A Queen of Indiscretions

A QUEEN OF INDISCRETIONS THE TRAGEDY OF CAROLINE OF BRUNSWICK QUEEN OF ENGLAND TRANSLATED BY FREDERIC CHAPMAN FROM THE ITALIAN OF GRAZIANO PAOLO CLERICI LONDON JOHN LANE THE BODLEY HEAD NEW YORK JOHN LANE COMPANY MDCCCCVII PLYMOUTH WILLIAM BRENDON AND SON, LIMITED PRINTERS THIS TRANSLATION IS INSCRIBED TO THE PLEASANT MEMORY OF THE CONTE VINCENZO FERRERO DANTE SCHOLAR AND POET AN OLD MAN WITH THE HEART OF A LITTLE CHILD UNDER WHOSE KINDLY GUIDANCE I MADE MY FIRST HALTING EXCURSIONS INTO THE LINGUA TOSCANA INTRODUCTION “TRADUTTORE traditore” is an Italian proverb—one of the few that have been so incorporated into the English language as to be invariably given in the original—which must inevitably force itself upon the recollection of whosoever essays to present an English version of a foreign book. In offering such a version of Il più lungo scandalo del secolo xix, by Signor Graziano Paolo Clerici, a distinguished professor in the University of Parma, the translator can only hope that he may not have exemplified the proverb too emphatically. The protracted scandal referred to is the long and embittered struggle between Caroline, born Princess of Brunswick- Wolfenbüttel and successively Princess of Wales and Queen of England, and George, Prince of Wales, subsequently Prince Regent and King George IV. Professor Clerici has, by minute research into Italian records, both in public departments and in private ownership, reconstructed the life of the Princess during the momentous six years, 1814-20, which preceded her succession to the dignity of Queen, years which were, except for the time occupied in a voyage to the East, spent in different parts of Italy. This episode in the Princess’s life it was, undoubtedly, which incited him to turn his attention to the subject For the benefit of his readers he summarized briefly the principal events of the Princess’s life previous to her arrival in Italy, and presented on a larger scale a summary of the famous trial which was ostensibly the outcome of her residence there. But in England, although early in the nineteenth century books about Queen Caroline were innumerable, the whole sordid tragedy has been so generally forgotten, that it seems desirable to deal with certain phases of Caroline’s strange career at somewhat greater length than Professor Clerici deemed necessary. The marriages of the Georges were none of them ideal, whilst two of them produced extremely tragic results. The fate of the unhappy Princess of Zell, the wife of George I, was sufficiently grim, and it almost excites a sensation of wonder that the English people, cognizant of the atrociously cruel treatment meted out by the Elector to his wife, tolerated the entry upon the royal prerogatives of the man who arrived with his lumbering German mistresses. A joke seems to have saved the situation, for when the ladies, protruding their heads from the windows of the coach to expostulate with the hooting mob, cried, “We haf only come for your goods,” a wit in the forefront retorted, “Yes, and our chattels too,” and the disturbance that threatened passed off with laughter. George II was perhaps the most fortunate of the family, for though he cared little for his wife, the level-headed Caroline of Anspach, she was devoted to him, and even pandered to his weaknesses. The famous conversation as she lay a-dying can perhaps hardly be paralleled in history. The moribund queen-consort, anxious about the future welfare of the husband she is parting from, advises him to marry again speedily, and the husband, amidst his blubbering sobs, replies, “Non, non, j’aurai des maîtresses.” George III, Farmer George as he was called, was generally supposed to have been fortunate in his marriage relations; but it is matter of common knowledge that George had, previous to his union with Charlotte, been deeply in love with Lady Sarah Lennox, and it is widely believed that still earlier he had gone through a marriage ceremony with a beautiful young quakeress, Hannah Lightfoot, and that his queen was aware of and did not neglect to make him suffer for his premarital indiscretions. George IV, however, was the most ill-fated of the four in this respect, for his ill-omened marriage resulted in a public scandal which was protracted for twenty-five years. One feature of the domestic and court life of these four successive Georges was a sort of traditional maintenance of bad relations between the reigning sovereign and his heir, and the consequent creation of a secondary court, between the hangers-on of which and the legitimate court as much bitterness existed as exists nowadays between the adherents of the Vatican and the Quirinal. It may be easily realized that George I, torn from his beloved Hanover, and hating England, could scarcely look upon the future George II without arousing thoughts of the miserable captive, Sophie Dorothea; but the grounds for the unbounded hatred which