THE ERRANT ARIADNE.
The Princess arrives at Hamburgh--Assumes the title of Countess
of Wolfenbüttel--Travels in Switzerland--Meeting of the
Princess with the ex-Empress Maria Louisa, and the divorced
wife of the Grand Duke Constantine--The Princess at Milan--
Her English attendants fall off--Her reception by the Pope--
At a masked ball at Naples--Her imprudence--Her festivals
at Como--The Princess at Palermo--Bergami her chamberlain
--The Princess at Genoa--Corresponds with Murat--Personal
vanity of Queen Charlotte--The Pope visits the Princess--
Surrounded by Italians--Her roving life--Proceeds to Syracuse
--At Jericho--Lands at Tunis and visits the Bey--Liberates
European slaves--The Princess at Athens--At Troy--At
Constantinople--At Ephesus--At Acre--Stopped at Jaffa--
Enters Jerusalem--Her reception by the Capuchin Friars--
Institutes a new order of chivalry--Life on board the polacca
--The Princess and Countess Oldi at Como--Private theatricals
a favourite pastime--Agents and spies--Innocent incidents
converted into crimes--Bergami divested of his knighthood--
The Princess at Carlsruhe--Contemptuously neglected at Vienna
--The chamberlain her only attendant--The Princess in public
--Deeply affected by the death of Princess Charlotte--As
uncircumspect as ever.
The early period of the travels of the Princess on the Continent calls
for nothing more than simple record. She left the ‘Jason’ under all
the customary honours; and when she entered Hamburgh on the 16th she
dropped her English to assume a German title, that of the Countess of
Wolfenbüttel. Her suite consisted of the two ladies we have already
named, with Mr. St. Leger and Sir William Gell. Mr. Keppel Craven
subsequently joined her at Brunswick. Dr. Holland accompanied her as
physician, and Captain Hesse as equerry. Thus attended she appeared
at the theatre at Hamburgh, where she was received with a storm of
applause, and entered Brunswick, where she was welcomed by her brother
the Duke, and with a loud-tongued cordiality by the inhabitants.
The reception touched her, but not deeply enough to induce her to
profit by it. Within a fortnight she brushed the tears from her eyes,
left Brunswick behind her, and was on the high-road of Europe, as
self-willed and as obstinate a Princess as ever destroyed a reputation
and rushed blindfold upon ruin.
She now travelled under the appellation of Countess of Cornwall, and
had one English gentleman less in her train, Mr. St Leger having
withdrawn from the honour of waiting on her at Brunswick. The time had
not yet arrived when the _mot d’ordre_ had been given to treat her
with disrespect. The governors of German cities were courteous to her
as she passed, and the Marshal Duke de Valmy, with all the authorities
of Strasburg, offered her the expression of their homage when she
traversed that portion of France. After spending the greater portion
of September in a tour through Switzerland, she finally sojourned for
a while at Geneva, where she met with the ex-Empress of France, Maria
Louisa, and became for a time on intimate terms with an imperial lady
who, like herself, was separated from her husband. Like her, she was
stripped of her old dignity, and, like her, she was accompanied by a
young boy. But those boys were not more different in their rank than
the two women were in their position, similar as this was in many
respects. The boys were Napoleon Francis, ex-King of Rome, and William
Austin, son of the Blackheath labourer.
The two women, illustrious by rank rather than character, lived much
in each other’s society. They dined together, sang together, together
listened to the discussions of the philosophers whom they assembled
around them, and when together they attended a fancy dress ball one at
least astonished the other--the Princess surprising the ex-Empress by
appearing in what was called the costume of Venus, and waltzing with a
lack of grace that might have won laughter from the goddess of whom the
waltzer was the over-fat representative.
