Charlotte & Leopold

by James Chambers

  But throughout the night and for most of the next day there was no official news. All that anyone could add to the rumour was that Nathan Rothschild had apparently received a copy of a Dutch newspaper containing a vague report of an allied victory.

  In the evening the Prince Regent went round from Carlton House to attend a ball at 16 St James’s Square. His hostess was Mrs Edmund Boehm, whose husband had made a vast fortune in the sugar trade, and the ball was the pinnacle of her ambitious social career. At last, her guests included not only the Regent but also his brother the Duke of York and her neighbour Lord Castlereagh.

  The Regent led off the dancing. Before the first dance was over, however, a commotion in the square brought the music to a standstill and the dancers to the windows. There were cheering people running out of the side streets. An open carriage was clattering towards the house. By the light of the tapers that running footmen were carrying ahead of it, the dancers could see that it contained a young soldier dressed in the simple scarlet coatee of a staff officer. He was Major the Hon. Henry Percy, aide-de-camp to the Duke of Wellington. Percy leapt out of the carriage and ran into the house and up the stairs, carrying what looked like a short but broad roll of cloth under each arm.

  He crossed the drawing room and knelt in front of the Regent panting. ‘Victory… Victory, Sire!’

  As he spoke, he dropped two captured eagles – French regimental colours with golden eagles on the tips of their poles.

  Then he took out a small purple velvet bag that had been given to him a week earlier by a young lady at the Duchess of Richmond’s ball in Brussels. From this he drew out the Duke of Wellington’s despatch.

  The Regent took the despatch and retired into another room with the Foreign Secretary. When he returned he was in tears, and for once his tears were justified.

  Mrs Boehm’s muttering guests fell silent. Castlereagh read the despatch aloud. Four days ago, the allies had destroyed Napoleon’s army at Waterloo. But the cost had been terrible. There had not yet been time to make out a complete list of the officers who had been killed or wounded, but those listed in the despatch, together with those that Henry Percy could remember, were still so many that there was no one in the room who had not lost a kinsman or a friend.

  The Prince Regent returned at once to Carlton House, accompanied by the Foreign Secretary. All the guests went home after them, hurrying to bring the grim but glorious news to their families. Mr and Mrs Boehm were left alone with the musicians, extra servants and a huge uneaten supper.

  At Warwick House, the news was, for the most part, a relief. Napoleon had decided to strike at the right flank and try to take on the allies one at a time. So the Russians were too far away to be engaged – Leopold was safe. Wellington and Blücher were the only commanders who had been able to combine, and theirs were the armies that had suffered the casualties. Among these, Charlotte learned, both Charles Hesse and the Hereditary Prince of Orange had been wounded, although neither so severely that his life was in danger. But there was also a loss, and it was a loss that brought back the gloom that Warwick House had not seen since the death of Mrs Gagarin.

  Two days before the battle of Waterloo, in an attempt to halt the French advance, the Duke of Brunswick had been killed leading his black cavalry in a charge at Quatre Bras. The little duchy had lost another duke to Napoleon.

  The Prince Regent had forbidden Charlotte to communicate with her mother, but, in the circumstances, he allowed one letter. Charlotte never received a reply. Several weeks later, however, she received a letter of condolence from Lady Charlotte Campbell, who was still a member of her mother’s entourage. Lady Charlotte kept the answer.

  … It was a grievous circumstance – a dreadful, irremediable loss to me, for the great possess few real friends. In him I had a warm and constant one, allied, too, by the closest ties of blood. I loved him with the fondest affection, & am confident he returned the sentiment. His death was so glorious, so completely what he always desired for himself – that if it was decreed that he should so early in life quit this world, he could not close his career more gloriously or more worthy of a hero as he was & of that father & that blood he descended from… I trust my mother continues well, & that she has not been very much shocked by the death of her brother. I hope she has got a letter. I was permitted to write to her on the sad event.

