Although the odds were longer, however, there were others in the field as well. Beyond the Duke of Kent there were three younger brothers.
The middle of the three, the Duke of Sussex, had married Lady Augusta Murray in contravention of the Royal Marriages Act and had therefore been withdrawn from the running, but the other two were both eligible and entered. In 1815 the elder of the two, the Duke of Cumberland, had married the widowed Princess of Solms, who was hated by the rest of the Royal Family because she had once jilted the Duke of Cambridge. Since then she had borne her husband a stillborn daughter, and although some said she was now too old, she was known to be trying for another child.
The youngest in the field, the outsider, was the man she jilted, the Duke of Cambridge, who had actually been first out of the gate. He had proposed to, and been accepted by, Princess Augusta of Hesse Cassel only two weeks after Charlotte’s death, and they had been married two weeks before the Dukes of Clarence and Kent.
The race was on.
In the following year the favourite went briefly ahead by a nose. On 21 March the Duchess of Clarence gave birth to a daughter, Charlotte, but tragically the baby died a few hours later.
Five days after that the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to a son, George.
Then, on 24 May, the Duchess of Kent pulled ahead by giving birth to a daughter. She was baptised Alexandrina, after her godfather Tsar Alexander, and Victoria, after her mother; and for the first few years of her life she was to be known as ‘Drina’.
Three days later the Duchess of Cumberland gave birth to another George.
The future of the House of Hanover was now secure. King George III had three legitimate grandchildren. But Alexandrina Victoria, Leopold’s niece, was the one who took precedence. After her father and three older uncles, she was fifth in line to the throne of England.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Out of Favour
LEOPOLD WAS ABROAD when his niece Victoria was born. He was still morose and not yet ready, or even fit, to be seen out in society, and Stockmar had persuaded him that it would be better to travel than mope among memories at Claremont.
In March 1818 he went down to the Pyrenees for a while. In the summer, when he returned, he opened Claremont to the public and then, in September, left for Paris.
While he was in Paris, one of the many Englishmen who were living there at the time, Captain Gronow, invited him to shoot hare with him out at Saint-Germain. Leopold declined. ‘I never intend again to shoot a hare’, he said. ‘At Claremont, one day, when I was walking with my beloved wife, we heard the cries of one that had been wounded; and she was so affected that she begged I would not hurt one of these animals in future.’
From Paris, Leopold went on to spend Christmas with his eldest brother, Duke Ernest, in Coburg, but he was so distressed by the sight of a happy festive family that he spent most of the time in his room.
In April he went to Vienna, where he bought a house for Ernest. Leopold was not yet ready to return to England. He wrote in English to Mrs Campbell, whom, he knew, was one of the few people Charlotte had loved, and who, he had hoped, was going to be the governess of his son:
I should have already sooner have thought of returning to dear old England, but I greatly wanted quiet and retirement, fallen from a height of happiness and grandeur seldom equalled, to accustom myself to the painful task of leading so very different a life… I hope you will at the approaching more propitious weather visit Claremont sometimes, and look a little on your protections in the flower garden…
Leopold was still in Vienna when he heard that his sister was about to give birth in London. On 28 May, four days after Princess Victoria was born, he landed at Dover. ‘The appearance of His Royal Highness’, said The Times, ‘is much improved since his departure from hence, yet he still looks very pale and much dejected; and having lost his moustachios contributes the more to make him look thin.’
Leopold spent the night in Dover and went home next day to Claremont. On the day after that he visited the Duchess of York at Oatlands, and on the last day of the month he went up to London, called on the Regent at Carlton House and then went round to Kensington Palace to meet his niece.
In the evening he went back to his huge new London home, Marlborough House. The house had been built by the first Duchess of Marlborough on a plot of land next to St James’s Palace which she leased from her friend Queen Anne. In 1817, after Charlotte and Leopold moved into Claremont, the lease had reverted to the Crown, and the Queen and the Regent, knowing that the young couple were dissatisfied with Camelford House, had decided to give it to them. Now Leopold was living there alone and solemnly redecorating and furnishing it, so that he would be able to entertain there when he took his place in London society again.
Mrs Campbell, who was invited round to see the house, described it to Lady Ilchester. ‘The Prince has laid out a great deal of money on Marlborough House, in painting and cleaning it, very handsome carpets to the whole range of apartments, and silk furniture, and on my asking if the silk on one sofa was foreign, he seemed quite to reproach me, and said I should never see anything that was not English in his house.’ But he still talked most about Charlotte, and Mrs Campbell was ‘gratified’ to report that ‘he also told me of his parties for the next month, and who he was going to ask’.
Leopold’s first appearance in society was at the banquet that followed the christening of Princess Alexandrina Victoria. He then went to the Prince Regent’s birthday party, and thereafter he gave a few dinner parties and attended others. But he was still so dejected that he was a dour host, and such a dull companion at other people’s tables that hostesses despaired of him. It was as much of a relief to them as to him when he went back to Claremont.
At the end of the summer the Duke of Kent took his wife and daughter down to spend the winter in Sidmouth on the south coast of Devon. On 20 January 1820 Leopold received a note from his sister telling him that the Duke had caught a chill and was suffering from a severe chest infection. Leopold raced down to Sidmouth and was at the Duke’s bedside when he died three days later.
