Caroline and Charlotte E-Book

Alison Plowden

• Herausgeber: The History Press
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 495

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

Caroline of Brunswick, wife of George Prince of Wales and Prince Regent, and her daughter, Princess Charlotte, lived out their lives surrounded by a cast of characters who might have been lifted straight from the pages of some Gothic novel. Theirs was a saga of passion and pathos, tragedy and black comedy, feuding and fighting - all set in Regency England against a backdrop of Europe in turmoil. The marriage of the Prince of Wales - renowned for his intemperance, hedonism and plain ordinary selfishness - to his cousin Caroline of Brunswick in 1795 was a preordained disaster. The groom is said to have called for brandy when he first laid eyes on the bride, while the bride was later to swear that the groom spent most of their wedding night lying in the grate in a drunken stupor. Brought together for reasons of financial and dynastic expediencey, the couple split up within a year of the birth of their daughter, Charlotte Augusta in 1796. The colourful story of these two fiercely dependent and ultimately tragic women is brilliantly told by Alison Plowden, tapping into a wealth of contemporary correspondence, journals, memoirs and contemporary press reportage. 'Caroline & Charlotte' constitutes a real-life Regency romance which makes gripping and poignant reading.

Leseprobe

Contents

Title Page

Chronology

1With All My Heart I’ll Marry …

2Separation in High Life

3The Delicate Investigation

4A Most Engaging Child

5A Pretty Queen You’ll Make!

6The Plan of Protracted Infancy

7The Orange Match

8The Flight of the Princess

9Charlotte the Bride

10That Good and Generous Charlotte

A Note on Sources

Copyright

Chronology

1762

12 August

Birth of George Prince of Wales, later Prince Regent and George IV

1768

17 May

Birth of Princess Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel

1795

8 April

Marriage of the Prince of Wales and Princess Caroline

1796

7 January

Birth of Princess Charlotte of Wales

1797

August

Separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales

1806

May–July

The Delicate Investigation

October

The Death of the Duke of Brunswick

1811

6 February

The Prince of Wales is sworn in as Regent

1813

March

Death of the Duchess of Brunswick

1814

16 June

Princess Charlotte breaks off her ‘engagement’ to the Prince of Orange

12 July

Runs off to join her mother in Bayswater but is forced to return to Carlton House

August

The Princess of Wales sails for the continent

1816

2 May

Princess Charlotte marries Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha

1817

6 November

Princess Charlotte dies in childbirth

1820

January

Death of George III and accession of Prince Regent as George IV

6 June

Queen Caroline arrives back in London

17 August

The ‘trial’ of Queen Caroline opens in the House of Lords

10 November

The case against her is dropped

1821

20 July

The queen is refused entry to Westminster Abbey for the King’s coronation

7 August

Death of Queen Caroline

1830

26 June

Death of George IV

ONE

With All My Heart I’ll Marry …

Says the King to the Prince, ‘You know you are deeply in debt, Sir;

A wife you must take – ’tis vain to bounce and fret, Sir,

You’d better send to Germany to fetch some pretty cousin,

There Highnesses Serene you may have by the dozen,

And you shall marry

Your Cousin – Cousin Cary.’

The Prince replied, ‘Good Father, if you’ll but find the money,

I’ll take whom you please, and she shall be my Honey;

There’s Caroline of Brunswick will give her pretty hand,

If you’ll but pay my debts, I’ll take her at command,

And with all my heart I’ll marry

My Cousin – Cousin Cary.’

‘Should I pay your debts’, the King said, ‘I should be much to blame, Sir;

There’s Clarence, and there’s York would quickly want the same, Sir;

John Bull will discharge them, you never need to doubt it;

So e’en take your Wife and I’ll speak to Pitt about it.

And so you shall marry

Your Cousin, Cousin Cary.’

The morning of Wednesday 1 April 1795 found the naval squadron escorting Caroline of Brunswick to England for her marriage to the Prince of Wales fogbound in the North Sea about eight leagues offshore between Orfordness and Yarmouth. It was not until the early hours of Friday 3 April – Good Friday – that the weather cleared, and Commodore Jack Payne was able to get the frigate Jupiter under way again and sail on down the coast before a brisk east-south-east wind, passing Harwich at eleven o’clock. That night was spent at anchor off the Nore, and on Saturday the flotilla entered the Thames estuary, reaching Gravesend at two in the afternoon. The river banks were lined with spectators, the day was fine and ‘the whole prospect most beautiful’ – at least according to the account of James Harris, Earl of Malmesbury, on board the Jupiter.

Lord Malmesbury, who had had the task of fetching the bride from Germany plus the anxiety of conveying her across a corner of Europe currently under threat of attack by the conquering armies of revolutionary France, was understandably euphoric in anticipation of being able to deliver his charge safely into the arms of her groom, but the long-term prospects for the success of the union were not encouraging.

George Augustus Frederick, Prince of Wales, eldest son and heir apparent of George III, King of England, was thirty-two years old and, on paper at any rate, the most eligible bachelor in the western world. His attitude towards matrimony, however, had always been disappointingly negative. Indeed, some ten years earlier he had sworn that he would never marry. He had ‘settled it with Frederick’ – Duke of York and his next favourite brother – that Frederick would marry and that the crown would descend to his children. But Frederick’s wife had turned out to be barren, and the other princes were now all either comfortably suited with mistresses, or for other reasons unwilling or unable to do their duty by the family. George III’s plain sturdy little Queen (she had been Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz) had survived no fewer than fifteen pregnancies and successfully reared seven sons and five daughters, but the remarkable fact remained that by 1795 there were still no grandchildren – or at least no grandchildren born on the right side of the blanket. It was not, however, concern for the future of the Hanoverian succession which had finally propelled the Prince of Wales towards the altar – it was stern financial necessity.

