HARSH TRIALS AND PETTY TRIUMPHS.
The Princess again in public--Restricted intercourse between
the Princess and her daughter--Sealed letter addressed by the
Princess to the Prince--Published--The Princess’s appeal
to Parliament--Bitterness on both sides--Meeting of the
Princess and her daughter--The Princess at Vauxhall--Death of
the Duchess of Brunswick--Last interview between the Duke of
Brunswick and the Princess--Her depressed spirits--Unnoticed
during the festivities of 1814--Sacrifice made by the Princess--
Unnoticed by the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia--The
Princess at the opera--A scene--Not invited to the great city
banquet--Mr. Whitbread’s advice to the Princess--A freak--
Reception of the Regent in the city--The Princess excluded from
the drawing-rooms--Correspondence between the Queen and the
Princess--Her letter to the Regent--Discussed in the House of
Commons.
From the comparative retirement in which the Princess had lived for a
few years she was now, in 1813, again to issue and appear before the
public more like an athlete on the arena than a suppliant with wrongs
to be redressed.
Her retirement had given, however, much subject for comment on the
part of the public, for censure on the part of her enemies. The latter
still pointed to her habits of life as forming apology enough for the
restrictions set upon her intercourse with her daughter. The fashion
of opening _all_ her apartments to her visitors at Kensington was
considered indecorous; and the popular tongue dealt unmeasuredly with
her cottage at Bayswater, at which she was _said_ to have presided at
scenes of at least consummate folly--and folly in such a woman was
but next to serious guilt, and almost as sure to accomplish her utter
ruin.
It is difficult to say positively in what light the Princess Charlotte
looked upon the restrictions which kept her mother and herself
apart. Report accredited her with being a thorn in the side of Queen
Charlotte, and a continual trouble to the Regent. She is said to have
paid to neither an over-heaped measure of respect, and she seriously
offended both by marring the splendour of her first ‘drawing-room,’ at
which she was to be presented by the Duchess of York, and which was
postponed because she insisted upon being presented by her mother.
Early in January a sealed letter was addressed to the Prince Regent
by the Princess of Wales, and forwarded by Lady Charlotte Campbell,
through Lord Liverpool and Lord Eldon. It was immediately returned
unopened. The letter was sent back as before. It was again returned,
with an intimation that the Prince would not depart from his
determination not to enter into any correspondence. Under legal advice,
it was once more transmitted, with a demand that the ministers should
submit it to the Prince. Finally, intimation was conveyed to the
Princess that the Regent had become acquainted with the contents of
the letter, but had no reply to make to it. Upon this the letter was
published in a morning paper. Though addressed to the Regent, it was
evidently intended for the public solely; and its appearance in the
papers excited a wrath in the Prince which brought upon the Princess
much of her subsequent persecution, and exposed her to considerable
present animadversion, even at the hands of many of her friends.
The letter was long, but it may be substantially described as
containing a protest of the supposed writer’s innocence; a remonstrance
against the restrictions, now more stringent than ever, which kept
her apart from her daughter; an assertion that such restrictions were
injurious to the latter, and a fatal blow against the honour of the
mother; and finally a stinging criticism upon the secluded system of
education by which her daughter was _not_ educated, and which was
not calculated to develop the character of the future Queen of Great
Britain.
A bomb in the palace could not have created more excitement than was
caused by the appearance of this letter in the papers. It was met by
a refusal to allow any meeting at all, for the present, between the
Princess Charlotte and her mother, and by an assembling of the Privy
Council, the members of which speedily showed why they had been called
together, by making a report to the Regent, in which it was stated that
the lords of the council, having read the letter of the Princess, and
having examined the documents connected with the investigation into
the conduct of the Princess in 1806, were decidedly of opinion that
any intercourse between the mother and daughter should continue to be
subject to regulations and restraint. This report, which was tantamount
to a mortal stab to the reputation of the Princess of Wales, and not
altogether unprovoked by her, was signed by the two archbishops and all
the ministers. The stab was dealt back as fiercely as it could be by
an appeal to the people through parliament. To this body the Princess,
in March, addressed a letter asserting her innocence, denouncing the
system which pronounced her guilty without letting her know on what
evidence the verdict was founded, and without allowing her to produce
testimony to rebut it; and, finally, requiring that parliament would
authorise a full and strict investigation, from which she felt that her
honour would issue pre-eminently triumphant. This request brought on an
animated debate upon a motion for the production of papers connected
with the inquiry of 1806, and the evidence adduced thereon. The motion
was lost; but ministers were compelled to acknowledge that the Princess
stood fully acquitted of the charges then and there brought against
her. The assertion made by Lord Castlereagh, that government had not
proceeded against the degraded and infamous Sir John and Lady Douglas,
because they were reluctant to trouble the world with the indelicate
matters that must be raked up again, excited shouts of derision. Mr.
