Charlotte And Leopold Take Up The Official Engagements

After little more than a week, Charlotte and Leopold went up to London, to Camelford House, where they began to receive a tedious series of ‘loyal addresses’ from various city councils and guilds. The first was from the Lord Mayor of London, who was received incongruously by the new bride in black because the court was in mourning for the Empress of Austria. But now that Charlotte was mistress of her own house she was in a position to receive anyone she pleased, and in the mornings, before the official engagements began, there were frequent visits from Cornelia Knight.

On 16 May they drove through huge crowds to Buckingham House, where the Queen gave a reception in their honour for over two thousand guests. Next day they received visits at Camelford House from Charlotte’s uncles the Dukes of York, Clarence and Gloucester, and then they went round to call on the Duchess of York and thank her for lending them Oatlands.

Yet, despite their inevitably crowded social calendar, Charlotte and Leopold found time to indulge their shared interests in music and, above all, theatre.

After leaving the Duchess of York, they went on to Drury Lane to see the great Edmund Kean in his latest tragedy, Bertram. The visit to the Duchess had delayed them so much that they arrived well after the performance had started. As they sat down in their box, the audience interrupted the play with hisses and shouts of ‘Stage Box!’. Leopold was taken aback: he thought they were being criticised for coming late. But Charlotte explained that this was what the audience did when they wanted a royal party to move their chairs forward so that they could see them better. So Leopold and Charlotte did as they were asked. That night and for ever afterwards, they sat well forward in their box, and the audiences were soon noticing how often the uninhibited Princess sat with her hand resting on her husband’s arm.

A week later they went to the theatre again, this time to Covent Garden to see The Jealous Wife. As they entered the Prince Regent’s box, several minutes before the performance was due to start, the curtain suddenly rose and the entire company sang the national anthem with a few additional verses which had been written hurriedly for the occasion and did not quite fit the cadence of the tune.

Long may the Noble Line,
Whence she descended, shine
In Charlotte the Bride!
Grant it perpetuate
And ever make it great;
On Leopold blessings wait
And Charlotte his Bride.

A fortnight after that, Charlotte and Leopold were due to attend a performance of Macbeth, in which the ageing Mrs Siddons had agreed to make one last appearance. But when the day came Charlotte was in bed suffering from what Dr Matthew Baillie, the King’s Physician Extraordinary, described as ‘a severe cold’, which had come on suddenly and forced her to leave in the middle of a charity concert a few days earlier.

Charlotte remained in bed for a week, although she was well enough to receive visits from the Queen and her aunts and uncles, and soon after that she was again going to the theatre and dinner parties.

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

Picture: Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold in their box at Covent Garden Theatre, 1816. The artist George Dawe was much patronised by the royal couple. This portrait was commissioned by Princess Charlotte, but Fry’s engraving was not issued until 6 April 1818 – after Princess Charlotte’s death in November 1817. Charlotte and Leopold are depicted seated in a classically ornamented box at the Covent Graden Theatre. He holds a libretto and looks at her. She is shown wearing a totally plain dress, but with a magnificent cashmere paisley shawl which is draped over one shoulder and falls over the box, showing off its exotic design; none of these costly shawls now survives. Charlotte has a wreath of roses in her hair and wears a low cut, high waisted dress of light weight material. The performance they are watching was of Henry VIII, performed for the benefit of the Theatrical Fund on Saturday 29 June 1817. The cast included Mrs Siddons as Queen Katherine. https://www.museumoflondonprints.com/image/143205/george-dawe-william-thomas-fry-princess-charlotte-and-prince-leopold-in-their-box-at-covent-garden-theatre-1816-1817

A Very Awkward Honeymoon

The honeymoon was not blissful. ‘We have none of us been well,’ said Charlotte, and blamed the weather. She found Leopold ‘the perfection of a lover’, and a very amiable companion, but she confessed that she felt shy of him, not at her ease or ‘quite comfortable yet in his society’.

