pointed; and went, with a heavy heart, after an hysterical fit,' to the Castle, where she met such a reception as compelled her to decline the Prince Regent's proposal. But the pressure on the part of Carlton House continued, until (if we may believe her) she adopted an expedient which seems to carry one back to the days when Queen Elizabeth's courtiers used to propitiate her with purses full of broad pieces. She was aware that Her Majesty was just at this time hard pressed for cash; and, renewing her supplication for permission to depart, 'offered some arrangements which I thought would serve to free Her Majesty from embarrassment, and particularly the loan of one thousand pounds, without interest-a sum which I knew the Queen was at that time very desirous to procure, and which, added to the salary which I gave up, and the house which she might let, would set her completely at her case in respect to Frogmore and the farm.' But the Queen, unlike the governor of Tilbury, was proof against the allurement of the thousand pounds.' To this letter I received, next day, two answers-the one, relative to my offer, of course private; and the other respecting my acceptance of the employment. Both were resentful and bitter to a high degree.' Miss Knight was very angry, and so she told Lord Moira's wife and sister. The ladies approved of my feelings, but Lord Moira did not. He thought my nerves ought to be braced against marks of resentment which he did not think I had deserved. I did not mention to them the pecuniary part of the correspondence; nor is it known to any human being except one friend, who will never repeat it. (Vol. i. p. 196.) At last the arrangement was effected, as she tells us, by means of an urgent letter from the Prince Regent himself; possibly the pecuniary part of the correspondence' had diminished her mistress's reluctance to part with her. But the Queen remained-at least in Miss Knight's belief-her fixed enemy to the end of her days; and she herself, as we shall see, ultimately repented having left Her Majesty.' On the 25th January, 1813, Miss Knight was presented' on her new appointment. The establishment into which she had, with full knowledge of the facts, introduced herself was certainly not such as the well-regulated mind of a duenna of fifty would usually select as a refuge after the storms of life. The daughter of George and Caroline was now just seventeen; a fine spirited girl, with much talent, much nobleness of heart, an ungoverned will, but a most affectionate, and through affection a controllable disposition. Such is the verdict posterity may fairly pass on the poor perishing creature who then filled such a space in the public eye-the bright ephemeron of our history, or the fair-haired daughter of the isles,' of whom those who were grown men forty years ago can even now hardly read without some emotion. So hemmed in from childhood upwards by every · evil influence-the victim of so much sinister design-that she should have won love and respect--that calumny should have glanced harmless from beside her, is surely enough to prove her real merit, even after all allowance for the exaggerations both of flattery and of faction, which, in her case, happened to combine. At the time when the Regent chose Miss Knight to attend her, he had been seized with a sudden fear lest his clever child should all at once chip the shell, and soar beyond his control. She had just had the boldness to ask her father, through Lord Liverpool, that, as she understood Lady de Clifford had resigned, she might have no other governess, but an establishment of her own, and ladies-in-waiting.' 'I believe,' says Miss Knight, she wrote that letter by the advice of Miss Mercer Elphinstone, her old and intimate friend.' We believe Miss Knight's suspicion of Miss Mercer's interference to be entirely false; and it will be seen presently how this misstatement is in keeping with many other particulars asserted or insinuated in this Autobiography respecting the lady in question, now Countess de Flahault. The Prince, however, was violently angry when he heard of the letter, and took Lord Eldon down with him to Windsor, where in the Queen's room, before Her Majesty, Princess Mary, and Lady de Clifford, in a very rough manner the learned Lord expounded the law of England as not affording Her Royal Highness what she demanded; and, on the Prince's asking what he would have done as had been my daughter, I would have locked her a father, he is said to have answered, “If she up." Princess Charlotte heard this with great dignity, and answered not a word; but she afterwards went into the room of one of her aunts, burst into tears, and exclaimed, “What would the King say if he could know that his grand-daughter had been compared to the granddaughter of a collier?"'