1: Antecedent
Preface || 2: Childhood >>
I
On November 6, 1817, died the Princess Charlotte, only child of the Prince Regent, and
heir to the crown of England. Her short life had hardly been a happy one. By nature
impulsive, capricious, and vehement, she had always longed for liberty; and she had never
possessed it. She had been brought up among violent family quarrels, had been early
separated from her disreputable and eccentric mother, and handed over to the care of her
disreputable and selfish father. When she was seventeen, he decided to marry her off to
the Prince of Orange; she, at first, acquiesced; but, suddenly falling in love with Prince
Augustus of Prussia, she determined to break off the engagement.
This was not her first love affair, for she had previously carried on a
clandestine correspondence with a Captain Hess. Prince Augustus was already married,
morganatically, but she did not know it, and he did not tell her. While she was spinning
out the negotiations with the Prince of Orange, the allied sovereign—it was June,
1814—arrived in London to celebrate their victory. Among them, in the suite of the
Emperor of Russia, was the young and handsome Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. He made
several attempts to attract the notice of the Princess, but she, with her heart elsewhere,
paid very little attention. Next month the Prince Regent, discovering that his daughter
was having secret meetings with Prince Augustus, suddenly appeared upon the scene and,
after dismissing her household, sentenced her to a strict seclusion in Windsor Park.
"God Almighty grant me patience!" she exclaimed, falling on her knees in an
agony of agitation: then she jumped up, ran down the backstairs and out into the street,
hailed a passing cab, and drove to her mother's house in Bayswater. She was discovered,
pursued, and at length, yielding to the persuasions of her uncles, the Dukes of York and
Sussex, of Brougham, and of the Bishop of Salisbury, she returned to Carlton House at two
o'clock in the morning. She was immured at Windsor, but no more was heard of the Prince of
Orange. Prince Augustus, too, disappeared. The way was at last open to Prince Leopold of
Saxe-Coburg.
This Prince was clever enough to get round the Regent, to impress the
Ministers, and to make friends with another of the Princess's uncles, the Duke of Kent.
Through the Duke he was able to communicate privately with the Princess, who now declared
that he was necessary to her happiness. When, after Waterloo, he was in Paris, the Duke's
aide-de-camp carried letters backwards and forwards across the Channel. In January 1816 he
was invited to England, and in May the marriage took place.
The character of Prince Leopold contrasted strangely with that of his
wife. The younger son of a German princeling, he was at this time twenty-six years of age;
he had served with distinction in the war against Napoleon; he had shown considerable
diplomatic skill at the Congress of Vienna; and he was now to try his hand at the task of
taming a tumultuous Princess. Cold and formal in manner, collected in speech, careful in
action, he soon dominated the wild, impetuous, generous creature by his side. There was
much in her, he found, of which he could not approve. She quizzed, she stamped, she roared
with laughter; she had very little of that self-command which is especially required of
princes; her manners were abominable. Of the latter he was a good judge, having moved, as
he himself explained to his niece many years later, in the best society of Europe, being
in fact "what is called in French de la fleur des pois." There was continual
friction, but every scene ended in the same way. Standing before him like a rebellious boy
in petticoats, her body pushed forward, her hands behind her back, with flaming cheeks and
sparkling eyes, she would declare at last that she was ready to do whatever he wanted.
"If you wish it, I will do it," she would say. "I want nothing for
myself," he invariably answered; "When I press something on you, it is from a
conviction that it is for your interest and for your good."
Among the members of the household at Claremont, near Esher, where the
royal pair were established, was a young German physician, Christian Friedrich Stockmar.
