Princesses (56 page)

The Hereditary Prince of Hesse-Homburg's reasons for seeking Princess Elizabeth as his bride at this point were obscure. At the age of forty-eight, his bride could hardly be considered a strong candidate in the royal race to provide an heir to the British throne, or even for Homburg itself. Indeed the Prince had seven brothers to do battle for the latter cause. Still, members of both their families – Royal, the Duke of Kent, the Duchess of York and her brother Prince William of Prussia, who had married the Hereditary Prince's sister Marianne – had acted in concert to advance the scheme, of which the bridegroom had written as early as February 1817. And it had advantages for both parties. Elizabeth would gain a property to administer, a husband, freedom from her mother. And
her dowry would have a huge effect in the tiny domain of Hesse-Homburg. The state debts were growing, as the Hereditary Prince's father grew old, and the buildings and lands had been neglected for years. In short, a capable wife with means seemed the answer to the Prince – a professional soldier who
‘shone'
at fortifications – as he contemplated the duty that would soon be his to superintend his Hessian homeland.

And as for his choice of Elizabeth? A report from Frankfurt in 1818 names her as the only princess of England available as a wife for those wishing to ally themselves with that prosperous country. Two princesses – Royal and Mary – were married, ran the note; one – Sophia – was a permanent invalid, and one was privately married. The rumours, if not the truth, about Augusta and Sir Brent had spread wide.

To Sophia the Queen talked fully and, her daughter thought, very reasonably one evening on ‘Eliza's subject'. She admitted that her daughter, at nearly fifty, was of an age to decide for herself. However, the Queen was ‘vexed and flurried at the quickness with which she had taken her resolution'. Sophia attempted to soothe her mother and palliate her distress – although the Queen still cried bitterly at times – by reminding her repeatedly that ‘she knew this was always Eliza's object'.

While the Regent declared that he entered deeply into the feelings of
all
parties – which he would endeavour to conciliate – the Hereditary Prince came to London, where, despite his preference for Elizabeth, he had to have his bride pointed out to him from among her sisters. He was ‘much hurt at the Queen's
manner.'
The Queen tried to prevent him on various pretexts from seeing Elizabeth as she had earlier tried to prevent Mary and William of Gloucester having interviews before marriage. But the Hereditary Prince could arrange nothing until he saw his bride, he told the Duchess of Gloucester. He hated writing, and would far rather talk over his proposals in person with Princess Elizabeth. The sooner Elizabeth and the Queen were parted, the better for both their sakes, wrote Princess Mary on 3 February. All comfort was at an end between them, and Mary blamed Elizabeth's ‘injudicious friends'. Her departure would be a sad blow to the Queen, she predicted – ‘heaven grant she may not sink
under it.'
With Sophia a tactical invalid and Mary busy with duties at Bagshot, it was surely Augusta who would now ‘sink under' the attendance on her mother.

Two days later Sir Henry Halford was called in to assess the Queen's health. He found that her ‘suppressed anger made it difficult for him to judge correctly of her pulse or of her breathing', and he came out astonished at the ‘perturbation and distress of feelings which she
manifested.'
Even the Regent was powerless to assuage her mood. Elizabeth, meanwhile, was ‘broken-hearted' after the series of ‘severe speeches' that her mother made her. The Queen refused to believe that her daughter had as yet made her ‘final irrevocable
decision'
and stuck to her refusal to bless the match, given that the King had never answered the earlier proposal from HesseHomburg for one of his daughters. It was not a match he would have liked, she said. By degrees, however, the Queen was brought round, and within a couple of weeks was counselling the Regent that Elizabeth's wedding should take place ‘as soon as you can manage it should'. And the sooner the bridal couple left England after that, she instructed Sophia to tell her brother, the better it would be.

