The Mayfair Secret

By Catherine Curzon

In 1785 two people, deeply devoted and unquestionably in love, were married in a secret ceremony at the bride’s house in Mayfair’s fashionable Park Street. The bride was Maria Fitzherbert, née Smythe, a 29-year-old, twice-widowed Roman Catholic woman and the groom none other than George, Prince of Wales, the man who would one day rule as Prince Regent and, eventually, King George IV.

George IV, 1798,
Salomon Jomtob Bennett, after Sir William Beechey
(via Wikimedia Commons)

The scandalous clandestine marriage was forbidden in law by the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, that stated:

‘That no descendant of the body of his late majesty King George the Second, male or female, (other than the issue of princesses who have married, or may hereafter marry, into foreign families) shall be capable of contracting matrimony without the previous consent of his Majesty, his heirs, or successors, signified under the great seal, and declared in council, (which consent, to preserve the memory thereof is hereby directed to be set out in the licence and register of marriage, and to be entered in the books of the privy council); and that every marriage, or matrimonial contract, of any such descendant, without such consent first had and obtained, shall be null and void, to all intents and purposes whatsoever.’

Those over 25 did enjoy a small loophole in that, if they were refused permission to marry, they could give notice of the intended wedding to the Privy Council. One year after that notice was given they would be allowed to marry, on condition that Parliament had not refused the match.

In keeping with his carefree, selfish character, George had neither sought nor gained permission from his father, George III, for the wedding. Though it’s unlikely that the permission would have been given, even if it had, any children that resulted from the marriage would have been forever disqualified from wearing the crown.

Maria Fitzherbert, 1788,
Joshua Reynolds
(via Wikimedia Commons)

How, though, did the heir to the British throne come to meet this Shropshire widow?

Mrs Fitzherbert was born Maria Anne Smythe and was just 19 when she wed Edward Weld. Just three months later, an equestrian accident left the new bride a widow and the lack of a will meant that his considerable estate passed to his brother, leaving Maria with nothing.

Still, Maria was not a lady to mope and three years later had found herself a second husband, Thomas Fitzherbert. Once again the fates were not smiling and three years after the marriage, she was a widow once more. But this time the newly bereaved lady was left a very generous bequest and, still only 24-years-old, Maria spread her social wings. Thanks to the influence of her relative, the Earl of Sefton, society welcomed her with open arms and in 1784, during a visit to the opera, she met the Prince of Wales.

For George it was infatuation at first sight though Maria was somewhat more circumspect. When George sent Maria jewellery, she promptly returned it; in reply, the devastated young man sent word that he had attempted suicide and languished on the threshold of death. She must come to Carlton House with all haste, he begged, and see him one last time.

It is perhaps surprising that the worldly Maria fell for this ploy but fall for it she did and the shocked lady hurried to the royal bedside in the company of Georgiana, the Duchess of Devonshire. The women found the prince pale, weak and wrapped in bloodstained bandages. He implored her to take a ring borrowed from the duchess and when she did so, told her that he now considered them betrothed. As soon as Maria reached home she and Georgiana wrote out a statement denying any connection and Mrs Fitzherbert made preparations to leave England.

Maria’s getaway only made her more attractive and through a combination of tenacity and romance, George finally managed to woo her. Upon her return to England, Maria and George entered into a morganatic, secret and illegal marriage. The couple were wed at Maria’s home on 15th December 1785 before her uncle and brother in a ceremony officiated by a Reverend Burt. Though rumours persist that Burt was an inmate of the Fleet Prison, records of the Fleet Prison contain no mention of his name. Scandalous though the tale is, it appears that it contains no basis in fact.

At first Maria and George enjoyed a surprisingly loving marriage and London gossips assumed that Maria was nothing more than another royal mistress. The prince was happy to string the king and Parliament along, encouraging them to settle his ever-increasing debts on the understanding that one day he would marry and secure the line of succession for the House of Hanover.

