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

Among the refugees of exalted rank whom revolution and the fortunes of war had driven to seek an asylum in England, the members of the family of the Stadtholder of Holland were the most conspicuous. The eldest son of this noble family became almost an Englishman by education and habit, and Oxford yet reckons him with pride among the honoured of her alumni.

As revolution and the fortunes of war had brought the family hither, so a happy turn in the same took them home, and restored them to a country which had now become for them a kingdom. At the peace of 1814 the Prince of Orange once more came to England, not as a refugee, but a visitor and suitor. The heir to a Dutch throne came to sue for the hand of the heiress to the Crown of Great Britain, and his suit was powerfully backed by the sanction of the heiress’s father. Her mother gave no such sanction, nor was she, indeed, asked for any. Most important of all, the young lady thus wooed did not at all sanction the proceeding. Of all the episodes of the season there was none more stirring than this.

It was said that the Regent himself had procured the previous admission of the suitor into Warwick House, under the feigned name of the Chevalier de St. George, but that the Princess would not receive him. In this refusal she was supposed to be supported by her mother, and to act under the advice of the Duchess of Oldenburgh, who already had in view a humbler and, as it turned out, a luckier aspirant for the hand of the heiress. Meanwhile, all England agreed to approve of the match, and chose to look upon the union as a thing settled. The ballad-singers made the streets re-echo with singing ‘Orange Boven,’ and Irish wits accused her Royal Highness of holding an Orange Lodge.

The Regent had hated and thwarted the Princess from her birth. Her death would have been no grief to him, if he could have divorced her mother. The next best thing was to be rid of the daughter. Accordingly her father had this match at heart, and longed to see it concluded. The Princess allowed herself to be handed to her carriage by the princely wooer from the dykes, and granted him more than one interview. It soon became evident that they were not agreed. The Princess pleaded her youth, her love of her country, and her desire to be more intimately acquainted with the latter and with its laws, history, and constitution, before she should surrender herself to the cares and duties of the married state. The Prince of Orange insisted, as far as lover dared, that his wife must necessarily reside with him in Holland. The prospect made the Princess shudder; but it remarkably suited the wishes of her sire, whose most ardent desire was to place as wide a distance as possible between the daughter and her mother. The Prince of Orange had made no secret of his desire that, in the event of his marriage with the Princess, her mother should take up no permanent residence in Holland. This desire—not over mildly expressed—had, perhaps, the most to do with rendering the union impossible. The Princess, indeed, was not inclined towards the Prince, and would not willingly have left the country of her birth; but to her warm friends, at least, she declared that, in the present critical situation of the Princess of Wales, she would not abandon her mother. The latter was touched; but it was just the moment when she was most strongly possessed by a desire to go abroad, and she thought that this desire might be more speedily realised if her daughter were married than if she remained single. She was on the whole rather disappointed than otherwise—except that the breaking off of the match was an annoyance to the Regent, and that was some consolation, at all events. How the match was broken off is thus told in the ‘Brief Memoirs of the Princess Charlotte’:—

‘The Princess Charlotte resented as a great mark of neglect that she was not invited to any of the entertainments given to the Allied Sovereigns, and was the more sore because the Prince of Orange went everywhere and would make no effort to vindicate her claims. The Regent had lost none of his anxiety to keep her out of sight, and the Prince did not choose to provoke the displeasure of the father by fighting the battles of the daughter. The same divergence in their views broke out when she spoke of her mother, and said that on her account it would be inexpedient that she should leave England for some time after her marriage, that when she had a house of her own it must be open equally to both her parents, and that as the child of both she must ignore all differences between them. The Prince of Orange feared the Regent and cared nothing for the Princess of Wales, who had always been hostile to the marriage, and the reasons urged by the Princess Charlotte for stopping in England were arguments to him for getting away from disagreeable complications. He combated her resolution, and said that he had been willing to stand by her in getting the article which secured her freedom inserted in the marriage treaty, but did not suppose that she would refuse altogether to go abroad with him, and that if this was her intention their respective duties were irreconcilable and their marriage impossible. A discussion ensued, and common every-day squabbles occurred to exasperate the dispute. The Princess Charlotte wanted the Prince of Orange to ride with her in the riding-house. He started objections, and she reproached him, till, annoyed at her vehemence and pertinacity, he left her to recover her temper. The climax had come, and in the evening she wrote peremptorily to say that their engagement must cease. Her first note was dashed off in a fit of temper, and a friend who was with her, and whom she asked to light the candle for her to seal it, said, ‘I will not hold the candle to any such thing.’ The Princess consented to pause before she despatched her note, and the result of her reflection was the following decisive dismissal:—

‘Princess Charlotte to the Prince of Orange.

