majesty. The chapel was very crowded.
There is a picture of the interesting scene, which is said
to have been painted, at the King’s command, by Hugh
Douglas Hamilton, an Irish artist, whom both King and
Queen had, formerly, much patronised. All the royal
sons and daughters—a beautiful family group they were—are
present in the Chapel Royal, St. James’s. The
bride is dressed in a white satin dress, worked down the
front with pearls. She wears a small crown, and from her
shoulders falls a robe of rich red crimson velvet, lined
with ermine. The Prince of Wales wears a court costume,
knee breeches and buckles with pointed shoes. His coat,
of blue velvet, is richly ornamented somewhat after the
fashion of the ornaments on the dress of his bride. The
ladies wear enormous hoops, except the bride, who has
no hoop. Their hair is powdered, and their arms project
from their bodies in rather a stiff attitude, rendered necessary
by the projection of the hoops. They all wear long,
white kid gloves, which extend nearly up to the elbow.
Ostrich feathers bend or bow on the ladies’ heads, rising
from the forehead, and curling gracefully at a considerable
height. Near the bride are her ‘maids,’ Lady Mary
Osborne, Lady Charlotte Legge, Lady Caroline Villiers,
Lady Charlotte Spencer, Lady Caroline Waldegrave.
When Queen Charlotte heard of this picture (she appears
not to have sat for it) she is said to have declared
that if it was brought into Windsor Castle she would go
out of it. The King paid for but declined to receive this
work, which ultimately was disposed of by lottery, and
is now in the Tussaud Gallery, in Baker Street.
The ceremony which it represents was performed by
the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr. Moore. The ‘Prince
of Wales gave his hat, with a rich diamond button and
loop, to Lord Harcourt to hold, and made him a present
of it. After the marriage we returned to the Queen’s
apartment. The Prince very civil and gracious, but I
thought I could perceive he was not quite sincere, and
certainly unhappy, and as a proof of it he had manifestly
had recourse to wine or spirits.’
Upon this point Lord Holland has afforded ample
corroborative evidence. The noble baron has stated that
the Prince of Wales had had such recourse to brandy
that he with difficulty could be kept upright between
two dukes. The wedding was as melancholy a one as
was ever celebrated. The only hearty actor in it was the
King, who advanced to give the bride away with an
eager alacrity. As for the bridegroom, after having
been got upon his knees, he rose, unconsciously, but
restlessly, before the proper time. The Archbishop
paused, the service was interrupted, and the Prince looked
very much as if he were inclined to run away. The King,
however, had presence of mind for all. He rose from
his seat, crossed to where his son was standing with a
bewildered air, whispered to him, got him once more
upon his knees, and so happily, or unhappily, brought
the ceremony to a conclusion.
The usual legal formalities followed; these were
succeeded by a supper at Buckingham House, and at
midnight the luckless pair retired to their own residence
at Carlton House, quarrelling with each other, it is said,
by the way. Meanwhile the metropolis around them
was rejoicing and exhibiting its gladness by the usual
manifestations of much drunkenness and increased
illumination to show it by. Asmodeus might have startled
the Spanish student that night with an exhibition such
as he had never seen beneath any of the unroofed houses
of Madrid!
It sounds singular to hear that the young husband’s
first serious occupation, on thus beginning life, was the
settlement of his debts. These were enormous, and their
amount only proved the reckless dishonesty of him who
had incurred them. Mr. Pitt proposed that the income
of the Prince should be 125,000l. a-year, exclusive of the
revenue of the Duchy of Cornwall, some 13,000l. more.
This was eventually agreed to. In addition, Parliament
fixed the jointure of the Princess of Wales at 50,000l.
per annum; and the smaller but pleasant items of 20,000l.
for jewels and 26,000l. for furnishing Carlton House
were also agreed upon. Out of the above-named
revenue, however, a yearly deduction was to be made,
in order that the debts of the Prince should be discharged
within nine years. This deduction he denounced, and
his brothers joined him in the denunciation, as a breach
of contract, he having married solely upon the promise
that his debts should be paid off at once. He immediately
claimed the amount of the accumulation of the
receipts of the Duchy of Cornwall during his minority.
He was answered, on the part of the King, that the receipts
had been expended on his education and establishment.
The consequent debates were a scandal to the
nation, a disgrace to royalty in the person of the Prince,
and cruelly insulting to the Princess, as they betrayed to
her the fact that the heir-apparent had accepted her as a
consort solely on condition that his debts should be paid
off. When the Romans made a bargain they confirmed
it by breaking a bit of straw between them. This straw
was called ‘stipula,’ and the Princess Caroline was the bit
of straw that was broken—the stipulation, in fact, whereby
it was agreed that if the Prince married the woman
whom he already detested his creditors should have
satisfaction in full of all demands!
Some of these were found heavy. There was a bill
of 40,000l. to his farrier! Bills like these were allowed.
Not so an annuity of 1,400l. to Mrs. Crouch, the
actress. The Parliament took a commercial view of the
matter and disallowed the claim, on the ground that no
valuable consideration had been given for the liability
which the Prince had voluntarily incurred. For the
allowed debts, debentures payable with interest were
given, and the Prince immediately withdrew into comparative
retirement, in order, as Lord Moira stated in
the House of Lords, that he might be able to save enough
to discharge certain claims upon his honour. These
claims were supposed to exist on the part of the Landgrave
of Hesse Cassel and the Duke of Orleans, from
whom the Prince had borrowed money. Perhaps they
included the 10,000l. per annum which he had engaged
himself to pay to Mrs. Fitzherbert, whom he had settled
in a superb mansion in Park Lane, and comforted with
assurances that his attentions to her would be as devoted
now as before his marriage! All this was an outrage on
the poor bride, whom the Prince took down to Windsor
on a visit to the King and Queen. That persons might
not suppose this was a commencement of positive
domestic and virtuous life, the husband took with him
his mistress, Lady Jersey.
The usual formality, which George III. loved, of
visiting the public at the theatre, was observed on this
occasion, and a short time after the royal marriage the
wedded couple were accompanied to Covent Garden by
the whole of the royal family. They were very dully
entertained with the very worst of O’Keefe’s comedies,
‘Life’s Vagaries,’ in which two cousins fall in love and
marry; and so perhaps the piece was thought appropriate.
It was followed by ‘Windsor Castle,’ a pièce
d’occasion by Pearce, who brought together in it Edward
III., Peleus, the Prince of Wales, Minerva, Thetis, and
the Countess of Kent. The last lady is represented as
expected at the castle; she is detained on her way by an
overflow of the Thames which threatens to drown her,
and from which she is rescued by the Prince of Wales;
whereupon all the heathen gods and goddesses are as
much delighted as if they formed an Olympian Royal
Humane Society, and exhibit their ecstasy by dancing
and singing. In such wise were our rulers entertained
when George III. was king.
Queen Charlotte had looked grimly cold upon the
Princess, but she gave an entertainment in honour of the
event which made Caroline of Brunswick a Princess of
Wales. The locality was Frogmore, and the scene was
brilliant, except that the hostess looked, as Lord Malmesbury
once described her, ‘civil, but stiff,’ and her
daughter-in-law superbly dressed, and black as midnight.
Meanwhile, the Prince’s first wife, Mrs. Fitzherbert,
was in sorrow. Their honeymoon had not lasted long.
The Prince had met Lady Jersey at Brighton, and a
letter from him, which was put into Mrs. Fitzherbert’s
hands at a dinner at the Duke of Clarence’s, where she
had expected to meet the Prince, satisfied her that all
intimacy between them had come to an end. From
that time, according to what appears to be an erroneous
statement in the ‘Memoirs of Mrs. Fitzherbert,’ ‘she
never saw the Prince;’ and this interruption of their
intimacy was followed by his marriage with the Queen
(Princess) Caroline, brought about, as Mrs. Fitzherbert
conceived, under the twofold influence of the pressure of
his debts on the mind of the Prince, and a wish on the
part of Lady Jersey to enlarge the royal establishment,
in which she was to have an important situation!
CHAPTER III. THE FIRST YEAR OF MARRIED LIFE.
The Princess’s letters to her family intercepted—Unkindness exhibited to
her—The Prince seeks a separation—Acceded to by the Princess—She
removes to Blackheath—Her income settled—Merry hours spent by the
Princess at Blackheath—Intercourse between the Princess and her
daughter—The Princess’s unfortunate acquaintance with Lady Douglas—The
boy Austin—Lady Douglas’s communication to the Prince attacking
the Princess—The delicate investigation—Witnesses examined—The
Princess hardly dealt with—Her memorial to the King—Delay in doing
her justice—The Monarch’s decision—Exculpated from the grave charges—Comparison
of Caroline Queen of George II. and Caroline of Brunswick—The
Prince and Lady Hertford—Miss Seymour, and the Prince’s
subornation of witnesses—Persecution of the Princess by her husband—Her
appeal to the King—Menace of publishing The Book—The Princess
received at the Queen’s drawing-room—Meeting of the Prince and Princess—Death
of the Duke of Brunswick at the battle of Jena—The
Duchess a fugitive—The Princess’s debts.
The Princess had cause then, and stronger reason soon
after, for her melancholy. She had written a number of
letters to her family and friends in Germany. These
she intrusted to the Rev. Dr. Randolph, who was about
to proceed to Brunswick, for delivery. The illness of
Mrs. Randolph kept the doctor in England, and he returned
the letters to the Princess of Wales, under a cover
addressed to Lady Jersey. The letters fell into the
Queen’s hands. This, however, was only discovered later;
and the discovery accounted for the cold reserve of Queen
Charlotte towards the Princess, for the letters contained
some sarcastic remarks upon the Queen’s appearance and
manners. In the meantime, on the packet failing to
reach its proper owner, due inquiry was made, but
nothing further was discovered, except that the reverend
doctor declared that he had transmitted it to Lady Jersey,
and that individual solemnly protested she had never
received it. That it reached Queen Charlotte, was
opened, and the contents read, was only ascertained at a
later period.
In whatever rudeness of expression the Princess may
have indulged, her fault was a venial one compared with
those of her handsome and worthless husband. While
she was in almost solitary confinement at Brighton he
was in London, the most honoured guest at many a brilliant
party, with Mrs. Fitzherbert for a companion. On
several occasions these two were together, even when the
Princess was present. The latter, by this time, knew of
the private marriage of her husband with the lady, and
that he had denied, through Fox, who was made the
mouthpiece of the lie, that his ‘friendship’ with Mrs.
Fitzherbert had ever gone to the extent of marriage. If
we have to censure the after-conduct of the Princess, let
us not forget this abominable provocation.
Except from the kindly-natured old King, Caroline
experienced little kindness, even during the time immediately
previous to the birth of her only child, the Princess
Charlotte. This event took place at ten in the morning
of the 7th of January 1796, amid the usual solemn formalities
and the ordinary witnesses. Addresses of congratulation
were not lacking. Among them the city of
London prepared one for the Prince, but the conventionally
‘happy father,’ who had looked down upon his legitimate
child with the critical remark that ‘it was a fine
girl,’ declined to receive the congratulations of the City,
unless in private. The pretext given was that a public
reception was too expensive a matter in the Prince’s
reduced condition; and the pretext was so insulting to
the common sense of the corporation that the members
very properly refused to ‘go up’ at all.
The truth was that the Prince shrunk from being congratulated
upon his prospects as a husband, seeing that
he was about to separate himself for ever from the
society of his wife. The latter had caused the removal
of Lady Jersey from her household. This was effected
by the hearty intervention of him whom the Scottish
papers not inaptly called that ‘decent man, the King.’
The intimation of the Prince’s desire for a separation
was conveyed to the Princess of Wales by Lady Cholmondeley.
Her Royal Highness made only two remarks—first,
that her husband’s desire should be conveyed to her
directly from himself in writing; and that, if a separation
were now insisted on, the former intimacy should never
under any circumstances be resumed.
If his Royal Highness had acceded to all his consort’s
wishes with the alacrity with which he fulfilled this one
in particular, there would have been more happiness at
their hearth. In his letter to her he said: ‘Our inclinations
are not in our power, nor should either of us be
answerable to the other, because nature has not made
us suitable to each other. Tranquillity and comfortable
society are, however, in our power; let our intercourse,
therefore, be restricted to that.’ It is what Froissart
might call ‘sadly amusing’ to find him offering tranquillity
when he was predisposed to persecute, and recommending
that their intercourse should take the character
of a ‘comfortable society,’ when he was about to turn
her out of her home, and without any greater fault laid
to her charge than that she had outlived his liking. With
regard to the Princess’s expressed determination that, if
there were a separation now, it must be ‘once and for
ever,’ he agreed to it with alacrity; ‘even in the event,’
he said, ‘of any accident happening to my daughter,
which I trust Providence in its mercy will avert, I will
not infringe the terms of the restriction by proposing,
at any period, a connection of a more particular nature.’
Her Royal Highness, in her reply, acknowledged that
his conduct during the year of their married life saved
her from being surprised by the communication addressed
to her. She does not complain, desires it only to be
publicly understood that the arrangement is not of her
seeking, and that ‘the honour of it belongs to you alone;’
and appeals to the King, as her protector, whose approbation,
if he can award as much to her conduct, would
in some degree console her. ‘I retain,’ she thus concludes,
‘every sentiment of gratitude for the situation in
which I find myself enabled, as Princess of Wales, by
your means, to surrender myself unconstrainedly to the
exercise of a virtue dear to my heart—I mean charity.
It will be my duty, also, to be influenced by another
motive—desire to give an example of patience and resignation
under every trial.’
In October 1804 Mr. George Rose entered in his
diary that the Princess of Wales had recently said to
Mr. George Villiers: ‘I cannot say I positively hate the
Prince of Wales, but I certainly have a positive horror
of him.’ ‘They lived,’ adds Mr. Rose of the ill-matched
pair, ‘in different houses, dined at different hours, and
were never alone together. The Princess said: “Nothing
shall shake the determination I have taken to live in no
other way than the state of separation we are now in.”’
Exactly after a year’s experience of married life the
luckless pair finally separated. The Princess’s allowance
was at first fixed at 20,000l. per annum, but after some
undignified haggling on both sides touching money, the
Princess declined the allowance proposed and, throwing
herself on the generosity of the Prince, rendered him
liable for any debts she might possibly contract. ‘It was
settled that the Princess should retain her apartments at
Carlton House, with free access to her child, who had a
nursery establishment of her own, under the superintendence
of Lady Elgin. This lady did not live in
Carlton House, but was in attendance on the child at
meals, ordered everything, and was the medium of communication
between her parents respecting her. The
Princess Caroline, naturally fond of children, doted on
the baby; the Prince cared little about her, though he
jealously asserted his authority, and was always on the
watch to restrain interference on the part of the mother.
In the summer of 1797, a sub-governess was appointed
to reside in Carlton House, and act under the orders of
Lady Elgin. The office was confided to Miss Hayman,
who seems by her correspondence to have been a warm-hearted,
devoted person. The Princess took a great fancy
to her, and drew her into an intimacy which the Prince
probably disapproved, for he dismissed her at the end of
three months.’8 With a few ladies the Princess subsequently
retired to a small residence at Charlton, near
Woolwich; but on being appointed Ranger of Greenwich
Park she removed to Montague House, on Blackheath,
where she had the care of her daughter, was very frequently
visited by the King, and never on any occasion
by her Majesty. At this period her income was settled.
It was partly derived from the Prince, who contributed
to her, as ‘Princess of Wales,’ 12,000l. per annum. The
exchequer supplied another 5,000l.; the droits of the
admiralty added occasionally a few pecuniary grants;
and altogether her revenue amounted to about the same
which she had previously declined to accept. With it
she appeared content, lived quietly, cultivated her garden,
looked after the poor, taught or superintended the teaching
of several poor children, and, without a court, had a
very pleasant society about her, with whom, however,
she was alternately mirthful and melancholy.
If her residence at Blackheath was in many respects
a sad one, it was not without its sunny side. There were
joyous parties there occasionally, and the friends of the
Princess, in spite of their sorrows and indignation, contrived,
with their illustrious protégée, to pass a merry
time of it between the lulls of the storm. The merriest
hours there were those passed in playing at blind-man’s
buff, where the Princess herself, that grave judge, Sir
William Scott, and that equally grave senator, George
Canning, were the sprightliest at the game. The company
the Princess received there included some of the
foremost people, for rank and for intellect, from all quarters
of the world. Here is one of several entries relating
to this subject, taken from William Windham’s Diary,
October the 20th, 1805:—‘Dined at Princess’s: present
Monsieur the Comte d’Artois (afterwards Charles X.),
Duc de Berri, Prince de Condé, Duc de Bourbon, M. de
Rulhière, Count de Escars, Lady Sheffield, Miss Cholmondeley,
Mr. W. Lock, and Mr. J. Angerstein. When
the Prince left, the Princess made a sign for us to stay,
when a small supper was brought, which kept us till
twelve.’ The petits soupers were hilarious and unceremonious.
The Princess of Wales had not been long a
resident at Montague House before her daughter, the
Princess Charlotte, was removed to a mansion in the
vicinity, where, under the superintendence of Lady Elgin,
her early education was commenced with favourable
auspices. It may, however, be questioned whether that
be a proper term to apply in a case where a mother is
deprived of the right to superintend the education of her
own child. But it must be allowed that, though the
Princess of Wales had a little taste, about the same
amount of knowledge, and could stick natural flowers on
ground glass so as to deceive the most minutely examining
or the most courtly of Germans, she was as little
capable of being governess to her own daughter as her
mother had of being instructress to the Princess Caroline.
The interviews between the latter and the Princess Charlotte
now occurred but once a-week; and, under the circumstances,
that was as frequent as interviews could be
permitted. The little Princess, meanwhile, did not fare
badly, nor did she lack wit, or lose opportunity of showing
it. She delighted Dr. Porteus, Bishop of London,
who, during a visit, had told her that when she repaired,
as was intended, to Southend, for sea-bathing, she would
then be in his diocese, by at once going down on her
knees and asking his blessing.
Her poor mother was always as ready to make friends,
but she wanted judgment to balance her tenderness.
She never had such cause to repent at leisure for overhastiness
of action as when she made the acquaintance of
Sir John and Lady Douglas. The former was an officer
lately returned from Egypt; the latter was the mother of
an infant whose reported beauty inspired the Princess
with a desire to see it. Without any previous intimation
to Lady Douglas, with whom she was totally unacquainted,
the Princess, one winter morning, the snow
lying deep upon the ground, crossed the heath, ‘in a
lilac-satin pelisse, primrose-coloured half-boots, and a
small lilac travelling-cap, furred with sable,’ and presented
herself at the gate of Lady Douglas’s house. She
was invited to enter, under the supposition that she
wished to rest. She did not see the infant; but there was
an old Lady Stuart there, quite as childish, and of her the
lady in attendance upon the Princess (during the hour
the visit lasted) made some ‘fun;’ the same old lady ‘being
a singular character, and talking all kind of nonsense.’
It was in all respects an evil hour when this acquaintance
was first formed. It ripened, for a time, into intimacy;
and when the mutual intercourse was at its highest,
in 1802, the Princess, who had a strong inclination to
patronise infants, and had several placed out at nurse, at
her charge, in a house upon the heath, ‘took a liking’
for the infant son of a poor couple named Austin. The
boy was born in Brownlow-street Lying-in Hospital, and
Mrs. Austin was his mother. These two important facts
were established beyond all doubt. Why the Princess
should have resolved to take personal charge of so young
an infant, only a few months old, defies conjecture. It
may, perhaps, be accounted for by the fact that she knew
she was narrowly watched by enemies who felt an interest
in accomplishing her ruin, and she was elated with the idea
of mystifying them by the presence of an infant at Montague
House.
However this may have been, the intercourse with the
Douglases continued with some degree of warmth on both
sides. It was ultimately broken off by the Princess, who
had been warned to be on her guard against Lady Douglas,
as a dangerous and not very irreproachable character;
and thereon the Princess of Wales declined to receive any
more visits from her. The baronet and his lady, with Sir
Sidney Smith, a very intimate friend of both parties, so
incessantly besieged the Princess for some explanation of
her conduct that she at length called into her council her
brother-in-law, the Duke of Kent.
The Duke consented to see Sir Sidney Smith upon the
subject, and from him his Royal Highness learned that
Sir John was not so much aggrieved at the refusal of the
Princess to receive Lady Douglas as he was at an anonymous
letter accompanying a coarse drawing representing
Sir Sidney and Lady Douglas, which had been forwarded
to him, and of which he believed the Princess to be the
author.
The Duke of Kent was a little too credulous, but he
did not act unwisely. Apparently afraid that there was
ground for the charge implied by Sir John, he was still
more fearful of the effect the knowledge of it would have
upon the King, then in a highly nervous condition, and
he was more than all afraid of the evil consequences it
might have, if divulged, of exasperating the existing fierce
quarrel between the Prince of Wales and the King, whose
visit to the Princess excited the utmost wrath in the bosom
of the Prince. Taking all these circumstances into consideration,
he succeeded in advising the parties to ‘let the
matter drop.’ Sir John consented to do so if he were
left unmolested. It must be added that Lord Cholmondeley,
who was perfectly acquainted with the Princess’s
handwriting, pronounced the letter as certainly not having
been written by her. Of the drawing he could form no
opinion, except one not at all flattering to the artist.
It was not likely that the matter would rest as the
Duke of Kent desired. Sir John himself was not as quiescent
as he had promised to be, and the details already
mentioned came to the ears of the Duke of Sussex. The
latter considered it his duty to make report thereof to the
Prince of Wales, and the heir-apparent, of course, called
upon Lady Douglas for a statement. His request was
complied with, and a deposition was taken down from the
lady’s own lips. It is a document of too great length to
be inserted here, but its chief points may be stated. It
professed great admiration of the Prince of Wales, and the
exact reverse of his consort. It detailed the circumstances
of the origin of the acquaintance between the Princess and
Lady Douglas, and of the latter becoming one of the
ladies-in-waiting to the former. The Princess was described
as coarse in character, loose in conversation, and
impure in action. Circumstances were detailed of her
alleged intrigues, of her attempt to corrupt the virtue of
Lady Douglas herself, of trying to seduce her into the
commission of very serious sin, and of her laughing at her
for not yielding to the seduction.
The lady went on to describe the common talk of the
Princess as being such as to disgust the men, and to cause
mothers to send away their daughters if the latter happened
to be listeners. The Queen was said to be the especial
object of the ridicule of the Princess, and she hinted
at an improper intercourse existing between her Majesty
and Mr. Addington! The whole royal family, it was
further alleged, were the objects of her satire; but all the
statements in the deposition fade into nothing before one
respecting the Princess, in which the latter is represented
as confessing to Lady Douglas that she was about to become
a mother, laughing heartily at the confession itself,
hinting that it would not be difficult to fix the paternity
on the Prince, and ending by declaring that the matter
would be settled satisfactorily by making the world believe
that she had adopted an infant belonging to some
other person. The deponent then says that she saw the
Princess a short time previous to her alleged adoption of
the child (subsequently proved to be the son of the Austins);
that then her condition of health was not to be
mistaken; and that some time subsequently she saw the
child and Princess together, and that the latter laughingly
acknowledged it to be her own. The immediately succeeding
details will not bear telling; and this is the less
necessary as they are excessively improbable, and were
proved to be untrue. They are followed by others regarding
the coolness which sprung up between the Princess
and lady, with consequent squabbles, and final separation
at the end of 1803. In conclusion, we hear of the
return of the Douglases from Devonshire, the refusal of the
Princess to receive her former lady-in-waiting, the receipt
of the anonymous letters and drawings, the appeal to the
Duke of Kent, the temporary suspension of hostilities, and
lastly, the communication made to the Duke of Sussex,
which the latter conveyed to the Prince of Wales, and
which was followed by the deposition of which I have endeavoured,
however imperfectly, to furnish a resumé that
may be comprehended without giving offence. Those who
are acquainted with the original document will allow that
this is no very easy task.
Upon this statement, made in 1805, a commission was
formed, under which various witnesses were examined.
On the 11th of January 1806, William Cole, page to the
Princess (a discarded servant), averred that he had been
dismissed by the Princess of Wales, for no worse offence
than looking indignant at conduct between his mistress
and Sir Sidney Smith which shocked him, the page. He
described various immoral proceedings as having gone
on during his residence, that he had heard of worse after
his departure from other servants, particularly from
Fanny Lloyd, who had kindly informed him of the very
improper conduct of her Royal Highness and Captain
Manby of the Royal Navy, during the sojourn of the
Princess at Southend, in the year 1804; and Cole added
that he himself had witnessed conduct as infamous between
the Princess and ‘Lawrence the painter’ as early as
1801.
Another witness, Bidgood, who, after being in the service
of the Prince of Wales near a quarter of a century,
was transferred to that of the Princess in 1798, went further
than his predecessors. The least offensive part of his
deposition was that in which he swore that he had seen
Captain Manby kiss the Princess, who was in tears at his
leaving. This witness spoke to alleged facts equally startling
respecting her Royal Highness and Captain Hood.
The depositions of the female servants were even more
strong in their coarseness and weight of testimony against
the Princess. All these persons, it must be remembered,
were appointed to serve her, she herself having had no
voice in the selection. When they became witnesses
against her she was not allowed to know the nature of
their evidence.
It was in consequence of their allegations having been
submitted to his Majesty that the King issued his warrant
in May 1806 to Lords Erskine, Grenville, Spencer, and
Ellenborough, whereby they were directed to inquire into
the truth or falsehood of these allegations and report
accordingly.
The witnesses were all examined on oath; and it is
due to Sir John Douglas to say that he seemed to wish
to make of his evidence a simple account of hearsay
communications from his wife. He knew nothing of
what had taken place between his wife and the Princess
but what the former had told him of long after the period
of its occurrence. He swore, however, to having been
convinced that the Princess was about to become a mother.
The depositions of most of these witnesses varied considerably
from those previously made by them, and fresh
witnesses, called to prove the case against the Princess,
did more harm than good to their own side. Others, who
were servants of the Princess, distinctly denied that the
allegations made against her were true. The proof that
young Austin was simply an adopted child was complete.
The commissioners were unanimous on this point, and
therewith was established the falsehood of the depositions
made by the Douglases with respect to it. The commissioners,
however, did not feel so certain upon the other
items of evidence; and they gave it as their opinion, not
that the Princess should be held innocent until she could
be proved guilty, but that the allegations should be credited
until they could be satisfactorily disproved!
Never was accused woman more hardly used than the
Princess in this matter. For a long time she knew nothing
of the nature of the evidence tendered against her, and
every obstacle was put in her way to rendering the satisfactory
answer, wanting which the commissioners, though
they acquitted her of high treason, thought she must be
held quasi convicted of immorality. She was equal,
however, to every difficulty, and she did not lack assistance.
Mr. Perceval wrote, in her name, a memorial to
the King, which is a masterpiece of ability, so searchingly
does it sift the evidence, crush what was unfavourable to
her, point out where she had a triumph, even without a
witness, indignantly deny the charges laid against her,
and which she had not hitherto been permitted to disprove,
and touchingly appeal to her only protector, the King
himself, for a continuance of his favour to one not unworthy
of that for which she so ardently petitions. The
memorial would almost occupy this volume entirely;
it is only possible, therefore, thus to describe and refer to
it. A passage or two from the conclusion will give, however,
some idea of its spirit:—
‘In happier days of my life, before my spirit had been
yet at all lowered by my misfortunes, I should have been
disposed to have met such a charge with the contempt
which, I trust by this time, your Majesty thinks due to it.
I should have been disposed to have defied my enemies to
the utmost, and to have scorned to answer to anything
but a legal charge before a competent tribunal. But in
my present misfortunes such force of mind is gone. I
ought, perhaps, so far to be thankful to them for their
wholesome lessons of humility. I have therefore entered
into this long detail to endeavour to remove at the first
possible opportunity any unfavourable impressions, to
rescue myself from the dangers which the continuance of
these suspicions might occasion, and to preserve to me
your Majesty’s good opinion, in whose kindness, hitherto,
I have found infinite consolation, and to whose justice,
under all circumstances, I can confidently appeal.’
The memorial, however, would have been of very
little worth but for the depositions by which it was
accompanied. These were sworn to, not by discarded
servants, but by men of character—men, that is, of reputation.
Thus Captain Manby, on oath, replies to the
allegation of Bidgood that he had seen the Captain kiss
the Princess of Wales:—‘It is a vile and wicked invention,
wholly and absolutely false; it is impossible that he could
ever have seen any such thing, as I never upon any occasion,
or in any situation, had the presumption to salute
her Royal Highness in any such manner, or to take any
such liberty as to offer any such insult to her person.’
To Bidgood’s allegation that the Captain’s frequent
sleeping in the house was a subject of constant conversation
with the servants, Captain Manby again declares upon
oath that he never in his life slept in any house anywhere
that had ever been occupied by her Royal Highness.
‘Never,’ he adds, ‘did anything pass between her Royal
Highness and myself that I should be in any degree unwilling
that all the world should have seen.’
This was conclusive; the deposition of Lawrence, the
great artist, was not less crushing. In answer to a strongly-worded
deposition of Cole, the page, Lawrence declares
on oath that during the time he was painting the portrait
of the Princess at Montague House he never was alone
with her but upon one occasion, and then simply to
answer a question put to him at a moment he was about
to retire with the rest of the company. Like Captain
Manby, he solemnly swears that nothing ever passed
between her Royal Highness and himself which he would
have the least objection that all the world should see and
hear.
One of the female servants had accused Mr. Edmondes,
the surgeon to her Royal Highness’s household, of having
acknowledged circumstances touching the Princess which,
if true, would have proved her to have been the very
basest of women. Mr. Edmondes was said to have made
this statement to a menial servant, after having bled her
Royal Highness. That gentleman, however, denied on oath
that he had ever made such a statement as the one in
question; and perhaps the animus of the inquisitors was
betrayed, on the reiterated denial of Mr. Edmondes, by
a remark to him of Lord Moira. ‘Lord Moira,’ says the
surgeon, ‘with his hands behind him, his head over his
shoulder, his eye directed towards me, with a sort of smile,
observed, “that he could not help thinking there must be
something in the servant’s deposition,” as if he did not
give perfect credence to what I said.’
Mr. Mills, another medical man attached to the
Princess’s household, and also accused by a female servant
of having intimated, in 1802, that her Royal Highness was
in a fair way of becoming a mother, proved that he had
not been in the house since 1801, and declared the accusation
to be a most infamous falsehood. Finally, two of
the menservants at Montague House swore to having seen
Lady Douglas and Bidgood in communication with each
other, that is, meeting and conversing together—a short
time previous to the commission of inquiry being opened.
With respect to the alleged familiarities said to have
taken place between the Princess and Sir Sidney Smith,
the Princess herself remarks upon them, in the memorial
addressed by her to the King, to the effect that ‘if his
visiting frequently at Montague House, both with Sir John
and Lady Douglas, and without them; at luncheon, dinner,
and supper; and staying with the rest of the company
till twelve or one o’clock, or even later; if these were
some of the facts which must give occasion to unfavourable
interpretations, they were facts which she could never
contradict, for they were perfectly true.’ She further
admits that Sir Sidney had paid her morning visits, and
that they had frequently on such occasions been alone.
‘But,’ said the memorial, ‘if suffering a man to be so alone
is evidence of guilt from whence the commissioners can
draw any unfavourable inference, I must leave them to
draw it, for I cannot deny that it has happened frequently,
not only with Sir Sidney Smith, but with many others—gentlemen
who have visited me—tradesmen who have
come for orders—masters whom I have had to instruct
me in painting, music, and English—that I have received
them without any one being by. I never had any idea
that it was wrong thus to receive men of a morning.
There can have been nothing immoral in the thing itself,
and I have understood that it was quite usual for ladies of
rank and character to receive the visits of gentlemen in
the morning, though they might be themselves alone at
the time. But if this is thought improper in England, I
hope every candid mind will make allowance for the different
notions which my foreign education and habits may
have given me.’
Nine weeks elapsed since the Princess had addressed
the above memorial and depositions to the King, and still
no reply reached her, except an intimation through the
Lord Chancellor that his Majesty had read the documents
in question, and had ordered them to be submitted to the
commissioners. She complained, justly enough, at being
left nine weeks without knowledge as to what judgment
the commissioners had formed of the report drawn up in
reply to their sentence, which acquitted her of gross guilt,
yet left her under the weight of an accusation of having
acted in a manner unbecoming her high station, or, indeed,
unbecoming a woman in any station. From such delay, she
said, the world began to infer her guilt, in total ignorance,
as they were, of the real state of the facts. ‘I feel myself,’
she then said, ‘sinking in the estimation of your Majesty’s
subjects, as well as what remains to me of my own family,
into (a state intolerable to a mind conscious of its own
purity and innocence) a state in which my honour appears
at least equivocal, and my virtue is suspected. From this
state I humbly entreat your Majesty to perceive that I
can have no hope of being restored until either your Majesty’s
favourable opinion shall be graciously notified to
the world, by receiving me again into the royal presence,
or until the false disclosures of the facts shall expose the
malice of my accusers, and do away every possible ground
for unfavourable inference and conjecture.’
The Princess then alluded to the fact that the occasion
of assembling the royal family and the King’s subjects ‘in
dutiful and happy commemoration of her Majesty’s birthday’
was then at hand; and she intimated that if the
commissioners were prevented from presenting their final
report before that time, and that consequently, at such a
period, she should be without any knowledge of the King’s
pleasure, the world would inevitably conclude that her
answers to the charges must have proved altogether unsatisfactory,
and the really infamous charges would be
accounted of as too true.
Some months longer, notwithstanding this urgent
appeal, was the Princess kept in suspense. There seemed
a determination existing somewhere that, if her accusers
could not prove her guilt, she should at least not be permitted
to substantiate her innocence. At length, on the
25th of January 1807, the King having referred the entire
matter, with her Royal Highness’s letters, to the cabinet
ministers, the latter delivered themselves of their lengthily
gestated resolution.
The ministers modestly declared themselves an incompetent
tribunal to pronounce judicially a verdict of guilty
or not guilty upon any person, of whatever rank. Their
office was, indeed, more that of grand jurymen called
upon to pronounce whether a charge is based upon
such grounds, however slight, as to justify further proceedings
against the person accused. They acquitted the
Princess by their judgment that further proceedings were
not called for, but, having been requested by the King to
counsel him as to the reply he should render to his
daughter-in-law, the nature of such counsel may be seen
in the royal answer to the Princess’s memorial. The King
exculpated her from the most infamous portion of the
charge brought against her by Lady Douglas, and
declared that no further legal proceedings would be
taken except with a view of punishing that appalling
slanderer. Of the other allegations stated in the preliminary
examinations, the King declared that none of
them would be considered as legally or conclusively
established. But, said the King, and severely imperative
as was this sovereign but, it was not uncalled for—‘In
these examinations, and even in the answer drawn in the
name of the Princess by her legal advisers, there have appeared
circumstances of conduct on the part of the Princess
which his Majesty never could regard but with serious
concern. The elevated rank which the Princess holds in
this country, and the relation in which she stands to his
Majesty and the royal family, must always deeply involve
both the interests of the state and the personal feelings
of his Majesty in the propriety and correctness of her
conduct. And his Majesty cannot, therefore, forbear to
express, in the conclusion of the business, his desire and
expectation that, in future, such a conduct may be observed
by the Princess as may fully justify those marks of
paternal regard and affection which the King always
wishes to show to every part of the royal family.’
There is no doubt that this admonition was seriously
called for. The conduct of the Princess had been that of
an indiscreet, rash, and over-bold woman. At the court
of the two preceding Georges such conduct would only
have been called lively; but the example of Charlotte had
put an end to such vivacity. The Queen Caroline of the
former reign had, in her conversations with Sir Robert
Walpole especially, gone far beyond the gaiety of the
dialogues maintained by the Princess Caroline and Sir
Sidney Smith under George III. But the Princess
was as yet ‘without blemish,’ only in the degree that
Queen Caroline was. She was not delicately minded, and
was defiant of the Court-world when she had been cast
out from it unjustly. The two Carolines were wronged
in much the same degree, but the husband of the one
respected the virtue of the wife whom he insulted; the
husband of the other had no respect for either virtue or
wife; nay, he would have been glad to prove that there
had been a divorce between the two. He had failed to
do so, and the King’s intimation to the Princess that ‘his
Majesty was convinced that it was no longer necessary for
him to decline receiving the Princess into the royal
presence,’ while it was the triumphant justification of the
wife, was the unqualified condemnation of the husband,
beneath whose roof the slander was first uttered by Sir
John Douglas to the Duke of Sussex. And so ended the
‘delicate investigation.’ A history of it was actually
printed, but the copies were bought up and suppressed.
A writer in ‘Notes and Queries’ (No. 128, 1852), says:—
‘Several years ago I was present when the sum of
500l. was paid for a copy of “The Delicate Investigation”
by an officer high in the service of the then government.—H. B.’
The husband of Caroline was at this time suffering
from a double anguish. He was snubbed by his political
friends, and he was what is called deeply in love with
Lady Hertford. The ‘passion’ for this lady was contracted
during some negotiations with her family, entered
upon for the purpose of placing Miss Seymour (a niece of
Lady Hertford’s) under the care of Mrs. Fitzherbert.
When this passion was in progress the Prince aimed at
bringing it to a successful issue by the strangest of love-processes.
He was accustomed, if not actually ill, to make
himself so, in order that he might appear interesting, and
have a claim upon the compassion of the ‘fair,’ who might
otherwise have proved obdurate. With this end in view
he would submit to be bled several times in the night,
and by several operators, when in fact ‘there was so little
necessity for it that different surgeons were introduced for
the purpose unknown to each other, lest they should
object to so unusual a loss of blood.’9 It was reported
that, after the rupture with his second wife, the
Prince sought to renew his intimacy with his first, but
that Mrs. Fitzherbert would not consent till a brief arrived
from Rome assuring her, in answer to a statement of her
case expressly laid before the Court, that the wishes of the
Prince were quite legitimate. This is intended to imply
that the Papal Court actually looked upon a marriage
ceremony performed by a Protestant minister, and uniting
a Roman Catholic with a Protestant, as a valid ceremony!
The assurance was enough for the lady. The old intimacy
was renewed, and inaugurated by a public breakfast, at
her own house, to all the fashionable world, with the
Prince at the head of it! The ‘next eight years’ of her
connections with the Prince she described as supremely
happy years. They were extremely poor, she said, but
‘as merry as crickets,’ and ‘joyously proud, on once returning
to Brighton from London, that they could not
raise 5l. between them.’ So runs this Idyll.
If he was ridiculous in this, he was criminal in other
respects. The pretty child, Miss Seymour, was placed
with Mrs. Fitzherbert, and the Prince became greatly
attached to her. The guardians of the young lady, rightly
or wrongly, thought that a person in the position which
Mrs. Fitzherbert occupied was not exactly a fitting guide
for a motherless girl. The law was had recourse to in
order to obtain the removal of the latter, and ultimately
the matter was brought before the supreme tribunal of
the peers. It is a well-known fact that when this was the
case the Prince, in whose heart there had been lit up a
flame of genuine affection warmer than anything he had
ever felt for his own daughter, became alarmed at the
idea of losing Miss Seymour. He therefore actually
stooped to canvass for the votes of peers in this, a purely
judicial question, which they were called upon to decide
according to law and their consciences. An heir-apparent
to a throne, and so engaged, presented no edifying spectacle.
And it must be remembered that at the time he
was thus suborning witnesses (for to canvass the vote of a
judicial peer was subornation of those whose office it was
to enforce the due administration of the law) he had set
his small affections upon a child, and was living in open
disregard of the seventh commandment, and of that portion
of the tenth which relates to our neighbour’s wife.
He was accusing, through suborned testimony, his own
wife of crimes and sentiments of a similar nature, and with
no better result than to make patent his own infamy, and
to establish nothing worse than thoughtless indiscretion
on the part of the consort whom he had abandoned.
The Princess, who was still suffering from debility consequent
upon an attack of measles, was naturally elated
at the result of the protracted inquiry, and respectfully
requested to be permitted to ‘throw herself at his Majesty’s
feet on the following Monday.’ The monarch reminded
her of her debility, bade her take patience, and promised
to name a day for receiving her, when he was assured of
her being fully restored to health. She waited patiently
for the expression of the King’s pleasure upon the matter,
and was preparing once more for the enjoyment of again
being received by him, when all her hopes were suddenly
annihilated by an intimation from the King that—the
Prince of Wales having stated that he was not satisfied
with the result of the late inquiry—the Prince had placed
the matter in the hands of his legal advisers, and had requested
his Majesty to refrain from taking further steps
in the business for the present; the King consequently
‘considered it incumbent on him to defer naming a day
to the Princess of Wales until the further result of the
Prince’s intention shall have been made known to him.’
This note was dated ‘Windsor Castle, the 10th of February,
1807.’ From that day the Princess looked upon her husband
as assuming the office of public accuser against her.
The Blackheath plot had failed, and the Prince was now
appealing against the decision of judges to whose arbitrament
he had committed the responsible duty of examination
and sentence. What he required was a judgment
unfavourable to his wife; not having succeeded, he sought
for another tribunal, and virtually requested the monarch
and the nation to hold his consort guilty until he might
have the luck or leisure to prove her to be so. Had she
been twice the imprudent woman she was, such conduct
as this on the part of the Prince was sure to make a
popular favourite of the Princess.
The courage of the latter rose, however, as persecution
waxed hotter; and the advisers who now stood by
her, of whom Mr. Perceval was the chief, were doubly
stimulated by political as well as personal feelings. The
Princess continued to address vigorous appeals to the King,
whose intellect was beginning to be too weak to comprehend,
and his eyesight too feeble for him to be able to
read them. Their cry was still for justice; they claimed
for her a public reception at court, and apartments in
some one of the royal palaces, as more befitting her condition.
Intimation, too, was made that if the justice
demanded were not awarded her, a full detail of the whole
affair, taken from the view held of it by the advisers of
the Princess, would be forthwith published. It is said
that the menace touched even Queen Charlotte herself,
who had a dread of ‘The Book,’ as it was emphatically
called, upon which Mr. Perceval was known to be busily
engaged, and which it was feared he was about to publish.
But the temporary triumph of the Princess was at hand.
In March 1807 the Grenville administration, the members
of which were known to be favourites with the Queen
and enemies of the Princess of Wales, retired from office,
and within a month the new ministry advised the King
that the complete innocence of the Princess had been
established, and that it would be well for him to receive
her at court in a manner suitable to her rank and station.
The ministers present at the meeting of council when this
advice was rendered were Lord Chancellor Eldon, Lord
President Camden, Lord Privy Seal Westmoreland, the
Duke of Portland, the Earl of Chatham, the Earl of
Bathurst, Viscount Castlereagh, Lord Mulgrave, Mr. Canning,
and Lord Hawkesbury.
In May 1807 the Princess was accordingly received
at court, at a drawing-room held by Queen Charlotte.
The latter illustrious lady exhibited no demeanour by
which it could be construed that she was happy to see
her daughter-in-law. The utmost honour paid her was
a cold and rigid courtesy. The Queen was again ‘civil,
but stiff.’ The nobility and gentry present were more
expansive in the warmth of their welcome. From them
the Princess received a homage of apparently cordial
respect. Sir Jonah Barrington, in his ‘Personal Sketches
of his own Times,’ gives a rather different description of
the scene, at which he was present. From this account
we collect that the Princess, leaning on the arm of the
Duke of Cumberland, appeared in deep mourning—for
her father. She ‘tottered’ up to the Queen, as if fearing
a repulsive welcome. The reception of her was ‘kind’
on the Queen’s part, ‘and a paroxysm of spirits seemed
to succeed, and mark a strange contrast to the manner of
her entry. I thought it was too sudden and too decisive.
She spoke much and loud, and rather bold. Her circle
was crowded, the presentations numerous, but on the
whole she lost ground in my estimation.’
On the occasion of the King’s birthday on the following
month the Princess again repaired to court. The
welcome resembled that which she had received at her
last visit, but there was an incident at this which rendered
it more interesting, at all events to lookers-on. It was
at this drawing-room that the Prince and Princess of
Wales encountered each other for the last time. They
met in the very centre of the apartment—they bowed,
stood face to face for a moment, exchanged a few words
which no one heard, and then passed on; he, stately as an
iceberg, and as cold—she, with a smile, half mirthful, half
melancholy, as though she rejoiced that she was there in
spite of him, and yet regretted that her visit was not
under happier auspices. The triumph, however, was
complete as far as it went, for she assuredly was present
that day contrary to the inclination of both her husband
and her mother-in-law.