The scandal of the Prince’s debts was an old story. His income from the Civil List, supplemented by the relatively modest revenues of the Duchy of Cornwall, had never been anything like enough to support his ample life-style as a bon viveur, aspiring glass of fashion, racing man, connoisseur, collector, and patron of the arts – probably no income ever would have been enough to satisfy the needs of so dedicated and proficient a spender of money and there had been something of a showdown back in 1787. Parliament had then had to be persuaded to settle the most pressing of his Royal Highness’s obligations, and his Civil List allowance had been raised by £10,000 to £60,000 a year. But early in 1794 another crisis loomed, as once again the Prince’s debts approached a staggering six-figure sum. Ungrateful tradesmen were beginning to refuse his custom, and he was being dunned in the street by his creditors, some of whom went so far as to petition the Prime Minister for relief. Clearly another rescue operation would have to be mounted, but it was equally clear that this time John Bull, as represented by an increasingly unsympathetic House of Commons, would first demand some earnest of reform from the prodigal. That summer, therefore, the Prince of Wales went to see his father and abruptly informed him that he was now ready to enter ‘a more creditable line of life’, to get married and settle down.

Surprised but pleased, the King stipulated only that his son’s wife must be a Protestant and a princess, which inevitably meant a German princess, and offered to send some suitable ‘confidential’ person on a talent-spotting expedition. But it seemed that the Prince had already made up his mind to throw the handkerchief in the direction of his cousin Caroline of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel. King George was thought to disapprove of marriages between such close relations – Caroline was his niece – and he continued to urge his son to make ‘particular enquiries about her person and manners’. Nevertheless he could not help feeling complimented that his sister’s child should have been thus singled out and told William Pitt that she was the person who ‘naturally must be most agreeable to me’. The Queen, on the other hand, remained noticeably tight-lipped, telling her son Ernest that she was resolved never to speak about the marriage, ‘so that no one should say she had any hand in anything’. She had never cared for Caroline’s mother, she went on, but she would make the princess welcome and hoped, though plainly without conviction, that the couple would be happy. It has been suggested that her attitude was due to pique that her own niece, Louise of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had been passed over. The explanation more probably lies in the fact that Queen Charlotte had heard some very disturbing reports about the Princess Caroline: that her governess had to stick closely to her side at dances in order to prevent her from making an exhibition of herself by having ‘indecent conversations’ with men; that her parents had forbidden her to speak to anyone at all except her governess; that all amusements had had to be banned because of her unbridled passions and generally ‘indecent conduct’.

According to other sources, any of his brothers, or anyone else who had been in Germany recently, could have told the Prince of Wales that the Brunswick princess had the reputation of being ‘very loose’; but although he must surely have heard the gossip he appears to have paid no attention. He did not even make any of the usual discreet enquiries regarding the lady’s personal appearance, character, and habits. In fact, he seems to have spent considerably less time and trouble over his choice of a wife than he would have done over a pair of boots or a new waistcoat. Nor is it clear why Caroline should have been so immediately and obstinately preferred to every other possible candidate. It later occurred to Lord Malmesbury that she may have been put into the Prince’s head by the Duke of Clarence out of spite, ‘with a view to plague the Duke and Duchess of York whom he hates … well knowing that the Princess Caroline and the Duchess of York dislike each other, and that this match would be particularly unpleasant to her and the Duke’. But if this was so, then the Duke of York gave no hint of any displeasure in his congratulatory note to his elder brother. The princess, he wrote, was ‘a very fine girl and in every respect in my opinion a very proper match for you. That you may be completely happy with her, is my most hearty wish.’

On the available evidence it has to be assumed that the Prince of Wales did not greatly care whom he married. Since he was being forced into wedlock for sordid financial reasons alone he seems to have felt that any Protestant princess would do, seizing cynically on the first name which was suggested to him, whether by his brother William or another. Certainly he was impatient to get the whole tiresome business over with as quickly as possible, but such matters were not to be hurried. Although the King had given his consent and notified the Prime Minister of his son’s projected engagement by the end of August, it was late autumn before Lord Malmesbury received His Majesty’s command formally to ask for the Princess Caroline for the Prince of Wales. His lordship was in Hanover, on his way home after completing a special mission to Berlin, when these instructions arrived in the post, and he needed to make only a short detour to reach the neighbouring Duchy of Brunswick in Lower Saxony on Thursday 20 November. He got a warm welcome, the offer of apartments in the ducal palace, servants, the use of a carriage, and an invitation to dinner from the Duchess, who was ‘all good nature’, and the Duke, ‘as usual civil, but reserved and stiff’.

Malmesbury the veteran diplomat and the Duke of Brunswick, a military man much respected for his qualities of personal courage, were old acquaintances, but the English envoy had not previously encountered the object of his current errand. In 1781 an English schoolboy doing the Grand Tour with his tutor had spent several months in Brunswick and fallen a little in love with Princess Caroline. Young John Stanley (he later became Lord Stanley of Alderley) saw the princess three or four times a week, but only as a star for ever out of his reach. Caroline at fourteen had been a lively, pretty child with light coloured hair hanging in curls on her neck, with rosebud lips from which it seemed that none but sweet words could flow, and always simply and modestly dressed. ‘How well I remember her in a pale blue gown with scarcely a trick of ornament,’ an older John Stanley was to recall in sentimental mood.

By the time Lord Malmesbury arrived to ask for her hand, Caroline was twenty-six, an age by which most unmarried women were at their last prayers as the saying went, and appeared ‘much embarrassed’ – or perhaps still in a mild state of shock – when his lordship was first presented to her. Malmesbury’s dispassionately observant eye noted a pretty enough face but ‘not expressive of softness – her figure not graceful – fine eyes – good hand – tolerable teeth, but going – fair hair and light eyebrows – short, with what the French call “des épaules impertinentes”’. Despite her initial (and uncharacteristic) display of self-consciousness, the princess was quite obviously vastly happy with her future expectations, and so, equally obviously, was her mama. The Duchess, who chattered incessantly, could talk of nothing else and made no attempt to conceal her astonished delight at the turn events had taken. All the young German princesses had learned English in the hope of becoming Princess of Wales, she told Malmesbury at one of their long gossipy sessions over the card table, but she had always been careful never to put such an idea into Caroline’s head, knowing that the King had often expressed his disapproval of the marriages of first cousins. Naturally enough, the Duchess did not mention any of the other possible objections to her daughter becoming Princess of Wales.

