The Queen’s House

by Edna Healey

  This year, Prince Leopold would later remember, was the happiest of his life. He had the adoring love of Princess Charlotte and the steady friendship of his counsellor, Stockmar. Their happiness was a bright light in Queen Charlotte’s darkening days.

  The Queen visited the King regularly in his sad isolation at Windsor. Did she try to cheer him with the news of Princess Charlotte’s engagement? He would have been glad: but the news of the rackety life her mother, Princess Caroline, was leading would have filled him with despair. The Prince Regent’s estranged wife was now scandalizing the courts of Europe with her wild behaviour. Fortunately for his peace of mind, the King could not know of the Prince’s continuing extravagant life, his debts, his drinking and his mistresses. Queen Charlotte had to endure the shame of it all alone.

  Did she try to tell him of the world outside as the years passed? Perhaps she tried to penetrate the mists of his mind with news of the Duke of Wellington and his victory over the French at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815. But he was beyond caring: wars and domestic troubles, unemployment, riots, all belonged to a world he had left.

  In November 1817 came heartbreaking news which she certainly would have kept from the King. Princess Charlotte – the heiress to the throne, the hope of the future – died in childbirth on 6 November. After fifty hours of agonizing labour she was delivered of ‘a fine, large, dead boy’. Stockmar had been there but medical protocol prevented him from interfering in another doctor’s case. He never forgot Princess Charlotte’s desperate last moments, recording later:

  During her agony the doctor had said ‘Here comes an old friend of yours.’ She stretched out her left hand eagerly to me and pressed mine twice vehemently. I went out of the room, then the rattle in the throat began. I had just left the room, when she called out loudly ‘Stocky, Stocky.’ I went back, she was quieter but the rattle continued. She died at 9pm.

  In old age Leopold was to say he ‘never recovered the feeling of happiness which had blessed his short married life’.35

  ‘The passing of a “very kind spirit”’

  As Queen Charlotte walked with difficulty through her state rooms, there were too many poignant memories of her own happy days of early marriage. The King’s rooms on the ground floor were much as he had left them: on the walls of his Dining Room still hung Zoffany’s portraits of herself, young and elegant, wearing the miniature by Meyer, set in a bracelet, that the King had sent to her in Mecklenburg before her marriage; and of the young King, painted so handsome and upright – itwas unbearable to think of the blind old man shuffling around his closed world at Windsor, lost to her for ever.

  Now the great staircase was hard to climb: she had told the Prince Regent on 19 December 1817 that she was ‘well in health but continue to puff when I go up and down stairs’.36 Upstairs in her long suite of rooms there were too many mirrors: she could not escape the image of the stout little lady with the tragic eyes. Beechey had caught the sad look, though his portrait on the walls of the Saloon was kinder than the mirrors. She could laugh wryly at her ‘fat figure’, but she thought of the cruel satires and cartoons in the popular press with pain.

  Most poignant of all, as she made her slow progress through her rooms, were the paintings by Gainsborough in the Green Closet of the heads of thirteen of her children, in all their shining innocence. What had become of all that hope and promise? The Prince Regent was trapped in a disastrous marriage, deep in debt, his dissolute lifestyle earning him hatred and ridicule. Frederick, Duke of York, the King’s favourite, had been caught up in the scandals of his mistress’s arraignment for bribery; his marriage to the eccentric Frederica had produced no children. William, Duke of Clarence, had lived for more than twenty years with his actress mistress, Mrs Jordan, by whom he had ten children. Edward, Duke of Kent, had had a similarly comfortable long ‘marriage’ without the blessing of the Church, with Madame de St Laurent – his ‘old French lady’, as his sisters called her. Ernest, Duke of Cumberland, the black sheep of the family, according to gossip which she must have heard, was accused of every imaginable vice. Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, had been something of a comfort and his marriage to Augusta of Hesse Cassel welcomed. Augustus, Duke of Sussex, however, had had a marriage to Lady Augusta Murray, which finished in separation in 1801. But most tragic were the two little boys who had died young – Prince Alfred and Prince Octavius: she could sigh over the painting by Benjamin West, The Apotheosis of Prince Octavius, describing their ascent to heaven, which hung on the walls (it still hangs there) – and Princess Amelia, whose death in 1810 had pushed the King over the brink into his final breakdown. But at least her other daughters had given her love and comfort even if there had been spectacular rows – understandable, considering their confined and frustrated lives. Charlotte, the Princess Royal, had married Frederick I, the Hereditary Prince of Wurttemberg, on 18 May 1797 and Princess Mary was at last settled.

