It was an ill fate that brought Caroline, Princess of Brunswick-Wolfenbuettel to England to be the bride of George, Prince of Wales, one April day in the year 1795; although probably no woman has ever set forth on her bridal journey with a lighter or prouder heart, for, as she said, "Am I not going to be the wife of the handsomest Prince in the world?" If she had any momentary doubt of this, a glance at the miniature she carried in her bosom reassured her; for the pictured face that smiled at her was handsome as that of an Apollo.
No wonder the Princess's heart beat high with pride and pleasure during that last triumphal stage of her journey to her husband's arms; for he was not only the handsomest man, with "the best shaped leg in Europe,"
he was by common consent the "greatest gentleman" any Court could show.
Picture him as he made his first appearance at a Court ball. "His coat,"
we are told, "was of pink silk, with white cuffs; his waistcoat of white silk, embroidered with various-coloured foil and adorned with a profusion of French paste. And his hat was ornamented with two rows of steel beads, five thousand in number, with a button and a loop of the same metal, and cocked in a new military style." See young "Florizel" as he makes his smiling and gracious progress through the avenues of courtiers; note the winsomeness of his smiles, the inimitable grace of his bows, his pleasant, courtly words of recognition, and say if ever Royalty assumed a form more agreeable to the eye and captivating to the senses.
"Florizel" was indeed the most splendid Prince in the world, and the most "perfect gentleman." He was also, though his bride-to-be little knew it, the most dissolute man in Europe, the greatest gambler and voluptuary--a man who was as false to his friends as he was traitor to every woman who crossed his path, a man whom no appeal of honour or mercy could check in his selfish pursuit of pleasure.
"I look through al his life," Thackeray says, "and recognise but a bow and a grin. I try and take him to pieces, and find silk stockings, padding, stays, a coat with frogs and a fur col ar, a star and blue ribbon, a pocket handkerchief prodigiously scented, one of Truefitt's best nutty brown wigs reeking with oil, a set of teeth and a huge black stock, under-waistcoats, more under-waistcoats, and then--nothing.
French bal et-dancers, French cooks, horse-jockeys, buffoons, procuresses, tailors, boxers, fencing-masters, china, jewel and gimcrack-merchants--these were his real companions."
Such was the husband Princess Caroline came so light-heartedly, with laughter on her lips, from Brunswick to wed, little dreaming of the disillusion and tears that were to await her on the very threshold of the life to which she had looked forward with such high hopes.
We get the first glimpse of Caroline some twelve years earlier, when Sir John Stanley, who was making the grand tour, spent a few weeks at her father's Court. He speaks of her as a "beautiful girl of fourteen," and adds, "I did think and dream of her day and night at Brunswick, and for a year afterwards I saw her for hours three or fours times a week, but as a star out of my reach." Years later he met her again under sadly changed conditions. "One day only," he writes, "when dining with her and her mother at Blackheath, she smiled at something which had pleased her, and for an instant only I could have fancied she had been the Caroline of fourteen years old--the lovely, pretty Caroline, the girl my eyes had so often rested on, with light and powdered hair hanging in curls on her neck, the lips from which only sweet words seemed as if they would flow, with looks animated, and always simply and modestly dressed."
Lady Charlotte Campbell, too, gives us a glimpse of her in these early and happier years, before sorrow had laid its defacing hand on her. "The Princess was in her early youth a pretty girl," Lady Charlotte says,
"with fine light hair--very delicately formed features, and a fine complexion--quick, glancing, penetrating eyes, long cut and rather smal in the head, which gave them much expression; and a remarkably delicately formed mouth."
It was in no happy home that the Princess had been cradled one May day in 1768. Her father, Charles William, Duke of Brunswick, was an austere soldier, too much absorbed in his military life and his mistress, to give much thought to his daughters. Her mother, the Duchess Augusta, sister of our own George III., was weak and small-minded, too much occupied in self-indulgence and scandal-talking to trouble about the training of her children.
Princess Caroline herself draws an unattractive picture of her home-life, in answer to Lady Charlotte Campbel 's question, "Were you sorry to leave Brunswick?" "Not at al ," was the answer; "I was sick tired of it, though I was sorry to leave my fader. I loved my fader dearly, better than any oder person. But dere were some unlucky tings in our Court which made my position difficult. My fader was most entirely attached to a lady for thirty years, who was in fact his mistress. She was the beautifullest creature and the cleverest, but, though my fader continued to pay my moder al possible respect, my poor moder could not suffer this attachment. And de consequence was, I did not know what to do between them; when I was civil to one, I was scolded by the other, and was very tired of being shuttlecock between them."
But in spite of these unfortunate home conditions Caroline appears to have spent a fairly happy girlhood, thanks to her exuberant spirits; and such faults as she developed were largely due to the lack of parental care, which left her training to servants. Thus she grew up with quite a shocking disregard of conventions, running wild like a young filly, and finding her pleasure and her companions in undesirable directions.
