A CHILD BRIDE.
Just about this time (1735), a very important event indeed occurred;
the King took a new mistress!
He made his triennial visit to Hanover this year, and became smitten
with the charms of a young German lady named Walmoden. This middle-aged
Don Juan--he was getting on, he was fifty-two--induced this estimable
lady to leave her husband for the trifling consideration of a thousand
ducats.
Madame Walmoden was a great niece of the Countess von Platen who had
been one of the mistresses of George the First, and consequently had
a good strain of the courtesan in her blood before she disposed of
herself for the aforesaid thousand ducats.
Little George at once wrote off to his wife in England and told her all
about it, just as if he had bought a new horse; he did not scruple to
describe the person of his new purchase to his wife, minutely. He even
solicited his wife’s affection for her! A curious race these Hanoverian
Kings!
Further, George did not scamp the details of his amour in his letters
to his wife, which were immensely long and always written in French,
which he apparently considered a language more fitted for descriptions
of love affairs; _his_ sort of love affairs at any rate. This is a
sample of one of his letters written concerning the inviting to England
by the Queen (which he besought her to contrive) of a certain Princess
of Modena, a daughter of a late Regent of France, to whom he had the
greatest possible inclination to pay his addresses, particularly
because he understood she was not at all particular from whom she
received such marks of favour. “Un plaisir,” he wrote, “que je suis
sûr, ma chère Caroline, vous serez bien aise de me procurer, quand je
vous dis combien je le souhaite!”
According to Lord Hervey, the Queen’s confidant, the general opinion
was that Madame Walmoden, the King’s new mistress, would oust the Queen
from her influence, but the diplomatic Caroline rose to the occasion.
She, to retain her power, expressed the utmost interest in the King’s
new mistress, and awaited further details with impatience. She got
them.[30] Not in such a manner as a profligate husband would write in
our days, even to a mistress debased enough to read such letters, but
hot and strong in the terms of Shakespeare expressed in French.
So far from being offended, the Queen replied in the same strain,
equalling in every respect her husband’s flights of fancy in the
regions of Venus.
It is this correspondence between Caroline and the King, coupled with
her very objectionable letters to the Duchess of Orleans, which have
caused many writers to take exception to the remark of Lord Mahon,
which described this Queen’s character as “without a blemish.” At any
rate it gives us an insight into the private life of the mother of
our Prince Frederick, and accounts perhaps for some of her unnatural
conduct towards him, for where there is not purity of mind, how can
there be purity of motherly affection?
Again, a mind which could take pleasure daily in the conversation of
such a man as Lord Hervey--epigrammatic though that conversation might
be--could not be expected to contain the natural solicitude which a
loving parent would have for her first-born son.
The little King, however, was having a particularly effulgent time
in Hanover with his new light o’ love, a time which he kept up, not
exactly religiously, until the very night before he left for England,
when standing glass in hand at a supper party on that eventful evening
he pledged himself to Madame Walmoden and the other demireps forming
the company to return without fail on the following 29th May.
Upon hearing of which promise some short time after, Sir Robert
Walpole, his sturdy Prime Minister, remarked: “He wants to go to
Hanover, does he”? he asked, when Lord Hervey told him of it, “and to
be there by the 29th May? Well, he shan’t go for all that.”
So much did the King enjoy his revels in Hanover that he had paintings
made of them, each containing portraits, sent them to England and had
them hung up in his wife’s dressing room! She must have enjoyed the
privilege!
So George returned to England and made himself exceedingly disagreeable
to his wife when he got there, as a testy love-sick gentleman of
fifty-two might be expected to do who had recently left a new and
youngish lady-love hundreds of miles behind. For the time being
Caroline and the English bored him; with regard to the latter he
expressed himself as follows: “No English, or French cook could dress
a dinner; no English confectioner set out a dessert; no English player
could act; no English coachman could drive, no English jockey ride,
nor were any English horses fit to be drove or fit to be ridden; no
Englishman knew how to come into a room, nor any English woman how to
dress herself.”[31]
How this particular strain of English King must have degenerated since
James the First’s daughter made a _mésalliance_ and married the King of
Bohemia!
But the little King had not wasted all his time in Hanover, he had seen
a Princess--the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha--whom he thought would
do for a daughter-in-law, and had straightway communicated this fact to
his Queen, mixed up with accounts of his own prowess on the field of
love, in a less innocent direction.
