Princesses (11 page)

Rather more revealing is the following scrawl by the same author written from Kew House:

My dear Miss Hamilton, I am very sorry for the blow I gave to you the night before last. I am very sorry indeed, and promise you I won't do so any more. I have written to Gouly and she has forgiven me, because I have been very good with every body and her too, and I learnt very well with Monsieur Guiffardière. I read very well, and I said my verses well also. I beg you will forgive me, for indeed I will be very good to you, and I will mind every thing you bid me. I am very sorry that I hurt Miss Gouldsworthy. I promise you I won't do so any more. But I hope I have not hurt you, and I was very sorry to find you put brown paper and arquebade upon your breast. I hope it will be of no consequence to you for I assure you that if it is, it will make me very unhappy. I am your ever affectionate Augusta Sophia.

And early in their acquaintance, discovering a taste for writing and for finding new correspondents, Princess Augusta wrote, while sitting with Miss Hamilton, a letter to her companion's mother in Derbyshire: ‘My dear Madam, I hope that you are well Miss Ham sends her love to you but pray don't forget to write to Miss Ham. Madam I am your most obedient servant AS.' But then, apparently dissatisfied with these formal pleasantries,
she added on the front: ‘28 November 1777, London, at night. Madam, Miss Ham. has a very bad headache, but for all that, she sat down and has writ you a very long letter and I shall be very angry with you if you don't thank her.' And finally, on the back fold, she added:

Dialogue between Clare and Eloise at Lambeth in Cornwall.

E: My dear friend, I had the pleasure to see your little brother last night.

Pray, has not he got a wig, for he had something like one?

C: He had, my dear, for he did tear his hair off his head. He is very sorry now that he has tore his hair off his head.

E: He was very handsome before he had that trick.

C: So he was.

And there the dialogue ends, with a note from the dramatist, ‘And good night, I am very
sleepy.'

The Princess Royal's letters to Miss Hamilton, on the other hand, like those she wrote to Mrs Compton, are full of threats and scolds and teases. ‘Princess Royal presents her compliments to Miss Hamilton,' she wrote shortly before Christmas 1777, ‘and begs to know why she would not kiss her last night.' And in the early part of the next year the Princess Royal, aged eleven, was in commanding form:

Madam, I am very sorry that you did not sleep well last night. I beg you will lay down and then not think of any thing but of a flock of sheep, and if you do not do that I shall not love you in the least, and I know that you will be very sorry for that, and if you do what I desire I will love you very much. Madam, your friend, Charlotte Augusta
Matilda
.

Miss Hamilton was quite up to such tricks, and called the eleven-year-old autocrat's bluff next morning. The Princess Royal had to concede: ‘Madam, Though you did not think last night of a flock of sheep, yet as you did sleep more than the night before, I will love you a little bit. Pray give my love to your mama.'

Brought to heel, the Princess Royal wrote three days later on 17 January, ‘My dear, I thank you for your note, and I hope you think I minded what you told me, and that it will encourage you to
continue
your correspondence
with me.'
And then she put a note in Miss Hamilton's workbag: ‘Day and night I always think of you, for I love and
esteem you.'
And she wrote again: ‘My dearest Hammy, I that love and adore you, think it very hard, that you will not kiss me today. I will tell you why I love you,' she added, attempting to subdue her feelings. ‘This is the reason, for it is that I think you have a good character.'

The awkward, hungry notes continued, sometimes twice a day. The Princess wrote late in January: ‘Ma chère, Je vous assure que je vous aime de tout mon Coeur et je vous prie d'avoir la bonté de m'accorder votre amitié et si vous avez cette bonté vous me rendrez fort
heureuse.'
But she had not finished there. On returning to the Queen's House that night from drinking tea at Gouly's apartment in St James's, the Princess Royal's first thought was of Miss Hamilton, who had had the evening off. And she sat down to write: ‘When we came home, only think, we went all three in Lady Charlotte's [sedan] chair, and she walked on the side. I hope you was much pleased with the play and the farce. I assure you of my love and promise you always to continue it.'