Whitbread stoutly asserted that never had woman been so falsely accused
or so fully triumphant; and Mr. Wortley, despite all his respect for
the house of Brunswick, could not help lamenting that the royal family
was the only one in the kingdom that seemed careless about its own
welfare and respectability.
The subject was frequently brought before parliament, but with no other
effect than to show that there was much exaggerated bitterness of
feeling on both sides, and that the best friends of the Princess were
those who were of no party. Parliament was, at last, but too happy to
let the matter drop. Meanwhile, the publication of the ‘Spirit of The
Book’ did the Princess no good, and was, perhaps, not intended to have
that result. The daughter was now established at Warwick House, and the
Duchess of Leeds had succeeded as governess to Lady de Clifford, much
to the dissatisfaction of the Princess Charlotte herself, who asserted
that she was old enough to live without such superintendence. She could
not be frightened into a conviction of the contrary by rude remarks
from Lord Eldon, who also sought to terrify the Princess of Wales into
absolute silence, on the ground that such a course would more entirely
conduce to her own safety; to which that spirited lady replied that she
was under the safeguard of the British constitution, and had no fears
for her own safety whatever.
That she saw her daughter ‘in spite of them’ was to her a matter of
legitimate triumph. She had been forbidden to call at Warwick House,
but she could not fail to encounter the Princess Charlotte on the
public highways. This meeting first occurred early in the spring;
the mother espied the daughter’s carriage at a distance, and ordered
her own to be driven rapidly after it. She was then on Constitution
Hill--the Princess was near Hyde Park--and the pursuer came up with the
pursued near the Serpentine. Each leaned forward from her own carriage
to kiss the other and for several minutes they remained in deep and,
apparently, affectionate conversation--a crowd the while surrounding
them with ever-ready sympathy.
It was said, however, that in the rarely-permitted meetings which
subsequently took place between the mother and daughter the former
occasionally complained of the coldness of manner of the latter.
The Princess of Wales was, in fact, not satisfied with an ordinary
demonstration of attachment from any one. She required enthusiasm--
sought and bid for it. When the Regent was rising into something like
popularity by the splendid entertainments which he gave--partly for
the benefit of trade, and partly because he was pleased to the very top
of his bent when playing the magnificent Amphitryon--the Princess
appeared in public at a _fête_ at Vauxhall, whither she was escorted by
the Duke of Gloucester, on whose arm she leaned as she passed along,
soliciting, as it were, signs of sympathy at a festival patronised and
presided over by the Duke of York.
In these public scenes she assumed a dignity which well became
her, but which she was as well pleased to lay aside as soon as the
occasion which called for it had passed. Nothing gave her more
gratification, for instance, after receiving congratulatory addresses
from corporations and other similar bodies, which she did with mingled
stateliness and courtesy, than to not only change her dress of
ceremony for a more ordinary one, but to take off her stays! The latter
odd fashion was not favourable to a figure which was now far removed
from the grace which had distinguished the Princess in her earlier
years.
It can be scarcely said that in this year she lost one friend more by
the death of her mother. The declining years of the aged Duchess of
Brunswick had been years of sorrow. She had long been a sufferer from
confirmed asthma, and in March 1813 she was attacked by an epidemic
which was fatally prevalent throughout the metropolis. It was attended
by, or rather consisted of, cough and difficulty of breathing. This
attack aggravated her other sufferings; but, though confined to her
bed, she was not considered in danger when her daughter saw her for the
last time, on the 22nd of March 1813. The Princess remained with the
Duchess several hours, and took leave without suspecting that she was
never again to see her mother alive. At nine that night the Duchess was
seized with violent spasmodic attacks, under which she rapidly sunk;
and, at seventy-six years of age, the ‘Lady Augusta,’ who was born in
St. James’s Palace, died in a modest lodging-house, and was quietly
interred in Westminster Abbey.
