The Prince of Orange proposes to the Princess Charlotte—His suit declined—Dr. Parr—A new household appointed for the Princess Charlotte—Her astonishment and immediate flight—Alarm and pursuit—Princess Charlotte removed to Cranbourne Lodge—The Princess of Wales determines to leave England—Her departure from Worthing—The Regent’s continued hatred of her.
Among the refugees of exalted rank whom revolution and the fortunes of war had driven to seek an asylum in England, the members of the family of the Stadtholder of Holland were the most conspicuous. The eldest son of this noble family became almost an Englishman by education and habit, and Oxford yet reckons him with pride among the honoured of her alumni.
As revolution and the fortunes of war had brought the family hither, so a happy turn in the same took them home, and restored them to a country which had now become for them a kingdom. At the peace of 1814 the Prince of Orange once more came to England, not as a refugee, but a visitor and suitor. The heir to a Dutch throne came to sue for the hand of the heiress to the Crown of Great Britain, and his suit was powerfully backed by the sanction of the heiress’s father. Her mother gave no such sanction, nor was she, indeed, asked for any. Most important of all, the young lady thus wooed did not at all sanction the proceeding. Of all the episodes of the season there was none more stirring than this.
It was said that the Regent himself had procured the previous admission of the suitor into Warwick House, under the feigned name of the Chevalier de St. George, but that the Princess would not receive him. In this refusal she was supposed to be supported by her mother, and to act under the advice of the Duchess of Oldenburgh, who already had in view a humbler and, as it turned out, a luckier aspirant for the hand of the heiress. Meanwhile, all England agreed to approve of the match, and chose to look upon the union as a thing settled. The ballad-singers made the streets re-echo with singing ‘Orange Boven,’ and Irish wits accused her Royal Highness of holding an Orange Lodge.
The Regent had hated and thwarted the Princess from her birth. Her death would have been no grief to him, if he could have divorced her mother. The next best thing was to be rid of the daughter. Accordingly her father had this match at heart, and longed to see it concluded. The Princess allowed herself to be handed to her carriage by the princely wooer from the dykes, and granted him more than one interview. It soon became evident that they were not agreed. The Princess pleaded her youth, her love of her country, and her desire to be more intimately acquainted with the latter and with its laws, history, and constitution, before she should surrender herself to the cares and duties of the married state. The Prince of Orange insisted, as far as lover dared, that his wife must necessarily reside with him in Holland. The prospect made the Princess shudder; but it remarkably suited the wishes of her sire, whose most ardent desire was to place as wide a distance as possible between the daughter and her mother. The Prince of Orange had made no secret of his desire that, in the event of his marriage with the Princess, her mother should take up no permanent residence in Holland. This desire—not over mildly expressed—had, perhaps, the most to do with rendering the union impossible. The Princess, indeed, was not inclined towards the Prince, and would not willingly have left the country of her birth; but to her warm friends, at least, she declared that, in the present critical situation of the Princess of Wales, she would not abandon her mother. The latter was touched; but it was just the moment when she was most strongly possessed by a desire to go abroad, and she thought that this desire might be more speedily realised if her daughter were married than if she remained single. She was on the whole rather disappointed than otherwise—except that the breaking off of the match was an annoyance to the Regent, and that was some consolation, at all events. How the match was broken off is thus told in the ‘Brief Memoirs of the Princess Charlotte’:—
‘The Princess Charlotte resented as a great mark of neglect that she was not invited to any of the entertainments given to the Allied Sovereigns, and was the more sore because the Prince of Orange went everywhere and would make no effort to vindicate her claims. The Regent had lost none of his anxiety to keep her out of sight, and the Prince did not choose to provoke the displeasure of the father by fighting the battles of the daughter. The same divergence in their views broke out when she spoke of her mother, and said that on her account it would be inexpedient that she should leave England for some time after her marriage, that when she had a house of her own it must be open equally to both her parents, and that as the child of both she must ignore all differences between them. The Prince of Orange feared the Regent and cared nothing for the Princess of Wales, who had always been hostile to the marriage, and the reasons urged by the Princess Charlotte for stopping in England were arguments to him for getting away from disagreeable complications. He combated her resolution, and said that he had been willing to stand by her in getting the article which secured her freedom inserted in the marriage treaty, but did not suppose that she would refuse altogether to go abroad with him, and that if this was her intention their respective duties were irreconcilable and their marriage impossible. A discussion ensued, and common every-day squabbles occurred to exasperate the dispute. The Princess Charlotte wanted the Prince of Orange to ride with her in the riding-house. He started objections, and she reproached him, till, annoyed at her vehemence and pertinacity, he left her to recover her temper. The climax had come, and in the evening she wrote peremptorily to say that their engagement must cease. Her first note was dashed off in a fit of temper, and a friend who was with her, and whom she asked to light the candle for her to seal it, said, ‘I will not hold the candle to any such thing.’ The Princess consented to pause before she despatched her note, and the result of her reflection was the following decisive dismissal:—
‘Princess Charlotte to the Prince of Orange.
‘June 16, 1814: Warwick House.
‘After reconsidering, according to your wishes, the conversation that passed between us this morning, I am still of opinion the duties and affection that naturally bind us to our respective countries render our marriage incompatible, not only from motives of policy but domestic happiness. From recent circumstances that have occurred, I am fully convinced that my interest is materially connected with that of my mother, and that my residence out of this kingdom would be equally prejudicial to her interest as to my own. As I can never forget the maternal claims she has upon my duty and attachment, I am equally aware of the claims your country has on you. It was this consideration, added to the design I had of complying with your wishes, that induced me some time ago to agree to accompany you to Holland, if I obtained satisfactory securities of having it in my power to return. Since that time the many unforeseen events that have occurred, particularly those regarding the Princess, make me feel it impossible to quit England at present, or to enter into any engagements leading to it at a future time. After what has passed upon this subject this morning between us (which was much too conclusive to require further explanation), I must consider our engagement from this moment to be totally and for ever at an end. I leave the explanation of this affair to be made by you to the Prince in whatever manner is most agreeable to you, trusting it entirely to your honour, of which I have never for a moment doubted. I cannot conclude without expressing the sincere concern I feel in being the cause of giving you pain, which feeling is, however, lessened in a degree by the hope I stand acquitted in your eyes of having acted dishonourably by you in the case of this business, or of having ever raised false hopes in your mind with respect to my consenting to a residence abroad. You must recollect in a letter from me, in answer to yours of May 3, that I told you it was impossible for me to give any promise on that subject, as it must totally depend upon circumstances. It only remains for me to entreat you to accept my sincerest and best wishes for your happiness, and to express the kindness and interest I shall always feel towards you.
‘Charlotte.’