They were probably suffering from reaction: they had both endured a long strain since Leopold’s arrival in England; moreover, they were still virtually strangers. Oatlands, with its spacious estate, was a pleasant, secluded place for a royal honeymoon, but unfortunately, although the Duke and Duchess of York had moved out, the Duchess’s animals had not. Charlotte considered that the air of the place was ‘quite unwholesome, as it is infected & impregnated with the smell & breath of dogs, birds and all sorts of animals’. (It is interesting to note that the Duchess of York, so sensitive to the bad breath of her cousin Prince August, must have been quite immune to the strong odours of her forty dogs and other creatures.)

But there were happy moments, and particularly a drive in the curricle to Claremont, their future home, ‘wh. is a real paradise’.

Two days after the wedding, the Prince Regent arrived on a visit – unexpected and not altogether welcome. Perhaps to ease any shyness on the part of his hosts, he settled down to entertain his son-in-law and bored daughter with a long discourse on the subject of uniforms, which interested him enormously. ‘For two hours and more I think,’ said Charlotte, ‘we had a most learned dissertation upon every regiment under the sun.’ But she was relieved by the good-humoured mood in which the lecture was delivered, and later heard from her Aunt Mary that the Regent had been ‘delighted with his visit & with both us’.

Since his arrival in England, Prince Leopold had been studying English, determined to master not only the language but the history of this country. He admired the English, but thought their manners ‘a little odd’ through their long separation from the Continent. He considered that, as husband to the Heiress Presumptive, he must educate himself for the high position he would one day occupy. Charlotte approved of these studies, and even on their honeymoon encouraged him to talk English, ‘wh. he really does surprisingly well considering how short a time and what little practice he has had’.

He was still suffering from neuralgia, which – temporarily relieved when the Regent’s dentist, Mr. Bew, pulled out one of his teeth – returned when he and Charlotte went to London: Miss Knight, on July 30, was unable to see the Princess, ‘as Prince Leopold was suffering from a pain in his face. But,’ Cornelia hastened to add, ‘she wrote me a very affectionate note afterwards to apologise.’

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

Picture: Oatlands Palace https://www.geni.com/projects/Oatlands-Palace-Surrey-England/25843

Day Of The Wedding (Part 3)

But Charlotte did not forget her beloved Margaret. ‘To show you how constantly you occupy my thoughts,’ she wrote two days later, ‘my last word was with [Princess] Lieven to intreat her to give you a faithful account, & to my maid just as I drove off to go & tell you how I looked & was …’

‘I promised you,’ she reminded Mercer, ‘I promised you to behave well … and everyone complimented me upon the composure & dignity of my manner, & the audible way in which I answered the responses.’ It was observed that Prince Leopold, on the other hand, ‘was not heard so distinctly, and exhibited rather more than common diffidence’.

It was also observed that the wedding ring, chosen by Charlotte, was ‘stronger and larger than those usually worn’. Twenty-nine years afterwards, Leopold told Queen Victoria that Charlotte ‘was particularly determined to be a good and obedient wife’, and this would perhaps account for Huish’s impression of her going through the ceremony ‘with a chastened joy’.

The service, conducted by the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of London, lasted exactly twenty-five minutes, and after all was over and healths drunk, Charlotte embraced her father, shook hands with her uncles York, Clarence and Kent (the other three were not there), kissed the Queen’s hand and her aunts’ tear-stained faces, and hurried away to change. Guns boomed from the Tower and St. James’s and as if by tacit agreement, the young couple did not appear again till they were ready to set out for their honeymoon. ‘The Princess did not take leave of the company, and avoided all compliments and congratulations by slipping down the private stairs from the state apartments to the ground floor.’ As she stepped into the new green travelling carriage, she must have looked captivating, in a white pelisse bordered with ermine, and a white satin hat, trimmed with blond lace and a nodding plume of ostrich feathers.

Leopold followed her, and, as the carriage was about to set off, the Queen, who had been all graciousness and kindness throughout the day, suddenly decided that it would be shocking for them to travel together at this late hour, unchaperoned, and ordered Charlotte’s lady, Mrs. Campbell, to join them. Mrs. Campbell, a determined Scotswoman, refused, and before anything more could be said, the coach, with Charlotte’s team of greys, ornamented with white favours, drove off at high speed, heading for Oatlands, near Weybridge, the Yorks’ country residence, which the Coburgs had been lent for their honeymoon. Charlotte was free.