George IV, 1785,
Samuel William Reynolds
(via Wikimedia Commons)

Charles James Fox brokered a deal with George, securing him the cash he needed to satisfy his creditors in return for a public denial of the widespread rumours that he was married to a Catholic widow. Despite his declaration of undying adoration to Maria, George agreed.

On 30th April 1787, Fox gave a speech to Parliament that included the following passage, its meaning in little doubt:

‘ [The rumours of marriage] …proved at once the uncommon pains taken by the enemies of his Royal Highness to propagate the grossest and most malignant falsehoods with a view to depreciate his character and injure him in the opinion of his country. […] a tale in every particular so unfounded, and for which there was not the shadow of anything like reality.’

For all Fox’s delicacy of language, the damage was done and Maria was furious. She was left to lick her unhappy wounds as George gadded off to Carlton House with nearly £170,000 safe in his coffers.

Despite the distance or perhaps because of it, their attraction continued to flare and soon Maria had forgiven her prince. Setting up individual residences in Brighton, George and Maria sat at the heart of fashionable society, hosting some of the most illustrious names in the country whilst at his father’s official court, things were less than happy.

George and Charlotte loathed the open liaisons between their son and his Catholic lover, but Maria struggled to retain her allure.

Almost ten years after the wedding, George sent a letter to Maria in which he explained that their marriage must end. With no excuses left, the time had finally come for him to make an official marriage to Caroline of Brunswick.

Maria Fizherbert
(via Wikimedia Commons)

Maria was heartbroken by the end of the relationship. Though the couple attempted to reconcile once his disastrous union with Caroline of Brunswick collapsed, the happy times they had known were far behind them. George hammered the final nail into the coffin when he snubbed Maria at a Carlton House dinner in 1811, when he told her to sit away from him ‘according to her rank’. Maria and George never met again and as the years wore on what had once been love turned to animosity.

Maria threatened to expose their marriage if she did not receive an annuity whilst George came to believe she had married him only for advancement. This seems disingenuous to say the least as Maria already enjoyed social standing and financial independence and being the illegal, secret wife of the debt-ridden George brought little to Maria that she could not have achieved with a good, legal marriage.
When Maria heard that George was unwell in 1830 she sent him a final note yet he was too frail to respond. Before George’s death, he asked to be buried with Maria’s eye miniature around his neck. This final wish was granted, perhaps proving how deeply George rued the loss of the scandalous Mrs Fitzherbert.

References

Anonymous. George III: His Court and Family, Vol I. London: Henry Colburn and Co, 1821.
Baker, Kenneth. George IV: A Life in Caricature. London: Thames & Hudson, 2005.
Black, Jeremy. The Hanoverians: The History of a Dynasty. London: Hambledon and London, 2007.
David, Saul. Prince of Pleasure. New York: Grove Press, 2000.
Hadlow, Janice. The Strangest Family: The Private Lives of George III, Queen Charlotte and the Hanoverians. London: William Collins, 2014.
Hetherington Fitzgerald, Percy. The Life of George the Fourth. London: Tinsley Brothers, 1881.
Huish, Robert. Memoirs of George the Fourth: Vol I. London: Thomas Kelly, 1830.
Irvine, Valerie. The King’s Wife: George IV and Mrs Fitzherbert. London: Hambledon, 2007.
Lloyd, Hannibal Evans. George IV: Memoirs of His Life and Reign, Interspersed with Numerous Personal Anecdotes. London: Treuttel and Würtz, 1830.
Smith, EA. George IV. Bury St Edmunds: St Edmundsbury Press, 1999.

About the Author

Catherine Curzon is a royal historian and blogs on all matters 18th century at A Covent Garden Gilflurt's Guide to Life. Her work has been featured by publications including BBC History Extra, All About History, History of Royals, Explore History and Jane Austen’s Regency World. She has also provided additional material for the sell-out theatrical show, An Evening with Jane Austen, which she will introduce at the Royal Pavilion, Brighton, in September (tickets are available here). 

Catherine holds a Master’s degree in Film and when not dodging the furies of the guillotine, she lives in Yorkshire atop a ludicrously steep hill. 