  Grief did not, however, distract Charlotte from what was now her only important objective. By the time she wrote that letter, she had written to the Prime Minister asking him to represent her formally with her father and request him to offer her hand in marriage to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg. If he did not agree, she warned, she would remain a spinster and refuse all other suitors.

  This time the Prince Regent’s excuse was ‘the state of the Continent and the negotiations’ that followed the exile of Napoleon to St Helena. This, he said, was not the moment to consider such a proposal. In his report to Charlotte, Lord Liverpool told her that for the time being he felt there was no more he could do; the matter would have to be ‘postponed for his Royal Highness’s further consideration’.

  When the Duke of York heard what had happened he agreed with the Prime Minister and advised Charlotte to be patient. He was in touch with Leopold and knew that he was about to join the allied army in Paris. Duty might well prevent him from coming to England for a few months anyway, and meanwhile Charlotte was about to be sent away for another seaside exile in Weymouth. The Duke’s advice was to wait until November, when Parliament would be sitting again, and then ‘make another push’.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Waiting in Weymouth

  AT FIRST CHARLOTTE found it easy enough to follow the advice to be patient with her father. But it was not so easy to be patient with Leopold. As soon as she reached Weymouth, she wrote to Mercer telling her that ‘the Leo’ was in Paris, and begging her to write to him, although she added, ‘Preach up prudence. A false step now I feel would ruin all.’

  In the weeks and then months that followed, Mercer wrote encouraging letters to Leopold, Leopold wrote back to Mercer, Mercer passed on what he had said to Charlotte, and in her answers Charlotte became more and more eager and less and less inclined to go on waiting.

  On 21 August, late at night, she wrote:

  Your accounts of him constantly at Lady Castlereagh’s stupid suppers does not astonish me… Oh why should he not come over, it is so near & it is but a run over of a few hours. I quite languish for his arrival. He is really wrong in keeping back as he does. Having got your letter what more can he wish for to bring him? Don’t you know an old proverb wh. says, ‘Hope long delayed maketh the heart sick’. What does he mean about a crisis? I see & hear of nothing that is like it.

  Just over a week later, after Mercer had induced Leopold to share his feelings with her, Charlotte wrote, ‘I will tell you candidly that I am delighted, not to say charmed & flattered at what Leo writes about his sentiments and feelings for me, & the way in wh. he expresses himself is peculiarly pleasing.’

  After another month she was beginning to hope that Leopold had decided to come over, and yet at the same time both she and Mercer were worried that someone was advising him against it – it was possible that ‘hints might have reached him through the Prussians’ about Prince August, or that somebody had told him about Charles Hesse. If he did come, Charlotte wanted Mercer to meet him and explain.

  If you see him long enough to have such confidential & various conversation with him, I allow you…to clear all that up to him in the best manner you please, & even if you think it necessary, to hint also at Hesse’s affair since I was quite clear (that unless he is well prepared & armed against all the lies & different things that will be told him) he will not know what to believe, who to credit, or how to act.

  A week later, still hoping that Leopold was coming soon, Charlotte was in a mood to be devious. She told Mercer, ‘I give you carte blanche if you see him, to say & do all that circumstances will allow & require. Don’t send me any
of his letters, let me see them when we meet, that you may honorably be able to keep to saying you never forwarded any letters to me.’

  Yet amid all the frustration and disappointment, the news that raised Charlotte’s hopes the highest was not about Leopold but about ‘Slender Billy’. It was announced in Holland that the Hereditary Prince of Orange was engaged to marry the Tsar’s younger sister, the Grand Duchess Anne.

  The Dutch fleet was to be united with the Russian fleet. For those who were inclined to suspect a conspiracy, and who did not know how much Charlotte detested the young Prince of Orange, it looked as though the scheming Grand Duchess Catherine had brought about the breach between them as part of a long-term Russian plan. But for Charlotte the news was nothing more than a merciful release. Her father no longer had a pet plan to promote above any other.

