Charlotte & Leopold (20 page)

Leopold was not celibate, however; he had several mistresses,
among them the beautiful Countess Ficquelmont and the notorious Lady Ellenborough, who, in character though not in shape, was very like his mother-in-law. But he was so cold, so completely incapable of tenderness, that they all left him for other lovers.

His only human interest lay in the education and welfare of his niece Victoria. She alone inspired his affection. He arranged holidays for her in Weymouth, and as often as possible he took her down to Claremont with her mother. In 1872, when she had been Queen for thirty-five years, Victoria wrote, ‘Claremont remains as the brightest epoch of my otherwise melancholy childhood.’

On 7 Jan 1827 the Duke of York died. The Duke of Clarence was now heir to the throne, and Victoria was heir presumptive. But as Victoria’s destiny drew closer, Leopold became more and more dissatisfied with his own lack of achievement. He was thirty-seven years old, and all he had to show for it was a good war record and the fact that he was the uncle of a future Queen. He did not even have a family.

There had been a spark of hope back in 1825, when the Greeks sent a deputation to London to invite Leopold to be their king. But the Greeks’ proposal depended on their unlikely success in freeing themselves from the Ottoman Empire, and it did not have the support of George Canning, the new Foreign Secretary.

Canning had taken office when Castlereagh committed suicide after being caught by a blackmailer in a bedroom with a boy dressed as a woman. In his opinion the offer was too far-fetched to be taken seriously, and anyway Leopold was likely to be more useful if he stayed in England. The King was not in good health, and nor were his brothers of York and Clarence. The imminent death of all three was a much more likely eventuality than the freedom of Greece. If that did happen within the next few years, England would be left with an infant Queen, and in that event her uncle would be an ideal regent.

In July 1827, however, Canning, who was by then Prime Minister,
died from the chill that he caught at the Duke of York’s funeral; on 20 October, in the last great battle fought between wooden warships, Admiral Codrington inadvertently destroyed the Ottoman fleet at Navarino.

Greece was within grasp of independence. The offer was renewed. Leopold was inclined to accept, and this time he had the support of no less a person than the Duke of Wellington. But the vengeful King was opposed to the plan, and the King’s opposition was enough to thwart it.

When Leopold’s frustration evolved into bitterness, Stockmar decided that it was time to go travelling again.

C
HAPTER
T
WENTY-
S
IX

The Hottentot

I
N
S
EPTEMBER
1828 Leopold’s travels took him to Prussia, to Potsdam, where he stayed in the palace as the guest of King Frederick William III.

One evening, in the King’s private theatre, the State Company gave a performance of a popular musical comedy,
The Hottentot
. When the 21-year-old actress who played the title role came on, wearing a short red frock trimmed with tiger skin, coral trinkets and a black and white feathered headdress, Leopold was enraptured and astonished. She looked just like Charlotte.

Her name was Caroline Bauer, and she had just returned from a triumphant season in St Petersburg. Her late father had been an officer in the Baden Light Dragoons. Her mother, who had been born a Stockmar in Coburg, was the aunt of the little doctor who was sitting out in the auditorium in the row behind Leopold. Her family had, of course, disapproved of her ambition to become an actress, but when it became clear that they could not stop her, her cousin, Dr Christian, had agreed to help, on the whimsical condition that she would always wear new shoes and new gloves at each performance.

Caroline Bauer knew that Leopold was in the audience. When she looked out through the peep-hole in the curtain before the performance began, she was able to recognise him easily. He was the ‘slender, tall gentleman, in red English uniform glittering with gold, of pale, noble face, with short, black, smooth-lying hair, and great, dark, melancholy eyes’.

When the performance was over, Caroline went home with her mother, who, in true theatrical tradition, accompanied her everywhere. On the following morning a valet came to inform them that Prince Leopold intended to call on them next day.

When the Prince came, he came in a hired carriage, rather than use his own and risk being recognised by the livery and the coat of arms on the doors. But he was not so cautious when he began to talk. The restraints of the last eleven years were cast aside impulsively.

First, according to Caroline’s memoirs, he told her mother why he had come. ‘All the long years since the death of my consort, I have been living alone. Now I believe I have found the sympathetic creature I have been looking for. At the very first glance my heart was drawn to her, because she looks so wondrously like my departed Charlotte.’