Her book, Life in the Georgian Court, is available now from Amazon UK, Amazon US, Book Depository and all good bookshops!

The English Princess - beloved wife and mother

by Anna Belfrage

Margaret of Connaught

In 1905, the Swedish Heir Apparent, Gustav Adolf (later Gustav VI Adolf) married Princess Margaret of Connaught, granddaughter to Queen Victoria. They met earlier that same year in Egypt, when Margaret and her sister were being presented to various eligible partners – although I think Egypt was something of a detour.

Gustav Adolf was actually in Capri visiting his mother when he received the invitation to a ball in Cairo in honour of the Connaught girls, and something must have piqued his interest already then - or maybe he just wanted to dance the night away, virtuoso dancer that he was. Whatever the case, off he went to Egypt. It is said it was love at first sight between the pretty English princess and the tall and dark haired Swedish prince. In actual fact, the idea was that the prince was to wed Margaret’s sister, but the moment he clapped eyes on Margaret, well, Gustav Adolf was lost, and after a whirlwind courtship the young couple were married at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, attended by a crowd of royals.

Gustav Adolf

This spontaneous behaviour was most uncharacteristic of Gustav Adolf – and of his rather stiff and formal family. Or maybe not so stiff, come to think of it, but more about that later. Gustav Adolf and his two brothers were the product of a dynastic marriage between the future King Gustav V of Sweden and Victoria of Baden, granddaughter to the German emperor, Wilhelm I. Initially, this young couple was very affectionate towards each other, and over the course of seven years Victoria would produce three sons – one heir and two spares.

By then, Victoria and Gustav led quite separate lives, this dictated to a large extent by Victoria’s declining health which required she spend the winters as far away from Sweden as possible. Things were not improved when Victoria, during a trip with her husband to Egypt, apparently dallied with one of the royal adjutants, and from Gustav’s letters home, he was more than torn apart by her betrayal. Victoria went on to spend most of her time and affection on Axel Munthe, the royal doctor who attended on both Victoria and her husband, while Gustav was supposedly to develop a preference for young men – as I said, not all that stiff and formal after all...

With their mother mostly away from home, the two young princes, Gustav Adolf and Wilhelm, were left in the care of their paternal grandmother, Swedish Queen Sofia. (The youngest boy was sickly and cared for elsewhere) The queen had been an eager supporter of Victoria as wife to her eldest son, but over time the two ladies developed an active dislike of each other, and Sofia was more than pleased to involve herself deeply in the day-to-day lives of her grandsons - preferably to countermand Victoria's instructions.

When Victoria was in Sweden, life was led according to rules. Victoria was strict and structured, and showed little overt affection for her sons. When Victoria was away, life was also led according to rules – Sofia’s rules – and while Queen Sofia has a reputation for being a kind lady, she was also stickler for protocol – royals had to behave as behoved royals.

By the time Gustav Adolf met Margaret in 1905, I think he was pretty sick of rules and protocols. And when he saw her, he decided that this was one opportunity at happiness he had no intention of letting slip through his fingers, ergo that most unusual burst of spontaneity and determination.

Sofiero

With Margaret - or Daisy, as her family knew her - English customs entered Swedish life. With Margaret, Sweden saw an upswing in flowered wallpaper, in tea consumption and in gardening. With Margaret, the wide-eyed Swedish populace saw pictures of their princess – their blue-blooded English princess – digging her own garden beds and laughing with her husband. Some of those flower beds she so meticulously planned and planted have been restored and can be viewed at Sofiero, the little palace she and Gustav Adolf converted into their summer house.

In retrospect, Margaret and Gustav Adolf seem to have been very happy together. While this is great news for them, it leaves the aspiring writer bereft of “tension”, the inherent conflict that has the reader’s eyes glued to the page. But when one starts scraping the surface, there are some streaks of darkness that come to life – like Gustav Adolf’s supposed affair with an actress, or the young man who insisted he was Gustav Adolf’s son. The king, as he was then, never uttered a word either confirming of rebutting this particular story.

