MOTHERS AND DAUGHTERS.
Imbecility finally settled on the mind of George III.--Intercourse
between the Princess and her daughter obstructed--The Whigs
betrayed by the Prince--Sketch of the Duchess of Brunswick--
The Princess’s Court at Kensington diminished--Her pleasant
dinners there--Lively outbreaks of the Princess--Her sketches
of character--Her indiscretion--An adventure--Description
of the Princess Charlotte--The Princess of Wales’s demeanour
to her mother--Thoughtlessness of the Duchess of Brunswick--
Popularity of the Princess on the wane--Her determination to
bring her wrongs before the public--She becomes more melancholy
--An incident--Continued agitation of the Princess--She
becomes querulous--The poet Campbell presented to her--A
humorous fault of orthography--The Prince and John Kemble.
By the exertions chiefly of Mr. Perceval the Princess had been declared
innocent of the charges brought against her, had been received at
court, and had apartments assigned her in Kensington Palace, which she
occupied conjointly with her house at Blackheath. The clever friend
of the Princess was high in the popular esteem for these things, and
the public awaited at his hands that banquet of scandal which he had
promised them in the volume to be called ‘The Book.’ When, however,
they found the work suppressed by its author, and that he was soon
after made Chancellor of the Exchequer, the public professed to discern
here both cause and effect. They looked upon the elevation of Perceval
as the reward of his literary self-denial. The honourable gentleman
cared little for what the public thought, nor can it be said that,
either as friend of the Princess or servant of the Prince, he served
either of these illustrious persons, or even the public, unfaithfully.
In 1810, when imbecility settled upon the mind of George III., Perceval
proposed a restricted regency, but there was less cause for restriction
now than there had been before, and the restriction was only maintained
during one year. It was a period of great distress at home, and abroad
of such costly triumphs as made victory itself a glory not to be glad
over. At this juncture the Regent acquired some degree of public
esteem, and it was not ill-earned, by declining to receive an increase
of revenue when the people were taxed to an extent such as no nation
had ever before experienced. The public, however, would fain have seen
the Princess of Wales raised also in a corresponding degree with the
Regent, by some distinctive mark to show that she was the Regent’s wife.
It was rather an unreasonable expectation, and Mr. Perceval was rather
unreasonably censured for not realising it. The deed of separation
was, if not a cause, at least an apology or authority, for keeping
the Princess in the condition of a private person. She could claim no
higher title till the period that should make her husband a king. But
this was no reason that she should be irritated by obstructions thrown
in the way of her seeing her daughter. These obstructions were unworthy
of their author, and failed in their object. They were excused on the
ground that the manners of the mother were not edifying to the child,
but when the two did meet there was ample evidence of an affection
existing between them stronger than might have been expected at the
hands of a daughter who had certainly not been educated in the holy
faith that her mother was worthy of all the filial reverence that child
could pay her.
In the meantime the Regent had his difficulties. He who betrayed
the Whigs, by whose advice he had been guided during the time of his
father’s sanity, but who had cast them off after the death of Fox
in 1806, now sought to strengthen his government by the accession
of some of his old friends. The Whigs, however, would not act with
Perceval, and after the assassination of that minister in 1812 they
lost, by their arrogance, the opportunity of forming an independent
administration. The boast of Grey and Grenville that they would ride
rough-shod through Carlton Palace led to the formation of the Liverpool
Tory Ministry, which began its long tenure of office in June 1812.
During these changes and negotiations the Princess of Wales remained
at Kensington or Blackheath, while her mother was very indifferently
lodged in New Street, Spring Gardens, in half-furnished, dirty, and
comfortless apartments. Amid filthy lamps on a sideboard, and common
chairs ranged along dingy walls, sat the aged Duchess, ‘a melancholy
spectacle of decayed royalty.’ She is described as having good-nature
impressed upon her features, frankness in her manners, with a rough,
abrupt style of conversation, that rendered her remarkable. She loved
to dwell upon the past, though it was full of melancholy remembrances;
and she is said to have been charitable to the frailties of the
period of her own early days, but a strict censurer of those of the
contemporaries of her old age.
