Charlotte & Leopold (13 page)

C
HAPTER
F
IFTEEN

‘Princess Charlotte Is Made of Ginger-bread'

C
HARLOTTE, HER LADIES
and her servants set out from Windsor for the town of Weymouth in a column of coaches on Friday, 9 September.

If she had forgotten the warmth of the crowd's reception on the day when her father opened Parliament, she was soon reminded. She was still the most popular member of the royal family. ‘Wherever I changed horses', she told Mercer, ‘there were people assembled to see me, & they all looked good humoured and took off their hats'. She stopped in Andover for an early dinner and then drove on to spend the night at the Antelope Inn in Salisbury, where, she was delighted to report, the ‘Bish-UP', as usual, was not in residence. She had to press through the crowd to get from her carriage to the inn, and in answer to their calls, she stood at her bedroom window for a long time with a candle held up so that they could see her.

Next day the party drove on through crowded towns and villages towards Weymouth. They stopped for dinner at Puddletown, where General Garth, who had gone ahead of them, had rented a house for himself. There was a young boy running around in the house, and the General, who said he was his adopted nephew Tom, told Charlotte after dinner that the boy would be ‘much mortified' if she did not take notice of him. ‘A heart of steel could not have refused that', wrote Charlotte, ‘for a
more lovely
boy was never beheld'.

Skinny old Lady Rosslyn and her nieces, whom Charlotte was now calling ‘Famine and the Consequences', were no longer in the room by then, but Lady Ilchester and Mrs Campbell were still there, and they were both shocked that the General had introduced the boy to the Princess.

If not also shocked, Charlotte was at least taken aback when she was told his true identity. Tom's mother was her favourite aunt, Princess Sophia, and General Garth was his father.

In the course of the next week all the ladies were surprised by the extent to which the strict old General spoiled the boy. He even allowed him to stay on for a few days after the new term had started at Harrow. But now that Charlotte knew who he was – and the General clearly knew that she knew – it was embarrassing for her to have him around. Everyone in Weymouth seemed to know who he was as well. People even gathered to have a look at him when he was taken into town to have his hair cut. As she told Mercer, Charlotte suspected that the General was making her feel uncomfortable on purpose, probably because it was an indirect way of getting his own back on her aunt for having spurned both him and their son. It was not Tom's fault, but Charlotte was relieved when he did at last go back to school.

When Charlotte reached Weymouth, the whole town was filled with people, and the military band that greeted her went on playing for an hour after she went into Gloucester Lodge. But the holiday began with what she saw as a bad omen.

The evening of her arrival, Charlotte was playing backgammon with the General when she noticed that the heart-shaped turquoise had fallen out of the ring that had been given to her by Prince August. She knew that it had still been there when she arrived at Gloucester Lodge, but she could not find it anywhere; and she never did, although the empty ring stayed on her finger throughout her stay in Weymouth. ‘You don't know for such an
apparent
trifle
what an effect
it has had on me', she told Mercer, ‘nor indeed how bitterly I have cried'. Charlotte was sure that the loss was a portent of ill fortune for her relationship with the Prussian Prince.

She had not had a letter from August since he left England, and she could not read the old ones because she had burned them. The only news of him came from Mercer, and most of that consisted of rumours that were soon contradicted. It was not true that he had secretly married a Miss Rumbold. Nor was it true that he had been appointed Governor of Saxony, which was also good news because, if he had been, he would never have been able to live in England.

Throughout the holiday Charlotte could only fantasise. She imagined August coming over and making a proposal to her father; and then she made herself anxious because she knew her father would refuse him. He would have to come over while Parliament was sitting. An appeal to Parliament would lead to a debate; a debate would be reported in the papers, and when the people read them they would be bound to support her against her father. If only August would make up his mind.

In one of her long outpourings to Mercer, however, Charlotte admitted that she was so miserable she might marry almost anyone. She would rather it was August. But if August did disappoint her, ‘The P. of S-C
decidedly would be accepted by me in preference to any other Prince I have seen.
'

When she read in the newspapers that there had been a quarrel between two young princes at the Vienna Congress, she fantasised again and imagined it was August and Leopold quarrelling over her.
After all, she insisted unconvincingly, they were ‘visibly' jealous of each other when they were in London.