Meanwhile, the dinners at Connaught House and the little parties at Blackheath continued as usual. If a great deal of frivolity were present at them, it cannot be said that grave wisdom was always lacking; for by the side of a public singer would sometimes be seated no less a person than Dr. Parr. Of personal intercourse between the mother and daughter there was now scarcely any, but their correspondence was still kept up; and it was not the less sincere on the poor mother’s side from the circumstance of her occasionally forgetting orthography in the ardour of her affection.

The Regent, soured by his defeat with respect to the union of his daughter and the Prince of Orange, was more than commonly irritated by the knowledge that his wife and child were engaged in a frequent epistolary correspondence, and that he had, hitherto, been unable to prevent it. He was satisfied that such correspondence could not be maintained without the connivance of the ladies of his daughter’s household, and he determined to meet the evil by dissolving the establishment.

Before this resolution had been arrived at the Princess Charlotte was subjected to much petty persecution, rendered the more annoying by being continual, and which made up in enduring length what it wanted in intensity. It was said at the time that even the letters in her writing-desk found their way into her father’s hands; and there was so much done at this time that was degrading to the doers that the report is recommended at least by its probability. At all events, ‘wearied out by a series of acts all proceeding from the spirit of petty tyranny, and each more vexatious than another, though none of them very important in itself,’ the Princess was driven to a very extreme measure by the uncalled-for and undignified severity of her irritated sire. Lord Stourton (referring indeed to an earlier time) states, in his ‘Memoirs of Mrs. Fitzherbert’:—‘On one occasion Mrs. Fitzherbert told me she was much affected by the Princess Charlotte throwing her arms round her neck and beseeching her to speak to her father that he would receive her with greater marks of his affection; and she told me that she could not help weeping with this interesting child.’

On the 16th of July, 1814, the Prince Regent, who had previously secured Cranbourne Lodge, in Windsor Forest, as a residence for his daughter, and had even, equally unknown to her, but in concert with Queen Charlotte, nominated the new ladies of the Princess’s household, repaired to Warwick House, accompanied by the ladies so named. The party had only to traverse the gardens of Carlton House to arrive at their destination. The ladies were the Duchess-dowager of Rosslyn and the Countess of Ilchester, the two Misses Coates, and Miss Campbell, formerly sub-governess to the Princess. They were placed in an apartment adjacent to that into which the Regent entered, as soon as he knew that it was occupied by the Princess.

Without ceremony he announced to the astonished Princess that her establishment in that house was from that moment dismissed; that she must instantly repair to the seclusion of Cranbourne Lodge; and that the newly-appointed ladies of her household were in the next apartment, ready to wait upon and accompany her.

The Princess was astonished, but she was wonderfully self-possessed, and her presence of mind, helped by her love for a little romantic adventure, admirably served her on this occasion. She requested a few minutes’ respite, that she might retire, take leave of her now dismissed ladies, and superintend some preparations for departure. The Prince acquiesced, and leaving the new ladies in charge of the Princess, returned to Carlton House to dress for a dinner en ville.

He was hardly gone when the Princess was gone too. Silently and swiftly descending the stairs, she issued from the doors, and in half a minute stood alone upon the pavement of Cockspur Street. Lord Brougham says: ‘It was a fine evening in July, about the hour of seven, when’—he adds with a sort of contempt for people of the lower order, and indeed with much inaccuracy to boot—‘when the streets were deserted by all persons of condition.’ From the old stand at the bottom of the Haymarket she called a coach, whose lucky driver (Higgins) obeyed the summons, and having handed the heiress of England into the damp straw of his dirty and rickety vehicle, listened to the order to drive to the Princess of Wales’s in Connaught Place—to be quick, and he should not have to regret it. The guileless Higgins concluded that he was taking a lady’s lady out to tea, and that the maid of one establishment was going to make an evening of it with the maids of another. Unconscious that he was contributing in his own person to the history of England on that eventful summer’s evening, Higgins in due course of time reached Connaught Place, and when he heard, to the inquiry of his ‘fare’ whether her mother was at home, that the page answered, ‘No, your Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales is at Blackheath,’ he became proudly sagacious of largesse to come, and was convinced that he had been a right royal coachman that night, by token that he received three guineas for his honorarium.