No sooner, however, had the King set foot in England, than the Prince
of Wales, urged to this filial act of duty by Doddington, put in an
appearance at one of his father’s first Levees, from which functions
he had absented himself for a considerable time. His father, however,
once more scented mischief in the air, and once more his olfactory
nerves had not led him astray. Frederick at once renewed his demands,
this time asking for his full allowance of £100,000 a year, a separate
establishment, and--a wife. The Prince was insistent.
There can be little doubt from an incident which followed that in this
demand for a wife, the Prince had in his mind his old love, his cousin
Wilhelmina, still unmarried.
The King, his father, however, had no intention whatever of uniting his
son with that Princess; he and the King of Prussia had been quarrelling
for years, even going the length of challenging one another to single
combat, an encounter which would have been exceedingly grotesque but
for the redeeming point that though George the Second was very little,
yet he was undoubtedly plucky for his size, and would have given a
good account of himself in any case. But, “unfortunately,” as some
historians put it, no mortal combat came off, and Europe had to put
up with the two sovereigns for some years longer. The King, as usual,
talked the matter of his son’s request over with his Queen, especially
the part about the £100,000 a year, which her Majesty was dead against,
she had all along resisted the demand of the Prince of Wales for a
regular income, and this opposition being persevered in on her part had
undoubtedly made matters worse between them.
The King and Queen’s talk resulted in the conclusion that it would be
cheaper to marry him off and make him an allowance than to keep on
paying some of his debts, therefore having put their heads together for
the last time on the subject, they sent a message by five of the Privy
Council, proposing to the Prince of Wales a marriage with the Princess
Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, the young lady whom the King had seen when
abroad. But this was evidently not what the Prince expected, for this
is what happened.
In the first place more than a year after his coming to England, when
there had been a spark of revival in the double marriage scheme,
Frederick had written to Hotham, the Special Envoy in Berlin, on the
subject of Wilhelmina:
“Please, dear Hotham, get my marriage settled, my impatience increases
daily for I am quite foolishly in love!”[32]
There is something plaintive in this message, for whatever were his
faults, and they were numerous, yet this constancy to the girl he
wished to make his wife was honest and admirable, and had he been given
her, he might have become a different man. But Wilhelmina was a strange
girl, and in her diary, written long after, affects to think it was
only his characteristic obstinacy which caused the Prince to evince
such affection. Perhaps it was the old tale of the sourness of the
fruit which had not come her way.
When therefore the deputation of the five Privy Councillors from the
King waited upon the Prince of Wales and proposed to him a marriage
with the Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, they evidently threw him into
a state of consternation. It was not Augusta he wanted, but Wilhelmina,
his cousin.
He appears to have remonstrated with some heat[33] and then to have
sent for Baron Borck, the Prussian Minister.
To him he complained that his father, the King, was forcing him to
marry a lady he had never seen and to renounce all hopes of “a Prussian
Princess”--there could not be much doubt about the identity of this
Princess.
He requested him to lay this statement before the King of Prussia. He
expressed his heartfelt grief at not being allowed to take a wife from
a family which he loved more than his own, and to which, from infancy,
all his desires had been directed. He begged for the King of Prussia’s
favour and friendship notwithstanding, and deplored that he should
be denied his support. He complained, too, that he should still be
under the control of his father and mother, for it was a part of King
George’s scheme that the young married couple should live with him,
presumably to save expense.
All this and much more the excited young Prince appears to have
said, and he seems to have deplored the fact of the King of England
disdaining the friendship of such a great monarch as the King of
Prussia, which could only lead to the ruin of his, Prince Frederick’s,
house.
This impassioned appeal to his feelings affected even that astute
old diplomatist, Baron Borck, who with Lord Townshend, had gained
notoriety, by preventing the comic duel between the King of Prussia and
King George.
It is more than probable that Baron Borck gave the distressed young
Prince some fatherly advice and impressed upon him the hopelessness
of thinking any more of his cousin Wilhelmina. None knew better than
the Baron that such a marriage could never take place. In addition the
Queen informed her son--they still had some confidence in each other
left--that the King of Prussia had definitely refused to give him the
hand of his daughter.
Soon after, the Prince gave in, and accepted the marriage his father
had arranged for him, apparently in sheer desperation, and no doubt in
consequence of a little pressure being put upon him financially, for
his father gave him no fixed allowance then as it has been said, but
simply as much or as little as he chose.
