When the performance was over, Caroline went home with her mother, who, in true theatrical tradition, accompanied her everywhere. On the following morning a valet came to inform them that Prince Leopold intended to call on them next day.
When the Prince came, he came in a hired carriage, rather than use his own and risk being recognised by the livery and the coat of arms on the doors. But he was not so cautious when he began to talk. The restraints of the last eleven years were cast aside impulsively.
First, according to Caroline’s memoirs, he told her mother why he had come. ‘All the long years since the death of my consort, I have been living alone. Now I believe I have found the sympathetic creature I have been looking for. At the very first glance my heart was drawn to her, because she looks so wondrously like my departed Charlotte.’
Then, not many minutes later, he asked Caroline what she would do if he were to ask her to share his ‘golden solitude’.
If Caroline or her mother were embarrassed by his words, she did not say so in her memoirs. The Prince was offering marriage. It was to be a morganatic marriage, in which the wife could not share her husband’s rank and the children could not inherit his possessions or his titles. But it was marriage. Caroline and her mother said yes.
A few days later mother and daughter drove to Coburg. They were met by cousin Christian and taken first to the Duke’s country estate at Rosenau, where a fair was being held on the lawn. Caroline was encouraged to join in the dancing, and while she was waltzing with a young farmer she looked up at the terrace in front of the house. The Duke and his two young sons, Ernest and Albert, were standing on it watching the dancers, and his brother Leopold was beside them, searching for Caroline through a telescope.
Next day mother and daughter were installed in a pretty country house, where, in the presence of Stockmar, Leopold renewed his promise to marry Caroline. He was off to Italy for a while, but when he returned to England he would lease one of the new houses in Regent’s Park and send for them.
Leopold may not have taken in too much of Italy in the course of the next few months. He was certainly so preoccupied that he overlooked his most cherished duty. One of the letters that he received while he was there ended with a complaint from Kensington Palace. ‘I am very angry with you, Uncle, for you have never written to me once since you went.’
In May 1829, after he had returned to England, Leopold kept part of his promise and sent for Caroline and her mother. As they drove up from Dover in an open carriage, Caroline was impressed by the condition of the English roads and the rich farms that surrounded them, and when they reached London she was astonished by the number of shop windows that were still displaying the portraits of Charlotte and Leopold which had first been hung there twelve years earlier.
The terraced house in Regent’s Park was beautiful. The ground floor contained a saloon with a fine grand piano in it, a dining room, a billiard room and a boudoir for Caroline with pink silk walls and curtains; and upstairs, among the bedrooms, there was a bathroom lined with blue and white tiles. But when Caroline and her mother arrived, the only person there to meet them was the German housekeeper, who had tea ready.
Next day they waited. At last, in the evening, Leopold arrived. He had not seen Caroline Bauer for eight months, but all that he could say when he did, and not with admiration, was, ‘Oh, how the spring sun has burnt your cheeks!’
Leopold stayed for an hour, and every day after that the ritual was the same. He came in the afternoon and stayed for an hour or two, just listening to Caroline reading or playing the piano. Sometimes he brought sheet music with him, so that she could play something new, and every time he brought his tortoise-shell drizzling-box.
Drizzling was then a fashionable hobby. It involved taking the gold and silver epaulettes and frogging from old uniforms, putting them into a little box, turning a handle and grinding them into a dust which, when melted, became precious metal again. Leopold was so fond of drizzling that he had already produced enough silver to make a soup bowl for his niece Victoria, and he was soon to produce enough to make her a tureen.
By the end of June, Stockmar had become as exasperated with this as his aunt and cousin. He confronted Leopold. He told him that the King of Prussia had written to ask whether Fraulein Bauer was his mistress or not, and he warned him that, if he did not make an honest woman of her, she would have to be taken home. He knew that the Prince was doing nothing but drizzling while Caroline read or sang to him, but that was not what other people thought he was doing.