It is due to the Prince Regent to say that on the occasion of the
death of the Duchess of Brunswick he exhibited becoming and courteous
feeling, by suggesting to the Princess Charlotte that she should pay a
visit to her mother, to condole with her on this bereavement. It was
suggested that after the funeral would be the most appropriate season
for such a visit; but the Princess, with quicker wit or more ready
sympathy, repaired at once to her mother’s residence, and thus afforded
her a gratification which was probably the more appreciated as it was
the less expected. This was more sympathy than she received at the
hands of some persons, who probably conceived that by behaving rudely
to her they should be paying court to a higher power. Thus, in the
course of the summer the Princess went to sup at Mr. Angerstein’s. Lord
and Lady Buckinghamshire were there. ‘The latter behaved very rudely,
and went away immediately after the Princess arrived. Whatever her
principles, political or moral, may be, I think,’ says Lady Charlotte
Campbell, who tells the anecdote, ‘that making a curtsy to the person
invested with the rank of Princess of Wales would be much better taste
and more like a lady than turning her back and hurrying out of the
room.’
In addition to her mother, the Princess may be said to have also lost
her brother this year; for though the gallant Duke of Brunswick did
not fall at Quatre Bras till 1815, she never saw him again but for a
brief moment on his departure from this country, two years previously.
The Duke was simply a soldier and nothing more, except that he was
a gallant one. He had a few relics with him in this country of the
treasures of Brunswick, such as old books and antique gems, the value
of neither of which did he in the least understand. His habits were of
the simplest, except in the fashionable dissipation of the times; but
if he was the slave of some pleasures, he was by no means the servant
of luxury. He slept on a thin mattress placed on an iron frame, and
covered by a single sheet. He had enjoyed sweeter sleep on it, he used
to say, than many who lay upon the softest down.
When he went to take leave of his sister he was in the highest spirits,
from having at last the prospect of an active career in arms. The actor
and the scene are well-described by the author of ‘The Diary:’--‘There
never was a man so altered by the hope of glory. His stature seemed
to dilate, and his eyes were animated with a fire and an expression of
grandeur and delight which astonished me. I could not help thinking
the Princess did not receive him with the warmth she ought to have
done. He detailed to her the whole of the conversation he had with
the ministers, the Prince Regent, &c. He mimicked them all admirably,
particularly Lord Castlereagh--so well as to make us all laugh; and
he gave the substance of what had passed between himself and those
persons with admirable precision, in a kind of question and answer
colloquy that was quite dramatic. I was astonished, for I had never
seen any person so changed by circumstance. He really looked a hero.
The Princess heard all that he said in a kind of sullen silence, while
the tears were in several of the bystanders’ eyes. At length the Duke
of Brunswick said: “The ministers refused me all assistance; they
would promise me neither money nor arms. But I care not. I will go to
Hamburg. I hear that there are some brave young men there, who await
my coming, and if I have only my orders from the Prince Regent to act,
I will go without either money or arms, and gain both.” “Perfectly
right!” replied the Princess, with something like enthusiasm in her
voice and manners. “How did Bonaparte conquer the greater part of
Europe?” the Duke continued: “he had neither money nor arms, but he
_took_ them; and if _he_ did that, why should not _I_, who have so much
more just a cause to defend?” The Duke then proceeded to state how the
Regent and the ministers were all at variance, and how he had obtained
from the former an order he could not obtain from the ministers.
After some further conversation, he took leave of his sister. She
did not embrace him. He held out his hand to me kindly, and named me
familiarly. I felt a wish to express something of the kindly feeling
I felt towards him: but, I know not why, in her presence, who ought
to have felt so much more and who seemed to feel so little, I felt
chilled, and remained silent. I have often thought of that moment since
with regret. When the Duke was fairly gone, however, she shed a few
tears, and said emphatically, “I shall never see him more!”’
