Princesses

by Flora Fraser

  The two younger princesses – Augusta and Elizabeth – and their brother Ernest enjoyed a rare outing from Kew at the end of June 1773, when they were four, three and two. They were despatched ‘in great state’ to visit their great-aunt Amelia, daughter of King George II, at her villa at Gunnersbury outside London – one of the few relations whom they were allowed to meet. ‘They were all dressed in the clothes they had for the King’s birthday and the two princesses had a great many diamonds. They came in a coach of the Queen’s,’ reported Lady Mary Coke,

  with six long-tailed horses, four footmen, and a great many guards. The Princess had the whole apartment above stairs open for them to play in, and a long table in the great room covered with all sorts of fruit, biscuits, etc of which they ate very heartily. There was also music for Prince Ernest who, though only two years of age, has a fondness for it very extraordinary in one of that age. The moment he heard it he danced about the room so ridiculously as made everybody laugh: then laughed so excessively himself as very much diverted the Princesses! They stayed two hours without tiring HRH or themselves, and said they were sorry to go.

  Their days were rarely so exciting.

  In the autumn of 1774 a domestic fracas threatened the peaceful campus, and the relationship between the Queen and Lady Charlotte soured. The health of the princesses’ sub-governess, Mrs Cotesworth, finally failed, and she left royal employ. While searching for a replacement, Lady Charlotte Finch requested that she should herself devote fewer hours to the royal children. The Queen, believing the trouble with Mrs Cotesworth had been exacerbated by Lady Charlotte’s increasingly skimpy attendance on the royal children, wanted her instead to devote more hours to her charges. ‘I am fully convinced’, wrote the Queen, ‘that besides the dependence you can have upon those that are there for a constant confinement’ – the sub-governors and sub-governesses ‘lived in’ – ‘your presence as the first not only will encourage them in theirs, but will make them look upon it as a less confinement. This I swear by experience for though with my sons Mr Smelt [the princes’ sub-governor] is to be depended upon, yet Lord Holderness’s presence in the house [the Prince of Wales’s House] for so many hours is the only and essential thing that prevents those under him from repining.’

  Lady Charlotte’s reply – or at least her draft on 31 October 1774 – was magnificent; not for nothing had she grown up at the Court of King George II. ‘The attendance I have hitherto given has been regularly a double daily attendance of two and oftener three hours in the morning and from before seven in the evening till dismissed by your Majesty, besides numberless occasional and additional attendances.’ She, besides, ever made her own concerns ‘except when of a particular or melancholy nature, in which I shall ever acknowledge the indulgence I have met with from both your Majesties’ give way to the duties of her place, ‘as everything belonging to me has experienced’.

  And now as she advanced more in years and very much declined in spirits, Lady Charlotte wrote:

  How can I without deviating from my own principles undertake an additional duty of a kind for which I am conscious I am growing every day more unfit, as your Majesty must know what an uncommon stock of spirits and cheerfulness is necessary to go through the growing attendance of so many and such very young people in their amusements, as well as behaviour and instruction, besides ordering all the affairs of a nursery.

  A letter that Miss Planta wrote in 1774, giving an account of the royal children to her sister in America, describes the ‘so many and such very young children’ to some purpose. The royal children, she recounted, had ‘all fine skins and blue eyes, some of them have brown hair, particularly Princess Augusta’ – Prince Edward was also a very dark child – ‘and they are all straight and healthy, and from what we can judge at present, are sensible and good tempered … In short, they would attract attention, though they were clothed in rags. Their dress is as unadorned as their rank will permit … their diet is extremely plain and light.’ Referring to the children’s attire on their parents’ birthdays and on feast days, she wrote, ‘the little sword the boys wear, makes one laugh. Imagine to yourself litle Prince Augustus at eighteen months old, in his nurse’s arms with a sword by his side, and a “chapeau bras” under his arm; such was his figure.’