On 2 July 1829, in the saloon of their house in Regent’s Park, Leopold and Caroline formalised their relationship. It was not a marriage. There was no priest present. It was not even a morganatic marriage. All that happened was that they signed a contract, witnessed by Stockmar and his brother Charles, in which Leopold promised to pay Caroline a small annual allowance for the rest of her life.
After that, for the rest of July, they were happy. They were together by day and they were together by night. Somehow Leopold’s heart lightened and his spirits lifted. ‘It was’, wrote Caroline, who could never be anything but theatrical, ‘the last youthful flicker of his burnt out heart before it finally crumbled for ever into cold ashes’.
At the end of the month, after a merry farewell dinner, Leopold went off to take the waters at Carlsbad, in the hope that they might help his recurring rheumatism, Stockmar went off to Coburg, where he now had a wife, and Caroline and her mother went off happily to spend a few weeks in Paris.
But Leopold did not join them in Paris until the middle of November, and when he got there he booked into a different hotel. The old routine returned. Every afternoon Leopold came round for an hour and sat drizzling while Caroline read to him.
Early in December Leopold went back to England accompanied by Stockmar. But it was not until after Christmas that Caroline and her mother were brought over and installed, not in the terraced house in Regent’s Park, but in a drab little villa with brown carpets and old furniture on the edge of Claremont Park. Leopold’s sister and niece, who were staying in the house for Christmas, were often there at other times as well, and as it would not have been appropriate for them to meet, it seemed better to lodge Caroline and her mother elsewhere.
The drizzling routine continued, but at least now it did not happen every day. The negotiations over Greece were on again, and this time there was more chance of success. The King was now so sick that he might not have the energy to object. Leopold was often in London, and when he was away and there were no guests in the house, Caroline and her mother were allowed to wander around Claremont like tourists.
On one occasion, in Charlotte’s sitting room, they found her cloak and bonnet still on the screen, and her watch still on the mantelpiece, and in the breakfast room they found a nervous and neglected parrot covered in lice with half his grey feathers missing. He was Coco. When Leopold returned, Caroline asked if she could take the parrot and nurse him back to health. Without a glimmer of emotion, Leopold gave him to her.
On another occasion Caroline noticed a portrait of Charlotte dressed in a traditional blue and silver Russian costume, which had been given to her by the Grand Duchess Catherine. Caroline’s theatrical wardrobe contained one almost exactly like it. Hoping to warm Leopold’s heart by reminding him of her likeness to his Princess, she wore it for him next time he came round for a drizzle. But, after the initial and inevitable surprise, his only response was to make comparisons. Charlotte had a more finely cut nose. Caroline’s mouth was prettier. Charlotte had a fuller figure. Caroline was more graceful. But the colour of their hair and their complexions were identical…
When the pedantic inventory was finished, all that crestfallen Caroline could do was to remind the Prince of the one attribute he had forgotten. ‘Your Highness forgets the faithful hearts which beat, or have beaten, for you.’
Leopold was on edge again. The negotiations over Greece had given him a goal, but the frustration and tension that had been e
clipsed briefly by the happiness of last July had returned. He was grinding his teeth so much in his sleep that, against Stockmar’s advice, he bought a pair of little gold clamps. According to the quack who made them, these would keep his teeth apart all night if he inserted them on either side between his molars before he went to bed. But after only a few nights he woke to find that the clamps were gone. Believing that he had swallowed them, the dignified Prince asked Stockmar to give him the most powerful purge that he could make, and it was only after he had taken it that a servant discovered the clamps amid his sheets.
In February Leopold accepted the throne of Greece. For a while his spirits lifted as he planned his future. He ordered some beautiful blue and white tents which he intended to use when he travelled round his kingdom. He subjected Caroline to the humiliation of discussing who he might have as his queen. But when he thought about it more, he was not sure that he had made the right decision. Greece, although free, was far from stable, and the greatest barrier to his ambitions, the King of England, was clearly on the brink of death. Perhaps destiny had something better in store for him. In May he changed his mind and declined the Greek throne.