The early part of 1814 was spent by the Princess in lowness of
spirit and littleness of pursuits. Miss Berry speaks of the mournful
‘house-warming’ by which the Princess inaugurated her tenancy some time
before:--On the 1st of December she writes, ‘We both of us (the two
sisters) dined with the Princess in Connaught Place, the first time she
had given a dinner in her new home, which is still all upside down.
The company consisted only of Gell and Craven, who arrived in town
to-day, Lady C. Campbell and Lady C. Lindsay in waiting. The Princess
was particularly melancholy; wept when speaking to me of herself,
confessed herself entirely overwhelmed with her situation and her
prospects for the future. On the 30th the aspect was not gay. Dined
at the Princess’s. There were only Mr. Craven, Little Willy (Austin)
and a young playfellow of his, and Lady Orme. These dinners become
insupportable. The dulness makes me almost ill in the course of a long
evening, only interrupted by the Princess’s singing with Mr. Craven,
which is a screeching of which no idea can be formed without hearing
it.’ The Princess was now established in Connaught Place, near the
Edgeware Road; the mansion is that now numbered ‘7’ Connaught Place.
She seldom saw her daughter, and did not consult her own dignity by
taking ‘strolls’ across the fields in the direction of the canal, or
by ridiculing the Regent at her own dinner-table. It was this sort of
conduct which made people account of her as being worse than she really
was. For London, it was a year of triumphs and congratulations, but
she shared in neither; it was the year of sovereigns, when European
potentates crowded our streets, and passed by the house of the Princess
without inquiring for her. In June, mortification was heaped upon her.
She had an undoubted right to be present at the drawing-rooms held by
the Queen; but her Majesty, who had announced her intention to hold
two in honour of the foreign monarchs then in England, announced to
the Princess that she would not be permitted to be present at either.
No other ground for this expulsion was alleged than the Regent’s will.
His Royal Highness had declared that never again would he meet her,
either in public or in private, and consequently her appearance on
the occasions in question could not be permitted for a moment. She
had prepared a letter of indignant remonstrance, but Mr. Whitbread
counselled her not to forward it, but rather to write one in a
submissive tone, accepting with humility the ill-treatment to which she
was thus subjected. This counsel is said to have given considerable
discontent to Mr. Brougham, who was inclined to make assertion of her
right to be present, and to go even further, if that were necessary.
She made, however, greater sacrifices than that of refraining from
appearing at court on a gala day. Her finances had become embarrassed,
in spite of the presence of a controlling treasurer, and her friends
made application to parliament on her behalf. The Regent had caused it
to be understood that he did not wish to curtail her personal comforts
or cause her any pecuniary embarrassment, and Lord Castlereagh came
down to the house with a proposition of settling on her 50,000_l._ per
annum. Of her own will she surrendered 15,000_l._ of this sum, and it
was agreed that the revenue of 35,000_l._ per annum should be awarded
to the ‘Princess of Wales.’ The sacrifice made by the Princess was
gracefully noticed in the House by Mr. Whitbread, at whose suggestion
it is said to have been cordially entered into, the Princess having,
as he said, a full sense of the burthens that lay heavy on the nation.
Such conduct ought to have won for her a little regard, and a visit
from that King of Prussia in defence of whose dominions her father had
not long before laid down his life, a stout old soldier, dying in his
harness, like a knight of the olden time.
She sent her chamberlain to welcome the King of Prussia on his
arrival in this country, and the King acknowledged the courtesy by
sending _his_ chamberlain to return thanks for it. The same stiff
intercourse passed with the other sovereigns and princes; but it is
said that Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt was especially charged by the Prince
to request the Russian Emperor Alexander to abstain from visiting
the Princess of Wales! They saw each other, nevertheless, though
under different circumstances from those which the Princess herself
could have desired. The incidents of this eventful evening are thus
described by one of the ladies-in-waiting on the Princess:--‘There
came a note from Mr. Whitbread advising her at _what_ hour she should
go to the opera, and telling her that the Emperor was to be at eleven
o’clock at the Institution, which was to be lighted up for him to
see the pictures. All this advice tormented the Princess, and I do
not wonder that she sometimes loses patience. No child was ever more
thwarted and controlled than she is; and yet she often contrives to do
herself mischief, in spite of all the care that is taken of her. When
we arrived at the opera, to the Princess’s and all her attendants’
infinite surprise, we saw the Regent placed between the Emperor and
the King of Prussia, and all the minor princes in a box to the right.
