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

On the 12th of January 1764, Charles William Frederick, the hereditary Prince of Brunswick, landed at Harwich (then the portal by which royal brides and bridegrooms had ingress to and egress from England), to take the hand which had been already asked and not over-graciously granted of the Princess Augusta, the sister of George III. This half-reluctance was on the part of the King and Queen, but especially of the latter. There was none on the part of the bride.

The young Prince was a knightly man, lacking a knightly aspect. His manner was better than his looks. His reputation as a hero was, however, so great that the people of Harwich, expecting to see an Adonis, nearly pulled down the house in which he temporarily sojourned, in order to obtain a better view of the illustrious stranger. When the Prince did show himself they were rather disappointed. His renown for courage, however, made amends for all shortcomings, and even the Quakers of Harwich warmed into enthusiasm. One, more eager than the rest, not only forced his way into the Prince’s apartment, but took off his hat to him, called him ‘Noble friend!’ kissed his hand, and protested that, though not a fighting man himself, he loved those who could fight well. ‘Thou art a valiant Prince,’ said he, ‘and art to be married to a lovely Princess. Love her, make her a good husband, and the Lord bless you both!’

The bridegroom got no such warm greeting from any other quarter as he did from the Quaker, and it is to be regretted that he did not follow the counsel which was offered him by his humble and hearty friend. He loved his wife and made her such a husband as heroes are too wont to do—who are accustomed to love their neighbours’ wives better than their own.

The marriage took place on the 16th with something, if not of maimed rites, at least of diminished ceremony. The ‘Lady Augusta’ was wedded with as little formality as was observed—under the same roof too—at her birth. The latter vexed Queen Caroline because so little etiquette was followed at it. The wedding troubled Queen Charlotte lest there should be too much and of too costly a sort. Not a gun was fired by way of congratulatory salute, as had been done when Anne, the daughter of Caroline, married the Prince of Orange. More trifling testimonies of respect were denied on this occasion, even when the bride had petitioned for them, on the ground that there was no precedent for them in the ‘Orange marriage.’ The bride, fairly enough, complained at quotation of precedent in one case which had been followed in no other.

The servants of the King and Queen were not even permitted to put on their new attire, either for the wedding ceremony or the drawing-room next day. They were ordered to keep their new suits for the Queen’s birthday. The ceremony performed, the bridal pair betook themselves to Leicester House, where they presided at a right royal supper; and this was the last time that Kings, Queens, Princes, Princesses, and half the peerage met together in Leicester Square to hold high festival.

Political party spirit ran very high in the early years of King George’s reign; and such especial care was taken to keep the Prince from encountering any of the Opposition that, as Walpole remarks, he did nothing but take notice of them. He wrote to fidgety Newcastle, and called on fiery Pitt, and dined twice with ‘the Duke’—of Cumberland. On the evening of the second dinner he was engaged to attend a concert given in honour of himself and wife by the Queen. As he did not appear inclined to leave the table when the hour was growing late, Fironce, his secretary, pulled out his watch. The ducal host took the hint, and expressed a fear, which sounded like a hope, that the hour had come when his guest must leave him. ‘N’importe!’ said the Prince; and he sat on, sipped his coffee, and did not get to the Queen’s concert until after eight o’clock, at which hour, in those days, concerts were half concluded.

Fironce, the Duke’s secretary, who sought to influence his master thus early, long continued to aim at exercising the same power. In 1794 Fironce was the Duke of Brunswick’s prime minister, when the command of the Austrian army against France was offered to the Duke. The latter was inclined to accept, and Fironce had nothing to say against it; but Fironce’s wife (who was a democrat) had, and she forbade her husband furthering the object of Austria.

During the short sojourn between the bridal and the departure, the whole of the royal family went to Covent Garden Theatre to see Murphy’s decidedly dull and deservedly damned comedy, ‘No One’s Enemy but his Own’—a comedy which even Woodward could not make endurable. The feature of the night, however, was the difference which the public made between their reception of the King and Queen and that given to the newly-married pair. For the latter there was an ebullition of enthusiasm; for the former, who were suspected of being more cold to the bridegroom than his deserts warranted, little fervour was shown; and the then young Queen Charlotte was not a woman to love either bride or bridegroom the better for that.

On the following night the same august party appeared at the Opera House. The multitude which endeavoured to gain access to the interior would have filled three such houses as that in the Haymarket. Ladies, hopeless of reaching the doors in their carriages, left them in Piccadilly, and, gathering up their hoops, attempted to make their way on foot or in sedans. So great were the concourse and confusion in the Haymarket that the gentlemen, to force a passage for these adventurous ladies and themselves, drew their swords and threatened direful things to all who stood between them and their boxes!

