When we returned home, Princess Charlotte was greatly agitated, and insisted on knowing the whole of Princess Mary’s conversation with me. She had heard most of it, and I concealed nothing from her in that respect; but I was less communicative with respect to my lesson from the Regent. I told her what he said about Lady Jersey, and I hinted that he had expressed his regard for her in preference to her mother, because he had insisted on my so doing. Princess Charlotte said she had of late received much more kindness from her mother than from the Prince, but that their unfortunate quarrels with each other rendered their testimonies of affection to her at all times very precarious. As to Lady Jersey, she said she knew not what the Prince had against her. He had been the first to urge her visiting his daughter, and Lady Jersey declared she would come unless she heard from his own lips a positive revocation of the order. Lady Jersey was now going out of town, so that all difficulties on that subject were suspended.
The affair of the Duchess of York and Lady Anne Smith hurt Princess Charlotte exceedingly; she had a great regard for the Miss Fitzroys, and she thought the Duke and Duchess of York two of her best friends. She therefore resolved to clear up the point with the Duchess, and therefore wrote her a note on the subject, desiring her to put off the party if she thought it more prudent so to do. What the Duchess had or had not said I cannot determine, but that trifling circumstance made a “tracasserie” of long duration. The Duchess wanted to exculpate herself with Lady Anne, who, scandal said, was jealous of her. Lady Anne wrote to Colonel Taylor at Windsor, he told it to Princess Mary, and she wrote me a letter, complaining I had betrayed confidence, after a friendship of so many years.
At last, however, the Duke of Cambridge called on me, and, I believe, set all to rights as far as I was concerned; for I not only told him that I could not deceive Princess Charlotte, whose ears were very quick, and who insisted on knowing the whole, but that I had promised never to deceive her; and that also I had not the slightest idea that Princess Mary wished what she said to me on the subject of the Duchess and Lady Anne to be a secret kept from Princess Charlotte; that I had rather considered it as a warning which it was my duty to repeat; and that the whole would have ended quietly if the Duchess had left it where it was. The Duke said that it had better have rested with the Princess Charlotte’s being to blame in not consulting the Duchess of Leeds. That, I said, had no effect; for her Royal Highness would not be persuaded to consider her as more than a nominal governess, and I had some difficulty in making things go on as well as they did in that quarter.
Sir Henry Halford, however, who was the person always employed at that time, settled the business of putting off the dinner party, by coming to say from the Queen, that as the Princess Charlotte was not well enough to go back to Windsor, she could not be well enough to see company at dinner, and the Duchess of York prudently declined it. The Prince Regent was supposed not to know anything of this affair, and perhaps really did not. I feel almost ashamed of spending ink and paper on such trifles, but they show the style of treatment adopted towards the future Queen of England.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE LETTER IN THE “MORNING CHRONICLE”—THE PRINCE AND PRINCESS OF WALES—PAINFUL POSITION OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE—FATHER AND DAUGHTER—THE PRINCESS IN RETIREMENT—THE DELICATE INVESTIGATION—BEHAVIOUR OF THE PRINCESS CHARLOTTE.
A very few days after this first fête, at which Princess Charlotte made her appearance, the Morning Chronicle exhibited a letter[[132]] from the Princess of Wales to the Regent, complaining of her daughter not being allowed to join in society, to acquire knowledge of the world, &c. Another complaint was her not being permitted to see her oftener; and the most serious one, that she was not confirmed. This letter had been sent to the Prince a month before, and a copy of it to Lord Liverpool. That to the Prince had been returned unopened, and had it rested there it would have been very well, but it was injudicious to print it in the papers, and more particularly at a time when Princess Charlotte had just appeared in public, and had been allowed to visit her mother twice in the space of eleven days, instead of once a fortnight, which had been the rule for some time past. I have no doubt that these two last visits had been so contrived on account of the letter; but that the world could not know, and with many people it put the Princess of Wales in the wrong. It produced a visit to me from Colonel Mac Mahon, with a command from the Prince to write a note to the lady in waiting of the Princess of Wales, to say that, “in the absence of the Duchess of Leeds, I was commanded to inform her that Princess Charlotte could not dine at Kensington that day, as had been intended.”[[133]]
Poor Princess Charlotte was thrown into agonies of grief by all these discussions, and always remarked that she could not have three days’ peace, and trembled continually for what was to come next.
The Prince Regent had, I think, made one or two visits to Warwick House since I came into office; but soon after that message through Colonel Mac Mahon, he called one morning with Lord Liverpool, and desired I would go down to the latter while he spoke to Princess Charlotte, as Lord Liverpool[[134]] would explain to me on what business they were come.