By then Caroline had had enough. Like the other mistresses before her, she was exasperated by Leopold’s indifference. She began to indulge in fits of overwrought theatrical indignation, and she wrote to her brother Karl in Germany complaining bitterly about her treatment.
There is no record of exactly what happened next. All that is certain is that Karl came over and subjected Leopold to some sort of blackmail. Stockmar stepped in to negotiate, and at the beginning of June, probably after receiving a payment, the Bauer family went back to Germany.
Caroline returned to the stage and continued her successful career until 1844, when she retired to marry a Polish count. Coco, now healthy and happy, went with her, learned to speak German and died while they were on tour in Dresden in 1842.
Soon after the Bauers’ departure, on 26 June, the King died. The Duke of Clarence was now King William IV, and eleven-year-old Victoria was heir to the throne.
At last the future looked brighter for Leopold. The King who had stood in his way had gone and, as the recent Greek offer had shown, there were many statesmen in Europe who respected him enough to present him with opportunities. There were to be moments in the course of the next few years when he felt that his life might have been easier if he had chosen to spend it in the sun, but he could not regret rejecting Greece because he knew now that he could do better. If the new King died before Victoria came of age, the government might even make him Regent.
He was right not to regret Greece. But his reason was wrong. Destiny had something different in store for him.
EPILOGUE
King of the Belgians
A FEW WEEKS after the death of King George IV there was another revolution in France. The totalitarian King Charles X had appointed a reactionary Cabinet, dissolved the Chamber of Deputies and imposed censorship on the press. In response, the citizens of Paris took to the streets. After overwhelming the inadequate garrison, they drove the King into exile in Scotland and replaced him on the throne with his distant cousin the Duke of Orleans, who was crowned as King Louis-Philippe.
When the news spread across the northern border, into the province that had until recently been known as the Austrian Netherlands, the people of Brussels poured out onto their own streets and gleefully followed the French example.
Their province had been conquered by the French in 1795, just before Charlotte’s mother set out for England, and in 1815, at the suggestion of the British government, it had been incorporated into the United Kingdom of the Netherlands by the Treaty of Vienna. Since then, however, the new Dutch King, William I, the father of Charlotte’s first fiancé, had been almost as repressive as the King of France. Although the French-speaking, Roman Catholic Belgians in his new province outnumbered the Protestant Dutch by almost two to one, he had not given them even equal representation in the upper house of their parliament: he had subjected them to the rule of Dutch civil servants, he had forced them to speak Dutch in the law courts and he had imposed heavy taxes in order to pay off the Dutch national debt. But he had not occupied the province with enough soldiers to hold down a rebellion. On 4 October 1830, the Belgians declared their independence.
King William appealed for help to the Russians, Austrians and Prussians. But the Russian army was busy putting down a rebellion in Poland, and the Austrians and Prussians would not fight without the Russians. Instead, all three sent representatives to a conference in London, where the incomparable British and French representatives, Lord Palmerston and Prince Talleyrand, persuaded them to recognise an independent Belgium and even guarantee its neutrality.
The constitution of the new nation was modelled on the constitutional monarchy of Great Britain, and at first it was suggested that the throne should be offered to the Prince of Orange. But when the Belgians, not surprisingly, rejected Slender Billy, it was offered to Leopold. Leopold said yes, and the Belgians said yes to Leopold.
Before leaving England, Leopold gave up his house in London and his annuity of £50,000, although he persuaded the government to go on paying the donations which he and Charlotte had made to various charities. But he could not bear to part with Claremont, and it was agreed that the house should be his for the rest of his life.
Leopold left for his new kingdom at the end of June 1831. Almost immediately he was involved in a war. On 2 August Belgium was invaded by a large Dutch army under the command of the Prince of Orange. The Belgian army was no match for it. It was small, ill-equipped and barely trained. Defeat was inevitable. But Leopold had powerful allies. When a French army marched into Belgium and a British fleet appeared off the coast, the Dutch invaders fell back.