There was one being upon earth whom this Princess
unreservedly loved, and of whom she was deprived this
year—her father, the Duke of Brunswick. He had been
but an indifferent husband and father, but his wife did
not complain, and his daughter Caroline feared and
adored him.
The father of the Princess of Wales, at the age of
seventy-one, perished on the fatal field of Jena, on that
day on which Prussia was made to pay the penalty of
mingled treachery and imbecility. It had been her policy,
throughout the troubles of the time, to save herself at any
other nation’s cost. Such a policy caused her to fall into
the ruin which overcame her at Jena, without securing
the sympathy even of those nations which then fought
against the then common enemy. In this battle the
father of Caroline had done his utmost to win victory for
Prussia, but in vain, and he lost his own life in the attempt.
His ability and courage were all cast away. He had with
him in the camp a very unseemly companion, in the
person of a French actress, who was the friend of his
aide-de-camp, Montjoy. This officer was close to him
when, in the midst of his staff, and at a distance altogether
from where the battle was raging, the old Duke was shot
by a man on foot, ‘who presented his carabine so close
that the ball went in under the left eye (the Duke was on
horseback) and came out above the right, quite through
the upper part of the nose.’ It is Lord Malmesbury who
suggests, without pretending to assert, that ‘Montjoy’s
brother, the Grand Veneur to Prince Max, the pretended
King of Bavaria, and who was with Bonaparte, knew
exactly where the Duke of Brunswick was to be found,
and by a connivance with Montjoy produced the event.’
After the death of the Duke, the Duchess became a
fugitive, for the Duchy of Brunswick was in the possession
of the French. And accordingly the poor Augusta, at
whose birth in St. James’s Palace there had been such
scant ceremony and excess of commotion, came now in
her old age, and after an absence of forty years, to ask a
home at the hearth of the brother who loved her, as she
used to say equivocally, as warmly as he could love anything,
and of the sister-in-law who, as the poor Duchess
knew, regarded her with some dislike, and who was met
with the same amount and quality of affection on the part
of Augusta of Brunswick.
She had, however, little cause to complain, as far as
these relatives were concerned. They received her
cordially; and, though they gave her no home in the
palace in which she was born, they helped her to an
humbler home elsewhere, and occasionally lent it cheerfulness
by paying her a visit. In the meantime the
widowed mother sat at the hearth of her deserted daughter,
and though neither of them had sufficient depth of sentiment
to bring her affliction touchingly home to the other,
each was sufficiently stricken by severity of real sorrow
to render her eloquent upon her own misery, if not
attentive to the twice-told tale of her companion.
Meanwhile, there was pressure of another sort upon
the Princess—a pressure of debt, incurred principally by
the uncertainty with which she had hitherto been supplied
with pecuniary means, and also the want of a controlling
treasurer to give warning when expenditure was exceeding
probable income. Prudent people find such an officer
in themselves; but then the Princess was not a prudent
person, and among the things she least understood was
the management or the worth of money. She was,
however, in 1809, in so embarrassed a situation as to
render an application to the King’s ministers necessary,
when it was found that her debts exceeded 50,000l. A
final arrangement was then come to. The Prince and
Princess signed a deed of separation. The former consented
to pay the debts to the amount of 49,000l.
on condition of being held non-responsible for any
future liabilities incurred by his consort. Her fixed
income was settled at 22,000l. per annum, under the control
of a treasurer, who was to discharge the remaining
liabilities out of the present year’s income, and to guard
against any other occurring in years to come, if he could.
As wide a separation as possible was made between
mother and child. They were happy Saturday afternoons
that the Princess Charlotte was allowed to spend at
Blackheath, where she met the Hon. Miss Wellesley (afterwards
Countess of Westmoreland) and other children, and
partook of childish delights. Under her grandmother
the Queen, at Windsor, she was stiffly disciplined. Once
expressing a wish to be allowed to go and say ‘good-bye’
to a young friend who was about to leave England, Queen
Charlotte remarked ‘it was contrary to princely dignity
to seek after any one.’ Some young girls who had been
allowed to come to Windsor, and were the companions of
the Princess for an occasional day, were not allowed to
grow into familiarity or intimacy. The old Queen’s sour
notice of them to her grand-daughter was: ‘I cannot
taste these young ladies!’ In this cruel way were all the
warm sympathies of a warm-hearted child set at naught.
The relations into which the Prince entered with Lady
Hertford, while the question of the guardianship of Miss
Seymour was pending, led to the ascendency of that lady,
and brought to a final close the intimacy which had
existed between the Prince and Mrs. Fitzherbert. At a
dinner given to Louis XVIII., to which she was invited,
the Prince replied to her inquiry as to where she was to
sit, ‘You know, Madam, you have no place.’ ‘None,
sir,’ she rejoined, ‘but what you are pleased to give me.’
He assigned none, and she kept away. The last morning
she ever saw the Prince was at a soirée at Devonshire
House. The Duchess was conducting her to the Duke’s
apartments, where he was confined with the gout, but
where he received a few old friends. As the two ladies
passed through one of the rooms, Mrs. Fitzherbert saw
the Prince and Lady Hertford in a tête-à-tête conversation,
and nearly fainted under all the impressions which
then rushed upon her mind, but, taking a glass of water,
she recovered and passed on.10
CHAPTER IV. MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS.
Imbecility finally settled on the mind of George III.—Intercourse between
the Princess and her daughter obstructed—The Whigs betrayed by the
Prince—Sketch of the Duchess of Brunswick—The Princess’s Court at
Kensington diminished—Her pleasant dinners there—Lively outbreaks
of the Princess—Her sketches of character—Her indiscretion—An adventure—Description
of the Princess Charlotte—The Princess of Wales’s
demeanour to her mother—Thoughtlessness of the Duchess of Brunswick—Popularity
of the Princess on the wane—Her determination to bring her
wrongs before the public—She becomes more melancholy—An incident—Continued
agitation of the Princess—She becomes querulous—The
poet Campbell presented to her—A humorous fault of orthography—The
Prince and John Kemble.
By the exertions chiefly of Mr. Perceval the Princess
had been declared innocent of the charges brought against
her, had been received at court, and had apartments
assigned her in Kensington Palace, which she occupied
conjointly with her house at Blackheath. The clever
friend of the Princess was high in the popular esteem for
these things, and the public awaited at his hands that
banquet of scandal which he had promised them in the
volume to be called ‘The Book.’ When, however, they
found the work suppressed by its author, and that he was
soon after made Chancellor of the Exchequer, the public
professed to discern here both cause and effect. They
looked upon the elevation of Perceval as the reward of
his literary self-denial. The honourable gentleman cared
little for what the public thought, nor can it be said that,
either as friend of the Princess or servant of the Prince,
he served either of these illustrious persons, or even the
public, unfaithfully.
In 1810, when imbecility settled upon the mind of
George III., Perceval proposed a restricted regency,
but there was less cause for restriction now than there
had been before, and the restriction was only maintained
during one year. It was a period of great distress at
home, and abroad of such costly triumphs as made
victory itself a glory not to be glad over. At this juncture
the Regent acquired some degree of public esteem, and it
was not ill-earned, by declining to receive an increase of
revenue when the people were taxed to an extent such as
no nation had ever before experienced. The public,
however, would fain have seen the Princess of Wales
raised also in a corresponding degree with the Regent, by
some distinctive mark to show that she was the Regent’s
wife.
It was rather an unreasonable expectation, and Mr.
Perceval was rather unreasonably censured for not realising
it. The deed of separation was, if not a cause, at
least an apology or authority, for keeping the Princess in
the condition of a private person. She could claim no
higher title till the period that should make her husband
a king. But this was no reason that she should be irritated
by obstructions thrown in the way of her seeing her
daughter. These obstructions were unworthy of their
author, and failed in their object. They were excused on
the ground that the manners of the mother were not edifying
to the child, but when the two did meet there was
ample evidence of an affection existing between them
stronger than might have been expected at the hands of
a daughter who had certainly not been educated in the
holy faith that her mother was worthy of all the filial
reverence that child could pay her.
In the meantime the Regent had his difficulties. He
who betrayed the Whigs, by whose advice he had been
guided during the time of his father’s sanity, but who had
cast them off after the death of Fox in 1806, now sought
to strengthen his government by the accession of some of
his old friends. The Whigs, however, would not act with
Perceval, and after the assassination of that minister in
1812 they lost, by their arrogance, the opportunity of
forming an independent administration. The boast of
Grey and Grenville that they would ride rough-shod
through Carlton Palace led to the formation of the Liverpool
Tory Ministry, which began its long tenure of office
in June 1812.
During these changes and negotiations the Princess of
Wales remained at Kensington or Blackheath, while her
mother was very indifferently lodged in New Street,
Spring Gardens, in half-furnished, dirty, and comfortless
apartments. Amid filthy lamps on a sideboard, and common
chairs ranged along dingy walls, sat the aged Duchess,
‘a melancholy spectacle of decayed royalty.’ She is
described as having good-nature impressed upon her
features, frankness in her manners, with a rough, abrupt
style of conversation, that rendered her remarkable. She
loved to dwell upon the past, though it was full of melancholy
remembrances; and she is said to have been charitable
to the frailties of the period of her own early days,
but a strict censurer of those of the contemporaries of her
old age.
Up to the period of the King’s illness the Princess of
Wales did not want for friends to attend her dinners and
evening parties. When the only advocate she had among
the royal family virtually died, and the Prince of Wales
became really King, under the title of Regent, the number
of her allies seriously diminished. They had to choose,
as in the days of the first and second George, between
two courts. They declared for that which was most likely
to bring them most profit in galas and gaieties. Still the
diminished court at Kensington was not so dull as that
made up of a few venerable dowagers at the Duchess of
Brunswick’s. The Princess called her mother’s court a
‘Dullification,’ and yawned when she attended it, with
more sincerity than good manners. But freedom from
restraint was ever a delight to her, and she has been
known on a birthday, kept at Kensington, to receive her
congratulating visitors wrapped up in a pink dressing-gown.
It was at a birthday reception that her brother,
the Duke of Brunswick, who afterwards fell at Quatre
Bras, presented her with a splendid compliment and a
worthless ring. It was as much as duchyless duke could
afford. On the other hand, on the same natal day, Queen
Charlotte showed a good-natured memory of the festival
by sending the Princess a very handsome aigrette. The
young Princess Charlotte was with her mother on that
day, and she observed, rather flippantly, that the present
was ‘really pretty well, considering who sent it!’11 The
Princess was at this time a fine girl, somewhat given to
romping, but with the power of assuming a fine air of
dignity when occasion required.
At the pleasant dinners at Kensington, when the servants
were out of the room, and a dumb waiter (all the
better, as Sir Sidney Smith used to say, for being a deaf
waiter also) was at the elbow of every guest, the Princess
would seem to take delight in going over the history of
the past. What little there was good in her, she once remarked
to Count Munster, was owing to the count’s mother,
who had been her governess. She acknowledged
that the natural petulance of her character was rather active
at the period of her marriage. ‘One of the civil
things his Highness said just at first was to find fault with
my shoes; and as I was very young and lively in those
days, I told him to make me a better pair and send them
to me. I brought letters from all the princes and princesses
to him from all the petty courts, and I tossed them
to him and said: “There ——, that’s to prove I’m not an
impostor.”’ She married, she said, entirely to please her
father, for whom she would have made any sacrifice. She
regretted that the union was determined on before the
parties had been introduced to each other. ‘Had I come
over here as a Princess, with my father, on a visit, as Mr.
Pitt once wanted my father to have done, things might
have been very different; but what is done cannot be undone.’12
Her own condition at home, however, was, at
the time, but melancholy. She had there but a sorry life,
between her father’s mistress and her own mother. Civility
to the one always procured her a scolding from the
other. No wonder that she was, as she asserted, ‘tired
of it.’
Her spirit, depressed as it often was during her presence
at Kensington, except on the few occasions when
her daughter was permitted to see her, sometimes experienced
the very liveliest of outbreaks. She thought nothing,
for instance, of slipping through the gardens, with
a single lady-in-waiting, both of them attired, perhaps, in
evening costume, and, crossing Bayswater, stroll through
the fields, and along by the Paddington Canal, at the great
risk of being insulted, or followed by a mob, if recognised.
She thought as little of entering houses that were to let,
and inquiring about the terms. These are but small, yet
they are significant, traits. One of more importance is her
study and perception of character. At Kensington she
kept a book, in which she wrote down, in indifferent English,
but with great boldness and spirit, the characters of
many of the leading persons in England. It is doubtful
whether this book was destroyed, as the writer, when
dying, ordered it to be. If it could be recovered, with the
diary of Queen Charlotte and that kept by poor Sophia
Dorothea, something from them might be culled of more
interest than anything that is yet to be found in the histories
of these three Queens.
The indiscretions of the Princess of Wales were attributed
by her mother to a touch of insanity. On an occasion
when Lord and Lady Redesdale were invited to
meet the Duchess of Brunswick at dinner at the Princess’s
house at Blackheath, they found themselves there long
before any of the rest of the company. For half an hour
the Duchess was alone with them. She had known Lord
Redesdale from her childhood, and she talked with him
unreservedly. Alluding to the eccentricity and imprudence
of her daughter, she added: ‘But her excuse is,
poor thing, that she is not right here,’ putting her hand
to her forehead. Lord Redesdale told this story to Miss
Wynn in 1828, and that lady has recorded it in her
‘Diaries of a Lady of Quality.’
The indiscretion of the Princess was very strongly
marked by her selecting Sundays as the days for her
greatest dinner-parties and her evening concerts. Queen
Charlotte, before her, used to hold drawing-rooms on Sundays,
without any idea of wrong. Since her time, too, the
Countess St. Antonio, and indeed other English ladies,
were accustomed to hold highest festival on this holiest
day. In the case of the Princess, no doubt much prejudice
was excited against her, in consequence of such proceedings.
Yet she was not insensible to public opinion;
and she not only wished to know what was said of her,
but wished to hear it from the lips of the people.
‘One day,’ says the author of the ‘Diary of the Court
and Times of George IV.,’ ‘the Princess set out to walk,
accompanied by myself and one of her ladies, round Kensington
Gardens. At last, being wearied, her Royal Highness
sat down on a bench occupied by two old persons,
and she conversed with them, to my infinite amusement,
they being perfectly ignorant who she was. She asked
them all manner of questions about herself, to which they
replied favourably. Her lady, I observed, was considerably
alarmed, and was obliged to draw her veil over her
face to prevent her betraying herself, and every moment
I was myself afraid that something not so favourable
might be expressed by these good people. Fortunately,
this was not the case, and her Royal Highness walked
away undiscovered, having informed them that if they
would be at such a door, at such an hour, at the palace,
on any day, they would meet with the Princess of Wales,
to see whom they expressed the strongest desire.’ These
off-hand adventures she delighted in, as she did in off-hand
expressions. One day, when the Princess was ready
to set out on a visit to the British Museum, and three of
her gentlemen, Keppel Craven, Gell, and Mercer, stood
awaiting her orders, ‘Now,’ said she, as she stepped into
her carriage, ‘toss up a guinea to know which shall be
the happy two to come with me!’ The trio had not a
guinea amongst them, and the Princess named Mercer and
Keppel Craven.
Except in reading aloud, the Princess does not appear
to have had any intellectual pursuits at Kensington. Her
health too was at times indifferent, but her constitution
was not undermined, mentally and physically, as the
Regent’s was at this period; and she had one joy, which,
however, she seemed to appreciate less than at its true
worth, in the occasional society of the Princess Charlotte.
The daughter is described as having been at this time
‘extremely spread for her age; her bosom full, but finely
shaped; her shoulders large, and her whole person voluptuous.’
There was thus early a prospect of that obese
development which so soon despoiled the attractions of
her mother, and which very early marred the grace and
beauty of the Princess Charlotte.
‘Her skin is white,’ says Lady Charlotte Campbell,
‘but not a transparent white; there is little or no shade
in her face, but her features are very fine. Their expression,
like that of her general demeanour, is noble.
Her feet are rather small, and her hands and arms are
finely moulded. She has a hesitation in her speech,
amounting almost to a stammer—an additional proof, if
any were wanting, of her being her father’s own child;
but in everything she is his own image. Her voice is
flexible and her tones dulcet, except when she laughs;
then it becomes too loud, but is never unmusical.’ Her
Royal Highness exhibited to this observer traits of disposition
which seemed to certify to an existence in her
character of self-will, some caprice, and also obstinacy;
but in a person so kind-hearted, clever, and enthusiastic
as this young Princess these symptoms were susceptible of
being converted into positive virtues; for a sensible,
kindly-natured, and ardent character can sooner be taught
to bend its own will to the liking of others—caprice
becomes fixedness of principle, and obstinacy gives way
to resolution, which is only determinedly maintained on
conviction of its being rightly grounded. The young
heiress to the throne was more gentle in her demeanour
to her mother than the latter was to her parent, the old
Duchess of Brunswick. To her the Princess of Wales was
harder in her demeanour than she was to others. The
Duchess was certainly a mother who had never won her
daughter’s respect, and who did not now know how to
properly estimate her daughter’s sorrows. The Duchess
was not only visited by Queen Charlotte, but she was invited
to dinner by the Regent; and of this last honour
she triumphantly boasted in the presence of that daughter
who was ejected from the Regent’s house. But the poor
‘Lady Augusta’ was as awkward in her remarks in her
old days as she had been in the days of her youth. When
the dismayed circle amid which the invitation was boasted
of observed a silence, which a sensible old lady would
have taken for as severe a comment as could be passed,
she broke the silence by abruptly asking the daughter,
‘Do you think I shall be carried up stairs on my cushion?’
To which the Princess coolly replied: ‘There is no upstairs,
I believe: the apartments are all on one floor.’
‘Oh charming! that is delightful!’ rejoined the Duchess;
and with a few more queries, to which the Princess always
replied with the greatest self-possession and sang-froid, as
though she were not in the least hurt, this strange royal
farce ended.
The brother of the Princess of Wales, if he had not
an unbounded regard for his sister, at least knew what
was due to her and propriety better than his mother.
By his directions the Princess represented to the Duchess
that if she accepted the Prince’s invitation she would
tacitly acknowledge that he was justified in his treatment
of his wife. The old lady, as obstinate as her own grandfather,
George II., was not to be moved. She saw the
matter, she said, in quite another light. She loved her
daughter, would do anything in the world for her, but
certainly she would not give up going to Carlton House.
And in this determination she remained fixed, till, meditating
upon the matter, and conceiving that the invitation
may have been less out of compliment to herself than intended
to draw her into a tacit condemnation of her
daughter, she suddenly declined to go, and with mingled
womanly and especially matronly feeling she invited the
Princess to dine with her, instead.
The Princess of Wales was, undoubtedly, fast losing
the small remnant of popularity among the higher classes
which had hitherto sustained her. As her more noble
friends silently cast her off she filled the void left by
them with persons of inferior birth, and sometimes of
indifferent reputation. Her own immediate attendants
laughed at her, her ways, her pronunciation, and her
opinions. She was indeed a puzzle to them. Sometimes
they found in her a tone of exalted sentiment; at others
she was coarse or frivolous: the ‘tissue of her character’
was made up of the most variegated web that ever went
to the dressing of a woman. Perhaps one of the most
foolish, if not the most unnecessary, of her acts, was an
attempt which she made to sell a portion of her jewels.
It was doubtless intended by way of proof that an application
to parliament for an increased allowance was a
necessity on her part.
She was, however, most intent on bringing forward
the story of her wrongs before the public; and she was
doubtless encouraged in this by a party, some members of
which, without any of the sympathy which they affected
to feel, looked upon her as an admirable tool wherewith
to shape their particular and political ends. In the
meantime the dinner parties at Kensington were of a
joyous and unrestrained character. The Princess had
poets and philosophers at her table when the royal
fugitives from France invented maladies as an excuse for
not visiting her, and she gained by the exchange; but,
strange to say, with a very liberal income, irregularly
paid, perhaps, she was as poor as the poets, and had not
the consolation of philosophy. The house of Drummond
and Co. declined to advance her the poor sum of 500l.,
although she is said to have offered to pay cent. per
cent. for the loan. Probably the stupendous liberality
promised by the would-be borrower rendered the bankers
suspicious.
As she failed to acquire all the public sympathy
which she thought herself entitled to by her condition,
she became at once more melancholy and more recklessly
mirthful. The dinner-parties, beginning late, continued
to sit till dawn. On one of these heavily entertaining
occasions, one of the guests, weary of his amusement,
ventured to hint that morning was at hand. ‘Oh!’
exclaimed the Princess, ‘God, he knows when we may
meet again.’ And then, using her favourite expression,
she added, ‘To tell you God’s truth, when I am happy and
comfortable I would sit on for ever.’ The describer of
this scene says: ‘There was heaviness in the mirth, and
every one seemed to feel it; so they sat on. At last one
rose from the table, many of the guests went away, some
few lingered in the drawing-room, amongst whom I was one.
I was left the last of all. Scarcely had Sir H. Englefield,
Sir William Gell, and Mr. Craven reached the drawing-room,
when a long and protracted roll of thunder echoed
all around, and shook the palace to the very foundations;
a bright light shone into the room, brighter than the
beams of the sun; a violent hissing noise followed, and
some ball of electric fluid, very like that which is represented
on the stage, seemed to fall close to the window
where we were standing. Scarcely had we recovered
the shock, when all the gentlemen, who had gone out,
returned, and Sir H. Englefield informed us that the
sentinel at the door was knocked down, a great portion
of the gravel walk torn up, and every servant and soldier
was terrified. “Oh!” said the Princess, undismayed, but
solemnly, “this forbodes my downfall,” and she shook her
head; then rallying, she desired Sir H. Englefield to take
especial notice of this meteoric phenomenon, and give an
account of it in the “Philosophical Transactions;” which
he did.’13
So passed away her life up to the period when restrictions
were taken off the Regency, and the Prince of Wales
became virtually King. The friends of the Princess in
the House of Commons served her cause with some
dexterity, and seldom made a statement in reference to
her without temporarily reviving some of the half-extinct
sympathy of the general public. Others of her ‘faction,’
as her friends were called, kept her in a state of irritability
and excitement by speaking of publishing her memoirs
in full detail. Some persons, with less pretence to the
name of friends, injured her extremely by statements
affectedly put forward in her behalf. Her agitated condition
of life was still further aggravated by the obstacles
put in her way so as to prevent her seeing her daughter
as often as she desired. She was even bold enough, and
justifiably bold enough under the circumstances, to go
down to Windsor to see the Princess. This audacious
step, as it was considered, was met by a message from the
Regent, through Lord Liverpool, requesting her never to
repeat so uncalled-for an expedition. She promised
obedience, on condition that she should be permitted to
see the Princess once a-week; but otherwise she threatened
a repetition of the visit. Such menaces gratified
those who provoked them. The more they could goad
the Princess of Wales into demonstrations of violent and
vulgar indignation, the more, as they well knew, would
she lose the public esteem. Her nature was too prone
thus to lose sight of dignity and self-possession on being
provoked. The grandeur of endurance was a flight
beyond her ken. She mourned the loss of a wise friend
in Perceval, who was partly lost to her, however, before
his death, as soon as he became minister. There were
reports, too, at this time, probably ill-founded, that she
was to be removed to Hampton Court, the apartments at
Kensington Palace being required for the Princess Charlotte.
This, and the abandonment of her by some of her
old partisans among the nobility, rendered her naturally
querulous. ‘No, no!’ she said, ‘there is no more society
for me in England; for do you think, if Lady Harrowby
and the Duchess of Beaufort, and all of that set, were to
come round to me now, that I would invite them to my
intimacy? Never! They left me without a reason, as
time-servers, and I never can wish for them back again.’14
She felt that she could hold no court in presence of that
of the Regent, and that as long as he lived she must
be patient, and ‘nothing.’ Could she only have been the
former, she perhaps would not have come to be of such
small esteem as that which she ultimately experienced.
The Princess, however, still had some good taste.
She patronised poets in other fashion than that followed
by Sophia Dorothea, who gave them rings; or by Caroline,
who made poor parsons out of poetic ploughmen, like
Duck; or by Charlotte, who gave to the sons of the
Muses little beyond empty praises and smiles that would
not nourish. The Princess of Wales was a great admirer
of Campbell, and in 1812 he was presented to her by his
own ‘chieftain’s fair daughter,’ Lady Charlotte Campbell—a
lady who has etched the doings of her royal mistress
in aqua fortis. The Princess showed her esteem for the
Scottish poet by dancing reels with him in her drawing-room
at Blackheath. Campbell has left his opinion of
her at this time in a letter addressed to a friend. ‘To
say what I think of her, without being bribed by the
smiles of royalty—she is certainly what you would call in
Scotch a fine body; not fine in the English sense of the
word, but she is good-humoured, appears to be very kind-hearted,
is very acute, naïve, and entertaining; the accent
makes her, perhaps, comic.... I heard that she was
coarse and indelicate. I have spent many hours with her
and Lady Charlotte alone, and I can safely say she
showed us no symptoms of that vulgarity attributed to
her.’ An instance of the mistakes, rather than the
peculiarity of pronunciation, which distinguished her, is
given by Dr. Wm. Beattic. He relates that, one day, the
Princess was showing her pleasantly-arranged house to a
noble peer of great celebrity. They were both in the
gallery, where the Princess had recently hung some new
pictures, and to one of these she directed the attention
of her guest. It was his own portrait, and he acknowledged
the honour by a very profound bow. The Princess,
to enhance the value of the compliment, said, ‘You see,
my lord, that I do consider you one of my great household
dogs.’ She meant ‘gods,’ poor lady; but she did terribly
abuse the divinities, and her daughter was ever her
very dear ‘angle.’ These faults of orthography and errors
in pronunciation bring less blame upon her than upon her
mother. That the child of an Englishwoman born should
have been so ignorant was the fault of the Englishwoman,
and not of her child. The sister-in-law of Queen Charlotte
was incapable of instructing her children as that Queen
did, but she might have taught her daughter English by
conversing with her in that language. The latter knew,
however, less of it than she did of French and German;
and when she conversed in these, it was not upon subjects
that were edifying to the future Queen of England or
creditable to herself. Queen Charlotte was far more
particular on the question of correct delivery. In the
case of her husband, Quin had ‘taught the boy to speak;’
and it was the exact propriety of the utterance of Mrs.
Siddons that led to her appointment as reading preceptress
of Queen Charlotte’s daughters.
CHAPTER V. HARSH TRIALS AND PETTY TRIUMPHS.
The Princess again in public—Restricted intercourse between the Princess
and her daughter—Sealed letter addressed by the Princess to the Prince—Published—The
Princess’s appeal to Parliament—Bitterness on both
sides—Meeting of the Princess and her daughter—The Princess at
Vauxhall—Death of the Duchess of Brunswick—Last interview between
the Duke of Brunswick and the Princess—Her depressed spirits—Unnoticed
during the festivities of 1814—Sacrifice made by the Princess—Unnoticed
by the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia—The
Princess at the opera—A scene—Not invited to the great city banquet—Mr.
Whitbread’s advice to the Princess—A freak—Reception of the
Regent in the city—The Princess excluded from the drawing-rooms—Correspondence
between the Queen and the Princess—Her letter to the
Regent—Discussed in the House of Commons.
From the comparative retirement in which the Princess
had lived for a few years she was now, in 1813, again
to issue and appear before the public more like an
athlete on the arena than a suppliant with wrongs to be
redressed.
Her retirement had given, however, much subject for
comment on the part of the public, for censure on the
part of her enemies. The latter still pointed to her habits
of life as forming apology enough for the restrictions set
upon her intercourse with her daughter. The fashion of
opening all her apartments to her visitors at Kensington
was considered indecorous; and the popular tongue
dealt unmeasuredly with her cottage at Bayswater, at
which she was said to have presided at scenes of at least
consummate folly—and folly in such a woman was but
next to serious guilt, and almost as sure to accomplish
her utter ruin.
It is difficult to say positively in what light the
Princess Charlotte looked upon the restrictions which
kept her mother and herself apart. Report accredited
her with being a thorn in the side of Queen Charlotte,
and a continual trouble to the Regent. She is said to
have paid to neither an over-heaped measure of respect,
and she seriously offended both by marring the splendour
of her first ‘drawing-room,’ at which she was to be
presented by the Duchess of York, and which was postponed
because she insisted upon being presented by her
mother.
Early in January a sealed letter was addressed to the
Prince Regent by the Princess of Wales, and forwarded
by Lady Charlotte Campbell, through Lord Liverpool and
Lord Eldon. It was immediately returned unopened.
The letter was sent back as before. It was again returned,
with an intimation that the Prince would not
depart from his determination not to enter into any correspondence.
Under legal advice, it was once more
transmitted, with a demand that the ministers should
submit it to the Prince. Finally, intimation was conveyed
to the Princess that the Regent had become acquainted
with the contents of the letter, but had no reply to
make to it. Upon this the letter was published in a
morning paper. Though addressed to the Regent, it was
evidently intended for the public solely; and its appearance
in the papers excited a wrath in the Prince which
brought upon the Princess much of her subsequent persecution,
and exposed her to considerable present animadversion,
even at the hands of many of her friends.
The letter was long, but it may be substantially described
as containing a protest of the supposed writer’s
innocence; a remonstrance against the restrictions, now
more stringent than ever, which kept her apart from her
daughter; an assertion that such restrictions were injurious
to the latter, and a fatal blow against the honour of the
mother; and finally a stinging criticism upon the secluded
system of education by which her daughter was not
educated, and which was not calculated to develop the
character of the future Queen of Great Britain.
A bomb in the palace could not have created more
excitement than was caused by the appearance of this
letter in the papers. It was met by a refusal to allow
any meeting at all, for the present, between the Princess
Charlotte and her mother, and by an assembling of the
Privy Council, the members of which speedily showed
why they had been called together, by making a report
to the Regent, in which it was stated that the lords of the
council, having read the letter of the Princess, and having
examined the documents connected with the investigation
into the conduct of the Princess in 1806, were decidedly
of opinion that any intercourse between the mother and
daughter should continue to be subject to regulations and
restraint. This report, which was tantamount to a mortal
stab to the reputation of the Princess of Wales, and not
altogether unprovoked by her, was signed by the two
archbishops and all the ministers. The stab was dealt
back as fiercely as it could be by an appeal to the people
through parliament. To this body the Princess, in March,
addressed a letter asserting her innocence, denouncing
the system which pronounced her guilty without letting
her know on what evidence the verdict was founded, and
without allowing her to produce testimony to rebut it;
and, finally, requiring that parliament would authorise a
full and strict investigation, from which she felt that her
honour would issue pre-eminently triumphant. This request
brought on an animated debate upon a motion for
the production of papers connected with the inquiry of
1806, and the evidence adduced thereon. The motion
was lost; but ministers were compelled to acknowledge
that the Princess stood fully acquitted of the charges then
and there brought against her. The assertion made by
Lord Castlereagh, that government had not proceeded
against the degraded and infamous Sir John and Lady
Douglas, because they were reluctant to trouble the world
with the indelicate matters that must be raked up again,
excited shouts of derision. Mr. Whitbread stoutly asserted
that never had woman been so falsely accused or so fully
triumphant; and Mr. Wortley, despite all his respect for
the house of Brunswick, could not help lamenting that
the royal family was the only one in the kingdom that
seemed careless about its own welfare and respectability.
The subject was frequently brought before parliament,
but with no other effect than to show that there was much
exaggerated bitterness of feeling on both sides, and that
the best friends of the Princess were those who were of no
party. Parliament was, at last, but too happy to let the
matter drop. Meanwhile, the publication of the ‘Spirit
of The Book’ did the Princess no good, and was, perhaps,
not intended to have that result. The daughter was now
established at Warwick House, and the Duchess of Leeds
had succeeded as governess to Lady de Clifford, much
to the dissatisfaction of the Princess Charlotte herself,
who asserted that she was old enough to live without
such superintendence. She could not be frightened into
a conviction of the contrary by rude remarks from Lord
Eldon, who also sought to terrify the Princess of Wales
into absolute silence, on the ground that such a course
would more entirely conduce to her own safety; to which
that spirited lady replied that she was under the safeguard
of the British constitution, and had no fears for her own
safety whatever.
That she saw her daughter ‘in spite of them’ was to
her a matter of legitimate triumph. She had been forbidden
to call at Warwick House, but she could not fail
to encounter the Princess Charlotte on the public highways.
This meeting first occurred early in the spring;
the mother espied the daughter’s carriage at a distance,
and ordered her own to be driven rapidly after it. She
was then on Constitution Hill—the Princess was near
Hyde Park—and the pursuer came up with the pursued
near the Serpentine. Each leaned forward from her
own carriage to kiss the other and for several minutes
they remained in deep and, apparently, affectionate conversation—a
crowd the while surrounding them with
ever-ready sympathy.
It was said, however, that in the rarely-permitted
meetings which subsequently took place between the
mother and daughter the former occasionally complained
of the coldness of manner of the latter. The Princess of
Wales was, in fact, not satisfied with an ordinary demonstration
of attachment from any one. She required
enthusiasm—sought and bid for it. When the Regent
was rising into something like popularity by the splendid
entertainments which he gave—partly for the benefit of
trade, and partly because he was pleased to the very top
of his bent when playing the magnificent Amphitryon—the
Princess appeared in public at a fête at Vauxhall,
whither she was escorted by the Duke of Gloucester, on
whose arm she leaned as she passed along, soliciting, as it
were, signs of sympathy at a festival patronised and presided
over by the Duke of York.
In these public scenes she assumed a dignity which
well became her, but which she was as well pleased to lay
aside as soon as the occasion which called for it had passed.
Nothing gave her more gratification, for instance, after
receiving congratulatory addresses from corporations and
other similar bodies, which she did with mingled stateliness
and courtesy, than to not only change her dress of
ceremony for a more ordinary one, but to take off her
stays! The latter odd fashion was not favourable to a
figure which was now far removed from the grace which
had distinguished the Princess in her earlier years.
It can be scarcely said that in this year she lost one
friend more by the death of her mother. The declining
years of the aged Duchess of Brunswick had been years
of sorrow. She had long been a sufferer from confirmed
asthma, and in March 1813 she was attacked by an
epidemic which was fatally prevalent throughout the
metropolis. It was attended by, or rather consisted of,
cough and difficulty of breathing. This attack aggravated
her other sufferings; but, though confined to her bed,
she was not considered in danger when her daughter saw
her for the last time, on the 22nd of March 1813. The
Princess remained with the Duchess several hours, and
took leave without suspecting that she was never again
to see her mother alive. At nine that night the Duchess
was seized with violent spasmodic attacks, under which
she rapidly sunk; and, at seventy-six years of age, the
‘Lady Augusta,’ who was born in St. James’s Palace, died
in a modest lodging-house, and was quietly interred in
Westminster Abbey.
It is due to the Prince Regent to say that on the
occasion of the death of the Duchess of Brunswick he
exhibited becoming and courteous feeling, by suggesting
to the Princess Charlotte that she should pay a visit to
her mother, to condole with her on this bereavement. It
was suggested that after the funeral would be the most
appropriate season for such a visit; but the Princess,
with quicker wit or more ready sympathy, repaired at
once to her mother’s residence, and thus afforded her a
gratification which was probably the more appreciated
as it was the less expected. This was more sympathy
than she received at the hands of some persons, who
probably conceived that by behaving rudely to her they
should be paying court to a higher power. Thus, in the
course of the summer the Princess went to sup at Mr.
Angerstein’s. Lord and Lady Buckinghamshire were there.
‘The latter behaved very rudely, and went away immediately
after the Princess arrived. Whatever her
principles, political or moral, may be, I think,’ says Lady
Charlotte Campbell, who tells the anecdote, ‘that making
a curtsy to the person invested with the rank of Princess
of Wales would be much better taste and more like a
lady than turning her back and hurrying out of the
room.’
In addition to her mother, the Princess may be said
to have also lost her brother this year; for though the
gallant Duke of Brunswick did not fall at Quatre Bras
till 1815, she never saw him again but for a brief
moment on his departure from this country, two years
previously. The Duke was simply a soldier and nothing
more, except that he was a gallant one. He had a few
relics with him in this country of the treasures of
Brunswick, such as old books and antique gems, the
value of neither of which did he in the least understand.
His habits were of the simplest, except in the fashionable
dissipation of the times; but if he was the slave of some
pleasures, he was by no means the servant of luxury.
He slept on a thin mattress placed on an iron frame, and
covered by a single sheet. He had enjoyed sweeter sleep
on it, he used to say, than many who lay upon the softest
down.
When he went to take leave of his sister he was in
the highest spirits, from having at last the prospect of an
active career in arms. The actor and the scene are well-described
by the author of ‘The Diary:’—‘There never
was a man so altered by the hope of glory. His stature
seemed to dilate, and his eyes were animated with a fire
and an expression of grandeur and delight which
astonished me. I could not help thinking the Princess
did not receive him with the warmth she ought to have
done. He detailed to her the whole of the conversation
he had with the ministers, the Prince Regent, &c. He
mimicked them all admirably, particularly Lord Castlereagh—so
well as to make us all laugh; and he gave the
substance of what had passed between himself and those
persons with admirable precision, in a kind of question
and answer colloquy that was quite dramatic. I was
astonished, for I had never seen any person so changed
by circumstance. He really looked a hero. The
Princess heard all that he said in a kind of sullen silence,
while the tears were in several of the bystanders’
eyes. At length the Duke of Brunswick said: “The
ministers refused me all assistance; they would promise
me neither money nor arms. But I care not. I will go
to Hamburg. I hear that there are some brave young
men there, who await my coming, and if I have only my
orders from the Prince Regent to act, I will go without
either money or arms, and gain both.” “Perfectly
right!” replied the Princess, with something like enthusiasm
in her voice and manners. “How did Bonaparte
conquer the greater part of Europe?” the Duke
continued: “he had neither money nor arms, but he
took them; and if he did that, why should not I, who
have so much more just a cause to defend?” The Duke
then proceeded to state how the Regent and the ministers
were all at variance, and how he had obtained from the
former an order he could not obtain from the ministers.
After some further conversation, he took leave of his
sister. She did not embrace him. He held out his hand
to me kindly, and named me familiarly. I felt a wish to
express something of the kindly feeling I felt towards
him: but, I know not why, in her presence, who ought to
have felt so much more and who seemed to feel so little,
I felt chilled, and remained silent. I have often thought
of that moment since with regret. When the Duke was
fairly gone, however, she shed a few tears, and said
emphatically, “I shall never see him more!”’
The early part of 1814 was spent by the Princess in
lowness of spirit and littleness of pursuits. Miss Berry
speaks of the mournful ‘house-warming’ by which the
Princess inaugurated her tenancy some time before:—On
the 1st of December she writes, ‘We both of us
(the two sisters) dined with the Princess in Connaught
Place, the first time she had given a dinner in her new
home, which is still all upside down. The company consisted
only of Gell and Craven, who arrived in town to-day,
Lady C. Campbell and Lady C. Lindsay in waiting.
The Princess was particularly melancholy; wept when
speaking to me of herself, confessed herself entirely overwhelmed
with her situation and her prospects for the
future. On the 30th the aspect was not gay. Dined
at the Princess’s. There were only Mr. Craven, Little
Willy (Austin) and a young playfellow of his, and Lady
Orme. These dinners become insupportable. The
dulness makes me almost ill in the course of a long
evening, only interrupted by the Princess’s singing with
Mr. Craven, which is a screeching of which no idea can
be formed without hearing it.’ The Princess was now
established in Connaught Place, near the Edgeware Road;
the mansion is that now numbered ‘7’ Connaught Place.
She seldom saw her daughter, and did not consult her
own dignity by taking ‘strolls’ across the fields in the
direction of the canal, or by ridiculing the Regent at her
own dinner-table. It was this sort of conduct which
made people account of her as being worse than she
really was. For London, it was a year of triumphs and
congratulations, but she shared in neither; it was the
year of sovereigns, when European potentates crowded
our streets, and passed by the house of the Princess without
inquiring for her. In June, mortification was heaped
upon her. She had an undoubted right to be present at
the drawing-rooms held by the Queen; but her Majesty,
who had announced her intention to hold two in honour of
the foreign monarchs then in England, announced to the
Princess that she would not be permitted to be present
at either. No other ground for this expulsion was
alleged than the Regent’s will. His Royal Highness had
declared that never again would he meet her, either in
public or in private, and consequently her appearance on
the occasions in question could not be permitted for a
moment. She had prepared a letter of indignant remonstrance,
but Mr. Whitbread counselled her not to
forward it, but rather to write one in a submissive tone,
accepting with humility the ill-treatment to which she
was thus subjected. This counsel is said to have given
considerable discontent to Mr. Brougham, who was inclined
to make assertion of her right to be present, and
to go even further, if that were necessary.
She made, however, greater sacrifices than that of
refraining from appearing at court on a gala day. Her
finances had become embarrassed, in spite of the presence of
a controlling treasurer, and her friends made application to
parliament on her behalf. The Regent had caused it to be
understood that he did not wish to curtail her personal
comforts or cause her any pecuniary embarrassment, and
Lord Castlereagh came down to the house with a proposition
of settling on her 50,000l. per annum. Of her
own will she surrendered 15,000l. of this sum, and it was
agreed that the revenue of 35,000l. per annum should
be awarded to the ‘Princess of Wales.’ The sacrifice
made by the Princess was gracefully noticed in the House
by Mr. Whitbread, at whose suggestion it is said to have
been cordially entered into, the Princess having, as he
said, a full sense of the burthens that lay heavy on the
nation. Such conduct ought to have won for her a little
regard, and a visit from that King of Prussia in defence
of whose dominions her father had not long before laid
down his life, a stout old soldier, dying in his harness, like
a knight of the olden time.
She sent her chamberlain to welcome the King of
Prussia on his arrival in this country, and the King
acknowledged the courtesy by sending his chamberlain
to return thanks for it. The same stiff intercourse passed
with the other sovereigns and princes; but it is said
that Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt was especially charged by the
Prince to request the Russian Emperor Alexander to
abstain from visiting the Princess of Wales! They saw
each other, nevertheless, though under different circumstances
from those which the Princess herself could have
desired. The incidents of this eventful evening are
thus described by one of the ladies-in-waiting on the
Princess:—‘There came a note from Mr. Whitbread
advising her at what hour she should go to the opera,
and telling her that the Emperor was to be at eleven
o’clock at the Institution, which was to be lighted up for
him to see the pictures. All this advice tormented the
Princess, and I do not wonder that she sometimes loses
patience. No child was ever more thwarted and controlled
than she is; and yet she often contrives to do
herself mischief, in spite of all the care that is taken of
her. When we arrived at the opera, to the Princess’s
and all her attendants’ infinite surprise, we saw the
Regent placed between the Emperor and the King of
Prussia, and all the minor princes in a box to the right.
‘God save the King’ was performing when the Princess
entered; and, consequently, she did not sit down. I was
behind, and of course I could not see the house very
distinctly, but I saw the Regent was at that time standing,
applauding the Grassini. As soon as the air was over,
the whole pit turned round to the Princess’s box and
applauded her. We who were in attendance on her
Royal Highness entreated her to rise and make a curtsy,
but she sat immoveable; and, at last, turning round, she
said to Lady ——: “My dear, Punch’s wife is nobody
when Punch is present.” We all laughed, but still
thought it wrong not to acknowledge the compliment
paid her; but she was right, as the sequel will prove.
“We shall be hissed,” said Sir W. Gell. “No, no,” again
replied the Princess, with infinite good humour; “I know
my business better than to take the morsel out of my
husband’s mouth. I am not to seem to know that the
applause is meant for me till they call my name.” The
Prince seemed to verify her words, for he got up and
bowed to the audience. This was construed into a bow
to the Princess, most unfortunately; I say most unfortunately,
because she has been blamed for not returning it.
But I, who was an eye-witness of the circumstance, knew
that the Princess acted just as she ought to have done.
The fact was that the Prince took the applause to himself,
and his friends, to save him from the imputation of this
ridiculous vanity, chose to say that he did the most beautiful
and elegant thing in the world, and bowed to his wife!
When the opera was finished, the Prince and his supporters
were applauded, but not enthusiastically, and scarcely had
his Royal Highness left the box when the people called for
the Princess, and gave her a very warm applause. She
then went forward and made three curtsies, and hastily
withdrew.’15 The semi-ovation in the house was followed
by a demonstration something more noisy in the streets.
The Princess’s charioteer was unable to drive through the
crowd of vehicles in Charles Street. The carriage was
therefore, ‘backed’ and driven round by Carlton House.