Malmesbury’s first few days in Brunswick were largely taken up by socializing – dinners, balls, and suppers and paying ceremonial visits to the various members of the ducal family and other local dignitaries. He also found himself called upon to have a series of time-consuming discussions with the Duke, who was being urged to go to Holland to take command of the Allied army which was attempting, not very successfully, to contain the French. This did not give him much opportunity to get to know the Princess Caroline, but on 26 November he noted in his diary that she improved on acquaintance, was gay and cheerful, and seemed to have good sense.

The main part of the mission was being held up by an irritating wait for Malmesbury’s full powers and credentials to be sent from London. These came at last on 1 December, and two days later his lordship drove solemnly to court in one of the official ducal carriages to make his public and ceremonial proposal to the Princess Caroline on behalf of the King of England’s son. The Duke of Brunswick, although ‘rather embarrassed’, played his part in the proceedings with proper dignity. The Duchess shed tears, and the princess also appeared ‘much affected’ but nevertheless bore up well and made her replies in a clear, distinct voice. The troth-plighting ritual was followed by an ‘immense dinner’ and a reception for the offering of ‘compliments of felicitation’, at which Caroline was for the first time addressed as Princess of Wales, and the day ended with supper, another huge and elaborate meal. Next morning, Count Feronce, the Brunswick Secretary of State, waited on Malmesbury for the signing of the marriage treaty, which had been drawn up in English and Latin, and presented him with a snuff box from the Duke and a diamond watch from Princess Caroline. The Brunswick end of the formalities were now complete, and it only remained to make the necessary arrangements for the bride’s journey to her new home.

On 3 December a messenger had arrived from the Prince of Wales, bearing a copy of his picture and a bundle of letters, including one for Lord Malmesbury urging him in the most vehement terms to set out with the Princess immediately. The Prince was eager to avoid any appearance of unnecessary delay, ‘bad on every account but particularly so to the public, whose expectations have now been raised for some months … besides the suspense, and the naturally unpleasant feelings attendant upon suspense, which I myself must be subject to’. His Royal Highness did not mention the naturally unpleasant feelings attendant upon the fear of an imminent invasion by bum-bailiffs which he must also have been subject to.

It was all very awkward. Caroline, of course, wanted to set out for England at once, and so, for that matter, did Lord Malmesbury; but, as he pointed out in a private letter to the Home Secretary, the Duke of Portland, it was not quite as simple as that. It had to be remembered that he was in Brunswick under the King’s orders, and could do nothing without the King’s express command. It was just like the Prince of Wales to disregard every consideration but his own convenience and place Malmesbury in this embarrassing predicament ‘by conveying to me his wishes, or rather his orders, without having previously communicated with His Majesty’s Ministers. … If he should be displeased with me for a non-compliance with these wishes’, continued his lordship rather plaintively, ‘I only have to entreat your Grace to justify me, when any justifications may be necessary. … I most heartily join with the Prince in his earnest desire to see the Princess at Carlton House, but sincere and strong as this desire is on my part, I cannot stir from hence but by the King’s order.’

Malmesbury had hoped to be able to pay his respects to Portland at Burlington House by Christmas, but Christmas approached, and still no orders came from London regarding the route the travellers were to take. Holland, with the shorter sea crossing, would obviously be preferable in winter, but in the present international political climate the security of the Low Countries could not be guaranteed – a fact which reinforced Malmesbury’s determination not to move without authority. However, he assured the Prince of Wales that not an hour would be wasted once it had pleased His Majesty’s ministers to inform him to which port he was to conduct the princess, and he went on to write encouragingly of her cheerfulness and good humour, and of his conviction that she meant to devote her life to the study of her husband’s happiness.

In truth the ambassador was far from optimistic about Caroline’s suitability for the role in which she had been so nonchalantly cast. Since the signing of the marriage treaty the Duke of Brunswick had roused himself from his brooding preoccupation with his own problems for long enough to have a couple of serious talks with Malmesbury about his daughter. ‘She is not stupid,’ he had said earnestly, ‘but she has no judgement’, adding that it had always been necessary to keep a very strict eye on her. He was extremely anxious that Caroline should make a success of things in England and wanted to make her realize that her high position would not be simply one of ‘amusement and enjoyment; that it had its duties, and those perhaps difficult and hard to fulfil’. The Duke, it seemed, had few illusions about his future son-in-law, appearing ‘perfectly aware of the character of the Prince’.

Malmesbury had also been hearing some straight talking from the Duke’s resident mistress. Mlle de Hertzfeldt was another old acquaintance, a highly intelligent and agreeable woman of the world, genuinely devoted to her protector and concerned for the welfare of his daughter. Caroline, remarked this percipient onlooker, was not a bad girl at heart, nor had she ever done anything really bad, but she had no tact, no reserve, and absolutely no discretion. She would blurt out the first thing that came into her head – ‘with her the word always runs ahead of the thought’ – and even in the little court at Brunswick this regrettable habit was inclined to give people the wrong idea. Mlle de Hertzfeldt was frankly very much afraid of the consequences if the princess were to be suddenly let loose on London society – not only would her head be turned by flattery, but the unscrupulous and scheming women who would surround her would be able to manipulate her any way they liked.

The Duke’s mistress therefore thought it of the utmost importance that Caroline should be kept out of the limelight, to begin with at least. Then, too, her chances of a happy life in England would depend heavily on her getting on well with her mother-in-law, but unfortunately the Duchess of Brunswick returned Queen Charlotte’s dislike and had talked far too openly on the subject. The Duchess, in short, was a silly woman who had never given her daughter the example and guidance she needed, with the result that, while the princess was ill at ease with her father, she felt no proper respect for her mother. In her anxieties, de Hertzfeldt begged Lord Malmesbury to take Caroline in hand himself. ‘She will listen to you. She has found that you talk good sense in a pleasant, easy manner, and you will make a far greater impression on her than her father whom she fears too much, or her mother, whom she does not fear at all.’ The Duke had also ‘earnestly entreated’ the ambassador to advise and direct his daughter, to warn her never to show jealousy of, or indeed appear to notice, her husband’s inevitable infidelities, not to ask questions, and, above all, ‘not to be free in giving opinions of persons and things aloud’.

