Indiscretions of the Queen

The Princess Royal’s Romance

THE Princess Royal came hurrying into the apartments she shared with her sisters and there was no need to ask her if something exciting had happened; it was written clearly in her face.

‘I have just seen Papa,’ she cried. ‘So it is true— true.’ Elizabeth looked up from the canvas on which she was drawing. ‘Not,’ she said, ‘a husband at last?’

Sophia rose from her seat and embraced her eldest sister. ‘Oh, you most fortunate of women!’

The Princess Royal acceded this. ‘Oh, how grateful I am! How tired I am of walking the dogs and filling the snuff boxes. I shall be free— free— of restraint for evermore.’

‘Husbands can be more restraining than fathers and mothers,’ Augusta reminded her.

‘Not more than ours,’ retorted the Princess Royal. ‘I do believe Papa is jealous of us all. I used to believe he wanted to keep us all here— pure and unsullied and that is why husbands have never been found for us until now.’

‘And then only one husband!’ sighed Sophia.

‘It is not necessary to be pure as well as unmarried,’ cried Augusta with a grimace. ‘Do you think dearest Papa realizes that?’

‘You should really be careful in front of the children.’ Sophia and Mary exchanged glances and laughed. ‘Don’t mind us,’ they said.

‘I am eighteen and not so innocent as I’m supposed to be.’

‘And I can well believe that!’ replied Augusta.

‘Hush!’ cried the Princess Royal. ‘How can you think any man will want to marry you if you talk like— like—’

‘Harlots?’ suggested Sophia. ‘I confess I often feel they have more interesting lives than ours.’

‘They could scarcely be less so,’ added Mary gloomily.

‘But,’ soothed Elizabeth, ‘if a husband has been found for our sister perhaps we need not despair.’

‘There are so many of us,’ wailed Mary, ‘and all getting older and older every day.’

‘A fate no man or woman can escape, you must admit,’ Elizabeth reminded them.

‘Yes, but the nearer we spinster-princesses get to the grave the farther we get from the marriage bed. I must confess it is a dreary thought.’

‘Well let us rejoice that at least one of us is to have a husband,’ said Elizabeth.

‘What do you know of him, sister?’

‘That he is a prince.’

‘Naturally.’

‘That he has been married before.’

‘A widower!’ grimaced Sophia.

‘Pray do not give me your pitying looks,’ cried the Princess Royal. ‘A man who has been married before is better than no man, I do assure you. And the second is likely to be your fate. The fact that he has had a wife makes me like him the better. He will be so experienced— perhaps she was a great beauty.’

‘Hardly likely when she was the sister of our sister-in-law Caroline.’

‘Is that indeed so?’

‘My Prince of Würtemburg had the misfortune to take to wife a Princess of Brunswick. She was Charlotte, too.’

‘He must have a fancy for the name.’

‘There are so many Charlottes in this family. Our mother, myself and now this new baby.’

‘Not to mention Caroline’s sister, your Prince’s dead wife. I wonder what Caroline will think of your marrying her brother-in-law.’

‘Caroline’s opinion is of no importance.’

‘I know. I just wondered. Perhaps she has already met him. She surely would for she would have been at her sister’s wedding, I daresay.’

Sophia looked expectant, but the Princess Royal said quickly: ‘I should not dream of discussing my future husband with Caroline in any circumstances.’

‘I shouldn’t dream of discussing anything with Caroline!’

‘I have decided to make my own wedding gown. I am starting on it without delay. I shall sit up all night to finish it if need be for I am determined to put every stitch into it myself.’

‘Have you no qualms about leaving your home and going to a strange land with your widower?’

The Princess Royal looked pityingly at her sisters. ‘You should be the ones to suffer qualms,’ she told them, ‘for it may well be that the King has decided that none of you shall ever have a husband.’

Caroline heard of the proposed wedding and was saddened, remembering her sister Charlotte who had married Frederick William, Prince of Würtemburg.

Charlotte had been sixteen then and she herself fourteen and how she had envied the elder sister who was starting out on her married life!

But what had happened to Charlotte? She would never really know. It was a shock too, to learn that that same bridegroom was now coming to England to marry the Princess Royal for she had never really believed that Charlotte was dead.

Charlotte’s story was strangely mysterious. Caroline knew that her father had sent messengers to Russia to try to discover the true story. And what sort of a husband was this Prince of Würtemburg who had deserted his wife, leaving her in Russia, after taking her three children away from her.