  Queen Charlotte never gave up hope that one day the King would regain his senses. So, in her refurbished apartments she held drawing rooms, and received delegations and diplomats, wearing her fabulous diamonds, silks and old lace as he would have wished. Richard Rush, American Minister to the Court of St James, remembered one such occasion, when a thousand guests thronged the great staircase, which, as he recorded in his diary on 17 February 1818,

  branched off at the first landing … The company ascending took one channel; those descending, the other, and both channels were full … The openings through the old carved balusters, brought all under view at once, and the paintings on the walls were all seen at the same time … Four rooms were allotted to the ceremony. In the second, was the Queen. She sat on a velvet chair and cushion, a little raised up. Near her were the Princesses and ladies in waiting … The Prince Regent was there and Royal Family … The doors of the rooms were all open … You saw in them a thousand ladies richly dressed … I had already seen in England signs enough of opulence and power – now I saw on all sides, British beauty.37

  In 1817 the Queen was struck to the heart by the death of her grandchild, Princess Charlotte, whom she had come to love. After the funeral at Windsor, she went to Bath to take the waters. Here she met again Madame d’Arblay – whom she had known as Fanny Burney. The novelist was shocked at the appearance of the Queen but nevertheless saw her making her

  round of the company … with a Grace indescribable, and, to those who never witnessed it, inconceivable; for it was such as to carry off Age, Infirmity, sickness, diminutive and disproportioned stature and Ugliness! – as to give her … a power of charming and delighting that rarely has been equalled.38

  Other commentators were more cruel, but Fanny Burney’s praise was echoed by others who saw her at the Queen’s House fulfilling her duties.

  On 25 February 1818, in the last year of her life, Richard Rush, the American Minister, was equally charmed by the grace with which she received his letters of credence in all the splendour of the great Saloon at the Queen’s House. She, who had followed the American War of Independence with passionate and partisan interest, now received the Republican envoy with ‘a very kind spirit’, asking intelligent questions about Rush’s home town Philadelphia, and about America in general. He found her ‘gentle voice’ and the ‘benignity of her manner attractive and touching’.

  The same strength that had supported her as a young girl at Court now steeled her to battle on, though she was often in pain.

  In her last year there were still duties to perform and there were weddings to celebrate. On Tuesday, 7 April 1818 her daughter, the intelligent Princess Elizabeth, married Frederick, the future Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg. The Queen and Princess Elizabeth had often quarrelled. The Princess had once claimed that ‘the King had spoiled her [the Queen] from the hour she came, and we have continued doing so from the hour of our birth’. But now they were reconciled and the Saloon at the Queen’s House was once more transformed into a chapel, the temporary altar covered in red and gold. The guests stood for the ceremony, but Queen
Charlotte, in pain, sat on her throne, and Princess Elizabeth knelt to receive her blessing. Richard Rush was there, full of praise for the Queen: he noticed that she wore a miniature of the King around her neck.

  There was one more drawing room on 14 April, but this was her last. There was another wedding: the Duke of Cambridge had married, at Cassel, Princess Augusta of Hesse-Cassel, sister of the Grand Duchess of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Now on 1 June they were remarried in the Queen’s Saloon in her presence. Queen Charlotte welcomed with pleasure the bride with Mecklenburg connections.

  She hoped to return to the King at Windsor, but she was too weak to travel. The iron gates around the Palace forecourt were closed: the rattle of carriages disturbed her.

  On 20 June she left the Queen’s House for the last time. She managed to get as far as Kew. In the drawing room of the Dutch House she witnessed two of her sons’ double wedding: William, Duke of Clarence, married Princess Adelaide of Saxe Meiningen, and Edward, Duke of Kent, married Princess Victoire, widow of the Prince of Leiningen and sister of Prince Leopold. The Duke of Kent had supported Prince Leopold in his pursuit of Princess Charlotte: he, in turn, had encouraged this marriage of the Duke with his sister, Victoire. Two faithful ladies had been put aside to make these royal marriages. Mrs Jordan was dead and the Duke of Kent’s long and happy relationship with Julie, Madame de St Laurent, had to be ended.