To add to her worries, there was bad news about Charles Hesse, now a Captain. Although Mercer had enlisted her father's assistance, they had still failed to persuade him to send back any of Charlotte's letters or presents, and they had no hope of succeeding soon. The little hussar was not in England. According to the most reliable report, he had gone out to join Charlotte's mother and her reputedly dissolute touring party.

Yet Charlotte was determined to enjoy her holiday and put on a brave face for all the ‘good people' who came to look at her. For much of the time her mood was not far from the slightly hysterical merriment with which she greeted the law officers of the Crown during the melodrama at her mother's house.

She went to performances at the Theatre Royal and the occasional ball at the Assembly Rooms; she was allowed to give dinner parties, to which she invited some of the aristocracy and gentry who came to stay in rented houses or at Ressell's Royal Hotel. Like the General, one of the constant guests at these dinners was ‘the Great UP', who took a house for his family on the seafront.

On one Sunday Charlotte went to church and heard the ‘Bish-UP' preach a sermon for the first time. ‘I never heard so weak a voice & so bad a delivery', she wrote to Mercer. ‘It is enough to spoil the very best sermon that ever was composed.' But this was nothing compared with the sermon preached on another Sunday by the apparently famous Dr Dupré. This preacher went on for forty-five minutes without notes with so many ‘blunders' and ‘repetitions' that he ‘kept the whole pew in a
titter
'. Fortunately Charlotte was able to turn her head and hide her giggles inside one of the large bonnets made fashionable by the Grand Duchess Catherine.

There were expeditions to places of interest, such as Lulworth Castle and the monastery nearby. The monastery had been taken over by some Trappist monks who had been expelled from France
during the Revolution. Charlotte rang the bell and asked to be shown round, but the porter, who was the only monk who was allowed to speak, explained that women were not allowed into the monastery. Charlotte insisted. The porter went away and spoke to the Abbot. The Abbot remembered that their rule, which excluded women, allowed the admission of royalty.

So while all the other ladies waited outside, the brightly dressed Princess was taken in among the black and white habits, shown round the monastery and its gardens and given a humble meal of milk, brown bread, vegetables and rice, which was served in wooden cups and bowls.

When she was not sailing, Charlotte's lunch was usually whatever was available at an inn, or a picnic on a beach. At one of these picnics, on the pebbled beach between Portland and Bridport, some children climbed up from the water's edge to the high bank above the beach, so that they could get a good look at the Princess. With each step they dislodged showers of pebbles which tumbled down towards the royal party.

Charlotte called up to them. ‘Hallo, there! Princess Charlotte is made of ginger-bread. If you do that you'll break her.'

But Charlotte's favourite picnics were those that were served on deck when she was sailing, at which, according to one guest, she consumed large quantities of ‘roast beef…with plenty of mustard!'

In her love of the sea, Charlotte was much more like her uncle the Duke of Clarence than her father, who was always seasick. She adored sailing, and she had been allowed the use of the royal yacht, which, by happy coincidence, was named, as she was, after the Queen, the
Royal Charlotte.

One slightly rough afternoon when Charlotte and her party were out sailing, a third rate ship of the line, HMS
Leviathan
, which was anchored off Portland, sighted the royal yacht and fired a salute to her. The yacht hove to and signalled to the warship to send a boat. A boat was lowered and the captain himself came over in it to pay his
respects to the Princess. When Charlotte asked to inspect his ship, he was honoured to agree.

Charlotte, two ladies and the trembling ‘Bish-UP' climbed down to the boat and were rowed across through choppy water to the warship. By the time they reached her, to Charlotte's great amusement, they were all drenched.

As they went alongside, a chair was lowered on ropes from the great height of the main deck. But Charlotte refused to use it. She wanted to climb the steps on the ship's side like a seaman, and when she had done just that, she stood and watched while the Bishop and the ladies were hauled up one at a time in the chair.