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

Picture: Charlotte’s wedding dress, picture by Royal Collection Trust

Day Of The Wedding (Part 2)

Just before nine o’clock, Charlotte came out of Buckingham House, climbed into an open carriage and drove the short distance down the Mall with the Queen sitting beside her and her aunts Augusta and Elizabeth sitting opposite. ‘Bless me, what a crowd’, she said. She had seen the crowds that came to see the Tsar or the opening of Parliament, but she had never seen anything like the mass that had come to watch the wedding of their future Queen.

One of the guests waiting at Carlton House was Admiral Lord Keith, who was there in his official capacity as Deputy Earl Marshal. But he was not accompanied by his daughter. Before leaving Buckingham House, Charlotte sent one of her maids up to Harley Street to tell Mercer how she looked; and after the service she asked one of her guests, Princess Lieven, to do the same. But Mercer was not there to see for herself. It was said that she was not feeling well – and it may have been true. There were five bridesmaids, and the uneven number left a gap and spoiled the symmetry of the bridal procession. Perhaps there were meant to be six.

The reports that Mercer received from the maid and the Princess are not difficult to imagine. Charlotte’s dress cost over £ 10, 000. It was a white and silver slip, covered with transparent silk net embroidered in silver lame with shells and flowers. The sleeves were trimmed with Brussels lace, and the train, which was six feet long, wad made of the same material as the slip and fastened like a cloak with a diamond clasp. She wore a wreath of diamond leaves and roses, a diamond necklace and diamond earrings, both of which had been given to her by her father, and a diamond bracelet that had been given to her by Leopold.

Leopold also wore diamonds. He was dressed for the first time in his scarlet British uniform and he carried a jewel-encrusted sword that had been given to him by the Queen. Not to be outdone, the Prince Regent was dressed in the uniform of a field marshal smothered in the badges of all the honours and orders that he had had the gall to give himself.

The ceremony was short and dignified – except for Charlotte’s slight giggle when Leopold promised to endow her with all his wordly goods. When it was over, Charlotte and Leopold stayed only long enough for the guests to drink their health. Then they left to change. Church bells pealed. Bonfires were lit. Field guns cracked their salute in St James’s Park, and far down river the cannons at the Tower of London boomed.

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

Picture: NPG D16053, ‘Marriage of the Princess Charlotte of Wales to Prince Leopold of Saxe-Cobourg, in the Crimson Saloon, at Carleton House, May 2 1816; after Robert Hicks; Nuttall, Fisher & Dixon; William Marshall Craig,print,published April 1818

Day Of The Wedding (Part 1)

The day of the wedding was fine and sunny, and from an early hour crowds began to gather in the Mall, St. James’s, and all the streets near the royal residences, eager for a sight of Charlotte and Leopold.

The courtyard in front of Clarence House was ‘crowded to excess with well-dressed people of all classes’, who waited patiently but noisily for Prince Leopold to appear, which he obliged them by doing, three or four times an hour. Cheers and applause greeted him as fresh crowds replaced those who had just been satisfied by a good long stare st the handsome obliging young man, simply dressed in blue coat, buff waistcoat and grey pantaloons. At about ten o’clock the crowds were forced to make way as a team of elegant grey horses trotted briskly into the stable yard, for the Prince’s inspection. They had been carefully chosen and matched to please Princess Charlotte, and could hardly fail to please her bridegroom.

At about two o’clock the delighted mob watched Leopold drive out in a curricle, on his way to pay a ‘morning visit’ to his bride, and to inspect the new travelling carriage which had been built for them. On his return to Clarence House he found that the crowd had grown enormous, and he had difficulty in getting out of his curricle. A footman, trying to help him, was nearly crushed to death, and a number of women and children were swept by the convulsion through the doors and into the hall of Clarence House. It was an alarming moment, but Leopold remained unruffled, and was soon bowing on the balcony again, which he continued to do till five in the evening, when he withdrew to prepare himself for dinner ‘with a select party of gentlemen’.