  After the death of Princess Charlotte there were no legitimate heirs to the throne in the younger generation and it seemed that the monarchy was in danger, but the royal Dukes, elderly but, it was hoped, still fertile, had hastily come to the rescue. In fact, none of the Duke of Clarence’s legitimate children were to survive, but he was to become William IV and the Duke of Kent was to be the father of Queen Victoria.

  Queen Charlotte had not long to live. She was not able to make the journey on to Windsor and after months of suffering, on Tuesday, 17 November 1818 she died.

  Her daughters, Princesses Mary and Augusta, had ‘witnesssed sufferings I can never describe and I trust we shall never forget, the example of fortitude and mildness and every virtue’. The Prince Regent, her favourite son, was there at the end, her hand tightly clasped in his. Queen Charlotte had been through much rough weather since she had crossed the stormy North Sea to her wedding, but she had kept the faith as she saw it; and had maintained the dignity of the Crown through a generation of scandal. At the end she had the comfort of the love of her family: as her daughter Princess Mary wrote, ‘Hers was a long life of trials. Religion and her Trust in God supported her under all her various misfortunes that brought us all together … we must feel the want of her every hour.’39

  Queen Charlotte was buried in St George’s Chapel at Windsor, a grieving Prince Leopold the most affected of the mourners.

  Did they tell the King at Windsor of her going? Or was he too far away in his timeless world where past and present were mingled? He would have approved the choice of the music of Handel as her Requiem, saying, as he often did, ‘The King had loved it when he was alive.’

  ‘And farewell King’

  The cold January of 1820 brought unexpected tragedy to the Kents and long-awaited release for the King. On 23 January the Duke of Kent died of pneumonia at Sidmouth, Devon, by the sea. He and his wife Victoire, Duchess of Kent, and Princess Victoria, their six-month-old baby, had been staying at Claremont with the Duchess’s brother, the widower Prince Leopold. They had come to Devon for a Christmas break and here the Duke caught the cold that killed him. His death took everyone by surprise – he had been the strongest of the King’s sons. It happened that the ubiquitous Stockmar was with him at the end, and sensibly urged him to make his will and appoint executors, one of whom was his equerry, John Conroy – a character who was to cause trouble in the future. Prince Leopold came to the Duchess of Kent’s rescue, persuaded her to stay to bring up little Princess Victoria in England, and made her an allowance.

  Six days later, on 29 January 1820 at eight o’clock at night, George III died at Windsor, the Duke of York at his bedside. For a moment he had seemed to regain his sanity, saying, ‘Frederick, give me your hand.’ As the Duke told Princess Lieven, wife of the Russian ambassador, ‘he was allowed to fade out quietly, he was given no remedy and he did not suffer at all’.

  Many who had been most critical now sighed at the passing of the ‘good old King’. Even the cynical and waspish Princess Lieven slipped into elegiac mood. She wrote to the Austrian statesman, Prince Metternich:

  There is something poetic in the picture of this old, blind King, wandering about in his castle among his shadows, talking with them; for he lived his life among the dead – playing on his organ and never losing his illusions. I really believe that, for the last nine years of his reign, he was the happiest man in his kingdom; the saddest of all infirmities – blindness – had become the source of all his pleasures. Nothing could call him back to the world of reality, and his ideal world was full of all the pure joys that a gentle and pious fancy could invent.40

  So in his mind he could wander again through the Queen’s House, admire his pictures, remember the artists and listen to the music of Handel. Now he could dream of his wonderful clocks and listen to their ticking in a world outside time.

  * The King and Queen surprised visitors by their knowledge of the manufacture of china. On a holiday in Cheltenham in 1788, they visited Worcester and toured the pottery there.

  * He was sent by the King to visit the Cardinal Duke of York, the last of the Stuarts in Rome; his bank arranged the King’s pension to the Duke.