Maria Louisa was not the only unhusbanded wife whom the wandering
Princess encountered in Switzerland. The divorced wife of the Grand
Duke Constantine was of this illustrious society. This lady was the
Juliana of Saxe-Coburg who, on marrying the Russian Prince, took
for her new appellation the name of Anna Feodorowna, and who was so
rejoiced to lay that name down again after she had escaped from the
brutalities of her husband. The Countess of Cornwall looked upon her
with more than ordinary interest, for she was the sister of that
Prince Leopold who ultimately married the Princess Charlotte, and
whose aspiring hopes were known to, and sanctioned by, the wandering
‘Countess’ herself. The presence in one spot of three princesses, all
separated from their then living husbands, had something as singular in
it as the meeting of Voltaire’s unsceptred kings at the _table-d’hôte_
at Venice. The ex-Empress was separated from _her_ husband because she
did not care to share his fallen fortunes; the Grand Duchess was living
alone because the Grand Duke did not care for his wife; and the other
lady and her husband had the ocean between them because they heartily
hated each other--three sufficient reasons to unite the triad of
wanderers within the territories of the Swiss republic.
In October, the Countess of Cornwall, or Princess of Wales, as it will
be more convenient to call her, had passed into the imperial city of
Milan. Her passage had something of a triumphant aspect; she reviewed
the troops drawn up in honour of her visit, smiled at the shouts of
welcome, mingled with cries for the liberty of Italy, which greeted
her, and endured the noisy homage uttered by a dozen _bouches à feu_.
She had now but one English lady in her suite, Lady Charlotte Lindsey
having resigned her office when in Germany.
It was at Milan that her suite first began to assume a foreign aspect.
The Princess was about to enter on a wide course of travel, and it
was said that she needed the services of those who had had experience
in that way. The first and most celebrated official engaged to help
her with his service was a Bartholomew Bergami, a handsome man, of an
impoverished family, who had served in the army as private courier to
General Count Pino (bearer of his despatches, it is to be presumed),
had received the decoration of some ‘order,’ and--whether by right
of an acre or two of land belonging to his family, or because of his
merits--bore the high-sounding name, but not very exalted dignity, of
‘Il Signor Barone.’ He had three sisters, all of whom were respectably
married; the eldest and best known was a Countess Oldi, a true Italian
lady, who loved and hated with equal intensity.
At Milan, as at Geneva, the Princess, undoubtedly, failed to leave
a favourable impression of her character. At the latter place the
sight of herself and the great Sismondi, both stout, and the former
attired as the Queen of Love, waltzing together, was a spectacle quite
sufficient to make the beholders what, it is said, the Princess herself
would have called, ‘all over shock.’ Then she insisted on undue homage
from her attendants, and made such confusion in the geographical
programme of her travels ‘that it was enough,’ as she herself used to
say on other occasions, ‘to die for laugh.’
On the progress of the Princess through Italy her English attendants
fell off, one by one, till she was finally left without a single member
of her suite with whom she had originally set out. They probably
ventured to give her some good advice, for she complained of their
tyranny. They certainly counselled her to return and live quietly in
England; but this counsel was always under consideration, yet never
followed by the result desired. She was rendered peevish, too, by
receiving no letters from her daughter, of whom she had taken but brief
and hurried leave previous to her departure from England.
Meanwhile, she traversed Italy from Milan to Naples, and was everywhere
received with great distinction. In the little states the minor
potentates did their poor but hearty best to exhibit their sympathy.
The crownless sovereigns, like those of Spain and Etruria, condoled
with her. At Rome the very head of the faithful stooped to imprint a
kiss or whisper a word of welcome to the wandering lady. After a week
of lionising at Rome she proceeded to Naples, where Murat received her
with the splendour and ostentation which marked all his acts. He had
a guest who was quite as demonstrative as her host. Court and visitor
seemed to vie with each other in extravagance of display. _Fêtes_ and
festivals succeeded each other with confusing rapidity, and never had
Parthenope seen a lady so given to gaiety, or so closely surrounded
by spies, so narrowly watched, and so abundantly reported, as this
indiscreet Princess. It was at Naples that she appeared at a masked
ball attired as the Genius of History, and accompanied, it is said, by
Bergami. She changed her dress as often as Mr. Ducrow in one of his
‘daring acts;’ and, finally, she enacted a sort of _pose plastique_,
and crowned the bust of Joachim Murat with laurel.