In front of this royal residence the mob surrounded her
Royal Highness, saluting her with loud and reiterated
shouts. The ladies who were accompanying her were
more alarmed at the popular demonstration than she was.
The people opened the carriage door, insisted on shaking
hands with her, and asked if they should burn Carlton
House. ‘No, my good people,’ was her reply; ‘be quite
quiet, let me pass, and go home to your beds.’ They
then allowed the carriage to pass on its way, as she
desired, but they continued following it as long as they had
strength, swiftness, and breath enough, shouting the while
the favourite cry, ‘The Princess of Wales for ever!’
She was pleased, says the original narrator of this scene,
at this demonstration of feeling in her favour, and she
never showed so much dignity or looked so well, we are
told, as she did under this excitement. She was depressed
in spirits, however, the next day, for the same
people crowded the parks, and flung those strong salutes
which so offended the delicate Casca, at the company of
foreign sovereigns and princes who were riding in the
ring, and who refused to pay her the scant courtesy of a
visit in the house from which she could hear the loud
huzzas that greeted them as they passed by it.
She lived on, feverishly, and in continually disappointed
hope that the Emperor of Russia would yet offer
her the poor homage of a morning call. In this hope she
was encouraged by some of her ladies-in-waiting, who
told her that they had heard, from good authority, it was
the imperial intention to pay a formal visit to Kensington
on a day named. With no better official authority than
this to trust to she sat up dressed, ready for the reception
of the potentate whose presence, she hoped, would lend
her some of the prestige of respectability which she fancied
herself losing by his prolonged absence. And still he
came not. On the other hand, she met with disappointment
even more bitter. Her city friends did not even
render her the courtesy of forwarding an invitation to the
grand banquet at which they were about to regale the
sovereigns and the retinue of princes in their train. Not
that they entirely forgot her, but then their remembrance
of her was rather insulting than flattering. Alderman
Wood, for instance, was absurd enough to offer her a
window in Cheapside, from which she might view the
procession of monarchs and minor potentates on their way
to dine with the city king! This vexed her sorely, as so
emphatically ‘rude’ a proceeding was likely to do. The
Princess would have less felt her exclusion from an entertainment
in the city where her friends abounded had it
been a festival from which ladies were altogether excluded.
Her ‘sensibility’ was wounded at hearing that the Duchess
of Oldenburg, the sister of the Emperor Alexander,
was to be present, with four other ladies. ‘This was
galling,’ says Lady Charlotte Campbell in her ‘Diary,’
and the Princess felt her own particular exclusion from
this fête given by the city very hard to bear, as she had
considered the city folks her friends. They, however,
were not to blame, as these royal ladies were self-invited
or invited by the Regent, and the Princess’s friends had
not time to call a council and discuss the matter. Immediately
after this bitter pill came another from Mr. Whitbread,
recommending her, upon no account, to go to
Drury Lane on Thursday evening, after having, a few
days before, desired her to go. ‘You see,’ said the Princess
to one of her ladies; ‘you see, my dear, how I am
plagued;’ and, although she mastered her resentment, the
tears came into her eyes. ‘It is not,’ she said, ‘the loss
of the amusement which I regret, but being treated like
a child and made the puppet of a party. What does it
signify whether I come in before or after the Regent, or
whether I am applauded in his hearing or not; that is all
for the gratification of the party, not for my gratification;
’tis of no consequence to the Princess, but to Mr. Whitbread;
and that’s the way things go, and always will till
I can leave this vile country.’
Wonderfully elastic, however, were the spirits of the
Princess, and at dinner, on the day when her disappointment
drew tears from her eyes, she entertained a large
party with some grace and more gaiety. The question
of her being present at the theatre on the following
Thursday was discussed, and a baronet present, whom the
authoress of the ‘Diary’ partially veils under the initials
of Sir J— B—, insisted that, unless Mr. Whitbread gave
some very strong reasons to the contrary, the Princess
would do right in going. ‘But I fancy,’ said Sir John,
‘he has some good reasons, and then she must yield.
Gad!’ he added to a neighbour at table, ‘if I were she,
and Whitbread didn’t please me, I would send for Castlereagh,
and every one of them, till I found one that did.
To tell you the truth, I am sorry the Princess ever threw
herself into the hands of Whitbread—it is not the staff on
which the royalties should lean.’—‘Ah!’ replied the
baronet’s neighbour, ‘but at the moment he stepped forth
her champion and deliverer, who was there that would
have done as much?’
The sequel is too characteristic and singular to be
passed over. The Princess was sometimes more vigorous
than refined in her expressions, and this less from coarseness
than ignorance of the value and sound of English
terms. Thus, when a letter arrived from Mr. Whitbread,
during this very dinner, intimating to her that there was
a box reserved for her if she strongly desired to be present
at the theatre when the foreign potentates were to
appear there, but at the same time strongly urging her
to refrain from being present, she exclaimed, after despatching
a lady to request Mr. Whitbread to come to her
immediately, ‘If he gives me good reasons I will submit;
but if he does not, d—n me, den I go!’ ‘Those
were her words, at which I could not help smiling,’ says
the authoress of the ‘Diary,’ ‘but she was in no mind to
smile, so I concealed the impulse I felt to laugh.’
When Mr. Whitbread waited on the Princess she received
him rather coolly, and listened silently to his enumeration
of the persons whose opinion it was that she
should not appear at Drury Lane. He said that Mr.
Tierney, Mr. Brougham, and Lord Sefton were of opinion
that, however much the Princess might be applauded, the
public would say it was at the instigation of Mr. Whitbread,
and was not the spontaneous feeling of the people;
that the more she was applauded, the more they would
say so, and that if, on the contrary, a strong party of the
Prince Regent’s friends and paid hirelings were there, and
that one voice of disapprobation were heard, it might do
her considerable harm. ‘Besides,’ continued Mr. Whitbread,
‘as the great question about an establishment for
your Royal Highness comes on to-morrow, I think it is of
the utmost importance that no one should be able to cast
any invidious observation about your forcing yourself on
the public, or seeming to defy your Royal Highness’s husband.’
In fine, the Princess was overruled.
In the midst of her disappointments she was enlivened
by renewed hopes of a visit from the Emperor of Russia,
whose expressed intention to that effect was said to have
given considerable uneasiness to the Regent. Meanwhile,
the Princess found solace in various ways—and not always
in the most commendable, if we are to put implicit truth
in the following account of a freak, which seems more like
a ‘freedom’ of the ladies at the Court of Charles II.
than a frolic of more modern and less lively times. Such a
story is best told in the words of a witness—Lady Charlotte
Campbell.
‘To amuse herself is as necessary to her Royal Highness
as meat and drink, and she made Mr. Craven and
Sir W. Gell and myself promise to go with her to the
masquerade. She is to go out at her back door, on the
Uxbridge (Bayswater) road, of which “no person under
Heaven” (her curious phraseology) has a key but her royal
self, and we are to be in readiness to escort her Royal
Highness in a hackney-coach to the Albany, where we are
to dress. What a mad scheme at such a moment, and
without any strong motive either to run the risk! I
looked grave when she proposed this amusement; but I
knew I had only to obey. I thought of it all night with
fear and trembling.’ In the supplementary matter to the
‘Diary’ we have the following detail as the ‘curious
story respecting this masquerade’:—‘The Princess,’ says
the editor, apparently, ‘it was related to me by undoubted
authority, would go to the masquerade, and, with a kind of
girlish folly, she enjoyed the idea of making a grand mystery
about it, which was quite unnecessary. The Duchess
of York frequently went to similar amusements incognita,
attended only by a friend or two, and nobody found fault
with her Royal Highness. The Princess might have done
the same; but no!—the fun, in her estimation, consisted
in doing the thing in the most ridiculous way possible.
So she made two of the ladies privy to her schemes; and
the programme of the revel was that her Royal Highness
should go down her back staircase with one of her ladies,
while the cavaliers waited at a private door which led into
the street, and then the partie quarée was to proceed on
foot to the Albany, where more ladies met her Royal Highness,
and where the change of dress was to be made. All
of this actually took place; and Lady —— told me she
never was so frightened in her life as when she found
herself at the bottom of Oxford Street, at twelve at night,
on her cavalier’s arm, and seeing her Royal Highness rolling
on before her. It was a sensation, she told me, betwixt
laughing and crying, that she should never forget.
The idea that the Princess might be recognised, and of
course mobbed, and then the subsequent consequences,
which would have been so fatal to her Royal Highness,
were all so distressing that the party of pleasure was one
of real pain to her. This mad prank, Lady —— told me,
passed off without discovery, and certainly without any
impropriety whatever, except that which existed in the
folly of the thing itself. It was similar imprudences to
this which were so fatal to the Princess’s reputation.’
And no wonder, if indeed these stories, as alleged, are
true in their details, or are founded on truth.
It was a time when the mob was accustomed to speak
pretty plainly. What a contrast is this pedestrian ramble
by night, to dress for Mrs. Chichester’s masquerade, to
the state procession of the Regent into the city, where he
twice dined—once at an entertainment given by the
merchants, and once at a banquet given by the lord mayor
and corporation! On the latter occasion especially his
passage from Temple Bar nearly to the dinner-table itself
was assailed by most uncomplimentary vociferations on
the part of the populace. Their most general cry was,
‘Where’s your wife?’—and that portion of the mob which
apparently consisted of women was loudest in its unsavoury
exclamations against the Vicegerent of the kingdom.
He dined with what appetite he might, and he
made the Lord Mayor (Domville), according to ancient
custom when kings sat at the board of a first magistrate,
a baronet; but he registered a vow, which he never
broke, that never again would he condescend to be a
guest among citizens to whose table he could not pass
without running the gauntlet through the scourge of vile
tongues that attacked him on his way. His mother,
Queen Charlotte, did subsequently honour a lord mayor
with her presence; but at her, too, the loud popular
tongue wagged so insolently that the royal lady, although
she courageously concealed her alarm, became indisposed
on her return home, where she was first seized with those
cruel spasmodic attacks which ultimately overcame her
strength and surrendered her to death.
But the way in which the populace resented on the
head of the Prince his conduct to his wife was but small
consolation to the latter for the disappointment and insults
which she experienced at the hands of her persecutors. She
may be said to have been literally ejected from court.
She was not allowed to present her own daughter, although
that daughter had declared she would be presented by
her mother or by nobody. It was not enough either that
the foreign sovereigns and great captains for or with
whom her father had fought and shed his blood—it was not
enough that these should be induced to turn away from
the house where dwelt a lady who, through her father, at
all events, had some claims upon such small courtesy—but
the determination that she should not meet them at
court was more insulting still. The Queen thought she
had skilfully provided against every possible emergency,
when the two drawing-rooms were announced as about to
be held in 1814. It was doubtless intended, at first, not
to exclude the Princess from both, but simply to prevent
her from being present at the one to be graced by the
Regent and his imperial and royal guests. But the Regent
himself was determined that his consort should not be
permitted to appear at either. He addressed a letter to
his mother, in which he modestly intimated that her court
would be no court without him; that he should attend
both drawing-rooms to lend them greater lustre (almost
as much was expressed in words); and that, as he had
resolved never to encounter his wife, it was of course
necessary that she should stay away. The Queen accepted
the conclusion as logically arrived at; and to the dignified
letters addressed to her by the Princess—letters which
would have been as touching as they were dignified had
they been of her own inditing, and not the vicarious sentiments
of her friends—the Queen addressed now taunting,
now contemptuous replies. The spirit of them was, in a
bitter insinuation, that though the commission which had
examined into her conduct had pronounced her free from
guilt, her husband would account of her as still guilty,
and the court would hold her as one convicted. In this
correspondence ‘Caroline P.’ shines with more lustre
than ‘Charlotte R.’ The latter appears so to have hated
the former as to be glad of the opportunity to insinuate
that she was infamous.
But ‘Caroline’ turned from exchanging sharp notes
with ‘Charlotte’ to addressing her husband. He might,
she said, possibly refuse to read the letter, but the world
must know that she had written it. In this communication
she states she would have exercised her right of
appearing at the drawing-room had she not been ‘restrained
by motives of personal consideration towards her
Majesty.’ She protests against the insult, appeals to her
acquittal, to her restoration thereupon by the King to the
full enjoyment of her rank in his court, and she adds:
‘Since his Majesty’s lamented illness, I have demanded,
in the face of parliament and the country, to be proved
guilty, or to be treated as innocent. I will not submit to
be treated as guilty.’ There is something, too, of the
taunting style which the Queen could manage with so
much effect in the succeeding passage. The Prince had
vowed that never again would he meet her, either in
public or in private. ‘Can your Royal Highness,’ she
asks, ‘have contemplated the full extent of your declaration?...
Occasions may arrive (one, I trust, is far
distant) when I must appear in public, and your Royal
Highness must be present also.... Has your Royal
Highness forgotten the approaching marriage of our
daughter, and the possibility of our coronation.’...
The illustrious heir of the House of Orange had announced
himself to her, she said, as her future son-in-law; and
then she adds, coupling the presence of the Orange Prince
with that of the illustrious strangers in the metropolis:
‘This season your Royal Highness has chosen for treating
me with fresh and unprovoked indignity; and of all his
Majesty’s subjects I alone am prevented, by your Royal
Highness, from appearing in my place to partake of the
general joy, and am deprived of the indulgence in those
feelings of pride and affection permitted to every mother
but me.’ It was possible, as the writer remarked, that
this letter was never read to the exalted individual to
whom it was addressed. It is certain that the letter was
not thought worthy of notice. But the presumed writer
was determined that, escaping the courteous notice of her
husband, it should not escape the more general notice of
the world. She accordingly sent copies of her correspondence
with the Queen and one of the correspondence
of the latter with the Prince to the House of Commons,
with an expression of her fears that there were ‘ultimate
objects in view pregnant with danger to the security of
the succession and the domestic peace of the realm.’
This communication raised a discussion, and Mr.
Methuen proposed an address to the Prince, requesting
him to acquaint the house by whose advice he had determined
never to meet the Princess. The proposition, however,
was withdrawn. Mr. Bathurst, the only government
advocate, stated that no imputation was intended against
the character of the Princess. ‘The charges of guilt,’
he admitted, ‘had been irresistibly refuted at a former
period.’ The so-called exclusion from court, he said,
simply resolved itself into the non-invitation of the
Princess to a court festival—nothing more. But, as Mr.
Whitbread subsequently remarked, ‘such non-invitation
was an infliction worse than loss of life: it is loss of
reputation, blasting to her character, fatal to her fame.’
The government thought to pacify the Princess by holding
out to her the prospect of an increase of income; but
her friends in parliament asserted that she would scorn
to barter her rights for an increased income, or to allow
her silence to be purchased in exchange for an adequate
provision.
CHAPTER VI. A DOUBLE FLIGHT.
The Prince of Orange proposes to the Princess Charlotte—His suit declined—Dr.
Parr—A new household appointed for the Princess Charlotte—Her
astonishment and immediate flight—Alarm and pursuit—Princess
Charlotte removed to Cranbourne Lodge—The Princess of Wales determines
to leave England—Her departure from Worthing—The Regent’s
continued hatred of her.
Among the refugees of exalted rank whom revolution and
the fortunes of war had driven to seek an asylum in
England, the members of the family of the Stadtholder of
Holland were the most conspicuous. The eldest son of
this noble family became almost an Englishman by education
and habit, and Oxford yet reckons him with pride
among the honoured of her alumni.
As revolution and the fortunes of war had brought
the family hither, so a happy turn in the same took them
home, and restored them to a country which had now
become for them a kingdom. At the peace of 1814 the
Prince of Orange once more came to England, not as a
refugee, but a visitor and suitor. The heir to a Dutch
throne came to sue for the hand of the heiress to the
Crown of Great Britain, and his suit was powerfully
backed by the sanction of the heiress’s father. Her
mother gave no such sanction, nor was she, indeed, asked
for any. Most important of all, the young lady thus
wooed did not at all sanction the proceeding. Of all the
episodes of the season there was none more stirring than
this.
It was said that the Regent himself had procured the
previous admission of the suitor into Warwick House,
under the feigned name of the Chevalier de St. George,
but that the Princess would not receive him. In this
refusal she was supposed to be supported by her mother,
and to act under the advice of the Duchess of Oldenburgh,
who already had in view a humbler and, as it
turned out, a luckier aspirant for the hand of the
heiress. Meanwhile, all England agreed to approve of
the match, and chose to look upon the union as a
thing settled. The ballad-singers made the streets re-echo
with singing ‘Orange Boven,’ and Irish wits accused
her Royal Highness of holding an Orange Lodge.
The Regent had hated and thwarted the Princess from
her birth. Her death would have been no grief to him,
if he could have divorced her mother. The next best
thing was to be rid of the daughter. Accordingly her
father had this match at heart, and longed to see it concluded.
The Princess allowed herself to be handed to
her carriage by the princely wooer from the dykes, and
granted him more than one interview. It soon became
evident that they were not agreed. The Princess pleaded
her youth, her love of her country, and her desire to be
more intimately acquainted with the latter and with its
laws, history, and constitution, before she should surrender
herself to the cares and duties of the married state.
The Prince of Orange insisted, as far as lover dared, that
his wife must necessarily reside with him in Holland.
The prospect made the Princess shudder; but it remarkably
suited the wishes of her sire, whose most ardent
desire was to place as wide a distance as possible between
the daughter and her mother. The Prince of Orange had
made no secret of his desire that, in the event of his marriage
with the Princess, her mother should take up no
permanent residence in Holland. This desire—not over
mildly expressed—had, perhaps, the most to do with
rendering the union impossible. The Princess, indeed,
was not inclined towards the Prince, and would not willingly
have left the country of her birth; but to her warm
friends, at least, she declared that, in the present critical
situation of the Princess of Wales, she would not abandon
her mother. The latter was touched; but it was just the
moment when she was most strongly possessed by a desire
to go abroad, and she thought that this desire might be
more speedily realised if her daughter were married than
if she remained single. She was on the whole rather
disappointed than otherwise—except that the breaking
off of the match was an annoyance to the Regent, and that
was some consolation, at all events. How the match was
broken off is thus told in the ‘Brief Memoirs of the
Princess Charlotte’:—
‘The Princess Charlotte resented as a great mark of
neglect that she was not invited to any of the entertainments
given to the Allied Sovereigns, and was the more
sore because the Prince of Orange went everywhere and
would make no effort to vindicate her claims. The Regent
had lost none of his anxiety to keep her out of sight, and
the Prince did not choose to provoke the displeasure of
the father by fighting the battles of the daughter. The
same divergence in their views broke out when she spoke
of her mother, and said that on her account it would be
inexpedient that she should leave England for some time
after her marriage, that when she had a house of her own
it must be open equally to both her parents, and that as
the child of both she must ignore all differences between
them. The Prince of Orange feared the Regent and cared
nothing for the Princess of Wales, who had always been
hostile to the marriage, and the reasons urged by the
Princess Charlotte for stopping in England were arguments
to him for getting away from disagreeable complications.
He combated her resolution, and said that he
had been willing to stand by her in getting the article
which secured her freedom inserted in the marriage treaty,
but did not suppose that she would refuse altogether to
go abroad with him, and that if this was her intention
their respective duties were irreconcilable and their marriage
impossible. A discussion ensued, and common
every-day squabbles occurred to exasperate the dispute.
The Princess Charlotte wanted the Prince of Orange to
ride with her in the riding-house. He started objections,
and she reproached him, till, annoyed at her vehemence
and pertinacity, he left her to recover her temper. The
climax had come, and in the evening she wrote peremptorily
to say that their engagement must cease. Her
first note was dashed off in a fit of temper, and a friend
who was with her, and whom she asked to light the candle
for her to seal it, said, ‘I will not hold the candle to any
such thing.’ The Princess consented to pause before she
despatched her note, and the result of her reflection was
the following decisive dismissal:—
‘Princess Charlotte to the Prince of Orange.
‘June 16, 1814: Warwick House.
‘After reconsidering, according to your wishes, the
conversation that passed between us this morning, I am
still of opinion the duties and affection that naturally bind
us to our respective countries render our marriage incompatible,
not only from motives of policy but domestic
happiness. From recent circumstances that have occurred,
I am fully convinced that my interest is materially
connected with that of my mother, and that my residence
out of this kingdom would be equally prejudicial to her
interest as to my own. As I can never forget the maternal
claims she has upon my duty and attachment, I am
equally aware of the claims your country has on you.
It was this consideration, added to the design I had of
complying with your wishes, that induced me some time
ago to agree to accompany you to Holland, if I obtained
satisfactory securities of having it in my power to return.
Since that time the many unforeseen events that have occurred,
particularly those regarding the Princess, make
me feel it impossible to quit England at present, or to
enter into any engagements leading to it at a future time.
After what has passed upon this subject this morning
between us (which was much too conclusive to require
further explanation), I must consider our engagement
from this moment to be totally and for ever at an end. I
leave the explanation of this affair to be made by you to
the Prince in whatever manner is most agreeable to you,
trusting it entirely to your honour, of which I have never
for a moment doubted. I cannot conclude without expressing
the sincere concern I feel in being the cause of
giving you pain, which feeling is, however, lessened in a
degree by the hope I stand acquitted in your eyes of
having acted dishonourably by you in the case of this
business, or of having ever raised false hopes in your
mind with respect to my consenting to a residence abroad.
You must recollect in a letter from me, in answer to yours
of May 3, that I told you it was impossible for me to give
any promise on that subject, as it must totally depend
upon circumstances. It only remains for me to entreat
you to accept my sincerest and best wishes for your happiness,
and to express the kindness and interest I shall
always feel towards you.
‘Charlotte.’
Meanwhile, the dinners at Connaught House and the
little parties at Blackheath continued as usual. If a great
deal of frivolity were present at them, it cannot be said
that grave wisdom was always lacking; for by the side
of a public singer would sometimes be seated no less a
person than Dr. Parr. Of personal intercourse between
the mother and daughter there was now scarcely any,
but their correspondence was still kept up; and it was
not the less sincere on the poor mother’s side from the circumstance
of her occasionally forgetting orthography in
the ardour of her affection.
The Regent, soured by his defeat with respect to the
union of his daughter and the Prince of Orange, was more
than commonly irritated by the knowledge that his wife
and child were engaged in a frequent epistolary correspondence,
and that he had, hitherto, been unable to
prevent it. He was satisfied that such correspondence
could not be maintained without the connivance of the
ladies of his daughter’s household, and he determined to
meet the evil by dissolving the establishment.
Before this resolution had been arrived at the Princess
Charlotte was subjected to much petty persecution, rendered
the more annoying by being continual, and which
made up in enduring length what it wanted in intensity.
It was said at the time that even the letters in her writing-desk
found their way into her father’s hands; and there
was so much done at this time that was degrading to the
doers that the report is recommended at least by its probability.
At all events, ‘wearied out by a series of acts
all proceeding from the spirit of petty tyranny, and each
more vexatious than another, though none of them very
important in itself,’ the Princess was driven to a very
extreme measure by the uncalled-for and undignified
severity of her irritated sire. Lord Stourton (referring
indeed to an earlier time) states, in his ‘Memoirs of Mrs.
Fitzherbert’:—‘On one occasion Mrs. Fitzherbert told me
she was much affected by the Princess Charlotte throwing
her arms round her neck and beseeching her to speak to
her father that he would receive her with greater marks
of his affection; and she told me that she could not
help weeping with this interesting child.’
On the 16th of July, 1814, the Prince Regent, who
had previously secured Cranbourne Lodge, in Windsor
Forest, as a residence for his daughter, and had even,
equally unknown to her, but in concert with Queen Charlotte,
nominated the new ladies of the Princess’s household,
repaired to Warwick House, accompanied by the ladies
so named. The party had only to traverse the gardens
of Carlton House to arrive at their destination. The
ladies were the Duchess-dowager of Rosslyn and the
Countess of Ilchester, the two Misses Coates, and Miss
Campbell, formerly sub-governess to the Princess. They
were placed in an apartment adjacent to that into which
the Regent entered, as soon as he knew that it was occupied by
the Princess.
Without ceremony he announced to the astonished
Princess that her establishment in that house was from that
moment dismissed; that she must instantly repair to the
seclusion of Cranbourne Lodge; and that the newly-appointed
ladies of her household were in the next apartment,
ready to wait upon and accompany her.
The Princess was astonished, but she was wonderfully
self-possessed, and her presence of mind, helped by her
love for a little romantic adventure, admirably served her
on this occasion. She requested a few minutes’ respite,
that she might retire, take leave of her now dismissed
ladies, and superintend some preparations for departure.
The Prince acquiesced, and leaving the new ladies in charge
of the Princess, returned to Carlton House to dress for a
dinner en ville.
He was hardly gone when the Princess was gone too.
Silently and swiftly descending the stairs, she issued from
the doors, and in half a minute stood alone upon the
pavement of Cockspur Street. Lord Brougham says: ‘It
was a fine evening in July, about the hour of seven, when’—he
adds with a sort of contempt for people of the lower
order, and indeed with much inaccuracy to boot—‘when
the streets were deserted by all persons of condition.’
From the old stand at the bottom of the Haymarket she
called a coach, whose lucky driver (Higgins) obeyed the
summons, and having handed the heiress of England into
the damp straw of his dirty and rickety vehicle, listened
to the order to drive to the Princess of Wales’s in Connaught
Place—to be quick, and he should not have to
regret it. The guileless Higgins concluded that he was
taking a lady’s lady out to tea, and that the maid of one
establishment was going to make an evening of it with the
maids of another. Unconscious that he was contributing
in his own person to the history of England on that eventful
summer’s evening, Higgins in due course of time
reached Connaught Place, and when he heard, to the inquiry
of his ‘fare’ whether her mother was at home, that
the page answered, ‘No, your Royal Highness, the Princess
of Wales is at Blackheath,’ he became proudly sagacious
of largesse to come, and was convinced that he had
been a right royal coachman that night, by token that he
received three guineas for his honorarium.
A messenger was despatched to Blackheath with a
request to the Princess to return immediately to her.
She was met by the bearer of the message on her way,
and with ready good sense drove to either house of parliament,
in search first of Mr. Whitbread, then of Lord
Grey, but without success in either case. Meanwhile,
another messenger had been despatched for Mr. Brougham,
the law-adviser of the Princess of Wales, and a third for
Miss Mercer Elphinstone, the young bosom friend of the
Princess Charlotte. Mr. Brougham arrived first, and soon
after Miss Elphinstone had reached the house the Princess
of Wales also arrived, accompanied by Lady Charlotte
Lindsey. ‘It was found,’ said Mr. Brougham, ‘that the
Princess Charlotte’s fixed resolution was to leave her
father’s house and that which he had appointed for her
residence, and thenceforward to live with her mother.’
But Mr. Brougham is understood to have placed himself
under the painful necessity of explaining to her that by
the law, as all the twelve judges but one had laid it
down in George I.’s reign, and as it was now admitted
to be settled, the King or the Regent had the
absolute power to dispose of all the royal family while
under age. Another account states that the Princess met
this announcement by the declaration, made amid many
tears and much sobbing, that she would rather toil for her
daily bread at five shillings a week than continue to endure
the persecution to which she had of late been subjected.
The Princess of Wales was very much affected by
this demonstration of her daughter’s affection and confidence,
but she united with Mr. Brougham in urging her
to submit to her father’s will. The Princess Charlotte
continued to show fixed reluctance to adopt such a course,
and was expressing her determination not to follow it
when the Archbishop of Canterbury arrived; but the page
refused to give him admission, and he remained at the
door seated in a hackney coach. The first great official
from the Regent’s side who was admitted into the house
was Lord Eldon. He had been despatched from the Duke
of York’s, where the Regent was dining, when the intelligence
of his daughter’s flight had been conveyed to him
by the ladies to whose care he had committed her. ‘The
Lord Chancellor Eldon,’ says Lord Brougham, ‘first arrived,
but not in any particular imposing state, regard
being had to his eminent station, for indeed he came in a
hackney coach. Whether it was that the example of the
Princess Charlotte herself had for the day brought this
simple and economical mode of conveyance into fashion,
or that concealment was much studied, or that despatch
was deemed more essential than ceremony and pomp,
certain it is, that all who came, including the Duke of
York, arrived in similar vehicles, and that some remained
enclosed in them, without entering the royal mansion.’
Lord Eldon appears to have treated the Princess with
some roughness, adding threats to the entreaties of others,
and menacing her with being closely shut up if she did
not obey. In his own account of this evening and its incidents
he says that the Princess, in answer to his observations,
only ‘kicked and bounced,’ and protested that she
positively would not go back. The chancellor declared as
positively that he would not leave the house without her.
‘At length,’ Lord Brougham concludes his narrative,
‘after much pains and many entreaties used by the Duke
of Sussex and the Princess of Wales herself, as well as
Miss Mercer Elphinstone and Lady Charlotte Lindsey
(whom she always honoured with a just regard), to enforce
the advice given by Mr. Brougham, that she should return
without delay to her own residence and submit to the
Regent, the young Princess, accompanied by the Duke of
York and her governess, who had now been sent for and
arrived in a royal carriage, returned to Warwick House
between four and five o’clock in the morning.’
Soon after this occurrence the Princess was removed to
Cranbourne Lodge, where she bore the secluded life she
was constrained to lead with more of a calm than a
cheerful resignation. She was not, however, there forgotten
by her friends. The Duke of Sussex rose in his
place in parliament to inquire if his royal niece was or
was not in a sort of ‘durance,’ and whether she were
permitted to see her friends. Ministers replied to these
queries in that official way which answers without enlightening,
and further measures were spoken of; but
the Duke of Sussex was seized with an attack of asthma,
which popular report attributed to a sharp communication
made to him by the Regent, and therewith no further
mention was made of the royal recluse in Windsor Forest.
But there was another recluse anxious to emancipate
herself and fly from the restrictions and conventionalities of
English living to the greater liberty allowed on the Continent.
There were very few persons who thought the Princess
of Wales well advised in this desire except Mr. Canning.
Into his hands the wife of the Regent committed a letter,
which Lord Liverpool was requested to submit to the
Prince. It contained a brief description of her unmerited
condition, expressed a wish of being allowed to withdraw
to the Continent, chiefly for the purpose of visiting her
brother, and finally made offer of resigning the Rangership
of Greenwich Park in favour of her daughter, and
also to make over to her the residence (Montague House)
which her mother had occupied at Blackheath. The
principal reason assigned for her wishing to withdraw was
that she had nothing now to bind her to England but her
daughter, and from her society she was now entirely and
most unjustly excluded.
Through Lord Liverpool the Regent returned for
answer that she was entirely free to go or stay; that no
restraint whatever would be put upon her in that respect;
that, as regarded the Rangership, on her resignation of that
office, the Regent would see to its being filled up by a
properly qualified person; with respect to Montague
House, the daughter of the Prince Regent could never be
permitted by him to reside in a house which had ever
been the dwelling-place of the Princess of Wales.
This reply—the Princess’s comment on which was
‘end well, all well’—reached her at Worthing, whither,
after a brief interview with her daughter, she had already
repaired. She remained in the neighbourhood
but a few days after she received the desired missive, and
the ‘Jason’ frigate, commanded by Captain King, lay in
the offing, waiting her pleasure and convenience to embark.
She lingered during those few days as if reluctant,
after all, to leave the land where she had not
known an hour’s happiness since she had first set her foot
upon its shore. She would linger on the beach at night,
regardless of the admonitions of her attendants, sitting
dreamily and despondingly, gazing over the waters or at
the moon by which they were illumined, and once
breaking from her reverie with the ejaculation: ‘Well,
grief is unavailing when fate impels me.’
On the 9th of August, she for the last time appeared on
Worthing beach, with Lady Charlotte Lindsey and Lady
Elizabeth Forbes. It was her intention to embark from
thence, but fearful of the crowd that was then collecting,
she quietly withdrew to South Lancing, about two miles
off, whither the captain’s barge proceeded to meet her.
She was followed, however, by nearly all the persons, in
carriages, mounted or on foot, whose curiosity, it may be
added, was especially aroused by the appearance of a
large tin-case among the luggage, on which was painted
in white letters, ‘Her Royal Highness the Princess of
Wales, to be always with her.’ It seemed as if she for
ever wished to have some mystery attached to her, or that
she desired the mystification of others. Her domestics had
gone on board at Worthing. On South Lancing beach she
appeared dressed in ‘a dark cloth pelisse with large gold
clasps, and a cap of velvet and green satin, of the Prussian
hussar costume, with a green feather.’ She was,
with her ladies, driven down to the beach, in a pony
chaise, by her own coachman.
On taking her seat in the barge she turned round and
kissed her hand to the assembled people, by way of farewell.
To the mute greeting the people returned as mute
reply. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs, the men
uncovered. She probably construed this silent adieu as
intended to denote respect and regret, and she was so
overcome that she fainted on her way to the ship. On
the deck she was received by Captain King, to whom
one of the Regent’s brothers had previously remarked:
‘You are going to convey the Princess of Wales to the
Continent. You are a great fool if you don’t make love
to her.’
Greatly as her spirits were depressed at starting, their
natural elasticity soon brought her round again to her
ordinary condition of cheerfulness. On the 12th of
August, the Regent’s birthday, as the ship was passing
the Texel, a royal salute was fired, by her order, it is
said, in honour of the day. The salute would, probably,
have been fired without any such command. What
were, without doubt, her own spontaneous acts were the
birthday banquet at which she presided; the health of
her husband, which she gave with a spirit that might
have been taken for sincerity; and the ball at which she
danced as joyously as though she had been a youthful
bride being borne to the bridegroom she loved, and not
a mature and child-deprived matron cast out by her
husband, between whom and herself there reigned as
bitter a hatred as ever raged in the bosom of any pair of
mortal beings. The hatred on his part is illustrated by
an anecdote which was in circulation at this unhappy
period. According to this story, ‘On the evening previous
to the Princess of Wales’s departure from England,
the Regent had a party and made merry on the joyful
occasion. It is even said that he proposed a toast: “To
the Princess of Wales’s d——n, and may she never
return to England!” It seems scarcely possible that any
one should have allowed his tongue to utter such a
horrible imprecation; but it may be believed the Regent
did, so great was his aversion to his wife. Besides, he
was not, probably, very well aware what he was saying
at that moment.’
CHAPTER VII. THE ERRANT ARIADNE.
The Princess arrives at Hamburgh—Assumes the title of Countess of
Wolfenbüttel—Travels in Switzerland—Meeting of the Princess with
the ex-Empress Maria Louisa, and the divorced wife of the Grand Duke
Constantine—The Princess at Milan—Her English attendants fall off—Her
reception by the Pope—At a masked ball at Naples—Her imprudence—Her
festivals at Como—The Princess at Palermo—Bergami her chamberlain—The
Princess at Genoa—Corresponds with Murat—Personal
vanity of Queen Charlotte—The Pope visits the Princess—Surrounded
by Italians—Her roving life—Proceeds to Syracuse—At Jericho—Lands
at Tunis and visits the Bey—Liberates European slaves—The Princess
at Athens—At Troy—At Constantinople—At Ephesus—At Acre—Stopped
at Jaffa—Enters Jerusalem—Her reception by the Capuchin
Friars—Institutes a new order of chivalry—Life on board the polacca—The
Princess and Countess Oldi at Como—Private theatricals a favourite
pastime—Agents and spies—Innocent incidents converted into crimes—Bergami
divested of his knighthood—The Princess at Carlsruhe—Contemptuously
neglected at Vienna—The chamberlain her only attendant—The
Princess in public—Deeply affected by the death of Princess Charlotte—As
uncircumspect as ever.
The early period of the travels of the Princess on the
Continent calls for nothing more than simple record.
She left the ‘Jason’ under all the customary honours; and
when she entered Hamburgh on the 16th she dropped
her English to assume a German title, that of the Countess
of Wolfenbüttel. Her suite consisted of the two
ladies we have already named, with Mr. St. Leger and
Sir William Gell. Mr. Keppel Craven subsequently
joined her at Brunswick. Dr. Holland accompanied her
as physician, and Captain Hesse as equerry. Thus attended
she appeared at the theatre at Hamburgh, where
she was received with a storm of applause, and entered
Brunswick, where she was welcomed by her brother the
Duke, and with a loud-tongued cordiality by the inhabitants.
The reception touched her, but not deeply enough to
induce her to profit by it. Within a fortnight she
brushed the tears from her eyes, left Brunswick behind
her, and was on the high-road of Europe, as self-willed
and as obstinate a Princess as ever destroyed a reputation
and rushed blindfold upon ruin.
She now travelled under the appellation of Countess
of Cornwall, and had one English gentleman less in her
train, Mr. St Leger having withdrawn from the honour
of waiting on her at Brunswick. The time had not yet
arrived when the mot d’ordre had been given to treat
her with disrespect. The governors of German cities
were courteous to her as she passed, and the Marshal
Duke de Valmy, with all the authorities of Strasburg,
offered her the expression of their homage when she
traversed that portion of France. After spending the
greater portion of September in a tour through Switzerland,
she finally sojourned for a while at Geneva, where
she met with the ex-Empress of France, Maria Louisa,
and became for a time on intimate terms with an imperial
lady who, like herself, was separated from her husband.
Like her, she was stripped of her old dignity, and, like
her, she was accompanied by a young boy. But those
boys were not more different in their rank than the two
women were in their position, similar as this was in
many respects. The boys were Napoleon Francis, ex-King
of Rome, and William Austin, son of the Blackheath
labourer.
The two women, illustrious by rank rather than
character, lived much in each other’s society. They
dined together, sang together, together listened to the
discussions of the philosophers whom they assembled
around them, and when together they attended a fancy
dress ball one at least astonished the other—the Princess
surprising the ex-Empress by appearing in what was
called the costume of Venus, and waltzing with a lack of
grace that might have won laughter from the goddess of
whom the waltzer was the over-fat representative.
Maria Louisa was not the only unhusbanded wife
whom the wandering Princess encountered in Switzerland.
The divorced wife of the Grand Duke Constantine was
of this illustrious society. This lady was the Juliana of
Saxe-Coburg who, on marrying the Russian Prince, took
for her new appellation the name of Anna Feodorowna,
and who was so rejoiced to lay that name down again
after she had escaped from the brutalities of her husband.
The Countess of Cornwall looked upon her with more
than ordinary interest, for she was the sister of that
Prince Leopold who ultimately married the Princess
Charlotte, and whose aspiring hopes were known to, and
sanctioned by, the wandering ‘Countess’ herself. The
presence in one spot of three princesses, all separated
from their then living husbands, had something as singular
in it as the meeting of Voltaire’s unsceptred kings at the
table-d’hôte at Venice. The ex-Empress was separated
from her husband because she did not care to share his
fallen fortunes; the Grand Duchess was living alone
because the Grand Duke did not care for his wife; and
the other lady and her husband had the ocean between
them because they heartily hated each other—three
sufficient reasons to unite the triad of wanderers within
the territories of the Swiss republic.
In October, the Countess of Cornwall, or Princess of
Wales, as it will be more convenient to call her, had
passed into the imperial city of Milan. Her passage had
something of a triumphant aspect; she reviewed the troops
drawn up in honour of her visit, smiled at the shouts
of welcome, mingled with cries for the liberty of Italy,
which greeted her, and endured the noisy homage
uttered by a dozen bouches à feu. She had now but one
English lady in her suite, Lady Charlotte Lindsey having
resigned her office when in Germany.
It was at Milan that her suite first began to assume a
foreign aspect. The Princess was about to enter on a
wide course of travel, and it was said that she needed the
services of those who had had experience in that way.
The first and most celebrated official engaged to help
her with his service was a Bartholomew Bergami, a
handsome man, of an impoverished family, who had
served in the army as private courier to General Count
Pino (bearer of his despatches, it is to be presumed), had
received the decoration of some ‘order,’ and—whether
by right of an acre or two of land belonging to his
family, or because of his merits—bore the high-sounding
name, but not very exalted dignity, of ‘Il Signor Barone.’
He had three sisters, all of whom were respectably
married; the eldest and best known was a Countess Oldi,
a true Italian lady, who loved and hated with equal
intensity.
At Milan, as at Geneva, the Princess, undoubtedly,
failed to leave a favourable impression of her character.
At the latter place the sight of herself and the great
Sismondi, both stout, and the former attired as the Queen of
Love, waltzing together, was a spectacle quite sufficient to
make the beholders what, it is said, the Princess herself
would have called, ‘all over shock.’ Then she insisted
on undue homage from her attendants, and made such
confusion in the geographical programme of her travels
‘that it was enough,’ as she herself used to say on other
occasions, ‘to die for laugh.’
On the progress of the Princess through Italy her
English attendants fell off, one by one, till she was finally
left without a single member of her suite with whom she
had originally set out. They probably ventured to give
her some good advice, for she complained of their
tyranny. They certainly counselled her to return and
live quietly in England; but this counsel was always
under consideration, yet never followed by the result
desired. She was rendered peevish, too, by receiving no
letters from her daughter, of whom she had taken but
brief and hurried leave previous to her departure from
England.
Meanwhile, she traversed Italy from Milan to Naples,
and was everywhere received with great distinction. In
the little states the minor potentates did their poor but
hearty best to exhibit their sympathy. The crownless
sovereigns, like those of Spain and Etruria, condoled with
her. At Rome the very head of the faithful stooped to
imprint a kiss or whisper a word of welcome to the wandering
lady. After a week of lionising at Rome she
proceeded to Naples, where Murat received her with the
splendour and ostentation which marked all his acts. He
had a guest who was quite as demonstrative as her host.
Court and visitor seemed to vie with each other in extravagance
of display. Fêtes and festivals succeeded
each other with confusing rapidity, and never had
Parthenope seen a lady so given to gaiety, or so closely
surrounded by spies, so narrowly watched, and so
abundantly reported, as this indiscreet Princess. It was
at Naples that she appeared at a masked ball attired as
the Genius of History, and accompanied, it is said, by
Bergami. She changed her dress as often as Mr. Ducrow
in one of his ‘daring acts;’ and, finally, she enacted a
sort of pose plastique, and crowned the bust of Joachim
Murat with laurel.
It seemed as if she wished to bury memory of the
past and to destroy the hopes of the future in the dissipation
of the present. To say the least of her conduct,
her imprudence and indiscretion were great and gross
enough to have destroyed any reputation; and yet she
herself described her course of life as sedentary, when she
often retired to bed ‘dead beat’ with fatigue from sight-seeing
by day and vigorous dancing by night. It was
here that she made the longest sojourn, and enjoyed herself,
as she understood enjoyment, the most. The purchase
of the villa on the Lake of Como was also now
effected; and Bergami was soon after raised to the
dignity of chamberlain, and to the privilege of a seat at
her own table. She claimed a right to bestow honours,
and to distinguish those on whom she bestowed them;
but her want of judgment in both regards amounted to
almost a want of intellect, or a want of respect for herself,
or for the opinions of those whose good opinion was
worth having.
At one of her festivals at Como she indulged in some
freedoms with a guest whom she strongly suspected of
being a spy upon her. Her conversation was of a light
and thoughtless nature, well calculated to give him abundance
of matter to be conveyed to the ears of his employers.
A friend present suggested to her that caution,
on her part, was not unnecessary, as within a fortnight
everything she said or did was known at Carlton House.
‘I know it,’ was her reply, ‘and therefore do I speak and
act as you hear and see. The wasp leaves his sting in
the wound, and so do I. The Regent will hear it? I
hope he will; I love to mortify him.’ And to satisfy this
peevish love she courted infamy; for even if she did not
practise it, her self-imposed conduct made it appear as if
she and infamy were exceedingly familiar.
Still errant, she wandered from Como to Palermo,
visiting the court there, and receiving a welcome which
could not have been more hearty had she been really of as
indifferent character as she seemed to be. At this court
she presented Bergami, on his appointment of chamberlain,
and shortly after she proceeded to Genoa, where she intended
to sojourn for a considerable time. She was
conveyed thither in the ‘Clorinde’ frigate, the captain of
which spoke to those around him in no measured terms
of her conduct and course of life, particularly at Naples.
She was well-lodged at Genoa. The scene, and she who
figured on it so strangely, are thus described by the writer
of a letter in the ‘Diary’—‘The Princess of Wales’s
palace is composed of red and white marble. Two large
gardens, in the dressed formal style, extend some way on
either side of the wings of the building, and conduct to
the principal entrance by a rising terrace of grass, ill-kept,
indeed, but which in careful hands would be beautiful.