To be invited to create a silk purse out of this particular sow’s ear in the limited time available was a challenge which would have defeated most people from the start, although it is true that no one could have been better qualified for the task than this patient, urbane, smooth-tongued, infinitely worldly wise diplomat, whose long professional career had taken him to all the major courts of Europe, from Madrid to St Petersburg. It is also true that Caroline was pathetically ready to listen, even when Malmesbury, sitting next to her at supper, recommended ‘perfect silence on all subjects’ during her first six months in England. The following evening, again sitting beside her at the supper table, he advised her to avoid familiarity, to have no confidantes, to avoid giving any opinion, to approve but not to admire excessively, on no account to meddle in politics, to be very attentive and respectful to the Queen, and to endeavour to keep on good terms with her.

The princess, her tutor admitted, took all this very well. She wanted to be popular, she said, but supposed rather wistfully that Malmesbury thought her too confiding. An amiable quality, he replied carefully, but not one to be indulged by those in high places without incurring great risk. Popularity was never attained by familiarity. On the contrary, ‘it could only belong to respect, and was to be acquired by a just mixture of dignity and affability’. Answering Caroline’s flow of questions about life at the English Court, his lordship seized the opportunity to emphasize that while of course he hoped she would enjoy every ease and comfort of domestic happiness in private life, in public she should always appear as Princess of Wales, surrounded by ‘all that appareil and etiquette due to her elevated situation’. The King and Queen, he told her, never missed attendance at Divine Service on Sundays, and he urged her to follow their example and do her best to make the Prince do the same.

Lessons continued relentlessly through December, with Malmesbury always trying to set his pupil’s mind on ‘thinking of the drawbacks of her situation’, to impress her with the idea that ‘those of a very high rank have a price to pay for it, and that the life of a Princess of Wales is not to be one of all pleasure, dissipation, and enjoyment; that the great and conspicuous advantages belonging to it must necessarily be purchased by considerable sacrifices’. His ‘eternal theme’ to her, as he put it, was ‘to think before she speaks, to recollect herself’, to cultivate discretion, reserve, prudence, dignity, and tact, and to remember that she could never have too much of these essential attributes of a great princess.

Although Malmesbury honestly admired Caroline’s sunny good nature and marvelled at her willingness to accept his criticism and advice in the spirit in which they were offered, his doubts remained. Well disposed and well meaning she might be, but there was so little mental substance, he mused in his diary, no depth or strength of character, and a light and flighty mind. In the hands of a steady and sensible husband she would probably turn out very satisfactorily, but not even the most partial witness would think of applying the adjectives ‘steady and sensible’ to the Prince of Wales. Caroline herself had told Malmesbury that she knew something of his reputation as a womanizer, that she was prepared on this point and was determined never to appear jealous. However, she did ask some pretty pointed questions about the Countess of Jersey, the Prince’s current chère amie, and when her spinster aunt, the Abbess of Gandersheim, told her that her husband would certainly deceive her and make her unhappy she showed disquieting signs of uneasiness, despite Malmesbury’s efforts to shrug it off as the nonsense of an envious old maid.

There was another awkward moment when the Brunswicks received an anonymous letter, abusing the Prince and ‘warning them in the most exaggerated terms against Lady Jersey, who is represented as the worst and most dangerous of profligate women.’ To Malmesbury’s intense annoyance the Duchess of Brunswick not only showed the letter to her daughter, but discussed its contents freely with all and sundry. Caroline presently showed it to Malmesbury, who dismissed it as the work of ‘some disappointed milliner or angry maid-servant and deserving no attention’. Indeed, the princess seemed more distressed by another communication which had just arrived from the King of England, expressing the hope that his niece and daughter-in-law would not have too much vivacity and be content to lead a retired and sedentary life. This was plainly not at all what his niece and daughter-in-law had in mind, and it was rather too noticeable that the hints dropped by the poison pen that Lady Jersey would be ready to lead her instead into a life of promiscuity had not alarmed her as they should. Her parents, however, no doubt remembering the tragedy of their elder daughter, who had died in mysterious circumstances after being unfaithful to her husband, were frightened. Mlle de Hertzfeldt renewed her warning that Caroline needed a firm hand – ‘il faut la gouverner par la peur, par la terreur même’ – and Lord Malmesbury decided the time had come to administer a short sharp shock. ‘It was death to presume to approach a Princess of Wales,’ he told her, ‘and no man would be daring enough to think of it. She asked me whether I was in earnest,’ he recorded. ‘I said such was our law; that anybody who presumed to love her was guilty of high treason, and punished with death, if she was weak enough to listen to him: so also would she. This’, added Malmesbury, ‘startled her’, as well it might.

Perhaps fortunately, since everybody’s nerves were becoming rather frayed, the long awaited marching orders had now at last – on 26 December – arrived in the postbag from London. The travellers were, after all, to rendezvous with their naval escort at a Dutch port, and, faithful to his promise, Malmesbury wasted no time in getting on the road. The Duchess of Brunswick had reluctantly agreed to accompany her daughter as far as the coast. The Duke, repeatedly recommending Caroline to Malmesbury’s care, urged him to be a second father to her.

The weather had turned bitterly cold, and when the party reached Osnabruck on the afternoon of New Year’s Day 1795 they were greeted by a courier bearing the disquieting news that the French had crossed the frontier into Holland. In spite of later reports that they had been driven back by the British expeditionary force under General Dundas, Lord Malmesbury was taking no chances. As he told the Prince of Wales, he could only act as if he were travelling with his own wife and children. The frost was now so severe that the Dutch could not open the sluices, their traditional defence against invasion, and it would also very likely prevent Commodore Payne from bringing his squadron into the Scheldt estuary. Malmesbury believed Holland to be in the most imminent danger and wrote to the Foreign Secretary, Lord Grenville: ‘It would be blameable in the extreme were I to conduct the Princess into that country at such a moment, and without the certainty of having a fleet to convey her out of it …. My duty’, he added, with the air of one stating a hitherto unsuspected truth, ‘is to arrive safe, and not to sacrifice this circumstance to the wish of arriving soon.’