It seemed as if she wished to bury memory of the past and to destroy
the hopes of the future in the dissipation of the present. To say the
least of her conduct, her imprudence and indiscretion were great and
gross enough to have destroyed any reputation; and yet she herself
described her course of life as _sedentary_, when she often retired
to bed ‘dead beat’ with fatigue from sight-seeing by day and vigorous
dancing by night. It was here that she made the longest sojourn, and
enjoyed herself, as she understood enjoyment, the most. The purchase of
the villa on the Lake of Como was also now effected; and Bergami was
soon after raised to the dignity of chamberlain, and to the privilege
of a seat at her own table. She claimed a right to bestow honours,
and to distinguish those on whom she bestowed them; but her want of
judgment in both regards amounted to almost a want of intellect, or a
want of respect for herself, or for the opinions of those whose good
opinion was worth having.
At one of her festivals at Como she indulged in some freedoms with
a guest whom she strongly suspected of being a spy upon her. Her
conversation was of a light and thoughtless nature, well calculated
to give him abundance of matter to be conveyed to the ears of his
employers. A friend present suggested to her that caution, on her part,
was not unnecessary, as within a fortnight everything she said or did
was known at Carlton House. ‘I know it,’ was her reply, ‘and therefore
do I speak and act as you hear and see. The wasp leaves his sting in
the wound, and so do I. The Regent will hear it? I hope he will; I love
to mortify him.’ And to satisfy this peevish love she courted infamy;
for even if she did not practise it, her self-imposed conduct made it
appear as if she and infamy were exceedingly familiar.
Still errant, she wandered from Como to Palermo, visiting the court
there, and receiving a welcome which could not have been more hearty
had she been really of as indifferent character as she seemed to be. At
this court she presented Bergami, on his appointment of chamberlain,
and shortly after she proceeded to Genoa, where she intended to sojourn
for a considerable time. She was conveyed thither in the ‘Clorinde’
frigate, the captain of which spoke to those around him in no measured
terms of her conduct and course of life, particularly at Naples.
She was well-lodged at Genoa. The scene, and she who figured on it
so strangely, are thus described by the writer of a letter in the
‘Diary’--‘The Princess of Wales’s palace is composed of red and white
marble. Two large gardens, in the dressed formal style, extend some
way on either side of the wings of the building, and conduct to the
principal entrance by a rising terrace of grass, ill-kept, indeed, but
which in careful hands would be beautiful. The hall and staircase are
of fine dimensions, although there is no beauty in the architecture,
which is plain even to heaviness; but a look of lavish magnificence
dazzles the eyes. The large apartments, decorated with gilding, painted
ceilings, and fine, though somewhat faded, furniture, have a very
royal appearance. The doors and windows open to a beautiful view of
the bay, and the balmy air they admit combines with the scene around
to captivate the senses. I should think this palace, the climate, and
the customs must suit the Princess, if anything can suit her. Poor
woman! she is ill at peace with herself; and when that is the case
what can please?’... Referring more directly to the Princess, the
writer says: ‘The Princess received me in one of the drawing-rooms
opening on the hanging terraces, covered with flowers in full bloom.
Her Royal Highness received Lady Charlotte Campbell (who came in soon
after me) with open arms and evident pleasure, and without any flurry.
She had no rouge on, wore tidy shoes, was grown rather thinner, and
looked altogether uncommonly well. The first person who opened the
door to me was the one whom it was impossible to mistake, hearing
what is reported--six feet high, a magnificent head of black hair,
pale complexion, mustachios which reach from _here to London_. Such
is _the stork_. But, of course, I only appeared to take him for an
under-servant. The Princess immediately took me aside and told me all
that was true, and a great deal that was not.... Her Royal Highness
said that Gell and Craven had behaved very ill to her, and I am tempted
to believe that they did not behave well; but then how did she behave
towards them?... It made me tremble to think what anger would induce
a woman to do, when she abused three of her best friends for their
cavalier manner of treating her.... “Well, when I left Naples, you see,
my dear,” continued the Princess, “those gentlemen refused to go with
me, unless I returned immediately to England. They supposed I should be
so miserable without them that I would do anything they desired me, and
when they found I was too glad to _get rid of ’em_ (as she called it)
they wrote the most humble letters, and thought I would take them back
again, whereas they were very much mistaken. I had _got rid of them_,
and I would remain so.”’
