Princesses (34 page)

When the doctors Sir Lucas Pepys and Mr Keate attended on 13 November and solemnly ordered her to keep her leg down, Princess Amelia obeyed and no longer laid it on the sofa. Sir Lucas, physician in ordinary to the King since 1792, was inclined to be dictatorial and very firm in his manner. ‘It is four months since I have let it hang, and therefore of course it hurts,' she wrote bravely. She complied also with their directive that she ride, and General Gouldsworthy lent her one of his horses, Frolic, for an attempt out on the downs where no one could see her. Eventually came success. Sir Lucas's prescription and the electrifying answered – or the knee healed naturally. By Christmas Amelia was back in London. ‘I go on riding
every day, and now
canter,'
she wrote, and was on her way to join the family for Christmas at Windsor.

A curious story exists about this sojourn at Worthing relating to Amelia and Robert Keate, nephew of surgeon Thomas Keate, who assisted his uncle with the royal patient there. In her August letters she told the King that he seemed to be ‘a very modest, civil young man and anxious to do
what is right.'
But she also told the King ‘how attentive and anxious to do right' was Captain Cumberland. He took her out, lying on a sofa imported for the purpose, to recruit her health on his barge. Nevertheless in early September, when the older Keate had to leave Worthing periodically to attend another patient, young Keate became responsible for her case – ‘his nephew, who is very gentle, attends me, you know', Amelia told her father. Given the curious circumstances of her isolation, with only Gouly and Mrs Cheveley and General Gouldsworthy for companions – even Lady Charlotte Belasyse, Amelia's lady, was called away to Yorkshire – it seems perfectly possible that the young nephew and Princess enjoyed during this summer at the least a tender relationship. But there the matter did not end. Lord Glenbervie learnt from the Princess of Wales twelve years later details that she had heard from the Duke of York about this Worthing sojourn – that ‘being engaged one day' there, Keate had sent his nephew to Amelia, ‘who communicated an infection to her from whence all her subsequent illness
originated.'
We shall see that this gossip chimes with fears about her fertility – and with detailed descriptions of symptoms that tally with those of venereal infection – that Amelia herself expressed later in extremely confidential letters.

For the moment, Amelia was restored to health and the following summer could join the rest of the family at Weymouth – where the princesses had their niece Charlotte to dote on. Amelia gloated over the baby one afternoon when, all by herself, she collected her from her nap and gave her her tea. Amelia, when not in pain, continued to be lively and enthusiastic. She was also religious. On 24 December 1799 she was confirmed by the Archbishop of Canterbury in St George's Chapel, Windsor. She believed that ‘the consequence these two days have been to me' would long endure, for her happiness depended on it.

Others in the family were not so blessed. After a period of some months in which she had not answered his letters, Prince Adolphus had heard in Hanover on 27 March 1799 that his beloved fiancée Frederica, widow of Prince Louis of Prussia, had married the Prince of Solms the day before. Admittedly there had been obstacles in the way to their own match, as the King was still waiting for peace to ask Parliament for a grant for the
marriage. But poor Adolphus was beside himself with grief and mortification in the house on the Leinestrasse in Hanover that he had so lovingly prepared for his
bride.

Among the comings and goings of officers and battalions and regiments at Windsor, one arrival was of significance for Princess Augusta herself – that of General Sir Brent Spencer, an Irishman who commanded the 40th Somersetshire Regiment. Since becoming an ensign at the age of eighteen, he had been almost constantly in the West Indies. But now, aged thirty-nine and a bachelor, he returned from an ill-fated expedition with the 40th to the Helder under the command of the Duke of York. When he brought despatches from the Helder to the King at Windsor, Sir Brent made such a favourable impression on the monarch that he was appointed one of his aides-de-camp, and took up residence at Court.

Spencer did not long remain with the King – perhaps fortunately, since he was ‘anxious and fidgety when there was nothing to do', as a contemporary put it, ‘but once under fire like a philosopher solving a
problem.'
Soon he was away again, off to command the 40th in the Mediterranean – Menorca, Malta and then to Egypt with Abercromby's expedition to force the French out of Alexandria and Cairo. But he had made an impression on Princess Augusta, whose siblings had always teased her about her ‘rage militaire', and she had equally affected him. She had written in 1793, ‘I intend for the rest of my life to be very despotic until I have a Lord and Master, and then (unless I break the great oaths and promises I shall make when I marry) I shall give myself up to his
whims.'

