The Queen slept that night at Witham, and the next day went slowly and satisfiedly on as far as ancient Romford, where she alighted at the house of a Mr. Dalton, a wine-merchant. In this asylum she remained about an hour, until the arrival of the royal servants and carriages from London which were to meet her. The servants having commenced their office with their new mistress by serving her with coffee, the Queen entered the royal carriage, in which she was accompanied by the Duchesses of Ancaster and Hamilton. As it is stated by the recorders of the incidents of that day that her Majesty was attired ‘entirely in the English taste,’ it may be worth adding, to show what that taste was, that ‘she wore a fly-cap with rich lace lappets, a stomacher ornamented with diamonds, and a gold brocade suit of clothes with a white ground.’ Thus decked out, the Queen, preceded by three carriages containing ladies from Mecklenburgh and lords from St. James’s, was conveyed through lines of people, militia, and horse and foot guards to London. ‘She was much amused,’ says Mrs. Stuart, ‘at the crowds of people assembled to see her, and bowed as she passed. She was hideously dressed in a blue satin quilted jesuit, which came up to her chin and down to her waist, her hair twisted up into knots called a tête de mouton, and the strangest little blue coif at the top. She had a great jewel like a Sevigné, and earrings like those now worn, with many drops, a present from the Empress of Russia, who knew of her marriage before she did herself.’ She entered the capital by the suburb of Mile End, which for dirt and misery could hardly be equalled by anything at Mirow and Strelitz. Having passed through Whitechapel, which must have given her no very high idea of the civilisation of the British people, she passed on westward, and proceeding by the longest route, continued along Oxford Street to Hyde Park, and finally reached the garden-gate of St. James’s at three in the afternoon. Before she left Romford, one of the English ladies in attendance recommended her to ‘curl her toupée; she said she thought it looked as well as that of any of the ladies sent to fetch her; if the King bid her she would wear a periwig; otherwise she would remain as she was.’
‘Just as they entered Constitution Hill one of the ladies said to the other, looking at her watch, “We shall hardly have time to dress for the wedding.” “Wedding!” said the Queen. “Yes, Madam, it is to be at twelve.” Upon this she fainted. Lady Effingham, who had a bottle of lavender water in her hand, threw it in her face.’ The travelling bride had, up to this time, exhibited much self-possession and gaiety of spirit throughout the journey, and it was not till she came in sight of the palace that her courage seemed to fail her. Then, for the first time, ‘she grew frightened and grew pale. The Duchess of Hamilton smiled; the princess said, “My dear duchess, you may laugh, you have been married twice; but it’s no joke to me.”’
Walpole, writing at ‘twenty minutes past three in the afternoon, not in the middle of the night,’ says: ‘Madam Charlotte is this instant arrived; the noise of the coaches, chaise, horsemen, mob, that have been to see her pass through the parks, is so prodigious that I cannot distinguish the guns.’
When the royal carriage stopped at the garden-gate the bride’s lips trembled, and she looked paler than ever, but she stepped out with spirit, assisted by the Duke of Devonshire, lord-chamberlain. Before her stood the King surrounded by his court. A crimson cushion was laid for her to kneel upon, and (Mrs. Stuart tells us) mistaking the hideous old Duke of Grafton for him, as the cushion inclined that way, she was very near prostrating herself before the duke; but the King caught her in his arms first, and all but carried her upstairs, forbidding any one to enter.
Walpole says of her that she looked sensible, cheerful, and remarkably genteel. He does not say she was pretty, and it must be confessed that she was rather plain; too plain to create a favourable impression upon a youthful monarch, whose heart, even if the story of the Quakeress be a fiction, was certainly pre-occupied by the image of a lady, who, nevertheless, figured that night among the bride’s-maids—namely, Lady Sarah Lennox. ‘An involuntary expression of the King’s countenance,’ says Mr. Galt, ‘revealed what was passing within, but it was a passing cloud—the generous feelings of the monarch were interested; and the tenderness with which he thenceforward treated Queen Charlotte was uninterrupted until the moment of their final separation.’ This probably comes much nearer to the truth than the assertion of Lady Anne Hamilton, who says: ‘At the first sight of the German princess, the King actually shrunk from her gaze, for her countenance was of that cast that too plainly told of the nature of the spirit working within.’ Lord Hardwicke is said to have sent to his wife an unfavourable description of the Queen’s features, which Lady Hardwicke read aloud to her friends. It is added that George III., on hearing of it, was greatly offended.