Was it true that she had had a love affair with the son of Empress Catherine— that woman whose own life was something of a legend? Or had she dabbled in politics? How could they know? But the fact remained that Charlotte had disappeared and no one could be quite sure where.

And now her death must be accepted as a fact— for how otherwise could her widower come to England to marry the Princess Royal?

What strange lives we lead, thought Caroline, when we are married to strangers. The Princess Royal was not the least bit disturbed by the rumours. Her great desire had been to be married and escape from the thralldom of Court life under the stern eye of her mother. She stitched happily away at her dress and her sisters came in to marvel at her happiness as her needle worked on the white satin making what Sophia called the most perfect little stitches in the world.

She was in transports of joy when she was fitted for her trousseau. She clasped her hands together in ecstasy over the jewellery which Forster, the Court jeweller, was making for her. She listened patiently to her mother’s advice on how to be a good wife, and to her father’s assurances of his love for all his children. He looked upon her as a child which might have been exasperating in other circumstances since she was past thirty, but all this she accepted in a kind of ecstasy— so delighted was she to have a husband.

‘My one fear,’ she confided to Elizabeth, ‘is that something will go wrong and prevent the marriage taking place.’ ‘Can you feel so strongly about a bridegroom whom you have never seen?’

‘It is marriage I want.’

‘Any marriage?’

‘Oh, come, sister, the Prince is handsome we hear. He is not deformed. He is not a monster.’

‘He has been married before.’

‘I tell you I don’t care. I don’t care.’

‘I wonder about his first wife.’

The Princess Royal frowned. She had not heard very much about the first wife except that she had been the sister of Caroline and had had three children and was now dead. But what more did she need to know?

‘Stop looking like a wise old witch,’ she cried. ‘I tell you everything is going to be all right.’

But was it?

The case of the diamond ring seemed like an omen.

It was to be a beautiful ring set with thirty diamonds.

Forster had brought the design and the stones to the Princess’s apartments to discuss the setting with her.

He then took it back to his shop and set to work on it. He had done some work on the ring and left it on his bench and while he was absent, a chicken— which by some strange manner had found its way into the workshop— was attracted by the diamonds and swallowed some, even pecking one out of the ring.

Their disappearance would have remained a mystery if one of Forster’s workmen had not arrived in time to see the chicken pecking at the stones in the ring and guessed what had happened.

News was hastily sent to the Princess Royal who was deeply distressed— not at the loss of the diamonds but because she feared it to be an omen. She was hearing strange rumours about the first wife of her future husband and although she was reassured that she was dead, there did not appear to be absolute proof of this.

Her demeanour had changed a little and she now no longer sang as she stitched away at her wedding dress.

But a few days later, the jeweller called on her in triumph. There was the ring just as it had appeared in the design— with thirty brilliants bravely glittering.

‘It’s another ring?’ she asked.

‘No, Your Highness. We killed the chicken and recovered all the diamonds from his gizzard.’

He was looking at her, expecting her approval for his cleverness in recovering the stones; but she took the ring gingerly and slipped it on her finger.

She could not help looking on the incident as an omen.

The King summoned his daughter. He was looking worried and the Princess Royal, like all the family, felt uneasy to see him so.

She would never forget that terrible day when they had first known that he was going mad, when he had caught the Prince of Wales by the throat and tried to strangle him. She remembered too the occasion when she had been going for an airing with him and he had kept getting out of the coach to give the coachman instructions so that at last she had felt quite hysterical herself and dashed back into the Palace declaring that she could not ride with Papa. She remembered too his excessive fondness for Amelia and how he had hugged the child so tightly on one occasion that they had feared he would kill her and had dragged her from him and put him into a strait-jacket. He was supposed to be cured now but there were times when he talked in that quick way of his until he became hoarse and incoherent. This was when he was upset about something. He was upset now.

‘I have something very serious to say to you,’ he began. ‘Difficult. In a quandary. Don’t quite know what it means but we shall have to discover. Can’t let you marry if the bridegroom already has a wife, eh, what?’

‘Already has a wife!’ cried the Princess Royal. ‘But she is dead.’

‘So we think— so we hope. At least one should not hope for the death of others, eh, what? But there are rumours. Some say that she is not dead— but a prisoner in Russia— and if she is, then that means that Prince Frederick can’t take another wife, can he— because that would be bigamy and something we couldn’t have, eh, what?’

The Princess Royal looked stricken. What a worry children were! thought the King. But they couldn’t have bigamy in the family— although in a way they already had it, because the Prince of Wales was supposed to be married to Mrs.