‘God save the King’ was performing when the Princess entered; and,
consequently, she did not sit down. I was behind, and of course I
could not see the house very distinctly, but I saw the Regent was at
that time standing, applauding the Grassini. As soon as the air was
over, the whole pit turned round to the Princess’s box and applauded
_her_. We who were in attendance on her Royal Highness entreated her
to rise and make a curtsy, but she sat _immoveable_; and, at last,
turning round, she said to Lady ----: “My dear, Punch’s wife is nobody
when Punch is present.” We all laughed, but still thought it wrong
not to acknowledge the compliment paid her; but she was right, as
the sequel will prove. “We shall be hissed,” said Sir W. Gell. “No,
no,” again replied the Princess, with infinite good humour; “I know
my business better than to take the morsel out of my husband’s mouth.
I am not to seem to know that the applause is meant for me till they
call my name.” The Prince seemed to verify her words, for he got
up and bowed to the audience. This was construed into a bow to the
Princess, most unfortunately; I say most unfortunately, because she
has been blamed for not returning it. But I, who was an eye-witness of
the circumstance, knew that the Princess acted just as she ought to
have done. The fact was that the Prince took the applause to himself,
and his friends, to save him from the imputation of this ridiculous
vanity, chose to say that he did the most beautiful and elegant thing
in the world, and bowed to his wife! When the opera was finished, the
Prince and his supporters were applauded, but not enthusiastically,
and scarcely had his Royal Highness left the box when the people
called for the Princess, and gave her a very warm applause. She then
went forward and made three curtsies, and hastily withdrew.’[15] The
semi-ovation in the house was followed by a demonstration something
more noisy in the streets. The Princess’s charioteer was unable to
drive through the crowd of vehicles in Charles Street. The carriage
was therefore, ‘backed’ and driven round by Carlton House. In front of
this royal residence the mob surrounded her Royal Highness, saluting
her with loud and reiterated shouts. The ladies who were accompanying
her were more alarmed at the popular demonstration than _she_ was. The
people opened the carriage door, insisted on shaking hands with her,
and asked if they should burn Carlton House. ‘No, my good people,’ was
her reply; ‘be quite quiet, let me pass, and go home to your beds.’
They then allowed the carriage to pass on its way, as she desired, but
they continued following it as long as they had strength, swiftness,
and breath enough, shouting the while the favourite cry, ‘The Princess
of Wales for ever!’ She was pleased, says the original narrator of
this scene, at this demonstration of feeling in her favour, and she
never showed so much dignity or looked so well, we are told, as she
did under this excitement. She was depressed in spirits, however, the
next day, for the same people crowded the parks, and flung those strong
salutes which so offended the delicate Casca, at the company of foreign
sovereigns and princes who were riding in the ring, and who refused to
pay her the scant courtesy of a visit in the house from which she could
hear the loud huzzas that greeted them as they passed by it.
She lived on, feverishly, and in continually disappointed hope that
the Emperor of Russia would yet offer her the poor homage of a morning
call. In this hope she was encouraged by some of her ladies-in-waiting,
who told her that they had heard, from good authority, it was the
imperial intention to pay a formal visit to Kensington on a day named.
With no better official authority than this to trust to she sat up
dressed, ready for the reception of the potentate whose presence, she
hoped, would lend her some of the prestige of respectability which she
fancied herself losing by his prolonged absence. And still he came
not. On the other hand, she met with disappointment even more bitter.
Her city friends did not even render her the courtesy of forwarding
an invitation to the grand banquet at which they were about to regale
the sovereigns and the retinue of princes in their train. Not that
they entirely forgot her, but then their remembrance of her was rather
insulting than flattering. Alderman Wood, for instance, was absurd
enough to offer her a window in Cheapside, from which she might view
the procession of monarchs and minor potentates on their way to dine
with the city king! This vexed her sorely, as so emphatically ‘rude’
a proceeding was likely to do. The Princess would have less felt her
exclusion from an entertainment in the city where her friends abounded
had it been a festival from which ladies were altogether excluded. Her
‘sensibility’ was wounded at hearing that the Duchess of Oldenburg,
the sister of the Emperor Alexander, was to be present, with four
other ladies. ‘This was galling,’ says Lady Charlotte Campbell in her
‘Diary,’ and the Princess felt her own particular exclusion from this
_fête_ given by the city very hard to bear, as she had considered
the city folks her friends. They, however, were not to blame, as
these royal ladies were self-invited or invited by the Regent, and
the Princess’s friends had not time to call a council and discuss
the matter. Immediately after this bitter pill came another from Mr.
