Queen's House by Edna Healey Read Free Book Online Page B

final assessment and to arrange the marriage. The colonel was charmed by the girl, who ‘fixed the love and esteem of everyone who is acquainted with her’.
    Princess Charlotte’s father, the Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, had died eleven years earlier and had been succeeded by her brother Charles. When Graeme arrived at the little castle in the remote north German dukedom, the family were in great distress. Princess Charlotte’s mother was dying, but in her last conscious moments she was able to give her consent. The Princess’s agreement was taken for granted. It was not every day that a proposal from the King of England dropped from the skies.
    The King now moved ‘in a great hurry’ with a characteristic impatience. On 8 July he called a Privy Council and informed them of his decision; emphasizing the fact that Charlotte’s family had shown the firmest zeal for the Protestant religion.
    Since his Coronation had already been planned for 22 September, he was relieved that Duke Charles did not allow his mother’s death to delay the marriage long. On 16 August Princess Charlotte presided over a farewell banquet in the Palace of Neustrelitz. Those who had feared that Princess Charlotte, in her inexperience, would be unable to uphold the dignity of her new status were surprised to see her easy composure. The next day she set off on a rugged journey and storm-tossed crossing that would test her endurance further. It was not until Monday 7 September that she landed at Harwich, rested a night at Lord Abercorn’s house at Witham and then was rushed with a splendid cavalcade through crowded London streets to be received at the garden gate of St James’s Palace by the King and royal family. She was to be married at ten o’clock that same night.
    On the night of her arrival the King took Princess Charlotte to see an Aladdin’s cave of fabulous jewels, among them those she was to wear at the marriage ceremony, ‘a stomacher of diamonds, worth three score thousand pounds’; ‘a little cap of purple velvet quite covered with diamonds, a Diamond aigrette in form of a Crown, 3 dropped diamond ear rings & Diamond necklace’. George II had bequeathed the Hanoverian jewellery to be shared between George III and his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, and the King had bought the Duke’s share.
    So, arrayed in a gown of white and silver, weighed down on a stifling hot night by ‘an endless mantle of violet coloured velvet, lined with ermine, fastened on the shoulder by a bunch of large pearls’ and accompanied by ten bridesmaids glittering in gowns of white silk embroidered with diamonds, Princess Charlotte was led by the King’s brothers, the Duke of York and Prince William, later Duke of Gloucester, to meet her bridegroom, a handsome figure in ‘a stuff of a new manufacture, the ground silver with embossed plate and frosted silver’. 2
    She had come through three disturbing months, during which she had endured with astonishing equanimity the death of her mother, her farewell to her home, her stormy voyage and now the glittering Courtat the Palace of St James. Not surprisingly she trembled on her arrival. ‘ You may laugh,’ she whispered to the Duchess of Hamilton, one of her Ladies of the Bedchamber; ‘you have been married twice; but it is no joke to me.’
    Even that well-informed old gossip Horace Walpole was impressed. In a letter to his friend, the British Envoy at Florence, he praised her good sense and charm.
    Is this bad proof of her sense? On the journey they wanted to curl her toupet. ‘No, indeed,’ said she, ‘I think it looks as well as those of the ladies that have been sent for me: if the King would have me wear a periwig, I will; otherwise I shall let myself alone.’ The Duke of York gave her his hand at the garden-gate: her lips trembled, but she jumped out with spirit. In the garden the King met her; she