Strange stories are told of her girlish love affairs, which seem to have been indiscreet if nothing worse, while her beauty drew to her many a high-placed wooer, including the Prince of Orange and Prince George of Darmstadt, to all of whom she seems to have turned a cold shoulder.
But the wilful Princess was not to be left mistress of her own destiny.
One November day, in 1794, Lord Malmesbury arrived at the Brunswick Court to demand her hand for the Prince of Wales, whom his burden of debts and the necessity of providing an heir to the throne of England were at last driving reluctantly to the altar. And thus a new and dazzling future opened for her. To her parents nothing could have been more welcome than this prospect of a crown for their daughter; while to her it offered a release from a life that had become odious.
"The Princess Caroline much embarrassed on my first being presented to her," Malmesbury enters in his diary--"pretty face, not expressive of softness--her figure not graceful, fine eyes, good hands, tolerable teeth, fair hair and light eyebrows, good bust, short, with what the French call 'des epaules impertinentes,' vastly happy with her future expectations."
Such were Malmesbury's first impressions of the future Queen of England, whom it was his duty to prepare for her exalted station--a duty which he seems to have taken very seriously, even to the regulating of her toilette and her manners. Thus, a few days after setting eyes on her, his diary records: "She _will_ cal ladies whom she meets for the first time 'Mon coeur, ma chere, ma petite,' and I am obliged to rebuke and correct her." He lectures her on her undignified habit of whispering and giggling, and impresses on her the necessity of greater care in her attire, on more constant and thorough ablution, more frequent changes of linen, the care of her teeth, and so on--al of which admonitions she seems to have taken in excel ent part, with demure promises of amendment, until he is impelled to write, "Princess Caroline improves very much on a closer acquaintance--cheerful and loves laughing. If she can get rid of her gossiping habit she will do very wel ."
Thus a few months passed at the Brunswick Court. The ceremonial of betrothal took place in December--"Princess Caroline much affected, but replies distinctly and well"; the marriage-contract was signed, and final y on 28th March the Princess embarked for England on her journey to the unseen husband whose good-looks and splendour have filled her with such high expectations. That she had not yet learnt discretion, in spite of al Malmesbury's homilies, is proved by the fact that she spent the night on board in walking up and down the deck in the company of a handsome young naval officer, conduct which natural y gave cause for observation and suspicion in the affianced bride of the future King of England.
It was wel , perhaps, that she had snatched these few hours of innocent pleasure: for her first meeting with her future husband was wel calculated to scatter all her rosy dreams. Arrived at last at St James's Palace, "I immediately notified the arrival to the King and Prince of Wales," says Malmesbury; "the last came immediately. I accordingly introduced the Princess Caroline to him. She very properly attempted to kneel to him. He raised her graceful y enough, and embraced her, said barely one word, turned round and retired to a distant part of the apartment, and cal ing to me said: 'Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.' I said, 'Sir, had you not better have a glass of water?' Upon which he, much out of humour, said with an oath: 'No; I will go directly to the Queen,' and away he went. The Princess, left during this short moment alone, was in a state of astonishment; and, on my joining her, said, '_Mon Dieu_, is the Prince always like that? I find him very fat, and not at al as handsome as his portrait.'"
Such was the Princess's welcome to the arms of her handsome husband and to the Court over which she hoped to reign as Queen; nor did she receive much warmer hospitality from the Prince's family. The Queen, who had designed a very different bride for her eldest son, received her with scarcely disguised enmity, while the King, although, as he afterwards proved, kindly disposed towards her, treated her at first with an amiable indifference. And certainly her attitude seems to have been calculated to create an unfavourable impression on her new relatives and on the Court general y.
At the banquet which followed her reception, Malmesbury says, "I was far from satisfied with the Princess's behaviour. It was flippant, rattling, affecting raillery and wit, and throwing out coarse, vulgar hints about Lady----, who was present. The Prince was evidently disgusted, and this unfortunate dinner fixed his dislike, which, when left to herself, the Princess had not the talent to remove; but by still observing the same giddy manners and attempts at cleverness and coarse sarcasm, increased it till it became positive hatred."
"What," as Thackeray asks, "could be expected from a wedding which had such a beginning--from such a bridegroom and such a bride? Malmesbury tel s us how the Prince reeled into the Chapel Royal to be married on the evening of Wednesday, the 8th of April; and how he hiccuped out his vows of fidelity." "My brother," John, Duke of Bedford, records, "was one of the two unmarried dukes who supported the Prince at the ceremony, and he had need of his support; for my brother told me the Prince was so drunk that he could scarcely support himself from falling. He told my brother that he had drunk several glasses of brandy to enable him to go through the ceremony. There is no doubt that it was a _compulsory_
marriage."
With such an overture, we are not surprised to learn that the Royal bridegroom spent his wedding-night in a state of stupor on the floor of his bedroom; or that at dawn, when he had slept off the effects of his debauch, "pages heard cries proceeding from the nuptial chamber, and shortly afterwards saw the bridegroom rush out violently."