The Princess appears to have corresponded with Murat. The soldier-king
is said to have addressed to her a very flattering note, beginning
‘Madame, ma chere, chere sœur,’ as if she had already been a queen,
and that he were treating with her on a footing of equality. Her reply
is described as clever but flippant, beneath her dignity, and so
wild and strange as to be entitled to be considered one of the most
extraordinary specimens of royal letter-writing that had ever been seen.
There was yet no inconsiderable number of English guests who gathered
round the table of the Princess, and some of the former ladies of
her suite here rejoined her. Among the guests is noticed a ‘Lord
B----,’ who had been a great favourite with the Prince of Wales, and
was equally esteemed by the Princess. He had been a witness of the
marriage of Mrs. Fitzherbert with the Prince, and was now the most
welcome visitor of the Princess. The illustrious pair, it has been
often observed, had ‘a strange sympathy in their loves and habits.’
Alluding to the style of the Princess’s conversation with her guests,
the ‘Diary’ affords us another illustration. ‘Sometimes Monsieur ----
opened his eyes wide at the Princess’s declarations, and her Royal
Highness enjoys making people stare, so she gave free vent to her
tongue, and said a number of odd things, some of which she thinks, and
some she does not; but it amuses her to astonish an innocent-minded
being, and really such did this old man appear to be. He won her heart,
upon the whole, however, by paying a compliment to her fine arm and
asking for her glove. Obtaining it, he placed it next his heart; and,
declaring it should be found in his tomb, he swore he was of the old
school in all things.’ The little vanity of being proud of a fine
arm was one as strong in Queen Charlotte as in her daughter-in-law.
The former had as fine an arm as, and perhaps not a better temper
than, the latter, but she could better control that temper, and had
the additional advantage of being possessed of a more refined taste.
This was not, perhaps, always shown when she sat and listened to
rather loose talk from the Regent, with no more of reproof than her
gently-uttered ‘George, George!’ by way of remonstrance. She, however,
never erred so grossly as the Princess of Wales, who not only would
listen unabashed to conversation coarse in character, but was not at
all nice herself in either story or epithet. In Italy such things
were then accounted of but as being small foibles; and when the Pope
visited her at Genoa he probably thought none the worse of her, nor
bated no jot in his courtesy towards her, because of her reputation in
this respect. She certainly loved to mystify people, and took an almost
insane pleasure in exciting converse against herself. Her adoption of
Victorine, a daughter of Bergami, was a proof that she had acquired no
profitable experience from the consequences which followed her adoption
of young Austin.
During 1815 the Princess was ever restless and on the move. She was
now entirely surrounded by Italians. Mr. St. Leger refused to be of
her household, nor would he allow his daughter to be of it. Many
others were applied to, but with similar success. Sir Humphrey and
Lady Davy also declined the honour offered them. Mr. William Rose,
Mr. Davenport, and Mr. Hartup pleaded other engagements. Dr. Holland,
Mr. North, and Mrs. Falconet were no longer with her. Lord Malpas
begged to be excused, and Lady Charlotte Campbell withdrew, after her
Royal Highness’s second arrival at Milan. The Princess, however, had
no difficulty in forming an Italian Court. Some of her appointments
were unexceptionable. Such were those of Dr. Machetti, her physician,
and of the Chevalier Chiavini, her first equerry. Many of the Italian
nobility now took the place of former English visitors at her ‘court,’
and two of the brothers of Bergami held respectable offices in her
household, while the Countess of Oldi, sister of the chamberlain, was
appointed sole lady of honour to the lady, her mistress. On several of
the excursions made by her Royal Highness from her villa on the Lake of
Como to Milan, Venice, and other parts of Italy, she was accompanied
by Mr. Burrell, a son of Lord Gwydyr. This gentleman ultimately took
his leave of her in August, to return to England. He was sojourning
at Brussels, on his way, when his servant, White, narrated to his
fellows some accounts of what he described as the very loose way of
life of the Princess at Milan. These stories, all infamous, but few,
perhaps, which could not be traced back to some indiscretion of this
most unhappy lady, and marvellously amplified and exaggerated, came
to the ears of the Duke and Duchess of Cumberland, then sojourning
at the same hotel; and it is declared that on the report made by the
former to his brother, the Regent, was founded the famous ‘Milan
Commission,’ which was one of investigation, appointed to sit at Milan,
to inquire into the conduct of the Princess, and to report accordingly.