—vol. i. p. 184. The story is differently told (as the editor points out) in Lady Charlotte Bury's Diary, and more plausibly, as the epigram is ascribed to Lady de Clifford instead of the girlish Princess. Most probably neither version is true. The result, however, of things being in this uncomfortable state,' as Miss Knight calls it, was, that the new establishment, with the Duchess of Leeds at the head as 'Governess,' was framed by the Regent and Sir Henry Halford as nearly on a nursery model as the case would admit of. The Princess's 'coming out,' if such a phrase be applicable to Princesses, was indefinitely postponed. 'War 'Warwick House, in which Princess Charlotte and I, with an excellent family of old servants, wick House' was selected as her place of con- | famous occasion when their carriages met finement. We copy the description of it for during a period of prohibited intercourse on the benefit of modern Londoners, and to show Constitution Hill, and mother and daughter what accommodation was thought sufficient almost threw themselves into each other's for presumptive royalty in the times when arms-an event, by the way, to which Miss King George III. was content with a couple Knight does not advert, though it made a of lodging-houses on the Esplanade at Wey- great sensation at the time. We know now mouth, and his offspring with the brick boxes what the Princess could not know, for none about Kew:could explain it to her with the observance of the common sanctity of the maternal relation, why it was absolutely necessary to stifle that voice of affection. We know that in enforcing the separation as far as he could, the Regent was performing no more than a duty, however repulsive. But then he, of all men, was the most utterly unfitted to enforce on a daughter precepts in themselves salutary. His deep sins against that mother-the unmanly, undignified character of his dealings with his family-the vices of his crapulous Court-all these rose up in judgment against him, whenever he endeavoured to take what, in the case of another father, might have been deemed salutary precautions. And all his faults were known to his daughter but too well, while the evidence of her mother's failings rested on hearsay, which she would not believe. The Regent, it must be plainly said for truth's sake, was one of those men on whom a course of hard profligacy has wrought out its own last revenge. Even when he meant well he could no longer act well. He had lost the refined sense of delicacy and honourable courtesy in dealing with man or woman; all that was left was a certain plausibility of manner, and even that manner has been severely observed upon by persons well qualified to judge. When his daughter was thrown into agonies of grief' by the daily discussions about her mother's guilt, on the occasion of the famous Douglas Charges (in the spring of 1813), he could not forbear, according to Miss Knight, from forcing the poor girl to go with him through the hateful subject of the investigation' in the presence of Lord Liverpool, as his confidential servant!' The Princess was dreadfully overcome by this piece of coarseness, and the Regent could not, for the life of him, conceive for she had taken everything he had said to her, when alone, perfectly well!' Scenes illustrating the same deficiency of moral perception on his part abound throughout these pages. was promised, according to Miss Knight, parties and balls, and drawing-rooms without number, to sweeten her seclusion; but no such promises were kept. Every consideration was to be sacrificed to the plan of keeping the Princess Charlotte as much as possible a child; and here we have the secret unconsciously revealed of great part of Miss Knight's dissatisfaction with her new office; for the title of Sub-governess,' which the Court people persisted in giving her, and against which she continually remonstrated, was in keeping with that jealousy of the Princess's years which would fain have revoked the premature grant of a 'lady companion.' In this strictly watched retirement the poor young Princess had to endure a far severer trial than those of such petty annoyances-why, the tribulation brought on her by the quarrels between the Regent and Princess of Wales, which, in this summer, reached their height. We know that the natural yearning of a child's heart made the Princess lean strongly to the side of her mother. Great part of the people, and even of the Court, sympathised strongly with this tendency on her part. All London was affected on the At the end of Warwick Street, which stretches from Cockspur Street towards the modern Carlton House Terrace,' says the editor. 