The King, as before mentioned, led his bride into the palace, where she dined with him, his mother the princess-dowager, and that Princess Augusta who was to give a future queen to England, in the person of Caroline of Brunswick. After dinner, when the bride’s-maids and the court were introduced to her, she said, ‘Mon Dieu, il y en a tant, il y en a tant!’ She kissed the princesses with manifest pleasure, but was so prettily reluctant to offer her own hand to be kissed, that the Princess Augusta, for once doing a graceful thing gracefully, was forced to take her hand and give it to those who were to kiss it, which was prettily humble and good. This act set the Queen talking and laughing, at which some severe critics declared that the illustrious lady’s face seemed all mouth. Northcote subsequently declared that Queen Charlotte’s plainness was not a vulgar, but an elegant, plainness. The artist saw another grace in her. As he looked at Reynolds’s portrait of her, fan in hand, Northcote, remembering the sitting, exclaimed, ‘Lord, how she held that fan!’
It is singular that although the question touching precedency, in the proper position of Irish peers on English state occasions, had been settled in the reign of George II., it was renewed on the occasion of the marriage of Queen Charlotte with increased vigour. The question, indeed, now rather regarded the peeresses than the peers. The Irish ladies of that rank claimed a right to walk in the marriage procession immediately after English peeresses of their own degree. The impudent wits of the day declared that the Irish ladies would be out of their vocation at weddings, and that their proper place was at funerals, where they might professionally howl. The rude taunt was made in mere thoughtlessness, but it stirred the high-spirited Hibernian ladies to action. They deputed Lord Charlemont to proceed to the court of St. James’s, and not only prefer but establish their claim. The gallant champion of dames fulfilled his office with alacrity, and crowned it with success. The royal bride herself was written to, but she, of course, could only express her willingness to see as many fair and friendly faces about her as possible; and she referred the applicants to custom and the lord-chamberlain. The reference was not favourable to the claimants, and Lord Charlemont boldly went to the King himself. The good-natured young monarch was as warm in praise of Irish beauty as if he was about to marry one, but he protested that he had no authority, and that Lord Charlemont must address his claim to the privy council. When that august body received the ladies’ advocate, they required of him to set down his specific claim in writing, so that the heralds, those learned and useful gentlemen, might comprehend what was asked, and do solemn justice to rank and precedency on this exceedingly solemn occasion. Lord Charlemont knew nothing of the heralds’ shibboleth, but he found a friend who could and did help him in his need, in Lord Egmont. By the two a paper was hurriedly drawn up in proper form, and submitted to the council. The collective wisdom of the latter pronounced the claim to be good, and that Irish peeresses might walk in the royal marriage procession immediately after English peeresses of their own rank, if invited to do so. The verdict was not worth much, but it satisfied the claimants. If the whole Irish peerage, the female portion of it at least, was not at the wedding, it was fairly represented, and when Lord Charlemont returned to Dublin, the ladies welcomed him as cordially as the nymphs in the bridal of Triermain did the wandering Arthur. They showered on him flowers of gratitude, and their dignity was well content to feel assured that they might all have gone to the wedding if they had only been invited.
At seven o’clock the nobility began to flock down to the scene of the marriage in the royal chapel. The night was sultry, but fine. At nine, and not at twelve, the ceremony was performed by the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury; and perhaps the most beautiful portion of the spectacle was that afforded by the bride’s-maids, among whom Lady Sarah Lennox, Lady Caroline Russel, and Lady Elizabeth Keppel were distinguished for their pre-eminent attractions. During the whole ceremony, it is said that the royal bridegroom’s eyes were kept fixed on Lady Sarah especially. That the Queen could not have been so perfectly unpossessed of attractive features as some writers have declared her, may be gathered from a remark of Walpole’s, who was present, and who, after praising the beauty of the bride’s-maids, and that of a couple of duchesses, says: ‘Except a pretty Lady Sunderland, and a most perfect beauty, an Irish Miss Smith, I don’t think the Queen saw much else to discourage her.’ The general impression was different. What this was may be understood by a passage in a letter addressed to Mrs. Montagu’s brother, the Rev. William Robertson, by a friend, in October 1761: ‘The Queen seems to me to behave with equal propriety and civility; though the common people are quite exasperated at her not being handsome, and the people at court laugh at her courtesies.’
All the royal family were present at the nuptials. The King’s brother, Edward, Duke of York, was at his side; and this alleged witness of the King’s alleged previous marriage with Hannah Lightfoot, says Lady Anne Hamilton, ‘used every endeavour to support his royal brother through the trying ordeal, not only by first meeting the princess in her entrance into the garden, but also at the altar.’
The Queen was in white and silver. ‘An endless mantle of violet-coloured velvet,’ says Walpole, ‘lined with crimson, and which, attempted to be fastened on her shoulder by a bunch of large pearls, dragged itself and almost the rest of her clothes half-way down her waist.’