  Asking the Queen to ‘signal’ to her the additional attendance required, Lady Charlotte wrote, ‘I shall either endeavour faithfully to discharge it, or humbly and fairly own my incapacity for it…’ The old warhorse had one further feint to make. Speaking of her own wish for ‘the real good of the children’, she was ready, should the Queen wish it, to resign her office ‘into the hands of any person younger and more fitted for it.’ No further request was made for any ‘additional attendance’ from Lady Charlotte. Moreover, she had written of having ‘really nobody I wish particularly to recommend’ as sub-governess, but she had in fact selected a candidate – Miss Martha Gouldsworthy – whose good health and lack of family or friends seeking her company were of prime importance.

  Lady Charlotte’s daughter Miss Henrietta Finch describes the consternation that their family at St James’s was thrown into by a message from the King and Queen after dinner one stormy night in September 1774 to say they would come and drink tea – and the good use the Finch family made of the occasion to promote Lady Charlotte’s candidate. ‘I was fortunately in a sack and hoop,’ Henrietta wrote to her sister Sophia, ‘which looked a little dressy, but my hair catted up without any curl, in a new way, and not so well consequently as it might be done.’ The royal party was ‘so good humoured – particularly the King – who I am more in love with than ever … He gave me an opportunity … (by speaking of Miss Gouldsworthy) to make mention of her good temper and cheerful spirits … things I knew would recommend her to him, more than anything.’

  ‘Gouly’, as Miss Martha Gouldsworthy became known, was the successful candidate, and was soon an established fixture in the princesses’ lives, chaperoning them from Kew to the Queen’s House or St James’s, sitting at their lessons with masters, and supervising their preparation for lessons with Miss Planta. She walked with them at Kew between their morning and afternoon lessons, sat with them while they ‘worked’ – sewed – and generally clucked after them (snatching an hour for dinner) from before breakfast until she escorted them to bed.

  The princesses were not only fortunate in their sub-governess Gouly, but, aged eight, nearly six and four, were cheerful students in the schoolroom. For the benign Miss Planta, their ‘English teacher’, used a variety of educational aids to develop – from an early age – their memories and knowledge. ‘I believe they all love me,’ she wrote, ‘and I have gained their affection by making their learning as much play as possible … I have put together a set of cards which contains the history of England, or more properly an idea of it, and have reduced the chronology of England to a game, by means of which the Princesses are better chronologists than I was three years ago.’

  Miss Planta was nothing if not optimistic. She put Princess Elizabeth, at the age of four, to learning by this method ‘the succession of Kings according to their several lines’. But she had help from the princesses themselves. ‘One thing more, common to them all,’ she noted of the royal children, ‘is a very retentive memory.’ The Princess Royal, who later advocated teaching her niece from Bible pictures, also recommended – perhaps from personal experience – having the child begin a ‘short history of England’ once she had learnt to read. ‘And have her accustomed,’ she wrote, ‘as soon as she is finished reading, to give a little account of her lesson and then lead her to make some slight reflections on what she has learnt.’

  There was no escaping an element of classroom grind – namely, the need to acquire good handwriting. This affair was taken very seriously, as all the princes, especially when serving abroad, and the princesses, on marrying abroad, would be required in later life to maintain a large correspondence with members of their own and other royal families. The Prince of Wales, whose father t
he King employed no secretary but undertook all his own official correspondence himself, had begun the process when he was five with Mr Bulley, a writing master.

  Now it was the turn of the Princess Royal and her sister Augusta with their writing master Mr Roberts to cover sheets of paper, shakily ruled, with such maxims as might do, faithfully inscribed in copperplate writing. (Perhaps Mrs Hannah More, the Sunday-school pioneer, who was a near relation of Mr Roberts, furnished some of the maxims.) The process took time, and would not be complete until they were well into their teens. It was among the most wearisome elements of their education. However, a geography teacher was also employed for the princesses from when they were young to display to them the extent of their father’s dominions, and the lands of others, and it is said that jigsaw maps of Europe were employed in the nursery. There were also in the King’s libraries in the Queen’s House scale models of the forts which guarded English property in America and India and further a field, to excite the children’s imaginations.

