  BIRTH AND PARENTAGE. 1751. Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark and Norway, Princess of Great Britain and Ireland (a sister of George III.), was born at Leicester House, London, on Thursday, July 22, 1751. She was the ninth and youngest child of Frederick Prince of Wales and of his wife Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, and came into the world a little more than four months after her father’s death. There is a Scandinavian superstition to the effect that children born fatherless are heirs to misfortune. The life of this “Queen of Tears” would seem to illustrate its truth. Caroline Matilda inherited many of her father’s qualities, notably his warm, emotional temperament, his desire to please and his open-handed liberality. Both in appearance and disposition she resembled her father much more than her mother. Some account of this Prince is therefore necessary for a right understanding of his daughter’s character, for, though she was born after his death, the silent forces of heredity influenced her life. Frederick Prince of Wales was the elder son The bride-elect landed at Greenwich in April, 1736, and, two days after her arrival, was married A few weeks after this rupture the illustrious Queen Caroline died, to the great grief of the King and the nation. Her death widened the breach in the royal family, for the King considered that his son’s undutiful conduct had hastened his mother’s Frederick removed his household to Leicester House in Leicester Fields. It was here, eleven years later, that his posthumous daughter Caroline Matilda was born. Leicester House was built by the Earl of Leicester in the reign of James I. There was a field before it in those days, but a square was subsequently built around the field, and Leicester House occupied the north-east corner of what was then Leicester Fields, but is now known as Leicester Square. It was a large and spacious house, with a courtyard in front, and the state rooms were admirably adapted for receptions and levees, but as a residence it was not so satisfactory. Frederick chiefly made use of Carlton House and Kew for his family life, and kept Leicester House for entertaining. His court there offered a curious parallel to the one his father had held within the same walls in the reign of George I., when the heir to the throne was also at variance with the King. Again Leicester House became the rallying place of the opposition, again its walls echoed with the sound Leicester House, where Queen Matilda was born. LEICESTER HOUSE, WHERE QUEEN MATILDA WAS BORN. After the fall of Walpole several of the Prince’s friends took office, and a formal, though by no means cordial, reconciliation was patched up between the King and the Heir Apparent, but there was always veiled hostility between them, and from time to time their differences threatened to become acute. For instance, after the Jacobite rising the Prince of Wales disapproved of the severities of his brother, the Duke of Cumberland, “the butcher of Culloden,” and showed his displeasure in no unequivocal manner. When the Jacobite peers were condemned to death the Prince and Princess interceded for them, in one case with success. Lady Cromartie, after petitioning the King in vain for her husband’s life, made a personal appeal, as a wife and mother, to the Princess of Wales, and brought her four children to plead with her as well. The Princess said nothing, but, with evident emotion, summoned her own children and placed them beside her. This she followed by praying the King for Cromartie’s life, and her prayer was granted. After the reconciliation the Prince and Princess At Kew the Prince and Princess of Wales led a quieter life, and here the influence of the Princess was in the ascendant. Kew House was an old-fashioned, low, rambling house, which the Prince had taken on a long lease from the Capel family. The great beauty of Kew lay in its extensive garden, which was improved and enlarged by Frederick. He built there orangeries and hothouses after the fashion of Herrenhausen, and filled them with
It was like Frederick’s monkeyish humour to make the portly and pompous Dodington work in his garden; no doubt he hugely enjoyed the sight. The Prince’s amusements were varied, if we may judge from the following account by Dodington:—
These, it must be admitted, were not very intellectual amusements. On the other hand it stands to Frederick’s credit that he chose as his personal friends some of the ablest men of the day, and found delight and recreation in their society. Between him and Bolingbroke there existed the warmest sympathy. When Bolingbroke came back to England after Walpole’s fall, he renewed his friendship with Frederick, and often paced with him and the Princess through the gardens and shrubberies of their favourite Kew, while he waxed eloquent over the tyranny of the Whig oligarchy, which kept the King in thrall, and held up before them his ideal of a patriot king. Both the Prince and Princess listened eagerly to Bolingbroke’s theories, and in after years the Princess instilled them into the mind of her eldest son. Chesterfield and Sir William Wyndham also came to Kew sometimes, and here Frederick and Augusta exhibited with just pride their flower-beds to Pope, who wrote of his patron— And if yet higher the proud list should end Still, let