The commissioners sat and took evidence without making the Princess
aware of the fact; and to an indignant remonstrance addressed to the
Regent, wherein she demanded to know the object of the commission, no
answer was returned. It was soon known, however, that the report was
of a most condemnatory character, but no proceedings were immediately
instituted. Meanwhile, the Princess continued her roving life, now
on sea, now on land; now on board the ‘Leviathan,’ and sometimes on
the backs of horses or mules. Her familiarity on all these occasions
with her chamberlain was offensive to persons of strict ideas and good
principles, and those were precisely the persons whose prejudices she
loved, perhaps out of mere mischief, to startle. He dined with her at
her table, and she leant upon his arm in their walks.
Early in January 1816, she again embarked on board the ‘Clorinde,’
Captain Pechell, with the intention of proceeding to Syracuse. The
captain, having previously seen Bergami occupying a menial state about
her Royal Highness, declined to admit him to his table, at which he
entertained the Princess--who refused such entertainment, however,
on the captain persisting on the ejection of the chamberlain. The
desired port was reached only with difficulty, and for some months
the Princess resided in Sicily, with no one near her but this Italian
household. To her chamberlain she certainly was some such a mistress
as Queen Guinever to Sir Lancelot. In liberality of sunny smiles and
largesses there can be no doubt of this; and perhaps the quality of
her favour is best illustrated by the fact of her having bestowed
her picture upon him, for which she had sat in the character of a
‘Magdalen.’ She professed to have procured for him also his elevation
to be a Knight of Malta, and she did obtain for him the dignity of
Baron de la Francino, to heighten the imaginary grandeur.
The next seven months were spent in continual travelling and change
of scene. The limit of her wandering was Jericho, whither she went
actually, and also in the popular sense of the word, which describes
a person as having gone thither when ruin has overtaken him on his
journey through life.
She embarked, with her Italian followers, on the 26th of March, and
nine days subsequently, after being beaten about by equinoctial
storms till the little ‘Royal Charlotte’ had scarcely a sound plank
about her, she reached Tunis, and struck up a very warm acquaintance
with the Bey. He lodged and partially fed her, introduced her to his
seraglio, perfumed her with incense till she was nearly suffocated,
and then as nearly choked her with laughter by causing to play before
her his famous female band, consisting of six women who knew nothing
of music, every one of whom laboured under some unsightly defect, and
of whom the youngest confessed to an honest threescore years. For
this entertainment she made a really noble return, by purchasing the
freedom of several European slaves. A greater liberator than she,
however, was at hand, in Exmouth and his fleet. It was in obedience to
the advice of the Admiral, who expected to have to demolish Tunis,
as the Bey seemed disinclined to ransom the Christian slaves he held
in durance, that the Princess, after a hasty glance at the sites of
Utica and Carthage, re-embarked, after a month’s sojourn with the most
splendidly hospitable of barbarians, and, passing through the saluting
English fleet, directed the prow of her vessel to be turned towards
Greece. She went on her way accompanied by storms, which prevented her
from landing until, with infinite difficulty, she reached the Piræus,
early in May, and proceeded to Athens, where she took up her residence
in the house of the gallant French consul. Since the days of Aspasia,
Athens had seen no such lively times as marked the period of the
residence there of the Princess. Her balls were brilliant festivities.
In return for them she was permitted to witness the piously ecstatic
dancing of the Dervises (for the city of Minerva was under the
Crescent then), who have plagiarised a maxim of St. Augustine, only
altering it to suit their purpose, as ecstatic persons will do with
sacred texts, and proclaiming _orat qui saltat_. The Princess had
some nerve, and was by no means a fastidious woman, but she saw here
more than she had reckoned upon, and was glad to escape from the
exhibition of uncleanness and ferocity. Athens, however, afforded more
interesting spectacles than this; she exhausted them all, according
to the guide-books and the cicerones; and she gratefully expressed
her pleasure by liberating three hundred captives, whom she found
languishing in the debtors’ prison. The fame of the deed travelled
as swiftly as if it had been a deed disgraceful to the actor, and at
Corinth she was subsequently entertained, during two whole days, with a
profusion and a gaiety that would have gladdened the heart of Laïs, who
was herself so often and so splendidly ‘at home’ in this ancient city.