Up to the period of the King’s illness the Princess of Wales did not
want for friends to attend her dinners and evening parties. When the
only advocate she had among the royal family virtually died, and the
Prince of Wales became really King, under the title of Regent, the
number of her allies seriously diminished. They had to choose, as in
the days of the first and second George, between two courts. They
declared for that which was most likely to bring them most profit in
galas and gaieties. Still the diminished court at Kensington was not
so dull as that made up of a few venerable dowagers at the Duchess of
Brunswick’s. The Princess called her mother’s court a ‘Dullification,’
and yawned when she attended it, with more sincerity than good manners.
But freedom from restraint was ever a delight to her, and she has been
known on a birthday, kept at Kensington, to receive her congratulating
visitors wrapped up in a pink dressing-gown. It was at a birthday
reception that her brother, the Duke of Brunswick, who afterwards
fell at Quatre Bras, presented her with a splendid compliment and
a worthless ring. It was as much as duchyless duke could afford.
On the other hand, on the same natal day, Queen Charlotte showed a
good-natured memory of the festival by sending the Princess a very
handsome aigrette. The young Princess Charlotte was with her mother on
that day, and she observed, rather flippantly, that the present was
‘really pretty well, considering who sent it!’[11] The Princess was at
this time a fine girl, somewhat given to romping, but with the power of
assuming a fine air of dignity when occasion required.
At the pleasant dinners at Kensington, when the servants were out of
the room, and a dumb waiter (all the better, as Sir Sidney Smith used
to say, for being a deaf waiter also) was at the elbow of every guest,
the Princess would seem to take delight in going over the history of
the past. What little there was good in her, she once remarked to Count
Munster, was owing to the count’s mother, who had been her governess.
She acknowledged that the natural petulance of her character was rather
active at the period of her marriage. ‘One of the civil things his
Highness said just at first was to find fault with my shoes; and as
I was very young and lively in those days, I told him to make me a
better pair and send them to me. I brought letters from all the princes
and princesses to him from all the petty courts, and I tossed them to
him and said: “There ----, that’s to prove I’m not an impostor.”’ She
married, she said, entirely to please her father, for whom she would
have made any sacrifice. She regretted that the union was determined on
before the parties had been introduced to each other. ‘Had I come over
here as a Princess, with my father, on a visit, as Mr. Pitt once wanted
my father to have done, things might have been very different; but what
is done cannot be undone.’[12] Her own condition at home, however, was,
at the time, but melancholy. She had there but a sorry life, between
her father’s mistress and her own mother. Civility to the one always
procured her a scolding from the other. No wonder that she was, as she
asserted, ‘tired of it.’
Her spirit, depressed as it often was during her presence at
Kensington, except on the few occasions when her daughter was permitted
to see her, sometimes experienced the very liveliest of outbreaks. She
thought nothing, for instance, of slipping through the gardens, with
a single lady-in-waiting, both of them attired, perhaps, in evening
costume, and, crossing Bayswater, stroll through the fields, and along
by the Paddington Canal, at the great risk of being insulted, or
followed by a mob, if recognised. She thought as little of entering
houses that were to let, and inquiring about the terms. These are but
small, yet they are significant, traits. One of more importance is her
study and perception of character. At Kensington she kept a book, in
which she wrote down, in indifferent English, but with great boldness
and spirit, the characters of many of the leading persons in England.
It is doubtful whether this book was destroyed, as the writer, when
dying, ordered it to be. If it could be recovered, with the diary of
Queen Charlotte and that kept by poor Sophia Dorothea, something from
them might be culled of more interest than anything that is yet to be
found in the histories of these three Queens.
The indiscretions of the Princess of Wales were attributed by her
mother to a touch of insanity. On an occasion when Lord and Lady
Redesdale were invited to meet the Duchess of Brunswick at dinner at
the Princess’s house at Blackheath, they found themselves there long
before any of the rest of the company. For half an hour the Duchess
was alone with them. She had known Lord Redesdale from her childhood,
and she talked with him unreservedly. Alluding to the eccentricity
and imprudence of her daughter, she added: ‘But her excuse is, poor
thing, that she is not right here,’ putting her hand to her forehead.
Lord Redesdale told this story to Miss Wynn in 1828, and that lady has
recorded it in her ‘Diaries of a Lady of Quality.’
The indiscretion of the Princess was very strongly marked by her
selecting Sundays as the days for her greatest dinner-parties and
her evening concerts. Queen Charlotte, before her, used to hold
drawing-rooms on Sundays, without any idea of wrong. Since her time,
too, the Countess St. Antonio, and indeed other English ladies, were
accustomed to hold highest festival on this holiest day. In the case
of the Princess, no doubt much prejudice was excited against her, in
consequence of such proceedings. Yet she was not insensible to public
opinion; and she not only wished to know what was said of her, but
wished to hear it from the lips of the people.