He was the son of a minor magistrate in Coburg, and, after taking part as a medical
officer in the war, he had settled down as a doctor in his native town. Here he had met
Prince Leopold, who had been struck by his ability, and, on his marriage, brought him to
England as his personal physician. A curious fate awaited this young man; many were the
gifts which the future held in store for him—many and various—influence, power,
mystery, unhappiness, a broken heart. At Claremont his position was a very humble one; but
the Princess took a fancy to him, called him "Stocky," and romped with him along
the corridors. Dyspeptic by constitution, melancholic by temperament, he could yet be
lively on occasion, and was known as a wit in Coburg. He was virtuous, too, and served the
royal menage with approbation. "My master," he wrote in his diary, "is the
best of all husbands in all the five quarters of the globe; and his wife bears him an
amount of love, the greatness of which can only be compared with the English national
debt." Before long he gave proof of another quality—a quality which was to
colour the whole of his life-cautious sagacity. When, in the spring of 1817, it was known
that the Princess was expecting a child, the post of one of her physicians-in-ordinary was
offered to him, and he had the good sense to refuse it. He perceived that his colleagues
would be jealous of him, that his advice would probably not be taken, but that, if
anything were to go wrong, it would be certainly the foreign doctor who would be blamed.
Very soon, indeed, he came to the opinion that the low diet and constant bleedings, to
which the unfortunate Princess was subjected, were an error; he drew the Prince aside, and
begged him to communicate this opinion to the English doctors; but it was useless. The
fashionable lowering treatment was continued for months. On November 5, at nine o'clock in
the evening, after a labour of over fifty hours, the Princess was delivered of a dead boy.
At midnight her exhausted strength gave way. When, at last, Stockmar consented to see her;
he went in, and found her obviously dying, while the doctors were plying her with wine.
She seized his hand and pressed it. "They have made me tipsy," she said. After a
little he left her, and was already in the next room when he heard her call out in her
loud voice: "Stocky! Stocky!" As he ran back the death-rattle was in her throat.
She tossed herself violently from side to side; then suddenly drew up her legs, and it was
over.
The Prince, after hours of watching, had left the room for a few
moments' rest; and Stockmar had now to tell him that his wife was dead. At first he could
not be made to realise what had happened. On their way to her room he sank down on a chair
while Stockmar knelt beside him: it was all a dream; it was impossible. At last, by the
bed, he, too, knelt down and kissed the cold hands. Then rising and exclaiming, "Now
I am quite desolate. Promise me never to leave me," he threw himself into Stockmar's
arms.
II
The tragedy at Claremont was of a most upsetting kind. The royal
kaleidoscope had suddenly shifted, and nobody could tell how the new pattern would arrange
itself. The succession to the throne, which had seemed so satisfactorily settled, now
became a matter of urgent doubt.
Windsor Castle
George III was still living, an aged lunatic, at Windsor, completely
impervious to the impressions of the outer world. Of his seven sons, the youngest was of
more than middle age, and none had legitimate offspring. The outlook, therefore, was
ambiguous. It seemed highly improbable that the Prince Regent, who had lately been obliged
to abandon his stays, and presented a preposterous figure of debauched obesity, could ever
again, even on the supposition that he divorced his wife and re-married, become the father
of a family. Besides the Duke of Kent, who must be noticed separately, the other brothers,
in order of seniority, were the Dukes of York, Clarence, Cumberland, Sussex, and
Cambridge; their situations and prospects require a brief description. The Duke of York,
whose escapades in times past with Mrs. Clarke and the army had brought him into trouble,
now divided his life between London and a large, extravagantly ordered and extremely
uncomfortable country house where he occupied himself with racing, whist, and improper
stories. He was remarkable among the princes for one reason: he was the only one of
them—so we are informed by a highly competent observer—who had the feelings of a
gentleman. He had been long married to the Princess Royal of Prussia, a lady who rarely
went to bed and was perpetually surrounded by vast numbers of dogs, parrots, and monkeys.