In the meantime the house was overflowing; and Horace Walpole, who has faithfully painted the scene—except, perhaps, where he presumes to construe the politeness of the Prince into contempt for his royal brother and sister-in-law—tells us: ‘The crowd could not be described. The Duchess of Leeds, Lady Denbigh, Lady Scarborough, and others, sat in chairs between the scenes; the doors of the front boxes were thrown open, and the passages were all filled to the back of the stoves. Nay, women of fashion stood in the very stairs till eight at night. In the middle of the second act, the hereditary Prince, who sat with his wife and her brothers in their box, got up, turned his back to King and Queen, pretending to offer his place to Lady Tankerville, and then to Lady Susan. You know enough of Germans and their stiffness to etiquette to be sure this could not be done inadvertently, especially as he repeated this, only without standing up, with one of his own gentlemen in the third act.’

After a brief sojourn, the slender young Prince, who looked older than his years (twenty-nine), left town with his bride for Harwich. Bride and bridegroom travelled in different coaches, with three or four silent and solemn attendants in each. Never did newly-married couple travel so sillily unsociable. The farewell speech, too, of the bridegroom, before he went on board, rang more of war than of love. He had already, he said, bled in the cause of England, and would again. In this he kept his word, for he was the Duke of Brunswick who fell gloriously at Jena, at the age of threescore years and eleven, subsidised by Great Britain, and unthanked by ever-ungrateful Prussia, so deservedly punished for her habitual double-dealing on that terrible day.

As bride and bridegroom travelled from the court to the coast in two coaches, so now did they traverse the seas in two separate yachts. No wonder they were storm-tost. Their passage from Holland, where they landed, to their home in Brunswick was quite an ovation. The little courts in their route did them ample honour; there were splendid receptions, and showy reviews, and monster battues at which ten thousand hares, and winged game in proportion, were slaughtered in one morning; after which, in the evening, the slayers all appeared at the opera in their hunting-dresses! Finally, the ‘happy couple’ arrived at Brunswick, where the various members of the ducal family greeted their arrival, and—no less a person than the Countess of Yarmouth, the Walmoden of George II., the mistress of the bride’s grandfather, bade them welcome!

Of this marriage were born two most unhappy women; Charlotte, in December 1764, and Caroline, in May 1768. There were also four sons: Charles, born in 1767; George in 1769; William in 1771; and Leopold in the following year. Of these, two died gloriously; the first fell in battle at the head of the Black Brunswickers, on the bloody field of Quatre Bras; the last perished not less gloriously in an attempt to save the lives of several persons, when the river Oder burst its banks, in 1785. Of this family we have only especially to do with the second daughter, Caroline Amelia Elizabeth, ultimately Queen-consort of our George IV.

‘In what country is the lion to be found?’ asked her governess, after a lesson in natural history. ‘Well,’ answered the little Princess Caroline, ‘I should say, you may find him in the heart of a Brunswicker!’ In these sort of dashing replies the girl delighted. She was as much charmed with dashing games. In the sport of the ‘ring,’ in which the aimers at that small object are mounted on wooden horses fixed on a circular frame, she was remarkably expert. On one occasion, when she was flying round with something more than common rapidity, one of her attendants expressed fear of the possible consequences. ‘A Brunswicker dares do anything,’ exclaimed the undaunted Caroline; adding, ‘A Brunswicker does not know that thing fear.’

Accustomed to enjoy a place, even when very young, at her father’s table, she early acquired a habit of self-possession, became as pert as young Cyrus, and as forward as the juvenile Wharton. ‘How would you define time and space?’ said her father once to Mirabeau. The Princess Caroline, then twelve years old, anticipated the witty Frenchman’s answer, by replying, ‘Space is in the mouth of Madame von L——, and time is in her face.’ When told that it was not fitting for so young a lady to have an opinion of her own, she observed, correctly enough, ‘People without opinions of their own are like barren tracts which will not bear grass.’ As her mother seldom asked any other question than ‘What is the news?’ and loved the small gossip which arises out of such a query, the Princess was more frequently engaged in serious discussions with her instructress than with the Duchess. The Countess von Bade having remarked that she herself was wicked because an evil spirit impelled her, and that she was by nature too feeble to resist, ‘If that be the case,’ observed the young lady, ‘you are simply a piece of clay moulded by another’s will.’ The orthodox Lutheran lady was about to explain, but the daughter of a mother who had brought ‘her girls’ up to membership with no church in particular cut short the controversy with an infallible air which would have done credit to Pope Joan, ‘My dear, we are all bad—very bad; but we were all created so, and it’s no fault of ours.’ The utterer of this speech was doubly unfortunate: her intellect was fine, but it was ill-trained; she was the daughter of a kind-hearted woman, incapable of fulfilling with propriety the duty of a mother; and she became the wife of a prince who was, as Sheridan remarked, ‘too much a lady’s man ever to become the man of one lady.’

