A forgotten Prince of Wales

National Portrait Gallery. Emery Walker. FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES, AND HIS SISTERS AT KEW.
A FORGOTTEN PRINCE OF WALES
BY CAPTAIN HENRY CURTIES Author of “When England Slept,” etc., etc.
LONDON EVERETT & CO., LTD. 42 ESSEX STREET, STRAND, W.C.
Dedicated by permission to His Grace the Duke of Argyll, K.G.
A FORGOTTEN PRINCE OF WALES.
So quiet had this matter been kept and so great a surprise was the event that Howe, the English Envoy, wrote home in the following strain:—
On the 25th February Howe writes again complaining bitterly like a wicked fairy in a children’s tale, that he has not been invited to the christening which had taken place a few days after the birth in the young mother’s bedroom, when the child had received the names of Frederick Louis. Furthermore, he had not been allowed to see the baby—and presumably to kiss it—until ten days later! This visit, however, appears to have mollified him, for he bursts forth into description: “I found the women,” he says, “all admiring the largeness and strength of the child.”
One can see them doing it, and the dry old Envoy—it is presumed he was a bachelor as he makes no mention of his wife—looking on, and as much at sea with regard to the “points” of a fine baby as a midwife would be at a horse show.
But this unusual secrecy about the birth—which was attributed to the child’s grandfather the Elector, afterwards George the First of England, who was not on the best of terms with Anne our reigning Queen—had another aspect. It was an age of suspicion, suspicion especially of substituted heirs, and the foolishness of not inviting the English Envoy to the birth according to custom, revolting as it would have been to a young modest wife, might have seriously prejudiced the child’s future had he not been born with, and had to struggle against, so many of those distinctive bad qualities so carefully nurtured and indulged by his father and grandfather. On a later occasion his father remarked to his mother a propos of these: “ Mais vous voyez mes passions ma chère Caroline. Vous connaissez mes foiblesses. ” Yes, that affectionate and long-suffering lady did know his “foiblesses” before she had been his wife very long. Thoroughly to appreciate the nest into which this unfortunate little Prince was born and christened, it is necessary to turn for a moment to the habits and customs of his father and grandfather.