‘One day,’ says the author of the ‘Diary of the Court and Times of
George IV.,’ ‘the Princess set out to walk, accompanied by myself and
one of her ladies, round Kensington Gardens. At last, being wearied,
her Royal Highness sat down on a bench occupied by two old persons,
and she conversed with them, to my infinite amusement, they being
perfectly ignorant who she was. She asked them all manner of questions
about herself, to which they replied favourably. Her lady, I observed,
was considerably alarmed, and was obliged to draw her veil over her
face to prevent her betraying herself, and every moment I was myself
afraid that something not so favourable might be expressed by these
good people. Fortunately, this was not the case, and her Royal Highness
walked away undiscovered, having informed them that if they would
be at such a door, at such an hour, at the palace, on any day, they
would meet with the Princess of Wales, to see whom they expressed the
strongest desire.’ These off-hand adventures she delighted in, as she
did in off-hand expressions. One day, when the Princess was ready to
set out on a visit to the British Museum, and three of her gentlemen,
Keppel Craven, Gell, and Mercer, stood awaiting her orders, ‘Now,’ said
she, as she stepped into her carriage, ‘toss up a guinea to know which
shall be the happy two to come with me!’ The trio had not a guinea
amongst them, and the Princess named Mercer and Keppel Craven.
Except in reading aloud, the Princess does not appear to have had
any intellectual pursuits at Kensington. Her health too was at times
indifferent, but her constitution was not undermined, mentally and
physically, as the Regent’s was at this period; and she had one joy,
which, however, she seemed to appreciate less than at its true worth,
in the occasional society of the Princess Charlotte. The daughter is
described as having been at this time ‘extremely spread for her age;
her bosom full, but finely shaped; her shoulders large, and her whole
person voluptuous.’ There was thus early a prospect of that obese
development which so soon despoiled the attractions of her mother, and
which very early marred the grace and beauty of the Princess Charlotte.
‘Her skin is white,’ says Lady Charlotte Campbell, ‘but not a
transparent white; there is little or no shade in her face, but her
features are very fine. Their expression, like that of her general
demeanour, is noble. Her feet are rather small, and her hands and arms
are finely moulded. She has a hesitation in her speech, amounting
almost to a stammer--an additional proof, if any were wanting, of
her being her father’s own child; but in everything she is his own
image. Her voice is flexible and her tones dulcet, except when she
laughs; then it becomes too loud, but is never unmusical.’ Her Royal
Highness exhibited to this observer traits of disposition which seemed
to certify to an existence in her character of self-will, some caprice,
and also obstinacy; but in a person so kind-hearted, clever, and
enthusiastic as this young Princess these symptoms were susceptible of
being converted into positive virtues; for a sensible, kindly-natured,
and ardent character can sooner be taught to bend its own will to
the liking of others--caprice becomes fixedness of principle,
and obstinacy gives way to resolution, which is only determinedly
maintained on conviction of its being rightly grounded. The young
heiress to the throne was more gentle in her demeanour to her mother
than the latter was to _her_ parent, the old Duchess of Brunswick. To
_her_ the Princess of Wales was harder in her demeanour than she was
to others. The Duchess was certainly a mother who had never won her
daughter’s respect, and who did not now know how to properly estimate
her daughter’s sorrows. The Duchess was not only visited by Queen
Charlotte, but she was invited to dinner by the Regent; and of this
last honour she triumphantly boasted in the presence of that daughter
who was ejected from the Regent’s house. But the poor ‘Lady Augusta’
was as awkward in her remarks in her old days as she had been in the
days of her youth. When the dismayed circle amid which the invitation
was boasted of observed a silence, which a sensible old lady would have
taken for as severe a comment as could be passed, she broke the silence
by abruptly asking the daughter, ‘Do you think I shall be carried up
stairs on my cushion?’ To which the Princess coolly replied: ‘There
is no upstairs, I believe: the apartments are all on one floor.’ ‘Oh
charming! that is delightful!’ rejoined the Duchess; and with a few
more queries, to which the Princess always replied with the greatest
self-possession and _sang-froid_, as though she were not in the least
hurt, this strange royal farce ended.