Whitbread, recommending her, _upon no account_, to go to Drury Lane on
Thursday evening, after having, a few days before, desired her to go.
‘You see,’ said the Princess to one of her ladies; ‘you see, my dear,
how I am plagued;’ and, although she mastered her resentment, the tears
came into her eyes. ‘It is not,’ she said, ‘the loss of the amusement
which I regret, but being treated like a child and made the puppet of
a party. What does it signify whether I come in before or after the
Regent, or whether I am applauded in his hearing or not; that is all
for the gratification of _the party_, not for _my_ gratification; ’tis
of no consequence to the Princess, but to Mr. Whitbread; and that’s the
way things go, and always will till I can leave this vile country.’
Wonderfully elastic, however, were the spirits of the Princess, and at
dinner, on the day when her disappointment drew tears from her eyes,
she entertained a large party with some grace and more gaiety. The
question of her being present at the theatre on the following Thursday
was discussed, and a baronet present, whom the authoress of the ‘Diary’
partially veils under the initials of Sir J-- B--, insisted that,
unless Mr. Whitbread gave some very strong reasons to the contrary,
the Princess would do right in going. ‘But I fancy,’ said Sir John,
‘he has some good reasons, and then she must yield. Gad!’ he added to
a neighbour at table, ‘if I were she, and Whitbread didn’t please me,
I would send for Castlereagh, and every one of them, till I found one
that did. To tell you the truth, I am sorry the Princess ever threw
herself into the hands of Whitbread--it is not the staff on which the
royalties should lean.’--‘Ah!’ replied the baronet’s neighbour, ‘but at
the moment he stepped forth her champion and deliverer, who was there
that would have done as much?’
The sequel is too characteristic and singular to be passed over. The
Princess was sometimes more vigorous than refined in her expressions,
and this less from coarseness than ignorance of the value and sound of
English terms. Thus, when a letter arrived from Mr. Whitbread, during
this very dinner, intimating to her that there was a box reserved for
her if she strongly desired to be present at the theatre when the
foreign potentates were to appear there, but at the same time strongly
urging her to refrain from being present, she exclaimed, after
despatching a lady to request Mr. Whitbread to come to her immediately,
‘If he gives me good reasons I will submit; but if he does not, _d--
n me, den I go_!’ ‘Those were her words, at which I could not help
smiling,’ says the authoress of the ‘Diary,’ ‘but she was in no mind to
smile, so I concealed the impulse I felt to laugh.’
When Mr. Whitbread waited on the Princess she received him rather
coolly, and listened silently to his enumeration of the persons whose
opinion it was that she should not appear at Drury Lane. He said that
Mr. Tierney, Mr. Brougham, and Lord Sefton were of opinion that,
however much the Princess might be applauded, the public would say it
was at the instigation of Mr. Whitbread, and was not the spontaneous
feeling of the people; that the more she was applauded, the more they
would say so, and that if, on the contrary, a strong party of the
Prince Regent’s friends and paid hirelings were there, and that one
voice of disapprobation were heard, it might do her considerable harm.
‘Besides,’ continued Mr. Whitbread, ‘as the great question about an
establishment for your Royal Highness comes on to-morrow, I think it
is of the utmost importance that no one should be able to cast any
invidious observation about your forcing yourself on the public, or
seeming to defy your Royal Highness’s husband.’ In fine, the Princess
was overruled.
In the midst of her disappointments she was enlivened by renewed hopes
of a visit from the Emperor of Russia, whose expressed intention to
that effect was said to have given considerable uneasiness to the
Regent. Meanwhile, the Princess found solace in various ways--and not
always in the most commendable, if we are to put implicit truth in the
following account of a freak, which seems more like a ‘freedom’ of
the ladies at the Court of Charles II. than a frolic of more modern
and less lively times. Such a story is best told in the words of a
witness--Lady Charlotte Campbell.
