Accustomed to enjoy a place, even when very young, at her father’s table, she early acquired a habit of self-possession, became as pert as young Cyrus, and as forward as the juvenile Wharton. ‘How would you define time and space?’ said her father once to Mirabeau. The Princess Caroline, then twelve years old, anticipated the witty Frenchman’s answer, by replying, ‘Space is in the mouth of Madame von L——, and time is in her face.’ When told that it was not fitting for so young a lady to have an opinion of her own, she observed, correctly enough, ‘People without opinions of their own are like barren tracts which will not bear grass.’ As her mother seldom asked any other question than ‘What is the news?’ and loved the small gossip which arises out of such a query, the Princess was more frequently engaged in serious discussions with her instructress than with the Duchess. The Countess von Bade having remarked that she herself was wicked because an evil spirit impelled her, and that she was by nature too feeble to resist, ‘If that be the case,’ observed the young lady, ‘you are simply a piece of clay moulded by another’s will.’ The orthodox Lutheran lady was about to explain, but the daughter of a mother who had brought ‘her girls’ up to membership with no church in particular cut short the controversy with an infallible air which would have done credit to Pope Joan, ‘My dear, we are all bad—very bad; but we were all created so, and it’s no fault of ours.’ The utterer of this speech was doubly unfortunate: her intellect was fine, but it was ill-trained; she was the daughter of a kind-hearted woman, incapable of fulfilling with propriety the duty of a mother; and she became the wife of a prince who was, as Sheridan remarked, ‘too much a lady’s man ever to become the man of one lady.’
The Princess, at a very early period, discovered how to be mistress of her weak mother. Therewith, however, she had a heart that readily felt for the poor. She was terribly self-willed, and played the harpsichord like St. Cecilia.
Her thoughtlessness was on a par with her sensibility; and it is said that a very early seclusion from court, to which she was condemned by parental command, was caused by a double want of discretion. She was too fond, it was reported, of relieving young peasants in distress, and of listening to young aides-de-camp who affected to be miserable. She was taught that princesses were never their own almoners, and that it did not become them to converse with officers of low degree. On her return to court, an aged lady, whose years were warrant for her boldness, recommended an exercise, in future, of more judgment than had marked the past. ‘Gone is gone and will never return,’ was the remark of the pretty, sententious, young lady; ‘and what is to come will come of itself.’ It was the remark of a girl brought up like that very Polly Honeycomb whose story Colman wrote and Miss Burney read to Queen Charlotte. Like that heroine, the Princess Caroline had not the wisest of parents. Like her, she was addicted to romance, and was too ready to put in practice all that romances teach, and to enter into correspondence at once pleasant and dangerous. Again and again was forced seclusion adopted as the parental remedy to cure a wayward daughter of too much warmth of heart and too little gravity of head.
Her heart, however, would not beat warmly at the bidding of every new suitor. An offer was made to her, when very young, by a scion of the house of Mecklenburgh, whose offer was supported by both the parents of Caroline. That Princess ridiculed her lover, and flatly refused the honour presented for her acceptance. She similarly declined the offers of the Prince of Orange and the Prince George of Darmstadt. Her father was now reigning Duke of Brunswick, burning with desire to destroy the French Republic, and eager to obtain a consort for his daughter. He cannot be said to have succeeded much more happily in the latter than in the former. As for this daughter, she would herself have been happier, in those days when her education—or no education—was scrambled through, had she possessed any religious principles. But she was like other German princesses, who, as it was not known into what royal families they might have the good-luck to marry—Russo-Greek, Roman Catholic, or Protestant—were taught morality (and that but indifferently) in place of faith and a reason for holding it. One consequence was, that they deferred believing anything convincedly until they were espoused—and then they joined their husband’s church, and remained precisely what they were before.
The Princess was in something like this state of suspense, and her sire was in a state not very dissimilar with regard to the part he should take in the war of Germany against France, when the Duke of York, commander of the English force in Holland, destined to act bravely inefficient against the French, visited the ducal court of Brunswick. He is said to have been very favourably impressed with the person and attainments of the Princess Caroline; and it has been supposed that his favourable report of her first led the King, his father, to think of the daughter of ‘the Lady Augusta’ as a wife for his son George.
If, however, Mrs. M. A. Clarke may be believed, the Princess had been thought of as a wife for the Duke of York, who, on seeing her, did not like her. In one respect he behaved infamously to her. The King had entrusted to the Duke a splendid set of diamonds, intended as a present for the Princess. The Duke, meanwhile, lent them to his favourite, Mrs. Clarke, who appeared in them at the opera, and enjoyed the splendid infamy.