By mid-October, when bad weather had brought an end to sailing, the doctors were able to report that Charlotte's health and spirits were much improved. Her knee was much better as well, as the climb up the side of
Leviathan
had demonstrated, and she had started to ride again. But it was not time to go home. The Regent was happy to have his daughter out of the way in Weymouth, and he kept her there for another two months.

There was less to do during those two months. With the hotel and the rented houses almost empty, there were fewer guests for dinner parties. On most of the long evenings the ladies sat around while Charlotte read aloud to them. The gloom that had never really gone seeped up to the surface again.

By the middle of November both Mercer and Cornelia Knight had written to Prince August, but the weeks went by without either of them receiving a reply. Charlotte could not believe that a man who had written to her so passionately did not mean at least some of what he said. She still clung to the hope that he would one day come back for her. But Mercer was clearly trying to persuade her to face up to harsh reality, and as one desperate letter succeeded another, Charlotte began to give more serious consideration to what she described as ‘the next best thing…a good tempered man with good sence, with whom I could have a reasonable hope of being
less
unhappy & comfortless
than I have been in a single state.' And ‘
that
man', she told Mercer, was ‘the P of S-C.'

Yet though the Prince of Saxe-Coburg was now a practical proposition, the Prince of Prussia was still the one who inspired Charlotte's romantic longings. In a letter written a month later, on 11 December, she surpassed herself. ‘If grief is to be my only share, then I will cherish, nourish, feed & love it, for nothing that comes from him can be otherwise than dear, tho' it may cut me to the soul.'

Mercer's letters have not survived, but whatever she wrote in response to that must have come close to convincing Charlotte that she was making a fool of herself and that August was a philanderer.

Shortly before she left Weymouth she wrote, ‘If the
plain &
damning
proofs are brought to me, such as must, however unwillingly, convince me of the faithlessness of the most beloved of human beings, the struggle, the effort, however painful, must be made.'

On 18 December, after a ‘sad, uncomfortable' journey, on which she was driven to distraction by Lady Rosslyn's ‘eternal fidgets & frights', Charlotte returned to Windsor, in time to spend Christmas with her family.

O
N
21 D
ECEMBER
Charlotte received a surprise visit from her father at Cranbourne Lodge. It was a surprise in more ways than one. He listened attentively to all she had to tell him about what she had been doing in Weymouth, and he told her all the news and gossip that he thought might interest her about the family and friends. Charlotte was amazed. He could not, she said, have been ‘kinder or more affectionate… It has been the most comfortable visit to me and my feelings that I have ever had…’

Two days later she received another surprise visit, this time from her old friend and tutor, and Mercer’s uncle, Dr Short. The dandy doctor of divinity had been sent by her father to warn her that her mother was again making claims about the paternity of William Austin, ‘the boy who she took abroad with her’.

When Dr Short had gone, Charlotte wrote to her father, thanking him for breaking the news so sensitively and asking him what she ought to do.

His answer, such as it was, came on Christmas Day, when most of the royal family was gathered at Windsor Castle. Soon after his
arrival the Regent led his daughter into Princess Mary’s apartment and asked Princess Mary to follow them.

As soon as the Prince had shut the door, he began by reassuring Charlotte. There was nothing to worry about while he was alive. After his death, however, her mother might claim that ‘Willikin’ was the true heir to the throne.

Charlotte could not dismiss the idea. Her mother, she told them, had always preferred the boy to her. She had slept with him in her bed for the first few years of his life, and even after that he had always slept on a small bed in her bedroom.

The Prince took in what his daughter said and then seemed to change the subject. He asked if Charlotte had had any particular relationship with anyone when the 18th Hussars were stationed in Windsor.

Charlotte did not stop to think. Without caution, without even asking a few questions to find out how much her father knew already. She started to tell him about Charles Hesse, and as he listened sympathetically, she opened up and told him the whole story – or almost the whole story. She admitted that Hesse had ridden beside her carriage, that they had exchanged letters and presents, that she had seen him in her mother’s apartments in Kensington Palace, and even that she and Hesse had been locked in her mother’s bedroom and told to enjoy themselves.

But then, as though caution had at last caught up with her, she added, ‘God knows what would have become of me if he had not behaved with so much respect to me.’

