There were now five such entities, whose total population was barely three hundred thousand people, and the Dukedom of Coburg could not be regarded as possessing great wealth or influence, let alone power, in the post-Napoleonic settlements. Even compared with Hanover or Bavaria, the position of Coburg was humble. That of Leopold, a younger son, was particularly lowly. This situation was to be dramatically transformed by a succession of marriages which were to make the Coburg dynasty of immense influence outside its modest borders.
In 1814, Leopold, attending the victory celebrations in London, met the beautiful but deeply unhappy Princess Charlotte, daughter and only child of the Prince Regent and his estranged wife, Caroline of Brunswick, and, after him, heiress to the throne of England. Their love incensed her father. Princess Charlotte was in effect incarcerated in a house in Windsor and all correspondence between the two was banned. But, through the involvement of her loving and loved uncle, the Duke of Kent, the couple was able to correspond, awaiting the time when the bitter opposition of the Prince Regent might abate.
It is a wise man who, embarking upon a career of political advancement, draws into his camp an adviser of sagacity and trust, linked to his fortunes not by avariciousness or vanity but by affection and regard. In 1814 Leopold found such a man, under improbable but deeply significant circumstances.
Christian Friedrich Stockmar was born at Coburg on August 22nd 1787, the second child, and first son, of Johann Ernest Stockmar, a successful lawyer, also well known for being highly cultivated and a bibliophile of distinction. Stockmar’s mother, his son was to write, ‘lives in our memories as a clever, humorous woman, a lover of poetry, and given to moralise on human affairs. She liked to put her ideas into a proverbial form, and one of her favourite sayings was, “Heaven takes care that the cow’s tail shall not grow too long”’, a particular saying that was a source of special amusement to Leopold when he came to know her. Stockmar was devoted to her, and valued her wisdom and basic common sense – a fact in itself which emphasises that she must have been a remarkable woman.
Stockmar’s childhood was spent in and near Coburg; he was educated at the Coburg Gymnasium, and subsequently was a medical student at Wurzburg, Erlangen, and Jena. A close friend and contemporary wrote of him that ‘he thus acquired his real science and art, which, even after he had given up their practical pursuit, yet remained for life the foundation of his scientific thought and critical action. Even later in life, as a statesman, he was fond of looking upon a crisis in political or domestic affairs, from his own medical point of view; always anxious to remove as fast as possible every pathological impediment, so that the healing moral nature might be set free, and social and human laws resume their restorative power. And still more clearly, perhaps, did he show his medical antecedents by the way in which he was able at once to recognise the existence of such social diseases or accidents by his power of penetrating at one glance the whole man or the whole situation of things by the help of single expressions and acts; regulating, at once, his own acts and conduct according to that diagnosis’.2
Stockmar himself subsequently believed that his medical training had been crucial in developing his abilities to assess people and human situations. No doubt it had been, but from a relatively early age he impressed teachers and contemporaries by a fundamental common sense and practicality which later prompted Lord Melbourne to remark of him that he was ‘one of the most sensible men I have ever met with’. But he was also sensitive, and he felt the humiliation of his country under Napoleonic domination very acutely. At one stage he was prepared to join an assassination attempt on Napoleon, but was quietly dissuaded by an old Prussian officer, who advised him to ‘trust to the natural course of events’. Stockmar, accordingly, returned quietly to Coburg to practise medicine.
In 1812 he took the step that was to change the entire course of his life, and was to have such profound and lasting influence upon history. He founded a military hospital at Coburg, which was rapidly filled with French, Allied, and Russian sick and wounded. Typhus took possession of it, which Stockmar fought by keeping all windows and doors open, even in mid-winter, but unavailingly. At one stage, only he and one other doctor remained at their posts, and in November 1813 Stockmar himself caught the disease. He recovered by the beginning of 1814, after an acute but brief illness, and then accompanied the Saxon Ducal Contingent to the Rhine as principal physician. It was at the military hospital at Worms that the crucial episode occurred.