'The Prince took me aside this evening [very shortly after her engagement with the Princess], and talked to me for a long while against the Princess of Wales, and the little regard she had shown for Princess Charlotte when a child, and how by her negligence there was a mark on the Princess Charlotte's nose, having left her hands at liberty, whereas he used continually to watch beside her cradle. He said very severe things | trusted by the good old King, much against the of the Princess of Wales in every way, and even | Prince's inclination. The Bishop's first points accused her of threatening to declare that the were to arm Princess Charlotte against the enPrincess was not his daughter. I really had not couragement of Popery and Whig principles remarked this little blemish on the smooth and (two evils which he seemed to think equally beautiful skin of my young Princess, and should great), and to appear himself a man of consehave had great difficulty in forbearing to smile quence. The Bishop had been preceptor at the seriousness with which that important misfortune was mentioned, if I had not been horrified by the rest of the conversation.'-vol. i. p. 211. Even when the Regent meant kindly, his tactless and frivolous ways of proclaiming his authority were almost as annoying as his displeasure. 'He was in high good humour this evening, but in the midst of it tapping me on the shoulder, said, "Remember, however, my dear Chevalier" (his pet name for Miss Knight), "that Charlotte must lay aside the idle nonsense of thinking that she has a will of her own; while I live she must be subject to me as she is at present, if she were thirty, or forty, or five-andforty." This, of course, I did not repeat to Her Royal Highness.' Occasionally the monotony of princely intercourse was varied for the inmates of Warwick House by such scenes as the following. After a birthday dinner at Sandhurst "The Prince did not speak to Princess Charlotte, the Duchess, or me, but looked as if he wished to annihilate us. When the Queen was about to depart, the Prince Regent was not to be found, and we afterwards learned that he, with the Duke of York, Prince of Orange (the father), and many others, were under the table. The Duke of York hurt his head very seriously against the cellaret. It short, it was a sad business.' Yet, coarse and unfeeling as the Prince may be deemed in his conduct to his child, it is justice to his memory to say that even the narrative of the resentful Miss Knight does not ascribe to him anything amounting to cruelty. His behaviour was by turns overbearing, sulky, jealous, querulous-everything but what it should have been where the object was to conciliate and to restrain; but of intentional cruelty there is no evidence. Of the associates in the same service whom Miss Knight encountered at Warwick House, she gives the following hopeful picture : 'The Bishop of Salisbury used to come three or four times a week, and "do the important" as Her Royal Highness's "preceptor." He had expressed great satisfaction at my coming into her service, and had, I know, wished it many years before; but however willing I was to be on the best terms with the Bishop, and to induce Princess Charlotte to treat him with attention, I could not but see how narrow his views, how strong his prejudices, and how unequal his talents were to the charge with which he had been en to the Duke of Kent, and living much at Windsor, where he was formerly a canon, had imbibed the bad style of manners belonging to that place' [this is an accusation against the Collegiate Chapel which we never heard of before]; and as it was not grafted on any natural or acquired elegance, he was in that respect also unfit for his situation; added to which his temper was hasty, and his manner easily ruffled.'—-vol. i. p. 233. We by no means accept all poor Miss Knight's jaundiced views of the personages about the Princess; but it seems clear enough, from all we know of him, that Bishop Fisher, whatever his episcopal merits may have been, control the temper of a young and sorely was about as fit to direct the intellect and perplexed girl as he would have been to nurse a child of a year old. Under the Bishop were 'Dr. Short, sub-preceptor, a good sort of Devonshire man, with some classical knowledge, very little taste, an honest heart, but overcautious temper, fearful of offending Mr. Sterkey? minister of the Swiss church, who read French with the Princess,' strangely described as a man of good manners for his station, and of a very pliant disposition, ready to do anything not absolutely wicked;' and Küper, the German preceptor, suspected of being a spy. Then there was the good Duchtion to quarrel with anybody, and really ess of Leeds (governess), who had no inclina 6 seems to have been the most sensible and cleanest of the party : times a week at Hall's, a second-rate riding'Provided that she might ride two or three school, on an old quiet horse, for exercise, get into her shower-bath, and take calomel when she pleased, dine out, and go to all parties when invited, shake hands with everybody, and touch her salary, she cared for nothing more, except when mischievous people to plague her, or curious people to know what was going on, talked to her about the Princess Charlotte's petticoats being too short, of Her Royal Highness nodding instead of bowing, or talking to the maids of honour at chapel between the prayers and the sermon.' None of them perhaps quite what the disappointed lady-companion paints them, but evidently a