Her father spoke in sorrow without a hint of anger. ‘My dear child, it is Providence alone that has saved you.’

It looked as though he believed her, even though he knew that the rest of the world would not. But she cannot have been telling the whole truth. By her own admission to Mercer, she still cared about her hussar because she had been ‘so intimate’ with him. Besides, judging by his subsequent record with other ladies, including royalty,
Charles Hesse was not the sort of man to be respectful when locked up alone with a lady in a bedroom.

For no apparent reason, the Prince asked if the Duke of Brunswick knew about Captain Hesse.

Charlotte said no, and then added that the Duke had warned her about her mother and had said he was sure that ‘Willikin’ was her child.

As if by way of finding out who the father might be, the Prince then asked how much Charlotte knew about her mother’s lovers; the answer, surprisingly, was quite a lot. She was able to name most of the men mentioned in ‘the delicate investigation’, although the only one she felt sure about was Captain Manby.

After that the Prince brought the conversation to an end. But there was still nothing but sadness and sympathy in his voice. Charlotte, he said, had done wrong in her relationship with Hesse. She had let him down, she had let herself down and, what was worse, she had let her country down. But he had not come to reproach her. His job now was to save her.

The Prince went back to London. His bewildered daughter ate Christmas dinner with the rest of the family, and then Princess Mary led her back into her apartment to continue the kindly interrogation.

Princess Mary asked if Charlotte’s mother was in favour of her marriage to the Hereditary Prince of Orange. Charlotte said that she had not been to start with, because she hated the House of Orange, but that by the time the engagement was broken off she had learned to accept it.

The topic turned to Hesse again. Did Charlotte really not realise what her mother was up to when she organised their romance? By the implications in her questions, Princess Mary made it clear that in this at least she agreed with her brother. The Princess of Wales was making sure that, if she ever needed it, she would have enough evidence to discredit her daughter.

Charlotte went back to Cranbourne Lodge haunted by what she described as ‘a presentiment of evil’. Next day, Princess Mary, who was compiling a memorandum of all these conversations, called on her accompanied by the Queen.

This time all they wanted to know was who Charlotte thought was the father of ‘Willikin’. Charlotte’s best guess was Captain Manby, but she also said that there was just a chance that it was her father. She was too young at the time to remember for sure, but she thought there were two or three nights when her mother stayed at Carlton House after she had moved to Blackheath. The Queen and her daughter left Cranbourne Lodge even more dismayed than they had meant to make Charlotte.

Clearly Charlotte did not know about the Mrs Austin who came over regularly to Blackheath to visit ‘Willikin’, and she seems to have forgotten the findings of the two ‘investigations’. The Princess of Wales had never said that she was the mother of ‘Willikin’, or that her husband was his father. It was the Douglases who had said that she said it, and the Douglases had been proved to be perjurers. If Charlotte had only remembered that, she might just have wondered whether her father’s story was true or not.

Charlotte’s father had succeeded in frightening her. Yet at the same time she was confused by his uncharacteristic sympathy and kindness. Mercer and Earl Grey both said that they thought he was trying to make her feel insecure, so that she would be easier to manipulate when he renewed his attempts to make her marry the Hereditary Prince of Orange.

For the next few weeks, however, the Prince Regent did nothing to follow up his success. At the beginning of January he went to Brighton. Throughout the month the only time Charlotte heard from him was on her nineteenth birthday, when he sent her a note
explaining that an attack of gout prevented him from attending her little party.

But Mercer and Earl Grey had worried her with their suspicions. On 17 January, when she was dining at Frogmore, she asked her uncle Frederick, the Duke of York, if he thought her father still wanted to marry her to the young Prince of Orange.

The Duke did not know, but he felt that, even if he did, she had nothing to worry about. None of the other members of her family would allow her to marry against her will. Besides, he explained, there was an important congress being held in Vienna. Many new alliances were being made. Wellington and Castlereagh could easily come back with better offers from other princes.

