o b464705202491194 (28 page)

‘My Prince of Würtemburg had the misfortune to take to wife a Princess of

Brunswick. She was Charlotte, too.’

‘He must have a fancy for the name.’

‘There are so many Charlottes in this family. Our mother, myself and now this

new baby.’

‘Not to mention Caroline’s sister, your Prince’s dead wife. I wonder what

Caroline will think of your marrying her brother-in-law.’

‘Caroline’s opinion is of no importance.’

‘I know. I just wondered. Perhaps she has already met him. She surely would

for she would have been at her sister’s wedding, I daresay.’

Sophia looked expectant, but the Princess Royal said quickly: ‘I should not

dream of discussing my future husband with Caroline in any circumstances.’

‘I shouldn’t dream of discussing anything with Caroline!’

‘I have decided to make my own wedding gown. I am starting on it without

delay. I shall sit up all night to finish it if need be for I am determined to put every stitch into it myself.’

‘Have you no qualms about leaving your home and going to a strange land

with your widower?’

The Princess Royal looked pityingly at her sisters. ‘You should be the ones to

suffer qualms,’ she told them, ‘for it may well be that the King has decided that none of you shall ever have a husband.’

Caroline heard of the proposed wedding and was saddened, remembering her

sister Charlotte who had married Frederick William, Prince of Würtemburg.

Charlotte had been sixteen then and she herself fourteen and how she had envied

the elder sister who was starting out on her married life!

But what had happened to Charlotte? She would never really know. It was a

shock too, to learn that that same bridegroom was now coming to England to

marry the Princess Royal for she had never really believed that Charlotte was

dead.

Charlotte’s story was strangely mysterious. Caroline knew that her father had

sent messengers to Russia to try to discover the true story. And what sort of a

husband was this Prince of Würtemburg who had deserted his wife, leaving her in

Russia, after taking her three children away from her.

Was it true that she had had a love affair with the son of Empress Catherine—

that woman whose own life was something of a legend? Or had she dabbled in

politics? How could they know? But the fact remained that Charlotte had

disappeared and no one could be quite sure where.

And now her death must be accepted as a fact— for how otherwise could her

widower come to England to marry the Princess Royal?

What strange lives we lead,
thought Caroline,
when we are married to
strangers.

The Princess Royal was not the least bit disturbed by the rumours. Her great

desire had been to be married and escape from the thralldom of Court life under

the stern eye of her mother. She stitched happily away at her dress and her sisters came in to marvel at her happiness as her needle worked on the white satin

making what Sophia called the most perfect little stitches in the world.

She was in transports of joy when she was fitted for her trousseau. She

clasped her hands together in ecstasy over the jewellery which Forster, the Court jeweller, was making for her. She listened patiently to her mother’s advice on

how to be a good wife, and to her father’s assurances of his love for all his

children. He looked upon her as a child which might have been exasperating in

other circumstances since she was past thirty, but all this she accepted in a kind of ecstasy— so delighted was she to have a husband.

‘My one fear,’ she confided to Elizabeth, ‘is that something will go wrong and

prevent the marriage taking place.’ ‘Can you feel so strongly about a bridegroom

whom you have never seen?’

‘It is marriage I want.’

‘Any marriage?’

‘Oh, come, sister, the Prince is handsome we hear. He is not deformed. He is

not a monster.’

‘He has been married before.’

‘I tell you I don’t care. I don’t care.’

‘I wonder about his first wife.’

The Princess Royal frowned. She had not heard very much about the first wife

except that she had been the sister of Caroline and had had three children and was now dead. But what more did she need to know?

‘Stop looking like a wise old witch,’ she cried. ‘I tell you everything is going

to be all right.’

But was it?

The case of the diamond ring seemed like an omen.

It was to be a beautiful ring set with thirty diamonds.

Forster had brought the design and the stones to the Princess’s apartments to

discuss the setting with her.

He then took it back to his shop and set to work on it. He had done some

work on the ring and left it on his bench and while he was absent, a chicken—

which by some strange manner had found its way into the workshop— was

attracted by the diamonds and swallowed some, even pecking one out of the ring.

Their disappearance would have remained a mystery if one of Forster’s

workmen had not arrived in time to see the chicken pecking at the stones in the

ring and guessed what had happened.

News was hastily sent to the Princess Royal who was deeply distressed— not

at the loss of the diamonds but because she feared it to be an omen. She was

hearing strange rumours about the first wife of her future husband and although

she was reassured that she was dead, there did not appear to be absolute proof of this.

Her demeanour had changed a little and she now no longer sang as she

stitched away at her wedding dress.

But a few days later, the jeweller called on her in triumph. There was the ring

just as it had appeared in the design— with thirty brilliants bravely glittering.

‘It’s another ring?’ she asked.

‘No, Your Highness. We killed the chicken and recovered all the diamonds

from his gizzard.’

He was looking at her, expecting her approval for his cleverness in recovering

the stones; but she took the ring gingerly and slipped it on her finger.

She could not help looking on the incident as an omen.

————————

The King summoned his daughter. He was looking worried and the Princess

Royal, like all the family, felt uneasy to see him so.

She would never forget that terrible day when they had first known that he

was going mad, when he had caught the Prince of Wales by the throat and tried to

strangle him. She remembered too the occasion when she had been going for an

airing with him and he had kept getting out of the coach to give the coachman

instructions so that at last she had felt quite hysterical herself and dashed back into the Palace declaring that she could not ride with Papa. She remembered too

his excessive fondness for Amelia and how he had hugged the child so tightly on

one occasion that they had feared he would kill her and had dragged her from him

and put him into a strait-jacket. He was supposed to be cured now but there were

times when he talked in that quick way of his until he became hoarse and

incoherent. This was when he was upset about something. He was upset now.