‘To amuse herself is as necessary to her Royal Highness as meat and
drink, and she made Mr. Craven and Sir W. Gell and myself promise to
go with her to the masquerade. She is to go out at her back door, on
the Uxbridge (Bayswater) road, of which “no person _under Heaven_”
(her curious phraseology) has a key but her royal self, and we are to
be in readiness to escort her Royal Highness in a hackney-coach to the
Albany, where we are to dress. What a mad scheme at such a moment,
and without any strong motive either to run the risk! I looked grave
when she proposed this amusement; but I knew I had only to obey. I
thought of it all night with fear and trembling.’ In the supplementary
matter to the ‘Diary’ we have the following detail as the ‘curious
story respecting this masquerade’:--‘The Princess,’ says the editor,
apparently, ‘it was related to me by undoubted authority, would go to
the masquerade, and, with a kind of girlish folly, she enjoyed the
idea of making a grand mystery about it, which was quite unnecessary.
The Duchess of York frequently went to similar amusements _incognita_,
attended only by a friend or two, and nobody found fault with her Royal
Highness. The Princess might have done the same; but no!--the fun, in
her estimation, consisted in doing the thing in the most ridiculous
way possible. So she made two of the ladies privy to her schemes; and
the programme of the revel was that her Royal Highness should go down
her back staircase with one of her ladies, while the cavaliers waited
at a private door which led into the street, and then the _partie
quarée_ was to proceed on foot to the Albany, where more ladies met
her Royal Highness, and where the change of dress was to be made. All
of this actually took place; and Lady ---- told me she never was so
frightened in her life as when she found herself at the bottom of
Oxford Street, at twelve at night, on her cavalier’s arm, and seeing
her Royal Highness rolling on before her. It was a sensation, she told
me, betwixt laughing and crying, that she should never forget. The
idea that the Princess might be recognised, and of course mobbed, and
then the subsequent consequences, which would have been so fatal to
her Royal Highness, were all so distressing that the party of pleasure
was one of real pain to her. This mad prank, Lady ---- told me, passed
off without discovery, and certainly without any impropriety whatever,
except that which existed in the folly of the thing itself. It was
similar imprudences to this which were so fatal to the Princess’s
reputation.’ And no wonder, if indeed these stories, as alleged, are
true in their details, or are founded on truth.
It was a time when the mob was accustomed to speak pretty plainly.
What a contrast is this pedestrian ramble by night, to dress for Mrs.
Chichester’s masquerade, to the state procession of the Regent into
the city, where he twice dined--once at an entertainment given by
the merchants, and once at a banquet given by the lord mayor and
corporation! On the latter occasion especially his passage from
Temple Bar nearly to the dinner-table itself was assailed by most
uncomplimentary vociferations on the part of the populace. Their
most general cry was, ‘Where’s your wife?’--and that portion of the
mob which apparently consisted of women was loudest in its unsavoury
exclamations against the Vicegerent of the kingdom. He dined with what
appetite he might, and he made the Lord Mayor (Domville), according
to ancient custom when kings sat at the board of a first magistrate,
a baronet; but he registered a vow, which he never broke, that never
again would he condescend to be a guest among citizens to whose table
he could not pass without running the gauntlet through the scourge of
vile tongues that attacked him on his way. His mother, Queen Charlotte,
did subsequently honour a lord mayor with her presence; but at her,
too, the loud popular tongue wagged so insolently that the royal lady,
although she courageously concealed her alarm, became indisposed on
her return home, where she was first seized with those cruel spasmodic
attacks which ultimately overcame her strength and surrendered her to
death.
But the way in which the populace resented on the head of the Prince
his conduct to his wife was but small consolation to the latter for the
disappointment and insults which she experienced at the hands of her
persecutors. She may be said to have been literally ejected from court.