A messenger was despatched to Blackheath with a request to the Princess to return immediately to her. She was met by the bearer of the message on her way, and with ready good sense drove to either house of parliament, in search first of Mr. Whitbread, then of Lord Grey, but without success in either case. Meanwhile, another messenger had been despatched for Mr. Brougham, the law-adviser of the Princess of Wales, and a third for Miss Mercer Elphinstone, the young bosom friend of the Princess Charlotte. Mr. Brougham arrived first, and soon after Miss Elphinstone had reached the house the Princess of Wales also arrived, accompanied by Lady Charlotte Lindsey. ‘It was found,’ said Mr. Brougham, ‘that the Princess Charlotte’s fixed resolution was to leave her father’s house and that which he had appointed for her residence, and thenceforward to live with her mother.’ But Mr. Brougham is understood to have placed himself under the painful necessity of explaining to her that by the law, as all the twelve judges but one had laid it down in George I.’s reign, and as it was now admitted to be settled, the King or the Regent had the absolute power to dispose of all the royal family while under age. Another account states that the Princess met this announcement by the declaration, made amid many tears and much sobbing, that she would rather toil for her daily bread at five shillings a week than continue to endure the persecution to which she had of late been subjected. The Princess of Wales was very much affected by this demonstration of her daughter’s affection and confidence, but she united with Mr. Brougham in urging her to submit to her father’s will. The Princess Charlotte continued to show fixed reluctance to adopt such a course, and was expressing her determination not to follow it when the Archbishop of Canterbury arrived; but the page refused to give him admission, and he remained at the door seated in a hackney coach. The first great official from the Regent’s side who was admitted into the house was Lord Eldon. He had been despatched from the Duke of York’s, where the Regent was dining, when the intelligence of his daughter’s flight had been conveyed to him by the ladies to whose care he had committed her. ‘The Lord Chancellor Eldon,’ says Lord Brougham, ‘first arrived, but not in any particular imposing state, regard being had to his eminent station, for indeed he came in a hackney coach. Whether it was that the example of the Princess Charlotte herself had for the day brought this simple and economical mode of conveyance into fashion, or that concealment was much studied, or that despatch was deemed more essential than ceremony and pomp, certain it is, that all who came, including the Duke of York, arrived in similar vehicles, and that some remained enclosed in them, without entering the royal mansion.’ Lord Eldon appears to have treated the Princess with some roughness, adding threats to the entreaties of others, and menacing her with being closely shut up if she did not obey. In his own account of this evening and its incidents he says that the Princess, in answer to his observations, only ‘kicked and bounced,’ and protested that she positively would not go back. The chancellor declared as positively that he would not leave the house without her. ‘At length,’ Lord Brougham concludes his narrative, ‘after much pains and many entreaties used by the Duke of Sussex and the Princess of Wales herself, as well as Miss Mercer Elphinstone and Lady Charlotte Lindsey (whom she always honoured with a just regard), to enforce the advice given by Mr. Brougham, that she should return without delay to her own residence and submit to the Regent, the young Princess, accompanied by the Duke of York and her governess, who had now been sent for and arrived in a royal carriage, returned to Warwick House between four and five o’clock in the morning.’

Soon after this occurrence the Princess was removed to Cranbourne Lodge, where she bore the secluded life she was constrained to lead with more of a calm than a cheerful resignation. She was not, however, there forgotten by her friends. The Duke of Sussex rose in his place in parliament to inquire if his royal niece was or was not in a sort of ‘durance,’ and whether she were permitted to see her friends. Ministers replied to these queries in that official way which answers without enlightening, and further measures were spoken of; but the Duke of Sussex was seized with an attack of asthma, which popular report attributed to a sharp communication made to him by the Regent, and therewith no further mention was made of the royal recluse in Windsor Forest.