They had no children. The Duke of Clarence had lived for many years in complete obscurity
with Mrs. Jordan, the actress, in Bushey Park. By her he had had a large family of sons
and daughters, and had appeared, in effect to be married to her, when he suddenly
separated from her and offered to marry Miss Wykeham, a crazy woman of large fortune, who,
however, would have nothing to say to him. Shortly afterwards Mrs. Jordan died in
distressed circumstances in Paris. The Duke of Cumberland was probably the most unpopular
man in England. Hideously ugly, with a distorted eye, he was bad-tempered and vindictive
in private, a violent reactionary in politics, and was subsequently suspected of murdering
his valet and of having carried on an amorous intrigue of an extremely scandalous kind. He
had lately married a German Princess, but there were as yet no children by the marriage.
The Duke of Sussex had mildly literary tastes and collected books. He had married Lady
Augusta Murray, by whom he had two children, but the marriage, under the Royal Marriages
Act, was declared void. On Lady Augusta's death, he married Lady Cecilia Buggin; she
changed her name to Underwood, but this marriage also was void. Of the Duke of Cambridge,
the youngest of the brothers, not very much was known. He lived in Hanover, wore a blonde
wig, chattered and fidgeted a great deal, and was unmarried.
Besides his seven sons, George III had five surviving daughters. Of
these, two—the Queen of Wurtemberg and the Duchess of Gloucester—were married
and childless. The three unmarried princesses—Augusta, Elizabeth, and
Sophia—were all over forty.
III
The fourth son of George III was Edward, Duke of Kent. He was now
fifty years of age—a tall, stout, vigorous man, highly-coloured, with bushy eyebrows,
a bald top to his head, and what hair he had carefully dyed a glossy black. His dress was
extremely neat, and in his whole appearance there was a rigidity which did not belie his
character. He had spent his early life in the army—at Gibraltar, in Canada, in the
West Indies—and, under the influence of military training, had become at first a
disciplinarian and at last a martinet. In 1802, having been sent to Gibraltar to restore
order in a mutinous garrison, he was recalled for undue severity, and his active career
had come to an end. Since then he had spent his life regulating his domestic arrangements
with great exactitude, busying himself with the affairs of his numerous dependents,
designing clocks, and struggling to restore order to his finances, for, in spite of his
being, as someone said who knew him well "réglé comme du papier à musique,"
and in spite of an income of £24,000 a year, he was hopelessly in debt. He had quarrelled
with most of his brothers, particularly with the Prince Regent, and it was only natural
that he should have joined the political Opposition and become a pillar of the Whigs.
What his political opinions may actually have been is open to doubt; it
has often been asserted that he was a Liberal, or even a Radical; and, if we are to
believe Robert Owen, he was a necessitarian Socialist. His relations with Owen—the
shrewd, gullible, high-minded, wrong-headed, illustrious and preposterous father of
Socialism and Co-operation—were curious and characteristic. He talked of visiting the
Mills at New Lanark, he did, in fact, preside at one of Owen's public meetings; he
corresponded with him on confidential terms, and he even (so Owen assures us) returned,
after his death, from "the sphere of spirits" to give encouragement to the
Owenites on earth. "In an especial manner," says Owen, "I have to name the
very anxious feelings of the spirit of his Royal Highness the Late Duke of Kent (who early
informed me that there were no titles in the spiritual spheres into which he had entered),
to benefit, not a class, a sect, a party, or any particular country, but the whole of the
human race, through futurity." "His whole spirit-proceeding with me has been
most beautiful," Owen adds, "making his own appointments; and never in one
instance has this spirit not been punctual to the minute he had named." But Owen was
of a sanguine temperament. He also numbered among his proselytes President Jefferson,
Prince Metternich, and Napoleon; so that some uncertainty must still linger over the Duke
of Kent's views. But there is no uncertainty about another circumstance: his Royal
Highness borrowed from Robert Owen, on various occasions, various sums of money which were
never repaid and amounted in all to several hundred pounds.
After the death of the Princess Charlotte it was clearly important, for
more than one reason, that the Duke of Kent should marry. From the point of view of the
nation, the lack of heirs in the reigning family seemed to make the step almost
obligatory; it was also likely to be highly expedient from the point of view of the Duke.