From Hellas to the Troad was a natural sequence She went thither, as
before, storm-tost--stood on the plain where infidels assert that
Troy had never stood, and, leaning on the arm of the noble and bearded
Bergami, twice crossed the Scamander. With the first day of June she
was in Constantinople, making her entry with Mdlle. Dumont and another
lady, in the springless cart or carriage of the country, drawn by a
pair of lusty bulls. She resided in the house belonging to the British
embassy. It was the last time in the course of her travels that she
found rest and protection beneath our flag. The plague, however, being
then in the city, she quitted it for a residence some fifteen miles
distant, from which she made excursions into the Black Sea, till,
growing weary of the amusement, she once more embarked and spent a week
at sea, on a frail boat, tossed by storms and watched by corsairs; and
at length reaching Scio, sought repose, and indulged in contemplation,
or may be supposed to have done so, in the school of Homer. By the end
of the month she was amid the ruins of Ephesus. Beneath the ruined
vestibule of an ancient church she pitched her tent. The heat was
great even at night, the errant lady was sleepless, and the Baron di
Francino, ever assiduous, watched near his mistress till dawn, and
performed all faithful service required of him.
From the locality once jealously guarded by chaste Diana she passed to
the spot where her old Blackheath friend, Sir Sidney Smith, had gained
imperishable fame by gallantly vanquishing a foe ever bravely reluctant
to confess that he had met his conqueror. Even this place might have
interested the Princess by the association of ideas which it may have
furnished her as matter for meditation. She did not, however, lose
much time in contrasting the gossiping Sir Sidney, who made Montague
House ring with his laughter, with the stern warrior who here turned
back Napoleon from his way toward India. She was longing to find rest
within the Holy City, and this she accomplished at last, but not till
many an obstacle which lay in her way had been surmounted.
Her progress was suddenly checked at Jaffa. The party, which consisted
of more than two dozen persons, had no written permission to pass on
to Jerusalem, and the Pacha could give his consent only to five of the
number to visit the city. After some negotiations with the governor
of St. Jean d’Acre, the difficulty was removed, a large armed escort
was provided, with tents, guides, and other necessary appendages.
Surrounded by these, the Princess and her attendants had very much the
air of a strolling party of equestrians on a summer tour. They had a
worn, yet ‘rollicking’ look. There was a loose air about the men and
a rompish aspect about the ladies, while the sorry steeds, mules and
donkeys, on which they were mounted, seemed denizens of the circus and
saw-dust, with the sun-bronzed Princess as manageress of the concern.
The similitude was not lessened by the circumstance that, more than
once on the road, the Princess, from sheer fatigue and want of sleep,
rolled off her donkey to the ground.
The journey was performed beneath one of the very fiercest of suns,
and the travellers, light of heart as they were, groaned beneath the
hot infliction and the blisters raised by it. They passed many an
interesting spot on the way, but were too listless or weary to heed
the objects as they passed. Her Royal Highness bore the perils and
minor troubles of the way better than any of her followers, but she too
became almost vanquished by fatigue; and when she entered Jerusalem, on
the 12th of July, seated on an ass, Mdlle. Dumont impiously contrasted
her virtues, sufferings, equipage, and person with those of the
Saviour. This lady was subsequently the very first who, with eager
alacrity, swore away the reputation of her mistress, and heaping her
indiscretions together, gave them the bearing of crimes, and did her
unblushing utmost to destroy what she had professed to reverence.
The Capuchin friars gave her Royal Highness a cordial reception, and
within their sacred precincts even allowed her and some of her French
attendants to sleep. In return for this knightly rather than saintly
courtesy, she instituted an order of chivalry, and, after looking about
for a saint by way of godmother to the new institution, she fixed upon
St. Caroline. In vain was it suggested to her that there was no such
saint in the Calendar. She had a precedent by way of authorisation.