Osnabruck was crowded with starving refugees from revolutionary France, and while he waited for more news of the fighting from army headquarters Malmesbury tried to organize some relief for them. ‘I persuade the Princess Caroline to be munificent,’ he wrote. ‘She disposed to be but not knowing how to set about it.’ Once the idea had been put into her head, though, she readily gave ten louis ‘of her own accord’ to an émigré child – and then quite spoilt the effect by trying to press a handful of double louis on Malmesbury himself when he complimented her on the value of the Brunswick coinage. ‘Cela ne me fait rien,’ she cried. ‘Je ne m’en soucie pas. Je vous prie de les prendre.’ It seemed she was incapable of discriminating between giving as a benevolence, and flinging money away like a child. ‘She thought that the act of getting rid of the money and not seeming to care about it constituted the merit.’ Malmesbury took a deep breath and tried patiently to explain what real benevolence was, recommending it as a quality that would, if rightly used, make her more friends and give her more genuine satisfaction than anything else. This whole concept, he was sorry to see, was quite new to her, but he thought ‘she felt the truth of it’.

There were, however, times when he despaired. ‘Princess Caroline very gauche at cards – speaks without thinking – gets too easy – calls the ladies (she never saw) “Mon coeur, ma chère, ma petite.” I notice this, and reprove it strongly.’ The Princess, for the first time, seemed inclined to take umbrage, which Malmesbury affected not to notice. His lordship was also beginning to have trouble with the Duchess, who was understandably not enjoying being dragged round the ice-cold countryside in the dead of winter and the middle of a war. She wanted urgently to go home to her cosy routine and her beloved card table, but this Malmesbury could not allow. The Princess of Wales must on no account be left unchaperoned until she was safely surrounded by reliable English ladies. If she were taken by the French, moaned the Duchess, her brother the King would be very angry. No doubt he would be very sorry, replied Malmesbury, but ‘your Royal Highness must not leave your daughter till she is in the hands of her attendants’. Quite early in his career the Earl of Malmesbury, then plain Mr Harris, a young chargé d’affaires in Madrid, had taken so firm a line with the Spanish government that he had successfully thwarted a threatened invasion of the Falkland Islands almost single-handed. He was now more than a match for the unhappy Duchess of Brunswick. ‘She argues,’ he noted, ‘but I will not give way, and she does.’

After a week at Osnabruck there were signs of a thaw, setting in, letters from The Hague reported all apparently quiet, and Malmesbury decided to try and press on. On 9 January the travellers reached Delden, just over the Dutch border, but about four leagues beyond the town they were met with more bad news. The French had crossed the river Waal in strength, heavy fighting was going on, and Malmesbury was advised ‘on no account to come into Holland’. That night was spent uncomfortably at an inn at Delden with an artillery barrage in progress ‘at no great distance’, and in the morning Malmesbury hurried his charges away to Osnabruck again. Caroline took this latest set-back with her usual cheerfulness, though she ‘seemed sorry not to go on towards the fleet’. Unlike her mama, she was enjoying the adventure and declared she was not afraid of cannon or the French. Indeed, she took pride in boasting that as a Brunswicker she was not afraid of anything – ein Braunschweiger darf alles – and Malmesbury admitted that she certainly appeared to have inherited her father’s physical courage, but as he wanted mental decision, so she lacked any sound understanding or steadiness. She was, in short, a creature of impulse, far too easily caught and distracted by superficial impressions, loving to talk, to gossip and giggle and whisper girlish confidences, making ‘missish friendships that last twenty-four hours’. She possessed ‘some natural but no acquired morality, and no strong innate notions of its value and necessity; warm feelings and nothing to counterbalance them; great good humour and much good nature – no appearance of caprice – rather quick and vive, but not a grain of rancour’.

While jotting down this character sketch of the princess in his diary, Malmesbury was considering his next move. Holland was now out of the question – before the end of the month it would be completely overrun. They would therefore have to embark from the north German port of Stade, and that meant waiting until the mouth of the Elbe was free from ice. Meanwhile they could not stay at Osnabruck, for one thing it was too close to the front and would very likely soon be occupied by the retreating army. But Malmesbury was determined not to let Caroline go back to Brunswick, where she would undoubtedly revert to all her bad old ways of ‘familiarity and easy intimacy’ among her former cronies. Instead, he decided to make for Hanover. In that uncommonly correct and decorous annexe of the English court the future Princess of Wales would be accorded every last detail of the formal respect due to her exalted rank and have a chance to grow accustomed to it. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more his lordship began to feel that this enforced delay might be a blessing in disguise, giving Caroline a much needed dry-run – a period of preparation during which to acquire the habit of ‘proper, princely behaviour’, so that by the time she did finally arrive in England it might have become almost natural to her. He tried to explain this to his pupil in another long, serious talk, warning her that she would be judged in England by the impression she made at Hanover, urging her to make a special effort to please the older people there, recommending the exercise of ‘great attention and reserve’, and, as always, ‘preaching circumspection’.

The journey from Osnabruck turned into a nightmare of discomfort. The cold was intense, worse than anything Malmesbury had ever experienced anywhere out of Russia. The unfortunate servants, perched on the outside of the carriages, were frozen solid. Inside, the Duchess was ‘benumbed’ and, as a result, increasingly peevish. Even after their arrival at Hanover she went on complaining about the cold in what Malmesbury considered a quite vulgar fashion, was troublesome about choosing her apartments in the palace, difficult about holding a regular Court day, which Malmesbury insisted upon, mean about tipping, and generally behaved in a thoroughly disagreeable and ill-mannered way. Malmesbury often had occasion to deprecate and reprove Caroline’s disrespectful attitude towards her mother, but he could hardly be surprised by it.