The Princess, at a very early period, discovered how to be mistress of her weak mother. Therewith, however, she had a heart that readily felt for the poor. She was terribly self-willed, and played the harpsichord like St. Cecilia.

Her thoughtlessness was on a par with her sensibility; and it is said that a very early seclusion from court, to which she was condemned by parental command, was caused by a double want of discretion. She was too fond, it was reported, of relieving young peasants in distress, and of listening to young aides-de-camp who affected to be miserable. She was taught that princesses were never their own almoners, and that it did not become them to converse with officers of low degree. On her return to court, an aged lady, whose years were warrant for her boldness, recommended an exercise, in future, of more judgment than had marked the past. ‘Gone is gone and will never return,’ was the remark of the pretty, sententious, young lady; ‘and what is to come will come of itself.’ It was the remark of a girl brought up like that very Polly Honeycomb whose story Colman wrote and Miss Burney read to Queen Charlotte. Like that heroine, the Princess Caroline had not the wisest of parents. Like her, she was addicted to romance, and was too ready to put in practice all that romances teach, and to enter into correspondence at once pleasant and dangerous. Again and again was forced seclusion adopted as the parental remedy to cure a wayward daughter of too much warmth of heart and too little gravity of head.

Her heart, however, would not beat warmly at the bidding of every new suitor. An offer was made to her, when very young, by a scion of the house of Mecklenburgh, whose offer was supported by both the parents of Caroline. That Princess ridiculed her lover, and flatly refused the honour presented for her acceptance. She similarly declined the offers of the Prince of Orange and the Prince George of Darmstadt. Her father was now reigning Duke of Brunswick, burning with desire to destroy the French Republic, and eager to obtain a consort for his daughter. He cannot be said to have succeeded much more happily in the latter than in the former. As for this daughter, she would herself have been happier, in those days when her education—or no education—was scrambled through, had she possessed any religious principles. But she was like other German princesses, who, as it was not known into what royal families they might have the good-luck to marry—Russo-Greek, Roman Catholic, or Protestant—were taught morality (and that but indifferently) in place of faith and a reason for holding it. One consequence was, that they deferred believing anything convincedly until they were espoused—and then they joined their husband’s church, and remained precisely what they were before.

The Princess was in something like this state of suspense, and her sire was in a state not very dissimilar with regard to the part he should take in the war of Germany against France, when the Duke of York, commander of the English force in Holland, destined to act bravely inefficient against the French, visited the ducal court of Brunswick. He is said to have been very favourably impressed with the person and attainments of the Princess Caroline; and it has been supposed that his favourable report of her first led the King, his father, to think of the daughter of ‘the Lady Augusta’ as a wife for his son George.

If, however, Mrs. M. A. Clarke may be believed, the Princess had been thought of as a wife for the Duke of York, who, on seeing her, did not like her. In one respect he behaved infamously to her. The King had entrusted to the Duke a splendid set of diamonds, intended as a present for the Princess. The Duke, meanwhile, lent them to his favourite, Mrs. Clarke, who appeared in them at the opera, and enjoyed the splendid infamy.

The King was more than ordinarily anxious for the marriage of his son, and the latter was made to perceive that, however his affections may have been engaged, it was his interest to marry in obedience to the King’s wishes. He was overwhelmed with debts, and the payment of these was promised as the price of his consent. The wildest stories have been told with regard to the share which the Prince took in furthering his own marriage. Some say that he especially selected the Princess Caroline of Brunswick as the lady he had resolved to marry; others affirm that, while coldly consenting to espouse her, he wrote her a letter expressive of his real feelings, and not at all flattering to those of his proposed wife. The latter is said to have replied to this apocryphal letter with spirit, and to have declared her readiness to incur all risks, and her resolution to win the heart which now affected to be careless of her. Due notice was given to Parliament of the coming event, and a dutiful and congratulatory reply was made by that august assembly.

The King knew nothing of his niece but by report; but he was resolved that the union, upon which he had now determined, and to which he was engaged by his message to Parliament, should take place, be the Princess of what quality she might. He had himself married under similar circumstances, and nothing had come of it but considerable felicity and a very numerous family.

The able and renowned diplomatist, Lord Malmesbury, having received the instructions of the King to demand the hand of the Princess Caroline of Brunswick for the Prince of Wales, proceeded to the duchy—a lover by proxy—to perform his mission. He had no discretionary powers allowed him. That is, although little was known of the Princess at the English court, he was not commissioned to give any information to that court which might have ultimately saved two persons from being supremely miserable. He was commissioned to fetch the Princess. The fitness of the Princess was the last thing thought of. The bride herself used often to say, in after life, to the attendants—who, while they served, sneered at her—that, had she only been allowed to have paid a visit to England, to have first made the acquaintance of the Prince, what a world of misery they might both have been spared! The fact was, no time was to be lost. All the marriageable princesses in Germany were learning English, for the express purpose of bettering their chances of becoming Princess of Wales. They all waited for an offer; and that offer, after all, was made to a Princess who had not made the English language her particular study.