Napoleon had compelled St. Roch to make way for St. Napoleon, and why
should not Caroline have ‘Saint’ prefixed to it, and shine as the
patroness of the new order? She, of course, had her way, created poor
young Austin a knight, and solemnly instituted Baron Bergami as grand
master. They looked more like strolling players than ever; the Baron
none the less so when his royal mistress placed on his breast the
insignia of the order of ‘St. Sepulchre’ by the side of the star of the
newly-appointed St. Caroline.
With these new dignitaries the party proceeded to view all the spots
where there is nothing to be seen, but where much that is false may
be heard if the guides be listened to. For miles round there was not
a scene that had been the stage of some great event, or was hallowed
by the memory of some solemn deed or saintly man, that the Princess
did not visit. Having spent upon them all the emotion she had on hand,
she trotted off to Jericho, her panting attendants following her;
and, having found the place uninhabitable from the fierce heat which
prevailed there, the strolling Princess and her fellow-players rushed
back to the sea, and, scarcely pausing at Jaffa, embarked hurriedly
on board the polacca there awaiting them, and set sail in hopes of
speedily encountering refreshing gales and recovering the vigour they
had lost.
Their singing ‘Veni Aura’ brought not the gale they invoked. The sun
darted his rays down upon them with greater intensity than ever, and
accordingly the Princess raised a gay tent upon the deck, beneath its
folds sat by day, took all needful refreshment, and slept by night; the
Grand Master of the Order of St. Caroline fulfilling during all that
time the office of chamberlain.
The weary and feverish hours were further enlivened by a grand festival
held on board on St. Bartholomew’s day, in honour of Bartholomew
Bergami and the saint of the former name, who was supposed to be the
patron and protector of all who bore it. The Princess drank to the
Baron, and the latter drank to the Princess, and mirth and good humour,
not to say jollity, abounded; and perhaps by the time the incident is
as old as the descent of the Nile by Cleopatra is now it may appear
as picturesque and poetical as that does. It certainly lacks the
picturesque and poetical elements at present.
It is the maxim of sailors that they who whistle for a breath of air
will bring a storm. Our travellers only longed for the former, but
they were soon enveloped by the latter, through which they contrived
to struggle till, on the 20th of September, they made Syracuse, and
were inexorably condemned to a quarantine of the legitimate forty days’
duration. At the end of this time an Austrian vessel conveyed them to
Rome. After a brief but by no means a dull sojourn in that city, the
Princess led the way to her home in the Villa d’Este, on the Lake of
Como, where she and the Countess Oldi exhibited the proficiency they
had acquired as travellers by cooking their own dinners and performing
other little feats of amiable independency.
And now, as if to authorise the simile made with respect to the
illustrious party, and their resemblance to a strolling company of
players, private theatricals became the most frequent pastime of the
lady of the villa and her friends. If she enacted the heroine, the
Baron was sure to be the lover. Marie Antoinette, it was said, used to
act in plays on the little stage at Trianon. The case was not to be
denied; but then the wife of Louis XVI. did not exchange mock heroics
with an ex-courier. On the other hand, the dukes and counts she played
with were often less respectable than the loosest of menials.
The agents, whose employers were to be found in England, had not been
idle during the Princess’s period of travel. They had been helped
by none so effectually as by herself. She had courted infamy by her
heedless conduct, and, cruelly as she was used, the blame does not
rest wholly with her persecutors. Her indiscretions seemed indulged
in expressly to give warrant for suspicion that she was more than
indiscreet, and therewith even the most innocent incidents were twisted
by the ingenuity of spies and their agents into crimes. The Baron
d’Ompteda had been the most assiduous and the best paid of the spies
who hovered incessantly about her, to misrepresent all he was permitted
to see. He was banished from the Austrian territory at the request of
the Princess, whose champion, the gallant Lieutenant Hownam, sought in
vain to bring him to battle and punish him for his treachery towards
a lady. On the other hand, the Austrian authorities commanded Bergami
to divest himself of the Cross of Malta, which he was wearing without
legal authorisation--a disgrace which his rash and imprudent mistress
thought she had effaced by purchasing for the disknighted chevalier an
estate, and putting him in full possession of the rights and dignity of
lord of the manor.
