The Jilting Princess...

by M.M. Bennetts

Yes, she was a princess.  And yes, she had to marry for reasons of state rather than solely based on her personal fancy, but Princess Charlotte (1796-1817), daughter of the Prince Regent and Caroline of Brunswick was no pawn--kind of more the opposite...

Bearing in mind that at the time when ministers of state, and latterly her parents, were scanning the horizon for suitable royal consorts for her, the Napoleonic wars were heading towards, they hoped, a close.  Whilst at the same time, the remaining heads of state--those which had survived--were wondering how best to restore order to Europe and reinstate legitimate government (read monarchies) to those countries which Napoleon had annexed to France.  So the task of choosing a royal mate was a little more complex than usual.

Nevertheless, in 1812, the government hit upon a plan.  Wouldn't it be perfect if Princess Charlotte were to marry William of Orange?  He was of an age with Charlotte, not too old nor too young, he'd seen active service in the Peninsula, so he was a dashing military hero and he was a Protestant (a necessity). What could be better? 

William of Orange had been raised in exile in England (so he spoke English!), he'd spent two years at Oxford,and from 1811, he served in the Peninsula under Wellington by whom he was known as 'Slender Billy'.

Perhaps he wasn't great looking, but he was known to be amiable, there had been another hugely successful marriage between a Prince of Orange and an English princess...And, bliss of blisses, someday he would rule the Netherlands--so through him and any children they might have, Britain would regain a toehold on the Continent, moreover a toehold that was right across the North Sea, thus securing the sea lanes to the Baltic.  It was ideal!

There was only one problem:  Princess Charlotte.

Because you see, in the autumn of 1812, she had conceived a rather violent passion for a Captain Charles Hesse of the 18th Hussars, and whilst at Windsor had gone out riding with him every day.

And after that, she'd been meeting with him secretly at her mother's home in Kensington, where her mother, helpfully, would "let him into her own apartment by a door that opens onto Kensington Gardens...[then] leave them together in her own bedroom, [with the words] 'A present, je vous laisse, amusez vous'."  [For the moment I'm leaving you, amuse yourselves...]

As may you appreciate, when the Prince Regent discovered, he was incandescent with rage.

And Charlotte was pretty much locked away with a new governess and with very little company.  As the Prince said with some feeling (and almost in echo of Austen's Mr. Bennet):  "I know all that passed in Windsor Park; and if it were not for my clemency I would have shut you up for life.  Depend upon it, as long as I live you shall never have an establishment, unless you marry."  

Hence, when the proposed match with William was put to Princess Charlotte in February 1813, she was not keen.  As she said of him, "I think him so ugly, that I am sometimes obliged to turn my head away in disgust when he is speaking to me."  (Ouch!)  But the idea did eventually take hold--marriage would allow her her own establishment and financial independence.  And the princess was already in debt to the tune of £22,000.  (Over a million pounds in today's money.)

The Prince Regent was delighted and held a dinner at his home at Carlton House so that the two might meet on 11 December, and Charlotte was enjoined to give her father her "fair and undisguised opinion".  After the usual fits and starts, by the end of the evening, Charlotte told her father, "I like his manner very well, as much as I ever have seen of it."

The Prince Regent was rapturous.  Charlotte would later speak of the whole thing as "a dream".

Then, in early April, having been fought to a standstill in France, Napoleon abdicated.  Then followed another remarkable bit of news:  for the first time in centuries European royalty were to visit England!  Caught up in the euphoria of the moment, in early May, the government announced the intended marriage between Charlotte and William, the Hereditary Prince of Orange (who suddenly had a throne again!)...

William himself had already arrived in Britain, ahead of the other European princes--Tsar Alexander and Kaiser Wilhelm and their entourages.  But then, a spoke appeared in the marital-diplomatic wheel--the Grand Duchess Catherine, the Tsar's confidante and sister, who allegedly had designs on William herself--or rather Russia also wanted a toehold in western Europe.

The visit of the crowned heads that June offered an opportunity for endless rounds of parties, balls, dinners and diplomacy, but Princess Charlotte was not invited.  Instead, she remained cooped up in her residence at Warwick House, next door to Carlton House, sequestered away from the fun, even as Grand Duchess Catherine worked on her, visiting, taking tea, souring whatever remained of Charlotte's affection for Slender Billy--especially by recounting just what her fiance was getting up to.

While Charlotte was locked away, William was repeatedly getting drunk, attending all the social events, having a whale of a time...when he'd gone to the Ascot Races, he'd returned to London hanging off the outside of a stage coach.

And there was one other looming problem.  Where would the young couple live?  Charlotte feared that if she  left the country and her father obtained a divorce as he wished to do, her father might remarry and produce a new heir.  And where would that leave Charlotte?  So the demand made in the proposed marriage settlement that she should spend some time with her husband in the Netherlands, as she put it, "living in Holland amongst the fogs and dykes", each year proved the final straw.

(Though it's also said that she'd been secretly seeing the Prussian king's nephew, Prince Frederick, who was said to be very handsome and she was much enamoured...)