The hospital was full of wounded French troops when a large number of German victims arrived. The senior medical officer ordered Stockmar to give priority to the Germans. Stockmar refused, declaring that he would deal with all the wounded in strict priority, regardless of their nationality. A fierce argument ensued, in which Stockmar held his ground and won his point. Leopold heard of this event, was deeply impressed, and made his acquaintance. Thus began a relationship of vital importance to Leopold, Stockmar, and the British Monarchy.
In March 1816 Stockmar was again practising medicine in Coburg when he received an invitation from Leopold who was now in London, the Regent’s hostility to his daughter’s engagement having been at last modified, to become his personal physician. He accepted, and travelled to London, which enraptured him. In his Diary he recorded:
The country, the houses, their arrangement, everything, especially in the neighbourhood of London, delighted me, and so raised my spirits, that I kept saying to myself, ‘Here you must be happy, here you cannot be ill’.
There are several mysteries about Stockmar, and one of them is why, at apparently an early age, he had become dedicated to the two great political causes of his life – the liberation and unification of Germany, and strong links between Germany and England. The first is explicable, but the second, which seems to have preceded the Anglo-Prussian coalition that eventually defeated Napoleon, is more difficult to comprehend. It was clearly not simply that Britain was the most powerful nation in the world, because Stockmar’s liberal faith did not inspire him with admiration for the dissolute and unpopular British Monarchy or Britain’s political leadership.
Perhaps the reason was the one he put simply to Prince Albert in a letter on August 9th, 1857: ‘the English people surpass all others in Europe in energy and vigour of character.’
And, then, whence did the liberalism come? He himself ascribed it to his literary father and tolerant mother, and to the good-natured and relaxed atmosphere of Coburg; but, whatever the causation, it was central to his character, and utterly dominated his approach to politics. In the words of his son:
Whilst the statesmen of Europe since 1815 followed various arbitrary aims and tendencies, arising from narrow egotism or pedantry, despotically fought against the natural bent of political circumstances, and strove to restrain or remodel the natural growth of the people by artificial arrangements, he, to his latest breath, was devoted with his whole soul to a national liberal development, and worked for it with all his powers.
What was surprising about Stockmar’s personality was that it contained remarkable contrasts between periods of almost excessive zest, gregariousness, and bubbling good humour with others of heavy seriousness, coldness, and iron self-control. These moods were partly the result of recurrent ill-health and a marked tendency to hypochondria and deep depression, but physical causes alone are unlikely to provide the full explanation. Thus, the most merry of companions – ‘it is good that you are so often ill, or there would be no bearing your exuberant spirits’, as a particularly close friend once remarked to him – could swiftly become lugubrious and sharp-tongued. These interludes did not, however, affect that aspect of his character that had first impressed Leopold, and was to impress so many others, and which can best be described as a fundamental humanity and willingness to serve others with warmth and loyalty. Perhaps the key to Stockmar can be found in words he wrote shortly before he died:
‘Were I now to be asked by any young man just
entering into life, What is the chief good for which it behoves a man to strive? my only answer would be, Love and Friendship! Were he to ask me, What is a man’s most priceless possession? I must answer, ‘The consciousness of having loved and sought the truth – of having yearned for the truth for its own sake! All else is either mere vanity or a sick man’s dream’.
The young doctor who had stood up to his commanding officer on behalf of the French wounded with such vehemence was the real Stockmar, and no comprehension of this remarkable man can begin without appreciating this basic fact. He was not solely respected by a wide variety of serious people; he was also greatly and genuinely loved and trusted by them. Thus, he was to become something very considerably more than a political counsellor and eminence grise, but a beloved friend and companion. It was this very unusual combination that at first puzzled so many, and was then recognised by the most sensible as not affecting the basic decency and humanity of the man. It was from these elements that his political liberalism essentially stemmed.
The marriage of Princess Charlotte and Prince Leopold, achieved after so many difficulties, was one of supreme happiness, in which Stockmar joyfully shared. Leopold quickly removed him from his post as physician and made him his chief personal adviser and assistant – posts he was to hold until 1831.
Princess Charlotte had known little happiness in her short life, caught as she had been between the growing and intense bitterness between her parents.