On 29 January the old King died.
The Prince Regent was now King George IV; eight-month-old Drina – Princess Victoria – was now third in line to the throne after the Royal Dukes of York and Clarence.
The Duchess of Kent inherited nothing but her husband’s debts. Fortunately, however, Leopold was rich. Parliament had agreed that the £50,000 a year it had voted to him on his marriage should continue to be paid for the rest of his life. Even after the ‘great deal of money’ he was spending on Marlborough House, he had income to spare. He paid some of the debts, made arrangements to pay off others over the next few years and assigned £3,000 a year to be spent on his niece’s education. The Duchess of Kent and her daughter could go on living in Kensington Palace without any worries, and her brother would always be on hand if she needed him. Princess Victoria would never know her father, but her ‘dearest Uncle Leopold’, as she was soon to call him, was determined to stand in for him as much as he could.
The new King set about planning his coronation with all the ceremonial enthusiasm shown when he was Regent. But six hundred miles away, in northern Italy, other plans were being made which did not quite accord with his. Now that her husband was a king, Charlotte’s mother wanted to be a queen. She announced that she was coming back to be crowned beside him in Westminster Abbey.
Brougham tried to persuade her to stay away. He had heard too much about her. He knew that she was now so grotesque that it would not be long before the press and then the people turned against her. In his opinion there was much more political capital to be made out of her if she could be presented as an innocent exile. But the Radical Whigs did not agree. They believed that they could only use her to rouse the discontented rabble if she was actually in the country to form a focus for their fury. And it was the Radical counsel that prevailed.
Fat, fifty-two and foolishly dressed in clothes that wer
e far too young for her, Caroline, Princess of Wales, accompanied by Willikin, landed at Dover on 5 June and was cheered all the way to London by well-organised crowds. For a few days, while she lived in South Audley street with the Radical MP Matthew Wood, mobs roamed the streets breaking windows and shouting, ‘God save the Queen!’, but the disorder died away when she moved to take up permanent residence at Brandenberg House in Hammersmith.
The King’s response was brusque and to the point. He told the government to get rid of her, and warned that he would get rid of the government if it did not.
Since the King could not divorce his wife in one of his own courts, the only way of ending the marriage was by Act of Parliament. But the appropriate Bill of Pains and Penalties could not be introduced until the government had collected enough evidence to support it. As a first step, the Queen would have to undergo a form of trial before the House of Lords. It was a project from which no one was likely to emerge with any dignity. Leopold offered to mediate. Perhaps the Queen could be persuaded to accept a compromise. But the Prime Minister refused to let him. Her Majesty had already rejected all offers. She was insisting on being crowned. The Bill of Pains and Penalties was the only option.
The trial opened on 17 August. On that day and each day that followed, the new evidence was a delight to the gossips, satirists and cartoonists. Italian witnesses were produced to substantiate almost every lurid rumour. When Brougham, who had been landed with the defence, tried to make them contradict their evidence under cross-examination, the answer that one of them kept repeating became the most popular catchphrase of the day – ‘Non mi ricordo’.
After only a few days Leopold could stand no more of it. Although mobs had again started to riot in support of her, the Queen was being represented to the court as a debauched hussy, and she was adding to the impression herself by slouching in her chair and yelling abuse at the witnesses. He decided to reason with her. If she accepted a compromise now, she might at least hold on to her popular support and avert complete humiliation.
He went down to Brandenburg House. But the visit was ill-advised, futile and disastrous. His mother-in-law refused to see him, and when his father-in-law heard about it he was furious.
In his own way the King had been good to his son-in-law. He had made him a Field Marshal and a Knight of the Garter; and he had given him the title His Royal Highness. As he saw it, Leopold’s visit to Hammersmith was ungrateful, disloyal and presumptuous.
The entertaining trial was allowed to run its course. But on 10 November, on its third reading, the Bill of Pains and Penalties only passed through the House of Lords by a majority of nine. The Prime Minister knew that it would never pass through the Commons. Rather than risk a defeat, he withdrew it. Instead the Privy Council ruled that, since the Queen was living separately from the King, she had no right to be crowned with him, and he could refuse to allow it if he chose. It was a solution that would have been better received if it had been used early enough to prevent the embarrassment of the trial. The Radicals claimed the climb-down as a victory, and their rabble rioted again.
The exclusion of the Queen from the coronation was at least enough to prevent the King from carrying out his threat to dismiss the government, but he was still exasperated and in no mood to forgive Leopold for interfering. When Leopold went to court a few weeks later, the King ostentatiously turned his back on him. Without any change in the expression on his face, Leopold walked up to the Duke of York. ‘The King has thought proper at last to take his line’, he said loudly, ‘and I shall take mine.’ Then he walked out.
By then the Duchess of Clarence had given birth to another daughter, Elizabeth. But the child only lived until the spring. On 19 July 1821, when Leopold set out in his garter robes to attend the coronation of King George IV, his niece Victoria was again third in line.