The hall and staircase are of fine dimensions,
although there is no beauty in the architecture, which is
plain even to heaviness; but a look of lavish magnificence
dazzles the eyes. The large apartments, decorated
with gilding, painted ceilings, and fine, though somewhat
faded, furniture, have a very royal appearance. The
doors and windows open to a beautiful view of the bay,
and the balmy air they admit combines with the scene
around to captivate the senses. I should think this
palace, the climate, and the customs must suit the
Princess, if anything can suit her. Poor woman! she is
ill at peace with herself; and when that is the case what
can please?’... Referring more directly to the
Princess, the writer says: ‘The Princess received me in
one of the drawing-rooms opening on the hanging
terraces, covered with flowers in full bloom. Her Royal
Highness received Lady Charlotte Campbell (who came
in soon after me) with open arms and evident pleasure,
and without any flurry. She had no rouge on, wore tidy
shoes, was grown rather thinner, and looked altogether
uncommonly well. The first person who opened the
door to me was the one whom it was impossible to mistake,
hearing what is reported—six feet high, a magnificent
head of black hair, pale complexion, mustachios
which reach from here to London. Such is the stork.
But, of course, I only appeared to take him for an under-servant.
The Princess immediately took me aside and
told me all that was true, and a great deal that was not....
Her Royal Highness said that Gell and Craven had
behaved very ill to her, and I am tempted to believe
that they did not behave well; but then how did she
behave towards them?... It made me tremble to
think what anger would induce a woman to do, when she
abused three of her best friends for their cavalier manner
of treating her.... “Well, when I left Naples, you
see, my dear,” continued the Princess, “those gentlemen
refused to go with me, unless I returned immediately to
England. They supposed I should be so miserable without
them that I would do anything they desired me,
and when they found I was too glad to get rid of ’em (as
she called it) they wrote the most humble letters, and
thought I would take them back again, whereas they
were very much mistaken. I had got rid of them, and
I would remain so.”’
The Princess appears to have corresponded with
Murat. The soldier-king is said to have addressed to her
a very flattering note, beginning ‘Madame, ma chere,
chere sœur,’ as if she had already been a queen, and that
he were treating with her on a footing of equality. Her
reply is described as clever but flippant, beneath her
dignity, and so wild and strange as to be entitled to be
considered one of the most extraordinary specimens of
royal letter-writing that had ever been seen.
There was yet no inconsiderable number of English
guests who gathered round the table of the Princess, and
some of the former ladies of her suite here rejoined her.
Among the guests is noticed a ‘Lord B——,’ who had
been a great favourite with the Prince of Wales, and was
equally esteemed by the Princess. He had been a witness
of the marriage of Mrs. Fitzherbert with the Prince,
and was now the most welcome visitor of the Princess.
The illustrious pair, it has been often observed, had ‘a
strange sympathy in their loves and habits.’ Alluding
to the style of the Princess’s conversation with her guests,
the ‘Diary’ affords us another illustration. ‘Sometimes
Monsieur —— opened his eyes wide at the Princess’s
declarations, and her Royal Highness enjoys making
people stare, so she gave free vent to her tongue, and
said a number of odd things, some of which she thinks,
and some she does not; but it amuses her to astonish an
innocent-minded being, and really such did this old man
appear to be. He won her heart, upon the whole, however,
by paying a compliment to her fine arm and asking
for her glove. Obtaining it, he placed it next his heart;
and, declaring it should be found in his tomb, he swore
he was of the old school in all things.’ The little vanity
of being proud of a fine arm was one as strong in Queen
Charlotte as in her daughter-in-law. The former had as
fine an arm as, and perhaps not a better temper than, the
latter, but she could better control that temper, and had
the additional advantage of being possessed of a more
refined taste. This was not, perhaps, always shown when
she sat and listened to rather loose talk from the Regent,
with no more of reproof than her gently-uttered ‘George,
George!’ by way of remonstrance. She, however, never
erred so grossly as the Princess of Wales, who not only
would listen unabashed to conversation coarse in character,
but was not at all nice herself in either story or
epithet. In Italy such things were then accounted of
but as being small foibles; and when the Pope visited her
at Genoa he probably thought none the worse of her,
nor bated no jot in his courtesy towards her, because of
her reputation in this respect. She certainly loved to
mystify people, and took an almost insane pleasure in
exciting converse against herself. Her adoption of
Victorine, a daughter of Bergami, was a proof that she
had acquired no profitable experience from the consequences
which followed her adoption of young Austin.
During 1815 the Princess was ever restless and on
the move. She was now entirely surrounded by Italians.
Mr. St. Leger refused to be of her household, nor would
he allow his daughter to be of it. Many others were
applied to, but with similar success. Sir Humphrey and
Lady Davy also declined the honour offered them. Mr.
William Rose, Mr. Davenport, and Mr. Hartup pleaded
other engagements. Dr. Holland, Mr. North, and Mrs.
Falconet were no longer with her. Lord Malpas begged
to be excused, and Lady Charlotte Campbell withdrew,
after her Royal Highness’s second arrival at Milan. The
Princess, however, had no difficulty in forming an Italian
Court. Some of her appointments were unexceptionable.
Such were those of Dr. Machetti, her physician, and of
the Chevalier Chiavini, her first equerry. Many of the
Italian nobility now took the place of former English
visitors at her ‘court,’ and two of the brothers of
Bergami held respectable offices in her household, while
the Countess of Oldi, sister of the chamberlain, was appointed
sole lady of honour to the lady, her mistress. On
several of the excursions made by her Royal Highness
from her villa on the Lake of Como to Milan, Venice,
and other parts of Italy, she was accompanied by Mr.
Burrell, a son of Lord Gwydyr. This gentleman ultimately
took his leave of her in August, to return to
England. He was sojourning at Brussels, on his way,
when his servant, White, narrated to his fellows some
accounts of what he described as the very loose way of
life of the Princess at Milan. These stories, all infamous,
but few, perhaps, which could not be traced back to some
indiscretion of this most unhappy lady, and marvellously
amplified and exaggerated, came to the ears of the Duke
and Duchess of Cumberland, then sojourning at the same
hotel; and it is declared that on the report made by the
former to his brother, the Regent, was founded the famous
‘Milan Commission,’ which was one of investigation,
appointed to sit at Milan, to inquire into the conduct of
the Princess, and to report accordingly. The commissioners
sat and took evidence without making the Princess
aware of the fact; and to an indignant remonstrance
addressed to the Regent, wherein she demanded to know
the object of the commission, no answer was returned.
It was soon known, however, that the report was of a
most condemnatory character, but no proceedings were
immediately instituted. Meanwhile, the Princess continued
her roving life, now on sea, now on land; now on board
the ‘Leviathan,’ and sometimes on the backs of horses or
mules. Her familiarity on all these occasions with her
chamberlain was offensive to persons of strict ideas and
good principles, and those were precisely the persons
whose prejudices she loved, perhaps out of mere mischief,
to startle. He dined with her at her table, and she leant
upon his arm in their walks.
Early in January 1816, she again embarked on board
the ‘Clorinde,’ Captain Pechell, with the intention of proceeding
to Syracuse. The captain, having previously seen
Bergami occupying a menial state about her Royal Highness,
declined to admit him to his table, at which he entertained
the Princess—who refused such entertainment,
however, on the captain persisting on the ejection of the
chamberlain. The desired port was reached only with
difficulty, and for some months the Princess resided in
Sicily, with no one near her but this Italian household.
To her chamberlain she certainly was some such a mistress
as Queen Guinever to Sir Lancelot. In liberality of
sunny smiles and largesses there can be no doubt of this;
and perhaps the quality of her favour is best illustrated
by the fact of her having bestowed her picture upon him,
for which she had sat in the character of a ‘Magdalen.’
She professed to have procured for him also his elevation
to be a Knight of Malta, and she did obtain for him the
dignity of Baron de la Francino, to heighten the imaginary
grandeur.
The next seven months were spent in continual
travelling and change of scene. The limit of her wandering
was Jericho, whither she went actually, and also in
the popular sense of the word, which describes a person
as having gone thither when ruin has overtaken him on
his journey through life.
She embarked, with her Italian followers, on the 26th
of March, and nine days subsequently, after being beaten
about by equinoctial storms till the little ‘Royal Charlotte’
had scarcely a sound plank about her, she reached Tunis,
and struck up a very warm acquaintance with the Bey.
He lodged and partially fed her, introduced her to his
seraglio, perfumed her with incense till she was nearly
suffocated, and then as nearly choked her with laughter
by causing to play before her his famous female band,
consisting of six women who knew nothing of music,
every one of whom laboured under some unsightly defect,
and of whom the youngest confessed to an honest threescore
years. For this entertainment she made a really
noble return, by purchasing the freedom of several
European slaves. A greater liberator than she, however,
was at hand, in Exmouth and his fleet. It was in obedience
to the advice of the Admiral, who expected to have
to demolish Tunis, as the Bey seemed disinclined to ransom
the Christian slaves he held in durance, that the Princess,
after a hasty glance at the sites of Utica and Carthage, re-embarked,
after a month’s sojourn with the most splendidly
hospitable of barbarians, and, passing through the
saluting English fleet, directed the prow of her vessel to
be turned towards Greece. She went on her way accompanied
by storms, which prevented her from landing until,
with infinite difficulty, she reached the Piræus, early in
May, and proceeded to Athens, where she took up her
residence in the house of the gallant French consul.
Since the days of Aspasia, Athens had seen no such lively
times as marked the period of the residence there of the
Princess. Her balls were brilliant festivities. In return
for them she was permitted to witness the piously ecstatic
dancing of the Dervises (for the city of Minerva was
under the Crescent then), who have plagiarised a maxim
of St. Augustine, only altering it to suit their purpose, as
ecstatic persons will do with sacred texts, and proclaiming
orat qui saltat. The Princess had some nerve, and was by
no means a fastidious woman, but she saw here more
than she had reckoned upon, and was glad to escape from
the exhibition of uncleanness and ferocity. Athens, however,
afforded more interesting spectacles than this; she
exhausted them all, according to the guide-books and the
cicerones; and she gratefully expressed her pleasure by
liberating three hundred captives, whom she found languishing
in the debtors’ prison. The fame of the deed
travelled as swiftly as if it had been a deed disgraceful
to the actor, and at Corinth she was subsequently entertained,
during two whole days, with a profusion and a
gaiety that would have gladdened the heart of Laïs, who
was herself so often and so splendidly ‘at home’ in this
ancient city.
From Hellas to the Troad was a natural sequence
She went thither, as before, storm-tost—stood on the
plain where infidels assert that Troy had never stood, and,
leaning on the arm of the noble and bearded Bergami,
twice crossed the Scamander. With the first day of June
she was in Constantinople, making her entry with Mdlle.
Dumont and another lady, in the springless cart or
carriage of the country, drawn by a pair of lusty bulls.
She resided in the house belonging to the British embassy.
It was the last time in the course of her travels that she
found rest and protection beneath our flag. The plague,
however, being then in the city, she quitted it for a
residence some fifteen miles distant, from which she made
excursions into the Black Sea, till, growing weary of the
amusement, she once more embarked and spent a week at
sea, on a frail boat, tossed by storms and watched by
corsairs; and at length reaching Scio, sought repose, and
indulged in contemplation, or may be supposed to have
done so, in the school of Homer. By the end of the
month she was amid the ruins of Ephesus. Beneath the
ruined vestibule of an ancient church she pitched her
tent. The heat was great even at night, the errant lady
was sleepless, and the Baron di Francino, ever assiduous,
watched near his mistress till dawn, and performed all
faithful service required of him.
From the locality once jealously guarded by chaste
Diana she passed to the spot where her old Blackheath
friend, Sir Sidney Smith, had gained imperishable fame by
gallantly vanquishing a foe ever bravely reluctant to confess
that he had met his conqueror. Even this place
might have interested the Princess by the association of
ideas which it may have furnished her as matter for
meditation. She did not, however, lose much time in contrasting
the gossiping Sir Sidney, who made Montague
House ring with his laughter, with the stern warrior who
here turned back Napoleon from his way toward India.
She was longing to find rest within the Holy City, and
this she accomplished at last, but not till many an obstacle
which lay in her way had been surmounted.
Her progress was suddenly checked at Jaffa. The
party, which consisted of more than two dozen persons,
had no written permission to pass on to Jerusalem, and
the Pacha could give his consent only to five of the
number to visit the city. After some negotiations with
the governor of St. Jean d’Acre, the difficulty was removed,
a large armed escort was provided, with tents,
guides, and other necessary appendages. Surrounded by
these, the Princess and her attendants had very much the
air of a strolling party of equestrians on a summer tour.
They had a worn, yet ‘rollicking’ look. There was a
loose air about the men and a rompish aspect about the
ladies, while the sorry steeds, mules and donkeys, on which
they were mounted, seemed denizens of the circus and
saw-dust, with the sun-bronzed Princess as manageress of
the concern. The similitude was not lessened by the circumstance
that, more than once on the road, the Princess,
from sheer fatigue and want of sleep, rolled off her donkey
to the ground.
The journey was performed beneath one of the very
fiercest of suns, and the travellers, light of heart as they were,
groaned beneath the hot infliction and the blisters raised
by it. They passed many an interesting spot on the way,
but were too listless or weary to heed the objects as they
passed. Her Royal Highness bore the perils and minor
troubles of the way better than any of her followers, but
she too became almost vanquished by fatigue; and when
she entered Jerusalem, on the 12th of July, seated on an
ass, Mdlle. Dumont impiously contrasted her virtues, sufferings,
equipage, and person with those of the Saviour.
This lady was subsequently the very first who, with eager
alacrity, swore away the reputation of her mistress, and
heaping her indiscretions together, gave them the bearing
of crimes, and did her unblushing utmost to destroy what
she had professed to reverence.
The Capuchin friars gave her Royal Highness a cordial
reception, and within their sacred precincts even allowed
her and some of her French attendants to sleep. In
return for this knightly rather than saintly courtesy, she
instituted an order of chivalry, and, after looking about
for a saint by way of godmother to the new institution,
she fixed upon St. Caroline. In vain was it suggested to
her that there was no such saint in the Calendar. She
had a precedent by way of authorisation. Napoleon had
compelled St. Roch to make way for St. Napoleon, and
why should not Caroline have ‘Saint’ prefixed to it, and
shine as the patroness of the new order? She, of course,
had her way, created poor young Austin a knight, and
solemnly instituted Baron Bergami as grand master.
They looked more like strolling players than ever; the
Baron none the less so when his royal mistress placed on
his breast the insignia of the order of ‘St. Sepulchre’ by
the side of the star of the newly-appointed St. Caroline.
With these new dignitaries the party proceeded to
view all the spots where there is nothing to be seen, but
where much that is false may be heard if the guides be
listened to. For miles round there was not a scene that
had been the stage of some great event, or was hallowed
by the memory of some solemn deed or saintly man, that
the Princess did not visit. Having spent upon them all
the emotion she had on hand, she trotted off to Jericho,
her panting attendants following her; and, having found
the place uninhabitable from the fierce heat which prevailed
there, the strolling Princess and her fellow-players
rushed back to the sea, and, scarcely pausing at Jaffa,
embarked hurriedly on board the polacca there awaiting
them, and set sail in hopes of speedily encountering
refreshing gales and recovering the vigour they had
lost.
Their singing ‘Veni Aura’ brought not the gale they
invoked. The sun darted his rays down upon them with
greater intensity than ever, and accordingly the Princess
raised a gay tent upon the deck, beneath its folds sat by
day, took all needful refreshment, and slept by night;
the Grand Master of the Order of St. Caroline fulfilling
during all that time the office of chamberlain.
The weary and feverish hours were further enlivened
by a grand festival held on board on St. Bartholomew’s
day, in honour of Bartholomew Bergami and the saint of
the former name, who was supposed to be the patron and
protector of all who bore it. The Princess drank to the
Baron, and the latter drank to the Princess, and mirth and
good humour, not to say jollity, abounded; and perhaps
by the time the incident is as old as the descent of the
Nile by Cleopatra is now it may appear as picturesque
and poetical as that does. It certainly lacks the picturesque
and poetical elements at present.
It is the maxim of sailors that they who whistle for a
breath of air will bring a storm. Our travellers only
longed for the former, but they were soon enveloped by
the latter, through which they contrived to struggle till,
on the 20th of September, they made Syracuse, and were
inexorably condemned to a quarantine of the legitimate
forty days’ duration. At the end of this time an Austrian
vessel conveyed them to Rome. After a brief but by no
means a dull sojourn in that city, the Princess led the way
to her home in the Villa d’Este, on the Lake of Como,
where she and the Countess Oldi exhibited the proficiency
they had acquired as travellers by cooking their own
dinners and performing other little feats of amiable independency.
And now, as if to authorise the simile made with
respect to the illustrious party, and their resemblance to
a strolling company of players, private theatricals became
the most frequent pastime of the lady of the villa and her
friends. If she enacted the heroine, the Baron was sure
to be the lover. Marie Antoinette, it was said, used to
act in plays on the little stage at Trianon. The case was
not to be denied; but then the wife of Louis XVI. did not
exchange mock heroics with an ex-courier. On the other
hand, the dukes and counts she played with were often
less respectable than the loosest of menials.
The agents, whose employers were to be found in
England, had not been idle during the Princess’s period
of travel. They had been helped by none so effectually
as by herself. She had courted infamy by her heedless
conduct, and, cruelly as she was used, the blame does not
rest wholly with her persecutors. Her indiscretions
seemed indulged in expressly to give warrant for suspicion
that she was more than indiscreet, and therewith
even the most innocent incidents were twisted by the ingenuity
of spies and their agents into crimes. The Baron
d’Ompteda had been the most assiduous and the best paid
of the spies who hovered incessantly about her, to misrepresent
all he was permitted to see. He was banished
from the Austrian territory at the request of the Princess,
whose champion, the gallant Lieutenant Hownam, sought
in vain to bring him to battle and punish him for his
treachery towards a lady. On the other hand, the
Austrian authorities commanded Bergami to divest himself
of the Cross of Malta, which he was wearing without
legal authorisation—a disgrace which his rash and imprudent
mistress thought she had effaced by purchasing for
the disknighted chevalier an estate, and putting him in
full possession of the rights and dignity of lord of the
manor.
Early in 1817 the Princess repaired to Carlsruhe, on
a visit to the Grand Duke of Baden. She was received
courteously, but not warmly enough to induce her to
make a long sojourn. This Duke was not anxious to
detain a guest so eccentric. Lord Redesdale told Miss
Wynn, who set the story down in her ‘Diaries,’ that
‘when the Princess was at Baden, and the Grand Duke
made a partie de chasse for her, she appeared on horseback
with a half pumpkin on her head. Upon the Grand
Duke’s expressing astonishment, and recommending a
coiffeur rather less extraordinary, she only replied that
the weather was hot, and that nothing kept the head so
cool and comfortable as a pumpkin. Her next point was
Vienna, from which city she had frightened Lord Stewart,
the British ambassador, by an intimation that she was
coming to take up her residence with him, and to demand
satisfaction for the insults to which she had been subjected
by persons who were spies upon her conduct. She
experienced nothing but what she might have expected
in Vienna—a contemptuous neglect; and soon quitting
that city she repaired to Trieste, and tarried long enough
there to compel the least scrupulous to think that, if she
possessed the most handsome of chamberlains, she was
herself the weakest and least wise of ladies. He was now
her constant and almost only attendant in public. English
families had long ceased to show her any respect. They
could not manifest it for a woman who, by courting an
evil reputation, evidently did not respect herself. What
was her being innocent, if she always so acted as to make
herself appear guilty? She might as well have asserted
that her openly attending Mass with Bergami was not to
be taken as proof of her being a very indifferent Protestant.
She became in every sense of the word a mere wanderer,
apparently without object, save flying from the
memories which she could not cast off. She was constantly
changing her residence—so constantly as to make
her career somewhat difficult to follow; but we know
that she was residing at Pescaro when she received intelligence
which she least expected, and which deeply
affected her. During her absence from England her
daughter had married Prince Leopold, and the mother
had hoped to find friends at least in this pair, if not now,
at some future period. But now she had heard that her
child and her child’s child were dead. ‘I have not only,’
she wrote to a friend in England, ‘to lament an ever-beloved
child, but one most warmly attached friend, and
the only one I have had in England; but she is only gone
before—I have not lost her, and I now trust we shall
soon meet in a much better world than the present one.
For ever your truly sincere friend, C. P.’
This calamity, however, had no effect in rendering
the writer more circumspect. Her course of life, without
being one of the gross guilt it was described, was certainly
one not creditable to her. Exaggerated reports,
which grew as they were circulated, startled the ears of
her friends and gladdened the hearts of her enemies.
They were at their very worst when, in 1820, George
III. ended his long reign, and Caroline Princess of Wales
became Queen-consort of England.
As a sample of the effect produced by the above-named
reports the following, from a letter by Lady
Charleville to Lady Morgan, in February 1820, may be
quoted:—‘The report of all travellers who have had any
knowledge of the Princess of Wales renders it imperative
that such a woman should not preside in Great Britain
over its honest and virtuous daughters, and something is
to be done to prevent it.’ In April of the same year Lady
Morgan was in Rome, and she wrote thence to Lady
Clarke more favourably: ‘We have Queen Caroline
here; at first this made a great fuss, whether she was or
was not to be visited by her subjects, when, lo! she refused
to see any of them, and leads the most perfectly
retired life! We met her one day driving out in a state
truly royal; I never saw her so splendid. Young Austin
followed in an open carriage; he is an interesting-looking
young man. She happened to arrive at an inn near
Rome when Lord and Lady Leitrim were there. She
sent for them, and invited them to tea. Lady Leitrim
told me her manner was perfect, and altogether she was
a most improved woman. The Baron attended her at
tea, but merely as a chamberlain, and was not introduced.
Before you receive this; if accounts be true, her Majesty
will be in England.’
The Roman authorities treated her with scant courtesy.
As soon as the death of almost the only friend she
ever had in England, George III., was certified, Cardinal
Gonzalvi, refusing to recognise in her person a Queen of
Great Britain, sent her passport to her as Princess Caroline
of Brunswick.
CHAPTER VIII. THE RETURN TO ENGLAND.
Report of the Milan Commissioners—The Princess’s determination to return
to England—Studied neglect of her by Louis XVIII.—Lord Hutchinson’s
proposal to her to remain abroad—Her indignant refusal—Bergami’s
anger on the refusal of the proposition—Discourtesy of the French authorities
to the Princess—Her reception in England—The Regent’s message
to Parliament—The green bag—Sympathy for the Queen—Desire for a
compromise evinced; meeting for the purpose at Lord Castlereagh’s—The
contending parties in Parliament—Mr. Wilberforce as Mr. Harmony—Mr.
Brougham the Queen’s especial advocate—The Queen’s name in the
Liturgy demanded—Mr. Denman’s argument for it—Address of the
House of Commons to the Queen—Her reply, and appeal to the nation—A
secret inquiry protested against—The Queen at Waithman’s shop—Violence
of party spirit.
The report rendered by the gentlemen who formed the
Milan Commission to inquire secretly into the conduct of
the Princess of Wales was so unfavourable to the latter
that the Regent would have taken immediate steps to have
procured a divorce, but for the assurance of his legal
advisers that, even in the case of the Princess becoming
Queen-consort, she would never return to this country,
provided only that the income assigned to her by parliament
as Princess of Wales were secured to her after she
was Queen. There had been some negotiation to this effect
in 1819, when it was understood that the title of Queen
would never be assumed by the Princess if the payment
of the annuity was punctually observed. Her most
intimate friends, therefore, did not reckon upon her
appearance in this country after the accession of her
husband to the throne.
Lord Liverpool addressed a letter to Mr. Brougham,
adverting to this arrangement as having been originally
proposed by Queen Caroline—a conclusion against which
she protested with great indignation. Her first step was
to pass through France to St. Omer, where she awaited
the arrival of her legal advisers. The then reigning
French monarch had in the time of his own adversity
received substantial aid and continual courtesy from the
Queen’s father; but now, in the hour of the distresses of
his former benefactor’s daughter, he beset her passage
through France with difficulties, and commanded her to
be treated with studied neglect. However mortified, she
was a woman of too much spirit to allow her mortification
to be visible, and for the lack of official honours she
found consolation in the sympathy of the people. On
the first intimation of the omission of her name from the
Liturgy, the Queen wrote thus, without consulting any one:
‘The Queen of this Relams wishes to be informed,
through the medium of Lord Liverpool, First Minister to
the King of this Relams, for which reason or motife the
Queen name has been left out of the general Prayer-books
in England, and especially to prevent all her
subjects to pay her such respect which is due to the
Queen. It is equally a great omittance towards the King
that his Consort Queen should be obliged to soummit to
such great neglect, or rather araisin from a perfect ignorance
of the Archbishops of the real existence of the
Queen Caroline of England.’ It was finely remarked by
Mr. Denman, after he became the Solicitor-General (at
Brougham’s recommendation), that the Queen was included
in the Liturgy, in the prayer ‘for all who are desolate
and oppressed.’
At the inn of St. Omer she was met by Mr. Brougham
and Lord Hutchinson. The latter came as the representative
of the ministry, with no credentials, however, nor
even with the ministerial proposition reduced to writing.
The Queen refused to receive it in any other form. Lord
Hutchinson obeyed, and made a written proposal to the
effect that, as she was now without income by the demise
of George III., the King would grant her 50,000l. per
annum, on the special condition that she remained on the
continent, surrendered the title of Queen, adopted no title
belonging to the royal family of England, and never even
visited the latter country under any pretext. It was further
stated that, if she set foot in England, the negotiation
would be at an end, the terms violated, and proceedings
be commenced against her Majesty forthwith.
It has been said that the Queen’s immediate and
decided rejection of these proposals, and her resolution to
proceed to England at once, were undoubted proofs of her
innocence. The truth, however, is, that the acceptance
of such terms would have been a tacit confession of her
guilt, and, had she been as criminal as her accusers endeavoured
to prove her, her safest course would have been
that which she so spiritedly adopted. The infamy here
was undoubtedly on the part of the ministry. Here was
a woman in whom they asserted was to be found the most
profligate of her sex, and to her they made an offer of
50,000l. per annum, on condition that she laid down the
title of Queen of England, of which they said she was
entirely unworthy; and this sum was to be paid to her
out of the taxes of a people the majority of whom
believed that she had been ‘more sinned against than
sinning.’
It has been believed, or at least has been reported,
that the Queen was counselled to the refusal of the compromise
annuity of 50,000l. by Alderman Wood. The
city dignitary, in such case, got little thanks for his advice
at the hands of Baron Bergami. The latter individual,
on hearing that Queen Caroline had declined to accept
the offer, and that the alderman was her adviser on the
occasion, declared that if he ever encountered the ex-mayor
in Italy he would kill him. The courier-baron’s ground
of offence was, that, had the Queen received the money, a
great portion of it would have fallen to his share, and
that he considered himself as robbed by the alderman,
whom he would punish accordingly.
Caroline refused the proposals with scorn. In one of
her characteristic letters she said: ‘The 30th of April I
shall be at Calais for certain; my health is good, and my
spirit is perfect. I have seen no personnes of any kind
who could give me any advice different to my feelings and
my sentiments of duty relatif of my present situation and
rank of life.’ Fearful of further obstacle on the part of
the French government, she proceeded at once to Calais,
dismissed her Italian court, and with Alderman Wood
and Lady Anne Hamilton she went on board the
‘Leopold’ sailing packet, then lying in the mud in the
harbour. No facilities were afforded her by the authorities;
the English inhabitants of Calais were even menaced
with penalties if they infringed the orders which had been
given, and no compliment was paid her, except by the
master of the packet, who hoisted the royal standard as
soon as her Majesty set foot upon the humble deck of his
little vessel. She sat there as evening closed in, without
an attendant saving the lady already named and the
alderman, who not only gave her his escort now but
offered her a home. She had solicited from the government
that a house might be provided for her, but the
application had been received with silent contempt.
Her progress from Dover to London was a perfect
ovation. Mr. Brougham had given her good advice at
St. Omer. ‘If,’ he said, ‘your Majesty shall determine to
go to England before any new offer can be made, I
earnestly implore your Majesty to proceed in the most
private and secret manner possible. It may be very well
for a candidate at an election to be drawn into towns by
the population, and they will mean nothing but good in
showing this attention to your Majesty; but a Queen of
England may well dispense with such marks of popular
favour, and my duty to your Majesty binds me to say
very plainly that I shall consider any such exhibition as
both hurtful to your Majesty’s real dignity and full of
danger in its probable consequences.’ ‘That Brougham
is afraid,’ said the Queen; and so he was—afraid of her,
afraid of some scandal, unknown to him then, coming out
after her arrival. If he could have had his way he would
not have consented to her coming to England at all.
The people saw in her a victim of persecution, and for such
there is generally a ready sympathy. They were convinced,
too, that she was a woman of spirit, and for such there is
ever abundant admiration. There was not a town through
which she passed upon her way that did not give her a
hearty welcome, and wish her well through the fiery
ordeal which awaited her. She reached London on the
evening of the 7th of June, 1820, and the popular procession
of which she was the chief portion passed Carlton
House on its route to the residence of Alderman Wood,
in South Audley Street. There Alderman Wood used to
spread a rug for her Majesty to tread upon, when, to satisfy
the loud-tongued mob, she appeared twenty times a day on
the little balcony. The Attorney-General would not allow
his wife to call on her; and Mrs. Denman received a
similar prohibition from Mr. Denman, who, subsequently,
regretted the course he had taken.
The Queen had scarcely found refuge beneath the
alderman’s hospitable roof when Lord Liverpool in the
House of Peers, and Lord Castlereagh in the House of
Commons, conveyed a message from the King to the parliament,
the subject of which was that, her Majesty
having thought proper to come to this country, some information
would be laid before them, on which they would
have to come to an ulterior decision, of vast importance
to the peace and well-being of the United Kingdom.
Each minister bore a ‘green bag,’ which was supposed
and perhaps did contain minutes of the report made by
the Milan commissioners touching her Majesty’s conduct
abroad. The ministerial communications were made in
the spirit and tone of men who, if not ashamed of the
message which they bore, were very uncertain and infinitely
afraid as to its ultimate consequences.
Not that they were wanting in an outward show of
boldness. The soldiers quartered at the King’s Mews,
Charing Cross, had been so disorderly some days previous,
allegedly because they had not sufficient accommodation,
that they were drafted in two divisions to Portsmouth.
When the Queen was approaching London a mob assembled
in front of the guard-house, and called upon the
soldiers still remaining there to join them in a demonstration
in favour of the Queen. Lord Sidmouth, who was
passing on his way to the House of Lords, seeing what
was going on, proceeded to the Horse Guards, called out
the troops there, and stood by while they roughly dispersed
the people. It was called putting a bold face upon
the matter, but less provocation on the part of a government
has been followed by revolution.
A desire to compromise the unhappy dispute was no
doubt sincerely entertained by ministers, and all hope was
not abandoned, even after the arrival of the Queen. Mr. Rush,
the United States ambassador to England at this period,
permits us to see, in his journal, when this attempt at compromise
or amicable arrangement of the affair was first
entered upon by the respective parties. On the 15th of June
that gentleman dined at Lord Castlereagh’s with all the
foreign ambassadors. ‘A very few minutes,’ he says, ‘after
the last course, Lord Castlereagh, looking to his chief guest
for acquiescence, made the signal for rising, and the company
all went to the drawing-room. So early a move was
unusual: it seemed to cut short, unexpectedly, the time
generally given to conversation at English dinners after
the dinner ends. It was soon observed that his lordship
had left the drawing-room. This was still more unusual;
and now it came to be whispered that an extraordinary
cause had produced this unusual scene. It was whispered
by one or another of the corps that his lordship had
retired into one of his own apartments to meet the Duke
of Wellington, as his colleague in the administration, and
also Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman, as counsel for the
Queen in the disputes pending between the King and
Queen.’ Mr. Rush, after mentioning that the proceedings
in parliament were arrested for the moment by members
purporting to be common friends of both King and Queen,
proceeds to state that ‘the dinner at Lord Castlereagh’s
was during this state of things, which explains the incident
at its close, the disputes having pressed with anxiety on
the King’s ministers. That his lordship did separate
himself from his guests for the purpose of holding a conference
in another part of his own house, in which the
Duke of Wellington joined him as representing the King,
with Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman as representing the
Queen, was known from the former protocol, afterwards
published, of what took place on that very evening. It
was the first of the conferences held with a view to a
compromise between the royal disputants.’ On the 28th
of June the American ambassador was at the levée at
Carlton House, where he learns that ‘the sensibilities of
the King are intense, and nothing can ever reconcile him.’
The same diplomatist then presents to us the following
graphic picture: ‘The day was hot, excessively so for
England. The King seemed to suffer. He remarked
upon the heat to me and others. It is possible that other
heat may have aggravated in him that of the weather.
Before he came into the entrée room, from his closet,
—— of the diplomatic corps, taking me gently by the
arm, led me a few steps with him, which brought us into
the recess of a window. “Look!” said he. I looked,
and saw nothing but the velvet lawn covered by trees in
the palace gardens. “Look again!” said he. I did; and
still my eye only took in another part of the same scene.
“Try once more,” said he, cautiously raising a finger in
the right direction. —— had a vein of drollery in him.
I now for the first time beheld a peacock displaying his
plumage. At one moment he was in full pride, and
displayed it gloriously; at another he would halt, letting
it drop, as if dejected. “Of what does that remind you?”
said ——. “Of nothing,” said I; “Honi soit qui mal y
pense!” for I threw the King’s motto at him, and then
added that I was a republican, he a monarchist, and that
if he dreamt of unholy comparisons where royalty was
concerned I would certainly tell upon him, that it might
be reported at his court. He quietly drew off from me,
smiling, and I afterwards saw him slyly take another
member of the corps to the same spot, to show him the
same sight.’
Meanwhile, the contending parties in parliament wore
about them the air of men who were called upon to do
battle, and who, while resolved to accomplish their best,
would have been glad to have effected a compromise
which, at least, should save the honour of their principal.
As Mr. Wilberforce remarked, there was a mutual desire
to ‘avoid that fatal green bag.’ There were many difficulties
in the way. The Queen, naturally enough, insisted
on her name being restored in the Liturgy; and none of
her friends would have consented for her, nor would she
have done so for herself, that she should reside abroad
without being introduced by the British ambassador to
the court of the country in which she might take up her
residence. The government manifested too clearly an
intention not to help her in this respect, for they remarked
that, though they might request the ambassador
to present, they could not compel the court to receive
her. They wanted her out of the way, bribed splendidly
to endure an indelible disgrace. She was wise enough,
at least, to perceive that to consent to such a course
would be to strip her of every friend, and to shut against
her the door of every court in Europe.
Mr. Wilberforce hoped to act the ‘Mr. Harmony’
of the crisis, by bringing forward a motion expressive of
the regret of parliament that the two illustrious adversaries
had not been able to complete an amicable
arrangement of their difficulties, and declaring that the
Queen would sacrifice nothing of her good name nor of
the righteousness of her cause, nor be held as shrinking
from inquiry, by consenting to accept the counsel of
parliament, and forbearing to press further the adoption
of those propositions on which any material difference of
opinion is yet remaining. The Queen’s especial advocate,
Mr. Brougham, felicitously contrasted the eager desire of
ministers to get rid of her Majesty, by sending her out of
the country with all the pomp, splendour, and ceremonies
connected with royalty, with their meanness in allowing
her to come over in a common packet, and to seek shelter
in the house of a private individual. He added that the
only basis on which any satisfactory negotiation could be
carried on with her Majesty was the restoration of her
name to the Liturgy. Mr. Denman, in alluding to the
case of Sophia Dorothea, which had been cited by
ministers as precedent wherein they found authority for
omitting the Queen’s name from the Liturgy, remarked
that, ‘As to the case of the Queen of George I., to which
allusions had been made, it was not at all in point. She
had been guilty of certain practices in Hanover which
compromised her character, and was never considered
Queen of England. On the continent she lived under the
designation of Princess of Halle; and though the Prince
of Wales had afterwards called her to this country for the
purpose of embarrassing the government of his father, to
which he happened to be opposed, still she was never
recognised in any other character than Electress of
Hanover.’ In this statement it will be seen that the
speaker calls her Queen whom he denies to have been
accounted as such, and he adds that the Prince of
Wales called her to this country in his father’s lifetime,
when he had no power to do so; whereas he simply
expressed to his friends his determination to invite her
over if she survived his father as Queen-dowager of
England. This invitation he never had the power of
making, for his mother’s demise preceded the decease of
his father. Mr. Denman was far happier in his allusion
to a ministerial assertion that the omission of the Queen’s
name from the Liturgy was the act of the King in his
closet. This assertion was at once a meanness and a
falsehood, for, as Mr. Denman remarked, no one knew of
any such thing in this country as ‘the King in his closet.’
Indeed the ministers were peculiarly unlucky in all they
did; for while they asserted that the omission was never
made out of disrespect towards the Queen, they acknowledged
that it never would have been thought of but for
the revelations contained in the fatal green bag as to her
Majesty’s alleged conduct. Finally, the House agreed to
Mr. Wilberforce’s motion.
The announcement of the resolution to which the
House of Commons had come was made to her Majesty,
now residing in Portman Street, in an address conveyed
to her by Mr. Wilberforce and three other members of
the Lower House. On this occasion all the forms of a
court were observed. The bearers of the address
appeared in full court dress. The Queen, in a dress of
black satin, with a wreath of laurel shaded with emeralds
around her head, surmounted by a ‘plume of feathers,’
stood in one portion of the little drawing-room; behind
her stood all the ladies of her household, in the person of
Lady Anne Hamilton, and on either side of her Mr.
Brougham and Mr. Denman, her Majesty’s Attorney and
Solicitor Generals, in full-bottomed wigs and silk gowns.
As the deputation approached, the folding doors which
divided the members in the back drawing-room from the
Queen and her court in the front apartment were then
thrown open, and the four gentlemen from the House of
Commons knelt on one knee and kissed her Majesty’s
hand. Having communicated to her the resolutions of
the House, the Queen, through the attorney-general,
returned an answer of some length, the substance of
which, however, was, that with all her respect for the
House of Commons she could not bind herself to be
governed by its counsel until she knew the purport of the
advice. In short, she yielded nothing, but appealed to
the nation. When the assembled crowd learned the
character of the royal reply its delight was intense, and
certainly public opinion was generally in favour of the
Queen and of the course now adopted by her. There
was one thing she and the public too supremely hated,
and that was the formation of a secret committee, formed
principally too of ministerial adherents, and charged with
prosecuting the inquiry against her, without letting her
know who were her accusers or of what crimes she was
accused, and without affording her opportunity to procure
evidence to rebut the testimony brought against her.
Against such a proceeding she drew up a petition, which
she requested the Lord Chancellor to present. That
eminent official, however, asserting that he meant no
disrespect, excused himself on the ground that he did not
know how to present such a document to the House, and
that there was nothing in the journals which could tend
to enlighten him.
The petition, however, the chief prayer in which was
that the Queen’s counsel might be heard at the bar of the
House against an inquiry by secret committee, was presented
by Lord Dacre, and the prayer in question was
agreed to.
The request of Mr. Brougham was for a delay of two
months, previous to the inquiry being further prosecuted,
in order to leave time for the assembling of witnesses for
the defence—witnesses whom the Queen was too poor to
purchase, and too powerless to compel to repair to
England. Her Majesty’s Attorney-General asked this the
more earnestly as some of the witnesses on the King’s
side were of tainted character, and one of them was an
ex-domestic of the Queen’s, discharged from her service
for robbing her of four hundred napoleons. The learned
advocate concluded by expressing his confidence that the
delay of two months would not be considered too great
an indulgence for the purpose of furthering the ends of
justice, and providing that a legal murder should not be
committed on the character of the first subject of the
realm. The best point in Mr. Denman’s speech in
support of the request made by his leader was in the
quotation from a judgment delivered by a former lord
chancellor, and which was to this effect—it was delivered
with the eyes of the speaker keenly fixed on those of
Lord Eldon—‘A judge ought to prepare the way to a
just sentence, as God useth to prepare His way, by raising
valleys and taking down hills, so when there appeareth
on either side a high hand, violent prosecutions, cunning
advantages taken, combination, power, great counsel,
then is the virtue of a judge seen to make inequality
equal, that he may plant his judgment as upon an even
ground.’
While the Lords were deliberating on the request for
postponement, Lord Castlereagh was inveighing in the
Commons against the Queen herself, for daring to refuse
to yield to the wishes of parliament, and rejecting the
advice to be guided by its counsel. Such rejection he
interpreted as being a sort of insult which no other
member of the House of Brunswick would have ventured
to commit. ‘That illustrious individual,’ he said, ‘might
repent the step she had taken.’ Meanwhile, the Commons
suspended proceedings till the course to be decided
upon by the Lords was finally taken. In the latter
assembly Earl Grey made a last effort to stay the proceedings
altogether, by moving that the order for the
meeting of the secret committee to consider the papers in
the ‘green bag’ should be discharged. The motion was
lost, but an incident in the debate which arose upon it
deserves to be noticed. The omission of the Queen’s
name from the Liturgy had been described as the act of
the King in his closet. Lord Holland now charged the
Archbishop of Canterbury as the adviser of the act;
but Lord Liverpool accepted the responsibility of it for
himself and colleagues, as having been adopted by the
King in council, at the ministerial suggestion.
The Lords having resolved to commence proceedings
by a preliminary secret inquiry, the Queen protested
against such a course, but no reply was made to her protest.
With the exception of appearing to return answers
to the addresses forwarded to her from various parts of
the country, she withdrew, as much as possible, from all
publicity. Her personal friends, however, were busier
than she required in drawing up projects for her which
she could not sanction. One of these busy advocates
thought that she might fittingly compromise the matter
by gaining the restoration of her name in the Liturgy,
being crowned, holding one drawing-room, yearly, at
Kensington Palace, and having her permanent residence
at Hampton Court, with 55,000l. a year to uphold her
dignity. The terms were not illiberal; but if the Queen
rejected them, it was, probably, because she knew they
would never be offered. Her own remark upon them is
said to have been, that she did not want a victory without
a battle, but a victory after showing that she had
deserved it.
She was the more eager for battle from the fact that
the contents of the green bag were by no means unknown
to her. At least, it has been asserted that she had long
held duplicates of some of the evidence, if not of the
report made by the Milan commissioners, and she was
satisfied she could rebut both. She possessed one, and it
was her solitary, advantage in this case. The ministers,
if not in so many words, yet by their proceedings, had
stigmatised her as utterly infamous, and yet they had
considered it not beneath them to desire to enter into
negotiations with one whom they considered guilty of all
the implied infamy. The Queen’s rejection of the proposals
to compound ‘the stupendous felony’ raised up
for her many a friend in circles where she had been
looked upon, if not as guilty, yet, at best, as open to very
grave suspicion.
The Queen’s health required her not to confine herself
within the narrow limits of her residence in Portman
Street. She accordingly paid one public visit to Guildhall,
and occasionally repaired to Blackheath. It was on
her way back from one of these latter excursions that she
honoured Alderman Waithman’s shop with a visit. The
incident is perhaps as well worth noticing as that which
tells of the trip made by the young Queen Mary to the
shop of Lady Gresham, the lady mayoress, who appears
to have dealt in millinery. The city progresses of the
Queen did her infinite injury. The very lowest of the
populace, who cared little more for her than as giving
opportunity for a little excitement, were wont on these
occasions to take the horses from her carriage, harness
themselves to the vehicle, and literally drag the Queen of
England through the mud of the metropolis. She could
only suffer degradation and ridicule from such a proceeding,
which a little spirit might have prevented. Her
enemies bitterly derided her through their organs in the
press. They expressed an eagerness to get rid of her,
and added their indifference as to whether ‘the alien’
was finally disposed of as a martyr or as a criminal. On
the other hand, her over-zealous partisans gave utterance
to their convictions that there was a project on foot to
murder the Queen. Party spirit never wore so assassin-like
an aspect as it did at this moment. Caroline, it must
be added, was not displeased with these popular ovations.
‘I have derived,’ she remarked in her reply to the City
address, ‘unspeakable consolations from the zealous and
constant attachment of this warm-hearted, just, and
generous people, to live at home with and to cherish
whom will be the chief happiness of the remainder of my
days.’ But her chief occupation now was to look to her
defence, for the time had arrived when her accusers were
to speak openly.
CHAPTER IX. QUEEN, PEERS, AND PEOPLE.
The secret committee on the Queen’s conduct—Encounter between the Queen
and Princess Sophia—Bill of Pains and Penalties brought into the House
of Lords—The Queen demands to know the charges against her—Her
demand refused—The Queen again petitions—Lord Liverpool’s speech—The
Queen’s indignant message to the Lords—Money spent to procure
witnesses against her—Public feeling against the Italian witnesses—Dr.