The brother of the Princess of Wales, if he had not an unbounded regard
for his sister, at least knew what was due to her and propriety better
than his mother. By his directions the Princess represented to the
Duchess that if she accepted the Prince’s invitation she would tacitly
acknowledge that he was justified in his treatment of his wife. The old
lady, as obstinate as her own grandfather, George II., was not to be
moved. She saw the matter, she said, in quite another light. She loved
her daughter, would do anything in the world for her, but certainly she
would not give up going to Carlton House. And in this determination
she remained fixed, till, meditating upon the matter, and conceiving
that the invitation _may_ have been less out of compliment to herself
than intended to draw her into a tacit condemnation of her daughter,
she suddenly declined to go, and with mingled womanly and especially
matronly feeling she invited the Princess to dine with her, instead.
The Princess of Wales was, undoubtedly, fast losing the small remnant
of popularity among the higher classes which had hitherto sustained
her. As her more noble friends silently cast her off she filled the
void left by them with persons of inferior birth, and sometimes of
indifferent reputation. Her own immediate attendants laughed at her,
her ways, her pronunciation, and her opinions. She was indeed a puzzle
to them. Sometimes they found in her a tone of exalted sentiment; at
others she was coarse or frivolous: the ‘tissue of her character’ was
made up of the most variegated web that ever went to the dressing of a
woman. Perhaps one of the most foolish, if not the most unnecessary,
of her acts, was an attempt which she made to sell a portion of her
jewels. It was doubtless intended by way of proof that an application
to parliament for an increased allowance was a necessity on her part.
She was, however, most intent on bringing forward the story of her
wrongs before the public; and she was doubtless encouraged in this by
a party, some members of which, without any of the sympathy which they
affected to feel, looked upon her as an admirable tool wherewith to
shape their particular and political ends. In the meantime the dinner
parties at Kensington were of a joyous and unrestrained character.
The Princess had poets and philosophers at her table when the royal
fugitives from France invented maladies as an excuse for not visiting
her, and she gained by the exchange; but, strange to say, with a very
liberal income, irregularly paid, perhaps, she was as poor as the
poets, and had not the consolation of philosophy. The house of Drummond
and Co. declined to advance her the poor sum of 500_l._, although she
is said to have offered to pay _cent. per cent._ for the loan. Probably
the stupendous liberality promised by the would-be borrower rendered
the bankers suspicious.
As she failed to acquire all the public sympathy which she thought
herself entitled to by her condition, she became at once more
melancholy and more recklessly mirthful. The dinner-parties, beginning
late, continued to sit till dawn. On one of these heavily entertaining
occasions, one of the guests, weary of his amusement, ventured to hint
that morning was at hand. ‘Oh!’ exclaimed the Princess, ‘God, he knows
when we may meet again.’ And then, using her favourite expression, she
added, ‘_To tell you God’s truth_, when I am happy and comfortable I
would sit on for ever.’ The describer of this scene says: ‘There was
heaviness in the mirth, and every one seemed to feel it; so they sat
on. At last one rose from the table, many of the guests went away, some
few lingered in the drawing-room, amongst whom I was one. I was left
the last of all. Scarcely had Sir H. Englefield, Sir William Gell,
and Mr. Craven reached the drawing-room, when a long and protracted
roll of thunder echoed all around, and shook the palace to the very
foundations; a bright light shone into the room, brighter than the
beams of the sun; a violent hissing noise followed, and some ball of
electric fluid, very like that which is represented on the stage,
seemed to fall close to the window where we were standing. Scarcely
had we recovered the shock, when all the gentlemen, who had gone out,
returned, and Sir H. Englefield informed us that the sentinel at the
door was knocked down, a great portion of the gravel walk torn up,
and every servant and soldier was terrified. “Oh!” said the Princess,
undismayed, but solemnly, “this forbodes my downfall,” and she shook
her head; then rallying, she desired Sir H. Englefield to take especial
notice of this meteoric phenomenon, and give an account of it in the
“Philosophical Transactions;” which he did.’[13]
So passed away her life up to the period when restrictions were taken
off the Regency, and the Prince of Wales became virtually King. The
friends of the Princess in the House of Commons served her cause with
some dexterity, and seldom made a statement in reference to her without
temporarily reviving some of the half-extinct sympathy of the general
public. Others of her ‘faction,’ as her friends were called, kept her