She was not allowed to present her own daughter, although that daughter
had declared she would be presented by her mother or by nobody. It was
not enough either that the foreign sovereigns and great captains for or
with whom her father had fought and shed his blood--it was not enough
that these should be induced to turn away from the house where dwelt a
lady who, through her father, at all events, had some claims upon such
small courtesy--but the determination that she should not meet them
at court was more insulting still. The Queen thought she had skilfully
provided against every possible emergency, when the _two_ drawing-rooms
were announced as about to be held in 1814. It was doubtless intended,
at first, not to exclude the Princess from both, but simply to prevent
her from being present at the one to be graced by the Regent and his
imperial and royal guests. But the Regent himself was determined that
his consort should not be permitted to appear at either. He addressed
a letter to his mother, in which he modestly intimated that her court
would be no court without him; that he should attend both drawing-rooms
to lend them greater lustre (almost as much was expressed in words);
and that, as he had resolved never to encounter his wife, it was of
course necessary that she should stay away. The Queen accepted the
conclusion as logically arrived at; and to the dignified letters
addressed to her by the Princess--letters which would have been as
touching as they were dignified had they been of her own inditing, and
not the vicarious sentiments of her friends--the Queen addressed now
taunting, now contemptuous replies. The spirit of them was, in a bitter
insinuation, that though the commission which had examined into her
conduct had pronounced her free from guilt, her husband would account
of her as still guilty, and the court would hold her as one convicted.
In this correspondence ‘Caroline P.’ shines with more lustre than
‘Charlotte R.’ The latter appears so to have hated the former as to be
glad of the opportunity to insinuate that she was infamous.
But ‘Caroline’ turned from exchanging sharp notes with ‘Charlotte’
to addressing her husband. He might, she said, possibly refuse to
read the letter, but the world must know that she had written it. In
this communication she states she would have exercised her right of
appearing at the drawing-room had she not been ‘restrained by motives
of personal consideration towards her Majesty.’ She protests against
the insult, appeals to her acquittal, to her restoration thereupon by
the King to the full enjoyment of her rank in his court, and she adds:
‘Since his Majesty’s lamented illness, I have demanded, in the face
of parliament and the country, to be proved guilty, or to be treated
as innocent. I will not submit to be treated as guilty.’ There is
something, too, of the taunting style which the Queen could manage with
so much effect in the succeeding passage. The Prince had vowed that
never again would he meet her, either in public or in private. ‘Can
your Royal Highness,’ she asks, ‘have contemplated the full extent
of your declaration?... Occasions may arrive (one, I trust, is far
distant) when I must appear in public, and your Royal Highness must
be present also.... Has your Royal Highness forgotten the approaching
marriage of our daughter, and the possibility of our coronation.’...
The illustrious heir of the House of Orange had announced himself to
her, she said, as her future son-in-law; and then she adds, coupling
the presence of the Orange Prince with that of the illustrious
strangers in the metropolis: ‘_This_ season your Royal Highness has
chosen for treating me with fresh and unprovoked indignity; and of all
his Majesty’s subjects I alone am prevented, by your Royal Highness,
from appearing in my place to partake of the general joy, and am
deprived of the indulgence in those feelings of pride and affection
permitted to every mother but me.’ It was possible, as the writer
remarked, that this letter was never read to the exalted individual
to whom it was addressed. It is certain that the letter was not
thought worthy of notice. But the presumed writer was determined that,
escaping the courteous notice of her husband, it should not escape the
more general notice of the world. She accordingly sent copies of her
correspondence with the Queen and one of the correspondence of the
latter with the Prince to the House of Commons, with an expression
of her fears that there were ‘ultimate objects in view pregnant with
danger to the security of the succession and the domestic peace of the
realm.’
This communication raised a discussion, and Mr. Methuen proposed an
address to the Prince, requesting him to acquaint the house by whose
advice he had determined never to meet the Princess. The proposition,
however, was withdrawn. Mr. Bathurst, the only government advocate,
stated that no imputation was intended against the character of the
Princess. ‘The charges of guilt,’ he admitted, ‘had been irresistibly
refuted at a former period.’ The so-called exclusion from court, he
said, simply resolved itself into the non-invitation of the Princess to
a court festival--nothing more. But, as Mr. Whitbread subsequently
remarked, ‘such non-invitation was an infliction worse than loss of
life: it is loss of reputation, blasting to her character, fatal to
her fame.’ The government thought to pacify the Princess by holding
out to her the prospect of an increase of income; but her friends in
parliament asserted that she would scorn to barter her rights for an
increased income, or to allow her silence to be purchased in exchange
for an adequate provision.