To marry as a public duty, for the sake of the royal succession, would surely deserve some
recognition from a grateful country. When the Duke of York had married he had received a
settlement of £25,000 a year. Why should not the Duke of Kent look forward to an equal
sum? But the situation was not quite simple. There was the Duke of Clarence to be
considered; he was the elder brother, and, if he married, would clearly have the
prior claim. On the other hand, if the Duke of Kent married, it was important to remember
that he would be making a serious sacrifice: a lady was involved.
The Duke, reflecting upon all these matters with careful attention,
happened, about a month after his niece's death, to visit Brussels, and learnt that Mr.
Creevey was staying in the town. Mr. Creevey was a close friend of the leading Whigs and
an inveterate gossip; and it occurred to the Duke that there could be no better channel
through which to communicate his views upon the situation to political circles at home.
Apparently it did not occur to him that Mr. Creevey was malicious and might keep a diary.
He therefore sent for him on some trivial pretext, and a remarkable conversation ensued.
After referring to the death of the Princess, to the improbability of
the Regent's seeking a divorce, to the childlessness of the Duke of York, and to the
possibility of the Duke of Clarence marrying, the Duke adverted to his own position.
"Should the Duke of Clarence not marry," he said, "the next prince in
succession is myself, and although I trust I shall be at all times ready to obey any call
my country may make upon me, God only knows the sacrifice it will be to make, whenever I
shall think it my duty to become a married man. It is now seven and twenty years that
Madame St. Laurent and I have lived together: we are of the same age, and have been in all
climates, and in all difficulties together, and you may well imagine, Mr. Creevey, the
pang it will occasion me to part with her. I put it to your own feelings—in the event
of any separation between you and Mrs. Creevey... As for Madame St. Laurent herself, I
protest I don't know what is to become of her if a marriage is to be forced upon me; her
feelings are already so agitated upon the subject." The Duke went on to describe how,
one morning, a day or two after the Princess Charlotte's death, a paragraph had appeared
in the Morning Chronicle, alluding to the possibility of his marriage. He had received the
newspaper at breakfast together with his letters, and "I did as is my constant
practice, I threw the newspaper across the table to Madame St. Laurent, and began to open
and read my letters. I had not done so but a very short time, when my attention was called
to an extraordinary noise and a strong convulsive movement in Madame St. Laurent's throat.
For a short time I entertained serious apprehensions for her safety; and when, upon her
recovery, I enquired into the occasion of this attack, she pointed to the article in the Morning
Chronicle."
The Duke then returned to the subject of the Duke of Clarence. "My
brother the Duke of Clarence is the elder brother, and has certainly the right to marry if
he chooses, and I would not interfere with him on any account. If he wishes to be
king—to be married and have children, poor man—God help him! Let him do so. For
myself—I am a man of no ambition, and wish only to remain as I am... Easter, you
know, falls very early this year—the 22nd of March. If the Duke of Clarence does not
take any step before that time, I must find some pretext to reconcile Madame St. Laurent
to my going to England for a short time. When once there, it will be easy for me to
consult with my friends as to the proper steps to be taken. Should the Duke of Clarence do
nothing before that time as to marrying it will become my duty, no doubt, to take some
measures upon the subject myself." Two names, the Duke said, had been mentioned in
this connection—those of the Princess of Baden and the Princess of Saxe-Coburg. The
latter, he thought, would perhaps be the better of the two, from the circumstance of
Prince Leopold being so popular with the nation; but before any other steps were taken, he
hoped and expected to see justice done to Madame St. Laurent. "She is," he
explained, "of very good family, and has never been an actress, and I am the first
and only person who ever lived with her. Her disinterestedness, too, has been equal to her
fidelity. When she first came to me it was upon £100 a year. That sum was afterwards
raised to £400 and finally to £1000; but when my debts made it necessary for me to
sacrifice a great part of my income, Madame St. Laurent insisted upon again returning to
her income of £400 a year. If Madame St. Laurent is to return to live amongst her
friends, it must be in such a state of independence as to command their respect. I shall
not require very much, but a certain number of servants and a carriage are
essentials." As to his own settlement, the Duke observed that he would expect the
Duke of York's marriage to be considered the precedent. "That," he said,
"was a marriage for the succession, and £25,000 for income was settled, in addition
to all his other income, purely on that account. I shall be contented with the same
arrangement, without making any demands grounded on the difference of the value of money
in 1792 and at present. As for the payment of my debts," the Duke concluded, "I
don't call them great. The nation, on the contrary, is greatly my debtor." Here a
clock struck, and seemed to remind the Duke that he had an appointment; he rose, and Mr.