Then, not many minutes later, he asked Caroline what she would do if he were to ask her to share his ‘golden solitude’.

If Caroline or her mother were embarrassed by his words, she did not say so in her memoirs. The Prince was offering marriage. It was to be a morganatic marriage, in which the wife could not share her husband’s rank and the children could not inherit his possessions or his titles. But it was marriage. Caroline and her mother said yes.

A few days later mother and daughter drove to Coburg. They were met by cousin Christian and taken first to the Duke’s country estate at Rosenau, where a fair was being held on the lawn. Caroline was encouraged to join in the dancing, and while she was waltzing with a young farmer she looked up at the terrace in front of the house. The Duke and his two young sons, Ernest and Albert, were
standing on it watching the dancers, and his brother Leopold was beside them, searching for Caroline through a telescope.

Next day mother and daughter were installed in a pretty country house, where, in the presence of Stockmar, Leopold renewed his promise to marry Caroline. He was off to Italy for a while, but when he returned to England he would lease one of the new houses in Regent’s Park and send for them.

Leopold may not have taken in too much of Italy in the course of the next few months. He was certainly so preoccupied that he overlooked his most cherished duty. One of the letters that he received while he was there ended with a complaint from Kensington Palace. ‘I am very angry with you, Uncle, for you have never written to me once since you went.’

In May 1829, after he had returned to England, Leopold kept part of his promise and sent for Caroline and her mother. As they drove up from Dover in an open carriage, Caroline was impressed by the condition of the English roads and the rich farms that surrounded them, and when they reached London she was astonished by the number of shop windows that were still displaying the portraits of Charlotte and Leopold which had first been hung there twelve years earlier.

The terraced house in Regent’s Park was beautiful. The ground floor contained a saloon with a fine grand piano in it, a dining room, a billiard room and a boudoir for Caroline with pink silk walls and curtains; and upstairs, among the bedrooms, there was a bathroom lined with blue and white tiles. But when Caroline and her mother arrived, the only person there to meet them was the German housekeeper, who had tea ready.

Next day they waited. At last, in the evening, Leopold arrived. He had not seen Caroline Bauer for eight months, but all that he could say when he did, and not with admiration, was, ‘Oh, how the spring sun has burnt your cheeks!’

Leopold stayed for an hour, and every day after that the ritual was
the same. He came in the afternoon and stayed for an hour or two, just listening to Caroline reading or playing the piano. Sometimes he brought sheet music with him, so that she could play something new, and every time he brought his tortoise-shell drizzling-box.

Drizzling was then a fashionable hobby. It involved taking the gold and silver epaulettes and frogging from old uniforms, putting them into a little box, turning a handle and grinding them into a dust which, when melted, became precious metal again. Leopold was so fond of drizzling that he had already produced enough silver to make a soup bowl for his niece Victoria, and he was soon to produce enough to make her a tureen.

By the end of June, Stockmar had become as exasperated with this as his aunt and cousin. He confronted Leopold. He told him that the King of Prussia had written to ask whether Fraulein Bauer was his mistress or not, and he warned him that, if he did not make an honest woman of her, she would have to be taken home. He knew that the Prince was doing nothing but drizzling while Caroline read or sang to him, but that was not what other people thought he was doing.

On 2 July 1829, in the saloon of their house in Regent’s Park, Leopold and Caroline formalised their relationship. It was not a marriage. There was no priest present. It was not even a morganatic marriage. All that happened was that they signed a contract, witnessed by Stockmar and his brother Charles, in which Leopold promised to pay Caroline a small annual allowance for the rest of her life.

After that, for the rest of July, they were happy. They were together by day and they were together by night. Somehow Leopold’s heart lightened and his spirits lifted. ‘It was’, wrote Caroline, who could never be anything but theatrical, ‘the last youthful flicker of his burnt out heart before it finally crumbled for ever into cold ashes’.

At the end of the month, after a merry farewell dinner, Leopold went off to take the waters at Carlsbad, in the hope that they might help his recurring rheumatism, Stockmar went off to Coburg, where
he now had a wife, and Caroline and her mother went off happily to spend a few weeks in Paris.

But Leopold did not join them in Paris until the middle of November, and when he got there he booked into a different hotel. The old routine returned. Every afternoon Leopold came round for an hour and sat drizzling while Caroline read to him.