  In many ways, the education which the Queen and Lady Charlotte ordained for the princesses would be as rigorous as that that the King ordained for his sons, for the Queen wrote that she thought women with a good education would be capable of as much as men. Princesses’ deportment, proficiency in music and dancing, and skills with needle, paintbrush and pencil were traditionally important, but in Lady Charlotte and Miss Planta the Queen had provided her daughters with accomplished women as teachers who themselves read English, Continental and classical literature for pleasure. And now the princesses began to learn German from the Reverend Heinrich Schrader, of the Savoy Chapel, to add to their French.

  The Princess Royal was, in 1774 and at the age of nearly eight, ‘a noble girl’, in Miss Planta’s opinion. ‘She looks the daughter of a King,’ she wrote:

  She is remarkably sensible, the propriety of her behaviour is very great, and she has shining parts. She speaks French very well, is well versed in ancient history, and to my knowledge, there is not an event of importance in the history of England, she is not pretty well acquainted with. She writes well, makes pertinent observations on what she reads, and has a competent knowledge of geography.

  Miss Planta was writing a private letter to her sister Mrs Minicks in America, who had begged a description of her royal charges. Aware that the letter would be shown around her sister’s circle, Miss Planta might not have been above exaggerating the princesses’ achievements under her tutelage, but there was little need. The Princess Royal was always a quick, calm and competent student, whatever the subject of study. It was outside the schoolroom that this ‘noble girl’ would experience difficulties, and Miss Planta’s reference to her ‘shining parts’ obscures these.

  The Princess Royal savoured her position as eldest daughter of the King – sometimes to the point of arrogance – but she also stammered, especially in the presence of her mother. Furthermore, for all the learning she would acquire and despite the attentions of the royal dancing master, M. Denoyer, she was a clumsy dancer, possibly because she had no ear – and certainly no liking – for music. So although she looked every inch the daughter of a king, she was a self-conscious and awkward one, who was aware of her failings. And the Queen, a naturally elegant woman with a fine appreciation of music, could not understand it.

  A painting two years later by Benjamin West, an American artist the King favoured, shows the Queen and Princess Royal at congenial ‘women’s work’. They are embroidering a length of silk. But the Princess looks strained and uncomfortable, and appears to be seeking her mother’s approval for her work. The Queen seems distant and oblivious of her daughter. It is a far cry from Cotes’s intimate rendition of their relationship at the Princess Royal’s birth.

  Miss Planta’s report card for the Princess Royal, though full of admiration, betrays little affection. Her portrait of five-year-old Princess Augusta, on the other hand, is full of love. ‘Princess Augusta is the handsomest of all the Princesses,’ she announced. ‘She is five years old, of a small make and very lively, and when compared to Princess Royal, very childish. She wants, however, neither feelings nor parts and will, I dare say, unfold to advantage.’ She went on, ‘It is amazing how much the little creature knows of the history of England, down as far as James I,’ and she revealed her method of imparting it. ‘I chose some striking facts in every chapter and dressed them in words adapted to her capacity and then told them as diverting stories. This method has taken, and she tells them again in words of her own, with as much pleasure as she would a fairy tale.’

  The Princess had also learnt to repeat such maxims as ‘To be good is to be happy, angels are happier than men, because they are better.’ ‘Any things of this kind she often repeats to herself, and is generally extremely influenced by them,’ wrote Miss Planta. But when not influenced by them Princess Augusta threw quite violent tantrums. Miss Planta had her revenge: ‘I displeased her today, by saying, I would go to Otaheite’ – or Tahiti – ‘to be English teacher to the Otaheite children.’ This remarkable declaration needed, at the time of writing, no explanation. That summer, following Captain Cook’s voyages to the South Pacific, an Otaheitan ‘prince’ called Omai had appeared in London, and made his bow – as Sir Joseph Banks’s guest – at Kew in July. Miss Planta’s remark, or rebuke, to Princess Augusta reflected the boundless curiosity about the natives of Tahiti that resulted from this exotic visitor’s appearance. But Princess Augusta would not succumb to it. ‘She says, indeed she cannot part with me,’ Miss Planta reported to her sister.