Creevey left him.
Who could keep such a communication secret? Certainly not Mr. Creevey.
He hurried off to tell the Duke of Wellington, who was very much amused, and he wrote a
long account of it to Lord Sefton, who received the letter "very apropos," while
a surgeon was sounding his bladder to ascertain whether he had a stone. "I never saw
a fellow more astonished than he was," wrote Lord Sefton in his reply, "at
seeing me laugh as soon as the operation was over. Nothing could be more first-rate than
the royal Edward's ingenuousness. One does not know which to admire most—the delicacy
of his attachment to Madame St. Laurent, the refinement of his sentiments towards the Duke
of Clarence, or his own perfect disinterestedness in pecuniary matters."
As it turned out, both the brothers decided to
marry. The Duke of Kent, selecting the Princess of Saxe-Coburg in preference to the
Princess of Baden, was united to her on May 29, 1818. On June 11, the Duke of Clarence
followed suit with a daughter of the Duke of Saxe-Meiningen. But they were disappointed in
their financial expectations; for though the Government brought forward proposals to
increase their allowances, together with that of the Duke of Cumberland, the motions were
defeated in the House of Commons. At this the Duke of Wellington was not surprised.
"By God!" he said, "there is a great deal to be said about that. They are
the damnedest millstones about the necks of any Government that can be imagined. They have
insulted—personally insulted—two-thirds of the gentlemen of England,
and how can it be wondered at that they take their revenge upon them in the House of
Commons? It is their only opportunity, and I think, by God! they are quite right to use
it." Eventually, however, Parliament increased the Duke of Kent's annuity by £6000.
The subsequent history of Madame St. Laurent has not transpired.
IV
The new Duchess of Kent, Victoria Mary Louisa, was a daughter of
Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, and a sister of Prince Leopold. The family was an
ancient one, being a branch of the great House of Wettin, which since the eleventh century
had ruled over the March of Meissen on the Elbe. In the fifteenth century the whole
possessions of the House had been divided between the Albertine and Ernestine branches:
from the former descended the electors and kings of Saxony; the latter, ruling over
Thuringia, became further subdivided into five branches, of which the duchy of Saxe-Coburg
was one. This principality was very small, containing about 60,000 inhabitants, but it
enjoyed independent and sovereign rights. During the disturbed years which followed the
French Revolution, its affairs became terribly involved. The Duke was extravagant, and
kept open house for the swarms of refugees, who fled eastward over Germany as the French
power advanced. Among these was the Prince of Leiningen, an elderly beau, whose domains on
the Moselle had been seized by the French, but who was granted in compensation the
territory of Amorbach in Lower Franconia. In 1803 he married the Princess Victoria, at
that time seventeen years of age. Three years later Duke Francis died a ruined man. The
Napoleonic harrow passed over Saxe-Coburg. The duchy was seized by the French, and the
ducal family were reduced to beggary, almost to starvation. At the same time the little
principality of Amorbach was devastated by the French, Russian, and Austrian armies,
marching and counter-marching across it. For years there was hardly a cow in the country,
nor enough grass to feed a flock of geese. Such was the desperate plight of the family
which, a generation later, was to have gained a foothold in half the reigning Houses of
Europe.