Fitzherbert and he’d married Caroline.

Oh dear, oh dear, families were difficult to control. Why could they not all be docile like himself and the Queen, who had always done their duty!

The King said: ‘Well, my dear, you see what this means. You must prepare yourself for no marriage. Though it may be it won’t come to that. The Prince assures me that his wife is dead. He has a letter from the Empress of Russia dated two years after he left his wife in her country and the Duke of Brunswick also has a letter from the Empress and in both the letters it states that the Princess Charlotte of Brunswick is dead.’

‘Then she is dead,’ cried the Princess Royal. ‘Why is there all this talk if she is dead?’

‘Because, my dear, no one seems to know how she died. Some say one thing, some another. And there are some who doubt the motives of that strange woman, the Empress, that they say the Princess did not die at all but that she was kept a prisoner and still is in prison in Russia.’

‘I won’t believe it! I won’t believe it!’ cried the Princess Royal.

‘All the same,’ said the King, ‘it is a matter which must be cleared up to my satisfaction— and the Queen’s— before we can consent to this marriage.’

‘But my— my future husband is due to arrive here!’

‘Postponement, my dear. It is sometimes necessary. We have to be very sure.

We have to have proof. You understand that, eh, what? Can’t have our Princess Royal going off to a strange country unmarried, eh, what?’

The Princess Royal felt limp with misery. ‘I feared it was too good to be true,’

she sighed.

The King looked a little shocked. Did marriage mean so much to his daughter? After all this was not love for a man. How could it be when she had never seen him? It was merely the desire to be married, to escape from home.

He liked to think of his girls unsullied. He could never bear to contemplate them in the marriage bed, particularly Amelia. I shall never part with her, he thought. Nor any of the others. They are my girls— my pure girls. They shall never be sullied if I can help it. He thought of the life he had led— the good pure life with his Queen— plain, unattractive Charlotte whom he had had to accept when he burned for Sarah Lennox. But he had subdued all his desires in order to do his duty, and as a result he had had thirteen children— fifteen if Octavius and Alfred had lived. He had never been unfaithful to his wife in deed although he had often dreamed of beautiful women. Sometimes in his less lucid moments he thought he had mistresses— beautiful women like those favoured by his brothers and his sons who had lacked his sense of duty. He dreamed erotic dreams— but they were only dreams.

And he was anxious that his daughters should remain pure. He would keep them under his roof, growing older perhaps— but they would always be children to him.

So now, although he was sorry for his daughter’s tragic looks, in his heart he would be pleased if this marriage came to nothing.

The King visited Caroline at Blackheath. ‘You are happily settled here?’ he asked.

‘I could enjoy my stay, Your Majesty, but I miss my daughter.’

‘Ah, yes, the young rogue! I was with her yesterday. She grows apace and is into everything.’

The King smiled affectionately. He loved babies. Caroline smiled with him and gave him an account of young Charlotte’s amazingly clever conduct in the days when she was at Carlton House with her.

‘She misses her mother,’ said Caroline. ‘But not as much as her mother misses her.’

The King smiled. This was the sort of conversation he loved— happy domestic conversation. He discussed the food the Princess should be given and what rules should be made for her household.

Then he came to the real point of his visit.

‘As you know there is a betrothal between the Prince of Würtemberg and our Princess Royal.’

‘Yes, I had heard of this.’

‘You will have met the Prince?’

‘I met him when he came to Brunswick to marry my sister.’

‘And your sister, Caroline, what of her?’

‘I had never believed her to be dead. I have always felt that she was alive and there were rumours—’

‘And your father?’

‘My father believed her dead and so did Madame de Hertzfeldt and my mother. But perhaps that was what they wished.’

‘Do you remember what happened?’

‘Yes. There was a letter to say that my sister had died of a terrible disease which made it necessary for her to be buried without delay.’

‘And you did not believe this.’

Caroline shrugged her shoulders. ‘Perhaps I did not wish to believe it. I had been brought up with her. She was always so full of life. I could not imagine her — dead. Her maid came back to us. She said she had been dismissed by my sister and sent back home. She became my maid and she told me that my sister had fallen in love with one of the Empress’s lovers.’

The King shuddered; he could not bear hearing stories of other people’s profligate habits because when he was alone he could not stop thinking of them.

Caroline had no notion of this and went on, ‘This maid told me that my sister had a child by this man and that the Empress had her sent away and imprisoned her. Perhaps she had her murdered in prison.’