Charlotte was at Buckingham House, dining with her grandmother and aunts.

Meanwhile, a full guard of honour of the Grenadier Guards, preceded by the band of the Coldstream Guards in full dress, marched from St. James’s Park into the courtyard of Carlton House, affording fresh entertainment for the spectators. After this, a troop of the Life Guards trotted into Pall Mall, followed by the two Bow Street magistrates, Sir Nathaniel Conant and Mr. Birnie, at the head of fifty police officers and constables, whose job it was to control the crowds. The approach to Buckingham House was already crammed with carriages, for, in the entrance hall of Buckingham House, privileged persons were gathering to see the Royal Family assemble before leaving for Carlton House.

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

Leopold Arrives In London

On April 29 Prince Leopold and his suite left Windsor in two of the Regent’s travelling carriages and drove to Smallberry Green, near Hounslow, the home of Sir Joseph Banks, the wealthy botanist, who provided ‘a most sumptuous repast’. As soon as this was eaten, the Prince, unable to linger and be shown Sir Joseph’s exotic plants, stepped smartly into one of the Regent’s dress carriages, drawn by six magnificent bays, preceded by the Regent’s state coachman on horseback, and followed by a second carriage containing his gentlemen.

This cavalcade set out for London, a splendid sight, with coachmen, postillions, footmen and outriders in their scarlet liveries, and the inhabitants of Brentford, Hammersmith and Kensington ran and jostled to get a chance to see it. The Coburg Prince may well have been feeling nervous at what lay ahead, but he presented a calm and confident appearance, and charmed his beholders by his friendly acknowledgement of their cheers.

At 3.30 he arrived at Clarence House, where he was to remain till after the wedding. Crowds were gathered in the Mall, and had already cheered themselves hoarse when Princess Charlotte, attended by the Countess of Ilchester and Colonel Addenbrook, arrived, at 1:30, at Carlton House. They now turned their attention to Clarence House, and during the next forty-eight hours, whenever he was at home, his Serene Highness Prince Leopold was obliged to show himself over and over again on the first-floor balcony, bowing politely and kindly to the milling and ecstatic populace.

His future father-in-law had made him a general in the British army, which entitled him to a new and splendid uniform for his marriage; but presumably it was in his Russian dress uniform that he drove to a reception at Carlton House, decorated with ‘a very brilliant Austrian order on a light blue ribbon’. Charlotte, who was present, had to leave soon after Leopold’s arrival, to go to the Queen’s Court at Buckingham House. Her dress, we are told, was purple silk, and it seems odd that she should have chosen this funereal colour, the colour which she also chose for her ill-fated first meeting with the Prince of Orange.

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

The Wedding Date Is Fixed

The wedding, after several postponements on account of the Regent’s ill health, was finally fixed for May 2, and on April 22 Prince Leopold moved from Brighton to Windsor, where he stayed at Upper Lodge. He did not meet Charlotte, however, till the 25th, when Princess Mary’s birthday was celebrated by a family party at Frogmore. The Prince Regent was affable to Charlotte and Leopold, but he did not seem at all well. ‘He is dreadfully altered,’ Charlotte observed. ‘I think he looks old & ugly, & is grown to an immense size.’ She noticed that he was unsteady on his legs, and walked ‘quite like Louis 18. If he don’t take care,’ she said, ‘he will soon get like him.’ Perhaps he had relied too much upon that merlin chair in which he wheeled himself about at Brighton.

The wedding was now imminent, and Charlotte’s fears that it would be private and ‘smuggled’ were relieved. The marriage service was to be held in the grand crimson saloon at Carlton House, and the Regent displayed his genius for ceremonial in the arrangements going afoot. A Master of Ceremonies was appointed, and his assistant. The public was to be allowed its share of entertainment, and Charlotte and Leopold would be displayed in due course. From now on they would cease to exist on their own account, but would become part of a complicated royal machine which would not release them until they were man and wife.

