Lives of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover, volume 2 (of 2)

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—

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.