The King did not speak and Caroline went on: ‘One cannot believe these stories of someone with whom one has spent one’s childhood. When I think of all the games we played together and our tricks and jokes— and then I think of her being murdered— I can’t grasp it. Perhaps that is why I cannot believe she is dead.’

The King said: ‘We cannot allow the Princess Royal to marry a man who has a wife living.’

Caroline thought: No. But I was married to a man who, in the eyes of some, already had a wife. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that it is remarkable what strange adventures can fall to the lot of princesses.’

‘I shall need to have proof of your sister’s death before I can consent to this marriage.’

‘My father will give you a copy of the letter he received from the Empress and doubtless the Prince of Würtemburg will too. Your Majesty will consider that proof?’

‘There is no other proof I could hope for.’

‘And would that suffice?’

‘I am not sure.’

The Princess Royal was ill; her skin had turned yellow and her eyes were tinged with the same colour.

She lay listlessly on her bed. She had felt the sickness coming on her but she would not go to bed until she had finished her wedding gown. There it was hanging in her wardrobe— like a white satin ghost.

‘At least I had a wedding dress if I don’t get a husband,’ she said to her sister Elizabeth.

Her mother came to see her. She folded her arms and stood looking down at her daughter, her wide mouth grim. The girl was sick through anxiety, so much did she wish for marriage. Queen Charlotte thought of her own marriage— that astounding message which had come from England to say that she had been chosen for the future King of England. She would never forget it— and remembering it, she could have some sympathy for her daughter.

‘You understand,’ she said, ‘that we must make sure he is free to marry you.’

‘I understand, Mamma.’

‘And when we have satisfied ourselves, there is no reason why we should not go ahead with the marriage.’ She went to the cupboard and examined the wedding dress.

‘You have stitched it very fine,’ she said. ‘I am sure the reward for such diligence will be that you will wear it for what it was intended.’

The Queen came back to the bed and looked at her daughter. The Princess Royal was indeed sick— sick with fear that she might not get a husband.

The Queen would tell the King that it was essential that the Princess Royal married. There were enough daughters at home.

The King was uncertain. He had received letters from the Duke of Brunswick and the Prince of Würtemburg. They had no doubt that the Prince’s first wife was dead. ‘And yet,’ mused the King, ‘I don’t know.’

He did not in fact wish his daughter to have a husband at all; but the idea of giving her to a man who could not be her husband shocked him deeply.

‘I am uncertain,’ he said. ‘I wish the offer had never been made. Better to have heard nothing about it, eh, what?’

The Queen replied that she did not care for the marriage either but the Princess Royal was set on it and it was hardly likely that they would find another husband for her. There were the other girls, too.

‘They’re happy enough at home.’

‘But they should marry if it is possible.’

‘ H’m, ’ said the King.

‘Princess Royal will be ill if this marriage does not take place. I could see her becoming a confirmed invalid. That sort of thing can happen. We don’t want sickness in the family.

The Queen stopped abruptly and the King looked alarmed. They were both thinking of that most terrible of all illnesses— the one to which he was addicted and which robbed him of his sanity.

‘I shall accept these letters,’ he said. ‘We will give our consent. It all happened a long time ago. The woman must be dead, eh, what?’

‘I think the woman must be dead,’ said the Queen.

The Prince of Würtemburg had arrived in England for his marriage. The Princess Royal rose from her sick bed. She had quickly recovered although her skin was still yellow.

She put on the wedding dress and in the Chapel Royal to St. James’s she made her marriage vows with the Archbishops of Canterbury and York presiding, and the King giving the bride away.

She was radiant and the bridegroom seemed well satisfied; but the King was so ill at ease that many who watched the ceremony wondered whether he was sickening for another bout of his illness. Later in the Queen’s drawing room, he talked incessantly and it was clear that he did not like parting with his daughter.

The Princess Royal suffered no qualms at parting with her family. She was at last married and all the fears and omens had come to nothing.

She embraced her brothers and sisters with affection; then she left St. James’s to spend a few days at Windsor before setting off with her husband for her new life in a strange country; and it seemed that the ghost of his first wife troubled neither of them.

Caroline, who had attended the marriage, remembered him from all those years ago; but he did not wish to remember.

Caroline grimaced inwardly. I’m the outsider, she told herself. The family don’t want me here. But perhaps the one who was most anxious for her absence was the bridegroom from Würtemburg.