The hymeneal envoy reached Brunswick on the 28th of November 1794. Nine years before, namely, on the 21st of December 1785, the Prince whom he represented was married to Mrs. Fitzherbert (a Roman Catholic, and twice a widow) in her own drawing-room, by a Protestant clergyman, and in presence of two of her relatives. The court of Brunswick thought nothing of this matter. Lord Malmesbury was received with as hilarious a welcome as that which was given to the Earl of Macclesfield at Hanover, when he appeared there with the Act of Settlement which opened the throne of England to the Electoral Family. There was the same hospitality, the same offer of service; and the business was opened, as so much earthly business is, with a grand banquet at court, on the same night, at which Lord Malmesbury saw the future Queen of England for the first time. She was embarrassed on being presented to him, but the experienced diplomatist was not so. He looked at and studied the appearance of the Princess, and saw ‘a pretty face—not expressive of softness; her figure not graceful; fine eyes; good hair; tolerable teeth, but going; fair hair, and light eyebrows; good bust; short; with what the French call “des épaules impertinentes.” Vastly happy with her future expectations.’ She had got over an omission on the part of the Prince which had for a moment pained her. With the offer or demand in marriage there came no greeting from the suitor. The Princess naturally felt disappointed, and she said in a plaintive little voice: ‘le Prince n’a donc rien écrit!’ She was at the time a pretty woman; she had delicately-formed features, and her complexion was good. Those who can only remember her as she appeared when on her last visit to England, in the House of Peers, at Alderman Wood’s window, or at the balcony of Brandenburgh House, with features swollen and disfigured by sorrow and an irregular life, can have no idea of how she looked in her youth. Her eyes were described then as being quick, penetrating, and glancing; they were shaped en amande; and they were, moreover, not merely beautiful, but expressive. Her mouth was delicately formed; she could be noble and dignified when she chose, or occasion required it. It might be said that her only defect, personally, consisted in her head being rather too large and her neck too short. But, setting this aside, there was a greater defect still, though it was one not uncommon to the ladies of the time. There was, in fact, to use a Turkish phrase, ‘garlic amid the flowers.’ The pretty creature was not superfluously clean. To say that she was so superficially would, perhaps, be even more than truth would warrant. As for her mother, that Princess Augusta at whose birth, at St. James’s Palace, such confusion occurred, and who had been in her time so ‘parlous’ a child, Lord Malmesbury found her full of nothing but her daughter’s marriage, and talking incessantly. Her talk was not of the wisest, particularly if she indulged in it in presence of her daughter, for part of it consisted in abuse of Queen Charlotte, the future mother-in-law of Augusta’s child. The Duchess spoke of Queen Charlotte as an envious and intriguing spirit; alleged that she had exhibited that spirit as soon as she arrived in England, and that she was an enemy of her mother, the Princess of Wales, as well as of herself, Augusta. She added that the Queen had so little feeling that while the Princess of Wales was dying her Majesty took advantage of the moment to alter the rank of her Highness’s ladies of the bedchamber. The Duchess’s judgment of King George, her brother, was, that he was more kind-hearted than wise-headed, which was not far from the truth.

But the Duchess was most eloquent upon the projected marriage, the virtues of her daughter, and the care which had been taken, by precept and example, to establish such virtues in Caroline. The Duchess had very excellent ideas as to the duties of a mother-in-law, as appears from her expressed resolution never to interfere in the household of the newly-married royal couple. Indeed the idea of visiting England at all was odious to her. If she were to repair thither, she was sure, she said, that her visit would result in discomfort to herself, and a jealousy and vexation excited against her in the hearts of others. Poor lady, she did not foresee that a dozen years later she would be a fugitive from Brunswick, seeking an asylum in England, after forty years’ absence.

The Duchess affected to treat the marriage of her daughter with the Prince of Wales as perfectly unexpected by her, but as she added that ‘she never could give the idea to Caroline’ we may fairly suppose that the thought of such a thing being possible had really entered for a moment into her own mind. George III., however, had been accustomed to speak disapprovingly of the marriage of cousins-german, and with good reason. It is only to be regretted that he did not act in accordance with his own expressed opinions on this point. It may be noted as a strange fact that the prelate who performed the marriage ceremony which made of the two cousins, so closely akin by blood, man and wife, would have been very much shocked had he been asked to do the same office for a man about to marry the sister of his deceased wife, and with whom he had not the slightest blood relationship.