Early in December Leopold went back to England accompanied by Stockmar. But it was not until after Christmas that Caroline and her mother were brought over and installed, not in the terraced house in Regent’s Park, but in a drab little villa with brown carpets and old furniture on the edge of Claremont Park. Leopold’s sister and niece, who were staying in the house for Christmas, were often there at other times as well, and as it would not have been appropriate for them to meet, it seemed better to lodge Caroline and her mother elsewhere.

The drizzling routine continued, but at least now it did not happen every day. The negotiations over Greece were on again, and this time there was more chance of success. The King was now so sick that he might not have the energy to object. Leopold was often in London, and when he was away and there were no guests in the house, Caroline and her mother were allowed to wander around Claremont like tourists.

On one occasion, in Charlotte’s sitting room, they found her cloak and bonnet still on the screen, and her watch still on the mantelpiece, and in the breakfast room they found a nervous and neglected parrot covered in lice with half his grey feathers missing. He was Coco. When Leopold returned, Caroline asked if she could take the parrot and nurse him back to health. Without a glimmer of emotion, Leopold gave him to her.

On another occasion Caroline noticed a portrait of Charlotte dressed in a traditional blue and silver Russian costume, which had been given to her by the Grand Duchess Catherine. Caroline’s theatrical wardrobe contained one almost exactly like it. Hoping to warm
Leopold’s heart by reminding him of her likeness to his Princess, she wore it for him next time he came round for a drizzle. But, after the initial and inevitable surprise, his only response was to make comparisons. Charlotte had a more finely cut nose. Caroline’s mouth was prettier. Charlotte had a fuller figure. Caroline was more graceful. But the colour of their hair and their complexions were identical…

When the pedantic inventory was finished, all that crestfallen Caroline could do was to remind the Prince of the one attribute he had forgotten. ‘Your Highness forgets the faithful hearts which beat, or have beaten, for you.’

Leopold was on edge again. The negotiations over Greece had given him a goal, but the frustration and tension that had been eclipsed briefly by the happiness of last July had returned. He was grinding his teeth so much in his sleep that, against Stockmar’s advice, he bought a pair of little gold clamps. According to the quack who made them, these would keep his teeth apart all night if he inserted them on either side between his molars before he went to bed. But after only a few nights he woke to find that the clamps were gone. Believing that he had swallowed them, the dignified Prince asked Stockmar to give him the most powerful purge that he could make, and it was only after he had taken it that a servant discovered the clamps amid his sheets.

In February Leopold accepted the throne of Greece. For a while his spirits lifted as he planned his future. He ordered some beautiful blue and white tents which he intended to use when he travelled round his kingdom. He subjected Caroline to the humiliation of discussing who he might have as his queen. But when he thought about it more, he was not sure that he had made the right decision. Greece, although free, was far from stable, and the greatest barrier to his ambitions, the King of England, was clearly on the brink of death. Perhaps destiny had something better in store for him. In May he changed his mind and declined the Greek throne.

By then Caroline had had enough. Like the other mistresses
before her, she was exasperated by Leopold’s indifference. She began to indulge in fits of overwrought theatrical indignation, and she wrote to her brother Karl in Germany complaining bitterly about her treatment.

There is no record of exactly what happened next. All that is certain is that Karl came over and subjected Leopold to some sort of blackmail. Stockmar stepped in to negotiate, and at the beginning of June, probably after receiving a payment, the Bauer family went back to Germany.

Caroline returned to the stage and continued her successful career until 1844, when she retired to marry a Polish count. Coco, now healthy and happy, went with her, learned to speak German and died while they were on tour in Dresden in 1842.

Soon after the Bauers’ departure, on 26 June, the King died. The Duke of Clarence was now King William IV, and eleven-year-old Victoria was heir to the throne.

At last the future looked brighter for Leopold. The King who had stood in his way had gone and, as the recent Greek offer had shown, there were many statesmen in Europe who respected him enough to present him with opportunities. There were to be moments in the course of the next few years when he felt that his life might have been easier if he had chosen to spend it in the sun, but he could not regret rejecting Greece because he knew now that he could do better. If the new King died before Victoria came of age, the government might even make him Regent.

He was right not to regret Greece. But his reason was wrong. Destiny had something different in store for him.