wretchedly inferior set of attendants, from whom the proud and clever Princess instinctively withdrew herself into a state of mental insulation. Such was the muddy whirlpool into which the unfortunate Miss Knight plunged herself, and in which, after an ineffectual struggle or two, she went, as we shall see, to the bottom. Unfortunately she did not enter the house as an impartial person. All its inmates naturally took one side or the other, the mother's or the father's; she had taken the former beforehand. This is plain on her own statement. When Lord Moira was endeavouring to persuade me to accept the place offered me,' she says, 'I told him my sole motive then was to assist in rescuing a noble young creature from surrounding persecution, to give her room to show what she really was, misunderstood as she appeared to be, and certainly capable of becoming a blessing to her country or the reverse;' and more to the same effect. This passage really affords the key to her subsequent narrative. After reading it, one feels that her protestations of impartiality and a simple desire to perform a difficult duty must go for nothing. All her actions were subject to a bias, and so is her narrative. She soon lost favour with the Prince Regent, and to lose favour with him was to become the object of a kind of effeminate, spiteful, and wayward hostility. Unfortunately she did not gain it with the Princess; and this was the crowning disappointment of her life. The Princess evidently had confidence in her steadiness, and wished, in her way, to be kind to her and to love her; but she did not love her, nor even like her; and the efforts went against the grain. We collect this from the general tenor of the Autobiography, as well as from Lady Charlotte Bury's express statement. But, with the natural feeling of un successful candidates for the attachment of a superior, Miss Knight could not ascribe this failure to any demerits of her own, and attributed it throughout to the ill offices of another. And here commences the most objectionable part of the narrative. The person on whom Miss Knight fixed as the subject of her jealousy was Miss Mercer Elphinstone. To her she ascribes, sometimes by assertion, more often by insinuation, almost every disappointment which occurred to herself. Miss Mercer was perhaps the only one of the Princess's few intimates who was the choice of her own heart. Some years older than the latter, she was able at once to be her adviser and her bosom friend. And although herself no favourite of the Regent, nor partial. to him-in fact, involved in his general dislike of the damned ladies' she seems to have exercised that influence, on all important occasions, in order to persuade her friend into submission to her father. That such unpalatable advice should have been given and received without any interruption of their cordial relations, does honour to both. Accordingly, in the Prince of Wales's circle, Miss Mercer was regarded as one of those who set the mother against the daughter;"'* and Miss Knight probably shared the feelings of the Connaught House party : About this time,' she says (March, 1813), Miss Mercer Elphinstone came to town, and Princess Charlotte wrote to ask the Regent's permission for seeing her. It was evident that this had been arranged beforehand, and that the conditions were that Miss Mercer, who had more influence than any one with Princess Charlotte, should open her eyes to her mother's imprudence, and break the confidential intimacy between them.'-vol. i. p. 225. We believe this to be altogether false. No conditions whatever were made with Miss Mercer; the permission was simply given to her father, who was in the Prince's household. However, we are told in the very next page : 'I soon perceived the change, and also some difference of conduct towards myself. Princess Charlotte left off shaking hands with me when we met in the morning and parted at night; a circumstance trifling in itself, and unnecessary where people live in the same house together, but it was accompanied by hints that when she had an establishment her ladies should be kept ladies ought to be peeresses or of the highest at a distance; and a short time after, that her connexions. I could easily guess whence all this was derived, but said nothing.' . . . . Soon after, on a similar occasion, I burst into tears, and was obliged to remain in my room that evening. Next day Princess Charlotte hinted something about jealousy, of which I took no notice; but I perceived that her mind had been poisoned.' All this-and there is much more of such stuff-seems to have been in truth the mere prompting of the 'green-eyed monster.' Miss Mercer and Miss Knight were on the most friendly outward terms, and the former seems to have known nothing of what was rankling in the mind of the poor lady-companion. These petty tracasseries were soon to give way to intrigues and annoyance of a more serious description. No young lady of great prospects, let alone her being 'The