Parr’s advice to the Queen—His zealous advocacy of her cause—Lord
Erskine’s efforts in her favour—Her hearty protest against legal oppression—Gross
attack on her in a provincial paper—Cruel persecution of her—Her
sharp philippic against Ministers—Lord John Russell’s letter to Mr.
Wilberforce, and petition to the King—The Queen at Brandenburgh
House—Death of the Duchess of York—Her eccentricities—Her character—Addresses
to the Queen, and her replies.
The secret committee charged with examining the documents
in the sealed bags made their report early in
July. This report was to the effect that the documents
contained allegations, supported by the concurrent testimony
of witnesses of various grades in life, which deeply
affected the honour of the Queen, charging her, as they
did, with a ‘continued series of conduct highly unbecoming
her Majesty’s rank and station, and of the
most licentious character.’ The committee reluctantly
recommended that the matter should become the subject
of solemn inquiry by legislative proceeding.
The ministers postponed any explanation as to the
course to be adopted by them upon this report until the
following day. The Queen exhibited no symptoms of
being daunted by it. She appeared in public on the
evening of the day on which the report was delivered,
and, if cheers could attest her innocence, the vox populi
would have done it that night. As the Queen’s carriage
was passing in the vicinity of Kensington Gate it encountered
that bearing the Princess Sophia. The two
cousins passed each other without exchanging a sign of
recognition, and the doughty livery servants of the Princess
showed that they had adopted the prejudices or convictions
of their portion of the royal family by refusing
obedience to the commands of the mob, which had
ordered them to uncover as they passed in presence of
the Queen.
On Wednesday, the 5th of July, Lord Liverpool
brought in the ever-famous Bill of Pains and Penalties, a
bill of degradation and divorce. Lord Liverpool had
previously protested against a divorce. Why he now
turned to a still more dangerous expedient he explains in
a letter inserted in his Memoirs. ‘In the case of a private
individual the question of divorce is a question of personal
relief. The law of man, not the law of God, says
properly in this case, we will not give you the relief unless
by your conduct you are entitled to it. But the
King does not, and cannot, apply for relief as an individual;
his accusation is a public accusation, resting on
public grounds. Adultery in a Queen is a crime against
the State. The private offence is merged in the public
crime, and must follow the effect of it. How is it possible
to entertain a charge of recrimination against a King, who
in the eye of the law can do no wrong?’
The Queen demanded, by petition, to be furnished
with the specific charges brought against her, and to be
heard by her counsel in support of that demand. The
House refused, and Lord Liverpool went on with his Bill.
The Queen again interfered by petition, requesting to
have the nature of the charges against her distinctly
stated, and to be heard in support of her request by
counsel. These requests were negatived. Lord Liverpool
then, in introducing the bill, did his utmost to save
the King from being unfavourably contrasted in his
character of complainant with the Queen in that of
defendant. He alleged that their Majesties were not
before the House as individuals. The parties concerned
were the Queen as accused party and the State! The
question to be considered was whether, supposing the
allegations to be substantiated, impunity was to be extended
to guilt, or justice be permitted to triumph. The
bill he thus introduced noticed the various acts of indiscretion
which have been already recorded. These
were the familiarity which existed between herself and
her courier, whom she had ennobled, and in honour
of whom she had unauthorisedly founded an order of
chivalry, of which he had been appointed grand master.
The bill further accused her of most scandalous, vicious,
and disgraceful conduct ‘with the said Bergami,’ but was
silent as to time and place. The document concluded
by proposing that Caroline Amelia Elizabeth should be
‘deprived of her rank, rights, and privileges as Queen,
and that her marriage with the King be dissolved and
disannulled to all intents and purposes.’ The bill, in
short, pronounced her infamous. It was the penalty
which she paid for the exercise of much indiscretion.
Earl Grey complained of the want of specification, and
asserted her Majesty’s right to be furnished with the
names of witnesses. Lord Liverpool, however, treated
the assertion as folly, and the claim made as unprecedented
and inexpedient.
A copy of the bill was delivered to the Queen by Sir
Thomas Tyrwhitt. She received it not without emotion,
and this was sufficiently great to give a confused tone to
her observations on this occasion. Had the bill, she said,
been presented to her a quarter of a century earlier, it
might have served the King’s purpose better. She added
that, as she should never meet her husband again in this
world, she hoped, at least, to do so in the next, where
certainly justice would be rendered her.
To the Lords she sent a message expressive of her indignant
surprise that the bill should assume her as guilty
simply upon the report of a committee before whom not
a single witness had been examined. Her friends continued
to harass the government. In the Commons, Sir
Ronald Ferguson attempted, though unsuccessfully, to
obtain information as to the authority for the organising
of the Milan commission for examining spies. That commission,
he intimated, originated with the vice-chancellor,
Sir John Leach, and had cost the country between thirty
and forty thousand pounds, for one half of which sum, he
added, Italian witnesses might be procured who would
blast the character of every man and woman in England.
The feeling against Italians did not require to be excited.
Those who arrived at Dover to furnish evidence
against the Queen were very roughly treated; and so fearful
were the ministers that something worse might happen
to them, that they were, after various changes of residence
in London, transferred to Holland, much to the disgust of
the Dutch, before they were finally cloistered up in Cotton
Garden, at hand to furnish the testimony, for the
bringing of which they received very liberal recompense.
Meanwhile, Dr. Parr, in ponderous sermons, exhorted
her Majesty not to despise the chastening of the Lord;
and the Queen’s devout deportment at divine service was
cited by zealous advocates as evidence in favour of her
general propriety.
Indeed the Queen had no more zealous champion
than the almost octogenarian Parr. On the fly-leaf of
the Prayer-book in the reading-desk of his parish church
at Hatton he entered (and one can hardly say of Dr.
Parr’s act on this occasion dispar sibi) a stringent
protest against the oppression to which she had been
subjected; adding a conviction entertained by him of
her complete innocence, and expressing a determination,
although forbidden to pray for her by name, to add a
prayer for her mentally, after uttering the words in the
Liturgy, ‘all the Royal family.’ In his heart the stout
old man prayed fervently; nor did he confine himself to
such service. A friend, knowing his opinions, his admiration
of the Queen, and the friendly feelings which had
long mutually existed between them, earnestly begged of
him not to interfere in her affairs at this conjuncture.
Dr. Parr answered the request by immediately ordering
his trunk to be packed, and by proceeding to London,
where he entered on the office of her Majesty’s chaplain,
procured the nomination of the Rev. M. Fellowes to the
same office, and in conjunction with him, and often alone,
wrote those royal replies to popular addresses which are
remarkable for their force, and for the ability with which
they are made to metaphorically scourge the King, without
appearing to treat him with discourtesy.
There was as much zeal, and perhaps more discretion,
in those impartial peers who, on occasion of Lord Liverpool
moving the second reading of the Bill for the 17th
of August, insisted on the undoubted right of the Queen,
as an accused party, to be made acquainted with the
names of the witnesses who had come over to charge her
with infamy. Lord Erskine was particularly urgent and
impressive on this point, but all to no purpose, except the
extracting an assurance from Lord Chancellor Eldon that
the accused should have, at a fitting season, a proper
opportunity to sift the character of every witness as far
as possible. Lord Erskine repeatedly endeavoured to
obtain the full measure of justice for the accused which
he demanded. The Queen herself entered a hearty protest
against the legal oppression, and further begged by
petition that, as the names of the witnesses against her
were withheld, she might at least be furnished with a
specification of the times and places, when and where she
was said to have acted improperly. The request was
characterised by Lord Eldon as ‘perfectly absurd,’ seeing
that the Queen could make no use of the information, if
she intended, as declared by her, to defend her case at
the early period named, of the 17th of August. The
reply was harsh, insulting, and illogical.
But to harshness and insult she became inured by
daily experience. It may be safely said that, if such a
drama had to be enacted in our own days, the press
would certainly not distinguish itself now exactly as it
did then. Party spirit might be as strong, but there
would be more refinement in the expression of it. And
assuredly, not even a provincial paper would say of a
person before trial as a Western journal said of the
Queen—that she was as much given to drunkenness as to
other vices, and that it was ridiculous to hold up as an
innocent victim a woman who, ‘if found on our pavement,
would be committed to Bridewell and whipped.’
But ministers themselves were not on a bed of roses.
They were exceedingly embarrassed by the Queen’s announcement
that she intended to be present every day in
the House of Lords during the progress of what was now
properly called ‘The Queen’s Trial.’ Their anger, too,
was excited at the sharp philippics against them inserted
in her Majesty’s replies to the addresses presented to her.
In those replies the passages complained of wounded
more than those against whom they were pointed; and
the authors of them had, no doubt, some mirth over
sentences intended to spoil it in the breasts of ministers
charged with rebelliously seeking to dethrone their lawful
Queen. The royal replies, too, were equally, but not
so directly, severe against those former counsellors and
advocates of her Majesty who were now arrayed on the
side of her Majesty’s enemy. These replies were, of
course, not censured by the ministerial opponents in
either House of Parliament. The addresses which called
them forth, however, did not escape reproach from this
quarter. Lord John Russell, in a letter to Mr. Wilberforce,
does not indeed go so far as reproach. He says:
‘I regret, though I cannot severely blame, the language
of many of the addresses that have been presented to
the Queen.’
Lord John acknowledged the political nullity of the
Whigs at this time, but he held that the Wilberforce
party in the Commons were sufficiently powerful to have
successfully resisted the scandal which the Government
had brought upon the kingdom. ‘In your hands, sir,’ he
says, ‘is perhaps the fate of this country. The future historian
will ask whether it was right to risk the welfare of
England—her boasted constitution, her national power—on
the event of an inquiry into the conduct of the Princess
of Wales in her villa upon the Lake of Como? From the
majority which followed you in the House of Commons,
he will conclude you had the power to prevent the die
being thrown. He will ask if you wanted the inclination.’
To this letter Lord John Russell appended a form of
petition to the King, which may not uncourteously be
termed the petition of the powerless Whig statesman.
This petition smartly and smartingly complimented his
Majesty upon his liberality in offering to allow his Queen
fifty thousand a year, and to introduce her to a foreign
court, at a time when he pretended to know that she was,
allegedly, perfectly worthless, as woman, wife, and mother.
With the domestic broils of King and Queen Lord John
would not interfere; but, the King having made of them
an affair of state, the ‘humble petition’ informs his
Majesty that he has been exceedingly ill-advised. With
excellent spirit does Lord John place upon record his
abhorrence of enacting laws to suit a solitary case—laws
‘which at once create the offence, regulate the proof,
decide upon the evidence, and invent the punishment.’
He asks if the Queen will escape from justice in the event
of the bill not passing? Are the ministers afraid lest she
may so defraud justice?—why, ‘that the Queen has not
fled from justice is not only the admission, but forms one
of the chief charges, of her prosecutors.’ Her prosecution,
then, will not serve the State. Can the revelation of
her alleged iniquity at Como or Athens serve or influence
public morals in England? What is the situation of the
Queen? asks Lord John, who thus replies to his own
query: ‘Separated from her husband during the first
year of her marriage, she has been forced out of that
circle of domestic affections which alone are able to keep
a wife holy and safe from evil. For the period to which
the accusation extends she has been also removed from
the control of public opinion—the next remaining check
the world can afford on female behaviour.’ Lord John
perhaps makes a low estimate of female virtue when he
thus concludes that women cease to be ‘holy and safe
from evil’ when they cease to have a share in domestic
affections or to be controlled by public opinion. There
is more sly humour in what follows than there is of correctness
in the noble lord’s estimation of female virtue.
The drawer-up of the petition reminds the King that
what most distresses him is ‘the uncrowning a royal head
without necessity. We see much to alarm us in the example,
nothing to console us in the immediate benefit.’
Not, says the petitioner, slyly, that we do not recognise
the right of parliament to alter the succession to the
crown. ‘None respect more than we do the Act of Settlement
which took away the crown from its hereditary successors
and gave it to the House of Brunswick;’ and,
as the writer alludes to the possibility of the new subject
of strife bringing the country to the verge of a civil war,
he of course intimates that parliament may again be
called upon to regulate the succession. The sum of the
petition is to let the Queen alone. ‘From her future
conduct your Majesty and the nation will be enabled to
judge whether the reports from Milan were well founded,
or whether they were the offspring of curiosity and malice.’
The prayer of the petition, therefore, is that parliament
be prorogued, and ‘thus end all proceedings against the
Queen.’
Of course this petition was really a political pamphlet,
introduced for no other purpose but the exposition
of certain opinions. The Queen’s replies to the popular
addresses borrowed something of the tone of this document,
and were partly sarcastic, partly serious, in regretting
that an impartial tribunal was not to be found on
this occasion in the House of Lords.
Her Majesty now once more changed her residence
from Portman Street to Brandenburgh House, the old
suburban residence of the Margravine of Anspach, on the
banks of the Thames, near Hammersmith, where watch
and ward were nightly kept by volunteer sentinels from
among some of the more enthusiastic inhabitants of the
vicinity. The distance, however, was too great to enable
her Majesty to repair conveniently to the House of Lords
when her trial should be in progress. The widow of Sir
Philip Francis had compassion upon her, and made her
an offer, promptly accepted, of the widow’s mansion in
St. James’s Square. It was next to that of her great
enemy, Lord Castlereagh; and to reach the House of
Lords she would daily have to pass Carlton House, the
residence of the husband who was so blindly bent upon
consigning her to infamy.
In the midst of these preparations for a great event
died a princess as unfortunate as Caroline, but one who
bore her trials with more wisdom. The Duchess of York,
the wife of the second son of Queen Charlotte, died on
Friday, the 6th of August. Her married life had been
unhappy, and every day of it was a disgrace to her
profligate, unprincipled, and good-tempered husband.
She endured the sorrows which were of his inflicting
with a silent dignity and some eccentricity. In her seclusion
at Oatlands this amiable, patient, and much-loved
lady passed a brief career, marked by active beneficence.
Her blue eyes, fair hair, and light complexion are still
favourite themes of admiration with those who have
reason to gratefully remember her. A great portion of
her income was expended in founding and maintaining
schools, encouraging benefit societies, and relieving the
poor and distressed. But her benevolence had an eccentric
side, and the indulgence of it was the only indulgence
she allowed herself. She loved the brute creation,
and had an especial admiration for dogs. Of these she
supported a perfect colony; and daily might her canine
friends, of every species and in considerable numbers, be
seen taking their airing in the park, often with their
benevolent hostess leading the way and taking delight in
witnessing their gambols. She, perhaps, was the more
attached to them because she had been so harshly used
by man; and a touch of misanthropy was probably the
basis of her regard for animals. The progeny of her
established favourites were boarded out among the villagers,
and in the park was a cemetery solely devoted as
the burial-ground of her quadruped friends. They rested
beneath small tombstones, which bore the names, age, and
characters of the canine departed. In these things may
be seen the weak side of her character; but it was a
weakness that might be easily pardoned. Her character
had its firm, and perhaps humorous, side. She had patronised
a party of strolling actors, and sent her foreign
servants, who could comprehend little, to listen to the
moan of Shakspeare murdered in a barn. Shortly after,
an earnest and itinerant Wesleyan hired the same locality,
and the Duchess ordered the household down to listen to
the sermon. The foreigners among them pleaded their
ignorance of the language as an excuse for not going.
‘No, no,’ said the Duchess; ‘you were ready enough to
go to the play, and you shall also go to the preaching.
I am going myself;’—and in the barn at Weybridge the
official successor of John Wesley expounded Scripture to
the lineal successor of Frederick the Great.
She had not the spirit of Caroline, and was all the
happier for it. The latter, indeed, was more harshly
tried, but she in some degree provoked the trial, and was
now suffering the consequences of the provocation. The
Queen gave a few days to retirement, in consequence of
the death of the Duchess; and, this duty performed, she
was again in public, working with energy and determination
to accomplish the restoration of a name which had
been tarnished by her own indiscretion. And indiscretion
is perhaps one of the most ruinous ingredients in a
character. It is a torch in the hand of the careless,
firing the very garments of the bearer.
The addresses to the Queen now became greater in
number and stronger in language. The replies to them
also became more energetic and menacing in expression.
They were still popularly ascribed to Dr. Parr, and, from
whomsoever proceeding, the author very well kept in
view the personage for whom and the circumstances
under which he was speaking. Thus, to the deputation
from Canterbury, one paragraph of the royal reply was
in these words: ‘When my accusers offered to load me
with wealth, on condition of depriving me of honour, my
habitual disinterestedness and my conscious integrity
made me spurn the golden lure. My enemies have not
yet taught me that wealth is desirable when it is coupled
with infamy.’ This was something of self-laudation; but
in answer to the Norwich address the Queen directed
attention from herself to the perils which menaced the
State through her prosecution. The manner of that
prosecution was described by her as ultimately threatening
the vital interests of individual and general liberty. ‘The
question at this moment is not merely whether the Queen
shall have her rights, but whether the rights of any individual
in the kingdom shall be free from violation.’ There
was more dignity in this sentiment and language than in
the Queen’s letter addressed to the King. Of course
this epistle was not the Queen’s, but a mere manufacture,
which the King, naturally enough, would not read, or at
least would not acknowledge that he had read. ‘Your
court became much less a scene of polished manners and
of refined intercourse than of low intrigue and scurrility.
Spies, bacchanalians, tale-bearers, and foul conspirators
swarmed in those places which had before been the resort
of sobriety, virtue, and honour.’ But the object of the
letter was less to contrast the Regent’s court with that of
the Queen Charlotte than to protest against the constitution
of the court before which she was to be tried. In
that court, she said, her accusers were her judges; the
ministers who had precondemned her commanded the
majority; and the husband who sought to destroy her
exercised an influence there perilous to the fair award of
justice. She demanded to be tried according to law:
‘You have left me nothing but my innocence,’ she
remarked, ‘and you would now, by a mockery of
justice, deprive me of the reputation of possessing even
that.’
In the reply to the Middlesex address occurs the sole
admission of blame attaching to her through indiscretion.
‘My frank and unreserved disposition may, at times, have
laid my conduct open to the misrepresentations of my
adversaries.’ But ‘I am what I seem, and seem what I
am. I feel no fear, except it be the fear that my character
be not sufficiently investigated. I challenge every inquiry.
I deprecate not the most vigilant scrutiny.’
Against the method of carrying on the scrutiny she continued
to protest most heartily. ‘In the bill of Pains
and Penalties,’ she replied to the address from Shoreditch,
‘my adversaries first condemn me without proof, and
then, with a sort of novel refinement in legislative science,
proceed to inquire whether there is any proof to justify
the condemnation.’ To the more directly popular mind,
to the address of the artisans, for instance, she delivered
an answer in which there is the following passage: ‘Who
does not see that it is not owing to the wisdom of the
Deity, but to the hard-heartedness of the oppressors,
when the sweat of the brow during the day is followed
by the tear at its close?’ This was stirring up popular
opinion against the King, of whom she invariably spoke
as her ‘oppressor.’ She, however, as significantly directed
the public wrath against the peers in her reply to
the Hammersmith address, wherein she says: ‘To have
been one of the peers who, after accusing and condemning,
affected to sit in judgment on Queen Caroline,
will be a sure passport to the splendid notoriety of everlasting
shame.’ The married ladies of London went up
to her with an address of encouragement and sympathy.
Her answer to this document contained an asseveration
that she was not unworthy of the sympathy of English
matrons. ‘I shall never sacrifice that honour,’ she observed,
‘which is the glory of a woman.... I can
never be debased while I observe the great maxim of
respecting myself.’ An eye-witness well remembers
seeing several of these ladies (principally wives of
small shopkeepers) descend from the hackney coaches
in which they were conveyed to Brandenburgh House.
They descended the steps as a man comes down a ladder!
The Queen’s answer to them was, however, full of
dignity. But her reply to the inhabitants of Greenwich
had even more of the matter in it that would sink deep
in the bosoms of mothers. After alluding to the period
when she was living happily with her daughter, among
those who were now addressing her, she added: ‘Can I
ever be unmindful that it was a period when I could
behold that countenance which I never beheld without
vivid delight, and to hear that voice which to my fond
ear was like music breathing over violets? Can I
forget? No; my soul will never suffer me to forget that,
when the cold remains of the beloved object were deposited
in the tomb, the malice of my persecutors would
not even suffer the name of the mother to be inscribed
upon the coffin of her child. Of all the indignities I
have experienced, this is one which, minute as it may
seem, has affected me as much as all the rest. But if it
were minute, it was not so to my agonising sensibility.’
But she observed in her reply to the Barnard Castle
address: ‘My conscience is without a pang—and what
have I to fear?’ Her Majesty at the same time seldom
allowed an opportunity to escape of placing the King in,
if the phrase may be allowed, a metaphorical pillory.
‘To pretend,’ she thus spoke to the Bethnal Green deputation,
‘that his Majesty is not a party, and the sole complaining
party, in this great question, is to render the
whole business a mere mockery. His Majesty either does
or does not desire the divorce which the bill of Pains
and Penalties proposes to accomplish. If his Majesty
does not desire the divorce, it is certain that the State
does not desire it in his stead; and if the divorce is the
desire of his Majesty, his Majesty ought to seek it on the
same terms as his subjects; for in a limited monarchy
the law is one and the same for all.’ In the answer to the
people of Sheffield the same spirit is manifested. ‘It
would have been well for me,’ she exclaims, ‘and perhaps
not ill for the country, if my oppressor had been as far
from malice as myself; for what is it but malice of the
most unmixed nature and the most unrelenting character
which has infested my path and waylaid my steps
during a long period of twenty-five years?’ Her complaint
was, that during that quarter of a century her
adversaries had treated her as if she had been insensible to
the value of character. ‘For why else,’ she asks, in addressing
the Reading deputation, ‘why else should they have
invited me to bring it to market, and let it be estimated
by gold? But—a good name is better than riches. I
do not dread poverty, but I loathe turpitude, and I think
death preferable to shame.’ Finally, she flattered the
popular ear by placing all the authorities in the realm
below that of the sovereign people. In her reply to one
of the City Ward addresses occurs the assertion that, ‘If
the power of king, lords, and commons is limited by the
fundamental laws of the realm, their acts are not binding
when they exceed those limitations. If it be asked:
“What then?—are kings, lords, and commons answerable
to any higher authority?” I distinctly answer, yes. “To
what higher authority?” “To that of God and of the
people.”’ Lord John Russell, too, told the King that the
crown was held at the will and pleasure of the parliament;
and the Queen, speaking on that hint, now maintained
that crown and parliament were, under certain contingencies,
beneath the heel of the peuple souverain.
It perplexed many of the clergy that the Princess
of Wales should be continued to be prayed for up to
the period of George III.’s death, but that Queen Caroline
should not be named in the Liturgy after the decease
of the only true friend she ever had in the royal
family. One military chaplain, a Mr. Gillespie, of a
Scotch Yeomanry regiment, was put under arrest for
daring to invoke a blessing upon her in his extemporary
prayer for the royal family; but this was the only
penalty inflicted for the so-called offence.
CHAPTER X. THE QUEEN’S TRIAL.
The Queen’s reception by the House of Lords—Royal progress to the
House—The Queen’s enthusiastic reception by the populace—Their
treatment of the King’s party—Marquis of Anglesea—The Duke of
Wellington’s reply to them—The Attorney-General’s opening speech—Examination
of Theodore Majocchi—The Queen overcome at the ingratitude
of this knowing rogue—Disgusting nature of the evidence—Other
witnesses examined—Mr. Brougham’s fearless defence of the
Queen—Mr. Denman’s advocacy not less bold—His denunciation of the
Duke of Clarence—Question of throwing up the bill entertained by
Ministers—Stormy debates—Lords Grey and Grosvenor in favour of the
Queen—Duke of Montrose against her—Ministerial majority—The
Queen protests against the proceedings—The Ministers in a minority—The
bill surrendered by Lord Liverpool—Reception of the news by the
Queen—Her unspeakable grief.
The Queen’s trial, as the proceedings in the House of
Lords were called, commenced on the 17th of August.
‘Now we are in for it, Mr. Denman,’ said her Majesty’s
Attorney-General to her Solicitor-General. With what
spirit Brougham went in for it has been left on record
by Lord Denman himself, in the ‘Memoir’ edited by
Sir Joseph Arnould.
‘Let me here state, once for all, that from this
moment I am sure that Brougham thought of nothing
but serving and saving his client. I, who saw him more
nearly than any man, can bear witness that from the
period in question his whole powers were devoted to her
safety and welfare. He felt that the battle must be
fought, and resolved to fight it manfully and “to the
utterance.”’
The Queen had signified her intention of attending
daily in the House during the proceedings, and suitable
accommodation and attendance were provided for her.
In the House, at all events, she was treated as Queen-consort,
and she more than once adverted to the fact
when about to take her seat on the throne-like chair and
cushion placed at her disposal, near her counsel. Her
usual course was to come up from Brandenburgh House
early in the morning to the residence of Lady Francis
in St. James’s Square. From the latter place she proceeded,
in as much ‘state’ as could be got up with her
diminished means, to the House of Lords. On these
occasions she was attended by Lady Anne Hamilton, her
chamberlains, Sir W. Gell and Mr. Keppel Craven, and
Alderman Wood, who invariably endeavoured to have
the honour of escorting the Queen into the House, but
was as invariably forbidden to pass in that way by the
local authorities. The alderman, being a member of parliament,
was compelled to pass through the entrance allotted
to the ‘Commons;’ and the Queen, who was received
with military honours, was usually led into the House, or
to the apartment assigned to her use, by Sir Thomas
Tyrwhitt and Mr. Brougham, each holding her by a hand.
The royal progress from St. James’s Square to the
House of Peers and the return were daily witnessed by
a dense multitude, and hailed with acclamations. The
Queen thought the popular sympathy for her far stronger
than it really was. It did not indeed want for earnestness,
intensity, or honesty, but it did not go deep enough
to urge the multitude to make any serious demonstration
in her favour. They cheered her as she passed, cheered
the soldiers who saluted her, and hissed those who failed
to show her that mark of respect. They hissed or
cheered the peers on their arrival according as they
knew that they were opponents or supporters of the
Queen. They were especially delighted when they succeeded
in compelling a lordly adversary to shout, or seem
to shout, for the Queen. They strove mightily to bring
the Marquis of Anglesea to this; but on his assertion
that rather than do a thing against his inclination they
might run him through the body, they laughed, cheered,
and let him pass on. The Duke of Wellington served
those who assailed him quite as characteristically: he was
violently hissed on his way to the House on the first day
of the trial; he checked his horse for a moment, looked
round with a half-smile, as if the people had been guilty
of some absurd mistake, and then quietly walked his
horse onward. On another occasion, as he was returning
from the House, the mob insisted upon his crying ‘The
Queen! the Queen!’ ‘Yes, yes!’ was his reply; but
his persecutors were not content therewith, and continued
to assail him as he rode slowly forward. At length,
wearied with their importunity, he is said to have turned
to his assailants and exclaimed, ‘Very well; the Queen
then, and may all your wives be like her!’
Caroline was early in her attendance on the 17th of
August. She entered the House at ten o’clock, while the
names of the peers were being called over. She wore a
black satin dress, with a white veil over a plain laced
cap. The whole body of peers rose to receive her, and
she acknowledged the courtesy with that dignity which
she could well assume, and which she could so readily
throw off.
It was not till the 19th of August that the case was
actually opened by the Attorney-General. The preliminary
proceedings were not, however, of much interest,
save on the part of the Duke of Leinster, who attempted
by motion to get rid of the bill at once, in which he
failed, all parties being nearly agreed that there was
now no possibility of retrocession. The second incident
of interest was in the speech of Mr. Brougham against the
bill, and the method by which it sought to crush his
illustrious client. While praising her self-denying generosity,
which induced her to refrain from all recrimination,
he ably adverted to the anomaly of the accused
person in a case of divorce being prevented from showing
the guilt of her accuser.
On the 19th the Attorney-General opened his case.
He professed his conviction that he should state nothing
which he could not substantiate on proof, and, reviewing
the general course of the Queen’s life abroad, he deduced
from it that she had been guilty of conduct which
stamped her with shame as Princess and as woman.
Caroline entered the House towards the conclusion of his
speech, shortly after which he introduced the first of the
batch of Italian witnesses lodged near the House, in
Cotton Garden, and whose presence there was sufficient
to render uneasy the spirit of the philosopher who gave
his name to the spot, and the wreck of whose library is
among the richest treasures of the British Museum.
The entrance of the first witness gave rise to an incident
dramatic in its effect. He was the celebrated
Theodore Majocchi, and he no sooner appeared at the bar
than the Queen, overcome, as it would seem, at seeing
one who owed her much gratitude arrayed against her, exclaimed
‘Oh, traditore! (oh, traitor!)’ and, hurrying from
the scene, took refuge in her apartment, from which she
did not again issue except to return home. The chief
points supposed to have been established by Majocchi
were that on the deck of the polacca Bergami slept at
night beneath the tent wherein the Princess also slept,
and that the same individual attended her when she was
in the bath. The tent was partially open in the hot
climate beneath which the wayfarers were travelling, and
in the bath the Princess wore a bathing dress, so that, if
the indiscretion was undoubtedly great, indecorum was
not (it was suggested) very seriously injured. Of the
remainder of Majocchi’s evidence it has been well
remarked, by one who heard it, that ‘all his subsequent
assertions did not, in consequence of what he implied by
this statement, weigh the worth of two straws with me,
for it was of the nature of inference, and deduced by the
imagination. Besides, I do think he was a knowing rogue,
who forgot to remember many things which perhaps
might have changed the hue of his insinuations. I do
not say that what he did say was not sufficient to induce
a strong suspicion of guilt itself in the members of an
English society; but this is the very thing complained of.
The Queen was in foreign society, in peculiar circumstances,
and yet our state Solomons judge of her conduct
as if she had been among the English.’16 The remark is
worth something, for even at so short a distance from
town as Ramsgate Sands the law of modesty does not
appear to be the same as it is in other parts of England;
and as for the incident of the bath, our grandfathers and
grandmothers, in the heyday of their youth, used to walk
in couples in the ‘Baths of Bath,’ and no one presumed
to take offence at the proceeding. The writer last quoted
further remarks, as a matter worthy of observation, that
Majocchi did not appear to be ‘at all shocked or shamefaced
at what he said.’ The inference deduced is that the
witness had been ‘taught to dwell so particularly on uncomely
things by one who did know how much they
would revolt the English.’
It would indeed be revolting to go through all the
evidence: it must suffice to tread our way through it as
lightly and as quickly as possible. All the government
witnesses deposed to an ostentation of criminality in
parties who, if guilty, must have been most deeply
interested in concealing all evidences of guilt, and one of
whom at least knew that she was constantly watched and
daily reported of. This contradiction very soon struck
Lord Eldon himself, who intimated that some measures
should be taken to punish perjury, if it could be proved
to have been committed. It is certain that the King’s
case was materially damaged at a very early stage of the
proceedings, not only by discrepancy in the evidence, but
by the suspicious alacrity of the witnesses in tendering it.
A close watcher of Majocchi, when giving his evidence,
says: ‘I cannot understand why so much importance
is attached to the evidence of Majocchi. He
did not state any one thing that indicated a remembrance
of his having put a sense of indecorum on the conduct of
the Queen at the time to which he referred; and in this,
I think, the want of tact in those who arranged the case
is glaringly obvious. As men they could not but have
often seen that it is the nature of recollected transactions
to affect the expression of the physiognomy, and particularly
of those kinds of transactions which the traditore
knew he was called to prove; yet in no one instance did
Majocchi show that there was an image in his mind, even
while uttering what were thought the most sensual
demonstrations. In all the most particular instances that
pointed to guilt he was as abstract as Euclid; a logarithmic
transcendent could not have been more bodiless
than the memory of his recollections. I do not say that
he was taught by others, but I affirm that he spoke by
rote.’17
Many of the servants examined swore positively to
much unseemliness of demeanour between Bergami and
the Princess, and some went very much further than this.
Of these, several confessed to being hostile to the courier;
some were jealous of him; but they all, despite some discrepancy
of detail, kept to the leading points of their
evidence, which was destructive to the reputation of the
Princess.
Captain Briggs and Captain Pechell, with whom she
had sailed, deposed to some folly, but no positive guilt.
Something was attempted to be made out of the arrangement
of the respective berths on board the ship commanded
by the first officer, but with no remarkable
success. The captain of the polacca gave evidence that
was much more damaging, with reference to the unseemliness
of sleeping on deck, beneath a tent—for which the
heat of the atmosphere and the horses and mules that
were below deck hardly offered sufficient authority.
Again, there was testimony of such disgraceful conduct at
inns that, if it be accepted, no other conclusion can be arrived
at than that those guilty of it must not only have
been lost to all sense of shame, but eager that their iniquity
should be a spectacle to all beholders. ‘As the whole
case now is,’ says a contemporary writer, ‘by making it
more gross than in all human probability it could be, the
evidence, where it might otherwise be trusted, is rendered
unworthy of credit.’
But there were incidents in the drama that were not
all for the audience. ‘Nature,’ says the writer of the
‘Supplementary Letters’ annexed to the ‘Diary Illustrative
of the Court of George IV.,’ ‘often mixes up the
sublime and the ridiculous helplessly, as it would seem;
and I met to-day with a curious instance of her indifference.
I forget how it happened, but I was driven
accidentally against a curtain, and saw, in consequence,
behind it Lord Castlereagh, sitting on a stair by himself,
holding his hand to his ear, to keep the sound and words
of the evidence which the witness under examination at
the bar was giving. Notwithstanding the moody wrath
of my ruminations, I could not help laughing at the discovery,
and his lordship looked equally amused, and was
quite as much discomposed. He smiled, and I withdrew.
I met him afterwards in the lobby of the House of
Commons, when he again smiled.’
Masons, painters, whitewashers, and waiters vied, or
seemed to vie, with each other in the dirty character of
their depositions. Rastelli, a groom, but discarded as a
thief, did not go further, but both sides evidently considered
him as an unmitigated scoundrel, and he was
somehow permitted to disappear, as if either side was
anxious to be rid of him. Scarcely more respectable
was the woman Dumont, who dwelt on the abominations
to which she swore as if she loved thinking of them.
She was worse than the boatmen, bakers, and others with
aliases to their names, who, however, deposed to circumstances
sufficiently gross in character, and drew dreadfully
strong inferences from generally slender but occasionally
very suspicious premises.
The loathsome mass was got through by the 7th of
September, when the House adjourned till the 3rd of
October. The members needed breathing time, and all
parties, the public included, stood in urgent need of that
peculiar civet whose virtue, according to the poet, lies in
its power to sweeten the imagination.
The course of the trial exhibited more than one trait
illustrative of the English Bar, and also of individuals.
Thus, in the interim between the closing of the King’s
case and the opening of the Queen’s defence by Mr.
Brougham, the last-named gentleman went down to Yorkshire
to attend the assizes there. The chief advocate of
one Sovereign against another was there engaged in a
cause on behalf of an old woman upon whose pig-cot a
trespass had been committed. The tenement in question
was on the border of a common of one hundred acres,
upon five yards of which it was alleged to have unduly
encroached, and was therefore pulled down by the landlord.
The poor woman sought for damages, she having held
occupation by a yearly rental of sixpence, and sixpence on
entering. The learned counsel pleaded his poor client’s cause
successfully, and, having procured for her the value of her
levelled pig-cot, some forty shillings, he returned to town
to endeavour to plead as successfully the cause of the
Queen. The re-opening of the case took place on the 3rd
of October. Before Mr. Brougham rose to speak, Lord
Liverpool made severe introductory remarks, for the
purpose of disavowing all improper dealing with the witnesses
on the part of Government. He also expressed
his readiness to exhibit an account of all moneys paid to
the witnesses in support of the bill.
Mr. Brougham then entered on the Queen’s defence in
a speech of great boldness and power. The sentiments
put forth in that oration were probably not endorsed by
Lord Brougham. He declared, too, that nothing should
prevent him from fulfilling his duty, and that he would
recriminate upon the King if he found it necessary to do
so. The threat gave some uneasiness to ministers, but
they trusted, nevertheless, to the learned counsel’s discretion.
He would have been justified in the public mind
if he had realised his promise. The popular opinion,
however, hardly supported him in what followed, when
he declared that an English advocate could look to
nothing but the rights of his client, and that, even if the
country itself should suffer, his feelings as a patriot must
give way to his professional obligations. This was only
one of many instances of the abuse of the very extensively
abused and widely misunderstood maxim of Fiat
justitia ruat cœlum.
Denman’s famous speech, which many peers thought
superior to Brougham’s, was partly prepared, as to some
of its points, at one of the ‘Sundays’ he used to spend
at Holland House. There, Denman, after suggestions
from Dr. Parr, resolved to draw a parallel between
Caroline and Octavia, George and Nero. And this he
did with such effect as regards George IV. that, veiled as
the most personal allusion was, the King never forgot
him who made it.
Mr. Denman, the Queen’s solicitor-general, was not
less legally audacious, if one may so speak, than his great
leader. In a voice of thunder, and in presence of the
assembled peerage of the realm, he denounced one of the
King’s brothers as a calumniator. Mr. Rush, who was
present on the occasion, says, ‘the words were, “Come
forth, THOU SLANDERER!”—a denunciation,’ he goes on
to say, ‘the more severe from the sarcasm with which it
was done, and the turn of his eye towards its object.’
That object was the Duke of Clarence; and in reference
to the exclamation, and the fierce spirit of the hour generally,
Mr. Rush says: ‘Even after the whole trial had
ended, Sir Francis Burdett, just out of prison for one
libel, proclaimed aloud to his constituents, and had it
printed in all the papers, that the ministers ALL DESERVED
TO BE HANGED. This tempest of abuse, incessantly directed
against the King and all who stood by him, was
borne during several months, without the slightest attempt
to check or punish it; and it is too prominent a fact
to be left unnoticed that the same advocate who so fearlessly
uttered the above denunciation was made attorney-general
when the prince of the blood who was the
OBJECT OF IT sat upon the throne, and was subsequently
raised to the still higher dignity of lord chief justice.’
By the end of the third day of the defence the testimony
had assumed so favourable an aspect for the
Queen that ministers began to deliberate upon the
question of throwing up the bill altogether. During the
following fortnight, however, the subsequent testimony
was not so decidedly contradictory of what the witnesses
on the other side had sworn to, and the government then
decided that the bill should take its course. The first
witness was a Mr. Lemann, clerk to the Queen’s solicitor.
His deposition was to the effect that he had been sent to
Baden to solicit the attendance of Baron Dante, the
Grand Duke’s chamberlain. The baron, who was proprietor
of an estate in Hanover, and who consulted his
memoranda before answering the solicitation, finally, and
under sanction, if not order, of his ducal master, refused
to attend as a witness. Colonel St. Leger simply proved
that he did not resign his appointment in the Queen’s
household from any knowledge of her having conducted
herself improperly, but on account of ill health. The
Earl of Guildford spoke to the general propriety of the
Queen’s conduct abroad while under his observation; and
Lord Glenbervie showed that the royal reputation had
not been dimmed, in his eyes at least, during his residence
in Italy, or otherwise he would not have permitted Lady
Glenbervie to act, even for a brief time, as lady-in-waiting
to the Princess. Lady Charlotte Lindsay deposed
to having heard reports unfavourably affecting that
reputation, but she had never seen anything to confirm
them. Persons of inferior rank, in attendance on the
Princess, deposed to the same effect. The testimony of
Dr. Holland and Mr. Mills was of a highly favourable
character, exact and decisive. The evidence of other witnesses
was equally favourable to the character and conduct
of the courier chamberlain; and, partly in answer to the
evidence which spoke of her Royal Highness receiving
strangers in her sleeping apartments, the Earl of Llandaff,
who had resided in Italy with his lady and family, showed
that such a circumstance was a part of the custom of
Italy. Mr. Keppel Craven, who had originally engaged
Bergami for the service of the Princess, declared that the
individual in question brought excellent testimonials with
him, and that he was of respectable family and behaved
with propriety. Mr. Craven added that he had heard
much about spies, and that he had admonished the
Princess touching the being seen with Bergami in attendance
as a servant. This evidence was corroborated by
that of Sir W. Gell. A writer, commenting upon the
testimony of these witnesses and that given on the other
side, remarks: that the witnesses on the King’s side ‘told
improbable stories, and none of them had the look of
speaking from recollection ... there is a visible difference
between the expression of the countenance in
telling a recollection and an imagination, especially such
stories as they told.’18
It was further proved that, if Bergami kissed the
Princess’s hand, he did no more than what was commonly
done by respectable Italian servants by way of homage to
their mistress.
This ‘plain sailing’ was, however, somewhat marred
by the contradictory evidence of Lieutenant Flynn; and
even that of Lieutenant Hownam was sufficient to show
that the Princess, if not the most gross, was certainly the
most indiscreet, of ladies. Other witnesses spoke to
dresses and dances, which had been described as disgraceful
in their character, being really harmless; and
others again showed that certain unedifying sights could
not have been seen by the witnesses who had sworn to
having been spectators of them from the place in which
they stood. Again, the evidence did not lack which
proved the purchasing of testimony on the other side, and
some excitement was raised when, on the presence of
Rastelli being required, it was found that he had been
permitted to leave the country. In the opinion of some,
he had been conveyed away by the prosecuting party. A
few thought he had disappeared with the connivance of
both sides.
The entire evidence was closed on the 30th of October.
Allusion has been already made to Mr. Denman’s
speech, which was ably made, now, in summing up the
evidence for the defence. It closed rather unaptly in
terms, the remembrance of which embittered many years
of the speaker’s life—for it seemed to undo all that had
been previously said and done: ‘This, my Lords, is the
highest tribunal on earth; it can only be exceeded by that
where all the world shall be judged, and the secrets of
all hearts laid open. I invoke you, my Lords, therefore,
to imitate the wisdom, justice, and beneficence of that
high and sacred Authority who said to the woman
brought before him: “If no accuser come forward,
neither will I condemn thee. Go in peace, and sin no
more.”’
The Lords adjourned to the 2nd of November, from
which day to the 6th the peers were engaged in debates
upon the evidence, almost every member assigning reasons
for the vote he intended to give. Mr. Rush describes the
character of the debates as the case approached its close.
It was ‘stormy’ in the extreme. ‘Earl Grey declared
that, if their lordships passed the bill, it would prove the
most disastrous step the House had ever taken. Earl
Grosvenor said that, feeling as he did the evils which the
erasure of the Queen’s name from the Liturgy (a measure
taken before her trial came on) was likely to entail upon
the nation, as well as its repugnance to law and justice,
he would, had he been Archbishop of Canterbury,
have thrown the Prayer-book in the King’s face sooner
than have consented to it. On the other hand, the Duke
of Montrose said, even after the ministers had abandoned
the bill, that, so convinced was he of her guilt, whatever
others might think to do, he, for one, would never acknowledge
her as his Queen.’
The bill, however, was not yet abandoned. The House
divided on the 6th of the month, on the second reading,
which was carried by 123 to 95, giving ministers a majority
of 28. The Queen immediately signed a protest
against the nature of the proceeding. The document
terminated with these words: ‘She now most deliberately,
and before God, asserts that she is wholly innocent of the
crime laid to her charge, and she awaits with unabated
confidence the final result of this unparalleled investigation’—and
as she signed the protest she exclaimed, with
a dash of her pen, ‘there, “Caroline regina,” in spite of
them.’
By a clever manœuvre of her friends the ministers
were next cast into a minority. The House had gone
into committee on the divorce clause. The clause was
distasteful to some of the bishops. Dr. Howley, indeed, is
said to have held that the King could do no wrong, even
if he broke the seventh commandment. Others, however,
thought that a man so notoriously guilty in that respect
was not justified in seeking to destroy his wife, even if
she were as guilty as he was. The clause was objected to
by many peers, and popularly it was distasteful for something
of the same reasons. The ministers, thinking to
gain a point by abandoning a clause, moved the omission
of this very clause of divorce. But the Queen’s friends
immediately saw that, by the retaining of the clause, the
bishops and others who preferred the bill without it
would be less likely to vote for the passing of the bill
itself. They accordingly voted that the divorce clause
should be retained, and the ministers, in a minority on
this point, proposed the third reading of the bill with the
clause in question in the body of it. One hundred and
eight voted for it, and ninety-nine against it. The
ministry were thus only in a majority of nine—exactly
the number of the peers who were members of the
cabinet—and after a short delay Lord Liverpool made a
merit of surrendering the measure as an offering to
popular feeling, although they had carried the bill—with
too small a majority, as he confessed, to enable ministers
to act upon it.