George II, and his Queen with him, displayed towards Frederick, Prince of Wales, are not so easy of comprehension. This hatred, on the Prince’s death, was perhaps not exactly transferred to his son George; but a considerable show of unkindliness must have existed, since the future George III regarded his grandfather with mortal terror. Between George III and his son George, again, disagreement which developed into open hostility speedily grew up, and on one occasion—possibly as a result of the King’s incipient mania—an actual physical struggle took place which scandalized the onlookers. George IV, in his turn, treated the Princess Charlotte with such severity as to incite her to open rebellion, and their lack of genuine affection for one another was so notorious, that the report that he had procured her death by poison gained credence very extensively. Of George the Fourth’s career from the cradle upwards we have the amplest information from innumerable sources, which may be regarded as fairly trustworthy. The public manifestations of joy at his birth, the incidents of his infancy and childhood, his mental and physical prowess in whatever tasks he undertook, his charm of manner, his self-will, his profligacy, his extravagance, his satiety—upon all these points countless anecdotes exist, and are more or less familiar. Of Caroline, on the other hand, little is known prior to her arrival on these shores as the bride-elect of the heir-apparent She was born on 17 May, 1768, the second daughter of Charles William Ferdinand, Duke of Brunswick-Wolfenbüttel, and Augusta, Princess of Great Britain, sister of George III. Her father appears to have been both ambitious and brave, but irresolute; her mother loquacious, petty-minded, and utterly lacking in discretion, as witness a ludicrous anecdote of the childhood of George III which she retailed to Lord Malmesbury during his stay at Brunswick in 1794, and which the curious may find in his Diary. The incapacity of the Duchess may probably have contributed to the Duke’s inability to rise to the opportunities which the struggle with Napoleon undoubtedly afforded him of increasing the influence of his house, and her silliness it was possibly which brought about his numerous amours, and the establishment actually under her own nose of Mlle. de Hertzfeldt, an openly acknowledged mistress, who, at any rate, appears to have been a woman of parts. Of the general tenour of life at a small German court at this date, perhaps the best picture that has been produced is to be found in Shorthouse’s romance The Little Schoolmaster Mark. The openness of the liaison between the Duke and Mlle. de Hertzfeldt has its parallel in the romance in the similar relation between the Princess and her cavaliere-servente, whilst the general mixture of the real life of the court and the fantastic life of the theatre, so inextricably confused as to bewilder the sudden intruder as to which is reality and which is fantasy, is forcibly recalled by an account of a visit to the Court of Brunswick made by the youthful Sir John Stanley, contained in a series of recollections entitled Praeterita—he anticipated Ruskin’s title— prefixed to The Early Married Life of Maria Josepha Holroyd. He concludes his account: “I might almost say I lived in these gardens in fine weather. This has made my remembrance of Brunswick one of green and leaves, and flowers and birds, as well as of a court and operas.” The romance referred to, which is avowedly based on contemporary German autobiography, conjures up miraculously the picture of the gay parterres and the popinjay groups of resolutely frivolous courtiers, darting here and there in the sun like so many gay insects in their rainbow-hued attire. Sir John Stanley was making the grand tour in 1781, and visiting Brunswick, was received at the Court there on the terms of cordiality which would doubtless be extended to any Englishman of his breeding and descent. He describes Caroline as “a beautiful girl of about fourteen,” and says, “I did think and dream of her day and night at Brunswick, and for a year afterwards. I saw her for hours three or four times a week, but as a star out of my reach.” Then, bridging a gulf of years, he continues: “One day only, when dining with her and her mother at Blackheath, she smiled at something which had pleased her, and for an instant only I could have fancied she had been the Caroline of fourteen years old—the lively, pretty Caroline, the girl my eyes had so often rested on, with light and powdered hair hanging in curls on her neck, the lips from which only sweet words seemed as if they would flow, with looks animated, and always simply and modestly dressed.” His infatuation extended from her to hers, a not uncommon trait, for of the Duchess he writes: “No attention was wanting on her part to acquit herself faithfully of her duties as a mother or a wife.

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