In the end, the measures implementing the princesses’ new allowances passed through Parliament relatively smoothly. The queen, however, remained unreconciled, both to the fact of the new arrangements and to the principles underlying them. When Perceval sent letters for her daughters to sign, confirming their acceptance of the money, she was furious that no communication had been addressed to her about it. Augusta explained that all the proper procedures had been followed, but Charlotte would not be mollified. ‘She looked very steadily at me,’ Augusta told her brother, ‘and said with a kind of suppressed anger, “That may be so, but still I think I ought to have been addressed straight to myself.” These were her words.’38
The queen’s temper was made worse by the implementation, in February 1812, of the economising measures which she had opposed so fruitlessly earlier in the year. As Charlotte had expected, it was a harrowing experience. Old servants were dismissed or left, and everyone was sadly aware that this was the end of an era. ‘It was Miss Planta’s last day,’ wrote Elizabeth to Lady Harcourt, ‘and she was the picture of misery and breaking her heart, which of course affected us much.’ The sisters and their old governess had had their differences, but all was forgotten now ‘and only the good was recalled. Then came a servant, he was a porter … to tell us he was going, there was another scene and so it goes on all day, grief and vexation of spirits, every hour something springs up to end our hearts, letters from other servants etc., etc., by the present melancholy change.’39
If her daughters found the process of dissolution heartbreaking, how much harder was it for their mother, who watched as so much of the life she had made for herself over half a century was dismantled before her eyes? The king’s horses, no longer ridden, were sold, as was his prized flock of merino sheep. The queen’s German band was dismissed. None of this made any impression on her husband, who, in his secluded part of the castle, sat silent, ‘employed in arranging, tying and untying his handkerchiefs and nightcaps, and unbuttoning his waistcoat’.40 But it was a painful reminder to Charlotte of her new and indeterminate status, no longer a real wife, yet denied the dignity of widowhood. What the future held for her was anything but certain as she watched her old existence crated, packed and carried away. It was perhaps not surprising that as a result, she clung so tenaciously to any security and support offered by her daughters, and could not see in the dawning of a new life for them anything other than a narrowing and darkening of her own.
The princesses were adamant they intended to make very few alterations to their daily routines. They certainly had no plans to abandon their parents; they had already arranged matters to ensure they would never all be absent from Windsor at the same time so that the king should never be left alone. There were, however, some changes they did want to make. They were determined to spend more time away from the gloom of Windsor and to enjoy a greater variety of company, especially that of their brothers, whose occasional invitations to dinners and parties illuminated their otherwise monotonous days.
This was exactly what the queen feared; and when the princesses were asked to stay with the regent at Oatlands, the Duke of York’s house, she took it as a test case of her authority over them, and refused to let them go. Perhaps realising the larger implications of so apparently insignificant an event, Augusta and Elizabeth would not back down. Mary, always the queen’s most vigorous opponent, described to the regent how she had instilled a little backbone into her siblings. ‘I took this opportunity of giving my mind strongly to my two elder sisters, that this time must prove to them how decided we must be.’ They carried the point, and made the visit, although at the cost of the queen declaring she should go too.
These petty demonstrations of their mother’s displeasure were, as Mary put it, ‘very provoking’, and formed the constant backdrop to their days. The barrage of complaint and frustration to which they were subjected affected the sisters very deeply, eventually emboldening them, as nothing had done before, to abandon their lifelong policy of capitulation and containment and confront the queen directly. In April, Augusta wrote frankly to her mother, stating her intention, and that of her sisters, to venture out occasionally into society. She was confident this would have no impact on the duty they owed to the king, which they would continue to perform with the same good heart. Elizabeth echoed her sentiments in a letter she wrote to the queen at the same time. ‘The melancholy situation in which we are placed, Augusta has explained with so much delicacy and feeling that … I trust you will see she was right in doing.’ She added that the obligations the sisters owed to their mother were no less important to them than those due to the king. ‘I must assure you that all perfectly agree that you ought to be considered in everything, and never left alone.’41
Far from reassuring her, these notes drove the queen to even greater levels of outrage. She wrote her daughters a letter that Augusta felt she could not show the regent because it was written in such fury. It was certainly an exclamation of pent-up rage; but it was also a fervent repudiation of the new freedoms her daughters claimed for themselves, an uncompromising statement of the retired life Charlotte considered appropriate for them in light of their father’s condition. ‘As this may be the last time any of you may be inclined to take a mother’s advice, let me beseech you to consider that your situation is very different to that of your brothers.’ The princes had public duties to perform that necessarily took them into the world, ‘but in your sex, and under the present melancholy situation of your father, the going to public amusements, except where duty calls you, would be the highest mark of indecency possible’. She had nothing further to add and would not meet the princesses as usual at breakfast. ‘I do not think I ever felt as shattered in my life as I did by reading your letter … The stroke is given and nothing can mend it.’42