Elizabeth now began to receive notes of blessing and congratulations on her forthcoming marriage to ‘Bluff' – her name for Frederick. (Like his brother-in-law the King of Württemberg, however, the Hereditary Prince was usually called Fritz.) To Miss Gomm, the former nursery governess, she wrote, ‘I have great reason to bless God.' No man ‘ever stood higher in the world', she wrote of her Fritz, and his manner and conduct towards her were perfect.
Others
thought that he stank to high heaven of stale tobacco from the meerschaum pipes he smoked addictively. On one occasion he made a bow at Court and the seat of his breeches ripped loudly. His ruddy face obscured by coarse whiskers and moustachioes gained few admirers. Princess Elizabeth did not know of a letter written by Leopold's mother to his sister Victoria, Princess of Leiningen, in which the match was called
‘stupid.'
And Napoleon, far away on St Helena, was contemptuous. ‘The English royal family', he said in February 1818, ‘va incanagliarsi [mean to lower themselves] with little petty princes, to whom I would not have given a brevet of
sous
lieutenant.' But she would have condemned Leopold – the likely source of his mother's comment – and Napoleon too, had she heard of their remarks. For Elizabeth and her reeking warrior prince were, quite by chance, to have a very happy marriage.

The Regent and Council approving the match, Elizabeth in virginal white married the Hereditary Prince in the drawing room of the Queen's House on 7 April. The maids of honour who had been at Royal's wedding were summoned, and all the Queen's ‘family' was present, as were the great officers of state. With the promise that he would bring her back to England within a year, Fritz gathered up his bride and the many belongings she insisted on taking, and made for the Channel, after a honeymoon during which he would be so considerate as to smoke fewer pipes than usual. Among other possessions Elizabeth took with her to Bad Homburg were
exercise books in which she had written down advice from Sir Joseph Banks on rose-growing and comments by Lord Harcourt on feeding orange trees. She took commonplace books and sketchbooks and artists' paraphernalia – and her dear old china. At the last, Elizabeth's resolve quivered. She and her sisters were aware that their mother was far from well. But she set her face for the Continent and looked forward to what lay across the Channel after the honeymoon she and the Prince were taking along the Sussex coast.

Bluff, for his part, sent an urgent letter to Bad Homburg to his chamberlain, ordering all the poultry to be removed from beneath the windows of his bride's proposed apartments and the stables near by to be
cleaned.
The family, used to their own company and able to put on a show for meals or entertain at Frankfurt when distinguished or royal visitors passed through, were not over-scrupulous in their living habits or in overseeing those of their servants.

In the following few weeks in London the Regent, astonishingly, gave his consent for three of his brothers – Clarence, Kent, and Cambridge – to marry. During the battle to secure royal married allowances for all these bridegrooms, Mr Thomas Creevey, the waggish Whig MP, commented that the royal dukes were ‘the damndest millstone about the necks of any Government that can be
imagined.'
One of them had to get rid of what others might have considered a millstone round his own neck. The Duke of Kent, who had been living for over fifteen years first in North America and now at Brussels with Mme de St Laurent, simply handed her the newspaper to reveal to her his engagement to Victoria, Princess Leiningen, Prince Leopold's widowed sister.

While Elizabeth was still at Brighton on honeymoon, Queen Charlotte's health worsened. On a journey in June 1818 from the Queen's House to Windsor, she had to stop at Kew when she developed breathing problems. Sir Henry Halford was summoned, and advised that it would be
dangerous
to move his royal patient.

‘What my feelings must be at this time being away from my mother that I have always adored since I had sense of reason,' Elizabeth wrote, distraught, from Brighton. ‘My trial has been severe and only proves how little happiness there is in this world for had I not had these tremendous blows, I might have been much too happy, as I assure you every hour increases my affection, esteem and admiration of my husband, who expresses himself so lucky that I only wish that I really was all he thinks me.' She and Bluff had had a very quiet time, were going to Worthing for a few days, and then embarked at Dover.

My spirits at times are not what they used to be, but I try to hide it from him, for though my family must be dearer than life to me, the kinder he is the more I ought to bear up. My dear sisters are angels, and I think Augusta particularly deserves every reward that this world can give by her uncommon firm steady friendship and affection for me, and exerting herself as she does for my mother dearest. They say her conduct is angelic – I have sacrificed my comfort in going away when I did, but that is of little consequence if I have done right, which I firmly believe I have, and that must make me content, but feeling that I might have shared with them the attendance on my mother, often occasions me a
pang.

