Read Online Charlotte & Leopold by James Chambers - Free Book Online
Authors: James Chambers
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know all that passed in Windsor Park; and if it were not for my clemency, I would shut you up for life. Depend upon it, as long as I live you shall never have an establishment, unless you marry.’
The Prince Regent was still determined to treat his daughter as a child. But there was not another man in the kingdom who felt inclined to do the same.
Five months later, over eight hundred miles away, Wellington defeated the French at Vittoria and prepared to drive them back over the mountains into France. According to Captain Gronow ofthe 1st Foot Guards, one of the officers wounded in that battle was Lieutenant Charles Hesse of the 18th, who received his first slash on his sword arm. While he was recovering, Hesse was honoured by a visit from Wellington himself. The General gave him a package that had been sent out from London, apparently by ‘a royal lady’. It contained a beautiful gold watch, a hunter, and there was a portrait of the lady inside the cover.
C HAPTER S IX
âProtracted Childhoodâ
âD EPEND UPON IT , as long as I live you shall never have an establishment, unless you marry.â
The Prince Regent did not always mean what he said, but Princess Charlotte knew all too well that he had been serious when he said that. For her, marriage was the price of freedom. If that was not enough of an incentive to marry the first man who asked her, the regime of the Duchess of Leeds was another.
It was not that the Duchess was in any way strict. On the contrary, she was easy-going and avoided every kind of conflict. She concurred with âthe Great UPâ at every opportunity. When Charlotte was in London, she only came to Warwick House between 2 and 5 p.m., which gave the Princess the evenings to herself. But she was a boring, graceless, self-important hypochondriac. She was forever telling âstories of an hourâs lengthâ and taking cold showers to wash away her latest ailment. Worst of all, in Charlotteâs eyes, she was âa violent Tory â.
The daughter of the Accountant-General to the Court of Chancery, the Duchess had won her Dukeâs heart on the basis of herbeauty alone, and her exalted new rank had gone to her head. To Charlotteâs embarrassment, she often âoveractedâ her part and was patronising with people whom she regarded as inferiors.
Even so, the Duchessâs âdisagreeableâ company might have been worth suffering if her easy-going nature had allowed Charlotte to meet and correspond with anyone she pleased. But protecting the Princess from undesirable influences was the one duty that she tried to take seriously. She was always, as Charlotte put it, âkeeping closeâ to her in public, and, with an air of innocence, the Duchess introduced her fifteen-year-old daughter, Lady Catherine Osborne, into Charlotteâs household.
To everyone outside that household, it seemed ideal that the Princess should have a companion closer to her own age. It does not seem to have occurred to any of them that a fifteen-year-old girl who danced well had nothing in common with a sophisticated seventeen-year-old Princess who looked and behaved as though she were at least twenty. But the people who were actually members of that household were very soon suspicious of Lady Catherine. She asked too many questions, and she was all too often found alone in Charlotteâs room without a good reason for being there. As Charlotte wrote to Mercer, âThat odious Lady Catherine is a convenient spie upon everybody in the house, with her long nose of bad omen, & her flippant way of walking so lightly that one never hears her.â
Things were not as bad as they could have been, however. The tedious Duchess and her prying daughter were effectively thwarted by the conspiratorial loyalty of Miss Cornelia Knight.
âThe Chevalierâ, as Charlotte called her, was, like Mercer, the daughter of an admiral. As a child she had met many of Englandâs
The Prince Regent was still determined to treat his daughter as a child. But there was not another man in the kingdom who felt inclined to do the same.
Five months later, over eight hundred miles away, Wellington defeated the French at Vittoria and prepared to drive them back over the mountains into France. According to Captain Gronow ofthe 1st Foot Guards, one of the officers wounded in that battle was Lieutenant Charles Hesse of the 18th, who received his first slash on his sword arm. While he was recovering, Hesse was honoured by a visit from Wellington himself. The General gave him a package that had been sent out from London, apparently by ‘a royal lady’. It contained a beautiful gold watch, a hunter, and there was a portrait of the lady inside the cover.
C HAPTER S IX
âProtracted Childhoodâ
âD EPEND UPON IT , as long as I live you shall never have an establishment, unless you marry.â
The Prince Regent did not always mean what he said, but Princess Charlotte knew all too well that he had been serious when he said that. For her, marriage was the price of freedom. If that was not enough of an incentive to marry the first man who asked her, the regime of the Duchess of Leeds was another.
It was not that the Duchess was in any way strict. On the contrary, she was easy-going and avoided every kind of conflict. She concurred with âthe Great UPâ at every opportunity. When Charlotte was in London, she only came to Warwick House between 2 and 5 p.m., which gave the Princess the evenings to herself. But she was a boring, graceless, self-important hypochondriac. She was forever telling âstories of an hourâs lengthâ and taking cold showers to wash away her latest ailment. Worst of all, in Charlotteâs eyes, she was âa violent Tory â.
The daughter of the Accountant-General to the Court of Chancery, the Duchess had won her Dukeâs heart on the basis of herbeauty alone, and her exalted new rank had gone to her head. To Charlotteâs embarrassment, she often âoveractedâ her part and was patronising with people whom she regarded as inferiors.
Even so, the Duchessâs âdisagreeableâ company might have been worth suffering if her easy-going nature had allowed Charlotte to meet and correspond with anyone she pleased. But protecting the Princess from undesirable influences was the one duty that she tried to take seriously. She was always, as Charlotte put it, âkeeping closeâ to her in public, and, with an air of innocence, the Duchess introduced her fifteen-year-old daughter, Lady Catherine Osborne, into Charlotteâs household.
To everyone outside that household, it seemed ideal that the Princess should have a companion closer to her own age. It does not seem to have occurred to any of them that a fifteen-year-old girl who danced well had nothing in common with a sophisticated seventeen-year-old Princess who looked and behaved as though she were at least twenty. But the people who were actually members of that household were very soon suspicious of Lady Catherine. She asked too many questions, and she was all too often found alone in Charlotteâs room without a good reason for being there. As Charlotte wrote to Mercer, âThat odious Lady Catherine is a convenient spie upon everybody in the house, with her long nose of bad omen, & her flippant way of walking so lightly that one never hears her.â
Things were not as bad as they could have been, however. The tedious Duchess and her prying daughter were effectively thwarted by the conspiratorial loyalty of Miss Cornelia Knight.
âThe Chevalierâ, as Charlotte called her, was, like Mercer, the daughter of an admiral. As a child she had met many of Englandâs
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