The Duchess, as has already been remarked, spoke of her brother, George III., as having more amiability than intellect. If amiability mean the power of loving others, she very much qualified the remark by observing that ‘he loved her very much, as well as he could love anybody;’ an equivocal phrase, which is made clear enough by the context; for the Duchess added, that her long absence, and his thirty years of intercourse with Queen Charlotte, had caused him to forget the sister whom he loved as much as he could love anybody.

The court of this Duchess, who had been so anxious to make of virtue a fixed possession for her daughter, was not a court where virtue itself was a fixed resident. The mistress of the Duke was quite as important a lady there as the Duchess; and yet the lady herself, or one of those who held the post which was shared by many, had the sense to be a trifle ashamed of her position. Her name was Hertzfeldt. She had ennobled the name by putting a de before it, but she had not dared upon the prefix of the Teutonic von. Lord Malmesbury thus notices her. ‘In the evening with Mademoiselle de Hertzfeldt—old Berlin acquaintance, Duke’s mistress—much altered, but still clear and agreeable; full of lamentations and fears; her apartments elegantly furnished, and she herself with all the appareil of her situation; she was at first rather ashamed to see me, but she soon got over it.’

Mademoiselle de Hertzfeldt, too, was among those who were anxious that the Princess Caroline should be worthy of the position now open to her. This was a strange entourage for the bride; and there were both strange people and strange things at this ducal court. Some of the names of the officials and residents call up memories of the past. There was a Count von Schulemberg among the former. We hear also of a Herr von Walmoden, the son of that ‘Master Louis’ whose mother was the ‘Walmoden’ of whom George II. made a Countess of Yarmouth, and whose father was that royal sovereign himself. There was also an exemplary couple in the court circle, Herr and Frau von Waggenheim, of whom indeed little is said, save that the gentleman drank, and that the lady thought the example worth following. This was but an indifferent place from which to select a future Queen of England; but, depraved as the court was, there were others more so, from which, nevertheless, princesses had gone to be honoured wives and virtuous matrons in other circles.

The ducal family were never so well pleased as when they could get the envoy from the bridegroom in one of their own little coteries, and there it was the delight of the Duchess to make much of him, and inundate him with stories of bygone times. She was particularly pleased to tell anything disparaging of Queen Charlotte. That her brother, King George, had, on her marriage, presented her with a handsome diamond ring as a wedding gift. This generosity rendered the Queen peevish and jealous, and her Majesty is said to have actually wished that the gift should be recalled and conferred upon herself. In such tales the Duchess delighted, and she had an attentive listener.

To him she further told that the King had proposed to many one of his daughters to her favourite son, Charles; requiring only that he should first pay a visit to England, a course to which she strongly objected, and apparently for very efficient reasons—‘she was quite sure, if he was to show himself, none of the Princesses would have him.’

On the 3rd of December these very small matters were varied by the arrival of Major Hislop, who brought with him the portrait of the royal bridegroom, and a private letter to Lord Malmesbury, urging him ‘most vehemently to set out with the Princess Caroline immediately’.

And thereupon, on the 8th of December 1794, followed the marriage, whereat the vehement lover appeared only by proxy. All parties behaved with due decorum. The paternal and warrior Duke, a man infirm of purpose, was rather embarrassed, but performed his office with dignity. The Duchess was of course overcome, and shed tears. The bride herself was affected, as maiden well might be, at a rite which took her from a home where she had, latterly, enjoyed the highest freedom, and which flung her on the bosom of a husband whose arms were scarcely opened to receive than they were raised to reject her.

The wedding-day was spent in a remarkably comfortable style of celebration. First, after the ceremony, there was an early and an ‘immense’ dinner. Then a grand court was held, at which felicitations were made to the new Princess of Wales. This was followed by grave whist for the older aristocrats, and gayer games for the younger people, addicted to more liveliness. Last of all came a great supper, but how the terrible meal was got through the court historians do not say. We only learn that during the progress of the banquet Lord Malmesbury informed the Duke of Brunswick of the nature of the contents of the Prince’s letter, and the wish therein expressed so vehemently for his instant departure with the impatiently-expected bride. He of course supposed that the Duke would at once appoint a day for the solemn departure. But the sovereign of Brunswick was not a man who liked to compromise himself. He accordingly answered oracularly: ‘We depend entirely on you, my lord; you cannot possibly decide in a wrong way.’ It was leaving Lord Malmesbury ample powers, of which he was anxious to avail himself; but he had much to do with and for the bride before he led her safely to the asylum of her husband’s cold hearth.

The bride was, meantime, herself anxious to depart to her new home; her mother, fussy, fond, and agitated, was desirous to accompany her a part of the way; and Lord Malmesbury, who had been honoured with the gift of a ‘snuff-box’ from the Duke and a diamond watch from the Princess, was quite as willing to get to the end of his mission. There was the impatient Prince, too, in London; but the diplomatist held his powers from the King, and rather obeyed the precise and deliberate order of the monarch than the urgently gallant appeals of his princely son.