Charlotte therefore requested that William pay her a visit on 16 June.  Their consultation together ended with Charlotte's "positive declaration that she will not leave England now..."  And later that evening, Charlotte wrote to William informing him that she was jilting him, that their engagement was "to be totally and for ever at an end".

It was a public humiliation for William...and initially, it didn't work out so well for Charlotte either...though later, she did marry the rather spiffing Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg and he was her choice.

This is an Editor's Choice post, originally published April 23 2013

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M.M. Bennetts was one of the driving forces behind teh EHFA blog and contributed many wonderful posts before her early demise some years ago. She was a specialist in early 19th century European history and the Napoleonic wars, and the author of two novels, May 1812 and Of Honest Fame set during the period.  

Ann Radcliffe, The Mighty Enchantress

by J.A. Beard

Reading, that oh-so-wonderful pleasure, was of course appreciated by many in Georgian England. The expansion of literacy among women during the period  also helped to provide new popularity for many types of fiction.

In the later decades of Georgian England, the rise of the Gothic novel particularly stands out. Crumbling castles, brooding noblemen, virtuous women terrorized by supernatural wickedness in the darkness. These are all part of the the early tradition of Gothic fiction. Fixated on atmosphere, the Gothic tradition was a mix of horror, melodrama, and romantic elements. Whenever Gothic fiction is considered, there's one woman who helped to shape and popularize the genre, Ann Radcliffe.

An excerpt:

While Emily gazed with awe upon the scene, footsteps were heard within the gates, and the undrawing of bolts; after which an ancient servant of the castle appeared, forcing back the huge folds of the portal, to admit his lord. As the carriage-wheels rolled heavily under the portcullis, Emily's heart sunk, and she seemed, as if she was going into her prison; the gloomy court, into which she passed, served to confirm the idea, and her imagination, ever awake to circumstance, suggested even more terrors, than her reason could justify.

Another gate delivered them into the second court, grass-grown, and more wild than the first, where, as she surveyed through the twilight its desolation—its lofty walls, overtopt with briony, moss and nightshade, and the embattled towers that rose above,—long-suffering and murder came to her thoughts. One of those instantaneous and unaccountable convictions, which sometimes conquer even strong minds, impressed her with its horror. The sentiment was not diminished, when she entered an extensive gothic hall, obscured by the gloom of evening, which a light, glimmering at a distance through a long perspective of arches, only rendered more striking. As a servant brought the lamp nearer partial gleams fell upon the pillars and the pointed arches, forming a strong contrast with their shadows, that stretched along the pavement and the walls.

-- The Mysteries of Udolpho, 1794.

While not the first author to write what we would now consider a Gothic novel, Radcliffe helped to popularize and bring Gothic novels into the literary mainstream. For this reason, she's often considered the true definer of the genre.

Although she was wildly successful during her lifetime, she wrote only a book of poetry and six novels: The Castles of Athlin and Dunbayne (1789), A Sicilian Romance (1790), The Romance of the Forest (1791), The Mysteries of Udolpho (1794), The Italian (1797), and Gaston de Blondeville (1826). If you're wondering about the large number of years between her fifth and sixth novels, the last was actually posthumously published by her husband.

Her works tended to focus on virtuous and imperiled heroines of breeding dealing with the aforementioned brooding noblemen, mysterious exotic castles, and supernatural elements. Radcliffe, however, in contrast to many other Gothic writers was rather explicit (with one exception, Gaston de Blondville, though as noted above, it would only be published after her death) in showing that the supernatural elements in her stories all actually had rational, non-supernatural explanations.

One of the continuing elements in her works is a heroine desperately resisting an onslaught of emotion and instead, eventually, applying reason to the situation. For the time, especially given many people's sentiments about women in general, this was actually somewhat feminist, though a type of feminism considered mostly acceptable by late Georgian society.

Indeed, her combination of sensible heroines, lack of true supernatural elements, and virtue allowed her brand of Gothic novels to be acceptable for the literary mainstream. Critics at the time hailed her as the "mighty enchantress."

Surprisingly, at the height of her popularity at the age of 32, she stopped writing. As she kept a rather low personal profile, it's not certain her exact reasons for quitting, but many literary historians attribute it to her personal disgust with the direction Gothic fiction was taken, particularly in terms of then-prurient disreputable supernatural content. For example, The Monk, published in 1796, gained some popularity. The novel features and references, among other things, demon pacts, rape, and incest.

Radcliffe's works remained popular and influential throughout the 19th century both in England and the United States. She would influence many other authors who would go on to influence their own literary descendants. So, even if she isn't a household name anymore, her influence lingers.

Her 19th-century popularity is easily attested by the direct references to her works in period works and later fiction. One of the more famous and familiar to modern readers would be the several references to her work, particularly The Mysteries of Udolpho, in Jane Austen's Northanger Abbey (1817), a parody of many elements popular in Gothic fiction and Radcliffe's books. I should note that Ms. Austen was far from the only one parodying Gothic excess at the time.

So, whenever you read a book where some young woman is running down a spooky mansion/castle corridor or watch a similar movie, take a moment to think of Ann Radcliffe.

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J.A. Beard is a scientific editor and the author of A Woman of Proper Accomplishments, which, though not very Gothic, does feature  a virtuous and rational Georgian young woman threatened by supernatural forces.