CHAPTER V.
THE MARRIAGE OF FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES.
The Queen’s cleverness—Princess Augusta of Saxe Gotha, the selected bride of Prince Frederick—Spirited conduct of Miss Vane, the Prince’s mistress—The King anxious for a matrimonial alliance with the Court of Prussia—Prussian intrigue to prevent this—The Prussian mandats for entrapping recruits—Quarrel, and challenge to duel, between King George and the Prussian monarch—The silly duel prevented—Arrival of the bride—The royal lovers—Disgraceful squabbles of the Princes and Princesses—The marriage—Brilliant assemblage in the bridal chamber—Lady Diana Spencer proposed as a match for the Prince—Débût of Mr. Pitt, afterwards Lord Chatham, in the House of Commons—Riot of the footmen at Drury Lane Theatre—Ill-humour exhibited by the Prince towards the Queen.
The Queen never exhibited her cleverness in a clearer light than when, in 1735, she got over the expected difficulty arising from a threatened parliamentary address to the throne for the marriage and settlement of the Prince of Wales. She ‘crushed’ it, to use the term employed by Lord Hervey, by gaining the King’s consent—no difficult matter—to tell the prince that it was his royal sire’s intention to marry him forthwith. The King had no princess in view for him; but was ready to sanction any choice he might think proper to make, and the sooner the better. As if the thing were already settled, the Queen, on her side, talked publicly of the coming marriage of the heir-apparent; but not a word was breathed as to the person of the bride. Caroline, moreover, to give the matter a greater air of reality, purchased clothes for the wedding of her son with the yet ‘invisible lady,’ and sent perpetually to jewellers to get presents for the ideal future Princess of Wales.
The lady, however, was not a merely visionary bride. It was during the absence of the King in Hanover that it was delicately contrived for him to see a marriageable princess—Augusta of Saxe Gotha. He approved of what he saw, and wrote home to the Queen, bidding her to prepare her son for the bridal.
Caroline communicated the order to Frederick, who received it with due resignation. His mother, who had great respect for outward observances, counselled him to begin his preparations for marriage by sending away his ostentatiously maintained favourite, Miss Vane. Frederick pleased his mother by dismissing Miss Vane, and then pleased himself by raising to the vacant bad eminence Lady Archibald Hamilton, a woman of thirty-five years of age and the mother of ten children. The prince visited her at her husband’s house, where he was as well received by the master as by the mistress. He saw her constantly at her sister’s, rode out with her, walked with her daily for hours in St. James’s Park, ‘and, whenever she was at the drawing-room (which was pretty frequently), his behaviour was so remarkable that his nose and her ear were inseparable, whilst, without discontinuing, he would talk to her as if he had rather been relating than conversing, from the time he came into the room to the moment he left it, and then seemed to be rather interrupted than to have finished.’[24]
The first request made by Lady Archibald to her royal lover was, that he would not be satisfied with putting away Miss Vane; but that he would send her out of the country. The prince did not hesitate a moment; he sent a royal message, wherein he was guilty of an act of which no man would be guilty to the woman whom he had loved. The message was taken by Lord Baltimore, who bore proposals, offering an annuity of 1,600l. a year to the lady, on condition that she would proceed to the continent, and give up the little son which owed to her the disgrace of his birth, but to whom both she and the prince were most affectionately attached. The alternative was starvation in England.
Miss Vane had an old admirer, to whom she sent in the hour of adversity, and who was the more happy to aid her in her extremity as, by so doing, he would not only have some claim on her gratitude, but that he could, to the utmost of his heart’s desire, annoy the prince, whom he intensely despised.
Lord Hervey sat down, and imagining himself for the nonce in the place of Miss Vane, he wrote a letter in that lady’s name. The supposed writer softly reproved the fickle prince, reminded him of the fond old times ere love yet had expired, resigned herself to the necessity of sacrificing her own interests to that of England, and then running over the sacrifices which a foolish woman must ever make—of character, friends, family, and peace of mind—for the fool or knave whom she loves with more irregularity than wisdom, she burst forth into a tone of indignation at the mingled meanness and cruelty of which she was now made the object, and finally refused to leave either England or her child, spurning the money offered by the father, and preferring any fate which might come, provided she were not banished from the presence and the love of her boy.
Frederick was simple enough to exhibit this letter to his mother, sisters, and friends, observing at the same time that it was far too clever a production to come from the hand of Miss Vane, and that he would not give her a farthing until she had revealed the name of the ‘rascal’ who had written it. The author was popularly set down as being Mr. Pulteney.
On the other hand, Miss Vane published the prince’s offer to her, and therewith her own letter in reply. The world was unanimous in condemning him as mean and cruel. Not a soul ever thought of finding fault with him as immoral. At length a compromise was effected. The prince explained away the cruel terms of his own epistle, and Miss Vane withdrew what was painful to him in hers. The pension of 1,600l. a year was settled on her, with which she retired to a mansion in Grosvenor Street, her little son accompanying her. But the anxiety she had undergone had so seriously affected her health that she was very soon after compelled to proceed to Bath. The waters were not healing waters for her. She died in that city, on the 11th of March 1736, having had one felicity reserved for her in her decline, the inexpressible one of seeing her little son die before her. ‘The Queen and the Princess Caroline,’ says Lord Hervey, ‘thought the prince more afflicted for the loss of this child than they had ever seen him on any occasion, or thought him capable of being.’