Meanwhile, the dinners at Connaught House and the little parties at Blackheath continued as usual. If a great deal of frivolity were present at them, it cannot be said that grave wisdom was always lacking; for by the side of a public singer would sometimes be seated no less a person than Dr. Parr. Of personal intercourse between the mother and daughter there was now scarcely any, but their correspondence was still kept up; and it was not the less sincere on the poor mother’s side from the circumstance of her occasionally forgetting orthography in the ardour of her affection.
The Regent, soured by his defeat with respect to the union of his daughter and the Prince of Orange, was more than commonly irritated by the knowledge that his wife and child were engaged in a frequent epistolary correspondence, and that he had, hitherto, been unable to prevent it. He was satisfied that such correspondence could not be maintained without the connivance of the ladies of his daughter’s household, and he determined to meet the evil by dissolving the establishment.
Before this resolution had been arrived at the Princess Charlotte was subjected to much petty persecution, rendered the more annoying by being continual, and which made up in enduring length what it wanted in intensity. It was said at the time that even the letters in her writing-desk found their way into her father’s hands; and there was so much done at this time that was degrading to the doers that the report is recommended at least by its probability. At all events, ‘wearied out by a series of acts all proceeding from the spirit of petty tyranny, and each more vexatious than another, though none of them very important in itself,’ the Princess was driven to a very extreme measure by the uncalled-for and undignified severity of her irritated sire. Lord Stourton (referring indeed to an earlier time) states, in his ‘Memoirs of Mrs. Fitzherbert’:—‘On one occasion Mrs. Fitzherbert told me she was much affected by the Princess Charlotte throwing her arms round her neck and beseeching her to speak to her father that he would receive her with greater marks of his affection; and she told me that she could not help weeping with this interesting child.’
On the 16th of July, 1814, the Prince Regent, who had previously secured Cranbourne Lodge, in Windsor Forest, as a residence for his daughter, and had even, equally unknown to her, but in concert with Queen Charlotte, nominated the new ladies of the Princess’s household, repaired to Warwick House, accompanied by the ladies so named. The party had only to traverse the gardens of Carlton House to arrive at their destination. The ladies were the Duchess-dowager of Rosslyn and the Countess of Ilchester, the two Misses Coates, and Miss Campbell, formerly sub-governess to the Princess. They were placed in an apartment adjacent to that into which the Regent entered, as soon as he knew that it was occupied by the Princess.
Without ceremony he announced to the astonished Princess that her establishment in that house was from that moment dismissed; that she must instantly repair to the seclusion of Cranbourne Lodge; and that the newly-appointed ladies of her household were in the next apartment, ready to wait upon and accompany her.
The Princess was astonished, but she was wonderfully self-possessed, and her presence of mind, helped by her love for a little romantic adventure, admirably served her on this occasion. She requested a few minutes’ respite, that she might retire, take leave of her now dismissed ladies, and superintend some preparations for departure. The Prince acquiesced, and leaving the new ladies in charge of the Princess, returned to Carlton House to dress for a dinner en ville.
He was hardly gone when the Princess was gone too. Silently and swiftly descending the stairs, she issued from the doors, and in half a minute stood alone upon the pavement of Cockspur Street. Lord Brougham says: ‘It was a fine evening in July, about the hour of seven, when’—he adds with a sort of contempt for people of the lower order, and indeed with much inaccuracy to boot—‘when the streets were deserted by all persons of condition.’ From the old stand at the bottom of the Haymarket she called a coach, whose lucky driver (Higgins) obeyed the summons, and having handed the heiress of England into the damp straw of his dirty and rickety vehicle, listened to the order to drive to the Princess of Wales’s in Connaught Place—to be quick, and he should not have to regret it. The guileless Higgins concluded that he was taking a lady’s lady out to tea, and that the maid of one establishment was going to make an evening of it with the maids of another. Unconscious that he was contributing in his own person to the history of England on that eventful summer’s evening, Higgins in due course of time reached Connaught Place, and when he heard, to the inquiry of his ‘fare’ whether her mother was at home, that the page answered, ‘No, your Royal Highness, the Princess of Wales is at Blackheath,’ he became proudly sagacious of largesse to come, and was convinced that he had been a right royal coachman that night, by token that he received three guineas for his honorarium.