It was small wonder that Princess Charlotte, the only child of the marriage, should suffer from the hatred between her parents. She had been the pawn of each, in turn, in the ruthless family politics. Her mother had naturally claimed her, her father quite as naturally protested that Caroline was not fit to look after her, and the King [George III] had determined to control the upbringing of the child who would no doubt one day ascend the throne. Charlotte had suffered from all three. No childhood could have been more disturbed than the childhood of this little girl who so needed emotional stability. Her governesses and ladies-in-waiting had been frequently changed; for years she had no friends of her own age. She had lived in growing isolation in a harsh adult world.3
She came to despise her parents equally, with the balance of dislike being principally placed on her father, an opinion sedulously encouraged by perhaps the most gifted yet grievously flawed man of his generation, Henry Brougham,4 who sought in the bitter divisions between Caroline and her husband personal advancement and revenge upon a man who he believed was an implacable obstacle to his political fortunes. But Brougham, although frustrated and erratic, was a powerful and astonishingly articulate advocate. From the genuine unhappiness of her circumstances, marriage offered the only possibility of escape, and in December 1813 she had become engaged to the Prince of Orange at their first meeting, at the age of seventeen. Brougham is hardly an impartial witness, but his report in March 1814 that ‘she agreed to the match as a mere matter of convenience and emancipation, caring for the Prince of Orange literally nothing’ is confirmed from other sources. The news was initially received with some approval in both countries, but Charlotte soon began to entertain serious doubts, which turned out to have been wholly merited. She later told Stockmar that ‘there was nothing Princely about him’, but there were other practical objections. Each was, after all, heir-presumptive to their respective thrones, and neither had the slightest intention of renouncing them. What would be the situation of any sons of the union? Where would they live? Charlotte refused to contemplate living in the Netherlands, and her mother was strongly opposed to the marriage. While political negotiations continued, the unfortunate Princess gradually appreciated that the marriage was impossible, and the Parliamentary opposition became publicly hostile.
Breaking off this engagement was complicated by the fact that it had now become a State agreement, but Charlotte insisted that the marriage contract contained full security, sanctioned by Parliament, that she should never be removed or kept away from England. On this insistence the engagement foundered, although the critical event was the refusal by her father to permit her mother to attend any of the victory celebrations in June. But it was also during these – somewhat premature – festivities that Charlotte met Leopold. The combination was fatal for the engagement, which was then decisively broken off.
The rage of the Regent took characteristic form. He dismissed Charlotte’s entire household, ordered her to leave Warwick House and to go to Cranbourne Lodge, Windsor. She fled to her mother’s house in Connaught Place, only to be brought back by her uncle, the Duke of York, and taken to Cranbourne Lodge. All corres-pondence between her and Leopold was prohibited, but the Duke of Kent was a willing intermediary. Through his hands the lovers’ correspondence continued for two years until the Regent unhappily relented. Charlotte and Leopold were deeply grateful to the man who not only rendered this service to a girl who ‘was really treated as a sort of prisoner’ in Leopold’s words, but who was also, as Leopold expressed it, ‘the chief promoter of the marriage’. By January 1815 Charlotte was writing that she had ‘perfectly decided and made up my own mind to marry, and the person I have decisively fixed on is Prince Leopold . . . At all events I know that more worse off, more unhappy and wretched I cannot be than I am now, and after all if I end by marrying Prince L., I marry the best of all those I have seen, and that is some satisfaction’.
It was from this exile that she was rescued by Prince Leopold and love, and was married, amid continued severe parental difficulties, on May 2nd 1816. In August they moved to Claremont House, near Esher, in Surrey. Stockmar went with them for what he subsequently regarded as an idyllic interlude in his life. The happiness of the young couple, their great and growing public popularity, the feeling of a brilliant future for the young heiress to the throne of England, now so suddenly and magically happy and radiant, were never forgotten by either Stockmar or Leopold, and it was in this tragically brief period that their relationship moved into deep and abiding friendship and trust.