in a state of irritability and excitement by speaking of publishing
her memoirs in full detail. Some persons, with less pretence to the
name of friends, injured her extremely by statements affectedly put
forward in her behalf. Her agitated condition of life was still further
aggravated by the obstacles put in her way so as to prevent her seeing
her daughter as often as she desired. She was even bold enough, and
justifiably bold enough under the circumstances, to go down to Windsor
to see the Princess. This audacious step, as it was considered, was
met by a message from the Regent, through Lord Liverpool, requesting
her never to repeat so uncalled-for an expedition. She promised
obedience, on condition that she should be permitted to see the
Princess once a-week; but otherwise she threatened a repetition of the
visit. Such menaces gratified those who provoked them. The more they
could goad the Princess of Wales into demonstrations of violent and
vulgar indignation, the more, as they well knew, would she lose the
public esteem. Her nature was too prone thus to lose sight of dignity
and self-possession on being provoked. The grandeur of endurance was
a flight beyond her ken. She mourned the loss of a wise friend in
Perceval, who was partly lost to her, however, before his death, as
soon as he became minister. There were reports, too, at this time,
probably ill-founded, that she was to be removed to Hampton Court,
the apartments at Kensington Palace being required for the Princess
Charlotte. This, and the abandonment of her by some of her old
partisans among the nobility, rendered her naturally querulous. ‘No,
no!’ she said, ‘there is no more society for me in England; for do
you think, if Lady Harrowby and the Duchess of Beaufort, and all of
that set, were to come round to me now, that I would invite them to my
intimacy? Never! They left me without a reason, as time-servers, and I
never can wish for them back again.’[14] She felt that she could hold
no court in presence of that of the Regent, and that as long as he
lived she must be patient, and ‘nothing.’ Could she only have been the
former, she perhaps would not have come to be of such small esteem as
that which she ultimately experienced.
The Princess, however, still had some good taste. She patronised poets
in other fashion than that followed by Sophia Dorothea, who gave them
rings; or by Caroline, who made poor parsons out of poetic ploughmen,
like Duck; or by Charlotte, who gave to the sons of the Muses little
beyond empty praises and smiles that would not nourish. The Princess of
Wales was a great admirer of Campbell, and in 1812 he was presented to
her by his own ‘chieftain’s fair daughter,’ Lady Charlotte Campbell--
a lady who has etched the doings of her royal mistress in aqua fortis.
The Princess showed her esteem for the Scottish poet by dancing reels
with him in her drawing-room at Blackheath. Campbell has left his
opinion of her at this time in a letter addressed to a friend. ‘To say
what I think of her, without being bribed by the smiles of royalty--
she is certainly what you would call in Scotch a fine body; not _fine_
in the English sense of the word, but she is good-humoured, appears
to be very kind-hearted, is very acute, naïve, and entertaining; the
accent makes her, perhaps, comic.... I heard that she was coarse and
indelicate. I have spent many hours with her and Lady Charlotte alone,
and I can safely say she showed us no symptoms of that vulgarity
attributed to her.’ An instance of the mistakes, rather than the
peculiarity of pronunciation, which distinguished her, is given by Dr.
Wm. Beattic. He relates that, one day, the Princess was showing her
pleasantly-arranged house to a noble peer of great celebrity. They were
both in the gallery, where the Princess had recently hung some new
pictures, and to one of these she directed the attention of her guest.
It was his own portrait, and he acknowledged the honour by a very
profound bow. The Princess, to enhance the value of the compliment,
said, ‘You see, my lord, that I do consider you one of my great
household dogs.’ She meant ‘gods,’ poor lady; but she did terribly
abuse the divinities, and her daughter was ever her very dear ‘angle.’
These faults of orthography and errors in pronunciation bring less
blame upon her than upon her mother. That the child of an Englishwoman
born should have been so ignorant was the fault of the Englishwoman,
and not of her child. The sister-in-law of Queen Charlotte was
incapable of instructing her children as that Queen did, but she
might have taught her daughter English by conversing with her in that
language. The latter knew, however, less of it than she did of French
and German; and when she conversed in these, it was not upon subjects
that were edifying to the future Queen of England or creditable to
herself. Queen Charlotte was far more particular on the question of
correct delivery. In the case of her husband, Quin had ‘taught the boy
to speak;’ and it was the exact propriety of the utterance of Mrs.
Siddons that led to her appointment as reading preceptress of Queen
Charlotte’s daughters.