And with that, Elizabeth crossed to the German coast and made her way down the Rhine to her new life.

At Kew the Queen fretted that she was away from the King, but her doctor was adamant that she should remain where she was. And at least Princess Sophia, still not well, remained at Windsor. Princess Augusta, however, and the Duchess of Gloucester joined their mother at Kew, while the Duke, as Augusta told Lord Arran, tactfully went abroad. ‘If he stayed at home,' Augusta explained, ‘and Mary was at Kew the illustrious world would certainly say they had had a
quarrel.'

Royal wrote from Ludwigsburg to Lady Harcourt:

Entre nous, when I first heard of the Duke of Gloucester's intending to make a tour without Mary, I was quite vexed, as all the English appeared to think there was some secret cause of his taking this step. Indeed, reports that reached me made me tremble for my dear Mary's happiness, and this worked me so much, that nothing but my thinking it wrong to offer advice unasked prevented my entreating Mary to reflect seriously on the consequences of so long a separation; as too frequently when married people have been parted for months, they take up tricks which are calculated to destroy their domestic happiness, and often that confidence which must reign between husband and wife is destroyed by their having accustomed themselves to confide in others.

Although the Duke had longed to marry his cousin Mary, as her husband he grew to delight in inflicting domestic privation on her. And his adoring sister, Princess Sophia Matilda, became for Mary a ‘meddling, fussy' sister-in-law, who made the Duke's domestic tyranny still harder to bear. In one turbulent incident Mary was summoned by Sophia Matilda from a family crisis at Windsor to tend the Duke who was ill. The Duke then said he did not want her there, made his sister write to Windsor to say his wife was returning, and refused to send for Mary's dresser when she stayed. Mary wrote: ‘to have one's feelings so little considered is to add an
unnecessary distress; and want of concern since, nearly drove me wild last night'. Now Royal was quite happy to hear the Duke had been so kind as to let Mary attend the Queen, ‘and assist poor dear Augusta, who I should fear would have been too wretched, had she been quite alone at Kew'. She herself was of course not able to come. ‘My complaints are of a nature not to allow of my being two hours in a
carriage,'
she wrote ominously.

While the Queen was confined to her bedroom at Kew, her nurses Augusta and Mary were passing
judgement
on their new sisters-in-law, Kent, Cambridge and Clarence. Victoria, Duchess of Kent was the ‘livelier', they considered, although not handsome. The Duchess of Cambridge – Princess Augusta of Hesse-Cassel – was ‘proud'. And the young Duchess of Clarence – Princess Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen – was, although pious, sadly without looks or fortune. But the Queen's daughters had little enough time to spare for their brothers and their new wives. For they lived in a permanent state of alarm about their mother's health.

Elizabeth wrote from Homburg in August 1818 to Lady Harcourt:

Alas, all my letters are daggers to my heart when I read of the state of my mother. That really kills me, for to know her so very suffering and not to be near her is almost death, though you will do me the justice to say that, of such an illness, I never dreamt. My agonies have been dreadful, but I can say with truth to you who will not show my letter, that my dread of losing her was always such that I did wish to settle, and my feelings regarding the sentiments I have ever held forth, and the opinion I have given regarding improper society, when once she was out of the way, has been fully justified by those asked to the last party at Carlton House where I hear many were offended at the Dss of A
appearing there.

The princesses, in September, thinking their mother's end near, begged Lord Liverpool, the Prime Minister, to send the Archbishop of Canterbury to Kew. They hoped that that prelate might prevail on their mother to receive the Last Rites, which she was reluctant to have administered. Liverpool, in his turn, wrote of the Queen, ‘For a person whose conduct through life has been so free from reproach she has a strange unaccountable fear of death.' The Queen was reluctant even to make a will and took a dislike to General Taylor when he raised the subject. She prayed ceaselessly, with her eyes and hands lifted up – alarming her assistant dresser, Miss Mary Rice. And she tried various remedies for her condition, including an invalid's chair to pull her upright. Her swollen legs were not the least of her problems. But the Queen herself feared mostly for her heart, which she was convinced must stop soon, so difficult was it for her to breathe.