Perhaps it was the confusion which reigned before and at her birth which had some influence on her intellects in after life. She was an extremely pretty child, not without some mental qualifications; but she became remarkable for making observations which inflicted pain and embarrassment on those to whom they were addressed. In after years, she also became the mother of that Caroline of Brunswick who herself made confusion worse confounded in the family into which she was received as a member—that Caroline whom we recollect as the consort of George IV. and the protectress of Baron Bergami.
At Hampton Court, the King and Queen, concluding that their dear son and heir had, with his consort, relieved his illustrious parents of his undesired presence for the night, thought of nothing so little as of that son having taken it into his head to perform a trick which might have been fittingly accompanied by the ‘Beggars’ Opera’ chorus of ‘Hurrah for the Road!’
No comedy has such a scene as that enacted at Hampton Court on this night. While the prince was carrying off the princess, despite all her agonising entreaties, the rest of the royal family were quietly amusing themselves in another part of the palace, unconscious of what was passing. The King and the Princess Amelia were at commerce below-stairs; the Queen, in another apartment, was at quadrille; and the Princess Caroline and Lord Hervey were soberly playing at cribbage. They separated at ten, and were all in bed by eleven, perfectly ignorant of what had been going on so near them.
At a little before two o’clock in the morning, Mrs. Tichborne entered the royal bedchamber, when the Queen, waking in alarm, asked her if the palace was on fire. The faithful servant intimated that the prince had just sent word that her royal highness was on the point of becoming a mother. A courier had just arrived, in fact, with the intelligence. The Queen leaped out of bed and called for her ‘morning gown,’ wherein to hurry to the room of her daughter-in-law. When Tichborne intimated that she would need a coach as well as a gown, for that her royal highness had been carried off to St. James’s, the Queen’s astonishment and indignation were equally great. On the news being communicated to the King, his surprise and wrath were not less than the Queen’s, but he did not fail to blame his consort as well as his son. She had allowed herself to be outwitted, he said; a false child would despoil her own offspring of their rights; and this was the end of all her boasted care and management for the interests of her son William! He hoped that Anne would come from Holland and scold her. ‘You deserve,’ he exclaimed, ‘anything she can say to you.’ The Queen answered little, lest it should impede her in her haste to reach London. In half an hour she had left the palace accompanied by her two daughters, and attended by two ladies and three noblemen. The party reached St. James’s by four o’clock.
As they ascended the staircase, Lord Hervey invited her Majesty to take chocolate in his apartments after she had visited the princess. The Queen replied to the invitation ‘with a wink,’ and a significant intimation that she certainly would refuse to accept of any refreshment at the hands of her son. One would almost suppose that she expected to be poisoned by him.
The prince, attired, according to the hour, in nightgown and cap, met his august mother as she approached his apartments, and kissed her hand and cheek, according to the mode of his country and times. He then entered garrulously into details that would have shocked the delicacy of a monthly nurse; but, as Caroline remarked, she knew a good many of them to be ‘lies.’ She was cold and reserved to the prince; but when she approached the bedside of the princess, she spoke to her gently and kindly—womanly, in short; and concluded by expressing a fear that her royal highness had suffered extremely, and a hope that she was doing well. The lady so sympathisingly addressed, answered, somewhat flippantly, that she had scarcely suffered anything, and that the matter in question was almost nothing at all. Caroline transferred her sympathy from the young mother to her new-born child. The latter was put into the Queen’s arms. She looked upon it silently for a moment, and then exclaimed in French, her ordinary language, ‘May the good God bless you, poor little creature! here you are arrived in a most disagreeable world.’ The wish failed, but the assertion was true. The ‘poor little creature’ was cursed with a long tenure of life, during which she saw her husband deprived of his inheritance, heard of his violent death, and participated in family sorrow, heavy and undeserved.
After pitying the daughter thus born, and commiserating the mother who bore her, Caroline was condemned to listen to the too minute details of the journey and its incidents, made by her son. She turned from these to shower her indignation upon those who had aided in the flight, and without whose succour the flight itself could hardly have been accomplished. She directed her indignation by turns upon all; but she let it descend with peculiar heaviness upon Lady Archibald Hamilton, and made it all the more pungent by the comment, that, considering Lady Archibald’s mature age, and her having been the mother of ten children, she had years enough, and experience enough, and offspring enough, to have taught her better things and greater wisdom. To all these winged words, the lady attacked answered no further than by turning to the prince, and repeating, ‘You see, sir!’ as though she would intimate that she had done all she could to turn him from the evil of his ways, and had gained only unmerited reproach for the exercise of a virtue, which, in this case, was likely to be its own and its only reward!
The prince was again inclined to become gossiping and offensive in his details, but his royal mother cut him short by bidding him get to bed; and with this message by way of farewell, she left the room, descended the staircase, crossed the court on foot, and proceeded to Lord Hervey’s apartments, where there awaited her gossip more welcome and very superior chocolate.
Over their ‘cups,’ right merry were the Queen and her gallant vice-chamberlain at the extreme folly of the royal son. They were too merry for Caroline to be indignant, further than her indignation could be shown by designating her son by the very rudest possible of names, and showing her contempt for all who had helped him in the night’s escapade. She acknowledged her belief that no foul play had taken place, chiefly because the child was a daughter. This circumstance was in itself no proof of the genuineness of the little lady, for if Frederick had been desirous of setting aside his brother William, his mother’s favourite, from all hope of succeeding to the throne, the birth of a daughter was quite as sufficient for the purpose as that of a son.[35] The Queen comforted herself by remarking that, at all events, the trouble she had taken that night was not gratuitous. It would at least, as she delicately remarked, be a ‘good grimace for the public,’ who would contrast her parental anxiety with the marital cruelty and the filial undutifulness of the Prince of Wales.
While this genial pair were thus enjoying their chocolate and gossip, the two princesses, and two or three of the noblemen in attendance, were doing the same in an adjoining apartment. Meanwhile Walpole had arrived, and had been closeted with the prince, who again had the supreme felicity of narrating to the unwilling listener all the incidents of the journey, in telling which he, in fact, gave to the minister the opportunity which Gyges was afforded by Candaules, or something very like it, and for which Frederick merited, if not the fate of the heathen husband, at least the next severe penalty short of it.