The Queen was in her own apartment in the House of
Lords when the intelligence was brought her by her
excited counsel that the bill of Pains and Penalties had
been abandoned. She received the intimation in perfect
silence, hardly seeming to comprehend the fact, or perhaps
scarcely knowing how it should be appreciated.
The ministers had carried their bill, but even their withdrawing
of it would not prove her guiltless. ‘I shall
never forget,’ says one present, ‘what was my emotion
when it was announced to me that the bill of Pains
and Penalties was to be abandoned. I was walking
towards the west end of the long corridor of the House of
Lords, wrapt in reverie, when one of the door-keepers
touched me on the shoulder and told me the news. I
turned instantly to go back into the House, when I met
the Queen coming out alone from her waiting-room, preceded
by an usher. She had been there unknown to me.
I stopped involuntarily. I could not, indeed, proceed,
for she had a dazed look, more tragical than consternation:
she passed me. The usher pushed open the folding
doors of the great staircase; she began to descend, and I
followed instinctively two or three steps behind her.
She was evidently all shuddering, and she took hold of
the bannisters, pausing for a moment. Oh, that sudden
clutch with which she caught the railing! Never say
again to me that any actor can feel like a principal. It
was a visible manifestation of unspeakable grief—an echoing
of the voice of the soul. Four or five persons came
in from below before she reached the bottom of the stairs.
I think Alderman Wood was one of them, but I was in
indescribable confusion.... I rushed past, and out
into the hastily-assembling crowd.... I knew not
where I was; but in a moment a shouting in the balcony
above, on which a number of gentlemen from the interior
of the House were gathering, roused me. The multitude
then began to cheer, but at first there was a kind of
stupor. The sympathy, however, soon became general,
and, winged by the voice, soon spread up the street.
Every one instantly, between Charing Cross and Whitehall,
turned and came rushing down, filling Old and New
Palace Yards as if a deluge was unsluiced.’19
It was asked by many why Bergami himself had not
been summoned to deny upon oath any charge of guilt
with the Queen, but Mr. Denman had given sufficient
reason in his speech. ‘If,’ he said, ‘any man guilty of
the charge was examined he would deny it. I firmly
believe the feeling among mankind in such a case would
triumph over morality. It would be found better to
violate the oath than betray the victim.’ This is, doubtless,
true; but like the concluding sentence of Denman’s
speech, already quoted, it seemed to some persons
to damage as much as defend. The Queen had said, in
her fear of her attorney-general, ‘If my head is placed
on Temple Bar, it will be through Mr. Brougham.’ She
stood in greater peril from the studied words of Denman
than from the unpremeditated and impetuous utterances
of Brougham. The Queen’s own utterances did not want
for boldness. It is reported of her having said at the
time of the trial that she was, perhaps, not altogether
blameless, since she had certainly lived with Mrs. Fitzherbert’s
husband!
CHAPTER XI. ‘TRISTIS GLORIA.’
The result of the Queen’s trial advantageous to neither party—The Queen’s
application to Parliament for a residence—Lord Liverpool’s reply—Royal
message from the Queen to Parliament, and its discourteous reception—The
Queen goes to St. Paul’s to return thanks—Uncharitable conduct of
the Cathedral authorities—Their unseemly behaviour rebuked by the
Lord Mayor—Revenue for the Queen recommended by the King—Accepted
by her—The Coronation of George IV.—The Queen claims
a right to take part in the ceremony—Her right discussed—Not
allowed—Determines to be present—The Queen appears at the Abbey,
and is refused admittance—With a broken spirit retires—Her sense of
degradation—The King labours to give éclat to his Coronation—The
Coronation-festival in Westminster Hall described—Appearance of the
Duke of Wellington—His banquet to the King—The King’s speech on
the occasion—True greatness of the Duke—Anecdote of Louis XIV. and
Lord Stair—Regal banquet to the foreign ministers—The Duke of
Wellington appears as an Austrian general—Incident of the Coronation—Lord
Londonderry’s banquet to the minister of Louis Napoleon.
The Queen was in tears when the ‘people’ were rejoicing,
less certainly for her sake than for the popular victory
which had been achieved. There was nothing in the issue
of the trial for any party to rejoice at. The ministry could
not exult, for although they had carried the bill which
declared the Queen worthy of degradation from her rights
and privileges, rank and station, yet they refrained from
acting upon it, because the popular voice was hoarse with
menace, so unfairly had the case of the two antagonists
been tried before the august tribunal of the peers.
The popular voice had been heeded, and was satisfied
with the triumph. Caroline must have felt that she was
really of but secondary account in the matter, that the
victory was not for her, and that, righteously or unrighteously,
her reputation had been irretrievably shaken
into ruins.
Her great spirit, however, was as yet undaunted. The
bill was no sooner withdrawn than she formally applied
to Lord Liverpool to be furnished with a fitting place of
residence and a suitable provision. The premier’s reply
informed her Majesty that the King was by no means disposed
to permit her to reside in any of the royal palaces,
but that the pecuniary allowance which she had hitherto
enjoyed would be continued to her until parliament
should again meet for the regular despatch of business.
Caroline, determined to harass her husband, next sent the
following note to the prime minister:—‘The Queen requests
Lord Liverpool to inform his Majesty of the Queen’s
intention to present herself next Thursday in person at
the King’s Drawing-room, to have the opportunity of
presenting a petition to his Majesty for obtaining her
rights.’
The following humiliating minute was accordingly
made to guide the King:—‘If the Queen should decline
delivering her petition into any hands but the King’s, the
King should not be advised to permit her to come up to
the Drawing-room, but should himself go down to the
room where the Queen is, attended by such of his household
and his ministers as may be there, and receive the
petition.’
The then present parliament was about to be prorogued,
and the Queen was resolved that, if possible, that
body should not separate until it had granted her what,
as Queen-consort, she had a right to demand. Her solicitor-general,
accordingly, went down to the Commons
with a royal message, which he was not permitted to
deliver. The House probably never presented such a
scene as that disgraceful one of the night of the 23rd of
November. Mr. Denman stood with the Queen’s letter
in his hand; he was perfectly in order, but the Speaker
chose rather to obey that brought by the usher of the
black rod, summoning the members to attend at the bar
of the Lords and listen to the prorogation. The Speaker
hurried out of the House, and the Queen’s message was
virtually flung into the street. The public, however,
knew that its chief object was to announce the Queen’s
refusal of any allowance or accommodation made to her
as by ministerial bounty. She still claimed the restoration
of her name to the Liturgy, and a revenue becoming her
recognised rank as Queen-consort.
In the meantime she publicly partook of the Holy
Communion at the parish church of Hammersmith, a
proceeding which many persons considered as a new protestation
of her innocence. The admirers of coincidences
affected to have found a remarkable one in the first lesson
for the day, on this occasion (Isaiah lix.); and particularly
in the verse which declares that ‘Judgment is turned
away backward, and justice standeth afar off, for truth is
fallen into the street, and equity cannot enter.’ This was
considered as applicable to the Queen’s case, but, as its
applicability presented itself in a double sense, every one
construed it as he thought best.
Caroline’s next step was to proceed to St. Paul’s in
solemn, public array, to return thanks for her escape from
the meshes constructed for her by her enemies. Due
notice was given of her Majesty’s intention and object to
the Cathedral authorities, and the day appointed by her
was the 29th of November. The intimation excited in
those authorities neither admiration nor respect. Even
the dean, the mild and virtuous Van Mildert, seemed to
think that it was highly unbecoming in the Queen to be
grateful for the dispensations of Heaven. The whole
chapter thought, or were taught to think, that there was
no greater nuisance upon earth than for this woman to
come to St. Paul’s and thank God that he had not allowed
her enemies to prevail over her. Those who may have
any doubt as to these being the capitular sentiments are
referred to the ‘Life of Lord Sidmouth,’ by Dean Pellew,
who records with emphatic approval what the good, but
mistaken, Van Mildert very uncharitably said and did
upon the occasion.
The Corporation of London were anxious to facilitate
the Queen’s object; the Chapter of St. Paul’s, under
pressure from very high authority without, resolved to do
all they could to impede it. They determined that nothing
should be changed in the ordinary service; that the
Queen’s presence or purpose should in no way be recognised;
that the doors should be thrown open to the rush
of Queen and canaille indiscriminately; and that the
mayor and corporation should be held responsible for the
safety of the Cathedral.
The chief magistrate and his council soon, however,
brought the chapter to a more proper sense of seemliness.
The latter body indeed would not yield on any really
ecclesiastical point; but they agreed that certain arrangements
might be made by the mayor and his corporate
brothers for the better maintenance of the decorum, dignity,
and decency becoming so solemn an occasion.
The dean was satisfied that the unwashed artisans—the
unclean public generally—would make of the day a
‘saturnalia,’ a festival of obscene desecration. The public,
it is to be hoped, pleasingly surprised him. It generally
comports itself with propriety when it descends in countless
masses into the streets to form a portion of the
solemnity, partly actors, partly spectators, on great occasions.
The people never behaved with more decency than
they did on this day.
The circumstance was really solemn, but there were
matters about it that robbed it of some of its solemnity.
It was solemn to see a Queen proceeding alone, as it may
be said, but through myriads of people, to acknowledge
publicly the mercies of Heaven. Lady Anne Hamilton
was her solitary female English attendant; but every
woman who witnessed her progress either praised or
pitied her that day. Her ‘procession’ was made up of
very slender material, though all her court followed her
in the person of Mr. Vice-Chamberlain Craven. This
little company, however, was swollen by numerous additions
on the way; members of parliament, among others, Sir
Robert Wilson, Mr. Hume, and Mr. John Cam Hobhouse,
lent some dignity by their presence. Horsemen fell into
the line, vehicles of every degree took up their following,
and the ‘trades’ marshalled themselves, either in joining
the march or drawing up to greet the pious Queen as she
passed upon her way. Among these, perhaps, the solemnity
most suffered. Some very ill-favoured individuals shouted
for her Majesty beneath banners which declared, ‘Thus
shall it be done to the woman whom the people delight to
honour.’ The braziers added a joke to the occasion by
raising a flag over their position at the end of Bridge
Street, on which it was recorded that ‘The Queen’s Guards
are Men of Metal.’
With the addition of the ordinary civic pomp the
Queen arrived at the Cathedral, where she was received
with affectionate respect by her friends, and with some
show of courtesy by the ecclesiastical authorities, who had
wiled away the time previous to her arrival by squabbling
rather too loudly for the place and occasion with the
corporation present.
The usual service was then proceeded with, and again
the coincidence hunters sought for their favourite spoil.
They found abundance of what they desired in the hundred-and-fortieth
and the following psalms. But of these the
phrases cut both ways, and perhaps there was no passage
more personally applicable to the Queen, and some of
those friends less in deed than in word, than where it
is written, ‘Oh let not my heart be inclined to any evil
thing; let me not be occupied in ungodly works with the
men that work wickedness, lest I eat such things as please
them. Let the righteous rather smite me friendly, and
reprove me. But let not their precious balsam break my
head; yea, I will pray yet against their wickedness.’ No
especial form of thanksgiving was made use of in her
Majesty’s name, but this was not needed. It was, however,
imperative upon the clergy officiating to read the parenthetical
clause in the General Thanksgiving prayer, which
has immediate reference to the individual who desires to
make an offering of human gratitude to God. This clause,
however, was omitted! The Queen-consort of England
was upon her knees upon the floor of the Cathedral, but
the officiating minister virtually looked up to Him, and
standing between Caroline and her Creator, exclaimed,
‘Lord, she is not here!’ The omission of the clause was
tantamount to this. The people behaved better than the
priests on that day; and yet it was one on which the
priests might have found occasion to give valuable instruction
to the people. Those of St. Paul’s mistook their
mission on the day in question.
This spiritual matter ended, the temporal welfare of
the Queen had to be looked to. If she could have existed
upon good wishes, she would have been wealthy, for never
did congratulatory addresses pour in upon her as at the
end of this year and the beginning of that which followed.
But she needed something more substantial than good
wishes, and the King himself acknowledged as much in a
speech from the throne, delivered on the re-opening of
parliament in January, 1821. His Majesty recommended
that a separate provision should be made for the Queen-consort.
She instantly declared her refusal of any provision
that was not accompanied by the restoration of her name
in the Liturgy. The condition was peremptorily declined
by the government, and the income of 50,000l. a year was
then accepted by the Queen. In this step she disappointed
numberless friends, who would not have contributed a
farthing to her maintenance. But stern necessity broke
the pride of the poor lady, who was beginning to feel that
a banker without ‘effects’ for her use was a worse thing
than a Liturgy without her name. Her increased revenue
enabled her to bear the expenses of a town establishment,
which she now formed at Cambridge House, South Audley
Street, but her favourite residence was still that on the
banks of the Thames.
Early in May, 1821, the ceremony of the King’s coronation
began to be spoken of as an event that was about
to take place. Caroline did not forget that she was
Queen-consort. She immediately addressed Lord Liverpool,
claiming to take part in the ceremony. The claim was
made literally in these words:—‘The Queen, from circumstances,
being obliged to remain in England, she requests
of the King will be pleased to command those ladies of
the first rank his Majesty may think the most proper in
the realm to attend the Queen on the day of the Coronation,
of which her Majesty is informed is now fixed, and also
to name such ladies which will be required to bear her
Majesty’s train on that day. The Queen, being particularly
anxious to submit to the good taste of his
Majesty, most earnestly entreats the King to inform the
Queen in what dress the King wishes the Queen to appear
in on that day at the Coronation.’ The premier replied
that, as his Majesty had determined that the Queen should
form no part of the ceremonial of the coronation, it was
his royal pleasure that she should not even attend the ceremony
itself. Ever active when she could inflict annoyance
on the King by claiming what she very well knew
he would never concede, she succeeded in obtaining a
hearing for her legal advisers in her behalf before the
Privy Council. They served her to the best of their
ability, but in truth they had no right upon their side,
and the arguments which they raised to prove what could
not be demonstrated fell down as rapidly as they were
constructed. Mr. Brougham deduced a presumed right
from a curious fact, from a circumstance of a law being
passed in the year 784 excluding Queen Adelberga from
the ceremony of being crowned Queen of the West
Saxons, because she had murdered a former husband.
The most early instance in which the title of Queen is
given to a wife of a King of Wessex in any contemporary
document occurs in the reign of Edmund, A.D. 945. The
West Saxons, it will be remembered, had well-nigh dethroned
Ethelwolf for crowning his wife Judith, on the
ground that by so doing he had violated the laws of the
West Saxons, made by them on the death of their King
Bertric. ‘It has been supposed,’ says Lingard, in his
History of the Anglo-Saxon Church, ‘that Queens were
crowned, because in some MSS. the order for the coronation
of a Queen follows that for the coronation of a King;
but this proves only that both orders were contained in
the original from which the copy was made.’ The same
writer also states that the little Queen Judith was so beloved
that the people ultimately acquiesced in her coronation
without a murmur. Mr. Brougham never pleaded
a cause more unsuccessfully than on this day. Mr. Denman,
the Queen’s solicitor-general, was, if not more
successful, at least infinitely more reasonable. He
grounded his application upon the simple and incontrovertible
fact, that the Queen was in so unfortunate a
position as to be unable to waive any right she considered
she possessed without being exposed to the most injurious
imputations. ‘He begged to impress upon their lordships,
as well as upon the country, that the claim of his
illustrious client was put forth in self-defence, because her
Majesty could not forego that claim without hazarding
her reputation or sacrificing her honour, which, to her,
was dearer than life itself.’
The King’s attorney-general showed that, if claim there
were, it rested solely on usage, and that here the law of
usage was without application, as a coronation of a Queen-consort
was not a right, but a mere favour conferred by
the King. The Queen, in short, could no more demand
her own coronation than she could that of the King.
The Privy Council made a report accordingly; it was
approved by the King, and a copy was transmitted to
Viscount Hood. The purport of it was—that, as the
queens consort of this realm are not entitled of right to
be crowned at any time, it followed that her Majesty
Queen Caroline was not entitled as of right to be
crowned at the time specified in her Majesty’s memorial.
The conclusion was disagreeable, but it was inevitable.
They who thought, however, that it would silence the
Queen for ever, were much mistaken. If she could not
form a part of the ceremony, she could mar it by her
presence; and this she resolved to effect. An announcement
was made to Lord Sidmouth of the Queen’s intention
to be present at the coronation on the 19th of July, and
she demanded that a suitable place might be appointed
for her accordingly. The noble lord, in a letter commencing
‘Madam,’ and terminating without the signature of
the writer, informs the Queen that it was not his Majesty’s
intention to comply with the application contained in her
letter.
The Queen was none the less bent upon appearing in
the Abbey, and due notification of the fact was made to
the Duke of Norfolk, as earl marshal of England, with
the request added that his grace would order persons to
be in attendance to conduct the Queen to her seat. The
earl marshal transmitted the letter containing the notification
and request to Lord Howard of Effingham, who
was the ‘acting earl marshal’ on the day in question,
and that official ‘made his humble representations to her
Majesty of the impossibility, under existing circumstances,
of his having the honour of obeying her Majesty’s commands.’
Her Majesty, however, was not so easily got
rid of. She now addressed a note to the Archbishop of
Canterbury, informing him of her desire to be crowned,
some day after the King, and before the arrangements
for the previous ceremony had been done away with.
The lord primate humbly replied that he was the King’s
servant, and was ready to obey any commands that he
might receive from his royal master. Thus foiled once
more, the Queen issued a protest against the proceedings.
This document was drawn up by the law-advisers of her
Majesty. It re-asserted that the Queen could claim as of
right to be crowned, and yet it admitted that there had
been cases in which the exercise of the right ‘was from
necessity suspended, or from motives of policy checked;’
and though perhaps not in the sense in which it was
understood by the Queen’s council, the King now saw
that there was a ‘necessity’ for the suspension of the
right claimed, and that there were ‘motives of policy,’
as well as of personal feeling, for declining to authorise
the exercise of it. The protest was addressed to the
King, from whom, says the royal protester, ‘the Queen
has experienced only the bitter disappointment of every
hope she had indulged;’ but—and it was in such phrases
she was made to represent the nation as hostile against
the King—‘in the attachment of the people she has found
that powerful and decided protection which has ever been
her ready support and unfailing consolation.’
Her Majesty’s legal advisers supposed, at least they
hoped, that she had now done enough for her dignity,
and that with this protest would end all further prosecution
of a matter which could not be carried further
without much peril to that dignity and to her self-respect.
But even they did not know of what metal she was made.
On the coronation day she was up with the dawn, determined
to penetrate into the Abbey, or resolved to test the
popular attachment, the powerful and decided protection
of the people, the ready support of the public, of which
she boasted in her last protest, and see if, upon one or
other of these visionary essences, she could not be borne
to the end which she ardently desired. Her health
had already begun to suffer from the effects of the unsettled
and agitated career through which she had
passed, but her resolution was above all thoughts of
health. She was like the sick gladiator, determined to
stand in the arena, trusting to the chance of striking an
effective blow and yet almost assured that defeat was
certain.
At six o’clock in the morning, the poor Queen, in a
carriage drawn by six horses, and with Lord and Lady
Hood and Lady Anne Hamilton in attendance upon her,
proceeded down to Westminster. The acclamations of
the people hailed her on her way, and she reached the
front of Westminster Hall without obstruction. If many
a shout here welcomed her as she descended from her
carriage, there was something like fear, too, in many a
breast, lest the incident, peaceful as it seemed, should not
end peacefully. After some hesitation, Caroline, attended
as above mentioned, advanced to the doors of the Hall,
amid much confusion, both of people and soldiery—the
first were eager to witness the result, the second were
uncertain how to act, and their leaders appeared as
uncertain how to direct them. The officer on guard
respectfully declined allowing her to pass, even though
she were, as she said, Queen of England. He could only
obey his orders, and they were to this effect: to give
passage to no one whatever who was not the bearer of a
ticket. The Queen turned away, disappointed, proceeded
on foot to other doors, and encountered only similar
results. It was a pitiable sight to see her, hurrying along
the platform by which her husband was presently to
march in gorgeous array, seeking for permission to pass
the way she would go, ejected alike wherever she made
the application, forced back in one direction by officers in
authority, and turned off the platform, not roughly, but
yet turned off, by the common men; and not an arm of
the multitude, upon whose aid she reckoned, was raised
to help her to her end. They pitied her, perhaps, but as
her presence there promised to mar the splendour of
which they hoped to be spectators, they wished she were
gone, and rather tolerated than encouraged her.
Never was Queen cast so low as she, when, flurried,
fevered, now in tears and now hysterically laughing,
she stood at the door of the Abbey haggling with the
official who acted as porter, and striving to force or win
her way into the interior. The chief of the ‘door-keepers’
demanded to see her ticket, but Lord Hood
claimed exemption for her on account of her recognised
rank: the door-keeper would not recognise the claim.
‘This is your Queen!’ said Lord Hood. ‘Yes, I am
your Queen; will you admit me?’ The assertion and
the request were repeatedly made, but always with the
same effect. No passage could be given without the indispensable
ticket. Lord Hood possessed one, and the Queen
appeared for a moment inclined to pass in with that.
But her heart failed her, and, half-laughing, to hide
perhaps what she could not conceal, her half-crying, she
declined to go in without her ladies. Finally, a superior
officer appeared, and respectfully intimated that no preparations
whatever had been made for the accommodation of
her Majesty; upon which, after looking around her, as if
searching for suggestions or help from the people, and
finding no encouragement, she assented to Lord Hood’s
proposition, that it were better for her to enter her
carriage and return home.
She had dared the hazard of the die: the cast had
been unfortunate. She, for the first time, felt degraded,
and she withdrew, still, like the gladiator from the arena,
conscious of bearing the wound of which death must
ultimately and speedily come.
Meanwhile, let us tarry for a moment at the Hall and
the Abbey. It is not likely that England will ever again
behold such a scene of coronation splendour as that of
George IV., and it is quite certain that England would
not care to do so. The national taste does not merely
regulate itself by the national purse, but by general principle;
and it is an incontrovertible fact, that the outlay of
millions for the crowning of one man involves the violation
of a principle which the nation desires to see respected.
Never did sovereign labour as George IV. laboured
to give éclat to the entire ceremony. He passed days
and nights with his familiar friends in discussing questions
of dress, colours, fashions, and effects. His own costume
was to him a subject of intense anxiety, and when his
costly habits were completed, so desirous was he to
witness their effect that, according to the gossip of the
day, a court-gossip which was not groundless, his Majesty
had one of his own servants attired in the royal garments,
and the King contemplated with considerable satisfaction
the sight of a menial pacing up and down the room in
the monarch’s garb. The man did his office with as much
mock gravity as the dramatic King, Mr. Elliston, when he
showered tipsy benedictions upon the public as he crossed
the platform over the pit of Drury Lane.
But it is true in real things as it is in tragedies, that
‘the King’ is not necessarily the principal character.
Even in a ballet the sovereign is less cared for than the
chief dancer who cuts entrechats in his presence. So at
the coronation festival of George IV., although he was
first in rank and as princely as any in bearing, he was
very far from being the first in consequence or the foremost
man in the people’s love. This matter is admirably
put by Mr. Rush, the American ambassador to our court,
who witnessed the ceremony, and made a very nice distinction
as to the true position of the principal actors in
it. In his account of the scene the amiable and accomplished
diplomatist remarks that the chief splendour of
the day, where all wore an air of joy and animation, was
in the Hall. ‘The table for the King’s banquet,’ he
remarks, ‘was spread on the royal platform; the foreign
ambassadors and ministers had theirs in the painted
chamber of the house of lords, a communicating apartment
under the same roof—but we ran from it soon to
come into the hall, the centre of all attraction. The
peeresses, peers, and others associated with them had theirs
in the body of the hall. Here six long tables were laid,
three on each side, leaving a vista, or aisle, open in the
middle, which directly fronted the royal platform. The
platform and all the seats were covered with crimson,
which, with the peeresses richly dressed, and the plate on
the banqueting-tables, and the company all seated, with
the King at the head of his sumptuous table, shaped as a
crescent, so that he and a few seated on his right and left
faced the whole company, made the spectacle extremely
magnificent. The comptroller and clerk of the kitchen,
and purveyor of wines, had not, as may be imagined,
overlooked their duties. But when the Champion appeared
at the opposite extremity of the hall, directly in front of
the King, nothing seen at first but tufts of plumes waving
from his horse’s head and his own helmet, startling emotions
arose in every bosom. Curiosity was breathless to
see what was coming. He was attended by Howard of
Effingham, and by Anglesea, and by another greater
than all—the Duke of Wellington; and as these, all on
horseback, entered abreast, the Champion heralding his
challenge, and the horses seeming almost in contact with
the outward line of peeresses at the table, yet obedient to
the bit which they kept champing—as this equestrian
train slowly advanced in martial grace and strength up the
aisle towards the King, all eyes were seen turned upon one
man in it. In vain did the declining sun through the vast
old Gothic edifice throw beams upon the bright and heavy
armour of the Champion; in vain was it, when the horses
reaching by slow, impatient steps the top of the aisle, and
proudly halting at the steps of the royal platform, that
the stout-clad Champion again put forth his challenge,
threw down his glove, received the cup from his sovereign,
and drank to his sovereign—in vain all this; the beauty
and chivalry at the banqueting-tables still looked at the
Duke of Wellington; still kept their eyes on the man
whose person and horse recalled, not war in romance, but
its stern and recent realities. All were at gaze—fixed,
silent. He was habited only as a peer, had only his staff
as Lord High Constable, yet was he the observed of all.
Nowhere was he more intently eyed than from the box
where sat the assembled ambassadors of the potentates of
Europe. Judging from opinion in that box, there was
nothing in the elaborate grandeur of the day to rival the
scene. It was the inherent pre-eminence of a great man
exalting moral admiration above the show of the whole
kingdom.’ This was the imperative fact. The King was
the great figure of the hour, but the Duke was the great
hero of the age; and the truth was not lost sight of in the
gorgeous splendour of the spectacle.
To do the King justice, it must be confessed that he
was among the first to acknowledge the pre-eminence of the
Duke as regarded his services and merits. At the dinner
given by the Duke of Wellington, a few days after the
coronation, in honour of the new sovereign, and with that
monarch as chief guest, this acknowledgment was very
gracefully made. At this splendid banquet, after the
noble host had proposed the health of his royal guest—a
toast that was drunk all standing and all silent, the King
himself merely rising to bow his thanks to the company—George
IV. in turn proposed, in a brief speech, the health
of the Duke. ‘The purport of his remarks,’ says Mr.
Rush, who was present at this interesting festival, was,
‘that, had it not been for the exertions of his friend upon
the left (it was so that he spoke of the Duke), he, the
King, might not have had the happiness of meeting those
whom he now saw around him at that table; it was,
therefore, with particular pleasure that he proposed his
health. The King spoke his words with emphasis and
great apparent pleasure. The Duke made no reply, but
took in respectful silence what was said. The King continued
sitting while he spoke, as did the company, in profound
silence under his words.’
The silence of the host was true courtesy. It has not
escaped Mr. Rush’s discernment. ‘I thought,’ he says,
‘of Johnson, when George III. complimented him: the
innate dignity of great minds is the same. In Johnson
it was that of the rough, virtuous recluse—whose greatness
was that of the author. In Wellington it was externally
moulded into the will which armies and courts,
and long association with the élite of mankind, may be
supposed to give. Johnson did not bandy civilities with
his Sovereign, whom he had never seen before; nor did
Wellington, who saw him every day!’ It is ever the
same with true gentlemen.
It would seem, however, that all the nobles who shone
at the coronation festivities of George IV. were not so
perfect in politeness as the warrior-duke. King George
IV. gave a banquet to the ambassadors specially sent to
grace the high solemnity of the coronation. To this
banquet the foreign ministers generally and the members
of the cabinet were invited and were present. The
American Ambassador sat next to Lord Londonderry,
and the two discussed between themselves the power,
pretensions, and infamy of Russia, Lord Londonderry
affecting to trust to the moderation of the Muscovite—a
moderation which has been more truly described by Lord
John Russell as more menacing than the ambition of
other powers. The conversation then fell upon English
society; and while on this theme Lord Londonderry remarked,
‘that the higher the rank and education, the
better bred, as a general rule, their people in England—so
he believed it was considered.’ Setting aside the fact
that this is only partially true, it was at the same time a
most uncourteous remark to be made by one who was
high in rank and education to a commoner. But the
Stewart-Castlereaghs have ever been unlucky in their
civilities, and with their precious balsams they have too
often bruised the heads they would only have anointed.
Witness the fact of the banquet given by the late
Marquis of Londonderry to the ambassador of Louis
Napoleon. Everything was well done but one, and that
one thing, ill done, marred all besides that was well. The
room in which the English host welcomed his French
guest was decorated with pierced and battered French
cuirasses, which had covered the breasts of gallant French
enemies at Waterloo. The man who is fortunate enough
to kill an adversary in a duel may, possibly, in after
years, be reconciled with that adversary’s brother, and
perhaps entertain him at dinner; but he would hardly
think of hanging up the dead man’s clothes (purchased
as a trophy from his valet) in his dining-room.
The grand banquet at Carlton House was given on
the 26th July. The special and ordinary ambassadors
and the ministers were present. The monarch’s brothers
were also among the guests—always excepting the Duke
of Sussex, whose sympathies for Queen Caroline had been
too markedly and publicly expressed.
‘We were invited,’ says Mr. Rush, ‘at seven o’clock.
As my carriage turned into Pall Mall from the foot of
St. James’s Street, the old clock at St. James’s struck
seven, and before I reached Carlton Palace all the carriages
appeared to be entering or coming out through
the double gates of the Ionic screen in front of the palace.
Mine was among the last that drove up to the portico,
and by a very few minutes past seven all the guests, save
one, were assembled in the reception rooms. I had
never before witnessed such punctuality at any dinner in
England.
‘The King entered a minute or two afterwards, and
saluted his guests generally, then went the rounds, speaking
to each individually. With the special ambassadors
he paused longest. Time had now run on to more than a
quarter past seven, still one of the guests had not yet
arrived, and that one was the Duke of Wellington. The
man not apt to be behind time when his Majesty’s enemies
were to be met was, it seems, in meeting his friends.
Five minutes more went by, and still no Duke of Wellington;
critical moments when each one seemed to count two.
At length, in one of the rooms at a distance, the Duke
was seen; he was dressed in the uniform of an Austrian
field-marshal, a plain round-about jacket of white cloth
and white under-dress to suit, relieved by scarcely anything
but his sword. The dress, being tight and simple, gave to his
person a thinner look than usual; and as he kept advancing
with easy step, quite alone, and a general silence
prevailing, the King separated himself from the group of
ambassadors where he was standing, and when he got
near enough stepped forward to meet him. With both
hands he shook the Duke by both with great cordiality,
saying something which the company could not hear, but
which, from the manner, we took to be a good-natured
rally upon his late arrival. The Duke received it with
placid composure, made no reply, but bowed. When
liberated from the friendly grasp of the King, he approached
a circle of which I happened to be one. One
of the ministers composing it said to him, “We hope you
will forgive our little treason, my Lord Duke, but we
have just been determining that, as some one of the company
was to be too late, it was best to have fallen to your
Grace’s lot, who can so well bear it.” With a half whisper
and an arch smile, the Duke replied, “The King knows
I could have been here sooner but for attending to some
of his Majesty’s business.” This, considering the Duke
as a cabinet minister and privy councillor, had doubtless
been sufficient to excuse his delinquency, and secure for
him the very cordial reception all had witnessed....
The entire dinner-service was of gold. Each of the
salt-cellars, as well as I could catch the design, represented
a small rock in dead gold, on which reclined a
sea-nymph holding in her hand a shell, which held the
salt. One of these was before every two guests; so it
was, as to number, with the gold coolers down the sides,
containing wine. The whole table, sideboard, and room
had an air of chaste and solid grandeur, not, however,
interfering with the restrained enjoyments of a good
dinner, of which the King seemed desirous that his
foreign guests should in no wise be abridged, for we sat
till past ten o’clock.’ Contrasting this banquet with the
one given by the Duke of Wellington, the same writer
and guest remarks that the Duke’s table-service was not
only brilliant, but that it lighted-up better than the
King’s; for being entirely of silver, and very profuse, the
whole aspect was of pure, glittering white, unlike the
slightly-shaded tinges which candles seem to cast from
gold plate. The dessert-service at the Duke’s was of
china, a present from the King of Prussia, and made
emblematical of the life of the Duke, commencing with a
view of Dangan Castle, the (supposed) birth-place of Arthur
Wellesley, and going through a course of views of all the
places rendered interesting by his presence or remarkable
by his deeds, down to the porcelained pictorial representation
of the crowning glory at Waterloo.
While all these matters were in progress, people who
nursed superstition were prophesying some calamity to
come; and certainly, among the incidents of the coronation
of George IV., was one which would have been
counted ominous in earlier days. The gallant Marquis of
Anglesea was Lord High Steward on that occasion, and it
was part of his office to carry the crown up to the altar
before the Archbishop placed it on the King’s head. It
was heavier than the gallant Lord High Steward had
reckoned upon, and the glittering crown, ponderous with
gold, diamonds, and other precious stones, slipped from his
hands. He dexterously recovered it, however, before it
reached the ground. Among the medallic records of the
time one was the work of an enemy of Caroline of
Brunswick. A bronze medal of the time is extant which
has the Queen’s head, on the obverse, with the inscription:
‘Caroline, D. G. Britt. Regina.’ On the reverse
is the head of Bergami, with the inscription: ‘Count B.
Bergami.’
CHAPTER XII. A CROWN LOST, AND A GRAVE WON.
The Queen’s agitation—Her illness—Her sufferings—Desires her diary may
be destroyed—Her death—Sketch of her life—Her mother a foolish
woman—Every sense of justice outraged by the King—Inconsistency of
the Whigs—The Queen persecuted even after death—Disrespect shown
to her remains by the Government—Protest against a disgraceful haste
to remove her remains—Course of the funeral procession interrupted by
the people—Collision between the military and the populace—Effort to
force a way through the people ineffectual—The procession compelled to
pass through the City—The plate on the Queen’s coffin removed—The
funeral reaches Harwich—The Queen’s remains taken to Brunswick—Funeral
oration—Tombs of the illustrious dead there.
The coronation-day killed the Queen. The agitations
and sufferings of that eventful day called into deadly action
the germs of the disease under which she ultimately
succumbed. Once only, between that day and her death,
did she appear in public, at Drury Lane Theatre, and even
then she may be said to have been dying.
On August the 2nd, the first bulletin issued from Brandenburgh
House, by ‘W. G. Maten, P. Warren, and H.
Holland,’ announced that her Majesty was suffering from
internal inflammation and obstruction. Her sufferings were
considerable, but they were borne with resignation; and
she even expressed a cheerful readiness to be gone from a
world in which she had endured more than she had
enjoyed. Her own conviction, from the first, was that her
malady would prove fatal. No whisper of hope appeared
to deceive or to cheer her. She was determined, as it were,
that she must die, and she prepared for the worst. Her
feelings were natural to a woman of her disposition and
character. She felt that, despite all solemn protestation,
notwithstanding all as solemn assertion, she had failed in
re-establishing the reputation which she enjoyed during
the early years of her residence in this country. The
abandonment of the Bill of Pains and Penalties had not
rescued her from degradation; and the people, who were
ready to offer her consolation as a woman who had been
most deeply wronged and outraged, were by no means so
ready to espouse her cause further than this. She had herself
confessed to indiscretions, and when the confession
applies to constant repetition of the offence, the public
judgment, even with nothing more to warrant its exercise,
will never be slow to hold her who acknowledges so much
as being guilty of more. In her position, with a reputation
so soiled, and torn, and trodden upon; which could
not be made bright by any declaration (poor indeed) that
she was not so debased as she was declared to be by her
adversaries; for a woman so placed, to die is the sole joy
left her, if she has made the peace with God which can
never again exist between her and man. Her few friends
were accustomed to say that in after years her good fame
would be substantiated. After years—alas! Of what use
to the drowned sailor is the favourable wind after shipwreck?
Assuredly, her own character perished more by
her own suicidal acts than by the assaults made upon it by
those who were interested in damning it; just as ‘Tom
Paine’ himself has said that a writer may destroy his own
reputation, which cannot be affected by the pens of other
writers.
To die then was now in the very fitness of things, and
death made but brief work with his new victim. Between
the second and the seventh of August the suffering never
ceased sufficiently to warrant serious hope of amelioration.
During the intervening time she continued to express her
willingness to depart. She signed her will, gave with calmness
all necessary orders which she wished to be observed,
spoke charitably of all, and little of herself. Among her
last acts was one of sacrifice, and perhaps posterity will
regret it. She ordered the diary, which she had long kept,
and in which she had entered the characters of the most
prominent persons with whom she had come in contact,
to be burned. This is said to have been done in her presence;
but so many things only seem to be done in a dying
presence that our successors may not despair, hereafter,
of becoming more intimate with Caroline, her thoughts
and feelings, than she ever permitted her contemporaries
to be. The great chance against posterity being allowed
to read the scandalous chronicle or the justifying confessions
of Caroline lies in the fact that the series of journals
were burned by a foreign female servant, who knew
nothing of their value. Such, at least, was the accredited
report.
After nearly five days of intense suffering, the Queen
sank into a stupor from which she never awoke. At half-past
ten o’clock on the morning of the seventh of August,
1821, ‘after an entire absence of sense and faculty for
more than two hours,’ Caroline Amelia Elizabeth of Brunswick,
Queen Consort of George IV., expired almost without
a struggle. In her supreme hour only her faithful
friends, Lord and Lady Hood and Lady Anne Hamilton, were
with her. Her legal and medical advisers, with Alderman
Wood and one of his sons, were also near her person.
She had completed fifty-three years and three months;
of these she passed by far the happier and the more
innocent half—happier because the more innocent—in
Brunswick. Of the following nineteen years spent in
England, eighteen of them were passed in separation from,
and most of them in quarrelling with, her husband. For
the first nine or ten years of this period she lived without
offence and free from suspicion; during the remainder she
was struggling to re-establish a fame which had been
wrongfully assailed; but this was accompanied by such
eccentricity and indiscretion that she seemed almost to
justify the suspicion under which she had suffered. Then
came the half-dozen years of her residence abroad, when
she too often shaped her conduct as though she had
alacrity in furnishing matter condemnatory against herself
to the spies by whom she was surrounded. To say that
they exaggerated her offences does not, unfortunately,
prove her guiltless of great crime. Her return to England
was a bold step, but it was one she was compelled to take.
It failed, however, in its great purpose. She did not triumph.
Justice, indeed, was not rendered her, for she was condemned
before she was tried; and though the trial was
not carried to its intended conclusion, he who would now
stand forth as the champion of Caroline of Brunswick
would be necessarily accounted of as possessing more
generosity than judgment.
Nevertheless, for this poor woman there is something
to be said. She was ill-educated; religiously educated,
not at all; and never had religious principles as expounded
by any particular church. Her mother was a
foolish, frivolous woman, and her father, whom she
ardently loved, a brave, handsome, vicious man, who
made his wife and daughters sit down in company with
his mistresses. With such an example before her, what
could be expected from an ardent, spirited, idle, and
careless girl? Much—if she had been blessed with a
husband of principle, a man who would have tempered
the ardour to useful ends, guided the spirit to profitable
purpose, and taught the careless girl to learn and love
the cares, or duties, rather, which belonged to her position.
But by whom, and what, was that Princess encountered
in England, whither she had come to marry a
Prince who had condescended to have her inflicted on
him, and bringing with her the memories of pleasant
communings with more courteous wooers in Brunswick?
She met a husband who consigned her to companionship
with women more infamous than ever she herself became,
and whose interest and business it was to render the
wife disgusting to the husband. They speedily accomplished
the end they had in view, and when they had
driven the wife from the palace they endeavoured to
prove her to be guilty of vices which she had not then, in
common with themselves and her husband. If he ever
justly complained of wrong, he at least took infinite
pains to merit all that was inflicted on him. He outraged
every sense of justice when, steeped to the very lips in
uncleanness, he demanded that his consort should be
rendered for ever infamous, for the alleged commission of
acts for which he claimed impunity on his own account.
She was not, perhaps, betrayed by the Whigs, but these
rather took up her cause for the reason that it served
them politically than put credence in its righteousness.
They were, however, the voluntary champions of her
virtue. Lord Holland was among the first of them, and
yet in his contemporary Diary he says of her, ‘She was
at best a strange woman, and a very sorry and uninteresting
heroine. She had, they say, some talent, some
pleasantry, some good-humour, and great spirit and
courage. But she was utterly destitute of all female
delicacy, and exhibited, in the whole course of the transactions
relating to herself, very little feeling for anybody,
and very little regard for honour and truth, or even for
the interests of those who were devoted to her, whether
the people in the aggregate, or the individuals who
enthusiastically espoused her cause. She avowed her
dislike for many, scarcely concealed her contempt for all’
(no wonder); ‘in short, to speak plainly, if not mad,
she was a very worthless woman.’ So wrote one who
had asserted directly the contrary.
But it was the lot of this unhappy Queen to be persecuted
even after death. Her will, in which she
bequeathed the little she had to leave to William Austin,
the protégé, who did not long survive her, contained a
clause to this effect: ‘I desire and direct that my body
be not opened, and that three days after my death it be
carried to Brunswick for interment, and that the inscription
on my coffin be, “Here lies Caroline of Brunswick,
the injured Queen of England.”’
The government, acting under alleged orders from
the King, but influenced, no doubt, by a wish not to mar
the festivities attendant upon the visit of George IV. to
Ireland, by allowing the Queen’s body to remain longer
than needful in England, announced their intention to
pay every sort of respect to the orders and wishes of her
late Majesty, and to despatch the body to Harwich at
once, for embarkation. The personal friends of Caroline
protested against this unseemly readiness, on the part of
the ministers, to obey the wishes of one who, when alive,
never had a wish that was not thwarted. Lady Hood
addressed a letter to Lord Liverpool, not so much, indeed,
as she said to him, as to his heart. The letter pleaded
for delay, on the ground of the Queen’s ladies being
unprepared; and it expressly protested against the intended
military escort, as being an honour never allowed
to the Queen when living, and one not certainly desired
by her, who was sufficiently guarded by the people’s love.
Reply was made that the arrangements already resolved
upon were irrevocable, and that, if the ladies were not
provided with the necessary mourning, there would be
nothing disrespectful in waiting behind till they had been
furnished with what was necessary, and then joining in
the procession anywhere on its route. There was a singular
want of courtesy in all the communications made
by the ministry to the friends of the Queen. The latter
could not even learn by what route the body would be
conveyed to Harwich. The most direct road was through
the City of London, and the mayor and corporation had
announced their intention to attend on the royal remains
on the passage through the City. The government curtly
intimated that the funeral cortège would not be allowed
to pass through the City at all. From the same source
it was subsequently learned that the coffin would be
carried by the circuitous route of the New Road to
Romford, and then by the direct road to Harwich. The
popular disgust was justifiably great. Lord Liverpool
asserted that he and his colleagues were influenced only
by feelings which prompted them to show full respect to
the wishes of the deceased Queen. How very little the
noble lord was really influenced by the feelings in question
may be seen in Dean Pellew’s Life of Lord Sidmouth.
In that work there is a letter from Lord Liverpool, in
which the writer says that he would have despatched the
body the whole way by water to Harwich, had he not
been afraid of the passage at London Bridge! In other
words, he would have paid it as much disrespect as was in
his power, only that he feared a popular demonstration
of unwelcome character at the bridge.
On the 14th of August, the government authorised the
persons employed by them to remove the body from
Hammersmith. There had been very scant ceremony
displayed in a ‘lying in state,’ and the preparations now
were but of a meagre description. A few tawdry escutcheons,
a tinsel coronet, heralds in private dresses, and a
military escort, looking mournful rather because of the
rain, which fell in torrents, than for any other reason.
When Sir George Naylor, in his official tabard, and
Mr. Bailey, the undertaker, authorised by government to
carry out the prescribed arrangements, entered the room
where the body lay, in order to remove it, they were met
by Dr. Lushington, who stood at the head of a small
group of her Majesty’s friends, and protested against the
intended removal, on account of over-haste, and also
against the attendance of the soldiery. ‘I enter my
solemn protest,’ said the doctor, ‘in right of the legal
power which is vested in me by her late Majesty, as
executor. I command that the body be not removed till
the arrangements suitable to the rank and dignity of the
deceased are made.’ Mr. Bailey declared that, with the
authority he held, the body must be removed. ‘Touch it
not, at your peril,’ exclaimed Dr. Lushington. Mr. Bailey
asked if he intended to use or to recommend violence.