The young man’s pleadings to Baron Borck, however, were not without
effect; the Baron wrote off at once to his master the King of Prussia,
and reported all the Prince of Wales’ messages, but as luck would
have it the letter fell into the hands of Walpole, who was not at all
above tampering with the Ambassador’s post bags, and the whole of the
Prince’s love ravings were communicated to the King, his father, whose
anger passed comprehension, especially about that part which referred
to his “disdaining the support of such a great monarch as the King of
Prussia” whom he hated, and his own ruin speedily following.
All this was no doubt stored up by the Royal couple against their
troublesome son, who seemed to be in ill-luck’s way. His parents were
determined. They had married off their daughter Anne, the Princess
Royal, in 1733 to the Prince of Orange, an amiable but deformed
gentleman who apparently married his royal wife--he was only Serene
himself--on the traditions of another Prince William of Orange who had
preceded him. A marriage the English King and Queen would have now.
Frederick was to marry the Princess Augusta, or go short, and it is not
at all surprising, considering all things, that he gave in.
With regard to the above-mentioned marriage of Frederick’s eldest
sister with the Prince of Orange, the way in which this unfortunate
man was treated could not have been a better testimony to the bad
breeding of King George and his wife. The poor Dutchman fell ill when
he landed in England, and lay in that state for months, during which
time the whole of the Royal Family were forbidden to go near him,
lest they should make him proud by having such an attention from a
“Royal” House as a sick visit. He was to be taught by little George
to understand that if he ever should receive any dignity at all, it
was not to be his own but a reflection from his marriage with a Royal
Princess of England. In addition, to make things more pleasant all
round--especially for the bride--he was given the name of “the Baboon”
by the King in the family circle, and the Queen generally graciously
referred to him as “that Animal.” All this was calculated to establish
the future happiness of the young couple on a firm and sound basis.
But to return to Frederick, it is very evident that he hesitated long
before he accepted the marriage his father proposed for him, until
in fact it was demonstrated to him that the desire of his heart was
unattainable; then he agreed in the following words: “whoever His
Majesty thought a proper match for his son would be agreeable to him,”
and the negotiations went forward forthwith.
The King, after an unusual struggle, had intimated--undoubtedly on
the initiative of the Queen, for she suggested everything, or at any
rate sanctioned everything before it passed through her hands--that he
intended to allow the Prince £50,000 per annum, which seems a large
sum to us considering the fact that the young couple were to live
with “his people,” but when the sum is dissected, and the huge taxes
deducted, the amount, as will be seen later, was not by any means too
great an income for a Prince of Wales at that time. The sum that the
young princess was to receive from her father’s grateful subjects of
Saxe-Gotha by way of income, did not transpire.
The Prince having given his reluctant consent to the marriage--and
there was something pitiable about it--little time was lost. Walpole
was most anxious to get the Prince married, perhaps he was glad to put
a final stop on the double marriage scheme which had worried him at
intervals for years. Lord Delaware was selected, principally on account
of his ugliness, to demand the hand of the Princess of Saxe-Gotha.
King George had recollections, perhaps, of a certain handsome Count
Königsmarck, who had played havoc in his father’s family, and was
taking no risks in that respect in the present instance. This long,
lank, unpolished nobleman shambled off to fetch the Princess Augusta,
leaving no jealous feeling in anybody’s heart, that he would play the
part of Paolo to the Princess’s Francesca.
There is no doubt whatever that the Princess Augusta was handsome;
certainly she was only seventeen, but gave promise of great beauty, she
was tall, slender, but naturally unformed and fresh from the schoolroom.
Now commenced a somewhat humorous episode. The little King George was
due to meet his dear Walmoden in Hanover on the 29th of the following
May according to promise--how he had endured the intervening months in
his state of middle-aged infatuation it is difficult to conceive--and
the staid, leisurely formalities of the marriage contract over which
the ungainly Delaware presided on behalf of the Prince in Saxe-Gotha,
were one long drawn out agony to the amorous little King of England,
whose deep-drawn sighs of love for his far-away German courtesan must
have been exceedingly gratifying to his wife, the Queen, to listen to,
she being perfectly informed from his own lips how matters stood. At
last King George sent word to Lord Delaware that if the Princess could
not arrive in England by the end of April, the marriage would either
have to be put off till the winter or take place without his presence.
This had the desired effect of hurrying the Princess, who was at the
time saying good-bye to her numerous girl friends, and of course having
her trousseau made. She forthwith set out alone, under the care of that
plain-featured nobleman who had been sent for her.
Poor child! It was a cheerless beginning to the festivities of a
marriage, coming alone without father or mother or relative of any sort
to a strange land to wed with a man she had never seen, and who did not
love her.