Charlotte thanked him politely. She knew much more about the Congress of Vienna than he realised. She had just received a letter from her other uncle Frederick, the Duke of Brunswick. In it, as in any letter to a niece, ‘the Black Duke’ reported his family news and told her that he had seen the Grand Duchess Catherine, who spoke warmly of her and sent her best wishes. But he also gave a detailed report on the progress at the Congress of Vienna. He outlined the conflicting interests, described the various proposals under discussion and listed the possible consequences of each; and he gave his own opinion on the agreements that he thought would be best for Britain. For a Princess whose own family was still treating her as a child, it was good to be reminded that the ruling families in the rest of Europe regarded her as an intelligent adult and respected her as a future queen.

On the day after her dinner at Frogmore, Charlotte received another, much less welcome, letter from Europe. It came in a package delivered secretly through Cornelia Knight. It was a letter from Prince August of Prussia, and it was accompanied by the miniature portrait and the ring that she had given to him.

Military duty, he told her, prevented him from confessing the deep feelings that she had inspired in him, and he was sending back
her charming portrait because keeping it would only serve to make his sense of regret even worse.

It was as kind a way of saying goodbye as he could manage, and it may have been true. Perhaps his duty did come first. Perhaps Charlotte really had aroused feelings that the Prince had not known since his parting from Madame Récamier. If she did, he never knew them again. When he died, aged sixty-three, Prince August was still unmarried.

Charlotte wrote to Mercer. ‘If anything was further wanted to
decide
the affair, this does it.’

She was surprised by how calmly Miss Knight was taking it, given that it brought ‘termination’ to one of her ‘favourite schemes’. Indeed, like Miss Knight, who returned the compliment, Charlotte was surprised and pleased by how well she was taking it herself. ‘I know I feel satisfied with myself, & that is one step, & a great one, to getting comfortable if not happy again.’

Two days later it was clear that Charlotte had already set her mind, if not her heart, on marrying Prince Leopold. At another dinner with the Duchess of York, she decided to find out if the Duchess really was as much in favour of Leopold as her aunt Sophia said she was.

Charlotte opened the conversation by asking the Duchess of York her opinion of the Prince of Orange. The Duchess did not like him; neither did she approve of the manner in which the Prince Regent had been forcing him on Charlotte. In her opinion, her father ought to invite several princes to London and let Charlotte make a choice.

Charlotte then mentioned Prince Leopold.

The Duchess ‘colored beyond anything’, and said, ‘I beg as a favour you will never let it be known you mentioned him to me, for as I happen to be nearly related to him, particularly intimate with him, like him very much, and am in constant correspondence with him, it would be directly said that I managed this match.’

Charlotte knew that she had at least two allies in the royal family. A week earlier, when it had not mattered so much, Princess Mary had abandoned her enigmatic attitude and ‘launched forth vehemently’ in praise of Leopold, partly because of his reputation as a man of the highest character, and partly because he came from a very old family. Then the Duke of York revealed himself as an ally, although, like Mercer, he advised Charlotte to keep quiet for the time being.

It was good advice. No proposal was likely to succeed with the Regent if it contradicted one of his own. But now that she had made up her mind, Charlotte did not feel inclined to wait. She persuaded Mercer that it would do no harm if ‘the Leo’, as she now called him, were to come over uninvited, and on 3 February she wrote to Mercer asking her to make it happen.

Next day, as if in justification, she wrote:

A few days later, however, the Prince Regent revealed his hand, proving not only that Mercer and the Duke of York were giving
good advice but also that Mercer and Earl Grey had been justified in their suspicions after Christmas.

The Prince summoned Mercer and her father to Brighton, ostensibly to discuss their attempts to recover Charlotte’s letters from Captain Hesse. If those letters were to fall into the wrong hands, particularly her mother’s, he said, she would be ruined. He therefore appointed Lord Keith officially as his representative with instructions to interview Captain Hesse and find the letters.

After that the Prince turned abruptly to the possibility of a marriage with the Hereditary Prince of Orange. For Charlotte, he said, this was now ‘the only means of saving her reputation, getting out of her mother’s hands, and making herself quite happy’.

Mercer answered without a hint of respect. ‘It is not actually necessary to marry one man’, she said, ‘to apologise for writing love letters to another’.