During the six weeks or so which were to be spent in Hanover his lordship persisted in his attempt to conduct a one-man finishing school, despite frequent attacks of discouragement. ‘Princess Caroline very missish at supper … Princess too childish and over-merry at supper.’ It seemed impossible to cure her of the habit of tutoying people she hardly knew and calling them ‘ma chère’ or ‘mon coeur’, or of her unashamed curiosity – ‘a silly pride of finding out everything’ – especially about other people’s love affairs, which led her at times to make ‘the most improper remarks and conversation’. This was something which Malmesbury, foreseeing only too clearly the sort of social chaos it would create in London, made the most determined effort to correct.

Caroline continued to listen patiently to his lectures, though on one occasion she did admit that she would not have put up with them from anyone else, but unfortunately they only seemed to make a very temporary impression, so that Malmesbury began to believe that she was incapable of any strong or lasting feelings, her mind being so incorrigibly shallow and frivolous, her heart so ‘very, very light’. By the same token, her good humour might be unfailing and praiseworthy, but her sense of humour was often unacceptably earthy. For example, when she had to have a tooth drawn she apparently thought it funny to send it to Malmesbury by her page. ‘Nasty and indelicate,’ he noted vexedly. And while on the subject of delicacy …

‘Argument with the Princess about toilette,’ runs the entry in his lordship’s diary for 18 February. ‘She piques herself on dressing quick; I disapprove this. She maintains her point.’ Suppressing a shudder, Malmesbury had a quiet word with Madame Busche, Caroline’s dresser, asking her to explain that the Prince of Wales was very fastidious in his tastes and would expect his wife to pay the most careful attention to personal daintiness – something which the princess was apt to neglect to the point where she became positively offensive. On the following day she appeared ‘well washed all over’ – she must, presumably, have told him this herself – but Malmesbury kept up the pressure.

Early in March he was recording that he had had another conversation with the Princess Caroline, endeavouring, as far as was possible for a man, ‘to inculcate the necessity of great and nice attention to every part of the dress, as well as to what was hid as to what was seen’. He knew, he added, although he does not say how, that her underclothes and stockings were coarse and cheap and never washed or changed often enough, and went on to reflect sadly on how amazingly her mother – although an Englishwoman with no excuse for not knowing better – had neglected her education in this vital department. In fact, the English had never enjoyed an especially good reputation for cleanliness, but things were changing, at least among the haut ton, where the Prince of Wales’s friend, that immensely influential model of sartorial elegance George ‘Beau’ Brummel, was setting a fashion for meticulous grooming and high standards of personal hygiene for both sexes.

In the middle of March, Malmesbury received a welcome reinforcement with the arrival of the Hon. Mrs Harcourt, wife of General William Harcourt who had succeeded the Duke of York as Commander-in-Chief of the British forces in Holland, currently being routed by the French. The Harcourt family, of Nuneham Courtenay near Oxford, were old and trusted friends of the King and Queen. Mrs Harcourt, who had been with her husband at army headquarters now established at Osnabruck, had had a premonition that, being as it were on the spot, she might be asked to chaperon Caroline to England, considering ‘the difficulty attending any lady’s coming over at this time to fetch the Princess’. Not that she was overjoyed at the prospect. ‘I am always wretchedly ill at sea. How I am to stand such a voyage at such a season I know not.’ She was already suffering from an inflammation of the eyes and face and apart from that had absolutely nothing suitable to wear. ‘I know not what I shall do for clothes. … I have none with me, and as to money we are really ruined.’

But there was, of course, no question of refusing a royal request of this nature, and after an unpleasant journey – after such a severe winter the roads were more than usually bad, with the carriages up to the axles in mud and slush left by the melting snow – Mrs Harcourt, still moaning gently, reached Hanover on 16 March. Like a good courtier, she at once professed herself delighted with the princess, who was so very good natured that it seemed impossible she should not succeed. Mrs Harcourt was sure the Prince would love her, she was so affectionate and her desire to please so very engaging. ‘She is all openness of heart, and has not a shadow of pride.’

Lord Malmesbury, with his more intimate knowledge of the princess, remained unconvinced, but when the suggestion came up that he should stay in Germany on official business instead of accompanying her to England, Caroline burst into tears and spoke to him with such apparently genuine ‘kindness and feeling’ that he was quite touched. In fact, despite the exasperation she had so often caused him, there is no doubt that his lordship had developed a reluctant fondness for this great boisterous, over-friendly, slatternly creature who, he very much feared, was destined for nothing but disappointment and disaster. For her part, Caroline had come to depend heavily on Malmesbury as her guru and father-figure. On at least one occasion she had expressed a hope that he would accept a position in her household – though she was afraid he would not consider it good enough for him – and had several times declared it would be a comfort to have him near her. She was sure no one else would ever give her such good and honest advice.

But the whole strange little interlude was now coming ineluctably to an end. Early in March letters had arrived from England to say that a naval escort was on its way to the Elbe; on the 24th the travellers left Hanover for Stade and at seven o’clock on the evening of Saturday 28 March they went on board the Jupiter off Cuxhaven to be greeted by a fifty-gun royal salute which was echoed by the rest of the fleet. ‘Very fine evening, and fine sight,’ observed Malmesbury with satisfaction. The sea was smooth, the wind in the south-east, the weather charming, and everyone consequently in a good temper. Caroline, who most likely had never seen the sea before, much less been on it, was thrilled. ‘The Princess delighted with the ships, and the officers greatly pleased with her manners and good humour.’ Indeed, despite Mrs Harcourt’s forebodings, the voyage went off perfectly. ‘The weather began to be fine the day we left Hanover; the wind was fair, the sea as smooth as glass, accommodation good, society agreeable, and the whole … like a party of pleasure.’