This was too much for even the long-suffering sisterhood to bear. ‘I certainly expected a storm when we made known our decided wishes and ideas as to our future plans,’ wrote Mary to the regent, but even she had not expected the queen to react with such anger. ‘Great allowances must be made for a woman who has had her own way for many years, and who we all have reason to know has not a good temper.’43 Mary was clear things could not remain as they were, and there was only one member of the family with any influence over the queen. The regent would have to speak to her. ‘We must freely own,’ the princesses declared to him, ‘that we have neither health nor spirits to support for any time the life which we have led for the last two years.’ In the face of a full-scale revolt by the sisters, the prince exerted himself, hurried down to Windsor, charmed and cajoled his mother as only he could, and bought the princesses a moment of respite. In May, they went to London without the queen, although they thought it wise not to provoke her by accepting the regent’s invitation to Carlton House, ‘not because we saw the smallest impropriety in it (which is the queen’s reason)’, explained Mary, but because ‘the great object is to break the ice’. Their sacrifice made little difference. They still lived ‘upon very cross words and sour looks’.44
For much of the rest of the year, the queen and her daughters rubbed along in a state of subdued unhappiness; but their brother had not forgotten their plight. In the autumn of 1812, the regent came up with a plan. The princesses should be asked to accompany his sixteen-year-old daughter Charlotte on some of her first forays into London society. In doing so, they could take the place of her mother, the Princess of Wales, whose behaviour the regent considered made her an impossible companion for a young girl, and who was allowed to see her daughter only under strict supervision. The Duke of York was duly sent to Windsor to break the news to the queen. ‘Her Majesty seemed to view in a right light the necessity of Charlotte enjoying more liberty and passing a part of her time in London,’ he reported to the regent, ‘but there was a very visible alteration in her manner when I stated to her the wish that our sisters should accompany her. She said however but little.’ The duke thought all would be well if the regent himself raised the subjec
t. ‘I have no doubt if you speak to her with gentleness and firmness, and can make her sensible of our sisters’ situation, she will easily be got the better of. All our sisters … are determined to be stout and trust that you will support them.’45
Shortly afterwards, the regent wrote formally to the princesses, requesting that they take Charlotte to the House of Lords, where she could see for the first time the state opening of Parliament. Augusta and Elizabeth agreed immediately to attend; a few days later, Mary decided to join them. When the queen discovered their plans on the night before they left Windsor, a furious row erupted. For Charlotte, this scheme amounted to more than just a lapse in taste and decency; it implied the princesses believed there was no point in remaining at home, since there was no prospect of any improvement in their father’s health. It was, she argued, ‘a full declaration that the king can never recover, and which you know not even any of the physicians have ventured to declare’.
The accusation of indifference to their father’s plight was too much for Elizabeth. She was infuriated by her mother’s words, and ‘in defending her own conduct, struck upon a book, saying she had done all in her power to please’. Elizabeth, usually the most cheerfully devoted of the sisters, was so enraged that the queen said she would not have been surprised to have received ‘a box on the ears’ from her. Elizabeth admitted she had been so affected by her mother’s criticism that she thought she was about to have a seizure. ‘I own the blow of being thought unfeeling and wanting in my duty to the king really haunts me.’46 Augusta thought Elizabeth was right to be so angry. ‘Never was there a daughter more faithfully attached than Eliza to the queen,’ she wrote, adding that their mother ‘won’t allow that any of us feel for the king’s unhappy state of mind’.47
This latest breach with their mother marked a major shift in the princesses’ attitudes. Afterwards, none of them felt able to summon up so uncomplainingly the posture of disciplined submission that had marked their behaviour until then. Elizabeth now pondered whether she should leave the castle and live permanently in her cottage. For Mary, the episode served to confirm her bleak assessment of Charlotte’s character. ‘It was the object of the dear king’s life to keep from the world all he suffered and went through with her temper. He brought his daughters up with a most anxious wish we should assist him in that most unfortunate point, and her conduct in all this business has been such that by her own imprudence (excuse me the expression) she has destroyed the poor king’s honest labours of the last fifty years past.’48 Even Augusta, who could still declare that ‘I love the queen with all my heart’, felt her affection severely qualified by the experience. ‘I feel the injustice most deeply with which she treats us all four. It is undeserved. And our lives have not been too happy, but we have never complained, nor should we if we were but quiet and comfortable with the queen.’49 She too had begun to think the previously unthinkable, and consider whether it might not be better for her to find a home of her own.
Faced with the unappetising prospect of a permanent rupture between his mother and his sisters, the regent sent a letter to the queen with which he intended to put an end to the whole affair. He wrote in tones of icy courtesy, quite unlike the effusive and elaborate style in which he usually addressed his mother, suggesting that he expected his words to be taken seriously. He had been ‘deeply afflicted at hearing from my sisters the strong objections which you have made to their coming to town for the purpose of going to the House of Lords’. He reminded her that the idea had been his own, ‘and not taken up by me without the most thorough consideration’. He did not want to hear of any more opposition to it. ‘I rely with confidence that you will not throw any further obstacles in the way of a plan which I feel so essential to the comfort and happiness of our family.’ He concluded by stressing the importance ‘of showing to the world that the greater number of our family are united in sentiment and affection’.50
At first Charlotte bridled, and sent the regent a long letter of self-justification and complaint; but he was having none of it. ‘I am particularly grieved at the feelings of dissatisfaction which you have manifested towards my sisters,’ George replied, ‘whose general conduct has been so truly proper and affectionate.’51 Having sufficiently applied the stick, he now brandished a carrot in the shape of an invitation to dine at Carlton House. Once she arrived, he did all he could to persuade her that she would survive the occasional absences of his sisters from home. His charm offensive worked. At last, the queen began to thaw and her mood lifted.