The legal executor answered that he would neither assist
in nor recommend violence. Whereupon the government
officer declared that he should discharge his duty firmly
and, he hoped, properly.
But he had to encounter a second duel of words with
the other executor, Mr. Wilde, who protested as Dr.
Lushington had done, and to as little purpose. Mr.
Bailey said that his orders were imperative, and he would
take upon himself the responsibility and peril of removing
the body.
The procession then set out, and never had Queen a
funeral of such strange ceremony and circumstance. The
mourners comprised those friends and legal advisers who
have been so often named: some of them were not in the
mourning coaches, but in their own private carriages.
It was a strictly government funeral (the King, it was
said, paid all the expenses); but there was a multitude
who descended into the streets on that day. There were
many among them who deemed that the funeral charges
would, after all, be defrayed out of the public pocket.
They were accordingly determined that their own programme
should be followed, and that the body of the
Queen should be carried through the City of London.
The ministers, unwisely, were as obstinately bent in dragging
the dead Queen through the outskirts, and getting
her to Harwich in as unceremonious a manner as possible.
They professed great respect, but it is certain that they
meant none, and it was because the people were convinced
of this that they occupied the highways on that stormy
morning, resolute to bear the inanimate Caroline, as it
were, and as she had desired, on the popular shoulders,
through the very centre of the great metropolis.
It was between seven and eight o’clock when the
funeral procession, escorted by or rather partly made up
of, cavalry, passed through Hammersmith. It met with
no obstruction until it reached Kensington Church. At
this point the first attempt to turn out of the direct road
leading to the City, by conducting the cortège up Church
Street into the Bayswater Road, was met by a hoarse cry
of execration on the part of the people. They went
further than protest. In a brief space of time the road
was dug up, rendered impassable, and obstructed by a
barricade that would have won the approval of a Parisian
professor of tumults. The military escort kept their
places and their tempers; but the Life Guards, with the
chief magistrate of Bow Street, Sir Richard Baker, speedily
appeared. They saw the uselessness of attempting to
force a passage; and when the order was given to proceed
in the direct route to London, there broke forth a thundering
shout of victory about the hearse of the unconscious
Queen, as though expressly raised to give her assurance
that the people had compelled respect to her will.
In the Park the multitude had spent many of the
morning hours in rushing from the south to the north
side, from the north to the south; and again and again
repeating the same movement, according as report reached
them that the funeral would pass by one or the other line.
The issue of the struggle at Kensington having been announced
in the Park, the great body of the people there
had now moved once more to the south side, and were
pouring into the Knightsbridge Road. Meanwhile, orders
had been received from ministers, by Sir Richard Baker
and the commander of the Life Guards, to lead the procession
through the Kensington Gate of Hyde Park into
the Edgeware Road. But at the gate the scene which
had been enacted at Church Street was replayed with
some additions. The people forcibly held the gates
closed, placed every impediment in the way which they
could collect, and were so fiercely demonstrative with
their cry of ‘The City! the City!’ that magistrate and
military again yielded to the popular will, and the body,
which had halted amid the tumult, was once again carried
forward amid shouts of triumph.
The delay had afforded time to Sir Richard Baker to
apply to ministers for fresh instructions. These were forwarded
to him in a peremptory order to see that the
procession was conducted into the Edgeware Road, either
by the east side of the Park or through Park Lane. At
both points the suspicious and exasperated populace were
ready for the expected contest. It was here that the
matter assumed a more serious aspect than it had yet
worn. The soldiery began to grow chafed at an opposition
which, in its turn, began to be emphasised by the
employment of missiles. The attempt to pass up the
Park was made in vain; that to force Park Lane was
equally ineffectual. But while the struggle was raging at
the latter point the line of procession was broken,
and that part of it near the gate turned into the
Park, carrying the hearse with it. The military
at Park Lane turned back, followed the successful
Mr. Bailey and his followers, and closing the gates
upon the public, the body of the Queen was borne, at
an unseemly pace, onwards to Cumberland Gate. But the
increasingly-excited people were light of foot, and when
the head of the funeral line reached Cumberland Gate,
with the intention to proceed, not down Oxford Street to
the City, but up the Edgeware and, subsequently, the
New Road, there was a compact mass resolved to give no
passage, and determined to carry the royal corpse through
the metropolis. It was here that Sir Robert Wilson
endeavoured to mediate between the multitude and the
military. The commander of the latter had no discretionary
power, and could only obey his orders. His men,
hitherto, had exhibited great forbearance, but their
patience was overcome when they found themselves fairly
attacked by the populace at this point. Neither mob nor
soldiers were really culpable. The blame rested entirely
with the ministry, whose folly and obstinacy had provoked
the conflict, and made victims on both sides. The military
(by which is to be understood the Life Guards, and not
the ‘Blues,’ who formed part of the procession, and were
quiescent throughout the day) at last fired a volley, by
which several persons were severely injured, and two men,
Francis and Honey, were slain. Not a few of the military
were seriously wounded by the missiles flung at them in
return, but the hitherto victors were vanquished. They
gave way, and across the blood that had been spilt, and
among the wounded lying around, the people’s Queen, as
they called her, was once more carried on the way which
the respectful feelings of the ministry taught them it was
best for her to go.
The defeat and the victory seemed respectively
accepted by the different parties. The individuals having
the body in charge, and the escort, pushed hurriedly
forward with the hearse towards the New Road. But
several of the mourners here left a procession to form
part of which was attended with peril to life. The
multitude looked moodily on; but suddenly, as if by
common impulse, perhaps at suggestion of some shout,
they, too, rushed forward, determined to make one more
attempt at achieving a victory for themselves and the unconscious
Queen.
They who were conducting the body along the New
Road towards Romford did not dream of further
opposition, and their astonishment was great when, on
arriving at Tottenham Court Road, they found all progress,
east or northward, completely obstructed, and no way
open for them but southward, towards the City. In this
direction they were compelled to turn, hailed by the
popular exultation, and met with shouts of execration and
menace, as they sought, but vainly, at each outlet down
the east side of Tottenham Court Road, to find a passage
back into the suburban line. In the same way the procession
was forced down Drury Lane, into the Strand.
Sir Richard Baker did not yield to anything but compulsion,
yet he lost his office, as Sir Robert Wilson did
his commission, for endeavouring to do his duty under
most trying and difficult circumstances. Once in the
Strand, the people felt that their victory had been fairly and
irrevocably achieved. When the royal body was carried
under Temple Bar, its advent there was hailed with such a
wild ‘hurrah’ as had never met the ears of living sovereign.
For seven hours that body had been dragged through wind,
and rain, and mud—the King’s will drawing it in one
direction, the people in another. How much or how
little the latter were influenced by earnest attachment to
her for whom, dead, they made their demonstration, even
to the shedding of blood, it is not easy to say. There is
less difficulty in coming to the decision that they who
professed to be carrying out the King’s commands served
him ill, and even perilled his crown on that day. The
King himself, however, is known to have been exceedingly
wroth against the government for not having employed
more stringent measures in order to fulfil his commands.
The triumph of a dead wife embittered more than one
joyous banquet in the Irish capital.
The civil authorities of the City, hurriedly collected
for the occasion, accompanied the royal remains as far as
the eastern limit of the City’s ‘liberty,’ Whitechapel.
Thence to Romford the funeral train proceeded at a very
varied pace, sometimes as slowly as became the solemnity
of a funeral, at others the pace would have been counted
lively enough for a wedding. At Romford, the mourners
who had rejoined the cortège passed the night, but the
royal corpse was carried on to Colchester, where it rested
for the night, in St. Peter’s Church.
It was during this night that the silver plate
announcing the occupant of the coffin as ‘the injured,’ or,
according to some, ‘the murdered, Queen of England,’
was affixed to the lid. Whenever this was done the plate
was not allowed to remain. It was removed and replaced
by another, inscribed simply with the deceased’s
name and titles and dates, in the usual form. They who
have visited the vaults beneath the Church of St. Blaize,
the patron of Brunswick, may remember that the marks
of the nails which fastened the original plate are still
visible.
The journey to Harwich was unmarked by any
particular incident, save that everywhere along the route
the feeling of curiosity to see the remains of Caroline pass
to their last resting-place was accompanied by manifest
evidences of respect. Off Harwich were awaiting the
Glasgow frigate, two sloops of war, three brigs, and the
Pioneer schooner. The coffin was conveyed to the latter,
after being unceremoniously swung into a barge, and from
the schooner it was transferred to the Glasgow. The little
group of mourners followed. They consisted of Lord and
Lady Hood, Lady Anne Hamilton, Mr. Austin, Dr. and Mrs.
Lushington, and Count Vassali. Her Majesty’s remains
were now in charge of Captain Doyle, who, when a midshipman,
more than a quarter of a century before, had
handed the rope to the royal bride, whereby to help her
on board the Jupiter. The squadron set sail, under a
salute from Languard fort, and at two o’clock p.m.,
on Sunday, the 19th, it anchored in the harbour of
Cuxhaven.
The Gannet sloop of war conveyed the body up the
Elbe to the mouth of the Schwinde, and up the latter it
was carried, with a guard of marines and the mourners,
by the boats belonging to the Wye sloop, as far as Stade.
From this place to Brunswick the body of the unhappy
Caroline was borne, by slow journeys, and amid profuse
respectful demonstrations on the part of the people. One
of its resting-places by the way was at Zell, in the church
of which place the body lay for a night upon the tomb of
the unfortunate sister of George III., Caroline Matilda
Queen of Denmark.
At midnight on Friday, August 24, the last rites were
performed over the deceased consort of George IV. The
body had been removed from the hearse to a funeral car,
which was drawn by some hundred Brunswickers to the
cathedral gates. No extraordinary service was allowed to
be celebrated at the side of the vault. The Duke of
Brunswick was then a minor and an absentee, and the
government of the country was administered by the King
of England. But though the service was of the most
ordinary character, the sexagenarian pastor, Woolf, pronounced
an oration above the remains of the Queen. He
thanked God for adorning her with high advantages of mind
and body, for bestowing upon her a heart full of clemency
and benignity, and for placing her where she could, and
was resolved to, accomplish much good. But ‘unsearchable,
O Eternal, are thy ways!’ was the perplexed
pastor’s cry as he adverted to her subsequent career—for
terminating which the wisdom of the Almighty was
again to be revered.
Among the range of coffins in the vault beneath the
cathedral of St. Blaize, at Brunswick, Caroline rests
between two which contain two heroic but far from
faultless men—her father, who fell at Jena, and her
brother, who, at the head of his Black Brunswickers,
also fell in avenging him at Waterloo. Speaking of the
latter, ‘two small black flags,’ says Russell, ‘the one an
offering from the matrons, the other from the maidens of
Brunswick, are suspended above his coffin, and its gaudy
gold and crimson are still mixed with the brown and
withering leaves of the garlands which the love of his
people scattered on his bier, when at midnight he was
laid among so many of his race who had fought and fell
like himself.’ Between the coffins of these two lies that
of Caroline of Brunswick, between father and brother
slain. Her mother died in exile, yet in her own land;
and the grave of her murdered sister Charlotte, the first
wife of the Prince of Wurtemburg, would be sought for in
vain. Surely here was a household sternly dealt with.
On the Sunday following the funeral the venerable
pastor, Woolf, preached a sermon appropriate to the event,
and which ended in a panegyric on the character of the
Queen. The old man, with singular tenacity, clung to the
assertion, that in early life ‘her quick understanding
eagerly received every ray of divine truth, and her warm
heart and lively feelings were excited and elevated by
piety.’ He declared that her sense of religion increased
to a confirmed faith, and that pious occupations were
dear to her heart. ‘I knew her,’ said the aged advocate,
‘as an enlightened Christian, before she left the country
of her birth. She first received from my hands, with
pious emotion, the holy Supper of our Lord, and the
solemnity of her manner was like her precious devotions,
an unsuspected proof of her sincere faith and pious feeling.’
The panegyric would have been, like most articles
of the kind, far above the merit of the subject, were it
not for the strong qualifying sentence in which the preacher
acknowledged that ‘the sense of religion, it was true,
did not always preserve her from infirmities and errors;’
but, as he asked after the admission, ‘Where is the
mortal, where has there been a saint, who has been always
perfect? And,’ said he, aptly and truly enough, whether
addressed to the friends or the foes of the poor, ill-used,
and erring Caroline of Brunswick—‘And he who
erred less may conscientiously ask himself whether he
owes that to himself or to his more fortunate situation and
the undeserved grace of God?’ It is a query which we
are all bound to make when viewing a brother or a sister
of the human family who is reputed guilty of offence
towards God or man. The latter is ever ready to condemn
his neighbour, but never ready to pass sentence on himself.
Happy for all that with God there is not only judgment
but mercy.
There has been some discussion as to whether Caroline
of Brunswick was legally married to the Prince of Wales.
There is no doubt, however, to be entertained on the
matter. Her husband had, unquestionably, previously
married a Roman Catholic lady, and that lady was living
when the Prince married Caroline of Brunswick.
By the well-known statute of William and Mary, marrying
a Roman Catholic entails exclusion from, and incapability
ever to inherit, the crown of this realm.
The Prince clearly forfeited his right to the Crown by
his marriage with a Papist.
But he married the lady (with the King’s connivance,
he said) without the King’s consent; and, wanting that
consent, the marriage (according to the 12th of George
III.) was null and void.
This would set aside the marriage, but it would not
release the Prince from the consequence of having entered
into such a marriage. Horne Tooke was not justified in
sneering at the 12th of George III., nor in writing ‘legally,
really, worthily, and happily for the country, Mrs. Fitzherbert
is Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales.’
The Roman See, it is said, satisfied Mrs. Fitzherbert’s
scruples by considering the marriage legal. That See
never considered any other marriage between such (religious)
parties, so celebrated, legal. Had there been issue
of such an union, grave peril might have arisen. There
was, indeed, a claimant to such honour, but he disappeared.
He lacked the power of lying since manifested
by Orton and some of the Orton gang. The monument
to Mrs. Fitzherbert’s memory at Brighton asserts the
legality of her marriage with the Prince by the three
rings on her finger. That she was as much respected as
if her last marriage was as legal as the preceding two
there is no shadow of doubt. As little doubt is there
that the Prince of Wales was never legally married except
to his wayward and unhappy cousin—Caroline of Brunswick.
ADELAIDE OF SAXE-MEINENGEN , WIFE OF WILLIAM IV. — FOOTNOTES — Transcriber’s Notes
The pocket Duchy—Old customs—Early training—The Father of the
Princess Adelaide—Social life at the ducal court—Training of the
Princess Adelaide—Marriage Preliminaries—English parliament—The
Duke of Clarence—Arrival in London of the Princess—Quaint royal
weddings—At home and abroad—Duke and Duchess of Clarence at
Bushey—‘State and Dirt’ at St. James’s—William IV. and Queen
Adelaide—Course of life of the new Queen Consort—King’s gallantry
to an old love—Royal simplicity—The Sovereigns and the Sovereign
people—Court anecdotes—Drawing-rooms—Princess Victoria—The
coronation—Incidents of the day—Coronation finery of George IV.—Princess
Victoria not present—Revolutionary period—Reform question—Unpopularity
of the Queen—Attacks against her on the part of the
press—Violence of party-spirit—Friends and foes—Bearing of the King
and Queen—Duchess of Angoulême—King a republican—His indiscretion—Want
of temper—Continental press adverse to the Queen—King’s
declining health—Conduct of Queen Adelaide—King William’s
death—Declining health of the Queen—Her travels in search of health—Her
last illness—Her will—Death—And funeral.
The little Duchy of Saxe-Meinengen was once a portion
of the inheritance of the princely Franconian house
of Henneberg. The failure of the male line transferred
it in 1583 to the family of reigning Saxon princes. In
1680 it fell to the third son of the Saxon Duke, Ernest
the Pious. The name of this son was Bernard. This
Duke is looked upon as the founder of the House of
Meinengen. He was much devoted to the study of
Alchemy, and was of a pious turn, like his father, as far
as may be judged by the volumes of manuscript notes
he left behind him—which he had made on the sermons
of his various court-preachers.
The law of primogeniture was not yet in force when
Duke Bernard died, in 1706. One consequence was, that
Bernard’s three sons, with Bernard’s brother, ruled the
little domain in common. In 1746 the sole surviving
brother, Antony Ulrich, the luckiest of this ducal Tontine,
was monarch of all he surveyed within a limited space.
The conglomerate ducal sovereigns were plain men,
formal, much given to ceremony, and not much embarrassed
by intellect. There was one man, however, who
had enough for them all: namely, George Spanginburg,
brother of the Moravian bishop of the latter name, and
who was for some time the Secretary of State at the court
of Saxe-Meinengen.
Antony Ulrich reigned alone from 1746 to 1763. He
was of a more enlightened character than any of the preceding
princes, had a taste for the arts when he could
procure pictures cheaply, and strong inclination towards
pretty living pictures, which led to lively rather than
pleasant controversies at court. His own marriage with
Madame Scharmann disgusted the young ladies of princely
houses in Germany, and especially exasperated the aristocracy
of Meinengen. They were scarcely pacified by the
fact that the issue of the marriage was declared incapable
of succeeding to the inheritance.
The latter fell in 1763 to two young brothers, kinsfolk
of Antony, and sons of the late Duke of Gotha, who
reigned for some years together. The elder, Charles, died
in 1782. From that period till 1803 the other brother,
George, reigned alone. He had no sooner become sole
sovereign than he married the Princess Louisa of Hohenlohe
Langenburg. At the end of ten years the first child
of this marriage was born, namely Adelaide, the future
Queen of England.
Eight years later, in the last year of the last century,
A.D. 1800, a male heir to the pocket-duchy was born, and
then was introduced into Meinengen the law which fixed
the succession in the eldest male heir only. Saxe-Meinengen
was the last country in Europe in which this law was
established.
The father of the Princess Adelaide, like his brother
Charles, was a man of no mean powers. Both were condescending
enough to visit even the burgher families of
Saxe-Meinengen; and Charles had so little respect for
vice in high places that when a German prince acted
contrary to the rights of his people the offender found
himself soundly lashed in paper and pamphlet, the
pseudonymous signature to which could not conceal the
person of the writer—the hasty Duke Charles. If this
sometimes made him unpopular over the frontier, he was
beloved within it. How could the people but love a
sovereign Duke who, when a child was born to him, asked
citizens of good repute rather than of high rank to come
and be gossips?
In the revolutionary war Duke George fought like a
hero. At home he afforded refuge to bold but honest
writers driven from more mighty states. He beautified
his city, improved the country; and, without being of
great mental cultivation himself, he loved to collect
around him scholars, philosophers, artists, authors, gentlemen.
With these he lived on the most familiar terms,
and when I say that Schiller and John Paul Richter were
of the number, I afford some idea of the society which
Duke George cared chiefly to cultivate. He buried his
own mother in the common churchyard, because she was
worthy, he said, of lying among her own subjects. The
majority of these were country folk, but George esteemed
the country folk, and at rustic festivals he was not unwilling
to share a jug of beer with any of them. Perhaps
the rustics loved him more truly than the sages, to whom
he proved, occasionally, something wearisome. But these
were often hard to please. All, however, felt a honest
grief when, on the Christmas night of 1803, Duke George
died, after a brief illness, caused, it is said, by a neglected
cold, and by rage at an urgent demand from the Kaiser
of 60,000 florins, fine-money for knightly orders ducally
declined.
The Duke left a young family, Adelaide, Ida, and his
son and successor, Bernard, then only three years of age.
The mother of these fatherless children took upon herself
the office of guardian, with that of Regent of the duchy.
The duties of both were performed with rare judgment
and firmness, during a time of much trouble and peril,
especially when the French armies were overrunning and
devastating Germany.
On the young ladies, gently and wisely reared in this
little court, Queen Charlotte had begun to look with the
foresight of a mother who had elderly and wayward sons
to marry. When the death of the Princess Charlotte
of Wales threatened to interrupt the direct succession of
the crown, the unmatched brothers of the Regent thought
of taking unto themselves wives. Cumberland had
married according to his, but to no other person’s, liking,
hardly even that of his wife. The Dukes of Kent and
Cambridge made better choice, and there then remained
but the sailor-prince to be converted into a Benedick.
The Queen selected his bride for him, and he approved
or acquiesced in the selection. He might, as far as age
goes, have been her father, but that was of small account;
and when Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen was spoken of,
men conversant with contemporary history knew her to
be the good daughter of an accomplished and an exemplary
mother.
The preliminaries of the marriage were carried out
amid so much opposition that at one moment the accomplishment
of the marriage itself wore a very doubtful
aspect. The difficulty was of a pecuniary nature. The
Dukes of Kent and Cambridge were content, on the
occasion of their respective marriages, to accept an addition
to their income of 6,000l. The Duke of Cumberland
was compelled to rest content, or otherwise, without any
addition at all—save the expenses of a wife. With the
Duke of Clarence it was different. He already possessed
18,000l. per annum, and ministers resolved, after a
private meeting with their supporters, to request the
Parliament to allow him an increase of 10,000l. On the
13th of April, 1818, a message from the Prince Regent
to that effect was submitted to either House by Lord
Castlereagh and the Earl of Liverpool. In the Commons
the first-named Lord hinted at the dependence of our
Princes on the liberality of Parliament since the time
when the crown had surrendered its long uncontrolled
disposal of revenues. But the House was not to be ‘suggested’
into a generosity which might be beyond justice.
Tierney, the gadfly of his period, complained of the
previous meeting of the friends of ministers, and the
communication to them, before it was made to the House,
of the amount to be applied for. Methuen insisted that
before the Commons would grant a farthing they must be
made acquainted with all the sources from which the
King’s sons derived their present revenue, as well as the
amount of the revenue itself. Finally, Holme Sumner
met the proposal of an additional 10,000l. by a counter-proposal
of 6,000l. This was carried by a narrow
majority of one hundred and ninety-three to one hundred
and eighty-four, and when this sum was offered to the
Duke he peremptorily declined to accept it.
Things did not progress more in tune with marriage-bells
in the House of Lords. There, when Lord Liverpool
stated what his royal client would be contented to
receive, Lord King started to his legs and exclaimed,
‘That the question was not what it might please the Duke
of Clarence to take, but what it might please the people
to give him!’ They were not willing to give what he
expected, and for a time it seemed as if there would
consequently be no marriage with the Princess of Saxe-Meinengen.
But only for a time.
‘The Duke of Clarence is going to be married, after
all,’ was a common phrase launched by the newspapers,
and taken up by the people, in 1818. If the phrase had
but one meaning, it had a double application. In the
former sense it had reference to the disinclination of Parliament
to increase his income, without which he had expressed
his determination not to marry. It was further
applied, however, to the old course of his old loves.
There were the years spent with Dora Bland, then ‘Mrs.
Jordan,’ the actress—years of an intercourse which had
much of the quiet, happy character of a modest English
home—the breaking-up of which brought such great grief
to the mother in that home that even every service subsequently
rendered to her seemed to partake of the quality
of offence. It has been registered as such by those who
heard more of the wailing of the Ariadne than they knew
of the groundlessness of it, when vented in reproaches for
leaving her unprovided for as well as deserted.
Then the public remembered how this light-of-heart
Duke had been a suitor to other ladies. He was the
rival of Wellesley Pole for the favour and the fortune
of the great heiress, Miss Tilney Long. That ill-fated
lady conferred on this wooer of humbler degree the
office of slaying her happiness, sapping her life, and ruining
her estate. The other lady, who declined the Duke’s
offer of his hand or petition for her own, was Miss Sophia
Wykeham, of Thame Park, daughter and sole heiress of
an Oxfordshire ’squire. Each lady had merits of her
own, and other attractions besides those which lay in the
beaux yeux de sa cassette; but perhaps each remembered
the clauses of the Royal Marriage Act; however this may
have been, Miss Tilney chose between her two suitors,
while Miss Wykeham, after turning from the prayer of
the Duke, never stooped to listen to a lowlier wooer.
These were the ‘antecedents’ of the lover who, in
mature age, took rather than asked for the hand of
Adelaide of Saxe-Meinengen. Of all the actions of his
life it was the one which brought him the most happiness;
and with that true woman he had better fortune
than is altogether merited by a man who, after a long
bachelorship of no great repute, settles down in middle-life
to respectability and content, under the influences of
a virtuous woman, gifted with an excellent degree of
common-sense.
In the dusk of a July evening, in the year 1818, this
unwooed bride quietly arrived, with her mother, at
Grillon’s Hotel, Albemarle Street. She had but cool
reception for a lady on such mission as her own. There
was no one to bid her welcome; the Regent was at Carlton
House at dinner, and the Duke of Clarence was out
of town on a visit. Except the worthy Mr. Grillon himself,
no person seemed the gladder for her coming. In
the course of the evening, however, the Regent drove
down to Albemarle Street; and at a later hour the more
tardy future husband was carried up to the door in a
carriage drawn by four horses with as much rapidity as
became a presumed lover of his age, in whom a certain
show of zeal was becoming.
The strangers became at once acquainted, and acquaintance
is said to have developed itself speedily into
friendship. The family-party remained together till near
upon the ‘wee sma’ hours; there was much indulgence
there, we are told, of good, honest, informal hilarity;
and when the illustrious and joyous circle broke up, the
easy grace, frankness, and courtesy of the Regent, and
the freedom and light-heartedness of the Duke, are said
to have left favourable impressions on both the mother
and the daughter.
Quaintest of royal weddings was that which now took
place in old Kew Palace. Indeed, there were two, for the
Duke of Kent, who had gallantly fetched his wife from
abroad, where he had married her according to Lutheran
rites, was now re-married to his bride according to the
forms of the Church of England. Early in the day there
was a dinner, at which the most important personages in
that day’s proceedings were present. The old house at
Kew seemed blushing in its reddest of bricks, out of pure
enjoyment. The Regent gave the bride away; and, the
ceremony concluded, the wedded couples paid a visit to
the old Queen in her private apartment. She was too
ill then to do more than congratulate her sons, and wish
happiness to the married. The Duke and Duchess of
Kent thereupon departed, but the Duke and Duchess of
Clarence remained—guests at a joyous tea party at which
the Regent presided, and which was prepared al fresco
in the vicinity of the Pagoda. It must have been a
thousand times a merrier matter than wedding state-dinners
of the olden times, at which brides were wearied
into suffering and sulkiness. A more joyous party of
noble men and women never met in mirthful greenwood;
and when the princely pair took their leave for
St. James’s, the Regent led the hilarious cheer, and sped
them on their way with a ‘hurrah!’ worthy of his bright
and younger days.
The Regent, undoubtedly, manifested a clearer sense
of the fitness of things on this occasion than either of the
managers of the theatres honoured by the presence of
the newly-married couple soon after the union.
At Drury Lane was given the ‘Marriage of Figaro,’
and Covent Garden complimented the Duke and Duchess
with the ‘Provoked Husband.’
It cannot be said that the public looked with much
enthusiasm on any of the royal marriages. Such unions,
with rare exceptions, are unpleasantly free from sentiment
or romance; and in the present instances there was
such a matter-of-fact air of mere ‘business’ about these
contracts and ceremonies, such an absence of youth and
the impulses and the dignity of youth, that the indifferent
public, even remembering the importance of securing a
lineal succession to the throne, was slow to offer either congratulation
or sympathy. The caricaturists, on the other
hand, were busy with a heavy and not very delicate wit;
and fashionable papers, uniting implied censure with faint
praise, observed that ‘the Duchesses of Kent, Clarence, and
Cambridge are very deficient in the English language.
They can scarcely speak a sentence. They possess most
amiable dispositions.’ They also possessed true womanly
qualities, which won for them the esteem of their husbands.
After a brief residence at St. James’s, and as brief a
sojourn at the Duke’s residence in Bushey Park, the Duke
and Duchess of Clarence repaired to Hanover, and remained
there about a year—no incident marking the
time is worthy of observation. The issue of this marriage
scarcely survived the birth. In March 1819, a daughter
was born, but to survive only a few hours. In December
1820, another princess gladdened the hearts of her
parents, only to quench the newly-raised joy by her death
in March of the following year. The loss was the keener
felt because of the hopes that had been raised; and the
grief experienced by the Duke and Duchess was tenderly
nourished, rather than relieved, by the exquisite art of
Chantrey, which, at the command of the parents, reproduced
the lost child in marble—sleeping for ever where
it lay.
The household at Bushey was admirably regulated by
the Duchess, who had been taught the duties as well as
the privileges of greatness. The fixed rule was, never to
allow expenditure to exceed income. It is a golden rule
which, when observed, renders men, in good truth, as
rich as Crœsus. It is a rule which, if universally
observed, would render the world prosperous and
pauperism a legend. It was a rule the more required to
be honoured in this case as the Duke had large calls
upon his income. When those were provided for, old
liabilities effaced, and current expenses defrayed, the
surplus was surrendered to charity. There was no saving
for the sake of increase of income—economy was practised
for justice-sake, and the Duke and Duchess were so
just that they found themselves able to be largely
generous. With the increased means placed at their disposal
by the death of the Duke of York, there was
but trifling increase of expenditure. If something was
added to their comforts, they benefitted who were employed
to procure them; and, if there was some little
additional luxury in the rural palace of Bushey, the
neighbouring poor were never forgotten in a selfish enjoyment
of it.
In 1824, the Duke and Duchess of Clarence had
apartments in St. James’s Palace, where, however, they
seem to have been as roughly accommodated, considering
their condition, as any mediæval Prince and Princess in
the days of stone walls thinly tapestried and stone floors
scantily strewn with rushes. The Duke cared little about
the matter himself, but he gallantly supported the claims
of his wife. In a letter addressed to Sir William Knighton,
the King’s privy purse, in 1824, he thus expresses himself—from
St. James’s Palace:—
‘His Majesty having so graciously pleased to listen
to my suggestion respecting the alteration for the Hanoverian
office at the palace, I venture once more to trouble
you on the point of the building intended for that purpose.
To the accommodation of the Duchess this additional
slip at the back of the present apartments would
be most to be wished and desired, and never can make a
complete Hanoverian office without our kitchen, which
the King has so kindly allowed us to keep. Under this
perfect conviction, I venture to apply for this slip of
building which was intended for the Hanoverian office. I
am confident his Majesty is fully aware of the inconvenience
and unfitness of our present apartments here.
They were arranged for me in 1809, when I was a
bachelor, and without an idea at that time of my ever
being married, since which, now fifteen years, nothing has
been done to them, and you well know the dirt and unfitness
for the Duchess of our present abode. Under these
circumstances, I earnestly request, for the sake of the
amiable and excellent Duchess, you will, when the King
is quite recovered, represent the wretched state and dirt
of our apartments, and the infinite advantage this slip
would produce to the convenience and comfort of the
Duchess.... God bless the King and yourself, and ever
believe me, &c.—William.’
Though often as ungrammatical and inelegant, it was
seldom the Duke was so explicit in his correspondence as
he is in the above letter. Generally, he wrote in ambiguous
phrases, very puzzling to the uninitiated; but when
his Duchess Adelaide was in question, and her comfort
was concerned, he became quite graphic on the ‘state and
dirt’ in which they passed their London days, in the old,
dingy, leper-house palace of St. James’s.
With the exception of the period during which the
Duke held the office of Lord High Admiral, 1827–28—an
office which may be said to have been conferred on
him by Canning, and of which he was deprived by the
Duke of Wellington—with the exception above noted,
this royal couple lived in comparative retirement till the
26th of June, 1830, on which day the demise of George
IV. summoned them to ascend the throne. During his
fatal illness, Mrs. Fitzherbert addressed a letter of sympathy
to her old lover, if not husband. She affectionately
tendered any service which might be of use to him in his
extreme necessity. To this letter no reply ever reached
her; but some vestige of human affection was nevertheless
evinced by the King on his death-bed. ‘He more than
once expressed his anxiety,’ the ‘Memoirs’ tell us, ‘that a
particular picture should be hung round his neck, and
deposited with him in the grave.’ It seemed to be the
opinion of the Duke of Wellington that this portrait was
one which had been taken of Mrs. Fitzherbert in early
life, and was set round with brilliants. It appeared the
more likely, as this portrait was afterwards missing when
the others were returned to her. Mrs. Fitzherbert was
possessed of an annuity of 6,000l., settled on her by
George the Fourth, which she enjoyed to the year of her
death, 1833.
It is said that when the news of the death of George
IV. was announced to the Duchess of Clarence the new
Queen burst into tears. The prayer-book she held in her
hand at the moment she conferred on the noble messenger,
as a memorial of the incident and of her regret.
The messenger looked, perhaps, for a more costly
guerdon; but she was thinking only of her higher and
stranger duties. If Queen Adelaide really regretted that
these now had claims upon her, not less was their advent
regretted by certain of the labouring poor of Bushey,
whose harvest-homes had never been so joyous as since
the Duke and Duchess of Clarence had been living among
them.
The course of life of the new Queen was only changed
in degree. Her income was larger, so also were her
charities. Her time had more calls upon it, but her
cheerfulness was not diminished. Her evenings were
generally given up to tapestry work, and as she bent over
the frame many of the circle around her already sorrowingly
remarked that the new Queen, though not old in
years, seemed descending into the vale of life.
The esteem of her husband for her was equal to her
merits. His affection and respect were boundless; and
when the senate granted her, on the motion of Lord
Althorpe, 100,000l. per annum, with Marlborough House
and Bushey Park, in case she survived the King, the good
old monarch was the first to congratulate her, and was
pleased to put her in office himself, by appointing her
Perpetual Ranger of the Park, which was to become her
own at his decease.
William IV. was not forgetful of his old loves, and
Queen Adelaide was not jealous of such memories. She
looked more indulgently than the general public did on
the ennobling of his children of the Jordan family. If
that step could have been met by objections in these
later days, it was at least supported by that amazingly
powerful but sometimes perilous engine, precedent.
Though indeed there was precedent for the contrary;
and perhaps the husband of Queen Adelaide would have
manifested a greater sense of propriety on this occasion
had he rather followed the decent example, in a like
matter, of the scrupulous Richard the Third than that of
Henry the Eighth or the Second Charles.
There was another ennobling, however, which the
public as warmly approved as the Queen heartily
sanctioned. In 1834, her husband raised to the dignity
of a Baroness the lady who had declined to share with
him whatever of higher or more equivocal honour he
could have conferred by marrying her. In that year
Miss Wykeham became, by the grateful memory and
good taste of her old royal lover, Baroness Wenman of
Thame Park, Oxon. This testimony of the memory of
an old affection was an act to be honoured by a Queen,
and to it that royal homage was freely tendered. Inquirers,
on turning over the peerage books, may discover
many honours conferred on women too ready to listen to
the suit of a monarch; but here, for the first time, was a
title of nobility presented to a lady who had declined to
give ear to royal suit, paid in honesty and honour.
Baroness Wenman bore her honours with grace and dignity
till her death, in 1870.
There was something chivalrous in the bearing of the
King towards ladies; hearty, but a courteous heartiness.
This sort of tribute he loved to render to his wife; and
there was nothing so pleasant to hear, in his replies to
addresses after his accession, as the gallant allusions to
the qualities of the Queen, who stood at his side serenely
satisfied. This heartiness was not an affectation in him.
It was of his nature; and another phase of his character
was manifested by King William at the first dinner after
he ascended the throne, at which his relations only were
present. On that pleasant occasion, although it was a
family dinner, he gave as a toast, ‘Family peace and
affection;’ it was the hearty sentiment of a citizen King
who loved quiet and simple ways, who walked the streets
with his intimate friends, and often occupied the box-seat
of his open carriage, turning round to converse with
the Queen inside. King William took much interest
in the first lady whom his brother, George IV., had
married. Mrs. Fitzherbert resided some part of the
year at Brighton. The King visited her, and invited
her to the Pavilion. He authorised her to put her servants
in the royal livery, and to wear widow’s weeds for
his late brother. On Mrs. Fitzherbert paying her first
homage to Queen Adelaide, the King went down to her
carriage to meet her, took her by the hand, and introduced
her to his consort and all the members of his
family who were present. Mrs. Fitzherbert told Lord
Stourton that ‘she was herself much surprised at the great
composure with which she was able to sustain a trial of
fortitude which appeared so alarming at a distance.’
After this she was frequently a guest. Queen Adelaide
was a gentle hostess, and the royal Sunday dinners were
as elegant as they were comfortable. Mrs. Fitzherbert
very decidedly declined being made a Duchess.
When Adelaide became Queen-consort some persons
who would not have been ill-pleased to see her fail
affected to fear that the homely Duchess would prove
to be unequal to the exigencies of the queenly character.
One exalted person hinted that, in this matter, she would
not do ill were she to take counsel of the Princess Elizabeth
of Hesse Homburg, ‘than whom none could better
record to her Majesty the forms and usages and prescriptions
of the court of Queen Charlotte.’ But Queen
Adelaide needed no such instruction as the good daughter
of George III. could give her. She observed the forms
and usages that were worthy of observance; and as for
prescriptions, she could prescribe readily enough when
duty demanded the service, as the Church felt, with
mingled feelings, when she declined to invite clergymen
to her state balls or her dancing soirées. The dancing
clergy had their opportunity for censure when the King
and Queen gave dinner-parties on the Sunday.
The court was essentially a homely court. The two
sovereigns fed thousands of the poor in Windsor Park,
and looked on at the feasting. The Queen went shopping
to Brighton fancy fairs, and when on one occasion she
bent to pick up the ‘reticule’ which an infirm old lady
had dropped, as much was made of it as of the incident
of King Francis, who picked up (or did not pick up)
Titian’s pencil, and handed it to that sovereign gentleman
among artists.
Then the new sovereigns paid more private visits
than any pair who had hitherto occupied the British
throne. While the Queen called on Sir David and Lady
Scott at Brighton, her royal husband, with whom she
had just previously been walking on the Esplanade, would
suddenly appear at the door of some happy but disconcerted
old admiral, and invite the veteran and his wife to
dinner. To the hearty ‘Come along, directly,’ if there
was a glance from the lady at her toilet, the citizen
King would encourage her by an intimation never to
mind it, for he and his wife were quiet people; ‘and,
indeed,’ as he once remarked, ‘the Queen does nothing
after dinner but embroider flowers.’ Which, indeed, was
true enough, and, to tell the truth, very dull did the finer
people find it.
The consequence of this familiarity of the sovereigns
with their humbler friends was a rather audacious familiarity
ventured upon by people who left their queer names
in the book at the King’s door, and more than once successfully
passed it, and penetrated to the Queen’s drawing-room.
This evil, however, was soon remedied. There
were other matters Queen Adelaide was bold enough to,
at least, attempt to remedy. Indecorousness of dress
in a lady she would censure as sharply as Queen
Charlotte; and if, when Mrs. Blomfield appeared at her
first drawing-room in a ‘train of rich immortal velvet,’
as the fashionable chroniclers of the day called it, she
did not even hint surprise, it was, perhaps, out of
respect for the successor of the Apostles, of whom that
good but richly velvetted lady was the honoured wife.
The letter-writers who dealt with court incidents at
the period of the accession of this domestic couple tell
of various illustrations of the simplicity of the new
sovereigns. When the Duke of Norfolk had an interview
with William IV. at Bushey, on the affair which
had brought him thither being concluded, the King declared
he must not leave the house without seeing the
Queen; and, thereupon ringing the bell, he bade the
official who answered the summons to ‘tell the Queen I
want her.’
This lady, at the time when her husband was Duke of
Clarence and Lord High Admiral, had been accustomed,
on her visits to Chatham, to be received and entertained
by the daughters of the then Commissioner, Cunningham.
As soon as the Duchess became Queen, among her first
invited visitors to Bushey were these ladies. At the meeting
they offered to kiss her Majesty’s hand, but ‘No, no,’
said Queen Adelaide, ‘that is not the way I receive my
friends. I am not changed;’ and therewith ensued a
greeting less dignified, but not less sincere.
Queen Adelaide and King William kept a ‘state’ at
Brighton which had a burlesque element in it. They
were the last sovereigns who held a court or entertained
friends at the Pavilion—that place of big and little
domes, which made Lord Alvanley say of it that it
looked ‘as if St. Paul’s had come down to the sea-side
and pupped.’ It was not etiquette for any guest (of an
evening) to stir till Queen and King retired, which was
at midnight. On one occasion, when Captain and Mrs.
Marryat were present, and anxious to go to a second
party, the King remarked that the lady often looked at
the clock. Being asked the reason, she frankly told him.
‘Why don’t you go then?’ said his Majesty. ‘Sir,’
answered the lady, ‘we cannot move till her Majesty
and yourself have departed.’ ‘Oh, d—n it!’ rejoined the
royal sailor, ‘take my arm; I’ll smuggle you out.’ At
the Pavilion balls, after the ladies had kissed the Queen’s
hand, the King kissed the ladies, who then passed into
the ball-room, where one of the Fitzclarences used to
greet them with: ‘Well, has Dad bussed you yet?’
There are other stories told of incidents at Windsor
which indicate the difference of the court going out from
that of the court coming in. This change required the
removal from the palace of a little household, the head
lady of which reluctantly gave way to the new Queen.
People generally rejoiced in seeing a ‘wife’ installed
where ‘queans’ used to rule it; and, when William IV.
was seen walking arm-in-arm with Watson Taylor or
some other happy courtier, they added one incident to
the other, and, comparing the new court with the old,
exclaimed, ‘Here is a change indeed!’ No one ever
dreamed at that moment that the time would come
when party-spirit would stir up the ‘mobile’ against the
sovereigns; that the Queen would be accused of plotting
with the Duke of Wellington against reform; that stones
would be cast at the royal carriage as it bore the King
and his Consort from the theatre; and that, when matters
went adversely to the humour of the ultra-chiefs of
the popular movement, the first lady in the land should
be marked out for vengeance by the famous cry in the
Times, ‘The Queen has done it all!’
The drawing-room at which good Mrs. Blomfield
appeared in ‘immortal velvet’ was remarkable for another
incident, related in ‘Frazer’s Magazine,’ by John Wilkes,
ex-M.P. for Sudbury, in his ‘Regina’s Regina’:—‘The
drawing-room of her Majesty Queen Adelaide, held in
February, 1831, was the most magnificent which had
been seen since that which had taken place on the
presentation of the Princess Charlotte of Wales, upon
the occasion of her marriage. No drawing-room
excited such an interest when compared with that
as the one held by Queen Adelaide, at which the
Princess Victoria was presented on attaining her twelfth
year. It was on this occasion that the Duchess of Kent
and her illustrious daughter arrived in state, attended by
the Duchess of Northumberland, Lady Charlotte St.
Maur, Lady Catherine Parkinson, the Hon. Mrs. Cust,
Lady Conroy, La Baronne Letzen, Sir John Conroy, and
General Wetheral. This was the first public appearance
of the Princess Victoria at court. Her dress was made
entirely of articles manufactured in the United Kingdom.
Victoria wore a frock of English blonde, simple, modest,
and becoming. She was the object of interest and admiration
on the part of all assembled, as she stood on
the left of her Majesty on the throne. The scene was
one of the most splendid ever remembered, and the future
Queen of England contemplated all that passed with
much dignity, but with evident interest.’
Nearly three-quarters of a century had elapsed since
a Queen-consort had been crowned in Great Britain. On
the present occasion, such small pomp as there was was
confined to the religious part of the ceremony. The procession
to and from Westminster Hall, the banquet there,
and the dramatic episode of the entry of the Champion
were all dispensed with. There was an idea prevalent
that the cost would be too great, and that the popular
voice would be given to grumble—others thought that
money spent in the country, and made to circulate rapidly
through many hands, would be a public benefit rather
than a public injury. The ministry, however, would only
sanction the maimed rites which were actually observed;
the privileged people were deprived of many a coveted
perquisite which might have dipped deeply into the
public purse, and the heir of Marmion and the owner of
Scrivelsby kept his horse and his defiance at home in the
domain of the Dymokes. The public, cheated of their
show, called it a ‘half-crownation.’
There was only one incident at this ceremony which
is worth narrating. The Queen-consort’s crown was a
rich little toy, sparkling but small. It would hardly fit
a baby’s head, and, accordingly, Queen Adelaide’s hair
was turned up in a knot, in order that on this knot the
little crown might safely rest. The Archbishop of Canterbury,
in place of fitting the crown down upon this knot
of hair, only lightly placed the glittering toy on the top
of it. Had the Queen moved she would have been discrowned
in an instant, and all the foolish people whose
footsteps go wandering on the borders of another world,
instead of going honestly straightforward in this, would
have had a fine opportunity of discussing the value of
omens. But, in a case of adornment, the ladies had their
wits about them, and were worth the whole episcopal
bench when the matter at issue was surmounting a head
of hair with its supreme adornment of a crown. Some
of those in attendance stepped forward, saved their embarrassed
mistress from an annoyance, and Queen
Adelaide was crowned in Westminster Abbey by a
couple of ladies-in-waiting!