For Caroline that week spent at sea was a bubble of pure enchantment – perhaps the first, and certainly the last, time of unclouded happiness she was ever to know. ‘The Princess’s sweet temper and affability of manner has charmed and delighted everyone,’ wrote Mrs Harcourt, ‘and all the officers of the ship declare they should have had more trouble with any London lady than Her Royal Highness has given. She is always contented, and always in good humour; and shows such pleasant, unaffected joy at the idea of her prospect in life, that it does one’s heart good to see anybody so happy.’ It seems, though, that there were some people on board the Jupiter who viewed Caroline’s prospects rather more realistically than poor sentimental Mrs Harcourt, or the innocent princess herself. In fact, some people, ‘knowing the discomforts she would have to contend with’, were sorry to see her so elated and tried tactfully to bring her down to earth a little. But Caroline would not have her bubble burst – not yet, anyway. Was she not going to be married to the finest and handsomest prince in the world, and live in the most desirable country in Europe? Of course she was happy, ecstatically so. How could she be otherwise? Lord Malmesbury, who had been with Jack Payne catching up on the latest gossip about the finest handsomest prince in the world and the Countess of Jersey, could have told her.

Things started to go sour from the moment Caroline first set foot on the soil of the most desirable country in Europe. At eight o’clock on the morning of Easter Sunday the travellers transferred from the Jupiter to the royal yacht Augusta for the final stage of the journey up-river from Gravesend to Greenwich, arriving at noon after a ‘pleasant and prosperous sail’ only to find that the royal carriages and ceremonial escort of the Prince of Wales’s Light Dragoon Guards had not yet put in an appearance. There followed an embarrassing hiatus of at least an hour, during which the princess and her party were entertained by the attentive but flustered Governor of the Hospital for Seamen and his two sisters. Caroline was much intrigued by the Greenwich pensioners, who had streamed out of the chapel before morning service was half over, ‘forsaking the pulpit’ in their eagerness to catch a glimpse of the distinguished visitors, and as she bowed and smiled from a window of the Governor’s house she was moved to enquire if every Englishman was missing an arm or a leg. So much for all Lord Malmesbury’s homilies on tact and discretion and thinking before one spoke!

When the official reception committee did at last turn up it included the Countess of Jersey, newly appointed lady of the bedchamber to the Princess of Wales. It was Lady Jersey, so Malmesbury heard, who had caused the delay in the first place by simply not being ready, and her ladyship at once began to make her presence disagreeably felt by criticizing Caroline’s dress in terms which led Malmesbury to speak to her quite sharply. Mrs Harcourt had taken great pains over the princess’s toilette that morning, and she was wearing white muslin over a blue satin slip, which sounds both pretty and suitable – echoes of that ‘pale blue gown with scarcely a trick of ornament’ which had once so charmed young John Stanley. Lady Jersey, however, had come prepared with an elaborate robe of white satin and insisted that Caroline must change into it before setting out for London. The princess’s measurements had, of course, been sent to London so that a trousseau could be ordered for her, but in the circumstances it seems only too probable that the white satin was not calculated to flatter her dumpy little figure.

More trouble threatened over the seating arrangements in the carriages. Lady Jersey having the effrontery to say that as riding backwards always made her ill, she hoped she would be allowed to sit forwards – that is, next to the princess. This was strictly against etiquette, and although the easily bullied Mrs Harcourt would have conceded the point, Lord Malmesbury most certainly would not. Fixing her ladyship with a fishy eye, he remarked that she should never have accepted a situation as lady-in-waiting if riding backwards in a coach disagreed with her. If she was really likely to be sick, then she had better travel with himself and Lord Claremont, leaving Mrs Harcourt and Mrs Harvey Aston (the other bedchamber lady) to accompany the princess. This, he noted with grim satisfaction, settled the business. Lady Jersey sat sulkily beside Mrs Harcourt with her back to the horses, and no more was heard about feeling sick.

According to Malmesbury, there was little sign of popular interest or applause on the road to London, but the report in The Times speaks of ‘Westminster Bridge and all the avenues leading to the Park and the Palace’ being crowded with spectators and carriages, and of the Princess bowing and smiling ‘with the greatest good nature’. The princess was finally deposited at St James’s at about three o’clock and taken up to the Duke of Cumberland’s vacant apartments overlooking Cleveland Row. Here a crowd was waiting to ‘huzza’, and she at once appeared at the open window to curtsy and smile in response. These pleasantries, which continued ‘for some minutes’, were brought to an abrupt end by the arrival of the Prince of Wales from Carlton House; and, no one else being in the room, it was left to Lord Malmesbury to perform the introductions. We have his own succinct account of this famous first encounter between bride and groom.

She very properly … 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 …

– leaving behind him a situation which had jolted even Malmesbury out of his customary unshakable poise. As for Caroline, she was not surprisingly, stunned, exclaiming ‘Mon Dieu! est ce que le Prince est toujours comme cela? Je le trouve très gros, et nullement aussi beau que son portrait.’ This too, was not surprising. Two years later the Prince of Wales was to turn the scales at 17 stone, and already the marks of good living and self-indulgence were only too apparent on his large, florid countenance. Malmesbury managed to stutter something about his Royal Highness being naturally ‘a good deal affected and flurried at this first interview’, which must have sounded unconvincing even to him. Certainly it did not convince Caroline, who showed an alarming disposition to make further criticisms, and Malmesbury was only rescued from his embarrassment by a timely summons from the King.

Exactly why the Prince reacted so violently to the first sight of his bride has never been satisfactorily explained. Contrary to the usual assumption, her physical appearance cannot have come as any very great shock. In view of the close connections which existed between England and Germany – especially Hanover and Brunswick – he must already have had a pretty clear idea of what she looked like. True she was no beauty, and would have compared particularly badly with the graceful, assured elegance of Lady Jersey, but Caroline was no freak. In her twenties she still possessed a certain blowsy blonde attraction – Horace Walpole told Miss Berry within days of her arrival that, although she was a bit on the plump side and used too much rouge, ‘everybody speaks most favourably of her face as being most pleasing’. The press reports, too, were generally favourable, remarking on her expressive eyes, good teeth and complexion, and beautiful hand and arm, while The Times declared magisterially that she might properly be deemed ‘a very pretty woman’. The Prince of Wales may not have wanted to marry his ‘Cousin Cary’, but he had had long enough to get used to the idea; and, although she was later to give him cause enough for ill will, it is hard to find any excuse for his treatment of her on that first afternoon, or any explanation apart from sheer petulant bad temper.

