Princesses (51 page)

But it was not Elizabeth who had eaten that wedding cake to effect. Princess Charlotte,
nearly
thirty years her aunt's junior – barely come out, at seventeen – was suddenly mooted as a bride. For in August 1813 the Hereditary Prince of Orange brought despatches to the Regent from his patron, Arthur Wellington, that announced a great victory over Marshal Soult's forces in the Pyrenees. And the Regent seized his appearance in London to impress upon his daughter the dynastic opportunities of marriage to this unprepossessing boy, Prince William of Orange. Lord Yarmouth was sent as his emissary, to tell Charlotte that all must wish her to be ‘well together' with her father. The Regent's sisters Elizabeth and Mary – whom Yarmouth called ‘intriguantes in every way except being women of gallantry which might be the case too, but there he did not
meddle'
– governed her father now, he said. How much more easily might she do so, Yarmouth wheedled, with so superior an understanding? But until Charlotte was
married,
with her own establishment, how could it be, he sighed?

At first Princess Charlotte resisted. She might say she was free of her mother's influence, but Caroline had stigmatized the Oranges, when they lived in exile at Hampton Court before proceeding to Berlin, as ‘intriguing and violent'. Furthermore, a friend in London who met the Prince said Charlotte would think him ‘frightful… as thin as a needle. His hair excessively fair, to match a complexion that is burnt brown by the sun; eyes that have no expression at all, but
fine
teeth that stick excessively out in
front.'
And so Charlotte declared herself at Frogmore one August afternoon, to another of the Regent's emissaries, ‘very much in favour and in preference for everyone to the Duke of Gloucester'. She wrote to her confidante Miss Mercer Elphinstone, ‘I added that I had considered it long and in no hurry,
and was convinced of the propriety.' ‘Good God, I can hardly believe you are serious,' came the reply of her father's deputy. The Duke of Gloucester's attachment to her aunt Mary was common rumour. And Charlotte, well pleased with her effect, ‘laughed heartily after they were gone'. Even the reminder that she could not marry the Duke of Gloucester if the Prince forbade it did not disconcert her. ‘I assured them nothing was so easy as to make a public declaration that I would never marry anyone
else.'

Two months later, the Regent held forth to his daughter so strongly and in such indecent language against the Duke of Gloucester, her supposed object of affection, that she hardly knew which way to look – ‘especially as he repeated it twice over'. He accused her of being in love with the Duke of Devonshire – whom, as it happened, the Duke of Clarence favoured that winter as a groom for his illegitimate daughter, Sophia Fitzclarence. But eventually, on the
advice
of Lord Grey, the Whig leader, who counselled that opposition to her father must not commence her public life – ‘which God grant may be long and
glorious'
– Charlotte accepted her fate. Her aunt Mary advised her to marry – although she did not promote ‘Slice', as Gloucester was known, but rather ‘the Orange'. And Charlotte had an interview in December with William, whom she described as ‘shy, very plain, but he was so lively and animated that it quite went off'. When it was done, the Regent took her into the other room, and, on his asking what she said to it, she hesitated. He was ‘so alarmed that he cried out: “Then it will not do”.' When Charlotte indicated, rather, that she approved what she had seen, he exclaimed in still greater agitation, ‘You make me the happiest person in the world.' And without a second's pause he called in the young Prince, ‘took us both into another room and fianced us, to my surprise'. He took their hands and joined them and gave them his blessing. ‘And when it was over, and I was walking
with him
[William of Orange], we were both so excessively astonished that we could hardly believe it was true,' Charlotte ended her tale.

‘Whether it was summer or in spring', his daughter was ‘equally to be married', the Regent told his mother days later on Christmas Eve at Windsor after she had expressed her surprise at the heady course of events. And when the Queen attempted to give her granddaughter some ‘good advice', the Prince was no less impatient. The royal family was gathered to attend Charlotte's confirmation, which had been planned rather more carefully than her engagement. Not surprisingly, at the end of her confirmation, ‘so awful a ceremony that I felt during it and afterwards exceedingly agitated', Princess Charlotte saw ‘traces of agitation visible upon all their
faces'
when her family greeted her.