Nor, we may be sure, was the Prince's undisguised hatred of his bride in any way mitigated by the stories which Lady Jersey and others of hex rivals poured into his willing ears--stories of her attachment to a young German Prince whom she was not al owed to marry; of a mysterious illness, fol owed by a few weeks' retreat; of that midnight promenade with the young naval officer; of assignations with Major Toebingen, the handsomest soldier in Europe, who so proudly wore the amethyst tie-pin she had presented to him--these and many another story which reflected none too wel on her reputation before he had set eyes on her. But it needed no such whispered scandal to strengthen his hatred of a bride who personal y repelled him, and who had been forced on him at a time when his heart was ful y engaged with his lawful wedded wife, Mrs Fitzherbert, when it was not straying to Lady Jersey, to "Perdita" or others of his legion of lights-o'-love.
From the first day the ill-fated union was doomed. One violent scene succeeded another, until, before she had been two months a wife, the Prince declared that he would no longer live with her. He would only wait until her child was born; then he would formal y and final y leave her. Thus, three months after the birth of the Princess Charlotte, the deed of separation was signed, and Caroline was at last free to escape from a Court which she had grown to detest, with good reason, and from a husband whose brutalities and infidelities filled her with loathing.
She carried with her, however, this consolation, that the "great, hearty people of England loved and pitied her." "God bless you! we will bring your husband back to you," was among the many cries that greeted her as she left the palace on her way to exile. But, to quote Thackeray again,
"they could not bring that husband back; they could not cleanse that selfish heart. Was hers the only one he had wounded? Steeped in selfishness, impotent for faithful attachment and manly enduring love--had it not survived remorse, was it not accustomed to desertion?"
For a time the outcast Princess, with her infant daughter, led a retired life amid the peace and beauty of Blackheath, where she lived as simply as any bourgeoise, playing the "lady bountiful" to the poor among her neighbours. Her chief pleasure seems to have been to surround herself with cottage babies, converting Montague House into a "positive nursery, littered up with cradles, swaddling-bands, feeding bottles, and other things of the kind."
But even to this rustic retirement watchful eyes and slanderous tongues fol owed her; and it was not long before stories were passing from mouth to mouth in the Court of strange doings at Blackheath. The Princess, it was said, had become very intimate with Sir John Douglas and his lady, her near neighbours, and more especial y with Sydney Smith, a good-looking naval captain, who shared the Douglas home, a man, moreover, with whom she had had suspicious relations at her father's Court many years earlier. It was rumoured that Captain Smith was a frequent and too welcome guest at Montague House, at hours when discreet ladies are not in the habit of receiving their male friends. Nor was the handsome captain the only friend thus unconventional y entertained.
There was another good-looking naval officer, a Captain Manby, and also Sir Thomas Lawrence, the famous painter, both of whom were admitted to a suspicious intimacy with the Princess of Wales.
These rumours, sufficiently disquieting in themselves, were followed by stories of the concealed birth of a child, who had come mysteriously to swel the numbers of the Princess's proteges of the creche. Even King George, whose sympathy with his heir's ill-used wife was a matter of common knowledge, could not overlook a charge so grave as this. It must be investigated in the interests of the State, as well as of his family's honour; and, by his orders, a Commission of Peers was appointed to examine into the matter and ascertain the truth.
The inquiry--the "Delicate Investigation" as it was appropriately called--opened in June, 1806, and witness after witness, from the Douglases to Robert Bidgood, a groom, gave evidence which more or less supported the charges of infidelity and concealment. The result of the investigation, however, was a verdict of acquittal, the Commissioners reporting that the Princess, although innocent, had been guilty of very indiscreet conduct--and this verdict the Privy Council confirmed.
For the Princess it was a triumphant vindication, which was hailed with acclamation throughout the country. Even the Royal family showed their satisfaction by formal visits of congratulation to the Princess, from the King himself to the Duke of Cumberland who conducted his sister-in-law on a visit to the Court.
But the days of Blackheath and the amateur nursery were at an end. The Princess returned to London, and found a more suitable home in Kensington Palace for some years, where she held her Court in rivalry of that of her husband at Carlton House. Here she was subjected to every affront and slight by the Prince and his set that the ingenuity of hatred could devise, and to crown her humiliation and isolation, her daughter Charlotte was taken from her and forbidden even to recognise her when their carriages passed in the street or park.
Can we wonder that, under such remorseless persecutions, the Princess became more and more defiant; that she gave herself up to a life of recklessness and extravagance; that, more and more isolated from her own world, she sought her pleasure and her companions in undesirable quarters, finding her chief intimates in a family of Italian musicians; or that finally, heart-broken and despairing, she determined once for all to shake off the dust of a land that had treated her so cruel y?
In August, 1814, with the approval of King and Parliament, the Princess left England to begin a career of amazing adventures and indiscretions, the story of which is one of the most remarkable in history.