  But then she heard that several other eligible princes had been seen in London and at Windsor. On 14 October she wrote, ‘I have such a dread of all foreign Princes, the sight as well as the name of them alarm me from the idea of some intrigue or other going on for my marrying someone of them.’

  By then it was a while since Mercer had heard from Leopold, and a week later Charlotte began to despair. ‘His silence to you is now what surprises & occupies me the most for you ought to have heard long before this.’

  November came. It was the month when Parliament was sitting again, the month in which the Duke of York advised Charlotte to make ‘another push’. But Mercer heard nothing from Leopold, and while Charlotte waited in Weymouth she underwent what she described as an alarming adventure.

  On Friday, 10 November, between four and five o’clock in the evening, the Princess was looking out of her dressing room window when she saw a young gentleman with his right arm in a leather sling walking on the esplanade. He looked exactly like Charles Hesse. Charlotte took out her telescope and had another look at him as he walked back. It was Charles Hesse.

  As Charlotte told Mercer, ‘What to do was the next question.’ Was he there because he knew Charlotte was there? What would happen if the Prince Regent found out he had been there, even if he and Charlotte never met?

  Charlotte went to General Garth and told him all that he needed to know. The old General went out, found the young Captain and sat down with him on a bench. Garth asked why Hesse was in Weymouth. The answer was that, while still recovering from his wound, Hesse was on his way to stay with friends in Cornwall. He had stopped off for the night in Weymouth because he had never seen it before. Garth then asked him if he knew that Princess Charlotte was staying in Weymouth. Hesse said that he did not. Garth believed him. In that case, said the General, it was the Captain’s duty to leave town at once. Hesse agreed. He was due to leave next day at noon, but if that was not enough he would try to find a way of leaving earlier. Garth said that it was enough.

  Next day Charlotte watched as Charles Hesse walked past Gloucester Lodge to join the Exeter coach. That evening, to guard against any future accusation of subterfuge, she wrote to the Duke of York and told him what had happened.

  Soon afterwards, Hesse left England and rejoined the entourage of Charlotte’s mother. After her death, he lived in Italy, where he had several eminent lovers, including the Queen of Naples, whose husband eventually had him escorted out of the kingdom by carabinieri. He also fought a number of duels, in the last of which he was killed by another bastard, Count Leon, whose father was Napoleon.

  The Duke of York wrote back to Charlotte. ‘I can easily conceive how unexpected and unpleasant Mr H.’s appearance at Weymouth must have been to you, and think that in the very awkward situation in which it placed you, you acted quite right in sacrificing your own feelings, however disagreeable it must have been to you in confessing to General Garth the delicacy of your situation.’

  Charlotte was pleased by her uncle’s approval, but while Leopold’s silence continued, the Duke’s next letter brought even greater comfort. ‘You may be assured, dearest Charlotte, that tho’ absent you are not forgot, and that your real friends are doing everything in their power to serve you and further your wishes, and I cannot but be confident that the patience and acquiescence which you have shown in all the arrangements which have been made for you, will have a proper effect.’

  ‘I think, that he does know something he don’t like to say’, wrote Charlotte hopefully to Mercer. But as December came and went there was still no sign of it, and Charlotte’s continuing anxiety can only have been made more poignant by the news that Mercer was in love.

  The man who had won Mercer’s heart, and who had lost his own heart to her, was Auguste Charles Joseph, Count de Flahault de la Billarderie. He had served in the French army in both Spain and Russia, where he had been appointed an aide-de-camp to Napoleon, and he had rejoined the Emperor when he returned from Elba and served with him again at Waterloo. Like many of Napoleon’s closest supporters, he had left France as soon as the allies restored the Bourbon King Louis-Philippe to the throne. Since he had been educated in Scotland and spoke English fluently, he had gone to live in Edinburgh; it was there that he met his beautiful Scots heiress.