me add, no follower, but a friend. The Prince not only sought the society of men of letters, but made some attempts at authorship himself. His verse was not very remarkable; the best perhaps was the poem addressed to the Princess beginning:— ’Tis not the liquid brightness of those eyes, That swim with pleasure and delight; Nor those heavenly arches which arise O’er each of them, to shade their light: and so on through five stanzas of praise of Augusta’s charms, until: No,—’tis that gentleness of mind, that love So kindly answering my desire; That grace with which you look, and speak, and move, That thus has set my soul on fire. Perhaps it was of these lines that the Prince once asked Lord Poulett his opinion. “Sir,” replied that astute courtier, “they are worthy of your Royal Highness.” Notwithstanding his admiration of his wife, Frederick was not faithful to her. But it may be doubted whether, after his marriage, he indulged in any serious intrigue, and his flirtations were probably only tributes offered to the shrine of gallantry after the fashion of the day. In every other respect he was a good husband. He was also a devoted father, a kind master to his servants, and a true friend. In his public life he always professed a love of liberty. To a deputation of Quakers he once delivered the following answer: “As I am a friend to liberty in general, and to toleration in particular, I wish you may meet with all proper favour, but, for myself, I never gave my vote in parliament, and to influence my friends, or direct my servants, in theirs, does not become my station. To leave them entirely to their own consciences and understandings, is a rule I have hitherto prescribed to myself, and purpose through life to Frederick avowed a great love for the country over which he one day hoped to reign; and, though French in his tastes rather than English, he did all in his power to encourage the national sentiment. For instance, it is recorded on one of his birthdays: “There was a very splendid appearance of the nobility and gentry and their ladies at Leicester House, and his Royal Highness observing some lords to wear French stuffs, immediately ordered the Duke of Chandos, his Groom of the Stole, to acquaint them, and his servants in general, that after that day he should be greatly displeased to see them appear in any French manufacture”. Moreover, he instilled in the minds of his children the loftiest sentiments of patriotism. In view of the German predilections of his father and grandfather the training which Frederick gave his children, especially his eldest son, had much to do in after years with reconciling the Tory and Jacobite malcontents to the established dynasty. The wounds occasioned by the rising of 1745 were still bleeding, but the battle of Culloden had extinguished for ever the hopes of the Stuarts, and many of their adherents were casting about for a pretext of acquiescing in the inevitable. These Should this superior to my years be thought, Know—’tis the first great lesson I was taught. What! though a boy! it may with pride be said A boy—in England born, in England bred; Where freedom well becomes the earliest state, For there the laws of liberty innate—etc., etc. There came an echo of this early teaching years later when George III. wrote into the text of his first speech to parliament the memorable words: “Born and educated in this country, I glory in the name of Briton”. In the epilogue spoken by Prince Edward similar sentiments were expressed:— In England born, my inclination, Like yours, is wedded to this nation: And future times, I hope, will see Indeed, I wish to serve this land, It is my father’s strict command; And none he ever gave shall be More cheerfully obeyed by me. We get many pleasant glimpses, in contemporary letters and memoirs, of the domestic felicity of the royal household at Kew and Leicester House; of games of baseball and “push pin,” with the children in the winter, of gardening and cricket in the summer, and of little plays, sometimes composed by the Prince, staged by the Princess and acted by their sons and daughters all the year round. “The Prince’s family,” Lady Hervey writes, “is an example of innocent and cheerful amusement,” Frederick Prince of Wales died suddenly on March 20, 1751, to the great grief of his wife and children, and the consternation of his political adherents. The Prince had been suffering from a chill, but no one thought that there was any danger. On the eighth day of his illness, in the evening, he was sitting up in bed, listening to the performance of Desnoyers, the violinist, when he was seized with a violent fit of coughing. He put his hand upon his heart and cried, “Je sens la mort!” The Princess, who was in the room, flew to her husband’s assistance, but before she could reach his side he was dead. Later it was shown that the immediate cause of death was the break No Prince has been more maligned than Frederick Prince of Wales, and none on less foundation. He opposed Walpole and the Whig domination, and therefore the Whig pamphleteers of the time, and Whig historians since, have poured on him the vials of their wrath, and contemptuously dismissed him as half fool and half rogue. But the utmost that can be proved against him is that he was frivolous, and unduly fond of gambling and gallantry. These failings were common