Yet, despite the unassailable strength of Leopold’s supporters, it was not until 19 April 1839, almost eight years later, that the Dutch at last recognised an independent Belgium; at the same time the five Great Powers formalised their London agreement, in the treaty that was to be dismissed so famously by the German Kaiser in 1914 as nothing more than ‘a scrap of paper’. The Prince of Orange, who had hoped that at least his Russian brother-in-law would continue to support him, was bitterly disappointed. Soon afterwards he said of Leopold, ‘There is a man who has taken my wife and my kingdom.’
Since a king must have a queen, if only to bear him heirs, Leopold looked round for the most useful candidate and chose twenty-year-old Princess Louise-Marie, eldest daughter of his most powerful neighbour, King Louis-Philippe of France. They were married in a combined Roman Catholic and Lutheran service on 9 August 1832.
Queen Louise-Marie soon lost her youthful exuberance and became a dull, dutiful and dignified wife. She bore four children – three sons, the first of whom died within a year, and one daughter, whom she allowed without argument to be christened Charlotte. Although her husband was more than twice her age, she always adored him. But she was under no illusions. She knew that his English Princess was the only woman he had ever loved, just as her children always knew that their father cared more for his niece Victoria than he ever did for any of them.
Leopold wrote regularly to Victoria, advising her on every aspect of her conduct and education while she was a princess, and on every aspect of statecraft while she was a queen.
When she was still a princess he once composed a long essay for her on the reign of the irresolute and impressionable Queen Anne. In reply Victoria thanked him for telling her ‘what a Queen ought not to be’ and hoped that he would soon tell her ‘what a Queen ought to be’.
If Leopold sent a second essay, it has not survived, but throughout his life, in many of his letters, he often turned to the same example of how a princess ought to be. In 1845, on Queen Victoria’s twenty-sixth birthday, he sent her as her present a portrait of this ‘noble-minded and highly gifted’ example. At the end of the letter that went with it he wrote, ‘Grant always to that good and generous Charlotte – who sleeps alre
ady with her beautiful little boy so long – an affectionate remembrance, and believe me, she deserves it.’
By then Uncle Leopold’s influence with the Queen was even greater than it had been when she was a princess. In the spring of 1837, when it seemed likely that King William IV was dying, Leopold sent Stockmar to live at Claremont and instructed him to help and advise his niece in every way he could. On 20 June, one month to the day after Stockmar landed, the King died. Next day, the Queen wrote in her journal, ‘Saw Stockmar.’ Within two years, rooms had been set aside permanently for Stockmar’s use in Buckingham Palace and Windsor Castle.
After his influence over the English court, Leopold’s greatest family interest lay in arranging influential marriages. He was so successful at it that the Prussian Chancellor Bismarck described the House of Coburg as ‘the stud farm of Europe’. By the time his own children came of age he had already arranged marriages for five nephews and, of course, a niece.
In 1836, shortly after he married his nephew Ferdinand to the Queen of Portugal, Leopold told his eldest brother, the dissolute Duke Ernest, to take his two sons, Ernest and Albert, to London to visit his sister in Kensington Palace and introduce them to their cousin Victoria. At the time Victoria was not much impressed by either of them. But when she met Albert three years later at Windsor she wrote to her uncle, ‘Albert’s beauty is most striking, and he is so amiable and unaffected.’
Leopold’s niece and nephew Victoria and Albert were married on 10 February 1840. It was the most influential of all the marriages that he arranged. But just over eight years later, his own marriage suddenly ceased to be influential, or even useful. There was another revolution in Paris. On 24 February 1848 his father-in-law Louis-Philippe abdicated. Unconvincingly, but somehow successfully, the French King and his Queen disguised themselves as Mr and Mrs Smith and escaped to England, where Leopold had arranged for them to live at Claremont.
Charlotte & Leopold Page 20