Romantically, the lovesick Princess signed another note a couple of days later, ‘your most affectionate unknown friend'. She sent her love to Miss Hamilton's mother in Derbyshire: ‘tell her that though I have not the happiness of knowing her, yet I love her because she belongs to you'. And she added, ‘Pray give me your love, for I wish for your love so much that I think you must give it to me, My dearest love, your little affectionate friend, Charlotte Augusta Matilda'. She returned to the theme two days later, afraid that she had made Miss Hamilton ill on some account. ‘Pray love me for I love you so much, and so it is fair. The publicans and sinners even loved those that loved them,' she wrote with muddled logic but clear-eyed determination.

Despite the Princess's declarations of affection, she made her attendant's life difficult in time-honoured fashion, as the following letter of 6 February shows: ‘My dearest Hammy, I am very sorry to have tormented and hurt you, in not learning my lesson for Monsieur de Guiffardière, but I promise you to do my utmost for to know it perfecdy
tomorrow.'
M. de Guiffardiere, a French émigré doctor of letters, had been chosen as the princesses' principal master this year, and he was to suffer much at their inky hands. Later this year Princess Augusta begged Miss Hamilton to ask M. de Guiffardière ‘to not tell that foolish thing I did this morning, for I promise that I won't do so any more'. (It had been a bad morning. Augusta was also seeking forgiveness from Gouly for ‘being so foolish this morning about my
rhubarb.'
) There would be more good intentions and inattention to follow from the princesses' younger sisters over the next decade. Inclined to lose his temper with poorly prepared pupils, in this opening year M. de Guiffardière was full of hope. Eventually beloved, he was to dedicate to his royal pupils his
Cours élémentaire d'histoire ancienne, à l'usage des LL. AA. Royales, Mesdames les Princesses de l'Angleterre,
published at Windsor in 1798.

The princesses had lost another long-standing teacher this year. Although a Miss Planta continued to be the elder princesses' English teacher, and to teach them other subjects including their own royal history, this was not Frederica Planta but her sister Margaret or Peggy. So discreet, so efficient and so self-effacing was the Planta family that when on 2 February 1778 Miss Frederica Planta died suddenly, she was immediately replaced by her younger sister. And her brother Joseph was only sorry to disturb the royal household with arrangements for removing his sister Frederica's body from the room it occupied at St James's
Palace
. As a Miss Planta continued to be the princesses' companion, sit, walk and sup with them, and draw the same salary, many people never noticed the substitution. Besides, there were so many attendants now for the royal children that it was difficult for anyone to keep up with them – except for the children themselves.

Miss Hamilton appears to have directed the energies of her emotional pupil the Princess Royal effectively back into her studies. Besides M. de Guiffardière and the new Miss Planta and Mlle Suzanne Moula, the French teacher who replaced Miss Krohme, the princesses had other tutors for specific subjects ranging from their writing master Mr Peter Roberts to their geography master Mr George Bolton, and to dancing and music masters. In addition, the Princess Royal and Princess Augusta continued to learn German with Mr Schrader. By the time the royal family took up residence at Kew for the summer months, the Princess Royal was writing on a more respectful note: ‘My dearest, I beg you will forgive me intruding upon your morning leisure, but must beg that tomorrow you will breakfast with me. I am very sorry to find that you have so bad a headache, and beg that if tomorrow you have such another you will not think of coming to my breakfast.'

Her mother the Queen believed the Princess Royal to be a steady, conscientious pupil, and indeed she was when interested. When she was twelve, in 1778, for the first time an artist, John Alexander Gresse – known in London as Jack Grease – was employed as drawing master to the princesses, and the Princess Royal found something of a métier. With Gresse and other art masters Royal began ‘drawing heads' every week, or copying Old Master profile drawings by Leonardo da Vinci and other heads by Italian and English eighteenth-century artists in her father's
library
. The results were creditable, and marked the beginning of a passion for drawing and painting copies of superior originals in the pursuit of artistic excellence – as Sir Joshua Reynolds in his fashionable
Discourses on Art
advised.