loveliest maid, besides, can escape rumours of flirtations; and so long as the world goes on in its present way, such will be borne on every breeze. In the case of the Princess Charlotte, these began early enough. Already, when Miss Knight joined the household, talk was busy about Captain Fitzclarence, the late Lord Munster, whom, Lady Charlotte Bury's Diary, i. 249. See also Moore's Diary, vol. iii. p. 112. When dressed for the evening, says Miss Knight, with excusable partiality, she was the handsomest woman in the room.' as we have been informed, the Princess | entered the heads of some less authorised inscarcely knew by sight. Her father wished termeddlers-that of marrying her to the her to marry the young Prince of Orange, Duke of Devonshire, then the rising star of just restored to his Dutch expectations by the world of fashion. Miss Knight repeats the fall of Napoleon. The project was taken an ill-natured story' that Miss Mercer enup very strongly by the Regent, partly from couraged the Duke's expectations in this exceeding desire to get rid of the additional Direction, in hopes that, if repulsed, he might embarrassment occasioned by his daughter in fall back on herself. I heard this story,' his unhappy relations with his wife. The she kindly says, from every one, but did not scheme did no discredit to its promoters: believe it.'-(Vol. i., p. 243.) It gave rise, the Prince's character stood high, the mar- however, to the only smart saying we have riage was in consonance with the then British seen attributed to Miss Knight, which is in policy; but, somehow, Orange matches (not- Lady C. Bury's Diary: There was hung (in withstanding the instance of the great Deli- a room at Warwick House) one portrait, verer) have seldom been popular in England. amongst others, that very much resembled At all events, the Princess could not abide the Duke of Devonshire. I asked Miss him. As soon as she discovered what was Knight whom it represented; she said that in store for her, she seems to have been anx- was not known: it had been supposed a likeious to escape from persecution by some otherness of the Pretender when young? union-she had scarcely considered what. She wanted to marry some one of the Princes of Prussia-she wanted to marry the Duke of Gloucester; and however the idea may provoke a smile from those who remember that kind-hearted Prince in later days, it was not thought so preposterous in 1813. Attachment to him she had not formed; but he had touched her feelings by words of friendly encouragement proffered in her deep troubles. One of her truest-hearted advisers, Lord Grey, did not disapprove of the idea. Lord Grey was a strong party man, and one whose judgment was as subject in general to be warped by party considerations as that of others; but not on a matter appealing so closely to the higher principles of his nature as the confidence of an almost friendless girl, and she the heiress of the throne. He seems, as far as we can judge, to have advised her in the spirit of a friend interested in her wel-picked up by another sister. Others looked fare alone, and at the same time free from that over-sensitive regard to her rank and position which affected the judgment of others: About this time' (August, 1813), writes Miss Knight, 'Her Royal Highness, by the advice of Miss Mercer, with whom she constantly communicated, entered into another correspondence which promised great utility. Politics were not concerned in it, and nothing could be more correct than the advice given with respect to her filial duty, as well as other points of her conduct. To this friend she communicated what had passed with her father; and the advice was, if possible, to comply with his wishes with regard to the Prince of Orange; but, if resolved to marry the Duke of Gloucester, to wait patiently until the age of twenty-one, when more efficacious measures could be pursued. This adviser professed himself the friend of the Duke, but certainly was fair and impartial in the manner in which he wrote.' All these ideas, however, evaporated, and the disagreeable reality pressed on. The young Princess did her best to comply with the general wish. She consented to marry the Prince of Orange, and then she withdrew her consent. High and low puzzled their brains to explain that inexplicable thing the bent of woman's fantasy.' Lord Castlereagh's solution was curt and characteristic: Faction had been busy at work upon the Princess Charlotte's mind.'-(Correspondence, vol. x., p. 61.) Others laid her obstinacy at her mother's door. Others detected the influence of the clever, handsome, intriguing Duchess of Oldenburg, sister of the Czar, whose proceedings in England were the subject of much comment among professed politicians; and these had certainly some reason to congratu late themselves on their clear-sightedness when the rejected Prince was ultimately to personal causes. Miss Knight thought the no doubt an A stranger notion than this seems to have have been, it lay deeper. |