Life of Her Most Gracious Majesty the Queen (Vol. 1&2). Sarah Tytler
the royal family dead since the new year; yet she, poor lady, was but a unit in the sum, a single foreign princess who, however, kind she might have been to the few who came near her, was nothing to the mass of the people.
The name of another foreign princess was in every man's mind and on every man's tongue. However, there were many reasons for the anomaly. Caroline of Brunswick was the Queen until she should be proved unworthy to bear the title. Her quarrel with the King had long made her notorious. Though the story reflected little credit on her, it was so utterly discreditable to him that it raised up friends for her where they might have been least expected. His unpopularity rendered her popular. Her name became the rallying-cry for a great political faction. The mob, with its usual headlong, unreasoning appropriation of a cause and a person, elevated her into a heroine, cheered frantically, and was ready to commit any outbreak in her honour.
After six years' absence from England Queen Caroline had come back on the death of George III. to demand her rights. She had landed at Dover and been welcomed by applauding crowds. She had been escorted through Kent by uproarious partisans, who removed the horses from her carriage and dragged her in triumph through the towns. London, in its middle and lower classes, had poured out to meet her and come back in her train, till she was safely lodged in South Audley Street, in the house of her champion, Alderman Wood.
The King had instructed his ministers to lay before the House of Lords a bill of Pains and Penalties against the Queen which, if sustained, would deprive her of every claim to share his rank and would annul the marriage. The Queen was prepared with her defence, and furnished with two of the ablest advocates in the kingdom, Mr. Brougham and Mr. Denman. In the earlier stages of the proceedings she was present almost every day in the House of Lords. She entered in her puce or black sarcenet pelisse and black velvet hat, a large, not uncomely woman, a little over fifty, and took the chair of State provided for her, the House rising to receive the Queen whom it was trying. The trial, in its miserable details of gross folly well-nigh incredible, lasted from July to November—four months of burning excitement—when it collapsed from the smallness of the majority (nine) that voted for the second reading of the bill. The animus of the prosecution and the unworthy means taken to accomplish its purpose, defeated the end in view. It is said that had it been otherwise the country would have broken out into widespread insurrection.
The Queen's supporters, of all classes, sects, and shades, indulged in a perfect frenzy of rejoicing. Festivals, illuminations, every token of triumph for her and condemnation for him accompanied what was equivalent to her acquittal. She went in something like State, with her queer, motley household—Bohemian, English and Italians—and her great ally, Alderman Wood, to offer up thanksgiving in St. Paul's, where, at the same time, she found her name omitted from the Church service. She wore white velvet and ermine, and was surrounded by thousands of shouting followers, as if she had been the most discreet of queens and best of women. The poor passionate, wayward nature, which after all had been cruelly dealt with, was touched as well as elated.
On the very day after Queen Caroline's arrival in London in June, she had dispatched Alderman Wood to Kensington, to condole with the Duchess of Kent on her recent widowhood, and inquire after the health of the infant princess. The message was innocent in itself, but alarming by implication; for Queen Caroline was not a woman to be kept at a distance, or to hesitate in expressing her sentiments if she fancied her overtures slighted by the embarrassed Duchess. In the month of August Queen Caroline had established herself at Brandenburg House—the Margravine of Anspach's house, by the river at Hammersmith—near enough to Kensington Palace, to judge from human nature, to disconcert and provoke a smile against the smiler's will—for Caroline's extravagances would have disturbed the gravity of a judge—in the womanly Princess at the head of the little household soberly settled there. Never were princesses and women more unlike than Caroline of Brunswick and Victoria of Coburg; But poor Queen Caroline was not destined to remain long an awkward enigma—a queen and yet no queen, an aunt and yet no aunt, a scandal and a torment in everybody's path.
In the summer of the following year, when the country was drawn away and dazzled by the magnificent ceremonial of the coronation of George IV., she exercised her last disturbing influence. She demanded to be crowned along with her husband; but her demand was refused by the Privy Council. She appeared at the door of Westminster Abbey, but the way was barred to her. A fortnight afterwards, when King George had gone to Ireland to arouse the nation's loyalty, his wife had passed where Privy Council ushers and yeomen of the guard were powerless, where the enmity of man had no voice in the judgment of God. She had been attacked by severe illness, and in the course of five days she died, in the middle of a wild storm of thunder, wind, and rain. The night before, a boatful of Methodists had rowed up the Thames, within sound of the open windows of her sick-room, and sung hymns to comfort her in her extremity. The heart of a large part of the nation still clung to her because of her misfortunes and the insults heaped upon her. The late Queen's body was conveyed back to Brunswick. The funeral passed through Kensington, escorted by a mighty mob, in addition to companies of soldiers. The last were instructed to conduct the cortege by the outskirts of London to Harwich, where a frigate and two sloops of war were waiting for the coffin. The mob were resolute that their Queen's funeral should pass through the city. The first struggle between the crowd and the military took place at the corner of Church Street, Kensington. The strange, unseemly, contention was renewed farther on more than once; but as bloodshed had been forbidden, the people had their way, and the swaying mass surged in grim determination straight towards the Strand and Temple Bar. The captain of the frigate into whose keeping the coffin was committed in order to be conveyed back to Brunswick had been, by a curious, sorrowful coincidence, the midshipman who, "more than a quarter of a century before, handed the rope to the royal bride whereby to help her on board the Jupiter," which was to bring her to England.
One can fancy that, when that sorry tragedy was ended, and its perpetual noisy ebullitions had sunk into silence, a sense of relief stole over the palace-home at Kensington.
Round the childhood and youth of sovereigns, especially popular sovereigns, a growth of stories will gather like the myths which attend on the infancy of a nation. Such stories or myths are chiefly valuable as showing the later tendency of the individual or people, the character and history of the monarch or of the subjects, in accordance with which, in reversal of the adage that makes the child father to the man, the man is, in a new sense, father to the child, by stamping on his infancy and nonage traits borrowed from his mature years. Mingled with the species of legendary lore attaching to every generation, there is a foundation more or less of authentic annals. It is as affording an example of this human patchwork of fancy and fact, and as illustrating the impression deeply engraved on the popular mind, that the following incidents of the Queen's childhood and youth are given.
First, the people have loved to dwell on the close union between mother and child. The Duchess nursed her baby—would see it washed and dressed. As soon as the little creature could sit alone, her small table was placed by her mother's at meals, though the child was only allowed the food fit for her years. The Princess slept in her mother's room all through her childhood and girlhood. In the entries in the Queen's diary at the time of the Duchess of Kent's death, her Majesty refers to an old repeater striking every quarter of an hour in the sick-room on the last night of the Duchess's life—"a large watch in a tortoiseshell case, which had belonged to my poor father, the sound of which brought back to me all the recollections of my childhood, for I had always used to hear it at night, but had not heard it for now twenty-three years."
When the Princess was a little older, and lessons and play alternated with each other, she was taught to attend to the thing in hand, and finish what she had begun, both in her studies and games. One day she was amusing herself making a little haycock when some other mimic occupation caught her volatile fancy, and she flung down her small rake ready to rush off to the fresh attraction. "No, no, Princess; you must always complete what you have commenced," said her governess, and the small haymaker had to conclude her haymaking before she was at liberty to follow another pursuit.
From the Princess's fifth year Dr. Davys, afterwards Bishop of Peterborough, was her tutor. When it became clear that the little girl would, if she lived, be Queen of England, a prelate high in the Church was proposed to the Duchess of Kent as the successor of Dr. Davys in his office. But the Duchess, with