  The thirty-year-old Count de Flahault was everything that Mercer was looking for: handsome, worldly, cultured and charming. It was widely believed that his father was Prince Talleyrand, who was having an affair with his mother before he was born; and in qualities and abilities he was certainly much closer to the great statesman than the provincial count whose title he inherited. He was so confident and clever that, despite his recent setback, he was clearly destined for further success. And as if these gifts were not enough, Mercer’s father added to his dangerous attraction by disapproving of him because he was a Bonapartist. So while Mercer was being courted by her Count, Charlotte went on languishing in Weymouth. She spent Christmas Day there without a single member of her family for company, and it was not until New Year’s Day that she and her ladies climbed into their carriages to ride back to Windsor and Cranbourne Lodge.

  On 6 January Charlotte drove down to Brighton with the Queen and two of her aunts. The next day was her twentieth birthday, and the Prince Regent was giving a party for her at his pavilion. In the course of the evening she made ‘another push’ on behalf of Prince Leopold, and this time her father made no objection.

  Knowing that the Regent could remember things as he wanted them to be rather than as they were, Charlotte wrote to him as soon as she returned to Cranbourne Lodge, repeating on paper exactly what had been said in Brighton. Her excuse was that her shyness often prevented her from expressing herself clearly, and ‘in the present instance’ she therefore felt that it was essential ‘to have recourse to writing’. After reminding her father that he had once told her he would leave the choice to her, she went on. ‘Thus encouraged I no longer hesitate in declaring my partiality for the Prince of Coburg – assuring you that no one will be more steady or consistent in their present & last engagement than myself.’

  But there was no need to worry. The Duke of York had indeed known something. At the end of the previous year the Regent had been making enquiries. He consulted Lord Castlereagh, who had been impressed by Leopold at the Vienna Congress, and Lord Lauderdale, who had got to know him better than anyone else when he was last in England. Both agreed that he was a man of the highest principles and an ideal husband for their future queen, and furthermore Lauderdale could confirm that he was ‘partial to the young lady’.

  The answer to Charlotte’s letter was the news that her father had written to Leopold summoning him to England, and that his letter was accompanied by a letter from Castlereagh explaining to Leopold that the Regent intended to offer him his daughter’s hand in marriage.

  All that was needed now was for the courier to find Leopold. He was no longer in Paris, but he had not, as some said, gone to Russia. When the courier reached Coburg he was told that Leopold had gone to Berlin, and it was there that he found him, in the middle of February.

  By then Charlotte was exasperated with waiting. On 21 Februa
ry she wrote to Mercer. ‘By accurate calculation & measurement of the distance between Berlin & Coburg I find no reason (except the bad roads) for his not being here now.’

  Charlotte’s calculation was correct. The day on which she wrote that letter was also the day on which Leopold landed at Dover and drove to London. This time there was no need to take rooms above a grocer’s shop in Marylebone High Street. This time the Prince Regent was paying. Leopold checked in at the Clarendon Hotel in Bond Street, where a suite had been reserved for him.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  ‘An Inappropriate Relationship’

  LEOPOLD WAS IN England for five days before Charlotte saw him. He spent his first day in bed at his London hotel suffering from what Charlotte described as ‘rheumatism in his head’, and he was still suffering when he left next day to stay with the Prince Regent at his pavilion in Brighton. But, as Charlotte told Mercer, ‘He says he waits to see me to cure that and all other ailments.’

  At last, on 26 February, Charlotte drove down to Brighton, accompanied, as was becoming usual, by her grandmother and a couple of aunts. In the evening they dined with Leopold and the Prince Regent. Everyone was ‘in high spirits’, and everyone was impressed by Leopold’s charm and dignity as well as his good looks. As Lady Ilchester put it, ‘imagination cannot picture a countenance more justifiable of love at first sight’.

  The Queen was so taken with the Prince that she declined her usual game of cards after dinner and chose to sit talking instead – although she had little chance to talk to Leopold. Charlotte and he were totally absorbed in each other, anxiously reassuring, eagerly planning, and talking all the time in French, since Leopold’s French was much better than his English, and Charlotte’s was better than her German.