And then we have the fact that it must have been very difficult for Margaret to adapt from her life in England to the stilted dreariness of the Swedish court. Where Gustav Adolf had captured a vibrant butterfly, an injection of energy and colour in his rather staid and boring life, Margaret had netted a handsome man who had little reason to believe in the longevity of happiness – he had seen first-hand how his parents’ marriage collapsed. But Margaret was not a quitter, and besides she was very much in love with this husband of hers, with his cleft chin and sensuous mouth, with the low timbre of his voice.

In 1906 came the first of the couple’s children – a prince, joy of joys, thereby ensuring Margaret had done her duty. Named after his father, the little boy thrived, and one year later he was joined in the nursery by boy number two, little Sigvard. To the astonishment of the Swedish court, Princess Margaret insisted on being very involved in the lives of her children – a most odd and English notion as per the older members of the royal family. Margaret didn’t care, in matter such as these she trusted her instincts.

Even odder, Margaret insisted her children be dressed in comfortable clothes, with comfortable shoes, so that they could run wild and crazy through the grounds of Sofiero. Not, let me tell you, the way Swedish royal children had been raised previously. What, little princes to come in with twigs in their hair and mud-caps on their knees? And look at their nails, their hands, covered with dirt. Once again, Princess Margaret smiled serenely and shrugged. And as to her husband, Gustav Adolf was as happy as a calf in clover with his loud and boisterous family. What he had never experienced as a child, he now tried to compensate himself for as an adult, supported by his loving wife.

A happy family upon the birth of child nr 4, Bertil

In 1910, a little girl, Ingrid, was born, in 1912 yet another son, Bertil, and in 1916 came the baby, Carl Johan. Five children in ten years. Margaret looks a bit pale and strained in the pictures from this time, as if all this child-bearing was taking quite the toll on her. But nonetheless they were happy and busy, the children thrived as did the gardens, and it was year after year of marital bliss.

In 1919, Margaret became pregnant again. She was thirty-seven at the time, still young enough for the pregnancy not to be a concern. The baby was due in June of the following year, and everything seemed to be progressing as it should. Until Princess Margaret caught a cold. Not a major issue, one would assume – as did Margaret and Gustav Adolf. She sniffled and coughed for some days, she sniffled some more and started complaining that her ear hurt. A lot. An ear infection, no more, the doctors diagnosed. An ear infection that went very bad, developing into a full-blown mastoiditis.  From one day to the other, the Princess went from being eight months pregnant with an aching ear to being dead, leaving her five children motherless and her husband utterly bereft.

Sweden’s English princess was dead. The English butterfly that had so captivated her husband, bringing colour and light into his life, was gone. I imagine Gustav Adolf took a long walk in the gardens she had planned, in the greenhouse she had ordered, sinking down to sit on her favourite perch. His happy family was gone, his brief excursion into a world dominated by love and laughter was at end. Gustav Adolf retreated into the protective armour of protocol and rules.

Louise Mountbatten

In 1923, Gustav Adolf married yet another English lady of royal blood, Louise Mountbatten. Theirs was to be a very long if childless marriage, and by all accounts Gustav Adolf was as lucky in his second marriage as in his first, finding in Louise a woman who was capable of great affection. Not as strikingly beautiful as Margaret, at times painfully shy, Louise compensated by being well-read and interested in everything from politics to social welfare, a good companion to her erudite and equally well-read husband. (As an aside, Gustav Adolf left a library consisting of 80 000 books - and he had read them all)
But despite all her qualities, despite her husband's affection for her, I believe that there were very many days when Louise felt she lived in the shadow of her predecessor and close relative, the oh so beautiful, oh so loved Princess Margaret of Connaught.

Anna Belfrage is the successful author of six published books, all of them part of The Graham Saga. Set in 17th century Scotland, Virginia and Maryland, The Graham Saga is the story of Matthew Graham and his wife, Alex Lind - two people who should never have met, not when she was born three centuries after him

Anna's books are available on Amazon US, Amazon UK, or wherever else good books are sold.

For more information about Anna and her books, please visit her website! If not on her website, Anna can mostly be found on her blog or on FB