Dr Nott Must Leave

In December 1807 someone gave the Prince of Wales a note in which Dr Nott had written to Princess Charlotte rebuking her for not turning up for a lesson. There is no direct evidence that the culprit was Mrs Udney, but she was the only member of Charlotte’s household who had the opportunity, a motive and access to the Prince. The Prince wrote to Dr Fisher. In his opinion ‘ remonstrance on the failure might have been made in terms of becoming deference’. But Mr Nott, as he called him, was overreaching his authority in presuming to critisise the Princess. ‘Mr Nott is paid to wait for the Princess, instead of being entitled to expect that she should wait for him.’

The Bishop defended Dr Nott valiantly, reminding the Prince that he was a man of many virtues and an example to his daughter, and for the time being the Prince was placated. Just over a year later, however, Mrs Udney discovered that Lady de Clifford and Dr Nott were about to have her disciplined. They had learned, perhaps from Charlotte, that she had shown the Princess an obscene cartoon of Nelson’s mistress, Lady Hamilton, and had explained the meaning to her. They had already reported the matter to the Bishop, and the Bishop had consulted the Lord Chancellor.

Mrs Udney decided to strike first. She went to the Prince of Wales and complained about Dr Nott. He was always gossiping with Princess Charlotte in order to exercise undue influence and he encouraged her to be disrespectful about Lady de Clifford and even her father.

The Prince of Wales was already prejudiced against Dr Nott, partly because of the earlier impertinence and partly because he suspected that the sub-preceptor had prevented him from seeing some papers in which his daughter had been disparaging about her mother. He believed Mrs Udney’s preposterous story.

This time the Bishop pleaded in vain. Dr Nott was suspended from office and never reinstated, and the Bishop and Lady de Clifford decided that this was not the moment to take the case against Mrs Udney any further.

Charlotte wrote to Dr Nott. ‘If we never meet again, keep for me your regard and affection. If I go into other people’s hands, rely on me, I shall ever remember your kindness and your good advice.’

[an extract from ‘Charlotte&Leopold’ by James Chambers]

Charlotte’s Life in Windsor

Physically Charlotte developed early, and at fifteen she was a young woman.

‘She is grown excessively,’ wrote Lady Charlotte Bury, ‘and has all the fulness of a person of five-and-twenty.’ This critical lady-in-waiting considered that the young princess was neither graceful nor elegant, but had to admit that the she had ‘a peculiar air’. ‘The Princess Charlotte,’ she continues, ‘is above the middle height, extremely spread for her age; her bosom full, but finely shaped; her shoulders large, and her whole person voluptuous.’ But Lady Charlotte predicts unkindly that ‘without much care and exercise she will shortly lose all beauty in fat and clumsiness’.

The Princess was well aware of this danger: from her father and several of her aunts and uncles she inherited a tendency to stoutness, which she knew that she must fight by taking exercise; but she was lethargic, particularly in the winter, when she felt the cold excessively and hated the thought of going out. She was now spending part of the year at Windsor, and the rest of her time at Warwick House, a small building standing to the east of Carlton House, with a gate leading into the Prince’s grounds. It was shabby and isolated: ‘nothing,’ wrote Miss Cornelia Knight, ‘could more perfectly resemble a convent than this residence; but it was a seat of happiness to Princess Charlotte compared with the Lower Lodge at Windsor, and she was anxiously desirous to remain in Town as much as possible.’

At Windsor when the weather was bad, there was nothing whatsoever to do. She disliked the Queen intensely, believing at this stage that her grandmother was plotting against her; neither could she be sure of her ground with her older aunts, and she found the monotonous life, full of petty intrigue, quite intolerable. She must also have been haunted by the knowledge that her grandfather, whom she loved, was there, in the Castle, shut away from his family, rigorously hidden from sight (but not always from sound). She heard the discreet bulletins given by the numerous tiptoeing obsequious doctors: ‘not so well today as he was yesterday’, ‘the King was composed throughout the day’, ‘the King had had three hours’ sleep and was composed’, or ‘by no means as well as he was’. She learned that it was, among the family, a subject to be avoided; slowly she accepted the cruel truth, that her grandfather was hopelessly out of his mind-and she would never see him again.’

[an extract from ‘Prinny’s Daughter: A Biography of Princess Charlotte of Wales’ by Thea Home]

Picture: Charlotte Augusta by Joseph Lee, 1814