Dinner that evening, which was hosted by the vice-chamberlain and attended by all those who had been detailed to escort the Princess of Wales to London, set the seal on a disastrous day. Caroline, needless to say, was by no means the first royal bride to find herself expected to make up a threesome with her husband’s mistress, and perhaps if Lady Jersey had not been so obviously intent on putting her down, the Prince less openly uncivil, she might have been able to accept the situation with at least a show of indifference. But as things were, her fighting spirit had been roused, and the poor girl reacted to humiliation and disappointment in the only way she knew – by trying to hit back. It was brave, but it was a fatal mistake. ‘I was far from satisfied with the Princess’s behaviour,’ wrote a deeply ortified Lord Malmesbury; ‘it was flippant, rattling, affecting raillery and wit.’ Worse still, she would persist in ‘throwing out coarse vulgar hints’ about Lady Jersey, who sat by demurely and triumphantly mute, watching the newcomer make a fool of herself in front of the Prince, who was ‘evidently disgusted’ by his fiancée’s ‘giddy manners’ and pathetic attempts to be clever and sarcastic. Indeed, in Malmesbury’s opinion, this unfortunate dinner party served to fix his initial dislike, which was soon to flower into ‘positive hatred’.

The marriage had to go ahead, of course. It was far too late now to cancel arrangements made months in advance and, in any case, impossible to withdraw without creating a catastrophic scandal and loss of face on both sides. The ceremony was scheduled for the evening of Wednesday 8 April and would take place in the presence of the King and Queen and ‘all the persons of elevated rank in the kingdom’ at the Chapel Royal, St James’s. Although it was not an occasion which the general public were invited to share, some buildings in the vicinity had been illuminated in its honour, and on the following day The Times and the Morning Chronicle were able to inform their readers that the bridal gown had been made of white silver tissue, richly trimmed with silver, and ornamented with a profusion of jewels. The Princess had also worn a coronet and a royal robe of crimson velvet bordered with ermine. Her four bridesmaids, the Ladies Mary Osborn, Charlotte Spencer, Caroline Villiers, and Charlotte Legge, all the daughters of dukes or earls, had been dressed alike in white satin over white crepe slips embellished with stripes of silver foil and spangles, and on their heads bandeaux of spangled crêpe and silver laurel leaves, topped by three large white ostrich feathers.

The chapel was suffocatingly hot and crowded, but the bride showed no sign of nervousness, appearing to be in the best of spirits and chattering away to the Duke of Clarence who escorted her up the aisle. The groom, on the other hand, ‘looked like death’ and, as Lord Malmesbury put it, ‘had manifestly had recourse to wine or spirits’. The Duke of Bedford saw him swallow several stiff brandies, and by the time he arrived at the altar he had reached that state sometimes described as ‘tired and emotional’ – fuddled, weepy, and so unsteady on his legs that his two ducal groomsmen, Bedford and Roxburghe, had their work cut out to keep him upright. This was bad enough, and nor was the service itself without its embarrassing moments. For when the Archbichop of Canterbury, John Moore, came to the words relating to ‘any person knowing of a lawful impediment’ he laid down his book and looked very earnestly for a second or two at the King as well as at the royal groom, who was ‘much affected and shed tears’.

With the possible exception of the bride, few people present in the Chapel Royal can have failed to grasp the significance of Dr Moore’s meaning glances. Few people present can have been unaware of the persistent and well-grounded reports that some ten years earlier the royal groom had gone through a form of marriage with Maria Fitzherbert, a respectable widowed lady who had since been his most regular companion, but whose principles had prevented her from agreeing to share his bed without benefit of clergy. Although rumours of this ‘marriage’, performed behind locked doors in Mrs Fitzherbert’s drawing-room by the Reverend Johnes Knight in December 1785, were always vehemently denied by the Prince and his friends – the fact that Mrs Fitzherbert was a devout Roman Catholic made the matter even more sensitive – its existence had become a pretty open secret in court and political circles. (Describing Caroline’s arrival in London to Miss Berry, Horace Walpole had observed facetiously that it was not thought Mrs Fitzherbert would forbid the banns.) Under the terms of the Royal Marriages Act it would, of course, have been judged invalid in the eyes of the law, but – quite apart from the unholy scandal which would have been caused – the Church might have experienced a good deal of difficulty in side-stepping the obstacle of a pre-contract freely entered into before witnesses by consenting adults and blessed by an Anglican priest. The Archbishop’s hesitation is, therefore, understandable, and he further emphasized his qualms of conscience by twice repeating the passage in which the Prince engaged ‘to live from that time in nuptial fidelity with his consort’. Even as the vows were being spoken, though, it was noticed that HRH was ‘perpetually looking at his favourite Lady Jersey’. The Duke of Leeds, walking immediately in front of the bridal couple in the procession from the chapel, could not help remarking how little conversation passed between them, and ‘the coolness and indifference apparent in the manner of the Prince towards his amiable bride’, still nodding and smiling like a mechanical toy. ‘What an odd wedding,’ commented Lady Maria Stuart, who was present at the Drawing-Room which followed.

Although still obviously unhappy, the Prince sobered up sufficiently to respond to the formal congratulations offered at the reception held in the council chamber at St James’s, and to appear ‘very civil and gracious’ to the distinguished guests. The royal family then retired to the Queen’s quarters at nearby Buckingham House, where a splendid supper had been provided, so that it was approaching midnight before bride and groom finally reached Carlton House – by which time, according to the bride, the groom had ceased to take any interest in the proceedings. ‘Judge’, she said bitterly to one of her ladies-in-waiting some years later, ‘judge what it was to have a drunken husband on one’s wedding day, and one who passed the greatest part of his bridal night under the grate, where he fell, and where I left him.’

Caroline’s disillusion had been rapid and complete. Certainly it was hard to ‘conceive or foresee any comfort’ from a connection in which Lord Malmesbury was also already lamenting having taken any share.

TWO

Separation In High Life