  CHAPTER THREE

  George IV

  ‘I am too old to build a palace … If the public wish to have

  [one]… I will have it at Buckingham House … There are early associations

  which endear me to the spot.’1

  GEORGE IV

  The Age of Fantasy

  When George IV acceded to the throne, his first concern was to plan the most extravagant of coronations, bringing back old traditions. Herb strewers walked before the King, a Champion rode into Westminster Hall on his grey horse, wine flowed and thousands of candles shone. There were onlookers who remembered the hunger and poverty outside and did not know whether to laugh or cry. The sight of the horse that refused to walk backwards from His Majesty’s presence certainly provoked disrespectful merriment. Many were furious at the indignity suffered by George’s Queen, Caroline, who, though she [tried all] the doors of the Abbey, was refused entry to the Coronation. When soon after the King heard the news of her death, there was no grief for a wife he had come to hate.

  His next concern was to provide himself with a London residence. From the first years of his adult life he had been possessed by a mania for building, and each new home had reflected his changing moods, expressions of his world of fantasy. In the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, he was an oriental potentate; in Carlton House, he wanted to outshine the French King; at Windsor Castle, he was a knight of battles, convincing himself that he had fought at the Battle of Waterloo.

  By the time George IV became King, his passion for creating palaces was waning: his fantastic Pavilion at Brighton was losing its charm, and he was becoming tired of the ‘Mahomet’s Paradise’ he had created in Carlton House. A lifetime of self-indulgence had left its mark: crippled by gout, increasingly obese, he had become the butt of satirists and cartoonists. His extravagance in times of war and poverty, and his treatment of his eccentric wife, Queen Caroline, had made him deeply unpopular. To his enemies Carlton House, his London home, had become the symbol of the decadence of the British monarchy.

  Carlton House had been bought by the King’s grandfather, Frederick, Prince of Wales, and his grandmother, Princess Augusta, had lived there until her death in 1772. When Prince George came of age in 1783 he was given Carlton House: for the next thirty years, with the help of five successive architects, the Prince had spent vast sums, altering and improving, furnishing and refurnishing with manic energy, forever changing his plans. The
waste and extravagance had been scandalous, although it must be said that he accumulated a superb collection of paintings and a priceless hoard of treasures and furniture, silver, china and objets d’art, many of which grace Buckingham Palace today.

  He must have sorely tried his first architect in 1783 – Sir William Chambers – who was succeeded in the next year by Henry Holland. Nevertheless Chambers’s love of Chinese art and architecture left a lasting impression on the Prince. Four years later, he created a Chinese Room at Carlton House. Thirty years later its furniture was to be transferred to the Prince’s second and even more fantastic palace, the Brighton Pavilion.

  When, in 1811, the Prince became Regent, Carlton House became the centre of Court life, where he held his levees, receptions, and fabulous fêtes to celebrate victories in the Peninsular War, and in honour of Louis XVIII on his return to France after the Battle of Waterloo. In July 1814 an even more extravagant celebration was held in honour of the Duke of Wellington. John Nash, appointed in 1813 as architect for Carlton House, created mirror-lined tents and pavilions in the garden for these festivities.

  However, by 1819, the Prince was growing tired of Carlton House: there was not enough room for his vast assemblies, and it had no gallery suitable for his growing collection of paintings – over 250 had to be stored on the attic floor.

  George IV was one of the great Royal collectors, comparable with Charles I. He undoubtedly was genuinely interested in art and showed real discrimination in his purchase of paintings. However, he accumulated pictures with obsessive greed, buying and selling almost until his death. But he was a generous patron: he bought pictures from Reynolds, Gainsborough, Beechey and Hopper, and commissioned many more, including narrative paintings from David Wilkie. George Stubbs was a particular favourite. Eighteen of his pictures, now in the Royal Collection, belonged to George IV.

  During his Regency he had collected mainly Dutch and Flemish seventeenth-century pictures. Perhaps their cool order brought peace to his restless mind. Surprisingly the extravagant Regent took pleasure in van Ostade’s painting of a child being fed in a cottage. This was part of a collection of eighty-six paintings he bought from the banker Sir Thomas Baring in 1814: also included were Jan Steen’s rollicking Twelfth Night Feast: the King Drinks and a luminous evening landscape by Aelbert Cuyp.