Now Princess Augusta dreamt of having Sir Brent Spencer not only for a lover but for a husband, as she later recounted. But she did not yet reveal her feelings, strong though they were, to Spencer himself. He, for his part, caused much ill feeling when he unaccountably broke his engagement to his cousin Miss Canning this year, but whether this was on account of unspoken feelings he had himself for Princess Augusta cannot be known. It was dangerous for any private gentleman to have feelings for these princesses, when the King their patron would not allow even princes to come near them – unless the princess herself gave encouragement. In due course Princess Augusta would give that encouragement, in pursuit of private happiness within the confines of the Royal Marriages Act, an ambition that she had long pondered. The intensity with which she pursued that goal would startle those she entangled in her scheme – Sir Brent, perhaps, as much as anyone.

The Prince of Wales meanwhile had returned to Mrs Fitzherbert, and Princess Augusta wrote to him on 25 August 1799, without apparent irony,
‘how very much it stands to your mutual credit, that old friends sincerely and unalterably attached, should come together again'. A year earlier she had written that all the sisterhood felt concern at ‘the dejected appearance you made. I am not such a child as for you or anyone else in the world to suppose me ignorant of the cause … After such real affection, not to say adoration on your side, and I am confident from all I have heard pretty near the same on hers, I am certain it is nothing less serious than a reconciliation, which would surely make both of you
happy.'

Other unorthodox arrangements proved too fragile to withstand the displeasure of the author of the Act. In Berlin out of the blue Prince Augustus's wife Lady Augusta Murray had appeared at his side, alarmed to hear he was ill. After an interval of six years apart the Prince and his lady lived contentedly for a time, and even provided for their son Augustus a sister, Augusta. But the Prince was recalled to England by his father, and not long after his arrival there in May 1800, his Berlin sojourn with his wife and son and their daughter's birth appeared like a dream – as did his promises to Lady Augusta of eternal fidelity. Shrugging off all encumbrances, Augustus took up his father's offer of apartments at Kensington Palace and became an avid bibliophile. He welcomed visits from his brothers and sisters at Kensington, but bad health, he claimed, kept him away from Windsor.

Meanwhile in the spring of 1799 in Württemberg Augusta's elder sister Royal had believed herself in real, not romantic, danger as the French drew near. But she had resisted her husband's attempts to send her to safety. Her sister-in-law Princess Ferdinand, a target as the wife of an Austrian general, had left for Hanover on hearing the report that the French intended marching through the Duchy. As the daughter of the King of England, the Duke argued, Royal would have also a special value to the enemy. But with the stepchildren, and her ladies, she remained in Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg – keeping up lessons in engraving with Friedrich Müller. She preferred not to be parted from her husband, she told her father: ‘some days ago I was low with the thoughts of what might happen but now that the decisive moment approaches I am perfectly
calm.'

Notwithstanding her calm, Royal lamented to her father the ruin of the country. The French armies under the command of General Moreau were in and out of the city, eating all they could find, stealing cattle as they pleased, and the Austrian generals imposed equal demands. The Duke dissolved the Stande or Parliament when it advocated making peace with the French, and offered stout promises that he would never leave his people – only to renege on that when the Helder disaster appeared to render flight essential. The Duchess reluctantly agreed to go to Wengen in September
1799, but after a few days she was celebrating her release from captivity. The menace had passed for the time being.

The next spring, however, there was no way out. To Erlangen in the Prussian King's Franconian lands the Württemberg women and children retreated in 1800. Here in a flat landscape of conifers and sand, far from the fruitfulness of Württemberg and in a small house, Charlotte, Trinette and Paul sat down to endure the war. By a touch of fate, the pair of kangaroos she had requested from England were their companions – an intelligent chamberlain at Stuttgart having divined they would be of interest to the royals in their exile. This was not what Charlotte had expected when she adopted that diamond headdress and had her hair pulled into ringlets for her wedding day. She had hoped above all to be a mother, but she had certainly also looked forward to exercising the power of her position as the matriarch of a major Continental power.