Although it was not the end of the sisters’ difficulties – much of their time was still spent in the cloistered dullness of Windsor, reading, sewing and waiting for something to happen – there was no return to the life of almost total seclusion that had been their lot for the two years after the onset of their father’s final illness. The great battles of 1812 won them some degree of independence. They bought new carriages, decorated their apartments, visited their brothers’ houses, and went more often to London, to dinners and even the occasional ball. Their new freedom did not please everyone – the young Princess Charlotte was horrified to discover that she was ‘to be seen out with a parcel of old maids’ – but for the sisters, their victory made all the difference between a quiet life and an unbearable one.52 They were too dutiful not to be aware that their partial release had been made possible by unhappy circumstances. ‘My heart is full, not elated by what has happened,’ confessed Elizabeth, ‘for when I think what has caused it, this is so affecting to my feelings that I cry when I think of it, and when do I not think of it?’53 But they had emerged from the ordeal with as much liberty as they had perhaps ever enjoyed in their lives. As single women past their first youth, and in their ‘very particular situations’, that was, as they acknowledged, something to be thankful for.
*
For one of the sisters, however, the prospect of better relations with her mother and the occasional trip to London fell far short of what she had hoped 1812 would bring. Not long after her brother’s regency had been made permanent, Princess Augusta wrote to him describing a predicament ‘from which you alone can relieve me’. She hoped that, in his new role, he would grant her what she knew her father would never have allowed – permission to marry the man she loved. ‘If it is in your power to make us happy, I know you will. I am sensible that, should you agree to our union, it can only proceed from your affection for me, and your desire of promoting my happiness and that of a worthy man.’54
Augusta had grown into a guarded, inward-looking woman in whom it was difficult to discern any traces of the lively wit she had been known for when she was younger. At twenty-five, she had playfully assured the Prince of Wales, ‘I intend for the rest of my life to be very despotic till I have a lord and master and then … I shall give myself up to his whims.’55 In 1812, Augusta was forty-four, and had lost her taste for whimsy. She knew now that, for princesses, love was a serious business, fraught with problems, and marriage anything but the inevitable state she had once assumed it to be. Perhaps as a result, she conducted her life’s one love affair with the same mute discretion that had become the watchword of her character. ‘Our sentiments’, she told her brother, ‘were of too delicate a nature to make them known, unless at a moment when we might hope to have our sufferings relieved.’ Over time she had learnt to keep to herself feelings which could not be gratified. ‘This was my own secret,’ she declared. She denied that in hiding her love she ‘had not acted with candour’ towards her family; like her mother, she believed that ‘there is no duplicity in silence’.56
Augusta and her lover had sustained their carefully concealed devotion for many years. The regent was, as she reminded him, one of the very few people who knew about it as she had first broached the subject with him in 1808. She would not have broken her vow of silence if her lover had not been away, fighting abroad on active service. ‘My heart was full of care and I knew you would feel for me, and the idea cheered me!’57 Nowhere in her letter does Augusta name
the man himself, but it is now known that the man she loved was Sir Brent Spencer, a career soldier, and – like many of the men with whom the princesses fell in love – an equerry to the king.
Born in Ireland, Spencer had entered the army as a young man. He had fought alongside the Duke of York in 1799, attached to the duke’s forces as part of the disastrous Anglo-Russian invasion of Holland, in which the army commanded by the duke suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Dutch and French at the Battle of Bergen. The duke, who enjoyed his company, mentioned him in dispatches and Spencer went with him when he returned to England. It may have been as a friend of her brother’s that Augusta first met Spencer in 1800. He spent much of the next decade fighting across the world in some of the major battles of the Napoleonic Wars, serving in the West Indies, Egypt, Denmark and Portugal. He was an active, energetic commander, engaged in numerous hard-fought actions. Although regarded as perhaps not the brightest of men, his bravery was never questioned, and he was seen at his very best in action on the battlefield. An old colleague remembered him as ‘a zealous, gallant officer, without any great military genius; anxious and fidgety when there was nothing to do, but once under fire, like a philosopher solving a problem’.58 The Duke of Wellington, with whom he fought in the Peninsular War, admired his courage and recommended him for some mark of royal favour: ‘There never was a braver officer, or one who deserved it better.’59 Spencer had none of the Iron Duke’s laconic wit, and his somewhat literal, ponderous character seems to have been a source of amusement to his more sophisticated colleagues; but none of this was likely to have qualified Augusta’s admiration for him. A life spent at court had made her wary of over-polished articulacy. Her own mind was sharp, but in others she prized the simpler virtues of honesty, loyalty and bravery, all of which Spencer possessed to a degree that made him for her the model of what a man should be.
The Strangest Family Page 73