This gives me an opening for saying a few words on this subject. I found several times that some people had given you the impression that poor Charlotte had been hasty and violent even to imperiousness and rudeness. I can you assure that it was not so; she was quick, and even violent, but I never have seen anybody so open to conviction, and so fair and candid when wrong. The proverb says, and not without some truth, that ladies come always back to the first words, to avoid any symptom of having been convinced. Generous minds, however, do not do this; they fight courageously their battles, but when they clearly see that they are wrong, and that the reasons and arguments submitted to them are true, they frankly admit the truth. Charlotte had eminently this disposition; besides, she was so anxious to please me, that often she would say: "Let it be as it may; provided you wish it, I will do it." I always answered: "I never want anything for myself; when I press something on you, it is from a conviction that it is for your interest and for your good." I know that you have been told that she ordered everything in the house and liked to show that she was the mistress. It was not so. On the contrary, her pride was to make me appear to my best advantage, and even to display respect and obedience, when I least wanted it from her. She would almost exaggerate the feeling, to show very clearly that she considered me as her lord and master.
And on the day of the marriage, as most people suspected her of a very different disposition, everybody was struck with the manner in which she pronounced the promise of obedience. I must say that I was much more the master of the house than is generally the case in private life. Besides, there was something generous and royal in her mind which alone would have prevented her doing anything vulgar or ill-bred. What rendered her sometimes a little violent was a slight disposition to jealousy. Poor Lady Maryborough,21 at all times some twelve or fifteen years older than myself, but whom I had much known in 1814, was once much the cause of a fit of that description. I told her it was quite childish, but she said, "it is not, because she is a very coquettish, dissipated woman." The most difficult task I had was to change her manners; she had something brusque and too rash in her movements, which made the Regent quite unhappy, and which sometimes was occasioned by a struggle between shyness and the necessity of exerting herself. I had—I may say so without seeming to boast—the manners of the best society of Europe, having early moved in it, and been rather what is called in French de la fleur des pois. A good judge I therefore was, but Charlotte found it rather hard to be so scrutinised, and grumbled occasionally how I could so often find fault with her.
Nothing perhaps speaks such volumes as the positive fact of her manners getting quite changed within a year's time, and that to the openly pronounced satisfaction of the very fastidious and not over-partial Regent. To explain how it came that manners were a little odd in England, it is necessary to remember that England had been for more than ten years completely cut off from the rest of the world....
We have bitter cold weather which has given colds to both the children. Uncle Ferdinand 22 is now only arriving si dice on Sunday next. He has been robbed of 15,000 francs in his own room au Palais-Royal, which is very unpleasant for all parties.
My letter is so long that I must haste to conclude it, remaining ever, my beloved Victoria, your devoted Uncle,
Leopold R.
My love to Alberto.
Footnote 19: Prince Charles of Leiningen.
Footnote 20: The three sisters, Mrs Norton, Lady Dufferin, and Lady Seymour (afterwards Duchess of Somerset), the latter of whom was "Queen of Beauty" at the Eglinton Tournament, were grand-daughters of R. B. Sheridan. Lord Melbourne was much in Mrs Norton's company, and Norton, for whom the Premier had found a legal appointment, sued him in the Court of Common Pleas for crim. con.; the jury found for the defendant.