‘I have something very serious to say to you,’ he began. ‘Difficult. In a

quandary. Don’t quite know what it means but we shall have to discover. Can’t let you marry if the bridegroom already has a wife, eh, what?’

‘Already has a wife!’ cried the Princess Royal. ‘But she is dead.’

‘So we think— so we hope. At least one should not hope for the death of

others, eh, what? But there are rumours. Some say that she is not dead— but a

prisoner in Russia— and if she is, then that means that Prince Frederick can’t take another wife, can he— because that would be bigamy and something we couldn’t

have, eh, what?’

The Princess Royal looked stricken. What a worry children were! thought the

King. But they couldn’t have bigamy in the family— although in a way they

already had it, because the Prince of Wales was supposed to be married to Mrs.

Fitzherbert and he’d married Caroline.

Oh dear, oh dear, families were difficult to control. Why could they not all be

docile like himself and the Queen, who had always done their duty!

The King said: ‘Well, my dear, you see what this means. You must prepare

yourself for no marriage. Though it may be it won’t come to that. The Prince

assures me that his wife is dead. He has a letter from the Empress of Russia dated two years after he left his wife in her country and the Duke of Brunswick also has a letter from the Empress and in both the letters it states that the Princess

Charlotte of Brunswick is dead.’

‘Then she is dead,’ cried the Princess Royal. ‘Why is there all this talk if she

is dead?’

‘Because, my dear, no one seems to know how she died. Some say one thing,

some another. And there are some who doubt the motives of that strange woman,

the Empress, that they say the Princess did not die at all but that she was kept a prisoner and still is in prison in Russia.’

‘I won’t believe it! I won’t believe it!’ cried the Princess Royal.

‘All the same,’ said the King, ‘it is a matter which must be cleared up to my

satisfaction— and the Queen’s— before we can consent to this marriage.’

‘But my— my future husband is due to arrive here!’

‘Postponement, my dear. It is sometimes necessary. We have to be very sure.

We have to have proof. You understand that, eh, what? Can’t have our Princess

Royal going off to a strange country unmarried, eh, what?’

The Princess Royal felt limp with misery. ‘I feared it was too good to be true,’

she sighed.

The King looked a little shocked. Did marriage mean so much to his

daughter? After all this was not love for a man. How could it be when she had

never seen him? It was merely the desire to be married, to escape from home.

He liked to think of his girls unsullied. He could never bear to contemplate

them in the marriage bed, particularly Amelia.
I shall never part with her,
he thought.
Nor any of the others. They are my girls— my pure girls. They shall

never be sullied if I can help it.

He thought of the life he had led— the good pure life with his Queen— plain,

unattractive Charlotte whom he had had to accept when he
burned
for Sarah Lennox. But he had subdued all his desires in order to do his duty, and as a result he had had thirteen children— fifteen if Octavius and Alfred had lived. He had

never been unfaithful to his wife in deed although he had often dreamed of

beautiful women. Sometimes in his less lucid moments he thought he had

mistresses— beautiful women like those favoured by his brothers and his sons

who had lacked his sense of duty. He dreamed erotic dreams— but they were only

dreams.

And he was anxious that his daughters should remain pure. He would keep

them under his roof, growing older perhaps— but they would always be children

to him.

So now, although he was sorry for his daughter’s tragic looks, in his heart he

would be pleased if this marriage came to nothing.

————————

The King visited Caroline at Blackheath. ‘You are happily settled here?’ he

asked.

‘I could enjoy my stay, Your Majesty, but I miss my daughter.’

‘Ah, yes, the young rogue! I was with her yesterday. She grows apace and is

into everything.’

The King smiled affectionately. He loved babies. Caroline smiled with him

and gave him an account of young Charlotte’s amazingly clever conduct in the

days when she was at Carlton House with her.

‘She misses her mother,’ said Caroline. ‘But not as much as her mother

misses her.’

The King smiled. This was the sort of conversation he loved— happy

domestic conversation. He discussed the food the Princess should be given and

what rules should be made for her household.

Then he came to the real point of his visit.

‘As you know there is a betrothal between the Prince of Würtemberg and our

Princess Royal.’

‘Yes, I had heard of this.’

‘You will have met the Prince?’

‘I met him when he came to Brunswick to marry my sister.’

‘And your sister, Caroline, what of her?’

‘I had never believed her to be dead. I have always felt that she was alive and

there were rumours—’

‘And your father?’

‘My father believed her dead and so did Madame de Hertzfeldt and my

mother. But perhaps that was what they wished.’

‘Do you remember what happened?’

‘Yes. There was a letter to say that my sister had died of a terrible disease

which made it necessary for her to be buried without delay.’

‘And you did not believe this.’

Caroline shrugged her shoulders. ‘Perhaps I did not wish to believe it. I had

been brought up with her. She was always so full of life. I could not imagine her

— dead. Her maid came back to us. She said she had been dismissed by my sister

and sent back home. She became my maid and she told me that my sister had

fallen in love with one of the Empress’s lovers.’

The King shuddered; he could not bear hearing stories of other people’s

profligate habits because when he was alone he could not stop thinking of them.

Caroline had no notion of this and went on, ‘This maid told me that my sister

had a child by this man and that the Empress had her sent away and imprisoned

her. Perhaps she had her murdered in prison.’

The King did not speak and Caroline went on: ‘One cannot believe these