The etiquette of King George’s Court did not admit of a Prince of Wales
going to woo a Princess of such an inferior state as Saxe-Gotha; on
the contrary, she had to come to him, but it is said that the young
Princess came joyfully, dazzled by the prospect of becoming Queen of
England.
She arrived at Greenwich in the royal yacht, “William and Mary,” on
Sunday, April 25th, 1736, and was duly handed ashore by Lord Delaware,
who not being a lady’s man was no doubt glad to be rid of his charge.
There was, however, nobody there to meet her. King George did not
believe in, as the Irish say, “cocking up” these small “Serenities”
with too much attention, so she spent the night at Greenwich Palace
alone.
One is confused at this time with the number of royal palaces; St.
James’s, Richmond, Kew, Hampton Court, Leicester House, Kensington,
Greenwich, and Windsor Castle, which latter seemed to be very little
used.
The young Princess created a very favourable impression on the people
on landing; she was exceedingly amiable and engaging, and possessed all
the charm of youth. She showed herself to the people on the balcony of
the Palace and was very warmly received.
The poets were ready with plenty of verses for the young couple, of the
description following:
That pair in Eden ne’er reposed
Where groves more lovely grew;
Those groves in Eden ne’er enclosed
A lovelier pair than you.
Which somehow reminds one of the verses of Mr. Feeder, B.A., in “Dombey
and Son.”
Walpole made the following amusing remark upon it:--“I believe the
Princess will have more beauties bestowed upon her by the occasional
poets than even a painter would afford her. They will cook up a new
Pandora, and in the bottom of the box enclose Hope--that all they
have said is true. A great many, out of excess of good breeding, who
have heard that it was rude to talk Latin before women, proposed
complimenting her in English; which she will be much the better
for.[34] I doubt most of them instead of fearing their compositions
should not be understood, should fear they should; they wish they don’t
know what, to be read by they don’t know who.”
The next day after the landing of the Princess Augusta came the Prince,
and the meeting must have been an exceedingly interesting one to those
about them, especially to the populace who loved them both for their
amiability, and who cheered themselves hoarse in consequence whenever
they caught sight of the pair.
It is said that the Prince was very pleased with her, as indeed he
might well have been, for there is no doubt that she was a very
charming young girl, and what man--especially one of the Prince’s
temperament--would not have been pleased under the circumstances?
But after his impassioned appeal to Baron Borck, which occurred only
a few days before, it is impossible to believe that this child from
abroad--who by the bye brought a doll with her, poor dear--could have
effaced from Frederick’s heart the passion for his cousin Wilhelmina,
which had burned there for so many years, almost from his childhood.
And now the hour had come when she was to lose him for ever; perhaps
there were some tears shed in the private chamber of Wilhelmina in
far-away Berlin, for what girl likes to lose a devoted lover?
Meanwhile, the young Princess waited patiently at Greenwich Palace for
something to occur; she remained there it is said for forty-eight hours
without anyone coming near her, except the Prince, this being a result,
without doubt, of the King’s orders.
His Majesty, however, came down so far from his great altitude as to
send the poor little Princess a message from himself and his family:
“Their compliments, and they hoped she was well.”
This was being taken to the warm bosom of a loving family with a
vengeance! And yet the little Princess seemed to put up with it
without a murmur. Perhaps she confided all her disappointments to her
doll, and wept over them in secret with it, or what was still more
probable, they did things differently in Germany and it was no surprise
to her. Certainly the Royal Family could not have sent a barer message
if the Prince had been going to marry Cinderella.
The Prince, however, was a gentleman and certainly did his best to make
up for the coldness of his relatives whose excuse was that they were
so bound up with etiquette that until Augusta became Princess of Wales
they did not know upon what footing to treat her.
Frederick came down to Greenwich the next day after his first visit in
his state barge and dined with his bride elect; then he did the exact
thing to please a girl. He took her out for a row in his flag-bedecked
barge on the Thames, with a band playing sweet music before them, guns
firing from the river craft, and the people cheering them on the bank;
these seeing their bright young faces, thought how happy the Prince
of Wales must be, not knowing of course anything about his cousin
Wilhelmina over in Berlin.
It is not a far-fetched idea to imagine that the Prince thought of his
lost-love on that journey on the river--they went as far as the Tower
and back again--and wondered how she would have looked in the same
place beside him. It is just what a lover under such circumstances
could not well help doing.
[Illustration: _From “Caroline the Illustrious,” by permission of
Messrs, Longmans, Green & Co._
PRINCESS AUGUSTA.