In due form, therefore, the marriage treaty, drawn up in English and Latin—French was prohibited, by royal order—was signed by all the high contracting parties on the 4th of December. After the pleasant labour a sumptuous banquet followed, and the envoy and Duchess announced to the bridegroom at home that his bride would set out on the 11th, provided by that time intelligence was received of the sailing from England of the fleet which was to serve for a wedding escort across the sea.

The Duke of Brunswick was a man who, whenever he asserted that he was going to speak to you with perfect frankness, was really about to treat you with anything but candour. Even in his breast, however, the feelings of the father were not always dormant; and occasionally he manifested considerable perception with regard to the true nature of his daughter’s position. ‘He was perfectly aware,’ says Lord Malmesbury, ‘of the character of the Prince, and of the inconveniences that would result with almost equal ill effect either from his liking the Princess too much or too little.’ The Duke was as thoroughly cognisant of the peculiar disposition of Queen Charlotte, and, curiously enough, ‘he never mentioned the King.’ The paternal comment on his own daughter was thoroughly impartial: ‘She is not a fool,’ said he, ‘but she has no judgment; and she has been severely brought up, as was very necessary with her.’ He knew well where peril lay, and, to do him justice, he did his little best to save his daughter from the danger.

The severity of the education of the Princess was only imaginary, or, if it had existed, it had been entirely ineffective. We may judge of this by remarking what the Duke begged of the envoy—to recommend to the Princess discretion; to pray of her not to be curious, nor free in giving her opinions aloud upon individuals and things—a fault which this severely-trained young lady inherited from her mother, who, throughout her life, had been given to ‘appeler un chat, un chat!’ and who was excessively free, easy, and loud-tongued in her dissertations upon both men and manners. The poor Duke probably thought of the mother, too, when he asked Lord Malmesbury to advise his daughter never to be jealous of her husband, and ‘if he had any gouts, not to notice them.’ The Duke added that he had written all this down in German for his daughter’s benefit, but he thought it would be none the worse for being repeated orally by Lord Malmesbury. These audiences and consultations of the morning were succeeded by dinners and operas in the evening, and the Princess Caroline was of course the heroine of every festival.

A cynic might have laughed, a more religious philosopher would have sighed, at the further illustration of the severity of manners at the ducal court, and the ‘serene’ anxiety for the proper conduct of the newly-married Princess. The Duke actually sent his mistress to engage Lord Malmesbury to set the bride in a right path. Mademoiselle de Hertzfeldt represented to the envoy the necessity of being very strict with the Princess. The courtesan champion of morality represented the Duke’s daughter as not clever, neither was she ill-disposed, ‘but of a temper easily wrought on, and had no tact.’ The good lady thought that the envoy’s advice would have more effect than the paternal counsel, as, ‘although the Princess respected him, she also feared him as a severe rather than an affectionate father; that she had no respect for her mother, and was inattentive to her when she dared.’ No more terrible testimony could be rendered against a daughter than this. For if a girl love not her mother, whom shall she ever love? and if she hide not her disregard from the mother whom she cannot in her heart honour, whom will she ever truly regard? The Princess was as anxious in imploring guidance and direction from Lord Malmesbury as any of her relatives, and she was probably quite as sincere in asking for counsel.

At dinner and supper, concert and opera, there was the same diet and the same song. For hours of a morning the paternal admonitions were poured into the bride’s ear, and for hours of an evening Lord Malmesbury had to listen to what the Princess had been told. The advice was good of its sort, but its constant repetition shows that the Duke had great fears touching his daughter’s character. The Duke wished to make her feel ‘that the high situation in which she was going to be placed was not simply one of amusement and enjoyment; that it had its duties, and those perhaps hard and difficult to fulfil.’ Lord Malmesbury was especially invoked not to desert the Princess in England. The Duke was quite right in foreseeing that future peril, and what future peril for his daughter, lay in that direction. ‘He dreaded the Prince’s habits.’ Well he might. They were not dissimilar from his own. On the very evening that the Duke told the envoy that he dreaded the Prince’s habits, Lady Eden, who had just arrived at Brunswick from London, told Lord Malmesbury that ‘Lady ——,’ meaning, doubtless, Lady Jersey, ‘was very well with the Queen; that she went frequently to Windsor, and appeared as a sort of favourite.’ ‘This, if true,’ says Lord Malmesbury, ‘is most strange, and bodes no good.’ The intelligence seems to have strongly impressed the envoy; and when, in the evening, he sat next the Princess Caroline at supper, he counselled her ‘to avoid familiarity, to have no confidants, to avoid giving any opinion, to approve but not to admire excessively, to be perfectly silent on politics and party, to be very attentive and respectful to the Queen—to endeavour, at all events, to be well with her.’ He was evidently thinking of the rival that was already well with the Queen, and still better with the Prince. This condition of things boded no good. The Princess, whose eyes were red with tears—the consequence of taking leave of some of the dear young friends of her heart—had good cause to weep on. Never was bridal attended by prospect more forlorn. The bride, however, was as variable as an April day. On the evening following that just noticed, Lord Malmesbury records that he sat ‘next to Princess Caroline at table; she improves very much on closer acquaintance—cheerful, and loves laughing.’