to the age, and in his case they were largely due to his neglected youth. Badly educated, disliked by his parents, to whom he grew up almost a stranger, and surrounded from the day of his arrival in England by malcontents, parasites and flatterers, it would have needed a much stronger man than Frederick to resist the evil influences around him. His public utterances, and there is no real ground for doubting their sincerity, go to show that he was a prince of liberal and enlightened views, a friend of peace and a lover of England. It is probable that, had he been spared to ascend the throne, he would have made a better king than either his father or grandfather. It is possible that he would have made a better king than his son, for, though he was by no Here lies Fred, Who was alive, and is dead, Had it been his father, I had much rather; Had it been his brother, Still better than another; Had it been his sister, No one would have missed her; Had it been the whole generation, So much better for the nation; But since ’tis only Fred, Who was alive, and is dead, There’s no more to be said. George II. was playing cards when the news of his son’s death was brought to him. He turned very pale and said nothing for a minute; then he rose, whispered to Lady Yarmouth, “Fritz ist todt,” and quitted the room. But he sent that same night a message of condolence to the bereaved widow. Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of Queen Matilda. FREDERICK, PRINCE OF WALES, FATHER OF QUEEN MATILDA. From the Painting by J. B. Vanloo at Warwick Castle, by permission of the Earl of Warwick. The death of her husband was a great blow to Augusta Princess of Wales. Suddenly deprived of the prospect of becoming Queen of England, she found herself, at the age of thirty-two, left a widow with eight young children and expecting shortly to give birth to another. Her situation excited great commiseration, and among the people the dead Prince was generally regretted, for despite his follies he was known to be kindly and humane. Elegies were cried about the streets, and very common exclamations were: “Oh, that it were his brother!” “Oh, that it were the Butcher!” Still it cannot be pretended that Frederick was deeply mourned. A conversation was overheard between two workmen, who were putting up the hatchment over the gate at Leicester House, which fairly voiced the popular sentiment: “He has left a great many small children,” said one. “Aye,” replied the other, “and what is worse, they belong to our parish.” Contrary to expectation the King behaved with great kindness to his daughter-in-law, and a few days after her bereavement paid her a visit in person. He refused the chair of state placed for him, seated himself on the sofa beside the Princess, and at the sight of her sorrow was so much moved as to shed tears. When the Princess Augusta, his eldest granddaughter, came forward to kiss his hand, he took her in his arms and embraced her. To his grandsons the King said: “Be brave boys, be obedient to your mother, and endeavour to do credit to the high station in which you are born”. He who A month after his father’s death Prince George was created Prince of Wales and Earl of Chester, but the young Prince, though always respectful, never entertained any affectionate feelings for his grandfather. This may have been due, in part, to the unforgiving spirit with which the old King followed his son even to the tomb. Frederick’s funeral was shorn of almost every circumstance of state. No princes of the blood and no important members of the government attended, and he was buried in Westminster Abbey “without either anthem or organ”. Of the few faithful friends who attended the last rites, Dodington writes: “There was not the attention to order the board of green cloth to provide them a bit of bread; and these gentlemen of the first rank and distinction, in discharge of their last sad duty to a loved, and loving, master, were forced to bespeak a great, cold dinner from a common tavern in the neighbourhood; at three o’clock, indeed, they vouchsafed to think of a dinner and ordered one, but the disgrace was complete—the tavern dinner was paid for and given to the poor”. Some five months after Frederick’s death his widow gave birth to a princess, the subject of this book. Dodington thus records the event, which, except in the London Gazette, was barely noticed by the journals of the day:—
The advent of this daughter was hardly an occasion for rejoicing. Apart from the melancholy circumstances of her birth, her widowed mother had already a young and numerous family, Eleven days after her birth the Princess was baptised at Leicester House by Dr. Hayter, Bishop of Norwich, and given the names of Caroline Matilda, the first being after her grandmother, the second harking back to our Norman queens. Except in official documents she was always known by the latter name, and it is the one therefore that will be used in speaking of her throughout this book. The infant had three sponsors, her aunt the Princess Caroline (represented by proxy), her eldest sister the Princess Augusta, and her eldest brother the Prince of Wales. In the case of the godfather the sponsorship was no mere form, for George III. stood in the light of guardian to his sister all through her life.
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