Wife of Frederick, Prince of Wales.]
The account in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ for April, 1736, concludes
by saying that the happy couple returned to Greenwich together, and
“supped in public,” which meant that the young people took their meal
near an open window for the people to see them.
Certainly this must have been an enjoyable day for the young Princess,
during which probably she did not miss the presence of the King and
Queen, whose personality was pretty well known on the Continent.
The next day after this excursion, one of the Royal coaches was sent
down to Greenwich to bring the Princess up to Lambeth, where she
embarked in a royal barge and was rowed across the river to Whitehall.
Thence she was carried in one of Queen Caroline’s sedan chairs to the
garden entrance of St. James’s Palace, by a couple of stout carriers,
to the great content no doubt of the inhabitants of Westminster, who
were assembled there to see her.
Her reception at the palace is said to have been magnificent and
tasteful. Certainly the meeting itself of Frederick and Augusta was
very pretty and likely to impress the public and increase the young
people’s popularity with them.
On the arrival of the bride, Frederick was there to meet her and
gallantly assisted her from her chair. Then when she attempted to kneel
and kiss his hand, he prevented her, but instead drew her to him and
kissed her twice upon the lips before everybody, a proceeding no doubt
which gave satisfaction to all, including the Princess.
The picture of confusion and happiness, it is said the young couple
ascended the broad staircase of the Palace together hand in hand. Thus
they proceeded into the Presence Chamber crowded with courtiers of both
sexes.
Here, according to Lord Hervey, the Princess “threw herself all along
the floor, first at the King’s, then at the Queen’s feet,” and by
so doing greatly pleased little George, whose kingly brow had been
disfigured by wrinkles when she arrived, for she was a little late.
This act was considered by the Court as being so exceedingly tactful
that she was given the credit at once of being a girl of “propriety and
sense.”
But the King graciously raised her up and kissed her on both cheeks
with his royal arm round her. The Queen embraced her too, and the
remainder of the family did their best to make up for their neglect of
her at Greenwich.
This must have been a trying ordeal for the young Princess considering
that her wedding was to take place that very night at nine o’clock!
To avoid the question of precedence before Augusta became Princess of
Wales, the King and Queen decided that she should dine with the younger
members of the family, and this incident gave rise to a scene which
can only be regarded as exceedingly comic, and which gave the bride an
idea of what sort of a family she was marrying into.
Of course it must be remembered that the actors in this absurd scene
were all young, though the Prince was the eldest and certainly
twenty-nine.
For some reason, possibly by way of a joke, for he was extremely fond
of joking, _vide_ the Bubb Doddington incident, the Prince decreed that
at this meal, his brother and all his sisters should sit on stools
without any backs, whilst he and his bride luxuriated in arm-chairs
at the head of the table. Upon this the Duke of Cumberland, who was
fifteen, and the Princesses, refused to go into the Dining Chamber
until the stools were all removed--there ought to have been one for the
Princess Augusta’s doll--and chairs substituted in their place.
This formality being complied with, exception was taken by these young
royalties to the fact that the Prince of Wales and the bride were being
served on bended knee and they were not. This difficulty was got over
by their being allowed to be waited on by their own servants, who it is
presumed served them also on bended knee or in any other position in
which it pleased them to have their food handed to them.
But these young sticklers remained firm on one point, they would _not_
receive coffee from the Prince’s servants for fear they should “pass
some indignity upon them with the cups.” Altogether it was a scene
which was well fitted for a nursery, and no doubt heartily enjoyed by
Augusta who had just come away from one.
It is notable that the King, perhaps having an idea what this dinner
party of his children was likely to be, commanded that they were to
dine “undressed,” that is in their ordinary clothes, and not in the
grand paraphernalia of the wedding. This was probably a wise precaution.
The dinner and the various objections and counter-objections concerning
the etiquette to be observed at the meal occupied nearly all the
afternoon, so that when the time came for uprising, Augusta had barely
time to withdraw to her rooms, and commence that most important
dressing of a girl’s life, whether she be a princess or a ’prentice,
her wedding toilette.
FOOTNOTES:
[30] “Old Blackbourn, the Archbishop of York, told her,” _i.e._, the
Queen, “one day, that he had been talking to her Minister, Walpole,
about the new mistress, and was glad to find that Her Majesty was
so sensible a woman as to like her husband should divert himself.”
Walpole’s Memoirs, App., p. 446.
[31] Hervey’s Memoirs.
[32] End of 1729.
[33] Coxe’s Walpole.
[34] She could not understand a word of English.