Early in 1817 the Princess repaired to Carlsruhe, on a visit to the
Grand Duke of Baden. She was received courteously, but not warmly
enough to induce her to make a long sojourn. This Duke was not anxious
to detain a guest so eccentric. Lord Redesdale told Miss Wynn, who set
the story down in her ‘Diaries,’ that ‘when the Princess was at Baden,
and the Grand Duke made a _partie de chasse_ for her, she appeared
on horseback with a half pumpkin on her head. Upon the Grand Duke’s
expressing astonishment, and recommending a _coiffeur_ rather less
extraordinary, she only replied that the weather was hot, and that
nothing kept the head so cool and comfortable as a pumpkin. Her next
point was Vienna, from which city she had frightened Lord Stewart, the
British ambassador, by an intimation that she was coming to take up her
residence with him, and to demand satisfaction for the insults to which
she had been subjected by persons who were spies upon her conduct.
She experienced nothing but what she might have expected in Vienna--
a contemptuous neglect; and soon quitting that city she repaired to
Trieste, and tarried long enough there to compel the least scrupulous
to think that, if she possessed the most handsome of chamberlains,
she was herself the weakest and least wise of ladies. He was now her
constant and almost only attendant in public. English families had
long ceased to show her any respect. They could not manifest it for a
woman who, by courting an evil reputation, evidently did not respect
herself. What was her being innocent, if she always so acted as to make
herself appear guilty? She might as well have asserted that her openly
attending Mass with Bergami was not to be taken as proof of her being a
very indifferent Protestant.
She became in every sense of the word a mere wanderer, apparently
without object, save flying from the memories which she could not
cast off. She was constantly changing her residence--so constantly
as to make her career somewhat difficult to follow; but we know that
she was residing at Pescaro when she received intelligence which she
least expected, and which deeply affected her. During her absence from
England her daughter had married Prince Leopold, and the mother had
hoped to find friends at least in this pair, if not now, at some future
period. But now she had heard that her child and her child’s child were
dead. ‘I have not only,’ she wrote to a friend in England, ‘to lament
an ever-beloved child, but one most warmly attached friend, and the
only one I have had in England; but she is only gone before--I have
not lost her, and I now trust we shall soon meet in a much better world
than the present one. For ever your truly sincere friend, C. P.’
This calamity, however, had no effect in rendering the writer more
circumspect. Her course of life, without being one of the gross guilt
it was described, was certainly one not creditable to her. Exaggerated
reports, which grew as they were circulated, startled the ears of
her friends and gladdened the hearts of her enemies. They were at
their very worst when, in 1820, George III. ended his long reign, and
Caroline Princess of Wales became Queen-consort of England.
As a sample of the effect produced by the above-named reports the
following, from a letter by Lady Charleville to Lady Morgan, in
February 1820, may be quoted:--‘The report of all travellers who have
had any knowledge of the Princess of Wales renders it imperative that
such a woman should not preside in Great Britain over its honest and
virtuous daughters, and something is to be done to prevent it.’ In
April of the same year Lady Morgan was in Rome, and she wrote thence
to Lady Clarke more favourably: ‘We have Queen Caroline here; at first
this made a great fuss, whether she was or was not to be visited by
her subjects, when, lo! she refused to see any of them, and leads the
most perfectly retired life! We met her one day driving out in a state
truly royal; I never saw her so splendid. Young Austin followed in an
open carriage; he is an interesting-looking young man. She happened
to arrive at an inn near Rome when Lord and Lady Leitrim were there.
She sent for them, and invited them to tea. Lady Leitrim told me her
manner was perfect, and altogether she was a most improved woman. The
Baron attended her at tea, but merely as a chamberlain, and was not
introduced. Before you receive this; if accounts be true, her Majesty
will be in England.’
The Roman authorities treated her with scant courtesy. As soon as the
death of almost the only friend she ever had in England, George III.,
was certified, Cardinal Gonzalvi, refusing to recognise in her person a
Queen of Great Britain, sent her passport to her as Princess Caroline
of Brunswick.