Out of favour though he was, Leopold had at least been invited to the ceremony in Westminster Abbey. The Queen, on the other hand, had not. In accordance with the ruling of the Privy Council, she had been specifically instructed not to come. But she insisted that it was her right to be there. She turned up in her carriage and went round the Abbey from door to door demanding to be admitted, and at every door she was turned away. When she climbed back into her carriage and drove off, for the first time, the scanty crowds booed her.
As Brougham knew they would in the end, the press and the people turned against the Queen. Now they sympathised with the satirist who wrote:
Most gracious Queen, we thee implore
To go away and sin no more;
Or if that effort be too great,
To go away at any rate.
The Queen did not go away. Instead, three weeks later, she died of bowel cancer. She probably knew that she was dying when she went to Westminster Abbey, and she may even have known for some time before that, but the first time she told anyone was when Brougham went to see her two weeks after the coronation. ‘I am going to die, Mr Brougham’, she said, ‘but it does not signify’.
Apart from the Queen’s ludicrous appearance and the abuse that the crowds shouted at their King, the coronation was pronounced a success. Mrs Campbell wrote to Lady Ilchester, ‘Nothing could be finer than the sight of the Coronation, and Prince Leopold the most beautiful part of it.’
But cutting a dash in public was about all that Leopold was able to do during the next few years. Now that he was out of favour with the King, he was given no role in the world, and he remained too dull and introspective to be a success in society. George FitzClarence, who had just returned from service in India, described him as ‘a damned humbug’. The only people who sought him out were the many mothers, including Lady Augusta Murray, who tried in vain to interest the rich and handsome Prince in their daughters.
Leopold was not celibate, however; he had several mistresses, among them the beautiful Countess Ficquelmont and the notorious Lady Ellenborough, who, in character though not in shape, was very like his mother-in-law. But he was so cold, so completely incapable of tenderness, that they all left him for other lovers.
His only human interest lay in the education and welfare of his niece Victoria. She alone inspired his affection. He arranged holidays for her in Weymouth, and as often as possible he took her down to Claremont with her mother. In 1872, when she had been Queen for thirty-five years, Victoria wrote, ‘Claremont remains as the brightest epoch of my otherwise melancholy childhood.’
On 7 Jan 1827 the Duke of York died. The Duke of Clarence was now heir to the throne, and Victoria was heir presumptive. But as Victoria’s destiny drew closer, Leopold became more and more dissatisfied with his own lack of achievement. He was thirty-seven years old, and all he had to show for it was a good war record and the fact that he was the uncle of a future Queen. He did not even have a family.
There had been a spark of hope back in 1825, when the Greeks sent a deputation to London to invite Leopold to be their king. But the Greeks’ proposal depended on their unlikely success in freeing themselves from the Ottoman Empire, and it did not have the support of George Canning, the new Foreign Secretary.
Canning had taken office when Castlereagh committed suicide after being caught by a blackmailer in a bedroom with a boy dressed as a woman. In his opinion the offer was too far-fetched to be taken seriously, and anyway Leopold was likely to be more useful if he stayed in England. The King was not in good health, and nor were his brothers of York and Clarence. The imminent death of all three was a much more likely eventuality than the freedom of Greece. If that did happen within the next few years, England would be left with an infant Queen, and in that event her uncle would be an ideal regent.
In July 1827, however, Canning, who was by then Prime Minister, died from the chill that he caught at the Duke of York’s funeral; on 20 October, in the last great battle fought between wooden warships, Admiral Codrington inadvertently destroyed the Ottoman fleet at Navarino.
Greece was within grasp of independence. The offer was renewed. Leopold was inclined
to accept, and this time he had the support of no less a person than the Duke of Wellington. But the vengeful King was opposed to the plan, and the King’s opposition was enough to thwart it.
When Leopold’s frustration evolved into bitterness, Stockmar decided that it was time to go travelling again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
The Hottentot
IN SEPTEMBER 1828 Leopold’s travels took him to Prussia, to Potsdam, where he stayed in the palace as the guest of King Frederick William III.
One evening, in the King’s private theatre, the State Company gave a performance of a popular musical comedy, The Hottentot. When the 21-year-old actress who played the title role came on, wearing a short red frock trimmed with tiger skin, coral trinkets and a black and white feathered headdress, Leopold was enraptured and astonished. She looked just like Charlotte.
Her name was Caroline Bauer, and she had just returned from a triumphant season in St Petersburg. Her late father had been an officer in the Baden Light Dragoons. Her mother, who had been born a Stockmar in Coburg, was the aunt of the little doctor who was sitting out in the auditorium in the row behind Leopold. Her family had, of course, disapproved of her ambition to become an actress, but when it became clear that they could not stop her, her cousin, Dr Christian, had agreed to help, on the whimsical condition that she would always wear new shoes and new gloves at each performance.
Caroline Bauer knew that Leopold was in the audience. When she looked out through the peep-hole in the curtain before the performance began, she was able to recognise him easily. He was the ‘slender, tall gentleman, in red English uniform glittering with gold, of pale, noble face, with short, black, smooth-lying hair, and great, dark, melancholy eyes’.
Charlotte & Leopold Page 19