But the match, so suddenly come forward, so urgently forwarded, was not destined to stick. Charlotte worried about a black box containing her letters to her admirer Captain Hesse which Mercer seemed unable to extract from him. She worried about her mother, ‘a very unhappy and a very unfortunate woman who has had great
errors
but is really oppressed and cruelly
used.'
She worried about her aunt Sophia, especially when Dr Baillie, her mother's doctor, said that ‘he saw … no end to her illness … that hers and Amelia's sickness were precisely the same, though not originating from the same causes… having no digestion at all it is greatly to be feared she will sink under it, having so little
strength.'
It seemed that no medicines would remain in Sophia's stomach.

Charlotte also worried that Mr Augustus d'Este, her uncle the Duke of Sussex's son by Lady Augusta Murray, was quite her ‘shade'. All the previous summer he had pursued her on her daily drives in the Park in her tilbury; now he was again in evidence, for instance, at the Chapel Royal – ‘opposite to me the whole time of service, never taking his eyes off me and imitating every motion of
mine.'
When she went to Kensington Palace to see her mother, where the Duke of Sussex also had apartments, d'Este was ‘planted behind one of the pillars of the colonnade watching me'. An extravagant letter from the boy – Charlotte took exception to her bastard cousin's use of his father's royal crest – finished the matter, for she sent it to her uncle Sussex with a request to be no further disturbed.

In June 1814, the Prince of Orange reappeared to play a part in the fetes in London that marked the Allied victories culminating in the imprisonment of Napoleon on Elba, and the successful restoration of the Bourbons to France. All the French princes paraded, and the King of Prussia came with his general, Blücher, who was loudly cheered. The Russian Emperor, Alexander, and his sister, Grand Duchess Catherine (widow of Prince Peter of Oldenburg, son of the Prince of the same name who had once wooed the Princess Royal), came, and put up at Pulteney's Hotel. The Prince Regent did not dare visit them there for fear of being hissed, of which the Grand Duchess declared herself very glad. She had come to London with a thought of marrying the Regent, but took a strong dislike to him. The Hereditary Prince of Württemberg, though a married man with children, attracted her instead.

The Prince of Orange, whose father had been restored to the throne of Holland the previous winter, and the Hereditary Prince of Württemberg – and his brother Paul – were among countless young princes who made their way to London this June, to begin the jockeying for position in the new Europe that would be continued at the Peace Congress to be held in
Vienna shortly thereafter. A handsome prince in the Russian service, Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, made Princess Charlotte's acquaintance when she visited the Grand Duchess, and asked if he might wait on her. His brother was much in favour with the King of Prussia, and his sister was married to the Prince of Leiningen, but his – successful – effrontery was noticed, given that Charlotte was engaged to the Hereditary Prince of Orange. No one knew that, among the mêlée of princes, and while engaged to William, Charlotte had also met and given her heart to Augustus Frederick, a nefarious cousin of the Prussian King.

Meanwhile, Charlotte's aunts were not without visitors during these days of fêtes and celebrations. And their sister Royal had written to Lady Harcourt from Ludwigsburg that she hoped ‘the various visits which will take place in England will… have some influence on my sisters' future
situation
. This is a subject I have much at heart, and trust the Almighty will bless them and reward them already in this world for all they have gone through …' She herself had had to decline her brother's invitation to join the imperial and royal visitors in London, as she was ‘so very apt to be sick in a shut carriage and off and on constantly spit blood with a violent spasmodic
cough.'
Sir Thomas Tyrwhitt, the Regent's envoy, believed that the cough was a pretext and that Royal's husband was furious not to have been addressed on the matter himself. But Royal begged him not to pursue the matter – she said she would be the loser for it. And still she prayed daily that her sisters might yet have a chance to marry.

In 1788, as we have seen, only days before the King of England became ill for the first time, he had said he would take his daughters to Hanover, there hold a court, and invite all the German princes to attend. His daughters might choose whom they wished, within moderation. Now the German and other princes had come instead to England – and, with Princess Charlotte affianced, they looked afresh at her older aunts. The King of Prussia was seeking a bride to act as mother to the seven children his adored wife Louise had left him. The Russian royalties were scouting for brides for their brothers, the grand dukes. Dynastic alliance with England, above all, rather than heirs and maidenly charms was what was desired at this time of acute anxiety on the part of all the imperial and royal houses of Europe.

