CHAPTER V.
HARSH TRIALS AND PETTY TRIUMPHS.
The Princess again in public—Restricted intercourse between the Princess and her daughter—Sealed letter addressed by the Princess to the Prince—Published—The Princess’s appeal to Parliament—Bitterness on both sides—Meeting of the Princess and her daughter—The Princess at Vauxhall—Death of the Duchess of Brunswick—Last interview between the Duke of Brunswick and the Princess—Her depressed spirits—Unnoticed during the festivities of 1814—Sacrifice made by the Princess—Unnoticed by the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia—The Princess at the opera—A scene—Not invited to the great city banquet—Mr. Whitbread’s advice to the Princess—A freak—Reception of the Regent in the city—The Princess excluded from the drawing-rooms—Correspondence between the Queen and the Princess—Her letter to the Regent—Discussed in the House of Commons.
From the comparative retirement in which the Princess had lived for a few years she was now, in 1813, again to issue and appear before the public more like an athlete on the arena than a suppliant with wrongs to be redressed.
Her retirement had given, however, much subject for comment on the part of the public, for censure on the part of her enemies. The latter still pointed to her habits of life as forming apology enough for the restrictions set upon her intercourse with her daughter. The fashion of opening all her apartments to her visitors at Kensington was considered indecorous; and the popular tongue dealt unmeasuredly with her cottage at Bayswater, at which she was said to have presided at scenes of at least consummate folly—and folly in such a woman was but next to serious guilt, and almost as sure to accomplish her utter ruin.
It is difficult to say positively in what light the Princess Charlotte looked upon the restrictions which kept her mother and herself apart. Report accredited her with being a thorn in the side of Queen Charlotte, and a continual trouble to the Regent. She is said to have paid to neither an over-heaped measure of respect, and she seriously offended both by marring the splendour of her first ‘drawing-room,’ at which she was to be presented by the Duchess of York, and which was postponed because she insisted upon being presented by her mother.
Early in January a sealed letter was addressed to the Prince Regent by the Princess of Wales, and forwarded by Lady Charlotte Campbell, through Lord Liverpool and Lord Eldon. It was immediately returned unopened. The letter was sent back as before. It was again returned, with an intimation that the Prince would not depart from his determination not to enter into any correspondence. Under legal advice, it was once more transmitted, with a demand that the ministers should submit it to the Prince. Finally, intimation was conveyed to the Princess that the Regent had become acquainted with the contents of the letter, but had no reply to make to it. Upon this the letter was published in a morning paper. Though addressed to the Regent, it was evidently intended for the public solely; and its appearance in the papers excited a wrath in the Prince which brought upon the Princess much of her subsequent persecution, and exposed her to considerable present animadversion, even at the hands of many of her friends.
The letter was long, but it may be substantially described as containing a protest of the supposed writer’s innocence; a remonstrance against the restrictions, now more stringent than ever, which kept her apart from her daughter; an assertion that such restrictions were injurious to the latter, and a fatal blow against the honour of the mother; and finally a stinging criticism upon the secluded system of education by which her daughter was not educated, and which was not calculated to develop the character of the future Queen of Great Britain.
A bomb in the palace could not have created more excitement than was caused by the appearance of this letter in the papers. It was met by a refusal to allow any meeting at all, for the present, between the Princess Charlotte and her mother, and by an assembling of the Privy Council, the members of which speedily showed why they had been called together, by making a report to the Regent, in which it was stated that the lords of the council, having read the letter of the Princess, and having examined the documents connected with the investigation into the conduct of the Princess in 1806, were decidedly of opinion that any intercourse between the mother and daughter should continue to be subject to regulations and restraint. This report, which was tantamount to a mortal stab to the reputation of the Princess of Wales, and not altogether unprovoked by her, was signed by the two archbishops and all the ministers. The stab was dealt back as fiercely as it could be by an appeal to the people through parliament. To this body the Princess, in March, addressed a letter asserting her innocence, denouncing the system which pronounced her guilty without letting her know on what evidence the verdict was founded, and without allowing her to produce testimony to rebut it; and, finally, requiring that parliament would authorise a full and strict investigation, from which she felt that her honour would issue pre-eminently triumphant. This request brought on an animated debate upon a motion for the production of papers connected with the inquiry of 1806, and the evidence adduced thereon. The motion was lost; but ministers were compelled to acknowledge that the Princess stood fully acquitted of the charges then and there brought against her. The assertion made by Lord Castlereagh, that government had not proceeded against the degraded and infamous Sir John and Lady Douglas, because they were reluctant to trouble the world with the indelicate matters that must be raked up again, excited shouts of derision. Mr. Whitbread stoutly asserted that never had woman been so falsely accused or so fully triumphant; and Mr. Wortley, despite all his respect for the house of Brunswick, could not help lamenting that the royal family was the only one in the kingdom that seemed careless about its own welfare and respectability.
The subject was frequently brought before parliament, but with no other effect than to show that there was much exaggerated bitterness of feeling on both sides, and that the best friends of the Princess were those who were of no party. Parliament was, at last, but too happy to let the matter drop. Meanwhile, the publication of the ‘Spirit of The Book’ did the Princess no good, and was, perhaps, not intended to have that result. The daughter was now established at Warwick House, and the Duchess of Leeds had succeeded as governess to Lady de Clifford, much to the dissatisfaction of the Princess Charlotte herself, who asserted that she was old enough to live without such superintendence. She could not be frightened into a conviction of the contrary by rude remarks from Lord Eldon, who also sought to terrify the Princess of Wales into absolute silence, on the ground that such a course would more entirely conduce to her own safety; to which that spirited lady replied that she was under the safeguard of the British constitution, and had no fears for her own safety whatever.
That she saw her daughter ‘in spite of them’ was to her a matter of legitimate triumph. She had been forbidden to call at Warwick House, but she could not fail to encounter the Princess Charlotte on the public highways. This meeting first occurred early in the spring; the mother espied the daughter’s carriage at a distance, and ordered her own to be driven rapidly after it. She was then on Constitution Hill—the Princess was near Hyde Park—and the pursuer came up with the pursued near the Serpentine. Each leaned forward from her own carriage to kiss the other and for several minutes they remained in deep and, apparently, affectionate conversation—a crowd the while surrounding them with ever-ready sympathy.