The wedding was as disastrous as the first meeting. The Prince of Wales was agitated and almost unable, or unwilling, to utter his responses during the ceremony, and by the evening had consumed so much brandy he collapsed on the floor by the fireplace in the bridal chamber. Despite this, nine months later Caroline gave birth to Princess Charlotte.
The unhappy marriage was made worse by the malicious gossip spread by Lady Jersey, who poisoned the Royal Family against Caroline. Regardless of his own infidelities, the Prince was desperate to divorce his wife but the government wouldn’t sanction it without proof of her adultery. Three days after Princess Charlotte’s birth the Prince drew up a will leaving all his property to Roman Catholic commoner Maria Fitzherbert, whom he had married illegally and without the essential royal permission ten years before. He referred to Maria as ‘the wife of my heart and soul’, and to ‘the woman who is call’d the Princess of Wales’, he bequeathed one shilling.
The humiliations continued and, deeply hurt, Caroline reacted with increasingly reckless behaviour. In 1796 the papers carried reports that Lady Jersey had intercepted and opened letters written by Caroline to her mother, in which she made rude comments about the Royal Family and referred to the Queen as ‘Old Stuffy’. The press took Caroline’s side against the already unpopular Prince of Wales. They called for Lady Jersey’s dismissal as lady-in-waiting and were critical of the Prince’s spiteful attitude to his wife. The couple separated but the cruelties continued when Caroline was denied proper access to her daughter or an allowance or home suitable to her position.
Caroline rented a house in middle-class Blackheath, where she held some kind of a court of her own, encouraging politicians and society figures to visit. She hosted eccentric and sometimes wild parties, entertaining visitors while she sat on the ground eating raw onions or romped on her knees on the carpet with Princess Charlotte. She indulged in flirtations with a number of her guests, though her behaviour was somewhat sobered by the knowledge that adultery, in her case, was a treasonable offence. Her manner was extraordinarily open and confiding and she formed many intense, but often short-lived, friendships without regard for whether or not they were appropriate.
During the following years she became the protector of seven or eight orphan children, finding them good foster homes and supervising their education. Caroline’s fondness for children and for irresponsible jokes led to a national scandal. She adopted a baby, William Austin, but teased her friend Lady Douglas by pretending that she had given birth to the boy herself. Later, in 1806 and following a quarrel between the two women, Lady Douglas spread vindictive rumours about the purportedly illegitimate baby. At once a secret committee was set up by the King, the so-called Delicate Investigation, but, to the Prince of Wales’s chagrin, it was proved William Austin was not Caroline’s natural child. She, however, was condemned for her ‘loose behaviour with men’ and left with a stain upon her character.
In 1814, with Napoleon apparently a spent force, a service of thanksgiving was held at St Paul’s, followed by celebrations hosted by the Prince Regent and attended by royalty, peers of the realm and ministers of state. Caroline was incensed at being excluded and the press considered such treatment of her as shameful. The populace cheered her in the streets and at the opera. Exhausted by the continuing humiliations and political and financial wrangling of life in England, Caroline, now forty-six years old, decided to leave the country. She visited her family in Brunswick and thence travelled to Italy, appointing a lady’s maid, Louise Demont, in Geneva on the way. Upon leaving Milan she hired a courier, thirty-year-old Bartolomeo Pergami. In Florence, in an attempt to assimilate the Italians, whom she had grown to love, Caroline bought a black wig and darkened her eyebrows.
Pergami became indispensable to her and was always attentively by her side. Following a sojourn at Villa d’Este by Lake Como, they set off on extensive travels. Caroline elevated Pergami to the position of chamberlain and purchased land and a title for him before they travelled back to Italy, eventually arriving in Pesaro in 1818. The facts of her life from 1819 to her death on 7 August 1821 are outlined in The Dressmaker’s Secret except for her interactions with Emilia, whose fictional story is woven throughout.
Following her death, Caroline’s body was conveyed to Brunswick Cathedral, where one hundred maidens carrying lighted candles lined the aisles. As her coffin was placed in its vault a prayer was said and then the maidens extinguished the candles.
Caroline was her own worst enemy and impossibly unsuited to life as a royal princess. Although her common touch was popular with the people, her sometimes outrageous behaviour made her a painful burr in the side of the Royal Family. Despite that, she was courageous and loving. She tried to live for the moment, squeezing as much joy as possible into a life led under difficult and often extremely unfair circumstances.
Further Reading
If you wish to find out more about Caroline of Brunswick, I suggest the following books:
The Unruly Queen by Flora Fraser
Rebel Queen by Jane Robins
Caroline by Thea Holme
The Dressmaker’s Secret Page 39