Princess Elizabeth had remained at Windsor while her brother led a great party of emperors and kings and generals to the Ascot races: ‘I went into my room to sit in my great chair with my books, my papers and writing things, intending to employ
myself
all day.' About three o'clock she was startled to receive a note from Mary, written at the race ground. The
Emperor Alexander of Russia and his sister, the Grand Duchess of Oldenburg, were on their way to visit her.

Elizabeth dressed and summoned her wits to entertain her distinguished visitors, no doubt making something of the connection between them – her brother-in-law the King of Württemberg being their maternal uncle. ‘When they were gone I sat down to recover myself,' the invalid wrote. The next moment, the door opened and from without ‘they said, the King of Prussia'. This time there was a double connection to explore. Louise, the adored wife of Frederick William III, had been Queen Charlotte's niece, and he himself was half-brother to the dear Duchess of York. ‘I almost dropt,' she wrote the following day, ‘for I did not expect him. He is very shy, very modest, looks manly, good and melancholy … you will allow it was awkward for me, as we had never met and there was no soul to introduce either him to me or me to him.' It gave her the ‘headache
ferociously.'

Although Elizabeth did not know it, her sister's stepson, Prince Paul of Württemberg – first cousin of the Emperor and Grand Duchess, and the Princess of Wales's nephew for good measure – had behaved shockingly that day at Ascot. He got the Hereditary Prince of Orange blind drunk, for the second time. The first time, at Carlton House, Princess Charlotte had been present to observe it. The Prince's stepmother, Royal, disclaimed all responsibility from Ludwigsburg, telling the Regent that she had warned him in April that they could not be answerable for Prince Paul's conduct. ‘For thirteen years he has done nothing but offend his father by the improprieties of his conduct.' But Princess Charlotte seized on the displays to refuse outright to marry the Hereditary Prince of Orange. She was as summary with him in this great matter of state as she had been with young d'Este. She wrote to her aunt Mary of ‘an explanation which took place between me and the Prince of Orange and which terminated in a manner which will, I fear, give you pain; but in my situation it was unavoidable. Our engagement is at an end …'

The real truth was that Charlotte feared she would be forced to live in The Hague, and she felt very strongly that her presence in England was her mother's protection against further designs – divorce, persecution – that she was aware her father meditated once she was gone. If she also felt that her father's remarriage and the birth of a son – an heir apparent – might follow divorce, it was hardly surprising.

There were so many advisers pressing in with information and hypotheses on this unfortunate young Princess – ranging from her father and his government to her uncles Sussex and Kent, to Lord Grey and Mercer
Elphinstone for the Whigs, to her mother's lawyer Henry Brougham. And then there were the visiting dignitaries who put a finger in the pie, such as the Duchess of Oldenburg, the Tsar's sister, who saw Holland as a useful Russian satellite and wanted the Prince of Orange as a bridegroom for her own sister. In the midst of it all was Charlotte, with her jutting
bosom
and hips and her fresh face and chestnut ringlets – outfacing her father's wrath, and, as it happened, utterly in love with Augustus Frederick of Prussia, whom Miss Knight had allowed into Warwick House after Princess Charlotte had asked him to come and visit her.

The hothouse atmosphere of royal London exploded when the Regent appeared at Warwick House, demanding to see his daughter. Miss Knight said, on the Princess's instructions, that she was too ill with a swollen knee to descend, but then offended the Prince by saying she must contradict a report that Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, an officer in the Russian service, had been secretly visiting Warwick House. The Regent said grimly that he knew that rumour to be false, and that equally he knew of a certain Prussian prince who had been the visitor in question. A
distressed
Charlotte then learnt she was to be incarcerated with elderly ladies of the Queen's in a lodge in Windsor Great Park for her criminality in receiving Augustus and rejecting William of Orange. Seeking sanctuary she fled by hackney carriage, bad knee or no bad knee, to her mother, the Princess of Wales at her house in Bayswater, Connaught House.