The diarist Gronow has described Charlotte as ‘a young lady of more than ordinary personal attractions; her eyes were blue, and very expressive, her hair was abundant, and of that peculiar light brown tint which merges into the golden; in fact, such hair as the middle-age Italian painters associate with their conceptions of the Madonna’. Not all English perceptions of Leopold were favourable, but there was a general view that he was a vast improvement upon Prince William of Orange – derided as ‘young frog’ by Brougham – and Lady Ilchester described him, somewhat condescendingly, as being ‘like an Englishman in all but the ease, elegance, and deference of his manners’, but she considered him cultured, handsome, and ‘positively interesting’. Thus, although she quite understandably exaggerated when she wrote that ‘Indeed there is not a soul that is not in ecstasies at my fate and choice’, the fact that the necessary legislation to naturalize Leopold passed through Parliament with remarkable speed and approval and that he and his future wife were voted £60,000 a year – with a lifelong sum of £50,000 for him in the event of her death – had their significance. In short, it was generally considered an admirable marriage, with very fair prospects.
Not surprisingly, Princess Charlotte was a difficult young woman. Her moods were very variable, a clear sign of the insecurity of her childhood and adolescence. Her education had been fair, but she was very impulsive, and sometimes thoughtless. Her warmth of personality and genuine kindness touched all who worked with her, but existence with her brought frequent, and sometimes tumultuous storms. ‘My first impression was not favourable’, Stockmar recorded, but he gradually warmed to her, and she to him. By October he was writing that she was ‘astonishingly impressionable and nervously sensitive, and the feeling excited by a momentary impression not seldom determines at once her opinion and conduct’, but he also noted with approval that Leopold’s influence on her had notably increased her ‘calmness and self-control’, although ‘She never for a moment forgets the king’s daughter’
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The marriage between Prince Leopold and Princess Charlotte, with the faithful Stockmar at hand, was an event of remarkable historical importance. Leopold was in effect learning the difficult, and unprecedented, task of how to become a future Prince Consort of the Queen of England – and a highly headstrong and determined future Queen at that. Already Stockmar had begun to develop his concept of the role of the Monarchy, which was wholly different from that of the Royal Family, whom he collectively and individually despised, and on whom his contemporary comments were understandably sulphurous.
The public reputation of the never greatly loved Hanoverian dynasty was at its lowest point. King George III, long mad and isolated, was a distant and melancholy figure, his otherwise not unsuccessful reign irretrievably shadowed by the loss of the American Colonies. His heir, the Prince Regent, had many qualities, but public frugality, political wisdom, and uxoriousness were not to be included among them. Of the Regent’s brothers, the notorious Royal Dukes, Cumberland was the most hated, and none was esteemed. Most ominous of all, in Stockmar’s unsparing analysis of their defects, was the blatant political partisanship and meddling of the Regent, unbuttressed by any evidence of genuine popular support. Fears of violent revolution were exaggerated, although understandable, but no thoughtful or perceptive observer of the English political situation in 1816 could come to the conclusion that the position of the Monarch and his Regent and successor was high in the estimation of an increasingly hostile and articulate Press and ambitious politicians.
Stockmar’s bleak assessment of the condition of the English Monarchy also recognized the fact that Britain had emerged from the Napoleonic Wars as the most powerful nation in the world. In the immediate aftermath of the wars contemporaries were concerned by the impact of the short-term slump in trade, the sharp increase in the population, and the immense strains caused by the growth of towns and cities. But Britain’s ‘industrial revolution’ had a much more positive aspect. New wealth was being rapidly created, for the first time in the island’s history, from within. Foreign trade remained crucial, and agriculture prospered, but now the availability of cheap energy, the development of steam power, new expansion in technology, and the best transport system in the world – even before the coming of the revolution of the railways – had begun to transform not only the economy but the face of Britain. ‘All the way along from Leeds to Sheffield it is coal and iron, and iron and coal’ wrote Cobbett wonderingly in 1830. Foreign visitors were amazed by the spectacle of the Manchester spinning mills, the growth and prosperity of London, and the expansion and wealth of the industrial Midlands and the port towns.
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