It may be that the Archbishop was not so much to
blame on this occasion. The little crown was made up
at the Queen’s expense for the occasion, by Rundell, out
of her own jewels, and it may not have fitted easily. She
had a dread of unnecessary outlay, and, perhaps, remembered
that at George the Fourth’s coronation the sum
charged by Rundell merely for the hire of jewels by the
King amounted to 16,000l., as interest on their value.
The whole expense of the double coronation of William
and Adelaide did not amount to much more than twice
that sum.
The Queen herself was not ill-dressed on this occasion,
as will be seen by the record made by those who
have registered the millinery portion of the ceremony:—‘Her
Majesty wore a gold gauze over a white satin petticoat,
with a diamond stomacher, and a purple velvet
train, lined with white satin, and a rich border of gold
and ermine. The coronet worn by Her Majesty, both to
and from the Abbey, was most beautiful. It was composed
entirely of diamonds and pearls, and in shape very
similar to a mural crown.’
When the modest coronation of William and Adelaide
was yet a subject of general conversation, the expensive
finery of that which preceded it was actually in the
market, and was subsequently sold by public auction.
Out of the hundred and twenty lots ‘submitted’ by Mr.
Phillips, the new King and Queen might have been
tempted to secure a souvenir of their predecessor; but
they had no taste for ‘bargains,’ perhaps small regard
for their defunct kinsman. Nevertheless, so thrifty a lady
as the Queen may have sighed at the thought of the
coronation ruff of Mechlin lace going ‘dirt cheap’ at two
pounds; and she may have regretted the crimson velvet
coronation mantle, with its star and gold embroidery,
which, originally costing five hundred pounds, fetched,
when yet as good as new, only a poor seven-and-forty
guineas. There was the same depreciation in other
articles of originally costly value. The second coronation
mantle of purple velvet fell from three hundred to
fifty-five pounds; and the green velvet mantle, lined with
ermine, which had cost the Czar, who presented it to the
late King, a thousand guineas, was ‘knocked down’ at a
trifle over a hundred pounds. Sashes, highland-dresses,
aigrette-plumes—rich gifts received, or purchases dearly
acquired—went for nothing; and, after all, seeing into
what base hands coronation bravery is apt to fall, the
economical King and Queen were not without justification
in setting an example of prudence, which was followed at
the next great crowning.
Perhaps not the least remarkable incident in connection
with this coronation was the absence of the heiress-presumptive
to the crown, the Princess Victoria. No
place had been assigned to her, nor any preparation made
in expectation of her gracing or witnessing the ceremony.
It has been said that Earl Grey, the prime minister, obstinately
opposed all idea of inviting the Princess to be
present. But the grounds for such opposition are so unapparent
that it is difficult to give credit to them at
all. By others it has been asserted that the Duchess of
Northumberland, the governess of the Princess, in the
exercise of a superior and enlightened judgment, and in
consideration of the then alleged delicate health of her
young charge, advised that her pupil should not be present
at the coronation of King William and Queen
Adelaide. This reason seems hardly to account for the
fact. In the absence of a better, it was accepted by those
at least who did not throw the blame of that ‘conspicuous
absence’ on Queen Adelaide herself and her royal consort;
but, as an anonymous writer remarked, ‘Who
that knew the good King William and his incomparable
Queen would believe that any slight was put by them on
their well-beloved niece and the heiress-presumptive to
the throne?’ The same enemies also stated that ‘the
Duchess of Northumberland was seeking to give a political
bias to the education of the Princess, and some uneasiness
was therefore created in the palace.’ The ‘Times’
asserted, with iteration, that the Duchess of Kent had
‘refused to attend, yes, refused to attend,’ and reproved
Her Royal Highness, in the harsh terms which illustrated
many of the controversies of the day, for the impertinence
of the widow of a mediatized German Prince, in withholding
her daughter from a ceremony at which she
could never, at one time, have expected to see daughter
of hers, as heiress-presumptive to the crown of England!
Other papers made this alleged refusal rest on the course
taken by Lord A. Fitzclarence, who, in marshalling the
coronation procession on paper, had assigned a place to
the Princess Victoria after the other members of the
royal family, instead of next to the King and Queen.
Finally, the ‘Globe,’ on authority, declared that the
Duchess, having pleaded the delicate state of her daughter’s
health, had obtained the King’s sanction to her absence—a
version of the end of a story which began, nevertheless,
more like the current report of it than would seem here
to be indicated. As marked an instance of absence as
that of the Princess was that of the whole of such members
of the preceding administration as happened to be
members of the House of Commons. This, however,
little affected the King, who, at the subsequent dinner at
St. James’s Palace, gave, as a toast, ‘the land we live in,’
and declared that, except as a formality and memorial,
the coronation was a useless affair, as far as he was concerned,
for no oath he had there taken could bind him
more stringently to fulfil his duty towards the people
than he felt himself to be bound by as soon as the responsibility
of his position had fallen upon him.
The land he now lived in speedily became agitated by
that wave of revolution which was shaking many of the
monarchies of Europe. England endured as great revolution
as any of them, but with this difference, that here
it was effected according to law, and, albeit not exempt
from very vast perils, was carried through to its natural
consequences, to the mutual advantage of the government
and the governed.
When the first rumours began to spread of an opposition
establishing itself at court against the progress of
reform, the press manifested particular desire to exonerate
the Queen from the charge of participating in or heading
such a course. The ‘Times’ at first interfered to protect
that lady from similar aspersions. Papers of less influence,
but of like principles, had openly named Queen Adelaide,
the two daughters of George III., Elizabeth (Princess of
Hesse Homburg), and Mary (Duchess of Gloucester) as
mischievously active in impeding the popular will. In
answer to such accusations, the ‘Times’ (April 9, 1831),
in a brief but spirited and courteous leader, denounced
the falsehood, and showed the improbability and the unfairness
of such allegations. On a like occasion, that
paper fairly urged that, whatever opinions might be expressed
by members of the household, they were not to
be attributed to the mistress of that household. At the
same time, on these members and on the fair frequenters
of drawing-rooms who there gave utterance to sentiments
which they carried into action elsewhere against the
great consummation sought by the people, the pro-reform
paper thundered its bolts and showered its sarcasm with
unsparing hands. On most occasions, however, so much
was made of the apparent heartiness of the King, that
excess of praise in that direction took the form of censure
on the lukewarmness, if not the hostility, of the Queen.
Contrasts rather than parallels were the favourite medium
for turning the public attention to the two sovereigns.
The Ex-Chancellor Eldon was said to have assured Queen
Adelaide that, if reform was carried, the days of her
drawing-rooms were numbered, and that royalty would
do well to follow a counsel which was given by Earl Grey
to the bishops—namely, set its house in order. On the
other hand, we hear of the new Chancellor Brougham
attending the court with his huge official purse so full of
petitions in favour of parliamentary reform that, as he
continued to extract and present them, he apologized to
King William for troubling him with such piles of the
public prayers or demands. Whereupon the King is said
to have remarked, in the hearing of the Queen, ‘My
Lord Chancellor, I am willing to receive anything from
that purse, except the seals!’ The wit was small, but the
suggestiveness was considered important, and gossips, on
both sides, jumped to conclusions which had questionable
affinity with the premises.
While the Queen was thus treated with a certain degree
of moderation by the press, she is said to have been
seriously coerced by the liberal ministry of the day. The
charge was distinctly made, after the Queen’s death, in a
funeral sermon, preached by the Rev. Mr. Browne, Vicar
of Atwick. The occasion was so solemn that an honest
man was not likely to be led even into exaggeration,
much less into deliberate misrepresentation. These are
the preacher’s own words:—
‘The Queen-consort had witnessed in her father-land
some of the dreadful effects of the French revolutionary
movements; and she was known to disapprove, out of
womanly feeling and fear for her husband’s safety, of
popular tumults and agitations. With the narrow-minded
and impure suspicion is proof, and is followed by resentment.
This pure being was a sufferer by the machinations
and exactions of the ephemeral favourites of the
misguided populace. Her influence over her royal
husband was too great to be trusted, and she was
forbidden—I speak advisedly, and mean nothing less
than “forbidden”—to have a kindred spirit near her
during the agitation and intimidation by which the
measure called the Reform Bill was supported and
carried.’
It was when that bill was in jeopardy, when the King—who
had made so many knights that the very pages
called them the ‘Arabians,’ the ‘Thousand and One’—hesitated
to create a sufficient number of new lords to
secure the passing of the bill in the Upper House; it was
then that the press began to admonish the King and to
menace the Queen. On one occasion, when they attended
at the opening of the new Staines Bridge, where, by the
way, they were so closely pressed upon by the mob that
maids of honour and gentlemen-in-waiting had their
pockets picked, the Conservative wits remarked that the
King might make new bridges, but that he must leave the
peers alone. The Whig party at once assumed that
Queen Adelaide was at the head of a faction whose
object was to give reality to such jokes, and thenceforward
the Queen was little spared. The ‘Times’ asserted
that it was by ‘domestic importunity’ alone that the free
action of the King’s mind was impeded. The Queen was
compared to Queen Amata, in the ‘Æneid,’ cajoling or
raging at her older consort, Latinus, because the latter
preferred Æneas to Turnus as a husband for their
daughter Lavinia. There was not much alike in the two
cases, for Amata was a staunch Conservative, who detested
the idea of a foreign prince obtaining the hand of her
daughter, and exercising influence within the limits of
Latium. But there were strong terms in the original
which suited the purpose of the hour, and the Queen was
pelted with them most unmercifully.
Occasionally, there was a truth mixed up with the
harder words, which even ultra-Tories could not gainsay,
as when the ‘Times’ remarked that ‘a foreigner was no
very competent judge of English liberties, and politics
are not the proper field for female enterprise or exertion.’
When this strong hint was taken to have failed, and
Queen Adelaide was still supposed to be conspiring with
the daughters of George III. to turn King William from
his liberal views, this was the tone with which the royal
lady was lectured by the press:—‘There is a lady of high
rank who must be taught a salutary, though a very painful,
lesson. She may be bold as an amazon, be troublesome,
importunate, or overbearing, but her present course
is one from which can follow naught but final wretchedness.
Why has she so eagerly, within these few hours,
bidden her gossips not to despair? Why such haste to
tell them, all will be well? The King will do without
the Whigs. Yes, madam, but England will not. Still less
will England do without the unmutilated Bill.’
At another time Queen Adelaide was reminded that
if a female influence drove Necker from the court of
Louis XVI., one of the consequences was the destruction
of the most influential lady; another, the ruin of the
country. The influence being assumed to be still active,
allusion was made to the ‘foreign woman whom the
nation may have too easily adopted.’ Reports were rife
that intrigues were on foot, the object of which was to
induce liberal peers to betray their party, and then the
public censor showered imprecations on ‘blandishments
and entreaties, urged with a force and pertinacity which,
coming from a monarch, are difficult to be refused.’
On the other hand, the Conservative press drew its
own inferences and made its own accusations. When
the cholera was raging, during the reform fever, Queen
Adelaide’s drawing-room happened to be very thinly attended.
The real cause was lost sight of, and her
Majesty was respectfully assured that the scanty attendance
was entirely owing to Lord Grey’s revolutionary
government, beneath which all old English energy, vitality,
and spirit had become so extinct that it was unequal
to the exertion of even manifesting respect for an English
Queen. As much injury was inflicted on Queen Adelaide
by the Tories who blazoned her name on their banners
and boasted of having her on their side as by the Whigs
and Radicals who, by their calumny, exposed her to
popular insult. When Lord Chancellor Brougham coerced
the King to go and dismiss the unreformed and unreforming
Parliament, one part of the royal remonstrance took
the form of: ‘What! Would you have me dismiss in
this summary manner, a Parliament which has granted
me so splendid a Civil List, and given my Queen so liberal
an annuity, in case she survives me?’ Lord Brougham
answered that he would, and that he had taken upon
himself to order out the Horse Guards to escort the King
down to the House.
Old English qualities manifested themselves at a Conservative
festival in Gloucestershire, where the health of
‘the Queen’ was ‘received with great applause.’ Upon
which announcement the ‘Times’ significantly asked, ‘Is
that meant as a compliment to her Majesty, or will it
sound as such in the ears of the unanimous people?’
Then, when reiteration was made of the alleged co-operation
of the sisters of William IV. with Queen Adelaide
in efforts to overthrow the Reform Bill, the ‘Times’
stepped forward with the following testimony in favour of
those ladies and their mother, with the accompanying admonition
to the Queen:—‘No one will be persuaded that
any daughter of George III. could so mistake her position
in this country or so disregard her duty. Queen
Charlotte was advised by her mother, before she ever
touched the shores of England, to make entire and
religious abstinence from politics the rule of her life as a
British Princess; and for twenty-eight years, till the
question of the first Regency forced Queen Charlotte upon
the stage as a reluctant actress, she had satisfied herself
with being a modest spectatress, living in strict observance
of maternal counsel; and what was the consequence?
Down to the above-mentioned period of her wedded life,
her Majesty enjoyed, in a degree not experienced by
any Queen-consort for centuries past, the respect and
good-will of the whole community. Is it then to be
supposed that the leading maxim of her own mother
was not impressed by that judicious and estimable
woman upon the minds of her daughters, the six Princesses,
two of whom still adorn the court of England
with their constant presence? The Princess Augusta
and the Duchess of Gloucester owe little to the gossips
who thus abuse the delicacy of their illustrious
names.’
Party-spirit was, doubtless, aggravated on either side
by the tone of the press. Influential cities announced
their refusal to pay taxes, and tavern-clubs possessing
pictures of King and Queen turned them heels uppermost,
with an intimation that they should be righted
as soon as the originals had made themselves right with
the people. If Tories of eminence talked of coercing
the King, Whigs equally exalted hinted at the possibility
of sending his Consort to Germany, and of rousing the
men of the provinces in order to make an impression
upon people in high places. One well-known ‘man about
town,’ presiding at a public dinner, refused to propose the
Queen’s health, and among the lower caricature-shops
she might be seen pictured wending her way, the ejected
of England, to a dull, dreary, and unwelcoming Germany.
Publicly, however, she had her champions too. Mr.
Baring, from his place in parliament, protested against
the language of the Whig papers generally. His own
description of it, as applicable to the Queen, was, that it
comprised foul slander against the highest personage of a
sex, from insulting which every manly mind would recoil.
The gallant champion added, with less discretion, perhaps,
that the full measure of scornful indifference and silent
contempt with which the Queen repaid all the insults
heaped upon her had elevated her in the hearts of those
whose homage was a worthy tribute. Mr. Hume, ultra-reformer
as he was, exhibited very excellent taste on this
occasion, and pointed out in a few words marked by good
common sense that the name of the exalted lady in
question should never be dragged into the debates, the
discussions, and the dissensions of that house.
Less, perhaps, by way of championship than in the
character of consolers, did the bishops, or a certain
number of them, with the Archbishop of Canterbury at
their head, address Queen Adelaide. They had, previously,
‘been up’ to the King, who was just then being
counselled in various ways by everybody, from wary old
politicians to the ’prentice-boys of Derry. They brought
to his Consort the usual complimentary phrases—but, in
the present instance, they carried weight with the Queen,
for amid the din of abuse with which she was assailed a
few words of assurance and encouragement, of trust,
counsel, and consolation, must have fallen pleasantly upon
her ear. She said as much, at least, in a brief phrase or
two, indicative of the satisfaction she experienced at
hearing such words from such men, at a period when she
was the object of so much undeserved calumny and
insult.
The scene was, undoubtedly, made the most of by
those who rejoiced most in its occurrence; perhaps too
much was made of it; and this induced the ridicule of
the opposite side. The ‘Times’ courageously denied its
existence. The presentation of the prelates was admitted,
but the Queen’s speech was defined as a hoax. There
was nobody by, it was said, but the knot of diocesans and
a body of maids of honour—and, of course, any report
emanating from such a source was to be received with
more than ordinary suspicion.
Long before the press had commenced directing an
undesired notice upon the Queen private circles were
canvassing her conduct with regard, especially, to this
matter of reform. ‘By-the-bye,’ says Moore in his diary,
‘the Queen being, as is well known, adverse to the measure
which is giving such popularity to her royal husband,
reminds me a little of the story of the King of Sparta,
who first gave his assent to the establishment of the
Ephori. His wife, it is said, reproached him with this
step, and told him that he was delivering down the royal
power to his children less than he had received it.
“Greater,” he answered, “because more durable.” This
is just such an answer as William IV. would be likely
to give to his wife. But the event proved the Spartan
Queen to have been right, for the Ephori extinguished
the royal power; and if Queen Adelaide’s bodings are
of the same description, they are but too likely to be
in the same manner realized’—a curious avowal from
Lord Lansdowne’s Whig friend.
There are few things which more forcibly strike a
student of the political literature of this period than
its wide difference from that which now generally prevails.
It seemed, in those days, as if no public writer
could command or control his temper. The worst things
were expressed in the worst forms, and writers had not
reached, or did not care to practise, the better style by
which a man may censure sharply without doing undue
wrong to the object of his censure, without losing his own
self-respect or forfeiting that of his readers.
Taken altogether, the year 1832 may be said to have
been the most eventful and the least felicitous in the life
of Queen Adelaide. It was a year which opened gloomily
for the court, both politically and personally. At one of
the small festivities held at the Pavilion, the King’s old
friend, Mr. Greenwood, of the firm of Cox and Greenwood,
Army Agents, was playing whist, after dinner, with
the Queen for a partner, and the King and Sir Herbert
Taylor for adversaries. During the progress of the game
he was taken ill, became insensible, and, on being removed
from the room by Sir Herbert and Lord Erroll,
died in an adjoining apartment, within a quarter of an
hour. The Queen was very much shocked at this incident,
and the elder ladies about court, who thought it
ominous of a fatal year—for already were movements
hostile to monarchy becoming active—considered the
next month’s omen of unpleasant significance too, when
the fog in London, on the night of the anniversary of
the Queen’s birthday, was so dense that not a lamp of
illuminations was visible through the mist. Then ensued, in
the subsequent spring, the unpleasant feud with the Sefton
family, in which Queen Adelaide’s name was so prominent.
Soon after the temporary resignation of the Grey
ministry, King William invited the Jockey Club to
dinner at St. James’s Palace. Among the invited was old
Lord Sefton, who was a Whig and something more, and
who was resolved to avenge on the King the wrongs inflicted,
as he assumed, by that dissembling monarch on
his friends of the late administration. Lord Sefton accordingly
withdrew from the club. The unsuspicious
King at once invited him as a friend, but Lord Sefton
was ungracious enough to absent himself, and did not
condescend to restore the sovereign to favour till Lord
Grey was once more at the helm of the national ship—steersman
and captain too. His lordship and family
appeared at the ball given by the Queen in May, to
which, of course, they had been all invited. Meanwhile,
however, the King had learned how he stood in the estimation
of the Earl, meeting whom in the Queen’s ball-room,
he turned his royal back upon him, publicly.
Thence arose embittered feelings on the part of the
offended peer. Vivere sat, vincere, ‘to conquer is to live
enough,’ is the Sefton motto, and the bearers of it seem
to have been determined to have this taste of life, by
putting down the royal offenders, and appearing before
them to enjoy their humiliation. ‘Lord Molyneux’ (Lord
Sefton’s son, says Mr. Raikes, in his Diary) ‘has attended
a public meeting at Liverpool, where he made a speech,
and, actuated by his father’s feelings, alluded very bitterly
to the conduct of both the King and Queen. He afterwards
came to town, and appeared, with his family, at the
ball. On the following day, the King commanded Mr.
W. Ashley, as vice-chamberlain to the Queen, to write to
Lord Molyneux, and request he would not appear at
court again. Nothing could be more just. This is only
a slight instance,’ adds the Tory Diarist, ‘of Whig insolence
and ingratitude. Sefton has been made a peer, and
treated with the most marked courtesy and attention by
the present King.’
In the following June, Lord Lichfield, master of the
buckhounds, prepared a list of guests invited by him to
meet the King, at the conclusion of Ascot races, at dinner,
at Lord Lichfield’s house, Fern Hill. The King expressly
ordered that Lord Sefton should not be invited. Considering
the offence, it was singular that any one should have
thought of winning the Queen over to use her interest in
influencing her husband to withdraw the command. Lady
Lichfield, however, did so, intimating to her Majesty that,
if the King had been moved by what was reported to
have passed at the Jockey Club, she was enabled to say
how that matter had been much misrepresented. The
Queen confined all reply and comment to the words,
coldly uttered, that she hoped it was so.
It certainly was not a period when Queens could expect
to be cordial with people who insulted them, and
whose speeches in public were exercising a very unwholesome
influence on the more ignorant of the lower orders.
At the above very Ascot races the King was grievously
assaulted, in the Queen’s presence, by a ruffian in the
crowd. Their Majesties had just taken their seats in the
grand stand, and the King had then risen to salute the
people in view, when the ruffian in question flung a stone
at him, which struck the King on the forehead, but did
not inflict any serious mischief. The assailant was let
cheaply off; but Queen Adelaide was much distressed by
his act, and the impression it made upon her was only
increased, a week later, when she appeared with the King
at the review in Hyde Park. There she was treated with
such incivility and rudeness that at the fête at the Duke
of Wellington’s, in the evening, where they held a little
court, the Queen wore a spiritless and sorrowing aspect,
while King William, his buoyant spirits all quenched,
looked aged and infirm, weary of his vocation and vexations.
The season, certainly, was not one for monarchs to be
abroad in with joyous exterior. In the summer of this
year there passed through London a princess whose story
bore with it a great moral to the wearers of crowns—the
Duchess of Angoulême, the daughter of Louis XVI.
She had experienced the widest extremes of fortune, but
had been longest and most intimately acquainted with
misfortune. She was again a fugitive and an exile—one
never destined to behold her country again. The Queen
visited her at her modest apartments in Charles Street,
Grosvenor Square, and she took leave of that illustrious
victim of many revolutions with evil forebodings of the
issue of the spirit of the then present time. Her Majesty
did not, indeed, lack a certain spirit of her own wherewith
to meet the other and revolutionary spirit. Thus,
when her friend and faithful servant, Lord Howe, was
compelled to give up his office of chamberlain to the
Queen, his mistress would never accept the nomination of
any other person to the same post. Lord Howe remained
in attendance upon his mistress unofficially; but he positively
refused to be reinstated by Lord Grey, to whom
his reply was, ‘That he had been wantonly dismissed by
him, and would receive no favour at his hands.’ The act
of Lord Grey was, probably, far more keenly felt at
court than that of the two new radical members (Messrs.
Wigney and Faithful) returned for the royal borough of
Brighton, and who, ‘under the very nose of the court,’
as it was said, ‘talked openly of reducing the allowance
made to the King and Queen.’ This was a foolish speech;
but there was an even more indiscreet tongue within the
Pavilion than those of the new radical senators without.
In 1833, the King himself declared in favour of a
republican form of government! What must the feelings
of Queen Adelaide have been—she who had a horror of
revolutions and a hatred for republicanism—on that
never-to-be-forgotten Sunday evening, the 6th of January,
1833? The American Minister was a guest at the dinner
table that evening. At the dessert, the King, instead of
wisely going to sleep, as he was accustomed to do after
his second glass of wine, would be lively and talkative.
When he was in this vein he was addicted to make
speeches, and on this occasion, before the ladies had
retired, he delivered himself of a very notable one, considering
the times and the speaker, in which he expressed
his great regret that he had not been born a free, independent
American, seeing that he entertained deep
respect for the United States, and considered Washington
to be the greatest man that ever lived. Queen Adelaide
must have been astounded when listening to this profession
of political faith, and to this eulogy of a man who had
struck the brightest jewel out of the crown of his
panegyrist’s royal father!
To old royalists such a speech as the above savoured
of that period which is called ‘the end of the world.’
Speculative individuals who heard of it were amazed.
‘The aristocracy are hourly going down in the scale;
royalty is become a mere cypher.’ Well might Mr.
Raikes make this entry in his journal, when a King of
England manifested a liking for ‘rowdyism.’ The influences
of these passing events, even on men of intellect,
are well marked by a contemporary passage in the diary
of the merchant, whose commercial affairs were going the
way he fancied the monarchy was tending. ‘I was
walking the other day,’ he writes, in February 1833,
‘round the Royal Exchange, the enceinte of which is
adorned with the statues of all our Kings. Only two
niches now remain vacant; one is destined to our present
ruler, and that reserved for his successor is the last.
Some people might say it was ominous.’ So, indeed, it
proved to be; half-a-year after the accession of Queen
Victoria, when there were as many niches as there
had been sovereigns, and room for no more, destruction
ensued, but it was the Royal Exchange that fell (by fire),
and not the monarchy. That has grown stronger. May
it ever so flourish!
Meanwhile, it is to be observed that Queen Adelaide
after this time began to re-conquer the popular esteem.
When, in July 1834, she embarked at Woolwich as
Countess of Lancaster, on board the royal yacht, for
Rotterdam, in order to visit her relations in Germany, the
spectators of the scene received her with demonstrations
of great respect, and on her return, in the following
month, she landed at the same place amid acclamations
of loyalty and welcome.
It was after her return that the King began to bear
symptoms of restlessness and fatigue, which betokened
that decay which gradually made progress, and was
ultimately accelerated in 1837, when his daughter, Lady
de Lisle, died, to the grief of many, but especially to the
heart of her father.
As the King’s health began to give way, so also did his
temper more easily yield before such provocations, and
more freely did he indulge in that early acquired habit of
using strong expletives which has been noted, in her
diary, by Fanny Burney. William the Conqueror, it is
said, used to ungallantly beat his wife, Matilda, of whom
he was otherwise so fond. William the Fourth was
guilty of an offence only next to it in criminality—by
swearing in presence of his consort, Adelaide. There is
a well-known instance of this told in connection with a
visit to the Royal Academy, in 1834. The occasion was
that of a private view, with a very large public attendance
at Somerset House. The President of the Royal Academy
received the illustrious visitors, and accompanied them
through the rooms. In the course of their progress he
pointed out to the King the portrait of Admiral Napier,
who had recently been in command of the Portuguese
fleet for Don Pedro. The King’s political wrath was too
strong for his infirmity, and, without forgetting the
presence of his wife, nay, making such presence an excuse
for not breaking forth into greater unseemliness, he exclaimed:
‘Captain Napier may be d——d, sir! and you
may be d——d, sir! and if the Queen was not here, sir,
I would kick you down stairs, sir.’ Such a scene
indicated as much infirmity as bad taste on the part of
the chief actor, and must have sorely tried the patience
and shaken the dignity of the Queen. She now, perhaps,
as much or more than ever, required the support of those
nearest to her. The old prejudices of the reform time
against her had not yet died out, and to these was to be
added certain malignity in foreign papers; a malignity
which culminated in 1835 in the ‘Gazette de France,’
which paper seriously asserted that England was endeavouring
to revolutionize Spain and Portugal, with
ulterior purposes of pursuing the same course in Germany
and Italy as she had done in Belgium and in Greece;
and that at the head of this conspiracy for reconstructing
Europe were William the Fourth, the Duke of Wellington,
and Queen Adelaide! Thus, the lady who had
seldom during her life desired more than to be permitted
to enjoy it tranquilly, and who had but little perplexed
herself touching the ways of others, was held up, after
being accused of being a political meddler at home, as
being a political conspirator abroad.
When her royal consort’s indisposition assumed an
appearance of increased gravity, Queen Adelaide at once
took her place by his couch, and never left but when
compelled by gentle restraint put upon her by those who
loved her, and who feared for her own health. ‘Les
reines’ (says a French writer) ‘ont été vues pleurantes
comme de simples femmes,’ and she was one of them.
Her constancy only gave way, and she broke into profuse
but silent tears, on the eve of the old King’s death, as the
Archbishop of Canterbury concluded the service of the
sick, by pronouncing the solemn words of the benediction
as contained in the Liturgy of the Church. The good old
monarch looked with affection upon his sorrowing Queen,
and with as cheerful a voice as he could put on, and
almost in nautical phrase, begged her to be of good heart
and to ‘bear up! bear up!’
The Rev. Mr. Browne, Vicar of Atwick, rendering
testimony to her conduct on this occasion, said in a funeral
sermon: ‘She was by the King’s bedside, a being so full
of devoted love and pious resignation, of such meekness,
gentleness, and goodness, and sweetness, that an angel
might have beheld her with satisfaction and delight, and
almost with advantage.’ She did her duty like a true
wife and tender woman; and Mr. Browne thought that,
altogether, Queen Adelaide might have afforded an useful
hint or two even to angels! It is more than the good
Queen ever dreamed of.
The Archbishop of Canterbury was in close attendance
upon the King during the last days of his life, in 1837,
and in the course of his ministrations saw more of Queen
Adelaide than any other individual there present had the
opportunity of doing. At a meeting of the Metropolitan
Churches’ Fund Society, the primate went fully, but tenderly
and sensibly, into this solemn matter; and after rendering
due, but not over-piled, measure of justice to the King,
spoke in these words of his consort:—‘For three weeks
prior to his dissolution the Queen sat by his bedside, performing
for him every office which a sick man could
require, and depriving herself of all manner of rest and
refection. She underwent labours which I thought no
ordinary woman could endure. No language can do
justice to the meekness and to the calmness of mind
which she sought to keep up before the King, while
sorrow was preying on her heart. Such constancy of
affection, I think, was one of the most interesting spectacles
that could be presented to a mind desirous of being
gratified with the sight of human excellence.’
The spectacle at the close was one most touching of
all, for old King William, threescore and twelve, died at
last in a gentle sleep, as he sat up on his couch, his hand
resting, where it had lain undisturbed for hours, on the
shoulder of the Queen. Such had been her office at various
times, daily, for the preceding fortnight; and when it
shall have been a little more hallowed by time, it will be
a fitting subject to be limned by some future artist competent
to treat it.
Since the death of Charles II. no King of England
had died under the same roof with his wife; and then
there was no such touching scene as the above, but only
a few words of decent reconciliation before the royal pair
parted for ever, and the wife (leaving the husband to die
at leisure and commend worthless women to his brother’s
protection) went to her chamber to receive the formal
news of his death, and finally to receive the condolence
of visitors, lying the while on a state bed of mourning,
in a chamber lighted with tapers, the walls, floor, and
ceiling covered with black cloth. Queen Adelaide stayed
by her husband to the last, then laid his unconscious head
upon the pillow, and, quietly withdrawing to her chamber,
looked for consolation to other sources than the visits of
courtiers shaping their faces to the humour of the hour.
The respect of the royal widow for the deceased King
did not cease here. On Saturday night, the 8th of July,
she attended the funeral ceremony, at Windsor, being
present in the royal closet during the whole ceremony.
She is the only Queen of England who saw a King, her
consort, deposited in the tomb.
In the following month the Dowager Queen left
Windsor Castle, to which the shouts of a joyous people
welcomed her successor. From that time she may be
said to have commenced her own course of dying. Her
story is really, henceforward, but the diary of an invalid.
The nation, through the legislature, condoled with her
upon her bereavement, and as she descended the steps of
the throne to resume her old unostentatious privacy
there was not a man in the realm who failed, in some
wise, to greet her, or who did not acknowledge that she
had borne greatness with honour, and had won the
hearts of a people who had been once forward to censure
her.
From this period her life was one of suffering, but it
was a suffering that never rendered her selfish. In her
worst hours of anguish her ear was open, her heart
touched, her hand ready to relieve her sisters in affliction,
and to remedy the distresses of all who really stood in
need of the royal succour. For nearly twelve years she
may be said to have been dying. The sunniest and most
sheltered spots in this country were visited by her, but
without resulting in permanent relief. The winter of
1837–8 was spent at St. Leonard’s. An attack of bronchitis,
in the autumn of the latter year, drove her for refuge
and remedy to Malta, where the church raised by her at
Valetta—the cathedral church of the diocese of Gibraltar—at
an expense of 10,000l., will long serve to perpetuate
her memory. On her return in May 1839, she became, for
a time, the guest of various noble hosts in England. In
1840 she visited the lakes, and established her home,
subsequently and for a brief period, at Sudbury. Her
next homes—the frequent changes indicating increased
virulence of disease—were at Canford Hall, Dorset;
Witley Court, Worcester; and Cashiobury, near Watford:
thence she departed on one short and last visit to her
native home, from which she returned so ill that, in 1847,
she repaired, as a last resource, to Madeira, whither she
was conveyed in a royal frigate.
The progress of the sick Queen over water was not
without its stateliness and solemnity, mixed with a certain
joyousness, acceptable to, though not to be shared in by,
the royal invalid. Before the squadron departed from
Spithead, on Sunday, the 10th of October, full divine
service was celebrated on board the Howe, the ship’s
chaplain reading the prayers, the Queen Dowager’s preaching
the sermon, on a text altogether foreign to so rare and
interesting an occasion:—‘But now the righteousness of
God without the law is manifested, being witnessed by the
law and the prophets’ (Rom. iii. 21). After service, the
squadron stood forth to sea, no incident marking its way
till the following Tuesday. On that day, a bird winging
from the Bay of Biscay fluttered on to the Howe,
perched on the yards, and then flew from one point to
another and back again, as if he had made of the gallant
steamer a home. A sailor named Ward attempted to
capture the little guest, in pursuing which into the chains,
being more eager than considerate, he fell headlong over
into the waves, while the Howe pursued her forward way.
In an instant after alarm was given, however, the life-buoy
was floating on the waters, a boat was pulling lustily
towards the seaman, and the Howe slipped her tow ropes,
and made a circuit astern to pick up rescued and rescuers.
Ward, meanwhile, had by skilful swimming gained fast
hold of the buoy, and was brought on board little the worse
for his plunge and his temporary peril. Queen Adelaide
was more moved by this accident than the man was himself.
On the following Sunday, the Queen was better
able than she had previously been to turn the accident
to some account for Ward’s own benefit. Her Majesty
had attended the usual service on board, and had listened
to another sermon from the ship’s chaplain, this time on
a subject as unappropriate as that of the preceding Sunday:—‘And
almost all things are by the law purged
with blood; and without shedding of blood is no
remission’ (Heb. ix. 22)—the ship’s company were
repairing to their respective quarters, when Ward was
told that the Queen Dowager requested to see him. If
this message disconcerted him more than his fall into the
Bay of Biscay, he soon recovered that self-possession
which no man loses long who has a proper feeling of
self-respect. Besides, the widowed Queen, in her intercourse
with persons of humble station, wore habitually
that air—
—— which sets you at your ease,
Without implying your perplexities.
She spoke to the listening sailor kindly on his late peril,
and the position in which it suddenly placed him near to
impending death. A few words like these, wisely and
tenderly offered, were likely to be more beneficial to a
man like Ward than a whole course of the chaplain’s
sermons on doctrinal points in the Epistle to the Hebrews;
and I cannot but hope that the artists of the next generation,
when Time shall have poetized the costume of the
incident, will not forget this picturesque passage in the
life of the Queen and the man-of-war’s-man.
And now, as they glided by the coast of Portugal, on
the evening of Monday, the 18th of October, there was
dancing on board, and again on the Wednesday evening.
Princesses waltzed with commanders, the Grand Duchess
tripped it on the poop with a knight, and the midshipmen
went dashingly at it with the maids of honour, while the
gun-room officers stood by awaiting their turn. On the
fore part of the quarterdeck as many of the ship’s company
as were so minded got up a dance among themselves;
and the suffering Queen below heard the echoes of the
general gladness, and was content.
On the following Friday, the Howe was close to Belem
Castle, and was towed into the Tagus by the steam-frigate
Terrible. The King Consort of Portugal came down in a
state barge to receive the Queen, whom he escorted to
the palace of the Necessidades, landing amid a roar of
artillery, and welcomed by loyal demonstrations as the
illustrious traveller passed on her way to the Queen
regnant, Donna Maria.
By such progress did Queen Adelaide make her way
towards Madeira, the climate of which could not arrest
the progress of her malady, and she returned to England—for
a time to Bushey, finally to Bentley Priory, near
Stanmore, where she occupied herself in preparation for
the inevitable end. There, on the 8th of May, 1849, the
Queen Dowager may be said to have ‘done a foolish
thing,’ in altering her will without legal assistance in the
method of alteration. On that day, alone and unadvised,
her Majesty took out her old and duly attested will of
the 14th August, 1837, and inscribed on the back thereof
this remarkable endorsement:—‘This will is cancelled,
8th May, 1849. My heirs are my brother and sister, and
their heirs after them. My executors, Lord Howe and
the Hon. W. A. Cooper, are requested to pay off all
that I directed in my codicil, and then to divide my
property equally between my brother and sister. This is
my last will and request.’
It was the will of a Queen, but it stood for nothing in
the eye of the law. The endorsement was brought under
notice of the Prerogative Court; the Judge, Sir Herbert
Jenner Fust, declared it to be of no effect. It was a
mere unattested memorandum, and he pronounced, as the
legal phrase is, for the original will. Of greater interest
is the subjoined document, which pleasantly contrasts
with the wills of many of her lady predecessors, whose
minds were engaged on the disposal of their state beds,
their mantles, and their jewellery, to the exclusion of all
other subjects. Thus wrote the dying Queen Adelaide:—
‘I die in all humility, knowing well that we are all
alike before the throne of God; and I request, therefore,
that my mortal remains be conveyed to the grave without
any pomp or state. They are to be removed to St.
George’s Chapel, Windsor, where I request to have as
private and quiet a funeral as possible. I particularly
desire not to be laid out in state, and the funeral to take
place by daylight; no procession; the coffin to be carried
by sailors to the chapel. All those of my friends and
relations, to a limited number, who wish to attend may
do so. My nephew, Prince Edward of Saxe-Weimar,
Lords Howe and Denbigh, the Hon. William Ashley, Mr.
Wood, Sir Andrew Barnard, and Sir D. Davies, with my
dressers, and those of my ladies who may wish to attend.
I die in peace, and wish to be carried to the tomb in
peace, and far from the vanities and pomp of this world.
I request not to be dissected nor embalmed, and desire
to give as little trouble as possible.
‘ADELAIDE R.’
The end soon came, and it was met with dignity. On
the 22nd of November 1849, Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert visited the Dowager Queen for the last time. On
the last day of the month she calmly passed away. The
above document was then produced, and it rendered
kings-of-arms, heralds, gold sticks, and upholsterers
powerless to exercise their absurd dignity in connection
with death when so intelligible and sensible a protest
as the above was in existence. Accordingly, on a fine
December morning of 1849, there issued from the gates
of Bentley Priory an ordinary hearse with a pall emblazoned
with the Queen’s arms, preceded by three
mourning coaches. A scanty escort of cavalry accompanied
them, more for use than show, their office being to see
that no obstruction impeded the funeral march from
Stanmore to Windsor. On its way the attitude of the
spectators exhibited more of sympathy than curiosity.
The Harrow boys turned out in testimony of respect,
and the country people at large looked like mourners,
wearing more or less, but wearing some, outward manifestation
of sorrow.
The Queen’s body reached the Chapel at Windsor at
one o’clock. In the south aisle, close to the porch, there
had been standing, grouped together, silent and motionless,
a group of seamen,—grave, bronzed, athletic sailors.
Their demeanour showed them worthy of the office which
the now dead Queen had asked at their hands. When all
the royal, and great, and noble personages were in their
respective places—while some indispensable officials
effected a little more of their foolish calling in the
presence of death than Queen Adelaide herself would
have sanctioned—while princes, peers, and prelates,
ladies-in-waiting, clergy, and choristers, proceeded
passively or actively with their parts in the ceremony of
the day—then those ten sailors advanced to accomplish
the duty assigned them, and, standing by the platform on
which the body was placed, gently propelled it to a
position over the subterranean passage into which it was
lowered, after one of the simplest services that was ever
said or sung for departed Queen had been accomplished—most
simple, save when Garter stepped forward to
announce, what all men knew, that it ‘had pleased
Almighty God to take out of this life to His divine mercy’
the departed Queen; and to assert, what that royal lady
would assuredly have gainsaid, that she was a ‘Most High,
Most Mighty, and Most Excellent Princess.’ With this,
and one or two other formalities of that pomp and state
from which she had asked to be spared, Queen Adelaide
passed to the tomb—a tomb capacious enough to contain
whole generations of kings and queens, princes and
princesses yet unborn.
This event was followed by an unusual amount of
execrable elegiac verse, which was powerless, however,
to throw ridicule on what it affected to solemnize. It was
painful to read an inconceivable amount of this trash,
which, intended to be serious, was often irresistibly comic.
Out of the reams written in professed honour of a most
exemplary Queen there was not an appropriate line
worth citing. One sample of the solemnly absurd
Pegasuses set restive on this occasion will assuredly
satisfy curiosity. The writer affects to see at the royal
funeral the ghosts of departed great ones, who assemble
to do visionary homage to their new sister in death.
Among them is the incautious Bishop who died from
the effects of a cold caught at the funeral of the Duke of
York:—
Lo! see the shade of a prelate pass by
Who came to a night-burial to die;
Standing too long expos’d to the chill air,
Death aim’d his dart, and struck the mitre there.
Poor Queen Adelaide! A wish could save her from
some of the empty pomps and vanities that linger about
the open grave, but nothing could save her from the
villainous poetasters. All the rhymers who rung metrical
knells at her death deserved the fate, and for like reasons,
invoked in Julius Cæsar on the so-called poet who
made ‘bad verses.’
The preachers, if honest chronicling is to be observed,
did not on this occasion very much excel the poets. Very
‘tolerable’ indeed, and not at all to be endured, were
most of the funeral sermons which have come under my
notice. One clergyman, who had been the Queen’s chaplain
too, and who had composed a funeral sermon on
William IV. reproduced not merely the substance,
but in many parts, identical passages from the discourse
on the dead King, and made them do duty in illustrating
the demise of that sovereign’s royal widow. Others were
illogical, or were painfully simple or amusingly trite.
In one I find an intimation that, ‘after deducting the
more needful expenses of her household, she gave away
all she had, and died poor;’ which seems an inevitable
consequence of such liberality. None of these who took
a dead Queen for the subject of a lesson on vanity, or for
an example to be followed, wore the mantle of a Bossuet—grand
and instructive when consigning La Vallière to
the cloister, or Henrietta of Orleans to a tomb. They
might at least have found something suggestive in the
sermon on the latter occasion, by the ‘Eagle of Meaux,’
where he exclaims, after apt reflection on birth, rank,
and their responsibilities: ‘No! after what we have
just seen, we must feel that health exists only in name,
life is a dream, glory a deception, favours and pleasures
dangerous amusements, everything about us vanity. She
was as gentle towards death as she had been to all the
world.... She will sleep with the great ones of
the earth, with princes and kings, whose power is at an
end, amongst whom there is hardly room to be found, so
closely do they lie together, and so prompt is death to
fill the vacant places. Can we build our hopes on ruins
such as these?’
From beyond sea there did come echoes something
like these, and fitting homage to the virtues of the
deceased lady was rendered from many a church pulpit
among a foreign people. In another hemisphere, at the
Cape of Good Hope, a funeral sermon was preached in
St. George’s Cathedral, Cape Town, on the 24th February,
1850, by the Rev. W. A. Newman, at that time Senior
Colonial Chaplain and Rural Dean, in which that learned
and eloquent divine rendered a graceful tribute to the
memory of the deceased Queen, of which the following
paragraph is a portion:—‘Of this excellent lady’s large
charities I can speak from evidence, and can, therefore,
speak with a full heart. I have lived near to the neighbourhood
where her less public bounty diffused itself. I
know that the sick-room of the poor has been visited by
her in person; I know that from her own table a portion
has been sent, to call forth the coy appetite of disease;
and I know that wherever she went many a heartfelt
God bless her would follow.’
Such was Queen Adelaide, some seven years Queen
Consort of Great Britain; a lady who will be remembered,
if not as a great Queen, yet as one of the truly good
women who have shared with a King regnant the throne
of these islands—one who lived down calumny, and
who, being dead, is remembered with respect and
affection.
THE END.
Spottiswoode & Co., Printers, New-street Square, London.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made
consistent when a predominant preference was found
in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced
quotation marks were remedied when the change was
obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.
Footnotes, originally at the bottoms of the pages that referenced them,
have been collected, sequentially renumbered, and placed at the end of
the book.