The King was more than ordinarily anxious for the marriage of his son, and the latter was made to perceive that, however his affections may have been engaged, it was his interest to marry in obedience to the King’s wishes. He was overwhelmed with debts, and the payment of these was promised as the price of his consent. The wildest stories have been told with regard to the share which the Prince took in furthering his own marriage. Some say that he especially selected the Princess Caroline of Brunswick as the lady he had resolved to marry; others affirm that, while coldly consenting to espouse her, he wrote her a letter expressive of his real feelings, and not at all flattering to those of his proposed wife. The latter is said to have replied to this apocryphal letter with spirit, and to have declared her readiness to incur all risks, and her resolution to win the heart which now affected to be careless of her. Due notice was given to Parliament of the coming event, and a dutiful and congratulatory reply was made by that august assembly.
The King knew nothing of his niece but by report; but he was resolved that the union, upon which he had now determined, and to which he was engaged by his message to Parliament, should take place, be the Princess of what quality she might. He had himself married under similar circumstances, and nothing had come of it but considerable felicity and a very numerous family.
The able and renowned diplomatist, Lord Malmesbury, having received the instructions of the King to demand the hand of the Princess Caroline of Brunswick for the Prince of Wales, proceeded to the duchy—a lover by proxy—to perform his mission. He had no discretionary powers allowed him. That is, although little was known of the Princess at the English court, he was not commissioned to give any information to that court which might have ultimately saved two persons from being supremely miserable. He was commissioned to fetch the Princess. The fitness of the Princess was the last thing thought of. The bride herself used often to say, in after life, to the attendants—who, while they served, sneered at her—that, had she only been allowed to have paid a visit to England, to have first made the acquaintance of the Prince, what a world of misery they might both have been spared! The fact was, no time was to be lost. All the marriageable princesses in Germany were learning English, for the express purpose of bettering their chances of becoming Princess of Wales. They all waited for an offer; and that offer, after all, was made to a Princess who had not made the English language her particular study.
The hymeneal envoy reached Brunswick on the 28th of November 1794. Nine years before, namely, on the 21st of December 1785, the Prince whom he represented was married to Mrs. Fitzherbert (a Roman Catholic, and twice a widow) in her own drawing-room, by a Protestant clergyman, and in presence of two of her relatives. The court of Brunswick thought nothing of this matter. Lord Malmesbury was received with as hilarious a welcome as that which was given to the Earl of Macclesfield at Hanover, when he appeared there with the Act of Settlement which opened the throne of England to the Electoral Family. There was the same hospitality, the same offer of service; and the business was opened, as so much earthly business is, with a grand banquet at court, on the same night, at which Lord Malmesbury saw the future Queen of England for the first time. She was embarrassed on being presented to him, but the experienced diplomatist was not so. He looked at and studied the appearance of the Princess, and saw ‘a pretty face—not expressive of softness; her figure not graceful; fine eyes; good hair; tolerable teeth, but going; fair hair, and light eyebrows; good bust; short; with what the French call “des épaules impertinentes.” Vastly happy with her future expectations.’ She had got over an omission on the part of the Prince which had for a moment pained her. With the offer or demand in marriage there came no greeting from the suitor. The Princess naturally felt disappointed, and she said in a plaintive little voice: ‘le Prince n’a donc rien écrit!’ She was at the time a pretty woman; she had delicately-formed features, and her complexion was good. Those who can only remember her as she appeared when on her last visit to England, in the House of Peers, at Alderman Wood’s window, or at the balcony of Brandenburgh House, with features swollen and disfigured by sorrow and an irregular life, can have no idea of how she looked in her youth. Her eyes were described then as being quick, penetrating, and glancing; they were shaped en amande; and they were, moreover, not merely beautiful, but expressive. Her mouth was delicately formed; she could be noble and dignified when she chose, or occasion required it. It might be said that her only defect, personally, consisted in her head being rather too large and her neck too short. But, setting this aside, there was a greater defect still, though it was one not uncommon to the ladies of the time. There was, in fact, to use a Turkish phrase, ‘garlic amid the flowers.’ The pretty creature was not superfluously clean. To say that she was so superficially would, perhaps, be even more than truth would warrant. As for her mother, that Princess Augusta at whose birth, at St. James’s Palace, such confusion occurred, and who had been in her time so ‘parlous’ a child, Lord Malmesbury found her full of nothing but her daughter’s marriage, and talking incessantly. Her talk was not of the wisest, particularly if she indulged in it in presence of her daughter, for part of it consisted in abuse of Queen Charlotte, the future mother-in-law of Augusta’s child. The Duchess spoke of Queen Charlotte as an envious and intriguing spirit; alleged that she had exhibited that spirit as soon as she arrived in England, and that she was an enemy of her mother, the Princess of Wales, as well as of herself, Augusta. She added that the Queen had so little feeling that while the Princess of Wales was dying her Majesty took advantage of the moment to alter the rank of her Highness’s ladies of the bedchamber. The Duchess’s judgment of King George, her brother, was, that he was more kind-hearted than wise-headed, which was not far from the truth.