The Napoleonic harrow had indeed done its work, the seed was planted;
and the crop would have surprised Napoleon. Prince Leopold, thrown upon his own resources
at fifteen, made a career for himself and married the heiress of England. The Princess of
Leiningen, struggling at Amorbach with poverty, military requisitions, and a futile
husband, developed an independence of character and a tenacity of purpose which were to
prove useful in very different circumstances. In 1814, her husband died, leaving her with
two children and the regency of the principality. After her brother's marriage with the
Princess Charlotte, it was proposed that she should marry the Duke of Kent; but she
declined, on the ground that the guardianship of her children and the management of her
domains made other ties undesirable. The Princess Charlotte's death, however, altered the
case; and when the Duke of Kent renewed his offer, she accepted it. She was thirty-two
years old—short, stout, with brown eyes and hair, and rosy cheeks, cheerful and
voluble, and gorgeously attired in rustling silks and bright velvets.
She was certainly fortunate in her contented disposition; for she was
fated, all through her life, to have much to put up with. Her second marriage, with its
dubious prospects, seemed at first to be chiefly a source of difficulties and discomforts.
The Duke, declaring that he was still too poor to live in England, moved about with uneasy
precision through Belgium and Germany, attending parades and inspecting barracks in a neat
military cap, while the English notabilities looked askance, and the Duke of Wellington
dubbed him the Corporal. "God damme!" he exclaimed to Mr. Creevey, "d'ye
know what his sisters call him? By God! they call him Joseph Surface!" At
Valenciennes, where there was a review and a great dinner, the Duchess arrived with an old
and ugly lady-in-waiting, and the Duke of Wellington found himself in a difficulty.
"Who the devil is to take out the maid of honour?" he kept asking; but at last
he thought of a solution. "Damme, Freemantle, find out the mayor and let him do
it." So the Mayor of Valenciennes was brought up for the purpose, and—so we
learn from Mr. Creevey—"a capital figure he was." A few days later, at
Brussels, Mr. Creevey himself had an unfortunate experience. A military school was to be
inspected—before breakfast. The company assembled; everything was highly
satisfactory; but the Duke of Kent continued for so long examining every detail and asking
meticulous question after meticulous question, that Mr. Creevey at last could bear it no
longer, and whispered to his neighbour that he was damned hungry. The Duke of Wellington
heard him, and was delighted. "I recommend you," he said, "whenever you
start with the royal family in a morning, and particularly with the corporal,
always to breakfast first." He and his staff, it turned out, had taken that
precaution, and the great man amused himself, while the stream of royal inquiries poured
on, by pointing at Mr. Creevey from time to time with the remark, "Voilà le monsieur
qui n'a pas déjeuné!"
Settled down at last at Amorbach, the time hung heavily on the Duke's
hands. The establishment was small, the country was impoverished; even clock-making grew
tedious at last. He brooded—for in spite of his piety the Duke was not without a vein
of superstition—over the prophecy of a gipsy at Gibraltar who told him that he was to
have many losses and crosses, that he was to die in happiness, and that his only child was
to be a great queen. Before long it became clear that a child was to be expected: the Duke
decided that it should be born in England. Funds were lacking for the journey, but his
determination was not to be set aside. Come what might, he declared, his child must be
English-born. A carriage was hired, and the Duke himself mounted the box. Inside were the
Duchess, her daughter Feodora, a girl of fourteen, with maids, nurses, lap-dogs, and
canaries. Off they drove—through Germany, through France: bad roads, cheap inns, were
nothing to the rigorous Duke and the equable, abundant Duchess. The Channel was crossed,
London was reached in safety. The authorities provided a set of rooms in Kensington
Palace; and there, on May 24, 1819, a female infant was born.
Preface || 2: Childhood >>