  And what of Princess Elizabeth? From the attentions of her wet-nurse Mrs Spinluffe, she had passed into the care of her sisters’ dresser Miss Mary Dacres, and from there into Miss Planta’s hands. As a third princess, she had not rated the attention that the Princess Royal had commanded as firstborn of the species. No artist detailed her infant wardrobe or depicted her doll as had Humphry and Cotes and Zoffany for the Princess Royal.

  Nor was Princess Elizabeth the subject, as Princess Augusta had been from birth, of anxious and minute comparisons with an elder sister, where she was judged prettier or less pretty, more ‘sensible’ or less ‘sensible’ than the other. As foil to her elder sister, Princess Augusta features in a celebrated Zoffany group portrait of the royal family in Van Dyck dress when it numbered two parents, four sons and two daughters. Princess Elizabeth – seventh child – appears once in a Zoffany conversation piece as a baby, then not again till depicted by Benjamin West.

  Her primary distinction, and an unfortunate one for a princess, had been that she was a fat baby. At the age of three she was still fat, but Miss Planta discovered great potential in her. She traces a determined personality that was to be key for this artistic Princess’s survival in a world where her sisters’ looks and figures would be widely admired. ‘Princess Elizabeth is a lovely little fat sensible thing and so tidy’, she exclaimed, ‘that she never leaves her needles, or scrap of work without putting them all in a tiny bag, for the purpose.’

  As we have already heard, Miss Planta dwelt on Princess Elizabeth’s achievements in learning the lines of succession, and then revealed that the three-year-old was not always a paragon. ‘Her reward to being good, is giving me a flower or some such trifle, and I make it a point not to accept anything from a naughty child.’ Elizabeth and her sister Princess Augusta later separately recalled that Lady Charlotte Finch had taught them – as soon as they could speak, Elizabeth said – to memorize for recital the maxim, ‘Content is wealth, the riches of the mind, / And happy he who can that treasure find.’ Unfortunately, frustration rather than contentment was long to be the tenor of this gifted girl’s life.

  Even that harsh critic Lady Mary Coke thought when she saw the three girls on 25 October 1774, with two of the young princes in ‘what is called the queen’s apartment’, that ‘the Princesses are much improved’. She wrote, ‘The two youngest are really pretty, especially the Princess Augusta.’ But Lady Mary had private information to impart about Augusta: ‘I
’m told she is not so agreeable as the Princess Royal. She tells long stories which is not a good habit.’ However, she recorded with more pleasure that on the child’s sixth birthday, 8 November 1774, an entertainment and supper were projected, which the Duchess of Argyll and Lady Betty Stanley were to attend. But in this sort of situation Princess Augusta was not at her best. Her elder sister may have stammered, but Augusta was painfully shy, and in this sense was much more ‘childish’ than her sister.

  Princess Augusta’s comfort and enjoyment lay within the family circle, and in this setting she showed early on the large-minded and rational character that was always to distinguish her, as her brother the Prince of Wales reported to his governor Lord Holderness, who had gone abroad to recover his health in the autumn of 1774. The Prince wrote, ‘Last Sunday, William, Edward and Augusta were talking together about pistols, and Edward complained that his brothers had pistols but he had none. Upon which Augusta turned to William and said, “Give one pistol to Edward and then you will be equal”. “O Madame”, said William, “if I have not a pair of pistols I am worth nothing”.’ Seven-year-old Prince Edward’s response is not recorded, but, just as the elder brother guarded his privileges, so did the younger one resent them. On one occasion, Prince Edward was told that Prince William was going to Court. ‘Then,’ said the younger brother, ‘I shall button myself up and go to bed.’ Upon being asked why, he replied that, if he were not accompanying his elder brother to Court, it must surely be because he was ill and needed his bed.

  The princesses’ youngest brother, Prince Adolphus, born on 24 February 1774, was weaned the following spring, and the Queen wrote with relief on that occasion, ‘Adolphus seems to relish the taste of potatoes and apple pudding extremely well, nor did it disagree with him, of which I was very fearful.’