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

Picture: His Most Excellent Majesty George the Fourth, lithograph by T.C.P., from the original by George Atkinson, profile artist to His Majesty, printed by C. Hullmandel, published by G. Atkinson, Brighton, November 15, 1821

Dr Stockmar Appears

Nevertheless, in the planning and preparation for their life together, there was much to keep them busy. In Brighton Leopold spent several hours each day learning English, at which his vocabulary and grammar were soon much better than his pronunciation. But he was still unwell. Meeting up with Charlotte had not, as he hoped, cured everything, and nor had the hot baths which the Regent’s doctor had told him to take every other day. Within a fortnight of his arrival in Brighton he had written to Coburg to ask his personal physician, Dr Christian Stockmar, to join him.

Perceptive, practical and good-humoured, little Dr Stockmar was a highly qualified young physician who had taken over the military hospital in Coburg on the outbreak of hostilities with France. He had then served as a regimental surgeon with the Prussian army, and since the end of the war he had formed a close friendship with Leopold. Within days of his arrival in Brighton he had superseded Leopold’s equerry, Baron Hardenbroek, as his closest adviser. When Leopold and Charlotte assembled their own staff, Stockmar became the Prince’s Secretary, Comptroller of his Household and Keeper of his Privy Purse; he remained his confidant until, many years later, Leopold sent him back from Brussels to London to become mentor to his niece Victoria.

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

Picture: Baron Stockmar from the portrait by John Partridge, Arthur Christopher Benson; Viscount Esher (1907). The Letters of Queen Victoria. Volume 2. p. 272.

Household For Charlotte and Leopold Is Being Prepared

As soon as Leopold was naturalised as a British subject, the Prince Regent commissioned him a general in the British army and offered to raise him to the peerage as Duke of Kendal. Leopold refused the dukedom, but this was his only modest defiance. He acquiesced in everything when the marriage contract was drawn up, and he took no part in the financial discussions. That was left to the Regent and his government.

After much debate and indecision, Parliament agreed to provide the royal couple with two houses. Their London residence was to be Camelford House, a meagre brick building on the corner of Park Lane and Oxford Street, which had dark, little rooms, a narrow hall and only one staircase. The house has been the home of the second Lord Camelford, a cousin of William Pitt and a notorious duellist, who had died of a wound there twelve years earlier, after an encounter with Captain Best in Holland Park. Charlotte thought it was much too small. ‘It will do for this season’, she told Mercer, ‘but really for the next we must look out for another’.

By contrast, their home was to be Claremont near Esher in Surrey, which Charlotte thought was ‘the most beautiful house and place possible’. She had visited it twice when she first went to stay with the Duke and Duchess of York at Oatlands, and by what looked like good luck, the most recent of its many unhappy owners, Charles Rose Ellis, had put it up for sale because his beautiful wife had just died there in childbirth.

For furniture, silver, linen, china and all the other household equipment, Parliament voted a generous single payment of £ 60,000, which was almost as much as it paid for Claremont. For living expenses and the cost of their household, Leopold was to be given £ 50,000a year, and in addition Charlotte was to have £ 10,000 a year ‘pin money’ to cover the cost of her clothes and the payment of her ladies and her personal maids.

Charlotte was restrained in the composition of her new household. She settled for six footmen, not eight as her father suggested, and their state livery was to be simple green, not gaudy crimson and green like his. She was also loyal. She kept on many of the people who had been closest to her at Windsor and Warwick House. Among them, Mrs Campbell was to be lady-in-waiting, despite 279 applications for the job; Mercer’s uncle the Rev. Dr Short was to be chaplain; and Mrs Louis, of course, was to stay on as dresser.

Mrs Louis was kept busy as the wedding day approached. Charlotte’s dress, ordered by the Queen and made by Mrs Triand of Bolton Street, did not quite fit; a few subtle alterations were required. But the dress was ready in plenty of time. The ceremony was postponed more than once because of the Prince Regent’s gout.

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

Picture: Camelford and Somerset Houses (demolished), ground-floor plans in c. 1820, source https://www.british-history.ac.uk/survey-london/vol40/pt2/pp264-289