In March 1778, the French broke off diplomatic relations with England and the King was at work from six in the morning until midnight without
respite. ‘I speak, read and think of nothing but the war,' wrote Queen Charlotte with energy, having recovered quickly from the birth of Princess Sophia. ‘Je deviendrai politique
malgré moi.'
But busy King George III marked the birth of his fifth daughter – a round-headed, fair-haired baby with blue eyes – and sought Parliamentary provision in the spring of 1778 for the princesses and for his younger sons, which he had neglected to do until this point, and even for those of his brother Gloucester as princes and princesses of the blood. Although other woes would accrue to her lot, as she lay in her cradle round-faced Princess Sophia was assured of £6,000 a year for life, to be paid to her on marriage or on her father's death. Her brothers were to receive £8,000 on the same terms, and her cousins Prince William of Gloucester and Princess Sophia Matilda of Gloucester won respectively £6,000 and £4,000 on their own father's death.

The Queen wrote to the King in April 1778, ‘Dear little Minny [Mary] remains quite uneasy about not finding you anywhere in the house, every coach she sees is Papa coming and nothing satisfies her hardly but sitting at the window to
look for you.'
For the King spent much of the summer months of that year reviewing troops at camps in locations varying from the West Country to Warley Common in Essex and Cox Heath in Kent, visiting the fleet at Portsmouth and elsewhere, and making preparations. These covered the vexed subject of arrangements for the care of the royal family against a French invasion that became a real threat the following year.

But the family still found time for a fleeting visit to Windsor to inspect the Queen's Lodge. ‘It is astonishing to see the progress… since last year,' Miss Hamilton wrote; ‘it is a spacious elegant structure, though standing on a confined space of
ground.'
And the celebrated botanist Mrs Delany was lost in admiration at the effect of the Queen's interior decor: ‘The entrance into the first room [in the Queen's Lodge] was éblouissante after coming out of the sombre apartment in Windsor, all furnished with beautiful Indian paper, chairs covered with different embroideries of the liveliest colours, glasses,
tables,
sconces, in the best taste, the whole calculated to give the greatest cheerfulness to the place …' The Queen and the princesses – Mary and the baby Sophia included – all lodged with the King and necessary attendants at the unfinished house for the few days they were at Windsor this summer. The Queen was later to refer to a neighbour's unfinished country house as ‘unfurnished, unfinished, dirty and uncomfortable to the greatest degree', and to complain of it as not appearing ‘the least cheerful'. She expanded on her theme: ‘A thing the most essential in a country place, is its being cheerful; for else it is not worth
living at it.'

But the King was content, and surveyed energetically all the ‘improvements' in a smart new ‘Windsor uniform' – a blue coat with red collar and gold buttons – which he had devised, and which, it was decreed, not only he but all his sons and the equerries and male members of the ‘family' were always to wear while resident at that place. When a royal cavalcade of ‘fifty-six personages', counting the thirty-three servants in attendance, descended on the elderly Duchess of Portland and her companion Mrs Delany at Bulstrode, the King and all his ‘attendants' besides wore this smart new uniform ‘of blue and gold'. Bidden to Windsor the following day with the Duchess to meet the remaining royal children – seven only having accompanied their parents to Bulstrode – Mrs Delany does not record whether the King, appearing at the head of all his seven sons, again sported the ‘Windsor uniform'. But she described young Princess Mary as ‘a delightful little creature, curtseying and prattling to
everybody.'
And the child engaged Mrs Delany herself in conversation while they looked down from a bow window in the Castle at the crowds on the terrace below.

Mrs Cheveley – or Che Che, as she was known to the younger princes and princesses, who adored her – was the younger girls' nurse, and had been their elder brother Ernest's wet-nurse. Once described unforgettably as ‘rather handsome and of a showy appearance and a woman of exceeding
good sense',
she was very much the younger children's champion and took enormous pride in all their doings. She wrote after one visit to Windsor: ‘sweet Pss Mary has conquered and captivated every human being that has seen her. There never was a child so consummate in the art of pleasing, nor that could display herself to such
advantage.'
Prince Ernest was her other favourite; she called him ‘my boy', and described him approvingly as ‘rude', ‘big' and ‘noisy'. ‘I do not know that I have a right to hold the scales when Prince Ernest is to be
weighed …'
she wrote, admitting her partiality.