Stoic by nature, self-abnegatory by upbringing, Princess Charlotte Augusta Matilda, Duchess of Württemberg looked out over the desert sand and identical pines in the shifting light and fretted that the French would destroy the improvements she and Fritz had so recently made at Ludwigsburg. Meanwhile, her husband the Duke of Württemberg, with his son Wilhelm, was energetically attempting at Vienna to redress his altered fortunes, and those of his Duchy. He expressed himself as bitter against Britain, which had done so little to aid his country considering their new family connection. And the Mintos heard that he was among those eager to separate themselves from the fading Holy Roman Empire and seek their fortune with Napoleonic France. Colleagues remonstrated with Minto for listening to the Duke, but the diplomat stood firm:

Besides the natural claim he seemed to have as an ally and relation of our own Court to support from an English minister in his relations with this Government, it seemed impossible to refuse a … kind and friendly ear to the lamentations and claims of a prince whose ruin seems so much a consequence of this relation and engagements to us … It is not his merits, but his misfortunes, or rather ruin in a common cause that my indulgence is directed [to]. I admit also that he is no apostle of our cause, and I can easily believe all you say of the mischief done by his indiscreet and perhaps ill affected language. Yet I have not nerves to resist altogether, or rather feel some indulgence for the cries and clamour of a real
agonie.
For he is at present struggling in the very convulsions of political death.

In England Charlotte's sisters had recently recovered in May 1800 from convulsions of a different nature. Huddled outside the royal box at Drury
Lane Theatre behind their mother, who was waiting to join her husband once he had taken his bow, they heard a shot. At first they thought it was a ‘squib' backstage. Then the King waved the Queen back, saying, ‘Don't go forward, a man in the parterre has fired a pistol.' The Queen, worried that her younger daughters would faint, said nothing, for fear of uttering a
‘bêtise.'
For two minutes the theatre was silent. ‘You could have heard a pin drop,' the Queen told her brother. Then, with the marksman apprehended, the King advanced, showing himself safe and unharmed, and a hubbub, with ‘cries of joy', erupted. But the actors were too frightened to start the comedy, and the audience wanted to know what had happened. ‘Finally,' reported the Queen, ‘an actress was pushed onto the stage.' The actress announced, ‘I have the pleasure to tell you the man is in custody,' and the comedy, very badly performed, began. There was no political intention, at least, in the attempt on the King's life, as Sheridan, the theatre manager, discovered on questioning the marksman. James Hadfield, a hospital orderly who had tried to murder his child two days before, joined Margaret Nicolson, the King's earlier assailant, in Dr Monro's asylum, Bedlam.

Sophia wrote to Miss Garth on 25 May of ‘the miraculous escape of my most perfect and angelic Papa', at the same time complaining of having been very far from well ‘with a complaint in my stomach'. The year before she had been afflicted by this complaint, as in earlier summers, including that first occasion in 1793 when she had stayed for so long at Tunbridge Wells and again in the summer of 1798. She had been forbidden ‘any kind of fatigue or
hot rooms'
this time, and therefore would not be at the Birthday, although she told Miss Garth that she would accompany her parents in the following month – July – to Weymouth.

In the event, Sophia and Amelia set off a day before the rest of the royal party, and stopped for the night en route at General Gouldsworthy's house outside Salisbury. It was said that Princess Sophia was still so weak she had to be carried up the stairs there. The rest of the royal party pursued their usual headlong course by coach from Windsor to Weymouth, there joining on 31 July the younger princesses and Prince Ernest, newly Duke of Cumberland, who was taking a course of sea bathing. (The King had provided royal dukedoms for both Ernest and – at last – for Prince Edward in Canada, who became Duke of Kent, in April 1799.)

After taking an airing on the sands in a
‘sociable'
(an open carriage) with her sisters Augusta and Elizabeth on the 2nd, Sophia was ill off and on at Weymouth in the early days of August until the 8th, when the Prince her brother – with whom she was still on cool terms, due to her support for
his hated wife – heard from Amelia: ‘at last we have the prospect of seeing our dear Sophia restored to health very shortly'.