But there was another recluse anxious to emancipate herself and fly from the restrictions and conventionalities of English living to the greater liberty allowed on the Continent. There were very few persons who thought the Princess of Wales well advised in this desire except Mr. Canning. Into his hands the wife of the Regent committed a letter, which Lord Liverpool was requested to submit to the Prince. It contained a brief description of her unmerited condition, expressed a wish of being allowed to withdraw to the Continent, chiefly for the purpose of visiting her brother, and finally made offer of resigning the Rangership of Greenwich Park in favour of her daughter, and also to make over to her the residence (Montague House) which her mother had occupied at Blackheath. The principal reason assigned for her wishing to withdraw was that she had nothing now to bind her to England but her daughter, and from her society she was now entirely and most unjustly excluded.

Through Lord Liverpool the Regent returned for answer that she was entirely free to go or stay; that no restraint whatever would be put upon her in that respect; that, as regarded the Rangership, on her resignation of that office, the Regent would see to its being filled up by a properly qualified person; with respect to Montague House, the daughter of the Prince Regent could never be permitted by him to reside in a house which had ever been the dwelling-place of the Princess of Wales.

This reply—the Princess’s comment on which was ‘end well, all well’—reached her at Worthing, whither, after a brief interview with her daughter, she had already repaired. She remained in the neighbourhood but a few days after she received the desired missive, and the ‘Jason’ frigate, commanded by Captain King, lay in the offing, waiting her pleasure and convenience to embark. She lingered during those few days as if reluctant, after all, to leave the land where she had not known an hour’s happiness since she had first set her foot upon its shore. She would linger on the beach at night, regardless of the admonitions of her attendants, sitting dreamily and despondingly, gazing over the waters or at the moon by which they were illumined, and once breaking from her reverie with the ejaculation: ‘Well, grief is unavailing when fate impels me.’

On the 9th of August, she for the last time appeared on Worthing beach, with Lady Charlotte Lindsey and Lady Elizabeth Forbes. It was her intention to embark from thence, but fearful of the crowd that was then collecting, she quietly withdrew to South Lancing, about two miles off, whither the captain’s barge proceeded to meet her. She was followed, however, by nearly all the persons, in carriages, mounted or on foot, whose curiosity, it may be added, was especially aroused by the appearance of a large tin-case among the luggage, on which was painted in white letters, ‘Her Royal Highness the Princess of Wales, to be always with her.’ It seemed as if she for ever wished to have some mystery attached to her, or that she desired the mystification of others. Her domestics had gone on board at Worthing. On South Lancing beach she appeared dressed in ‘a dark cloth pelisse with large gold clasps, and a cap of velvet and green satin, of the Prussian hussar costume, with a green feather.’ She was, with her ladies, driven down to the beach, in a pony chaise, by her own coachman.

On taking her seat in the barge she turned round and kissed her hand to the assembled people, by way of farewell. To the mute greeting the people returned as mute reply. The ladies waved their handkerchiefs, the men uncovered. She probably construed this silent adieu as intended to denote respect and regret, and she was so overcome that she fainted on her way to the ship. On the deck she was received by Captain King, to whom one of the Regent’s brothers had previously remarked: ‘You are going to convey the Princess of Wales to the Continent. You are a great fool if you don’t make love to her.’

Greatly as her spirits were depressed at starting, their natural elasticity soon brought her round again to her ordinary condition of cheerfulness. On the 12th of August, the Regent’s birthday, as the ship was passing the Texel, a royal salute was fired, by her order, it is said, in honour of the day. The salute would, probably, have been fired without any such command. What were, without doubt, her own spontaneous acts were the birthday banquet at which she presided; the health of her husband, which she gave with a spirit that might have been taken for sincerity; and the ball at which she danced as joyously as though she had been a youthful bride being borne to the bridegroom she loved, and not a mature and child-deprived matron cast out by her husband, between whom and herself there reigned as bitter a hatred as ever raged in the bosom of any pair of mortal beings. The hatred on his part is illustrated by an anecdote which was in circulation at this unhappy period. According to this story, ‘On the evening previous to the Princess of Wales’s departure from England, the Regent had a party and made merry on the joyful occasion. It is even said that he proposed a toast: “To the Princess of Wales’s d——n, and may she never return to England!” It seems scarcely possible that any one should have allowed his tongue to utter such a horrible imprecation; but it may be believed the Regent did, so great was his aversion to his wife. Besides, he was not, probably, very well aware what he was saying at that moment.’