Whilst, therefore, I had no scruples on the score of publication, I had, on the other hand, a very strong impression that by publishing these papers, and thus contributing an important addition to existing materials of history illustrative of the reign of George III. and the Regency, I should render a service to Literature and to Truth. But my time was engrossed by other occupations, and I know not when these volumes might have been prepared for the press if it had not been for assistance very cordially rendered by my friend, Mr. James Hutton, of whose intimate acquaintance with the social history of England in the Georgian era no better proof could be afforded than that which speaks out from his interesting volume on English Life “A Hundred Years Ago.” To him, indeed, is to be assigned any praise that may be due for the editing of these volumes, for his, in a much higher degree than mine, have been the intelligence, the industry, and the care bestowed upon them.
The story of Miss Knight’s life is soon told. The daughter of Admiral Sir Joseph Knight, an officer of well-deserved reputation, she was born about the year 1757. Her childish years appear to have been spent in London, where she received an excellent education, and made the acquaintance, as a girl, of Johnson, Goldsmith, Burke, Reynolds, and other celebrities of the age. In 1775, Sir Joseph Knight died; and shortly afterwards, Lady Knight, being in straitened circumstances, and having failed to obtain a pension from the Crown, turned her back upon England, and, taking Cornelia with her, travelled through France, and finally fixed her residence in Italy.
During a space of some twenty years after their departure from England, they appear to have oscillated between Rome and Naples, mixing in the best society of those cities, and seeing much both of the political and prelatical sides of Italian life. That in spite of these environments, Cornelia Knight remained both a good Protestant and a loyal Englishwoman we have the best possible proof in her Memoirs and Journals. Living in a revolutionary period, she had a hatred of revolutions, and was a Tory and a Bourbonite in every pulse of her heart.
At Naples, Lady Knight and her daughter became the familiar friends of Sir William and Lady Hamilton; and when, after the victory of the Nile, Nelson sailed into the Bay and delivered the Royal Family from the dangers which beset them, it was only consistent with the general kindliness of the hero’s nature that he should have taken a deep personal interest in the welfare of the widow and daughter of a brother officer. In return, Miss Knight celebrated his victories in patriotic verse, and was called by the naval officers of the time “Nelson’s poet laureate.”
In 1799, Lady Knight died, at Palermo, and Cornelia, in fulfilment of her mother’s dying injunctions, placed herself under the protection of the Hamiltons. In the following year she accompanied them and Lord Nelson to England—being then about forty-two years of age.
In England she found many friends, with whom she had first become acquainted on the Continent, and the circle was soon widened, including in it some of the most distinguished persons of the age. In this society she did not move merely on sufferance. Miss Knight enjoyed at this time considerable reputation as a lady of extensive learning and manifold accomplishments. She had written some books, which, being in the stately classical style, hit the taste of the age;[[1]] and she was celebrated for her extensive acquaintance with ancient and modern languages. Being a person of high principle, of a blameless life, and altogether a gentlewoman, it was not strange that, possessing also those intellectual gifts, and having numerous influential friends, she should have recommended herself, or been recommended by others, to the favourable notice of the Royal Family of England. Among her friends was Mr. Pitt, whose opinion it was that the education of the young Princess Charlotte of Wales could be entrusted to no fitter person.
Other arrangements were made for the early instruction of the Princess; but Miss Knight had been marked out for a Court life, and in 1806 she became one of the attachées of Queen Charlotte, and took up her residence at Windsor.
There she remained during a period of about seven years, at the end of which, having been included in some new arrangements which were being made for the household of the Princess Charlotte, then growing into womanhood, she left the Court of the Queen (who never forgave her for the desertion) and settled at Warwick House, which was then the domicile of the young Princess, adjoining the residence of her father.
Here Miss Knight sojourned, in attendance upon the Princess, until the eventful July of 1814. The papers had called her, and she is still called in contemporary memoirs, the governess of the Princess Charlotte. But she repudiated this title, and claimed her right official nomenclature of “lady companion” to the Princess. That she had a difficult part to play at Warwick House is certain; that she did not pass the ordeal unscathed is not surprising. Her conduct in the trying circumstances in which she was thrown appears to have been straightforward and honourable; but the Prince Regent, not understanding it at the time, resented it, and Miss Knight was dismissed.
Throughout the year 1815 and the early part of 1816, Miss Knight resided principally in London. In the spring of the latter year she went abroad, and the record of the next twenty years is one of almost continuous wandering. In France, Italy, and Germany she spent the greater part of her remaining life. The restoration of the Bourbons made Paris a point of attraction to her, and there she appears to have been greatly esteemed by the Royal Family, especially by Charles X., who had a high opinion of her learning, and was wont to ask her, after any interval of absence from his capital, what new language she had learnt. In Germany she spent some time at the Court of Würtemberg, and also at that of the petty principality of Hesse-Homburg—both of which were connected by marriage with our own Royal Family. And so her wanderings were continued into the year 1837, in the December of which she died, after a short illness, at Paris, in the eighty-first year of her age.