The penalty of her new position came before her, too, in another shape. She was beset with applications for her patronage, and she was induced to seek for Lord Malmesbury’s aid to realise the expectations of the petitioners. He at once counselled her to have nothing to do with such matters, and to check or stop solicitation at once, by intimating that she could not interfere in any way in England by asking political or personal favours for others. Lord Malmesbury added that, if she were sincerely desirous to further the fortunes of a really deserving person, he would find means to enable her to accomplish what she wished. But even then it were far better, he said, not to engage herself by any promise. He added much more of excellent admonitory advice, in all of which the Princess readily acquiesced. He especially counselled her to be discreet in all her questions. She promised solemnly that she would, and forthwith she began to put some queries to him touching the Prince’s ‘favourite.’ Not that she knew Lady Jersey to be the occupier of so bad an eminence. Still the question was indiscreet. ‘She appeared to suppose her an intriguante, but not to know of any partiality or connection between her and the Prince. I said that, with regard to Lady ——, she and all her other ladies would frame their conduct towards her by hers towards them; that I humbly advised her this should not be too familiar or too easy; and that it might be affable without forgetting she was Princess of Wales; that she should never listen to them when they attempted anything like a commerage, and never allow them to appear to influence her opinion by theirs. She said she wished to be popular, and was afraid I recommended her too much reserve; that probably I thought her too proné à se livrer. I said I did; that it was an amiable quality, but one that in her situation could not be given way to without great risk; that, as to popularity, it never was retained by familiarity; that it could only belong to respect, and was only to be acquired by a just mixture of dignity and affability. I quoted the Queen as a model in this respect.’7

Lord Malmesbury thoroughly understood the characters both of the Princess Caroline and the Queen Charlotte. Of the latter the Princess expressed great fear, and added a conviction that the Queen would be jealous of her and do her harm. On that very account she was advised to be scrupulously attentive in rendering to this terrible mother-in-law, as she seemed, every mark of respect due to her; and the Princess was further counselled to set a guard upon her too prompt tongue in the Queen’s presence, and to be especially careful not to drop any light remarks. The bride promised all she was asked, and then observed, by way of illustration of her watchfulness, that she was quite aware that the Prince was leger; that she had been prepared on that point, and was determined never to appear jealous, however much she might be provoked. Her monitor commended the wisdom of a resolution which he said he believed (but it must have been in a diplomatic sense) she would never be called upon to put in force. Still more diplomatically, he added that if she ever did ‘see any symptoms of a gout in the Prince, or if any of the women about her should, under the love of fishing in troubled waters, endeavour to excite a jealousy in her mind,’ he entreated her, ‘on no account to allow it to manifest itself.’ Sourness and reproaches on the part of even a young neglected wife, it was suggested, not only would not reclaim a husband whose ‘tottering affections’ might be won back by patient endurance and softness, but reproof and vexation would only survive to give additional value to her rival and that rival’s charms. In short, my Lord as good as intimated that, if she would only re-enact the part of Griselda, she would please her husband; whereas, if she ran counter to his wishes, ‘it would probably make him disagreeable and peevish, and certainly force him to be false and dissembling.’