A messenger was despatched to Blackheath with a request to the Princess to return immediately to her. She was met by the bearer of the message on her way, and with ready good sense drove to either house of parliament, in search first of Mr. Whitbread, then of Lord Grey, but without success in either case. Meanwhile, another messenger had been despatched for Mr. Brougham, the law-adviser of the Princess of Wales, and a third for Miss Mercer Elphinstone, the young bosom friend of the Princess Charlotte. Mr. Brougham arrived first, and soon after Miss Elphinstone had reached the house the Princess of Wales also arrived, accompanied by Lady Charlotte Lindsey. ‘It was found,’ said Mr. Brougham, ‘that the Princess Charlotte’s fixed resolution was to leave her father’s house and that which he had appointed for her residence, and thenceforward to live with her mother.’ But Mr. Brougham is understood to have placed himself under the painful necessity of explaining to her that by the law, as all the twelve judges but one had laid it down in George I.’s reign, and as it was now admitted to be settled, the King or the Regent had the absolute power to dispose of all the royal family while under age. Another account states that the Princess met this announcement by the declaration, made amid many tears and much sobbing, that she would rather toil for her daily bread at five shillings a week than continue to endure the persecution to which she had of late been subjected. The Princess of Wales was very much affected by this demonstration of her daughter’s affection and confidence, but she united with Mr. Brougham in urging her to submit to her father’s will. The Princess Charlotte continued to show fixed reluctance to adopt such a course, and was expressing her determination not to follow it when the Archbishop of Canterbury arrived; but the page refused to give him admission, and he remained at the door seated in a hackney coach. The first great official from the Regent’s side who was admitted into the house was Lord Eldon. He had been despatched from the Duke of York’s, where the Regent was dining, when the intelligence of his daughter’s flight had been conveyed to him by the ladies to whose care he had committed her. ‘The Lord Chancellor Eldon,’ says Lord Brougham, ‘first arrived, but not in any particular imposing state, regard being had to his eminent station, for indeed he came in a hackney coach. Whether it was that the example of the Princess Charlotte herself had for the day brought this simple and economical mode of conveyance into fashion, or that concealment was much studied, or that despatch was deemed more essential than ceremony and pomp, certain it is, that all who came, including the Duke of York, arrived in similar vehicles, and that some remained enclosed in them, without entering the royal mansion.’ Lord Eldon appears to have treated the Princess with some roughness, adding threats to the entreaties of others, and menacing her with being closely shut up if she did not obey. In his own account of this evening and its incidents he says that the Princess, in answer to his observations, only ‘kicked and bounced,’ and protested that she positively would not go back. The chancellor declared as positively that he would not leave the house without her. ‘At length,’ Lord Brougham concludes his narrative, ‘after much pains and many entreaties used by the Duke of Sussex and the Princess of Wales herself, as well as Miss Mercer Elphinstone and Lady Charlotte Lindsey (whom she always honoured with a just regard), to enforce the advice given by Mr. Brougham, that she should return without delay to her own residence and submit to the Regent, the young Princess, accompanied by the Duke of York and her governess, who had now been sent for and arrived in a royal carriage, returned to Warwick House between four and five o’clock in the morning.’
Soon after this occurrence the Princess was removed to Cranbourne Lodge, where she bore the secluded life she was constrained to lead with more of a calm than a cheerful resignation. She was not, however, there forgotten by her friends. The Duke of Sussex rose in his place in parliament to inquire if his royal niece was or was not in a sort of ‘durance,’ and whether she were permitted to see her friends. Ministers replied to these queries in that official way which answers without enlightening, and further measures were spoken of; but the Duke of Sussex was seized with an attack of asthma, which popular report attributed to a sharp communication made to him by the Regent, and therewith no further mention was made of the royal recluse in Windsor Forest.
But there was another recluse anxious to emancipate herself and fly from the restrictions and conventionalities of English living to the greater liberty allowed on the Continent. There were very few persons who thought the Princess of Wales well advised in this desire except Mr. Canning. Into his hands the wife of the Regent committed a letter, which Lord Liverpool was requested to submit to the Prince. It contained a brief description of her unmerited condition, expressed a wish of being allowed to withdraw to the Continent, chiefly for the purpose of visiting her brother, and finally made offer of resigning the Rangership of Greenwich Park in favour of her daughter, and also to make over to her the residence (Montague House) which her mother had occupied at Blackheath. The principal reason assigned for her wishing to withdraw was that she had nothing now to bind her to England but her daughter, and from her society she was now entirely and most unjustly excluded.