The subject of the marriage of the Prince of Wales will come more fully under our notice in the Life of Caroline of Brunswick. Here it may be mentioned that the period at which the question of the marriage of the Prince was first moved, is not known with certainty. It was soon, however, publicly ascertained that whenever that much-desired event should take place the Prince’s debts were to be paid, on the condition that after such settlement and the fixing of his establishment as a married man, he was never to incur such liabilities again. The agreeing to this condition debarred him from ever again applying to Parliament for pecuniary relief.
There is little doubt as to the wish of Queen Charlotte that her son should marry a Princess of Mecklenburg. It was sufficient for the Prince that his mother had such desire that he should oppose it. According to Lord Liverpool, the intimation of the Prince’s wish to marry was abruptly made to the King, who received the information with a cheerful complacency, and simply required that the lady chosen should be a Protestant and a Princess. Mrs. Fitzherbert was neither.
The King offered to send a commissioner to the German courts on the pleasant mission of reviewing the daughters of the sovereign dukes there, and reporting on their eligibility. The Prince’s choice, however, appears to have been made, if that can be called choice which fixes on an object utterly unknown. He named his cousin, the daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Brunswick. Her mother was Augusta, sister of the King, whose birth had taken place at St. James’s Palace under circumstances which gave such offence to Caroline and George II. The King made no objection: and yet he must have known that if the object selected was pretty, she was far less fair than the lady of Mecklenburg whom Charlotte would fain have had for a daughter-in-law; and that her reputation, even in Germany, where the best people then construed liberally of female conduct, was none of the best. She was known as a bold, dashing, careless girl, whose tongue was ever in advance of reflection; who called the coarsest things by the coarsest names, and who only needed temptation and opportunity to fall into any sin which had a pleasant side to it. She was not worse than many of her contemporaries with whose doings fame was less busy. Her great defect was a want of self-control, if that be a great defect compared with a want of cleanliness. But in this latter respect Caroline’s neglect was not singular. In her young days dirtiness had not yet quite gone out of fashion.
It is credibly asserted that the Prince’s favourite, Lady Jersey, led him to select the Princess of Brunswick for his wife. It was Lady Jersey’s object that he should have a legal consort who must draw him away from his (illegal) wife, Mrs. Fitzherbert; but it was also Lady Jersey’s object that the wife should not possess attractions that should prove more powerful than her own.
It will suffice to record here that the marriage took place on the 8th of April, 1795, under unseemly auspices. The behaviour of the Prince at the ceremony undoubtedly may be received as confirming the accounts of his aversion to the bride. He confessed to the Duke of Bedford (one of the two unmarried dukes who supported him at the marriage) that he had taken several glasses of brandy before proceeding to it. He must have taken many, for he was so drunk that the two dukes could scarcely keep him from falling. The conduct of the Prince was, of course, the subject of much remark, and it was set down, at the time, not to brandy but remorse—remorse at the idea of that other marriage which he had contracted with the woman whom he undoubtedly did love, if he ever entertained for woman at all a sentiment worthy of that name. Very few days passed after the solemnisation of the ceremony before ‘many coarse and indelicate strictures on the bride’s person and behaviour were currently reported as coming directly from the Prince in every society in London.’ So says Lord Holland; and that noble writer, who pronounces to be a bad and worthless woman—mad, at least, if not bad—a princess whom his party, if not he himself, held up, in the days of her persecution, as a martyr of virtue, goes on to say, that the ill-usage to which the Princess of Wales was exposed at Brighton and elsewhere from the Prince and his mistress, Lady Jersey, was notorious, unpardonable, and so utterly disgraceful, ‘that persons of rank (afterwards indebted to him for advancement in it) have plumed themselves upon refusing to meet him at dinner at my house [Holland House, Kensington], observing that he was not fit company for gentlemen.’
The marriage began miserably, continued miserably, and ended miserably. As Lord Holland observes, neither the Prince’s reconciliation with Mrs. Fitzherbert nor his subsequent intimacies with Lady Hertford and others (although such returns and changes of love were usually accompanied by similar changes and returns of a train of favourites, friends, and dependents), ever softened his hatred to the Princess. When, in 1820, on the death of Napoleon, some officious courtier ran up to him to apprise him of the news which he supposed would be welcome to him, in these words, ‘Sir, your greatest enemy is dead!’—‘Is she, by G—?’ was the royal husband’s dignified and pious ejaculation.
‘Many seeds of discontent,’ says Lord Holland, ‘were imperceptibly sown during the year 1795, among the supporters of the ministry, which time brought to maturity. Among these may be reckoned the influence of Carlton House. The Prince of Wales thought himself duped by Mr. Pitt about the payment of his debts at the time of his marriage. He had been treated superciliously, more than once, by Mr. Pitt, and he had never liked him, though his own dread of revolutionary principles, quickened by a recent quarrel with the Duke of Orleans, had rendered him eager, and even vociferous, for the war. The last injury, real or supposed, which he had received from Mr. Pitt, by the latter’s acquiescing in devoting, on his marriage, the whole increase of his revenue to the payment of his debts, sank into his weak and fretful mind deeper than usual, because he was continually reminded of it by his connection with a woman whom he loathed.’
Meanwhile, the Queen maintained the long-standing reputation of her court with undiminished strictness. ‘The Queen’s public receptions,’ says Sir Jonah Barrington, ‘were the most gracious in the world. There could not be a more engaging, kind, and condescending address than that of the Queen of England. An illustration of her strictness is afforded us by an anecdote told of her Majesty and an English duchess, who was aunt to a niece of rather blemished reputation, but to which it was hoped some lustre might be restored if she could only be made to pass through a court atmosphere. The duchess, on asking the Queen to receive her niece at the drawing-room, of course insisted that the young lady’s fame had been unfairly attacked, and that she trusted to her Majesty’s clemency and generosity to set it fair again with the world. The Queen remained silent; whereupon the duchess, previous to retiring, beseechingly inquired what she might be permitted to say to her niece. ‘Tell her,’ said Queen Charlotte, ‘that you did not dare to make such a request to the Queen.’ The duchess, who held some post in the royal household, felt that such a speech involved her own dismissal.
Never was the court so unpopular as at this time. In October 1795 the King, on proceeding to the House of Lords, was not only assailed by seditious cries, but was fired at by some assassin among the mob. On his return from the House he was pelted with stones, and, later in the day, when driving to the Queen’s House, in a private carriage, without guards, the excited mob, with cries of ‘Bread—cheap bread!’ ‘No war!’ and ‘No king!’ made an attempt to force open the door of the vehicle in which he was riding. The same spirit was shown in 1796. On the 1st of February the King and Queen went to Drury Lane to see ‘The Fugitive.’ On their return a stone was thrown at the carriage, which passed through one of the glass panels and struck the Queen in the face. Soon after a female maniac was discovered in the palace, making no secret of sanguinary designs against ‘Mrs. Guelph,’ her alleged ‘mother.’ Added to these private vexations, the negotiation entered into, at the King’s express desire, to establish a peace with France, entirely failed, and the difficulties of the situation were further increased by Spain uniting with our other enemies against us in war.
In the month previous to that last mentioned the birth of the Princess Charlotte, daughter of the Prince and Princess of Wales, was speedily followed by the separation of the parents. We may cite here an incident of the christening, as the Queen Charlotte is rather the heroine thereof than the infant Princess.