But if the English envoy enlightened the bride upon the character of the Prince, her father’s mistress, Mdlle. de Hertzfeldt, was not less liberal in affording to Lord Malmesbury portraits of the Princess, drawn in all lights and with no lack of shadow. One lecture from the ‘favourite,’ which the envoy set down in French, deserves to be quoted, in spite of its length. ‘I conjure you’—thus began the anxious lady—‘I conjure you to induce the Prince, from the very commencement, to make the Princess lead a retired life. She has always been kept in much constraint and narrowly watched, and not without cause. If she suddenly finds herself in the world, unchecked by any restraint, she will not walk steadily. She has not a depraved heart—has never done anything wrong—but her words are ever preceding her thoughts. She gives herself up unreservedly to whomsoever she happens to be speaking with; and thence it follows, even in this little court, that a meaning and an intention are given to her words which never belonged to them. How then will it be in England, where she will be surrounded, so it is said, by cunning and intriguing women, to whom she will deliver herself body and soul, if the Prince allows her to lead a dissipated life in London, and who will make her say just what they please, and that the more easily as she will speak of her own accord, without being conscious of what she has uttered? Besides, she has much vanity, and, though not void of wit, she has but little principle. Her very head will be turned if she be too much flattered or caressed, or if the Prince spoil her; and it is quite as essential that she should fear as that she should love him. It is of the utmost importance that he should keep her closely curbed; that he should also compel her respect for him. Without this, she will assuredly go astray! I know,’ added she to the noble envoy, who wrote down her speech in his Diary as soon as it was delivered, ‘I know that you will not compromise me, for I speak as to an old friend. I am attached heart and soul to the Duke. I have devoted myself to and lost myself for him. I have the welfare of his family at heart. He will be the most wretched of men if his daughter does not succeed better than her elder sister. I repeat, she has never done anything that is bad; but she is without judgment, and she has been judged of accordingly. I fear the Queen. The Duchess here, who passes her entire life in thinking aloud or in never thinking at all, does not like the Queen; and she has talked too much about her to her daughter. Nevertheless, the happiness of the Princess depends upon being well with the Queen; and for God’s sake,’ exclaimed the Duke’s devoted mistress, who so airily satirised the Duke’s lawful wife, ‘say as much to her as indeed you have done already. She heeds you; she finds that you speak reason cheerfully; and you will make more impression on her than her father, of whom she is too much afraid, or than her mother, of whom she is not afraid at all.’

That night there was a masquerade at the court opera-house. Amid the gay and festive throng the envoy never left the side of the bride, over whom it was his mission to watch. He talked with her in a strain which became so gay a scene, but on every jest hung counsel. She was for giving way to the temper of the entertainment; but as the Princess grew more hilarious and ‘more mixing,’ he checked the rising spirit of fun, and prevented its becoming ‘fast and furious,’ by treating her with a vast outlay of increased seriousness and respect.

If there was something strange in this scene, what followed was stranger still. Mentor and maiden retired to a box on the Balcon, and there they discussed anew the chances of domestic happiness, and the rules by which it might be accomplished. As minuets were being statelily walked below, the envoy categorically laid down the regulations observation of which might purchase connubial felicity. He gave expression to an urgent wish that she would never miss going to church on Sundays, as the King and Queen never failed being present—although it must be added that, severe as Queen Charlotte was in strictly and formally attending divine worship on the Sabbath, the service itself was no sooner over than (at that period of her life) she proceeded to hold a drawing-room. It was one generally more brilliantly attended than that held on the Thursdays.

The prospect of being compelled to attend church every Sunday was but a gloomy view, it would seem, thus presented at the very gayest portion of the masquerade. The Princess probably thought she saw a way of escape, for she inquired if the Prince was thus strict in his weekly attendance. Lord Malmesbury dexterously replied that if he were not she would bring him to it; and if he would not go with her, she would do well to set a good example and go without him. ‘You must, in such case,’ added the bride-trainer, ‘tell him that the fulfilling regularly and exactly this duty can alone enable you to perform exactly and regularly those you owe him. This cannot but please him, and will in the end induce him also to go to church.’

The Princess evidently liked this part of her prospect less and less. We may fairly judge so by her observation, that my Lord had ‘made a very serious remark for a masquerade.’

The envoy defended himself from the attack made under cover of this insinuation, and he defended himself with gaiety and success. The Princess herself acknowledged as much, and Lord Malmesbury rather naïvely observes that, after descanting to the bride upon the necessity of regular church-going when she got to England, he was glad he had set her thinking on the drawbacks as well as of the agrémens of her situation. The attendance at church was, in his eyes, a rather severe discipline; but, as he so forcibly impressed on the mind of his charge, ‘in the order of society, those of a very high rank have a price to pay for it. The life of a Princess of Wales is not to be one of pleasure, dissipation, and enjoyment. The great and conspicuous advantages belonging to it must necessarily be purchased by considerable sacrifices, and can only be preserved and kept up by a continual repetition of those sacrifices.’ The Princess probably sighed as she weighed the pomp of her position against the piety by which she was to formally illustrate it.

Lord Malmesbury could not play the mentor without the godless wits of the court treating him to a little raillery. On the evening when he had been expatiating on the uses of attendance at church, during the noise and revelry of a masquerade, he encountered Madame de Waggenheim She was the lady who ‘drank,’ and whom the noble diarist sets down upon his tablets as ‘absurd, ridiculous, ill-mannered, and méchante.’ ‘How did you find the little one?’ said she, alluding thereby to the Princess. ‘Rather old as she is, her education is not yet finished.’ Lord Malmesbury felt the taunt, but parried it with the remark that ‘at an age far beyond that of her Royal Highness persons might be found in whom the education of which she spoke had not even begun.’