She had insisted on being put in her chair and she sat there breathing heavily.
Her family was with her and the Prince Regent was seated beside her; her hand was in his.
And so she died.
It was fitting that it should be Kew Palace where she should lie in state. The Prince Regent was so affected that he had almost fainted at the moment of her death. He was overwhelmed by remorse for all the enmity which had been between them, sorrow that he could no longer let her know that she was restored to his affections and a great relief that they had parted good friends.
He wished that she could have lived longer to see him parted from the woman he had married. He believed that if she could have seen that, if he could have married, she would have forced herself to live and see his heir.
But it was not to be.
Her coffin was carried by torchlight from Frogmore to Windsor and there she was buried in the royal vault.
This was a period of momentous events in the royal family— for births and deaths must be so called.
The Prince was tiring of Lady Hertford. She was frigid and no one knew whether or not the friendship was platonic. What he needed in his life was comfort and affection. He did not get this from Lady Hertford whose greatest concern was to protect her reputation and to lead him in politics.
For a time he had been fascinated, but with the loss of his mother he needed a woman who could be loving, affectionate and uncritical.
He thought often of Maria. He would always think of Maria. But Maria had retired from the scene; she wanted no more upheavals in her life. She had diverted her affection to Mary Seymour, little Minney. She was old— older than he was and although young girls had never appealed to him and he had chosen one grandmother after another, he wanted someone whose beauty could inspire him.
Marriage! He thought continually of it. Which always brought him back to the same problem.
There was another birth in the family. Not, it was believed, a very important one this. In May of the year 1819 the Duchess of Kent produced a daughter.
She was called Alexandrina Victoria.
The Clarences had not been so fortunate as the Kents. The Duchess had borne two children, none of whom had survived. Meanwhile the Duke of Kent gloated over his plump, healthy little daughter whose looks already showed her to be a true member of the House of Hanover.
He was delighted, he remarked to his Duchess, that little Victoria had a chance— a very fair chance. York could not produce an heir now; and it seemed that Clarence could not. And if they did not there was nothing between their own little Victoria and the throne.
‘But a girl,’ said the Duchess, her eyes sparkling at the prospect.
‘The English are not averse to women rulers. There was Elizabeth. There was Anne. They were both more popular than any George has ever been.’
He spoke regretfully. He had wanted to christen Victoria ‘Elizabeth’, but the names had been chosen for her and she was Victoria after her mother.
‘I have a feeling,’ said the Duke, ‘that what I hope might well come to pass.
It’s just a feeling but it’s very strong.’
Shortly afterwards he took his wife and child to Sidmouth which he thought would be healthy for little Victoria. It was a rainy season and on several occasions the Duke, who was fond of walking, was out in torrential downpours, as a result of which he caught cold; inflammation of the lungs set in and in a few days he was dead.
Little Victoria was fatherless but a step nearer the throne. And within a few weeks she had taken even another step forward. The King whose mind had given way so many years ago but whose physical health had remained very good, suddenly became ill.
He had no will to live. In those rare faintly lucid moments when he was aware of what had happened to him, he had always wished for death.
He need wish no longer.
Six days after the death of the Duke of Kent he too was dead.
The Prince Regent had become George IV.
Return to England
SINCE the death of her daughter Caroline had lived a little more soberly. She often reproached herself for not being in England at the time of Charlotte’s confinement.
‘A mother should be with her daughter,’ she told Lady Anne Hamilton who had joined her and was proving to be one of her most faithful attendants.
‘It was not easy in Your Highness’s place,’ Lady Anne reminded her.
‘I wonder whether I should have stayed.’
She was not at all sure and it was a question no one could answer.
She had heard, long after the events, of the marriages in the family and of the Clarences’ disappointments and the birth of the Kents’ little girl.
‘That is our trouble, my dear,’ she said. ‘Everything is political. My brothers- in-law married because they must, not because they wished to. They were happier with their mistresses. Sometimes I think it is a mistake that royalty should marry royalty, for royalty often hate each other. My father hated my mother because there was a woman he loved and whom he would have preferred to marry. As for the Prince of Wales, he was already married to Maria Fitzherbert and would have been a happier man if, he had stayed married to her. But royalty demanded that he marry me— and you see what a merry pickle we have got ourselves into.’
Messengers arrived from England and Caroline, eager for news, had them brought to her at once ‘A letter from Brougham?’ She turned pale. That must mean that something very important was happening in England.
She read it through and said ‘Oh, my God—’
She gazed at Anne and went on: ‘He tells me that the King is very ill and not expected to live, it may even be that at this moment our Prince Regent is King of England.’
Lady Anne looked startled and Caroline could see that she was thinking that she was talking to the Queen of England. She laughed.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, ‘it may well be that I am your Queen, my dear. That poor man! How he suffered! And he was so kind to me. No one else was. He was a good man. You see I say was for something tells me he has gone. It is not bad— for him at least. He will go to Heaven to meet his old Begum— if she arrived there, which I much doubt. She could be a wicked old woman at times. Oh dear, but think what this means to us who are left. I— the Queen of England! That is why Brougham writes to me. He will be in communication he says. You can be sure he will! He has my interests close to his heart. Only because they are your own, my dear Brougham! You have never deceived me. Ah, my dear, I can see that our travels will soon be over.’
‘You would return to England?’
‘My dear, if I am Queen of England is not my place in that country? You doubt it? Let me tell you this, when the Prince Regent becomes George IV he will have to understand that he has a Queen. I shall certainly go back to England for I am indeed the Queen.’
Brougham knew a great deal more than Caroline. He knew that the new King was going to do everything in his power to obtain a divorce. He was a very ambitious man and one of his great stumbling blocks to advancement was the Lord Chancellor Lord Eldon who refused him a silk gown Brougham saw that if he became the Queen’s attorney he would automatically take silk and there would be other advantages too. He was therefore determined to act as Caroline’s legal adviser and to be in at the start.
While she was aware of his ambitions, Caroline was not blind to his talents.
He was a brilliant man and it was purely the animosity of the Chancellor which was preventing his rising in his career. While she knew that he would be working for Brougham rather than her, she realized the advantage of such a man’s advice and was ready to appoint him.
She had learned of the King’s death through Brougham; she realized that she would never have been officially told which was an indication of what treatment she might expect when she reached England.